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It is a privilege for me to be 
able to introduce to you Pastor Jeff Thomas. He comes to us today 
from the Alfred Place Baptist Church in Aberystwyth, Wales. And he has been pastoring that 
church since 1965. And that is longer than some 
of us, probably many of us, have even been alive. And I don't 
point this out to embarrass our brother with reference to his 
age. but rather to highlight the fact that God has privileged 
us very greatly in giving us a seasoned and a proven brother 
to come and minister the word. And it is a great privilege for 
me to be able to introduce Pastor Jeff Thomas. I was wondering where the volume 
of sound was coming from and was too shy to turn around and 
look at you. I know I'd see you soon. Thank you very much for 
the invitation to come here and speak on this Lord's Day morning. I'm very much at home. See the 
leaflets in the rack there at the back, the very same ones 
that we put on display in our book rack in Aberystwyth. and 
also sell in our Christian bookshop and friends of mine like John 
Blanchard, Peter Jeffrey, you've got them there. I'm delighted 
to be with you today and trust that what I say will be a means 
of grace to you. I want to draw your attention 
to the letter to the Romans chapter 15 and verse 13, Romans 15 and 
verse 13. Now may the God of hope fill 
you with all joy and peace. in believing, that you may abound 
in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. One of the great verses 
in scripture, isn't it? Let's get the great verses right in our lives. You've been traveling 
in a state, Wyoming, Montana, Saskatchewan, lots of empty space 
there, you've been travelling far north in British Columbia, 
you don't know where the gas stations are, you're going on 
a family trip, you've got your camping equipment with you, children 
in the back seat and the needle is on empty and you're going 
along there and you're hoping no one else has noticed it and 
you sing some hymns and turn the radio on, put a CD so that 
your wife doesn't spot that you're on empty, that she doesn't see 
the flashing light. You come to one community, there 
are no gas stations there, and you're on. You're talking heartily 
and jovially, but your heart is sinking. You're on empty. 
You're just wondering, what will you do now if you run out of 
gas and you're miles from anywhere? What will you do? Who will come? 
The dangers and the worries. of it all. And then you go round 
the bend and you see a sign and the light is there, oh you've 
never been so glad to see a filling station in your life. You fill 
it up. You're so glad. You're so thankful. Our civilisation is on empty. People are having music and loud 
singing and constant laughter on the media, radio, TV, something 
to dull the pain of knowing that they're on empty and not knowing 
where they're going to get filled up again. People are out of joy 
and they're out of peace and they're trying the narcotics 
and the alcohol and the popping the pills just somewhere to find 
joy and peace. Men without God Amen without 
hope. And then one day you were in 
work and you meet a girl and you say to her, so how do you 
weekend go? Lovely, great time, she said. 
We were in church yesterday. I found the message so helpful. 
Oh, you go to church. And she begins to talk to you. 
Always when you're together then you somehow find her and you 
talking about Christianity and the Bible. And one day she says, 
we've got a baptismal service in our church on Sunday, would 
you like to come along? And you come along. And your 
life has never been the same since that time when you heard 
the gospel preached and you were welcomed in a believing fellowship 
of men and women. And you began to discover then 
in the message of Jesus Christ the source of joy and peace. Now I can tell people that God 
is light and in Him is no darkness at all. I can tell you that God 
is a consuming fire, that it's a fearful thing to fall into 
the hands of the living God. I must say those things to you 
because that's what the Bible says. I can bring to you the 
great solemn sanctions of judgement and eternity. But the unique 
distinctive of the Christian faith is that it contains a message 
of hope. That Jesus Christ didn't say 
to the church, you are the headmaster, you are the principal of the 
world. He doesn't say, you are the traffic 
warden. of the traffic police of the 
world. He told them that they were the 
light of the world. And I can speak to you of a God 
who is love and joy and peace and long-suffering and gentleness 
and goodness and faithfulness and meekness and self-control. That this God of hope can fill 
despairing men and women with all joy and peace. It's possible for your burden 
to be lifted, for your heaviness to evaporate, for your discouragement 
to be turned to acceptance and for you to be influenced so that 
you are filled to the brims of your lives with joy and peace. That's what the text says. Isn't 
this what the text says? Belonging for the Apostle, for 
the whole congregation there in Rome, the God of hope fill 
you with all joy and peace in believing that you may abound 
in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. He's writing to the entire 
congregation in Rome. He's writing to the illiterates. 
that were there, the slaves, the poor beggars that have come 
there, the women, the slaves, the soldiers that have come down 
from the palace, he's writing to them all. And he's praying 
this, he's longing for this, for all of them, that every one 
of them may be filled with all joy and peace in believing that 
they may overflow, that they may abound in hope through this 
living God. The great question on the lips 
of this me generation in which we live is, what's in it for 
me? What's in Christianity if I came back on another Sunday 
morning to this congregation? If I got seriously involved now 
in the Christian faith, what's in it for me? Well, what's in 
it for you? is you being filled with all joy and peace as you 
trust in God. That's what's in it for you, 
isn't that marvellous? That you will never, never in 
your lives hear such an offer made to you as you are hearing 
now. The first thing I want to say 
to you is that the Bible tells us how such hope can be ours. And it begins by focusing on 
the God of hope. The God we worship is the God 
of hope. He's not twisting his hands in 
frustration as he looks from heaven on the earth today and 
he sees turmoil in northern Africa and Afghanistan. He's not frustrated 
as he looks through the history of the last hundred years and 
world wars and Korea and Vietnam and 9-11. He is the God of hope. He's the God of the future, the 
God of the rolling years. a God who makes promises and 
fulfills every single one of them. He says if you come to 
Jesus Christ, you will have rest. He is the God of hope for the 
most despairing, for the most despised men and women in society, 
for the child abusers and the torturers and the rapists. There is hope for you because 
God is a God of hope. If you turn to Him, He says, 
though your sins are scarlet sins, they shall become as white 
as snow. He assures you that if you entrust 
yourselves to His loving care, He will freely pardon you for 
the worst things you have ever done. He will clothe you with 
the righteousness of His Son, Jesus Christ. He will adopt you 
into His family. He will make you His sons. He 
will give you all the privileges of access to this great Creator 
and you can say to Him, Abba, Father. He will become your teacher. He will give you ever increasing 
understanding and knowledge of who you are and how you should 
live what this world is all about and what your purpose in life 
is and how to handle the various pressures which mortality and 
a groaning creation bring into our lives. He will work all things 
together for your good. He will never leave you. When 
you are walking through the valley of the shadow of death, He will 
be with you then comforting and support you. He will take you 
to Himself in heaven and you will dwell in the house of the 
Lord forever. Isn't that a marvelous message 
of hope? Sigmund Freud hasn't got a message 
like that. Charles Darwin didn't have a 
message like that. Karl Marx doesn't have a message 
like that. Only God can say such things, 
because He is not the God of the humanists or the God of the 
stoics. He is not the God of the veil 
worshippers in their despair, cutting themselves and dancing 
and shouting and crying and hearing nothing. God has given us certainty that 
what I have said to you is true. You say, how is that? You Christians 
are always talking about love and joy and peace and they're 
words, they're just words. No, God has given us assurance 
that what I have said in your hearing is true because of the 
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Peter was a companion, 
he was an eyewitness. of the Lord Jesus Christ. He 
said, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He's begotten us again to a lively 
hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. He'd been 
a know-all. Not even Jesus could tell him 
everything. He didn't need warnings. He didn't 
need the peril to be made spectacularly clear to him. He didn't believe 
in the necessity of Jesus dying? He didn't believe in the resurrection 
of the dead, and he was now in despair. He'd given three years 
of his life to following a healing rabbi. But now it was all gone. Jesus was dead. Another good 
man put to death. But on the third day, he ran 
after John to the tomb. and found the stone rolled away 
and the tomb empty and then he met, he met Jesus. He met him. He met him in the 
upper room. He met him in a private re-commissioning when the Saviour 
gave him then restoration of the privileges of serving Him 
and working for Him, feeding His sheep and feeding His lambs. His life was reborn. He was a 
new creation. He had a living hope. He spent 
the rest of His days in joy and peace because He knew God. And He knew that Jesus Christ 
was more powerful than death. That absolute reality was not 
death. But absolute reality was the 
preacher of the Sermon on the Mount. And the glory of the resurrection 
is that it didn't take place in the world of hypotheses or 
the realm of ideas. It didn't belong to the sphere 
of theology, that it belongs to the realm of facts. An empty 
tomb, a folded napkin, grave clothes laid there. The great 
word of the angel, behold the place where they laid him. He 
is not here, he is risen. The empty tomb, the triumph of 
Christ over death and the forces of evil. Hours in which love 
incarnate lay in a tomb. Wisdom incarnate, power incarnate 
seems to have been overthrown by death and the powers of evil. And then God raises Him from 
the dead, and God gives Him the victory, God vindicated incarnate 
grace, and God raised Him up, and it is the great guarantee 
of our resurrection. It is the model of our resurrection, 
we too sown in weakness. There was a time when your father 
could repair a television. But now he's unable even to switch 
a television on. There were times when he would 
devour his food. And now he needs both hands to 
hold a cup to sip through a tube. We're sown in weakness. Mortality 
is written on all of us. But that is not the end. It is 
raised in strength and glory And honour, that is the Christian 
hope. On the first Lord's Day, there 
was the eruption of the power and goodness of God into this 
world. On this planet, someone who was dead opened an eye and 
opened another eyelid and looked around and flexed his fingers 
and toes and got up and took off the napkin. And a messenger 
from God took the stone away and he came forth in the power 
of an endless life. God gives us the assurance that 
when he speaks of hope and peace and joy, that it is grounded 
in his mighty power in Christ over the greatest and last of 
our enemies. And then this God of hope, he 
tells us how this joy and peace can become yours. It is as you 
trust in him. Some of you are not sure whether 
you have faith or not. The New Testament doesn't tell 
us much about the psychology of faith. It doesn't give us 
much information that we can analyse that. emphasises greatly 
Jesus Christ. It wants us to think about him. 
It wants our minds and our conscience and our affections to be drawn 
to Jesus Christ and in that, faith comes. Let's use the word 
trust, the NIV translates it as we trust in him, and that's 
a good word, trust. It's a softer word, isn't it? 
It's an Anglo-Saxon word rather than faith, which is a Latinized 
French word, faith, fide, trust. You trust in him, you trust, 
you know what trust is, you've got that digital alarm clock 
at the side of your bed and it's so reliable and you hardly ever 
have to change it except if there's a power cut. It's there and it'll 
tell you, you can't sleep, it's 3.34. You trust the clock, don't 
you? You trust your mother's love 
for you. You know, her face lights up when she sees you. We can 
trust in God. We can trust God. We can trust 
God implicitly. We can trust whatever God is. We can trust God. Whatever He's done, what He says, 
God is straight. We can trust Jesus Christ. You 
can trust Jesus. You can trust Him. When He said, 
the Son of Man came to lay down His life for ransom for men. 
That's why He came. You can trust Him. Our ransom 
has been paid. He says, come to Me and I will 
give you rest. You can trust that He will give 
you rest if you come to Him. Coming to Him is a movement of 
your heart and affections and mind, energised by the Holy Spirit 
as he takes the word that you were listening to, and he brings 
you then to himself. He is meek and lowly of heart. because he received a sinner 
like you. You can trust him. You can trust 
him absolutely. You can trust him implicitly. 
When the devil says we've sinned too much and we've out sinned 
his forgiveness. There was a little girl and she 
was six years of age. She is six years of age. Her 
name is Aspen and she was being driven home from school by her 
father. Mother couldn't do the school 
run and her father had gone down to pick her up and it was one 
of those downpours where you need double speed on the windscreen 
wipers just to see ahead. And there was silence in the 
car, father didn't want to hit anything. And she said, Daddy, 
yes, I've been thinking. Yes, he said, what are you thinking 
about? The rain is like sin and the windscreen wipers are like 
God wiping our sins away. He'd never said anything like 
that before. He had a lump in his throat. She was a funny little 
girl. She said that. He wanted to see 
if he could go a little further with it. So he said to her, do 
you notice that the rain is still coming down? What does that tell 
us? She didn't hesitate for a moment. 
She said, we keep on sinning and God keeps on forgiving. We keep on sinning. And I said, 
yes, Lynn, I've never done anything free from sin. Everything I've 
done and said, holiest prayers and sermons they need the forgiveness 
of God. There's too much self here still, 
until in a better land when I'll sing His power to save. You may say about what I've just 
said to you, we keep on sinning. But Jesus Christ keeps on forgiving. You may think that that is a 
license for promiscuity, for continuing in sin. I say to you, 
Golgotha won't let you. The rest you've had in coming 
to Christ won't allow you. to add an ounce to the burdens 
that he bore. You trust in him. You trust right 
into him. You trust and trust in him as your prophet, as your 
priest, as your king. You trust everything about Jesus. 
You trust him. You trust his warnings. But they 
are pastoral and caring warnings. The place where the worm dies 
not and the fires are not quenched. You trust what he says. Trust 
everything. He's never dying love for you. 
He's saying... Sometimes, you know, I say, if he sends me to hell, I'll 
go to hell trusting in him. Well, of course, no one's ever 
gone to hell trusting in Jesus. No one's ever gone to hell asking 
Jesus for mercy and forgiveness. I'll go to hell with you, if 
you go to hell crying to the Lord to save you. The God of hope kills us, and 
the result is We are filled with all joy and peace. That's such 
extraordinary encouragement. We, not super Christians, not 
Jonathan Edwards, not Spurgeon. We ordinary Christians. He wants that church in Rome. Young believers, new believers, 
people from such awful backgrounds, converted gladiators. He wants 
them filled with all joy and peace. The joy of knowing God, 
the joy of being loved by God, the joy of realising our sins 
have been cast into the depths of the sea and God remembers 
them. The joy of walking through life from getting up on a Monday 
morning, going off to school, going off to work and the Lord 
is with you, the joy of the heart, the joy of having a Bible, the 
joy of the Lord's day, the joy of the Lord's people, the joy 
of the means of grace, the joy of the Word of God coming in 
power and the Holy Spirit and with much assurance, the joy 
of serving other people in the name of Jesus, the joy of bearing 
witness with a lisping, stammering tongue, the joy of hearing What 
a friend we have in Jesus. I was in Grand Rapids a couple 
of years ago now. I was preaching in Providence 
Reformed Church in Grand Rapids. We went for lunch to a fascinating 
family. The man was a carpenter. I knew 
a bit about the family. There were ten children. and 
there was the husband and the wife and there was Jola and myself. We were 14 around the table. 
We had chicken soup and bread. Just great. And he got the Bible 
to read at the end of the meal. He said, you were preaching on 
contentment this morning, Pastor Thomas. I said, do you know something 
about our family? And I did, but I wanted to hear 
it from the horse's mouth. He said, I was married and had 
three children and my wife was expecting her fourth and she 
was driving along the road and a drunk shot through a red light 
and hit the car and killed her. And my second wife here, she 
said her husband, he was a baker in Grand Rapids. And one day 
a disgruntled employee took a Colt 45 and went to work and shot 
him dead. And her parents came to look 
after her and the five children. And on the Sunday morning they 
were driving to church as they did. Her parents and her and 
the five children in the back and they were driving along and 
suddenly a voice came from the back of the vehicle. We're not singing. We always 
sing going to church. And one of them pitched up John 
Newton's great Sabbath hymn. safely through another week. They'd lost their father. He'd 
been murdered. But he was safe in the arms of 
Jesus. It's said that when the boy had more faith than 
all of us, the children, like children, like statues, listening to this 
story of their life. She came with her five children 
to church and he was there with his three children and the Lord 
brought them together. They fell in love with one another 
and then the Lord has given them two children themselves and there 
are the ten children. And he read scripture and expressed 
his contentment with God's good and perfect will. The God of 
hope filled them with joy and peace as they trusted in God. You have joy as Christians. The 
clouds lifted this morning when we saw the mountains for the 
first time. We'd heard about them. They were there. They were beautiful. Sometimes 
you look out of a window at your backyard and you see a bird pulling 
up a worm from the lawn and you're just overwhelmed with joy. I sit and watch my three girls 
and behind a book that I'm watching them and they're talking to one 
another and they're listening carefully as one speaks and the 
other speaks. See their affection for one another 
now, all mothers talking together. Just overwhelmed with joy. How unworthy to be blessed in 
this way. The Lord fills us with joy. The joy of hearing of people 
being converted. When Philip preached in Samaria 
and the Lord blessed his ministry in Samaria, then many Samaritans 
were converted and Luke tells us that the city was full of 
joy. Isn't that interesting? He could 
have said it was full of faith and full of praise and singing 
and full of repentance and all that would have been true. That's 
what he seizes on, his joy. And when Philip was taken and 
ministered to the Ethiopian eunuch, he went on his way full of joy. The disciples were full of joy 
and the Holy Ghost is at the end of Acts 13. That can't be 
the disciples were regenerate. It can't be. There is something 
experiential about that definition of Christian men and women. They 
were filled with joy and the Holy Spirit. Paul, the great 
apostle of joy, he mentions it twenty-one times in the Bible. 
Joy, filled with all joy and peace. Never joy only, but a 
joy that's characterised also by peace. It's not just effervescence. It's not I'm working on the microphone, 
getting close to you and asking the organist to play a tune again, 
dimming the lights and all that psychological trickery. I despise 
it. It's joy and peace. It's heaven's gift. The only explanation from it 
is that God in his mercy has given us this joy and peace. The peace that comes from knowing 
that nothing happens by chance or because of the devil. But we go back to the first cause 
and our Heavenly Father is the first cause of everything. If only we could believe what 
we do believe, what we say we believe. Oh, if only I believe 
what I say. If only I believe wholly what 
I'm preaching to you now. Peace from accepting God's will 
without murmuring. I was reading John Newton a couple of years 
ago because it was the bicentenary of his death and I was so interested 
in Newton. And Newton, I came across this 
illustration of his, one morning all the angels of God gathered 
together before God to receive their instructions for the day. 
The first angel, God says, go and become the emperor of the 
greatest empire in the world. Angel goes and he comes the next 
one, he says, go and clean the public toilets in the slum in 
Mexico City. Angel goes and does it. It's their delight to do the 
will of God without question. If God says something, they do 
it. It's a matter of utter indifference 
whether they're going to clean a ditch to clean out a barn of 
rain over an empire. The peace of the angels lies 
in doing God's will. One day one will lift a stinking 
beggar and he'll carry him into heaven. Another day the angel 
will take out the chariots and horses and will go down and will 
drive Elijah to heaven. Obeying God's will is all that 
comes. A young friend of mine was engaged 
to a girl in our congregation and in her last term, just before 
her examination, she dumped him. She ended the engagement. She 
said to me, he's boring. So unkind and so untrue. and he was just shattered and 
heartbroken. Well, he went into the ministry 
and he was just a really superb preacher. I always profit from 
listening to him. Years went by, he told me, I'm called to be a bachelor. I'm called to celibacy. He said, 
come on, come on. I said, come on now. No, no. I'm going to be a bachelor for 
the rest of my life. And then one day, he began to 
notice a girl in the congregation. Very tricky. And he waited until she was 18. 
He was 38. And when she reached her 18th birthday, that week he went 
to see her parents. Her father was an elder in the 
church. And he asked her father and mother 
permission to take her out to ask her would she come out for 
a meal with him. And he and his wife talked it over and they 
came back to him and they said, no, we feel The age gap is too 
great and she is too young to begin a serious relationship 
with you. So we don't want you to make 
any attempt to get closer to her. And he accepted that. He knew 
he would do it that way. And then three weeks went by 
and he noticed a fellow from the church beginning to sit next 
to her and share a hymn book with her. And then this fellow, 
a few weeks later, came to her and said, Pastor, you notice 
that I'm going out with so-and-so in the congregation. I want you 
to give me some advice on this. I want to do this right now. 
I want you to help me. He said to me, I'd make a far 
better husband for her than he ever would. But there we are. So I was so 
sorry for my dear friend and I tried to give him, you know, 
the verses that you would give to encourage him and comfort 
him. There are plenty of them, aren't there? It's all right, 
Jack. It's all right. We believe that when we ask God 
for something, He either gives us what we ask for, or He gives 
us something better. Now that's the bedrock of Christian 
comfort. That's the bedrock of joy and 
peace. But if we don't get that fellow 
that we love so much, if the love is unrequited and we are 
facing singleness, then God has someone, something better for 
us. And sure enough, a couple of 
years later, he met his dear wife and asked me to marry them, 
and I did. He's still in that church, which 
has been the scene of his long ministry, and he has four children 
in the congregation. The end of all this is that you 
may abound in hope, or the NIV says, overflow in hope by the 
power of the Holy Spirit, the result of God working in us. 
Preachers always talk about the two seas, don't they, in Israel? There's the Sea of Galilee in 
the north and the Jordan flows in and then it flows out and 
down the steep Jordan Valley into the Dead Sea, and the Dead 
Sea is totally arid. There's no river out of the Dead 
Sea, is there? So nothing lives there. It just 
takes in and evaporates and that's it. Nothing living is there. But the Sea of Galilee, well, 
The river runs in and there's fish in abundance there and the 
river runs out. It not only takes in but it gives 
out as well and preachers use that illustration about there 
can be no joy and peace without service. It's a basic point that you all 
understand. It's no good you just coming 
here week after week and taking in. the great truths from the 
Word of God, the great understanding of Jesus Christ and His salvation, 
without then a life of ministry. But you pray, Lord guide me to 
someone, guide me somewhere, use me this week, help me, teach 
me, that the God of hope fills us 
with all joy and peace. that we may overflow, that we 
may overflow then in hope by the power of the Holy 
Spirit. That's why He fills us with joy 
and peace, not to make us feel good, but to overflow, to needy chilliwack. the needy school 
you go to, the needy neighbours that live around you. That's 
why. There's much in this world I can doubt this 
morning. I can doubt the claims and promises 
of every candidate running in the election this week. I can 
doubt their promises. I can doubt their achievements. I can doubt global warming. I 
can doubt windmill farms on the mountains and at sea. I can doubt 
the value of state religion giving lessons in morality. I can doubt 
many things that others believe. I cannot doubt the goodness of 
God. I can't doubt that. I've been 
a Christian now since 1954. I've been the recipient of God's 
goodness day after day, year after year, decade after decade. I'm one of these people who's 
experienced something of the God of hope and how he's changed 
my whole heart and life. And I want to abound in hope. to you and to all the world, that this world is held in the 
grip of the God of Hope, that He's got it tight. He's in control, 
the God of Hope. He's in control of my life and 
my destiny. When bad days come, then it's 
the power of the Holy Spirit that just keeps me going. I can't 
attribute it to anything else. An energy wholly outside myself, 
that energy helps me, keeps me going, picks me up. When I fall 
again into sin, it picks me up. No matter how unworthy We feel 
ourselves to be an incompetent, and our lack of success, the 
littleness of our growth, and so on. A sense of hope. Let's 
be churches where there's a great message of hope. I have good 
news for you, brother. I have good news for every one 
of you. I have good news. I have a God 
of hope for you. For you to harvest your God and 
your Saviour. To fill you with joy and peace 
as you trust in Jesus Christ. I have this wonderful message, 
the God of hope, that you can abound and overflow in hope. In a hopeless, despairing world, 
God has made ordinary Christians like you and me, custodians of 
this wonderful message of hope. May God bless His Word to us 
this morning. Amen. Let us pray. We pray, gracious 
and loving God, for Thy blessing to attend Thy holy word as we 
sought to explain it and honour Thee by it and yearn to know 
more of the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives, filling 
us with joy and peace as we trust in Thee. O God of hope, fill 
us, fill this congregation of Thy people. We beseech Thee. 
and grant that the message of hope through Jesus Christ shall 
go out to the ends of the earth. We ask it in the Savior's name. 
Amen.