His Perfect Love

Guest (Male): Pastor Matt says knowing that God is for us helps us make it through life no matter what comes our way.

Matt VanderVen: If God is for us, who can be against us? Amen, amen, and amen. Just let that marinate for a minute. No matter what you're going through, if you've had a change in employment, a loss of a job, a diagnosis, whatever might be going on in your life right now, just allow that to penetrate your heart, allow that to break those things down, and respond in: who can be against us? Nobody. No one.

Guest (Male): Does it feel at times like the whole world is coming against you? Maybe the pressure is so intense you're really down and discouraged about it. Well, there are definitely some things that are against us as Christians, but there is something we don't want you to lose sight of today on *His Perfect Love*, and that is God is for you. When you come to understand that, it makes all the difference in the world as you make your way through life. Here is Pastor Matt VanderVen with Romans chapter 8.

Matt VanderVen: Open your Bibles to Romans chapter 8, and we're going to pick up in verse 31. God's been bringing us on this beautiful journey through this book. Last we left off with God's plan for salvation as we began to see this idea that He foreknew in verse 29. It's going to be very important because we're going to pick up on that even in chapter nine as we get there today.

But He also then explained that He predestined or, as we know what that means, it means predetermined. We talked about last week Revelation chapter 13:8 where it says that before the very foundations of the world, the Book of Life was written, which means names either had to be in it or out of it. And then we read in Revelation chapter 3:5 that says that names are blotted out of the book. Well, to have your name blotted out, your name must be in the book.

I'm a simple man and we're all simple people. That's what Jesus asks us to be. We began to see that after predestination or predetermination, He then did something. He called us. I don't think that's a stretch for us. When we read the Gospel, what did Jesus say? Did He say you need to do Jesus plus this and all these other things? Or what did He say? He said, "Come, follow Me."

It is really beautiful and really simple. Sometimes when folks come up and say, "Pastor, I'm really not sure how to reach out and evangelize a lost and dying world," you've heard me say it before: one of the most beautiful, simple things you can do is let them know Jesus loves them right where they are. Not that they've arrived, not that they have to somehow be something they're not, because God's the one that does the saving and God's also the one that does the sanctifying.

We just need to be willing to come, broken and just as we are. He says, "Come." And so after you tell them Jesus loves you, you say, "Come. Come unto Him." Don't draw men and women unto ourselves; we draw them unto Christ. And then after that, what happens? We see justification. It's a legal term. Justified, just as if we had never sinned before.

And then after that, we've already been given the promise of this, but we wait in hope for the coming when we're in heaven face-to-face with Christ, where we receive our new glorified bodies. What is that called? Glorification. He's already started the process in us, but we'll receive the fullness of it. And friends, I don't think we have to wait that much longer. I think we're really right there.

I think it is amazing how close we are if you're following current events, eschatology, and the Bible. Twenty-seven percent of your Bible is eschatology, by the way. We are living in the last days. So what do we do with it? Do we turn around and panic? Do we worry, or do we occupy and be about our Father's business? Be about our Father's business.

So that picks up where He has us. He's kind of just laid that out. Remember, Paul was a man just like you or I. He's a real man with real feelings. And now God, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, gives this and He lays it down on him. Paul's response is this amazing passage in verses 31 through 39 where he comes out and he declares the fullness of God's love, the fullness of God's plan for him, and how he just experiences so much joy and excitement.

It's almost lighting that fire in us again as born-again believers in Christ. And if you're here today and you are not a born-again believer in Christ, if you are not aware of this, this is your guarantee. This is your hope. This is what awaits you. And as Jesus would say, come follow after Him. Today is the day of salvation.

Verse 31: "What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?" Amen, amen, and amen. Just let that marinate for a minute. No matter what you're going through, if you've had a change in employment, a loss of a job, a diagnosis, whatever might be going on in your life right now, just allow that to penetrate your heart, allow that to break those things down, and respond in: who can be against us? Nobody. No one.

That's it. That's our study this morning. What else can we say? How great is that? I mean, if we ended on that, friends, would we not walk out of here blessed, better than we came in? But there's more. He has more for us. Verse 32: "He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?"

He says if God turned around, the Father gave His only begotten Son for you and I for the remission of sin, if He was willing to do that, what won't He give us? What won't He give us? Now this isn't a faith and prosperity gospel. This is better. This is better than that. This is love. This is our needs. This is God saying that He's invested in our lives and that just as He sent His Son, He also sent the Holy Spirit as a seal, sealing us and living with us and penetrating our hearts, our minds, our soul, and He is our strength. He's everything. He's everything for us.

And He says that He gives it freely. It's not out of a response of "I have to do this" or "I have to do that." He's not an absentee father. Oh no, He's the best dad ever because everything He does is all based on a system of grace. It's not what we deserve; it's better than what we deserve. It's better than what we could hope for. It's everything, and the best is yet to come.

The best is yet to come. "Who shall bring a charge against God's elect?" Now that word can stumble some when they say, "Elect, election." I don't have a problem with it. I think it's a good word. Did He not call? Did He not elect? Did we not read in Revelation 13:8 again and Revelation 3:5 that before the foundation there was a book, a Book of Life, and everybody's name was written in that book? So did He not call us all? Praise Jesus.

Are we not all then to respond? So he says, "Who can bring a charge against God's chosen, if you will, God's elect?" This should be great, great encouragement. If you're struggling with something, if there's something in your life right now that you're saying, "Lord Jesus, I need help," whatever it is—again, it could be medical, it could be addiction, it could be marital, it could be a job, maybe you've lost a job recently, maybe you're having financial hardship right now—any of these things, what is God telling us here?

"Who can bring a charge?" Why would He say that? Because when we go through those trials and tribulations, don't we feel alone? We often feel alone, and don't we begin to listen to that liar, that deceiver? Those are lies from the pit of hell. "You're not good enough. You're a bum." I've got a Rocky Balboa in my ear sometimes. "You're a bum. You're good for nothing." That's what I hear. And then I go, but who am I in Christ?

Because all of that is an identity crisis. I'm a born-again believer in Christ. I'm a son, you're sons and daughters of the living God. That's not something He gives and takes away. We're all adopted children into His family, Jew and Gentile alike. He even goes into Galatians 3:28 and says, "Look, Jew, Gentile, no race, male, female, none of that. All things in Christ Jesus."

That's your identity. You're identified by Jesus. That's who you are. You're sons and daughters of the living King, King of all kings, Lord of all lords. It changes everything, doesn't it? No matter what you're going through, when you know your Father in heaven is there and He's interceding for you, what's overwhelming? What's too hard? What's too difficult? Is your God not big enough? Is your God not strong enough? Is your God not faithful enough?

So why does the enemy turn around and try to deceive us? Why is he a liar? Why does he want to—do you know why? Because he doesn't want us to glorify God for who He is. Because God deserves all the glory and honor just because He's God. If it was nothing else, because He's the author of love. Not because He even redeemed us. We didn't even deserve that, did we? But He did it because His love is unending. It's nothing we can understand in this world. There's nothing we can compare to in this world to know and understand the love of Jesus Christ.

Some of you might have had earthly parents, and maybe your earthly parents weren't what you hoped they would be. Maybe they didn't love you enough. Maybe mom or dad didn't love you enough. Maybe you felt like you didn't get to grow up in a Christian home where you would have had the opportunity to receive the Bible and the study and the teaching and the encouragement. And because you read your Bible, when you get to passages like this, you struggle. "Lord, how is that possible because I've never seen an example of it?"

This is real. This happens. And people struggle and wrestle with this: "How is this possible?" And then we pray to God to soften our hearts. We receive Him as Lord and Savior. We go through that "Who are we now?" We begin to learn, He begins to show us, we read His word, He confirms these things in our hearts, our minds, our souls. He gives us a new spirit, and we start to realize that we don't need to believe the lies of the devil.

He has no power over us. We have nothing to do with him. As the archangel Michael said, "Jesus deal with you." You are no one to us. We don't battle against flesh and blood, our own conscience really more than just the enemy. Just think about that. Who is the one that justifies? Well, look here. It says, "It is God who justifies." It's God that does that. He's the justifier. That's a legal term.

He is the one that's "just as if you've never sinned before." He gives that legal precedence upon you. He's declared it in a court of law, His court, the only court that really matters. Not the Supreme Court that tries to redefine God's word, but the true court, God's court, where all decisions will be made for the eternal—whether you'll spend eternity separated from Him forever and ever in hell, or you'll spend all of eternity with Him in heaven, in paradise.

But it's our choice because God is the one that does the justifying. Praise Jesus. Aren't you glad it's not based on our works or our strength or our abilities? He wants to encourage us. He says, "Who is he who condemns?" He asks a question. Paul, who is it then who's really condemning you? Who even has the right to condemn you? He's like, how dare someone try to condemn you in Christ.

"It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes what? Intercession for us." Right now. Your depth of your prayer goes to God our Father, and He is interceding at the right hand of our Father, standing and/or sitting, and He's literally right there based on your needs. And think about that. Isn't that what He did when He was physically manifested 2,000 years ago?

When He was on the earth, did He not do the same things when the disciples would go into a trial? Remember they were going to go out in the middle of the Sea of Galilee, and He says, "Go out there," because they were going to crown Him king. John 6, and He says, "No, go." Because He was trying to keep them—He actually put them into a trial to protect them from idolatry or from being out of God's will.

So He turns around and He tells them to go into the middle of the sea. They're in the middle of the sea. What does Jesus do? Does He go up there and go, "Hey, watch this"? No. That's what we would do. What does He do? No, He turns around and He begins to pray to the Father. He prays for their strength. He prays for their help. He prays that they wouldn't be just blown like a reed shaken in the wind, but that they would find their foundation and strength in Christ Jesus and that they would occupy, they would stand.

If our God, who was physically here manifested, went away to pray like that as an example, as an illustration of what to do and what He's doing for us right now, why wouldn't we find hope in that? It would be wrong for us not to see that God is an encourager and He's interceding for us. He says, "Who shall separate us?" Beautiful verse. "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" He then breaks it out for you, just in case you needed additional information because, like I said, maybe you didn't grow up in a Christian home. Maybe you didn't have a loving mom and dad.

But He says, "I am." He says, "I am a good Father. I'll never leave you nor forsake you, and I want you to understand nothing will ever separate you from My love." Isn't that what we long to hear even on earth? Isn't that what we wanted from our own biological parents, our mom and dad, to just unconditionally love us?

Parents today, you have that ability to do that with your children, to unconditionally love them, agape love them. How about your wives, husbands? Are you loving your wife as Christ loved the church? Husbands, you'll stand before Christ and give an answer to that. And wives, are you pressed into your husbands? Are you their helpmates? The greatest of all these gifts in 1 Corinthians 12 was what? Was love. It was love.

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness?" That's the idea of lack of clothes because of need. "Or peril, or sword?" even martyrdom. What will separate you? Nothing. "As it is written"—and he reads, Paul here quotes, excuse me, Psalm 44:22—"For Your sake we are killed all day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter."

Well, that doesn't sound super reassuring, does it? If you're paying attention and you're still awake here this morning, you're reading that and you're going, "What? We are counted as sheep for the slaughter. That is not good." But what does that speak into? We're overcomers. That's what he's saying here. And just in case anybody misses it, he brings it out in verse 37: "Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors."

So we are more—we have more than just victory. It's not enough to have victory; we have more than just victory. We are conquerors through Him who what? Who loved us. It's always about Jesus. When we run into trouble is when we take our eyes off Jesus and we put them on ourselves, or quite honestly, we can put them on our spouse or our children or somebody else.

Our eyes belong on Jesus. Can you married couples in here, or those about to be married, can you look at your significant other and say, "I love Jesus more than I love you"? That's biblical. Can you look at your children and say, "I love Jesus more than I love you"? That's biblical. But that's hard, isn't it? But that's discipleship. That's walking by faith and not by understanding. That's walking by promise and not by sight.

He says, "For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come"—just in case we're not getting the point—"nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing"—all of creation, the enemy, the devil, Lucifer himself, a created being, a fallen angel. He says, "Any other created being shall be able to"—what? Circle that in your Bible. "Separate."

Nothing can take you out of the loving arms and hands of God. That's why I believe it's very clear that you can't lose your salvation. Because if you could lose your salvation, then something could what? Rip you and separate you from the arms of God. Does that mean we don't blow it? No, we blow it. I blow it. But I don't lose my salvation. I might be in error, I might be allowing sin to separate my right relationship, but I'm never ripped out of the hands of a loving God. Never ever.

Neither can the enemy, neither can your conscience that can betray you, neither can your eyes, your ears, your tongue, your lips, your heart. Nothing. While it may betray your emotions, it can never do something to the point of separating you from a loving God. Because God means what He says, and He says what He means. And again, for us, that's foreign today because maybe we've had marriages where somebody ran out on us, and we have a hard time with understanding how are we supposed to trust again.

And yet you want me to trust a God that's the invisible God, I can't see Him. But this is the exact opposite of what the culture says, and usually that means it's right. If it wasn't enough that it's in the Word of God, it's opposite to the world. Isaiah chapter five. They would call evil good and good evil. It's upside down.

He says He separates us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Now think about Paul. He's speaking to Rome. You have Christians there, but you also have Jews. Now the Jew up to this point's like, "Really, really, Paul? So God loves everyone that way, huh? And He doesn't give up on them, really?"

"Well Paul, in case you haven't seen, you know, this is past AD 70, or sometime within that era," which means the temple's being destroyed, which means all of Israel's being kicked out of Rome here in a moment, everything that they—obviously this might have been written before that, but you get the point that there's something coming to Israel that they wouldn't have expected. Because they thought that Jesus was originally coming to do what? To set up His earthly kingdom, to overthrow Rome. Because they had been in oppression and affliction well before the intertestamental period, even when they came in the land.

I mean, God had given them over the Canaanites and everything. But even Saul, their first king, 1 Samuel, what did he turn around and do? He turned around and didn't follow God's commandments and destroy the king that was practicing idolatry. So they've been under oppression for thousands of years at that point, 1,100-plus years easily.

And so think about this. These are real people. This is what they would have been thinking. What about me? What about Israel? What about the Jew? Well, Paul's going to dedicate chapters 9 through 11 to the Jew, but for you and I as well. But he's going to explain, "Hey, you're adopted children. It's not as though this is all for naught." Because I imagine somebody that's Jewish might be sitting there and going, "What, is the word of God not for me?" Can you imagine? These are real people. So what did they do? What was the sin of Israel at that time?

They had forsaken or rejected Messiah, Yeshua, Jesus. That was the sin. He says, "I tell you the truth in Christ. I'm not lying, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit." He's saying even my conscience and my spirit are one in this. Galatians 5:16 says the conscience and the spirit wage war. He says, "But even in this, there's no battle. It bears witness."

"That I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart," verse 2. Did you notice that with me? What just happened? Paul just had us on the high of highs. Man, we're like up there, we're like "Praise Jesus," we're conquerors, we're seeing the love, our identity crisis is being mitigated. We now realize we're sons and daughters of the living God. We're seeing the power in that, the joy in that, the love in that. Nothing can separate us from God. Check, check, check. All right. Amen. Awesome. Who doesn't want to be a believer in Jesus Christ after hearing that? All the promises for the follower and believer.

But then there seems to be a little bit of an emotional shift here because he's talking about Israel and he knows Israel's what? They're condemned. They're going to be eternally separated from God. And he loves them. Didn't he even explain that when he was in Acts and he was making his way back to Jerusalem and he got to Jerusalem? Two different times, the Lord gave him an opportunity, gave him an audience with the Jewish people first, and then even with the Romans that were there with the Jewish people. And what did Paul want to do each time? He wanted to declare Christ crucified and the Gospel. He so desperately wanted his brothers and sisters to receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior so that they could be in eternity with Paul. He loved them.

Guest (Male): Well, thanks for joining us today for *His Perfect Love*. You can hear this study from Pastor Matt VanderVen again when you visit hisperfectlove.org. Catch up on what you may have missed in Romans at hisperfectlove.org. Look for us on oneplace.com and most of the major podcast platforms.

The Calvary Chapel Harrisburg mobile app is another great way to listen to Pastor Matt's messages shortly after they're delivered. We can help you get started when you visit hisperfectlove.org. *His Perfect Love* is made possible through the support of listeners just like you. Together we can bring the truths of God's word to the radio every day. You can make a donation at hisperfectlove.org.

And Pastor Matt would like to hear from you. Tell us the station you listen to and what you're getting out of this study in Romans. He would be so encouraged. Email us there at the website hisperfectlove.org.

Are you looking for a Christian school that offers a quality education and a nurturing environment for your children? If so, you might be interested in Calvary Chapel Christian Academy, a ministry of Calvary Chapel Harrisburg West Shore. Calvary Chapel Christian Academy is a non-denominational Christian school that serves students from kindergarten to 12th grade. The Academy's mission is to provide a Christ-centered education that equips students to love God, love others, and serve the world.

The Academy offers a rigorous academic curriculum, a variety of extracurricular activities, and a caring and supportive staff. The Academy is located at 28 North Locust Point Road in Mechanicsburg, PA. For more information, please visit our website at ccharisburg.org/academy. That's ccharisburg.org/academy. And then we'll come back to our study of Romans next time on *His Perfect Love* with Pastor Matt. See you then, and God bless.