THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR
"Assured That All Things Work for My Good”
Rev.
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prca.orgDear radio friends,
One of the most precious promises of God in all of Scripture is found in
Romans 8:28.
I trust that it is well known to you. “And we know that all things work together
for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his
purpose.” That must be one of the
best-loved promises of God in all of the Scriptures. It is a promise that belongs to you, child of
God. It was purchased by the blood of
Jesus Christ, and it is sealed in your heart by the mighty work of the Holy
Spirit.
You may say, “I
know that all things work together for my good.” You must always say that. You must never stop saying that, as a child
of God. When all seems utterly hopeless,
painful, and you are hurt, say, “This, too, will turn out for my good.” What is a Christian? A Christian is this: he is one who believes that, through Jesus
Christ and by the power of God, everything is working for his good.
When the text says,
“All things work together for good to them that love God,” it does not mean
that they work that way on their own, that there is some resident power or fate
at work in things. But it means that God
works all things together for good to them that love Him. When the text says, “All things work together
for good,” it does not mean that all things are good. Paul is not saying that everything that
happens is necessarily good. He is
saying that God turns all things for good to them that love Him. And what is good? Good is God’s highest glory and our greatest
joy in Jesus Christ. All things, good
and evil, are used by God to bring His highest glory in the life of a child of
God and to bring our greatest joy in Jesus Christ.
There are two
things that I would pray that God will work in us as we hear the exposition of this beautiful promise today in
Romans 8:28.
The first is confidence, the assurance of this promise. This must be the foundation of our life. This marvelous promise must be present in our
souls every moment, in every event, and every day. We must understand that there are no accidents
but that God, in His own wise way through Jesus Christ and out of an eternal
love, is working our good.
You will need this
promise. You will need it desperately,
for many evil things shall come your way in this present world. With this promise you will stand. Without it, you can only sink.
My second prayer is
that, on the basis of this promise, we might have an incentive, that we would
go aggressively into our Christian life.
The promise does not mean passivity.
It does not mean, “Well, since God is working all things together for
good, I can sit back, do nothing, and risk nothing in His service. Just enjoy life.” But the promise is a battle cry. It means, Be active
in God’s work. Do not be afraid. Do not be afraid of the cost, the consequences,
of a God-centered, Christ-honoring life.
It means, consider being active always in His service; consider
marriage; consider having children; consider, church of Jesus Christ, being
active in missions. Do not sit
back. Do not say, “Let others do it.” Those who believe this promise that all
things work together for good to them that love Him will be active. They will go.
We ask the
question: For whom does God work all
things together for good? The answer is
plain: To them that love God, who are the
called according to His purpose. That is
not two categories of people, but that is one.
Those who love God are the ones who have been called according to His
purpose. And those two things must be
true of you if this promise is to be yours.
So the first thing
we need to see is that all things do not work together for good for
everyone. Paul says in effect, if you do
not love God and if you have not been called according to God’s eternal
purpose, all things are not working for your good. All things are not going to turn out all
right. For the person who does not love
God and is not called according to His purpose, optimism in this life is
foolishness. There is no bright future. Pessimism is exactly the right state of mind
for those who do not love God.
Our country wants
assurance, assurance of the future.
Investors want assurance of a good future. Hope for the future sells big-time. But the Word of God, the Word of the gospel
of Jesus Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords, is that, for all those
who do not love God, who do not repent and bow their knee before the Savior
Jesus Christ, all things are not working good.
Romans 2:5
describes the experience of those, and the future of those, who do
not love God. There we read, “But after
thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto
thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment
of God.” In other words, the experiences
of such a person as he walks through each day in its trials do not turn out for
good. They turn out for wrath. If one does not love God, then the pleasant
things that he experiences, for which he does not thank God, and because of
which he does not turn to God to worship Him—those pleasant things are one day
going to condemn him. If you do not see
God above you, if you do not see God in all things, and if you do not
thank Him, you are storing up wrath.
Also
the painful things. When day by
day you walk through painful experiences but you do not trust in God, you do
not turn to God, you do not trust in Jesus Christ, then that pain is not
working good.
It is working a foretaste of hell.
A man’s way, apart
from Jesus Christ, may be very prosperous.
Or it may be poor. But if one
does not love God, and if he is not called according to His purposes, then
those experiences of life are not leading to good but to misery—eternal
misery.
For whom do all
things work together for good? For them that love God; for them who are the called according to
His purpose. Now, what does that
mean: love God? We assume that today if you say the word
“love,” everybody will know what you mean.
But I am convinced that nobody today, apart from God’s grace of course,
knows what that means.
Love for God is an
abiding condition of the heart created by God’s grace. Love for God is an abiding work, because He
has worked it within you. So, first of
all, love for God is something that God must work in us by His grace. We read in
I John 4:19
that we love God
because He first loved us.
But what is love
for God? Do you love God? Love for God, in its essence, is not, first
of all, a love for His gifts. Love for
God, in its essence, is not, first of all, that you
love God because of all that He gives to you.
But love for God is a love for God. You treasure God. Love for God, in its essence, is not seen
first in the deeds that love prompts us to do.
If I were to ask the question, What does it
mean to love God? perhaps you would say, “Well, um, it
means to go to church and to keep His commandments.” Yes, that is the fruit of loving God. But that is not the essence of loving
God. People can do those outward
works. They can go to church. They can outwardly keep His
commandments. But that does not mean
that they love God. Love for God is love
for God. It is a high esteem for
God Himself. It is admiration for God as
God. Listen to this expression of love for God (
Ps. 63):
“O God, thou art my
God. Early will I seek thee. My heart and my
soul thirsteth for thee. My flesh longeth
for thee as in a dry and thirsty land.”
Love for God is admiration and esteem and worship of God for who He
is—the ever adorable, sovereign, thrice-blessed God.
We must be careful
that in Christianity we do not produce hypocrites. We can do that when we equate the outward
with the essence of the thing. Then we
say that if a person goes through the outward motions of being a Christian, he
must be a Christian. If he has the
outward expressions of love for God, he must love God. That is not true. The outward acts of Christianity can be
imitated. Our concern must not be to
produce squeaky-clean, shining, do-do-do-do Christians. But the concern of the
Love for God is desiring God. Let
me use the words from the Scriptures. I
will not refer to the text—because of the shortness of our time. But let me use these words. Loving God is, according to the Scriptures,
desiring God, treasuring God, delighting in God, being satisfied with God,
cherishing God, savoring God, valuing God, prizing God, reverencing God,
admiring God. Do you love God? Love for God means that you stand in awe of
God who created and redeemed you. You
are awed by Him and the mystery of His grace and love and faithfulness unto you
His child. It means that you will be a
person who repents of his sins. It will
mean that you will be a person at heart who wants God to be pleased with how
you think, how you feel, and what you do and say.
All things work
together for good to them that love God.
The promise is that, for those who love God, every event, every moment,
every circumstance, both good and bad, pleasant or difficult, joyful or a
burden, is sent by God for good, to bring His highest glory and our eternal
joy. All things! Not just good things. Not just when we see God’s blessing and we
can praise Him. But the point is that
bad things, evil things, hard things, impossible things, things that reduce us
to tears, things that break us down, work for good.
That is the context here in
Romans 8.
It is painful. That is why the verse is here. We need this Word of God. This is not fluff.
Romans 8
makes plain that the prospects for
the Christian’s life on earth are bleak.
In verse 17 we read that we shall be glorified with Christ if we suffer
with Him. Verse 18: “The sufferings of this present time.” Verse 20:
“The creation is made subject to vanity,” that is, futility. Verse 21:
We are under the bondage of decay.
We need the redemption of the body.
Verse 35 speaks of tribulation, distress, persecution, famine,
nakedness, and all the rest. Especially
the point is this in Romans 8:28, that it is not just
that we as Christians are living on the earth under the curse of sin, but that
when the child of God by grace carries the banner of the Lord into life, he
will experience much opposition and evil.
Because you are a son of the Father, a daughter of the King, the
heavenly Father will chasten you and prepare you. So, as a Christian, evil things are coming
into your life.
But the promise is
that all things (evil things, every last thing that comes into my life) will be
worked by God to accomplish my good, His glory in me, and my joy in Him. The promise is not simply that we will have good
in the end, that now on the earth we will be knocked around a bit and we will
have to suffer a lot but in the end we will go to heaven and we will have it
good then. Too bad it cannot be
otherwise now, but just look ahead. That
is not the promise. The promise is this, that God will work through all things to bring out our
good, that God’s purpose will be accomplished.
All things work
together for good to them who love God, who are the called according to His
purpose. That means that God knows what
He is doing. All things will be an instrument
in His hand to mold, shape, prepare, and fit you as vessel for His praise and
for His glory. All things are being sent
by God into your life not to destroy you, but in order that you might shine yet
more brilliantly in the knowledge of Him as your God and Savior.
In all things, God
is working the good of them that love Him, who are the called according to His
purpose. God is working all things for
good for me.
But you say, “How
can I be sure of that? How can I be
absolutely sure that this promise is true for me? This promise is so massive, so unbelievable, so weighty.” The
apostle Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, knows that he must put
a very deep foundation under this promise to hold it up and help us believe it,
especially since sometimes (very often in fact) everything in our lives seems
the opposite, and we are tempted to say, “All things are against me. How can I know that this is true for
me?” In a sense, you could say that all
the rest of chapter 8 can be seen as Paul’s effort to put a foundation under
this promise. He will go on to say, “If
God be for us, who can be against us? He
that spared not his own son, shall he not give us all things freely with
him? It is God that justifieth,
who is he that condemneth? Who shall separate us from the love of
God?”
But the massive
foundation that is placed under the promise that all things work the good of
those who love God is this: “Who are the
called according to his purpose.” Now I
said at the beginning that these are not two groups of people: one group who love God, the other who are
called according to His purpose. This is
one group. The promise is not for
everyone. It is for those who love God,
and those who love God are the ones who are called according to His purpose. Now Paul adds “who are the called according
to his purpose” in order to give a reason for our assurance. If he had said only, “All things work
together for good to them that love God,” then that would make it sound as if
the promise rests upon flimsy ground—my love for God. My love? Yes, I know that God worked it in me, but my
love for God? That is weak, variable,
and fickle. To make the promise stand on
my love for God, that all things work together for good because of my love for
God, that would be like resting a mountain on a marshmallow, or a skyscraper on
tinker-toys. Paul says that the promise
does not rest upon your marshmallow heart.
But it rests upon this, that you have been called according to His
purpose. There we have God’s work. And that is the foundation: God’s call.
And God’s call is something that is massive and solid and strong.
God works all
things together for good to those who love Him because they are the ones He has
called according to His purpose. Or put
it this way: I know that God will work
all things for my good because He, according to His purpose, has called me to
Him. I am called by God. That is a wonderful doctrine of the
Scriptures. The call of God is His
bringing you into contact with the gospel of Jesus Christ and making your dead
heart alive so that you see the gospel as inestimably beautiful and true. If you are a Christian, it is because God
irresistibly called you. That is God’s
mighty work—to bring us forth out of unbelief to faith, to bring us out of
enmity to love, to bring us out of darkness to light. He awakened you. He called you. He called your name. He said, “You are mine.” He called you to Himself. The divine call comes to us through the
preaching of the gospel, not the words of a man, but the preaching of the truth
of the gospel in which the Holy Spirit addresses that word to the heart—the
saving call of God.
How do I know that
all things work together for good?
Because God has called me to Himself irresistibly, according to His own
purpose in Christ Jesus. We know (not we
hope) that all things work together for good to them that love God. How?
Because God has called us, God has predestinated us,
God has purposed to justify and to glorify us.
He did that. It is all of
Him! He is obliged now to keep us. It rests in His own
faithfulness and in His own power.
Oh, we may have
seasons of doubt and struggle and trial.
But underneath this promise is a massive foundation—the promise of the
God who has said, “You are mine. I have
called you to Myself.”
This God will also work all things for my good,
for He is faithful and He will do it.
Do you, by grace,
believe that? Then what confidence you
may have! You do not need to know the
future—except that God has planned it.
He has ordered it in such a way for a marvelous good.
But
more. If you believe this, then
you will have the incentive for your Christian life to go and to serve. You will not respond to the promise with
passivity, with complacency, with a casual attitude so that now you say, “Well,
since God is working everything for my good, I can just indulge in the American
dream, the American materialism, and all of its unclean pleasures.” No, this verse will be a battle cry. I cannot be defeated in the cause of Jesus
Christ. You will go and you will serve
Him. You will not fear the cost. But you will spend your life in His
service—no matter the cost. You will
follow Jesus for whatever the cost, whatever comes into your life. It will work for your good. For all things work
together for good to them who love God, to them who are the called according to
His purpose.
Let us pray.
Father, we thank Thee for Thy precious Word. We pray that it may enter into our hearts today. In Jesus’ name, Amen.