So Romans 8.28, it's a very well-known passage of scripture. It says, During this COVID-19 outbreak, it can be amusing and also sort of frustrating to watch the social media posts that go out there. And one of the things I'm seeing frequently is the use of Romans 8.28. It's a great promise of scripture. I just want to take a few moments to make sure we're understanding that promise right. So let's start by making sure that we see the promise in the context of the whole chapter. In verse 1 of Romans 8, it actually starts off with the words, So it starts off with no condemnation if you're in Christ. Then at the end of the chapter, it says there's no separation from the love of Christ. Romans 8, starting at verse 35, who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long. We are counted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." The chapter starts off with this promise of no condemnation in Christ, it ends with there's no separation from the love of Christ, and yet there's a lot of seemingly bad stuff that can try, it can never succeed, but it can try to condemn or to separate us from the love of God. So in between, Paul is spending part of the time explaining the source and purpose of some of the bad things in life. And there are bad things. Don't make a mistake that Romans 8.28 Paul is saying all things are good. He doesn't say that. Some things are not good. He says they all work together for good. Right? We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. So a few things I want you to see in that verse. First, we should have great confidence in the promise, right? The first words of this, you can't get more than a couple of words into the verse without coming to this just vastly important little word that I think we tend to skip a lot. And that word is we. And we know. We're tempted, I think, to read this promise and say, well sure, the apostle Paul understands that. That kind of understanding is for the apostles, and maybe it's for pastors, it's for super saints, but that sort of thing is just beyond me. But when we think that way, we're wrong. Paul includes everyone who's in Christ Jesus into this language by saying, and we know. Through Jesus Christ you can have certainty because you're also a child of God. The context of this chapter, again, is that you're indwelled and led by the Spirit of God. I would just encourage you, press pause on the video right now, read through Romans chapter 8. And long before you get to verse 28, you'll see Paul's argument is continually that we're living by the Holy Spirit of God in us. In verse 1, we walk after the Spirit. In verse 2, we follow the law of the Spirit. Verses 4 and 5, we do what the Spirit guides us to do. In verse 9, the Spirit indwells us, and if it doesn't indwell us, it says if the Spirit of Christ is not in us, we're none of His. In verses 10 and 11, the righteous life of the Spirit's brought us to life and lives in us. Verses 13 through 16, we're children of God, we're adopted into God's family as the Spirit has brought us to a point where we cry out to God as our Father. And in verse 26, the Spirit even helps our weaknesses. The Spirit guides us in our prayers when we don't even know who to pray for as we ought. So when Paul gets to verse 28, he says, and we know. It isn't that we know because we're so smart. It's because we're indwelled and alive and guided by the Spirit of God himself. That is the source of our confidence in this promise. We're not floundering in a world of misguided emotions and fears. We're not tossed to and fro that way. We're grounded in this promise by the Holy Spirit of God Himself. The very same Spirit that indwelled the Apostle Paul and inspired him to write these words is the Spirit that indwells us and gives us confidence to believe the promise of these words. There's no discouraging circumstances that should ever shake us loose from the core conviction that God is going to fulfill this promise. Then I want you to also see the scope of this promise. He says we know all things work together for good. Now again, we gotta be careful there. It'd be very easy to read that as saying all things are good, or even all good things work together, but neither one of those is really what Paul intends. To state it simply, all things, we live in this world, we know all things include some bad things. In fact, as we've seen in the context of the passage, that's the case. If life in this world was all lollipops and gumdrops, you'd hardly have to make a promise like this. Instead, we understand that there are experiences in this life that are good and beautiful, but there's other experiences that are dark and sinister and manifestly bad, and God uses the bad and good in order to bring us to his goal. Those words, all things, they're really all-encompassing. Oddly enough, Paul doesn't bother listing some things that seem good on the surface, but he makes a pretty frightening list of bad things, right? Verse 35, tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword, you can add coronavirus in there if you want to. It's not a list of good things, it's a list of bad things, none of which are capable of separating us from Christ's love. because God's in control of each one of those things. And if they come into our lives, they'll only become part of the all things which God has determined for our good. Look at verses 38 and 39 for a minute. It says, for I am persuaded, right? That's a lot like verse 28. It says, we know, right? Except now Paul's saying, I know, right? I'm confident in this. That neither death nor life, now that's everything, right? Everything's either alive or it's not alive. Nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, so right, any spiritual being on any level. Nor things present, nor things to come, that is stuff happening right now or anything that might happen in the future. nor depth nor height, so no matter how high the high is or how low the low is, nor any other creature, no other creation, any other created thing you can imagine, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. So, nothing dead, nothing alive, nothing high, nothing low, no angels, no demons, nothing now, nothing later, nothing that ever has been or will be created will separate us from the love of Christ. All of those created things were made by the Creator who loves us, and He won't allow that. So the scope of this promise is all-encompassing. When Paul says this promise includes all things, he knows that he's working up to using that term, all things, again in this letter. He uses it several times actually, but ultimately, takes it to the end of sort of the doctrinal section of Romans. In chapter 11, verse 36, he wraps up the whole doctrinal section by saying, So of him, so he's the source of all things, through him, he is the means by which all things exist, to him, that is, he is the purpose of all things, everything is going to bring him glory by bringing us good. The trouble is, we see some particular thing as an individual part. We look at something like COVID-19 and just see it as sort of this individual thing and forget that it is part of the all things that will be for our good and for his glory. So back in our promise in Romans 8.28, the words work together, as Paul says, all things work together, is actually just a single Greek word. It's synergio. And it's a word that we get our English word synergy from. That's when two or more ingredients come together and the combined effect of them is greater than they are individually by themselves. So said another way, even bad things in life combined with another bad thing in life is going to result in something that's bigger and better and good. That's part of God's recipe for our good. The example that I always want to use for this is when I was a kid, my brother and I would like to make vanilla milkshakes and we had a lousy recipe for it, right? We actually We added some ice, and we put it in a blender, and we added some ice cream if we had it, or some cream and some milk, and then we would take a spoonful of vanilla extract and add it to it, and we'd blend the whole thing up, and we'd make ourselves a milkshake. The problem is, I got this idea in my head once that the milkshake is so good that everything that goes in it has to be good, right? I enjoy ice, I like milk, I like cream, I like ice cream. I tried a spoonful of vanilla extract. Let me tell you, not everything in that recipe is good by itself. So they work together for good. There's a synergy there that causes it to work as it comes together. So all things, as Paul lists them, even bad things, are part of God's recipe for our lives, and it's going to be a good recipe. This verse It helps you to not live in a defeated mindset when you're living through days that feel like you're drowning in a spoonful of vanilla extract, right? But why do we know that it's going to be good? Right? We know that everything is going to work together for good because we know what God's purpose is. When you look at that verse, it speaks about God's purpose. This promises we're called according to his purpose and the next verse explains what that purpose is. The next verse, ooh, and I can't really get into, you don't want me to start preaching these verses, but it begins, whom he did foreknow, he did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son. And that word know in scripture, it's often used to describe a special loving relationship. That's how it's used here. Those to whom God had determined ahead of time to have a loving relationship with, those are the ones he predestined to be conformed to the image of his son Jesus Christ. We know all things work together for good because the good that God has planned for them is to make us more like his son. There's no greater purpose than that. The sovereign, all-powerful God who is determined to do us good is going to fulfill this promise. He's not against us, he's for us. And Paul even says in verse 31, what shall we say to these things then? What's our reaction going to be to this? Our reaction is, if God's for us, who can be against us? When you have your own list of all things, that are clearly not good, what are you going to say about them? If God's for us, then none of those things are against us. If God is for us, this separation that we have right now from corporate worship, it's not against us. If God's for us, coronavirus is not against us. It doesn't mean that it's good in and of itself, But it does give us confidence that it's part of God's recipe, working together for our good. Now, just quickly, one other thing that you have to see in this verse is the people who are the focus of the promise. Paul specifies the promise is for two groups of people, or rather it's for one group of people about whom two things are true. to them that love God and to them who are the called according to His purpose. So this promise is for Christians alone. All things do not work together for the good of all people. For those who do not love God, for those who have never been called by Him, it would be foolishly optimistic to come to Romans 8.28 looking for comfort there. Because without having repented of your sins and trusted in Jesus Christ for salvation, there's no promise here for you. Because the whole chapter is making promises about there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. There's no separation from the love of those who are in Christ Jesus. And this promise is for those who are in Christ Jesus, or as Paul says, them that love God and have been called according to his purpose. But if you love God because you've been called by His love, and you've been saved by the work of His Son Jesus, if you're indwelled and walking according to His Spirit, then there is confident assurance for us in Romans 8.28. It is a promise that it transcends life and death. It rises above the highest heights and it reaches down below the lowest lows. There is a confidence in this promise that all things will work together for your good because none of those things will separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.