Reformed Baptist Church in O'Fallon, Missouri
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Communion: Remembering God’s Love

Sermon Transcript

The following is a lightly edited transcript generated from the audio; it may contain small errors.

Opening Scripture

We’re going to look at the word briefly if you guys want to take a quick break, but I’m going to call you back up here real soon, okay? And then we’re going to have the Lord celebrate the Lord’s supper. Spurgeon said Romans 8 was like the Garden of Eden, full of precious fruit. He said if he had only one chapter in the Bible to preach from, it would be Romans 8 because he said every line is a sermon. Every line is many sermons. authors compared Romans 8 to the pinnacle of the Gospel. When we think of the Gospel as a beautiful building, this is the pinnacle of the entire Gospel presentation in the Book of Romans. Let’s see, where do we start? Hmm, we’ll start in 28, since this was quoted several times during the prayer. And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. For whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son. That he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom he predestined, these he also called, and whom he called, these he also justified, and whom he justified, these he also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? 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? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who, or what, shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword, or broken planes, oh that’s fixed. As it is written, For your sake we are killed all day long, we are counted as sheep for the slaughter. Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.“

Remembering What Led Him to Calvary

As we celebrate communion, Jesus said to take the supper, celebrate the supper, and he said, Do this in remembrance of me, to remember me. And as I meditated on that phrase this week, I realized that to remember Him is to remember… What? What is it to remember? His person, His passion, His death, His resurrection. What is it to remember? Justification, glorification, predestination, what is it to remember? It’s really to remember all of it. You know why? Because the entire gospel is Jesus. To remember Jesus, to remember the passion of Jesus is called his death. He said, do this in remembrance of me and then he went to die. Paul says when he was instructing about the Lord’s Supper, he said to the Corinthians, Often as you do this, as often as you do this, take the bread and the wine, as often as you do this, you proclaim or show forth the Lord’s death. The Lord’s death is the sign, and by the way, when scripture talks about the Lord’s death, it’s always assuming the Lord’s resurrection too, because he’s not in the grave, amen? He’s risen. But when it talks about the Lord’s death, the Lord’s death is the sum and substance substance of the Gospel. Everything that God has given to us comes through the passion, the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. So when he says, remember me, what am I supposed to remember? I have to read a whole theology book this week to try to remember it all. And as I was meditating on the Lord’s Supper and that phrase, Remember Me, one of the things the Lord impressed upon me is that as we remember the Passion of the Lord, we need to remember what brought Him to that place, what led Him to Calvary. And the thing that led Him to Calvary was the love of the Father. Now notice I didn’t say the love of the Son. I said the love of the Father. Now let me tell you a false picture of the Gospel. The false picture of the Gospel is God the Father doesn’t really love you. God the Son does. God the Son convinces the Father to tolerate you. Anybody ever felt that way before? Diane, raise your hand. Diane has shared before that when she got saved, she thought she was getting, that the Son was saving her from the Father. Now you could argue there’s a sense in which that’s true because the scripture talks about God frowning on sin and Christ deals with that sin problem, right?

God Is for Us

But it’s not as if God had to be convinced to love us and then Jesus intervened and Jesus made God love us. That is not the gospel. That is not what the gospel is. Notice this in Romans 8. There’s actually seven questions here, but we won’t look at them all because we don’t have time. After the rhetorical question in 31, what shall we say to these things? These, really, are not just the things in the preceding verses, although that’s kind of the summary of what Paul has been saying in the book. What shall we say to these things means what are we going to say to everything I’ve told these first eight chapters? whole gospel, the fact that we’re justified, that we’re redeemed, that we’re reconciled, that we have new life, that we’re being informed to the image of the Son, that we have the Holy Spirit in us, transforming us and fulfilling the righteousness of the law in us. What are we going to say to these things? And Paul goes on and he says, if God is for us, who can be against us. Notice he says God. If God is for us, who can be against us? What’s the answer? I didn’t hear you. Well, they can be against you and very often they will be against you, but the point is that no matter who is against you, if God is for you, then you triumph. That’s what he’s saying. We’re going to come right back. Look at Psalm 118 for a moment. Got to go quick. Psalm 118, you there? Okay, Psalm 118 verse 5. It says, I called unto the Lord. And by the way, Psalm 118 is a messianic psalm. And so this is really a psalm in which Jesus is praying. I called on Jehovah in distress, verse 5, Jehovah answered me and set me in a broad place. Jehovah is on my side. Jehovah is on my side. God is on my side. The Lord of the universe is on my side. My creator is on my side. My Savior is on my side. The Almighty One is on my side. The eternal one is on my side. The all-loving one is on my side. The infinite one is on my side. How can you lose if he’s on your side? If God is for us, what does he say? I will not fear. What can man do to me? Well, man might destroy your body. But as Jesus said, don’t fear the one who can destroy the body. Fear the one that can destroy the soul. Man can do his worst, but he can’t take your soul unless you give it away. Verse 6, The Lord is on my side, I will not fear, what can man do to me? The Lord is for me among those who help me. That’s a beautiful phrase, because as you meditate on it, what you realize is the Psalmist is saying that those who are helping me are really instruments of God helping me. God is the one helping me, but he’s using the people who are helping me. The Lord is for me among those who help me. Therefore, I shall see my desire on those who hate me.” Notice verse 8, it is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man. Say amen.

It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes. Amen.

The Lord is for us. And so as we celebrate the supper, what we’re remembering is God is for us. The question in verse 32 of Romans 8,

He Did Not Spare His Son

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? This is really what Paul does here and he does it a lot of places, he asks the question and then he answers the question with the question. Because when he says God is for us, he’s Now illustrating what he’s saying, he’s emphasizing what he’s saying, God is for us. Is God for you? Let me ask you this. Is God for you? How do you know that? How do you know God is for you? Paul says he knows God is for us because he did not spare his own son, but he delivered him up for us all. That’s how he knows God is for us. Now it’s just a coincidence that on the first Sunday of the week when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper that the children are in here. Now would anybody like to bring their little one up here and sacrifice them for us? Would anybody like to do that? Well of course not. I have found over the years just the opposite. Parents are fiercely loyal to their children, usually even to a fault. That’s why Jesus said, you need to love me more than your son or daughter. More. That natural affection is the strongest human affection that we have. The strongest affection. And if it’s the strongest affection that we have, just imagine what that affection is between the Father and the Son. Because our love is just a dim, faint image of the love that’s in the heart of God. So the Father loves, loved and loves His Son Jesus Christ. And we talk about the passion of Jesus and His suffering and we’re like, yeah, that’s cool. We died for being great so I can. Not really contemplating the reality, not only of what Jesus went through, but the reality of what this meant for the Holy Trinity. What it meant for the heart of the Father. And this is illustrated for us in Genesis 22 in the story of Abraham. Do y’all know the story? All of you? Somebody? Alright, let’s go there real quick. Genesis 22. By the way, if you don’t have a Bible, I encourage you to start bringing one. You can bring it on your phone, you can bring it in a big old clunky one like mine, it doesn. Where did I say to go? Genesis 22. Genesis 22. God had promised Abraham a son. He came and as you all probably know the story, he came to Abraham, said, I’m going to make you a father of many nations. Abraham believed God in spite of the fact that the promise was just insane. Crazy, because he was old, his wife was old, she was past the time where she could bear children and for this to happen would take a major miracle, a grade A miracle, a type one, you get what I’m saying? a little bitty miracle. This is a big deal. So God promises then he makes Abraham wait for the fulfillment of the promise. You know how long he had to wait? Does anybody know? Does anybody know how long he waited? Are you people reading your Bibles? Twenty-five years, 25 years, then he fulfills the promise after 25 years he has a son. And can you imagine how much Abraham must have loved that kid? Waiting all that time. But not only that, in him was the fulfillment of the covenant that God had made with Abraham. In this son was where all of Abraham’s cherished hopes, not just about his own reputation, this was about a man who loved God and through his son he was going to see the fulfillment of God’s purposes on the earth, through this son. So what does God do in Genesis 22 verse 1, now came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham. As I did Abraham and he said here I am and he said take now your son your only son Isaac and by the way he wasn’t the only son technically he had another son. He says take your only son whom you love and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you. This is the first time the word love appears in the Bible. Abraham loved this son. more than life itself. And what does God do? He says, I want you to give that son to me. Now that would have been really hard. And it’s very hard for us to enter into the reality of what’s going on here, because we know the end of the story. But Abraham didn’t know the end of the story. Abraham didn’t know when God said, I want your son. He didn’t know that his son was going to, well he didn’t know the other story. What makes this worse is not only did God say to Abraham, I want your son, he said, I want you to sacrifice your son. I want you to do the deed. I want you to kill your son. I mean, this is crazy.

So Abraham rose early in the morning, he saddled his donkey, took two of his young men with him and Isaac his son, and he split the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place which God had told him. Then on the third day Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the place afar off. Abraham said to the young man, Stay here with the donkey. The boy or the lad will go yonder, and me and the boy will go yonder, and we will worship. And R.E. will come back to you. Now we know from the book of Hebrews that that statement, We will come back to you. We know that was a profession of faith, that Abraham truly believed he was going to have to slay his son, but likewise he believed that God was going to raise him from the dead. So everyone took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son, and he took the fire in his hand and a knife, and the two of them went together. I can’t imagine what that walk was like. Can you imagine? a long walk that must have been for Abraham, knowing that he was going to have to kill his son. But Isaac spoke to Abraham. His father said, Father, and he said, Here I am, my son. And he said, Look, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, another profession of faith. So the two of them went together. Then they came to the place which God had told them, and Abraham built an altar there and placed the wood in order, and he bowed Isaac his son and laid him on the altar upon the wood.“ What’s striking to me about this is the impression you get at this point in the story is that Isaac fully submitted to his father. At some point, he What’s going to happen? As they put the wood and they say, he bound his son. He said, Son, here’s what God told me. You have to die and I have to kill you. And Isaac did not protest. First then, and Abraham stretched out his hand and he took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham. So he said, here I am. And he said, do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him for now I know that you fear God since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” Then Abraham lifted his eyes and looked, and there behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up for a burnt offering instead of his son. And Abraham called the name of the place, the Lord will provide, or Jehovah Jireh, as it is said to this day, in the mount of the Lord it shall be provided. There’s so many lessons in this passage, and we may come back to this at a future date when we talk more about faith, but because there’s each person, Abraham and Isaac, they have a typological significance. And this text is important as what it teaches us about the obedience of the Son to the but what does it teach us about the Father? What does it teach us about the heart of God? That He would give His Son for us whom He loves. And if you don’t have children, it’s hard for you to really understand. But if you have children, I think you can get a little glimpse of what I’m talking about. Of how much you love your children, and how you would never do anything intentionally to harm them. And you have a little glimpse of the heart of the father through your love for your children. And how difficult it must have been for Abraham to lay his son on that altar.

How difficult it must have been for him to literally take the knife and be ready to plunge it into his son. Scripture says to us, he who spared not his son. That’s how much God loves us. More than Abraham loved Isaac, more than you love your children, much, much more, I would say infinitely more than When you love your children, God loved His Son. And yet He gave His Son for us. And we can only imagine the pain, if you will, to the heart of the Father. Because when Jesus Christ died on that cross, it was not the Jews that killed Jesus or the Romans that killed Jesus. It was the Father that killed Jesus. He went to the cross, the Word of God says, by the foreordained or predetermined counsel of God. And yes, Judas betrayed him and he had evil motives and the Romans hated him and the Pharisees hated him, but God used all of that to accomplish the Father’s purpose. And the gospel is this, for God, not Jesus, for God, meaning the Father, for God so loved the world that he did what? He gave, or as Paul says, He offered up, He provided His Son. The most precious thing to Him, He gave for us. That’s how we know that God loves us. Go back to Romans, but go to chapter 5 real quick before we go back to 8. Romans 5, Paul says this, therefore in verse 1, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, for whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand and rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulation. How can you glory in tribulation? Knowing that tribulation works perseverance and perseverance, character and character, hope. And our hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us. For when we are still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man one will die, yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God, the Father, demonstrates His own love toward us and that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. The Father showed us His love by providing His Son for us, not when we were good, not when we were obedient, not when we were religious, not when we turned over a new leaf. He sent His Son to die for us in our sin. In our sin. That’s how much God loves us. Romans 8. question, verse 33,

Nothing Can Separate Us

who will bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies, no matter what others may say of you, no matter what others may, how they may judge you, no matter how the enemy of your soul may accuse the word of God says that God is the one who justifies and who justifies and what God says And what God says is true. No amens. That means if God says you are righteous, and I mean righteous in the sense of you’re standing with God, you are accepted with God, God is not holding his sin, your sin against you. You are not guilty before God because you are justified. And justified means it’s just if I’d never sinned. You’re justified. You’re accepted. If God says you’re accepted, you’re accepted. If God says that you can stand in His presence, then you can stand in His presence. If God is not condemning you, guess what? You’re not condemned. So don’t live like it. Don’t walk around living like you’re condemned, because the Word of God says, you are not condemned. The Father says, I am not condemning you, because I’m the one that justifies you. Why would God condemn the one He justifies? It doesn’t make any sense. It’s not schizophrenic. It doesn’t do one thing with his right hand and then change it with his left hand. God is the one who justifies. You don’t justify yourself. If you’re standing with God dependent on your obedience, then you would have every reason to wonder, am I condemned? Am I accepted? But it doesn’t depend on you. It depends on the work of Christ. It depends on the love of God. And God says that if you are in Christ through faith, that He has already declared you righteous. Amen? That means there is, Romans 8.1. What does it say? There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. Can you read that? Can you say that? There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. You know what that means? But if you’re in Christ Jesus, there’s no condemnation for you. So when you read that verse, you need to say, there’s no condemnation for Ryan. There’s no condemnation for Drew. There’s no condemnation for Matt. There’s no condemnation for Steve. There’s no condemnation for Sean. There’s no condemnation for anyone who is in Christ Jesus. And you, by faith, need to take hold of this Scripture, because what God says is true. And if you are in Christ, this Scripture means there’s no condemnation for you. For you. Because God is not condemning you. God is the one who justifies you. Next question, 34, who is he who condemns? Is it Christ who died and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us? Okay, Paul says, well the Father is not condemning you, well hmm, maybe the Son is. Well let’s see, would the Son then give His life for you? Would He die for you in order to condemn you? You know what Jesus said? He said, the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them. He said, I did not come for condemnation. He says the condemnation is that when men had the light, they loved darkness more than light. That’s the condemnation. God sent his Son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. Jesus didn’t come to condemn. He came to save. So is he going to condemn you if you receive him? The logic of it is preposterous. Next question, who or what shall separate us from the love of Christ? And now, Paul tells us all of these things. Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword. As it is written, for your sakes we are killed all day long. we are kind of the sheep for the slaughter. He quotes from the Old Testament because it. Because it’s possible you’ll be killed. it is possible you might die for the gospel. But that doesn’t mean God doesn’t love you. Yet in all these things we are more than conquers through Him who loved us. Paul says, for I am persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come, not height nor depth nor any created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. What he is saying is that there is no created thing. He’s already established the fact that God, who is not a created thing, or created person, God is not condemning. The Father is not condemning you if you’re in the Son. The Son is not condemning you if you’re in the Son. So the uncreated one is not condemning you. So what about something in the created order? Is there something in the created order that condemn you? He’s saying no created thing. This means there is no experience, there is no person, there’s no time, there’s no place, there is nothing in the created order that can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Hallelujah. Nothing. Oh, there is one thing. Want to hear it? Your unbelief. That’s the only thing. Because we are saved by faith. We know God by faith. know the Son by faith. And we experience the truth and the reality of God’s love by faith. Amen. By faith. As we remember the Lord, as we take the supper, we’re celebrating so many things, but we need to remember and celebrate the love of the Father. And we need to walk in the reality of that love. Walk in the reality that we are not condemned. Walk in the reality that God loves us so much, He gave us His Son. Walk in the reality that Jesus Christ is not only not condemning us, Jesus Christ is interceding for us. Walk in the reality that there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God, walk in the reality that God is for us. Amen? Do you believe God is for us?

Closing Prayer

So as we take the elements, we’re celebrating that love and we take the elements in faith, in faith, remembering really that the ultimate expression of that love was in the broken body and the shed blood of Jesus. Let’s stand together and pray. Worship team can come up. Father, we thank you. We thank you is not sufficient. It is not sufficient, Lord. Lord is your apostle. Paul said, what shall we say to these things, Lord? We don’t know what to say. The only thing we can say is, Lord, I believe. And I pray, Lord, for any here that don’t know your son Jesus, and I ask that you would open their eyes now to see how to much you love them. And I pray also, Lord, for not just any that may have come in here today that didn’t know you, I pray also, Lord, for your church. I pray for those that need to have their minds opened to your love, their hearts opened to your love. I pray through the ministry of your word and through your spirit that you would show your people, your great love, that you, God, are for us.

We thank you that you have proved, you have demonstrated in space-time history your love [audio unclear] showing us your Son. No greater love has any man than this than a man lays down his life for his friend.

And Lord, you’ve called us your friends, you’ve called us your children, you’ve called us your beloved. May we revel in that love. And may that love transform us into the image of Jesus. Amen.