Sunday 01 • 21 • 18

Scripture reading for today is Romans chapter eight verses 28 through 30.

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. — Romans 8:28-30

The word of the Lord.

So great to see you all here this morning. Would you bow your heads and pray with me? Father, I pray that the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable in your sight. Lord, you are our rock and our fortress and our redeemer. Amen.

The Story of Hin Pham

This morning, I want to start with the story from Robbie Zacharias. He tells the story about a friend of his named Hin Pham. He writes this:

"I was ministering in Vietnam in 1971 and one of my interpreters was Hin Pham, a young Christian. He had worked as a translator with the American forces in Vietnam and was of immense help both to them and to missionaries such as myself. Hin and I traveled the length of the country and became very close friends and we didn't know if our paths would ever cross again but seventeen years later, I received a telephone call. Brother Robbie, the man asked, and immediately, I recognized Hin's voice and he told me his story."

Shortly after Vietnam fell, Hin was imprisoned on accusations of being an American sympathizer and aiding the Americans. His captors tried to indoctrinate him in communist propaganda. He was put in a prison camp where he was fed a steady diet of Marx and Engels and over time, he began to question his faith and wrestle with, "Is this all made up? Have I just been brainwashed by the West?"

And so one night in despair, he determined: I'm done. I'm done praying. I'm done with this god. I'm done.

The next day, he was assigned to the worst chore in the prison camp, which was to clean the latrines. The primitive plumbing in the prison camp did not allow for toilet paper to be flushed. So there was a wastebasket in every latrine full of soiled toilet paper and Hin's duties were to clean up the bathroom as well as to take out the trash. As he was going about his duties, he noticed in the trash there were pieces of paper with English writing on them. So he grabbed them and stuffed them in his pocket till later that night.

Late at night after everybody had gone to sleep, he unrolls these and realizes what he is reading are sections of the Bible. In fact, he's reading this passage from Romans eight:

And we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For I'm convinced, it's a little bit later in Romans eight, that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of god that is in Christ Jesus, our Lord. — Romans 8:28, 8:38-39

He broke down weeping because he realized God's provision for him in that moment. The very day he was to give up his faith and abandon Jesus, God had provided for him his word. And what was one man's trash became his lifeline.

So he discovered that there was an officer in the camp who was using an American Bible, an English Bible, as toilet paper every day. The next morning when Hin saw the commanding officer at the daily lineup, he volunteered. He said, "Sir, would you mind if I clean the latrines again?" And the commanding officer, thinking he was being a smart aleck, said, "You're on permanent latrine duty."

So every day, Hin collected the paper, cleaned it off, and added it to his collection. And this became the way that his faith was sustained through that horrifying place.

Why This Story Matters

Now, why do I tell you that story? I tell you that story because while the circumstances that you're facing today, or you have faced in the past, or you will face in the future are different, every person who names himself a Christian struggles with these questions about in the place of suffering, in the place of overwhelming circumstances: Is God good? Does God care? Does God love me? Is this what God's love is like?

And so we all have the same battle. And I love that story because it tells us of one man's triumph in the midst of that battle but it also encourages me.

As we look at this passage, which is, to be honest, the ultimate cross stitch or refrigerator magnet passage in the New Testament. I think most Christians know this passage.

It's easy for these to become empty words or an empty slogan for us. Yet if we don't get the fullness of the context in these three verses, we will miss some of the great hope that's in these verses for us.

So today, here's my outline, very simple: the love of God for you in the past, the love of God for you in the present, and the love of God that will keep you to the end in the future.

The Love of God in the Past

These verses here, verses twenty-nine and thirty, were nicknamed by a Puritan pastor named William Perkins as the golden chain. And they describe the five links of God's salvation plan in the life of every individual believer. In this chain are God's foreknowledge, His predestination, His calling, His justification, and His glorification. Four of them are in the past, and one is future. And it tells us a lot about how God's love works.

God's love is so different from our love. God's love is effective—that's a strange word to apply to love. When we think of love, human love is always reactive. We respond to the good or loveliness or what is lovable in another person. And it's also emotional. It's an emotional response. But what we see here is that God's love is creative and it's effective. It's effective to work in the life of a person what He wants.

So you notice, as you go through those statements—those four statements we read in the past about the golden chain—the subject of those statements is always the same. It's always the same group of people. It's not "He loves some, He called others. He justifies some, He predestined others." No. Those He foreknew, He also predestined. Those He predestined, He also called. Those He called, He also justifies. It's the same group of people. It's the same effective love for sinners that changes us and moves us.

I want to briefly examine each link in this chain. Foreknew. Now, it's common to hear that word foreknew and to think of that as understanding the future, and it can mean that. But a lot of times when people think about this, they think, "Well, God looked down the corridor of history and He could see that you are one of those kind of people who is predisposed, who sort of would be the kind of person who's going to believe in the gospel." Yet that doesn't jive with the rest of the Bible.

When the Bible describes someone being known or knowing another person, that is a very powerful word. It means to set your love on another person. So this can't just mean God could predict the future. What this means is akin to saying God pre-loved. God pre-loved people who otherwise had no inclination to love Him. God's pre-love that looks ahead and not only predicts but sets His love on us.

And this is only intensified by that word predestined—the second link in that chain. Predestined means to set a destination beforehand with regard to yourself or another person. And so, as an intensifier to foreknew, this is what this is saying: God not only pre-loved us, but also predetermined that He wanted to spend eternity future with you. His love is so set on you that He's determined for your destination to always be with Him.

Now, I know that word predestination is really frustrating to a lot of people. It's confusing. Maybe you've heard some teaching, or maybe you've heard more characterization of this. You're going to get a lot of this in the next few weeks. When we get to Romans chapter nine in February, early March, you'll get several weeks on what this term means and what it doesn't. And so I'd ask you to hang in with us on this if you're not comfortable. But at least I want you to hear this: predestination is not an empty and cold doctrine. It has everything to do with an intensification of God's pre-love for sinners like me and sinners like you.

There's a movie—this is sort of my cheesy romantic drama movie for this illustration. There's a movie from 1980 called Somewhere in Time, and it stars the late Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. It's a story about an ill-fated love between two people. It's a story about a man named Richard who goes on vacation. He's a playwright and he goes on vacation to this old mountain resort hotel. As he's looking around the lobby of the hotel, he's looking at these pictures from years past, and he sees this picture taken in 1912 of a woman. And he finds himself just drawn to this photo. It occupies his mind. He can't get his mind off of this woman. And he finds himself falling in love with the woman pictured in that photo. And the problem is it's sixty-eight years too late. The woman's name was Elise. She had been an actress and that photo had been taken in 1912. Remember, it's 1980.

Well, here's the suspend your disbelief part, okay?

So this is where he finds a way through hypnosis to travel sixty-eight years back in time and meet Elise. They get to know each other and you can tell they're falling for each other. He goes to one of her plays. She's a local actress and does this whole monologue, looking at him the whole time, full of love. This budding romance is happening sixty-eight years in the past.

After the play, he comes into a photo session. As he walks in the door, the photographer captures the look on her face. As she turns and sees him, her face just lights up with love and excitement to see him. And that's the photo sixty-eight years later that he fell in love with. He fell in love with a photo of a woman falling in love with him.

And I think that's helpful for me as I understand what's given to us in the Scriptures. Because what's given to us in the Scriptures is a beautiful picture over and over of God's love for sinners like me and like you. It captures for us God's face as he delights in us. So if you have become a Christian, you have fallen in love at some point with the God whose face is turned toward you, smiling at you and in love with you. That's what it means to be foreknown, loved. Foreknown, predestined, called. God calls us by name.

His invitation to sinners doesn't come to us like the circulars you get in your mailbox—"dear occupant." God's calling of his people is always so personal and so direct. Some of you can remember this. Some of you can remember a time in your life, a season, a camp, a sermon, when you're like, "Man, God is ringing my doorbell. God is calling me by name." And that is so consistent with what we read in Scripture.

In John 10, Jesus likens himself to a shepherd:

The sheep hear his voice and follow him. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them. The sheep follow him for they know his voice. A stranger they will not follow; they will flee from him for they do not know the voice of the stranger. The shepherd comes and calls the sheep by name. — John 10

God is calling you or has called you. And finally, the link of the chain: justified. We've covered this a lot this fall as we've looked through the book of Romans. To be justified is a legal declaration that God makes over sinners. Because of Jesus' death and resurrection, he declares people like me righteous in his sight, perfect. When he looks at us, we look like Jesus to God. We are declared righteous in his sight because of Jesus.

Verse 30 shows us that no one is justified apart from being foreknown and predestined and called altogether. Remember the story of Hin Pham? I think it's a great picture for us of what Jesus does. Jesus comes and enters this world and becomes a prisoner of war. He is beaten, mistreated. But he comes for what purpose? To rescue you from the filth, what is demeaning you, to cleanse you, and to add you to his collection. This is the gospel. This is what God has done for sinners past.

And this morning, I want to tell you, if you're not a Christian, today is the day of salvation. As you hear my voice, God is ringing your doorbell and calling you by name. I want to urge you not to resist that. Don't sit here with arms crossed and say, "That's for these other people." No, this is for you. Jesus comes and calls us. There's a very good reason if you're not a believer that you're here this morning, because God is calling you to come.

God's Love in the Present

This is God's love past for us. Many of us who have been Christians for a while can look back and say, "Yeah, that is true for me." What's harder for me is God's love in the present. That's where we look at Romans 8:28.

We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. — Romans 8:28

Now, this is a verse that you shall not beat over the head of your suffering friend. This is a verse that's given to us in times when we are not suffering to help us make sense of our sufferings as we're going through them. It's something for us to marinate in and meditate on and take in. We don't use this as a club to call other people to just cheer up when they're in the ditch of despair. We trust the Holy Spirit to apply this to this person's life and we pray this for our friends, but we don't beat people with this.

This is one of the best verses in all Scripture. As I said earlier, it's the cross-stitch verse of Scripture, because it's given to us to show us the fullness of God's love for us in the present.

Now, let me describe what this doesn't mean, and it's helpful to understand this in context because Romans 8:28 doesn't mean that Christians will have fewer difficulties or fewer hardships in their lives than people who aren't Christians. That's not what it's promising. And it's not promising that things are going to work out in a general sense—like, "Hey, if you're a Christian, everything's going to work out for you." No, that's not what that means.

If you flip through the pages of scripture, you'll find example after example of people whose lives probably were harder for following Jesus. So I don't want to give you some kind of false Pollyanna view of Romans 8:28. In fact, what I want to do is read it in context because Romans 8:28 is always connected with Romans 8:29. Paul is showing that the "all things that work together for our good" is for this purpose: that he would be conformed into the likeness of his son. That's what it says here.

So this good that God is working is for us for that end—that we would be more and more made into the likeness of Jesus. Now, if you're a Christian, at justification, there's another act that God does for us legally, which is adopt us into his family. We looked at that earlier in Romans 8. God brings us into his family and declares that we have a new last name, that we are part of the family of God. And yet what is happening in our sufferings—in this "all good thing," all things that God is working together for our good—is God is more and more making us into the family. This is what he's doing: to be conformed to the image of his son so that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

He is using the sculpting and the sanding and the breaking off of hard edges and the polishing and the melting and the framing and the casting and the contouring of suffering and hardship in your life to make you more like Jesus—to make you into a person as loving and as noble, as truthful, as wise, as strong, as good, as joyful as Jesus. That's what he's doing. So if you feel the heat in that—if you're like, "I feel like I'm being melted down"—yes, you are. To be poured into the mold of Jesus. That is what he is working in your life, and he is doing it in all things.

What "All Things" Means

So let's walk through. Let me break down what "all things" mean. All things mean little things. Ultimately, there are no accidents in this universe.

The lot is cast in the lap. Every decision is from the Lord. — Proverbs 16:33

Picture somebody rolling a die. If you want to play a fun game this afternoon with yourself, go through your life. Some of you have more runway on this than others, but go through your life like me and think through all the "what ifs." What if I hadn't had that conversation that made me change my entire direction? What if I didn't go to college, or did go to college, or transferred high schools, or didn't take that part-time job? Or never met her, or never met him, or never went to that Bible study, or went to a different church? I mean, there are so many what ifs. And it tells us: are there any accidents in this world? All those what ifs come back to the same ending: God. There are no little things, no little decisions, no little conversations. In all things—even what we consider unimportant.

God's Plan and Suffering

Second, his plan includes bad things, and I want to be really careful here because this is potentially very painful for us, and I don't want to be flippant or light in any way. The evil that is in this world is not of God's original intention. The sufferings and tears and hardship and things that are wrong and tragedies are not what God intended this world to work like. This is not how it's supposed to be.

And so it's so encouraging for me to read stories like when Jesus raises his friend Lazarus from the dead. Before he even raises him, he weeps first, because we don't have a God who is cold and indifferent and unmoved by the hardship of this world. He looks at your sufferings in this life with a tear in his eye. In fact, if you read through the CBR journal this week—you did your readings through Luke—I love the passage in Luke 12 where it talks about how valuable we are to God.

Are you not worth more than many sparrows? Not a hair from your head will fall without the will of your heavenly Father. — Luke 12

He knows all things. And so bad things do not eclipse his love for us. But anything bad that he allows—which he hates, just like you hate—he does for that purpose of conforming you to his image.

Now, this is hard for us because all we see is on the micro level. One of the very frustrating things with being human is living always in this moment we call the present. And you can only see what's right in front of you in the present.

So we just had a birthday in my house, so cake is on my brain. Let's think about cake this morning. Let's say you're going to bake a cake this afternoon and I pull out all the ingredients for baking a cake—the oil and the baking powder, the eggs and the salt and the flour, the sugar—and instead of mixing them together, I consume them individually.

I take the oil, I measure it very carefully and then I drink it. Right? Nauseating gag reflex. I take the eggs, I put them in a bowl. You have to quickly eat raw eggs. You can't savor them, right? You gotta quickly eat them. I take the salt, which is great for seasoning, but in a little clump like that is bitter. Or I take the baking soda and I put it in my mouth and it begins to have a chemical reaction with my saliva. Right? None of those things individually are appetizing. But you know what happens if you take them and you combine them in all the right ingredients and all the right measurements and you subject them to intense heat? You get cake. And while you may not get the chemistry of that, you've read enough cookbooks, you've seen enough people make cake that you know that all things work together for the good of those who love cake and are called according to cake's purposes. Right? I mean, you mix these things together, which individually are hard and nauseating, disgusting, and yet something wonderful is being created.

God's Plan Includes Even Sins

His plan, third, includes even sins. And this again, this is hard. Some of you may raise an eyebrow and say, "I don't know about this one. I can get little things. I can get bad things. I don't know about sinful things." But look, if we were to say sinful things are excluded from God's "all things," there wouldn't be very much else to be included. In fact, what we find in the Bible is a much more complex view of how the world works than the binary categories we want to work in.

So we read in Acts chapter two, the first sermon that Peter preaches at Pentecost, and he tells the crowd that Jesus's death was their fault, and yet according to God's expressed purpose. Sinful things being used according to God's expressed purpose for the good of his people. How can that be? Because God is that amazing. He's working on that many levels. All things working together, as we read here, for my good.

God Is Playing the Long Game

But let's think about that good that God's working. It's not necessarily for my immediate good. God is playing the long game. I want the short game. I want God to do quick fixes and easy solutions and get out of jail free cards and boom, boom, boom. But God is playing the long game in my life. Conforming me, conforming you to the image of his Son is not a quick fix. So God is about the long-range good.

Let's imagine you're a person here who has excruciating back pain, and you've struggled with back pain for a long time. And you go to your doctor, and your doctor instead of giving you something helpful like quick medicine says, "You know what you really need to do? You need to strengthen your core." And so your doctor prescribes the worst exercise—crunches—for you. Right? So you're like, "I gotta go to the gym and do crunches every day. What?"

You show up at the gym and the first day, let's say you can do four. And you're like, "I do this and I feel like I'm going to die on the last one." And you keep going. Every day, you have to keep going back and doing the crunches. And what's happening in those crunches is every time you get to the last one, you're like, "I feel like I'm getting weaker every time. I get to the end of this and I collapse in a heap and I feel like I'm dying."

And what's happening to your body is that the muscle fibers are being broken apart so they can be knit back together. But what happens over time—the long game is—for a week, maybe you're only doing four to six. But in two weeks, you're doing ten and in six weeks you can do thirty and in six months you can do a hundred.

So what feels in the short run like death, in the long run God is working for your long-range good. And so it's not just for your immediate good, and it's not necessarily for your apparent good. There are a lot of things that appear bad to us that end up being part of what God is working for your good. What seems senseless and impossible to us—when we say things like, "How can a good God allow this kind of thing in my life? If I were a parent, I would never do this to my kid"—have you ever felt that way? Right? We say those things because we're looking at apparent good and God has a much larger scope.

When he says all things—bad things—working out for my good, we can only glimpse it sometimes in a couple of occasions. But why could it not be? Think with me. Could it not be that God allows horrible things to happen in our lives?

For the purpose of the kind of change, the kind of work he's doing within us that could never happen otherwise. We would never go down those pathways. We would never want to look at our hearts. We would never challenge those relationships. We would never actually learn to have to depend on him. See, there are things that we only learn this way and they don't feel good.

Those of you who have small children will get this. One of the worst things as a young parent is having to take your kids to get shots. You go to the doctor and the kids gotta have a shot and you're the one who has to hold the kids still. So the kid is both dealing with the pain of the shot, the inoculation that they're about to get, but they're also—there's this look of betrayal. You know what I'm talking about? The look of betrayal like, "How could you allow this to happen to me? I trusted you. I hug you. You take care of me and you're allowing that bad man, that bad woman in the white coat with the sharp thing to do this to me."

And yet, you know what's going on in the life of this child. The apparent good in their eyes is horrible. And they look at you with such betrayal, but they don't know the difference between a shot and the kind of disease that can harm and even kill. They don't have any understanding of that.

In the scope of a child's life, how long is that shot? Let's do it percentage-wise of a ninety-year lifetime. That one shot where they feel like you're betraying them and they're filled with tears and suffering, and they look at you in that way—what's the percentage of that in the life of a person? It's point 0001% of that person's ninety-year lifetime that that shot lasted.

In the same way—and I don't mean to make light, because some of you are walking through intense times of suffering and pain and why, and this shouldn't be. And it feels like it's going on and on. And it doesn't feel like it's getting better. And it feels like God is absent and not listening to your prayers. And he's pulled his hands off of you. And yet, in the scope of an eternal life with God, in the scope of an infinite existence as his child with him—that season, which is really long right now because of what you experience in the present—what is that in the scope of eternity?

It's so quick. What right now feels so hard, and I don't mean to make that out as it's any less hard than it really is. I don't want you to hear that, but I want to tell you that God is working a great plan. All things work together for our ultimate good and his ultimate purpose.

Remember, he's making us his brothers. What happens at conversion, justification, and adoption is you are brought in legally into the family. What happens over time is God increasingly makes you into the family resemblance of Jesus, and that is what he is working in you. That is what he's doing day in and day out. Just as Hebrews two says:

In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting for God for whom and through whom everything exists should be made the author of their salvation, perfect through suffering, and also you and also you. — Hebrews 2

Look, here's the thing. Of course, we can resist that and fight that. There's an old saying, a country saying, it says: "The same sun that melts the wax hardens the clay."

So here's the reality of that. We can be angry at God. We can shake our fist at him. We cannot trust him. We can run away from him. We can doubt him. We cannot pray to him, and we cannot worship him. And do you know what? His love is the same. His love is the same. Even that doesn't change it. You can be miserable, but that doesn't change his love for you.

The Glorification to Come

And finally, the love of God in the future—loved to the end. This is what is contained in that word "glorified." The word glorified means to have all sin eradicated, to be made perfect in body and soul. This is the last link in that golden chain. This is the last thing where God says, "I will finish the job."

You look at your life and you're despairing at your sin. So despairing. "I'm never going to be what God wants me to be. What is God going to do with me?" God's like, "I will finish that job."

And he adds an intensifier to this that you need to see this morning. Look at the strange language in this passage. Such odd language. Such unique language. What does he say about this future coming event? "He has glorified you." Past tense. Future event. How does that work? I don't know. I don't know.

But he speaks of this as such an accomplished fact. So certain in the mind of God is your glorification that he can speak about it in past tense terms. This is not questionable. It's not up for discussion or debate. God will finish the job in your life. God will bring you to perfection in him. What does that mean? It means a completed golden chain.

It means that as you are able to maybe look back in the past and see His hand and the way He's been faithful in the past, and you struggle to do so in the future, you don't have to doubt the present, you don't have to doubt the future. He is that good on His promises.

I read a story recently from this book called The Way of the Dragon and the Way of the Lamb that made me think of this. It's a story of James and Rita Houston. James is a really amazing person. He was discipled by C. S. Lewis. He was a professor at Oxford and left that to go found Regent University in Vancouver. Really brilliant mind. But it's not James that I'm interested in talking about, it's Rita. She's since passed away. But years ago, she was diagnosed with early onset dementia that would increase and get worse and worse. And over the beginning of that, she began to be paralyzed in fear—fear of what we all fear with dementia, which is losing our memories, losing the names of the people we love, and ultimately, she confessed to her husband, James, "I'm afraid I'm going to forget Jesus."

I love James's response to her. What matters is not that you remember him, but that he remembers you. See, this is the glorification that Jesus promises. He will keep us to the end. He will lose none of those that are in his hand.

Brothers and sisters, this is my invitation to you. Whether it's the first time or the ten thousandth time, can you trust his love today? Can you trust the love of this kind of God who loves so completely from beginning to end? Whose hand is never removed, who's always active for his children's good. In the past, in foreknowledge, in predestination, in calling, in justification. In the present, in the very heart of what you're dealing with right now. And to the end, who keeps us forever to himself.

In the name of the Father and Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.