If quoting part or all of a Bible verse could wear it out, Romans 8.28 would be barely visible in some Bibles today. We've worn it and worn it and worn it. How about in your Bible? Are you a regular customer of that promise of God? Do you go there often? Do you take your seat at its counter and order up your usual meal spiritual encouragement, and a cup of nourishment from Romans 8.28. I know I do. It's a place that I can find easily and quickly. If we did one of those old-fashioned Bible drills where everybody puts their Bible up and the verse is stated, I think I'd whoop you and find it first. Can't do that very much anymore with all the electronic Bibles that people have, but that was in the day. Has your life ever felt like a thousand piece puzzle just dumped out of the box? Parts of our lives appear right side up. Other parts of our lives seem like they're upside down. Just like that puzzle. Things can seem unconnected. Things can seem scattered. I think you know what I mean. Maybe you're there right now, today. There are times when few of the pieces of our lives fit together into a meaningful picture. It's just all these pieces, upside down, right side up, disconnected, scattered. Today's hurt. doesn't mesh with yesterday's happiness. Sometimes we say, well, just yesterday I... and now today. Just like that. The embarrassing failures don't match up with the proud successes in our lives. The torrent of expenses keeps gushing faster than the trickle of income. Some dark attic corner of the past Do you have any of those? Dark attic corner of the past. Occasionally descends hauntingly into the living room of the present. I thought I forgot all about that. Here it is again. The unknown future approaches like the swirling black clouds that produce tornadoes and hurricanes. So for me, Romans 8.28 is a welcome refuge and home. its gravitational pull arranges everything into orderly and meaningful orbits. Did you ever play with one of those little toys where you have a magnet underneath and there's all these iron filings on the top, on the piece of paper? And you move that magnet around and those things just all spring to life and they go into the order that you want to put them. Well, that's God. That's Romans 8.28. It's that pull that takes all of those scattered pieces of life and makes them just stand up together. That's where we are in looking at this passage. That's why we are spending week number three It's one of those promises that I'll never forget. How about you? It shows up large and shiny in the pile of promise gems that can be collected in God's Word. This one just stands right out. Look at it! Beautiful! Amidst all the others. Our approach to this promise has been to ask some questions about it. That little insert that you have in the bulletin gives you the questions that we've already looked at that you can review there. What is it, this promise? How must I use it? When should I use it? And now this week, why may I use it? Why may I use this promise? What gives anyone permission to enter the promised pharmacy of the Bible and order up a medication like this. What right do you have? What right do I have? For whom does the divine physician write such a prescription as this? There are two descriptions in this verse of those who qualify. They're like two sides of the same coin. Anyone who is the one of these is the other of these, and vice versa. So, let's find out what Paul has to say, and this will conclude our little journey that we've taken into Romans 8.28. Why may I use it, this promise? Well, you'll see there on your little sheet the first thing I put down, because God comes first in my life. That sounds simple enough. Because God comes first in my life. Use your eyes to make an invisible parenthesis around the words in our text that you think emphasize that God comes first in someone's life. Look at it. What words there can we say? They say God comes first in someone's life. Paul limits and extends the comforting use of Romans 8.28 to people who love God. Isn't that what it says? So that makes a division in the world's population. Not everyone is a beneficiary to this promise. Any more than everyone is a beneficiary in Bill Gates' will. Those who love God, now get it straight, it's the God of the Bible. Not just any God. Anybody's God. It's the God Paul's been talking about for eight chapters here, and he'll keep on talking about Him through the rest of the book and that we find in the rest of the Bible. Love for just any God of one's own choosing or one's own imagination will no more work here, won't fit, any more than your key will start every car in the parking lot. It just won't do it. Your key is for your car. This is for certain ones. So the point is clearly stated here. It's for those who love God. So what does that mean? You see there, I want you to consider two words that seem to me to summarize what it means to love God. We can talk about it probably in a lot of different ways. I just want to summarize it for you this way, because you need to know if you love God. Do you love God? Oh yes, I love God. Okay, well let's just take a two-part quiz on that to make sure. And these are only buds that I'm giving to you, but they'll blossom. If you spend a little time watering and putting a little of the light of your meditation on them, they'll blossom into something even more. The first word is preference. This is a one-word way of stating our main heading that God comes first in our life. Preference. Someone's preference is their first choice. You want moose tracks or vanilla? What's your preference? What's your first choice? Have you ever heard of a person getting preferential treatment? Maybe it was the teacher's pet in school and you say it with a sneer. Why do you get preferred preference? Maybe it's the coach's son on the team or the boss's nephew at the job. You get the idea. Preference. To love God is to give Him preferential treatment. He gets considered first. He is chosen first. That's the emphasis in the Bible, isn't it? Old Testament and New. God's gotta be first. That's love. Look at some of the verses that I've written out for you there. Deuteronomy 5-7. You shall have no other gods before me. That's preference. God says this is the way it's gotta be. The next one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength. Deuteronomy 6, you shall not go after other gods. Matthew 10, he who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Preference. I am preferred, God says. 1 John 2, if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. You get the idea. Whatever are the detailed meanings of these verses, at least they teach that love for God includes the idea of preferring Him above everyone, above everything else. Now, right now, it's a good idea to begin just a little review of our own hearts and lives in saying, do I prefer God? Whatever I'm going to do, wherever I'm going to go, whatever I'm going to decide, however I think, what's my preference? So, who may and is encouraged to reach for the promise of Romans 8.28? For comfort. Oh, I like that promise! For comfort and for strength. And I'm going to reach and I'm going to... Wait a minute! Keep your hand off that! What's your preference in life? It's available, this promise is available to those who prefer God. They love God. They love, they prefer, they choose His way, they choose His will, they choose His wisdom, they choose His work, they choose His words first. And is it possible that the more He is preferred, the more comfort is received from the promise. Some folks say, well, I quote that verse. I've even got it on a plaque that was put on my wall in my living room, but I don't get all of that comfort that you're talking about on it. And I say to you, are you preferring Him It's going to comfort you a whole lot more. God's Word in that text will just envelop you with so much more if you're enveloping Him with so much more of you. Preference. Love. Now you and I are not perfect at giving God preferential treatment, are we? Come on, fess up. We're not perfect at that. In fact, a lot of times we're not even good at that. But we would be if we could, right? If we could be perfect at it. If it were possible. Is that where your heart leans? Even though you're not there yet, you say, oh, I do prefer God. It's like Paul saying, the things I want to do, I don't do, and all of that struggle, but boy, that's the way I'm leaning anyway. Let's reach out and clutch God's promise to us who love Him. We love God. We prefer God. That's the word. But there's another word that joins hands with preference to explain what it means to love God. You see it there? Obedience. You saw this one coming, didn't you? You just know this has got to be part of it. Now we know that the Bible is clear that no one on this side of heaven can offer God perfect obedience or perfect preference. We just can't do that. Paul has already blown away that theory earlier in the chapters here in Romans, but love preference does include regular though imperfect obedience. Regular though imperfect obedience. That little sheet of paper there, we have some verses there again. Deuteronomy 11.1, Therefore you shall love the Lord your God, and, and, here it is, he's going to elaborate, and keep his charge, his statutes, his judgments, his commandments always. He doesn't just stop and say, go ahead and love the Lord your God and do it anyway you want to. We're free around here. We want to be pluralistic and open and just kind of let you love God the way you want to love God. And we may do that with each other, but God says, I'm not going to let you do it that way. You love the Lord and keep His charge, His statutes, His commandments. That's loving God. What's the next one there? John 14, 15. Jesus said it, if you love Me, then keep My commandments. Remember, we're in Romans 8.28, everything works together for good to those who love God. Well, what's that mean? He's first, we prefer Him, and He's over us, we obey Him. That's loving God. What's that other verse, John 14.21? He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is He who loves me. You notice He won't stop. It has. Some people have God's commandments plastered all over everything. They've got them on plaques. They've got them on cards. They've got them underlined in the Bible. They have His commandments. Oh, good, good, good start. That's like the demons believe God is. Well, that's a start, I guess. And we can have his commandments, but he says, you have them and keep them if you want to show you love me, Jesus says. You remember the story of Abraham, don't you? What a story that is in chapter 22 of Genesis, where God puts Abraham to the test. Let's see if you love me. Abraham says, okay, I'm in. Okay, take your son up there and kill him. Obey me, Abraham. Wow. And he did what God said to do, and God made it so he didn't have to slay his son. But he loved God. That's why I think later he's called the friend of God. Boy, that's the kind of friend I have. Abraham being God's friend. Abraham preferred God, didn't he? And he obeyed God. Preference for God is the left hand. Obedience to God is the right hand. And it's with those two hands. Make them mental hands. Make them eye hands. Any way that you want to. It's with those two hands that we grab hold of this verse. There's no other way to do it. It's for those who love God. They prefer Him. They obey Him. It's that way that we see that He works all things together for good to those who love Him. If my love for God gauge is a quart low, then I'm not going to grab hold quite so tight of Romans 8.28. I mean, if I'm not where I need to be in relation to God, then the verse isn't going to mean that much to me. If you love Him at all and desire to love Him more, this promise is for you. Say inside anyway, hallelujah. It's for me! What an incredible thing. Claim it. It's yours. But, there's another side to the coin of why I may use the promise of Romans 8.28. There's another side to that. It's our second point. because God acted first on my life. Now, can you draw with your eyes another invisible parenthesis in Romans 8.28? You drew one already around the words loving God. This time, find the phrase that teaches that God acted first so that now He comes first in my life. Why is it that I'm preferring Him? Why is it that I'm obeying Him? What is it that's happened that gets me to that point? Did you choose the words about being called according to God's purpose? What powerful words. In my mind, the second half of this verse has call forwarding on it. Do you have call forwarding on any of your phones? This one's got call forwarding. It just immediately jumps over. I've got the verse there for you. 1 John 4.19. We love Him. Why? Why do we love Him? Because He first loved us. That's why. Why do we love Him in Romans 8, 28? To those who love God? Well, why would anybody love God? Because they're called according to His purpose. He loved them first. That's what Paul is saying here. This promise is for those who love God. Who are those people anyway? Who loves God? John says that they're the ones who God loved first. Paul says that they are the ones who have been called according to His purpose. God acted first on my life before He became first in my life, because I'd never prefer Him if He didn't. I'd never prefer God first. I'm too selfish. I'm too into self-glorification. I'm too much into self-gratification to put God first, to prefer Him. Are you kidding? It's all about me! Until He acts on my life. And He rewires me. That's what's going on here. There are two words for you to use, like mental windshield wipers. to be able to see this verse very clearly. I put them down there for you. Two words. Intention. Invitation. Intention. Let's stand this point right up straight. Intention. Remember, we're under the heading, because God acted first on my life. Point A. Intention. We don't want to miss it in the weeds of misunderstanding. God acted on purpose. He acted with a purpose. Isn't that what it says? To those who are called according to His purpose. It means that God acted deliberately according to a plan. Paul uses the same word later in chapter 9 verse 11 and 9 verse 17 where again the idea is intention on purpose. Let's back off a little bit. Do you know what it means when somebody says they're going to wing it? You know what that means? Well, when we get there, we'll just wing it. Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Wing it? We probably ought to have something a little more definite than just winging it, don't you think? One who wings it has nothing set out in his mind beforehand. No, we're going to wing it. Take it as it comes. Let's just react to whatever happens. Well, I'm here to say God never wings it. He never has winged it. He never will wing it about anything. I love the first chapter of the Bible in terms of creation and how God starts out there and He doesn't wing it in creation. How wonderful it is he creates a habitat and then he creates the inhabitants for that habitat. Whether it's water or land or the garden or wherever it is, he doesn't wing it. He's not there, oh, we'll just, when we get there we'll deal with it. No, no. He doesn't do that in creation and he does not do that in salvation. He doesn't react rather than act. You remember how Paul puts it in Ephesians 1.11 where it says, he works all things after the counsel purpose of his own will. That doesn't sound like winging it to me. Not at all. So the ones who love God are the ones who are part of God's plan. He intended something for them. What a great God. What a wonderful being for us to prefer. Wow, he's worth preferring, isn't he? He's worth obeying. He's worth loving. Why? Because on purpose, he did something with me first. You're kidding. Me? Self-gratifying, self-congratulating, self-glorifying. Me? And it brings us to the second word, invitation. I like the way Jesus used the word call. John 10, And he calls his own sheep by name, and leads them out. John 10, 27, My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. They hear me calling. John 6, no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, or back to the idea of calling, Romans 8.28. Those who love God, those who are called on purpose, according to His purpose. He said, I'm going to call. I'm going to call. I'm going to invite. My sheep hear my voice. This is in contrast to many that Jesus called who did not follow Him. You know that happened, don't you? I mean, he called and called and called and called in Samaria and Judea and all up and down and around and here and there and everywhere and all kinds of calling out to people. Come! Come to me! And however many of them said, no way, I don't want to be part of you. That's a kind of calling. But then there's that other kind of calling where he would say to someone, Leave everything you're doing and come on, follow me. Boy, they followed. There's something different about those two kinds of calling. It's kind of the difference between an invitation to graduation exercises or an invitation to jury duty. Come to my graduation exercise. Well, thank you for the invitation. Don't know if I will or won't, whatever, and then show up on Monday at nine o'clock for jury duty at the courthouse. There's something behind that call that's different than the other call. What is it? It's authority. Authority. There is a compelling authority built into the one kind of invitation. When someone is called according to God's purpose, it's got authority behind it. The person called that way recognizes, admits, yields to authority. Oh, he called, didn't he? It's unavoidable. It's irresistible, that call. That's why that verse, John 6.44 is there. And verse 65, you could add, nobody can come except the Father which hath sent me drawing. That's part of this calling. That's what's going on in Romans 8.28. Those are the individuals. If you know that God acted first on your life, so that God now comes first in your life, then I hope that Romans 8.28 is a promise from God that you'll never forget. It's a promise I'll never forget. It's the spiritual scripture helicopter that lifts us up above the maze of life. You ever go through a corn maze or another kind of a maze? Go out to Chicago, there's an indoor maze there. The maze is made out of curtain material, and you know, you enter here, and then you're on your own inside. I mean, it's enormous, this maze! in this building and people are there. But the neat thing about it is that there's a walkway lifted up above the maze. So you can go up on there and look down at everybody wandering around in the maze. There they go. No, no, no! Go the other way! Right! Not your other right! Come on! You'll never get out of there! You're up on that walkway and you can look down in there and you can see the whole maze and how it's all going to go and how that person is going in it. And that's what this is. You're going through a maze in life. You don't know the turns. You don't know where you're going to be blocked. You don't know just how it's going to be. But you've got somebody above you that does. and has given you a promise that he does and that he's directing you so you'll come out the other end just fine. Lots of corridors of decisions in our lives. Lots of angles of pain. Lots of dead ends of suffering. There's a number of backtracks of sin and repentance and they all work together. to lead us to the exit of life eternal. Every bit of it. Romans 8.28 is at the same time, I think I wrote this down there for you, a safe haven during ministry storms, a walled fortress during satanic attacks, a prescription when soul pain and heartache become unbearable. Anybody there today? You can hardly bear it. The disappointment. the broken relationship, the teetering situation at work or wherever. This is also a sunrise for the depressed, a roadside rest for the weary pilgrim. Oh man, we've been driving. Let's pull over here for a few minutes. All things work together for good. Everything in your life, on your trip down the highway of life, it's all working together for good. If you love God, who has called you according to His purpose. And keep using it. You can't dent it or wear it out. Go ahead. Beat on this promise with all you've got in your heart and life. You can't hurt it. Because you can't hurt God. It will always stay the same, this promise. And not only stay the same, but say the same. Every time you read it, it's going to say the same thing. No magic letters here. I've got a last word. Let's see, it's been since May that I've been with you folks, so I'm getting to know you a little bit, but I'm sure I don't really know you all that well. But I want to say something to you if you're not quite sure if you love God. And if that's where you are, admit it. Child? Teenager? I don't know if I prefer God. I know I'm battling obeying Him. Maybe you have no understanding that He acted first on your life. I want you to be able to take this promise and hang it on the wall of your mind, to be able to go out and say, I don't know what else I've got in life, but I've got this. You want to know if all things are working together for your ultimate good? You want to be free of the merry-go-round feeling that your life really is spinning in circles, getting nowhere? You want to have some real assurance that there's real purpose for being alive and there's a blessed end at death? Why am I here? Where am I going? What's happening? Kids, listen. Young people, listen. One day you're going to be old like me. Maybe. Maybe you won't make it to my age. Maybe right now you need to say, I'd like to be able to have this promise, but I'm not sure I'm there. Kids, you need to know. Well, you adults, I don't know all of you. You need to know it's not a game. We don't come together like this to just kind of do our thing as Grace Reformed Baptist Church. We're here to encourage those that love God and are called according to His purpose. And we're also here to say, are you hearing Him calling for the first time? You've heard my voice since May. Have you ever heard His voice? Is there any way now that you're just sensing, well, I'm getting something, I'm hearing something, I'm having an idea, a thought, an impression that never had before. Maybe it's the Lord! Maybe the Spirit of God is saying, it's time now, right now, make sure that you love me, prefer me, put me before everything. You need to do that. It's so important because we read verse 31 earlier, if God is for us, who can be against us? Turn that around. If God is against us, who can be for us? If you find out that you're not loving God, that means He's against you. Jesus said, you're either for me or against me. There's no in-betweeners. You want Him for you. And if He is, who could be against you? Nobody. Nothing. Because we know, don't we? We know that all things work together for good to those who love God! and are the called according to His purpose. We know that. Let's pray together. Our Father in Heaven, thank You so much for talking to us through Your Word. Forgive us for the times we haven't been listening. But we're listening now to this verse that's so special. And we want it, our God, we want it to be special to everybody here. So if there's somebody, somebody that you have not yet called, we ask you to do it. You're the only one who can call this way. Call them to your love. Help us all to rejoice in the promise that we're not going to forget. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.