Right with God - Romans 8 Part 2

Over the course of this series, we've spoken a fair bit about the context to which Paul writes in Rome. We've spoken about the. The Church in Rome, scattered amongst homes right across the city. We've spoken about the tricky religious and cultural customs in the city, the climate that the believers there were facing. We have also spoken about the challenges that the Church faced in integrating Gentile and Jewish believers together and the way that Paul speaks into that.

What we haven't spoken about yet is what was coming for the Church in rome. Because in AD 64, just seven years after this letter from the Apostle Paul arrives, fire sweeps through the city of Rome. It's a fire that burns for nearly two weeks and 10 out of the 14 districts in the city are destroyed. So well over half of the city is wiped out by this fire. Rumours quickly spread amongst the population that are left that the emperor himself, Nero, was responsible for this blaze.

And so Nero, needing to fix the attention of the angry people on. On somebody else or on another group, fixes it on the Christians. The famous Roman historian Tacitus, he didn't like the Christians, but he writes these words. He says, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians. In his record, Tacitus goes on to describe what.

What these torches looked like. Christians were torn apart by dogs. They were nailed to crosses and at night, Nero had them wrapped in pitch and burned alive as torches to illuminate his garden parties. Now, that's a rather sombre way for us to start our time together this morning. But without a shadow of a doubt, those believers who first heard these words from Paul that we read in Romans 8, 26, 39, where we'll be this morning.

The believers who first heard them read aloud were Christians that within a decade would need every word. You know, they didn't know it at the time. They couldn't possibly have seen what was to come, but God knew. And in God's wonderful grace, he gives them the most incredible words of encouragement. And as we work through this section of text this morning, up on the screen there, there's three wonderful truths that we're going to see.

Firstly, your helper is present. It's in verses 26 to 27. Secondly, your future is certain, verses 28 to 30. And then third, your place with God is secure in verses 31, 39. So let's start there together.

In verse 26 it says, and the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don't know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words. And the Father, who knows all hearts, knows what the Spirit is saying. For the Spirit pleads for us, believers in harmony with God's own will.

In the verses that have come just immediately before this section, Paul has been speaking about suffering, words that are going to come in handy for the believers. But he's been speaking about it through the example of groaning. And first, Paul has said that creation groans. I wonder if you've ever looked at the world and thought something's not quite right here. There's an instinct, I think, even amongst non Christians, that things are not as they were supposed to be.

And Paul says even creation itself knows this. So it groans and it waits. It's longing for the day when everything will be made new. And then Paul says, believers groan too. We've received the Spirit, but we live in this space between what Christ has already done and what is still to come.

There's a gap that we live in where we ache for the full promise, the day that Paul says we will be given the full rights of God's children and the new resurrected bodies. And then here we read in verse 26, Paul turns his attention to each one of us. And he says, in the midst of this gap that we're living in between what we know God has promised us and this broken, sinful world and our broken bodies, the Holy Spirit helps us. The Holy Spirit comes and in our weakness helps us. And Paul gives a practical example of the help of the Spirit.

It's one I know I'm grateful for. Paul says we don't know what God wants us to pray for. I love the fact that Paul, the man who wrote some of the most beautiful prayers of the New Testament, doesn't say, you don't know what to pray for. He says, we don't know what to pray for. Paul's including himself in this.

He's experienced this. When words fail you, when all you can do is groan, he says the Holy Spirit is at work. And the Greek word here for the help of the Holy Spirit, it's a really visual one. It describes someone coming and helping you carry a heavy load. That's what it is in the Greek, this picture.

These readers would have understood straight away, someone coming alongside you, seeing you with a load that is too heavy to carry and taking it with you. And Paul says, the Holy Spirit intercedes on your behalf. The helper takes the cries of your heart and presents them to the father. Each of our kids, when they were in kindergarten, they did an activity where they had to draw a portrait of their family. And you can see from the picture that they really tried.

But even with all the effort, the bodies, funny shapes, the heads are kind of radically different sizes. I try not to read too much into it. They haven't quite worked out the heights of the different people in the family. So there's some interesting scale going on. It's the drawing of a five year old who hasn't quite yet even mastered how to hold a pencil.

But in our home, Cindy has taken these pictures, she's framed them and she's put them on the wall. They're treasured because they came from our children, who we love deeply. They're treasured because they were the best that a five year old had. And Paul is saying, this is how God receives your prayers, through the Holy Spirit. He receives them from his children through the Spirit who takes your stumbling prayers and translates them perfectly.

The Spirit takes what you can't even put into words and presents them before the throne of heaven. And what do our prayers do? Paul says they align our minds and our hearts and our will with the good and perfect will of God. And so I'd encourage you this morning, even in moments of despair or fatigue, when all you can do is cry out to God, or maybe all you can do is groan. You're not praying alone.

Your helper is present. He is near. And he takes your groans and the unformed cry of your heart and he takes them to our good and loving Father on your behalf. Let's look at verse 28 and our second encouragement this morning which says your future is certain. And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.

For God knew His people in advance and he chose them to become like his son so that His Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. Verse 28 is perhaps the best known passage in all of Romans. It must have brought enormous encouragement to the believers there in Rome. I suspect some of you have reminded yourself of this in various seasons of your life. God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love Him.

It's a great encouragement, isn't it? I want to say three really quick things about this much loved verse. Firstly, God doesn't promise to make all things good. There are many things in our world which are not good. There's injustice, there's disease, there's war.

The list goes on these are not good things. And Paul does not say that by knowing God, you'll suddenly look at these things and say, how wonderful. Wow, aren't these things good? The key here is not that God makes all those things good, but that God promises to work in the midst of all of it. Paul says God causes all things to work together for good.

You know, I picture someone with a cross stitch. I've never done that before, but I've seen people who have. And you turn it over on one side and all you see are threads. And what is the cross stitcher doing? They're taking colorful threads and they're weaving them through.

They're taking dark threads and they're weaving those through as well. And in the end result, you turn it over and there is something beautiful there. This is what God does. He takes all of the things in your life and together they form something good. The second quick reflection there on verse 28 is that this promise is for a specific group of people.

Paul says that this is for those who love God and are called according to his purpose. This is not a general promise for every human. It is a covenant promise to the people of God. And this helps to answer the question, can anything good come from terrible things? For those who don't know Christ, often the answer is no.

Outside of Christ, there's no promise that your suffering is working towards your ultimate good. But for those who know Christ, the answer is different. Does something good come from bad things? Paul would say, absolutely. And third, what is the good that all things are working towards?

I think this is probably the least understood part about this whole passage. But the great thing is we don't have to guess because Paul has actually given it to us. In verse 29, he's told us that all the things that are happening are contributing to us becoming more like Jesus. That's the destination God has in mind for us. And I think it's really important for us to understand this reality because the world offers something or it suggests that something similar to this is at work.

You've probably heard people say everything happens for a reason, or the universe has a plan. That is not what Paul is saying. Paul is saying something far more specific and far more personal. He is saying that God, the God who knows you by name, the God who sent his son Jesus to die for you, that God is at work in every circumstance of your life, weaving it together towards his purpose. He's taking all of the things that happen, the good and the terrible, and through His Holy Spirit, those things are doing A good work, they're transforming you more and more into the image of His Son.

That is the good work that God is doing in you. And so Paul is not promising us a life free of trouble. I mean, I wish he was. I wish that's what this said. But he's saying to you, here is where you're headed.

You are headed along this journey, this process of being transformed to be more like Christ. Let me touch on verses 29 and 30 before we move on to our third point. For God knew His people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son so that His Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And having chosen them, he called them to come to him. And having called them, he gave them right standing with himself.

And having given them right standing, he gave them his glory. Theologians often call this the golden chain. Maybe you've heard this before. Links of a golden chain. God knew, he chose, he called, he gave right standing, he gave glory.

Now, there's debate, there's a lot of debate about how all this happens theologically. We don't have time to cover that today. So if you want to have that discussion another time, you are more than welcome. I'm happy to chat. Let me just say one quick thing about what's important to Paul and what's important to the church at Rome.

And it's simply this. God finishes what he starts. God finishes what he starts. If you look at the last part there, it says, he gave them his glory. Paul writes in the past tense.

Here it isn't, he will give them his glory, or he hopes one day they'll receive his glory. But instead it says, and having given them right standing, he gave them his glory. And this is really important for us. I love watching Manly play the mighty Manly Seagulls. I don't know if you're a footy fan, but if you are, that should be your team.

Especially when they play like yesterday. I love watching their games live. There's nothing that compares quite like replayed sport does not compare to live sport. If you're a sports viewer, you'll understand. But growing up, sometimes my brother Adam, he'd find out the score.

If we were watching a game delayed. He couldn't handle the tension. And so he would find out the score. But the problem was, as much as he then tried to hide it, I could just take one look at him and it was written all over his face. If Manly had won, he was upbeat.

If they'd lost, that was obvious as well. You see, knowing the Result of a game you are watching completely changes how you feel about the game. If you know your team wins at the end, the the pressure's off, what happens? A player makes a mistake, your team player gets sent off, the other team scores. None of it affects you because you know the outcome.

You know victory is coming. And this is what Romans 8, 29, 30 is doing for us. Paul is saying, God is sovereign. He's determined the ending. And for those who are his and who have put their hope in him, who love him, who have been called according to his purpose, the final, final score is already written.

He knew you, he chose you, he called you, he justified you, and he gave you his glory. And so at the end of the day, the victory is yours through Christ. So Paul says, whatever happens, whatever circumstances you face the good and the bad, your future is certain in Christ. Let's look at these last eight verses as we come to point three. What shall we say about such wonderful things as these?

If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since he did not spare even his own Son, but gave him up for us all, won't he also choose, sorry also give us everything else? Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one. For God himself has given us right standing with Himself, who then will condemn us?

No one. For Christ. Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us. And he is sitting in the place of honour, at God's right hand, pleading for us. Can anything ever separate us from Christ's love?

Does it mean he no longer loves us? If we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted or hungry or destitute or in danger or threatened with death, as the Scriptures say, for your sake we are killed every day, we are being slaughtered like sheep.

No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us, as we've seen Paul often do through these first eight chapters, if you've been with us for this time, he anticipates the objections that might come. And so, in the face of persecution and suffering, when people might object to what he said, he anticipates it and he gives us an answer for it. And so he says, what about those who are against us? What about those who accuse us? What about those who might come and condemn us?

Will anything be able to separate us from Christ's love? And then he lists everything that might come and try and separate us. Trouble, calamity, persecution, hunger, destitution, danger, death. Can one of those things separate you? Can all of those things Together, separate you.

And Paul gives a loud resounding, no, none of these things. Paul is not saying that those things can't touch you. He's saying they can't sever you from God's love. And so you may still go through the valley, but the valley is not the end. You might face trouble and persecution.

And even when death comes, none of those things have the power to separate you from Christ's love. Because he says, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ who loved us. I wonder if you know that in your own life, if you understand the reality of that in your life because of Christ, overwhelming victory is ours. In some versions, we are more than conquerors because of Christ.

If verse 28 is the most well known part of Romans, Then surely verse 38 would have to be in a close second place. It says, and I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God's love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today, nor our worries about tomorrow. Not even the powers of hell can separate us from God's love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below.

Indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord. Paul says, I am convinced in the Greek. This word is doing a lot. The Greek word is. It means I have been persuaded and I remain persuaded.

It says, I'm convinced now and I will remain convinced in the future. I am convinced past, present and future. See, Paul is not speculating here. Remember, this is a man who has been beaten. He's been imprisoned, he's been shipwrecked, he's been left for dead.

He's given up everything for the sake of the Gospel. And so this is his testimony. This is what he knows to be true. And as he's done just in the verses before, he does it here again, he lists everything that might try to separate us from God's love. And he says, neither death nor life.

He's saying, in every moment, from your first breath to your last, angels nor demons, nothing in the entire spiritual order, whether it's seen or unseen. Neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow. At every point in time, in the past and in the present and in the future, not even the powers of hell or all the evil of this world. No power in the sky above or in the earth below. And then, in case anything has been missed, he says, nothing in all creation.

You see, he's given every category at any time, in any place, with Any power. There's no loophole here. Nothing can separate you from the love of God which has been shown to you in Christ Jesus. As we come to a close this morning, I want to ask you to do something that I've asked you to do a few times during the series. Might be a little bit out of your comfort zone.

We don't necessarily do this in our sermons normally, but I want you to try and picture yourself in this moment in history. I want you to picture yourself, if you have to, close your eyes to help, in a house tucked away somewhere deep in the alleys of the city of Rome. Imagine yourself wearing a toga or something that might help you think back to seven years ago. Phoebe arrives with this letter from the great apostle Paul. She reads it aloud.

She's explained it. She's answered your questions late into the evening. The words of that letter had been such an incredible encouragement to you. You'd been shocked at the depth of your sin, but overjoyed that the gospel of Jesus was the power for salvation. You'd been told that through faith in Christ, you've been declared righteous before God, that there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

That nothing you had done and nothing you could do would ever change your standing before a holy God. You've been told the spirit of God himself lives in you. Those words had energized you. They'd energized the church. But now, all over the city, stories are being shared of Christians arrested in the night.

Families are being dragged from their homes. Followers of Jesus. The same people who had filled those homes with you seven years earlier, are being brutally murdered by Nero's soldiers. Peter's been taken and crucified. The apostle Paul, whose letter had filled you with so much joy, has been killed as well.

And you don't know what's coming for you. You don't know if tonight is the night someone drags you from your home. You don't know if tomorrow your faith will be put to the ultimate test. To choose the world or choose Jesus. But deep in your heart, deeper than the fear, are the words that you heard seven years ago.

And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God's love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today, nor our worries about tomorrow. Not even the powers of hell can separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord. When you'd first heard those words, you had no idea how much you'd need them now. And so, whatever happens next, whether it's death or life that comes, whether today or tomorrow, might bring whatever it might bring, those words carry you.

For I am convinced. For I am convinced. And I want to remind you this morning that here in Canberra in 2026, God has not changed for 2000 years since these words were given to this church. Those words have carried the people of God through persecution and loss, through illness and grief, through seasons doubt and failure. Because God hasn't changed.

They're just as true for you today as they were for the people there in Rome. Your helper is present, your future is certain, your place with God is secure. And so in the midst of whatever comes, you too can rely on these promises that nothing can separate you from the love of God that has been shown to you in Christ Jesus our Lord. Let's pray. Oh God, we thank you for this encouragement.

We thank you that your word remains true. Lord. You know the stories of the the people in this room, Lord, you know whether or not they feel like more than a conqueror this morning, whether they feel like they've been called Father. You know the challenges in their life, in their health, Lord, in their relationships and finances, in their family, Lord, most importantly, you know the challenges in their desire to live for you. Lord, we thank you that.

That these verses here contain so much for us. We thank you that they contain the promise that whatever we face, that you are transforming us more and more into the likeness of your Son and that this is a good thing, Lord, that our seasons of success do that. But Lord, maybe even more fully our seasons of struggle do that. Lord, we thank you that the Holy Spirit lives within us, that the Holy Spirit takes those unformed cries of our heart and presents them before the Father who responds to us as a loving Father, who won't withhold any good thing from his children. Lord, we thank you that our future is certain, Lord, just as those first century Christians, Lord, facing persecution that perhaps we can't even imagine.

Lord, we thank you that they could hold on to these words. For I am convinced that nothing can separate us from the love of God. That whatever we might face, whatever might come, whether it is life or it is death, Lord, nothing can separate us from the love of God that has been revealed in Christ Jesus. And so we thank you for that, Lord. Make us convinced as well, Lord, for those who might have been carrying doubts, Lord, who might have been trying to earn your favour or earn your love through their own actions, Lord, who might be sitting here this morning not even convinced that you love them.

But Lord, let them be convinced of these words as well, knowing that they are as true for them today as they were for those Christians there in Rome. And so we ask you this. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.