Believer’s Triumph
Romans 8:31-39
Prayer
Introduction
I. verses 31-34 31 What then are we to say about these things?
If God is for us, who is against us?£
32 He did not even spare His own Son,
but offered Him up for us all;
how will He not also with Him grant us everything?
33 Who can bring an accusation against God’s elect?
God is the One who justifies.
34 Who is the one who condemns?
Christ Jesus is the One who died, but even more, has been raised;
He also is at the right hand of God and intercedes for us.
As a believer we can truthfully say “if God be for us who can be against us?”
a. Once God saves you, you are His
a. He sent His son to die on the cross for you.
b. He sent His son to pay your sin debt
c. Since He sent his son to do that do you really think He can ever lose you.
d. Do you think anyone can ever do anything to you or in some way cause you to fall from God’s grasp.
i. If I, you, or Satan can do that than I, you, or Satan is more powerful than God and God is not God.
ii. But I, You, or Satan can’t so God has us and no matter what anyone does He will hold us for all eternity.
b. This is a message of comfort to us. To assure us in times of doubt and tribulations that God still holds us in His hands.
II. Who assures us? Who is the one who condemns?
Christ Jesus is the One who died,£ but even more, has been raised;
He also is at the right hand of God and intercedes for us.
a. Once we are saved it is Satan not God who accuses us.
b. Jesus intercedes for us in heaven. He defends us before Satan’s accusations. He says I bought him or her, my blood covers them and Satan’s accusations fail.
c. The word of God proclaims it is impossible to be separated from Chris.
35 Who can separate us from the love of Christ?
Can affliction or anguish or persecution£
or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
36 As it is written:
Because of You we are being put to death all day long;
we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered.
37 No, in all these things we are more than victorious
through Him who loved us.
38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life,
nor angels nor rulers,
nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
39 nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing
will have the power to separate us
from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord!
a. We may fear we have been abandoned by Christ because of the trials and tribulations that come our way. But we must remember that Jesus went through trials and tribulations also and He is there to walk every step of the way with us.
b. But Paul says we can separate us from Christ. And his answer is no one or nothing.
c. Christ’s death is the proof of His unconquerable love. Nothing can stop His constant presence with us.
i. We can feel secure in our salvation because of His love there fore we need not be afraid
ii. Satan and his followers are the principalities and power or unseen forces in this world.
1. they will attack us
2. they cannot overcome us
3. we are the conquerors because we have Chrsit within us and His power will protect us from any and all forces.
III. Are you facing trials and tribulations in your life tonight? Do you feel overwhelmed? You don’t have to. You can come here to the alter and surrender them to God. That does not mean that He will take them away or make things better but what it does mean is that God will empower you and strengthen you so that you can overcome and come out the other side of the trial or tribulation stronger and better. Men think back to basic training, let me paint a picture for those who were not there. “Thank you sir! May I do another?” Crouching on the ground, the recruit seemed barely touched by the sergeant’s rough treatment. He was doing push-ups; and a lot of them. Each time he pushed his struggling frame up, the sergeant would rest his boot on the small of the private’s back and down he would go again. Then his overseer would bark, “What do you like, soldier?” The recruit, prone and struggling to complete just one more cycle of lift, would shout out, “Thank you sir, may I do another?” Although it was obvious that the recruit really wasn’t interested in doing another push-up, it was also certain that he knew exactly what he was doing. It was the sargeant’s expectation that the recruit would ask, so the soldier made it his will to meet that expectation. He had been drilled to believe that the pain and the effort would be worth it in the end. The sergeant had guaranteed him that when he was through with his “style” of training, the recruit would be fit for duty and able to deal with anything the enemy might hand out.
We, as witnesses to that scene, would probably see the sargeant’s actions as mean-spirited and unmotivating. Watching that recruit go up and down, always asking for more punishment, would put our minds in a spin. There is no logic to this kind of behavior. Wouldn’t the carrot and the stick be more motivating than pain and punishment? “It certainly isn’t the way that we would be motivated anyway!” Nevertheless, this tried and true regime has been used for centuries in training recruits. Why? Because it works. When a soldier is in a war-time situation there often isn’t opportunity to think things through. Following orders at that critical juncture is all that matters; even when those orders mean harsh, even death-defying tasks. There needs to be an action/reaction instinct in a soldier. Since it can’t be “fright/flight”, that which is innate in every person, the trainer needs to reshape the reaction to fit the action. And there’s only one way to do that--drill!
Our lives seem like that sometimes. Often it seems that God is laying out a harsher regime than we think is necessary. We blink and wince and then ask. “Is this what grace is all about? How can a loving God expect us to go through all of this?” Author James Packer writes: “Grace is God drawing sinners closer and closer to him. How does God in grace prosecute this purpose? Not by shielding us from assault by the work, the flesh, and the devil, nor by protecting us from burdensome and frustrating circumstance, not yet by shielding us from troubles created by our own temperament and psychology, but rather by exposing us to all these things, so as to overwhelm us with a sense of our own inadequacy, and to drive us to cling to him more closely. This is the ultimate reason, from our standpoint, why God fills our lives with troubles and perplexities of one sort and another -- it is to ensure that we shall learn to hold him fast. The reason why the Bible spends so much of its time reiterating that God is a strong rock, a firm defense, and a sure refuge and help for the weak is that God spends so much of his time showing us that we are weak, both mentally and morally, and dare not trust ourselves to find or follow the right road. When we walk along a clear road feeling fine, and someone takes our arm to help us, likely we would impatiently shake him off; but when we are caught in rough country in the dark, with a storm brewing and our strength spent, and someone takes our arm to help us, we would thankfully lean on him. And God wants us to feel that our way through life is rough and perplexing, so that we may learn to lean on him thankfully. Therefore he takes steps to drive us out of self-confidence to trust in himself, to -- in the classic scriptural phrase for the secret of the godly man’s life -- ‘wait on the Lord’.” (James Packer, Your Father Loves You, Harold Shaw Publishers, 1986.)
When our Savior was tested in the desert, it wasn’t merely a battle of wills or spirits. It involved physical pain and suffering. God did not spare His Son these griefs. Jesus must be broken in body to demonstrate that His faith and willingness to do His Father’s will was the ultimate factor that defeated Satan. It was not Jesus’s body that could not be broken; it was his spirit. This must be demonstrated to both Satan and the world. And so it is with you and I. The world may look on and shake its collective head at those suffering Christians that are willing to take such punishment. There may be better ways in their minds to motivate a believer. Yet, when all is said and done, the Christian always comes back for more. Our hearts faint within us as God has willed it so and yet, as we “drop for another”, the spirit within us cries out for more and each time it does, God’s “grace-training” grows stronger within us. There is nothing the world can dish out that we aren’t “conditioned” to handle. In so doing, we glorify our God who has trained us so to cope and so to triumph.
