Secure in the Greatest Love of All

Well, why don't we go to the Lord in prayer and ask his blessing on Our time together. In his word this morning, Father, we, we come to you because we are a needy people. We confess to you our vast need of you. And even, even this morning, Lord, in the coming moments, Just the worship we've already rendered to you as, as Joe already mentioned, just how they prayed over their worship.

And even now as we listen to you, Lord, if you don't show up and look upon us with your mercy, and choose to do a gracious work in our midst, then, then all we're doing is, is playing church, and no eternal fruit will be born. Lord, we want fruit to be born from our time together. In this service, may fruit be born and may that fruit remain for all of eternity. I pray that you would do a work in the hearts of any who are here that have never been.

brought into the experience of your love through Christ that they would be attracted to To this love. Today that they would run from sin. And from All that would keep them from you and flee to you, Jesus. And call upon you to be their Lord and their Savior from the guilt of their sins and from the power of sin.

And for those of us that are your children, God, we ask that You would do miracles in us and take us deeper and understanding. The gospel of Jesus Christ. So we open our hearts to you, Lord, expecting you to do mighty miracles in each heart here. And whatever you choose to do, Lord, we'll be careful to give you all the glory.

And we ask all these things in Christ's name. Amen. Well, let me invite you to turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 8. Romans 8 for our time of study and the word this morning.

We're doing a verse by verse study through Romans 567 and 8, a journey to the heart of the gospel, and as we continue in that journey, this morning, we come to Romans chapter 8, verse 35, and my initial intention was to get through verse 35 to 39, but in the first service, all we did was got from verse 35 to 37. So, I thought the series would end today, but it's not going to. so we're going to cover verses 35, 36, and 37 today, and the title of the message is secure in the greatest love of all.

secure in the greatest love of all.

I cannot read these verses in the, at the end of Romans 8 without being reminded of something that happened to me when I was 19 years of age. And what had happened was it was on a Saturday, and for a good part of the day I was at our house by myself and I found myself just undergoing a spiritual assault of temptation. And God was giving me grace to resist and to make the right choice, to say yes to righteousness and no to sin, but I found that the temptations were not going away.

They just kept coming back wave after wave, and they were wearing me down to such an extent that I ended up beginning to pray and I prostrated myself on the living room floor.

of my parents' home and just face down and began crying out to God in prayer. And as I did so, and I know this is just a subjective thing, but just subjectively, I, I just felt a real spirit of oppression. coming over me, my chest tightened, and I felt as if a weight was on me to where just subjectively speaking, it felt like if I were to try to have gotten off the floor, I would not have been able to. So just feeling pressed by the battle and worn out and exhausted.

And crying out to God, and then feeling that oppression as I lay there. And I then, I looked to my, my left, and within arm's reach of me was a copy of my mom's Bible that she had sitting by the chair that she was accustomed to sitting at. And so I reached out and I grabbed her Bible, and I opened it to Romans chapter 8. And as I lay there, I began reading out loud.

Romans 8 beginning in verse 1. And as I began to read and just feeling those words on my tongue and then speaking them aloud, forming the words, reading them, and then hearing myself speak them, I found a growing confidence coming over me, and I ended up getting up off the floor and sat up and continued reading aloud. And then I began to stand up and I began pacing the floor in our living room as I was reading Romans 8, not only out loud, but with authority and, and enjoying as I was doing so and When I came to the last, 10 or so verses of Romans 8, I actually, it probably sounds hokey to you guys, but I found myself not only standing, but I had assumed a position of standing on my mom's piano bench.

I'm in the house by myself and, and I'm, I have the Bible in my hand, and I am reading these final verses of Romans 8.

And, how, the confidence I felt was such that, like, how in the Bible it says resist the devil and he will flee from you and we're like, yeah, I want to resist so he'll flee. I actually didn't want him to flee. I wanted him to stick around and hear what I had to say. That's there was a holy sass that came over me and with a defiance and a growing confidence and boldness and brazenness, I was just rejoicing in reading and speaking these words at the end of Romans 8 aloud.

When I finished verse 39, I Looked around the room awkwardly and realized what I was doing. I closed my Bible and I got down from my mom's piano bench and went throughout the rest of my day. But throughout the rest of that day, I marveled At The power of God's word and the change that had come over me as a result of the power of gospel truth in Romans chapter 8. There was a moment where I was oppressed and beaten down and lacking any confidence, and on the floor, and 10 minutes later I'm standing on a bench and I am rejoicing in and full of confidence in the gospel truths that are being read from Romans 8.

That's the power of these truths in Romans 8. That's the power of these verses at the end of Romans 8 that we're going to be looking at, today. in fact, let me read verse 35 through 39, and I will I will not stand on a bench as I read these, but listen to what Paul says. Who will separate us from the love of Christ?

Will tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword, just as it is written, for your sake, we are being put to death all day long. We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered. But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Part of why I think about what happened when I was 19 is that one of the commentators I was reading described Paul as actually experiencing very something very similar to what happened to me back when I was 19, that Paul himself is being carried along by what he is saying and his confidence is growing. As we've mentioned before, we know from Romans 16 that there's a scribe named Tertius who's writing down these words as Paul is speaking them, and I guarantee you Paul is not sitting down as he is speaking these truths at the end of Romans 8.

He's on his feet, and we are beholding here and listening to a man. In worship, and his heart is so full of all of the gospel truths that he's been going over in Romans 4, and Romans 5, and Romans 6, Romans 7, and all of the truths that he's been reviewing in Romans 8, and he himself is so full of confidence and boldness.

He's being carried along by these truths. Listen to what One writer, James Edwards says about these final verses of Romans, about the last 10 or 12 verses of this chapter, he says, in a rhapsody of grace, Paul brings the first half of Romans to a climactic conclusion. In an unrestrained volley of rhetorical questions, dramatic repetitions, and contrasting universals, Paul is born by a thermal current of assurance that God is for us. At least 6 of his 11 sentences are rhetorical questions.

We can imagine the effect such rhythmic questions must have had as they were first read aloud in Rome, moving Christians joyously to praise God for His faithfulness. The certainty of this faithfulness is celebrated in brisk repetition like a 16 gun salute with 16 references to God or Christ in only 9 verses. The scope of God's faithfulness is heralded in seraphic universals. There is no condemnation for Christians, no power against them, no one to bring charges against them, nothing that can separate them from the love of Christ, for all is given to them.

All things worked for them, and in all things they are more than conquerors in Christ. The gate of heaven is thrown open. In this triumphant conclusion. Another writer that I was reading a few weeks ago said that when you come to these final verses of Romans 8, any thoughtful reader would observe here something that is among the greatest that is found in human language anywhere, sacred or secular.

These are powerful words that Paul is speaking, words of his own assurance, and he is wanting us to share this confidence and assurance with him. As we look at these verses today, there's basically 3 questions that I want to hit you with now and for you to be asking throughout the message this morning. And the first question is, do what the greatest love of all is? Do what that is?

the song, The Greatest Love of All, popularized by Whitney Houston a number of years ago, the lyrics say that learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all. That would actually be a wrong answer to This question. you may say, well, Pastorm, I, I know what the greatest love of all is. I, I got a boyfriend recently.

And he's so cute and he's so good to me. In fact, this week we're celebrating our 2 month anniversary of our relationship. And if you could read my Facebook status, you would know that I have found the greatest love of all. That would actually be a wrong answer also.

Write down this reference, John 15:13, where Jesus says, I'll tell you what the greatest love of all is, and that's me. And the love that I have for you. He says, greater love has no one than this, that a man laid down his life for his. Friends, Jesus is saying, you will never encounter anyone who loves you more or better, more effectively, more passionately than I do.

There is no greater love than the love that I have for you. That is the greatest love. The next question is, have you found the greatest love of all? Or more accurately, has this love found you and captured you?

Have you entered into a relationship with Jesus? And experience this amazing love relationship that is available to you through Christ. And the third question is, are you secure in this, the greatest love of all? There are people even in this church, in this room, you're born again, children of God.

You are among God's elect. You are saved and secure in His love forevermore, but you are not. Subjectively speaking, secure. You're not enjoying that security.

You are insecure in your apprehension of these things. Let's be asking these questions as we go through this morning. Just a quick observation on love in the book of Romans. It may surprise you to know that up to this point of the book of Romans, the word love has only been used twice.

And those two references are Romans 5:5 and Romans 5:8. In Romans 5:5, the apostle Paul tells us that the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. And in Romans 5:8, Paul tells us that God demonstrates present tense, His love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died past tense for us. That past event of the death of Christ at the cross is God's ongoing, ever present, continuing demonstration of His ongoing love for us.

Now, everything Paul has been saying, obviously, is unfolding the love of God for us, but the word love has only showed up twice until we come here to Romans chapter 8, verses 35 to 39. In verse 35, he makes reference to the love of Christ, verse 37, he speaks of him who loved us, and in verse 39, he speaks of the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus. And what's interesting is that as he ponders the love of God for us in Christ, twice he uses the word separate, which is one of the words for divorce.

OK.

It's a relational term that implies a separation between people, and Paul is just pondering. He begins this section by asking the question, Who or what shall separate us from this love? Just very quickly, guys, just understand that when Paul is thinking about and pondering this possibility of separation from the love of God in Christ, What he's really asking is, is there anything or anyone that could ever get God to stop loving me? To stop loving us who He has saved and justified.

He's also pondering the question of, is there anything that could ever happen to us that would move us beyond the reach of God's love and His ability to hold us in that love and show us that love? Maybe God loves us and He'll love us forever, but There are other forces at work that can remove us from His love to where he can't reach us with that love anymore once we're saved. I still have in my brain so vividly from the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia as the water came in, there was some video footage of a man who was holding on to, one of like the 4 by 4 posts in a porch type area of a restaurant there, he was holding on with one arm and he had his wife in the other arm and holding on to her for dear life.

And yet the current was coming in so strong that it ended up separating him from her, and he turned as his wife was taken downstream, essentially.

In that moment as he watched his wife going away from him, no doubt he loved his wife as much in that moment as he ever did, and yet a more powerful force had moved in to create a separation between him and her. And she was moved beyond the reach of what his love would have wanted to do for her. So when Paul is pondering the love of God, he's just asking the question, Is there anything or anyone that could separate us from this love to get God to stop loving us or to perhaps move us beyond the reach of His love?

And as he ponders this, what we find in these verses is 4, and we're only going to look at 3 this.

Morning. Three confident exclamations regarding our absolute and total security as Christians in God's love for us in Christ. Exclamation number 1 essentially is this that no one and nothing can separate us from Christ's love. He affirms this in no uncertain.

Terms, no one and nothing can separate us from Christ's love. Look what he says in verse 35. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? In asking this question, the obvious answer is nothing and no one.

This is a rhetorical question, and he's going to demonstrate essentially how nothing and no one can actually create a separation between us and God. In the new American standard, it says, who will separate us, but this could be translated either who will separate us or what will separate us. And let's go with both, because the point is that there is no one and there is no thing that actually can create separation between us and the God who loves us in Christ. There's nothing that could get him to stop loving us, and there's nothing that could take us beyond the reach.

Of his love for us. Paul then brings some things forward as possible candidates. Of circumstances that one might wonder, could this perhaps separate us and take us beyond the reach of the love of God? And so he says, shall tribulation.

Distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword, shall these things separate us from the love of God? And the answer obviously is no. Let's think about these words real quick. Tribulation, speaks of pressurized circumstances that, that compress you.

And it involves a loss of ease and a loss of comfort. Distress means the same thing as tribulation, but there's more of a focus on our inward response to such circumstances, and it has the idea of anguish internally that we experience in the midst of constraining. Difficulties and circumstances. It involves a loss of calm, a loss of peace in terms of our external circumstances, and even a loss of just an inward serenity in our inner being.

It also involves a loss of freedom. This word distress also has the idea of narrowness like constraining to where basically you're in a circumstance of pain. And difficulty and your options are very limited because it is so constraining. Options that you once had, you now don't even have those options anymore.

So there's a loss of certain choices that you might have preferred to have. Persecution, when we're being persecuted by other people, that involves a loss of acceptance from other people, from nonbelievers, a loss of tolerance from them. And a loss of affirmation from them. All of us would love for the lost people in our life to come to know the Lord, but if they don't, we would all desire that they accept us and that they tolerate us and allow us to live our faith as God instructs us to, and we would love for them to affirm us.

It's not bad to want that, but when persecution comes, understand, guys, that all of these terms convey an idea of separation. When tribulation comes, it separates us from ease and comfort. When distress comes, it separates us from calm, peace, and the freedom that we would prefer. When persecution comes, that persecution separates us from the acceptance, from the tolerance, and from the affirmation that we might prefer to receive from the people in our life.

When famine comes, And you don't have to necessarily think of, a famine in the land. Although this could involve that, this is, this is just simply the Greek word for hunger. Which involves a loss of food. When hunger comes, what's happening is you're being separated from the food that you would actually prefer to have.

Nakedness I did a lot of study on this word, and it speaks of the loss of clothing. You guys are more awake than the first service. I said the same thing in the first service and everyone was like. But when we're Christians throughout history have been persecuted for their faith, they have found themselves shamefully in circumstances where those circumstances separated them from food, from clothing.

Peril speaks of danger. It's a loss of security and safety. The sword obviously speaks of the loss of life. The sword separates us from life.

It separates us from those that, that we love. All of these. Words here speak of circumstances that create separation in our life, that separate us from things that we all would actually prefer. These aren't necessarily bad things.

We all would love ease and comfort, calm, peace, freedom, acceptance, tolerance, affirmation. We all would, would love to have food. that's not a bad thing, and we all seem to prefer clothing. All of you are clothed today.

And we all would prefer security and safety. We all would prefer our own lives, and we would prefer the lives of those that we love to continue. But Paul is speaking of circumstances that come into our lives that separate us from these things. And yet his point is, that even though these things may come, and powerfully separate us from things that we may appreciate and value, they will never succeed in separating us from the love of Christ.

Notice the verse again in verse 35, who will separate us from the love of Christ? The verb separate is future. Paul is here situated firmly inside of the present love of God, and he does what all of us do with regard to any love, and that is he turns and looks to the future. And he's asking this love that I have today in Christ, will this love be with me tomorrow?

We assess the quality of any love that we're experiencing today by asking the question, will this same love be with me tomorrow? If it will not be with me tomorrow, then it doesn't mean a lot for me to have this love today. Imagine if you came to God and, and said, God, do you love me? And God said, I love you today.

I love you today. I love you so much today. And if you said, God, will you love me tomorrow? What if God said, actually, frankly, I don't know if I'm going to love you tomorrow, but I do love you today.

How much would that love mean? Husbands, imagine giving your wife a card for Valentine's Day, wherein you say to her, honey, I love you today. I am not sure about tomorrow, but I want you to know that I love you very much today. I don't think that would Make for a great Valentine's Day together.

We all want to be loved today with the love that we know will be with us tomorrow. And so Paul's doing what all of us would do. Part of how we assess the quality of God's love and any love is we look to the future and ask, will this love be with me tomorrow? That's what a wedding is all about, and promises that that individuals make to one another are all about this love that I have for you today, it will be here tomorrow.

And so Paul is coming to the conclusion through this rhetorical question. Of essentially saying that those circumstances may come that create a real separation between us and many things that we value, they may even separate us ultimately from our life, but nothing will ever separate us from the love of Christ for us. Nothing. There's a second affirmation or confident exclamation of Paul in Verse 36.

And let's go ahead and word it this way, wherein Paul is essentially saying that the separations that we do experience in our lives are always for the sake of Christ who loves us. Not only will these separating circumstances, that come into our life, not, not only will they not succeed in separating us from God's love in Christ, but actually when these painful separating circumstances do come, they actually come for the sake of Christ. Let's ponder that for a moment. Paul quotes from Psalm 4422.

Where he says, just as it is written, for your sake, the psalmist says to Jehovah God, for your sake, We are being put to death all day long. We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered. Notice what he's saying. We are being continuously put to death all day long.

The basic idea of death is separation, right? And he's saying not only every day are we experiencing real separations in our lives, but throughout every day we are being confronted endlessly with these separations that are occurring and in terms of how people around us. Who do not follow Jehovah in terms of how they look at us. Well, we know how they view us.

They look at us as sheep to be butchered. So here we are, God's people, Jehovah's people, and yet we're experiencing real separations all the time, every day it seems, and the world around us looks at us as sheep to be slaughtered. But the psalmist lays hold of and Paul lays hold of the fact that when these separations occur in our lives from day to day, they occur for Christ's sake. Part of the idea of that is they, they are allowed by God into our lives to serve his purposes.

They happen under His providence. This has been the experience of God's people for millennia. And when they come into our lives, they always serve his providential purposes. Quite literally, the idea is when tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, and sword come into our life and create all these separations, we can look at those circumstances and say, this is happening for him.

Christ, we saw in verse 34, is at the right hand of the Father interceding for us. He's praying for us all the time. Whatever circumstances ever reach us, they reach us and they are governed and shaped by the prayer life of Jesus for us, and there is no circumstance of tribulation and anything else on this list that ever comes our way, that God does not fully intend to use for our good. And to shape us to be useful for His ultimate purposes.

That's why Paul in Romans 5 says, Being justified, we exult in the hope of the glory of God. We also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance. Perseverance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope and hope does not make a shame because God's love is shed abroad in our hearts through the Spirit who's given to us. Paul looks at his circumstances, and he knows there's no circumstance that I face.

That has not been allowed by God to do good to me. God will take every circumstance, every trial, and force every one of them to pay tribute to me and do good to me and to shape me into the image of Christ and to make me useful for Him. Paul is affirming here that when these separations occur in our life, they happen for Jesus' sake. And Jesus' purposes for us, God's purposes for us, is articulated in Romans 8:28.

God works all things together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. When Johnny Erickson dove into the shallow waters decades ago and her neck was broken and a separation occurred in an instant separating her from the life that she thought she was destined to live, separating her from abilities that she once had and that she would have loved to have continued to have that separation. All those separations happened for him to serve his purposes, to do a work in her, and to also shape her and position her in a way that God would use her in the powerful way that he has since that time.

Several weeks ago, I was talking to a man in our church who was talking about the economic meltdown and he said, you, you have no idea what What we've lost in the last several years in terms of just properties and assets.

And money, he says, you have no idea what we've lost. He's experienced separation. From the things that he once had, but then he laughed, and if there is such a thing as holy laughter, it is this. He laughed and he said, but God, has done such a great work of bringing my wife and I back to Him, and we are richer today in Christ than we have ever been.

He would look at his circumstances. He wouldn't wish them on his worst enemy, but he would say, those happened for his sake. Those happened for him to serve his purposes. So Paul says nothing and no one.

No separating kinds of circumstances that may separate us from things that we value. None of those could ever separate us from Christ's love. And not only that, when they do happen to us, they ultimately are for His sake and serve God's purposes in us. And then there's a third confident exclamation that we see here, and this is in verse 37, and let's word it this way.

Paul says, we overwhelmingly triumph in all separating circumstances through Christ who loved us. Not only do these circumstances not separate us from His love, not only These circumstances actually serve God's purposes because they're allowed for His sake. But we in the midst of these separations that occur in our lives, we continuously, overwhelmingly triumph through Christ who loved us. He says in verse 37, but in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.

Let me talk for a minute about the Greek word that is translated overwhelmingly conquer. This is basically a compound word. It is the word huper, which basically means super, and then nikao, which is, I give you this word because you see this Greek word all the time. This is where the Nike got its name, Nike.

is basically a transliteration of this Greek word that means victory, to conquer, to triumph. To find a name for their company, they fished through the Greek language and found the word for victory and said that will be our name, Nike. Basically, Paul is talking here about super Nike. As you can see on the screen, obviously because I don't have anything else to do with my time, I fiddled with the Nike swoosh, and I was thinking it's not just that, but it's, it's Nike plus, and I had a plus symbol there and then I thought that looks like a cross, so I put a cross there in the place of the plus sign that would be Paul's logo.

it is super Nike. It is Nike Plus. By virtue of the Christ who loved us past tense. He's pointing to the cross.

And what Paul is saying is, in all these things, in all of these tribulations, distresses, famine, nakedness, peril, sword, in all of these things we are continuously, perpetually, overwhelmingly conquering through Him who loved us. Now, notice this prepositional phrase in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer. How many of you want To experience overwhelming conquering in your Christian life. Raise your hand.

OK. About 40% of you. If We all want that, OK? And if God were to say, Hey, overwhelming triumph, super Nike, do you want to experience that, all of us would say, Get me inside of that because that's what I want to experience in my life.

But in this verse, what we observe is something that we may not be overly thrilled about initially. And that is that this super Nike is experienced inside of suffering and loss, as one writer says, this victory, this super victory takes place through or in suffering, not apart from it. We all would prefer get me outside of the circle of suffering and loss. So I can experience super Nike.

But God says, no, no, that's, that's often experienced inside the realm of suffering and loss, inside of tribulation and persecution and famine, nakedness, distress, peril, and sword. We all want to experience overwhelming triumph, but we're not real keen. On experiencing painful separating circumstances, right? we all want to experience miraculous, wonderful, powerful history making deliverance from God, but who of us is willing to stand in a lion's den and experience that?

We all want to experience mighty deliverance from God, but who among us wants to stand in a fiery furnace like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego did in the book of Daniel when God delivered them. We, we all want to experience seeing Jesus standing at the right hand of God. We all would love that, but who among us wants to be stoned like Stephen was, when he looked up into the heavens and saw Christ standing. At the right hand of God.

All of us would love to see the glories of the future played out before our eyes and to see the glories of the things to come at the end of human history and in the eternal state. We would love to see those things, but who among us wants to be exiled on the island of Patmos like the apostle John was, wherein he saw those things. We all want to experience overwhelming triumph, but God says frequently, not always, but frequently, he says, you want to experience this, you will find it inside of suffering and loss.

The great saints of church history have overwhelmingly triumphed in this context.

Now I'm not saying that this is the only context where we experience this, but that Paul in this context is talking about the overwhelming triumph that we experience in sight of suffering and loss. The last thing I want to focus on regarding this exclamation, look again at the verse. He says, but in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. This super Nike, it comes through Him.

In other words, he does it. We don't do this. understand, guys, that the victory that Paul is talking about here is, is a victory that is not dependent upon us. It actually has nothing to do with our performance.

It is a victory that Christ has won and continues to win. It comes through Him. I don't want to preach a message this morning on, do you want to be an overwhelming conqueror? Based on this passage, here's 5 things you need to do to be an overwhelming conqueror.

No, in this context, there's other passages that talk about us conquering, and there are things we do to overcome or to not be overcome. In this passage, the focus is on the fact that we are overwhelming conquerors because of Jesus and what he's done. It's a victory that he has won, and it's not based on our individual personal performance. Just by way of example, imagine a guy who plays on a football team and the coach lets him in for 4 plays in the course of the game, and on all 4 plays, this football player really botches it up.

His personal performance really is bad. He fumbles the ball. He doesn't do his assignments and really blows it at the end of the game. He looks at his personal stats and his personal performance and says, I really blew it today.

Nonetheless, the team he plays on won the game 54 to 0. He overwhelmingly triumphs, not because of his performance, but because of the performance of others on the team that he is a part of. That's exactly the overwhelming triumph that Paul is speaking about. It is a triumph.

It is a conquering that comes through Christ, that Christ accomplishes, and it is not dependent upon us. In fact, some have suggested that the victory that Paul is speaking about here, they've gone so far as to say that this victory of Super Nike that Paul is speaking about is always ours, even in moments of personal defeat. We're still overwhelmingly triumphing in Christ because of him. Think about what we must look like from Satan's perspective.

The devil wants to get us to sin. And he succeeds, let's say, in tempting us and we're seduced into sin, and we really blow it and we experience personal defeat. The devil then looks at the Father thinking, surely, he's going to give up on Milton now. And the devil looks at the Father and the Father still loves us.

The Father still looks at us through the lens of our justification. He still looks upon us as forgiven sinners. He still looks upon us as righteous with the righteousness of Jesus. That is overwhelming triumph.

And even when we sin, as Paul implies in Romans 6:1, when we sin and experience personal defeat, what happens? God's grace abounds to us all the more. As he graciously maintains our justified status that Paul has been speaking about throughout Romans 5. So the devil succeeds in getting us to sin and looks up and here comes mighty waves, increasing waves of God's grace to sustain our status as justified ones.

The devil succeeds in getting us to a place of personal defeat, failure, and sin, and he looks up at the Father, and what does he see? There's Jesus facing towards the Father as our advocate interceding on our behalf, not against us, but he listens, and Jesus is interceding for us. There's nothing that the devil can do even through our personal defeat. To get us separated from the love of God, even in our moments of greatest spiritual defeat as Christians, do you realize the overwhelming triumph that is taking place in that moment to simply sustain you as a child of God and as a justified one before Him?

We are always, we are always inside of this overwhelming triumph. In fact, one writer says it this way, the victory that Paul is speaking about here comes not by escaping suffering, nor even in our courage in the face of suffering. But this victory comes in God's love in the midst of suffering. The overwhelming triumph is that his love is not quenched.

We're not taken beyond the reach of his love. He goes on to say, it is not our hold on Christ which sees us through, but his hold on us. The victory is God's love that will not let me go in life. Or death.

You may say, Pastor, you've got to be careful talking like this because if you talk like this, there's going to be Christians who are like, well, I guess it doesn't matter whether I'm I sin or not, I can just stay in sin, and I'm always an overwhelming conqueror. actually, I'm not afraid of that because those who truly belong to God are so moved by this Christ wrought ongoing victory to sustain them as children of God, as righteous ones before God, that true believers contemplate this and it makes them want to go crazy for this God and to love Him.

All the more. So I want to encourage you guys, walk in the good of this.

Nothing can separate you from his love or take you beyond his reach. Anything that does happen, as painful as it may be, it's happening for his sake to serve His good purposes, for your ultimate good and His glory, which are never in conflict with each other, by the way, and also inside of all of these things, you are always an overwhelming conqueror through Him. You are always loved, and every second that you remain loved by God is a moment of overwhelming triumph that will never wane, never be taken away from you.

If you're here today and you've, you've never known such love, such triumph, Such a relationship with a God like this.

Who can love you with a love that is the greatest love of all, I just would plead with you to put your own petty little righteousness aside and And put an end to your little self salvation project. And just come running to God and into his arms and let Him love you through His Son Jesus Christ, who died for you, who was raised for you, who was ascended for you, and who's at the right hand of God, ready to be your Lord and your Savior, if you would call upon Him and receive salvation through Him.

Let's go to the Lord in prayer and I wanna pray a prayer for us as, as believers that we would be daring enough to believe this. God, we thank you for the gospel.

These are mind blowing realities how we in moments of personal defeat can At the same moment be Inside of overwhelming triumph. It is beyond us to comprehend. We don't deserve this, but Lord, your love is the victory. Your love is the triumph.

And may we get our eyes off of ourselves and And allow our hearts to become smitten with this overwhelming love that is in front of us, behind us, to our left and to our right. It is in our past. It is in our present, it is in our future. It will endure for all of eternity.

It is above us. It is below us. It sustains us who are your people. May we walk in the good of this, soak in this grace, be transformed by this grace, and have much grace to give and to show to others.

And may we be fearless and bold in the face of anything that may come our way. If there's any here today, Lord, who've never entered into a relationship with you, touch their heart, only you can touch their heart and draw them to yourself. Lead them to come and talk to me or to anyone else afterwards so we can pray with them and answer their questions and help them. Thank you for the opportunity to give of our offerings to you, receive these funds and do much with them for the glory of Jesus.

And all God's people said, Amen.