Let's look to the book of Romans chapter eight this morning. And thankful that I can turn to this chapter today. Apologize to begin. Um, There are times when I study the Word of the Lord, and I feel like I'm drinking through a fire hose, that there's so much, it's so good. And I feel like I'm drenched in His goodness, And in a deep sense of gratitude for these things that he's revealed to us that are true. I often feel like what Jesus said to those apostles when he said kings and prophets have desired to hear what you hear and to know what you know. And that's not to say I have anything about me, it's about what He has revealed. That He has revealed things to us that men of old that were much more righteous than I am yearned to know what they meant. And God, through His grace, gave us these wonderful scriptures. And I cannot imagine living life without them because there's so much life that fills my soul with such richness. Of all the chapters in the Bible that you can become acquainted with, this is a good one. This is a really good one. And today, I am quite confident that I will fall far short of the task of relaying what is upon my heart. But I will certainly delight in trying. Romans chapter eight, beginning in verse 28 and reading through verse 39. I'm sorry. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are 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, excuse me, what shall we then say 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 counted 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. That'll conclude our reading this morning. Again, I just, I so love this portion of Scripture. I'm so thankful that I can read it. It never grows old. The title of our message this morning, drawn from this text of Scripture, is The God of the Cross. The God of the Cross. for a couple days, tried to think about how to start the message today. He just prayed for me this morning that I could say what the Lord would want, said this morning. I think for me, I don't think, I know this, that 2024 was the best year of my life, and it wasn't even close. wasn't even close other years. Um, saw a lot of loss in 2024. Of course, Kathleen's dad passed away sometime back and where the Reynolds passed away and both were those two men that integral parts of my life. But I suppose in some ways, and I'm not going to make this about me this morning, but I want to say it as it relates to our text today, that something inside of me changed. The Lord changed it. And I don't know really how to express it, so I'm going to fail this morning to do it, but I'm going to try. For much of my Christian life, I was missing the forest for the trees. I've always been a very, the word's escaping me, but always interesting and knowing more, learning. Just like to learn about anything. So if you start talking about something that I don't know about, I just like to learn. I just like to ask questions. I've always enjoyed that. And as that personality quirk has translated to the scriptures, for many years of my life, I've just been intrigued by what does this mean? And what are the implications of this? And where can you prove this? And so I think very often that the truths in the scriptures, because I was seeing them through my own fleshly eyes, and still do very often, sometimes I was missing what God was trying to say or what he's trying to show. What's it called? Confirmation bias, I think, where you look for the things that support what you already think And so there's a tendency within us because of pride to think that what we're seeing, reading, understanding, and what's being revealed to us aligns with what we already know and what we already think. And that subliminal pride often causes us to forfeit those things that are greater and richer than what we've ever known. And so as much as possible, when we read the Scriptures and when we listen to our brothers and sisters talk about their experiences with the Lord, and when we go to the Lord in prayer, I think a good thing is to ask God to clear the plate and the thoughts of our minds of whatever contaminants lie in our flesh that could possibly distort seeing what it is God wants us to see. And I think very often as we go to something like Romans 8 and we read these promises, what we see is us. what we get. And certainly I'm not going to be dismissive of the fact that God has reserved promises that one day we will enjoy that is beyond human comprehension and meditating upon those things and discovering those things are a rich exercise that ought to be done regularly. But why stop there? Why stop at looking at what the cross accomplished for me? The title of our message this morning is not the events of the cross. It's not the atonement that was found at the cross. It's not the forgiveness that was enabled by the cross. It's not the salvation that was opened by the sacrifice of the cross, but it's the God of the cross. What is greater than an extraordinary gift, but the giver behind it? A few weeks ago, I was meditating upon this and all these thoughts are still just running rampant all over my mind about this. And as I began to think about, has my flesh so been tainted that as I study the scriptures, I'm always looking for something that will come back to blessing myself? And in so doing, I am forfeiting the richest revelation that God gives to us in his word, and that is of himself. That Jesus so well summarized that salvation is not, and I double down a thousand times, salvation is not the rewards you gain in heaven and the hell that you lose. Those are byproducts. That is not the substance of salvation. It's not about getting away from punishment. That is not salvation. That is not the essence of it. Oh, it's so much greater than that. and in so designing a plan of salvation that overemphasizes our gain, we forfeit true gain. What did Jesus say? This is life eternal. This, what I'm about to say, that you know me, Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. true life, the richest part of life in this life and in the life to come is knowing God. That's it. And the reason that our minds do not appreciate that is because we don't know Him well. We've not sought out that pearl of great price that has been revealed that is so great. That's not salvation. It's Him. It's knowing Him, being one with Him, and learning of Him. I was talking to a brother yesterday and I said, here's something that has bothered me now. I'm gonna back off the harshness of this statement by saying I've been listening to myself preach for 20 years, so this is probably not a good gauge. However, probably my whole life, sitting in church, I've heard people talk about the gospel from a God-centric viewpoint maybe 15 times. What He gave, what He did, what He suffered, that was all how that at the cross. Now, we know from the Scriptures that Jesus, if we want to know what God is like, we look at Jesus. And we study his life, and we read his words, and we explore his person. And the more that we learn about Jesus, the more we understand the Father. Even in so much that he said that, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. That's not a literal thing, he's just saying, I am the full embodiment of God. There is nothing in the character of the Father that is not fully on display in the character of Christ. And so if we wanna know God, the one that you literally just a few moments ago was praying to, that you may feel uncomfortable around, that you might feel afraid of, that you might feel distant from or apathetic towards. If you wanna know more about Him, study Jesus. But let me take that a step further. What if I wanna know more about Jesus? What if I wanna really hone in If I was to ask you about a stranger, this is often the case with my children in regards to my dad. They didn't know my dad. And so they asked me all these questions about Papaw Hicks. Well, how do you sum up a life of 61 years in just a 10-minute conversation? Well, you basically run to the highlights. interactions which most fully reveal who he was. And so we apply that to God and we say, what is the activity? What is the thing? that he points us to to say, if you wanna know me, look at Jesus. But when you're reading the life of Jesus, all parts are not equally revealing to the character of who God is. Some are a more full revelation of who God is. And what we learn is that it is the cross that reveals Christ. If you want to know who Jesus is — now, I want to keep going with this because you already know the story of the cross. Like if I asked you, tell me about what happened, you could probably start by telling me. meshing together all four Gospels and sprinkling in some of Paul's writings and maybe even going back to the Old Testament and referring to certain events that took place. But listen, what we're not trying to see in the story of the cross is the historicity of events. And I think sometimes people think they limit the Gospel to a series of events. But the gospel about the cross and the God of the cross is not just a checklist of events that occurred in order to give us something. No, the cross really reveals to us the heart of our God. reveals Him, why that He did it. Have you ever asked that question, you've been asked that question, you ever thought about it? How does a man, even God, dying on a cross, make it okay for us to go to heaven? Like how does that happen? He dies, so I get to go to heaven. Why is that the case? Have you ever asked yourself this question? How does Jesus suffering for a few hours, how is that equal to somebody experiencing the wrath of God for all eternity in hell? Because what we talk about in the cross is that Jesus came and he suffered the wrath of God on our behalf in order that we don't have to suffer the wrath of God, right? And so the reason I have been saved from God's wrath is because Jesus came took upon himself, was imputed by God my sins. He was transferred from me to him. Now he that knew no sin became sin for us. So now God allowed that transfer to take place. He is sin. And so as God looked down from heaven, he smote his son with all the wrath. of God and he bruised him and he crushed him. And the midst of all the bruising and the crushing, he abandoned him. And there Jesus was as a cruised brush servant being abandoned by the help of God. How is that period of time where he suffered satisfactory to substitute for an eternity in hell? for all human beings. Isn't that a good question? That's what the gospel's about. It's about exploring who Jesus was and what he did and what was necessary. It's about better understanding the motivations of God that he expresses in his word and those things that motivated him, why it had to be the way that it was. And all throughout his word, he reveals these truths to us. And as you untangle one by one by one, here's what I'll tell you will likely happen. You won't get it. You'll be like the woman who grabs the hem of his garment. All you got was the hem, but the virtue runs all through you. In other words, all you get is these droplets of truth about who God is and his vast greatness, and you see it for just a moment, the flash in your heart and in your mind, the spirit reveals the word of God, and you see the character behind the one who is giving us all of these promises, and what it leaves you with is this unquenchable desire to know that God more. I wanna know him. Why'd I read Romans 8.28 in regards to all this? You know, for the first time, usually when I read Romans 8.28, it goes something like this. Man, I'm really having a hard day. I'm really going through a hard stretch. Oh, you know what? It's okay. All things work together for good to them that love the Lord, that are the called according to His purpose. And so the verse becomes about me. until a brother a number of years ago pointed out something to me about Romans chapter 7 and Romans chapter 8. Romans chapter 7 says the word I 38 times. And it begins in Romans chapter 7 with a sense of condemnation and it ends with a plea of the man's own wretchedness. He says, oh wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? And so when the message of the gospel begins to talk about us, what it reveals is sin, what it reveals is selfishness, what it reveals is a place of wretchedness. And then in Romans eight, it stops talking about us. And it starts talking about Him. And what He has done for us. But in showing what He's done for us, what it's showing us is how great He is. In other words, if somebody does an extraordinary act, like, greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. Right? The act is one thing, but what the act says about the person is another thing. Because Jesus asked the question, or excuse me, Paul asked the question in Romans five, some people would be willing to die for a person that they loved in essence, and I'm summarizing here, or a good man. And so perhaps some of us this morning would look at our spouse and we'd look at our children and we'd say, you know what, I'm willing to die for them. But what about your enemy? What about a person who hates you? What about a person who reviles you and mocks you and does everything in their power to denounce you? Would you die for that person? And if not, if somebody would die for their enemy, does it not elevate the righteousness of their character beyond the person who would not die for that type of person? Certainly so. It testifies to the goodness and the righteousness of the person. So what do we make of a God? What does it tell us about his greatness? That as he looks down in the sinful world upon sinful creatures acting of their own volition towards sin. Like let's not be under illusion this morning, we don't accidentally stumble into sin. we choose to sin. We want it, we have an appetite for it, we lust after it and we long for it, and some of us spend years of our life coordinating a complex lifestyle in order to enjoy the pleasures of sin, which the Bible says will only be enjoyed for a season. And yet, God says this, those creatures, I'm going to make it to where All things work together for their good, for those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose. So what does it say about God that even when we are acting in spite of Him, that He is still doing everything for our good? He's a pretty good God, isn't He? Doesn't that proclaim the magnificence of who God really is if He is willing to love us in spite of our tendency to wander from Him? The promise is a reflection of who He is. It continues in the text. It says this in verse 29. In our reading this morning, for whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son. So, my flesh, this body, is full of sin. From head to toe, this body is full of sin. My mind, my heart, it longs for sin and it craves sin. And as the end of chapter seven comes, Paul is revealing the extent to which that is true in the human heart. And it just comes to a place where he says, when I seek to do good, evil is present within me. And yet for we that are saved by God's grace, he's not going to leave us in this state forever. You know, death is not a bad thing. It's not. Oh, I wish that we as Christians could begin to see death for what it really is. The last time you had an interaction with death, how'd it go? You, not somebody else you know, when you had an interaction with death, how did it go? Here's what I mean. When you were saved, you died to sin. How'd that work out for you? All the good that you experience spiritually, all the knowledge of God that you have, the relationship that you have with God, all the promises that you have inherited, all of those things are a product of the fact that you died to self, and you died to sin, and were risen with Christ. And if our first death to sin brought about these great promises, what God reveals in his word is that our second dealing with sin will allow us to be inheritors of those promises. That is when we assume possession of the down payment that the Spirit has given us. And so listen, all this time as we walk by faith and we only enjoy the anticipation of the promises because of our death to sin, one day when we actually die in the body, we will become beneficiaries and possession holders of that which we have been promised. And so I hunger and long for the day of death. That's why Paul said, death has no power upon me. It has no power because all I will see at death is an improvement of what I am and who I am and what that I have. Listen, why is that the case? Because he's predestined us to be conformed into the image of his son. So he makes the same illusion, I think, at the end of verse 29, where he says that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. I'm not going to explain this well. I haven't explained anything well yet, so we'll just keep on that same path here. In verse 29, he's saying this, that he might not be the only born of the Father, but the firstborn among many. In other words, here's how it works. Jesus was righteous, perfectly righteous. And because of that, God has prepared an inheritance for him. It's going to be good. The God who created this realm in six days, with all of its intricacies, with all of its beauties, who spoke it, tells us in another place, Jesus said that he went away to prepare a place for us, and he's been gone for 2,000 years, and he's been preparing a place. So if he did this in six, and it was perfect and untainted, and he's there for 2,000, What do you think that place is gonna be like? Just in short, it'll get a really good review on TripAdvisor. It's gonna be good, right? There's not gonna be anything that we could possibly comprehend, and that what Paul alludes to is that it's beyond comprehension, and yet the inheritance that Christ is going to have, you split an inheritance, with your siblings, right? And so what this is telling us is that he is not the only born son. He is the firstborn among many brethren, that he has many with whom he will share his inheritance. And so because we are going to be conformed or fashioned and made into his image, we are able to be co-inheritors with the son of all that the Father has prepared for him. And if he can take wretches, slaves, orphans like us, and make us adopted children, co-inheritors with His Son. What does that say about the magnificence of our Father? What does it say about the love that He has? I've always been impressed with people who can adopt a child and love the adopted child just like they did the biological child. I think there's something to it. I think it's special. That's how God is towards us. I mean, He loves us. He loves us as His own because we are His own. I want to keep reading for a minute. Paul in Romans 8 gets to verse 31. He's read all these things about what God has given to us. And I think with the with an attempt to reveal to us not only the hope that we have forthcoming, but also to reveal the greatness of the God who has given us these promises. And then he gets to verse 31, and he kind of comes to this place where it's like, if I have not made the point and convinced you how wonderful that God is and how much hope you have in the Christian life and knowing then, he comes and he says, what shall I say then? What more can be said about who God is? And if we this morning feel at times like things go on in our life and that we don't understand them and we question them and we're hurt by them, and because of that hurt, we're caused to look to heaven and say, what are you doing up there? I'm suffering. I know this can't be for my good. Listen, what he's saying here is, listen, you don't understand who God is. God is far more and he has done all these things that are yours, that he wants to give freely to you. Any misunderstanding is not on his part. It's on our part of understanding him. So how do I put it this way? The veracity of a promise is dependent upon the promise giver, right? In other words, I'm hesitant to believe people I don't know. Not because they might not be trustworthy, I don't know them. Would you rather have a promise that is opulent and grand from someone you don't know very well, so the chances are kind of 50-50 in your mind whether you're going to get it, Or would you rather have promises from someone who has perfectly righteous character? Well, of course, it would be the latter, right? Paul gets to this place and he says, what shall we say then? If God is for us, the emphasis there is God. If the God that I've just lined out here the God that has given you all of these promises, that has proved himself upon the cross, that he would go to this length to secure your redemption, that God, as opposed to anybody else and lost person this morning, I preach that to you as hard as I can, that it is God who has promised you The God whose character is far beyond anybody that you know, and anything that I could ever say, His integrity far outweighs the skies and the heavens and the universe. He is good, and if He has promised that when you surrender to Him, you will come to know Him, that promise is true. There is no doubt, and any thinking to the contrary is sin in you. If God is for us, who could be against us? Or in other words, what could we possibly be? Oh, what's the word Paul uses? We are distressed but not forsaken. I can't remember how that goes. We're not in despair. How could, that's the word. How can we despair if others resist us, but God is for us? Others is not just talking about people. You know how I know that? Because the rest of the text reveals that. Famine or persecution. If unfortunate things come your way and you feel stricken of God, forsaken, Maybe what God is doing is allowing you to have fellowships with his son through your suffering, and thereby come to know his son. Here's what I mean by that. I can sympathize with somebody who has lost a child. Many of you here, some of you here have lost a child, and I cannot comprehend the pain, but my feelings stop at sympathy. That's all I can feel for you, because I've never experienced it. But if I lost a son, if I felt the crushing that I know you have felt, if I felt the can't sleep pain that just makes the rest of life not worth living in your estimation in those moments, if I feel that, and then I see your faithfulness to the Lord despite that, I understand your character a little bit better. So what if Christ at times allows you and I to feel forsaken, to pray as he prayed upon the cross, and not feel anything? And God is not doing that to be spiteful, but God is doing that so that you, when you read about the sufferings of Jesus and the extent that he went to, that you could know just how much God loves you. That as you bear the piddly weight of your own sin in contrast to the weight that he carried for the whole world, And to think that in your situation very often, what throws me off is something so small and insignificant in the scheme of life that I can be derailed of my confidence in God over things that are just so silly. And I can be like Job just thinking that I've been the target of God and something is wrong. And that's over just one situation in my life that I just think is a little hard. And I look to the heavens and I say, oh God, it's been a week and you've not come and answered me, why? And to feel the forsakenness. And then to think upon the cross. That Jesus willingly, voluntarily came He volunteered, volunteered for it. How many of you this morning will volunteer to give up a child? How many of you will volunteer to undergo deep distress and suffering for the spiritual welfare of your fellow man? What's revealed in us every day? How much do we give of ourselves to see about their salvation? Isn't the truthful answer very little? Isn't it that we hoard and we protect and we keep all that is ours for ourself? And then when God makes this demand of us and says, give more charitably, sacrifice yourself for the good of the cause, come and learn about me, worship me, that we recoil from such invitations. And so we already know the threshold of our limitations and willingness to undergo hardship for the cause of God. And it's, embarrassingly small, but Christ, despite the fact that many people would go their whole existence and never appreciate what He did, volunteered to be forsaken of the Father and endure the punishment and wrath of God for sin so that He could bring many sons into glory. so that he could, the irony, so that he could share his wealth. That's kind of weird, right? Doesn't the natural man want to hoard his wealth? Doesn't the natural man want to reserve everything that is his for him? But Christ died so that he might share it. With who? Well, not with a friend. were those of us who were enemies of the cross. God who spared not his own son, shall he not also give us freely all things? What is God holding back from us? He gave up the, I say the thing, the one, who is most valuable to him, so that we might inherit the promises of God. And yet we would deign to think that he is somehow holding back on us. Paul can't handle the thought. He can't contain it. So then he goes into this, and it's a, I think it's a combination of, it's like this emotional, Exuberation. He can't. Here's the only way I can compare it myself, and then I'm going to try to close. I'm a person who likes justice. So when injustice occurs, the more facts I learn about the injustice, the more against my will I get angry. I get real angry. And it can be about people I don't know, about a situation that I don't know. But it's like the more information that I learn and the greater the disparity in the perpetrator getting rewarded and the victim getting harmed and the miscarriage of justice when applying punishment or when applying retribution, I just can't handle it. And so what I've learned about myself is listen, you get to a certain place, just stop reading. You can't handle it because emotionally it almost literally scars me to think about. Keeps me up at night thinking about such a miscarriage of justice. But what Paul is doing here is the opposite. What he has just seen is how much that God loves the human race. And he's listing thing after thing after thing after thing. And each one of them can be dissected and pulled apart. And if that one promise was all we got to enjoy, heaven would be worth an eternity with God there experiencing it. But Paul stacks promise upon promise upon promise upon promise, and the Romans 8 is just them heaping all of these things upon what the Christian gets to enjoy. And he comes to the very end, and he says, what shall we say? What more can I tell you? And then he comes to another place at the very end where he says, who is he that condemneth? I'm not going to go to that one. It's really good. Don't have time. Verse 35. Who shall separate us from the love of God? See, that's the apex of the mountain. All that was underneath it was just to prove this rhetorical question. Nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ. Should tribulation or persecution He goes through all these things. He says in verse 38, for I am persuaded. You know, that means something to me now. I'm trying to close. Bear with me for just a moment. I feel like I'm going to mischaracterize what I'm saying here, but I'm going to try to say it. There are things which I believe to be true, but I have a hard time being persuaded of it. And what I mean is like, I know the scriptures are inspired and they're true. I know that. And I believe that. Specific claims inside of it, I read and immediately the sinful part of me says, that is too opulent to be true. It's too much. It can't be true, this is my flesh speaking, because it's so great and it's so grand and we live in a world of such hyperbole and exaggeration that this must be that. But Paul is saying, not only do I just say these things in order to align with biblical Christian doctrine, in the depth of my spirit, I am persuaded. that this is true. Here's why I think that's important. When God is not a character in heaven who performed an event 2,000 years ago upon a cross, but he's a person that you know and that you love. and that you feel and that you talk to and whom you see the glory of this world all around you at all days and all times and you can see his handiwork and you can feel him and there's things that are internal within the human spirit that you can't even articulate to human beings because God is so real of a person and that part of you is persuaded of these things. I don't know of a higher place to be on earth than being persuaded of who God is and rejoicing in it. Closing by saying this, in Deuteronomy chapter 18, all the tribes got an inheritance, right? Yep, they sure did. So Moses, I think it was Moses went around, it's been a while since I read it, and he said, okay, here's your part of the land. here's your part of the land and here's your part of the land. And then he got to one tribe and they got no land. It was the Levites, the tribe of priests, which by the way, God has called us a kingdom of priests. They were not given land. And you know what? I don't really want land in a wilderness or in a physical promised land. I don't want it, you can have mine, okay? The promised land, some place defective, place over in Israel, you can have it. It doesn't mean a lot to me. Because I'm like Abraham, I'm seeking a better country. I don't want to return to this country. I don't want an inheritance in this world. I want this world along with Israel, along with everywhere, burned up completely. And when I get to heaven, I don't want the gold, the crown. I want the inheritance of the Levites. You know what that was? The Lord. That's what I want. Do you know why in Revelation those people are laying down their crowns, casting them at his feet? Trust me, you won't be like, man, this is a really, I really kind of want to keep this, but I guess I'll make a sacrifice. Here you go. He will be your inheritance. And so all you're going to want is him. And I think the casting the crowns is going to be a dual reason. One, you want to praise Him, and two, you don't really want it. You want Him. So you cast, what a beautiful song Sister Ashley chose, Holy, Holy, Holy. This morning, as I wondered about here today, if I could do anything, it is to provoke you to discover more. of God. And for me, 2024, there's a piece of his garment that I touched. It's enriched my life. And I don't want anything else. It's him I want. And when I read the scriptures, I want to see him I wanna see Him, not me, not me. I hope through that, the Lord could do what I can't do, and that is to speak to your heart. I do. I pity the person who goes their whole life and cannot know in their heart what I have felt. And I don't say that in an exalted way at all. I pity myself that for 36 years of my life, I hadn't felt what I have felt in knowing God the way I've known Him this last year. There is nothing in this life that I could give in exchange for it. Nothing. That I hope, I really hope, that this year for you would be a year where you discover the God of the cross, the real God. That's our message this morning. I pray it'll help you today. Somebody have something on their heart this morning.