Unburdened #5 - Living Without Fear
Message Description
Dr. Kurt Bjorklund concludes the Unburdened series on Romans 8 looking at the culmination of Paul's arguments on how we should respond as Christians and how we can live without fear as part of our daily life.
Message Transcript
Hey, welcome again to Orchard Hill. It's great to be together this weekend, Butler County, the Strip District, and Wexford. And next weekend is the fourth of July. We have a special privilege of having Ken Carlson teaching next weekend and then July is on us. It's hard to believe it's already that far into the summer. But I guess when you're on lockdown for a long time, the year can go by fairly quickly.
We have been in a series that we've called Unburdened. And we've been looking at the eighth chapter of Romans and some people would say that this is one of the most pivotal chapters in the Bible. And what we've been doing, is we've been talking about, in a sense, figuratively taking burdens off of our back or out of our backpack, setting them down, and being able to say that we're living without those burdens that can kind of inhibit our life, the life that God intends for us to live.
And we've talked about living without condemnation. Romans 8:1-4, which just basically gives us this idea of saying that there's now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus - just a glorious truth. And then we talked about living without bondage. We talked about living without despair. Last week, we talked about living without pride, and how each of those things become a burden in our lives that keep us from experiencing God. And today we come to chapter eight, verses 31 through 39.
And in many ways, this is the culmination of this chapter, and in some ways, the culmination of the book of Romans. And it begins with this simple statement, "What, then, shall we say in response to these things?" These things being all that Romans eight has talked about, and all that the whole book of Romans has talked about. And the point of this is ultimately not so much that we're going to get new information as much as he wants to give an exclamation to all that he's already said. So what he's doing here is he's really trying to move us from saying, here's some information that you've needed, here's what the doctrine of Romans has taught, this justification by faith alone, that it's not something that you do, but it's something God's done.
And he says, now, what shall we say in response to all of this? What is it that we shall say? And then he asked these rhetorical questions that the implied answer is basically, there is no answer. And in a sense, this would be more like a political rally with somebody saying something like, here's a question, and everyone's shouting in unison, no one, or nobody, or nothing kind of a response. And so, the point of this is ultimately to stir our emotions more than it is to simply inform our minds. And I fear that this will in many ways be inadequate to do that. Especially if you come without having a strong knowledge of what's in Romans leading up to this because it's like jumping into this Pinnacle moment and expecting us all to feel the emotional weight of it. What he's doing here is he's saying this is the culmination of what I've been talking about.
But be that as it may, we're going to try to do that today. So, verse 31, he says this, here's the first question after the initial question, "What, then, shall we say in response to these things?" He says, "If God is for us, who can be against us?" So, he asked this very simple question, "If God is for us, who can be against us?" And the implied answer is no one. So again, it's for people that say, God has done amazing things on your behalf. He's for you, no one can ever be against you. I don't know about you. But there are times that I wonder if God is really for me. I don't mean I wonder it like theologically, like I know the category to say God is for me, but sometimes experientially, I wonder if God is for me.
You may have experienced a toilet paper shortage earlier this year during the COVID thing. We were one of the families who did not stock up when all the toilet paper was flying off the shelves. And so, at one point it became one of these things where it's like, we need toilet paper. And I went out and went from store, to store, to store, and finally found some toilet paper. And evidently, the toilet paper I brought home was less quality than the toilet paper we normally get. I was just happy to have found toilet paper at that point. I was like, hey, we got toilet paper. And so you know, after a little bit of time went by, and that became the toilet paper that had to be used, I came to find out later that of the four young men who live in our house, that one of them, who has kind of a bathroom that he uses that not a lot of other people use, came to the conclusion that he had been singled out to have bad toilet paper. Like we had been using good toilet paper in the rest of the house, and we're using bad toilet paper for him. And, you know, I heard that and I'm like, really, you think that we're purposely putting bad toilet paper in your place and everyone else is getting good toilet paper. He's like I didn't really mean that, you know, it wasn’t really what I thought. And the point of that is sometimes even when we know that people are for us, I mean, you know, there's house, there's food, there's clothes, there's gas, there's money for the car, I mean, there's a lot of provision there, but you're giving me bad toilet paper.
And my point is, sometimes we have an overwhelming amount of evidence that says God is for us. And what we end up doing is we end up saying, well, I don't know, something isn't quite right. Something isn't to my liking. Maybe God isn't for me. But if we understand the flow of what Romans is doing is it's saying you do not deserve what you have, and yet God has been incredibly gracious to you, incredibly good to you, and given you more than you could imagine. And so, we say no one, or nothing can ever tell us that God isn't for us.
John Calvin once wrote this, he said, "The law is contained in precepts. It threatens, it burdens, it promises no goodwill. But the gospel acts without threats. It does not drive one by precepts but rather it announces the supreme goodwill of God toward us." I like that because it reminds us that God is for us. So that's verse 31. Then he moves to verse 32, "He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?" So here he just asked a simple question, how will he who gave His Son not graciously give us all things.
And the way that we understand value for things is what somebody will pay for it. I don't know if you've ever been house shopping or car shopping, or maybe garage sale-ing. And people will say, well, this is worth this much. And like in the housing market, what they'll do is the house will be on the market for a long time because they price it up here and somebody says, I'm not paying that. Or somebody will try to sell you a used car and they'll say it's worth this much, and no one will buy it because they say no, it's worth this much. Or you go to a garage sale, my favorite, not that I go to a lot of garage sales, but when you go to a garage sale, somebody's like, this is worth that much. And at the end of the day, they're like somebody gave me a nickel for it. And what you realize is that value isn't just what you want to ascribe to it. It's what it's worth to somebody else.
And here's what Paul does. He says, he gave his son, and if you're a parent you know that at least when your kids are little, you do anything for them, when they get older you kind of maybe hit the point where you're like, wow, you know you can go now. But you know, the idea here is that God gave His Son and so how will he not graciously give us all things? And so, the picture is he says, God is for you, who could be against you? No one. The God who gave His Son, will he not graciously give us all things? Yes, he will, or nobody can ever give us more. That's the idea.
Then verse 33 says this, "Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies." Now here you get the idea of being chosen again. We talked about predestination a little bit last week. But here the idea of being chosen is again set in this context of who can bring a charge against the one God is chosen. And I told the story about how Caesar Augustus, and Brutus, and that whole story came about, and how he said my nephew is the one I've chosen. And so here again if that is backstory to this, and that people would have known, he's saying, who can bring a charge against the people that I have chosen? And what this means is that no one can bring a charge against the person who is in Christ Jesus. No one can tell God anything about you that God doesn't already know. No one can find out anything about you that God doesn't already know because God already knows everything. There is nothing, nothing, that somebody can ever have on you, get on you, or find out about you. There is nothing in your future that can be a charge against you because God has already seen it and said, because of Jesus Christ, there will never be a charge against you.
You know, I don't know if you ever have had somebody kind of come at you with a charge of something that you have done wrong, or that they don't like how you've done something, or they don't like your thoughts on an issue. Chances are you've had that. Maybe it was somebody close to you, or maybe somebody far from you. But you know, the best response to that, ultimately, I think is this, and that is to simply say, you know, what you say may or may not be true. But even if it is true, I want you to know that there are worse things about me that you don't even know. But God knows. Now I'm not saying you have to say all of that. But I'm saying internally, when somebody comes at you with a charge, the answer is if you knew all, it would be worse than you think. But there's a God who has seen it. And you can't bring a charge against me that God hasn't already seen. And when you and I understand that, that's when we start to say, this is a God, who is worthy of my trust, worthy of my worship, a God of whom I can give my confidence to, and I can have wonder and awe toward because he has seen me and still loves me.
You know, you and I, we go through life often marketing ourselves. Even when you've been married a long time, there's still a little bit of marketing, not as much as when you're dating. But there's still a sense of we try to be a certain way so that we're acceptable. And one of the beauties of a long term marriage is that you get to a point where you can be more and more yourself, less and less marketed, but even then, there are still times where you say, I'm going to try to be something. But with God, the idea of no charge means that you and I can live with this confidence of saying that God has seen it all. And because of Jesus, I can be completely accepted.
You know, we live in a time in which cancel culture is kind of a thing. And I saw a story the other day that was written about the song Amazing Grace, which if you're familiar with it, was written by a man who had been a slave trader and he came to see that was wrong. He wrote those words Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. And the reason that I saw this story, this was in a thing called UnHerd by a man named Giles Fraser, and he writes this about cancel culture, he says, "Cancel culture makes us hide in fear. It makes us publicly pretend we are better than we are. It turns us all into liars and the more we fear the exposure of our failings, the more we point the finger at others in the hope of misdirecting the anger of the crowd." And his point was to say, if the cancel culture had been in effect, when John Newton wrote Amazing Grace, what would have happened is people would have said you can't possibly write a song about anything because of what you've done.
Now, I'm not saying that we shouldn't address monuments or statues in our country that are insensitive to the time in which we live or something like that. But what I'm saying is this and that is our culture will quickly say you're cancel because of this. But our God says I'll never cancel you because of what you've done, or where you've been, or what you may not have done. If we get that, this idea of who can bring a charge against God's elect, we will stand to our feet and say, no one can bring a charge against me because of what Jesus Christ has done. God's disposition toward you, toward me, is not ultimately based on our behavior. You aren't loved more because you behave better, and you aren't loved less because you behave poorly. You are loved the same, regardless of what it is you do or do not do.
Now, I realize that there are people who will hear that, and they'll say, well, that doesn't make sense. That doesn't work. There has to be some kind of a quid pro quo with God. But the whole message of Romans is, no matter how hard you try, you'll come short, and God has done for you, for me, what we can never earn. That's why I can stand here and say, with such confidence, who can bring a charge against God's elect? Nobody, not because I say I'm not good, but because Jesus is good on my behalf, changes everything when you get it. It changes absolutely everything. To be justified means to be declared right. And it means that I can't ultimately be tried again, for the same idea.
Donald Bloesch was a theologian who wrote a generation ago now, said this, "Among modern Christians, it is not the justification of the ungodly that form the basic motif during the time of the Reformation." And what he's talking about here, justification being declared right, but the sanctification of the righteous that has been given the most attention. "With this shift came a renewed focus on the life of the individual. So, the subjective question, how am I doing has become a more dominant feature than the objective question, what did Jesus do." See, the reason some of us feel like God can bring a charge, or somebody can bring a charge, is because we focus so much on our life, our performance, our ability, our goodness, rather than what Jesus has done, that we think it's ultimately about us rather than about Jesus. Who can bring a charge against those whom God has chosen? No one. No one is what this says.
Verse 34 says this, "Who then is the one who condemns?" And he supplies the answer, no one. Christ Jesus who died, more than that, who was raised to life is at the right hand of God, who is also interceding for us. And the word here for interceding means to petition a king. In other words, Jesus, God, is now raised a life living in eternity, in heaven, in space outside the space time continuum that we inhabit, and interceding to the King of Kings, to the God of the universe, who is predisposed toward us on our behalf.
If you want to know why there's such good news in this passage it's because we see God is for us, we see that God gave His Son and will graciously give us everything, that there's no one who can bring a charge against God's chosen people, and that there's a God in Jesus Christ who's interceding on our behalf. And then we see this, verse 35. And this is in some ways, the big question, and the big thing. He says, "Who can separate us from the love of Christ?" Again, the answer is no one. And then he says this, "Shall trouble or hardship, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword?"
So, he uses seven words. The first three are forming kind of a sense of trouble in our environment. He says, shall trouble, or hardship, or persecution. And one of the words there refers to just a very narrow space, and the other two is pressure that's put on us. In other words, what he's doing is he's saying, you can go through the hardest things in this world, and they can't separate you from the love of God. And then he says, shall famine or nakedness, probably referring to our economic well-being, danger, or sword for persecution that you might suffer. Now, again, the context is that the people there often did endure persecution.
There are some accounts that the Emperor Nero at one point, and this was probably after this was written, but took Christians and literally used them to be burning human lamps at some of his parties. In other words, people endured real danger, real swords, not just people saying, oh, I unfriended you on Facebook, or I didn't like your comment or something because of this. This was something that happened. In fact, he quotes Psalm 44 here, for he says this, verse 38, “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” Sheep being kind of victims going to a slaughterhouse, almost unknowingly. And here what's happening is he's taking this verse from the Old Testament, again, that the people of that day would have understood and known, and he's saying this has been our experience.
And what Psalm 44 is all about, is its people saying, in essence, how can we trust a God when this is our experience? In fact, it was probably a teaching method that would have been known as a remez, which was a way of basically saying that they took a song, or a ditty, or something that people would have known and played into it in culture. And so, this would almost be like me saying to you today, Happy Birthday to..., and you can't help yourself, you start to fill in the next piece of the song. I was going to come up with a different song. I was going to get one that was for people who are younger, and people who are older, but I didn't want to hum that many songs for you. So, we just went with Happy Birthday. But notice how as soon as I say happy birthday to you, you're like, okay, I got it. I know what I'm supposed to do. That's what would have happened when Psalm 44 was quoted here. Because people would have said, oh, yeah, we are like sheep to be slaughtered. And what he's doing is he's saying that can't separate you from the love of God.
This is so unamerican. Because what we tend to think, is that God's love is on display by the better my life is now. If I'm healthy, my family's going well, I have enough money, the job situation is good, if everything's going my way, then God is good. And if he isn't, then where is God? And when Romans eight says you can go through difficulty, hardship, everything can go wrong, and none of it can never separate you from the love of God. Now, that may not seem hopeful to some of us, because some of us may hear that and we may say, well wait a second. What I really want, what I want more than anything, is for my life to go well, to not have hardship, persecution, difficulty, trouble, famine, nakedness, like I don't want any of that. And if God can't help me with that, then I'm not sure I want that God. But what is here, is just this assurance of saying, whatever twists and turns your life takes, that God's love will never be out of reach.
You know, I don't know if you've ever noticed that movies often have a plot where somebody starts off, in fact, it's very formulaic, somebody starts off, and they're called to do something that's really challenging. And when they're called to do something that's challenging, they're set against all these difficult odds. And then the movie is look at how hard this is going to be. And then all of a sudden, at the last minute, they come through with some unexpected helper, some kind of strength from within or something. And then they're the hero at the end of the movie. That's the plot of most movies that you and I see. And we like them. And the reason we like them is we like seeing people come through difficulty.
I remember one of the first times I saw a movie that I remember at least, that had a different plot. I was with my wife and we went out for a date, and this when our kids were little, so going out for a date was like a luxury, a big deal. You didn't get three hours to go do stuff without kids very often. And I remember we got out and we went, and we saw this movie called Cold Mountain. I don't know if any of you have ever seen it. It was awful. You watch people die on a cold mountain for three hours. It was like, where's the redemption, where's the plot that I'm used to seeing. And I went with some friends another time to see this, I think was an Academy Award winner, There Will Be Blood. Well the title should give it away. There Will Be Blood means that there will be blood and people just died over and over in the movie. I was like, oh, this is awful, I don't want to see this. And my point is this, as much as I like to think of myself as a realist who enjoys like a real story, when I go to be entertained by a movie, what I want is I want to see a hero overcome odds and come out the other side. And here's what is happening in this passage is it's like Paul is saying, whatever you face, you know that the end of the story, God is not being separated from you. That His love is not being lost.
See, when you watch a movie, a lot of times you get drawn into the moment but most of the time you know it's going work out. If you know Jesus Christ, you can say no matter how difficult this part of the movie is, I know that God's love has not abandoned me. I know that I'm not on my own. That's what Paul is driving at here. And this is part of why I believe that we can live without fear because we have a God who's for us, we have a God who will give us all things, we have a God who has known us so deeply that no one can bring a charge against us, we have a God who intercedes for us, and we have a God who is present and nothing can separate us from his love.
And then we come to this climax, verse 37, through the end of the chapter, it says, "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." So now he turns from these rhetorical questions where people would say no one or nothing or something like that. And he turns and he says, here's the situation. You're more than a conquer and there is nothing that can ever separate you from the love of God. And he includes in here, death and life, present and future. So the things that matter to us in this life and our death, he includes the present and the future, he includes powers, demons, it says here, and sometimes this this phrase is translated more along the lines of principalities or powers. And then in one place here, he talks about powers.
Let me just give you a few words that the Bible uses for Satan, for the adversary of the Christian. In John 8:44, he's called the father of lies. In Ephesians 2:2, he's called the prince of this world. In 1 Peter 5:8, he's called the adversary who prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. In Revelation 12:9-10, he is called the great dragon, the destroyer. In other words, the picture that we have here is the picture of this adversary who wants to destroy what matters to you. But what Paul does is he says, I'm convinced that none of this can ever separate you from God's love. So, the battle is real. The stakes are real. But God says, I will never let you be outside my care.
And I mentioned earlier, just the idea of movie plots. One of the classic movies, especially if you have kids, is a movie called The Princess Bride. And it's classic for a variety of reasons, mostly the humor in the lines that I'm not going to repeat. Although I have been offered big money to start a wedding ceremony with the phrase, marriage, and true love, but I've resisted the urge no matter how much relatives offered to pay me for such a stunt. But one of the things that happens in the movie is this young man Wesley, falls in love with princess Buttercup. And then they're separated by fate and she keeps saying, well, true love will come for me, and despite all of the difficulty, and all of the hardship, he keeps coming until finally at the end of the movie when they get reunited. And again, the plot, and the reason we like this plot, and take any movie, doesn't have to be that movie, is because there's something in us that says, I want to be loved like that.
And here's what Paul is doing. He's saying you are loved like that by the God of the universe, you are loved like that. Nothing can separate you. You have no reason to fear. God is for you. God has promised to graciously give you all things. Jesus died for you so that no one can bring a charge against you. Jesus is interceding for you and heaven. No matter what happens in this life, no matter how difficult it gets, nothing can ever separate you from the love of God. And he is convinced that not even the powers of hell itself are enough to overcome you so that you will miss out on the love of God. That is a reason to live without fear, and to worship the very God who created you.
Now, the way that you share in this, is again by acknowledging our sinfulness. There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus by coming to a point of acknowledging our need for Jesus Christ to justify us. Saying I can't justify myself. Acknowledging that there are charges that could be brought. But that the way that those charges are taken care of is by the work of Jesus Christ. Not through my own efforts. And then you can say with confidence, no one can separate me from the love of God. No situation in this world, no political turmoil, no amount of social upheaval, no economic disaster, no death, no person can ever separate me from the love of Christ.
Father, we thank you that your word is so clear on this point, and that this isn't something that we need to guess at. And God I pray that for each person who believes in your son, who's listening right now, that we would be able to live without fear with a confidence that comes with this knowledge. And God, I pray for those who aren't as confident when they hear this. That it would spur them just to investigate and consider what it would be like to have a Jesus, have a relationship with you that gives confidence rather than uncertainty. And we pray this in Jesus name, amen.
