Our Eternal Security and Assurance In Christ

Oh, wow. Thanks for right here. That's cool. Thank you. I was sitting over here because Nick and I were talking about our summer plans of risking death and going over Black Bear Pass. And I think we'll study that. It's tribulation, distress, peril, right? So hopefully we'll make it. But yeah, and Jean, you can drive. Yeah? She did a couple years ago, and she did just fine.

We lived, and that's the important thing. And Jim always says, it's always said in the past, that this Romans 8 is his favorite. I heard it from him and I'm like, well yeah. But after studying it, it is, Jim, it's kind of the greatest a chapter, probably in all of Romans, but maybe in all of Scripture. It's really good stuff. So we're continuing on this morning in Romans, chapter eight, and we begin with verse 35.

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 the day long. We are considered sheep to be slaughtered.

So short, but a lot here. And we're really gonna concentrate on verse 35 primarily this morning. So to review from last week, Paul is presenting as in a courtroom or as in a Greek forum, God's riches and provisions and salvation. And those run from Romans chapter one through Romans chapter eight. So we have the salvation as it goes to our past, the penalty for sin, the present, salvation from the present, aspects of sin, which is its power, and then, well, I only said hopefully, you can't say that, but for certain in the future, we'll be free from the presence of sin and the sin nature.

So he gives us, it says here, six who's questions. I think there are only five, so I corrected that on the slides that will go over the internet. I think it's only five, but you're welcome to check my work and see how many who's are in end of Romans chapter seven, end of Romans chapter eight. I say six, I think there's five. But Romans chapter eight is the capstone of all this before we go on to discuss Israel and its dispensation of Israel.

It's the assurance Grant, F.W. Grant says, that he will leave nothing undone. for our salvation. He has, who has not spared his own son, but delivered him over for us all. How will he not freely give us all things that Jim read?" And that is a very encouraging verse, as Jim said, verse 32. And since Christ, who is our all in all, secured not only for us complete salvation from sin, but deliverance from all things that would come between Him and us, and we are His chosen, His elect, His beloved, He's effectively removed any challenge from anyone who would challenge our standing with Him. So now this morning we ask, who shall separate us from the love of Christ? and grant again. It's a challenge that whomever or whatever step forward and be produced and to bring in a challenge. And I think last week we saw that there's no challenges to our security in Christ.

So no one steps forward, and last week as we saw in the Old Testament, Jeremiah and Isaiah, God says, for who is like me and who will summon me into court? And that's where we are, the courtroom. And who then is the shepherd who can stand against me? I know of none, I'm looking around and I don't see any.

A review from last week. So the assurance of this eternal security we have in Christ is what we find out today in verses 35 and 36. And Romans 8, chapter 8 ends with Christ who is able to save us to the utmost. and from Hebrews chapter seven. And I was thinking of that Oswald Chamber Book, My Utmost for His Highest, and it should be His Utmost for My Highest is what that book should be titled. So here we are in verse 35. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Is there any who? This is the final challenge of these prosecutorial objections, and we find that no one is able to challenge God's sovereignty and his divine plan. Everything falls short.

Now, the word separate is horizo, and it's to divide, to part, to put asunder, to separate oneself from, or to depart. Or divorce is a secondary meaning for separate, chorizo. And if you're hungry for chorizo burritos right now, you're right. I say that because every, when I'm going on Zoom, I always go to the market and get a chorizo burrito. Now I won't be able to say it correctly. Burrito. And it just, I saw that word and I was like, huh. So I was thinking, no one is able to chorizo me from my chorizo burritos. Which is good stuff.

Whereas death, I was thinking, death means separation, but does separation mean death? And if you look at it, it does not. Death is thanatos. Now, eternal death, eternal separation from Christ is death, right? But in this aspect, separation is just separation and not necessarily death yet until the eternity coming up.

So the answer up front is no one is able to separate us from Christ's love. And this is, chorizo, chorizo, now substituting the meat for the Greek word, but chorizo is dividing, parting us from Christ in relationship Be it time space or nearness from Christ's love and his personal presence with us And he owns us we will never be separated from his ownership Because he bought us at the cross. We're redeemed and that will never be challenged in any way and So we go on now and we look at what is this love of Christ, and you all know what the word is.

It's agape, or agape, and I just have it in a statement here. We are objects of God's unique divinely sourced love, and that's a definition of its divinely source, it's unique. It's once for all with abiding permanence. If you look at the Greek word for agape, which is agapeo, it can be in the perfect tense, meaning it has abiding results. Or it can be in the present tense. It's here and now and going on.

Agape love is a love that highly values its object, a love that can only be known from the actions it prompts. So if you have a mismatch of your actions to agape love, it might not be agape love. It's God's love. It's part of God's and Christ's intrinsic essence.

It's who and what he is. He is holy, righteous, sovereign. He's love. He's immutable, infinite in power, presence, and knowledge. God is spirit and God is transcendent. So it's part of who and what he is intrinsically. Christ's love is an act of love, present tense, and can never be complacent.

And as we looked at this morning in Roger class, 1 Corinthians 1, or 13, chapter 13, expresses that quite nicely. And moreover than we being in Christ's love, we're kept for Christ's love. Tereo is the word for kept. It's to be guarded very, very carefully and to be preserved. King James has in Jude 1, we are beloved of God and we are preserved in Christ Jesus or kept from Christ Jesus. So it's a keeping love as well. Very secure. From 1 John 4, 19, we love, because he first loved us, and that's Agapeo. And from Coates, I love what he says about love so much, I had to reproduce it here.

So he says, Jesus came from God into a world of sin and man's ruin, where Satan had triumphed. And it was a place of God's grief and dishonor, the earth was. And he has secured everything for God at the cross, so that he could go back to God, resurrected, as the one who has removed every hindrance to the full display and triumph of this agape love, this divine love. And he continues, let us seek to enter into what death was for God and into the wondrous blessings of this agape love for which it opens the way according to the counsel and purpose of the heart of God.

So he goes on, Coates goes on to look at, we're excited about God loves us, 1 John, or John 3.16, but he's looking at it from a different angle here, and he quotes John chapter 10.

I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. And I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. And no one will snatch them out of my hand." And notice these words, how they line up with our verse for today, verse 35. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? No one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all. Any who, right? Any who of them. And no one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand. I and the Father are one.

So Coates makes this point that we're excited about being secure from our perspective. It's a great blessing for us, but from God's from divine viewpoint, the Good Shepherd laid down his life for the sheep, that he might have the joy of securing them for himself and for the Father. From Christ's side, the Father and Son wanted to keep the sheep for themselves. And the death of Christ is the righteous title, the warranty deed, if you will, of divine love to take possession. and to keep possession of them."

So in this there's no home title fraud. You might see commercials for that. That will never happen with Christ's love. The father and son wanted a company. and this is really important, for whom they might introduce to their circle of divine love with a nature suitable to that circle and capable of appreciating and responding to it. See, we can't appreciate or respond to it if we don't have Christ's nature in us if we're not born again and if we don't have a new nature to enjoy this and I'm thinking about what it will be like to be in this love for eternity in Christ and in God and never to leave and I can't quite make it out yet, but when we're there, we're gonna know exactly what it is, even though it's sort of a shadow right now. And Coach will have more to say on that in another quote, which is really wonderful this morning. So the right to have such a company has been secured to God by Jesus and none of those who compose it, that's us, will ever be lost. That keeping love, that toretto of the love.

So we go on to part B of Romans 8.35.

Tribulation, distress, persecution, shall, any of these things, famine, nakedness, peril, or sword, separate us from the love of Christ. And I call them calamities. They're all nouns. And they're all things. And if you notice, it's strange, and I didn't quite figure this out, but he says, who will separate us from the love of Christ? But then he gives the answer as, they're a bunch of what's, right? They're not who's, they're things, they're nouns.

So we have thlipsis, which is tribulation, and that's a pressing together, or an oppression, an affliction, distress, the straits, S-T-R-A-I-T-S, getting narrower and narrower, and the vice, you're in a vice, and that vice is cranking. That's what thlipsis means, tribulation.

Related to that is distress, or stenochoria, a narrowness of place. And notice the similarity between these two things. It's a narrowing of the place. It's dire calamity. It's extreme affliction. Then we have persecution, which is diogmos, from diogo.

That's the verb. And it means to pursue. And you can pursue something positively or with noble intentions, like when I pursued Jean. That was noble intentions. But there can be a situation where someone pursues negatively, like someone's chasing you. And they have hostile intent to harass or trouble you and that's the other side of this this Dioco this persecution So it's narrowing and it's pursuing and it's it's really bad in this list Lemos is famine lack of food.

That's that's easy Nakedness is Goumnotes, is that how you say that? Goumnotes. And if you see gymnasium in there, you're correct, because back in the Greek times, they would do those Olympic games naked, for whatever reason. So, I think that goes to gymnasium, and in Greek it means nudist. So that's what that is. Oh and back then in this time They would use nakedness as a as a persecution.

So I guess they'd strip you down and Have you wander through the streets or something? very bad stuff Kind do not is peril. That's danger it looks inviting has kind in it and And it's our kindergarten, and you think, oh, that's good stuff. But it's danger. So stay away from kindunas, peril. Makaria is a sword, or a large sword, that can cut up animals. And I think it leads to our English word machete, I would venture to guess. So these are all things that could, and they're nouns, that could separate us from the love of Christ.

So next week, compare to the verses for next week and we have, what else? We have death, life, angels, principalities, things present or things to come, powers or height or depth or any other created thing. Do you see the difference in the two lists? The difference are, and if I'm wrong you can correct me next week, one's earthly, the verses today, and then up there, angels, principalities, things to come, those are spiritual things, things that we don't see and that there's angelic hosts that can separate us. demons, all those powers that Paul's going to talk about in verses 38 and 39 is the way I read it. It's heavenly versus earthly.

So I hope I'm correct on that. You'll get the correction from Mike next week if I'm wrong. So these calamities, and I'll just put these up here, they're from Paul's resume, is the point of this point, from 2 Corinthians chapter four, from 1 Corinthians chapter four, and from 2 Corinthians chapter 11.

And I said, oh, these are just things, tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, and sword, that Paul, experienced during his ministries, his three missionary journeys. So you see in 2 Corinthians 4, he was afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed, but not despairing, persecuted, but not forsaken, struck down, but not destroyed, always caring about the dying of the Lord Jesus, as Jim mentioned that verse. Then in 1 Corinthians 4, To this present hour we are both hungry and thirsty, there's limos, and are poorly clothed, there's gumnites, we're roughly treated, there's beaten, homelessness, we experienced that, toil, we were reviled, And we are persecuted, there sleeps us, yet we endure. And then the major resume that Paul has is this passage from 2 Corinthians 11, verses 23-28. And he's giving his defense of himself versus the better-looking, better-dressed other preachers that are out there that are wooing the Corinthians away from the true gospel. And he says, I speak as if insane. I'm more so.

In far more labors, in far more imprisonments, Beaten times without numbers, often in danger of death. Five times I received from the Jews 39 lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. A night and day I have spent in the deep.

I have been on frequent journeys in dangers from rivers, dangers from robbers, and here's how it really lines up with Romans 8.35, dangers from my countrymen, dangers from Gentiles, dangers in the cities, in the wilderness, dangers at sea, dangers among false brethren. I've been in labor and hardship, through sleepless nights, in hunger and thirst, there's limos again, often without food, limos.

In cold and exposure, there's gumnotes. Apart from such eternal things, there's daily pressure on me out of concern for all the churches, and that daily pressure, that would be, that leapsis, that closing in on Paul. So he's been there, and that's his resume. And he uses, in verse 35, he uses the B section here as a dramatic way to show, he answers his rhetorical question, who will separate us from the love of Christ, with another rhetorical question. Will peril tribulation distress persecution famine nakedness or peril or sword?

That's another rhetorical question to answer his own rhetorical question And these are all things on this earthly plane that in theory could cause Christ to lose sight of us or to reject us in theory, to turn his back on us, to drop us out of his hand. But does that ever happen? No, it never happens from God's perspective, from his perspective never, but sometimes We think it happens because our viewpoint is subjective and it can be based on human viewpoint and it's clouded by human viewpoint in the sin nature. Hal Malloy says, God seems slow to respond or totally indifferent to our needs when they are most acute.

Trials and tribulation require persistent faith. And here's this quote by F.W. Grant, and I'll... I won't read it verbatim because it's written in that 19th century, very sparse, beautiful way. You have to read it many times. Maybe you don't, but I had to read it many times to really understand it.

But what he's saying that faith is in things unseen, and faith makes those unthings reality. that faith is the unseen things that are reality, that are God's things. But those to us seem to have no reality, because we can't see them. Not that they don't have foundations in the Bible, facts, but they're too beyond our natural sight. And since they're spiritual things, To our carnal mind they seem to be dreams because we can't see them. We can't touch them And I really like this this verse about how he uses Hebrews 11 1 To describe what faith is Faith is in things unseen making that substantial or reality, that's the word hupostasis, which to mere sight and sense have no reality. And it just, to our minds right now, it seems to be dreams. But it is reality. The spiritual things are the real reality down here. Yeah, they're reality, but they're gonna pass away into eternity, aren't they?

Grant says again, Christ, though he seems absent, is superintending the all things, from Romans 8.28, in a love which mixes the whole cup for us, and every ingredient is a blessing. I like that quote.

So on to Romans 8.36, where he quotes Psalm 44. And I didn't quite know why he breaks into a quote of a Psalm. But after really looking at it and turning it over in my mind, I think I know why. He's saying that Psalm 44, and I'll just kind of outline Psalm 44, and we won't read it, it's quite long. But Psalm 44 begins with God extending to Israel in the old days, past deliverances and victories.

And the psalmist says, I will not trust in my bow, nor will my sword save me. Faith is in his divine, divine sufficiency for Israel. Then what comes in this trial, tribulation, defeat, doom upon doom and reproach and more defeat. You know Israel sort of wanders off. And the psalmist says, thou has given me up as sheep to be meat scattered among the nations. And that's what God always does. He establishes Israel and they're secure in their land and then they fall away and he scatters them among the nations. So that's what Psalm 44 is talking about. Israel knows their divine favor. They know their covenants, the Abrahamic covenants, and they're great and they're positive.

But what they see around them, their present circumstances, thoroughly are in contrast with this claim of divine favor from the covenants. So they're crushed, Psalm 44 says, in the place of prowling jackals. They're covered with the face of the shadow of death, similar to Psalm 23. Yet they cling to God in their hearts, and they have not turned to any strange gods. So they remain at their core faithful, and they're contrite now.

And in their contriteness, Psalm 45, I believe it's verse 22. Here's the verse from Romans 8, 36. We are being put to death all day long. We are considered as sheep for the slaughter, is the quote. So finally, the psalm ends with arise, help, redeem us for mercy's sake.

And then what follows is Psalm 45. And Psalm 45 is the Messiah King, a one who is greater, who is fairer than all the sons of men, comes to the rescue. And he establishes the millennial kingdom in power and might. And now Israel is placed in the millennial kingdom prophecy. And there it is, there's the despair and then there's the rescue of Psalm 44.

And I noticed that In Romans, Romans 7.24, Paul says, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death? And it's very similar to Romans 7, to the despair of Psalm 44.

And then the answer comes in Romans 7.25, thanks be to God, Jesus Christ, my Lord, rescues me, delivers me. He arrives, just like he arrives in Psalm 45, for the Israelites, for the old economy, for the Old Testament saints. So what Paul is doing here is he's contrasting Old Testament saints with heavenly saints, that's us.

And what I didn't do, I figured this out at 2 a.m. last night, is this message is quite dire and kind of a Debbie Downer, actually, and I thought, Well, trials are supposed to be good. Even if we're put to death all the day long and we're considered to be sheep, to be slaughtered, that's for our growth and that's for our conforming to the image of Christ.

And those are positive things. But I said, oh boy, this is quite a negative message. So Mike is going to make it positive next week and you'll see how it blends all together. That's his task. And in Roger's class today we're talking about trials and tribulations and the purpose of those is to conform us to it and to behold him and when you get a trial really you should be you should be thanking God. We don't always do that, as Roger said. So anyway, we're gonna learn the positive side of trials, I'm sure, next week. So don't... Try and get through the week without getting too depressed.

So we learn that God is immutable. He never changes. So that which he does for his earthly people, Israel, is what he does for us. He puts us through trials, tribulations, that fleets us, that pressure, and then, for them, deliverance, but with us, I would say we just, we always have his love, and we should always be in that love. So this verse 36 is a type, or a prophetic example for us, coming from Israel. We're his heavenly company. To trust in the spiritual deliverance of anything and anyone, any who, would ever harm or danger us. And so we can trust him to make all bad things, all stressful things, all tragic things.

And even, I think, things that are self-induced, quite honestly, any calamity, dangers, toils, and snares, to work together as in a bowl, to make a Michelin-ranked five-star souffle is what I have. I just came up with that. Then I looked up Michelin rankings and they only go to three. But I said, three sounds, so I made it five star. Because I think hotels are up to five stars now, so I had to take some creative liberty there.

So even our spiritual opponents, will be our part of the things that he'll overcome for us. He is always, and if he is faithful to keep his covenant with Israel, how much more is he able to keep and preserve to Toretto, his heavenly company, that's us, in the operation of pure grace? Because after all, Israel is gonna see quite literally, more Psalm 44 tribulation in the tribulation. They're gonna see all that stuff again. But we have the blessing of being taken out of that. And when they go through the tribulation, we're raptured. We're not gonna go through that.

And that's a tremendous blessing. So that's a bit of good news at the end of the message today that you can take home and rest upon this week. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you that. You're a God who is always for us and we are in your love and we're in the palm of Christ's hand. And not only that, we have the double security of being in your hand. And no one will ever take us away from that or molest our position we have in you. And we just thank you for your death on the cross, your burial, your resurrection, and that's secured all these wonderful salvation truths we learn about in Romans 8. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.