Introduction: In a way that I have never known in my lifetime our nation is looking for assurance. Our leaders tell us to move on with our lives. Yet everyday there seems to be a new issue that surfaces that causes us to be uncertain about how and when to move on with our lives. We are looking for assurance that it is safe to fly again. We need assurance that we are protected against bioterrorism. We desire reassurance that our families are safe. We want to know that it is normal to have the need to be assured about our life. We long for assurance but assurance seems to elude us.

There is a favorite Peanuts cartoon of mine. Lucy and Linus are starring out of a window watching it rain. Lucy turns to Linus and says, "Boy, look at it pour. What if it floods the whole world?" Linus says, "It won’t. In Genesis 9 God promised Noah that should never happen again. The sign of that promise is the rainbow." Lucy, turning back to the window, with a big smile said, "You have taken a great load off of my mind." Linus said, "Sound theology has a way of doing that."

This morning I want us to share just a bit of sound theology, sound theology from God’s word that is designed and determined to bring comfort and assurance to us. Romans 8:31-39 will be our focal passage this morning as we discuss four great assurances. I do not have nor does anyone have the ability to assure us about the security concerns we have. We have suddenly realized that we are more vulnerable than we ever dreamed to the threats of those who would hate us as a nation. In spite of our lack of immediate assurance there are four lasting certainties that can give us confidence in a time of great uncertainty.

One of the great themes I find often questioned is whether or not the circumstances of our human life could ever endanger our relationship with the person of Jesus Christ, that somehow being who we are and what we are that the ultimate security of our salvation in relationship to Him could be endangered or imperiled. In other words by some action on our part, is there a sin out there that could cause us to lose our relationship with God.

Very succinctly I want you to understand an argument that opposes that idea, that somehow there is something we could do, somehow that we could lose our secure relationship with God. It is this: If sin is the issue that causes us to lose that relationship, that somehow endangers that relationship with God, then the question is what sin is it and how many times do we need to commit it? You can search all of God’s word from the very front to the very back and you will not find the answer. Oh, some will pick a scripture here and a scripture there and weave it together in an argument that would seem to them to somehow say that once a person has a relationship with Christ that their relationship is so fragile and so frail that they could lose that relationship. Paul in one of the most powerful passages of all of Scripture begins in Romans 5 and carries through to Romans 8:39 with a masterful, dynamic argument to the contrary. For he begins in Romans 5:1 by saying, "Therefore having been justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." He concludes in chapter 8:39 by saying that there is nothing—nothing—that shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I want us as a body of Christ to be assured, to find ourselves not standing on weak foundations, but standing on great and powerful holy ground that the relationship that is ours by grace through faith in the person of Jesus Christ is secure. It is not ours to secure ourselves, but we have someone who has secured it for us, and that is God Himself. Yes, we know that there are many things that will remove our human life from us, but we all know that as we gather here in this place that there is life beyond this life, and we want assurance that there is nothing—nothing—that can imperil that life once we have known Christ as Savior and Lord.

I. The very first assurance that is given to us is that there is no greater power than God’s power (Rom.8: 31) Paul begins by saying—and all of these are an argument from the greater to the lesser. In fact, every one of these has that element in it. That is, if God can do this thing, then surely anything less is of no consequence. He says quite strongly in verse 31, "If God is for us, who is against us?"

There are many things that are against a believer. We know that. We know quite clearly that the unbelieving world, the culture that has rejected Christ, is a world in opposition to us. A world that by its very nature being a broken world, whenever a person chooses Christ they immediately gain, not a resolution of their problems, but begins to have a whole other set of problems. So we know that the world is opposed to us. There is a system, a world order, that is against us.

We know that our enemy, Satan, is against us, that he is true and real and he does not desire our being merely hindered or our being ineffective. No, his desire is that in any way, at any time, using any method available to eliminate our effectiveness for Christ, destroy our life and destroy our witness. We have him to oppose us.

We have our selves. Just being who we are. That is Paul’s argument in chapter 7, that he finds himself wanting to do what is right, wanting to do what is good, wanting to do what he wants to do, but every time he tries he finds himself failing. Our own human personality is against us.

Who is against us? Well, there are a lot of things against us. But Paul’s argument is not so much who is against us, but who is for us. Paul says, "If God is for us"—and underscore that, highlight that, realize what is being said there. Paul is saying that not some God of our imagination that we might hope to be some great grandfather in the sky who could tell us to think happy thoughts when we are having a bad day. He says it is God and all that God would be and all that God is and all that God has been. He is the one who is for us. The word for does not mean someone who stands at a distance. He means "super, and it is a word that envelops. It means that he stands above, he stands beneath, and he stands on either side. In other words, he stands surrounding us, above us, underneath us.

Paul’s argument is that if God is for us, surrounding us, sustaining us, supplying us with all of His power, that if that God is for us, then what is the result? If that God is for us, then is there any adversary that can be compared to God’s power that could somehow endanger that relationship that we have with Him, that He alone has afforded to us and given us? The answer is no, overwhelmingly no. There is no power greater, stronger, or mightier than God’s power.

II. The second great assurance given to us is that there is no danger that God’s love for us will ever change (Rom.8: 32) Is there a danger that somehow because of what we could do, by some action on our part, that God’s love for us would ever change? Paul’s answer to that question is no, there is no danger. There is no danger that God’s love for us will ever change. Paul’s argument again is from the greater to the lesser. His point in verse 32 is that if God has done this great thing, not sparing His own Son, but delivering him up for us all, will he not do everything else that is needed and necessary in our lives?

I want you to underscore the one who is in charge of all of this action. Paul begins with the word He and it refers back to verse 31, to God, He, that one, who spared not His own Son. I want you to know and understand this morning that whenever and whatever time you came to Christ, whether it was last week or last year or ten years ago, twenty years ago, how ever many years ago, or if it will be today, that God in all of His wonder and grace and mercy has moved all of the events of life to bring you to know his love. I say this and I believe it more and more with all of my heart that if you or I would have been the only one—the only one—who needed saving, who needed to be forgiven, who needed their life and their eternity redirected, that He still would have done exactly what Paul says here in verse 32: "He who did not spare His own Son." Your coming to Christ was no accident, it was nothing that just happened along, it was part of God’s desire for you and His gift to you that you would come to know Him and come to trust Him. He is the one who is the author of all of this.

What did He do? Well, Paul says He, "spared not His own Son." To spare means to deliver, to save. We want to spare our children difficulties. We might find in a court of law that a judge might spare the punishment on someone, but Paul says here God, "spared not." In other words, all of the things that were to come to Christ, all that He was to suffer, particularly being, bearing and knowing what it was to bear our sin and our failure upon himself, He did not spare him any of that, but he took all of that upon himself. He spared not His one, His only, particular, unique Son, but he delivered Him up for us all.

The word for there is a word for substitute. It means "in behalf of." It is not so much what we used earlier as the word of support, but here it means "in behalf." It means you. It means me, that we were the ones who should have borne that punishment. I am the one who sinned, I am the one who failed, but God is the one who stood in my place and offered to me in the person of Christ himself, as Paul would say in the second letter to the Corinthians, "He who knew no sin became sin for us." He became that. He did that in my place and on my behalf.

What is the point? The point is that if he has done this great thing, if he has done this, can he not, is he not able to provide everything else in relationship to me? Can something that I could do in the relationship I have with Him be a cause of failure on my part; is there any danger His love for me would ever change? Think about this. God has taken you, he has taken me, just as we were, men and women, boys and girls, young men, young women, in rebellion against him, and he has taken you and purchased you and he has changed our life forever, once and for all. The issue is if he has done that, taken you from being someone who was lost to being someone who was found, from being someone who was going to be separated from him forever, to now being gathered with him forever. Is he going to give that all up? No. My friends, because he has invested so much in that relationship with you and relationship with me, He assures us that there is no danger that his love for us will ever, ever change. He loves us and sent His Son; He spared not His Son, to assure us and to affirm that for us.

III. A third great assurance is that there is no one who could charge us with a sin that God’s grace does not cover (Rom. 8:33-34): In verses 33-34 you find two questions: "Who will bring a charge against God’s elect?" And then in verse 34, "Who is the one who condemns?" For both of them Paul has a response. Together they work united to say to us that there is not a sin that God’s grace would not, cannot, and has not covered.

Paul says, "Who can bring a charge against God’s elect?" You are his chosen ones. You are the object of love. Whenever God thinks about love, whenever he thinks about joy, he thinks about you. You are His elect; you are that one that he has chosen. So, who accuses us? Satan certainly accuses us. In Revelation 12:10 John describes Satan as though he is before God accusing us day and night, as if watching our lives go on and saying, "Did you see what Bruce did today? How are you going to let him get away with that? Did you see what he did last year? Do you know what he is going to do in the future? How are you going to let him get by with rebelling against you and disobeying you like that?" He accuses us like a wild man.

There are those people who accuse us and throw accusations at us: "Did you see what that person did, and they call themselves a Christian? How dare they?" They accuse us of this and that and somehow think that by their accusation that endangers our relationship with God.

Our own heart condemns us. We don’t need Satan; we don’t need other people. We have our own soul that reminds us, "How can you call yourself a Christian? You acted that way and you did this and you yielded to that temptation and you behaved in that manner. How do you dare? Who do you think you are to call yourself a Christian?" Oh, we have lots of accusers. Notice what Paul said: God is the one who justifies. I have never said I deserve it. I have never said I am worthy of it. I have never said He owes me anything. I have never said that because of the good life I’ve lived you owe me eternity in heaven. Not at all. Paul says God is the one who justifies. The word justifies means that in spite of all the things I have ever done he declares that I am right with him.

There is no one now on this planet more despised by our nation than Osama bin Laden. Imagine if somehow he were brought to justice, found guilty of the charges against him and confessed that he was guilty of the indictments against him. It would be the same as though the judge were to say, "I count those things as if they have never been." Whatever there has been against you, whatever you shall do in the future, who brings a charge that God’s grace doesn’t cover? Paul says, "God is the one who justifies." I can never justify myself or my actions or my life, but God does in Christ and Christ alone.

Then Paul’s second question is, "Who is the one who condemns?" Oh, there are plenty to condemn us. Again, here’s the thing. Here is what Paul is going for: It is as though somehow God would be reading the books, reading our lives, evaluating our lives and looking at our lives and all of a sudden discover, "Uh, oh, I didn’t know they did that. I didn’t know they committed that sin. Oh, what am I going to do?" No, you see, when we testify and we say that in Christ God forgives all of our sin, he forgives all of our sins, and there is no one who can condemn us. Paul uses four great pillars, if you would, as he says this: "Christ Jesus is He who died." Paul doesn’t say he did or we did, but Jesus did. He died for me. He not only died, he didn’t stay dead, he "was raised." He was not only raised, he has ascended and he is "at the right hand of God in a place of authority." Then not only does he sit in a place of authority, but he "intercedes for us". He does so in order that when there is a place of helplessness in my life and it seems as though I cannot endure, there is the intercession of the Son of God in my behalf. Again Paul would remind us that there is not a chance of God finding a place or of anyone finding a place to condemn us once the gracious mercy of God has been given to us in the person of Jesus Christ. There is not a sin that the grace of God doesn’t cover.

IV. The fourth assurance is that there is no failure on our part that can separate us from the love of Christ (Rom. 8:35-37): We have said that there is no power greater than God’s power. We have said that there is no danger of God’s love for us ever changing. We have said there is nothing—nothing—in our lives that the grace of God doesn’t cover. But what if there is a failure on my part? Can some failure on my part separate me from the love of God?

Verses 35-37 present a series of things that we imagine might be able to separate us from God’s love. He mentions tribulation or distress or persecution. In other words, just the pressures of an ungodly word, isn’t that big enough, can’t that separate us from God’s love? Or famine or nakedness, in other words the lack of adequate provisions, that somehow that would harden our hearts and turn us against God and that would cause us to abandon our relationship with Him. He mentions "peril or sword", in other words, the dangers of living life of those who might actively and deliberately oppose us. Then he mentions in verse 36, just the simple pressures of living life daily, could that not separate us? Watch verse 37: "But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through him who loved us." The word overwhelmingly conquer is a word that we get our word super hero from. It is a word that simply means that we do not walk into heaven regardless of our success or failure at living the kind of life we wish we should have lived. It means that when we walk there and stand before God in heaven, we stand not with our head down and shuffling our feet, but stand before him overwhelmingly conquering. Paul’s argument to us is that there is not a trial that we face that could somehow endanger our relationship with him and there is no failure on our part that can separate us from the love of Christ. There is none.

Conclusion: Paul comes in verse 38 and 39 to an unshakable conclusion. These last two verses are the like Hallelujah Chorus of Handel’s Messiah, resounding powerfully, pumping forcefully through these words, for he says, "I am convinced." I am persuaded, without question, without apology, without backing down, without denying, without excusing, I am convinced. Well, what are you convinced of? "That neither death—death as horrible as it is for human life—that is not capable of separating us from the love of God. That life, just the calamity of life itself, that life is not capable of separating us from his love. That superhuman powers, angels or principalities, they are not capable. Time, whether things present our or things to come doesn’t have that power. The powers of hell itself, somehow those things would be able to separate us from God’s love. Or height or depth, as though there was something out there in space or dimensions that would be able to separate us from the love of God. Paul, perhaps not finding anything else to say, just draws it all up into one final statement and says, "or any other created thing." I can’t think of another thing that could separate the believer from the love of God in Christ Jesus. With all the compassion and sincerity within me, who dares say that I, or you, could lose the gift of eternal life once it has been given to us? It is His gift. An overwhelming conclusion is that it is His. He has given it to us and he holds us in absolute security.

In 1937 when the Golden Gate Bridge was being built, the cost of that bridge was over 77 million dollars on Phase One of that project. In Phase One of that project 23 men fell to their deaths because the safety concerns were not as great as they are today. Building that bridge was quite a life or death issue for many, and twenty-three men died. In the second phase of that construction the designers discovered a way that they could build a net. So, they fashioned a net for a hundred thousand dollars made out of huge manila rope and wove a net to place underneath that. Was it worth it? Well, ten men fell and every one of them was saved because of the net underneath. The project was finished in three-fourths of the time than it was expected, because the people who were working high above did not have to worry about what was underneath them. They knew there was something there to catch them.

My friends, God has provided for us, given to us and sustains us with his eternal net of security underneath. His words say to us, as Paul reflects them to us, that there is no conceivable power greater than God’s power, that there is no danger of God’s love for us ever changing, that there is not a sin in our life that is not covered by God’s grace, and that there is no failure on our part that could cause us to lose our salvation. My friends, our response to this today, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, ought to be, "You have every reason to stand strong and go forward." Some would say, "Pastor, all you’ve done is give people a license to go out and live like they want to." No. For if one understands the power and beauty of the provision given to us, we will only live greater, stronger, more wonderfully able to do that which God has given us to do, because we know there is security.

This morning it may be that you are here today and that security isn’t yours. You’ve wondered about your own relationship with him. You may feel you have failed so horribly that he has abandoned you. I say to you, my friend, it is not so. It may be that you have never known Christ in a saving relationship and this morning you would want this kind of security, to live the rest of your life with force and power and strength. I want you to come this morning and let us share with you how you can know a personal relationship with Him. It may be that you say, "I want to be a part of a church that’s real, that grieves when others grieve, that rejoices when others rejoice, and it proclaims a God of grace like this."

Sunday, October 28, 2001

Dr. Bruce Tippit, Pastor

First Baptist Church

Jonesboro, Arkansas 72401

btippit@fbcjonesboro.org