How Do We Know God Will Be Faithful?
In Romans, chapter eight, verse 31 and 32 What then shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us, he God who did not spare His own Son, but gave him up for us all. How will he not also, along with him, Jesus, graciously give us all things. This is the word of the Lord be seated. So now I just, I just, I just want you to know, for everyone who's in this room that you are quite literally sitting in what people would define as a miracle. If you don't know this by now, this is the place where the people of King's Cross Church will meet for the foreseeable future, and it's quite pretty, isn't it? And spacious, you know, got some more room for some more kids and people. And I also want you to know 99.9% of church plants don't get to start in a place like this. I don't exaggerate the numbers when I say this building, and it's not to make us sound good, but more to put the spotlight on Jesus. But this is a $17 million building. Okay. Now, how much do you think it would cost to meet in a space like this? Doesn't matter, because whatever your number is, I can tell you, we're far lower than that number. Kings Cross Church is paying a whopping price of $0.00 to meet here. God has been so good to us and faithful to this church plant, and we are just at the beginning. And I love telling people that story, which, mind you, is just the truncated version. If you want to hear the full story of how we actually got into this place, I'd encourage you to find me afterwards. I have no or you can come join us at our vision night in two weeks, and you will have your mind blown. I can promise you that I've had grown men who never shed a tear in the middle of of a coffee shop begin to weep as they hear this story. So naturally, I like to tell it, but I had a mentor of mine challenge me. When I told him about this place, I told him how good and kind God had been, and how faithful he's been to us and and I don't know what came upon him, this kind man named Brian, but he said, What would you say about God if the building was taken from you tomorrow, would you still say that God is good and faithful. Now, theologically, I know my answer. It's a media answer, God is good all the time, and all the time God is good, but in the deeper regions of my heart, I know the answer is different, like I don't. I actually don't think I would say God is being very faithful at best, what I would probably say is that God will be faithful down the road. He'll guess, get us another place. But for right now, it feels like I have to walk this hardship alone, and I've noticed that we as humans have a tendency right to to to of making our view of God's faithfulness dependent on the outcome of our circumstances. So if things are going well, what do we say? Well, God's good. He's being faithful. And if things go poorly, we either try to convince God to help us, as if we have to earn his faithfulness, or we just freak out because we think for some reason God has left the building. I just want to tell you tonight, but both of those views of God and His faithfulness are very, very wrong. And tonight, what I hope to convey is, is that I hope that our views can be realigned, because I can assure you of this, wherever you are and whoever you are, hard times will come, and what helps the Christian make their way through hard times, is knowing that God is faithful to his people, but the longer that we hold on to these warped views of God's goodness and His faithfulness, the less we will be able to withstand, walk through and overcome the difficulties of this life. And as I consider what makes it hard for me to believe that God is faithful even when hardships come. A question arises for me, and maybe you've had this question yourself, How can I know God will always be faithful to me, like even when the circumstances seem to indicate otherwise? How can I come to believe that God is and will be good to me how and Paul addresses this very question in tonight's passage. And so I just want to ground our time in these two verses with just the larger context of Romans eight. And now just summarize it here. In Romans eight, Paul is holding this very tension of. Of two stark realities. On one hand, Paul outlines in Romans eight that we as Christians, as children of God, are filled with the Spirit of God, that we're set free from sin and death, that we've been made children of God, and we've been given the ultimate promise that we will share in the same glory as Jesus. That's some big stuff. And on the other hand, Paul says, but you also live on planet death, so it's gonna suck for a little bit, and you're gonna suffer not If not, but you will suffer if you're love, if you're human, living on Earth. And so Paul's tension is between this God's promise of His goodness and His faithfulness, and the human experience of a broken world. And so what Paul aims to do here, both in Romans eight, but more specifically in these two verses, is that he wants to root the Christian's hope in something far greater than your perception of your circumstances. So here how he begins verse 31 What then shall we say in response to these things. What does Paul mean by these things? Well, these things refer to all the blessings that are given to Christians that Paul unpacks in Romans five through eight. So if you want after this, go read tonight. Go to bed, put it on your headphones or whatever. But read through Romans five through eight, and you'll see all the blessings that are promised and find them yes, and there are men in Jesus. And what Paul is saying here is, what shall we say about all these wonderful things, such as these blessings? And what Paul will spend the rest of the chapter doing is he'll summarize the beauty and the grandeur of God's love towards us in the form of rhetorical questions, which is a weird way to do it, but this is where he does it. And the first question he asks is, if God is for us, who can be against us? Now, in the English, the word if is used to talk about conditions, conditional statement. It's not concrete, it's hypothetical. You know, if I do this, then what would you do? But that's not what Paul is writing here. The if is meant to be understood as because. So this transforms verse 31 to say, not if God is for us, but because God is for us who can be against us. It's a declarative statement. But while these words sound powerful. It also feels like Paul has never lived a human day in his life. Like Paul, everything is against us, like the real question should be, is there anything that isn't against us? And that's Paul's point. He's not denying the reality of our human experience. See, Christianity is not about denying the existence of suffering and difficulty or dismissing it. Paul is highlighting the fact that we, you and me, every person in this room and all throughout the planet, all the billions of people, we are finite people living in a fallen world, and it should be expected that it will be hard sometimes, even if you're a Christian. But Paul doesn't stay focused on humanity or on the problems. His focus is on who God? How does verse 31 begin? Because, because God is for us. He's painting this picture of God fighting whatever it is that stands against you and what is standing against you, your circumstances, perhaps, or your insecurities or your inabilities, your fears, your worries, your health issues, your marital problems, your struggle to conceive, your struggle to parent, your money problems, your sexuality, your addictions. Perhaps it's demonic. Perhaps there are evil forces at work. But all of this, all of our lives, it just feels like all of this is against us. And what Paul is saying is God is greater than anything that would come come against us. And what Paul wants to help instill in us is a holy confidence in yourself. No, he wants to instill a holy confidence in God. He's encouraging us to be like the psalmist in Psalm 118 in Psalm 118 verse six. This is what it says. This is This is tough. The Lord is with me. I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me? It's only the beginning of a rap song. It's like LeBron James when he makes a slam dunk and he makes the gesture of his opponents, be like you too tiny. And before you think that you're the Lebron James in this analogy, No, you're the person in the nose bleeds. And even then, God says, I'm for you, and these things that you think are overwhelming are too small to handle me. But do we believe this? Do you believe this more than that? Do. You believe that God has directed his goodness and His greatness towards us, and in the very next verse, Paul shows us why we should believe that God is for us. What is verse 32 say, he meaning God, the Father did, who did not spare His own Son Jesus, but gave him up for us all. How we How will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all of these things? So what Paul is saying here, just to kind of correct some of the English grammar, because it's kind of funky, because God the Father did not spare Jesus His own Son, but gave up Jesus for us all. Won't the father also give us everything else. It seems like a logical statement. But what it seems, what Paul is saying in this statement is, don't you get what it cost God to bring you from death to life? Do you realize the length that God of the God of the universe, has gone to bring you into His Holy Family. Do you remember Paul says, Now I'm not a parent, but I would imagine the parenting books don't ever suggest giving up your child for the sake of another the parents in the room. Would you ever give up your kid as annoying as they might be sometimes? Nope. Well, that was a that was a deep man's voice. Nope. And we've all seen the movies and the TV shows, right? And when, when a criminal or a robber comes into a home and a family is in danger, the mother and their father often shield their children. And they'll say, Do whatever you have to to me. But what do they say after but please don't harm my child, right? And God the Father doesn't do that. Instead, he was willing to give up his one and only Son, Jesus, for your sake and my sake. Now, Matthew, chapter three, verse 17, we see that that God calls Jesus His beloved Son in Hebrews, chapter one, verse three, the author writes this, Jesus is the radiance of God's glory in the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. And what the Scriptures tell us is that Jesus is the crown jewel of all the universe, nothing more beautiful, nothing more greater than Him, and He is the father's Beloved. And Paul says, The Father gave him up for you. And before you think this is something like kind of cosmic child abuse, which sometimes people say. Paul writes in Titus, chapter two, verse 14, that Jesus gave himself up freely for you and for me, the Father and the Son, fist like fist bump. We're in this we're on the same page. They saw how desperately humanity is and how unable you and I are to bring about our own salvation. And so the father's willingness to send Jesus for us, and Jesus willingness to die for us was full demonstration of His love for us. Now let me ask you this, if the father was willing to give up the crown jewel of heaven, why would any of us ever think that our father wouldn't be willing to give us anything else we might need. I love how 1/4 century church father put it, if the father was willing to give us the greater Jesus, how will he not also give us the lesser anything else that's not Jesus. And if that's not enough, the father did all of this while you sucked. That's my version. The Bible says you were his enemies. I like mine. Romans 510 says that God was gracious to us by giving us his son while we were still his enemies. So if the father was gracious to you when you hated him, how much more so will he be gracious to you now that you're a son and daughter? That's why Paul ends in verse 32 how he graciously gives us all things. What are all these things? They are every physical and spiritual blessing we need as we make our way through this fallen and death stricken world. But the question still remains that we ask in the beginning, how do we know that God would continue to be faithful to us? How can we know that God will always be for us? Because this he has shown that there are no lengths that he would not go for his beloved children, that circumstances do not dictate God's faithfulness towards us His love does in Christ's death on the cross is the proof God the Father, has only. He ever left behind one child once and ever in human existence, and it was when he left Jesus on the cross so that no other child of God would ever be abandoned for all of eternity. Jesus was left on the cross so we would never have to be left alone. And Paul is forcing us here to look at the cross of Christ. Do you want to know if God will be faithful to you? I encourage you to look at the cross. It was on that rugged cross where Jesus spilled his blood for you, and his body broken for you. To quote the great British theologian Martin Lloyd Jones, he wrote that in God giving his son, he gave everything, but the cross is the guarantee of the continuing, unfailing generosity of God, and that is the point for us today. This is the answer for our fear that someday God will abandon us. This is the remedy for when the harshness of life thrusts itself upon us, we're able to look at it all and with great confidence say, God's faithfulness towards me is permanently anchored in the cross of Christ. And do you know what the purpose of a cross is? I mean, of an anchor is, it's to keep the boat steady and fixed in one space. And we are that very ship. And you, you know, you know how stormy life is. You know how high those waves might seem. You know how close it you feel to tipping over. But the cross of Christ anchors us under the eternal faithfulness of God, no matter the circumstances. And I need to desperately remember that myself. Let me just tell you, church planting is hard, like this whole process has had me break down in tears. Rachel can attest to this, because I think that God leaves me like when our fundraising isn't going well, or when people we thought would come with us saying no, or when I or for whatever reason, people trust me to file taxes with the state for this thing, and I have no idea what in the world I'm doing, and when imposter syndrome rears its head and all my insecurities and my inadequacies scream louder to me these days than before, can I tell you how it is that I'm going getting through it? My hope is this. My God was, My God is, and my god will continue to be faithful to me, and Jesus will make sure of that. The dollars in the bank don't define God's goodness. The amount of people that show up today or next time or the time after this or on lunch Sunday, that doesn't define God's goodness, he we could lose this building after tonight. And do you know what the words that would be on my lips because of Jesus, the father will always be faithful to me. Now, some of you have never experienced this kind of faithfulness before, whether it be from loved ones, family or even romantic partners. And some of you need to be alerted to the truth that God is faithful to his children. Listen, if you are here tonight and you fall in those categories, and you want to walk in the full assurance of God's loving faithfulness, right where you are, right where you are. I encourage you, and I beg you to Ask and pray to God that you and tell him I want to live under the banner of your faithfulness, ask him for the grace to believe and entrust your life to Him. And there are some of you in this room who are who have a great fear of difficulty and hardship, and so you try to hide, or some of you are already living in difficulty and hardship, and Jesus wants you to know that you can walk with a new found sense of confidence that can only come from knowing that no matter the circumstances, you are now and forever, the eternal recipient of God's goodness. Family, the children of God are the only people that can be beaten, robbed, broken and left with no material gain to their name and still walk with great joy and say, God will be faithful, and actually mean it, because Jesus is the assurance that the father's loving faithfulness will always be directed towards you. And as we finish, we say. And we pray together, I pray that we would leave this space with a greater confidence, not in yourself and your ability or or your circumstances, but a greater confidence in the God who is for us, and with a deeper sense of trust that God will always stay with us. Let's pray God, we thank you, just for the small time together and.
