From the Pulpit – A Briarwood Podcast

This Advent season, we are studying God’s gifts to His people, to humanity, as Romans describes. Our theme verse is 8:32 “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?”

1. God has general plans and specific purposes. (8:28)

2. God acts from his knowledge for our good. (8:29–30)

3. God offers specific gifts - justification and glorification. (8:30–32)

This Advent season, we are studying God’s gifts to His people, to humanity, as Romans describes. Our theme verse is 8:32 “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?”

1. The context for adoption: confidence and doubts in Romans 6–8

2. Not debtors to sin; children of God (8:12–13)

– The death of sin

3. Led by the Spirit, God adopts us as sons and daughters. (8:14–15)

– We say “Abba, Father” (8:15)

4. We are children and heirs. (8:16–17) 

– We wait for the full experience of our adoption. (8:17b–18)

Dr. Trent Casto is the Senior Pastor of Covenant Church of Naples, PCA in Naples, Florida. Dr. Casto graduated from Covenant Theological Seminary and went on to receive a Doctor of Ministry from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He and his wife also served as missionaries in the Czech Republic in his early ministry years. They have three children.