TEXT: ROMANS 8: 35-39
READING: PSALM 103: 1-22
SUBJ: The assurance that nothing will prevail against the Love of God and the relationship that He has with His own.
AIM: That we might be reminded of the Love of God in Christ and be moved to greater Love to God.
INTR: The final level of opposition to the salvation of the Lord's people and their justification is discussed and preciously emphasized.
1. The issue of justification is often challenged but cannot succeed in that it is God that justifies.
2. But the enemies of grace and the Gospel never stop and so the challenge takes a different tack.
3. The method is to equate earthly peace, prosperity and security with the Love of God or the lack thereof.
THESIS: The love of God is not only in Christ but is also displayed through Christ and the greatest display of love at the cross.
I. The fact is that forces conspire to separate from the Love of God (vv. 35-36)
1. Consider the debate over love to God or love from God. Compare the thoughts of love in us in 1 Corinthians 13. But here it appears to be the love of God to us.
2. The things that would:
1) Tribulation: Pressure or affliction from without
2) Distress: "narrowness of place." Anxiety in not knowing where to turn.
3) Persecutions: Matthew 5:11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Such was the lot of the early Christians.
4) Famine: which often occurred when driven from homes
5) Peril: ever present danger of any kind
6) Sword: lives exposed to death in consequence of a stand for Christ.
3. The enemies of the Gospel think of believers as "slaughter sheep."
II. More than conquerors (v. 37)
1. We are conquerors in that God has defeated the enemy.
2. But, more than, in that believers are enabled to glory in affliction and thereby experience, faith and joy being increased and we are the more enabled to glory in the cross.
3. Through the strength in Christ alone: Philippians 4:13 I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.
III. The Apostolic Persuasion (vv. 38-39)
1. Paul had lived through this and so the list goes on. It seems to pick up where the other left off.
1) Death: goes without saying
2) Life: the things in this life that would conspire to distract
3) Angels: evil angels - 1 John 4:4 Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.
4) Principalities: We consider the past practice of civil magistrates and consider that the same could be true in our times.
5) Powers: Could be the combination of the last two. Or it could be false teachers able to work miracles.
6) Present evils of all kinds
7) And things yet unseen and unfaced
8) Neither height - surrounded by wealth or Depths -- the lowest depressions.
2. Compare the Love of God in verse 39 with that of Christ in verse 35. It is the same
3. After all it is in Christ Jesus and that cannot change.
4. The whole of Romans 8 it a precious testimony to the assurance God would give us of His prevailing Love. No condemnation and no separation.
