How Will He Not Also?

[0:00] Well, we're glad you guys are here.

[0:11] We find ourselves continuing to camp out in Romans chapter 8, verses 31-39.! That's where we find the great truths on the doctrine of the perseverance or preservation of the saints.

[0:28] ! We like to call it the eternal security. The true believer. In this portion of Scripture, the Holy Spirit, writing through the pen of the Apostle Paul, asks a series of questions that serve to address this great doctrine.

[0:47] And the first question, which we looked at last week, was, Who can be against us? It was a question based upon Romans chapter 8 and the second part of verse 31.

[1:00] If God is for us, who can be against us? The correct answer to that is no one successfully. But we had to add that word successfully because the truth is that just about everybody is against us to include most humans in the world, the devil and his demons, and even ourselves through unredeemed flesh.

[1:28] So we're in this battle, spiritual warfare. Tonight we come to the next question, which is very revealing, when we plumb its depths to the degree that we are able.

[1:43] The question is, how will he not also? And that verse is based upon, or that phrase is based upon Romans 8.32, the next verse, which reads this way, Fantastic verse of Scripture.

[2:18] When John Calvin was pondering Romans chapter 8, he presented some interesting questions to consider. Basically, these were rhetorical from the pen of John Calvin.

[2:33] What if God became too busy to care about us? I mean, my gosh, he's running a universe, right? What if we became so insignificant to God that he no longer gives us a second thought?

[2:48] And then he asked this, What if our sins had become so frequent and so egregious that God regrets having brought us into existence? And the question we will examine tonight takes care of all such thoughts for time and eternity.

[3:08] The short answer to these fanciful speculations is this. We can know that God is for us and will be for us eternally because God has already given us his Son.

[3:28] That's how we know. And let your mind focus on six words in that statement. He has given us his Son. That's amazing.

[3:41] It's staggering. And that is what sets Christianity apart from every world religion, every belief system that ever existed, or exists now, or ever will exist in the future.

[3:58] Armed with this knowledge, we could dismiss for the night. We're not going to. Go downstairs, shoot some hoops, sit around and visit. But this is an essential doctrine.

[4:09] And we're going to look at it more deeply tonight. A Bible teacher or a theologian in our day would probably answer this dilemma differently than the Apostle Paul.

[4:24] He would probably have some comment about God's love. He's for us because He loves us. He might say, you don't have to worry about the future because God loves you and after all, God is love.

[4:37] And of course, that statement is true. We know that. We know that from John 3.16. We're going to actually study this before leaving Romans chapter 8 because in the last verse of that section, in verse 39, we find this, nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

[5:04] But now we're getting way ahead. Paul, of course, was a pastor and a missionary. He's a church planter. He frequently saw people in the struggles of life.

[5:20] He saw them in the struggles of life. Some of these struggles were intense, even life-ending. He saw even believers believers who felt that God's love for them had grown cold.

[5:38] Let me put this in the modern vernacular. And I can't remember why I used this example. I hope it works out at the end. When I was the police chief, I had the duty of notifying people whose loved ones had been killed.

[5:51] That's a hard thing. Perhaps they died in a traffic accident. All too often, it was the victims of murder.

[6:05] Now, one year, I made 12 such notifications. Now, Bartleville didn't experience 12 homicides in a year. We averaged two to four.

[6:18] But as a courtesy, we make such notifications for other jurisdictions. If a Bartleville family is killed in Dallas, the Dallas police notify us and we go out and tell the family.

[6:30] Or Tulsa. We had a lot of Tulsa. And as a courtesy, we do that. And they do it for us. I can tell you, that's a hard duty.

[6:43] Remember the movie Saving Private Ryan? When they had to go tell his mother that three of her sons had been killed in combat? That's the only time I broke down and cried in that movie.

[6:55] My wife turned it off. She said, I've done that. I've had to make those notifications. I said, no, go ahead and play the movie. But that was a hard deal because I flashed back to it.

[7:10] I can tell you how difficult it is. Often when I walked up to the door, I could hear families being families. Kids were laughing. They're playing.

[7:21] Perhaps they're enjoying supper. They're watching a movie. And I was standing on their porch. I haven't rung the bell or knocked. But I'm painfully aware that I'm about to change their lives forever.

[7:36] When I told the family what happened next typically was chaos. Often the mother would collapse to the floor.

[7:48] Sometimes faint. Other siblings, when they became aware of what was going on, would run through the house screaming. The father tried to fight back tears.

[8:00] Sometimes he wanted, he said, just give me the name and address to the person that did this. Of course, I couldn't provide that. But I tell you this, brothers, and we're getting back to the love part, that was not time for me to say God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.

[8:18] And that may be true in a lot of lives, but that wasn't the time. Maybe we could do that later. If the people were Christians, the only thing they had to fall back on was what they had, and that's the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.

[8:36] And I came up with a solution for making those notifications. I started taking Dr. McBride with me. And he was a tremendous, our former pastor for the young guys here, a tremendous asset.

[8:49] I'm certainly not trying to minimize the importance of knowing that God loves you. Love is an expression that exists, but it exists on an emotional level.

[9:02] Love is packed with emotion. Paul is here dealing with doubts that might arise on a factual level or on a factual basis.

[9:13] We can know, we can know that God is for us because it is a nature to be loving. We know it because He's given us His Son to die for us.

[9:27] We can know this because He's already done this in human history. We look back to the cross. We know the Father gave His Son to be the propitiation for all who believe.

[9:42] What Paul is talking about here is the substitutionary atonement of Christ. And it doesn't get any more important than that.

[9:57] The cross is the vital doctrine of the Word of God. This is an essential. If you reject substitutionary atonement, you're on your own.

[10:11] Christ died in our place. That's staggering. And that again sets us apart, doesn't it, from the world's religions. So we're talking here of the substitutionary atonement.

[10:25] And it is so vital that Paul is expanding on it here and he's going to explain it further in two verses. So we won't leave it behind tonight, although we'll complete verse 32.

[10:41] And he starts out by giving us vital facts in verse 32, the very passage we are considering tonight. He talks about the factual elements of the atonement.

[10:55] By hearing that, we can know that God is truly on our side. He has given us His Son. And I want to consider some truths that Paul reveals in the brevity, really, of verse 32.

[11:11] And the first truth is, we see here God in action. God is in action here. He has accomplished this. This is an accomplishment. Until I actually studied for this lesson, and I've taught Romans before, but when I studied for this lesson, I found out that I'd passed over this point for years.

[11:36] Never even thought about it. The shame of it is, it's a truth so vitally important. People that reject this do so at great peril and they plunge into all sorts of errors.

[11:50] And one of the chief errors is that Jesus is for us and God the Father is against us. And Jesus comes along and He talks the Father into being for us.

[12:03] But until then, He's against us. That's a theology out there. And it kind of pits Jesus and the Father against each other. It pictures Jesus as a loving Savior trying to convince an angry and offended God to change His mind about us.

[12:23] The Father is pictured in that false description as ready to cast us off for eternity.

[12:34] But Jesus comes along, pleads His love for us, and then He finally persuades an angry, reluctant, and even hostile God to relent, change His mind, and spare us.

[12:49] Well, those opinions are not consistent with the biblical record. They're just not. From beginning until end, we find the death of Jesus as a sacrifice for sins is God the Father's idea.

[13:10] It's the Father in action. The Father is in action. That makes the Father the author and source of our salvation.

[13:21] And I'm not trying to separate out the Trinity. They're all involved. Obviously, Jesus is involved. He carried it out. Consider this passage, though, just for an instance. Isaiah 53, 4.

[13:33] Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed Him stricken. stricken, now listen to this, smitten by God and afflicted.

[13:49] The Father afflicted His Son. Hard to wrap our hands around. In this passage, we learn that Jesus was stricken by the Father.

[14:00] He was smitten by the Father. He was afflicted by the Father. All of this, the Father did on our behalf. And then we skip forward in Isaiah 53, just a couple of verses to verse 6, and we read this, All we like sheep have gone astray.

[14:22] We have turned, how many of us? Every one to His own way. And the Lord, and we know that's the Father there.

[14:33] How do we know that? Because it says, the Lord laid on Him. Does that make sense? The Lord laid on Jesus the iniquity of us all.

[14:47] See, the Father's intimately involved in this. This statement in Isaiah is one of the clearest passages on substitutionary atonement in the Word of God.

[14:59] Written 700 years before the cross. It tells us that the Lord, God the Father, laid on Jesus our iniquity.

[15:11] God did not magically start to love His people after the death of Christ. He loved us before the foundation of the world. That put the eternal security of the true believer in a new light from what is being passed off in many churches today as truth.

[15:31] as truth. There is another mistake that is widespread concerning the death of Christ. Many see it as the result of human action alone.

[15:46] I mean, you've got humans involved, right? You've got the Jewish leadership, you've got Romans, all kinds of people involved. people involved. And many see this as the result of a human action alone.

[16:00] This view pictures Jesus and the Father as incapable of heading this off and blame the Lord's death on evil men exclusively.

[16:12] Now, we can be certain evil men conspired and participated in the crucifixion of Jesus. We know that.

[16:24] That fact is certain. Peter makes an amazing statement concerning the cross when he addressed the Jews of Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost.

[16:36] In Acts chapter 2, he said this, Men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst as you yourselves know that Jesus, listen to this, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God the Father, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

[17:19] He was delivered up by the Father but into the hands of evil men who wanted to kill him. Peter tells the crowd that Jesus was handed over by a lawless mob but that it was by God's set purpose and foreknowledge.

[17:39] Now, the men who carried that out were guilty. And those that didn't repent are in a place prepared for them for eternity. They wanted to kill Jesus and by sinning carried out their plan.

[17:57] They will never be able to plead that God forced them to do this evil deed. God didn't make them do that.

[18:09] But their actions fulfilled the purpose of God by their actions. The atonement of Christ as He died as the substitute for the Father's elect children is the clearest expression of God's love for His own.

[18:26] He loved them before time began. Now, the second truth that we talk about tonight is this, that the atonement involved God's only Son.

[18:41] That next point that Paul makes in verse 32 is that the atonement involved God's only Son. By describing Jesus as God's only Son, we come face to face with the reality that Christ, the Lord Jesus, is fully God and fully full deity.

[19:04] He's God's only Son. The fact that Jesus is divine provides the fullest meaning to the Lord's death on the cross.

[19:16] Mere human couldn't have done that. Couldn't atone for our sins. God hung on the cross and not mere man.

[19:29] That was God on the cross. Were He not God, His death would have been tragic, but it would not and could not have been an atonement for the sins of mankind.

[19:46] There is value in the crucifixion because it was in fact God on the cross. I think there is a book here, God in a manger and God on a cross and everything that came in between.

[20:02] He was an atoning sacrifice because Jesus is the unique Son of God, holy, without spot or blemish, and of infinite value.

[20:13] That's what makes that cross purposeful. He's all those things. And this also brings added meaning to the words of John the Baptist when he spoke at the baptism of Jesus and he said this, look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

[20:36] He pointed out Jesus. There's the Lamb of God. He's telling his followers, you've got to go follow this guy. He takes away the sins of the world. How much does the Father love us?

[20:49] So much that he sent his son to take away the sins of all those who would believe. God wasn't angry with us until after the cross.

[21:05] God loved us from the foundation of the world, wrote our names in the Lamb's Book of Life. God's love for us is infinitely greater than our own.

[21:16] How do we know this? Because he spared not his only son, but gave him for us. He gave him for us. He gave him for the church, for all who would believe.

[21:30] Jesus is the Father's greatest gift to fallen mankind. And there's nothing in the universe more precious to God the Father than his dear son. Nothing.

[21:41] when God the Father gave us his dear son, he proved the greatness of his love by the most precious gift he could possibly give.

[21:54] I mean, what else could he have done? Sacrificing a lamb wasn't going to do it, or a turtle dove. It's his precious son. another truth in verse 32, that God spared him not.

[22:13] He didn't spare him. And the third point here in verse 32 carries us beyond where we have been thus far.

[22:24] This passage tells us that the Father did not spare his own son. But haven't we already covered that in the words above? No. This phrase that God spared not his only son carries us even further.

[22:42] By telling us that God did not spare his son implies that he could have spared his son. God made a choice not to spare his son.

[22:55] He chose not to spare his son, but to make him a sacrifice in our place. And I'm glad it was God and not me.

[23:09] I might in a certain circumstance be willing to die for any one of you guys, but I'm not going to sacrifice my kids for you. I love you, but I'm not going to do that. Take me, but not them.

[23:21] But the Father didn't see it that way. There is a link here in this brief passage, this portion of the passage, but there's a link here between this passage and the story of Abraham offering to sacrifice his son Isaac on Mount Moriah.

[23:41] There's linkage. The Septuagint is the Greek translation of the Old Testament. They took the Greek Old Testament Hebrew, translated it into Greek, and that's called the Septuagint.

[23:55] And I've got a copy of that. it tells us there that Abraham spared not his son.

[24:09] Here it is. Let me read it to you. It's Genesis chapter 22 verses 16 and 17. Now this is the Septuagint, not directly from the Hebrew. This is from the Greek.

[24:21] I have sworn by myself, says the Lord, because thou hast done this thing, and on my account, has not spared thy beloved son.

[24:32] Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying all. Multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is by the shore of the sea, and thy seed shall inherit the cities of their enemies.

[24:46] Now we can be sure of this. Abraham was ready to sacrifice his son. He was ready. And you remember when he was going up there, and he was in agony.

[24:58] But he finally figured out, he said, my son is going to be the father of many nations, and God's capable of raising the dead. So when I kill him, God's going to raise him.

[25:09] He worked that out in his own mind. But we know it didn't happen like that. It was God who spared the boy.

[25:19] The same language of the Romans chapter, the verse. God spared the boy by stopping Abraham from fully carrying out that act.

[25:32] That knife was coming down, guys. And the father stopped him. That word spare in this Greek translation of the Old Testament is the same word used by the Holy Spirit in Romans 8.32.

[25:46] same Greek word. The lesson being taught to Abraham, and by extension all of us who would become believers, is that the day would come when God would not spare his own son from death, but allow him to die so that Abraham, Isaac, and all who would believe through the long history of the human race would be spared.

[26:18] He spared not his son so we could be spared. That's major. That's major. The only one who deserved to be spared was Jesus.

[26:36] But the father chose not to spare him. We didn't deserve to be spared. no. But by refusing to spare his son, the father spared us so that we might be saved and spend eternity and glory with him worshiping the son and through him the father.

[27:03] Somehow, God taught all of this on Mount Moriah. Abraham that is why Abraham named the place Jehovah Jireh.

[27:13] The Lord will provide. That's Genesis 22 14. Now, clearly we can argue well the provision was the ram. Remember they needed a sacrifice and now Isaac's not the sacrifice so they looked around and there was a ram whose head was caught in a thicket in a bunch of brambles in a bush.

[27:36] In other words, that ram had his crown of thorns in that bush and he became the sacrifice. God provided that. So, Abraham called it Jehovah Jireh.

[27:49] The Lord will provide. But reaching millennia beyond that we see God proving for us and providing for us by giving up Jesus to the cross.

[28:05] He is Jehovah Jireh. He did not spare his son. He provided his son. There's a fourth truth that God delivered up Jesus for us.

[28:22] He delivered up Jesus for us. This is the fourth truth that Paul tucks into one verse of Scripture. It's amazing how he can do that when he has the Holy Spirit authoring.

[28:36] And we're still looking at the actions of God the Father in providing salvation through the death of his dear son on the cross of Calvary. So, Paul gives us a negative statement.

[28:49] He says he did not spare his own son. But then and now Paul gives us a positive statement but gave him up for us all.

[29:03] So, you go from the negative to the positive. What does it mean when the inerrant scriptures say God gave him up? It means that God the Father delivered his son the Lord Jesus Christ to death.

[29:21] This is the same Jesus who is the creator, the redeemer. Jesus died while his type, Isaac, did not die. He's a type of Christ.

[29:32] Christ. He did not die. Did Jesus die physically? Of course. We answer that with an emphatic yes. He didn't swoon in the tomb.

[29:45] That's a theory. There's a book out on that where he just swooned. He passed out from loss of blood but he was alive. And they said the coolness of the tomb healed him.

[29:58] I mean he was crucified. The Romans knew how to kill people, right? and ran a spear through him? I don't think so. He died physically.

[30:13] But never minimized the truth that Christ died spiritually. He was a spiritual death. What do we mean by that? The death of the Lord in that death he was separated from the Father.

[30:27] And separation is death. That's called death. And it was a temporary separation. And the first and only time in eternity that will ever happen.

[30:40] Why was Jesus separated from the Father through death? Because Jesus who knew no sin became sin for us as the Scripture says. Memorize 1 Corinthians 5.21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

[31:05] On the cross the Lord Jesus bore the wrath of sin in our place. One of the old theologians said he became the ugliest human in existence because he had all of our sins laid on him.

[31:24] And it takes us back to the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prayed take this cup from me. He anticipated the agony not of death, not of the beatings, the agony of separation from the Father and the Spirit and he started to sweat blood.

[31:44] He'd never been separated from the Father and the Spirit in infinity but now he's going to be. In agony from the cross Christ cried out my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

[32:01] Now we know men die every day. But this was more than physical death. This was the horror of the holy, eternal Son of God delivered up as the worst of sinners though he himself never sinned.

[32:20] The fact he took upon himself our sins did not make him a sinner. He has never sinned and never will. He bore the wrath of separation from the love of the Father in our place.

[32:36] He was not spared so we could be spared. He bore the wrath of God so that we would never have to bear the wrath of God.

[32:48] The wrath has been satisfied and it's a righteous wrath, a deserved wrath, been totally satisfied. A quote here from the great Welsh physician and pastor Dr. David Martin Lloyd Jones.

[33:05] This is from his commentary of Romans. I think it's appropriate. Such then is the measure of God's love and it is the only adequate measure of a love which is beyond measure.

[33:22] How pathetic and hopeless is the position of people who think that they safeguard the love of God by denying the substitutionary theory of the atonement.

[33:34] Who say that our Lord did not cry out in agony and who imagine that the measure of the love of God is that God says though you have killed my son I still love you and am ready to forgive you.

[33:47] they believe that they safeguarded and magnified the love of God by denying the truth concerning the wrath of God and that God must and does punish sin.

[34:00] What they actually do is detract from the love of God. The love of God is only truly seen when we realize that he spared not his only son.

[34:12] There's love manifested and magnified. it is in such an action that you see the love of God. He loves such as we are and to such an extent that for us he punished his only son, did not spare him anything, delivered him up for us all and poured upon him the final dregs of his wrath against sin and evil and the guilt involved in it all.

[34:47] Let me close with one final and brief point. Paul says at the end of verse 32 these words, Will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

[35:01] It's interesting. He tucked that in there. What are all things in this passage? Some of our extreme charismatic friends claim this is God's promise, to us for health and wealth and prosperity.

[35:21] We're going to get all things. They say this passage guarantees that we can be material rich, but we've got to claim it. You've heard of name it and claim it, grab it and stab it.

[35:35] This is a blasphemous treatment of that passage. This is not a guarantee of health and wealth. All things there is not a big bank account. If it is, I haven't gotten mine yet.

[35:48] Verse 32 is along the lines of verse 28, which we've already examined. Verse 28 says, in God all things, there's that phrase, all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose.

[36:05] God is to be more and more like Jesus. We're being recreated in the image of Christ.

[36:30] That's the goal of your Christian walk, to be more and more like Jesus. And hopefully, you're more like Him today than you were yesterday. It's progressive in nature.

[36:43] Let me close with a comment from Dr. Boyce. Whatever your circumstances, whatever your trials, whatever your pains, whatever your persecutions, whatever your hardships, God will use all of these things to make you like Jesus.

[37:09] Beyond that, He will provide all true necessities for your growth in holiness and perseverance in faith until the very end.

[37:23] And I like the fact Dr. Boyce uses that phrase, perseverance in faith, because that's what we're studying. We will persevere to the very end, because He spared not His only Son, but delivered Him up for us.

[37:38] There's eternal security to the true believer. That's what I like to tell my Arminian friends. There's eternal security. He spared not His only Son.

[37:49]