Sean C. Capparuccia

18 October 2026

Sermon 3 in the 3-part Romans 8 series

Trinity GMC – Homecoming Sunday

Genesis 50:15–21; Psalm 46:1–7; John 10:27–30; Romans 8:28–39

What a wonderful occasion a church’s homecoming is. And beyond the good food and fellowship; beyond seeing folks one hasn’t seen in a while; beyond reminiscing about good ‘ol days and remembering the ones who have passed on; beyond all that is the very soul of what homecoming signifies, and that is this: for those who are in Christ, there is no real separation. Things like time and distance have no real meaning other than that they are material constructs that help us – in the material world – to know where we are. But, for those who are in Christ Jesus, just where we happen to be in time and space always plays second to where we are in spirit. And so, Homecoming is a reminder, as well as a celebration, of where our true home is – and that is in the love of God, through the grace of our Savior Jesus Christ, in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

Romans 8 Recap

Turn in your Bibles, if you will, to Paul’s letter to the Romans – chapter 8. The past two weeks we have been going through this chapter and picking up some key themes contained therein, and oh, what wisdom and affirmation there is for God’s people there.  So far, we have learned that “there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (8:1). In other words, the past is past and it needs to stay in the past; what is done is done and if the child of God has confessed to God, repented, and asked His forgiveness – it is forgiven. God will never dredge it up. If it gets dredged up again that will be due to just two people: it will be either you or the Devil (or the Devil working through someone else) and doing so is a usurpation of God’s authority and sovereignty. If He forgave it, He forgot it. End of story. That’s the past.

The second theme was there in verse 14: “For all who are being led by the Spirit are the sons of God.” This is our present situation. As the children of God, we are right now actively being led by the Spirit of God. Notice the text doesn’t say (in fact, no text in the Scriptures say this) that “those who are nice to other people are children of God. The text does not say that “all human beings are children of God.” The text does not say, “everyone who goes to church is a child of God.” The text says, let me remind you, that the children of God are those who are led by the Spirit. We are reminded of the first part of our Gospel reading here: in verse 27 of John 10 we heard Jesus say, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.” Now, in the verse just before this one the Lord said to some of those who were around Him, He said, “You do not believe because you are not one of My sheep” (10:26). The Spirit leads those who are His, and those who are His believe. Again (and I like to deal with negatives because they give so much clarity) Jesus did not say, “You are one of My sheep because you believe.” No. That’s not at all what He said. You believe because you are one of His sheep. You aren’t a child of God because you follow the Spirit, you are a child of God because the Spirit leads you. Isn’t that a beautiful thought? What it comes down to is this: your eternal salvation does not rest in your hands or in your works, but in God’s own desire to save you. From beginning to end our salvation is in His hands which is exactly where He wants it to be, not in ours because He knows that if it were in our hands we’d lose it soon as we got it. Our lives would be a constant cycle of getting saved, losing salvation (or “falling from grace”), confessing, getting it back, losing it, confessing, getting it back…. and that is precisely what God’s word tells us does not happen.

Romans 8:28-39 then

Which brings us to our text for this morning in Romans 8 beginning in verse 28. I hope you will follow along with me because there’s a lot of words here that are better heard and seen.

…

Now here is a truism I think we all know: we cannot always understand what God is doing. We simply don’t know. So, here’s a question to keep in the back your mind as we go through this: Where are you looking for your security? You see, we all want security; we all want to be secure, and when we aren’t secure we’re what? Scared. Fear. We feel like we’ve lost control of our circumstances. God gave us dominion all the way back there in Genesis 1:26. We were made to be in control. Then Adam sinned and while he didn’t lose control, he lost the leading of God. So now this control is depraved, it is twisted. Adam was on his own with this control and everyone who came after him wanted this control. Man wanted to control other men; women wanted to control [their] men; mankind wanted to control the gods by turning to witchcraft and astrology and all manner of ungodliness. And everyone looking for security. Control without God’s leading does not lead to security.

Psalm 121 paints a similar picture: As I’m walking through the valleys I look up into the mountains and ask, “From whence shall my help come?” Or, to interpret the King James, Where does my help come from? And then it answers that question, “My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth” (Ps. 121:2). I think it’s a matter of emphasis here: I’m lonely; I’m in desperate need; I’m sick and sore and I need something. Is there anything in those mountains that will help me? Is there anything along this dusty road that I’m travelling on that’s ready to help me? But not everyone can say, “My help comes from the Lord.” No, we’ve got people going into the hills, leaving the road, going everywhere else but to the Temple of God to look for help. They’re doing this and doing that and everything they can find just to alleviate the suffering produced by need and desire – everything except looking to God, anything except staying on the long and dusty road that leads to the Temple. Where does my help come from? It comes from anything but the Lord. Eventually, as Paul will point out in the first chapter of Romans, man will want to control things that they have no business controlling. We can call that “out of control!” And there is insecurity. When man is in control, without the leading of God, man is insecure. But God’s Word gives us an antidote, doesn’t it?

God is in control – Genesis 50

In Genesis 50, we heard part of the story of Joseph and his brothers. And if you know the story, you know how when they were much younger, these brothers of Joseph sold him into slavery and left him for dead. Well, God brought Joseph through many more trials in order to make him the man he was and eventually his brothers found him again. What could have been a time of extreme bitterness and rage and punishment became a time of joy and gladness. But it wasn’t for another 17 years until the brothers begged Joseph’s forgiveness, and that was only after their father, Jacob, died and they were afraid that since dad died, the only one who could stay Joseph’s hand, that they were going to get it bad from Joseph. And what was Joseph’s answer? He said, “… as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring about this present result: to preserve many people alive” (Gen. 50:20). Did he say, “Nah, guys, it’s ok. Don’t worry about it. It’s all good”? No, he said “what you did was evil, you knew it was evil, and I suffered for it, but God meant it for good….” He didn’t let them off the hook. We can’t ignore evil for the sake of peace, Beloved. Evil is evil. Wrong is wrong. It needs to be called out. But, at the same time, where there is repentance, there must be forgiveness. Yes, evil may have been done to you, but with God on His throne there is nothing done to you that He didn’t know about, that He didn’t see, and that He didn’t allow and therefore, as Joseph said, and Paul affirmed in Romans 8:28, “All things work together for the good of those who love God.” Beloved in Christ, God works even through the things that we don’t think are good. Sin is not good; death is not good; suffering? Not good. But God is greater than all of them. There is no time or place where darkness can hide from God’s sovereign eye. He sees all; He knows all; and there is our antidote- He controls all. Yes, it may look like it’s out of control, but it isn’t, you know why? Because He’s got the whole wide world, in His hands. That’s why!

God is our Refuge – Psalm 46

Which reminds me of our Psalm that we read just a short while ago. I hope you’ll take this bulletin home with you and commit to reading this Psalm every day until you really know it.

God is our refuge and strength, A very present help in trouble.

Therefore, we will not fear,

though the earth should change and though the mountains

slip into the heart of the sea.. (Ps. 46:1-2).

There is something of infinite value here for us. It is God who is our refuge and strength. It isn’t a particular time (as in “the good ‘ol days,” or the days before smartphones, or the days before T.V., or the days before the wheel was invented.) Nor is it a place (like, your house, your castle, although that’s usually the next best thing.) Our refuge is a Person  – God; actually three Persons – the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And the word for trouble here – machaseh – means, “in tight places.” Now we’ve all been in tight places. We’ve all been in situations where it seems like it doesn’t matter which decision we make, someone’s feelings are going to get hurt. Pastors can spend a lot of time in “tight places” you know; you want to please everyone and you end up pleasing no one. Yes, we’ve all been in tight places where we feel “damned if we do and damned if we don’t” and yet God tells us He is our refuge for this very thing. Bring it to Him. Lay it at His feet, Christian. And yet, here’s the reality: when that tight space starts squeezing the life out of you what do you do? You turn to the hills? You turn off the old road that leads to the Temple and you start looking for help elsewhere. From whence comes your help? Then turn to the Refuge.

There is yet another facet of this Psalm that fits our purposes here. “We will not fear though the earth should change” (Ps. 46:2). The King James says, “Though the earth be removed.” The word for the “earth” is aretz, which means “land”; and the word translated as “changed” can also mean “change hands.”[1] So that leaves us with, “With God as our refuge and strength, very present help when we find ourselves in a tight place. Therefore, we will not fear, even if the land should change hands.” What does that mean? Well that means that even if our land is invaded – and this is precisely what the Psalmist had in mind with the Assyrian invasion – even if our land is invaded, He is still our refuge. Even if our country should come under the control of the ….. well, you fill in the blank there…. Even then, God is our refuge. You see, ultimately it doesn’t matter who the president is, who is the richest, who owns the land next to your house, taxes going up… ultimately none of that matters because God is our strength. (Now, as an aside, I will say most emphatically that as long as we have the right and privilege to vote, we absolutely must use it to advance the people who will best advance the kingdom of God.) So, our refuge, our help, is both a Person, and He is permanent – He transcends the changing landscape, both physically and politically, and our allegiance is first and foremost to Him.

God Elects      

This sets the stage, then, for the true meat of this passage from Romans 8. The Holy Spirit leads His children; the Shepherd knows His sheep even before they are His sheep; God is in control; and God is our immovable and unchanging Refuge. And how is this? Because, as Paul says in verse 29,

“For [those] whom God foreknew[2], He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brothers; and [those] whom He predestined, these He also called; and those whom He called, these He also justified; and those whom He justified, these He also glorified.”  Those with ears to hear, let them hear!

We have then the stated purpose of God’s election – to conform those whom He did know beforehand, before the foundation of the world, more and more to the image of His son, Jesus Christ. Because of Him, we are even now being made in the image of Christ until such time as we will be complete. The word here for that is “glorified.” And notice that the word is in the past tense. Paul doesn’t say that those whom God calls and justifies He will one day glorify – future tense. He purposefully uses the past tense, glorified, here to make His point: because God began the good work, God is going to finish it. This is one of our blessed assurances in this chapter. Because of the fact that it isn’t up to us, that it doesn’t rest in us, that it is not dependent upon us, we are therefore assured that this future glorification of our soul, our mind, and our body, is as good as done!

God Not in Time

We need to remember that God is outside of time. We are bound by time – we can watch the second-hand tick; we can while away the hours; we can pass the days and trod through the years, but God sees it all in the present. God is not waiting for Christmas like a 10-year old who thinks he’s getting a new bike. Surprises are for us, His creatures, not for Him. Can you picture that, then? God sees all of time as a present reality. And so, when He elected His called and justified people by His foreknowledge before the foundation of the world, He is also seeing them glorified and seated at the marriage supper of the Lamb. And I would have to think that once we cross out of this life, we are no longer bound by time either. Think about that when you get a moment.

That leads us, and Paul, to the next question that necessarily arises, verse 31,

“What then shall we say to these things?

If God is for us, who can be against us?”

In other words, if the first part of this is true, that those whom God has elected will indeed without a doubt be glorified, then what do we have to fear?  Someone was asked whether they were afraid of slipping through the Lord’s fingers. The reply was a simple truth: “That is impossible, for I am one of the Lord’s fingers.”[3]

Beloved, if you are in Christ, there is no condemnation for you! If you are in Christ, know that you are in Christ because God wants you there! If you are in Christ, there is nothing to fear – no one, no thing, no church, no animal, no alien, no ex, no present, no future anything can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus! Who can bring a charge against us? Paul asks. Who in the entire universe can go to God and say, “God, I want to tell you something about so-and-so. Now I don’t know if you knew this but he did such-and-such.” Let them try. Let them do it. Brother, sister, you know your sin, you know your failures, you know all the things you’ve done to deserve God’s wrath and punishment. Every single place where we have broken God’s holy law deserves His eternal punishment. But who will accuse? Like a roaring lion who is protecting its cubs, so is our Lord Jesus Christ in the heavenly realms right now ready to pounce on anyone or anything that dares to lay a charge against any one of God’s elect! This is God’s non-separation agreement and according to this eternally binding contract, nothing can separate us from the saving love of God in Christ Jesus. Is there any assurance more blessed than that? Who can condemn if Christ has set it free? Who can re-enslave those whom Christ has released?[4] Who is stronger than Christ? Who is victorious over Christ? Who has power over Christ?

Conclusion

Each one of you has a situation – a life that has been lived and many more years to come. Each of you has a head full of memories. You look around this sanctuary and see the stained glass and the pews and, probably the same carpet, and attached to all that are memories of various times in your life. Some of you may have no memories of Trinity but were invited by someone else. Either way, today you’re making new memories. Now, I don’t know where some of you are now in your walk with Jesus. Some have been walking with Him a long time; some went to church a while back but have since let it slide; some have been telling themselves for years now, “I need to get back in church…”; some met Him recently; some are still a little unsure what it all means or what that even looks like. Maybe you’re wondering if God, if He really is as holy as the Bible says He is, how He could ever forgive someone like you. None of this is new. Billions of people since the dawn of time have said these same things. And so, we have the Apostolic witness to the answer. The Scriptures simply say, “Come to Christ.” Do you feel Him pulling you towards Him?  Repent of your sin and call Him not just Jesus, but Lord and Savior.

Brothers and sisters in the faith, do you feel Him now saying, “Come a little closer. Put away that one thing that is pulling you away from Me?” Do you hear His voice in your heart asking, “Why are you downcast? Why are you searching for what is right in front of you? Why are you afraid of this world? Why does the thought of our land changing hands send you into a tailspin? Why does your child’s sickness or your spouse’s attitude or your paltry retirement plan make you want to run and hide? He says, “I am your refuge. Come to Me. Come to Me.”  Ask the Spirit to reveal your sin to you; repent of it, turn from it, put it on a shelf and walk away from it, and go to Him. That’s all.

But I’m already a Christian. Praise the Lord, are you ready to go further in your walk? Here is the time to really think about where you are in your sanctification and make the choice, here’s your free-will in action, make the choice to follow Him more nearly.

Today is homecoming, and it’s almost time to eat and fellowship and talk and catch up. But then it will be time to go home – wherever that is for you. I pray that if you came here this morning not knowing who Christ is, you will go home to God through Christ, for He is the only way. For the Christian who is wandering a little off the old road, it’s time to come back home to Christ. For the faithful Christian who knows just where he or she stands in Christ, reach out and help someone else find the way home.

Please leave here today remembering that there is no condemnation for anyone who is in Christ Jesus; that every child of God has the very real and present help of the Holy Spirit; and that if you are in Christ, then nothing on earth, above the earth, or under the earth can separate you from the love of God.  Our hope is not in the idea that we can find God if we just look hard enough or say the right prayers or do the right things; no, our hope, our blessed assurance, is that in Christ, God has come looking for us in order to bring us home.   ~Amen

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[1] John Phillips, Exploring the Psalms vol. 1 (Neptune, NJ: Loizeaux Brothers, 1988), 365-366.

[2] A note on “foreknowledge” – “All knowledge is based on fact… fact is not based on knowledge. A fact has to be established before it can be known. Human knowledge is largely after-knowledge of a given fact, but God is not restricted to after-knowledge. He is omniscient and therefore has foreknowledge.” -John Phillips, Romans.

[3] Donald Grey Barnhouse, Let Me Illustrate, 229.

[4] Can you envision the slave who was told she was free and as she was walking down a road someone came up to her and tried to bind her and put her in a vehicle to take her back? Then she says, “But Christ set me free.” All of a sudden the man says, “Oh, pardon me, ma’am. I didn’t know. You should’ve said something. I apologize. Can I give you a lift?” Man’s word can never carry the weight of God’s word. No sermon, no catechism, no magisterium can ever be equal in light to the Scriptures; they can only reflect what is true and obscure what is not.