Put your finger in Genesis chapter 42 for a moment, please, and then turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 8. While you're turning, let me bring greetings from Columbia, South Carolina. I'm glad it's warmer there than it is here. Someone told me when we first moved up from Orlando that We have moved to the armpit of South Carolina. I found that to be true in the summertime particularly, very warm and very humid, but it's good to be in Greenville once again to fellowship with you to open up the Word of God. I want to say a special word of thanks on behalf of my family for your prayers for us. I know that the calmness and the peace of heart that has been our portion through the last spate of rough waters has been because of the prayers of God's people here in Greenville and throughout the world. God does hear and answer prayer, we believe that, and he has helped us through very difficult times. a calmness that I can't explain other in terms of the grace of God, a peace of mind and heart that does pass understanding. It does work. The Lord does work His grace. We thank Him for that. We thank Him for you, for remembering us, and we ask you to continue to remember us. My wife's surgery is the 25th of March, as I'm sure you know, and we'll ask you to keep her especially in prayer at this time, and the whole family. God will prove Himself to be what He said He would be to us. Our Father, our Comforter, our help in time of trouble, And we're glad we're in the family, not just the family of Christ, but I'm glad I'm in the Free Presbyterian Church, a family worldwide that has taken up the cause of His people and the burdens of His people and bear them with His people. So we thank you in the Lord's name for your prayers for us and ask you that you do keep remembering us before the throne of grace. Romans chapter 8, we want to break in, please, this morning at verse 26. Romans chapter 8 verse 26, likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities. For we know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom He did predestinate, them He also called, and whom He called, them He also justified, and whom He justified, them He also glorified. What shall we say then to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not His own Son but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that 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 creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Now, one little verse tucked away back in Genesis chapter 42. Verse 36, And Jacob their father said unto them, Me have ye bereaved of my children? Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away? All these things are against me. And we know that God will add His own divine blessing. to the public reading of His precious Word for His name's sake. Let's bow our heads in prayer. Let's ask the Lord for His help. Ask God to make a way for His Word into your own soul this morning. Let's all pray. Our gracious, loving Father in heaven, we come yet again to the mercy seat in Jesus Christ's holy name. We ask Thee for His sake. for His righteousness imputed to us, that Thou wilt look down upon us with favor, that Thou wilt give to us something of the power of the Spirit of God this morning, to preach Thy Word, to preach it, Lord, in all of its clarity, to preach it, Lord, with power that comes from God, to make the pertinent application that needs to be heard by this congregation today. Even now, Thy Word assures us that Thou art well acquainted with every need and every heart and every home. We ask Thee once again that Thou will take up Thine own truth and custom fit this message for every soul today. Pass not one by, we pray. May we all be aware that the Lord is in this place this morning. Save us from being plastic Christians, we pray. Save us from playing with the things of God. Save us this day from simply warming a pew or standing behind a sacred desk and preaching a sermon. We ask this morning, Lord, that we will all know what it is to draw nigh to God and to have Thee draw nigh to us. Father in heaven, deal in mercy with us, we pray. Meet the deep needs of our hearts, we ask Thee. And we pray that when we leave the house of God this morning, we will do so with the joy of the Lord in our hearts. We pray it in Christ's name for his sake. Amen and amen. Poor, poor Jacob. He's an old man now. It seems that the last years of his life are going to be spent in mourning. His children, If you know the story at all, you will know that they had been an ongoing source of heartache for this old patriarch. And it would seem that these family troubles had turned Jacob into something of a pessimist. The word pessimism comes from a Latin word. Pessimist, which means worst. Pessimism is usually defined as the tendency in someone to expect the worst. Pessimism, pessimist, engages in the practice of therefore always looking on the dark side of things because he doesn't really expect to see the bright side of things. That's why he's a pessimist. I say that Jacob was plagued with pessimism here in Genesis 42 because of the response he makes to his sons when they tell him that they can't go back to Egypt and get more grain in light of that famine because they have to have Benjamin with them if they do. Benjamin, his youngest boy, the son of his right hand. Jacob cries out, all these things are against me. The Hebrew word translated, all these things is simply one word that means all. All is against me. Everything, it could be easily said, everything is against me. When you are in that frame of heart and mind, you are a pessimist. You are expecting the worst to happen. Jacob has given up hope of ever seeing Joseph and Simeon alive. He says, Joseph is not and Simeon is not. And what did he think would happen if he agreed to allow them to take Benjamin down into Egypt? Well, verse 38 says, My son shall not go down with you, for his brother is dead and he is left alone. If mischief befall him by the way in which ye go, then shall ye bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. My, my, how pessimistic you are, Jacob. You look at your circumstances and you fear the worst. Yet does not that accusation we can so often make of Jacob fly right back in our own face? Have we often not found ourselves looking at our circumstances and painting the blackest picture that could ever be painted? We expect the worst. That's our tendency when we are especially in the midst of afflictions and sorrows as Jacob. Our hopes are dashed to pieces and our expectations are not fulfilled. Our hearts are filled up with anguish and sorrow and even our circumstances. We expect the worst to happen. Like Jacob, we expect to go to our graves in sorrow. We lose our song and turn from singing to sighing, from laughter to lamentation. and from peace to petulance. The damaging effects of a pessimistic spirit upon the heart and life can be very immense because our gloom tends to be contagious. It easily spreads to those who are around us because we're casting a dark shadow everywhere we go. You see it on our countenance, you hear it in our voice, and our responses to the daily things of life. The spirit of gloom is spread. We lose our ability to encourage others, to lift them up out of their despondency, their discouragement. And our testimony to the lost around us is adversely affected because our bemoaning our condition does not speak very highly of what we profess to have as a blessedness in our Christian state. Worst of all, we actually lose the ability to praise the Lord from our hearts. We come to church, we open the hymn books, we sing the songs of praise, but the heart does not join into the praise. It's just something we're going through because we have the spirit of gloom filling our souls. Maybe you've come that way here this morning, a spirit of heaviness, a pessimistic spirit about whatever your circumstances may be. They may be about your family. They may be about your children. They may be about your work situation. They may be about your church situation. Who knows what it is? God knows. What a blight a spirit of pessimism is upon the life of the child of God. But for every disease that plagues the believer, the Lord always, always, always has a remedy. In fact, there is only one remedy for any attack upon the spiritual life and vitality of God's people. This is God's panacea. This is God's cure-all, and that cure-all is simply nothing more and nothing less than the gospel. The gospel. That brings me to the statement of Paul that stands in stark contrast to the statement of Jacob. It's Jacob's statement, of course, is everything is against me. Paul says in Romans chapter 8 and verse 31, what shall we say then to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? There you have Jacob living as I think too often so many of us find ourselves living and saying that everything is against me. But you have Paul standing there on the mountain of glory and saying, everything is for us. What a contrast. Everything is against me. No, no, everything is for me. From those two texts this morning, I want to speak to you on the subject of overcoming pessimism. Overcoming pessimism, or if you like, a longer sermon title, How to Go from the Valley of Gloom to the Mountaintop of Glory. How to go from the Valley of Gloom to the Mountaintop of Glory. I have only two thoughts. Doesn't mean I'm going to be brief. My homiletics teacher was not brief and I learned well from him. First I want to look at Jacob's words and look for a few moments at the realities of the valley of gloom. And then we'll turn over to Romans 8 and consider the road to the mountaintop of glory. The realities of the valley of gloom and the road to the mountaintop. First off this morning, the realities of the valley of gloom. It's important that we look at the hard realities when we feel overwhelmed by a spirit of pessimism, of gloom about our circumstances, whatever those circumstances may be. And that's because when you're living in the valley of gloom, you usually don't deal in reality. You usually don't deal in reality. Because you're in the valley of gloom, the bright rays of the sunshine that are there for you when you're on the top of the mountain aren't shining. And therefore, you don't see things so clearly. Your perceptions about your circumstances are skewed. You're not thinking right. because you're not seeing right. You're not feeling right because you're not thinking right. The response you give to your setbacks or troubles is determined by how you feel or how you have reasoned, how you have leaned on your own understanding of your situation. Therefore, we need to take a look at hard realities when we're in the valley of gloom and pessimism. Here's the first reality. Our gloom blinds us to the present blessings from the Lord and forgets about His past blessings. This pessimism, this spirit of despair, this spirit of gloom, blackness, darkness, it has this power to blind us from the actual Here and now, present blessing of God, and completely causes us to forget about what the Lord has done for us in the past. Back in verse 2, Jacob has asked his sons to go down into Egypt to buy corn, that we may live and not die. The famine was obviously very severe, because if they did not get corn, they were going to starve to death. We then read that Joseph had their sacks filled with corn. They go down to Egypt. He fills them with corn and even he gave them their money back to boot on top of it. It was free. So their families are not going to starve to death. After all, they now have plenty of corn to eat, and that should have been taken as a blessing from God to an answer to the prayer. But did they? Nope. They only focused on the problem, and they could not see the blessing that was right in front of them. You know, pessimism has this awful power to completely blind us to the present blessings of God. Completely blind us to answers to prayer. He's answering the prayers, but we don't see them. Anybody else looking in could see, well, there you are, but we don't see them. We're not expecting the Lord to answer prayers. Remember, we're expecting the worst, and you don't expect God to hear and answer your prayers when you're in the valley of gloom. You don't really believe. It also seems so easy to forget all of God's blessings in the past. Jacob had forgotten. Oh, everything is against me. Oh, wait a minute, Jacob. Have you forgotten Bethel? Have you forgotten that night when you were asleep upon a pillow of stone and you saw that ladder with angels descending and ascending back and forth and God making that covenant promise with you? Have you forgotten that, Jacob? What about Peniel? When you thought it was all over? Esau was coming with his band of 400 men, and you thought it was over for all your family, and you did your best to connive away out of it. And there you met God, and you wrestled with Him in prayer, and the Lord delivered you. And had he forgotten how when the men of Shechem wanted to slay his sons for what they did in slaughtering their sons of the men of Shechem, He was scared to death. These men are going to kill me. We've slain all their sons. And the text says, and the terror of God was upon the cities that were around about them, and they did not pursue after the sons of Jacob. He had forgotten about that. We seem to forget all about the Ebenezers we set up when we said, hitherto hath the Lord helped us. That's a very hard reality when you're sitting in the valley of gloom. You've forgotten about the past blessings, the answers to prayer that you got. You don't see how the Lord is presently blessing you. All you're focused upon is that bad circumstance. Another reality. Our gloom will often induce us to exaggerate the true extent of our trouble. Jacob said, Simeon is not, in the same breath that he said Joseph was not. And he believed Joseph to be dead. But his sons didn't say that Simeon was dead. Just that he had been bound in front of their eyes when they were down in Egypt. And Jacob, he's a pessimist now, he immediately jumps to the wrong conclusion because his pessimism exaggerated how bad his trouble was. He concluded that Benjamin would end up being executed, in his mind, just like Simeon. But you know, he had no warrant to say either of those things, to come to that conclusion. You see, when we're in the Valley of Gloom, we exaggerate our problems and we think that our troubles are really worse than they are. We imagine that no one else that we know has ever gone through what we're going through. No one else has ever had these kind of problems. Nobody else. Nobody else in the free church would understand. They don't have this situation. But do you seriously believe that your affliction Whatever it is, your trouble is worse than that of Job, who lost 10 children at one time. I can't imagine going to a funeral service and burying 10 kids. I can't imagine having to bury one. Whose wife told him to curse God and die. Give up your integrity, Joe. Who lost his health where it was painful for him, excruciatingly painful just to sit down. And then to have his friends come along and say, ha, ha, ha, you're going through this, pal, because you're a big fat hypocrite. You've been playing us all along. You've been putting on a mask. And so now God's caught up with you. He was down and he was being kicked for all he was worth. Do we really think that our troubles, whatever yours are right now, do you really think they're as severe as Job's? Or have you read the book of Jeremiah recently? Who was let down into a pit and sank in the mud? So much so that he would ask the king later on, do whatever you want, but don't send me back there again. Must have been pretty bad. Or Paul's troubles. Now we think they are only if we listen to the voice of pessimism. Third reality, our gloomy spirit leads us to place blame on the ones who are nearest and dearest to us for our troubles. Verse 36, Jacob their father said to them, Me have ye bereaved of my children. You've done this. You've done this. He's suspicious of his sons and he places the blame on them for this current spate of trouble. Does it not sound all too familiar? Trouble or even tragedy comes into our home, and the tendency all too often is to blame one another. If you had just done this, then that wouldn't have happened. No, no, the response comes back, if you hadn't done the other thing, then that wouldn't have happened, and that caused this. And it goes on and on, and these are people that are dearest to us, that we love the most. But we're sitting in the valley of gloom. So the blame game is played out. But what has been forgotten in the midst of all the heartache and the fear and anxiety is that there is a God in heaven who preserves and governs all of His creatures and all of their actions. This is where your theology begins to meet the road. It's not just theory. He believed that he governs and preserves all of his creatures and all of their actions. There's nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing that would ever take place in our lives has not been part of the plan and purpose of God, decreed by God to come to pass. Nothing. You want to know what Jacob really meant when he said that all these things are against me, he meant, number one, that these troubles were against his will. This is not what I want. I don't like what's happening. I'm not happy with my circumstances. It's against my wishes. It's against my will. He meant, moreover, that they were against his present peace and comfort. They were making his day miserable, and he didn't like it. They were against his present happiness. Peace, comfort, happiness, gone. And that is why a spirit of gloom settles over us. And we conclude in such a state that we will never know again peace and comfort of heart and happiness. We expect the worst. This is how we're going to go to our graves sorrowing. The situation is not going to get any better. The outcome is going to be as bad as you can imagine it. A fourth and final reality is, however plausible our pessimistic conclusions may seem, they're not true at all. Not for God's people. They're not true at all. Jacob lives long enough to find out that he had been wrong from start to finish. You imagine that day, this guy who had been sitting there saying, you see his old wrinkled face so sad, oh, everything is against me. But then there comes the day when he hears the wheels of the wagons that Joseph had sent with all the provisions coming. I had been so black with gloom, but now, listen to the wagon wheels. And now he thought he had never seen Joseph again, and he sees Joseph again. And then he has the golden years at the end of his life. All these things are against me. No, no, Jacob, no. They were all working for you. You just didn't see it. Your focus was all wrong, Jacob. You weren't thinking right. That brings me in the second place this morning to the road to the mountaintop of glory. Romans chapter 8. The road to the mountaintop of glory. What shall we say then to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? Paul has been writing in this chapter about the security of God's people in spite of all, verse 18, the sufferings of this present time. After the struggles of the believer with that law of sin and his members back in chapter 7, he should be very glad to enter into that security and blessings of chapter 8. What shall we say then to these things? I take these things. to refer not simply to the gift of the Spirit's intercession and of the truth of the overruling providence of God who makes all things work together for good, but I believe that these things includes the struggles and the sufferings that he's been writing about. What shall we say then to these things? All these things I've been writing about, the suffering, the heartache, the sorrow, what shall we say then to these things? How do we respond to it all? In light of all of our sufferings and God's gracious spirit, how do we respond to it all? Here's how. If God be for us, who can be against us? Now here, brothers and sisters, here's how we get from the valley of gloom to the mountain of glory, and there's a number of simple statements I want to make and say a few things about it, and this is the gospel. I have nothing new for you, you know. I'm not a Christian psychologist. I don't have a bunch of principles to follow, but I do know the remedy. I proved it. I've been in the Valley of Gloom more than once in my life. Some people would say I'm a pessimist by nature. You know, the glass is half empty, it's partly cloudy, not partly sunny. That's me. Expecting the worst, not the best. And I am telling you, This is how you go from the valley of gloom to the mountaintop of glory. These realities of the gospel. Number one, number one reality, God has not left us alone. Verse 26, likewise the spirit also helpeth Our infirmities. We have many infirmities. We have many weaknesses. We are, in our best state, frail, frail creatures. We're a massive weakness. I know you and I get puffed up with pride and we think we're big, bad, and tough and all the Lord's got to do is, we find out we're not as strong as we thought we were. Our faith is not as mighty as we thought it was. Our grasp of doctrine is not as deep or not as fierce as we thought it was. We have many infirmities, and our weaknesses will often leave us in this place where we can't understand. Because of our infirmities, we don't know, we don't understand what the will of God is in prayer. How should we be praying? What should we be asking God for in this situation, in the midst of our suffering and our sorrows? Paul says, we have not been left alone. The Spirit has been given to help. It's a unique Greek word, help. It's only used here and in Luke chapter 10, where Martha asks the Lord to bid her sister Mary to come and help. Bid my sister that she come and help me. It's a double compound word that means to take hold of something along the side of another, to take hold of something along the side of another. And God declares that he is for us, that he is not against us because he sends his spirit to come right alongside of us, who takes hold of and helps us with our weaknesses, helps us with our burdens. We're not left alone to go through it. We're not left alone in the place of prayer. Even when we feel, because of our pessimism, that God is not listening, and we find words difficult to marshal together at the throne of grace, God says His Spirit is sent along to help, to come alongside and lay hold of our burdens. You know, Jacob never once made mention of God in that scene in Genesis 42. Strange thing that. Never made mention of the Lord, of Jehovah. But God had not abandoned him any more than he's abandoned us. It's true of our weakness in prayer. I think one of the things that you struggle with most, if I know anything about the Lord's people, you struggle with your prayer life more than anything else. Am I not true? Consistent time spent on your knees at the throne of grace, I think I'm dead on right. And you grieve, you feel guilty, you feel useless, powerless, you lament that, and oh my, when you're sitting in the valley of gloom, you really feel it. The Lord has said, I've not left you alone for all your struggles and prayer, all the times when you've neglected me, when you should have come to me and told me your heartache and your fear and your worry. You should have spent time in my presence because I'm the only one who can give you peace and comfort and joy. I'm the only one who can straighten your thinking out. But even so, I've not left you alone. I haven't abandoned you. You have my spirit. It's true of our weakness to endure the trial. How can we endure the trial? How are we going to get through it? We think that. How are we going to get through it? Likewise, the spirit helpeth our weaknesses. Something else, God's purposes will not be frustrated. That's number two. Verse 28, ah, you know it well. Or do you? And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God. We know. Why do all things work together for good? For his elect. They all work together for good because God has this purpose, this plan, this blueprint, and everything is going according to plan. I remember one time many, many years ago when the church was in Newtown Square. I'd only been attending the work for about a year, so you're going back to 1984, and I was driving along the New Jersey Turnpike going to my first appointment about two hours away. I had all kinds of time to think, and my, I was so upset about my own spiritual life, about what was happening, and it was just miserable. Mourning about this to God, you know, moaning, groaning, complaining, and all those things you do when you're But then the Spirit came alongside and helped, and reminded me that, John, I'm God, and everything is going according to schedule. I've got this plan, and you're right where I want you in this plan. I'm right on target. I haven't missed one beat, one step. And the burden rolled off my back and joy filled my soul. I went immediately to the mountaintop of glory. And then I looked down at the speedometer, I was doing 90 miles an hour. And the devil came along and said, ha, could that be really from God if you're breaking the law? He doesn't give up, you know. All things, all things work together. And let me put the real truth there. God makes all things. Sad things, painful things, things that we fear, makes them work together. for good, for our benefit. Therefore, we don't have to be frustrated. Here you are, you're so frustrated with your life. You live in frustration day in and day out. But you know God's not frustrated. Not in the least. Why do we get frustrated? We get frustrated with ourselves, and let's be honest, we get frustrated with others, and with our circumstances, because they aren't according to what we want. Our wishes and our wants, they're not according to those things. We're frustrated. I wanted this to happen. I didn't want that to happen. Why isn't this happening? But God is not frustrated with us. Hallelujah. That's good stuff, you know. That He's not frustrated with us. Your wife may be very frustrated with you this morning. Your husband may be very frustrated with you this morning. Your children may be very frustrated with you as their parents. And you may be very frustrated with your children. But God is not frustrated with us. And He certainly isn't frustrated with our circumstances. He knows what he's doing. Always has. It's all part of the plan. And that means it's okay. Don't you understand? It's part of the plan. It's God's plan. It's perfect. He's not frustrated. Therefore, we do not need to be frustrated. If we believe, not just a verse we have on the wall and that we memorize in school or in college, we really believe that he is going to make everything work together for good, it's okay. Everything is okay. You must believe that if you want to go from the valley of gloom to the mountaintop of glory. There's a third truth. God is for us, and therefore we will not be defeated. If God be for us, in verse 31, who can be against us? The idea is there. Who can be against us and prevail? Who can be against us and really conquer us? And have dominion over us? You want to know who's frustrated, brothers and sisters? Satan is frustrated. He's been trying to sift you like wheat for years and years and years. And every time he thought he had you, he thought he had you. But Christ stepped in and said, Father, I have prayed. I have prayed for that child. Satan was defeated. Three years of my life in drugs and drink, and he thought he had me. And the Lord stepped in and made me a preacher. The devil is very frustrated. But you see, because God is for us, we will not ultimately be defeated. I preached some weeks ago in Columbia on that. One of my favorite passages in the prophet, rejoice not against me, O mine enemy, for when I fall, I shall arise. The Hebrew actually says, I have arisen. It's as certain as anything. Rejoice not against me. God is for us. Can you imagine that? Paul, he's brought these believers to the fact of the groanings that come from within, the sufferings and the sorrows, but wait a minute, God is for us, therefore we will not ultimately be defeated. Yes, we'll have setbacks, and yes, we'll have disappointments with our circumstances, and yes, there'll be heartaches, but we will not know ultimate defeat. My mind goes back to standing behind this this pulpit in homiletics class, maybe the first or second message we ever had to preach to Mr. Cairns, and if you've ever sat in a class and he's sitting there in that back row about where David Starr is right now with his glasses on looking and writing his notes, you'll understand what fear is. But I remember saying to this day, one day, brothers and sisters, We will, through Christ, put our heel on the neck of Satan and say, the victory is ours. The victory is ours. Because God is for us. We don't need to live in a valley of gloom. We need not fear. Come on, come on. Pluck up the courage. Be strong and of good courage. There's no need to sit in gloom. We will not know defeat. God is for me. God the Father is for us. He adopted us. He must be for us. He adopted us. He can't cast us off because He has chosen us to be His elect people. Knowing everything there was to know about us. Everything. Knew all about you. Knew all about your failures. Knew all about your backsliding. Knew all about your prayerlessness. Knew all about your temper. Knew all about your carnal ways. When He chose you, He can't cast you off. The Father is for you. He remembers your frame. He knows you came from dust. He knows how feeble you are. He knows your proneness. But He's for you, not against you. Christ is for you. Christ is for you. Did He not declare that when He was quite happy to leave glory, to dwell among men who would despise Him and crucify Him? did not, when they laid that piece of wood on the ground and put the Savior upon it, did not every blow of the hammer that drove the nails through his hands and his feet cry out, I'm for you, I'm for you, I'm for you, I'm not against you? You say to yourself, but all my sin, You ever been there on your knees before God and just been overwhelmed with your sin, and you've said, oh, Lord, my sin, my sin, my sin. My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought. My sin, not in part, but the whole, is nailed to His cross, and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord, O my soul." That's the gospel. God the Spirit is for us. He's called our comforter, our guide into the truth, our sanctifier. our pledge, our power. The Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, He cannot make it any plainer than He has in the gospel. I am for you. I am not against you. You're not my enemy. You're my child. You're my brother. You're my friend. You're my beloved." If only we could see how the Lord looks upon us this morning as His people. The fourth step up this mountain, God will give us all that we will ever need. Look at verse 32. He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? So much is God for you that He did not spare His only begotten Son, but delivered Him into the hands of wicked men, knowing what they would do to Him. What was it the Puritan said? He would give up Christ to get us. He would give up his Son to get us. I don't understand that. I'll make my Son an object of shame that I might make my elect objects of glory and honor. I'll make my Son an object of my wrath that I can make these rebels objects of my love. Now, if He would give us His only Son, Paul argues from the greater to the lesser, how shall he not with him also freely give us, and to me it's worth circling that word, all things. All things. All things that pertain to life and godliness. Faith, you need it? You got it? I'll give it to you. Hope? You need power in prayer? I've got it. You need wisdom for your situation? He has it. There's nothing you can name as far as your needs may be this day, whether it be spiritual, physical, or material, that the Lord is not there with a full supply in Christ Jesus to meet the need. Now you believe that, if you believe that, let me put it like this, the more you believe that, the more you go to him asking for those things. The more confident you are that he has the supply, it's wide open for you. That's what a Spurgeon is called, faith's checkbook, you know? You believe the bank is full, I'll go today and I'll submit my check and he'll give. You don't believe that, then guess what? You don't find yourself very much going to God for those things. And so you sit yourselves on your backside in the valley of gloom when you could well be standing on the mountaintop of glory. Can I put it that bluntly? all things. What do you need? What do you need this morning? Tell me. He gave you Christ. You think he's going to hold back something less The fifth truth, God will defend us against all the accusations of hell. Verse 33, Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifies it. Laying something to the charge, it's a forensic term, a legal term. It actually brings us into a courtroom. And of course you understand, I know you do, that the devil is the accuser and slanderer of the brethren. Constantly brings his charges against Christ's people. Ah, Peter, Peter is a hypocrite. He's going to sift him, he thinks, like he's chaff. He's not the real McCoy. He's a phony. And he brings the accusations and the guilt would want to come along with it. We have God, it says, that justifies. God says we're righteous. Our creator says we're righteous. In spite of our failings, in spite of our sins, in spite of our backsliding, we are righteous in His sight. What though the accuser roar of ills that I have done, I know them all and thousands more, Jehovah findeth none. Though, or to take the other part of that, though the restless foe accuses sins recounting like a flood, every charge our God refuses, Christ has answered with His blood. He will defend his people against every accusation. And one day, one day, Satan is going to see all of his righteous people at the right hand of Christ, and they're going to see that they were exactly what God said they were. They were justified. all your accusations you brought against them were lies and you were wrong. Does my heart good? Pessimists tend to be very keenly aware of all that's wrong in their lives. They see, they feel the guilt, the accusations that come. You stay in the valley of gloom when that's all your focus is. The gospel of Jesus Christ says, no one's going to lay a charge against my child and it's going to stick. If any man sin, we have an advocate with a father, a lawyer, never lost a case. and stands up to defend us. Hallelujah. Something else here. Not only will God defend us against all the accusations of hell, but God himself will never condemn us. So he says in verse 34, Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, rather that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. God is not... He'll never ever condemn us, never bring judgment against us, because it's been brought upon Christ himself. Can't judge me. I've been judged in Christ already. One final thought. There is never going to come a time when God will stop loving you. Never. Who shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus? He comes up and says at the end, after all this list of things that will not separate nor any other creature, it actually reads, no created thing, nothing created, that means everything, can separate us from the love of God. Nothing, no one. Now, you might feel and be convinced when you're sitting in the valley of gloom that you're not a very lovable person. You know, some people are just lovable. My wife is one of them. But I'm like Mike Baird, I'm not very lovable. But the gospel, the good news, my God will never, ever, ever stop loving me. Never. No matter how cold my heart gets, how prayerless I may become, how much I might fail Him, and not trust Him, and sit in the valley of gloom and say with Jacob, all these things are against me. He will always love me. If I can say it reverently, He can't help Himself. He must love me. I'm in Christ. And if I'm in Christ, He must love me. Tucked away forever, forever in Him. Safe and secure from all alarm. So no matter what this purpose or plan of God brings into your life, you must believe through it all. He is doing this because He loves me, not because He's against me. Everything that He does is because He loves me, and that will never end. Those are simple steps, ones that we seem so reticent to take. But they're the only steps that will take you from the valley of gloom to the mountaintop of glory. May God write His precious Word upon our hearts for His name's sake. Let's all bow our heads in prayer. Let's seek the Lord together. Our gracious and loving Heavenly Father, We thank Thee for Christ. He is all the world to us. Without Him we are nothing. We can do nothing. Thy word says that with Him we can do all things. We ask Thee, our Lord, that this will be a day when Thy people do leave this house of God with joy in their hearts. How can we not if we believe these truths? Draw alongside that child of thine right now that is hurting, that is full of fear, worry, sitting in gloom. Draw them to thine own heart. Give them the vision of Christ and all that He is and is done for His people. make this to be a very special Sabbath day. We ask it in Jesus' name, for Jesus' sake. Amen.