Now Romans chapter 8, we'll read
the portion of scripture we need as we get to the various verses.
Now I think in the bulletin I entitled this, Him, Therefore Us, and
that's because I had to print the bulletin before I had fully
written out the notes to the message. So I have actually changed
the name of the message to Blessed Assurance, not that titles are
all that important. But it'll give you an idea of
the subject at hand this morning. Blessed assurance. Now, one cannot
imagine a progression of thought that would more powerfully give
assurance to the people of God than what we find here beginning
in verse 28 and going through the end of this chapter. I mean,
the things written here, if you cannot find assurance in these
declarations. I don't know where you could
find assurance. In verses 28 through 30, God's eternal decree
and his sovereign control over everything is brought to bear
as a reason for our salvation. That is, as an assurance of our
salvation. Our salvation is guaranteed and
upheld and cannot be overthrown because God who decrees all things
and sovereignly controls everything in time, He is the one who has
saved us. In verses 31 through 34, the
justice of God is used to argue for the certainty
of our salvation. Now, when we talk about assurance,
the certainty of our salvation is what we're talking about,
isn't it? I mean, we say we believe, and we do. If we doubt, that doesn't mean
we don't believe, because our Lord said, ye of little faith,
so He's talking to people who did believe, He said, you of
little faith, why did you doubt? So there were believers who doubted.
And the things that cause us doubt, or the very nature of
our doubt, is the certainty that in the end, we shall be saved. It's real easy to stand here
and say, I am saved. But within the recesses of our
heart, we sometimes wonder, will I say that? But when I get there,
will that truly be the case? So the sovereignty of God, the
justice of God are brought to bear. And then in verses 35 through
39, the everlasting and invincible love of God is used. to prove the certainty of the
salvation of all of those upon whom his love rests, who are
the called according to his purpose, and who have indeed returned
his love with theirs. Now these three things are put
up as answers to the very things that are most prone to cause
us doubt. Now, Paul didn't overtly mention
the things that cause us doubt, but when you see how he answers
doubts with certainty, you see that he's actually answering
the kind of things that cause us doubt. For instance, our weakness
to control things so that we can see a clear path to glory. We would love, now see if this
isn't true of you. I know it's true of me. I suspect
you have thoughts similar to mine. We would love to have set
before us a broad and straight highway to walk upon and there
on the horizon is the glow of heaven. We can see it. We can
see everything between here and there. The whole path is laid
out for us. That's what we'd like. But that's
not the way it is, right? The road to eternal life, the
Bible says it's narrow. Narrow. And it's a winding path
so that we cannot see very far ahead. And we know by the testimony
of Scripture that it's often a difficult path. that we will face troubles. And all the time that we're walking
on this path, we cannot see our destination. We know what our
destination is, but we can't see it. No glow on the horizon,
no signposts, just a narrow and winding road
And at the beginning of it was a sign that said, this is the
way to eternal life. You see, we live by faith, not
by sight. And so when we see the world
before us and our weakness to control things in this world,
we wonder, are we going to be able, I mean, are we really going
to come to the end of this in blessedness? Secondly, And this probably causes us more
doubt than anything else. Our sins. Our continuing sinfulness. Probably you recall that when
God first revealed His Son to you, and you came to understand
the Gospel, you laid hold of it with your whole heart, and
you were so filled with a sense of the presence of God and the
presence of Christ that sin for a while didn't even hold an attraction
to you. And you thought for sure this
is the way it's going to be from now on. We sing that song, in fact it may be the last one,
I'm not sure it is, but the last line is this, and now I am happy
all the day. Now we sing some hymns that have
a line or two in it that really aren't true, because we're not
happy all the day, are we? No matter how much we believe,
we're not happy all the day. Because what we thought, partly
because what we thought the Christian life was going to be, is not
what it turned out to be. Yes, God was pleased in those
early days, to give us such a sense of His presence, that it seemed
like things were going to be easy. But that's just in our
infancy. And just as parents dote upon
an infant, I mean wait on it literally hand and foot, and
do everything for it, because it cannot do anything itself.
So were we treated in the infancy of our spiritual life, but as
time went by. It was expected that we would
grow and mature and we'd begin to handle some matters ourselves.
And so, as God withdraws some of those early graces to replace
them with later graces that cause us to mature, these problems
arise again. And these conflicts come up again,
and particularly this conflict with sin, how they rise up to
accuse us. Old sins do. Do you have that
trouble? Things you've done, and I recognize
in our theology we say everything's sin, but I also realize that
there are things which our conscience bothers us about more than others.
Things that we have done. And maybe at one point we dealt
with it. And we came before the Lord.
These old sins, you know, we came before the Lord and we laid
them before the Lord. And we said, Lord, just as that
publican did, may your blood be effective. for me, a sinner. May the mercy
seat where the blood was spilled, may it be a place of my salvation."
And we walked away from there feeling free of all those sins,
feeling guiltless. But sins are like zombies. We
put them to death and they come back. And I don't mean that they
come back in their temptations. Old sins creep back into the
conscience and bear us down again. And say to us once again as our
accusers, how can you be a child of God? Look what you did. Such
a one as that would do the things you do certainly cannot be a
child of God. And so sins from the past come
back to haunt us. Present sin. I know that there are people,
I've run into religious people and they claim they don't sin
anymore. And I feel like I would say, well, that was a sin right
there, because that's just a bold faced lie. But that's because
they don't understand what sin is. But our present sin. Our continual love of it. You say, well, a believer doesn't
love sin. Remember, a believer is spirit and flesh, and his
flesh loves sin as much as it ever did. And it so troubles us in our
spiritual being. And again, the question comes
up, can someone who loves God also love this wickedness so
much? Can he who says that he delights In God and His grace, can the
same person delight in such wickedness as I find going on in my mind
and occasionally breaking out in my activities? And we're brought to doubt because
of our sin. And future sin. You ever worry
about future sin? I do. I think sometimes to myself,
considering the things I've done, What kind of mischief am I going
to get into in the future? I don't believe. There was a
time I thought I had some ability against sin. I don't anymore. And therefore, I wonder in myself,
shall I someday prove to be a reprobate? Because you know, there are some
who started on the way of life. And for one reason or another,
left that way. Our weakness in the face of temptation
puts a huge question mark in our minds. How can such a weakling
belong to an omnipotent God? And then thirdly, the multitude
of enemies that we face in this world. The processes of life. I mean, just the things that
go on, often come before us and challenge our salvation. We might say to ourselves, well,
if God loves me, how can these things be happening to me? I
thought that since I trusted God, things were going to go
well for me. I didn't realize that I'd get
sick. I didn't realize that a child of God could go bankrupt or just
barely scratch by. I thought that the way of life,
that you know, that now that you're God's, He was just going
to, you know, a rose-petaled pathway. I've heard people say
that. I've heard preachers say that
kind of thing. If you just believe, everything would work out. And
people believe that. Unfortunately, that principle
still goes in, goes with us. And so the processes of life
argue against our salvation and the powers, the spiritual powers,
which we do not see, but we believe exist. We know this about them. They are more powerful than we
are. I mean, there's a devil out there.
What about him? Say, well, I can resist the devil,
I can stand up against him. No, you can't. If Adam, in a perfect environment,
without a nature of sin, could be drawn into sin and destruction
by the devil, how do you think you're going to fare? And you're
full of sin and live in a cursed, corrupt creation. Brethren, our hope is not that
we are strengthened to fight the devil. Such strength is not
ours, not his demons, not the ones who do his bidding, or at
least are following essentially the same path he did. There are
spiritual spirits out there, and again, the Bible doesn't
say a lot about them, except that they do exist. And they
have some remarkable powers, no more power than God will allow
them to have, but they do have powers that we cannot overcome. I think of those poor wretches
we read about in the scripture who were actually demon possessed.
Somehow or another those spirits were able to infiltrate their
bodies and take over their consciousness. Take over their will. And there wasn't anything anybody
could do for them. And you'd have religious people
that claim they could, and they'd go around saying, we're going
to cast out demons, but they couldn't get rid of real demons. They didn't have the power to
do that. And so people went on in this
wretched state of actually being possessed and controlled by another
spiritual power. Now you say, well, such a thing
has never happened to me. Well, why do you think that is? It's not as though if some demon
were given enough room by God to do so, it's not as though
he wouldn't be able to overcome you. And then there's angels
whom God sends to execute His justice. We wouldn't be able
to stand up against them. Now those are the only other
creatures I know about that God has created, but that doesn't
mean he hadn't created others. I don't know what all is out
there. You know, it's a great conceit to believe that the only
thing that is real are the things that I can see. You know, people
say, when I see it, I'll believe it. Well, then you're never going
to believe the gospel, because it involves mostly things which
cannot be seen or detected in any way. But we have these enemies. In fact, it seems as though all
of creation stands against us in this quest for life. The very process of death, which
is worked in our bodies, argues against our salvation. Now you
think on that. The older you get, the less likely life scenes. And that's because we live so
much by sight. We see our life ebbing away. Little by little,
the aspects of our physical nature, we're robbed of them. Our strength
begins to fade. Our memory begins to fade. Our
ability to enjoy life begins to fade. The writer of Ecclesiastes makes
a point of it. He says to the young people,
and you young people take this to heart, but it says to seek the creator,
to know the creator in the days of your youth. And he says before,
and he gives a long list of symbols of old age and decay. Talks about when the grinders
cease. What's he talking about? When your teeth fall out. When
memory is a fog. When desire is gone. One of the things I'm sure that
young people cannot understand is when they meet an older person
who's just become wary of life. And they say things like, I'm
not interested in living anymore. I'm not saying that they're suicidal
or going to do anything about it, but all the joy of life is
gone. And so it says to young people,
remember your Creator while you're still young. Because the time
will come when you won't be able to remember anything. The time will come when this
life will have no joy. And seeing that you have not
sought the Lord, you will not be able to enjoy those things
which are spiritual and do not decay. But these three things,
our powerlessness, our sinfulness, and the circumstances of life
and all this, all of them are answered in these scriptures.
And let's look at how the apostle answers this. And I want you
to note as we go through this, when it comes to assurance of
our salvation, Paul does not mention anything that we do. The scriptures really do not
ever point us to ourselves to find a reason to believe that
indeed we are saved and shall be saved eternally. No virtue,
no works, nothing. Verse 28, And we know that in
all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who
have been called according to His purpose. For those God foreknew,
He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son, that
He might be the firstborn among many brothers, and those He predestined
He also called. And those he called, he also
justified. Those he justified, he also glorified. Now a point I forgot to make
and I want to go back and make it because it gives the theme
of this entire message. It's written right here in verse
31. Here is the answer to every doubt. What then shall we say
in response to this? If God is for us, who can be
against us? And so in those verses I just
read there in 28 and 30, 28, 29, and 30, we see that God is
for us in sovereignty and in decree. Now it says, we know
that in all things God works for the good. Or it could be
put this way, and I like the image that this brings up, and
we know that God causes all things to work together for good. That word that we would translate
work together. I looked it up in other places
and it's always like a group of people all trying to accomplish
the same thing. For instance, and again, you're
going to have to think old fashioned. The scriptures were written in
olden times, so that's the imagery that would be used. But imagine
in the building of those pyramids, they had to move those big heavy
blocks. How'd they do that? Well, a whole lot of people,
or a whole lot of animals, or whatever, had to be joined together
in a single effort to pull that block along to its destination. All of them working together.
And what the apostle is saying here, that God is causing absolutely
everything to join together in a gigantic effort, if we can
put it that way, to bring about the salvation of His people. Now I want you to think of this.
We look out there and it looks like everything is against us.
It looks like everything's working against us. Paul says, no, God's
causing all of these things to work for you. You say, well, I don't know,
I just can't see that because all these things are offering
resistance. Well, that may be what we feel,
but that's not what's happening. Remember, we cannot determine
what God is doing by what we see going on. Things may look
like death to us when they are life. And so God is working all these
or causing all these things to work together for our good and
in verse 29 he goes back to God's eternal decree for those God
foreknew Now, if you teach sovereign grace, if you go out and confess
that you believe sovereign grace, you'll eventually run into someone
and say, well, you know, that doctrine of election is just that God
foresaw who would believe, so he chose them. Which, that makes
it a pretty pitiful sounding God, doesn't it? Well, who will
I choose? Well, I don't want anybody to
say no to me, so I'm just going to choose those I foresee are
going to believe. Well, that's impossible. Because
we do find in the scriptures that there is this chain that
leads to faith and part of that chain is God's election of a
people. He didn't choose us because he
knew we were going to believe. We believe because he chose us. And in that choice initiated
a whole series of actions which led to our trusting Him. When
it talks here about God foreknew, what it means is that He knew
us intimately. Not just the intimate details
of us, but He knew us as friend knows friend, as husband and
wife know one another. It indicates not only a knowledge
of a person, an intellectual knowledge, or even an affection
for them. This word foreknow means to have
loving and gracious purposes for them. And so those who foreknew,
and here's how that foreknowledge showed itself, he also predestined
to be conformed to the likeness of his son. Now notice this,
He did not look to their likeness to Christ to cause Him to choose
them or anything like that. In His foreknowledge, He determined
that in time to come, they would be like His Son. He determined
their destiny. They didn't. You say, I don't know if I'll
ever reach that destiny. Wait a minute. before time and
all of its difficult circumstances, before the clock even got started,
God foreknew His people and He set their eternal destiny. It
was set and determined before anything got started. Isn't that
interesting? It begins with the end. His decree
begins with the end. Where are they going to end up?
They're going to end up like my son. And then what does he
do? Well, those whose destiny he
is determined to be like Christ, well, then he also called. That is, way back yonder in eternity,
God issued a divine call. And that call enters time at
its appropriate point. and finds every one of these
predestined ones. Now we get all tied up in time.
And that's because we live in time and we can't even think
without the concept of time. And we don't want to know, well,
this happens and then this happens and then this happens. Brethren,
from God's viewpoint, all of it's already happened. And so
the call of God, it's not as though on such and such a date,
He called an individual person. He called them back in eternity,
but eternity surrounds time, and that eternal call enters
time at the appropriate point to grab the attention of one
of God's people. So He called them. And He says, and those He called,
He also justified. Every one of those who He called
way back yonder in eternity, He also justified them then.
So how can He justify them in eternity? Well, that's where
He lives. He can't do anything. Everything
God does, He does in eternity, because that's where He exists.
But Jesus Christ is the Lamb slain from the foundation of
the world. And therefore, God is just, even as He justifies
the ungodly way back before the ungodly even existed. Now that
does not mean justification doesn't happen in time. In truth, when
you understand what the word justify means, it happens lots
of times. It simply means to declare someone
righteous and over and over again God declares His people to be
righteous. But all of this was accomplished
before time began. And then it says, those He justified,
He also glorified. Now wait a minute, preacher,
I'm looking around, there's a lot of people here who claim to be
believers, and I have no reason to doubt that they are. You know,
God has chosen them, God called them, God justified, but they
don't look very glorious to me. Well, there was a time when He
had chosen them, but they didn't look very justified either. They
didn't look very called. Because those eternal things
which God had done had not entered time in their experience, but
it will. For from the perspective of the
eternal God, these things are done. And you and I are passing
through time, just waiting for them to happen. We see troubles. We see our weakness
to control things. We see powers greater than us. And we wonder, will I make it? The first thing God did with
regard to every child of God here was determine they're going
to make it. He predestined them. to be like
Christ. And if God predestines you, you
will reach that destination. You will realize that destiny. And everything necessary to bring
you to that destiny will happen. In fact, God, as it were, controls
the every minute detail of history, bringing it into subjection to
this end to bring you to salvation. So you see, your weakness doesn't
matter because your strength is not involved. Your ability
to see what lies ahead doesn't matter. Because He who has determined
all that lies ahead has already got it under control, organized
in such a way as to bring you to the destination. And even
if there's some curve in this narrow path that you're walking
that seems to go off at the edge of the cliff into nothingness,
do not fear. It only appears that way to you.
It's not that way. And you shall arrive. at your appointed destination.
For it is God that appointed it, and God that brings it to
pass. So again, what shall we say in
response to this? If God is for us, who can be
against us? Verse 32. He who did not spare
his own son, but gave him up for us all, how shall he not
also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will
bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It's God
who justifies. Who is He that condemns? Christ
Jesus who died. More than that, who is raised
to life, is at the right hand of God and is also interceding
for us. Now, I mentioned our sins. Notice what's brought up here.
The things that are laid down now to assure us. First of all,
that God was willing to go even to this extent to deal with the
problem of our sin. He did not spare his own son. Now we see our sin as deserving
punishment, and when we see it, we see it right. It does deserve
punishment. But God has assured us of His
intention and purpose to save us because He has provided the
very thing necessary to deal with the problem of our sin.
He did not spare His own Son. He gave Him up for us all. Notice
there, it doesn't say He gave Him to us. He gave Him up for
us. A sacrifice. Now, if he did that,
would a just God, who himself paid the penalty for the sin,
would such a God withhold any of the blessings which were purchased
by that payment? Well, first of all, common sense
is going to tell you he wouldn't. If I have predestined all things
good for you because I love you, and in order that these good
things come to pass, I pay an enormous price necessary to bring
it to pass, well, I am not then going to withhold lesser things which were purchased by this
great price. Brethren, if God our Father was
pleased to give His Son for us. Why would
we doubt at all that He will withhold anything else that is
necessary to our salvation? Who, verse 33, will bring any
charge against those whom God has chosen. That is, who can
bring them into the court of divine justice and lay a charge
against them which is going to stick? That used to be the way
it was. You had the accuser who accused
a person of a crime and then he had to give a defense as to
why he's not guilty of the crime and hope that the judge would
accept his defense. But notice this. Who will bring
any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who
justifies. God has justified us. He is justifying
us. And if I already know that the
judge has justified the one who's been charged, The one who stands
before Him, it doesn't do any good for me to go in and make
another accusation. The judge has already rendered
a judgment. Now your sins may accuse you
in your own conscience. You know, the past, the present,
you may have fears about future sin. But here is what the Apostle
is saying, God has justified, nobody can make any of those
sins stick. The judgment's already been rendered.
The verdict has already been given. Therefore, there is no
condemnation of those who are in Christ Jesus. None. Now, if you justify yourself,
then someone is going to be able to go into the court of God and
make legitimate accusation against you. You go around saying, I'm
righteous. I'm worthy. Well, someone else can go on
the court of heaven and say, God, He says He's righteous,
but I know better, because He did this, that, and the other.
And those charges might stick. Why? Because it was you that
justified yourself. But if God justifies you, there's
no higher court to go to. The accuser cannot say, well,
it doesn't matter what you think, God, I'm going to a higher court.
There isn't a higher court. He is the Supreme Court all by
Himself. And there's no appeal either
for innocence or for guilt beyond him. And if he's justified, what's
an accuser going to do? It goes on. Who is he that condemns? Who is he, who could it be, that
would be able not only to make an accusation against you, but
render a guilty verdict and pronounce upon you eternal judgment. Now, if you are a simple believer
in the Lord Jesus Christ, there are plenty of religious people
who would be glad to do just that. Accuse you of sin, find
you guilty, and condemn you to eternal torment. One problem
with that. It'll never work. Why? Christ
Jesus, who died, More than that, who is raised to life is at the
right hand of God and is also interceding for us. What's the
picture here? Once again, we're in a courtroom.
And that's why I said this deals with the issue of our sin. We're
in a courtroom. Now, the judge is the one who's
already declared us not guilty. More than that, we have what
John called an advocate. If any man sin, we have an advocate
with the Father, even Jesus Christ the righteous. And Paul is saying
the same thing here. He says Jesus Christ is at the
right hand of God interceding for us. And so there we stand. And let's say all of our sins
come flooding back into our conscience. And we're standing there in the
presence of God, and they, just like a grand chorus, are condemning
us in the presence of God, saying, here we are, we are testifiers
of His guilt, and we pronounce Him guilty and worthy of damnation. And believe me, that'd be a big
chorus if all your sins showed up. What say ye, Judge? Well, someone
speaks up and says, just a minute. Before the judge renders his
verdict, let me speak. And who is he that speaks? He
says, I am Jesus Christ who died for all those sins that are right
now making accusation. I, I was accused of them. I was condemned for them and
I bore the penalty of them. I died. But I rose again. And I am seated at the right
hand of the Father. And by my blood and righteousness,
I plead for this man. There is no sin on him, because
all his sin was laid on me." Now what answer can be given
to that? Really? If that's so, How can
our sins ever prove an obstacle to our salvation when all our
sins have been taken care of by our defense attorney and the
judge has already declared not guilty? Now, I don't mean that
that should lead us to not care about our sins. We should grieve
over them. But if we will cling tightly
to our Lord Jesus Christ and listen to His intercession rather
than the condemning and accusing words of our sin, then we need
never fear our sin. Because it's gone. It no longer
has power in God's court. Isn't that an amazing thing to
think of? I know the principle of sin has an awful lot of power
in me to make me do sinful things. But sin has absolutely no power
or authority in the court of God to accuse God's people and
condemn them so long as Jesus Christ is there. And He ain't
leaving. Alright, let's go on. Verse 35,
who shall separate us from the love of Christ, shall trouble,
or hardship, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger,
or sword? As it is written, for your sake
we face death all day long. We are considered as sheep to
be slaughtered. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors
through Him who loved us. I love language, so I've got
to tell you these things, because I love the way, actually, over
the years as I looked into Greek, I like the Greek language. I
like the way it puts things. And the way it made this whole
phrase, more than conquerors, actually, it's not a noun, it's
a verb. But it took the word for conquering,
and then put a preposition in front of it, we get our preposition
or prefix, hyper from it. Strictly, here's what it says.
No, in all these things, we are hyper-conquering. We're not just
barely winning. We are overwhelmingly winning.
We're not just... When we come into glory, We're
not just going to be a nose ahead of all that would drag us into
hell. On the battlefield, it's not
as though we barely survive the battle. and come dragging out
wounded and beaten up, and they wonder if we're going to survive
our wounds. No! We are hyper-conquerors. Even
the word conqueror is not enough to describe what the believer
is in Christ Jesus. He is a hyper-conqueror. You
say, I don't feel like one. Understand the battle here. The
battle is not that you not sin. The battle is not that you don't
suffer reversals. The battle is not decided by
whether you are brought to tears or whether you are always happy
all the day. That's not the battle. You know
what the battle is? That you believe. And here's
the wondrous thing about the people of God, they believe in
the face of everything because Jesus Christ, who is the great
conqueror, has gone before them and slain all their enemies before
they even get there. And you will find them in their
darkest hours when doubts overwhelm their consciousness. You will hear them cry out to
their God. And you don't cry out to one
you don't believe in. Remember when our Lord said,
O ye of little faith, why did you doubt? Do you know what the circumstances
were that brought our Lord to say that? One of those boat stories. They're out in a boat and a storm
comes up. And he's big enough, he's pitching that little boat
back and forth. And the water's coming in over the side. And they're bailing for all they're
worth. And the Lord's asleep. And they cry out. Lord, don't
you care that we're perishing? Now, that doesn't sound very
much like faith, does it? But it is. And it sounds like
faith not because of what they said, but because of who they
said it to. You see, often our faith sounds
very much like unbelief, but we express it to the one in whom
we hope. They said, don't you care that
we perish? And while that was an insult
to the Lord to think he didn't care, nonetheless, they were
throwing that at him because they knew that if he cared, they
would not perish. Their confidence and hope was
still in him. And they got to the other side,
not barely. They got to the other side as
hyper conquerors over the sea. Because the Lord stood up and
said to the waves, lay down. And they did. And they drifted
on into port. Know in all these things we are
hyper-conquerors through Him who loved us. God loved us, Christ
loved us. For I am convinced that neither
death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present
nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor
anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from
the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. Now that is a tremendous
conviction to have. Notice the things he brings up.
I'm convinced that neither death nor life. Now, we may fear death. It's natural for us to do so.
And we may think, maybe at death I'll be separated from the love
of God. Maybe death is going to be too strong for love. No,
it won't. Yea, though I walk through the
valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou
art with me. In fact, it's God's love that
has arranged your death. You say, wait, that doesn't make
sense. Hey, death's how you get home. You say, oh, I so much desire
to be with Christ. Okay, death's the door. It's
part of that winding road over which you must pass to get there
unless you live until the Lord comes. And so you see in this,
God has taken this horrible thing called death And by His power,
He has made it to be a wonderful thing as a gateway to life. Notice this, it says, neither
death nor life. Brethren, sometimes I fear life
more than I do death. Because I can't fail at death.
I'm going to die. That's going to happen. But I
look at life and life has so much that bothers me and tempts
me. Not even life. Whatever is in
it. And whatever I do in it, nothing
about life is going to be able to separate me from the love
of God. And then he goes on. Angels nor
demons. Not righteous angels of judgment
or demonic angels of wickedness. None of them can separate me
from the love of God. Not the present. Nothing going
on right now or nothing that will happen in the future. You
say, but I can't see around the bend of the road there. No matter.
There's nothing up there that can separate you from the love
of God. And if God loves you all as well. If God's for you,
no one and no thing can be against you. Nor any powers, no earthly power,
no spiritual power, they can't separate you from the love of
God. In times of severe persecution, when God's people were even killed
because of their testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ, you can
imagine that those powers that were bringing this to pass thought,
well, we'll condemn this man, we'll call him a heretic, we'll
burn him at the stake, and he'll go straight to hell. No, he won't.
You may condemn him in your ecclesiastical courts, you may tie him to a
stake and light a fire and burn his body, but all you're doing
is sending him straight to the arms of the Savior. The powers,
every one of them, God has corralled them and as it were put a yoke
upon them and tied that yoke to you to drag you to glory if
need be. Even then. Nor height, nor depth, nor anything
else in all creation. Just in case he missed something
that's bothering you. Something in your mind that's
making you wonder about eternity. Anything in all creation will
be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ
Jesus. You see, our salvation is not
really a part of this creation. It was all done by God. before this creation ever existed.
And he's controlled everything in this creation to assure that
all of his chosen shall experience this salvation and be brought
to eternal life. Now we know that we must go through
many troubles to enter the kingdom of God, but that doesn't mean
we won't enter. The sovereign God has decreed
it. The just God has declared it. And the loving God has assured
it. God is for us. There ain't nobody
can be against us.