Sermons through
Romans
The Purpose of God
Part One
Romans 8:28-30
All Things
With Study Questions
Pastor Paul Viggiano
Branch of Hope Church
2370 W. Carson Street, #100
Torrance, CA 90501
(310) 212-6999
pastorpaul@integrity.com
5/18/2014
The Purpose of God
Part One
Romans 8:28-30
All Things
And we know that
all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the
called according to His purpose. 29 For
whom He foreknew, He also predestined to
be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among
many brethren. 30 Moreover whom He predestined, these He also
called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these
He also glorified (Romans 8:28-30).
Introduction
The initial verse under our
consideration has been reduced to such a cliché that one hesitates to offer it
as a remedy to human sorrow or hardship.
You might even say it’s become threadbare through overuse, often
wrenched from its rich context—a context which would serve well to keep the nap
of the verse’s fabric thick with the warmth and comfort that was little doubt,
the Apostle Paul’s intention.
It might be a little overly optimistic
to suggest that a phrase exists which is capable of effectively and immediately
extracting the pangs of sorrow from the human soul or the difficulty of
sickness and suffering from our mortal bodies.
So often I’ve thought if I only had a button I could push to alleviate
your (or my) physical pain, emotional heartache or current trying circumstance,
I would assuredly do so.
But, alas, there is no such a button and we
are left to endure the sorrows and grief.
Though sorrows and grief are generated from the fall of man, they in and
of themselves are not inherently sinful.
Of Jesus, it was anticipated that He would be “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3).
So the question, not merely for the Christian
but for any human is not ‘will there be sorrow, grief, pain and trials in this
life,’ but is there any sense to it? Is
life, as so many dark poets suggest, a tragedy?
Are we humans merely carbon based pain gatherers rocketing toward a
meaningless oblivion? Or is there a
message—news from heaven which turns that dark message on its head?
Years ago in a physiology class I was given
definitions of two similar feeling, yet dramatically opposite,
experiences. The professor spoke of pain versus discomfort. The distinction
was not a matter of intensity—that is to say that discomfort could be much more
painful than pain (if you follow). The
distinction between pain and discomfort (maybe there are better terms) is that
pain involves injury and discomfort does not.
Discomfort is a component of healing or the gaining of strength.
I am currently going through rehabilitation
for a fairly minor knee surgery. I’ve
gone through this before. The first time
when I was in high school I did my rehab at Pauley Pavilion at UCLA. In one of my first sessions I recall the late
legendary trainer, Ducky Drake, working on a member of the Los Angeles Lakers,
Happy Hairston, who also had knee surgery.
Happy apparently had scar tissue in his knee that Ducky was dealing with
by bending his leg further than Happy was happy with. I recall Happy yelling, “It hurts Ducky, it
hurts”. Ducky was unmoved by the prayers
and petitions of Happy. He continued
bending and twisting until Happy was back on the NBA court. Ducky wasn’t injuring Happy, but the
discomfort was necessary for true healing to take place.
There is a great redemption, restoration,
rehabilitation if you will, taking place in the cosmos. For those, who by the grace of God, have
cried out “Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15)
there is no (by the definitions offered above, for sake of clarity) pain for
the children of God for God is not seeking to injure His children. There is only discomfort. It may be a discomfort ending in the grave
itself—it inevitably will be—at which point the faithful will cry with Paul “For me to live is Christ, and to die is
gain” (Philippians 1:21).
God’s power to restore is not
frustrated even by death itself. The “gain” of which Paul writes is
certainly the gain as he enters glory, but it is also gain for the advancement
of the gospel. God took Paul home at the
perfect time for Paul and the perfect time for Paul’s ministry. In order for a passage/verse like the one we are
looking at this morning to have its desired effect, there are things that must
be observed.
If we don’t, for example, agree on what the
“good” of which Paul writes is, we
might be frustrated when things don’t turn our way. If we think the chief end of God’s goodness
is ensuring our dreams are fulfilled (as in a sermon I heard recently), or that
events in this life will eventually turn our way (at least by our own
definition), then this passage will be a bitter disappointment.
Paul had just addresses our tendency
toward frustration when our prayers are not answered in the way in which they
are submitted. Our prayers are groanings
which the Holy Spirit refines and submits “according
to the will of God” (8:27). We then
have the confident knowledge that God’s answer to prayer will always be
superior to the prayer itself.
How perfectly Paul’s short treatise on
prayer folds into this most popular verse, utilized by the children of God for
comfort in the midst of difficulty! In
the same way our inadequate, shortsighted and perhaps even sinful prayers are
utilized by God toward a just, holy and righteous end, Paul now expands that to
“all things”.
And we know that
all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the
called according to His purpose
(Romans 8:28.
We Know (at least
we ought to know)
The verse begins with the verb “we know” oikamen, as if Paul is about to instruct on something that was
common knowledge. What did everyone seem
to know? What was so obvious? Perhaps it was the notion that if we have a
Father in heaven who is infinite in being, glory, blessedness and
perfection—who is almighty and everywhere present, knowing all things and most
wise—who is most merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in
goodness and truth—who because of the great love with which He loved us, sent
His only begotten Son to die for us, He certainly will not allow that great
work to be in any way upset by a random universe.
There is not a micro-second nor a quantum
or nano-meter that falls beyond His power and jurisdiction.
The “all things” in this verse is just that—every last single thing—things
that at first blush might make us uncomfortable.
The
Lord has made all for Himself, Yes, even the wicked for the day of doom
(Proverbs 16:4).
Is it
not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come (Lamentations 3:38)?
But
he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we
receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” In all this Job did not
sin with his lips (Job 2:10).
Is a
trumpet blown in a city, and the people are not afraid? Does disaster come to a
city, unless the Lord has done it (Amos 3:6)?
It is not uncommon for people to
understand Romans 8:28 to mean that God will make the most of a bad situation,
as if man has scrambled the eggs and God will make an omelet. But it is not as if God is walking into the
room of tragedy and saying, let’s see if we can clean up this mess. Such thinking puts restraints on our
understanding of the true sovereignty of God.
God is not merely the one who sees us through the storm, He is the one
who “commanded and raised the stormy
wind, which lifted the waves of the sea” (Psalm 107:25). God is the one who makes the storm.
In the tapestry of God’s unfolding
history, we have threads of good and threads of evil. What we learn in a verse like this, and
others like it, is that God has ordained all these threads to form the design
of His purpose and pleasure.
And what Paul is telling you and me is
that the aim of God in the administration of His infinite love and power is the
inclusion of all those that love Him in His good and glorious plan; a plan that
will most certainly includes days of heartache and trial.
Yet God is doing something magnificent, so
much so that Paul can only express it:
What
no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has
prepared for those who love him (1 Corinthians 2:9).
We might be careful not to take Romans 8:28
and view it as a promise that we will eventually get what we want, though
sidetracked for the time-being. We will
then be tempted to measure whether or not God has kept His promise based upon
whether or not we approve of the way things have worked out.
The “good”
of which Paul writes is a good determined by God. As we shall see in the verses to come, that
good certainly includes the very personal and (to borrow from Paul)
unimaginable ouk anebe (lit. beyond
our thoughts) preparations of God. But
unless we are moved to lay aside our own paltry definitions of “good” this glorious verse will lose
its weight.
Not to be corny, but I can’t help think of
the speech William Wallace gives the soldiers as they look across the
battlefield, drawing the conclusion that they are about to be slaughtered. And why—that the nobles can have more land? Wallace convinces them that there is
something greater than the nobles, greater than preserving the extension of
their own lives. He makes the great
speech for freedom. It is with an
enlightened recognition of this greater thing that they fight like “warrior
poets.” Have we been convinced of what
the “good” is to which all things are
being cinched?
Lovers of God
When Paul writes that the recipients of
this “good” are those that love God,
it is just another way of denoting those who are Christians. This becomes clear with the phrase which
accompanies it, “those who are called
according to His purpose.” The “call” here being the effectual calling
of God. It is not the outward call but
the inward call—that irresistible call which transforms a heart of stone to a
heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26) and opens blind eyes (John 9:25).
It is a great, comforting and glorious
truth that all things work together for good.
It is equally true that those who trust in Christ can rest in the
assurance that they are the unique beneficiaries of all these things which are
working together for good. But what is
this “good?” Is it the job I want, the family I desire, is
it health, friendships, reputation, respect?
Shortly, Paul will begin a thought with the
words “What then shall we say to these
things” (Romans 8:31)? Then he will
give his own speech—a speech that in my opinion is virtually unparalleled in
terms of depth and encouragement. In
that speech he sets the temporal, historical and stark reality of “being killed” and “regarded as sheep to be slaughtered” against the eternal and
spiritual reality of being “more than
conquerors through Him who loved us.”
What is this “good” that God
is accomplishing that can yield, that can justify, such a statement? We will pursue that more fully next time.
Questions for Study
- Are pain, sorrow and grief sinful? Why or why not? How do people generally deal with such
things (pages 2, 3)?
- What is the distinction between pain and
discomfort? Why is this significant
(page 3)?
- What does Paul assume his readers know (page 4)?
- What is included under “all things” (pages 4, 5)?
- What kind of limitations do we put on our understanding
of the sovereignty of God if we think of Romans 8:28 as God merely fixing
the mess (page 5)?
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