In 1977, Bob Marley wrote a song that would become kind of an anthem for people who had had to endure hardship and oppression and yet are determined to push forward and make the most of their conditions. The song was called Three Little Birds, but almost nobody calls it by that name. It's better known by its most famous line, everything is going to be all right, which is repeated over and over in the refrain of the song. Don't worry about a thing because every little thing is going to be all right. Now, there's no real reason given in the song why Bob's listeners should have such a positive outlook. They're simply told to do so, perhaps inspired by the beautiful singing of the three little birds that he wakes up hearing in the morning that caused him to have just a more positive and uplifted outlook on life in general. Anxiety and worries are not pleasant things. Most of us would like a remedy to them. We want to be able to face our trials without fear or despair or uncertainty. But do we have any reason to do so? Can the idea that everything is going to be all right, can that be something more than just ignorant optimism? It can. It can, friends. If there is a sovereign and good God who is dictating all that happens in the universe, which His creative heart designed and made. If there is a God who is mightier than the chaos that our sin has created, then we have reason for optimism. If there is a God who builds and orchestrates with purpose, a God who is not hindered in his designs by any lack of ability in himself or by the opposition of the will of any man, then we have reason to hope. If God is sovereign, friends, and we are covenantally connected to him, then Paul will show us today that we have every reason to burst forth with hope and with optimism. And so we are in Romans chapter 8 and looking at those very well-known verses, verse 28 and verse 29. I'll take just a moment to read them to you. This is the word of God through the pen of Paul. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. Would you bow with me in a word of prayer? God, we are happy to come before you today and thankful that when we woke up this morning, we found the calendar was setting on Sunday, the best day, Lord. We got to gather together and be your family and we get to come to this place, Lord, that you provided for us so that we can sing praise to you and respond to your generosity with thanksgiving. I pray, Lord God, that our hearts are being lifted up today, that Father, whatever burden we might bear as far as the circumstances of life are concerned, that we can do so with hope, and that we don't have to feel like a defeated people or a forgotten people. I pray God that by the power of your written word today, that we might remember whose hand is on all things that happen in our lives. And so guide us and direct us, if it be your will, to reveal to us why You have allowed us to go through the things that we go through, God, and we will rejoice in that, but even if you don't find it necessary or beneficial for us to have an explanation, help us instead to stand on faith and to trust that You are good, and to know, Lord, that everything that You are orchestrating in our lives is for Your glory, but it is also for our blessing, if our names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life. And so help us, God, as we grow, to be thankful for all that You give to us. And I pray, Lord, that You'd bring maturity to us in growth, according to Your Word, in Jesus' name. Amen. Most of our focus will be on verse 28 this morning as verse 29 pairs very nicely with verse 30 in some really integral ways, but we're just going to begin to scratch the surface of what 29 says because its content reinforces the assertions that are made at the end of verse 28. So verse 28 is the object of our meditation for the most part. I think it's very It's got a very clear structure that's going to help us to understand what Paul is communicating in these few words. And let me point that structure out to you. At the heart of verse 28 is a powerful promise. One that can have a tremendous impact on the way that a person lives their life and faces the difficult challenges that come up against them day by day. But the promise has very specific object. It's not a promise for just anyone. A very specific audience is in mind when God gives this promise to us. And so verse 28 breaks down into three parts. It starts with explaining to us who the promise is for. We are told that it's for those who love God. And then the promise is described. All things work together for good. And then he goes back to that first subordinate clause. Who is the promise for? Again, for those who are called according to God's purposes. We're going to unlock the promise first. And then we're going to turn our attention to the first and the second subordinate clause to consider who the promise applies to. And then we're also going to consider why the recipient of the promise is mentioned twice. So here's the heart of verse 28, this promise that should bring us great comfort. All things work together for good. All things work together for good. It is Christmas, if you haven't noticed all the decorations around us. And it's a beautiful time of year, a time of generosity. And in Western culture, we often take this time of year to show some kindness to our children by buying them presents, rack them up, put them under a Christmas tree. And my kids, almost every single year, at least one of my kids is going to get something from LEGO. Lego has been a hallmark in our family for generations. I played with Legos. They all play with Legos. I'm sure their kids are going to play with Legos. There's a satisfaction that comes when you see the vivid picture of what that set is supposed to produce once you get finished building it. You open the box, you find several of those tidy little clear cellophane packages with dozens of multicolored bricks inside, a wide variety of shapes, some of them just basic building blocks. Others are very specific and specialized pieces that serve a specific function. You turn to page one of that instruction manual, and you begin to slowly add this piece to that piece, and this piece to that piece, one cluster of pieces to another. This little substructure then connects to this larger superstructure, and little by little, it becomes apparent to you, the designers of the kit put every single thing in that box for a purpose. All of those bricks go together to form the artistic expression of something that the creator designed. It's a very efficient system, very satisfying to complete. And it's not hard for us to wrap our minds around the fact that everything in that box goes together for a reason. But real life is seldom as clear cut for us, isn't it? Every human being is a work in progress. Every person is the product of all the genetic makeup that they came into this world with. refined through all the experiences that a person encounters along the way of their day-to-day lives. In order to get to this present moment in our lives, we've taken literally millions and millions of twists and turns through our existence, experienced countless permutations of happiness, of sadness, of victory, of defeat, of excitement, and boredom, and exhaustion, relaxation, fulfillment, and challenge. Who you are today is being continually shaped and molded. And unlike Lego, no one gave us a nice little picture that said, when Nick Neves is done, he should look exactly like this. And just when I think that I've made progress in coming close to what I believe I should be, The Lord is gracious to me and He opens my eyes. And the Holy Spirit enlightens my understanding and I realize that there's so much more for me to grow. There's so much more that needs to be changed in me that God needs to work on in my heart and my life. I can confess here to you today that all of the little experiences that are supposed to make that happen, that are supposed to refine me into the person that I am, don't always make very much sense to me. I don't understand exactly why I have to go through the things that God has me go through. I often go through experiences and I didn't expect to have those experiences, experiences that don't fit into my personal plans, some that might in fact fly completely against the plans that I had made for myself that I was trying to accomplish. There are great losses in life that leave my heart feeling empty and void. There are problems that present themselves that I struggle to find a good and satisfying solution to. I don't have the knowledge currently to handle them or the resources to deal with those situations. There are persistent roadblocks that I can't seem to move beyond that keep presenting the same troubles to me over and over again. How is all of this supposed to somehow coalesce into a meaningful and satisfactory person? How do all of these different pieces click together to form me, who is mature and content and pleasing to God? And yet here in verse 28, there is a promise. All. things work together for good. Notice that while it is not explicitly said here by Paul, it is very strongly implied. And based on what we're going to continue to read in verse 29 through verse 30, where Paul lays out what has been commonly referred to as the golden chain of salvation, where the apostle gives us a brief reminder that God is the author of salvation from beginning to end, we really cannot deny that the reason Paul says all things work together for good, is that there is a good and sovereign God who causes all of these things to do so. Paul does not advise us to battle against weariness and doubt by looking to anything that we can do on our own, but rather he bids us to look to the one who is the opposite of everything that is frustrating about us. We struggle because we do not know things. There are limits upon our knowledge. We have not perceived all the data we need to make the right decisions. We don't know what to do next. We don't know why things have turned out the way that they have. We don't know who we can always trust. But none of that is a problem for God. He lacks no knowledge. He has all wisdom. So Paul encourages us, look to Him, look to the Sovereign One. He knows why. He knows what comes next. He knows what led to this. He knows where this will lead you next. And when this challenge is overcome, He knows what next challenge He has in line for you to grow you and to make you trust Him more. Before anyone can derive any relief or joy from Paul's message here in Romans 8, they need to understand that this comfort that the Apostle talks about is completely built upon the foundation of God's strong sovereignty. The sovereignty of God is a doctrine that receives a lot of attention and pulpits, and it should. If you believe that God is sovereign, you don't just believe that God is good or that He is mighty. He is those things, but sovereignty is more than just those things. To say that God is sovereign is to say that God has the power to do anything that is good anything that is in His will to do, but the doctrine of sovereignty is also that God always does His good pleasure. Let's think about that for a moment. God is always going to do what is pleasing to Him. Psalm 115.3 says, Our God is in heaven. He does all that He pleases. All that He pleases. Very simple. He accomplishes what He wants to accomplish. His plan comes to pass. Now you might have known a rebellious child or two in your life of whom it might say, that kid just does whatever he pleases, right? I might have raised one or two from time to time. But when applied to a child, the phrase, he does whatever he pleases, it doesn't mean that he can do all things, that he can do whatever he wants. It simply means that that child doesn't take authority into consideration. He hasn't learned yet that there are powers above him that he needs to respect, that there are rules for him to follow. And so there's much for that little one to learn. But a child can't go about his business and do what he wants to do in a boundless way. And since that child's juvenile will is immature and flawed, it usually does everyone else harm when he acts as if there is no authority over him. God's nature is so perfectly good and holy that we should want nothing different than what the Lord wants for Himself and for His creation. We should desire that God always does His will and always gets His way. We should want that. We should pray for that, shouldn't we? If anyone were to be able to restrain Him, or to get God to act contradictory to His perfect nature, it could only be for the worse. God must do all that He pleases, because all that He pleases is righteous and good. His will is perfect. The all in Psalm 115.3, where it says, God is in the heavens, He does all that He pleases, informs our understanding of God's sovereignty. God does everything that He wants to do, not most of what He wants to do, but all of it. his will will be perfectly performed. Now, he doesn't do it all at once, friends. There are things that are a part of God's plan that have yet to come to pass. They remain for the future. God chose to create the universe in the context of time and space, and as such, God's will is planned to unfold gradually over time. But every aspect of his will does get done, and exactly when it is supposed to get done. Also beneficial to our understanding of God's sovereignty is what Paul says in Colossians 1, verses 16 and 17, where it reads, For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. Speaking of God the Son here, Paul writes in these verses that God's sovereignty is based on the fact that all of existence owes its being to God's creative power. God made the world and He created all that is in it. This was accomplished through God the Son and so it is all utterly dependent upon Him. Here we see that God created other powerful thrones. He created dominions and rulers and authorities. Even these minor powers have their origin in God and are thus subjugated to Him. They are a means by which God brings about his ends, but they cannot even begin to stand against or try to overthrow the power and authority of the one true God who is the only sovereign. This passage also makes it clear that God is more than the beginning of all things. He has done more than just wind up the universe like a great kinetic energy toy and then set it down to let it unwind on its own. God continues to be undeniably essential to all being. Even now in this very moment, God is upholding the universe by the Word of His power. All things hold together through Him. And so He is the beginning, He is the Alpha, but He is sovereign over the now as well. His creation has not moved on from Him. His sovereignty is just as relevant today, therefore, as it has always been. And so the promise of Romans 8.28 hinges fundamentally on our understanding of this sovereignty. And the higher your view of God and His sovereignty is, the more powerful this comfort will be to you. The more you say amen to the sovereignty of God, and the more you think highly of God's perfect will and plan, the more you will be comforted when you hear this passage, Romans 8.28, which says that He works all things to the good. Not everyone has a very high view of God's sovereignty. There are people that would like to identify with Christianity, but they don't really think of God in this lofty and mighty way. There are those who I would call functional deists. Now, a deist is someone who claims to believe in God, but their attitude towards God reveals that while they think he's real, they think that he is, in fact, mighty, They also largely see him as being detached from what he has made. A deist believes in God, but he doesn't think that God has much to do with us here and now. He doesn't have a large stake in what is going on in the created realm, according to the deist. And so they might attribute some praise to him, but they do not function as if God has any real authority or jurisdiction over the creation now, and certainly not over their own lives. A promise like the one that we see here in Romans 8.28 would mean very little to nothing to someone who acted like a deist, who acted like God is somewhere, but He's not really here. We're kind of working this all out on our own. They could not affirm that God works all things to the good. Some people have adapted a view of God that is called open theism. I mentioned this, I think, a few weeks back, the idea that God has to watch, that God knows more than anybody else, but he's still a learning God, that he is going through time with us. An open theist still thinks that God is the wisest and most powerful being, but he does not affirm his omniscience, meaning that he knows all things, and he does not affirm God's omnipotence, meaning that he can do all things. In other words, God is a God who still grows. And so he may have a plan of sorts, but it is subject to change as time and history unfolds before God. He can call a variable and an option. And if you were to hold on to that view of God, which plainly is the wrong view of God, then this promise in Romans 8.28 would not mean much at all to you. How can God work all things to the good if God does not know what is coming? How can God work all things to the good if he doesn't have the power to make things work the way they need to work? If you think that God has to be allowed to do the things that he wills to do, if you think that he has to be a gentleman and ask permission of every created being before he makes a move or shapes our future, then this promise won't have as much power to you. In that view, God is not very sovereign at all. In fact, his will is subject to approval by a greater authority, which is ironically, tragically, a lesser authority, man's heart and mind. Some believe that the higher authority is the human will. If man can veto what God has determined to do, or if man can thwart his plans, then Romans 8.28 is going to lose all of its power, and conversely, its comfort as well. But if you have this high view of God, if you have come breathlessly before the one who created all things and come to realize how radically differently he is than anything else that he has created, if you can affirm with a confident heart that God does know all things, even the depths of our heart, before we even think a thought, he knows what we're going to think. If you can profess that God is omnipresent, that you cannot go anywhere where God is not, that there isn't a corner of the universe that He has abandoned or neglected. If you can say plainly that God is omnipotent, that He has power beyond all power, and that there is nothing that is impossible for God, and that this nature which sets him apart as the only divinity, as the one and only triune God, if you hold to that high view of God's sovereignty and understand God to have ultimate influence over every detail that occurs in this complex and diverse creation, then Romans 8.28 should be music to your ears. You should love to hear that God works all things together for the good. Notice that the promise of verse 28 says, all things work together for good, not for our good. What is good is good, not because it is our good, not because it matches what I want, not because I think that it is good, but because it is truly and objectively good. It is judged to be good by the only judge who matters. It is judged to be good by God himself. What you and I think is good might not live up to what is actually good. So verse 28 is not a promise that God is going to give His children everything that they want. You realize that? Romans 8.28 does not say that God is going to give you every good thing that you want. But rather it is a promise that He will work it all to the good. according to His perfect definition of what good is. And so Paul is continuing on with the designs of chapter 8. He is comforting Christians who are facing the hard realities of living their life by the Holy Spirit, but doing it in a fallen world and trying to do it with a flawed flesh. You know, Christians are not perfect individuals, and so we battle against constant temptations and pitfalls that if we're not careful, we'll stumble into still, even though we're redeemed creatures. And Paul encourages us, he does this by assuring us that every detail of our lives is being used by God as a heavenly conductor of beauty. He is ordering a complex symphony of experiences that he intends to bring about the kind of changes that he has determined will be best for us and for all that he has made. Have you been hurt by someone recently? Someone's broken your heart or treated you in a way that you never wanted to be treated. Believe it or not, God is using that. That's not just some random occurrence, but God is actually using that in some way, shape, or form to teach you what you wouldn't see otherwise. He's using that to help you to see how much you need Him and how much His commitment to you, His covenantal relationship to you is far superior than any relationship you're gonna have in this world. Have you been running out of resources? The bank is empty right now. There's nothing in the wallet. You're struggling to get by. God is using that. Poverty is not this great and mighty power that God is doing all that he can thwart, but some months it just doesn't work out. No, God uses when we don't have much. He uses those times to strengthen us and to make us thankful for what we do have. Have you been sick, struggling against the ailments of your body with no resolution or healing on the horizon? God is using that. He uses our suffering, our physical struggles. He uses our discomfort to remind us that this world is not our home. This is not the ultimate destination that He designed us for. that there's a new heavens and a new earth where those kinds of hurts and difficulties will not be the definition of who we are. He points us forward to something better through these things. Have you been struggling with sin, my friend? Have you been battling against those temptations and you just don't know how to get over this desire to do what you know is wrong. The scripture has been honest to you and you've seen it and you want to love what the scripture says about what is holy and righteous and good and yet you find yourself in this loop where you keep battling the same mistakes. You keep making the same errors. and offending God in the same ways. Have you been battling with your sin? Believe it or not, Christian, God is even using that in such a way that it will ultimately work out for good for you. God is not the author of sin, but there is sin in your life, Christian. And when you sin against God, when you turn away from His law, even if it's just for a moment, God knows how to even use that rebellion in you in such a way that it will bring light to God's faithfulness to you. Sin itself is not good, but what God will do by using it to humble and shape you is a good thing. Think about the prodigal son. Most of you are very familiar with this story. A man who was an heir to some riches and wealth. His father was a wealthy landowner and had much, but he was a discontent son and he demanded that his son give him his inheritance before his father passed away. And you know that that prodigal son, clearly in sin, took that money that his father gave to him and he ran off to a foreign land and he wasted it on his desires. He spent it sinfully. And he was taken advantage of. He acted like a pagan and pagans took advantage of him. And they drained his pockets. And his life fell apart so dramatically that he ends up in a pig pen. He has no prospects for a future. He is destitute, he is hungry, he is cold, and he is alone. Everyone has abandoned him. And after that, what does he do? He realizes it wouldn't hurt. Why don't I just go back to the father who I so insulted, who I showed no love for, who I demanded my inheritance from and then left behind? Why don't I go back to him and just say, Father, I was wrong. I don't deserve to be your son anymore. Would you at least just make me a slave? Can I just be a slave in your property? I'll be doing better now that I am on my own strength and with my own power. And so he goes back to his father. And we all know that the joyful reunion that the scripture describes there, that the father does not come back with his arms crossed. He doesn't see his son coming and shake his head. He doesn't lambast him with great guilt and shame. He opens his arms wide to the son and receives him in. And he prepares a feast for him. And he's grateful because this son whom he continued to love, even though his son did not love him, has returned to him. And where is that son's heart now? Is he better off or worse off than when he left in his sin? Now it was a shame what he did to his father. He should never have done it, but the fact that he did it was used in such a way that now this young man who thought he knew what life was all about has learned something very important. And it was an expensive lesson. Yet he comes back and now he knows the love of his father like he's never known it. He knows the power of forgiveness like he had never known it before. God can even use your sin in such a way that he can grow you and humble you and give you a greater admiration and appreciation for the sacrifice of your Savior. Now there is a caveat. The promise does not come with an explanation to us, necessarily. Or even a promise that we will someday know how all of this synthesizes into a perfect expression of God's plan. All things work together for good, but God does not hand you the playbook on how it works. Our deep and thorough knowledge of God's processes here are not guaranteed, nor should our peace and contentment hang on knowing every why that leads to God's sovereign hand doing what he does. I love what Dr. Martin Lloyd-Jones says about this passage. He says, the Christian is a man who can be certain about the ultimate when he is most uncertain about the immediate. See, this is not a promise, this encouragement that's being given to us by Paul is not a promise that we will be certain about all the reasons why we've gone through what we've had to go through. Rather, what he does is tell us, God has this under control. And God knows why these things are going the way that they're going in your life. And yours is just to trust Him. and to believe and be comforted that because He is sovereign, because He has His hands on these things, that you don't have to despair. You don't have to feel as if all of this is for nothing. There is more here than just a promise. In fact, twice as many words are spent on describing who should expect to receive this promise than are spent on describing the actual promise itself. And so let us look at the first qualifier. Remember, we have a qualifier, we have a promise, and another qualifier. The first qualifier is this. It is a comfort to a specific people. For those who love God, for those who love God, He works all things to the good. Friends, the sovereignty of God is not a doctrine that represents comfort to everyone. For someone who is still living in abject rebellion against God, the idea that God is sovereign cannot comfort us. In fact, it would have to be a great terror to the person who believes that, yes, God is sovereign, but they don't love Him, but they do not have faith in Him, but they are, in fact, living in rebellion against this God who's just been described in sovereign ways. If God works all things according to His will, then any attempt to set ourselves up against God and against His will to oppose Him and to resist His pleasure and His plan can only ever fail. It can never bring good fruit. It is impossible for two different beings to be sovereign. Did you know that? Impossible. For their wills will eventually be opposed to one another and one of their wills will have to win out over the other's will. And this is one of the reasons why the doctrine of the Trinity is so wonderful and so beautiful to us. Remember last week we noticed how in chapter 8 we have a Trinitarian comfort given to us by Paul. That we have blessings from the Father in the form of adoption. That we have blessings from the Son in the form of our salvation. We have blessings from the Spirit that He gives us new life and gives us a way to walk that we don't have to walk in the ways of sin like we used to before. We have this beautiful picture of a triune God, one that we worship as one God in three subsistences, in three persons. But we do not worship three gods, church. The one God we worship has three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And while each of these subsistences, these persons, has particular functions and roles that are specific to them, Enough so that it is important for us to recognize that the Father is not exactly the Son, and the Son is not exactly the Spirit, and the Spirit is not exactly the Father. The Spirit indwells us, right? The Father sent the Son, not the other way around. The Son took on flesh, not the Spirit. There are some distinctions here. And yet these three subsistences are not distinct in the way that I and my wife are distinct. Missy and I agree on much, but we each have a unique will. There are things that I want that my wife does not necessarily want. And there are things that she wants that I don't necessarily want. That is why we have three, three Christmas trees in our house right now. Three. Like, I don't get it. OK? But I love my wife. So she gets it. She gets three Christmas trees. I don't necessarily want them. But that's because we don't have the same will. And we don't have to have the same will. But it's not the case with God. the Father and the Son and the Spirit have one perfectly united will, and they are 100% in agreement, and they have always been 100% in agreement. And that's why I say carefully here, it is impossible for two different beings to be sovereign, for their wills will eventually be opposed to one another, and one of their wills will have to win out over the other person's will. If your will is different than God's will, friends, your will is going to lose out. You will not move him. You will not triumph over his designs. He is God and you are created thing. And yet all of us are born in the default mode of rebellion, aren't we? Whereby our own will is the single most important will to us by nature. The fallen man wants what will make him happy, regardless of the consequence in many cases. In order for this promise to bring you joy, you have to love God. In other words, this promise is for Christians. Because there is no Christian who doesn't love God. You can admire the principles and the values of Christianity. You can respect the historical impact that it has made on the world and on history. You can live in a nation dominated by Christian principles and culture. But if you do not love God, you're not a Christian. Because until you see God's will as the best will, you see Him as a threat to your own will. He is your competition. And that is why in Romans 10, verses nine through 10, where Paul, we're gonna get to this in due time, Paul expresses this very simple and straightforward definition of what it means to be saved. He says, because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart, one believes and is justified, and with the mouth, one confesses and is saved. a very fundamental verse about salvation in its simplest form. Two essential components are obvious here, belief and confession. But there's a third, and it is subtle, but it is there, behind the belief, behind the confession, an essential component, and that is the heart. For if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart, you will be saved. This is the heart as it relates to the Hebrew mindset. It is the core of a man. in the Hebrew way of thinking, the very essence of what He desires and is. It is the seed of where our loving affections come from. And remember, what is the greatest of all the commands? Mark 12, verses 29 through 30 says, this is Jesus answering that question. The most important is, hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. Salvation happens when God gives a rebellious sinner the gracious gift of a new heart, a heart that has spiritual vitality, and with that heart, God enables us to do what we could not do before we were saved. He makes it possible for us to trust in Him, to believe in Him, yes, and to love Him. The relationship that a Christian has with God is and must be a loving relationship. We come to Him because He has loved us. And if it were not for that loving affection, that gracious kindness that He has shown to us, we would not love the things of God. We would, by default, be in rebellion against Him. God works all things to the good for those who love God, not just for those who love God's stuff, not just those who love God's blessings, not those who just love God's power or God's freedom, for those who love God. It is too easy to look right past the person of God and our interactions with Him, even in our worship to Him. We can be so attracted to the product of knowing God, to the byproduct, the fruits of this connected relationship, that we find our vision of God Himself obscured. We fail to see the beauty of who He is and the greatest gift of all, which is being near to Him and knowing Him in truth. And so I might ask, what kind of love? can we give to God, Christians? Imperfect love. It's the only kind of love that we can afford to give. Imperfect love. We can give thankful love, love that is responsive, that recognizes and identifies the beauty of what God has given to us, one that responds in gratitude. We can give love that attempts, sometimes awkwardly, to mimic the love that we have received from God in the first place. We love, why? Because He first loved us. And so as Christians, we're being taught to truly love by the God who is Himself love. And so we try to love Him by watching Him love us and then by attempting to love Him back in like kind. Now trust me, Christian, your love is never going to match His love. Can you deal with that? Can you deal with the fact that forever you might express your love and gratitude and devotion to God, but His love for you will always be greater? When a man encounters grace, it is not unusual for the sinful tendencies of the human heart to want to compulsively push back against grace, to give back just as good as it got, to prove that we're as good as the person who tried to give. But here, as we applied that to God's generosity, may every one of us confess we are not as good as the giver. God is way more equipped to love than we are. He is better at this. Don't let your heart think about God in such a way that you feel like you need to match Him somehow, that you don't want to be in His love debt. Friend, you were designed to be in His love debt forever. He will always love you more than you love Him. And it can be hard for us to come to terms with that. God confronts us sometimes in the preaching of his word, doesn't he? He takes something about your character, it might be something that you have seen as a fundamental element of who you are, and he looks you right in the eye and he says, not literally, but in a sense, he says, child, that doesn't belong in you. That character trait, that tendency, that habit, that's not from me. You got that from the world. No matter how long you've operated in that way, no matter how much tendency you have to do that thing because it's bled over into your saved life from your pre-saved life, if God confronts you through the pages of his scripture and says, this doesn't glorify me, this is not how I saved you to live, then I urge you, Christian, get rid of that thing. Be grateful that He is pruning it out of your life. You're going to need to pray for His help to accomplish that. You're probably going to have to take time where you attempt to do this and then you slide back and you go forward again. You need His strength to let go of those things that were your definition before He saved you. Your heart might anxiously start to develop a defense. An excuse to keep that portion of you that isn't really you but feels like you, a defense that keeps it near to you for a while because it's been there for so long and it's hard to let it go. But here is the Lord telling you with a firm but loving voice to abandon those things. Maybe no one else in your life has had the courage to tell you to abandon those things. Maybe no one else in your life has had the insight and has cared enough to really watch you and to see that you need to be confronted on those things. You might have hid it from them. They might not carry it enough to even notice, but God sees it and He sees it plainly. And He'll keep preaching against it in your life, Christian. He will keep using the circumstances of your life along with the teaching of Scripture to bring this thing up so that you cannot casually tuck it away and pretend like it's not an issue. He will root it out because as much as Paul is telling us here that God works all things to the good for those who love Him, it could just as easily say that God works all things to the good for those He loves. He loves you, Christian. He won't give you everything that you want, and He won't give you everything that you ask for, because He loves you, and He's your Father, and He knows what you need and what you don't. While man often bristles at trial and suffering, these are some of the most effective ways that God works good in our lives, friends. Think about how much more diligently you seek after God when you're struggling. Is that true of you? You go through periods of great abundance, a season where God has provided for you amply. What do you find yourself doing? You find yourself caught up in the blessings themselves. You find yourself praying less. You may find yourself neglecting the discipline of the Word. But when things start to get very difficult and you start to realize that you don't have the strength to endure what you need to endure, where do you turn, Christian? It is in those times when God often opens our eyes and makes us realize how far we have strayed from the one that we need to cling to. Easy seasons of uninterrupted blessing often bear fruits of apathy from us, don't they? And so how do I reconcile things when what I want to do does not match what God wants? I know this passage can be really hard to receive for someone who is frustrated and hurting. It can feel like we're being dismissed when someone who means well can see that we're suffering and they take us, let me open the Bible with you, and they take us to Romans 8.28. You might be tempted to think, what is this guy doing? Doesn't he realize that I'm hurting? Why would they quote this passage of Scripture to me? In our 2 p.m. service, I recently preached on Psalm 92, and in our Q&A, we were talking about how modern hymns often fail to capture the hardship of life like the Psalms do. You know, the Psalms, they don't miss this. If you read through the Psalms, you're not gonna get a bunch of happy, clappy songs without the opposite, without this realization that being a human is hard sometimes. The Psalms are gonna confess that plainly. But the beauty of the Psalms is this, that the psalmist might start off in a mode of despair, in a mode where they cannot see the hand of God. Many of the Psalms plead, why have you forgotten me, God? Why have you turned your face from me? There is an honesty about how it feels to be in these modes of affliction at times when circumstances do not match our will. And we don't know why the Psalms is willing to say, this is tough, this is not easy. But if you continue to read through those Psalms so often, the very fact that the individual's appealing to the God who is sovereign over him starts to loosen up his tension. They begin with this desperation, they begin with this hopelessness, with this even anger. Why have you not shown up, God? Why is my enemy seem to be being blessed and I'm not being blessed? And yet through that process of going to appeal to him in honesty, the humility begins to come back. And the psalmist begins to realize, but I am not like one who is lost in the world. I'm a sheep, but I have a shepherd. I have one who cares for my heart and my soul. I have one that has not forgotten me. How could I even think that God would forget me? This is the same God who's brought me through so much. This is the God who made me who I am today. And then by the end of the psalm, what started off as lament is resounding praise and adoration to the God who alone can overcome our weakness. And so in the midst of suffering, Romans 8.28 might not be what you want to hear, but it's exactly what you need to hear, Christian. Note how the Psalms very frequently start with that lament, and then the believer reflects, and then they are returned again to that sweet, sweet worship of their Savior. Psalm 37.4 also has something to say to us about this. It says, delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. This is one of the most important passages in the whole of scripture that informs the way that we pray. Delight in what? Delight in the Lord. And then what will God give you? He'll give you that delight. He will give you the delight of the Lord. He will give you that thing that you have come to see is better than good health, better than a fat bank account, better than acceptance from your peers. He will give you delight in the Lord. He will multiply your satisfaction in Him. There's a common root of anxiety in many of God's people. Some, perhaps you're one of these, who has thought to themselves, maybe I'm not getting what I want from God. Maybe it feels like he's not showing up in this difficult circumstance because I don't love him enough. Are you a Christian? If you are, then you love God. And the promise that we read in 820 is for you. This is not a promise of love me enough and I will return to you love. He's pointing to us the fact that in His sovereignty He has already given to us that which we need. He has provided for us Himself. And His love is greater than our love, so let us not get caught up in this idea of, I need to love Him better, and then He will give me what I need. Rather, let us just be thankful that God has allowed us to love Him. And let us strive to love Him, but not so that He might lessen our circumstances. Let us love Him because He's God, because He deserves that affection from us. Which brings us to our last qualification of this promise, a comfort to a specific people, to those who love God. But then in the last part of verse 28, he expands on that. He says, for those who are called according to his purpose. Called by who? Of course, called by God. According to the purposes of God. And here is where verse 29 is going to help us to see what Paul is referring to in verses 28. We're going to spend much more time on this the next time I'm in the pulpit in Romans. But listen again to these words. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. You see that the doctrine of God's sovereignty is all over this encouragement to hold fast to hope. Before time began, God the Father, God the Son, God the Spirit had determined that within the course of the creation there would be a people who would be set aside for His glory. Those people consist of all of the men and the women who trusted Yahweh in the Old Covenant and all of those who call upon the name of Jesus in the New Covenant. The fall of mankind, his sin in the garden, was no surprise to God. When Adam sinned, it didn't throw a monkey wrench into God's plans. We don't see him scrambling to figure out how to make things right. He's ready for this. He had a plan from the beginning. Through the seed of woman, a new Adam would come, a better Adam. God the Son, who would crush the head of the serpent, and through his sacrificial love, a sinful people would be washed clean of their guilt and would be made holy. those who are called according to His purposes. And so the call that is being spoken of here is not the general call. The general call is what you're hearing right now, the call that goes out into the world, the call of the gospel, where the truth of sin and salvation from sin in Christ is preached. That general call goes out indiscriminately. Everybody needs to hear this general call, but not everyone is going to respond to this general call. There is, at the same time, in churches where the Word is being preached all over the world today, an effectual call going out. And that call is not one that I can make to you. It's one that the Spirit has to make in the heart of an individual. The effectual call is the preaching of the Word of God, the declaration of the truth, and then God working in concert with that preaching in such a way that a person who was a rebel is now seeing their sin for the first time for what it is. And by the power of God, by His calling, they are being beckoned out of this life of misery and rebellion, and they're being ushered into this new life. And that happens by the gift of this new soft heart that only the Lord can give. This effectual call is what is being spoken of here. God will work all things to the good for those who are called effectively, called to salvation, called to sanctification and to maturity, called to live by faith, called to be worshipers of the living God, all according to the magnificent purposes of His will and His decree. You get to be involved in the fulfillment, church, of this awesome plan of God's. God not only ordains the ends, but He also ordains the means that He's going to use to accomplish His ends. And so do you not see that God has assigned every one of His elect to be a vessel of His grace, a demonstration of His redeeming power in this lost world? Every part of your life is being crafted to that end, that the good purposes of God will come to pass in ways that He carries you through this life, not only in how He blesses you, friends, but in how He sustains you when things are very difficult. and in how he satisfies you when the things of this world fail to satisfy you. We would do well to keep in mind something that Paul has already taught us in the earlier part of this epistle, in chapter five, verses three through five, where it reads, not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Trust this church. Trust that God is a master craftsman and he has many tools at his disposal, each of which he can use to shape us into the image of Christ. If we love the Lord and if we confess that he is indeed sovereign, we can begin to see how the worst set of circumstances ultimately can play to our benefit and to the glory of the one who made us. Let us conclude by considering an example, just one, from the book of Job, a very common book referred to when we're trying to make sense of our suffering. Here is a brother who needed the encouragement that Paul lays out for us here in Romans 8, didn't he? He lost so much. I don't have to go through all the details of his story. He was a man of great wealth and blessing, but due to the Lord showing to the enemy that man doesn't just love God because of what God gives, but man can, through God's help, love Him for who He is, He allowed Satan to strip him of all these blessings. And Job was admirably faithful at first, but over time, He began to wear down, he began to waver as his weakness was exposed. He began to question God. We begin to see evidence of even possible bitterness in him towards God. Why have you allowed me to go through these things? And in the final chapter, God reveals himself dramatically to Job. He does so by humbling him. He lifts him up eventually, but first he humbles him further. He reminds him who God is and that it's not Job. But eventually God because of his great love for Job, restores his servant, gives him all these things. And we read in verses 12 of chapter 42 of Job, and the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning. And he had 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 yoke of oxen, and 1,000 female donkeys. He also had seven sons and three daughters. It goes on to describe how his daughters were more beautiful than anyone in the land. and that he loved and worshipped the Lord. He lived long life. He was there for many, many more years. You got to see his little ones grow up and his little ones' little ones grow up. But the greatest blessing was not these things. The greatest blessing was this, that because of his suffering, Because of the trials that the Lord allowed him to endure and then brought him out of, he was a better man than he began. Not in spite of his trial, but because of his trial. God used it for the good of Job, and God uses all things for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purposes. Let's pray. Father God, if only we could see what you see. If only we could get a picture of what you know about our lives and our circumstances, God, we would be astounded, I'm sure, to see the intricate detail in which you weave every little small aspect of our being, what we would deem good and bad, you weave it all together into a tapestry of your love for us. God, we want to trust you better. We confess that there are times when we cry out to you in frustration, and we really just want the relief that we know that you can give. But I pray, God, that you would make us bolder than that, that as your people, we might even be able to thank you for the trials and the challenges that you put into our lives, and that we would not be so quick to run away from them, Lord God, but that we would be willing to sit in whatever station you have planted us in, God, that for as long as it takes, that you would use these circumstances to refine our hearts, and when we are weak, God, thank you for the promises that you have made in other places in Scripture that remind us that if we sin in our weakness, Lord God, that your faithfulness can overcome that, and that you will again restore us, and again restore us, and again wash us clean, Lord. You are a good and a holy Father to us, and you will endure in your love. So God, I pray that this was a comfort to a brother or sister who's struggling through a difficult time right now and doesn't have all the reasons why, but can now know that you are not wasting this trial, that you are using it in a way that is a blessing to them and is glory to your great name. I pray even that somebody who does not yet know you, God, will be confronted with the realities today that apart from your love, they cannot have hope for the future. That the circumstances of the lost person who does not call you king, who does not bow the knee to you, Lord. Their circumstances are not necessarily being worked to the good. Those circumstances are often judgment over us, over those who care not for the Lord Jesus Christ. And so I pray that this message in a different way would be the trial they need to see their hopelessness apart from repentance. God, please bring new life in those who are lost. God, we would rejoice in being able to baptize new brothers and sisters in Christ and be able to disciple them in love and to bring them into the flock, into this family of God. And Father, we're so glad that you've done that to us, those of us who have believed, God, who have been shown a great mercy. And so may we not lose track of that mercy, God, and may we not despair when the road gets rough. But Father, let us remember that even though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you are with us. and your rod and your staff. They both comfort us, God. May you receive all the glory, in Jesus' name, amen.