SPEAKER_01: Today's reading is in Romans eight, verse thirty-one to thirty-nine, if you want to turn there in your own Bibles.
SPEAKER_01: And today's question is what can separate us from the love of God?
SPEAKER_01: So, Romans 8:31 says, What then shall we say to these things?
SPEAKER_01: If God is for us, who can be against us?
SPEAKER_01: He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?
SPEAKER_01: Who shall bring any charge against God's elect?
SPEAKER_01: It is God who justifies, who is to condemn.
SPEAKER_01: Christ Jesus is the one who died, more than that who was raised.
SPEAKER_01: He is the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us, who shall separate us from the love of Christ, shall tribulation or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?
SPEAKER_01: As it is written, For your sake we are being killed all the day long, we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.
SPEAKER_01: No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
SPEAKER_01: For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And so reads God's word.
SPEAKER_02: If I can invite you to turn to the passage that that Anna read for us, which is the very end of Romans chapter 8.
SPEAKER_02: Either if you have a Bible with you or on your phone, just by searching for Romans 8 ESV.
SPEAKER_02: That's the English Standard Version.
SPEAKER_02: That's the the version that we that we go through.
SPEAKER_02: This is the uh the last uh sermon that we're doing uh in the book of Romans now for the next uh couple of months.
SPEAKER_02: We're taking a pause uh during the summer to go back into the Old Testament, look at the the Psalms, and so we pick up Psalm uh 77 next uh six.
SPEAKER_02: Psalm 76.
SPEAKER_02: Gus just freaked out because he's preaching Psalm 77, uh 76 uh next week.
SPEAKER_02: You can tell uh that uh that I don't know what's happening next week because I'm gonna be on holiday.
SPEAKER_02: Um and uh we will pick up Romans again in uh in the autumn.
SPEAKER_02: This morning I really only have one point uh you will be delighted uh to know because you're probably looking at your watch and go, Mark's getting out a quarter past 11.
SPEAKER_02: Uh I just have one point that I'm just gonna repeat over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_02: The one point is uh is very simple but very profound, and one which we need to massage into our soul, because if we do, it will transform how we live today.
SPEAKER_02: Here's the one point that you need to take with you today it is that nothing and no one will separate a believer in Jesus from the love of God.
SPEAKER_02: I say that again.
SPEAKER_02: Nothing and no one will separate the believer in Jesus from the love of God.
SPEAKER_02: Between God and the one who is trusting in Christ, there is an indestructible bond of love that nothing and no one can break.
SPEAKER_02: This, in part, is what we're symbolizing uh today in the baptism of uh of Liam and Ruin and Victoria, that one of the things that has happened in their life is that that bond of love, that eternal, unbreakable connection, has been forged by God and between God and them, and that nothing and no one can separate them from him.
SPEAKER_02: And that is true for all those who are trusting in Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Now, if you have been journeying with us from January when we started the book of Romans, the fact that Paul crescendoes here, the fact that Romans 8 concludes with such a monumental, glorious, beautiful truth, given where he started, is quite remarkable.
SPEAKER_02: Because in those opening chapters of Romans, what we were learning was that at base human beings are fundamentally estranged from God, almost irreconcilably separated from him.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: Well, because of our own willful refusal to acknowledge him as who he is, and our desire, rather than to acknowledge that truth, to suppress it and to follow any other small g god than the God who made us.
SPEAKER_02: You know, I don't follow small g gods.
SPEAKER_02: Well, we all do.
SPEAKER_02: That's Paul's point in Romans 1, that if we're not living for uh the God of all creation, the transcendent one of the cosmos who stands behind all things, then we're living for these substitute gods, gods like uh like money, sex, power, control, comfort, success, affirmation, intimacy, that we pour ourselves out for those things rather than the one who made them.
SPEAKER_02: We turn the gifts of his good creation into gods over us.
SPEAKER_02: And in doing so, we we harm ourselves and we harm others.
SPEAKER_02: And it is really no better, Paul goes on to say, for the religious person.
SPEAKER_02: The religious person and the non-religious person are equally as estranged from God, equally in need of his saving action.
SPEAKER_02: The religious person is just as much given to pride, the religious person is just as much given to saying one thing and doing another, of setting a standard for themselves and for others, and then failing themselves to meet that standard.
SPEAKER_02: And so Paul said, well, if you're trying to kind of forge this link between God, it can't start from earth up.
SPEAKER_02: You can't try and build those links by your moral goodness.
SPEAKER_02: This is one of the things that we were talking about in Ruin's testimony, that this idea of exerting more willpower in keeping the rules doesn't save you.
SPEAKER_02: It cannot forge that bond of love between God and us.
SPEAKER_02: But God has acted.
SPEAKER_02: And this is where the the fortunes of humanity in the book of Romans uh changed right at the end of chapter three, where Paul says that God has done what no human being could do, that God has done what the law, the rules, could not do.
SPEAKER_02: He has acted in history through the sending of his son, who lived perfectly under the rules, perfectly keeping them in a way that we could never do, and yet goes on to die for our rule breaking, for our sin, that it might be taken from us, that we might be freed from its penalty.
SPEAKER_02: And then he then begins Romans chapter 8 with this great declaration that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: What does he mean by that?
SPEAKER_02: Well, all of the uh all of the sin that would condemn you, all of the sin that would separate you from God has been dealt with.
SPEAKER_02: And so there's now no condemnation, and in its place there is this unbreakable, eternally secure bond of love that exists between God and the believer.
SPEAKER_02: This is true for every believer.
SPEAKER_02: And we heard in our interviews that we all come to realize this truth through 10,000 different ways, different times, different people, different testimonies.
SPEAKER_02: But the eternal reality is the same for each one of us.
SPEAKER_02: That between Jesus and the believer in Jesus, there is an inextricable, unbreakable bond of love that pulls us through into eternity that will never be thwarted.
SPEAKER_02: Paul says that that is true.
SPEAKER_02: So verse 28, for all those who are called by God, all those who have heard that call to follow him, and who have responded by faith and trust.
SPEAKER_02: The result is that this bond has been forged.
SPEAKER_02: And Paul, essentially, in these last nine verses, asks five rhetorical questions.
SPEAKER_02: The answer to all of the questions is no, nothing, no one.
SPEAKER_02: I'm a preacher, so I'm gonna answer them with more words than that.
SPEAKER_02: Um, and then he he gives basically a bunch of pairs.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, what can separate us from the love of God?
SPEAKER_02: Life, death, angels, demons.
SPEAKER_02: We'll look at what that means.
SPEAKER_02: But the point is the same, that there is nothing that can pluck you from your Savior's hand if you are a believer in Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: So let's unpack these five questions.
SPEAKER_02: Let me answer these rhetorical questions, even though the answer to all of them is essentially no.
SPEAKER_02: So verse 31, what shall we say to these things?
SPEAKER_02: What are the things that he's responding to?
SPEAKER_02: Well, he's respond responding to this idea that God acts in eternity past to set his love upon people who don't deserve it.
SPEAKER_02: And then he acts in history to save them, to do, to take their sin, declare them innocent, and preserve them through to glory.
SPEAKER_02: That is the the things that he is responding to in verse 31.
SPEAKER_02: And so he asks that first question.
SPEAKER_02: If God is for us, who can be against us?
SPEAKER_02: If the Almighty God has set his love on you, then what opposition could you possibly face that would pluck you from his hand?
SPEAKER_02: That's what Paul's asking.
SPEAKER_02: And the answer is nothing.
SPEAKER_02: No one.
SPEAKER_02: If the one who has all power, all life, all goodness, all knowledge and all benevolence, if he is the one who has grabbed hold of you, who's going to wrestle you from his hand?
SPEAKER_02: Nothing.
SPEAKER_02: No one.
SPEAKER_02: Second question is there in verse 32.
SPEAKER_02: It says, He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how would he not also with him graciously give us all things?
SPEAKER_02: What's he saying there?
SPEAKER_02: He's saying essentially, well, if God was willing to give the most precious thing he had in the person of his son, the Lord Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, the Prince of Heaven, if God was willing to send him to become the man of sorrows and to live that perfect life and to die that sacrificial death, if God was willing to give up the most precious thing that he had in order to make you his own, do you really think now that he will withhold something else that would not keep you secure and keep you through to his glory?
SPEAKER_02: Do you really think that if he was willing to give you Jesus to make you his own, that he'd say, well, I've given Jesus, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to give any more than that.
SPEAKER_02: No, no, no, Paul's saying he's given the most precious thing he has in order to secure you as his own.
SPEAKER_02: He will not withhold anything that will ensure that you are kept by him all the way to glory.
SPEAKER_02: Third question, verse 33.
SPEAKER_02: Who shall bring any charge against God's elect?
SPEAKER_02: It is God who justifies.
SPEAKER_02: Who is to condemn?
SPEAKER_02: Fourth question.
SPEAKER_02: Christ Jesus is the one who died more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, and who indeed is interceding for us.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 33 brings us dramatically back into that heavenly courtroom.
SPEAKER_02: And Paul is asking essentially, what charges in that heavenly courtroom, what sin, what wrongdoing is left to condemn you?
SPEAKER_02: If God has declared you innocent, if God has declared you righteous, and if God is the one who has done it, there is no one, there is no other jurisdiction that could overrule him, you are free.
SPEAKER_02: If God has declared you to be one who is righteous, that's what justification means, then who will overrule that sentence?
SPEAKER_02: Who will overrule that absolution?
SPEAKER_02: No one, nothing.
SPEAKER_02: Think about what that does to how you approach your shame and your guilt.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, there's a sense in which uh we still we still do wrong things.
SPEAKER_02: And there's a there is a right sense in which our awareness of that wrongness drives us back to our Father.
SPEAKER_02: But it drives us back to our Father because we are so assured that He has declared us innocent and will receive us back and reassure us again of that declaration over our lives.
SPEAKER_02: And so shame and guilt no longer need to estrange us, cause us to hide, right?
SPEAKER_02: That's what that's what sin always does.
SPEAKER_02: That's what it did back in the garden.
SPEAKER_02: What happened?
SPEAKER_02: Adam and Eve sinned, they hid from one another and they hid from the Lord God.
SPEAKER_02: Sin and shame will always cause you to withdraw.
SPEAKER_02: But if you know that there is an a there is an eternal, unbreakable declaration of you are innocent, your sin has been dealt with, you are righteous, then you will run back and you will claim again that glorious declaration that you are free, sin dealt with.
SPEAKER_02: So the next question, verse 34, flows quickly on the heels of that.
SPEAKER_02: Who can condemn you?
SPEAKER_02: Christ Jesus is the one who died.
SPEAKER_02: That is, your sin has already been condemned.
SPEAKER_02: Where?
SPEAKER_02: In Him.
SPEAKER_02: Remember what Paul said earlier in the letter.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus condemns sin in the flesh.
SPEAKER_02: Whose sin?
SPEAKER_02: My sin.
SPEAKER_02: Your sin.
SPEAKER_02: Whose flesh?
SPEAKER_02: His flesh.
SPEAKER_02: So what condemnation is left to separate you from your God?
SPEAKER_02: None.
SPEAKER_02: Notice as well what he's doing here in verse 34.
SPEAKER_02: So he's his whole point is to encourage you.
SPEAKER_02: If you don't leave encouraged this morning, I've done this wrong, or you're not looking at it right.
SPEAKER_02: His whole desire is to give you confidence and assurance.
SPEAKER_02: I want you to notice how it is that he does that in verse 34.
SPEAKER_02: How does he give you confidence, encouragement, and assurance?
SPEAKER_02: Let me read it to you again, see if you can notice what Paul's doing.
SPEAKER_02: Who is to condemn?
SPEAKER_02: Jesus Christ is the one who died.
SPEAKER_02: More than that, who was raised, who was at the right hand of God, who is indeed interceding for us.
SPEAKER_02: What's Paul doing?
SPEAKER_02: Did you notice?
SPEAKER_02: He wants to encourage you.
SPEAKER_02: He wants to give you confidence.
SPEAKER_02: He wants to assure you.
SPEAKER_02: And how does he do it?
SPEAKER_02: He takes your head and he focuses your attention on Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't come and say, Oh, yeah, but you're like, you're such a great person.
SPEAKER_02: Like, Peter, you're so cool and like handsome and funny.
SPEAKER_02: And he doesn't, you know, and and Owen, like you're so good at like leading Wednesday central Bible study and on and you know Ross and David, the sound is amazing.
SPEAKER_02: You know, he doesn't come and massage your ego.
SPEAKER_02: He says, you want to be eternally confident, assured, encouraged.
SPEAKER_02: But don't look at, don't look at yourself.
SPEAKER_02: And you know that instinctively.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_02: Don't wanna don't want to do that too long.
SPEAKER_02: He says, Don't look at yourself.
SPEAKER_02: Let me give you four ways in which you can behold who Jesus is.
SPEAKER_02: He died more than that.
SPEAKER_02: See, hot on the heels.
SPEAKER_02: He died more than that.
SPEAKER_02: He was raised to life.
SPEAKER_02: He didn't stay dead.
SPEAKER_02: And where is he now?
SPEAKER_02: Well, he's at the right hand of the Father.
SPEAKER_02: And what's he doing there?
SPEAKER_02: He's praying for you.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus died, that death for sin.
SPEAKER_02: And do you know what the resurrection does?
SPEAKER_02: Why the resurrection matters?
SPEAKER_02: The resurrection is the great yes and amen that Jesus really did die for sin.
SPEAKER_02: It is God's confirmation that sinners really can be forgiven, that we really can know the grace of God.
SPEAKER_02: Because Jesus was saying that he would give his life a ransom for many, that his death would be on behalf of others, that his death would be for sin.
SPEAKER_02: And if he stayed dead, if he's just in the ground somewhere outside of Jerusalem, then we have no idea whether or not that's really true.
SPEAKER_02: We have no idea whether or not his claims that he could take sin were actually verifiable.
SPEAKER_02: So what does God do?
SPEAKER_02: God raises him from the dead as proof, as confirmation.
SPEAKER_02: That you can be assured, that you can be encouraged, that your sin has been dealt with.
SPEAKER_02: If you are a follower, if you're trusting in Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And so he's now at the right hand.
SPEAKER_02: What does the right hand mean?
SPEAKER_02: Well, it's that place of rule, that place of authority over everything and everyone.
SPEAKER_02: The one who has died is now Lord of all.
SPEAKER_02: And if he is Lord of all, who on earth would seek to harm you eternally?
SPEAKER_02: And there at his right hand, at the right hand of God, he prays for you.
SPEAKER_02: You have been looking in this passage at uh different aspects of salvation, and one of the things that is is the father adopts us into his family.
SPEAKER_02: And last week we saw that the Spirit is praying for us, and now here the Son prays for us.
SPEAKER_02: You know that God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, those names will be evoked in the baptism a little bit later on.
SPEAKER_02: That God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that eternal community of perfect life-giving joy and love is concerned with you, concerned to bring you into that love.
SPEAKER_02: We see these verse 34, who is indeed interceding for us, he's praying for us.
SPEAKER_02: Think about that, believer, massage that into your soul and ask yourself the question what preoccupies Jesus' thoughts in heaven?
SPEAKER_02: Is it how cool the angels sound when they sing?
SPEAKER_02: Is it how glorious he looks and how much he loves his father?
SPEAKER_02: No, what preoccupies your relationship?
SPEAKER_02: Redeemer's thoughts in heaven.
SPEAKER_02: You do.
SPEAKER_02: He's interceding for us.
SPEAKER_02: He prays for you.
SPEAKER_02: Nothing can assure us more of his eternal and unbreaking love that he ever lives and pleads for us.
SPEAKER_02: And so Paul asks the fifth question.
SPEAKER_02: Can anything separate us from the love of Christ?
SPEAKER_02: Shall tribulation or distress or persecution, famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword, as it is written, For your sake we're being killed all the day long, we're regarded as sheep to be slaughtered?
SPEAKER_02: Can any of the things in this world Paul is asking break that bond that exists between you and Jesus?
SPEAKER_02: No, it can't.
SPEAKER_02: Then Paul quotes Psalm 44, and I think what's going on with the quoting of Psalm 44 is that he's essentially saying something like, It's always been this way.
SPEAKER_02: God's people have always been regarded and looked upon as weak, that we've always found ourselves at various points in history on the fringes of society.
SPEAKER_02: We've always felt marginalized and scorned and disregarded and had socially awkward moments, and we've always experienced the suffering of the world.
SPEAKER_02: There's the suffering that we feel in our own lives.
SPEAKER_02: And then there's the particular suffering of being persecuted as a follower of God.
SPEAKER_02: But none of it can separate us from his love.
SPEAKER_02: No, in fact, Paul goes on, verse 37.
SPEAKER_02: He says, No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
SPEAKER_02: Paul wants to emphasize how wonderful it is that nothing can separate you from the love of God.
SPEAKER_02: That he makes up a new word.
SPEAKER_02: More than conquerors in the English is actually one new, unique to Paul, unique in this moment word.
SPEAKER_02: It is essentially hyper-conqueror.
SPEAKER_02: You are a super-conqueror because of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: You know, a conqueror, a great man like Napoleon or Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because we we men, we think about the Roman Empire quite frequently.
SPEAKER_02: So uh those great conquerors may be victorious in the field of battle for a day.
SPEAKER_02: Or a person who succeeds at all they do.
SPEAKER_02: Even those, one day they will come to an end.
SPEAKER_02: One day all conquerors eventually either fail or they die, but not the super conquerors, not the hyper-conquerors.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: Because death doesn't break the bond.
SPEAKER_02: Death only ushers us into the ever nearer presence of the one who loved us.
SPEAKER_02: And so, as though that's not enough, Paul heaps more onto our plate.
SPEAKER_02: This is the this is the dessert buffet at the end of this section of Romans.
SPEAKER_02: We've gone through, we've gone through the kind of fairly bitter salad starter of the opening chapters.
SPEAKER_02: You go for a buffet, you're like, I should probably, I should probably have some salad, right?
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: Uh and then you get into the real meat of things, uh, where we're learning about the uh the sacrificial death of Jesus and what it means to be either in Adam or in Christ, and all of those things that just kind of over the last few months have just been pickling our brain.
SPEAKER_02: And then in Romans chapter 8, he's leading us to the desserts and he's heaping more great treats onto our plate and saying, Don't enjoy this one, enjoy this.
SPEAKER_02: You don't like that one?
SPEAKER_02: Well, also have this as well.
SPEAKER_02: And so he's heaping up and he finishes with these great pairings in these final couple of verses.
SPEAKER_02: Look at them with me.
SPEAKER_02: 38, for I am sure, and the older versions, for I am persuaded, I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
SPEAKER_02: Neither death nor life.
SPEAKER_02: What does that encompass?
SPEAKER_02: Well, that encompasses the whole realm of human experience.
SPEAKER_02: Life, death.
SPEAKER_02: There is nothing in that realm of human experience that can separate you from the love of God.
SPEAKER_02: No death, no grief will be able to pluck you finally from his hand.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, there will be seasons where you must strain through the clouds of sorrow to perceive his love.
SPEAKER_02: But Paul is wanting to assure you that behind those clouds, there is an enduring providence, that nothing in the realm of human experience can separate you from his love.
SPEAKER_02: Neither angels nor demons.
SPEAKER_02: Paul was in the realm of human experience, and I were in the realm of spiritual experience, that there is nothing in that unseen realm.
SPEAKER_02: There is no power forged against you that can pluck you out of your Savior's hand.
SPEAKER_02: There is nothing that would that would seek to scare or menace you, that could take you away from your savior, nothing that can accuse you.
SPEAKER_02: It's your sin.
SPEAKER_02: Satan is uh not a guy with horns and a pitchfork.
SPEAKER_02: Satan's a prosecution lawyer.
SPEAKER_02: If you're a lawyer here, I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_02: He's a great prosecutorial lawyer.
SPEAKER_02: He stands in that heavenly court and he says, God, you are a holy judge.
SPEAKER_02: Look at what Mark has done.
SPEAKER_02: Look at the things that Mark has thought, look at the things that Mark has said, the way he has acted, the things that have happened in secret that nobody knows about.
SPEAKER_02: You're a holy judge.
SPEAKER_02: How can you possibly let him into your heaven?
SPEAKER_02: And do you know what my problem is at that moment?
SPEAKER_02: Everything that the prosecution has said is true.
SPEAKER_02: But this is why we're back to this question of who can condemn, because what has happened on the cross on Good Friday is Jesus has taken that charge sheet and he has died for it.
SPEAKER_02: He has paid the penalty for it.
SPEAKER_02: He has disarmed Satan of his chief weapon, which is my sin.
SPEAKER_02: So neither angels nor demons can separate us from the love of God.
SPEAKER_02: No things present nor things to come.
SPEAKER_02: Can anything in your past separate you from Jesus?
SPEAKER_02: No.
SPEAKER_02: Can anything that you might do or befall you in the future separate you from Jesus?
SPEAKER_02: No.
SPEAKER_02: Neither height nor depth.
SPEAKER_02: Paul has been in past and future, that's the realm of time.
SPEAKER_02: And here Paul is in the realm of sp in the realm of space.
SPEAKER_02: Again, he's encompassing everything.
SPEAKER_02: That there is no circumstance, no event, no sin, no situation that can separate you from Christ.
SPEAKER_02: You are held secure by him, kept forever by his love, brought safely and securely through every trial, through every suffering into his eternal glory.
SPEAKER_02: You cannot wreck it.
SPEAKER_02: You cannot wreck it by your sin.
SPEAKER_02: Why?
SPEAKER_02: Well, if you didn't earn your salvation, you can't unearn it.
SPEAKER_02: There is an unbreakable bond.
SPEAKER_02: Why does any of this matter?
SPEAKER_02: So that's one point.
SPEAKER_02: Let me just give you a couple of reasons why this matters.
SPEAKER_02: Of course, Paul wants to assure you that if you are trusting in Christ, but you worry about the persistent presence of sin, he's saying, take heart.
SPEAKER_02: Christ will not let you go.
SPEAKER_02: Keep fighting with all of the strength that he supplies.
SPEAKER_02: If you've fallen down, get up again.
SPEAKER_02: He also wants to give us a kind of humble confidence.
SPEAKER_02: The bond of love that exists between God and us is not something that was created by us, but by him.
SPEAKER_02: But because it was created by him, it's forged with unbreakable links.
SPEAKER_02: And so we can have a confidence to live for him.
SPEAKER_02: We can have a confidence to go out and speak of him to the world, knowing that whatever happens, however people respond, however weak are witness, his love for us remains eternally with us.
SPEAKER_02: And finally, he gives us these things in order that we might have an unassailable joy, unassailable because it's a joy that exists through every season of life, a joy that preserves and perseveres through every trial, a joy that seeks us through every pain, a joy that transcends the circumstances of this life and roots itself far deeper than mere happiness.
SPEAKER_02: That is what Paul would seek to encourage you with this morning.
SPEAKER_02: Can anything separate you, if you are a believer in Jesus, from the love of God?
SPEAKER_02: No.
SPEAKER_02: Nothing.
SPEAKER_02: No one.