SPEAKER_01: Today's reading is in Romans chapter 8 vers 26 to 30.
SPEAKER_01: And a question for today is who is God making us to be more like it says likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness for we do not know what to pray for as we ought.
SPEAKER_01: But the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groundings too deep for words.
SPEAKER_01: And he who searches hearts knows what is it what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for those saints according to the will of God.
SPEAKER_01: And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: And those whom he predestined, he also called.
SPEAKER_01: And so reads God's word.
SPEAKER_02: Well, welcome to you if you join us while we were singing.
SPEAKER_02: My name is Mark.
SPEAKER_02: I'm one of the leaders here at uh at City Church, and you're very welcome here with us.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, do turn up Romans chapter 8, uh, just those four verses, uh, verses 26 uh to 30, either in uh a Bible or uh on your phone.
SPEAKER_02: You can look that up so that you're able to follow along with us.
SPEAKER_02: This is our uh penultimate week in the book of Romans.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, we'll conclude uh this section next week as we finish chapter eight, and then actually we'll not pick it up until the until the autumn time.
SPEAKER_02: Uh chapter eight, uh, today and next week, uh, throw up some questions uh around God's sovereignty and things like predestination and other fun stuff like that.
SPEAKER_02: Uh questions that will ultimately be answered in October.
SPEAKER_02: So I'm going to take the time to work out the answer to those.
SPEAKER_02: And uh and so you can come back if you cannot wait uh until then, you can come and talk to me uh afterwards.
SPEAKER_02: But we uh we spend the summer time uh going through the psalms.
SPEAKER_02: We always have done.
SPEAKER_02: This is our normal practice, and so we're picking it up uh again in two weeks' time in Psalm 76.
SPEAKER_02: We start in Psalm 1 and we do eight to 10 Psalms every summer, and uh that is our our summer schedule going through the the song book, the book of emotional outpouring.
SPEAKER_02: We've been in quite dense, um uh quite kind of philosophical, theological doctrine uh over this last little while.
SPEAKER_02: And so it's good just to take a kind of even just a brain break uh and go to a style of literature that is much more poetic uh and much more um uh I'd say uh what would you say, well, emotionally engaged in one sense, not that this is not that this is not.
SPEAKER_02: Um last week, if you were here, uh the question that we were kind of wrestling with was well, is it is it worth it?
SPEAKER_02: Is it worth being uh a follower of Jesus?
SPEAKER_02: And unsurprisingly, perhaps, we concluded that the answer to that was yes, and we give and looked at two major reasons for that.
SPEAKER_02: The first was that uh, well, the reason why it's worth being a follower of Jesus is because God uh doesn't make you a slave, he makes you a son, that we're adopted as his children, sons and daughters of the living God, not merely his servants.
SPEAKER_02: And and we looked at maybe actually you relate to God like uh like a servant would a master, rather than a child would a uh a father.
SPEAKER_02: And the other reason uh that we saw why it's worth following Jesus is because all of the suffering of this world will one day give way to glory, and the suffering of uh that we go through has to be said in the context of the the glory that's so that awaits us.
SPEAKER_02: That's what Paul says uh wonderfully in verse 18 of chapter 8.
SPEAKER_02: And this week flows from those reasons insofar as that we might ask ourselves, okay, well, I see that it's it's worth keeping going as a follower of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, it's worth becoming a follower of Jesus, but it's a bit like standing at the base of a mountain.
SPEAKER_02: You say, okay, uh I see that it's going to be worth climbing up that mountain and getting to the to the summit.
SPEAKER_02: It's worth going on the hike to the top for the for the view.
SPEAKER_02: You've convinced me, Mark, that the uh that the vista that I will that I will see once I reach the summit is is worth it, that I that I won't regret it.
SPEAKER_02: But as you're lacing up your your hiking boots and you're getting ready for that walk up the mountainside, you're you're putting your pack on your on your back, and you've kind of got this niggle in your mind.
SPEAKER_02: You're thinking, well, yeah, but will I will I make it up?
SPEAKER_02: I understand that it's worth beginning the hike, but will I make it to the summit?
SPEAKER_02: Will I get to see the great panoramic view from the top?
SPEAKER_02: Perhaps what's worse is you you look out to the distance, out over the sea, and you can see just right on the horizon, there's there's some dark clouds, and you think, well, if the if the wind blows the wrong way, they're gonna be over here while I'm on the mountain, while I'm on this journey of following Jesus, there's gonna be a a storm that that comes in.
SPEAKER_02: And what's that gonna do?
SPEAKER_02: Is that gonna mean that I'm not gonna make it?
SPEAKER_02: Is that gonna mean that I'm gonna have to turn back?
SPEAKER_02: Am I gonna be lost on the on the mountainside?
SPEAKER_02: And so you begin to to feel anxious and to to say, well, I don't know if I'll if I'll make it, I don't know if I'll maybe I'll give up before I reach the end.
SPEAKER_02: Can I assure you that every follower of Jesus at one time or another asks themselves a question like that?
SPEAKER_02: The kind of will I make it sort of question.
SPEAKER_02: My faith right now, it feels it feels weak.
SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure that I can go on.
SPEAKER_02: And maybe that's exactly the place that you're you're in.
SPEAKER_02: How can I be assured that I will make it to the end?
SPEAKER_02: When the storms batter me on the mountainside of that journey of faith, having told me that it's that it's worth it, how will I know?
SPEAKER_02: How can you encourage me?
SPEAKER_02: What reasons for hope are there that I will make it to that great summit?
SPEAKER_02: And that's where Paul pivots in these last, or in these next rather four verses.
SPEAKER_02: He gives us some confidence for the journey, some some hope, some encouragements that actually, yes, it is worth it, and you will make it in the end.
SPEAKER_02: Let me give you three reasons that I think Paul uh lays out in this text.
SPEAKER_02: The first reason why you can have confidence in this journey of following Jesus is this that you don't travel alone.
SPEAKER_02: You do not travel alone.
SPEAKER_02: Rather, you have the help of God's Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_02: Have a look at verses 26 and 27.
SPEAKER_02: Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes, that is, he prays for us with groanings too deep for words.
SPEAKER_02: And he who searches hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
SPEAKER_02: One reason that we can have confidence in our journey as followers of Jesus is that God has not left us alone.
SPEAKER_02: The Father has adopted us, the legal papers are signed as we saw last week, and he is on his way to take us home, and in the meantime, he has left his spirit with us to help us.
SPEAKER_02: Who does the spirit help here?
SPEAKER_02: Well, the spirit helps all those who groan.
SPEAKER_02: Last week, far too briefly, really, at the end of the of the sermon, uh, we looked at how creation is groaning.
SPEAKER_02: The creation itself, the whole cosmos, is longing for something.
SPEAKER_02: It's longing for the day when God would renew all things, when death and suffering and pain and sadness would one day come undone.
SPEAKER_02: And then Paul says that we ourselves, who have the Spirit of God, we groan.
SPEAKER_02: We who have our eyes open to see that this world really isn't meant to be this way, and that the that this isn't all that there is, that there is a uh a new creation that we're journeying towards, that one day will come.
SPEAKER_02: And while we wait and experience the brokenness of this world, we groan, don't we?
SPEAKER_02: We feel the the anguish and grief, we long for things to be made different.
SPEAKER_02: We groan in in sickness, we groan in sadness, we groan when in pain.
SPEAKER_02: I was thinking about this uh just this week as I was preparing this, and I have the sense that when I get when I get bad news, um, I don't I don't tend to cry, not immediately.
SPEAKER_02: Um what I think I do, and you can ask Philippa whether or not this is true, is I think I go around sighing.
SPEAKER_02: I sigh a lot.
SPEAKER_02: I remember um a friend mentor, the man who married Philippa and I, he he passed away not long after we were married, and he was he was a dear friend uh to each of us.
SPEAKER_02: And I just I remember that being a season of just sighing, just thinking of Mike, and even now uh as I was writing this, thinking again of Mike and the blessing that he was and finding myself sighing.
SPEAKER_02: Do you ever find yourself just sighing deeply because of something that is something that's going on in your heart that you can't quite articulate?
SPEAKER_02: Something that's kind of inexpressible.
SPEAKER_02: And the best way to articulate it is in a sigh, in a groan.
SPEAKER_02: There's a wordless longing there.
SPEAKER_02: What has Paul got to say to us in those moments?
SPEAKER_02: You see his encouragement?
SPEAKER_02: His encouragement is this.
SPEAKER_02: He said God hears your sighings.
SPEAKER_02: That the spirit knows exactly what to do with wordless prayers.
SPEAKER_02: Isn't that an encouragement?
SPEAKER_02: The spirit knows exactly what to do with wordless prayers, those longings that well up within us, and we don't even know how to put them into words.
SPEAKER_02: But the spirit helps us on our journey.
SPEAKER_02: And he knows the mind of God, and God knows the spirit, and the spirit is able to take those wordless longings and pray for us.
SPEAKER_02: And why do we need this help?
SPEAKER_02: Well, Paul tells us that the spirit comes to help us in our weakness.
SPEAKER_02: Don't you sometimes feel weak and you don't quite know what way to turn, what the best choice is?
SPEAKER_02: You don't quite know how best to follow God, or even if in this moment that you want to, you don't quite know what to ask for.
SPEAKER_02: What does the Spirit do?
SPEAKER_02: The Spirit helps us in our weakness.
SPEAKER_02: Do you see how tender this is?
SPEAKER_02: How warm, how beautiful this is.
SPEAKER_02: That God our Father, who has adopted us, who is on his way to bring us home, he knows our limitations.
SPEAKER_02: Think of the Psalmist who says that uh that God knows our frame.
SPEAKER_02: He remembers that we are dust.
SPEAKER_02: How strong is dust, really?
SPEAKER_02: He remembers that there are times when we we feel so at the end of ourselves.
SPEAKER_02: He knows that there are times because of our finite strength and finite knowledge and finite wisdom, that we simply do not know how to move forward.
SPEAKER_02: And our Father knows that.
SPEAKER_02: And he helps us in that.
SPEAKER_02: In our weakness, God does not sit back and simply say, Well, you've got to figure it out.
SPEAKER_02: Work it out and come back to me when you've realized what it is you really want to ask for.
SPEAKER_02: You know the way I don't if you ever had a cat.
SPEAKER_02: You open the back door to the cat, and the cat stands with two paws inside the house and two paws outside the house.
SPEAKER_02: You kind of look at it and go, Well, are you coming in or you're going out?
SPEAKER_02: Dogs don't do that, dogs just run in, right?
SPEAKER_02: But a cat will just kind of stand there and we say, Well, hurry up and make a decision.
SPEAKER_02: God's not like that.
SPEAKER_02: And we're not like cats because they're evil anyway.
SPEAKER_02: He comes to us even when we don't know what to ask for.
SPEAKER_02: The Spirit comes alongside us, tender and caring.
SPEAKER_02: He interprets our groaning.
SPEAKER_02: Do you know what do you know what that means?
SPEAKER_02: That means that you have a God who doesn't just see you in your groaning.
SPEAKER_02: He understands it.
SPEAKER_02: He understands it more than you do.
SPEAKER_02: He knows what you mean when you sigh through the day, even when you don't.
SPEAKER_02: Moreover, I think there's even more help to be to be gleaned here.
SPEAKER_02: It's that the spirit helps us when we don't know how to pray.
SPEAKER_02: Do you see that in verse 26?
SPEAKER_02: For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the spirit intercedes for us.
SPEAKER_02: You ever pray prayers and you look back years later and you think, actually, I'm really glad that you didn't answer that prayer?
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, the few of you have.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe you have prayed a prayer along the lines of um, please, Lord, let me let me pass this exam, let me pass this year.
SPEAKER_02: Don't let me fail this year and have to and have to repeat it.
SPEAKER_02: And then you do fail, and you do have to repeat, or something happened, and that failure hits you, and you kind of look and you think, well, why did why didn't God answer that prayer?
SPEAKER_02: Wasn't that a right sort of prayer?
SPEAKER_02: And then you look back some years later and you think, oh, actually, that was the best possible thing.
SPEAKER_02: That was the best possible thing for me, because what that did was it it taught me how to fail.
SPEAKER_02: It helped me learn resilience, a kind of dependence upon uh upon God.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, he didn't answer that that particular prayer to pass or to succeed in that moment, but but he did something far more wonderful.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm actually quite glad in retrospect.
SPEAKER_02: It wasn't fun in the moment, it was painful.
SPEAKER_02: I'm so glad that God didn't answer that prayer.
SPEAKER_02: Or you pray, Lord, please don't don't let this relationship end.
SPEAKER_02: I love this person, please.
SPEAKER_02: I want us to be for together forever.
SPEAKER_02: I I want to to be in a relationship uh with this with this person.
SPEAKER_02: But then the relationship does end, and you you're attempted to think, well, God, God, why did you why why have you caused this pain?
SPEAKER_02: Why have you let me experience this?
SPEAKER_02: Where where were you?
SPEAKER_02: Why haven't you answered this prayer?
SPEAKER_02: Then a decade later, you're married to someone else, you've you've fallen in love with your absolutely besought of it.
SPEAKER_02: And you look back at your previous relationship, you're like, God, I'm really glad that you didn't answer that prayer.
SPEAKER_02: Ah, again, see?
SPEAKER_02: Because of because of what I have now.
SPEAKER_02: We don't really know what to pray for as we as we ought.
SPEAKER_02: But there's a groan behind those prayers, I think.
SPEAKER_02: There's a groan, there's a longing behind them.
SPEAKER_02: The the longing, the groaning uh to succeed in the person that God has made you to be, the groan, the longing to love someone and to uh and to pour yourself out to them and to provide for them and to love them.
SPEAKER_02: That's those are legitimate longings.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, you didn't pass the exam.
SPEAKER_02: Yes, you broke up with that person.
SPEAKER_02: But do you what happened?
SPEAKER_02: God heard the longing, the groaning behind those prayers, and he answered that.
SPEAKER_02: You see, and here's the point.
SPEAKER_02: God will always give you what you would have asked for if you knew everything.
SPEAKER_02: Let me say that again.
SPEAKER_02: God will always give you what you would have asked for if you knew everything.
SPEAKER_02: And so we can look back at what we think are unanswered prayers and realize, oh no, they've been asked, they've been answered in a far more perfect way than I could have ever imagined in that moment.
SPEAKER_02: I thought that the best thing for me was this.
SPEAKER_02: But actually, God was doing something else.
SPEAKER_02: He was hearing the groaning, the longing behind the presenting issue, ask, and he was meeting that.
SPEAKER_02: And the Holy Spirit helps us.
SPEAKER_02: He understands the groaning, the longing, even better than we do.
SPEAKER_02: He prays for us, not against us.
SPEAKER_02: He's with us in our weakness, in our groaning, in our ignorance when we don't know what to pray.
SPEAKER_02: And so the first reason why you can have hope in the journey as you continue on, seeing following Jesus is worth it, is that you are not alone.
SPEAKER_02: God, the Holy Spirit, is with you, praying for you, even when you don't know what to ask for.
SPEAKER_02: The second reason, and there's three this morning, the second reason why you can have confidence, why you can have hope in that journey is this that even your sufferings work for good.
SPEAKER_02: Even your sufferings work for good.
SPEAKER_02: The Spirit takes our prayers and prays for us in line with God's will.
SPEAKER_02: And here we begin to see well what God's will is.
SPEAKER_02: God's will is good, or sometimes they say the good.
SPEAKER_02: I think the good is slightly more helpful for our understanding.
SPEAKER_02: But you see it, verse 28.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 28 gets put on calendars.
SPEAKER_02: People uh uh people love to uh to meditate on it and take it out of context.
SPEAKER_02: Let's remind ourselves of it.
SPEAKER_02: We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
SPEAKER_02: God is at work in all things for what?
SPEAKER_02: For good, for the good of those who love him.
SPEAKER_02: Again, let's unpack this a little bit more.
SPEAKER_02: First, who is doing the working?
SPEAKER_02: God is.
SPEAKER_02: it just worked itself out.
SPEAKER_02: It all just kind of came out in the wash.
SPEAKER_02: No, no, no, that's not what the verse says.
SPEAKER_02: What the verse says is that God was working in all of those things.
SPEAKER_02: So Christians are not determinists, insofar as we think that God has kind of wind up the world and stuff just shakes out for good.
SPEAKER_02: No, no, he's actively working in all things for the good of those who love him.
SPEAKER_02: What about when things go wrong?
SPEAKER_02: Is God working in those things for for good?
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
SPEAKER_02: Suffering, pain, failure, loss, sickness, grief.
SPEAKER_02: Even The mundane things, plans not working out.
SPEAKER_02: They're all part of the all things.
SPEAKER_02: How many things is God working through and in in your life for good?
SPEAKER_02: All things.
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't say he's working in all of the positive things.
SPEAKER_02: Sometimes the uh uh the bad things uh creep up and they kind of blindside God, they kind of take him by surprise.
SPEAKER_02: And well, but he's trying to kind of stack up more good things than than bad.
SPEAKER_02: He's working really hard to make sure that you only get good things, but sometimes a little bit of suffering, a little bit of grief that kind of slips through the cracks, and you know, God can't help it.
SPEAKER_02: You know, there's what seven billion people on the planet, you know, it's gonna finally slip through the cracks somehow.
SPEAKER_02: No.
SPEAKER_02: He says that all things, even suffering, evil, pain, used by God to achieve his purpose, the good.
SPEAKER_02: God doesn't send evil, nor does he condone it.
SPEAKER_02: But in his good and sovereign care, in his majestic power, he is able to use those evil things for good.
SPEAKER_02: You see two major examples of that uh in the Bible.
SPEAKER_02: Let me very quickly give you an Old Testament one and a New Testament one.
SPEAKER_02: Old Testament one's Joseph, right?
SPEAKER_02: Of technicolor dreamcoat fame.
SPEAKER_02: Uh he is hated by his brothers because he's a bit of a jerk, right?
SPEAKER_02: Um, and his brothers, uh, because his father favored him more than others, uh, they sell him into slavery and they tell Jacob his father that he's dead.
SPEAKER_02: He gets sold into slavery in Egypt and ends up um working for a man called Potiphar.
SPEAKER_02: His wife falsely accuses him of sexual assault, and he is put in prison, languishes in prison, uh, for years and years and years.
SPEAKER_02: And through God's working, he is given a series of dreams which cause him to be elevated in the Egyptian court so that he becomes second in command to Pharaoh himself.
SPEAKER_02: And as second in command to Pharaoh, he administrates the agricultural input and storage of Egypt so that people are saved through a famine.
SPEAKER_02: When the famine hits, uh, his brothers have no food, and they come down to Egypt because they heard that uh that the Egyptians had had some sort of foresight, and they they'd stored up loads of food, and so they go to buy grain to make bread, and and they they meet this man in Egyptian dress, and the man recognizes them as his brothers, but they don't recognize him.
SPEAKER_02: And so they bow down before him, and uh uh and uh Joseph blesses them with food, and eventually he reveals his true identity to his brothers, and his brothers are terrified, they think, well, this is the end of us.
SPEAKER_02: They look at what we did to our brother, and now he's got way more power over us.
SPEAKER_02: And do you know what is what Joseph says?
SPEAKER_02: He says, What you intended for evil, you actually intended evil, what you intended for evil, in selling me uh into slavery, in telling my father that I was dead, they had evil intent.
SPEAKER_02: What you intended for evil, God intended for good and for the saving of many lives, those who are alive today.
SPEAKER_02: That God worked even through the evil intent of men's hearts to bring about the good, the saving of many lives.
SPEAKER_02: What's our New Testament example?
SPEAKER_02: Well, our New Testament example, brothers and sisters, is the cross of the Lord Jesus, is it not?
SPEAKER_02: Who was intending good on that dark day?
SPEAKER_02: I'll tell you one thing, Caiaphas and the Jewish leadership, they weren't intending good, they were intending evil, weren't they?
SPEAKER_02: In their kangaroo, their kangaroo court and their false accusations of the Messiah.
SPEAKER_02: Was Pilate intending good?
SPEAKER_02: No, he wasn't.
SPEAKER_02: He was a Roman middle management, wanted to keep the peace.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, and and so he corrupts his political leadership by sentencing this man to death.
SPEAKER_02: What about Judas?
SPEAKER_02: Was Judas intending good?
SPEAKER_02: No, in his greed and his avarice, he betrayed his friend.
SPEAKER_02: All the way along, people were intending evil on that good Friday.
SPEAKER_02: Who was intending good?
SPEAKER_02: God was.
SPEAKER_02: The saving of many lives.
SPEAKER_02: Look around you.
SPEAKER_02: That even in the darkest event, the most corrupt, the most shameful act in all of human history, that God would come as a man and that we would murder him, God was using that to save the world.
SPEAKER_02: Do you see?
SPEAKER_02: That God, in his sovereign care and his mighty power, works in all things for the good of those who love him.
SPEAKER_02: And so, can I encourage you, when you're tempted to say something like, no good can come of this, this text would like to differ.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe it is that actually you need to meditate on a truth like this and allow it to do battle with the fears and anxieties in your heart.
SPEAKER_02: Because even when life seems to have gone wrong, God still has your good in mind.
SPEAKER_02: Now, let me be clear and give a word of warning.
SPEAKER_02: Who does God work all things for the good of?
SPEAKER_02: Well, we see it there in verse 28.
SPEAKER_02: Those who love him and are called according to his purpose.
SPEAKER_02: You see, the sad reality is that for the person who is rejecting God, who is not a follower of the Lord Jesus, even the blessings that they experience, even the good material, God might be blessing you materially, might be blessing you relationally, but you're not a follower of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Let me give you a caution.
SPEAKER_02: Even the blessings do not work for your good.
SPEAKER_02: Because they're causing you to forget God.
SPEAKER_02: They're causing you to think that you do not need him.
SPEAKER_02: Be very wary of when God gives you everything that your heart desires, but not himself.
SPEAKER_02: I've been skirting around it up until this point, but right now we need to address this question of well, what is the good that God is working for?
SPEAKER_02: Well, let me say that it's not just simply some generalized happiness.
SPEAKER_02: God does not promise you as a Christian more happiness, more ease, more health, more prosperity.
SPEAKER_02: No, those things may come your way.
SPEAKER_02: And when happiness visits your house, thank God for it.
SPEAKER_02: But God has something far deeper, far richer, far more glorious in mind.
SPEAKER_02: And it's spelled out for us in verse 29.
SPEAKER_02: Again, have a look at it with us.
SPEAKER_02: For those whom he foreknew, he also be predestined for what?
SPEAKER_02: To be conformed to the image of his son.
SPEAKER_02: What is the good that God is working in your life for?
SPEAKER_02: That you might be conformed to the image of his son.
SPEAKER_02: That is, God is working in all things, the good and the bad, so that you might become more like Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: The good that God is supremely concerned for is not necessarily a change in your circumstances, but a change in your character.
SPEAKER_02: This is why he is able to work in all things, even things of suffering, even pain, he uses to do what?
SPEAKER_02: Well, to deepen faith, to grow dependence, to build resilience, to strengthen resolve, to clarify hope, to fuel prayerfulness, to make us more like Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: You see, in the short term being selfish and having all of your selfish desires met, it sounds great, but in the long term, it will destroy you and it will make you not a very nice person to be around.
SPEAKER_02: No one wants to be around the person who is who only ever gets their own way.
SPEAKER_02: So short-term good, long-term bad.
SPEAKER_02: The opposite is true of our difficulties, of the suffering that we feel.
SPEAKER_02: Short-term bad, there's plenty of uh in the Bible and certainly in the book of Romans, where God, where God acknowledges the pain is actually painful.
SPEAKER_02: The suffering is actually hard and difficult, but long-term good.
SPEAKER_02: Suffering gives way to glory, as we saw last week.
SPEAKER_02: You see how transformational this can be as you view your sufferings?
SPEAKER_02: Let me quote you uh just a couple of lines from a man called Jonathan Edwards.
SPEAKER_02: Jonathan Edwards is an American pastor round about the uh the early 1700s, and and he says this uh on this particular text.
SPEAKER_02: He says that we may look down upon the whole army of worldly afflictions and see them as under our feet, and look upon them with slight and disregard, and consider that however great they are, however numerous they may be, let them all join their forces together against us and put on their most rueful and dreadful habits, forms, and appearances.
SPEAKER_02: Let them spend all of their strength, vigor, and violence with endeavors to do us harm.
SPEAKER_02: It will all be in vain, Edward says.
SPEAKER_02: Every trial, every grief, every pain, the Christian is able to look at it and say, the lower you lay me, the higher God will raise me.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_02: The more you wish to destroy me, the more that God will remake me into the image of his son, to make me more like Jesus, to be about that eternal good.
SPEAKER_02: This is the second reason why you can have hope for the journey.
SPEAKER_02: That God is working for your good even in suffering.
SPEAKER_02: Thirdly, finally, the third reason why you can have hope, why you can have confidence in that journey this morning is that God will bring you home.
SPEAKER_02: That God will bring you to the end.
SPEAKER_02: Verses 29 and 30.
SPEAKER_02: 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.
SPEAKER_02: And those whom he predestined, he also called, and those whom he called, he also justified, and those whom he justified, he also glorified.
SPEAKER_02: How do we know that we will make it to the end?
SPEAKER_02: How do we know that we will ascend the summit through every storm and on that last day look out upon the panoramic glory of the goodness of God?
SPEAKER_02: Well, the answer here is that because God has forged an unbreakable chain wrought in eternity before the world began, which stretches on to the eternity before us.
SPEAKER_02: That chain has several links.
SPEAKER_02: Let me spell them out to you.
SPEAKER_02: They are all interconnected.
SPEAKER_02: You cannot have one without the other.
SPEAKER_02: All those that God foreknew, we'll unpack that in a second, all those that he foreknew, he predestined.
SPEAKER_02: That's the first link.
SPEAKER_02: All those he foreknew get predestined.
SPEAKER_02: Next link.
SPEAKER_02: All those that he predestined, he calls.
SPEAKER_02: All that he calls, he justifies, and all that he justifies, he glorifies.
SPEAKER_02: Do you see what he's saying?
SPEAKER_02: Actually, you can cut out the middle link, so you need to say, All those that God foreknew, he glorified.
SPEAKER_02: All those that God knew in eternity past, he glorified in the new heavens and the new earth.
SPEAKER_02: He does not say that God, that those that he foreknew, he predestined.
SPEAKER_02: Some rejected the call, some went their own way, some even some slipped through his fingers, some changed their mind, and and then those who were left, he glorified.
SPEAKER_02: No, no.
SPEAKER_02: Those he foreknew, he glorified.
SPEAKER_02: Those who he chose before eternity passed, he brought through to the end.
SPEAKER_02: Not one is lost.
SPEAKER_02: All that the Father gives to me will come to me, says the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And all those who come to me, I will never drive away.
SPEAKER_02: John 6.37.
SPEAKER_02: And what does God mean?
SPEAKER_02: Or what does Paul mean that God foreknew?
SPEAKER_02: You know, we'll get just do some easy things right at the end of the sermon, do you?
SPEAKER_02: Let me tell you what this does not mean.
SPEAKER_02: This is what you might have been told in youth group, uh, and perhaps kind of still hold on to.
SPEAKER_02: This does not mean that God somehow looks down the corridor of time and sees who it is, will freely respond to him, and so he predestines them.
SPEAKER_02: One of the reasons why that's not what it means is because that's not how foreknowledge is used in the Bible.
SPEAKER_02: Foreknowledge is not simply God's ability to see the future.
SPEAKER_02: Rather, it is it's a relational term.
SPEAKER_02: It's best understood as those who God set his love upon.
SPEAKER_02: Those who he chose.
SPEAKER_02: Those who he set his love upon, he predestined.
SPEAKER_02: That is, that God chose to love you before you were ever born.
SPEAKER_02: God set his love upon you before you ever did anything to earn it.
SPEAKER_02: And from that love, he predestined you.
SPEAKER_02: Predestined here in this context, just means that God set a plan in motion that we might come to know him as our Father, the one who has set his love upon us.
SPEAKER_02: And in the fullness of time, that plan unfolds in our life.
SPEAKER_02: And he speaks to us, he calls us, and our dead souls come alive, come alive.
SPEAKER_02: I want you to see, I want to try and impress upon you actually how beautiful this is.
SPEAKER_02: That God does not put a general call out to all humanity and say, Well, anyone who's willing, if you'd like to come, I'd love to have you.
SPEAKER_02: The door's open.
SPEAKER_02: Does anybody want to come in?
SPEAKER_02: That's not what God does.
SPEAKER_02: It's far more intentional than that.
SPEAKER_02: It's that he loves you personally, it's that he loves you by name, that he has chosen to set his love upon you specifically.
SPEAKER_02: His plan is in effect, whereby all of your experiences, all of the things that you choose by your own agency, that they might be used by him to bring you to himself.
SPEAKER_02: And that he calls you by name.
SPEAKER_02: So as you accept the invitation to a Bible study, as you accept the invitation to come to church or to go to dinner with that Christian friend, or to fall in love with that person who's a Christian, and there's something intriguing about them that you want to get to know more of.
SPEAKER_02: And you voluntarily choose to be in that person's life, or you voluntarily choose to go to that Bible study, you voluntarily choose to be here this morning, and all the while you never sought him, you would never choose him.
SPEAKER_02: Suddenly, his voice comes screaming through the darkness of your soul and floods your soul like light filling a dark cave, and you hear him calling your name, and he speaks to you and he says, Live, and in that moment you cannot stay dead anymore.
SPEAKER_02: That is the effective call of God.
SPEAKER_02: And those who he calls, he makes a child.
SPEAKER_02: He makes them a child legally by justifying them, by forgiving their sins and bringing them into his family by adoption.
SPEAKER_02: And one day, one day, not too far from that, one day, he will change you.
SPEAKER_02: He will transform you into something more beautiful, more magnificent than you could ever possibly imagine.
SPEAKER_02: All sin, gone, all shame, gone, all fear, gone.
SPEAKER_02: And did you notice the tense?
SPEAKER_02: Right at the very end of verse 30.
SPEAKER_02: Those who he predestined.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, okay, that's that's that's a long time ago.
SPEAKER_02: Those he called, yeah, he called me to himself 20 20 years ago, and that's when he justified me.
SPEAKER_02: Those who he justified, he also glorified.
SPEAKER_02: Do you see?
SPEAKER_02: Do you see how wonderful this is?
SPEAKER_02: It's glorified is also past tense.
SPEAKER_02: Do you see?
SPEAKER_02: It's not, and he one day will glorify you.
SPEAKER_02: No, it's as good as done.
SPEAKER_02: That as he set his love upon you, that's how certain that you can be that he will bring you up that summit, that he will bring you to the end.
SPEAKER_02: And so he can put it in the past tense because it's as good as certain.
SPEAKER_02: And so our Christian experience, from our vantage point, we think, but yeah, I I said yes to the invitation to church.
SPEAKER_02: I I asked my questions in the Bible study and and pursued the answers to who Jesus was.
SPEAKER_02: I I asked him to forgive my sin and to change me.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but look back.
SPEAKER_02: You ever have this experience that you look back over the course of your life and you see it with new eyes, you think, oh wow, God was working in that, and I didn't even realize that he was.
SPEAKER_02: All because he loved me, he knew me before I loved him.
SPEAKER_02: He was looking for me when I had never thought to look for him.
SPEAKER_02: He saved me before I even realized that I needed saving.
SPEAKER_02: In love, he called me.
SPEAKER_02: And all those he called, he brings to glory.
SPEAKER_02: This is the assurance that Christ will hold us fast.
SPEAKER_02: This is the beauty.
SPEAKER_02: People think, oh, predestination.
SPEAKER_02: Oh, are you a Calvinist?
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
SPEAKER_02: Only insofar as that's what I think this text is teaching.
SPEAKER_02: God foreknows people.
SPEAKER_02: He sets his love upon them, and he brings them through to the end.
SPEAKER_02: And so you can have great assurance on your journey, that you are not left alone, that the Spirit comes and he prays with you with groanings too deep for words.
SPEAKER_02: He knows how to interpret your longings before the throne of grace.
SPEAKER_02: And God is working in all of your circumstances, even and perhaps even especially in the suffering and pain to make you more like Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And he will not let you go.
SPEAKER_02: He will bring you from glory to glory.
SPEAKER_02: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: If you found this helpful or want to know more about City Church Dublin, please visit our website found at the link below.