SCRIPTURE: Romans 8:31-39 (ESV)
DATE: 4-18-21
As always it’s a joy to be with all of you this weekend at Gateway Church. And the one thing I always want you to know — and this is true if you’re worshiping with us in person at our North Main campus or are joining us online — the one thing I want you to know is that God loves you and that I love you too.
SERIES INTRODUCTION
We’re continuing in our series in the eighth chapter of the book of Romans today. We’re nearing the end of our two year journey through this chapter. A chapter — as we’ve seen — that’s full of great promises and truths of our faith. So if life is troubling you and you need some hope and assurance — this chapter is a great place to turn to. So let’s turn to our passage for today.
ANNOUNCE THE TEXT
If you have your Bible please turn with me to Romans chapter 8. We’ll be looking at verses 31-39. And as I mentioned last week, we’re going to be in these final nine verses for six weeks.
We’re in Romans chapter 8. Beginning in verse 31.
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? 33 Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died — more than that, who was raised — who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31-39 ESV)
SERMON INTRODUCTION
Have you ever lost something of value and put out a reward for it? Now — most of us probably haven’t — but we’ve heard about folks who have. For example, earlier this year you most likely heard that two of Lady Gaga’s dogs were stolen. They were stolen by armed men who actually shot her dog walker — who survived — and Lady Gaga called him a hero. She then put out a $500,000 reward for the return of her dogs. And — for all of you concerned dog lovers — her dogs were eventually returned.
But what about that reward? Five hundred thousand dollars. What does that tell you about her love for her dogs? Their value to her?
“Well, that’s Lady Gaga,” you might be thinking. “Regular folks don’t do that.” Well a San Francisco woman’s dog was stolen and she stopped at nothing to find her dog. She offered a $7,000 reward for her dog’s return. She hired a plane to fly a banner over the city to spread the word. She handed out thousands of flyers. She set up a GoFundMe account to raise money for the reward. And — as if all that’s not enough — she even set up a Tinder profile for her dog in hopes that the dating app might help her find her dog. Obviously, she highly valued her dog.
But — now — let’s change the question. We’ve seen how far we’ll go to get something returned to us that we value, but now let’s look at this from a different angle. What’s the best — or most valuable — thing you’ve ever given away?
When I think of stuff that’s usually donated — or given away — I don’t think of the best or most valuable stuff, do you? The stores we donate to are called secondhand stores for a reason, right?
There are some things we highly value — thus we’ll put out a costly reward for its return. Then there are other things we once valued, but don’t any longer — so we donate it. And still there are other things, we once valued — don’t any longer — so we throw it out. But have you ever given away or donated the equivalent of something that you’d have put out a “reward for its return if it was lost or stolen” — have you ever given something highly valued away?
Now — for each of us — the cost of what we value is different. For example, my wife and I had a proud parent moment recently. Our oldest son, Wesley, works at Goodwill. Recently, his boss texted him a letter that a customer had mailed to the store and Wes was told to make sure your mom and dad read it.
A lady’s husband had dropped her off at Goodwill — they’re not from Findlay — and the husband was going to some other store in town — not within walking distance — while she shopped at Goodwill. And he ended up locking his keys in the car. So here they are — not in their hometown — at separate stores — with the car locked and the keys on the inside. Now she had a set of keys in her purse but — they’re not together — so they’re in quite the situation.
Well she asks Wesley for some information about a cab, Uber, whatever — and he gets her the information and ends up calling her a cab. The cost of the cab ride was going to be $10. But — to add a bit more drama to her day — she’d never taken a cab before, she wasn’t sure how payment worked…and she only had a large bill in her purse. So she was pretty nervous about the whole situation.
Well Wesley told her to wait and he’d be right back. As her letter tells the story, “He walked all the way across the store and went in the back area. When he came back he walked up to me and gave me $15. It brought tears to my eyes…I asked him his name and told him I would repay him very soon. He said, ‘Oh no, you don’t need to, this stuff happens.’ He’s a young man and I know how dear that much money was to him. I want to highly commend his integrity, generosity, and compassion. It was very welcomed and appreciated.”
So why did I tell that story? To brag on my son — well — not only to brag on my son. I don’t want us to get caught up in comparing five hundred thousand dollars to fifteen dollars.
Jesus once praised a woman for giving the equivalent of a couple of pennies in the offering because it was all she had while others — who gave a lot more than her — weren’t demonstrating the same type of generosity.
But I bring all of this up because — today — we’re going to see Paul ask another rhetorical question that’s the exclamation point of the question he asked us last week. The question he asked us last week was, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” And Paul answers his question with another question found in verse thirty-two.
He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:32 ESV)
So Paul answers his question “If God is for us, who can be against us” by making sure that we understand that this God — who is for us — is so for us that he gave his Son as proof — as evidence — that he is for us.
And Paul’s question to us now — is this: How will God — who gave up Jesus for us — how will he not also give us all things? Which brings me back to our earlier question: What’s the most valuable thing you’ve ever given away?
I ask — because — I want us to be careful to not have in mind those typical things we drop off at Goodwill. Sure — it’s not worth throwing out — but it’s also not worth keeping. I want this kind of thinking to be far removed from our minds and hearts when Paul asks us the question, “If God gave us Jesus, how will he not also give us all things?” For God gave us his very best — in giving us Christ. God didn’t spare what he valued most — he gave what he valued most. Five hundred thousand dollars doesn’t even begin to compare to the value of Christ.
And my hope is that as we begin to realize what this means — that God gave us what he values most — that we’ll more clearly see the character of God. For in his giving of Jesus we see his love. We see his kindness and mercy. We see his generosity.
So let’s look more closely at Paul’s question. We’ll do so by reflecting on the death of Christ and what it means that God is the giver of all things.
THE DEATH OF CHRIST
Let’s begin with the death of Christ. Paul writes, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all…” (Romans 8:32a ESV)
Now imagine what our response would’ve been if Paul had just asked, “Will God not graciously give us all things?” Think of how you’d have responded if Paul hadn’t included the part about God giving us Jesus. As one person has said, “Well, we need many things, some of which are difficult and demanding. How can we possibly be sure that God will supply what we need?” This is inevitably what we would’ve thought if Paul had left out the great truth that God gave us Jesus.
Well — good news for us — Paul didn’t just ask, “Will God not graciously give us all things.” He first made sure to highlight what God has already given us — Jesus Christ. And this makes the obvious answer — to Paul’s rhetorical question — “Of course God will supply all of our needs — surely he will graciously give us all things. Why? Because he’s given us his Son.”
What Paul’s doing is a fairly common argument where you go from something greater to something lesser — he starts with something more valuable and goes to something less valuable. Paul’s wanting to prove to us the generosity of God and he could’ve started with something seemingly small and insignificant — say like the breath you just inhaled and exhaled.
“If God just gave you that breath, why don’t you trust that he’ll give you all that you need?” But you’d probably be like, “But that was just a breath. I do like sixteen of those a minute every minute of my life.” Pointing to a breath isn’t a very compelling argument.
So — instead of starting with something seemingly insignificant — Paul starts with the greatest act of generosity that God could ever do for us — he starts with God sending Jesus to live and die for us — and with his resurrection — defeat our enemies of Satan, sin, death, and Hell. God did all of this in giving Jesus on our behalf!
So Paul starts with the greatest act of generosity God could ever do for us and then he says, “If God’s already done the greatest act of generosity he could possibly do for you — he gave you what he valued most in the giving of his Son — why would you have any reason to doubt God giving you something less valuable than his Son?”
Or — to put it a different way — as someone has said, “If God is willing to hand over his beloved Son (a hard thing), he must surely be willing to give us all things (an easy thing).
But — you may wonder — “Why does Christ’s death have to be the proof that God loves us and will graciously give us all things? Couldn’t some other gift have communicated his love and commitment to us?” It’s a legitimate question to consider as there are many ways to demonstrate love. So why is the giving of Jesus — and particularly the death of Jesus — the greatest expression of God’s love for us? Because the death of Christ not only demonstrates God’s love for us, but Christ’s death was necessary for us to be made right with God because of our sin. Only a perfect, sinless death could atone for our sin against God.
So not only does Christ’s death show us the extent of God’s love for us — it’s also the means by which God reconciles us sinners to himself. Christ’s death is the means by which we escape the punishment we deserve for our sins — for Christ took our punishment upon himself on the cross. But the cross isn’t just a symbol of God’s wrath and hatred towards sin — it’s also a sign of his love for those who would be saved through the death of his Son.
For — on the cross — we don’t just have God telling us he loves us — we have God showing us he loves us. And how does he love us?
He gave up what was most valuable to him — his Son — so that our sin would be paid for in full and we would be brought back into a right relationship with him.
As one writer has said, “Such is the character of the love of our great God and King. It spares no expense, and it leaves no detail unattended to.” God’s love for us spared no expense — he didn’t spare what he valued most — for his Son is most valuable to him — he gave up what he valued most — Jesus — in love for us.
Specifically — though — what did Christ’s death accomplish for us? Get ready to dive deep into some theologically wonderful truths.
Christ’s death accomplished our expiation — the removal of our guilt and sin. On the cross, Christ removed our guilt and sin. As John the Baptist said about Jesus, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29 NLT)
Christ’s death accomplished our propitiation — the removal of God’s wrath. On the cross — as he died in our place — Christ removed the wrath of God we rightly deserved for our sin and rebellion. But — and this is jaw dropping — not only did Christ remove God’s wrath from us, but — in dying for us — he replaced God’s wrath with God’s favor. Jesus only knew God’s favor since before time began — but in love — he experienced God’s wrath for us — and now we’re covered and surrounded by the favor of God. The apostle Paul writes, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.” (Romans 3:23-25a ESV)
And John tells us, “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (1 John 4:9-10 ESV)
Christ’s death accomplished our reconciliation — this is the removal of our separation from God. Our sin made us unholy. And God — in being holy — cannot be in the presence of sin and unholiness. Thus we were in need of reconciliation. And “while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son…” (Romans 5:10b ESV)
Christ’s death accomplished our redemption — this is our being set free from our enslavement to sin. We’ve been delivered from our captivity to sin through the death of Christ.
Paul writes, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us — for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree” — 14 so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.” (Galatians 3:13-14 ESV)
Notice — again — how it’s not just the removal of the curse — that we’ve been given through the death of Christ — we’ve also been given the blessing of Abraham and the promise of the Spirit.
Finally, Christ’s death accomplished our victory of the powers of darkness. Christ defeated Satan on the cross. Paul tells us, “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.” (Colossians 2:13-15 ESV)
Christ accomplished all of this — on our behalf — on the cross — by dying in our place as our substitute. Though we deserve to die — to pay the penalty for our sins in Hell forever — Christ paid the penalty on our behalf. If anyone ever asks you, “Why was it necessary for Christ..to die?” A simple response is, “Christ died willingly in our place to deliver us from the power and penalty of sin and [to] bring us back to God.”
And this is just a small taste of some of the big things Christ accomplished when he died on the cross on our behalf.
As someone has said, “If you just get the big things straightened out, you will have what you need in the little things. What everyone in the world is obsessed with, God makes a distant second. He’ll give you what you need to live on if you need him in order to live.” Once you realize what you’ve been given — in God giving you his Son — you’ll see that you’ve already been given what God values most.
GOD THE GIVER OF ALL THINGS
Which leads us to God — who is the giver — and the “all things” he has guaranteed to give us. Back to verse thirty-two. “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32 ESV)
Let’s talk about our God who is a wonderfully generous giver.
From the very beginning of time, being a generous giver has been a characteristic we see of God.
On the sixth day of creation — to Adam and Eve — “God said, “Look! I have given you every seed-bearing plant throughout the earth and all the fruit trees for your food. 30 And I have given every green plant as food for all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, and the small animals that scurry along the ground — everything that has life.” And that is what happened.” (Genesis 1:29a-30 NLT)
God — at the end of his creating — tells Adam and Eve, “All that I have created I give to you. Be good stewards of my creation. Take care of it. It is yours.” How unbelievably generous of God, right?
But you know what happens two chapters later, don’t you? Sin enters the world because Adam and Eve were not content with the “all things” that God had given to them. Sometimes, God gives us it all — and it’s not enough. Which should cause us to pause when we start to blame God for not giving us something we think we need or deserve.
Twice — the younger brother of Jesus — writes about the generosity of God. James writes, “If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking.” (James 1:5 NLT)
If you lack wisdom — James says — ask God — who is generous — and he will give you the wisdom you need.
Later James tells us this. “Whatever is good and perfect is a gift coming down to us from God our Father, who created all the lights in the heavens. He never changes or casts a shifting shadow. 18 He chose to give birth to us by giving us his true word. And we, out of all creation, became his prized possession.” (James 1:17-18 NLT)
James says that everything that’s good and perfect is a gift from God — including — our spiritual birth — what theologians call our regeneration — being born again. And this comes from another generous gift from God to us — his true Word — this book — the Bible.
Every good gift is from God and — his Word to us — is at the top of the list of good things he’s given us. How do you view this book? Is it a gift from God you treasure or — like Adam and Eve — are you still waiting for a better gift from God to come along? A preacher from centuries ago once said, “God’s heart, not mine, is the measure of his giving; not my capacity to receive, but his capacity to give.” We must be careful when we place value on God’s gifts to us. He determines the value of the gifts. Our role is to joyfully receive them while knowing that Jesus is the most valued gift from God we’ll ever be given.
So the source of all gifts is God. And — this makes sense — when we realize that God owns all the resources in his creation — physical resources, spiritual resources — God owns it all and thus he’s free to be generous with it all.
In the book of Exodus, God says, “for all the earth belongs to me.” (Exodus 19:5b NLT)
Or take David’s words of praise. “O Lord, the God of our ancestor Israel, may you be praised forever and ever! 11 Yours, O Lord, is the greatness, the power, the glory, the victory, and the majesty. Everything in the heavens and on earth is yours, O Lord, and this is your kingdom. We adore you as the one who is over all things. 12 Wealth and honor come from you alone, for you rule over everything. Power and might are in your hand, and at your discretion people are made great and given strength.” (1 Chronicles 29:10b-12 NLT)
Or his opening words in Psalm 24. “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to him.” (Psalm 24:1 NLT)
And since “all the earth belongs to him” — “everything in the heavens and on the earth” — and because “he rules over everything” — God has the right to give away “all things” at his discretion.
Now — the tension for us — is that our faith tells us that nothing can compare to what God has given to us in Christ. As Christians — we believe that Christ is God’s most highly valued gift. We say yes and amen.
But then — if we’re honest — we kind of get a bit “ho hum” about the death of Christ — and all that it accomplished — which we looked at earlier — and get a little to focused on things we feel like we’re missing out on — things that belong to God — and yet we start to feel as if God’s being a bit stingy with these other things — these gifts we want and desire. Things that — even when God gives them to us — they can end up feeling like something less than what we were hoping for them to be.
So why does this happen? Because we’re looking to get more out of these other gifts than we are in the gift of his Son.
And — the somewhat hard biblical truth is — I say hard — but it should also comfort us — but the biblical truth is: If God hasn’t given us something — one of these “all things” gifts — well — the reason we haven’t been given the gift is because we don’t need it. And I want to say again — I know that this can be terribly hard because many of these “all things” gifts we desire aren’t bad things. Maybe it’s the healing of someone you love. Or a job. Or for a spouse. Or to get pregnant.
So please don’t hear me saying that these desires are wicked or evil. But if we remember that God did not spare his Son for us — God didn’t hold back his greatest gift to us — he didn’t hold back his most valued treasure — then surely we can trust that — if he’s given us his Son — he’s already given us the only gift we need. Surely we can trust that God is good and generous and kind — and his goodness and generosity and kindness is just as present in what he doesn’t give us as it is in what he has given us in Christ.
CONCLUSION
But even more than thinking of specific gifts — I think — the “all things” is meant to bring us back to verse 28 of this chapter. “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28 ESV)
The “all things” — that God graciously gives to us — more than specific gifts — is his sovereign work in our lives. The great promise that — everything in our life is being used by God for one purpose — for our good.
This is an incredibly gracious gift to us from God. A gift to us — made possible — through the death of his Son. For Christ’s death is the means by which all things are working together for the eternal good of the people of God.
The death of Christ is proof of God’s generosity towards his people. There’s no greater or more valuable gift God could’ve given you or me than his Son. Have you received this gift — the most extravagant gift — God will ever offer to you? And if you have received the gift of Christ, always remember that, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” Let’s pray.
PRAYER
Heavenly Father, thank you for giving us what you value most in giving us your Son. Father, we ask for your forgiveness for when we’ve downplayed the worth of the gift of Christ and have longed for other — less valuable — gifts.
Jesus, thank you for not sparing your life — but giving your life for our sake. We’ve seen some of the blessings that are ours through your death.
We’ve been cleansed of our sins. We’ve escaped the wrath of God. We’ve been set free from our enslavement to sin. We’ve been reconciled to God. Our victory over the enemy is guaranteed. What shall we say about things as wonderful as these?
And, Holy Spirit, elevate — in our hearts and minds — the treasure that is ours in Christ. Every day of our lives may we be in awe of the generosity of our God. Help us to trust that we have all we need in Christ and to be thankful for when we receive gifts from you in addition to the gift we have in Christ. May you draw many to Christ today who will receive the gift of life that he’s offering to them through his life, death, and resurrection. And may we all rejoice because of the goodness, kindness, and generosity of our God. We pray all of these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
BENEDICTION
May you go trusting that he who did not spare his own Son — but gave him up for you — that this same generous God will graciously give you all that you need. Amen.
God loves you. I love you. You are sent.