Romans chapter 8, and I would
like to read from verse 31. If you can turn with me please
to the end of the chapter, Romans chapter 8 and verse 31. The apostle has been speaking
about some of the great truths of God's eternal plan of salvation,
and he's been speaking about the foreknowledge of God, and
the election of God, and the predestinating of his people,
and the fact that all things work together for the good of
the Lord's people. And he goes on in verse 31 to
say, what shall we then say to these things? all these great
things that have been done for us. What shall we then say to
these things? If God be for us, who can be
against us? He that spared not his own son,
but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also
freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who
is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea,
rather that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of
God, who also maketh intercession for us. who shall separate us
from the love of Christ, shall tribulation, or distress, or
persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword. As it is
written, for thy sake we are killed all the day long. We are accounted as sheep for
the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are
more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded
that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities,
nor powers nor things present, nor things to come, nor height,
nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us
from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. Excuse me. All of us who believe in sovereign
grace We often enjoy turning to the great chapters that speak
to us about the sovereign grace and the sovereign mercy of our
God. chapters like Romans 8 and maybe
Ephesians 1 and John 17, speaking to us about the union that we
have with the Lord Jesus Christ and the terms of the great eternal
covenant that we have in our knowledge of the gospel and the
truths of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that covenant, of course,
is central to our understanding of grace. It was the great plan
of God. It was established in eternity,
way before time, way before the creation of the world, when the
all-knowing, omniscient God planned what he was going to do And in
his omnipotence, his power, his all-powerful will, he brought
all these things into being to accomplish his end. they speak
to us these chapters, these portions of Scripture, particularly about
these great truths, but of course not exclusively. We would find
these truths reflected in the whole of Scripture pretty much
wherever we look because all of Scripture speaks to us of
Christ and Christ is the centre of God's covenant purpose. And
so while we might have particular chapters that seem to resonate
more and more with these truths, of course they are not to the
exclusion of other passages. These passages, however, in particular,
perhaps, provide for us great comfort and instruction because
they show us the depth of the plan of salvation. They show
us that it's not a superficial thing. It's not a random thing. It's not an easy come, easy go
kind of thing. It's deep and it's solemn and
it's purposeful and it has its origin in God. And when we begin
to understand who God is, and when we see the plan and purpose
of God being set out and unfolded in these great chapters, it does
something to us. It comforts us, it encourages
us, and it blesses us. In the times when we feel the
troubles of this world on our shoulders, in our experiences
and sometimes weighing us down. What these passages tell us is
that we have a fit and able saviour in the Lord Jesus Christ. One
who is fitted to the purpose of saving his people and is able
to accomplish everything that is needful for that salvation. And so we read of God's purpose
of redemption and salvation as that great umbrella over the
redemptive work of Christ, the reconciling work of Christ, in
order to bring a wayward people into that place of God's purpose
and blessing. And these things are worked out
in the eternal plan of our God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So having kind of set up my stall
in that way, I'm not going to disappoint you by going to another
chapter. We're going to be thinking about
Romans 8 and the last few verses of Romans 8 this evening. And
I want us to think about what this passage is speaking about
in its central message, because the central message of this passage
at the end of Romans 8 is the love of God. And I want us to
think a little bit this evening about the scripture's presentation
of the great truths that the love of God shows and reveals
and exhibits to us. All of these other things that
we've kind of alluded to, God's foreknowledge, God's predestination,
the election of God, our union with Christ, these are the great
pillars upon which the gospel is built. But underneath these
pillars, underneath the pillars of God's predestination and God's
reconciliation and God's redemption of a people, lies the heart of
God and the love of God. And that is the core, that is
the great foundation, the love of God for his people. And it's about the love of God
that I want us to think a little bit now. You know, just a little
aside before we get into my thoughts. I think we've lost something
and I'm going to say something here about us in a sense. Those of us who love sovereign
grace, I think we've lost something because we don't talk about the
love of God enough. I think we've become embarrassed
about the love of God because free will people have adopted
the love of God and tell everybody that God is love, God wants to
save you, all you have to do is trust in him and they've kind
of hijacked the language of love and the testimony of the scriptures
on the love of God. And they've made the love of
God something that is comparable with the love that we find in
the world, the love that we discover in relationships, the love that
comes and the love that goes, and the love that's really pretty
superficial and not very deep. And as a result of that, we don't
give suitable thought. Now, maybe that's just me. Maybe
I can't speak for you. But we probably don't think about
the love of God as much as we should do. We probably don't
talk about it. We refer to it, we use the phrases. But what this is telling us is
that all these great doctrines, the doctrines that we love to
hear about, election and the union with Christ and predestination,
they're all built on something that is deeper than that. God's
eternal love for his people. So let's not allow the free will
preachers with their coaxing and their cajoling to steal these
great truths from us and let us not be embarrassed. They tell
us that God loves us all and what we've to do is admire his
love so much and love one another and love him back in return.
Well, I'm not going to say that we shouldn't be loving one another
and loving God, of course we should be, but that really is
just the outer edge of what the love of God is all about. God's
love is a moving cause. The truth of it is this. It's not merely an attribute
of the divine person that we are to try and copy and imitate
and emulate in some sort of way. We need to think way beyond that.
Of course, the beauties of the attributes of God are things
to be admired, but the love of God is to be seen as the moving
cause of every gracious act of God towards us. It's the beginning,
it's where it starts as far as we are concerned. Not to say
that God has a beginning, but the love of God is the beginning
of his revelation to us about his dealings with us. God planned,
God performed, and God applies a Salvation to his people based
upon the love that he has chosen to settle upon certain individuals. Now we don't believe that the
love of God is universal. We know that it's not. The scriptures
tell us that quite clearly. There is a particularity, there
is an individuality, there is a personality in the Lord's dealings
with his people. And I know that you can find
verses in the Bible that if you pluck them out of context, it
makes it look as if God is loving the whole world. But if we were
to take that word world and apply it to every single person in
the whole world, then we would find that Scripture would contradict
Scripture because we would be able equally to find examples
of people that God did not love. Jacob have I loved, Esau have
I hated. There you are. So what have we
got, a contradiction in Scripture? No, only a contradiction to the
extent that you say God's love is universal. The Bible doesn't.
The free will preachers might. The love of God is coextensive
with the elect of God and the people for whom the Lord Jesus
Christ died. Romans 5.8 says, God commendeth
his love towards us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died
for us. So that the love of God is commended
to the people of God for whom Christ died. And that's the testimony
of the whole of scripture. And if we find little phrases
here and there that seem to imply differently, we need to study
them and make sure that we've properly understood them in their
context. But this love of God is to be
understood as the powerful, unchangeable and purposeful desire of God
to save his people and bring them to himself. The Apostle
Paul in this chapter, in this passage that we have before us
here, he gives us three characteristics of God's love. And when I'm talking
about God's love, I'm also talking about Christ's love. I'm not
going to distinguish between these two because God's love
is only known to us in Christ, because it is Christ who reveals
everything to us that we know of the three in one, the eternal
Jehovah. So all we know of the love of
God, we know it because Christ has taught us. So it is also
the love of Christ. And whether we're thinking about
the love of God, which Paul talks about in this passage, or the
love of Christ, which he also talks about in this passage,
it's the same love that we're talking about. And what he's
telling us here is that he gives us these three things. He speaks
about the means, he explains the extent of the dimensions
of God's love, and he tells us what it accomplishes, what it
has done. And he does so in the simplest
of terms. He doesn't make it complicated.
First, Paul tells us about what God's love means. And he says,
God is for us. Could you get any easier words
than that? God is for us. That's lovely, that's just so
simple. Little ones can understand words like that without any difficulty. God is for us. Paul says, if God is for us,
who can be against us. If God is for us, and how do
we know God is for us? Because of all the things that
he's just been talking about. About all the things that God
has done and accomplished for us. That's how we see God is
for us in that the eternal Jehovah is lovingly affected towards
us to bless us and to do us good. The people in the heart of God,
if I can use that sort of phrase and imply these human traits,
the people in the heart of God are the people whom God is for. And then he says, so powerful
and intense and passionate is his love that no price was too
great for him to pay to secure that loving relationship between
himself and his people. And then he goes on to say that
God went forth. God was active. God went forth in a righteous,
holy, and proper way to bring about the purpose of His heart,
His love for us, in a way that actively accomplished every need
that we as sinners had. There's nothing that is left
up to us to do in order to make sure that God has his way in
his love. If there was, then God would
be indebted to us because his passion is such, his love is
such that he would have done everything that he could and
then he would have had to step back and say, now I hope that
that's enough and that they will do something for me. That's not
how love works. That's not how God's love works. All the great themes of sovereign
grace that we cherish, like election, and predestination, and free
justification, and particular redemption, and effectual calling,
just to mention maybe some of the main heads, all of these
great truths flow from God's love. and they reveal the righteous
acts of God towards us out of his love. Now we could speak
at length perhaps with a little bit of preparation about these
great truths and we could take any one of them and we could
set them forth tonight. This is covenant salvation and
this is what we believe. I trust we could speak about
these things profitably. But I am going to say that I
admire the Apostle Paul's pastoral approach to this matter, because
he doesn't delve into the doctrine of it. He doesn't delve into
the theory of it. He's not laying out these things
in order in some way to show people the depth and height and breadth
of all their theoretical significance. He's saying, what does this mean
to me and you in our lives? What does the love of God mean
to us for the challenges that we face here and now in the circumstances
of our own existence? And I think that the Apostle
Paul is It's admirable to see him doing this and it's that
that I want to just touch upon this evening for a little while
with you. Some of the practical and experimental applications
concerning the comfort and the peace and the joy that we should
draw from contemplating the love of God and its sure benefits
for us. The extent of what I have to say
tonight is too much to deal with in one sermon. So I'll tell you
now, you're only going to get the first half tonight. Okay? So I don't know whether that
means that you just breathe a big sigh of relief thinking, we've
already been talking for so long. So it's only the first half tonight.
You'll have to come back tomorrow for the second installment. I've
got my device working here. If you can't come tomorrow, you
can listen in if you're interested subsequently. We'll get it for you. But I want
us to think about some of the ways in which the Apostle directs
us to think pastorally about this love of God. Paul knew that
the believers in the Roman church, he was writing to the Romans,
this is the epistle to the Romans, that means it's the letter that
he had sent to the church at Rome. So he wasn't in Rome when
he wrote this, he was away from Rome, I'm not exactly sure where
he was, he might have been in Corinth or something or some
other city, and he wrote the letter to the Romans And these
are the things that he was setting out, knowing the trouble, knowing
the problems, the trials and the difficulties that believers
had in Rome back then. And I think Paul could have written
this letter to any group of believers in any age, in any city, at any
time. Because the problems of believers
living in this world are just the same wherever and whenever.
That's just the reality of life. We are, as individuals, and I'm
speaking about believers, we are as individuals, men and women,
Boys and girls perhaps who have the Spirit of God living in us,
but we have a body of flesh which drags us back. And while there's
a holiness, while there's a beauty, while there's a splendidness,
while there's a perfection, in that righteous work that has
been planted, the new creation, in every believer, there is also
the sin that remains. and there is always tension and
there is always abrasion and there is always conflict. And
so it's the same conflict that goes on regardless in a sense
of the circumstances all the time in the people of God. So the apostle is saying here
that he knows that there will be trials and difficulties. He
knows that the people will be tested, tempted. He knows that
Satan grieves us by bringing temptations and trials against
us. And therefore he's calling upon
us to consider not only the great truths of the gospel, but why
those truths are there, what it is that has motivated God
to do these things for us. He says in verse 35, who shall
separate us from the love of Christ? Who shall separate us
from the love of Christ? We could pause on that just for
a second and say, what he's talking about there is the fact that
God has laid, or Christ has laid, this is one of the times where
he says the love of Christ rather than the love of God. Who shall
separate us from the love of Christ? That love has been laid
upon us. Now, having had that love laid
upon us, who's gonna separate us from that? And then he gives
us a list of things that We constantly find to be difficulties in our
life. Now, maybe not all of us have
faced every circumstance here, but every circumstance could
be applied in a number of ways. Tribulation. Some of us have
known tribulation in our lives, right? Distress. Yeah. We can identify with some of
these words. Persecution. Well, okay, nobody's ever put
a sword to our chest and said, you need to recant of your faith
or I'm going to kill you. But there are people in some
parts of the world for whom that is a reality. Famine, nakedness,
peril, sword, most of what we suffer in this world Wherever
you want to find the description of what that suffering is, could
be accommodated under one of these headings in this verse.
None of these things are going to separate us from the love
of God, says Paul. You see, because it isn't up to us, it's God's
love that it's upon us, and He is going to keep us secure. He will not let us go. Nothing
In that list that Paul identifies can alter God's purpose, deflect
God's love, or remove us from his blessing. And you know these
trials, some of you. Some of you have been there.
Some of you have tasted something of what these things are talking
about. You know tribulation, you know
distress, you know uncertainty. These are earthly troubles. These
are temporal troubles. I was speaking to someone recently
about the frequency with which the little phrase, I've probably
mentioned this to you before, but the frequency with which
the little phrase is used in scripture and it came to pass. I can't remember now how many
times it is. I think it's something like 534 or 32 or something. Anyway, it's
lots and lots and lots and lots of times, the Bible says, and
it came to pass. And the point is that everything
passes. Everything passes. It comes to pass. And even our
trials and tribulations, they're earthbound, they're time related. And sometimes we find ourselves
in a hole and we think to ourselves, how on earth am I ever going
to get out of that? You know what? We shouldn't be
so despondent. I hear about things, terrible
things that happen. People taking their lives because
The world has become so dark, the world has become so closed
in on them, so optionless, that they don't have anywhere
else to turn. They think that going to hell is a better option
than staying alive. Okay, they probably wouldn't
phrase it like that, but that's effectively what they're saying.
They're prepared to take a step into the unknowing, thinking
it can't be any worse than this and maybe it'll be better. These things pass. Even our trials
and tribulations in this world, keep that in mind. You know,
when it gets really dark, when it gets difficult, when family
troubles, when financial troubles, when employment troubles, when
relationship troubles, when whatever it is that happens to us, it
came to pass, and that's what happens. The Lord is the one
who endures forever, and he will not let us fall from his grip
or move out of his hand. So that little phrase, God is
for us. If God be for us, who can be
against us. He gave his only begotten son
because he loved us. That was the price that he paid.
Particularly, personally, purposefully. Not as an example that we should
copy his sacrificial love and try to be sacrificial in our
loving relationships with all the people around about us. You'll
get A hundred preachers a week telling you that's the extent
of the love of God. That's not what it's about. That
God is for us is speaking to the fact that he loves his elect
people. He loves his people and he will
not let us go because he has forged in his eternal purpose,
in his covenant of grace and peace, this plan whereby he will
bring us to himself. And all these great truths that
Paul has been speaking about, election, our union with Christ,
redemption, they are the means to accomplish God's will. That's
what he is doing. God's works are as unchangeable
as God. God's accomplishments are as
undefeatable as God. And God will not be thwarted
and we shall not be denied the experience of the love of God
that has been placed upon us. Scripture's clear on this. Who shall separate us from the
love of Christ? We are more than conquerors through
him that loved us. It's the love of God. See, I
always like to see the tenses in Scripture, and this is one
of these beautiful examples. It doesn't say we are more than
conquerors through him that loves us. It says, we are more than
conquerors through him that loved us. And the love of God predates
all the troubles and the trials that we face. And it's the love
of God that brings about the great accomplishments of our
salvation. These great things that God has
done, we often feel that the circumstances of our life, nevertheless,
militate against the testimony of Scripture. So I think what
Paul is doing here is he's setting out some very practical examples,
and he's got 10 things that he names at the end of this chapter
that speak about the ways in which the world's
problems crowd in upon us. Now I'm not going to go through
all 10 tonight. I want to speak about a couple
of them, and then we'll pick up some of the rest tomorrow
evening. But let me just mention a few
here, if I may. The first thing he speaks about
towards the end of the chapter is about death. And he asks the
question about whether death can separate us from the love
of God. Well, separation is what death does.
That's what death is. It is separation. Death separates
pretty much anything that we can imagine, but it does not
separate us from the Lord God. In the Bible, the use of the
word death has three meanings. We speak about natural death,
we speak about spiritual death, and we speak about eternal death.
And these are the three different meanings of death. And you need
to know which one you're thinking about when you see it written
in a particular place. Natural death respects the death
that we're all familiar with in the separation of body and
soul. So that's when somebody dies,
then that is the natural death, the separation of body and soul. And scripture speaks about that
in James chapter 2 verse 16. The body without the spirit is
dead. That's it. The body without the
spirit is dead. That's a dead body there. That's
a dead body. because there's no spirit there.
So that's the natural death that it speaks about. It's the physical
death, and we're more or less familiar with it. And that's
what Paul is speaking about in this passage here. There's also
spiritual death, by which the Bible means the condition of
the soul that is unquickened. So those who have never been
made alive by the Holy Spirit and brought to conversion through
the preaching of the gospel are in a spiritually dead state. They haven't been made alive.
So that's the other meaning of the word death. Ephesians chapter
two, verse one says, ye hath he quickened who were dead in
trespasses and in sins. And the third use in scripture
is eternal death, and that's the everlasting separation of
the soul and the body from God to all eternity. The Lord Jesus
Christ himself said in Luke 12, five, I will forewarn you, I
will forewarn you who ye shall fear. fear him which after he
hath killed hath power to cast into hell. Yea, I say unto you,
fear him. So that's the eternal death.
And no one who is loved by God can ever die the eternal death. Natural death is the separation
that the apostle is speaking about here. And this is the separation
that separates people from their homes, from their wealth, from
their friends, from their family, from their husbands and wives
and their children. And we see it in the world around
about as it breaks the closest bonds but it doesn't break this
bond, the love of God for his people. It is not able to separate
us from the love of God. And whether that is the death
of the individual or the experience of bereavement, we should always
remember that no matter what it is that we are enduring, because
we've lost the person that we love, that person, if they were
a believer, are already with God because that's what God has
promised. If they're not, there's nothing
that we can do about it after that. Not that there was anything
that we could do about it beforehand, much to the chagrin of some of
us, but that's just the way it is. But as far as bereavement
is concerned, we need to remember the love of God towards us even
in those dark days when we may be left without the one that
we love. we can go to the Lord and we can lean on Him and rest
in Him and draw succor and comfort and help from Him. So that death,
though it might bring to an end all that we were secure with,
all that we were comforted with, all that we were able to lean
upon as far as this world was concerned, will not separate
us from God and we can still lean on Him and be comforted
by Him. So death is not able to change
us. The Word of God has much to say
about this. Isaiah tells us in Isaiah 25,
8, He will swallow up death in victory, and the Lord God will
wipe away tears from off all faces. Isaiah 13, 14 says, I
will ransom them from the power of the grave. I will redeem them
from death. O death, I will be thy plagues.
O grave, I will be thy destruction. So that death's sting is removed,
its teeth are pulled, And it's already condemned because God
is bigger and stronger than death and his love for us will hold
us through it. The last enemy to be destroyed
is death, and it is an enemy to us, and it will afflict us
in this life, either our own approach to it, which might be
difficult and troublesome, or our experience of it in the lives
of those that we love. It's an enemy, but it will be
destroyed. Its days are numbered. Some believers go through their
whole life being afraid of dying. Don't do that. Don't do that.
Why would we do that when the Lord says that death has lost
its sting, that death will not separate us from the love of
God. The resurrection of Jesus Christ
has robbed death of its power. Here's another thing that he
says will not be able to separate us from God and that is life
won't. Natural life. Now life is fleeting
in this world. Life will soon be over. save the inscription that somebody
puts on our gravestone. That will be all that's left.
I was in a graveyard just a couple of weeks ago and I saw all the
graves there with the names of the people on them and chiseled
into it was R.I.P. Do you know what that stands
for anybody? Yeah? Yeah? Yeah. Rest in peace. They used to put
that on all the graves, I think, pretty much. I don't know whether
you see it all the time now, but R.I.P. Rest in peace. That was what the people that
were burying their loved ones desired for the people that were
gone, that they would rest in peace. Because life is fleeting.
It passes quickly. We've got little ones here. May
they live long. We've got older ones here. May
you live long too, but soon we will all, soon we will all, their
generations have lived and died on this ground, on this land
that we are now on. and they're forgotten and gone.
But life won't separate us from the love of God. And all the
trouble of life, wherever it might be, the labour that goes
into life, the regrets that we have, of opportunities lost and
missed and troubles that we've faced, the sin that we've committed,
the doubt that we have harboured, the fear that has been part of
our life's experience. All of these things, God is bigger
than them all and the love of God will overcome them all. None of these can cause us to
forgo the blessings that we have in Christ because these have
been won for us by God himself. And even when we see the hand
of God in the trials and in the chastenings that we feel, we
are still to be reassured that even these very trials and chastenings
are for our good. They might seem like punishments,
but they're for our good. There's a purpose, there's a
constructiveness behind the difficulties that we have. And every time
we find ourselves complaining, go ahead, complain, I'm not gonna
stop you complaining, right? But every time we find ourselves
doing it, at least make a mental note. that God brought this problem
on me today. This is God's purpose in bringing
this on me. For whatever reason, I may have
been the cause, maybe my stupidity, maybe a wrong decision, who knows
what the reason is. Somebody backends us on the way
to the dentist for an extraction and the whole thing just falls
around. God did that, why did he do that?
Why are we chastened in these ways? Whom the Lord loveth he
chasteneth, even as a father the son in whom he delighted. You know what that's saying?
That is saying that the troubles that we experience are the proof
of God's love to us. Isn't that amazing? The troubles
we experience are the proof of God's love to us. Because whom
he loves, he chasteneth. Why do you give your... I've not used the word kids,
right? Why do you give your children into trouble? Not because you
delight in distressing them, because you're training them,
because you're dealing with them in a way which you hope will
help them not to make the mistakes that you've made. Well, God didn't
make any mistakes, but he knows what's best for his people. And
that's why he directs us and he hedges us in. And we might
not see why any particular incident could possibly be conducive to
our greater good, but that's not for us to see. Did you know
as a child why your mother made the decision that you weren't
to stay with your friend overnight? No, that was just the end of
your world because everybody else was. And you weren't because
your mum or your dad or whoever hated you so much. No, they didn't
hate you. And you who are parents now know
why that decision was made. You didn't then. Well, put yourself
in that position now. I don't know why this trial is
on me, but my father does. And whatever it is that he brings
me through, it will not separate me from him. Maybe sometimes
it feels as if life is too hard to bear. Things happen and we
struggle to understand why the Lord would permit this to happen. Well, you're not alone. Even
in those experiences, you're not alone. Don't think of yourself
as being the last one left. You know, there was a There was
a man in the Bible who thought he was the last one left. Remember
Elijah? He thought he was the last one
left. And he decided that he was going to lie down under a
tree and not get up again. He was going to die under that
tree. And the Lord sent him an angel
and the angel baked him a cake and said, Elijah, get up. There's
work to be done. I have reserved for myself 7,000
men in Israel that haven't bowed a knee. You think you're alone?
You think you're the last one left? You think that your life
is worse than everybody else's? No, that's not the case. That's
not the case. And life will not separate us
from the love of God. The troubles that we face are
sent to us for a good reason, and only those troubles that
will glorify God and help us will be sent against us. Life's
the canvas on which God is pleased to paint the picture of his love
towards us. James 5, 11 says, behold, we
count them happy which endure, You have heard of the patience
of Job and have seen the end of the Lord, that he is very
pitiful and of tender mercy. No matter what it is that you're
going through just now, no matter what it is that you think is
the worst thing possible that you could face, the Lord is very
pitiful and of tender mercy. And life will not bring us any
separation from God. Let me just take no more. We'll wrap it up at that. I will
just go, I'll go to the last point that I wanted to make and
just say this. When we think about these passages,
these ways in which the apostle has
been applying the truths of the doctrines of scripture to the
practical applications of our life. We are to take those things
personally. The apostle's not writing a textbook
here in which he is bringing some sort of theoretical, cerebral
kind of ideas to our attention to say, here's a list of things
that you've got to learn. Here's the sort of things that
you're going to be tested on. Make sure you know these, make
sure you've memorized this, and then you'll be fine. You'll pass
the exam. That's not what doctrine is about. That's not what theology is about. Theology and doctrine is the
truth of the gospel of the scripture and it's very practical and it's
intended to help us, to comfort us, to enable us to face the
challenges of this world. It is the food for the spirit
that helps it to fight against the flesh. It's the provision
that is made for us. The gospel is the provision that
is made for us to earnestly contend for the faith. So if you're going
to be a soldier, you better make sure that you've got something
in your tummy before you go onto the battlefield. Otherwise you're
not going to have any strength to face the foe. And that's the
same as hearing the gospel. So I encourage you, do listen
to the gospel whenever you can do. Gather together and hear
the gospel preached whenever you can do. Listen to the sermons
of people who have been sent by God in order to nourish your
soul. that it might thereby be strengthened
to face the challenge. So here's my point, and with
this I'm done. The Apostle Paul started this little section towards
the end of the eighth chapter of Romans by saying that I am
persuaded, I am persuaded, May we be persuaded. May we read
these things with hearts that are open to receive the truths
of the gospel, the truths of the word of God. May the Lord
open our eyes and our ears and our understandings so that I
hope too that you are persuaded to let your worries go. In the sense that, not that you're
not gonna worry, I've already said that, but in the sense that
you see them in their proper perspective, and you know that
the love of God, the love of God will never fail you, and
the love of God will still be there when all these things,
everything in life and everything in death, has come and passed,
you will still be in the grip of the Lord that loves you as
you trust and believe in Him. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us and encourage them in us. Amen.