Christ Life In Us Romans 8:28 The Tapestry of God

Well, good morning. It's good to be together with you this morning. Here we are in Romans 8, verse 28. What an amazing verse, as Jim read it for us already this morning, and in this amazing context that we've been in here for a little while now, as we move slowly through through Romans 6, 7, 8.

And we come to this powerful verse, but we want to remember the context because it's really important. What we're going to see here in verse 28, it needs to be seen in light of what Paul's been saying. You know, so often a verse like this, I mean, this is a very, you know, one of those key verses, one of those ones you memorize and tuck away, and we should. It's an important one that way, but we need to understand the context it comes in. And last week, we talked about the fact seen in verse 26 and 27 that we have the Holy Spirit indwelling us as the sons of God in order to intercede on our behalf.

And we said that As a believer, you are never alone. You are never alone because you always have the Holy Spirit in you, actively working, actively interceding on your behalf before the Father. So that in whatever situation you find yourself, God has not abandoned you. He is with you in the fire.

And Barb, particularly this morning, I think these words are for you, the things that we're gonna see here. Because this is not easy for you, this move. It's good, the Lord's provided for you in a wonderful way where you're going, but it's hard. It's very hard to walk through this, you know, leaving behind your church family and your dear friends and going into something new and unknown. There's some real particular application for you this morning, but for each one of us, we all have our own particular circumstances, and you are not alone in them.

God is with you. Just like we saw, we talked about the Lord with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. The Lord is with you in the fire. And when we do not know what specific things to pray for in any given situation, He does, and He is. And he's always carrying on that critical work in your life, and we need to know that.

So verse 26 and 27, we summarized as you are never alone. And now verse 28 is going to add to this additional truth, and I just summarized it this way. God has not made a mistake. And verse 28 says, 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.

And as I said, this is one of the most well-known verses in the New Testament for good reason. It's one of the great promises of scripture for you and I as Christians. It's an encouragement. It's been an encouragement to Christians for over 2,000 years now, or almost 2,000 years now. And this promise has carried our brothers and sisters throughout history through some of the most horrific trials that we can possibly imagine. And this promise is no less true for you and I today.

So I wanna just pause here and ask the Lord to teach us not just the truth of these words, but the power of these words in our lives. Heavenly Father, we just ask you to teach us this morning what it is that you have for us to understand, the critical importance of these words, the power of these words for us in our day-to-day lives. walk, and trials, difficulties that we face knowing that you are working out your good purpose. So we pray that you would teach us now. In Jesus' name, amen.

Does your life ever seem messy? I don't know if you've ever, anyone here embroider or done embroidery? Our girls do. And I kind of imagined if one of our daughters brought a piece of embroidery that she was working on and handed it to me and I look at it.

And I'm thinking, I can kind of make out what this is supposed to be, and there's a variety of colors and shapes, but it's a mess. And the problem is that I'm looking at the back side of it. Have you ever seen the back side of a piece of embroidery? It's not beautiful, right? It's messy. You've got some knots and you've got some loose ends and you've got, you know, threads running here and there.

And that's a lot like looking at the circumstances in our lives from our perspective. They're messy. They often don't make a lot of sense to us. Sometimes we get little glimpses of what's going on, maybe a little bit of what God's doing, but a lot of the things that we experience leave us confused or discouraged. or disappointed.

And the longer that I have lived, the more I realize that everyone's life has this characteristic. When we show up on Sunday morning, we all look put together. But if any one of us was to be able to see the backside, just like we can see our own life, we'd realize how messy everyone's life can be and is.

We all have pain woven into our lives. I don't know if this is the best term, but it's a term that I kind of came up with for what everybody has in their life, and I call it unspeakable pain. Because it's that pain that you can't verbalize with really anyone, maybe other than the very closest few individuals in your life.

This is the kind of thing that's woven into the tapestry of your life and mine. And as we look at that and we see that side of our lives, we can really wonder, what's going on? What is this all about? Is there really a purpose to it? And the promise in Romans 8.28 is that yes, There is most definitely a purpose to everything that's happening in your life, everything that has happened and everything that is happening, everything that will happen in your life as a child of God. There is most definitely a purpose. And we want to be really clear, as Jim kind of alluded to here, that this is not talking about an impersonal determinism because This verse is talking about God's personal sovereignty, right? The fact that he personally is working all of these things together in our lives.

And Jim talked a little bit about the textual variant there. Some manuscript, apparently one manuscript does not have the word God there, the rest do. And don't let textual criticism scare you. It's an interesting thing that though the original manuscripts were inspired by God and perfect, there are variations that have come into copies of the text over time, but they are small. And you need to know that no variant in any of the manuscripts that we have changes any doctrine of scripture.

Some translations, and don't go home and throw out your King James or NKJV, okay, because some translations say all things work together for good. And that's okay, right? The NASB, the inspired NASB, no, the NASB says God works all things together for good. But don't we understand from the rest of Scripture that God is sovereign? If all things are working together for good, and maybe that is the original inspired truth, then we still know who it is that's working these things together for good. So either case, either translation is fine.

That's why I say it doesn't change any doctrine of Scripture. We know that God is personally, sovereignly working in the situations of your life. And that's what this verse is teaching us. And that's why this verse has given so much strength and confidence, not self-confidence, right, but confidence in the Lord to Christians down through the centuries.

In every circumstance, God is personally engaged in working out his purpose in you. And whenever I think about this reality, I'm reminded of Joseph's words to his brothers. You remember what he said to them? Kind of at the end of it all, he said, as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.

And that's the same principle that we're looking at here in Romans 8.28. The same principle, though the details are different, and we'll get into that, right?

Because Joseph is talking strictly in terms of the earthly circumstances and the things that the Lord worked out, in this case in preserving the nation Israel alive. They would have been wiped out in his famine had it not been for all of the circumstances that God worked out in Joseph's lives. And so by this point in Joseph's life, he'd seen how God had worked all of these things together.

And it's an amazing story. That story, as you read through it, it's obviously a true story. You know, when we say story, we talk about Bible stories. We're not talking about fiction, right? This is true history. But by the point that Joseph said this, he could see where God had worked this all out together. it was probably an awful lot harder for Joseph to trust God. I don't know, but I'd be surprised if he was saying this the day that his brothers threw him in a pit to die, or when they sold him as a slave. and was hauled down to Egypt, or when he was falsely accused by Potiphar's wife and when he ended up in prison, and then when he was forgotten in prison by the guy who was supposed to give him a good word. You know, we don't—we don't know. The Scripture doesn't tell us what Joseph was thinking through all those things, but the point of it all, of relating all that, is that God did have a purpose in all of those things that he took Joseph through.

They're all very intentional. He never would have got to the place, the position of authority that he did had it not been for all those things. He wouldn't have been in place to provide the only means possible for Israel's physical salvation. God did have a purpose in all of it. And Joseph was able to see that at the end of things. But the lesson for us is that just like God had a purpose in all those details in Joseph's life, God has a purpose for everything that he takes you and I through.

And when we're walking through those things, like when Joseph was in prison and being falsely accused, when we're looking at those things going on in our lives, we can be really discouraged. And we can really wonder what this is all about. But what we're doing is we're looking at the bottom side of God's tapestry. We're looking at things from our very limited perspective, and it often doesn't make a lot of sense. But always remember, you're looking at the bottom side. you're looking at the bottom side of God's tapestry. And God is the one who is weaving together all of these loose threads in our lives. To us it feels awfully messy, but that's because we don't see it from God's perspective.

God always has the end goal in mind and he's working things toward his purpose. And that word there in verse 28, that word all, is a very comprehensive word. Maybe more comprehensive than we'd like to think at times, right? Because that doesn't leave anything out. There's nothing, absolutely nothing that God is not using to accomplish his purpose in you.

We have a dear friend back in Canada, his name is Mark, and in 2021, July 2021, he was in a horrific motorcycle accident. And for several days, he was in a coma, non-responsive. And when he finally came to, and we thought, we didn't know if he was gonna make it for quite a while, but when he finally came to, he was conscious, but he had no cognition. His brain was totally scrambled and he didn't have really any coherent thought. But Mark today will tell you that the first coherent thought that came into his mind was this. I'm still here. So God must not be done in me yet." Notice he didn't say, with me. That's commonly the way we hear, oh, God's still got something for me to do. That's not the thought that Mark had. He said, God must not be done in me yet.

And I think the Lord knew that Mark needed to understand that. And he's hung on to that because Not only would his recovery take months and months, but there are some things that Mark will live with for the rest of his life. See, Mark was actually our pastor in Canada.

And after working for over a year to recover and regain his faculties, he had to make the decision to actually resign as pastor. And that's not what he had planned. He loved. He loved being a pastor. He felt that that's what God had called him to. He says, I thought I still had probably another good 10 years of pastoring the church. He loved what he was doing. He loved the flock. But he had to let go of that. What a difficult, difficult thing for him to walk through.

And the question is, is that included in the all things of Romans 8.28? Yes, it is. We have to understand that it is. Can Mark see how that is? Even now, a lot of times the answer is no. I think most of the time it's very hard to see how God is working it all out. There's still a lot of very difficult days. It's usually not easy to see how the hard things in our life are being used by God.

But faith doesn't have to understand exactly how God is working it all out. It's enough to trust the Lord when He says that He's doing it. You know, if God wanted us to know all the details, to know exactly how He was working all these things out, then He could do that. He could show us, right? But He intentionally chooses to leave us in the dark about a lot of the circumstances in our lives. And we often think, well, I'd be able to trust the Lord if only I could see why I was going through this. But if God would show us these things, we think that then we could trust Him, we'd sign off on it.

But that's not what faith is about. Faith is trusting God's character. That's what God's after. He wants us to trust Him. We don't need to understand all the details. We need to trust Him. We need to trust that he's working out the details according to his plan and that his plan is good.

And he does tell us here... what his ultimate plan is, right? He actually does tell us where this is headed. And that comes in the next verse, and Andrew's gonna be teaching on verse 29 next week, but we have to step into his text a little bit because it's so closely connected, right? What is the purpose, if you've still got your Bible open, that the Lord is working out in our lives?

It's the conformity to the image of his son. He's working these things out to conform us to the image of his son. But though we know that, that doesn't mean that we can see how the specific things that we're facing play into that. We don't understand how this contributes to that or plays into that. You know, when you hit some trial, you can't turn to a Bible verse that says, now, here's why your loved one died, or here's why you lost your job. And let me give you all the details that I'm working out related to that. You know, if God wanted to do that, he could have. But God wants us to trust him with the unknowns, to trust that he is good. And that's really the thrust of this verse.

There's a strong contrast here, and it's actually not easy to see in most of the English translations, but you'll notice, you remember in verse 26, what does it say? It says, we do not know what, we do not know how to pray as we should. But now it says, we know. So in contrast to the fact that we do not know, now we do know. Darby translated this quite well. He really shows the contrast, the conjunction there that's translated. at the beginning of verse 28 is day, which can be translated and or but. In fact, it's more commonly translated but.

And so you could say, we do not know how to pray as we should, verse 28, but we do know that God causes all things to work together. And so the contrast is this, while on the one hand, we do not know how to pray according to God's will for the specific needs of our circumstances, we do know that God is working out all the details according to His good purpose.

Now there's something really important that we need to make mention of, because this verse is honestly often really misquoted. How often have you heard someone just pull out this phrase, all things work together for good? Okay, now that is an overly generalized feel-good statement, okay? Because it's taken completely out of the parameters that are in the verse, right? That's not what this verse is about, right?

I mean, if that's true, all things work together for good. I mean, you could go all the way down that train of thought and get to, you know, universalist kind of idea that well everybody's gonna be saved because God loves everyone and God's working everything out for good and ultimately everything's gonna be sunshine and lollipops, but that's not what the verse is saying, right?

It's true that God loves all people, John 3, 16, for God so loved the world. Romans 5, 8, but God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. So we know that God loves the whole world, and we also know that God is working in the lives of unbelievers.

He's working to draw them to himself. John 12, 32, Jesus said, and I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself. And we know from 2 Peter 3, 9, God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. And so, you know, in a sense, yes, God is working out things, even in unbelievers' lives, in order to draw them to himself.

He's seeking to show them their need of salvation. He's showing them, or the offer of eternal life, but there's no guarantee of a good end for any unbeliever, because that message has to be either accepted or rejected, and billions of people reject the gospel message, and the end result of that is hell, which is not good, okay? It's righteous, but it's not—we wouldn't say there's a good end for them. And so we can't take this verse and apply it and say, oh, well, God's working all things together for good, but—and not understand a specific context here.

This verse is talking specifically about God's working in the lives of Christians, of believers. Okay, verse 27 says that the Holy Spirit intercedes for the saints, according to the will of God. Saints is the word for holy or set apart. It's a term used to refer to Christians, okay? And then in verse 28, right after, and we know, so the saints, we, Paul including himself, we know that God causes all things to work together for good. To whom? to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. All those terms, all that language there is meant to indicate to us that this is talking about what God's doing for the born-again Christian, okay? Specifically for Christians.

How do you know whether this verse applies to you? Well, you have to know whether you are truly born again, whether you're a Christian. How do we know that? How do you know whether you or anyone else is eternally saved? Saved from the penalty of sin, eternity in hell, and saved to eternal life with God. The Bible's very clear on that, that the good news of the gospel is that Jesus Christ came to this earth as a man. that as the God-man, he would die in the place of every single man, woman, and child who would ever live. And that whoever receives that gift of salvation has eternal life. And if you've received that, that gift of eternal life, you can know that you are eternally saved.

And you don't have to ever question that because God's word says, So if you put your faith in Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection, then you have eternal life. And that means that this promise is for you. And the reason that this promise is only for the Christian is because it's a very specific promise. Okay, it's not just talking about the good as this kind of ambiguous kind of concept. But the promise is about the work that the Lord intends to do in each of his children.

Philippians 1.6, sorry, I think I missed a slide.

Philippians 1.6 says, for I am confident of this very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus. But what is that good work? What is that good work? That's a really important question.

And if we just take this Romans 8.28 as a promise to work out things toward the good, but we haven't defined the good, then we still have no idea what's really promised here. So what exactly is the good?

Okay, and again, we have to step into verse 29 to see that, right? At the end of verse 28, we see that Christians are called according to his purpose. And in verse 29, Paul tells us, for those whom he foreknew, in other words, believers, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brethren. That's the good towards which God is working out all things in our lives. And by the way, That's why I don't take the predestination in verse 29 and 30 to refer to a before-time decision to save certain men and not others.

The word predestination is a simple word. It simply means to mark out beforehand. But the word doesn't tell you when or to what. It just means that at some point in time, someone or something was marked out for some purpose. Many people want to say that this is referring to God marking out some men for salvation in eternity past, which turns the gospel message into a meaningless message because you can't make a decision.

You can't respond to it or not. You were predestined to or not. The problem with trying to read that into this text is that Paul is talking to believers about walking through trials and the work that God is doing in their lives through these trials. He's not talking to them about eternal salvation. That's not in the context.

The whole point is that as a Christian, you have been marked out to be conformed to the image of the Son. The moment that you put your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the moment you accepted Christ as your Savior, you were baptized into union with Jesus Christ.

That's Romans 6, right? And at that moment, you became one of the ones who is marked out or predestined to be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. And a major purpose of the Christians' walk in this world is to learn the Lord Jesus Christ. Not just to learn about him, but to know him. to think like him in every area of life, and then by faith, to be a living demonstration of that life. That's what you are marked out for as a Christian. You are marked out to be conformed to him.

So that's the good toward which God is working out all of our circumstances, everything that we go through, every single detail. And trials and sufferings are a significant part of that, because that's the whole emphasis here in chapter 8, right? That's the whole context. There is no place where the character of the Lord Jesus is seen more clearly in the Gospels, which is the record of his life on earth. There's no place where his character is seen more clearly than when he was going through a trial, and particularly the cross. And that's why we've got to go through these things.

Romans 8.28 tells us that everything that we go through is carefully orchestrated to accomplish his purpose. No matter what you're going through as a believer, nothing is outside of God's plan. And we should never think that God has made a mistake. Everything that God allows into your life and my life is being used by him. It doesn't mean, and this is really important that we mention this, it doesn't mean that he caused the problem, okay? But he does allow it, and he does use it to accomplish his work. Think about Joseph. Did God make a mistake when he allowed Joseph to be sold as a slave? When Joseph ended up in prison?

No. But apply that to your own trial. What about your serious health issues? What about your loss of a job or need of a job? What about the death of your child? What about the death of your spouse, or a spouse who left you. What about the abuse that you faced in your life? What about the financial trouble that you were in?

See, it's a lot easier to look at Joseph and say, no, yeah, God didn't make a mistake, he was using all those things, but when we think about the things that really affect us, the things that we face, the things that we're walking through, Are all of these things really included in the all things that God is working together? Or does all things not include your trial?

Again, we want to be totally clear. God's not responsible for the pain and suffering that exists in the world. That's man's responsibility. but he is able to use it to accomplish his work. And this verse tells us that he is. He is. There is nothing, nothing in your life that he is not using to accomplish his purpose. And this is what Joseph said to his brothers, right? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good." See, Joseph let the blame for the evil rest where it belongs. You meant it for evil. His brothers were responsible.

But he recognized that God, in his infinite sovereignty, is able to use everything toward his purpose. If he has allowed something in your life, You can know with absolute certainty that He is using it to conform you to Christ. That's the promise in this verse, and it's an incredibly powerful promise to hold on to.

Now, I'm speaking boldly this morning, and I'm applying this verse boldly to any trial that you might be facing, and you might be thinking, you don't know my trial. You don't know what I'm walking through. And I don't intend to come off as insensitive. The boldness that I'm using this morning comes from the fact that this is God's word. It comes from the fact that this promise is absolute truth, and I can't downplay that. I cannot downplay that. But I'm also speaking to you as a brother who has suffered, and who does suffer, and who will suffer many things. We all do.

And I know from experience that this is hard to accept. It's hard to accept these words when you're in the midst of a trial. We don't want to believe that this is something that God is actually using for good. And I don't want you to think that I can speak about this with boldness because I always trust that promise when I'm walking through a trial. I want to share this with you this morning as someone who has often had a hard time believing it, just like you. And keep this in mind because too often this verse is kind of slapped on a hurting brother as a band-aid, okay? Hey, I know that you're having a hard time, but don't worry, God's working it all out for good, right? We need to be able to weep with those who weep. Sometimes we just need to grieve with a brother or sister. And this verse doesn't make it wrong to feel the pain of our trials. It doesn't make it wrong to grieve.

But it does promise us that whatever we're going through, it's not without a purpose. And our Father wants us to learn that we can trust Him always, no matter what. And He's gonna keep bringing us back to that truth over and over and over. And the more deeply we learn that lesson, the more deeply we learn to trust Him in all our circumstances, the more useful we become to Him. The Lord can take you into places that you never could have trusted Him before, but because you've walked with him and learn to trust him. He can take you into places you never could have gone. And he will use you in ways to manifest his glory in ways that he never could have if you hadn't learned to trust him in any circumstance. The more that we are conformed to the Son and the more that we know him and abide in him, the more fruitful we become for the Lord.

Second Corinthians 411 says, for we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifest in our mortal flesh. So there's fruit. There's fruit to all this. There's a fruitfulness, but that's not all that God is seeking to do in us. Okay, this isn't just about a fruitful life here and now. I mean, that's a wonderful thing, and it glorifies God, and it's great, but that is just the icing on the cake. That's just the, here's how to use that expression, whatever. It's just the beginning. It's just a part of it.

The whole context is about the eternal glory of the Lord Jesus Christ being revealed. As the sons of God, we are being prepared to be glorified together with Christ throughout all eternity, and our trials are directly related to that. Romans 8, 16 and 17 talks about that, introduces this whole concept, says the Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, heirs also, heirs of God, and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him, which as we taught when we were there means sins, we do, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him, okay? This is the purpose. This is what the conformity to Christ is all about, being made like him so that we can be glorified together with him. We have to have a deep, personal fellowship with the Lord Jesus.

And it was through trials and sufferings that Jesus faced in his earthly life that his character was proved out, that it was demonstrated. He demonstrated that he trusted the Father completely, even to the point of death on the cross. That's what our trials are all about, teaching us about the life of Christ that we now have. The life of Christ in us is the same life that took Jesus through all of his trials and took him all the way up and through the cross. And because we have Christ's life, we can, in the same way, trust the Father in all things. And so the Lord is taking us through increasingly difficult trials.

Not all at once. The things that you face down the road are not the things you would have been able to face in years past or even today, right? But he's growing you. Growing you in your ability to trust him. Growing you in your understanding of who the Lord Jesus Christ is and what his life is. And the fact that you can trust him. You can trust the Father with even this. And so the Lord is always taking us farther along. And trials are the school of faith. It's the place where we can really learn to trust. Not when things are easy, right? We don't learn to trust the Lord when things are easy. We learn to trust him when things are hard.

And all of this is why we can exalt in our tribulations, which is what Paul said back in chapter five. We exalt in our tribulations because it's through them that the Lord is completing this good work in us. And if only we understood the glory that these things are leading to, because we just read 8, 16, and 17, the next verse, 18 says, for I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us or in us.

So I want you guys to be encouraged today. I know and I can sympathize with the fact that life is messy and painful, not all the time, but almost as an underlying theme. And we all have these things we've walked through and these things that we will walk through or are going through right now. And it doesn't make a lot of sense sometimes. But remember that we're looking at the bottom side of God's tapestry. Maybe we can see some of the threads, maybe we can get a glimpse at times of where it's going, but we can't see exactly how all of this is working out.

But we need to take God at His word. He is working all of these things together for His purpose, and we can trust Him about it. And one day, We're gonna be transported, right? The Lord Jesus is gonna come to gather us up, take us to be with him in heaven, and it's gonna become really obvious, really fast, what God was doing. We're gonna see the top side of the tapestry. We're gonna see God's masterpiece.

And honestly, for all of eternity, we're going to continue to marvel at what he has done. And we'll spend the rest of eternity praising him for that. And that is our hope, which is a sure hope and confidence that he is working all of these things together for good and we can trust him about it. Let's thank him. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are good. And that no matter what we're walking through today or what we will walk through tomorrow, you are trustworthy, you are faithful and true. and you're working out all of these things for us as your children, specifically to conform us to the likeness of your son, conforming us to his image, so that you can glorify us together with him, so we can share in his glory for all of eternity. We look forward to the day when we see that clearly with opened eyes, and we'll praise you forever for it. In Jesus' name, amen.