Romans chapter 8 and verse 28, and we're reading
through to verse 32. And we know that all things work
together for good to them that love God, to them who are the
called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he
also did predestinate, to be conformed to the image of his
Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover,
whom he did predestinate, them he also called, and whom he called,
them he also justified, and whom he justified, them he also glorified. 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? Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. I suspect we're all very familiar
now with this little passage. We've been studying it for a
number of weeks together. And this will be the last of
our studies in Romans 8 for the time being. Today, I want to
think with you about the greatest of all God's gifts to sinners. the gift of salvation by Jesus
Christ and the limitless blessings that come to every blood-bought
believer in and by Christ's atoning sacrifice on the cross. It will do us good, I think,
to be reminded that everything in this world is designed, formed
and serves first to glorify God and thereafter to do God's people
good. Let us note that, let us remember
that. Everything in this world is designed,
formed, and serves to glorify God and to do God's people good. And in that context, we cannot
overstate the love of God for his elect people, for his church,
and his infinite goodwill towards us. And we are going to see that
in the price that the Lord God willingly paid to secure our
every good. Here is my purpose today. My
purpose today is this. If you are one of the Lord's
people, I want you to leave our service rejoicing in your soul
and thinking how blessed I am to be loved, chosen, and so intimately
united to the Lord Jesus Christ. I want you to leave relishing
your salvation and praising the Lord for his goodness. And if you do not have faith
in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you know whether you do or whether
you don't, if you do not have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ,
I want you to leave the service today wishing that you did. Here are two truths. First, salvation And saving faith,
that saving faith that we're talking about, are God's free
gift, given to whomsoever he pleases. And we shall see this
again in what I have to say a little bit later. But this principle
is true. Salvation is of the Lord. It is at His initiative, at His
instigation, at His sovereign dispensation. Secondly, That being said, no one ever
came to Christ for grace. No one ever came to Christ seeking
mercy to be turned away empty. The Lord our God gives good gifts. and most of his gifts are conveyed
to his people in the gospel under the hearing of God's word. That is why our activity today
is so important. So as we begin, may we have ears
to hear today. May we have eyes to see him,
the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the chiefest amongst 10,000.
and altogether lovely to my soul. I've got four headings that I
wish us to consider. I want us to think about Jesus,
the highest gift of God's love. I want us to think secondly about
the implication of every lesser gift. I want us to think about
and understand what freely given means and what it is to freely receive. So these are the four kind of
topic or subject headings that I have. Jesus, the highest gift
of God's love, all the other gifts that we receive, what it
is to be freely given these gifts and what it is to freely receive
them. So, first things first. Jesus, the highest gift of God's
love. This is what the Apostle Paul
is talking about, and it's what, indeed, he's going to speak about
in the rest of this chapter eight. And we will come back to some
of these themes on another occasion, but let us think about our subject
for today. The Lord Jesus Christ, Paul is
telling us, is the supreme manifestation of God's love to sinners. If we would know how much God
loves us, let us look to the cross. We read about that in
our reading in Luke today. the cross at Calvary. If we would
know how much God loves his church, how much he loves his people,
let us look to the cross. The covenant of grace that God
instituted in his eternal purpose, the plan of salvation which he
set in place is the expression and revelation of God's love
and goodness towards his people. And we have been learning in
our studies from this portion of God's Word, these verses from
Romans 8 and 28 through to 32, we have been learning in our
studies from this portion that God's love and wisdom is at the
root the foundation of all our covenant blessings. And that
God's love and wisdom, his foreknowledge as Paul calls it, his love and
his wisdom is the moving cause of God's acts of grace and mercy
towards us. Now, we've gone through these
headings week by week as we've been thinking about this passage. Election, calling, justification,
glorification. These, all these, says Paul,
are founded on God's love for his church. God loved us so much
that he spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all.
And John the Apostle concurs in this. In this was manifested
the love of God toward us because that God sent his only begotten
son into the world that we might live through him. Here in his
love, says John, not that we loved God but that he loved us
and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sins. The covenant of grace, the plan
of salvation is founded upon Jehovah's everlasting love and
wise counsel for the good of his people. And by the covenant of grace
and the plan of salvation, God commendeth his love toward us
in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Giving Christ to redeem the Church
is the highest, fullest exhibition of the Father's love towards
us. For God so loved the world that
he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him
should not perish, but have everlasting life. And this is love indeed. It pleased God in his wise counsel
to bring those that he loved into his family and unite them
to himself in adoption. John says, behold what manner
of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called
the sons of God. The sons of God by adoption.
And God the Father, in bringing many sons unto glory, made the
captain of our salvation perfect through sufferings. That means
that he made the complete body, Christ the head, the church as
the body, joining us to Christ in our Saviour's death. God himself became a man. God the Son took our flesh, fitted
himself as our representative and was made a little lower than
the angels for the suffering of death. Christ, the eternal Son, he who
was by him in the vastness of eternity. in the eternal counsels
of God, he who was by him as one brought up with him and daily
his delight, he who was rejoicing always before him, yet being
found in fashion as a man, humbled himself and became obedient unto
death, even the death of the cross. Let us never forget the
significance of Christ's death. Firstly and foremost, as an expression
of God's love towards his people. God's precious, only begotten
son was given as the highest, loveliest, costliest sacrifice
possible for sinners. God gave his only begotten Son,
in whom he is well pleased, for you and for me who trust in him. That then is what I want to make
of this, our first point, that Jesus is the highest gift of
God's love. But this is not the end because
Paul is going on here to tell us that God the Father has freely
given us all things with Christ. So that there is in recognising
and knowing that the Lord Jesus Christ in his death is the highest
gift possible, also an implication for every lesser gift. Let me tell you what I mean by
that. One of the precious freedoms
of being the children of God, of being the sons of God by adoption, is that we are told that we have
an inheritance in Christ. This is how we are to be encouraged
while living here on earth. We are to meditate upon the gifts
of God to us in Christ. We are to enlarge upon the great
privileges of our position as heirs of God and joint heirs
with Christ. We are heirs of all the Father's
glory. We are absolute, unconditional
beneficiaries of all divine goodness. With the Lord Jesus Christ, Paul
tells us, comes every other good thing. The psalmist, says of
God's intentions for his elect people, Psalm 84 I think it is,
no good thing will he withhold. No good thing will he withhold. God is liberal in blessing his
people. His goodness is bountiful and
generous towards us. In fact, one of the earliest
names by which the Lord was revealed to men, the Lord was revealed
to Abraham, his servant, was Jehovah-Jireh. The Lord will
provide. And that is something that we
need to lay hold on. It is true that the Lord Jesus
Christ was provided as that lamb was provided in the thicket in
the place of Isaac, Abraham's son, Lord said God will provide
himself a lamb and so it was that the great Jehovah Jireh
provided for Abraham's need in that moment but it was a picture
of the greater provision that comes in Christ. But with Christ,
Paul tells us, God will also give us all things so that the
the enlargement, the length and the breadth and the depth and
the height, the dimensions of God's goodness to his people
are in the provisions of all things that we need and require. Another name that was given in
the early days of scripture was the Lord God abundant in goodness
and truth. The Lord God abundant in goodness
and truth. Now, I guess we don't often use
that name when we're referring to the Lord, but that was the
name that the Lord took. It was the divine name by which
God revealed himself to Moses in the cleft of the rock. Now
Moses, in that moment, in that place, in the cleft of the rock,
was a type of the elect, sanctified in Christ. Christ is a rock. Moses was hid in the rock. And God revealed to him his name,
the Lord God, abundant in goodness and truth. There was Moses. preserved, hidden, protected
and secure in the presence of Christ and an heir of all abundance
and truth. Now, this is not just a little
thing in scripture that I'm talking about here. This is the thrust,
this is the lesson of the word of God to the church, to God's
chosen people, to the beneficiaries of his grace and mercy within
the covenant purposes of salvation. This is what it was all about
in the eternal purposes of God. This is what he foreordained
in those eternal councils. We saw it yesterday in the words
of the Saviour to his disciples. Seek ye first the kingdom of
God and his righteousness, seek first Christ, and all these things
shall be added unto you. Have you sought God's kingdom?
Have you sought to be a member of Christ's kingdom? Do you hunger
and thirst after righteousness? The Lord's people do. The Lord's
people, when that quickening power, when that arise comes
to the lame man, when we are given faith to realise our need,
when we are quickened out of our dead sinful state, there
is such a hunger and thirst after righteousness that we will not
be satisfied except we have Christ. Do you know something of that?
Have you felt the weight of your sin? Have you felt the need for
forgiveness? Do you hunger and thirst after
righteousness? Then says Christ, everything
is yours. If you have Christ, you have
everything. This is what Jesus is saying.
And it's why Paul repeats it here. That is these things that
the apostle is talking about. All the temporal things that
are good and necessary for our earthly life, Jesus will supply. All the blessings of grace that
come with salvation, Jesus will supply. There will be in us a
Christ-likeness, for we will be conformed to the image of
his Son. There will be a hatred of sin
in us. There will be a desire for the
forgiveness of sin. And we will have peace with God.
all the experienced blessings of spiritual life, we shall enjoy
by faith. We will know what it is to have
union with Christ. We will know what it is to have
the love of God in our hearts. we will have the comfort of the
indwelling power of the Holy Spirit. That's why I said at
the beginning of our time together that these blessings predominantly
come to us through the preaching of the Gospel, because it is
by faith, in possessing that faith, that we lay hold upon
the promises of God in the Gospel. And all these riches become our
personal possession. all the blessings of heaven and
earth, all the blessings of eternal glory, these are all ours. And
Paul's argument is this, if Jehovah God provides us with the Lord
Jesus Christ, the greatest gift of all, if he spared him not,
but delivered him up for us all, then nothing that is less than
Christ will be withheld from us. Every good and perfect gift
is the inheritance of the family of God. And the Godhead, Father, Son
and Holy Spirit work together for our good. The angelic hosts
work together under Christ for our good. The temporal universe
of which we are part, the whole universe, everything created
in it works together for our good. Even sin and death and
the grave, Satan himself are employed to benefit you who believe
in Jesus Christ and all God's people. And Paul explains why. He tells the Corinthians that
God has ordained it so for his glory. All of these things are
ours for the glory of God. In 2 Corinthians chapter 4 verse
15 he says, for all things are for your sakes, that the abundant
grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory
of God. So that all that we have, all
our inheritance, as we receive these things, as we understand
what we possess in Christ and all the goodness of God to us,
all throughout our life, every day, surely goodness and mercy
shall follow me all the days of my life. And as the church of God give
thanks, as the many give thanks, so that redounds to the glory
of God as we possess his abundance. The life that God gives us in
Jesus Christ is abundant life. Our Father delights to give good
things to his children. The gifts of his goodness and
the callings of his grace, being without repentance, being without
regret on God's part, will never be withdrawn and never set aside. God doesn't give his good gifts
and then take them back again. These are our inheritance. They are our right absolute. And we possess all these things
in Christ. Now we might wonder, why is it
that I don't have all the money I need and all the health that
I want? We'll come back to that in a
moment or two. But let me just say this, that
it isn't in the abundance of things in this world that we
find our true satisfaction and true pleasure. It is in our relationship
with God through Christ and that is what the Apostle is here telling
us. At the end of our lives we will
look back and thank the Lord for everything that he has given
us in this life. both the things that we thought
were good at the time and the things that we thought were not.
And we will rejoice that the Lord has been so gracious to
us. Let us take a little of that
sentiment into everyday experiences with us and we will be blessed
thereby. Here's what I want to make as
my third point. What is it? How do we understand
this phrase freely given? Paul tells us that God having
given us his precious son will also with him freely give us
all things. Freely give us all things. Now
let us know God was not compelled Of course, to do anything. He
was not compelled to give us Christ, nor did we deserve him. Salvation is all of grace. And as we have seen, it is the
free, sovereign love of God. God's good gifts are liberally
bestowed without any obligation in God and without any merit
in the recipient. It's all of grace, that's what
grace means. No obligation on God's part,
no merit in the recipient. God does not give good gifts
because we deserve them. That's the antithesis of grace. We're all sinners and as such,
we deserve only condemnation, even our best works. our filthy
rags before the holy eyes of God. There is nothing in us to
recommend us to our God. There is nothing good in us.
And yet Ephesians 2 verse 4 and 5 tells us, But God, who is rich
in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when
we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ. There
is nothing in us naturally that Jehovah foresaw, sees now or
ever will see to attract his gracious notice or merit his
divine goodness. And yet he loves us. And yet
he loves us. If we know anything of our own
heart, we will agree in this matter. God's goodness and mercy
is graciously free, both in its nature and in its supply. And what of that supply? What
is it to freely receive God's good gifts? How do we receive
them? This is my fourth point. How
do we receive them, these good gifts from the Lord? How do we
possess them? How do we enjoy them? Well, let
me be clear, and I hope we understand this. All I have said does not
imply prosperity in the things of this world, or indeed that
there will be no suffering for the Lord's elect in this world. I know that many of you this
very day are facing trials and harbouring anxieties about your
daily circumstances, your everyday life. As I mentioned in my prayer,
an old friend of this meeting died in the past few days and
soon it will be you and me. and the pathway to that moment
will be strewn with lots of troubles and trials and difficulties.
Believers know sickness and loss and death. Furthermore, we know
what it is to experience doubt and fear and anxiety. We are, to our shame, a mass
of contradictions We hear and believe Paul when he tells us,
all things are yours. We hear Christ when he tells
his disciples, all these things shall be added unto you. We hear
the Psalmist say, no good thing will he withhold. And yet we
worry and we fret and we agonise over the affairs of this world. And believe me, I'm as guilty
of this as any. and yet the testimony of the
word of God is sure. These things, say the scriptures,
are ours in Christ. So how do we learn to enjoy them
and obtain them for our comfort? In two ways, in two ways. First,
by measuring our troubles alongside our blessings. Paul says in 1
Corinthians 2, verse 12, Now we have received not the spirit
of the world, but the spirit which is of God, that we might
know the things that are freely given to us of God. There is
a spirit of this world that is motivated by self that seeks
the comforts and the pleasures of the flesh. Then there is the
Spirit which is of God, the Holy Spirit, who teaches us all spiritual
things. And when we learn spiritual things,
we learn that the sufferings of this present time are not
worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed
in us. When we learn spiritual things,
we learn that the Lord exercises our graces and thereby strengthens
our graces by employing them in the fight against the flesh. When we learn spiritual things,
we learn that we are sons and not bastards. For whom the Lord
loveth, he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God
dealeth with you as sons. For what son is he whom the father
chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement,
wherefore all are partakers, then ye are bastards and not
sons. Hebrews 12, six to eight. When we measure our troubles
alongside our blessings, we learn to interpret our trials in the
light of God's word and not question God's word because of our trials. So that by comparing our troubles
with our blessings, we truly understand the positive reason
why these troubles exist and that they too are a feature of
God's goodness to us. The second way of the two that
I want to mention to you is this. Through living by faith and not
by sight. Living by faith and not by sight. learning that the trial of our
faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth,
though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and
honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. Remember what
Paul said to the Corinthians earlier? how that the thanksgiving
of God's people will redound to the glory of God. This is
exactly what Peter is saying as well, that this faith that
is ours and understanding and interpreting the world around
about us in the context of trusting God and trusting Christ will
cause us to praise and honour and glorify God in our lives. And that at the appearing of
the Lord Jesus Christ, all of these things will be seen to
be truly as they are. We who endure and persevere and
overcome shall glorify Christ at his appearing. And we who
are his shall endure and persevere and overcome all our foes in
his strength for his glory at his appearing. The Lord Jesus
Christ is the supreme gift of God's love to us. We began our
studies in Romans 8, verse 28, speaking of God's love and wisdom,
which works all things together for our good. We end with these
words, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? We had all things working together
for our good and here we have the fact that we are freely given
all things. Everything is ours in Christ.
Christ as our substitute by whom we are redeemed, reconciled and
made holy has brought us all of God's goodness and mercy. all of His grace, all of the
time, all of the days of our lives. The dimensions of God's
love have not yet been measured, and the boundaries of His goodness
are not yet fixed. Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard,
neither have entered into the heart of man the things which
God hath prepared for them that love Him, both now in time and
in eternity. As we face the challenges of
life, we have God's gospel promises to encourage us by day. When we face the challenge of
death, God's promises are equally sure in those dark times. Those who trust in the shed blood
and sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ have in themselves God's
justifying righteousness. complete pardon for sin, sanctifying
grace, the adoption of sons and everlasting life, all freely
given in a sovereign way according to God's good pleasure and His
will. As we face uncertain days, trials
and temptations, our confidence is not in our own strength and
in our own abilities, but in Christ's victories and his accomplishments. Our hope is not in our righteousness
or acceptability, but in Christ's righteousness and his acceptability. Our comfort comes from the Holy
Spirit, from the love of God toward us and from the faith
of Jesus Christ in us. Let us trust him for everything
and let us do so knowing that all glory and honour is his by
right, is his through covenant obedience and his by victory
at the cross. However, because it is his All glory and honour is ours
as well. It is ours because God has freely
given it to us. He has freely given to us all
things in Jesus Christ. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us. Amen.