Turn with me again to the eighth
chapter of Romans. And my text begins where Dr. Charles left off, at verse 26.
This is God's holy and inerrant word. "Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness.
For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for
us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows
what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the
saints according to the will of God. 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 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. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified,
and those whom he justified he also glorified." Father, as we turn now to these words, familiar
words, wonderful words, words that we know perhaps incredibly well, we ask for the blessing
and illumination of the Holy Spirit. Speak, Lord, for Your servant is listening.
And we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Well, as it's been said now many times,
Romans 8 is the best chapter in the Bible. I preached a sermon on Romans
8…a series of sermons on Romans 8 probably fifteen years ago, and I called the
series "The Best Chapter in the Bible." I later learned it was also a title that James Montgomery
Boice had given to a series which I had not seen. And a deacon – there's always a deacon – at the door of the church after the first sermon
pulled me aside and he said to me, "Isn't all the Bible God's Word? So how can one chapter be
better than another?" And I said to him, "Dude, you've got two minutes to live and the pastor
has called and you have a choice, the opening eight chapters of Chronicles, which is a list
of names, or Romans 8, and the clock is ticking. Which one do you want me to read?" And
of course, he smiled and he said…he didn't give up his point, but the eighth chapter
of Romans is the best chapter in the Bible. And here we are reaching the Himalayas and from
this vantage point, my dear friend Steve Lawson is going to take in the view, and from the
vantage point of the top of the Himalayas, he is going to give you this
afternoon a 360-degree view of the panorama and the implications of
it all. The air here is a little rarefied. And as I was thinking, listening to H.B.'s
wonderful exposition a few minutes ago, I thought as the whole of the eighth chapter of
Romans is a chapter of encouragement, it speaks of the adequacy of God to cover every
conceivable situation that we find ourselves in. I was thinking in this season, this
horrible season that we're passing through, there's almost nothing about it that I
like. Every decision, every minor decision takes ten times the effort to accomplish. But it
seems to me, and I want to say this carefully, that too many Christians in this season are
afraid. I don't mean that we don't need to take precautions and act wisely and
obey civil magistrates, maybe…we won't go there. I have the great pleasure
that our governor is in church every Sunday. But what's the worst thing that can happen to you?
I mean what is the worst thing that could ever happen to you? That you die? And if that's how we
approach death, we are tragically astray from how Scripture says Christians should view their
death. It is a passing from the groaning, as we've just heard, it is a passing from the
groaning of this present existence into glory, into the splendor and magnificence of being
in the very presence of the Lord Jesus. This assignment that I have contains
a pivotal text, and I want to focus on that text and then bring in the rest of the
passage as kind of supporting pillars. But the key text here, very obviously, is Romans 8:28.
We'll come back to verses 26 and 27 in a moment, but the key passage here is verse 28, "But
we know for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who
are called according to his purpose." I'm paraphrasing now something that I think
John Piper wrote, and I think he wrote it in Future Grace, so I'm paraphrasing, but
he talks about this verse Romans 8:28, and he says something like this that "we
should imagine this verse like a fortress, the strongest fortress that
you could ever imagine." We were at a Ligonier event in Colorado Springs
just a few weeks ago, and we were looking out at a range of mountains and I forget the name of the
mountain…help me… and underneath those mountains NORAD have all of their, whatever it is, I begged
someone to take me on a tour of these underground caverns that can survive a nuclear bomb,
so I was told. Well, Romans 8:28 is that. It can survive a million nuclear bombs, because
inside this fortress there's peace and stability and certainty and hope. Outside of this fortress, there's pain and insurance companies and
uncertainty and nuclear war and crazy politicians and on and on and on. We could go outside
of this fortress, there is anxiety and fear. But inside, there is calm and repose and peace
and stability. Because inside this fortress is the protection of a sovereign, omnipotent
God who has been at work from eternity and is absolutely determined to finish
that work, and we are part of it. Paul is addressing, in this magnificent
chapter, the adequacy of God, the adequacy of God in verses 1
through 9, to deal with the issue of the guilt of sin so that there is now no
condemnation to those are in Christ Jesus. God is adequate to deal with the fact of death
and the resurrection of the body that awaits the believer in verses 10 and 11. In verses 12
through 17, God is adequate to help us and aid us, demonstrate the holiness that is requisite of the
adopted children of God by mortifying the deeds of the flesh by the power of the Holy Spirit.
In verses 18 through 25, as we've just heard in the last hour, God is adequate to help us
overcome in the face of overwhelming suffering, the groaning, as we've heard that is part and
parcel of living in this fallen world, the creation groans and believers
groan. But God is adequate. And now in verses 26 and 27, the paralysis that
sometimes we feel in the face of overwhelming decisions that need to be made. And we do not
know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit will help us. And the Spirit will overcome our
timidity and our uncertainty so that our prayers, as I think Jim Packer says somewhere, our prayers
will be fixed on the way up, so that whatever unrighteousness may be in the prayer, by the
time it reaches the throne of Almighty God, they are cleansed and pure because
the Spirit knows the mind of God and is able to fix them. And then in
the closing peroration of Romans 8, when life seems meaningless and pointless and
futile, and when the enemy surrounds us and is constantly trying to undo us, God is adequate to
finish His work triumphantly and majestically. So, there are three things
I want us to think about. The first, and I'm using verse 28 as my launching
point, the first is "the character of those to whom this promise is made." That "we know that
for those who love God, all things work together for good." And I want us to see the character
of those to whom that promise is made, because that promise is not made to
everyone. It is made to those who love God. It is made to those who are the called
ones, called according to His purpose, who've received the effectual call of the Holy
Spirit that brought them into union and communion with the Lord Jesus. This promise is given to
those who are the adopted children of God, those who are heirs and joint heirs with Jesus Christ.
This is a promise to those who walk according to the Spirit and not according to the flesh.
This is a promise that is given to those who mind the things of the Spirit and not the things
of the flesh. This is a promise to those who are in Christ. This is a promise to those in whom
the Holy Spirit dwells, witnessing to Christ. This is a promise to those who engage in
mortifying the deeds of the flesh in order that they might live. This is a promise to those
who are alive. Using all of the terms that Paul has been using in this eighth chapter of Romans.
In other words, this is a promise to Christians, this is a promise to the children of God, this is
a promise to those who are in union and communion with the Lord Jesus Christ that all
things will work together for your good. It's not a promise to those who are still
dead in trespasses and in sins. It's not a promise to those who are near the kingdom of
God but they haven't yet closed with Christ. This isn't a promise that's made simply to
seekers because their life is restless, and they're experiencing something of the futility of
existence in this present world. This is a promise to those who are God's people, God's children. Let
me make it very clear. If you're not a Christian, things will not ultimately turn out good.
Things will turn out very, very badly. What does Hebrews 10:27 say?
What can the unbeliever, what can the wicked, what can the ungodly
expect but a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume His
adversaries. So let's be very clear, first of all, that this is a promise that is given only to
believers, only to those who are in Christ. Secondly, "the comprehensiveness of the promise." The comprehensiveness of
the promise, "all things," all things. We can understand how good things
turn out for our good. We love the good things, we love the days when the Lord is
my Shepherd and I shall not want, and He makes me to lie down in
green pastures, beside still waters, and there's a meal prepared and there are
flowers, daisies growing in the verdant grass, and little fish are jumping out of the river,
and birds are singing and there's a deer or two on the horizon, and your beloved and your
family, are beside you, and there's meatloaf and sandwiches and cake, and the picture that
David is giving us in the twenty-third Psalm. Yes, there are good days,
there are wonderful days, there are days and we say, "That was a good
day," "This is a good season in my life." But "all things," this is a doctrine that Paul
is espousing here of universal and comprehensive providence. That every facet, every aspect,
every detail, every moment of our lives is superintended by the providence of God.
That nothing happens without God willing it to happen and without God willing it
to happen in the way that it happens and without God willing it to happen before
it happens. All things, the bad things. What did Job say in the midst of his sorrow?
"The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord."
He's lost his ten children. He's lost the entirety of his wealth. And in
the second chapter, he will lose his health. And his wife, Mrs. Job, will plead with him and
church history has not been kind to Mrs. Job, Calvin called her diabolos matrix. You don't need
to know Latin to know that's not a compliment. But let's put Mrs. Job perhaps in the best
possible light. And here's a woman who's grieving, she's lost her children and now it looks
as though she going to lose her husband, and it's as though she might have
been saying, "Just get it over with." And what did Job say to her? "Shall we not accept
good at the hands of the Lord and not evil?" That Job understood that even evil
acts are under the comprehensive providence of God. Without God being the author
of sin, He is still in absolute and full control. There are no black holes in providence. Imagine…I don't know what view of
divine sovereignty you hold to, but imagine that you are driving along an
interstate and there was a section between Exit 230 and Exit 231 where God wasn't in control.
It was like a "No Trespass" zone for the Almighty, where there was absolute libertarianism in
that section. Would you travel along that road? Would you would you get off at
Exit 230 and take another detour? Because what Paul is saying here is
that all things, the good things, the bad things, the evil things,
Joseph and his brothers who tried to kill him and then had second thoughts
and sold him into slavery, and he ends up in the service of Potiphar, and the wife accuses him of
sexual assault and he is imprisoned for ten years. And God raises him up to be the second
most powerful person in Egypt. And then his brothers come, and at first they didn't
recognize him, but then Joseph has a lesson for his brothers to learn in the midst of
their wrongdoing, "You meant it for evil." You meant it for evil. They were culpable
for their actions, they were culpable for their wrongdoing, but God meant it for good.
"You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good to bring about the survival
of this family during the famine." We may not understand. God's providence is
incomprehensible to us. His sovereignty is incomprehensible to us. But in every aspect of our
lives as Christians, as believers, as those who walk in step with the Spirit, as those who mind
the things of the Spirit. You may find yourself with cancer. You may lose a child, an adult child, a college child who has come
home for Christmas. And on Christmas Eve, returning from a party with some of her
college friends, is less than fifty miles from the front door of her parent's house
and she hits a tree, and she is dead. You may be a young man in your mid-twenties, and
you have proposed to the love of your life, and there's been a ceremony in the hospital and you've
been married, and within a few days you are dead. You may be a businessman and you've worked all
your life to make your retirement comfortable, and the market crashes, or a partner embezzles
the funds, or a million other things can happen, and your future now looks so
uncertain from a worldly point of view. But God is in absolute control. That's
the comprehensiveness of this promise. We know that for those who love God, all
things – the good things, the bad things, your mistakes, your sins, when you fall
short as a believer of the glory of God, when you make a missed step – and
all of that is under the supervision, under the control, it's within the dome
of this fortress that is Romans 8:28. The third thing, and this
will take a little longer, "the conquest envisioned by the promise." The
conquest envisioned by the promise. "All things work together for good." Now, there are
things that may call that into question, and the segue into this
passage is verses 18 through 27, and in particular verses 26 and 27 that
speaks of the Spirit helping us in our weakness, in our weakness. We are weak, we are frail, and
we live in a creation that is weak and frail. We read back in verse 17, "provided we suffer
with him," and that leads Paul to speak of suffering. Suffering in creation, the world that
is red in tooth and claw, that is out of joint, that is cursed, and that much that we do in
this world has the product of futility about it, and frustration, and the theme
of the book of Ecclesiastes. But it's just not creation, as we heard in
the last hour. It is us, too. "Not only the creation," verse 23, "but we ourselves who
have the firstfruits of the Spirit groan." So there are aspects of our
present existence that might call into question the adequacy
of God to bring about that good. The groaning of creation, the groaning of the
believer, and now in verse 26, the groaning of the Holy Spirit. "The Spirit Himself intercedes
for us with groanings too deep for words." Now, Dr. Lloyd-Jones somewhere, and it's probably
in his exposition of this verse in his multivolume series of sermons on the epistle to the Romans,
and he says very categorically. And he asks the question, "Who does the groaning here? Is it
the Holy Spirit, or is it the believer?" And I can almost hear Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones
saying, "The Holy Spirit does not groan." And he's quite adamant about it that
this is beneath the sort of dignity of the sovereign majesty of God the
Holy Spirit that He should groan. Well, I beg to defer with a giant, and I
think that the context here very clearly suggests that Paul is actually talking about
the sympathy of the Holy Spirit along the same lines that the epistle to the Hebrews
speaks of the sympathy of the Lord Jesus. "We do not have one who is not tempted in
every point like as we are, yet without sin," and likewise the Holy Spirit, Christ's personal
representative agent in our hearts, groans. "Likewise, the Spirit helps us." That verb, it's
a made-up word in Greek, made up of three words sun-anti-lambanotai. And it has two prepositions
attached to the very beginning of the word sun and anti. And sun and anti are almost opposites.
Sun means "with" and anti means "against." The Spirit's ministry, and
let me illustrate it this way, back in the early 1980s I'm a young pastor with
two small children. My daughter showed some interest in learning to play the piano. Two senior
sisters said they wanted to give us their piano. We were short of money, and so we readily accepted
this upright piano. The problem was it was heavy, it was heavy! And what you do when you need
to move a heavy piano, you call the deacons. So, I got four young, strong,
hefty, deacons who brought the piano to our home. And to enter our home you had to go
up a series of 6, 7, 8 steps into the front door of the house. And I remember we were all holding
onto that piano. I had my hands on that piano, and there were moments I thought I was actually
contributing something, and there were moments when I knew for sure I wasn't contributing
anything at all. And all I could hear were these deep groans of strong men trying
to lift a piano up six flights of stairs. And that's the promise of the Holy Spirit. When you don't know what to pray for, when you
are so weak you do not know what prayers to pray, and the Spirit comes and helps you because there
is a goal here, and the goal, this massive goal is the one that is alluded to in verse 29, "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." That's the good. What is the good that God intends
for you? To conform you, to mold you, to shape you into the very likeness of the Lord Jesus so that
when you step into heaven, every last vestige of remaining sin is gone. That's the good. So that
you will be like Jesus, spotless, and harmless, and undefiled. Not only in the definitive
sense, but in the progressive sense, in the actual sense that you actually
will be holy and devoid of sin altogether. That's the goal, that's God's redemptive
purpose. How does He bring it about? Through what William Perkins, the Puritan in
the early 1600s, called "the golden chain." The golden chain of foreknowledge
and predestination and calling and justification and glorification. And I have eleven
minutes to expound these five massive concepts. Foreknowledge, not foresight, not that God can
see into the future a decision that you make. Yes, He can see into the future a decision you make,
but that is not what Paul is talking about here. He's talking about a knowledge that God has beforehand, before creation, before you
were a twinkle in your father's eye, before the creation was even brought
into being, God set His love upon you. He set His affection upon you. He chose you in
Christ. He said "This one will be a Christian, this one I will bring home
to Myself," foreknowledge. Predestination, not only setting His love
upon you, but ensuring that all of the details that will ultimately bring you to glory
and into Jesus' likeness, all of those details, all the microcosmic details are
planned and mapped out by God in a manner that doesn't impede the fact that
we have a volition that we make decisions but in a compatible sense to our
human freedom, God predestines. And He calls in time. There's an order here,
and theologians sometimes refer to it as the ordo salutis, the order of salvation, and
it's a logical order and in this instance, I think it's also a temporal order. Foreknowledge and
predestination is in eternity. Calling is in time. We are those who have been called by the Holy
Spirit. When Paul, for example in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, and in the opening verses, he says in
verse 2, "To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ
Jesus," in the definitive sense, "called to be saints." Called to be saints,
now you can equally translate that "the holy called ones," "saints" and "holy" is the same word
group in the Greek, "called to be saints," "the holy called ones." One answer as to your identity
in Christ is, "Who are you?" I'm a called one. It's not part of our Christian language and jargon
to say that, but it would be absolutely correct, I'm a called one. I've received a call. I heard
the voice of Jesus say, "Come unto me and rest." And He spoke to me and He called me. He called
me into union and communion with Jesus Christ. There's the foreknowledge of God, He set His
affection upon me in eternity. There's the predestinating activity of God ensuring that every
detail that is involved in bringing me all the way home is superintended and decided upon by our
sovereign God. And then there's the actual calling of this Adamic nature into union and communion
with Jesus, involving a rebirth from above and bringing us, as we saw in the previous session
this morning, bringing us into the status of the children of God, adopted into His family and
justified by faith alone, in Jesus Christ alone. But we stand legally in a relationship with God
that says we are not guilty anymore because of our substitute, because of Jesus, because our sin
was laid upon Him. His righteousness was reckoned to our account. We wear the righteous robe of
the Lord Jesus, and we stand acquitted in God's presence. This majestic doctrine, this absolutely
crucial doctrine of justification by faith alone, in Christ alone, apart from the works of the
law, what Luther called "the standing and falling of the church," what Calvin called
"the hinge on which the whole gospel turns." And then glorification, and you ask yourself,
you ask yourself, "Why not sanctification?" He goes straight from justification to
glorification, but follow his logic. Once you are justified, once you stand in
a legal relationship with God that says you are as righteous as Jesus is righteous, there is
absolutely nothing that can impede you from being glorified. That glorification is so certain from
that point onwards, and he puts it in the present tense as though it's already happened, as though
he can almost taste what is not yet in the now. Suppose this passage had said something
like this, "I'll be there for you. I'll be standing beside you. But it's up to
you, it's up to your free will, it's up to your autonomy," we would be outside of that fortress.
We would be in the sphere of the uncertain. We would be in the sphere of fearfulness and
rejection and groaning. And instead God says, "For those who love God, all things work
together for good." The good that brings you all the way home. The good that will ensure that you
will taste and see that the best is yet to come. Because God has been doing this from eternity.
This is no Johnny-come-lately thing. God has been working on this. This has been His plan, and
there's only one plan, there is no plan B. This has been His plan from eternity when He set His
affection upon you, and He ensures through His sovereignty that every detail will happen just as
He decides, the good and the bad. Knowing this, that even in the bad things, in the evil things,
God superintends it to ensure that you will ultimately be brought home to glory, that you will
behold the beauty of the face of the Lord Jesus, that you will walk the streets of the New
Jerusalem, that your mortal body will be raised into a glorious resurrection body to
live forever in the new heavens and new earth. "I sought the Lord, but afterward I knew He
moved my soul to seek Him, seeking me. It was not I that found, O Savior true. No, I was
found of thee." Isn't that your song? Isn't that the source of your comfort?
Isn't that the source of the security of the tower, the fortress that is Romans 8:28?
But inside this fortress there is hope, certain hope, solid hope, lasting hope, solid joys, and lasting pleasures that, as we
shall see this afternoon, Satan cannot snatch away though he will try and try and try and try.
But it is a futile attempt on his behalf. Well, as I said last night, I feel somewhat guilty of having covered those
five words in about six and a half minutes, and I beg your pardon. They deserve a series
of sermons in and of themselves, but I love being a Calvinist with all
my heart. It brings me assurance. If I were an Arminian, if I believed in some
form of human autonomy, I would be in despair every day, absolutely every day, and I
could never have the assurance that I have that the Spirit witnesses with my spirit
that I'm the children of God and if a child, an heir and a joint heir with Jesus Christ.
What a wonderful thing it is to be a Christian. Father, we thank You. Thank You for this
Himalaya moment in Scripture, and we look forward to this afternoon to seeing something
of the vista, something of the grand view, something of the absolute capstone that
You are totally and completely adequate to bring us all the way home. We rest.
Our faith is in You, not in ourselves. Strengthen us, we pray, as we live in this
world of groaning. For Jesus' sake, amen.
