Modern science is based upon the Bible and it's based upon the Bible in this, even Richard Dawkins will admit this, because the Bible taught, as did the Jews and then later on Islam as well, that there was one God, there wasn't many gods, there was one God and one universe that could be observed and it's on that basis that the observability of the universe and the uniformity of the universe that modern science was able to advance. So modern science, Western science, actually has a Christian foundation. And as we, by the way, move away from our Christianity, you will find that we're turning away from science. Less and less people do science. They talk about trusting in science, but they don't know what it is. And equally, what you find is that people start having unscientific beliefs. We saw that a little bit last night when we were looking at how there are people who believe that men can get pregnant. Now, as a scientific remark, that's flat earth level. But it's still there. I listened to a politician today talking about pregnant people, because she couldn't bring herself to say pregnant women. So I would actually, with that particular question, I would say what you'll find is that science will come back, but only because it's based on the ultimate revelation. And the Christian Church, I think particularly the Puritans who founded the Royal Science Society in London, They believed that there were two books. There was the book of nature, which God has given to us, which we observe, that's science. And there is the book that we have here, scripture, which tells us about Christ. And it's to that we turn just now to Romans 8. I am not going to go into verses 28 onto 30 just now. There's just so much in here. So I am going to restrict myself to do from verse 31. And we'll see how far we can go. with your patience. Now, what then shall we say in response to all of these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? Now, notice what's being said here. What's being said here is not who's against you. What's being said here is who is for you. I've noticed while I've been here in Australia that there are a number of Christians who are very fearful And sometimes we can have, you know, Christian organizations can use fear to manipulate people, just as governments have as well. I found it really interesting, if you think of the consequence of that, sometimes it can be too successful. So New Zealand, as regards COVID, right now, the government have announced we can't do zero COVID anymore. But they were so good at instilling in people the fear that thousands of you will die, that now there's a kind of psychological condition. A lot of people saying, no, we don't want to do that. We don't want to open up. And I fear sometimes in the Christian church, people tell us things which are true, But they're not balanced. And what I mean by that is we see things going on in the world, we see things all around us, and we can be very fearful. And in reality, we need to see how great God is. So my point of view is I'm pretty pessimistic about society, and I'm hugely optimistic about the gospel. So if God is for you, well, who can be against us? That doesn't mean that nobody can be against us. A lot can be against us. The Christian life is not an easy life. The devil, hell. the powers of this world, our own sin. Ephesians 6, 12, for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Psalm 23, you know that. Verse four, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, yet I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff come from me. You still walk through the valley of the shadow of death. It's not a pleasant place. Isaiah 40, the nations are as a drop in the bucket and are counted as small dust in the balance. Psalm 124, again, forgive me for quoting from the metrical version, which I kind of know by heart. Now Israel may say in that truly, if that the Lord had not been on our side, then we would have been crushed. And the Psalm goes on to say, but as it is, we're like a bird set free out of a fowler snare. It's, There's an old, I'm looking at you, and some of you might be old enough to remember this, and some of you may even have enough good taste, but there's a Leonard Skinner song, Free Bird, which is just a, it's a tremendous song, and what we're being told in this is if God is for us, even though all these things are against us, yet there is freedom. Verse 32, can I lose God's love? How will he not graciously give us all things? Again, the question is not whether God will graciously give you all things. The question is, you know, it's along with Christ that we receive all things. Again, there's a Beatles song, When I'm 64, Will you still need me? Will you still feed me? When I'm 64, we are often in fear of losing someone's love. You get married, I remember, I was in a congregation with a lot of young people and and particularly guys actually would come in and say, I'm going to propose to my girlfriend, but I'm just not very sure. And I would say, well, what are you not sure about? Well, you know, will she love me forever? I'm going to love her forever. And I'm saying, what do you mean? Are you are you going to have this perfect romance and perfect life? And I would say to them, no, that's that's not the way it is. That's not how life is. Life can be messy, but you should be saying, can I commit to this person for the whole of my life? Can I live with this person? And I think living in fear that you lose someone's love, I mean, by the way, that's really bad parenting, isn't it? That if you threaten your child and you say, if you don't do this, then daddy will no longer love you or mommy will no longer love you. It's a terrible way to bring up a child. And yet somehow, sometimes as Christians, we may fear, can we lose God's love? And Paul does what he does so often here. He argues from the greater to the lesser. He says, look, the cross is the answer. You understand the cross, as we saw in the previous session. This is so practical. God acted. Christ Jesus who died, verse 34, who's the one that condemns? Who can condemn you? Christ Jesus who died, more than that, who was raised to life, is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. And then you have, earlier in the chapter, you have the Spirit interceding for us. It's quite interesting, I received an email recently from a woman who's brought up very strong Catholic, very traditional, and is beginning to look through things, thinking upon things in a different way. And one of the questions she asked me, you know, when I pray to Mary or when I pray to the saints, and my answer to her was not to ridicule that, but just simply to say, why go to any of the servants when you can go to the main man? You know, we can go straight to Christ. We have that. And Christ intercedes for us, and the Spirit intercedes for us. I love this. The question we had in the last session about the cross, and that fascinating discussion, I think it was Lucy or Lauren, one of the Ls, had said that a friend had said what God did to Christ on the cross was evil. Well, I prefer this answer from Octavius Winslow, who says this. Who delivered Jesus up to die? Not Judas for money, not Pilate for fear, not the Jews for envy, but the Father for love. God gave his own son. God gave. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus sweated, as it were, great drops of blood. Jesus cried on the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The cross is the most astonishing thing. And that's why those, even though they profess to be Christian, who deny the atonement, who call the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus abhorrent, someone like Rob Bell or Steve Chopp, Rob Bell with his love wins, but what is love? Yes, love does win, but this is love, that God sent his son as the atoning sacrifice for our sin. It's ironic that in order to, take away the charge of cruelty from God, they end up diminishing the love of God, not exalting it. You know, if someone does something really special for you, we used to have this sweet, I don't know if you got it here, called Rolos, and they were just like little chocolate things and you get a pack of them. And their advert was a very clever advert. Who would you give your last Rolo to? And the idea was that you wouldn't give your last sweet to anyone unless it was someone really special. That's just a little bit of sugary chocolate. But who would you give your children for? And that's the extraordinary thing here. If God delivered up his son, let me put it this way, he's not going to abandon me. He's not going to abandon you. If he delivered his son up for us, what do we have that negates that? What can we do that negates that? Nothing. Paul's basically saying if you want to know that God loves you, you want to show your love to something, you do something for them, don't you? You buy something for them. God could never do anything greater to show his love than the cross. I remember, Sometimes, you know, we present the Christian gospel in such a dreadful way. We present it as though somehow it's a means of getting stuff and, you know, you'll have a better marriage, you'll have a better life and so on. And I think the worst example I've ever seen of that was I was watching a televangelist, which my congregation said, stop doing that, please, David, just because I get so wound up. But I watched this woman, I just remember she had massive hair and she was speaking at a stadium in Russia in front of about 20,000 people. And it was just quite amazing in lots of ways. You know, they had like muscular American weightlifters chopping a block saying God is powerful and so on. Anyway, she gave her message. And honestly, to this day, I'm still stunned at this message. Not because it was brilliant, the very opposite. But her message was simply this. I want you to know that God loves you. I'm not going to do all the accents. She had a very strong accent. And of course, as you are aware, I don't have an accent. You all have an accent. But I heard this woman, and she was saying, I want you to know that God loves you. And I know that God loves me. And how do I know that God loves me? And she actually said this. She said, when I was a little bitty girl, I had a chicken, a pet chicken, and my chicken was crossing the road. And I thought, you're kidding me. You're not doing a chicken crossing the road story. My chicken was crossing the road and my chicken got hit by a truck. And then she did the whole actions. My chicken went like that. And I prayed, Lord, heal my chicken. Lord, save my chicken. And my chicken went and came to life. And I know that God loves me. And at that point, she said, Come on down to the front if you want to be saved. What, because God healed a chicken? Really? Is that where you want to go? On the other hand, let me explain another way. I was giving a talk in a bookstore. And this woman came in. And it wasn't a Christian bookstore. It was a big secular bookstore. And there was about 40 people sitting there. And I had a microphone and a speaker and everything, which the store had given. She came in, she bought her coffee, she got her Danish and she went to sit down. And then she heard me talking. I could see the look of disgust on her face. You could see that she was thinking, oh, no, I came here for peace and quiet. I've got one of these religious nutters. And so what she did, she went and sat way, way over in the corner, as far away as you can possibly see. Now, I'm looking at you guys just now and some of you are actually sitting at the front, which indicates to me that you're not Presbyterians. Some of you are sitting at the back and you obviously are very godly people, but she went right at the back just so that she couldn't, you know, and she turned her back on me. Now, here's the thing. Sometimes, I'll tell you a trick from a preacher's point of view, sometimes there are people who, you know, they're sitting looking at you and you can tell that they're not really that interested, even if they're looking at you. And then sometimes there are people like this lady who was just absolutely determined not to listen, but she heard every word. And by the end of the evening, she was sitting right down at the very front, sitting at my feet. She'd come all the way down to the front. And I was doing Q&A, and she said, Dave, I want to ask you a question. I said, yeah, go ahead. She says, look, I came in here. I was really annoyed. I said, yeah, I noticed. So I just dropped my son off at Scouts and I just wanted some peace and quiet. And then I come in here and I hear you talking about the Bible and stuff, and I don't believe all of that. And then she said, but she said, I got one question for you. How do you know that God loves you? She said, I don't mean, don't tell me all this rubbish about God loving everybody. I said, how do you know that God loves you? And so beginning with Galatians 2.20, the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me, I explained the cross. And what amazed me was as I was explaining the cross, her eyes were like wide open and her mouth was wide open, you know, like that. And I saw Christians around seeing her reaction, being utterly amazed at her reaction. And then when I finished, she stopped and she said, David, I'm not saying I believe that. But if that is true, That is the most wonderful thing I've ever heard. And I said to some of our folks afterwards, you know, she got the cross better than many of us, because that's what Paul is saying here. He says, you get the cross. You're saying, well, hang on. If you gave me Jesus, how are you not going to give me all things? That doesn't mean God's going to give me the new iPhone or everything else. It just means he's going to give us all that we need and more to grow and to love and share. Verse 33, who shall bring any charge against God's elect? Maybe you don't want to think of yourself as God's elect, because when elect, you think of elect as, well, I get chosen for that team because I'm good. And that's not me. And it seems a bit proud, one of God's elect. But biblically, it's different. Martin Lloyd-Jones says, do you think of yourself as one of God's elect? or as one of God's chosen people, many of our troubles arise from the fact that we do not think of ourselves in this way, and that we think of the Christian as one who's decided for Christ. I'm not saying we don't decide for Christ, we do, but the emphasis should be the other way. Why are you here today? God brought you. That's a phenomenal thing. Why do you believe? God chose you, that's a phenomenal thing. The Christian is one who's been elected, chosen of God, and precious for that reason. And therefore, no charge can be brought against God's people. Who's gonna charge us? It's God who justifies. It's not just that we've been cleared of any one sin, we are cleared of absolutely every charge. And the devil can't appeal to a higher court. There is no higher court. This is it. This is the Supreme Court of Supreme Courts. Well, sometimes as a Christian, I think I say, I sense my sin, I know I'm bad. I know a little of the darkness of my own heart and my sin. And yet when Satan comes and accuses me, I say, no, but I'm not relying on me. I'm relying on what Jesus has done. He came to save. He died. He was raised. He is also at the right hand of God, interceding for us. Christ Jesus is in the holiest of holies. Let me just say a little bit about the passage at the end, in terms of the degrees of separation, and then I'll stop. There are seven degrees of separation mentioned here. Trouble, hardship, and persecution. Trouble is a word for strong pressure. Tribulation comes from the Latin tribulum. It means a threshing sledge, where the comb was brought to the threshing floor and there was a wooden threshing instrument. And it's the idea of circumstances pressing down upon us. Persecution is someone intent on causing us harm. Famine and nakedness. Jesus says, don't worry about your life, what you will eat or drink or about your body, what you will wear. It's not life more than food and the body more than clothes. Go and read the rest of that part of the Sermon on the Mount. Nakedness here is not about indecency, but it's about not having the money to clothe yourself. I ask you simply this, I'm not teaching here a prosperity gospel, but I'm teaching what God says. Do you not think that God will provide for you? We spend all our time worrying, and I think we need to be generous in giving people to share what the Lord has done for us, trusting that the Lord will continue to provide and give. No one can ever outgive God. The danger or sword, and quoting here is Psalm 42, that is the, that the testing of God's people in Hebrews 11 talks about, they were put to death by stoning, they were sawed in two, they were killed by the sword. These were all commended for their faith. It's been estimated that between 100,000 and 500,000 Christians lose their lives every year because of their faith. That's a phenomenal figure. I don't think in Australia, by the way, that we can say that Christians are persecuted in that sense. You're not going to be executed for your faith, not even in Melbourne. But I think what's going to happen more and more is we're going to be pressured, pressured in our work, pressured in terms of culture, pressured in terms of education. And who knows, but one day that may lead to much more significant persecution. Right now in my home country in Scotland, a law is being passed that if it was passed would mean that if I was preaching what I taught last night, I could go to jail for it. And I'm faced then with a choice. What do I do? A similar thing has happened in Victoria as well, where a law has been passed that would forbid, that tells us what we can and cannot pray for. And Christians may get very, very worried about that. But look at what's said here. No, verse 37, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. I love what John Stott says here. Paul seems to be saying that since Christ proved his love for us by his sufferings, so our sufferings cannot possibly separate us from it. Or Luther says this, we did not love him first, but he first loved us. And he still loves us first. It's not because we love that he loves, but he loves, therefore we love. And that's it, isn't it? Our love is a responsive love. This may be a very trivial illustration. Please forgive me for it. But we used to have school dances. Maybe you didn't have these discos and all the rest of it. And, you know, you're a teenage boy and there's a, you know, a couple of girls or a group of girls standing over there and there's a group of you boys standing here and there's a girl that you quite like and so on. And then there's another, you look and you think, oh, she's nothing special. But then her friend comes across and says, listen, would you like to dance? He said, what do you mean? He said, my friend would like to dance with you, because she thinks you're really great. And suddenly, the fact that she thinks you're really great changes your perception of her sometimes. She's got such amazing good taste. Maybe she's worse thinking about it. So what I'm trying to say is when people care for us and love us, we respond. And I think one of the mistakes that Christians often make is, if only I can love God enough, then maybe he'll love me. But what you need to understand is that God loves you. And as you understand that, you then respond in genuine love. Now, Paul then gives his 10 reasons for an absolute conviction, and I'm not gonna do them all, but he's persuaded. He's persuaded here. He's absolutely persuaded. Death nor life. You're afraid of death. No. Some people are afraid of life. They don't wanna live. It doesn't matter. These things cannot separate us from the love of Christ. Angels are demons. They can't separate us from the love of Christ. Christ disarmed the powers and authorities. The present nor the future. Time cannot separate us from the love of Christ. Time is powerless against believers. Height nor depth. Space. Have you ever thought about the enormity of space? We can feel very small in such a vast environment, but God's love is greater than the universe. Psalm 139, where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there. Not any powers. In the Greek language, this was used for the astrological powers, but any powers, no powers can separate us from the love of Christ. I think that makes us people who have great confidence. We're like the mountaineer. I knew a Finnish boy who did free mountain climbing. And what he means by that is he climbed without any ropes or any equipment. He got married, so he had to stop. It was very dangerous. It was incredibly dangerous. I think we're like mountaineers but not the free climbers in that sense. We are like mountaineers who we will slip and stumble and fall but there's always a rope around us and it's not a rope that binds us, it's the rope of God's love which keeps us and sustains us through all things. And it's that love. Donald J. Barnhouse, maybe this is a good way for me to finish this weekend. The love of Christ was eternal, for it was that love which moved him to leave heaven's throne and come down to the earth to redeem us. That love was deep, for it was that love which urged him on to the end of the road as he humbled himself to death, even the death of the cross. That love was broad, for it was that love which opened the arms of God to all the world of sinners. and made it possible for the very ones who nailed him to the cross to be forgiven and come back to the Father's heart. And that love is unchanging, for it is that love which comes to us today in the midst of our need, whatever it may be, and takes us out of our darkness and into light, and from doubt to certainty, and from death to life. That's the hope, isn't it? My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. I'll leave you with one story of hope. And it kind of illustrates the contrast between what I would call the hope of this world and the hope that we see in Romans 8. Each Sunday, by the way, I've been doing just a kind of short study on Romans 8, because for me, it's just the most astonishing passage. But I was doing a debate on the subject that we were looking at last night, or at least one of them, same-sex marriage. And it was very, very interesting. My opponent and I, we got on very well. He was a gay rights activist. He was there with his partner. And there are many things I remember about that night. This was in West London. It was a very, I don't know what your equivalent is in Adelaide, but here it would be kind of Newtown area in Sydney. There were 200 people there. Half of them were LGBT activists, and the other half were basically Baptists and West Indian Pentecostals. And one of the questions, this West Indian Pentecostal stood up and he said, I would like to ask the gentleman, what is your hope? And my opponent stood up and he said, well, I'm a liberal Democrat politician. And he said, my hope is that we can raise the tax threshold to 10,000 pounds. I got up and I looked at him and said, are you serious? Man, you've got to get a life. That's your hope? That's what you're living for? You want to raise a tax threshold? I said, wow. I said, I thought you'd be a bit more I'm a bit more ambitious than that, and a bit more joyful than that. And he laughed at me, because he knew. And he said, oh, right, Dave, what's your hope? I said, I'm sorry. I said, I'm going to speak in cliche. I said, this is my cliche. Forgive me for saying this. But my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness. At which point, all the West Indian Pentecostals stood up and went, hallelujah, amen. And then I said, let me explain what that means. And I explained about my hope in Christ. And I just thought about that. And I think about that now. What's your hope? Take that question, what's your hope? You hope to get a partner, hope to get good health, hope to get a better job, hope to get more money. Just me, at one level, I'm hoping for tomorrow because I'll be able to go to the beach. We're having our restrictions lifted here. Maybe you're hoping certain things don't happen, hoping certain things do happen. But if you want a sure, certain, solid hope, it's not going to be from the politicians. It's not even going to be, to be honest, from religious people. Your only hope has to be in Christ. And I hope you know that. I hope you remember that. Thank you for being so kind and listening to me. And I hope it was listening to God's word. And I hope one day that I will come to be able to come to Adelaide. That is one hope. That hope's not too vague. But if I don't see you in your beautiful area then, or your beautiful state, then hopefully I'll see you all in heaven. Thank you.