Amen. We will be going to Romans 8. If we're talking about unbounded love, there is a passage that stands out in all of Scripture. And now this passage, the quintessential passage on God's love. is Romans 8. I mean, of all passages in Scripture, if you wanted to pick out one that's going to explain the love of God, unbounded love of God, this is the place to go to. But it also happens to be one of these places which will put you in the dark night of the soul. You come here and it's ground zero. This is the passage that comes up all the time in counseling that reminds you that God works together. All things for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purposes. His purpose. Do we understand then that God's love now is couched in a chapter? I mean the quintessential passage on God's love for us is couched in a chapter that deals with the very ground zero of our soul. I don't know what ground zero is for you. I don't know where it is when your life blew up in front of your face. But you do. You know it right now. And everybody's got a different one. When this passage came and applied, not maybe at that moment, but later on. There's a time to mourn where I wouldn't quote this passage to anyone. at the moment, but wait till it comes later. And if we're gonna be honest with the text, let the text say what it says, then we're gonna have to deal with the fact that right there in the middle of it is ground zero, the dark night of the soul, the place of our pain that we don't like to go to. Look at Romans 8, 35. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Now notice, two places. I mean, this chapter is so chock full of things that we talk about all the time. It's just amazing how much Paul puts in just Romans 8. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? In 39 it says, nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, which we just sang. Verse 35, again, who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword, So we like the nothing's gonna separate me from the love of Christ that comes before it. I love the nothing's gonna separate me from the love of God after it. But what is this next verse doing in here? What is that all about? I was feeling good. Now you have to bring out this? What are you talking about, Paul? Just as it is written, for thy sake we are being put to death all day long? We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered? What's that about? And why put it right there in the middle of while I was feeling good about God's love for me? The line up, the line that wants to go into that ride is very short. The line that wants to go to epic camp, get the feels and know about how God loves you and confirms you and affirms you, that's long. Go, have a great weekend, leave feeling great. But the lineup for being slaughtered to know the unbounding love of God, that's pretty wide open. Not a lot of people coming to that camp. If we're gonna be honest with the text here, that's the camp we're going to. That's where we come to know the unbounding love of God. It's couched right in the midst of our dark night of the soul, our ground zero. And then, look at, just back it up because we have to get the context of our little hamburger. of love, Jesus loves you, you're being slaughtered, God loves you, right? And the meat in the middle is you're a lamb for slaughter. All right, so let's back it up just a little bit. There is that verse right there, and we know that God causes all things to work together for the good to those who love God. How many times do we hear that quoted? And it's always, why? It's easy to know the love of God when we are going through the blessings, oh, everything's great. This verse comes out in the dark, it comes out at ground zero when life has blown up in my face. And all the ruins are scattered all around me, and I'm saying, works out for my good? Your love works out for my good? Doesn't look like it. I'm looking at scattered pieces of the life that I thought was representing your love and it doesn't look so loving right now. We need to know that the scattered pieces do have a purpose. and that God does have a plan. Without it? Without it? Without the purpose and plan? What? Just fate? Fate blew my life up in my face. And it just happened out of nowhere. No purpose to it. You got the lemon of a life. And your enemies, oh, they get the good life. You just happen to get the lemon. We find unbounded love there, in the midst of the shattered pieces. When I say ground zero, every time I think of ground zero, I think of the Twin Towers. You know all the pictures of how the tower came down, nothing but mass rubble everywhere, destruction everywhere. And that is the moment where we recognize this is, it's at this moment that Christ is bringing me into His unbounded love to show me at this moment. What, another verse that we quote all the time. We love it. I love it. One of my favorite verses. But in all these things, we are overwhelmingly All these things we overwhelmingly conquer through him who loved us. Hupernicao, hyper Nike. Nike gets their symbol that you're conqueror, victor, from this word. And this goes beyond that. It's Hooper, it's beyond, above, way beyond. You're a victor way beyond. This is not just getting by and not losing. This is a supernatural victor. This is not something you come up with on your own. Are you with me? Look, Moses didn't sit in front of a heating lamp to be glowing. He met with God, and when he met with God, that changed him radically. It affected everything about his life. Some people have gone through the worst of circumstances and come out of it shining, and you stand there in awe saying, what happened to you? This thing just flops. I gotta calm down. I'm gonna try to hold my hands together. That'll never happen. You want to say, what happened to you? In seminary, there was a guy who came. I missed that day. My buddy was telling me about it. He said, Rob, you missed. You should have been there. He's a missionary, he went through a tragedy that you just cannot imagine. He said, as soon as he told us about it, the class went, oh, you felt the darkness weigh in on you. But he was beaming. He said, no, no, no, no. I wouldn't change a thing. I wouldn't want to go through it again, but I wouldn't change a thing. And he was radiating the love of Christ. He knew something that was supernatural that you just don't come up with on your own in a situation like that. Had another. So you have him on one side, another example. of someone who was not experiencing hupernacao, more than a conqueror. A couple, Amy and I, we were on a walk, we were just new to the neighborhood. Walking through the neighborhood, we come across this couple that had had another tragedy, had a tragedy, similar tragedy like this guy. Just horrific, terrible circumstance. And you could see it the moment you saw them. Darkness in their eyes. And he was a pastor. He looked dead still. He looked like a zombie, and so did his wife. Same circumstance, how do you come to two different conclusions? Which one is experiencing more than a conqueror at that point? It's the guy that was in my seminary class who said, I wouldn't change it. I wouldn't go through it again. You can't pay me to go through something like that, but I wouldn't change it. he has met with God and meeting with God and his unbounding love radically changed him. Radically changed him from the inside out. So now we back it up a little more, getting good context. Let's go to verse one, Romans eight. And all of Romans walks us through this deep, wonderful theology about Justification and sanctification and it's just all so laid out, but boy, it culminates things in Romans 8. So we get to verse 1. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Do we recognize? Is that good? Is that sweet to the soul? No condemnation. I can't think of anything better that I love to meditate on is the fact that I'm not condemned. I'm not going to hell forever. No condemnation. In fact, none of you, this is also another outward, secure, it makes me secure. None of you can stand up and say, you should be condemned for this. Right? Because there's no, Jesus said there's no condemnation for you, Rob, anymore. I'm free. I'm so free that I had a very wicked past. I freely give what I need to give when I went for things like in view of a call for a pastor. If you look back on my past, you can dig up plenty of stuff. But I'm free, and I'm not condemned. Christianity is the only place that you can go to where God changes all that. In cancel culture, they'll just, they'll ruin you. Repent forever, crawl, grovel on the ground forever, more, more. Christianity, we just stand up and say, I am free. I've been forgiven. And I'm not even, I'm not ashamed. It's just, it's what it is, I'm forgiven. For there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law, the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. Which was, Rob must die. Well, die for my sins. No, I'm not. Jesus did that. For what the law could not do, which was make Rob born again, or make Rob without any guilt, without any freedom for what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did, sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as an offering for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but to the spirit. When we look at no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, if we flip it to the subtext, and we look in context of the whole chapter, we recognize that, okay, in the context of my life being blown up and obliterated, there is oftentimes somewhere someone who blew it up. There's someone directly associated with the fact that my life is now obliterated. And I want him, her, them, whoever, I want condemnation for them. No condemnation for me, condemnation for them. Don't they realize what they did to me? If that's where you are, recognize that that is not the more than conqueror stance that Christ has given to you, to me. That is not the unbounded love that Christ gives to us. You can go to epicamp down the street where they'll stroke you and make you feel good and God will affirm you without ever drudging up the past. without ever having you come back to ground zero where everything blew up in your face and your life is in a shambles. They'll stroke you, make you feel good, but that's not what this text is talking about. This is for us to really know what is epic and really know what unbounded love is to the point where we can look at that other person that blew my life up and said, there's no condemnation, not for me, but not for you either. I will not keep on holding on. Why? Because ultimately, we talk about the love of God. Who blew up the garden? This one who died on my behalf? Talk about coming in and blowing up something. There's a perfect garden. Jesus made it all perfect. It's all without any sin, stain, death. Who stepped into that world and blew it all to pieces? We did. We're guilty. We're sinners. From Adam on down, Romans 5. Passed on down. We inherited that. Blowing up the place is me. And look at what happened. We've got evidence, the shattered pieces of it laying all around us. And Paul deals with it right here in Romans 8. Look at what he says in 18. He says, for I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed. That all sounds great. Love it. Amen. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to the futility, not of its own will, but because of him who subjected it in hope. You know, dolphins are really cruel. I didn't know this until recently. I was just going around. They do some hideous acts. I won't even get into it with children here, but from what I've learned, dolphins are just, I mean, you think, oh, look at the pretty dolphins, they jump out of the water, so much fun, let's ride a dolphin, grab one of those horns and just hold on. I know it's not a horn, it's a fin. And you have those, always some sweet young girl that is, what do you call the marina? They go to the marina and work at splash zone. And little petite thing holding onto this big dolphin going around and flying through the air and all this stuff. And you look at the power, and then you look at the young lady flying across. And you think, oh, that'd be so much fun, right? Dolphins are cruel animals. They do some wicked things. I'm amazed by it. They're under the curse. Why? Because of you and me? It's shattered pieces of the garden that we blew up and we see evidence all around. It should not surprise us. When dolphins act with animal instinct or animals tear each other up with their animal, they're subjected to the curse. Talk about seeing shattered pieces laying around. They're around us all over the place. We've got death and destruction all around us because of our sin, because of my sin. into that. We have God giving us everything that we need. We have the wonderful text that we go back to and say the spirit intercedes for us. Amen. Love it. But it's when it weighs in right there that I recognize I shouldn't be looking at so and so for blowing up my life. I should be looking at how I have blown up the garden and recognize that it's me, oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer. It's me in need of no condemnation. Not them. Dropping back down over in verse 26, and in the same way the spirit helps our weakness, for we do not know how we should pray as we should. But the spirit himself intercedes for us in groanings too deep for words. What an amazing privilege, what an amazing blessing because I don't know about you, but when when ground zero happens, I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to keep it all together. The Spirit, that's God Almighty. God Almighty in the Trinity. All of God is involved actively at this moment. All of God, God Almighty, active, the Spirit, the Son, the Father, active, right there in that moment. Unreal, he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. Verse 28, and we know that God causes all things to work together for the good to those who love God to those who are called according to his purpose. And that verse couched right there in the same chapter of the most famous passage on the extremities of God's unbounding love speaks specifically to a time where everything fell apart. Verse 29, for whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. You know what, conforming to the image of the Son, conforming to the image of Christ? You know, I think about the love of Christ, when I think about the love of Christ, typically I think about Christ on the cross. He died for me, he died for you. That's great. We see Christ on the cross. We don't see us laying down on the altar with God sinking his hand deep into our dragon's skin and peeling it back. It's a reference to C.S. Lewis. Who was that? Eustace? If you've read the Chronicles of Narnia. Just a great illustration of how God reaches in and peels off the layers of sin and the layers of blindness and it painfully, just wretched painfully, I know that's probably not a correct sentence, wretched painfully, he peels And it's painful and it's a wretched process there. The point is sinking deep into that dragon skin and peeling off the layers is painful. God loves you that much. I'll put you through this so that you can get rid of this dragon layer because I love you that much. And when I do, guess what? You will see me in all my glory and unbounded love, and you will walk away changed, changed. Epic down the street. You get the good feels. Walk away feeling good. That's not enough. We need to come to camp and be changed, transformed by God's unbounding love. That's what unbounding love does. You meet up with that and you're changed from the inside out and that bitterness melts away. It just melts, we need that. We absolutely need that. I can't change myself. I'm glad that God will take the good and the bad and the ugly. Just lay down, Rob. Let the peeling begin. Just let the peeling begin. Oh God, it hurts. I know. But it'll be okay. You're going to make it. Because I've given you my Spirit. My Spirit will pick you back up. Don't run away! You want to know I'm bounding love? That's where you find it! And the temptation's what? I'm passing by Romans 8, that secret garden. And before long the foliage overgrows and you don't even know how long it's been since I went down that path because it's too painful and I don't want to deal with it. I don't want anything to do with it. I want it to be yesteryear gone. And here's God bringing me right back and saying, walking by, letting the overgrowth come, missing out on Romans 8, you're not more than a conqueror at that point. I am bringing you to the point where you're more than a conqueror, where you can stand in the wipeout, in the total mass destruction of your life, of what happened in a fallen world, and you can lift your hands in praise and worship and experience unbounded love for you. You get to that point, then you'll know unbounded love and then you'll walk away from epic camp and it will be epic because you will be changed. You'll be transformed into his image, into the image of Christ. We cannot stay the same way. We have to press on. We have to say, Lord, peel it off. Make me like Jesus. I'm too much about myself. I need to get rid of that bitterness. I need to stop shaking my fist at you. I need to look at this and say, when it's sheep to be slaughtered. And you're saying that about my life. I need to say, bless the Lord, oh my soul. I know, because what does Satan do? What does our own flesh, I don't know about you. I know bad Rob. Bad Rob stands around and says, look at the shambles. God doesn't love you. If God loved you, would he do this mess? Look at this. You are like, who is it? Charlie Brown, the pigpen. You're like pigpen. Everywhere you go, you just make a mess. Worthless, dude. What kind of God lets you go through that? Go down to Epic down the street. They'll tell you that God won't do that to you. I'm telling you God will. And there's only one place to go to get past that. It's not just to go for good feels. We have to go to be changed and transformed and have layers peeled off so that we might see Jesus in all of his glory and all of his truth and be transformed so that we, like Moses, can stand in a truly, in the presence of unbounding love and it changes us. so that the world around, and it's not just so that the world, but so it will be true that you will really be more than a conqueror. You don't find more than a conqueror where it's easy. That's easy camp, not epic camp. More than a conqueror comes as we gaze into the glory of Jesus, instead of ignoring it, instead of running to where we get good feels. Epic change transformation comes from me laying down before the Lord and saying, I am so glad that you will use this. And I know it takes time, it doesn't just happen like that. But you can't keep going past the garden, the secret garden of Romans 8, and experience the unbounded love of God. We have to stop and drink it all in. Verse 30, and whom he predestined he also called, and whom he called he also justified, and whom he justified these he also glorified. I want the glory. I just don't like laying down and having layers peeled off. Well, guess what? That's life. It's a fallen world. We're not meant to live here. That's the whole point. We blew it up. And I'm thankful that Jesus is not gonna leave us here. And in the process, he's gonna use. Why can't you just, Lord Jesus, why can't you just use the good stuff and change me? Why does it have to be the bad stuff? Because there's so much bad material. I am not gonna waste it. All these shambles laying around, I'm gonna use it all on you. And out of it, I'm gonna make you more than a conqueror. I love being more than a conqueror. You know what I'm saying? It's like, you wanna talk about being more than a conqueror, hey, I do Spartan. That's not what we're talking about. That's not even close. It's not even close. What we're talking about is ground zero and you keep walking by. I keep walking by. I don't want to be more than a conqueror when we're talking about unbounded love given in that context. I keep walking by there. And then, that's not being more than a conqueror. I do not experience the love of Christ that is unbounded. Who will bring a charge against, verse 33, backing it up, 32, he did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all. How will ye not also with him freely give us all things, the good, the bad, and the ugly, take care of us in every aspect, all the way to glorification? Who will bring a charge against God's elect? God is the one who justifies. Boy, that ought to set our souls free. The minute we realize that the creation and everything is shouting, guilty, you blew up my garden, excuse the anthropomorphism, but it's true, guilty, and we are to blame, and then we have this. Don't worry, there's no condemnation, I've taken care of it. From the one we offended, mind you, from the one, the very one we offended, says, don't worry, I've taken care of it all. There is no more condemnation. That means your sin doesn't keep you from God using your sin. And I don't care what your sin is. I don't care what the person who blew up your life. I don't care what their sin was. There is no condemnation and we should be really happy about that. That makes you wanna shout. Yes. Because who's gonna stand up to Jesus? Say, I got a condemning thing about him. No one. Who's gonna stand up to God? I got a reason why he should pay the price. No one. Who's the one that condemns? Verse 35. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword. Those are all the extremes, okay? Just in a nutshell, we're just talking about the extremes, arguing from the greater to the lesser. If he covers the extremes, you're in there somewhere. You're not outside of the parameters of Christ's love. Isn't that good? I'm not outside of the parameters. me. I'm not outside of the parameters of Christ's love. That's just fabulous. Just as it is written, for thy sake we are being put to death all day long. We are considered sheep to be slaughtered. That's coming from Psalm 44 22, talking about back then how he recounts the history of how God delivered Israel. but now they're in a position where they're given like sheep to slaughter, and it's where are you at, Lord? Why is this happening to us? Because I've been to epic camp so many times, and I had the feels like God loves me, and it always felt great. Where are you at now? Now I'm just kinda trained in thinking that God loves me when things are going well. How can God love me when my world has blown up in my face? And that's the way it is. We learn the unbounding love that's in our text at that moment. But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through him who loved us for I am convinced. I am convinced. That neither death nor life, that's the extreme on the material side. Nor angels, nor principalities, the extreme on the spiritual side. Nor things present, nor things to come. That's time. Your past. Your future. Doesn't matter what it is, when it is, where it is. All of it is subsumed within, and then powers. The Democratic Party can't even steal this from you. Well, I won't go there. I don't want to darken the truth. For I am convinced all of these things, nor height, verse 39, nor height, nor depth, the extremes, nor any other created thing, all of creation shall be able to separate us from the love of God. And this love of God that we experience is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Are you in Christ Jesus our Lord? There is nowhere else to go than Christ Jesus our Lord. You cannot find real unbounded love down at Epic Feels Good Easy Camp. You find it when we come past that Romans 8 garden. and we stop and we allow God in His unbounding love to deal with our issues where the world blew up for us and He takes us in and we with unveiled face behold the unbounding love of Christ and it goes far beyond what we can even imagine. And we need that because there are times where you just can't pick yourself up. You just can't. You need supernatural. I need supernatural, unbounding love at that moment. So what do we do? I want to leave us with this. Ephesians 3. As we go to it, we just Go over a few pages, we've mentioned it a bunch already here this weekend. Ephesians 3. In that moment is when we need to stop at that garden, go find comfort, and Paul says, Ephesians 3, for this reason I bow my knees before the Father. from whom, so he's praying, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that he would grant you, we're praying that God will grant you, us, what? According to his riches of his glory. That's so deep, are you kidding me? The riches of his glory is unending, it's unbounding. to be strengthened with power through His Spirit. We need to be strengthened with power through His Spirit. Look at who's doing the actively picking you up and me up. God. We come before the Lord and we pray, oh God, pick me up, I can't do it myself. I need to meet you face to face and be picked up by you and your Spirit. that he would grant you according to his riches and glory to be strengthened with power through his spirit in the inner man so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith and that you being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge. This is not natural. This is supernatural. This is something we yield to and we recognize we can go nowhere else but to Christ and the Father and ask Him to reveal Himself to us that we will truly know, truly know an unbounding love that transforms us, instead it just makes us feel good. Transform me, Lord Jesus, so that I'm different and I'm changed. Then we will truly know what it means to be more than a conqueror. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, I thank you so much that you, by your grace and mercy, would, Father, by your plan, by your design, in so many ways, you just did everything for us. You've done everything for us in the midst of a shattered world where we are responsible. At least in a certain degrees, a certain ways, you have provided everything and then said there's no condemnation and there's no separation We have it all before us and we thank you and praise you. Oh, that we would see you and be changed by you and experience your unbounding love at all these different points where we in our ground zero have been afraid to look back at it and see and lift up hands to praise you and see you rightly in your true unbounding love. We just praise you and thank you and I pray that we would experience that all the more and live that truth out and be changed to look more like your son Jesus. I pray in your name, amen.