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More Than Conquerors- Life in Hard Times By Graham Harrison

Romans 8:28-39 

WWCG

First of all, thank you very much for the warm welcome that you've given me.
I never thought I'd be coming to a Cardiff in New South Wales.
I knew there was a Cardiff by the sea in California, but I thought that was the end of the Cardiffs.
But I felt quite at home coming here. I noticed you've got a Swansea not too far away, which is the same at home.
It so happens that my father was born in the north of England.
He was brought up partly in Newcastle, and he once lived in Wall's End.
So, it's almost as if it's been absolutely planned perfectly for me to come here.
Well, I'd like you to turn with me in your Bibles, please, to the Epistle to the Romans and Chapter 8.
The Epistle to the Romans, Chapter 8, and I'll commence to read at verse 28 to the end of the chapter.
Romans, Chapter 8, and verse 28.
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.
For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son,
that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Moreover, whom He did predestinate, them He also called.
And whom He called, them He also justified.
And whom He justified, them He also glorified.
What shall we then say to these things?
If God be for us, who can be against us?
He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?
Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?
It is God that justifieth.
Who is He that condemneth?
It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh 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 Thy sake we are killed all the day long, we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that 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 creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
And may God bless to us that portion of His word. Amen.
I'd like you to turn back with me please to that portion of scripture that I read to you just a little while ago from the 8th chapter of the epistle to the Romans.
I think it would be true to say that this is probably one of the most well known and indeed one of the most well loved passages that are to be found anywhere in the word of God.
There's many a Christian who in times of trouble and distress has turned to this particular passage and found God speaking to them through it
and encouraging them and lifting them up in the trial or the tribulation that they've been passing through.
And most certainly it's a passage of great blessing and great encouragement to the people of God.
The title that I'm going to speak on really comes from the words that are there in the 37th verse.
More than conquerors, nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.
But what I want to do as I look at this passage with you this afternoon is to try and snap the background and indeed in the context of the whole of the passage
that I read to you because you will have noticed as I was reading it, you will have noticed that it's a passage in which the apostle Paul is arguing a case.
Now that I suppose is something that many people in the world find strange because if you would listen to some people they give you the impression that Christians never think,
indeed one of the marks that makes a person a Christian is that they are empty headed and they do not use any intelligence with which God has given them.
That is the sort of attitude that many people have to those who are Christians and indeed to the Christian faith itself.
Perhaps the simplest way in which to answer that is to give such a person one of these letters that you have in the New Testament say from Paul in particular or Peter or John
and tell them to read that and to understand that and they're going to need to think, they're going to need to sit down and to seek to use the mind that God has given them
if they're going to have any hope of understanding what it is that these men of God wrote and that these words that are here for us in the word of God.
And I want therefore very deliberately to call your attention this afternoon to this portion of scripture not simply because I suppose on any reckoning you could say this is one of the great literary gems of the ages
as we hear how the apostle expresses himself and indeed as it's translated in the quite magnificent English of this particular version that I read to you.
Even a person perhaps who isn't a Christian at all would have to say well there's something moving about that, there's something even in the very style that grips you.
It's as if there is something quite magnificent about that portion of scripture.
And I'm not surprised at that because you see what the apostle is doing here is not as it were simply to write to Christians in order to inform them in their minds that their understandings might be enlightened
but he's writing to men and women who he knows are in and are going to be in trouble.
I wonder if you've ever thought what it must have been like to have been a Christian almost 2,000 years ago there perhaps in the city of Rome where these Christians were situated.
You know people didn't clap their hands together when they learned that you'd become a Christian.
Perhaps if you've gone home from a gathering such as this and if you denounced your assembled family that as a result of what you'd heard you decided to become a Christian.
Well it might well be after they realized of course that this was not just some flash in the pan thing that you were giving expression to but something that you were determined and set upon.
It might well have been the case that you'd be thrown out from your home and especially when they discovered what were the implications of being a Christian.
They would have been very angry with you.
I was reading in the newspaper I think it was only last week of a man in Kuwait a Muslim man who's been converted and has become a Christian.
And perhaps you've read the same reports that I've read.
Somebody has instituted a court case against him because according to the Muslim Sharia law that man's life is now forfeit.
And I understand that there are some nations in the world that are trying to bring pressure to bear on the Kuwaiti government to prevent the man being executed.
But as I read those brief reports my mind went back across the centuries to the sort of situation that must have been so commonly found at the time of the New Testament.
Yes it was actually to result in many cases before a great number of years had passed it was to result in many Christians being put to death for their faith.
And so here is the apostle Paul and he's not as it were simply informing their minds.
He's doing something much more than that.
He does inform their mind but he's seeking to encourage them to strengthen them.
He's seeking to enable them as it were to make sense of what is already happening to them.
And perhaps of what from a human point of view could be described as the calamities that are about to come upon them.
And that really is what he's saying in the very heart of this passage.
Did you notice for example the way in which the reading began?
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God to them that are the called according to his purpose.
We know that all things work together for good to them that love God.
Now you don't need to say something like that to a person for whom everything in the garden as it were is sweet and easy.
They haven't got a trouble in their life.
Their family is all as it should be.
They've got a job.
They've got plenty of money.
Their health is excellent.
There doesn't seem to be a cloud on the horizon.
To such a person it doesn't seem to be much sense to make much sense to say to them you know all things are working together for good.
They say well that's obvious isn't it?
Look how everything is fitting into place.
Look at the provision, the remarkable provision that God has made for me.
Look at my health.
Look at my prosperity.
Look at the lovely family that I have.
Look at the very situation in which God has set me.
I can see very clearly that all things are working together for my good.
But then illness strikes and he loses his job.
And his family disintegrates.
And he discovers that because he's a Christian people who once were very kind to him.
They become cruel and antagonistic and it's as if the bottom is falling out of his world.
And then come to him and say and we know that all things work together for good to them that love God.
And probably what he'll be tempted to say will be something like this.
Well how do we know?
How can you explain to me that all things are working together for good to them that love God?
To them who are the called according to his purpose?
If that's the case how do you explain my health problem?
How do you explain the trouble in the family?
How do you explain all these calamities that suddenly seem to have clustered around me and are breaking in upon my life?
How do you account for those?
Where's the love of God in all this?
And he might be tempted almost to back off from you and to mock the statement that you were making.
But you see Paul is insistent.
We know that all things work together for good to them that love God.
And I like that statement.
I like it because it partly reminds me of something very very similar that the apostle Paul wrote.
You might say in an equally hopeless situation or addressing an equally hopeless situation.
I'm thinking of what he says in the fifth chapter of the second epistle to the Corinthians.
For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God and house not made with hands eternal in the heavens.
And there have been times when as a minister I've taken a funeral or I've stood by a graveside.
And it's been my privilege to read those words.
And the grieving family has distressed and perhaps distraught in measure because of the sorrow that has suddenly come upon them with the bereavement of a loved one.
Suddenly their hearts are lifted up because they're able to see as it were beyond the grave.
They're able to see beyond the death and the trouble that so cruelly has hit them.
They're able to see yes the Christian has a great hope.
We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle these frail mortal bodies of ours if they were dissolved we have a building of God and house not made with hands eternal in the heavens.
Now that's the same sort of statement that Paul makes when he writes to those Corinthian Christians that he makes when he writes to these Christians here in the church at Rome.
We know that all things work together for good to them that love God.
And of course what the apostle Paul is saying is something that I think was so typically true of these New Testament Christians.
There was something different about them.
They knew great trouble. They knew great trials and tribulations.
I've indicated to you that already when Paul was writing to them things were hard for them in Rome and before many years had passed there was terrible trouble going to break out upon them.
You know who was the emperor when Paul was writing this letter? Nero.
I mean you just have to mention the man's name and enough said. A cruel monster of a man.
And before very long he was going to take the Christians and use them as just a scapegoat in order to try and shift the blame from his own maladministration and fasten the blame upon the Christians.
He used them as flaming torches to illuminate the streets of Rome.
That's the sort of monster that he was. Now these were the people to whom Paul wrote these words.
We know that all things work together for good to them that love God.
I remember once some years ago it was Christmas Eve and it so happened that I was doing some pastoral visitation and I happened to call in at the home of one of our church members and the family was there.
And as it happened they were watching the television and on the television there was an old western, not a western film, but an old Hollywood film that was being shown.
Ben Hur. Perhaps some of you have seen it.
And the particular snippet that I came in for, and this is all that I remember, I've never seen the whole thing through, but this has always stuck in my mind ever since.
I think an actor by the name of Peter Ustinov was playing the part of Nero.
And here were these Christians being led into the arena, either to be thrown to the lions or torn apart by the gladiators.
I didn't stay to see the horror part of it.
But as they were coming in, I remember hearing what Nero in the film was saying with amazement.
But they're singing. And they were. They were singing hymns.
And for all that it was Hollywood I thought, well, this was authentic New Testament Christianity.
Because that's in effect what these early Christians did when they were thrown to the lions or when they were made sport of by the gladiators.
They were singing. They weren't standing back as it were and bemoaning their lot and saying, where is God, where is the love of God, why is this happening to us?
No. What Paul had written to them had become part of, you might say, the very fabric of their life and of their belief.
We know that all things work together for God, to them that love God, to them that are whoever called according to His purpose.
And you'll have noticed that as you read on in the passage, there are some pretty terrible things that are mentioned out there.
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 thy sake we are killed all the day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
That's a pretty horrific image, isn't it? A flock of sheep being led to the slaughterhouse. No, no hope for them.
Death inevitably before them. Well, that's how it is with us says Paul.
And then as he comes to the tremendous climax of the chapter, 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 creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
In other words, you see, here is the apostle putting into this phrase the all things. He's putting all the troubles, all the difficulties, all the trials, be they comparatively speaking, little trivial things that come to all of us one way or another day by day, sooner or later, or whether they're the big troubles of life, the tragedies, the bereavements, the calamities, the unspeakable misfortunes.
They're all part of the all things. And we know as Christians that all things work together for good to them that love God.
Now, that's something that is distinctive about the Christian. He's able to say this. He's able to say it, not just as it were, mouthing, pious platitudes, but he's able to say it, even perhaps when he can't explain what's happening to him.
When he isn't able to stand back, as it were, to his scoffing and mocking non-Christian friends who are pointing the finger not at him, but at his God and who through his circumstances are criticizing the God in whom he trusts, he's able to say, well, I don't understand it. I can't explain it to you.
One day I will be able to, but this I know. I know that all things work together for good to them that love God.
I remember some years ago somebody gave me the eight volumes of John Wesley's journal, and from time to time I dipped into them.
And I remember reading of his journal. It probably would have been from the year about 1736. He was on his way across the North Atlantic to what was then the colony of Georgia, now the state of Georgia in the United States of America, but was a British colony in those days.
And traveling on the same boat as he was traveling were a group of Moravian Christians, and there was a man leading them by the name of Spangenberg.
And as they were journeying across the North Atlantic, and remember that wasn't in one of these transatlantic ocean-going liners. It was probably in a boat, maybe not much longer than the room in which we're meeting.
A storm comes upon them, a terrible storm. They were tossed up and down. The sails were ripped to pieces. Some of the masts snapped in too.
And John Wesley, he was a clergyman. He wasn't yet a Christian, but he was a clergyman who was actually going out to be a missionary to the Red Indians, unconverted as he was.
John Wesley was terrified. He thought that his end had come. There he was in this terrible storm, but he never thought he'd ever be able to set foot on solid ground again.
And yet what amazed him were these Moravians, their women, their children. They were emigrating from Europe to make a new life in the Americas.
And they weren't afraid. In fact, they were gathered together, and they were singing praise to God and praying, singing psalms to God, and calling upon him their wives and their children.
And Wesley couldn't get over this. And then eventually the storm subsided and things returned more or less to normal. They were able to patch up the sails and do something about the masts and begin to make their way westward across the North Atlantic.
And Wesley spoke to Spangenberg, and he said to him in amazement, and I think I caught him accurately, pardon the grammar, but this is what Wesley said, Was you not afraid to die?
And Spangenberg said to him, No, he says, our women and children are not afraid to die.
And John Wesley, the clergyman, the would-be missionary, he was amazed. And he realized that these people, these ordinary simple people, they had something that at that time he didn't have, but that, thank God, by the grace of God, within about two years or so, was to become a reality in his own life.
A confidence in God that would have resulted in him being able to reiterate what it was that the Apostle Paul says here, for we know that all things work together for good to them that love God.
Now what I want to try and do with you this afternoon is to explain to you the basis upon which Paul was able to make a statement like that. What were his reasons for doing it?
That's why I read to you the whole of the passage, and that's why a little earlier in this sermon I indicated to you that here the apostle is reasoning.
It's not one of those passages of scripture, as it were, that consists of unrelated statements, each of them blessed and encouraging in themselves, but they're isolated, they're atomistic, they don't relate directly to one another.
Here he's conducting an argument, and I want to take you through his argument. If you'd ask Paul, Paul, why are you able to make that statement? How can you speak with such confidence?
Well, he would have said, it's simple, isn't it? It's obvious. We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
You want to know why and how?
Whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate, and whom to be conformed to the image of his son that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Moreover, whom he did predestinate, them he also called, and whom he called, them he also justified, and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
And do you see what he's doing? He's saying, I can make a statement like that because, yes, I'm in the hands of God. The Christian is in the hands of God.
And God, as it were, stretches from eternity to eternity. There's neither beginning nor end with him.
And he's telling us here that this God, this great God, this mighty God, this God is concerned about what the world would describe as inconsequential, unimportant, trivial little people that call themselves Christians.
God doesn't look upon them like that. Back in eternity, before ever time was, God had them in mind. God planned his purposes with them in mind.
God predestinated them. And then in time, when they were born and as they were living, he called them, he brought them, perhaps in a meeting like this,
under the sound of the Gospel and they heard of the Lord Jesus Christ and of the way of salvation in him. And they trusted in him as they heard that call of God.
And as they trusted, they were, to use the very language of the apostle, they were justified. God looked upon them as people who were righteous and without any flaw or any transgression in their record at all.
And then, and here you might say he jumps on even into the future, whom he justified, them he also glorified. And that's a word that belongs to heaven.
It tells the Christian what's going to happen to him when he dies and when he leaves this world and all the troubles and the afflictions of this world, he's transformed there into the very presence of God.
And he's glorified. And all that God has purposed for him becomes an eventual reality.
Now it says, Paul, that is our God. That's the God who in eternity set his love upon us. That's the God who in time is watching over us. That's the God, yes, who in the eternity to come is going to glorify us.
That's why I can say we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
You and I, he says, as Christians, we are in the hands of God. We're in the hands of a sovereign God.
You know, not many people today believe that God is sovereign. I can't understand that. I can't understand why people get on the one hand in whatever direction they want him to dance.
That's not the God of the Bible. That's not the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the God of whom Paul is speaking here.
The God of whom he's speaking is a sovereign God. The God who spoke and creation sprang into being.
The God who upholds all things by the word of his power. The God who one day will speak the word again and the heavens will depart like a scroll and time will be ended and eternity once more will begin.
That's the God that Paul is speaking of. A sovereign God. A God to whom you can commit yourself. A God who never loses control.
A God, yes, who looks down upon the world that to us it seems to be a world in chaos and rebellion and confusion and in one sense it is.
And yet our God is so great that he somehow superintends all that and he watches over it all and in it all his eye is upon his own dearly beloved children.
And he's working all things together for their good. And as his love and his grace and his peace has fastened upon them so they know themselves confidently to be in his hand.
And they know in fact that he's working all things together for their good. What he's actually doing and this is one of the reasons why sometimes he brings us to pass through what we would describe as the tragedies and the trials, the tribulations, the calamities of life.
What's he doing to us? Oh, he's conforming us to the image, to the likeness of his son. Did you notice how he puts it?
Whom he did foreknow he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
In other words, God is fitting his children for heaven, knocking the corners off us and sometimes it's hard for us to have that happen to us.
And the only way in which God is able to do it is perhaps by bringing us through those trials and bitter experiences.
But it's not that he doesn't love us. It's not that he's lost control. He's still the same sovereign God, the same loving Heavenly Father that he's ever been towards his children.
But what he's doing is to make us to be more and more conformed to the image of his son. And one day he's going to take us home to glory.
So that's Paul's argument basically. But what I want to do is what Paul does in the remainder of that chapter. I want to try and spell that out and work it out in a little more detail.
You see, having made that statement, this is what Paul goes on to say. He asks a question. What shall we then say to these things?
That's the great affirmation that he's made. We know that all things work together for good to them that love God and he's explained it.
So what are we to say about this? What shall we then say to these things?
Well, Paul says, I'll tell you what we can say. I'll put it in the form of, well, a question or an exclamation.
If God be for us, who can be against us? And perhaps I could paraphrase it like this.
God is for us. What does it matter who is against us? God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is for us.
Ah yes, says somebody, that's all very well. But prove to me that God is for us. If he is for us, if he is the God that you've described him as being,
I can well understand why you make the sort of statement that you are saying, but how do I know that God is for me?
Look at the trouble in my life. Look at the difficulties that I'm passing through. Look at my state of health. Look at my economic circumstances.
Look at all these difficulties in the family. Look at the burdens that I have to carry and that don't seem to be getting any lighter,
but indeed seem to be getting worse day by day. And you say God is for us? God is for me?
How can I, how can I rationally be expected to believe something like that? So Paul says alright, wait, listen, and I'll explain to you.
What shall we say then to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? I'll tell you how you can know that God is for you.
He that spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things?
That's the first step in his argument. I know that God is for us because God spared not his own son.
And obviously when Paul makes a statement like that there's one thing above everything else that he has in mind.
And I think I could say it without fear of contradiction that what the apostle has in mind is something that perhaps is one of the most misunderstood things that has ever happened in the history of this world.
The crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ. Oh, you say that's a strange thing to say, but I'd be prepared to argue my case.
There are many people when they speak of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, they don't understand it.
They mouth words that might indeed be scriptural words, but they don't understand what they're talking about when they speak of Jesus Christ and him crucified,
when they speak of the cross of Calvary and what happened when the Son of God died on that cross of Calvary.
If you ask them to explain it to you they'd probably say something like this, you know there was something infinitely noble about the death of Christ.
You think of the life that he lived, innocent, never hurting people, doing good wherever he went, preaching in that most moving and marvelous way, healing the sick, raising the dead even.
And then what did they do to him at the end? They put him on the cross and killed him. What a despicable thing to do.
But there he was, meek, uncomplaining. He died. Isn't it noble? Isn't it magnificent?
Doesn't it teach us how we're to face calamities? Doesn't it show us what we're to do when people turn against us?
There's to be this meekness and this quietness and this self-surrender and that's their understanding of the cross.
Or others might say, well you know what Jesus was don't you? He was a martyr. I take my hat off to him.
He stood by his principles right to the end. Yes, he could have raised up some sort of rabble to have had a revolution against the Romans,
but he didn't, but fair play. He went right to the cross. He stood by his principles even though it cost him his life.
He had opportunity to have recounted, but he didn't. I admire a man like that and then probably they'll quote you some Muslim fundamentalist who's done the same thing,
who's been willing to die as a martyr to his principles and they dragged the Son of God down to that level.
They don't understand the cross. And others might say, well what an example of suffering.
And they perhaps describe to you the excruciating agony that death by crucifixion involved the sufferer in.
And to think that such a good man went through all that. And that's how they speak of the cross.
And they don't understand what happened there upon the cross.
You see, had you been a spectator on that hill called Calvary outside Jerusalem almost 2,000 years ago when Jesus Christ the Son of God was being crucified?
There were things that you would have seen, but there was something that you would not have seen with the naked eye.
And that was far more important than the physical suffering that you would have observed with your naked eye. Far more important.
What was actually happening there on the cross was what Paul is speaking of here when speaking of God the Father.
He says, He spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all.
Why was Christ on the cross? Was it because He was a martyr? No.
Was it because He was a revolutionary and that's what they did to revolutionaries in those days? No.
Was it simply because He stood by His principles to the very end? No.
He was there to do the will of the Father that had sent Him into the world.
Do you remember how on the night before He was crucified, He was in the garden of Gethsemane and He was praying?
The most marvelous prayer that has ever been uttered on the face of this earth, asking His own Father if it were possible that this cup might pass from Him.
Nevertheless, He said, Not My will, but Thy will be done.
And it was the will of His Father that He go up to the cross. Why? Well, this is why He'd come from heaven to earth.
He'd come, yes, to live a perfect life, but in one sense that was only a preliminary, a preparation, a necessary preparation in order that what was going to happen on the cross might be effective.
He was there to die as a sacrifice for the sins of people like you and me.
And so when Paul says, He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?
What Paul is saying is, that's how we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, like I can prove it to you that God is for us.
God did not spare His own Son. God, and you could quote the Old Testament, the Book of Isaiah, the prophecy of Isaiah, chapter 53,
He hath laid upon Him the iniquity of us all. Do you remember that terrible cry of dereliction that came from the lips of the Lord Jesus Christ as He was hanging there on that cross on Calvary's hill?
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And you see what was happening there on the cross of Calvary was that God the Father, in a way that we'll never be able to understand, certainly this time, this side of glory,
God the Father turned away from His own Son and poured forth upon Him the righteous anger and punishment that should have fallen on people like you and me.
God spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all. That's how we know that God is for us.
But Paul doesn't stop there. He says there's another step in the argument, a consequence that comes on from that.
And again, he puts it in terms of another question. Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?
Who can bring an accusation against any of those who are encompassed in this sense, in the love of God, those that have been predestinated and called and justified and who will be glorified, who can bring any accusation against them?
Well, you might say anybody can. Your dearest friend, your relative that's closest to you, if he or she is honest about you, they'll be able to reel off a whole list of accusations quite justifiably against you.
He did this, she did that, they're guilty of this, that and the other. And you'd have to say yes, it's all true and I can add to the list as well.
And there's the devil, he comes and he says yes and haven't you done this? Haven't you failed to do that? Aren't you a guilty sinner in the sight of God?
And yet, here's Paul asking what seems to be this ridiculous question. Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?
Oh, says Paul, it is God that justifieth. God has reckoned you righteous. God has, through what Jesus Christ has done upon the cross and as you trusted in him, so God has justified you.
He's freed you of all accusation. It's as if when God looks upon you, he's looking upon one who is as innocent and as perfect as his own dearly beloved son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
You are as righteous as he is in God's sight. Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth.
So, there's something wonderful about this. It means that the Christian, yes, even when his own conscience comes and accuses him and condemns him, the Christian is able to say, ah, but I have a Savior.
I have a Savior who died in my place. I have a Savior who took my sins to his own body and bore them in his own body on the tree and suffered in my place bearing the punishment of God that should have come to me.
And because of that, I am justified in the sight of God. One of the hymns that sometimes we sing puts it like this. When Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within, upward I look and see him there who made an end of all my sin.
It is God that justifieth. And so the next question, who is he that condemneth? Who dares come against those that God has justified and condemned them?
And the apostles answer, well, it's really a rhetorical question, isn't it, that doesn't require an answer. Who is he that condemneth? Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
And when the Christian is perhaps overwhelmed with the sense of his guilt and his unworthiness, he looks away to Jesus. He realizes that his Savior is seated there in glory at God's right hand. He ever liveth to make intercession for us. Nothing is going to be able to prevent that intercession prevailing.
So there's no condemnation, says Paul, to those who are in Christ Jesus. And then he begins to come and to apply it all so simply and so powerfully. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
And then he lists these things. And I'm sorry sometimes, you know, that we read the Bible, some of us, so frequently. You don't understand why I put it like this.
But we can become somehow over familiar with the Bible and things that should grip us and move us and stagger us in an amazing way. It's as if we just take them for granted.
But put yourself back in the position of these Christians in the church in Rome. A lot of you are slaves. You've got nothing going for you. You were born into slavery. You will die in slavery.
Some of you have been thrown out of your families. You're on the scrap heap. You've lost your job and nobody's going to employ you because you're a Christian.
And you see, some of you Christians have already been taken off to the arena. And who knows but that monster Nero, he may turn on people like you before very long. And you'll be going the same way.
And then Paul writes this letter to you. And one Sunday as you gather there with the Christians in the church at Rome, for the very first time this letter is read out.
And eventually they come to what we call chapter 8 and to verse 35. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? And then he lists some of the possibilities.
Shall tribulations? And it's a word that means pressures. You know what it is to be under pressure, don't you? Sometimes in our life it's as if we're pressurized from every side.
Shall tribulation? Or distress? Or persecution? Or famine? Or nakedness? Or peril? Or sword?
And that doesn't sound to you in the church at Rome. It doesn't sound to you with some sort of glorious piece of literature. Yes, it's as if the apostle, he understands you.
He knows what you're going through and what's lying before you. The tribulation, the distress, the persecution, the famine, the nakedness, the peril, the sword.
And as he goes on to quote from the Old Testament, as it is written, for thy sake we are killed all the day long. They would say, yes, that's what life seems like sometime.
For the sake of our Savior, it's as if we're bearing the brunt of all this pressure and trouble from the world. We're accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
Ah, yes, but Paul hasn't finished. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
And that word, it's actually one word in the Greek, more than conquerors, it's a very interesting word. Let me illustrate it to you in this way.
I don't know if it's happened like this out in Australia, but I can remember when I was a boy, in the middle of a block of houses there'd very often be a shop.
Perhaps the front room of a house. It was a little shop and the people in that street and the streets round about it, they would go to that shop to buy their provisions.
But then progress came and you discover that there were some big firms that were opening up in the middle of town and they were selling things more cheaply.
And they had their central stores there. And so before very long those little shops, they came on hard time and gradually they began to shut down.
But then the shops in town began to be in trouble because this new phenomenon, the supermarket came on the scene.
And of course buying things in greater bulk, they were able to sell them a few more cheaply than some of the other town center stores and so those center stores had to close.
But that wasn't the end of the road. After the supermarkets came the hypermarkets.
Do you have them here on the outskirts of towns and people drive out in their cars and they fill up their fridges and their freezers at a much cheaper rate than ever?
They would have been able to have done in the old style shopping and you would never have thought of it in the days of the shop front or the shop that was in the front of the house.
It's a hypermarket. Now that's what Paul is saying. We are hyper conquerors. That's literally what he's saying.
In all these things we are hyper conquerors. We are more than conquerors.
Perhaps I can give you a silly little illustration. Years ago when I was in school I used to play rugby.
And playing for the school on one Saturday we had a fixture against another school that had not deigned to play us for over 30 years.
They were in Britain what was called a public school and apparently back in the 1920s there had been an unfortunate match between the two schools in which Tempest had got out of control.
So the result was that this public school would never play Cardiff High School again.
But the time came in 1953-54 when they deigned to play us and they came down to play us. We were preparing as we thought very well.
And we played them and we beat them. 67-0. It wasn't a victory. It was a massacre. You might say it was a hyper victory.
We weren't conquerors. We were more than conquerors. No, I've always thought of that when I come to this verse.
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
Yes, the Christian, he knows the tribulation. He knows the anguish that comes with it. He knows the distress. He knows the persecution.
Maybe he knows the famine, the nakedness, the peril, the sword. But somehow by the grace of God he's more than sufficient for these things because God is with him.
And he knows that in these troubles God is for him. He's able to say, and the world doesn't understand it, that the world stands back in amazement.
It can't account for it because people in the world when these same things might come to them, they just collapse. They become cynical and they shake their fists in the direction of God.
But they look at these Christians who are going through the same troubles and they see that the Christians are not reacting in that way.
The Christians are able to say, we know that all things work together for good to them that love God.
And so Paul says, for I am persuaded, and that's an intellectual word, isn't it? I'm convinced, the argument has convinced me, 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 creature
shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Now that's what a Christian is able to say.
My dear friend, as I preached to you this afternoon, really what I want to do is to ask you this simple question. Can you say that?
As I've been endeavoring inadequately, no doubt, to set before you the argument of the Apostle Paul in this tremendous passage of scripture, have you gone along with me?
Gone along with me not simply with your head but with your heart? Have you been able to say, well yes, I've known some of those things.
I've known the distresses. I've known when life was falling apart round about me. I've known when those who were nearest and dearest to me have let me down so badly and I never knew how I was going to make sense of life again.
But somehow God was with me. God was for me. All things are working together for my good because God loves me.
And I'm able to say therefore that come what may, this is always going to be true, God will never fail me. God will never abandon me.
Friend, if you can say that from your heart, you are what I would call and what I believe the Apostle Paul would call a Christian.
Somebody whose trust is in Jesus Christ. Somebody who has cast themselves upon the One, the Son of God, who died in their place upon the cross and suffered the penalty for their sin and who's risen to heaven.
And whoever lives making intercession for them. And you'd expect many or some or all of these things to come your way. But you believe that God's grace is sufficient.
For we know that all things work together for good to them that love God. Amen.
All is well to you by the Christian Library.org.au