Well, thank you, Steven and music team. We just really appreciate the music very, very much and what a blessing it is to have a guitar. It's great. The Lord has been good to give us musicians in the church and we're so very grateful. And thanks to the. to Ben in the retreat for the music, and Daniel for the messages, Elijah for the food. It was just a great retreat. Thank you all very much, all of you, for the participation in the men's retreat. What an encouragement and blessing it was. Daniel, thank you for the ministry of the word. It was a blessing, brother. I appreciate it. Well, if you don't have your Bibles this morning, we're gonna take a couple of week break, give Daniel a chance to catch his breath between books and men's retreat and a whole bunch of other things, and take a look at something that is not one of the more popular topics in Christianity today. At least half of it is not. The first half, everybody knows. We know that God works all things together for good to those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. Everybody knows that one, but the rest of it, not so much. And I think it's very important for us as Christians to stand back every once in a while and take a look at how big God is. Most of our problems in life are associated with our belittlement of God. We do not recognize his sovereignty, his power in our lives. We don't recognize that he's in absolute control of everything that's going on in the universe today. I was looking at Isaiah 46 this morning. For I am God, and there is no other. I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning. And from ancient times, things not yet done, saying, my counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all of my purpose. And that's what we're going to be talking about this morning. If you've got an outline in your bulletin, you'll see the revised title is, We Must Focus on God's Purpose. I think that's one of the major thrusts of this passage, this paragraph of scripture. We don't often understand the why of suffering or of opposition or calamities in our lives. We'd like to know the why all the time. Why am I like this? Why am I composed this way? Why do I have the dispositions that I have? Why do I have the sinful inclinations that I have? Yes, the sin is involved in God's sovereignty as well. God is sovereign over sin. In fact, he uses sin to accomplish his purpose as we're going to see this morning. Romans 8, 28 through 30 may be the most important text in the Bible for helping us in dealing with these things. The Apostle Paul writes these words knowing full well what the Old Testament says in Isaiah that we just read and all the scripture of the Old Testament that shows his power and his might throughout scripture. The main idea that we're going to cover this morning is that God is sovereign over all things, and we must focus on His purpose in all things. In other words, we're to look and see what God is doing behind the scenes in the purpose of our lives. God is sovereign. He is in control. So let me just read our text for us this morning. If you've got your Bible, I'll be reading from Romans 8, 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. This passage is sometimes known, verses 29 and 30, as the golden chain of redemption. I like that. These five elements of things that God has accomplished in our behalf. Let's pray that God would give us wisdom as we look at this text. Father, I thank you this morning for the comfort of the sovereignty of God. Father, I thank you that we can rest as believers in your hands, knowing that you are weaving everything together in this universe to accomplish a purpose that you have intentionally, definitively thought through and laid out. Father, there are no accidents. And we recognize the more we read the Bible that we often do in our own lives believe that there are accidents, and we're surprised at what transpires. But Lord, we know from your scripture that this all occurs, everything in history occurs for your glory. Every leader that's ever ruled, every decision that's ever been made, sinful or good, Lord, it all works to our good. Those who love God and who are the called according to his purpose. Father, we need to grasp that this morning because we are faint of heart many times because we are overwhelmed with our circumstances. Lord, help us to rest in you this morning. And Lord, help us to see the power of the sovereignty of God in Scripture. And may we live our lives with such power. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, our text this morning comes at the high point, one of the high points, but one of the biggest high points of the Book of Romans. I think you all have read through the Book of Romans before. Many of you have studied it. We went through it about five years ago. It's a tremendous passage. Romans 8 is known as the peak of the mountains of salvation glory as you go through the Book of Romans. Romans 1 through 2 tells us the bad news that all of us have grievously sinned against God. It starts with Gentiles and how they have hurtled down the path of moral corruption. God, it says, gave them up three different times. We manifest as Gentiles all the evil traits of the sinful nature. The Jewish world has followed suit, but in a more subtle way, hypocritically appearing to obey the law of God, but while at the same time disobeying it. And so in chapter 3, we see the verdict is in. The whole world, Jew and Gentile, together is guilty before God. We all need to have our sin dealt with. So Romans 3 through 5, it teaches us that in the midst of our sin, the righteousness of God has been made known to us in the person of Jesus Christ who came. And through faith in Him, we can have justification of our sins. We can be declared righteous, even though we are guilty, guilty as sin. He declares us righteous, and we stand just in His eyes today. The theological term of justification simply means to be declared not guilty. And what God does is He takes us in the midst of our sin through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ, and He declares us not guilty. We were on the docket ready for condemnation, ready to pay the penalty for our sins, and God comes in and says, no, no, no. He's not guilty. She is not guilty. And that's what the message here of Romans is, that God has done this powerful work through his son, Jesus Christ, through the sacrificial death of Jesus, the substitutionary atonement, if you wanna use a big word, he died in our place so that we would not have to be punished for our sins. Romans 3.23 says, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Then Romans 6 through 8 takes us through the path of sanctification, the process of our being set apart for God in our attitudes and actions. As Burkoff well put it, the famous theologian from the last century, sanctification is God's work done with our cooperation. Sanctification is us becoming more holy in our practice. It takes place as a process over a period of time. It begins the moment we become believers. It's completed at the time we're taken up into glory. Sanctification is a wonderful work, but unlike justification, which is monergistic, that is God does all the work of justification. He declares us righteous through the work of Christ. Sanctification is God's work that is done through our cooperation. In other words, what God does is tell us that we are dead in our sin, and yet we must consider ourselves to be dead to our sin. Sin will have no dominion over us, yet we are to not let sin reign in our mortal lives. There is action required of us. We as believers don't just sit back and revel in the fact that we're forgiven. Now we must progress in our Christian lives in this process of sanctification. God, it must be stated very clearly, is the one who gives us the motivation to become more holy. And he gives us the ability to become more holy, but we must go out and be the one who live holy lives. We must flee youthful lusts. We must love our wives and so forth, all the ethical commands of the New Testament. And Romans 7 then goes on to develop the story of our redemption with the thought that our struggle for holiness continues. There are different views on Romans 7. I take the position that Paul is speaking about a Christian who has died to the law, but who is constantly tempted to revert back to the sins that he was once consumed by. That sin principle still lives within him. All of us can identify with the fact that we have sinned as Christians. And so we're dealing with that every day. The only deliverance that he can find is in Christ himself. Here's the way he sums it up in Romans 7, 24. Wretched man that I am. Who will deliver me from this body of death? Have you ever been to that point of frustration before? How do I deliver myself from this sin that attacks me every day, that draws me in every day? Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, is his answer, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. So then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. And so the conflict continues and will continue until we are perfected one day. So when we get to chapter 8, the one thing that is certain in the book of Romans here is that there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. For those who suffer from dealing with guilt, and a lot of us do, There's the promise here that there is no eternal condemnation for us. God has dealt with that sin on the cross of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit has a role in bringing us eternal life and in freeing us from the law of sin and death. We learn in the early part of Romans chapter eight, this high point in salvation range here in the book of Romans. In putting to death the deeds of the body by the power of the Spirit, we will live. That's the promise here. We will demonstrate that we are sons of God. We are heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. This is the message Paul gives us in Romans 8. And then he has a strange little caveat in verse 17. We covered this in the last sermon I presented here some weeks ago. Romans chapter 8 and verse 17 says this. If children, then heirs of, then heirs, verse 17, heirs of God and fellow heirs of Christ. And then he says this caveat, provided we suffer with him, that is with Christ, in order that we may also be glorified with him. And what he's saying is the Apostle Paul, who himself had a little suffering to go through, he said, the only way to get to glory is to go through suffering. Suffering is normal in the Christian life. Suffering is the normal Christian life. If you're not suffering, there's something going wrong. It's not right here. Eventually you will suffer. Yes, we all have good times in our lives. We thank God for those cloudless days and we bask in the sunshine during those days, but eventually we will all undergo suffering. And Paul says this is an imperative. a necessity in order for us to make it to glory. And then he recounts, and this is what we discussed in the last sermon here, verses 17 through 25, how all of creation is winding down. It's all suffering under the decay of sin and is destined for reformation. It's destined for being done away with and reformed, and it will be. Just as a woman goes through labor and gives birth to a child, so in the plan and purpose of God, all creation is producing a moment in which the sons of God will be revealed and the glory of God will be revealed in the new heavens and the new earth. That's where we're going. That's what's going on in this process. And this momentary light affliction we're going through right now is going to result in the eternal weight of glory that God is going to give us. And the Spirit is involved further here in verses 17 through, I'm sorry, verses 26 through 27. The Spirit helps us in our weakness for we do not know to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. The Spirit is working in our hearts, giving us the ability to pray the unprayable prayers that we go through in the midst of our agony and our suffering and our grief, and causes us to understand this redemptive plan God is working through to produce this eternal weight of glory. Now this is what underlies, this is the foundation that underlies the passage we're going to talk about this morning. We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. The Greek here in Romans 8, chapter 28, let me just say this first. Romans 8, 28 has been one of the mainstays of my life for many years. And I know that for many of you in this congregation, the same thing is the case. You come to a time of crisis and you realize that God is the one who is sovereignly superintending this. And after the fact, you go back and you put all the pieces together and you begin to understand that God had a purpose in that trial that you just went through. But let's look at this passage very closely this morning, because some of you, you may not have ever heard these truths before, and I wanna make sure that we're clear, who do understand it to some extent, that we really understand it, so that when the next trial comes, we're ready for it, and we're ready to embrace what God has designed for us. It is crucial for us to have this truth ready to launch when the evil one launches his next attack against us. And he will do it, because he is actively doing that. walks about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. Let me read this verse again and then we'll explore it. We know that for those who love God, this is out of the English Standard Version, all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose. The Greek here can be translated in several different ways. There are four major ways that people take this verse. I just read one, all things work together for good. It's probably the most popular way to take it. It can be God causes all things to work together for good. It can be translated accurately that way within the new American standard translates it that way. Luther took it to mean the spirit makes all things to work together for good. He refers back to the verses right before it using the Holy Spirit as the he there is working together things for good and that certainly is a possible translation of the verse. But I like the NIV, and I'm gonna deviate from the, I love the English Standard Version, that's our text here at Killeen Bible Church, we use it a lot, but the NIV I think has a better, more accurate translation. The NIV says it this way, in this particular passage. 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. I like this translation because in the end it fits better the entire theme of the passage. It is God who is working in human history to bring about his purpose. I think that's the big picture here in Romans. God is the actor. God is the one who causes things to happen. He works in both verse 28, working all things together for good, and then in verses 29 through 30, in the golden chain of redemption, foreknowing, predestining, calling, justifying, and glorifying. God is the one who is driving the train. Okay, that's the important thing. And the NIV translation, I think, hits the mark. In the end, all four of these translation possibilities come to the same conclusion, that God is the prime mover in his relationship with us. In order for us to face the inevitable sufferings of the Christian faith, suffering with Christ, by the way, He suffered before us, our suffering is suffering with Him, we're identifying with Him when we go through suffering, we must realize at the outset that it is God who is working right now to bring about His good pleasure, His good in our lives, in any and every event that takes place. Do you believe that? I'd like to say I believe that. Intellectually, I believe that God is working in every event, but I'll tell you practically, from day to day, I don't always practice believing that. The all things that he's talking about here are things good and bad, okay? He's not selectively choosing things. There is no qualifier here. Paul may be referencing back especially to the suffering in verse 17 we talked about that's necessary for believers to enter into glory. But in any case, all things work together for good for God's people. everything that happens. Now the good is clearly not financial or physical prosperity because we'll just read in the next section we come to next week. Verses 35 and 36, for your sake we are being killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. Paul is not forgetting that he's about to talk about the suffering that believers are going to have to go through. But what he's saying is that all of these things, God is working for our good. God is the subject of the sentence. It's he, the way I would understand the translation of the verse, it's saying God is the one who works together all things for good, for those who are called. those who love him and are called according to his purpose. Now this is, there's a mystery here, okay? And I don't pretend that there's not mystery here. The principle of concurrence, R.C. Sproul will talk about this probably later in his series on apologetics, there's this principle of concurrence, that is, that God brings good through evil, while at the same time holding the evildoer responsible for the evil that he does. Someone murders your father. OK, that's a very bad thing. I'm not saying that's a good thing. But what I'm saying is that God is working his good through that event. We don't see it many times for years to come. We may not see it until we get to glory and we see how the jigsaw puzzle all fits together and we see this giant mosaic of all the workings of God. I think it was Piper who put it this way in Desiring God, like shards of glass in a mosaic that are different colors. When you get up close, they're sharp and they're pointy and they don't make any sense and they hurt if you touch them. But when you stand back and you see the event all put together and the majesty of the glory of the eternal purpose of God, it brings God glory. Somehow, when we get to heaven, we're gonna be able to look at every event and see God's glory in every event. Do you believe that? In every event in our lives, the good, the bad, and the ugly, everything all put together, we're gonna see how it all worked together for good. But at the same time, God holds accountable those who have sinned against him. The one who did the murder, for example, will be held accountable for the murder he has committed. That's the principle of concurrence. God brings good out of the evil, but he does not neglect to punish the one who committed the evil. That will take place. And you could go one by one and list all the horrible events of human history and say the same thing. God will hold accountable, if he has not already, those who have committed such atrocities. But that does not mean that they're happenstance and that they were just random acts of violence that just happened. I just happened to be there at the wrong time. No, there are no accidents. God has planned all of that. God has planned every negative event, not only to bring about His good and our good and His glory in that event, but also to bring about our good and His glory through the punishment of that evildoer. And He will accomplish that. and we can rest in it. This is the beauty of the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. We can trust him to do the right thing. He is God, and he's moving forward. So it's our eternal good that he's concerned about. Are you concerned about the eternal good of your family? Am I concerned about the eternal good of my family, of my friends, and of our church? Am I really concerned about what is best for them in the long run, what is going to happen in the long run? Now, in the family, obviously, if we really believe that God, these things are true, we're going to invest our time in things that are beneficial for them for eternity. And so we'll prepare them with teachings like this, so that when they get to the difficult spot in the road, when they begin to question whether or not there is a God, they'll be able to fall back on the foundation of this truth, that our God is working everything according to His eternal purpose. Isaiah 46. Check that verse out. This is a truth that goes across Testaments. and they'll be able to survive. They'll be able to get through and they will not leave the faith when the going gets tough because they will understand that God is in control even of that. So who is this promise for? It says in verse 28, that it's for those who love Him. This is not a promise for the world around us. So if you're an unbeliever here today, this promise is not for you, okay? If you are around unbelievers during the week who clearly hate God, this promise that all things work together for good is not for them. It's for those who love God. There's an old saying going around that, you know, just get through it, everything will turn out all right. C.H. Dodd put it this way. There's some kind of evolutionary optimism out there. We just need to get through this and it'll all turn out right in the morning. It's nighttime now, but there will be a morning, things will get better. Okay, that is not what this passage is saying. We don't go through difficulties with the thought simply being that everything will turn all right. We go through it with the knowledge that God is working through this negative example to bring about something very good. He wants us to understand, Paul does, that the promise of God working everything for good is for one group of people, has two different characteristics. One is that they love God, and the other being that they are called according to His purpose. Love for God is a command throughout the Bible. We're commanded from the beginning of the Old Covenant until the present day to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, our souls, and our minds, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. This promise is for those who love God. This is not surprising. This teaching has been around for a long time. I would call this command, by the way, these two commands together, called the great commandment, love God and love neighbor. I would call this the eternal moral law of God, because Jesus says on these two hang all the law and the prophets. Everything in the Old Testament depend upon these two commands, loving God and loving neighbor. And this is the first part of that, loving God. God is in the habit of working all things together for good for people who are in the habit of loving Him. It's in the present tense. There's a progressive sense here of loving God, okay? Are we loving God today? Am I loving God? How do you know if you're loving God? How do you know if you love your wife? You spend time with her. You communicate with her. You sacrifice for her. How do you know you love God? You spend time with Him. You desire to be in His presence. You desire to be around His people. You desire to communicate with people who also love Him, people who are of like mind. This promise of God causing all things to work together or God working all things together for good is for those who love Him, those who are showing affection for Him. and who are showing affection for Christ, the affection of Christ for His people. God works together the events of our lives if we are people who are investing ourselves in love for God. And I just would ask you this morning, are you showing any affection for God in your life? Is there a desire in your heart for Him? Is there an inclination that God has placed in your heart to be with him, to spend time in his word, to spend time with his people. If not, then you need to relook your relationship with God. This promise is for those who love him. God is weaving the events of our lives, those in the category of loving God, into a beautiful garment of his glory. All these things are working together to cause us to anticipate the glory that will be ours in eternity. Now, the other characteristic of this group of people for whom God works all things together for good, first of all, they love God, but secondly, they are called according to His purpose. What does that mean? I think most of you in this congregation know there are two kinds of calling in the Bible. There's an external calling, that's Daniel standing up here every week and preaching the gospel. and demanding a response. He has a gall to demand a response to the Word of God. This is the external call, the call of a preacher. This is what Romans chapter 10 tells us is essential for a person to become a Christian. They've got to be called externally. That is, they hear the words of Scripture, and then they can respond to that, an external calling. The other kind of calling is what happens on the other end. As the word descends upon our hearts, the Holy Spirit takes that word and causes us to understand it. He flips the light switch on. As Dr. Johnson used to quote Donald Gray Barnhouse, he jiggles our willer. I love that phrase. He causes us to be inclined to him, gives us the desire for himself. That's the internal call, what we would call the effectual call. It has an effect upon us. That call is when the spirit calls our hearts and he draws us to himself. It's irresistible. When God calls us that way, we're coming. The best example of this in the Bible in physical terms is that of Lazarus. Remember Lazarus died and was dead in the tomb for four days and Jesus gets there to deal with his grieving friends whose relative had passed away. And he goes up to the tomb, and he says, Lazarus, come forth. And Lazarus, this is not a general appeal to Lazarus. If you feel like it, maybe you could sort of come out of the tomb, show us that you're not really dead kind of thing. Lazarus is dead. And he responds. This is the effectual call of the Holy Spirit in our lives today. God calls us, and you know if it's happened to you, you know it's happened. The day before, you didn't enjoy the Bible at all, you didn't understand the Bible, you didn't have any desire to go that particular direction, and all of a sudden, the light goes on. He has jiggled your willer, and you understand, and you want to believe, and you want to trust God for everything. This is the effectual call, and I think that's the call, that is the call, by the way, that this word call, kaleo in the Greek, normally means in the New Testament, 1 Corinthians chapter one, God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his son. Those of you who have been called understand what I'm talking about. If you haven't been called yet today by the spirit, my prayer is that God would call you today as you go through these words of holy scripture. But this calling is according to His purpose. Notice that phrase there. The purpose is none other than God's divine plan. We've been talking about this all morning here. His resolve, His will. Did you ever think of God as someone who had a plan for everything? God has designed from day one to day end. He knows not just observing as a third party, the deistic view that he wound up the watch, the clock and threw it out in the universe and it proceeds on its own. No, he's daily involved providentially in maintaining the universe. The sun does its purpose. The stars, the moon, the earth, all the galaxies, the billions of galaxies exist at his behest and he's providing for them constantly. Keeping an environment here on this earth, by the way, that we can survive in. You and I can breathe air. We can survive in the temperature, although it was debatable a couple times this weekend. It is hot out there at times, but it's survivable. God gives us an environment in which we can live. Perhaps the best example of this divine purpose, in which God purposefully does something good out of evil, is the crucifixion of Christ. The enemies of Christ thought that they had their opportunity. that they were exercising their own purpose in getting rid of Jesus. They'd been waiting three years to get this done, and they were ready to do it. The leading Jews collaborated with the leading Gentiles. This was a collaborative event to put Christ on the cross. And they thought they had him dealt with. And so they crucify him. And then on the third day, he rises again. from the dead as he promised that he would. And his apostles are witness to that resurrection. For 40 days they observed Jesus walking around in the flesh, eating and communicating with them. And then the apostles undergo the persecution of the Jewish hierarchy because they wanted to stamp this out before it got any further, and so they grab them, they bring them in for questioning, they want to imprison them, and they have this wonderful prayer in which they come back to God after they've been released, and they make this prayer to the sovereign God of the universe. This is their prayer. The kings of the earth, Acts 4.26, set themselves and the rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed. For truly in this city they were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed." Jesus was the anointed one of God the Father. Gentile leader and Pontius Pilate, Gentile leader, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, now get this, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. The worst event in human history, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, took place according to the plan and purpose of God. And all that these people were doing, the Jews and the Gentiles collaborating together to put Jesus to death only served the purpose of God and having Jesus die a sacrificial death for our sins so that we would not have to die. But he rose from the dead, he has victory over the dead, putting God's stamp of approval upon the sacrifice that had been made, he accepted the sacrifice of Christ, and those who are his children, those who have believed on him, have their sins forgiven based upon that. This is the good that the Almighty God can bring about in the most wicked event that can possibly take place. What was the very worst thing to possibly happen? God leverages to bring about the very best thing that could possibly happen because in bringing children to Himself, like us, sinners like you and I, people who were born in sin and who had no inclination for God, in drawing us to Himself with this effectual calling, He brings glory to God the Father. And we don't get that. We don't get that. But we need to. We need to see that this worked God's good in history. This is the amazing story of the gospel. God is right now working everything together for good in his people. That's the message of verse 28. He's working through the car accident, as well as through the promotion. He's working through cancer, as well as through the birth of a brand new baby. The good and the bad, he works through all of these things together to accomplish his purpose, and no matter what tragedy comes our way, we can fall in the sovereign grace of God and say, God, I know you have this purposed. I know you have it designed, and I look to you for your glory in what you are doing through this. Give me eyes to see. Now, how do we know this is true? There's a key word here, and I hope you see it here in verse 29. It's the word for. Maybe the Bible doesn't have it. Piper, in his sermon on this, said if your Bible doesn't have the word for there, you need to get another Bible. 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 predestinated, he also called, and those whom he called, he also justified, and those whom he justified, he also glorified. What we have after this fore is the foundation for what went before. God works everything together for good to those who love him, to those who are called according to his purpose because of what follows. In other words, right now, God is progressively, in history, working through all, working together all these things for our good, okay, and the reason he can do that is because of these five things that he's already accomplished. He has foreknown us, he's predestined us, he's called us, he's justified us, and yes, he's glorified us. Foreknowledge is one of these verses that most people who get to it, they say, I can't tolerate that one, that sounds too much like election. By the way, it is very much like election. The doctrine of election. Unconditional election, that God did something before the foundations of time to bring about his divine plan. Paul is saying that God knew us in some way before the beginning of human history. The word is used six times in the New Testament, and only two of those uses does the word mean know beforehand. That's the usual excuse. When people come to foreknowledge, God just knew beforehand that you would be a good boy, right? And that you would choose Jesus when you were in the third grade and you'd become a Christian. And he knew how good a person you were. No, that's not what it's saying. This foreknowledge is different. In all the other uses, it has to do with the idea of entering into a relationship with before something happens. God enters into a relationship with someone before. That's what foreknowledge means. It can be so far as to mean to choose, to determine before, and I'll explore that here. Romans 11, 1 Peter 1, Acts 2. The point here has to do with people. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. This is one of the reasons I believe that foreknowledge is more than just knowing beforehand. In every case, in the cases where it is used in scripture that we're referring to here today, these four instances, it's referring to God knowing people beforehand. It's not knowing events, it's knowing people beforehand. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. The second reason I believe that it's more than just simple foreknowledge is that the Old Testament doesn't use, while the Old Testament doesn't use foreknow, the verb itself, it does use the word to know. And it can have a far greater meaning than just to intellectually apprehend. Adam, for example, knew his wife and she bore him a son. God knew Abraham that he might command his children in his household. God said to Amos in Amos 3 too, you only, speaking of Israel, have I known of all the families of the earth. It was I who knew you in the wilderness. Now it can't be said that this is just simple knowledge of people because God knows everything. He knew all the peoples of the earth. He's talking about knowing in a special sense, in a very personal sense. He is God, He knew all the nations of the earth, but He knew Israel in a special way. And that's what we're talking about in the New Testament, is God knows His new covenant people. God knows us. This same use of an intimate knowledge carries over in the New Testament as well. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 8, if anyone loves God, he is known by God. In other words, if you're a believer in Christ today, God knows you in a special way, in a way He does not know unbelievers. Galatians 4.9, but now that you have come to know God or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again? To know and hence to foreknow can't have this personal meaning. But the third and the most important reason I believe that foreknowledge is more than just knowing beforehand is that the word foreknow in our context today only applies to certain people. Only those who are foreknown, predestined, only those who are predestined and called, only those who are called are justified, and only those who are justified are glorified. If you go through that sequence, foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification, and glorification, if you go through that, it's the same group of people. They're exactly the same group of people all the way through. This is 100% success rate. Whom God foreknows, He predestines. Whom He predestines, He calls. Whom He calls, He justifies. And whom He justifies, He glorifies. This is what the Bible is talking about here as a concept that we have come to know as distinguishing grace. And people don't like this because we believe that we are the master of our fates. Invictus, you've heard the poem. I am the master of my fate. I am in charge. I am in control. The only problem with that view is it's not true. God's in control. God's in control. You don't know the day of your death. You don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow. God is in control of that. God foreknew his people, Romans chapter 11 and verse 2. the idea conveys word, almost word for word, the idea of divine election. Rather than being a foresight of faith, in other words, God looking down the corridors of the future and saying, he'll be good, therefore I will choose him, it is a foresight of God's choice who would have faith. In other words, when God foreknows, he is deciding in advance who is going to believe. God has the prerogative in this matter. It is God who is in charge, not us. Put a different way, this is not a foresight that recognizes a difference in people, it's a foresight that actually makes a difference in people. And praise God, we have known people, you and I in the church, we've seen other people, as well as ourselves, whom God has turned the switch on and has enabled us to believe. He is the one who is doing the foreknowing. He's the one who has done the determining as to who would believe. I know this is startling because it flies in the face of everything that you've been taught. Everyone in this room, me included, was brought up with the notion that I'm in charge. Each one of us is a free moral agent. Have you heard that term before? We can choose as we wish. That God is just waiting to see what move we'll take before he makes his move. You know the argument, God is a gentleman. He will never force you into doing anything. You know that argument? Have you heard that before? God is a gentleman. Well, God may be a gentleman, but he's also the God of the universe. And he's in charge of everything that happens. Thank God if I were in charge of everything that happened, we'd have a lot of calamity. We'd be in trouble. Any human being. We're running into that in our governments across the world. Leaders fail. Leaders are sinful. God is not. And what he's about is his glory. That's what he's achieving is his glory as he comes through history and he comes to us with the gospel. Unfortunately, for the idea of free moral agency, it has not got much support in this golden chain of redemption. Those who before knew, he predestined. Those he predestined, he called. Those he called, he justified. Those he justified, he, tell me now, glorified. So predestination is the second one. Very quickly, he predestines us to be conformed to the image of his son. The word here is proorizo. It means to determine in advance that we might be the ones he would die for. Here's what it says. He predestined us to be conformed to the image of his son. So predestination is God's decision about what we're going to be, you and I are going to be. A lot of the Arminian folks who would take the opposite position to us in this particular passage would say, see, he just, the passage says there, he predestined us to be conformed to the image of son. He wants us to be like Jesus, so that's all there is to it. Well, the problem is that for us to be fully conformed to the image of his son, what does it mean? It means we have to be sinless, okay? And what does that mean? We're going to heaven, okay? So being predestined to be conformed to the image of Son is the same thing as saying He's predestined us to become His children. That's what God has done for us. He has predestined us to that. Now, Paul had to be thinking here about the fact that Christ is the image of God. There are verses which tell us that Christ is in the image of God. seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, 2 Corinthians 4, who is the image of God. He is the exact representation, Hebrews 1, 3. He's the radiance of the glory of God, the exact imprint of his nature. That is not what's happening here. We're going to be conformed to his image does not mean we're going to be made gods, but it means we're going to be made like him. We're going to be likenesses of our Savior. This is the process of sanctification we talked about going through time. Paul puts it this way, I'm sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will complete it, will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. If you were to draw a graph, when you became a Christian, you're right here, and you weren't living a very holy life, and God works on you. And the curve kind of goes, it's not a straight line, I wish it were. We would go straight up the chain and become like Christ evenly every day. Our lives are not like that, and frequently we sin, and we have lapses in moral judgment, and we sin against God. But there's a general process of becoming like Christ that is brought to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. That's full sanctification. That happens either when we die or when Christ comes again. And that's what he's talking about here, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Now, that's what God is doing in the process of our lives. Sanctification, if you'll notice, is not in the golden chain of redemption. All these things are what God has already accomplished. Sanctification is what God is accomplishing and will bring to fruition. What Paul is thrusting, causing us to understand here, thrusting in front of us, is to understand what God has already done. And maybe you've already seen God work in your life in this regard. And you understand that he's chosen you, that he's called you and your life has been changed. And what he wants us to understand is to take, he wants us to take that knowledge and apply it to the truth that God is in control. So the next step is he has called us. He's effectually called us, as we had just talked about a moment ago with Lazarus. An effectual call, a call that had to be obeyed. We responded. When God calls us, we come a running. That's what happens when we are called by him. There's so many passages that speak of this kind of calling. I would just mention a couple. To those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. 1 Corinthians 1. Jews and Greeks have been called and then effectually summoned by God to himself. Paul says of himself, he set me apart before I was born and called me by his grace. And so he goes on. Then he justifies us, that's what chapters three through five have taught us in the book of Romans. He has declared us righteous, we who were guilty before him, and he's caused us to have a clear conscience. He's enabled us to be able to face our lives. Understanding that we stand before God as cleansed, as clean, as holy before him right now. That's the way God sees us. And so if we're to die today as believers, we're immediately in the presence of God. He has justified us. We were on death row, awaiting the justice rightfully due to us for our sins, and God moved toward us, monergistically. It was one-way action. He moved toward us, and he justified us, declaring us righteous. And finally, he glorified us. It's also in the past tense, the aorist, if you will, in the Greek. It's just like the others. It's listed as past tense, but we all know that we're still here in the flesh. We have not yet been glorified. There are a couple ways to answer this. I think one way is to look at the way that the Greek can be handled. The aorist tense can sometimes mean past tense. It can sometimes look at the whole aspect of the verb in a complete sense. Whatever your interpretation of that is, it is certain before God right now that you're going to be glorified. If you're a believer in Christ today, if you trust Christ as your Savior today, in Christ alone, your confidence is, then you are justified. You are declared righteous, and you are, in fact, going to be glorified. God has accomplished this great work. Remember the 100% rule, all the way from foreknowledge to glorification, it's all the same people. It's coextensive, that's another $5 word you can remember. All five groups are the same people. If you are foreknown, you are glorified. The conclusion is that God is in charge right now of working all things together for your good, and it's based upon what he has already accomplished in his foreknowledge, in his calling, predestination, his calling, his justification, and his glorification. So how to apply this? I would say, first of all, Christians, stop fretting. Stop fretting. The reason I can say that is because I fret, okay? I know what it's like to fret. And I won't bore you with the song. There's a great song. We sang it a while back. Cheer up, you saints of God. Good old Irish song. Cheer up, you saints of God. You have nothing to worry about, nothing to make you feel afraid, nothing to make you doubt. Remember, Jesus never fails, so why not trust him and shout, You'd be sorry you worried at all tomorrow morning. You've got to hear an Irish person sing that. It's just really a great little song. You can go up on YouTube and see it. Cheer up, ye saints of God. Stop fretting with the issues of life. Secondly, live confidence in the knowledge of God's sovereignty in your life today. This isn't just a chipper attitude of, well, I feel good because God's God, and so it's going to turn out well. No. We're talking about a rock-solid confidence that God is in control of my future. God is in control of the decisions I'm going to make tomorrow, and yes, he's in control of my sin. And he will use my sin for his glory, inevitably. And praise God, only God knows how to do that. Thirdly, if you're not a child of God today, one for whom God works all things together for good, who has been foreknown, predestined, called, justified, and glorified, I would urge you, become one today. And you say, well, how can I do that? If God's sovereign, what choice do I have? Scriptures tell us to repent and believe the gospel. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes on him should not perish but have everlasting life. If you believe the gospel today, if you turn from your sins today and repent and believe, you are one of the elect. You are one of the ones for whom this promise applies. May God help us to do that. Let us pray. Father, we thank you so much for this passage. Some people would call it dry doctrine. Father, I pray that you would cause us to see that it's far, far more than that. Lord, this is the reason I continue in my Christian life. This is the reason that every one of us continues from day to day. We know, Lord, that you're in charge. And on our knees before you, Father, we all acknowledge that you're a sovereign God when we come into a time of crisis. Father, I pray today that you will enable us today in a time of peace, relative peace, that we'll come to you and say, Lord, I believe in your sovereignty. And I know that I'm going to need this rock-solid foundation when calamity comes, because I know, Lord, from your word that it will come. We live in a fallen world, and Lord, we live in a world that is against you. We'll either suffer because of our own sins or we'll suffer because of the sins of others, but whatever the case, Lord, I want to go into the future knowing that you're in control. And Lord, give us the great joy of resting and rejoicing in that rock-solid knowledge. Father, give us the confidence on our deathbed to be able to rejoice in the fact that we have been foreknown, that we have been predestined, that we've been called, that we've been justified and that we've been glorified. Lord, I pray that you'd cause us as we partake of the Lord's supper this morning to understand this truth even greater, understand the cost that our Savior paid for us. In Jesus' name we pray.