Good morning, welcome to Trinity Reformed Baptist Church, Jackson, Georgia. It's August 17th, 2014. Join us now as Brother Steve Martin brings us a message from the Word. Please turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 8. I have the privilege of preaching from this pulpit now and again as the elders have opportunity to use an extra preacher. And I began a series two times ago entitled God's Strange Ministers. If you were here, then I may remember that I did not point out Brandon or myself as the example of strange ministers. I said it wasn't particular people, but I use an illustration from one of my heroes in the Christian faith. I think it's good to have heroes. I think it's good to have men or women who have gone before who were just a notch above you or maybe several notches above you and maybe stimulated you to try to rise higher to be better to work harder. Pastor Ron Dunn pastored in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in the middle city of Irving, Texas, where the Cowboys used to play. And he was one of my first teachers in the Christian life back in the early 70s, and I lost track of him. Of course, he never knew who I was, but I came across him later in the 90s and discovered he had become a Calvinist in the meantime, as I had been. And so I found some of his materials to be extremely helpful. He did a series entitled God's Strange Ministers, and he began by telling the story of a Saturday when his honeydew list had gotten so long, he just had to attack it that day. And it was nearly midnight before he was through, and he was in a lazy boy chair, just totally exhausted, greasy, nasty baseball cap, jeans with holes. He said tennis shoes with leprosy. I stunk. It was just the end of a long, hard day. And his wife said, You know, we've got company coming after church tomorrow, and I need you to run by the grocery store just real quick. He goes, It's midnight on a Saturday. Boy, I sure hope I don't see anybody. I mean, who goes grocery shopping at midnight on a Saturday night? He said, Actually, a lot of people go shopping at midnight on a Saturday night, and the grocery store was full, and he was kind of slinking around, hoping not to be seen by anybody, because he just looked nasty. and he was in the checkout line and right in front of him was a little old lady of the congregation and she'd been attending about eight years. She had moved to the Dallas area. Don't let her turn around. He said, well, the devil made her turn around and she looked and she gave one of these once-over kind of deals and then turned away and was in line again. And then she snapped around. Brother Dunn, is that you? I didn't recognize you. He said, I froze for a moment. I'll see. She's been coming eight years, Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night. He multiplied out how many times that she had seen him. Probably, he said, if she saw my blue suit lying beside one of the freeways in Dallas, she'd go, oh, there's Brother Dunn's suit. But I wasn't wearing that suit, and I was a minister out of uniform to her, and I wasn't recognized as a minister to her. She didn't appreciate me. And then he said, it's been discovered that if you want to rob a bank or do something nefarious, wear a uniform, because people don't look at you, they look at the uniform. Case in point, he was in Gatwick Airport in London, waiting to fly back to the States after speaking in England. And he was sitting there in the lounge area, as you know, you're kind of killing time, sitting down, waiting to sit down for six hours. And he looked over there, there was this man staring at him, and he would look away, and the man's staring at him, and this went on for like an hour. And finally, he was getting really uncomfortable. The guy got up and started walking toward him. And he wondered what the guy was going to do. And he goes, excuse me. Yes. Do you live in Irving, Texas? He kind of jumped. He goes, yes. He goes, I'm your mailman. I'm your mailman. He said, I waited by the mailbox on Monday when I got home just to see if that really was my mailman. And it was. I thought they were cute examples until it happened to me. I was at a Sam's Club near where we live in Fayette County. And there was a family in there shopping, at least the mom and the two boys. And the boys were preaching their high age and they were just kind of running around wrestling, fighting, trying to kill time while mom was shopping. And I was shopping near where they were running around wrestling and I said, hi. And they looked at me like, stranger, danger. And I'd like to mention that I had just been through working out, and I hadn't shaved, and I had greasy hair, and a baseball cap, and walking shorts, and a nasty t-shirt, and bare legs, and cool tennis shoes. So there I was. And they didn't recognize me from anybody, even though they always sat in the second row every week for the two years they'd been coming. So they just ran off to be with their mom, and I go, well, whatever. So I finished shopping, went to checkout, and they're in this one checkout line. I said, well, I'll get behind them. I got behind them and the boys went over to their mom and said, there's that man. And she looked at me and I said, hello, good day. Hello. You don't recognize me, do you? No. I lifted off my hand. Pastor Martin! Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I don't know what she thought was going on. But she was embarrassed that she didn't have a clue who I was, but she just looked at my non-ministerial uniform. I mean, I know high school kids used to think I wore a suit every hour of the day, except when I was sleeping. Not true. Only on Sunday morning. Anyway, we can be out of uniform and people not recognize that we're ministers. Well, God has ministers he sends to us who aren't wearing the clothes we think they should, so we do not embrace them as God's hand-picked, hand-sent ministers to us. The first one I dealt with was the ministry of failure. Why in the world would God ever let me fail? I mean, hit rock bottom, broken clear through, I've utterly failed here. This area of my life, I've just failed it. The second one we looked at was the failure of absolute weakness. I am powerless to change my circumstances. Why would God put me in a situation where I can't do anything about this? The Bible doesn't say it's wrong to change your circumstances if you can. If you're poor, he doesn't say stay poor forever, work hard, see what happens. But if God puts you in a situation that is terrible and you are powerless to deal with it, what in the world is he doing? That was the second message I had. Today is the third message. The ministry of hard circumstances. Why in the world, if God loves me, would he ever let these awful, hard circumstances come into my life? Doesn't he love me? Doesn't he know that I don't like these kinds of things? I don't like this thing, this awful thing. The Bible talks about fiery darts. Well, this sucker's a fiery harpoon. I mean, the door opened, and it just stuck in me, and it's on fire, and it's not going away. Why in the world would God let hard circumstances come into my life? So, we're going to look at that today, and I want you to read with me. I'll read aloud, you can follow along. Romans 8, beginning in verse 18 through chapter 8, verse 39. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us, or to us. For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from the slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves having that firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves, grown within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it. In the same way, the Spirit also helps our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brethren. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. I think rather than reading until the end of the chapter, I'll stop there. These last three or four verses, verses 28 to 31, are the key text for this morning. A promise that you might have heard very early in your Christian life, and if you were smart and self-preserving, you latched on to very quickly. All things work together for good. All things work together for good. And that can kind of go along for a while until, wham, you get hit with something that you never dreamed would ever happen to you, to your family, to your life, to your job, to your body, to your whatever, and now you're going through it. I can remember as I was Reviewing to do this message, I remember my first hard circumstances, a young Christian and having this girl that I knew was God's will for my life that I marry her. And the Lord said no and took her away. And I was very upset with the Lord. And we had several long, unpleasant talks. And then I found out she was engaged to somebody else, that's strike two. And then I had an opportunity. She heard I was in a particular city. She stopped by to see me. She said, Would you pray for me? I'm engaged to this man, but this is what I've been doing and how I've been living, and I feel terrible. I'm ashamed of myself. Would you pray for me? And I said, there you go. And with my mouth open, aghast at how she'd been living, said I would pray for her and her fiancé. And then she drove off in the dark, and I watched her headlights proceed. I walked in the house, thanking God that he wouldn't let me have what I wanted, what I was mad at him for, what he wouldn't give to me. But it worked out for my best. And just a few months later, I got engaged to the woman who was perfect for me. How good of the Lord He didn't give me what I wanted. But that was my hardest circumstance up until that time. Well, that was 1971. I've had a lot more hard circumstances since 1971. If you live on a fallen planet, you're going to have hard circumstances culminating with your and my death. We're all going to die. We all assume we're going to die at 112, but probably not. And you're going to die probably before you think it's time. your loved ones will die. There's four things I want to show you in our time this morning. We need to change what we think about circumstance. We need to change what we think about circumstances. Number two, we're going to look at the eternal purpose of God and our circumstances. God has an eternal purpose and our circumstances. Number three, there's the eternal predestination of God and our circumstances. the eternal predestination of God in our circumstances, and finally, number four, the eternal providence of God in our circumstances. The eternal providence of God in our circumstances. First of all, changing our minds, changing our thinking about circumstances. As your fingers still at Romans 8, would you turn to Isaiah 49? We're going to look at one verse. Isaiah 49. Look at verse 11. God's telling Israel what he's going to be doing for them. Isaiah 49, 11, I will make all my mountains a road and my highways will be raised up. You go, and that's important. Why? Well, look at it again. In the day before, when the most advanced travel was a chariot or a horse, mountains were impenetrable barriers. Mountains kept those people away from you. And if you had to travel over mountains, it was a huge deal and difficult. He says, all my mountains are going to become a way, the King James says, or a road, New American Standards says, a path. What seems like an impenetrable object, or a huge, almost insurmountable object, is actually going to become a venue, a way, for my purposes to be accomplished in your life. You see these mountains as, he says, I will make them such that they're actually part of my smooth plan to accomplish my purposes in your life. We think there's two kinds of circumstances. The ones we can control and change as need be and the ones we can't control. We like the ones we can control or the ones we can change. We don't like it when we have circumstances in our life that we can't control and we cannot change them. But this is not what God says. He says, I'm able to take things which appear to you with your finite, finite means limited. There's limits to your knowledge, your wisdom, to your finite, limited wisdom and knowledge. There are things which you don't understand very well. And you make snap decisions based upon that and think if it doesn't go the way you think, all is lost. And that's just not true. It's a testimony to how small our minds are and how small our view of God is that we look at the circumstances of our life the way that we do. And so God may take your whole life to enlarge your view of God and to shrink your view of circumstances. Circumstances are not God. Circumstances are not sovereign in your life. God's sovereign in your life. What sin has done to us, and Barry, I think, Touched on it in Sunday School, excuse me, Bible study. Anyway, what's very said in our time together studying God's Word is that sin has blasted all of our minds and we do not think along God's lines, along God's thoughts, as God says, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. Case in point, have you ever had one of these little telescopes, little cheap ones you buy for kids? The idea is, you put it up to your eye, and things that are far away, and little, should become bigger and closer. But kids, being what they are, they'll take the little telescope and they'll turn it around and go, oh look, Daddy's real tiny and he's really far away. And they'll go play with it. That's just what we do. But that's what sin has done to your mind. And you tend to think, and I tend to think, apart from Revelation, that God's small and far away. And then, as R.C. Scrolls showed us in The Holiness of God, What if he's holy, holy, holy, and he's up close and he's in your face and he's very intimate with us. God's not little and he's not far away. He's absolutely sovereign. You live in a world created by him. The cells in your bodies are sustained moment by moment by his pleasure. And if he wanted to, your body could dissolve that quick if he chose to not have the cells of your body work anymore. We tend to think of circumstances through the lens of our puny human abilities, and God's way out there somewhere, we think, and he's lost control of the universe, and this random terrible thing has collided with my life, and I'm stuck underneath it, and that's just not biblical. Could you possibly envision, and part of what I'm trying to do today is to get you to think higher than you normally think. I became a Christian in 1969. For those of you who are younger, that's the year that the Earth's crust had just hardened so you could walk on it. And so we were out there exploring the planet. And in 1969, as I said, I had my share of problems. And they weren't anything like the problems I would learn to encounter in my life. But the idea that problems were a good thing, or that were appointed by God, or specially handcrafted and chosen by God, were a million miles away from me. And in fact, if you went to a biblical counselor or a Christian counselor for your problems, whether your problem was your spouse, yourself, your kids, your job, your health, or whatever it was, they tried to help fix your problems. Well, a couple of Christian counselors who are very famous wrote books in the same year to say, oops, we missed a major point, both in our theology and our counseling. Dr. James Dobson, who's famous to some of you who are older than 40, perhaps, who was head of focus on the family, founded that, wrote many books that help families and marriages. He wrote a book entitled, When God Doesn't Make Sense. They talked about how I've been counseling people, and all these things happen to these people. And I was trying to counsel them how to get out from underneath these problems and get back to being happy. And then it dawned on me, the more I read Scripture, the more I counseled people, that my goal wasn't to make people happy. My goal was to connect people with God. And even in the midst of the most awful circumstances, if they were rightly connected with God and close to Him, they could endure and eventually triumph over their circumstances. It wasn't to fix their problems, it was for me to help them see that God wasn't there as the genie in the bottle to fix their problems, but he was to fix them, change them, bring them close to himself, and go through this fiery furnace, or whatever it was, together. Larry Crabb, a well-known Christian psychologist, wrote a book called Finding God, and he said almost the same thing, but he said, my goal now in counseling is not to fix people's problems, it's for them to find the Lord in the midst of their problems, so that they and the Lord can work through this together, and he can take them where he wants them to go. It's not to fix problems, it's to find God in the midst of our problems. So, the first thing you and I need to do is to renew our thinking about how we approach problems. I remember as a young Christian, here comes some problems. And I wasn't even an Air Force pilot, but I learned about evasive maneuvers. These things that I see coming are not going to hit me. Oh, and you've got to go through all these maneuvers to try to avoid, and wham, they still hit you. Hey, these are great. These guys are a good thing they're not shooting at me from another country. These problems always nailed me. And I would always try to squirm out of them. And God said, these are my problems, they're hand-picked for you. And I had to learn, and over the course of the last forty-some years, I've had to learn God's perspective on my life, not my take on my life. Second point we want to make today, what is the eternal purpose of God in our hard circumstances? What is the eternal purpose of God in our hard circumstances? Let's look back at Romans chapter 8 again, verse 28 and 29. I said that's one of the first verses we should have learned as a new Christian to keep our sanity. And we know Paul's assuming knowledge of the part of the Romans. He says, this is what I bank on. This is what makes me sane. And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. What is the eternal purpose of God? Who's it for? Well, all things are working together for good. For who? Well, those who love God. Those people who love God are those who are called according to his purpose. Out of the mass of humanity, foreseeing that apart from grace, nobody would be saved, God purposes to save a great number of people. And as Genesis and Revelation say, Like the stars of the sky, like the sands of the seashore, so shall your descendants be. A great, unnumbered multitude of people will be saved by the grace of God. And these are the people who are the people who love me. Paul says, those who love God. Who are those who love God? By nature, nobody loves God. But after he changes your heart and saves you, you go, apart from grace, what would I be? Thank you, God, for saving me. I love you. called according to his purpose. Well, that begs the question, what's his purpose? We'll look at the next verse. For those whom he foreknew, remember last week in Sunday school, Bible study, sorry, cursive habit. In that thing we do before church, we looked at the idea of foreknowledge. What is foreknowledge? It's not simply to have information ahead of time. It's not presence. It's not simply God's really tall, and he sees down through the hallways of history. Oh, Steve Martin is gonna believe in me, so I'll choose him. That's how some people would explain foreknowledge. But you have to use foreknowledge in the context of the Bible, not simply looking up in Webster's dictionary. In the Bible, beginning in Genesis, when it talks about to know someone, it says, Adam knew Eve. Hey, Eve, I'm Adam. Good to know you. Is that what it's talking about? Adam knew Eve? Well, it's a euphemism for the intimate husband and wife relationship. over the New Testament. And Matthew 7, one of the most chilling parts of the whole Bible. Jesus says, depart from me. I never knew you. What? Wasn't Jesus an omniscient? Wasn't he God? Didn't he know this person existed? Sure. But he never had this intimate relationship with them. He never had this personal, I've committed my love to you, relationship For those whom God foreknew, he predestined to become conformed to the image of his son. God's eternal purpose is to make everyone who he saves to be like Jesus. God's purpose wasn't simply to save you so you could escape hell. It wasn't simply to save me so I could escape hell. It was to save us so that he could change us and make us into people that he would fellowship with for the rest of eternity. He's not going to stink up heaven with people who are ungodly and unholy and have no righteousness. So, he wipes away your sins by placing them on Jesus, punishes them on Jesus, gives you Jesus's righteousness to have for eternity, and then morally change you over the course of your life, so your sanctification begins to catch up with your justification. I've been declared righteous because I have Christ's righteousness, but I still have vast pockets of unholiness in my life that I am dealing with, and God's been working that out over the course of my life. And so, all things are working together for good, that God might make me conform to Christ. By the end of my life, by the time the Lord takes me to heaven, I will look so much more like Christ. And then once the redemption is complete, my adoption is complete, I'm taken to heaven, I'm given a resurrection body, a glorified body like Christ, sin will be done with. My moral transformation will be complete. Because of the fall of our first parents, the image of God was lost in people's lives, largely. Not entirely, but largely. And I like to use this illustration. If you've ever been to an old cemetery in the South, it's blessed with a lot of old cemeteries. You can go up along the East Coast to some famous places, there's old cemeteries. The problem is that wind and rain and ice over time will take what was engraved on those cemetery stones and it becomes smooth. You almost need to take a pencil and a piece of paper and go over the stone and find out what was written there because it's been obliterated. It's been made smooth by interaction with the elements. Sin defaces the image of God in your life and my life until God comes along and by a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit gives you a new life, a new nature, a new birth, and the image of God is re-stamped, so to speak, upon you. This is a God-given capacity to know God, to enjoy God, to love God. to be in fellowship with God? On planet Earth, the only people who can worship God are human beings who have been redeemed by grace. Have you ever seen your dog, before it wolfs down its food, stop and put its paws together and say grace and thank God for the acceleration? Have you seen a bird out, having plucked a worm, put its wings together and thank God for the worm it's about to partake? No. they are doing what they were created to do, they're not sinners, but they do not have a soul that has the possibility of communion with God as human beings do. We have the possibility to know God. In John's Gospel, John pulls back the curtain on much of the father-son relationship, and there's more in John's Gospel about the son's relationship with the father and the father's relationship with the son than practically any other book in the Bible. And Jesus is basically saying, the reason I came to earth was that there's nothing greater than to know my father. And I've known him for eternity. And I've come to save you so you can know him like I do. That's why I've come. The greatest bliss, the greatest joy, the greatest happiness, the greatest everything in all of eternity is to know my Father. And I've left eternity and entered time. I've come to this sinful planet in order to rescue you, that you might know Him like I do. Not simply to be saved from hell, but to actually know Him and enjoy Him forever, as the Catechism says. So, God is working an eternal purpose in our lives. And he's sanctifying us, making us more and more holy, like Jesus, day by day. And he uses hard circumstances. All things are working together for good, in order that we might become conformed to the image of Christ. For example, 2 Corinthians 3.18. And we all, believers, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed from one degree of glory into the next, even as by the Lord who is the Spirit. As you behold Christ over the course of your Christian life, you're being transformed in this one that you're gazing upon, in the one who is presented in the Scriptures, in the one who is preached on the Lord's Day. You and I are being transformed bit by bit over the course of our lives, sometimes almost unintelligibly, we're becoming conformed to Christ. That's God's purpose, and by God he will do it. So the present activity of God, what he's doing today and what he's going to do tomorrow, is daily, bit by bit, joy by joy, heartache by heartache, hard time by hard time, bliss by bliss, is he's going to order the lives of each of us in order to make us Jesus-like. And so it's absolutely essential that we understand the eternal purpose of God so we might know how to look at our lives, because if we don't understand what God's doing, we'll go, why is he giving me these hard circumstances? That's messing me up. I can't get done what I want to do. Hey, no shock to me. I know what you want to do. I know what you'd like to do. It's not necessarily evil, it's just not what I have planned for you. And over the course of our life, we learn to be a horse and a mule that doesn't have a bit in the bridle in its mouth. You know, Psalm 32 says, it's so sad that there are people who are professing believers who won't come to me unless you put a bit in a bridle in their mouth. Any horse people here? I know we have at least one. What do you put a bit in a bridle in a horse's mouth for? Because you can be a 100-pound woman on top of a 1,200-pound horse and go, whoa, Nellie! And suddenly, having a steel thing clamp on your tongue makes the 1,200-pound horse go, I think I'm going to stop. Is it because the person holding the bridle is more powerful than the horse? No. But they just don't like having their tongue pinched. I wouldn't either. Well, God says, you know, there are some professing Christians who are so sad. Unless you tweak their life, unless you put pain on them, they won't come running to you. They won't come to you. You go out in the paddock and they run away from you. So you have to always keep a bit and a bridle and a long rope, make sure that you can control them. God's purposes is to make each one of us like Christ. That's why he saved us. His purpose wasn't to make you rich. His purpose wasn't that you're not going to be rich. His purpose is not to make you poor. It's not to make you the world's greatest musician, or magician, or salesman, or whatever occupation you're in. His goal is to make you like Christ. And every single molecule in the universe, as J.C. Rowe says, every single molecule in the universe is serving God's purposes to make you like Christ. but we are still ingrained because of said to think what this can be heard too much. It makes me miserable. It makes me sad. I just can't do this anymore. God says this is not take me by surprise. It's handpicked. I'm going to make you like Christ. This is part of my ordering of your life to make you like Christ. Third, the eternal predestination of God in our circumstances. God is eternally predestinating what happens to us. What do I mean? Well, predestination is God choosing beforehand to guarantee the outcome. I'm going on a trip. I'm leaving Friday. I'm driving to northern Wisconsin. What am I doing up there? By the grace of God, I'm preaching at a Christian camp. I stop at Milwaukee next Lord's Day and I preach for Walt and Tom Chantry. Then I drive to northern Wisconsin, 40 miles from Lake Superior. Way up there. The one week of summer, I guess, is the week they have this camp. And I'm the speaker every night. That's a long way, driving northern Wisconsin. Finding Rhinelander, Wisconsin on a map was not an easy thing. No, I'm going to go there. I'm going to fill up my gas tank, but I also have a nice Atlas, and I also have a GPS. Because I'm not just going to get in my car and go. Well, I just sure hope I end up in Wisconsin. I sure hope that I find the right roads to get to Wisconsin. I sure hope I find Rhinelander in Wisconsin. Nobody takes a trip like that. Not even if you were a charismatic who said, let the Spirit lead. Yeah, well, I don't want to find the next sign that says Albuquerque, 10 miles. That's not going to be helpful to me. I have a plan. I, in fact, if you log to AAA, they give you a plan. It's called a trip take. And it tells you the whole trip ahead of time. Every place you could possibly want to stop and get this or that. It gets you all the way there. Is God less organized and thoughtful in what he does than you and I are? Is God going to run the whole universe? Is God going to shape a person's life? Is God going to save a human being for eternity and not have a plan that he's going to fulfill to bring everything about exactly as he wants? No, I don't want to go to Madison, Wisconsin. I don't want to go to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I want to go to Rhinelander, Wisconsin. It's got to be a perfect plan. I have to go to this particular camp at a particular time. I'm doing that just to fulfill a relatively small human responsibility. Almighty God is doing it for the whole planet, doing for each one of his people. He's predestinating all the details that will assure that he will get what Christ paid for, that he will get you or me sanctified, moved along, ready for glory. And here's a stunning thing to think about, and particularly if you're in the midst of some hard times or just come out of a hard time. If God had had a better plan for you, you would've been in that plan. The plan you're on is the very best plan for you. I know I can say that, but if I hadn't been through my own share of hard times, I wouldn't have much authority in looking you in the eye and say it's true. But it's true. My plan that I'm in is God's very best plan for me and my dear wife. and the plan that you're in with his heartaches and frustrations and disappointments and what the world is all about things. God said, if it wasn't the best for you, I wouldn't have you in this. This plan did not catch me unawares. This incident did not come while I was looking at this bushy-haired man's 1,000, you know, look, Jesus says, God knows all the hairs on man's head, and he's over there counting the hairs of a bushy-haired man, and he neglects to pay attention to you, and wouldn't you know, that's when the anvil falls off the third story and lands on top of your head. God's trip for you is perfect, and his plan is perfect. No wrong turns, no missed opportunities. God says you're my perfect plan. In John chapter 6, Jesus talks about how perfectly he's ordered things so you and I will make it. John 6, 37. All that the Father gives me will come to me. Everyone that the Father gives me will come to me. And whoever comes to me, I will never cast out. You're going to make it because you're so smart, so spiritual, so humble, so teachable. No, you and I will make it by the grace of God. Those who come to me, I will never cast out. Never is a big word. God choosing to save a people election and then giving these people his son is predestination and God marks out the details of their salvation so that it assures that they get saved to the end of their taken to worry. Two verses later, John six thirty nine and this is the will of him who sent me that I should lose none of all that he has given me, but raise them up on the last day. I'm not going to lose one person that the Father gave me before time. I came to purchase them, limited atonement, and I got everyone that I paid for, and I'm not going to lose one of them. Not because they're so great, but because my salvation is great. Salvation is not based upon you and your strengths or your weaknesses. It's based upon God and his purposes. God has marked off the days of your life and the circumstances of your life down to the tiniest details. So certain is God that his eternal purpose and all the details necessary to fulfill it will come true is that a Romans 8 verse 30. He says what those whom he called. He also justified those who justified. He also glorified. OK, but these are all things that have accomplished. If you take basically this of this is a risk and to be like a risk. Basically, it's something that's happened and has ongoing results. You're already glorified in God's book. He's already said, I've saved them. My son has procured them. I'm sanctifying them by the Spirit. They will get to glory. They're already in heaven, so to speak. It's a done deal. It's finished because I purposed it. I decreed it. You will make it to glory. And in God's point of view, you're already there. You just haven't arrived. So if he can procure all the details, of our salvation, then maybe I want to be careful not to throw away the details that come into my life, because are you smart enough to know which of the parts of things that come into your life shouldn't be thrown away? Now, if you get sick, you should go to the doctor. If you can deal with something, you ought to. But what if something comes into your life and you can't deal with it? You don't know what to do. You can't change it. Except have a bad attitude all the time. Well, we'll come to that in a minute. What do you do with unwanted hard circumstances that you can't change? And finally, the eternal providence of God in our circumstances, the eternal providence of God in our heart circumstances. Providence means to see beforehand, pro video, to see beforehand and to plan accordingly. In Romans 8, 28, God teaches that all circumstances in our lives are working together for good. It doesn't say they are good, it doesn't say they're intrinsically good. In the book of Job, we see the evil Satan attacking Job. Satan isn't good. He's destroying his family, destroying his occupation, destroying everything that he had except himself. And then the second attack, he afflicts Job with terrible sores and sickness, and Job's just ready to go out of his mind. Those aren't good things intrinsically. But Romans 828 says, even evil things that are done to you by, whether it's from sinful human beings or the devil himself, even sinful, awful, wicked things are part of my plan for your life. And I use even sinners to accomplish my holy plans for your sanctified life. How do all things work together for good? And that's the amazing thing, because in our small minds, we cannot conceive in a million years. How is this ever going to be for my good? And the Lord says, well, if you'd sit down and listen while I can show you how this will be good. It'll take a while to show you, but it'll be for your good. Pieces in a puzzle, gears in a machine, threads in a tapestry, circuits in a circuit board. It all works together for good. It may not be intrinsically good, but God takes the fiery harpoon, the fiery dart, the evil person, the wicked, whatever, and he uses it for his good purposes. Ron Dunn, who I mentioned earlier, gave me the idea for this series and several of the sermon titles, said he and his wife were given a very expensive puzzle. It had 5,000 pieces, and it must have been a mean person who gave it to them because there's one piece missing. They got all done and there's one piece missing. He goes, how torqued was I? One piece. He says, there will not be one piece missing in the puzzle of your life. God will see to it that it will all fit together perfectly. There will be no missing pieces. I talk to the book of Genesis and my hero, one of my heroes is Joseph. there's no greater man, in my estimation, and the whole Bible of the Lord himself and Joseph think about it. Sold in slavery by his jealous brothers who are going to kill him. They said, No, let's make money off of them and sell them to some Malachi slave traders. So he's taken to Egypt in a caravan by a Malachi slave traders who sell them into slavery in Egypt. He's purchased on the slave block by Potiphar, a high-ranking Egyptian official. Potiphar's wife tries to seduce him. and he flees rather than dishonoring his god and his Egyptian master. This burned woman accuses Joseph of trying to attack her and has him put in prison. He finds himself in prison with the Pharaoh's chief cupbearer and chief baker. These high-ranking officials are amazed at Joseph's God-given ability to interpret dreams, and when released, they tell Pharaoh about this man who was able to interpret his strange dreams. Pharaoh's troubling dream is interpreted by Joseph, and he's given second place in Egypt. He becomes the prime minister. This took 17 years out of his life. He was a 14-year-old boy when this started, and he's 31 now, and life has been a lot of hell in the meantime. 17 years! 17 years! I don't know about you, but 17 years is a long time. 17 years. God then sovereignly engineers a famine in Egypt and Joseph's brothers, on request of his father, go to Egypt to see if they can get food, because the one well-fed, well-nurtured nation around is Egypt, because God's hand was with Joseph and he planned how to store up food and how to plan for exigencies like a famine. And so Egypt was brimming with food and people who needed food went to Egypt. And then in Genesis 45, Joseph reveals himself to his brothers. and we see his perspective on the seventeen awful years. You know, when you study the life of Joseph, you don't see a bitter, cynical man who spits every five minutes when he talks about God and then spits because he's so angry, so bitter, so cynical. His hard times didn't make him that way. How did he keep from going crazy? How did he keep from becoming bitter? Well, three times Joseph says something to his brothers, and in the Bible, three is one of those numbers that's important. verse 5 of chapter 45, Joseph speaking to his brothers. For God sent me before you to preserve life. Two verses later, verse 7. And God sent me before you to preserve a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors. Verse 8. So it was not you who sent me here, but God. But wait a minute. They did send him there. They sold him to the Amalekite slave traders. The slave traders took him to Egypt, made money off of him, and then he's bought by Potiphar. What do you mean you guys didn't do it? their hatred of him, their vindictive actions, their sin, was a part of God's holy purposes. He says, thank you, I'll take your clenched fist and your hateful attitude and I will take that and I will use it to accomplish my holy, beautiful purposes for my son. You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. So, by the time you get to chapter 50, verse 20, there's one more time when the brothers are thinking, well, dad's died. And if he was holding back because dad was alive, dad's dead. So, he's the prime minister. We're not. We're dead. And so they come again and they go through the whole rigmarole and he goes, you guys still don't get it, do you? As for you, you did mean evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring it about that many people should be kept alive. All of our family and all of these Egyptians and people back in Canaan, as it is today. Yes, you guys were evil and yes, your attitudes were sinful and wrong and wicked and hurtful. But God had bigger purposes and he used your sin to bless me and to bless our whole family. Don't you think it hurt like the Dickens for 17 years? So what is the purpose of God's eternal providence? Three things. God's providence takes care of every eventuality in your life. God's providence takes care of every eventuality in your life. Think about it. God had the Amalekite caravan come by at just the right time to save his life. Not an hour late, not an hour early, just at the right time. Should we kill him? Well, I hear the good humor truck, I hear the ice cream truck. No, that's the slave trader's truck, and they're going to buy us slaves, and let's make money off of them. They were going to kill him. Ancient history and archaeology confirms that the Egyptians so disrespected the Hebrews, they would not have anything to do with them. They wouldn't eat with them, wouldn't work with them, wouldn't socialize with them. They considered them dogs. So God has Potiphar, the lone Egyptian of high rank, who would make an exception and take a chance on Joseph and bring him into his employ as a slave, have him eat at his own table and treat him almost like a son. How amazing is that? God just happened to have two high-ranking Egyptian court officials to be in jail to notice Joseph and that God was with him, and they were the ones who referred him to Pharaoh. Every detail of your life, God knows about and is in charge of. God's providence protects me from every enemy in my life. No enemy has sovereign control of your life. Joseph's brothers wanted to kill him or at least get rid of him, but they couldn't. Potiphar's wife wanted to destroy him in prison, but she couldn't. The Egyptian prison became the pathway to the palace. Joseph's enemies couldn't destroy him. Our sovereign God makes your enemies into his servants to accomplish his holy, loving purpose. Take 2 Corinthians 12. God tells Paul, I let Satan give you this thorn in the flesh. in order that you would not become so puffed up, because of the amazing things I've done in you and through you. This thorn is my thorn. The devil meant it to make you discouraged. I let him do it. He doesn't understand anything. But I do, and this thorn was to keep you from becoming puffed up like a big fat tick on a dog. A gruesome illustration, but you get the point. God even uses the sins of Satan and sinners for his holy purposes. Satan attacked Job. Satan attacked Job's family. He attacked his company. He lost everything except his wife, and he even lost his health. But God used it for higher purposes. Read the end of the book. You don't have to read all the bad counsel from his friends. Go to the end of the book and see how God blessed him with twice as many of everything. Joseph's brothers sinned against Joseph, and God used it to preserve our people and to bless Joseph and make him one of the great men of the Bible. The Jewish and Roman leaders sinned against Jesus by crucifying him. Arguably, the worst thing that ever happened in the history of the world was the crucifixion of the one innocent person who ever walked the planet. Was God able to use the crucifixion of Jesus to any good purpose? How many multitudes will be saved by the worst sin ever committed? The cross was Christ's greatest enemy, but God used it to bring the greatest good to the greatest number of people. The conclusion, what do I say? You and I have to grow up as Christians and say, Lord, not my will be done, but thy will be done. If you want to keep this here for however long, that's your purpose. I want to be your man. I want to be your woman. I want to be your kid. Please make me like Christ. Do what you have to do through my tears, through my kicking and screaming. Make me like Christ. And when you're through, please take it away. Submission to his will. And part of how you and I can express submission is to show that we believe in, that we trust in. Everybody in this room, I would ask you before class, before this meeting, do you believe in Romans 828? Oh, sure, I believe in it. Really? So when this thing happened to you, you got down on your knees with your family and you thanked God specifically that he gave you this? Well, no, I didn't do any of that stuff, but I mean, yeah, I believe this promise. If you can't get on your knees soberly and say, God, thank you for this thing. I can hardly spit out of my mouth. This event, this thing, this hurt. If you can't thank him for it, then you don't believe that promise for you at this time. I served for seven years on campus crusade for Christ staff, and there was a couple that I knew at a distance, but what did not serve with them. And I was in California. They were in Georgia. And then the wife, I think it was the wife, they're both named Terry. One was a I and one was a Y, and I could never remember which one wrote the book. It was called At Least We Were Married. They got married in Atlanta. They had the reception afterward. They drove south of Florida, and just between here and Forsyth on I-75, a drunk came across the median lane and smashed head-on into their car. And one of them, I can't remember which one, woke up three days later with a dead spouse and months of recovery. And so they wrote the book. At least we were married. We were married a couple hours. And she came to see the president of Campus Crusade, Bill Bright, in California. And of course, everybody had heard what happened. They didn't pray for her. And I think it was the wife came to see Bill Bright. And he spent time with her and gave her all the condolences and everything. And she confessed, you know, I haven't been able to sleep without I've said it for six and a half months since it happened. I can't sleep. My nerves are shot. I'm just miserable. He was a very good listener, and finally he said, Have you ever thanked God for it? What? Like he lost his mind. And then he took her to Romans 8, and he says, Now, I know you believe the word of God. Do you believe this? Well, sure. Well, then if you believe it, can you thank God that he took your husband after only a couple hours of marriage? And she was incredulous. But she realized it was true. If God was somehow working a bigger purpose that I can't see with my limited vision and taking my husband after a couple hours was totally out of my mind. I admit that God is bigger than me and his purposes are revealed in Christ and he shows me he loves me in Christ. And so she and Bill Bright got on their knees by a coffee table in his office and she thanked God that God took her husband in that awful car wreck and totally changed her life. She sent a letter a couple weeks later, and she said, I've been able to sleep every night without a sedative since I got on my knees with you and thank God that Romans 828 is true. And though I have no idea what he's doing here, I know his purposes are big and I can see the bigger picture. Short term, it still hurts, but I can make it. Can you get on your knees and thank God for these things that have been the hardest circumstances in your life? That's the question. Father, would you please take my poor stammering words and would you use them to your glory in the hearts of your sites. Those who are still outside of Christ. They have no certainty that you are working anything out for them. They're still in rebellion against you. They're still doing their own thing. They still think they can manage the world and their own lives better than you can. Lord, you don't smash rebels, you sweetly change their hearts. Would you change their hearts and make them to become believers? Would you make them to repent and believe upon Christ and to trust his sweet providence? You love your dear son, Jesus Christ, and his life was not a picnic, but you were committed absolutely to him. And you would take him back to heaven and bestow upon him that the name that was above every name. So you are committed to us. And despite the heartaches which are so wrenching, You will bless us and make us like Jesus and take us to heaven to enjoy you with him. All praise be to your name. Amen.