6 Reasons Christians Can Be Certain Of Heaven. Part 1 Series

Romans Series # 39 May 22, 2002

Title: 6 Reasons Christians Can Be Certain Of Heaven. Part 1

Website: www.newlifeinchrist.info

Email: pastorsarver@yahoo.com

Introduction: Welcome to New Life in Christ. We are currently in Chapter 8 of Romans as we continue with message #39 of our verse-by-verse study of the Book of Romans.

Read Romans 8:26-39

Opening Prayer

Illustration: 20 years ago when I was had just joined the Army, I was given an airline ticket from West Palm Beach, FL to Montgomery, AL. The initial flight landed at the Atlanta airport and I had to leave that large jet and board a twin-engine propeller plane that held about 20 people for the short trip to Montgomery (or maybe Birmingham, I can’t remember for sure.) That short trip was the wildest ride of my life! We encountered some severe turbulence halfway through the trip. That little plane shook and moved like it was a paper airplane. Sometimes it seemed we would drop 1,000 feet in a couple of seconds. The women were screaming and the men were completely pale-faced. The question on everyone’s mind was, “Will I make it?” The pilot kept reassuring us that we would and I appreciated his reassurances but I also questioned the validity of his statements. In my mind, my question to him was, “How do I know I will make it?”

Sometimes life is like that plane ride. It can be filled with troubles that are like the ups and downs and turbulence of that trip. Sometimes in the midst of such turmoil we may question weather we will make it. We wonder if we will arrive at the destination that God has promised us. In other words, you and I want to know if we will really receive the inheritance and the glory of being God’s child that was elaborated on in earlier parts of chapter 8 of Romans. How can we be sure? How do we know that we will make it?

Answering these questions and thereby reassuring struggling and suffering Christians is the main purpose of this entire passage.

Paul wants all Christians to understand that we have no reason to doubt our future because God’s Spirit is praying for us perfectly. (Vs. 26-27) God is working in every bad situation for our good. (Vs. 28) God has predetermined that we will make become like Christ and share in His glory. (Vs. 29-30) We should not doubt our future because God is for us and not against us. (Vs. 31-32) We do not even need fear we won’t make it because of our moral failures. God is for us and no one and nothing can condemn us. (Vs. 33) Christians can be confident about making to heaven because Jesus sits at the right hand of God praying for us. (Vs. 34) We can also maintain a great deal of confidence no matter what we encounter in life because nothing can separate us from God’s love (vs. 35-39) – God is for us!

These verses (vs. 26-39) are clearly intended to convey to us who are genuine Christians the certainty that we will make it to God’s glory no matter what we encounter in this life, because God is for us. Our confidence is not in our own strength, wisdom, or ability to overcome but in the fact that God is for us.

I would summarize the message of this Bible text this way:

I. Christians can be certain of eternal glory because God is for us.

In the next couple of weeks, I will show you from this passage 6 reasons Christians can be certain of making it to glory. Tonight we will look at two of them.

Having established the general teaching of this passage, let’s now look at it in detail verse by verse.

Read Verse 26

1. Christians can be certain of their future in heaven because God’s Spirit prays for us perfectly.

This is the main message of verses 26 and 27, which will become clear in a moment. “In the same way” refers back to verse 25. The subject of this previous verse was on how our future hope helps to sustain us in turbulent times. In the same way as hope sustains us during hard times, the Holy Spirit helps us also during these difficult times. The Holy Spirit helps us because of our “weakness.” Certainly we are weak in many ways and the Spirit helps us in all of them, but the weakness being referred to here is our weakness or inability to know “what we ought to pray for.” We know how to pray (To the Father, In the name of Jesus, etc.), but we often don’t know what to pray for in particular. We don’t know what to pray sometimes because we don’t always know God’s will for a given situation.