Grace Community Church, Arlington, TX

So many live such unhappy lives because they don’t know what God is really like. For example, that is why the Prodigal Son hesitated before returning home to his father, even after spending all he had, living with pigs in a pig pen, and having nowhere else to go. He hesitated in returning to his father’s house because he didn’t really know what his father was like.

And then when he finally becomes desperate enough, he does return. But on the way he is rehearsing a speech that he will give to his father. Again, the speech he is rehearsing shows that he does not know what his father is really like. He said,

He is returning expecting rejection. He is returning expecting that he will have to earn whatever he gets from his father. But his father’s response was not that at all.

In fact, what he was expecting when he returned was something called the Kezazah Ceremony.

And it breaks my heart, that some people could be coming back out of the brokenness of their lives, and coming back to the church, or coming back to God, imagining that God might have a pot with their name on it.

But Jesus tells a completely different story. He paints a completely different picture of the Father.
Look what happens when the father sees his son.

Now, I’m imagining the Father running past people with pots and pulling them aside so he could get to his son, not to get to his son so he could shake a shaming finger, but so he could wrap his arms around him and kiss him, and put a ring on his finger and a robe around his shoulders… Luke 15:24

In my research on the Kezazah, I found another pottery tradition, it comes to us out of Japan. It’s called the Kintsugi.

When a pot is broken in Japan, there are people that would look at the broken pieces and say, “Let’s not just sweep this up and call it garbage and throw it away as worthless.” But they actually take the pieces and fuse them back together, and what is amazing to me is that they don’t fuse them back together with cement or super glue, they use pure gold!

*And now the value of the restored artwork is greater than its original design. If that’s not a picture of how God works in our lives, I don’t know what is. Jesus came not to say, “Shame on you!” but to take the shame off of you! God is for you way more than you know.

Let’s look this morning at what I believe is the most important verse in the Bible. First, let’s read the entire passage before I zoom in on this most important verse.

Now, in the middle of that passage is the most important verse in the Bible to me. It is the foundation of everything talked about in that passage. And it is…

Since God did the absolutely hardest thing for us — since He did not spare His own Son — therefore, it is certain that God will find it very easy to give us all good things with Him.

When Paul calls Jesus God’s “own Son,” the point is that there are no others, and He is infinitely precious to the Father. Twice while Jesus was on earth God said, “This is my beloved Son” (Matthew 3:7; 17:5). In Colossians 1:13 Paul calls him “the Son of His [God’s] love.”

Could God, would God, overcome His cherishing, admiring, treasuring, white-hot, infinite, affectionate bond with His Son and hand Him over to be lied about and betrayed and denied and abandoned and mocked and flogged and beaten and spit on and nailed to a cross and pierced with a sword like an animal being butchered and hung up on a rack? Would He really do that for us?

Could God, would God, lay the sins of the world on His One and only Son? Could God, would God, pour out His deserved wrath towards our sin on His One and only Son? Could God, would God, allow His Son to experience utter darkness, and aloneness, and separation for us?

And in fact, Romans 8:32 says, God did not spare Him. He did give Him up. He did hand Him over to the worst possible suffering. The Bible says Judas handed him over (Mark 3:19), and Pilate handed him over (Mark 15:15), and Herod and the Jewish people and the Gentiles handed him over (Acts 4:27-28), and we handed him over (1 Corinthians 15:3; Galatians 1:4; 1 Peter 2:24). It even says Jesus handed himself over (John 10:17; 19:30). But Paul is saying the ultimate thing here in verse 32. In and behind and beneath and through all these human acts, God was handing His Son to death.

“This Jesus, [was] delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23). In Judas and Pilate and Herod and the crowds and the Gentile soldiers and our sin and Jesus’s lamblike submission, God himself handed over his Son. Nothing greater has ever happened. Or ever will.

What then shall we say? Since God did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, therefore, He will most certainly give us all things with Him.

When God promises in Romans 8:32, “therefore he will most certainly with Him graciously give us all things,” among those “all things” are all the promises of God in the Bible for His children. “All the promises of God are Yes in Him.” 2 Corinthians 1:20 is based squarely on the truth of Romans 8:32.

What are some of those promises that are guaranteed on the foundational truth of Rom 8:32?

Listen to Paul’s amazing words in

God reigns so supremely on our behalf that everything which we face in our lifetime will be subdued by the mighty hand of God and made the servant of our holiness and our everlasting joy in God. If God is for us, and if God is God, then it is true that nothing can succeed against us. He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all will infallibly and freely with Him give us all things — all things — for our good and His glory.

If we are in Christ. God is for us, not against us, in and through all things — all ease and all pain. Whatever the plans of the devil and his demons against you, God will turn for your benefit.

What an impact this should have on our lives! Since this is true, we need not be like the world. To the follower of Jesus, the Lord says, “The Gentiles seek all these things. You seek the kingdom first” (see Matthew 6:32–33).

God will give you what you need.

And what you lose or lack in the kingdom-ministry of love and sacrifice and suffering will work for your good and come back to you, in some God-designed way, even a hundredfold.

This message is for all believers, but today I want to emphasize to all Dads—God is for you, way more than you think.