Romans chapter eight, and I would
like to read from verse 31. 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 God bless to us this
reading from the Word of God. The Apostle in this chapter has
led us through, this chapter of Romans 8, he has led us through
from the beginning with a powerful and an emphatic statement of
our individual justification in the Lord Jesus Christ and
I just want to touch upon that again. He said at the very outset
of this chapter, there is therefore now no condemnation to them which
are in Christ Jesus. There is no condemnation to them
that are in Christ Jesus. And in saying that, the apostle
has highlighted the role of the triune God in establishing and
maintaining this position of grace that the Lord's people
have been brought into. The Father, the Son, and the
Holy Spirit, as the Apostle has unpacked these verses, are seen
all to be engaged in this great work of salvation. God the Father
it was we have been told who sent the Lord Jesus Christ to
die for sin that sin might be condemned in the flesh. This was God's proactive work. He it is who sent the Lord Jesus
Christ. He it is who dispatched the God-man
in order that he would fulfill that requirement, that work. And the Lord Jesus Christ equally
willingly went, voluntarily entered into that office of, as it were,
subordination, and came and fulfilled all that was required of the
Holy God. acquiesced and agreed to unite
himself with the elect people of God, the chosen people of
God, in body, in soul and in spirit. He was set up as our
representative and he satisfied every demand of the holy God
against his people. That was the role of the Lord
Jesus Christ. And we have also seen that the
Holy Spirit was active or is active because it is very much
a present tense activity with the Holy Spirit because he ministers
to us. He intercedes from God and from
the Lord Jesus Christ, from the Father and the Son to the people
of God here upon earth. that the body of Christ, the
church of the Lord Jesus Christ, are blessed day by day, whether
that is in the initial sanctifying work of God the Holy Spirit as
he brings the gospel and he brings conviction and the gospel to
bear on the consciousness, the soul of a redeemed individual,
or whether it is in his comforting role as he blesses and helps
the people of God throughout their daily life's experience. The Holy Spirit is both the quickener,
the regenerator, the enlivener of dead sinners and the comforter
with those sinners, having brought them into an experience of their
sins forgiven. And so the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Spirit are engaged upon this great work of salvation. And the Apostle has been clear
to emphasise that there is no condemnation to those who are
justified in the Lord Jesus Christ under this great work of grace. Thus, as we continue to live
in this world, as we live in this flesh, as we are subject
to the trials and the difficulties and the problems of this life,
These things ought to be our constant companions. We ought to remind ourselves
frequently, we ought to tell ourselves regularly about these
things. Because remember what the Apostle
has done. He came out of Romans chapter
7, speaking about the wretched man, speaking about laws that
seem to be at work in his life, where he has desires for holy
things and yet he finds that he is being dragged down in this
flesh, in this life, in this world, by its temptations, by
its trials, by its problems. And the Apostle Paul is identifying
himself with the experience of the Church of God wherever it
might be and whenever it might be. I don't think that there's
a believer who doesn't know something of that battle, that warfare
that goes on in the soul because we know, we just know that there
are glorious things, wonderful things, amazing things set aside,
set apart for the people of God, and yet it seems that we are
constantly wading through, I was going to say treacle, but it's
molasses that you have here, that we are constantly beset
with all the weariness of this life. when if we could just get
our mind attuned more to the wonders of God's grace and this
justified state and these three persons of the Godhead who have
laboured to secure these great gifts and blessings for us. The quickened spirits of the
people of God We wait patiently and that is what the Lord has
called us to in this life. You know it would have been well
within the power of God to save us and translate us into his
presence at the very same moment. the twinkling of an eye to save
our souls, if that was his will and his purpose and intention
from all eternity, and then immediately take us into the enjoyment of
all that he has for us. But that's not how it happens.
He keeps us in this world. He keeps us here to teach us,
he keeps us here to continue his worship here upon earth,
to comfort and help and fellowship with those fellow travellers
who are making their way through this life together, to be able
to witness to the things of God and to learn more of Him, to
realise the extent and the nature of the things that He has done.
And we do learn those things. We learn those things in the
inner man. We learn those things in the
quickened spirit. The Holy Spirit teaches us all
things. He brings to us a knowledge of
the things of the Lord Jesus Christ and what has been accomplished. And it seems as if for this little
time, for the time of the days of our lives, that we have to
continue to be beset by these opposing forces. The new man,
the quickened man, The man that is after Christ and life and
liberty and the old man and the trials that he brings against
us. So day by day we go through every
day, every week, every month and every year with these two
things labouring together. And the Apostle Paul knows about
that because he experienced the very same thing himself. He could speak of these things. He could speak of a wretchedness
that he felt in his own life, in his own heart, because of
the abrasiveness of the old man and the new, the old creation
and the new creation. And this glorious looking forward
to that we have, the revelation that we have in scripture of
the fact that there is a better day coming is something that
the Apostle would direct our minds to. And he's encouraging
us here that while we suffer in the flesh, while we struggle
in this world, while we are subject to trials and problems and issues
in this present time, the sons of God, that's what he calls
the elect, the sons of God, the quickened spirits of the people
of God, the redeemed of the Lord Jesus Christ, we are called to
patiently await patiently await the glorious liberty of the still
to come redemption of our bodies and the entering into heaven
of the complete and perfect new man and woman in Christ. We're not going to go to heaven
as disconnected spirits. We're going to pick up those
bodies again and we are going to heaven with a body that has
been transformed but the very same body because the dead in
Christ shall rise first and there will be a joining together of
spirit and body, soul and body and there will be an entrance
into heaven as a flesh and blood and spirit individual. And we will be like the Lord
Jesus Christ with these new bodies in heaven. In doing so, we shall
follow our elder brother, the Lord Jesus Christ, the firstborn
amongst many brethren. And according to the golden chain
that we mentioned last week of divine purpose, that is the foreknowledge
and the predestination and the calling and the justification
and the glorification of the people of God, it's all promised
to us. It will be ours, it's confirmed,
it's already recognised and established and we are assured as the people
of God that this will be our destiny. So the apostle asks in Romans
8 verse 31. What shall we say to these things? And that's the subject of our
sermon this evening. What are we going to say to these
things? What will we say to these things
that the apostle has shown us in this chapter so far about
our justification, about the work of the triune God, about
the promises that we have of entering into that glory because
all of these things have been said in place for knowledge of
God based upon his love to us through predestination and calling
and our justification and glorification. What are we going to say to these
things? Well let me ask a question before
we go into this. I wonder if we can be a little
bit more specific about what the apostle is talking about
when he says in verse 31, what shall we then say to these things? What things is it that he's talking
about, do you think? Well, it might be the whole of
the chapter. It might be these things that
we've touched upon, we've rehearsed, as it were, in the opening section
of our sermon this evening. the beauty of the interconnected
plan of salvation that has been established, purposed by God,
set out and fully accomplished for the redemption and deliverance
and liberty of the people of God. I mean, it's just an amazing
thing, is it not, to think about the love of God establishing
a plan of predestination, and thereafter calling that people
to himself, justifying us in the Lord Jesus Christ, and glorifying
us to enter into the presence of God, there to dwell for all
eternity with them. It's an amazing thing. You couldn't
sit down with a pencil and a piece of paper and imagine the beauty
of this. It's transcendent in its conception
and all of the creative people and the imaginative people in
the world couldn't come up with something as glorious, as heavenly,
as divine as this. But as I was thinking about that,
I'm thinking to myself, what shall we say to these things?
Actually, there's nothing to say to them. They just are. This is what God has done. We're
not to say anything. We've just to receive these things. We've just to believe them. and we have to rejoice in them.
They are our inheritance. This is our inheritance. They're the gift of God to his
people. They are the comfort for our
souls. So rather, I think, what the
apostle is talking about in verse 31 is he's saying this to us. What shall we then say to these
things? He's talking about the sufferings
and the trials of our present time. This is what he has addressed. He said there in verse 18, and
this is the context in which these things are being talked
about. He says, And then he goes on
in verse 20. And he says there, for the creature
was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him
who had subjected the same in hope. And then he goes on more
to talk about the fact that we are groaning together, that we
are travailing in pain, that we are in some way, in verse
21, in bondage of corruption. And I think it's these things
that the Apostle Paul is saying, well, what shall we say to these
things? Because these are the very things
that the Lord's people have to deal with every day. These are
the things which, if we address them, are actually the areas
which impinge upon our joy, our peace, our happiness. Let me
put it another way. These are the things that spoil
our relationship with God. These are the things which detract
from the new man's communion with the Father, with the spiritual
joy of what God has done for us in the plan of salvation.
The Apostle Paul knew about these things. He's been speaking about
them. And so he's given us these three. Let me just identify them
again. He's talking about us being subject
to vanity. Now he's speaking here to believers. He's speaking here to new men
and women. But he's speaking about us being
subject to vanity. Vanity is an interesting word.
Vanity means emptiness. It has to do with a preoccupation
on things that are actually meaningless. And when you think about it like
that, so much of how we spend our days in this world are engaged
with meaningless things. So much. We spend our time, we
spend our days, we spend our hours engaged with dealing with
this world and in a moment it is all going to be wrapped up,
folded up and disposed of. It's all going to be gone. And
everything that we've built and everything that we've laboured
for and everything that we've been involved with, it's all
going to be seen for what it truly is. And all that this world
has endeavoured to construct by way of powerful economies
and rich lifestyles and and ease and comfort and peace, it's all
just going to disappear because it's all vacuous, it's all a
vanity. And so being subject to vanity
speaks about the fact that the people of God have to interact
with this. We have to engage with this every
day. I don't know about you, but there
were times and days gone by when I would get up in the morning
and I would think about my working day that lay ahead of me and
I would think to myself, what's this all about? What on earth
have I got to go in and do this? Who cares? I was an accountant. That was my job. Who cares the
number of barrels of crude oil that's down in the refinery?
Who cares? Well, of course, somebody cared
because somebody wanted to tax it. So I guess that there had
to be somebody that counted it. But I used to worry about that.
I used to get anxious about that. I used to become so... Oh man,
I would get cold sores would come out in my lips at month
end and quarter end when I had to do all my adding up and all
the jobs that had to be done, just because of the sheer anxiety,
the pressure of the job. And yet, What was that all about? Those ledgers that I filled in
30 years ago, somebody threw them in a skip. Somebody threw
them away. And that was all my energy being
put, subject to vanity. There's an emptiness about so
much that we have to spend our precious time and thought and
energy upon. the bondage of corruption. What
does he mean by that? Well, because we are still flesh
in this world, the believer has to deal with the temptations
and the lusts, the lusts of the flesh, the trials of this body,
the anxieties of our minds, the way in which temptations come
against us and we find ourself being attracted to them, drawn
towards them. And even if we push one away,
we end up finding ourselves pushing one away only to be pushed towards
something else. And this is just the way of life.
There is a bondage of corruption which attaches itself to our
flesh and to our body. And he speaks about groaning
and travailing in pain. And we mentioned this last week,
the fact that pain is such a constant in this life. Whether that's
physical, whether it's emotional, whether it's psychological, we
groan. We groan. We groan every day
for one reason or another. I don't know whether you ever
sort of listen to yourself groaning. It almost comes involuntary, you know, you see
something and you go, oh, and you just groaned again. But there's
a groaning because of this flesh. And that's the contest, that's
the battle, that's the warring that's going on. And I think
that it's those things that the Apostle has in mind here when
he says, what shall we then say to these things? What shall we
say to this vanity? What are we going to say to this
bondage of corruption? What are we going to say to this
groaning and travailing in pain? What is the new man? Because
what the Apostle is doing here is he's giving us the armaments,
he's giving us the weaponry, he's giving us the resources. to be engaged in this battle,
to win this battle, to follow through against this wretched
man that I am. What shall we say then to these
things? It's to these things that we've to say something.
It's to these things that we've to speak. There's no point in
us saying something to, there is no condemnation to them that
they're in Christ Jesus. That's just the way it is. There's
no point in us saying something to the fact that the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit have covenanted together to secure
the eternal wellbeing of the church and people of the Lord
Jesus Christ and God select. That's just the way it is. We
don't say anything against that. We don't say anything to those
things, but we do have something to say. We do have an engagement. We do have an involvement with
the things of this world, with the things of this life. This
is our battle. This is where we have to interact
with the old man and the new. So what shall we say? And I think
what the apostle is telling us here is that we need to give
ourselves a talking to. Just as much as that, we need
to give ourselves a talking to. When we see that vanity in our
life, we need to give ourselves a talking to. When we see that
bondage of corruption in our flesh, we need to give ourselves
a talking to. When we groan and travail in
pain, physical, emotional, psychological, we need to give ourselves a talking
to. And what is it we have to say?
We have to say, if God be for us, who can be against us? The spiritual man has to tell
the natural man that God is for me. God is for me. The apostle is still here in
these passages talking to us about the believer's warfare.
In Romans 7, 23, he had said, I see another law in my members,
in my members, in the parts of my body, in my mind, in my spirit,
in my flesh, in my motives, in my desires. I see a law in my
members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into
captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members. So he's
putting a sword in our hands and he's putting a shield on
our arm and he's putting a knife by our side and he's saying now
you give yourself a talking to because this battle is real.
And here's what I want you to know and here's what I want you
to say. The weapons in this war are the
things that we have to tell ourselves, that we have to remind ourselves
about in this present age, in this time of our suffering. We
have to use these things against the sin which does so easily
beset us. And we've to be aware that it's
fleeting and momentary, that these are light afflictions that
are not worthy to be compared to the glory which shall be revealed
in us. You see, what Paul is doing here
is he is helping you and he's helping me to get through our
day. Look at verse 32. He says these are the ways in which he
leads us into those things which we have to say. 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? He has said in verse 32, what
shall we then say to these things? These things of our trials, these
things of our battle, these things of our warfare, these things
of suffering and vanity and bondage and the infirmities which we
feel. What shall we say to these things?
We say this, if God be for us, who can be against us? Okay,
so what does God being for us mean? What does God being for
us mean as far as our daily life is concerned, as far as the practicalities
of our experience day by day and the battle of the new man
and the old? Well, here's the thing. We're
told that in verse 32, He shall freely give us all things. So that is one of the things
that it means for God to be for us. He will freely give us all
things. Not that we are going to be possessors
of all things material. That's not what's being talked
about here. We don't need two houses, right? We're not talking
about gold here. We're not talking about material.
When it says that God will give us all things, he's not saying
that he's going to give us everything that's desirable in this world. The all things that he is going
to give us is like the all things that work together for our good. That's what we read in verse
28. He said, we know that all things
work together to them that love God. And you see that, we made
a point about this last week, that we know, we know. But the thing is that we don't
know as we should. This is the point at which the
world, the battle, the flesh comes in and contends with us.
Because while we say we know it in our head, our flesh tells
us that we don't. And it reacts against all of
the promises of God. And it again leads us down, leads
us into that state of bondage and into these tribulations.
So what the Lord is telling us, or what the apostle is telling
us here with respect to the Lord being for us, if God be for us,
is simply this, that the all things do indeed work together
for our good. And he gives us a little glimpse
of that every now and again when we need it most. This is what
he does for us. He shows us that that ache and
that pain and that problem is actually for your good. He shows
us that this trial that we are facing has got a blessing in
its shadow. He shows us that the dark path
that we have to walk down has got something so beautiful, so
bright and glorious at its end, that we will count this as having
been merely a momentary thing in the accomplishment and achievement
and experience of all that the Lord has for it. He gives us
a glimpse in the appropriate moment that these trials are
all subservient to your good. And it's interesting that he
says that he shall freely give us all things. Freely. He is going to give us these
things abundantly. He is going to give us these
things as they are needed. freely given. This is the grace
and the peace of God in the midst of our trials. Grace and peace
is a lovely little phrase. I looked it up just to anticipate
what I was going to say here and the Apostle Paul If ever
there was a subject that the Apostle Paul seemed to return
to time after time after time, it was the subject of grace and
peace. And he mentions it. Let me tell you this. He has
at least 13 letters that he writes in the New Testament. And at
the beginning of every single one of those letters, he talks
about grace and peace. It's the first thing that he
mentions, grace and peace. And he is showing us the liberality
of God. He is showing us that the goodness
of God, the grace of God, the mercies of God are our portion
and they are designed to bring us into peace. They have a role,
not only in reconciling us to God, but in enabling us to live
in this life with a degree of peacefulness in the midst of
the trouble and the trial and the problems and the difficulties
and the suffering and the vanities that surround us all the time.
And God's purpose of grace and peace is for our life here also. And so it is freely given to
us, given all things. It's not a reward for our enduring
hardship, but it's an explanation of what that hardship is about. It is saying that the giving
all things shows us that all things are subservient to us. All things are working together
for our good. All things, though they might
seem bitter and hard and harsh, are actually designed for our
greater blessing. And the explanation of that and
the elucidation of that and the illumination of that It's what
the Lord gives us. He just gives us a little insight
every now and again in the midst of our trials. He gives us a
little insight, a little gift, a little moment. And he says,
now look, this is for your good. I've got this sorted out. I'm
in control of this and I am accomplishing something here that you don't
know about yet, but it is coming together beautifully and it is
coming together exactly as I planned and willed it to do. And that's
what the Lord gives us. And so we have to tell ourselves
that. We have to remind ourselves of
that. When we get into these problems,
when we get into these trials, we need to give ourselves a talking
to and say, you know what? The Lord God will freely give
us all things. What else will he do? What else
have we to tell ourselves? We have to tell ourselves this,
that he will justify. Who, verse 33, 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. We have to tell that old man
that we're justified. We have to tell that old man
who comes with his allegations and his accusations, who comes
with all these problems, all the failures, all the falling,
all the foolishness that we have been guilty of. The devil uses
these things to accuse us. And the flesh employs those things
to attack us with fresh attacks. And the world uses those things
to entice us back again and again and again. And at that moment,
this is the defence that has to rise. God has made me clean. That's what we have to tell the
old man. God has made me clean. That's
what we have to say to the devil. That's the message that we have
to give to ourselves. What is all this condemning?
All that's gone. Christ himself has died to take
that away. That's not the reality. That's
fake news. That's false. Christ has risen. Christ is alive
and he is interceding for me in heaven. We give ourselves a talking to.
We say, away with you, be gone. I won't be beaten down by a lie
when I know that that crime has been paid for and that guilt
has been taken away. You see, the old man comes at
us in such a variety, like a chameleon. He can dress himself up in any
disguise that he likes, but these are the weapons of our warfare. God will freely give us all things. Christ has died for us and is
risen and is interceding for us. What else can we say? We can say this. He will never
let us be lost. If God be for us, What can divide
that hold that he has upon us? If God has joined us together,
who's going to separate us from him? If love, God's love for
his church and people in Christ is the foundation, that foreknowledge,
that purpose of God to save us from all eternity, and if that
foreknowledge is chained together to predestination, and predestination
is linked to calling, and calling is bound up with our justification,
and that every link of this golden chain is leading to our glorification,
what have I to fear? What have I to worry about? Glorification,
the glorification of our body and soul is certain. And what
power is there in heaven or earth will break that chain of God's
purpose. Look at verse 35. 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. In this life, in this life, nothing
will ever separate us from the love of God. You tell yourself
that the next time the dark cloud comes across your horizon. You
tell yourself that the next time the black dog bites your leg.
You tell yourself that, the next time it seems as if you're starting
to sink in that morass of trouble that feels as if you're going
to be submerged in it never to resurface. These are the things
that we tell ourselves, that God is for us, that these things
are our inheritance. All of these things, the apostle
says, in all of these things, verse 37, we are more than conquerors
through him that loved us. And I just want you to notice
here that I think there's a validity in the way in which I am talking about these things, discussing
these things, because it is we. It's a personal pronoun. It is that second or first person
plural that is being used here. It's we. This is our battle. And these are the weapons of
our warfare. We are the conquerors. It doesn't
say that Christ is the conqueror. Christ did defeat Satan at the
cross. Christ is defeating Satan every
day when he takes one and another of his elect out of that grasp
and hold of Satan that he has the old man in. But this is our battle. And it's
we who are conquerors. In all these things, we are more
than conquerors. We conquer. We gain the victory
because we take the promises, because we employ these promises,
these gifts, which the Lord has given to us. We take the promises
of the accomplishments of Christ. We take the promises of the character
of the Lord Jesus Christ to the attacks of Satan and we employ
them to muzzle his mouth, to silence his accusations and to
break the back of his attacks against us. It seems as if the Lord is willing
and eager that we participate by owning these blessings which
he has given to us and applying them in the fight which he has
called us to engage in. We are to face down sin in our
lives. We are to face it down. If the
Holy Spirit makes you aware of sin in that old man, it's to
be dealt with. We talk about liberty, the liberty
of believers. That liberty is not carelessness. That's not our liberty. Our liberty
is not indulgence. Our liberty is not promiscuity. Our liberty is the fact that
we are now free to fight against these things in the old man.
where once we were in bondage to its corruption. And so we
face it down, we face down sin in our lives. We face down Satan
in his attacks against us. We face down the flesh as it
endeavours to rise and subsume us again, subsume our spirits
back into that place of doubt and unbelief and distrust. And
we face down the world and we do it confidently and we do it
courageously. And the Bible says that you're
not only conquerors in doing that, but you're more than conquerors. You not only will have the victory,
but you will have blessing in the victory. And you will taste
of the glory of that victory in your own soul day by day as
you engage with the devil. This is spiritual experience
that we're talking about. It's the spiritual experience
of faith. and joy and assurance being increased
and enhanced as it is used. You know what happens when you
break your leg or you break an arm or something and you go and
you get it all fixed up and then the nurse says to you, you've
had that on for four weeks or for six weeks or whatever it
is now. Now you need to use this. You need to get the muscles back
working again. You need to get on your feet
and get this leg working again. You need to get the physiotherapy
going here in order to build up the strength again. And it
is that enhancing, that increase in the blessings of grace that
will be honed and improved and enlarged as we take this fight
to our enemy. We carry the banner of the blood
of Jesus Christ. The blood of the Lamb of God
goes into the battle with the Lord's people as they have to
contend against the old man day by day. In that battle we shall
gain the victory because we are more than conquerors. through
the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ is our strength. That's
the point about these areas of our life where we are to draw
on the blessings of God, the resources of God. It's Christ
that's our strength. He is our defence. He is our
armour. He is our arsenal. It's not our
morality that will keep us safe. It's not our Bible knowledge. It's not our intellect. It's
not even our spiritual ability. It is Christ's love, Christ's
blood, Christ's sacrifice, Christ's resurrection, Christ's intercession
for us in heaven. And we are called to engage day
by day upon the foundation of these things in order that we
might be evidently more than conquerors of that old man which
is still part and parcel of our life here on earth. I love the
personal application that is here in these verses. I'm not
sure that I've ever seen just as clearly in reading through
this passage how much the apostle has been building on the blessings
that we have in the light of what he discussed in Romans chapter
seven, which is probably a little bit foolish because it's pretty
obvious Romans chapter eight comes after Romans chapter seven.
But it is one of these chapters, I think, that we tend to go to
without reading it in its context. And here, I think, is the real
context of this, that the apostle is showing us that in these things
are our defences and our weapons of opposition to that old man,
that wretched man that so besets us with its sin and its doubt. All things are ours. and nothing
shall separate us from the love of God in Christ. Brothers and
sisters, what more do we want? What more do we need? It's enough. Amen.