Scott Brown's sermon explores Romans 8:31-39, emphasizing the assurance and comfort believers have in God's unwavering support and love. The text poses rhetorical questions to highlight that if God is for us, no adversary stands a chance. Historical examples like David Brainerd and Charles Spurgeon are used to show the universal need for divine comfort amidst life's trials. The sermon breaks down the passage into six questions, each illustrating how God's power and love surpass any threat or tribulation. Brown discusses the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, asserting that God's love, proven by Christ's sacrifice, ensures believers' ultimate victory over life's challenges. The sermon also focuses on the security of salvation through Christ's death, resurrection, exaltation, and ongoing intercession. By comparing God to a battleship and trials to a canoe, Brown emphasizes the absurdity of fearing anything over God's omnipotent love, urging believers to trust in God's plan and rejoice in their sonship.

This morning's text is Romans 8, 31 to 39. Paul writes, What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God's elect?

It is God who justifies. Who is He who condemns? It is Christ who died and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes 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 your sake we are killed all day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Yet, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who 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 created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Will you pray with me?

Oh father what confidence is inspired by these words. What a blessing is this doctrine, Lord. Nothing can separate us from Your love. Oh, praise You, Jesus. Praise You, Abba Father.

Oh Lord, prepare our hearts for the message you have for us today. Speak clearly, right into our very souls Lord. Holy Spirit, do your work in preparation for this message you bring to us. In Jesus' name, Amen. It was on the Lord's Day, April 25th, 1742, that David Brainer wrote in his diary, the diary that we're reading now is a church.

He said, The Lord refreshed my soul with many sweet passages of his word. O'er the New Jerusalem, my soul longed for it, the song of Moses and the Lamb and that blessed song that no man can learn but they who are redeemed from the earth." Here Brainerd is on the Lord's day and God uses his word to refresh his soul and he makes it clear that only the redeemed of the earth can know this comfort that's here. And this passage of Scripture is full of every kind of comfort. And we know from reading the biography of David Brainerd that he often needed the comfort of the Lord because He often was in a gyration of happiness to depression, a sweetness to sourness in his life. He struggled with ups and downs like so many of us do.

And As Brainerd needed it, so do we. As Brainerd needed it, so many of the greatest saints that the world has ever known have needed it. We know that even the great preacher, Charles Spurgeon, perhaps the greatest preacher that has lived in the last 500 years, would from time to time have to have his men come and drag him out of his study and prop him up on the pulpit because he was so depressed at whatever was going on. We know that great hymn writer William Cooper was beset with depression and that great Saint John Newton from time to time would have to go to his house and drag him out of his chamber to get him out in the sunlight to go see what the world was all about. This passage of Scripture, I trust, will be like dragging any of us out into the sunlight like we need.

There are these passages of Scripture that are so sweet and so wonderful that they threaten to drag you out of your chamber that you've fallen into. And this passage is so much like it. We will be refreshed here by one of the very beautiful passages of Scripture and one of the great statements, one of the most amazing comparative statements. There are many of them in this text. If God is for us, Who can be against us?

Go back to verse 18. Look at verse 18 with me. This is outside of the range of our text, but it really begins to help us understand where the Apostle Paul is going. He says, For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." And then he goes on and talks about how God is working this out through creation and through trials and tribulations. But he's talking about the glory that will be revealed to the sons of God.

That's what this is all about. And now he makes this other comparison. If God is for us, who can be against us? The context is consistently moving in the same direction. What does God do for His sons?

What is God's disposition toward His sons who have been saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ? What is He doing with them? Now in the midst of all this, we know that distress and feelings of insecurity are a normal part of life and the attacks that come upon us in this world. And everyone here today has the same backdrop that the Apostle Paul had. Back behind the curtain of our lives are distresses and pressures and fears and insecurities that come upon us.

We don't know it's not always seen on our faces, but it's there in the backdrop, it's behind the curtain. Well maybe it might come out on our faces. But often, we're so good at hiding it. But here, in this passage of scripture, God is stepping behind the curtain and shining a great light and saying, let's see the bigger picture. Let's open the curtain and see something grander and more beautiful than what's just there.

And it's in the midst of these trials that we think that it's all over. That there are situations and people unleashed upon us in this world and what gives us a sense of foreboding of circumstances that are upon us We fear financial disaster. We fear relational disaster. We feel like we're in the middle of it. It's never been worse and But what we need to understand here is that in this context of Scripture, God is coming in to comfort His people.

And we've just read last week, God causes all things to work together for good, to those who love him and are called according to his purpose. And that, on the tail of that, is this statement. And so it's an acknowledgement of the trouble in the world, but yet God is working through all the trouble. God has all of the trouble in his own hand and he is working it. He's moving it in a direction.

Yes, God has called his people to trouble. We should be very careful to say that that's exactly what it will be, this side of heaven. We shouldn't have rose-colored glasses on about life in this earth. We shouldn't expect some easy sale. It's not going to happen.

It never did happen. And here it's acknowledged in this passage. And so Paul is continuing in the details of sonship. Of course, the life of the Son of God tells us how God deals with sons. He says, this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.

And yet, the Son of God, even himself, goes through great trials and ends up suffering on a cross. And in continuing all these different details of what life is like for sons, we know they'll be glorified, but until then There will be trials and tribulations. And in the midst of this he says, if God is for us, who can be against us? The construction of the language needs to be understood here. If God is for us, It's really just another way of saying since God is for us.

It's a rhetorical question which the obvious just jumps out at you so that you in your own mind turn it to say since God is for us and that's what the term really means. And so now okay we are standing before one of the simplest passages in Scripture, I think, and here's why I think so. The logic is so simple and the theme is so consistent throughout, and he hangs the whole thing on six different questions but it's this simple if God if God is if God is for you who cares who's against you it doesn't matter absolutely who cares you can name name your trials name them one by one name your enemies name your fears, name the demons that are nipping at your feet. You can name them, and Paul names many of them in here. He sets up one straw man after another.

Well, how about this one? How about that one? How about that one? Well, if God is for us, who can be against us? And so, Here Paul is helping the Roman believers to deal with the same things that we deal with every day.

All of the myriad of insecurities and fears and difficulties that we face every day. And he's ministering to us as he did the Romans there. Okay, the first question. The first question is in verse 31, what then shall we say to these things? And this first question is really a response to all the things that have gone before, the glories of sonship that have been already communicated.

He says, well what shall we say then? So what does he just come off of? He just comes off of saying, God causes all things to work together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. It's God who is in control of everything. God is in control, first of all.

And then God causes all things to work together for good, all things, everything, everything you can possibly think of. There's no way you can understand what God is doing. You don't need to understand it. You just need to know that He's doing something good and that He will, on that great day, sum up all things in Christ. Yes, even the calamities and difficulties and sinful things that have happened in us and all around us.

And so he's responding to the glories of sonship. What shall we say then? And he continues to explain the blessings of sonship that have been secured through our justification by faith. And so this is all Paul is coming to the end of this long argument. Chapter 1 through 8 he's describing the details of justification by faith.

In chapter 1, I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it's the power of God and a salvation. Because men have rejected the glory of God, there is judgment toward them. In chapter 2, it's not just the ungodly world that's under the judgment of God, it's all the religious people too. What about Israel? Israel and all of their law keeping and righteousness, what does that get them?

Nothing. Is there any cause for boasting in anyone for any religious duty they've ever performed, or the prayers or whatever. No, absolutely not. Justification is by faith in Jesus Christ. In chapter three, all is sin and fall short of the glory of God.

In chapter four, there's an explanation of what faith looks like. Abraham. It's interesting, Paul goes back 2, 000 years to Abraham. He skips over the prophets, he skips over the law, and he goes all the way to 2, 000 BC, before the Ten Commandments were even given. And he says, this is what faith looks like.

Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness. And he talks about what is faith? Well, faith is something that just believes God. And then he continues on in chapter 6, Paul defends grace. In chapter 7, he defends the law.

In chapter 8, he sums it all up and wraps it all up together. And so here, in verse 31, we come against this statement here, what shall we say to these things? And here's what we're going to say about them. And that's where all the rest of the questions fall out. So do you get an idea of the structure here?

Paul has been building a case for what salvation is, what life is like, what the pressures and the problems are, and now he's coming to the end of this great section. In chapter 9 we move into a whole new section. 9 through 11 it speaks about the sovereignty of God in salvation and what about Israel. And then 12 through 16 is a tremendously practical section that gives us lots of nuts and bolts about life, what to do with forgiveness, what to do with enemies, what to do with all kinds of things. And so that's the logic that all this fits into.

And he starts out with a startling comparison. And let me just tell you something here. I think that he starts with the love of the Father in verses 31 to 33, and then he speaks of the love of the Son. He begins with God Almighty, and then he moves to the Son. But the second question is a startling comparison.

Verse 31, if God is for us, who can be against us? Now, Paul, for some reason, in this section, he starts with the summary and then gives the detail. Most people start with the detail and give the summary, but that's not what Paul does. This statement, I think, is the summary statement of the passage. If God is for us, who can be against us?

That is the – I believe that's the heart of this passage of scripture here. And it's a, it's an enormous mismatch. And what you're going to see in every question, he takes one thing and compares it with another. And that's what he does here. If God is for us, who can be against us?

So he's taking these two and he's saying, here's God and here's who's against you. And it's an enormous... What he's trying to do here is just to give a sense of the enormous mismatch. The insane proposition that somehow those who could be against us could be greater than God. Absolutely.

It's just an enormous absurdity that he's trying to bring to us. You know, it's like he's saying, he's saying, you in a battleship are going to war against a canoe. That's what he's saying. If God is for us, who can be against us? It's like saying, you are on a steam roller, and you are going to be pitted against a wine glass.

That's the idea. If God is for us, who can be against us? He takes one gigantic, enormous, incomprehensible, unquenchable, omnipresent, omnipotent being, Almighty God, and then he takes over here and he says, what about all these other people against you? They're nothing. They're zero.

They're less than zero. That's really the idea. So all through this text you see these enormous, absurd comparisons that he makes. And the idea is which of your enemies is greater than God. And then Paul, as you've seen from the reading, he lists a number of enemies.

He just itemizes them and he's always putting God up there. Here's one enemy, death. There's God. Here's another enemy. Those who are bringing a charge against God's elect here's God those who condemn here's God tribulation distress persecution famine making this peril sword those who bring us to slaughter death life everything whatever you just think of something Think of 15 other things that he hasn't mentioned and you can put them on the list.

And you can compare them with God and it's like a battleship going up against a canoe. There's no contest at all. So that's what we should do today. Name your trials, name them one by one, set them up against Almighty God. And God, if God is for us, or since God is for us, who can be against us?

It is so simple, isn't it? It's almost embarrassingly simple to see what he's doing here. And here we are with God, and He does love His people. There are specific enemies, let's be honest about that. There are threats, there are problems.

This last week we were reading in our family in Exodus and we ran into Pharaoh and the great contest between Pharaoh and really Almighty God. Moses was the face of God. Moses was the guy who was going to be standing for God. And Pharaoh is raised up against the children of Israel. The pharaohs were enemies of God for 400 years.

And they were put into bondage. And then Moses came and he said, let my people go. And pharaohs said, no way. And God sent 10 plagues upon him. But there's something fascinating in this story that helps illustrate this amazing text that we're in right now.

In Exodus 421, we read this last week. It was just amazing. The Lord said to Moses, now get this, you shall say to Pharaoh, thus says the Lord, Israel is my son. Okay? So imagine that.

Moses is there and he's going before Pharaoh and he looks Pharaoh in the eye and he says, Israel is my son. So Pharaoh says, big deal. And he says, he's my firstborn, So I say to you, let my son go, that he may serve me." Now remember Romans 8 is all about sons and sonship. There is a correlation. And Pharaoh is always standing stony-hearted against the sons of God.

And then Moses says this to him, he says, let my son go, he's my firstborn. That's what Moses is saying. And then he says this, if you refuse to let him go, I will kill your son, I will kill your firstborn. Well, that's not a happy thought, but boy I'll tell you. This is the disposition of Almighty God against those who despise the sons of God.

God loves his sons. God desires to protect his sons through all their calamities. Through all their calamities. He doesn't exempt them from calamity ever, really. But he does love his sons.

Here's God's perspective on you, his sons. Those who are bringing charge against God's elect, the famine, the nakedness, the sword, whatever, the privation that might be threatening you, here's God's disposition. I will kill your son and your firstborn. That's God's disposition toward the enemies of the saints. Isn't that amazing?

So here we have it. It's the battleship in the canoe. It's the steamroller and the wine glass. There's absolutely no contest. God Almighty has set Himself up to be the enemies of your enemies.

And that's what He has said. You know, the Lord Jesus said, All power is given unto me in heaven and earth." He said, he will give his angels charge over thee. He has legions of angels at his disposal to dispatch at any time that it's appropriate. He says, I will give you all the kings of the earth. He has prepared a kingdom for us and he's made us a kingdom of priests for his great kingdom.

We will serve there for all eternity. That's what God has done. So here we find this startling, enormous comparison. And God's people have done this from time immemorial. Think about David when he said in Psalm 27, The Lord is my light and my salvation.

Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? When my enemies came against me to eat up my flesh, my enemies and foes, they stumbled and fell. Though an army may encamp against me, my heart shall not fear.

Though war rise up against me, in this I shall be confident. One thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek, that I may behold the beauty of the Lord in His temple." Now, this is the grand comparison. We have these enemies all around me, but yet there's God Almighty, and he's greater than all of our enemies. God's people have always been led to see life this way. If God is for us, who can be against us?

And then we go to the third question in verse 32. God's love is proved by the delivering up of his Son. He who did not spare his own son but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" Here we learn that the giving of the Son of God is the proof that God will be good to His own sons by giving them all things. That's what God has done. He is willed to will all things to His sons.

And there will be no privation in the long term. In the short term, yes, there will be. There will be famine. There will be distress in the short term. Make no mistake about that.

But in the long term, in the grand scheme of things, He will freely give us all things. We talked earlier a couple weeks ago about adoption. What does that mean? We've all been adopted. It means that we are made heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs of Christ, meaning that we inherit, we inherit this treasure, this wealth of the kingdom of heaven.

It's not like all these things that moth and rust destroy, but it's eternal in the heavens and it's true treasure. And he has freely given us all things. It's a beautiful term that Paul uses, the Greek term charizomai. You're familiar with the word charis. Some of us know people who've named their little daughters charis.

It's a beautiful name to give a child. And he uses this word charizomai. It's taken from that word charis, a gift of grace. Remember the devil gives wages, remember that? The devil gives rations, not God.

He gives gifts freely. The devil will pay you back stintingly. He will give you a K ration to keep you just barely alive, but He won't give you the delicacies and the honey and the beautiful things. God is completely different. God gives gifts.

He is the giver of grace. He gives gifts to His people that they don't even deserve. You know, we don't deserve anything, but God has promised to give us the wealth of the Kingdom of Heaven, and He gives us freely All things. Now, here's one thing that this means. He doesn't hold back on his forgiveness.

We often hold back on our repentance, but he doesn't hold back on his forgiveness. I'm not even sure we're even aware of what we have to repent of, because we are so spiritually dull. And God does give us light to repent and that's a beautiful thing. But there's so many things we're not even aware of. How thankful we all are that God doesn't reveal every sin to us that we have.

If we did we would be completely crushed. We obviously can't repent of everything because we don't know everything. God hasn't revealed everything to us. But He has freely given us all things. That's the paradigm of the Kingdom of heaven.

It's free grace and it's given to His people. And God also calls us to return that same grace upon human beings. He gives it to us and then we return it to our brothers and sisters and those who hate us. We bless those who persecute us. We bless and curse not.

We forgive freely and if we do not forgive, we will not be forgiven. And there's something here about God's grace that's so powerful that's spoken of here. He freely gives us all things. Now, let me just have a doctoral moment here for a second. This whole passage is about the perseverance of the Saints.

This whole passage is about that nothing that nothing can separate you from the love of God and that He freely gives you all things. He's proven it. He didn't spare His own Son and He will take you all the way through into heaven, regardless of the persecutions and the difficulties and all the stuff that will come upon you. This is the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, which states that the saints will be preserved by the sovereign hand of God. Those whom he foreknew, those he called and he justified.

He knew you before the foundation of the world, that you would be holy and without blemish. And he will certify your perseverance. He will make it happen even though you don't even know how to make it happen yourself. And he takes the giving of the Son of God as the proof that he will give us all things. Do you see that?

Again, he sets two things up. He takes the giving of the Son of God and he compares it. He says, now that is your, that's the proof that you know that I will give you all things. I gave you that. It must be obvious.

Isn't it obvious enough to you? I think that's what he's trying to say. That his love, his love is that great. And in giving his son, he delivered him up for us all. We need to understand that the way that he conducted himself with his son is also the way that he'll conduct himself with us.

There will be trials, there will be mockings, there will be maybe perhaps scourgings, there will be persecutions just like with the Son of God. We shouldn't think that something strange has happened if that happens to us. So he is saying then if God gave his own son then He will freely give us all things. The fourth question in verse 33. Charges are nullified by justification.

Again, He does the same thing. He says, who shall bring a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Before, you know, he said if God is for us, who can be against us? Now he's saying, who shall bring a charge against God's elect?

It's God who justifies. He takes charges and he compares them with his justification. And he weighs them again. And again, it's right back to the battleship and the canoe. The charges are nothing in the face of God's justification.

It's nothing. And God will allow nothing to condemn us. Even the accuser of the brethren who is spoken of in Revelation 12 10, he makes accusations bringing charges against God's elect. We've seen this throughout history. We have many examples of charges being brought against God's elect.

Let's go to the Old Testament, the oldest book in the Old Testament, that great personality, Job. The devil was accusing Job, and he stood before God. He said, does Job fear God for nothing? And the devil is saying, you know, here's Job's real issue, God. He only has good things to say about you because you put a hedge around him.

You've made him wealthy. He's the wealthiest man. Who wouldn't be happy? Who wouldn't say, praise God, if he was the wealthiest man in the region? That's the devil's accusation.

And the accusation of Job says, look, against Job, went like this, put forth your hand and touch all he has and he will curse you to your face. This was the accuser of the brethren coming and trying to accuse Job of being duplicitous and being a phony and being just another happy rich guy. And of course the accuser of the brethren was proved wrong. The charges were brought, compared though to the justification of God, they're nothing. And yet there was trial in proving this case before the powers and the principalities.

But still, charges are small. They're nothing compared to this justification that we've been given. The charges are brought by fraud, they're from Lilliputians, they're from shadows. So he says, who shall bring a charge against God's elect." And then he says, it is God who justifies. And so the powerful nullifies the powerless.

God blows away the charges by justification. God disarms the condemnation through justification by faith alone. Does that sound too technical to you? So there are many self-condemnations at work in the souls that are here today, I'm sure. Many failures, many mismanagements, many times of wrong government of the tongue, many things that should never have been said, many things that should have been said that weren't.

Wrong thoughts. But here we have the charges And we have the justification. And so let me just plead with us today to let the justification trump the charges. People are always accusing the Apostle Paul of preaching antinomianism. People are always accusing the Apostle Paul of saying, well, let sin, since grace abounds, let sin abound.

And he's always having to correct that. But what he is saying is that justification is complete, And there's more than enough justification to overcome all the charges that are against us today. That's absolutely amazing. So if God is for us, who can be against us? And then there's the fifth question in verse 34.

Who is he who condemns? That's the question. Who is he who condemns? It's a battleship and a canoe again. It's the same deal.

It is Christ who died and furthermore is also risen who is even at the right hand of God who makes intercession. Again, do you see this? Who is he who condemns? But now we have the Lord Jesus on the right hand of God in authority. It's that comparison again that he's making.

So condemnation is overwhelmed by intercession as he is interceding for the Saints. So he places he who condemns with Christ who died and who has risen. Now There are many things that we can say about this phrase in verse 34, but here are four things about the security of our salvation. Four things here in this one verse that speak of the security of our salvation. First of all, Christ died.

Do you see that? Who is he who condemns? It was Christ who died. That's the first. And that is that the penalty for our sins was laid on him at his death.

He propitiated the wrath of God when he died. And all of the guilt and the shame of all of our sins was laid on him. And just like in the Passover, the anger of God was bypassed and there was mercy, because there was blood that was shed. So it's Christ who died. And then The second thing that secures our salvation is that Christ is risen.

He rose from the dead, He broke the power of sin, and He took away the sting of death. And He secured our salvation, no matter when we might die, through His own death. When He died, we also died. We were buried with him in baptism when we were saved God supernaturally and spiritually buried us He buried us and then he took us and he placed us in Christ. Right in Christ.

And then he raised us from the dead. That's what happened. And the third thing that secures our salvation is that he's at the right hand of God, he's exalted. He's the name above all names. And he is ruling.

And then the fourth thing that secures our salvation out of this verse is that He is interceding for us. He's at the right hand of God and He's now interceding for us. It's like what we read in Hebrews a couple years ago, Hebrews 7 25. He always lives to make intercession for the saints. Isn't that wonderful?

It's 24 hours a day, it's all the time, and it's for all the saints. He always lives to make intercession for the saints. That's why Cory Tim Boone was able to say, you know, there's no hole that's deeper than God. God is so great and so mighty. He is always, through His Son, interceding for all the saints.

So it is a secure salvation that has been claimed by the death of Christ, by the resurrection of Christ, by the exaltation of Christ to the right hand of God and by the intercessions of the Lord Jesus Christ. So it's a secure salvation. The Bible says if you confess your sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I mean, do you believe that? Well, that's what the Bible says.

Please believe that. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins. This is a secure salvation. We had an interesting discussion about this on Tuesday morning and one of the men said, it was a very profound thought, He said, look at Christ's position and activities at the throne of God. And this brother said, Christ is in the position of prayer.

He is at the right hand of God and What is He doing? He is praying for us. That's what He's doing. He's humbled Himself, and even though He possesses all authority in Heaven and in Earth, what is He doing? He's kneeling in prayer for all the saints.

The Lord Jesus, He is the ruler who serves, but He's also the servant who rules at the same time. And He's there ruling all of nature and creation. This is my Father's world. He is ruling it all. And at the same time, He is serving.

He is serving through making intercession free. He always lives to make intercession for the saints. You know, I was thinking about this and how this works itself out in everyday life. We know that husbands should love their wives like Christ loved the church, right? Christ loved the church by kneeling and praying for his wife, serving.

He, the Lord Jesus Christ, always lives to make intercession for the saints. What should a godly husband be doing? A godly husband should be doing the same thing. Yes, he is the ruler who serves, he is the servant who rules, but he is also an intercessor for his wife. A good husband will love his wife like Christ loved the Church and make intercessions for her.

To be in the exalted place, but not so exalted that there isn't a great outpouring of loving kindness and servanthood and self-sacrifice, even to the point of death. And that's the kind of headship that the Lord Jesus has for His church. That's exactly the same kind of headship that God would have His husbands to be performing. It is a serving function. It is a prayerful function.

It takes time out of a busy day to intercede for a wife. So I would just like to challenge myself as well as all of the rest of us here who might be husbands. Let's intercede. Let's be better intercessors. We've just read this now, okay?

Now let's do something about it. Let's don't just hear this other word and not do it. Let's do something about this. Let's pray. Let's kneel in the secret place where our wives are not even with us and pray for these dear daughters of Zion that He has given to us.

Just like the Lord Jesus Christ, for He always lives to make intercession for the saints. And Then the sixth question is asked in verses 35 to 36, 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 your sake we are killed all day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter." He does it again. He brings this massive comparison.

He takes the love of Christ and he compares it with this long list of problems. He takes the two and it's the same old, it is the battleship in the canoe. It is the love of Christ that is so massively more wonderful and more vanquishing than any tribulation that can ever happen. That's what he's saying. He's making this enormous comparison that he's meant to just blow our categories of thinking about our tribulations.

He wants us to see our tribulations as really small. We see them as big and God as small. He's saying, no, God is big and your tribulations are small. Do you get that? He's making this enormous comparison so that we see our tribulations in their proper light.

Do you see your tribulations like that? Like, are your tribulations looming? They seem so gigantic. Well, they're not. They're nothing.

They are the canoe ready to be crushed by the battleship. That's what it is. It'll take nothing. It'll happen in a second when He wills it. Our problem in life is that we see through a glass darkly in so many ways.

Our eyeglasses look at problems and they are so huge. And God is saying, no, put these other glasses on. See my way. See the enormous comparison, but flip it. And God Almighty is able to vanquish all these things.

And he says, who can separate us from the love of Christ? Nothing. And what's the love of Christ? It is salvation, it is the outpouring of grace toward His people, It's all those things. So is your tribulation greater than the love of Christ?

Is your mean mother-in-law greater than the love of Christ? Is your financial problem the shortfall of $10, 000 greater than the love of Christ? Is that problem, Is that $10, 000 greater? Is it really? Is that persecution greater?

That person who said something negative about you. Is that greater? I mean really, is it greater than the love of Christ? Honestly, no. It's nothing.

It's zero. It's less than zero. And here this enormous comparison is being made. He lists all these things. Tribulation, Let's take them one by one.

Tribulation. Paul uses a word here that indicates squeezing, pressing in upon you. It's usually spoken of pressure from the outside, not on the inside. Sometimes it seems to refer to emotional stress and pressure and things like that. But it's tribulation.

Tribulation is not just always dying by the sword. It's far broader than that. I believe it includes lots of irritations that feel so enormous to us. But they're pressing, they're squeezing us. And What are we doing?

And then he says, distress. Distress has to do with limitations, confinement. Have you ever felt like you're just in a box canyon? There's nowhere to go. What do I do?

I can't see the way out of this. That's what he's talking about. That's what distress is. You're hemmed in in strict confinement and you're just, you're emotionless. You don't know what to do.

And then persecution. These are personal attacks for the sake of Christ and the hatred of the gospel. Then he deals with famine. Now we've not had famine here in America in a long time and this is starving to death. This is complete abject lack of food.

I'm just not aware of that happening very often here in the United States. So, it does happen elsewhere. People die in prison from starvation and things like that among the truly persecuted church. Then there's nakedness. Now, he's talking about here in nakedness.

He's not talking about that you're just running around naked. He's saying you're so poor that you're not able to clothe yourself. It's a terrible privation. It might happen because you're prevented from working in your trade or something like that. You just don't have money even to buy clothing.

And where is that going to come from? And then he says peril. These are terribly dangerous situations that expose yourself to death. And then there is the sword. He's talking about a large dagger here that's used by assassins, but it can be concealed.

Large enough to do some serious work, but small enough to be concealed. And he's talking about this dagger that is ready to come for assassination toward you. And the logic that he's presenting to us is, how much greater is the love of Christ than tribulation? How much greater is the love of Christ than distress? How much greater is the love of Christ over persecution and famine and nakedness and peril and sword?

And then he quotes Psalm 144, for your sake we are killed all day long. We are counted as sheep to the slaughter. On Tuesday we read this entire psalm, it's very beautiful, but it's an outpouring of questioning of God, Oh Lord, how long, what is happening to me? Here is the answer, right here. We were talking on Tuesday and we thought that Paul quotes this because what he's writing here is the answer to Psalm 144.

I think that's right. He quoted it here because he's giving the answer to all the problems that are brought up in Psalm 144. And the idea is that there will always be earthly suffering. It's always been that way. The gospel has always been despised and it often leads to death.

And, you know, honestly, if the world wants to kill you, it might mean that you're on the right track. If the world doesn't want to kill you, it just may mean some lukewarmness or something is there. But he is speaking of being as sheep to the slaughter. You know, here again we have this enormous comparison and it's the same comparison that David sang about in Psalm 46 when he said, God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Again, God is our refuge and strength, the comparison, a very present help in trouble.

Therefore, we shall not fear, though the earth should change and the mountains slip into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with its swelling There is a river Whose streams shall make glad the city of God It's exactly what Paul is doing here He's pouring out the streams to make glad the city of God, to lift all the burdens, to lift every burden he can possibly name, and all those unnamed that are in your own heart and mind now. He just desires to lift those burdens And to place God in comparison to your burden, and to drive us to trust in God and to believe in Him. If God is for us, who can be against us? And then we come to the final words of this text. It's kind of a summary, and it's a statement of persuasion.

He says, yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who 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 death nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus." So to what persuasion do you belong? What is your persuasion? Are you a Calvinist? Are you an Arminian?

Are you a Charismatic? What is your persuasion? Well here's the persuasion of this text, I am persuaded that neither life nor death nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present or things to come shall be able to separate me from the love of God. That's my persuasion. I don't care about all those other persuasions quite as much as this persuasion here.

This is the persuasion of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. The love of God is placed over against life and death. Anything life might deal you, anything death might deal with you. Placed over against this enormously powerful, omnipotent God who has sent his son to die and saying that we are more than conquerors. That's my persuasion.

My persuasion is that no created thing can trump the plan of God. My persuasion is that we should rejoice in our tribulations. My persuasion is that love of God toward us is not conditioned, but it's given freely. That's my persuasion about our sinful group that's gathered here today. That He has vanquished our sins.

That's what I'm persuaded about. I'm persuaded that we have no business obsessing about our enemies. I'm persuaded that nothing can separate us from the love of God, neither life nor death." So here the Lord is weaning us from our own persuasions, our own perspectives about tribulation. He is, like my dad said the other day, he's putting us in the winner's circle. I really like that.

He will bring us to glory. He who began a good work will complete it in the day of Christ Jesus. And that's how God treats His sons. He justifies them, He glorifies them, and He keeps them. He causes them to persevere, and nothing can separate them from the love of God.

We have been made through adoption part of a family. And even though your earthly ties of family might be broken, These family ties will never be broken for all eternity. And He has placed us in His family, and neither will those ties be broken for all eternity. So how do we wrap all this up? Let me do it this way.

There was a hymn writer, a pastor by the name of George Matheson. He was born in 1842. He was born with very poor eyesight and it continued to deteriorate all through his youth. And finally at age 18, he completely lost his eyesight. He was a brilliant student, he was a pastor of many churches, he ended up writing a number of hymns.

He was engaged to a young woman And right at the eleventh hour, he went through a time of tremendous suffering because she broke off the engagement because she didn't want to be married to a blind man. And he had just revealed that he had just become totally blind. And he, in five minutes, he picked up this pen and wrote one of the most comforting and amazing hymns that sums up this text of Scripture. He says that he wrote it and the ink was barely dry and it was never changed again from the first writing. He wrote, Oh love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee, I give thee back the life I owe.

That thing in ocean depths its flow. May richer, fuller be." It is a beautiful summary of this text. If God is for us, who can be against us? Who shall separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus? Well, nothing.

Nothing. Nothing. Let's pray. Oh Lord, we thank you for this shocking, amazing story of our lives that you have put down in this paper. We cannot believe it.

It's so hard to believe that you would forgive sinners, that you would cause...we who know are like the apostle who says, who will deliver me from this body of death? We know that. We say that with all of our hearts. And yet you have come with a grace so enormous that we have a hard time getting our arms around it, but let us today get our arms around it a little bit more, and that you would loom so high and lifted up in comparison to these trials that you have placed us in for your own glory, for the causing of good. Amen.