The Perfect Diamond Of Romans 8:28 Series

[I am grateful to the teaching of Skip Heitzig at Calvary Church Albuquerque. His sermon, "The Steady Hand of a Caring God" provides the outline and structure of this sermon.]

I promise I didn’t plan this. We’ve been in Romans for over eight months now, taking it almost verse by verse. We’ve taken a couple of breaks here and there, times I’ve been out of town, or days we had a special emphasis that took us out of Romans. I say all that to tell you I don’t think I could have planned this.

But here it is. Today is August 28. 8-28. And today, we are going to spend nearly the entire sermon on Romans 8:28. And Romans 8:28 tells us that God causes all things to work together for His purposes.

You can’t make this stuff up! And in a way, this “coincidence”—if you even want to call it that—is a perfect illustration of what Romans 8:28 is all about.

Romans Chapter 8:28 is one of the most well-known verses in the entire Bible. Many of you know it by heart. When Biblegateway.com published a list of their most read verses, it was #3, behind John 3:16 and Jeremiah 29:11.

There is a good chance you have a pillow or coffee mug or T-shirt with Romans 8:28 on it.

But while many of you know every word of Romans 8:28 by heart, there’s also a pretty good chance that you haven’t really taken every word of Romans 8:28 to heart. And even if you have, there are a lot of people who claim Romans 8:28 out of context. They love 8:28, but they don’t know 8:29 and 30. And the truth is, Romans 8:28 really doesn’t make any sense without Romans 8:29-30. Let’s look at these three verses together. Normally, I read from the ESV, but I’m going to switch to the New American Standard version this morning, mainly because that’s what I first memorized 8:28 from. I’ll have it up on the screen too, because I know that’s not a translation a lot of people use. Let’s stand, if you are physically able, for the reading of God’s Word:

“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.

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[Prayer]

We’ve talked before about how, if the entire Bible was a necklace, then Romans would be the pendant on that necklace. Romans 8 would be the cluster of diamonds in the middle of the pendant. And verse 28 would be the brightest diamond in the cluster.

When a jeweler grades the quality of a diamond, he looks at five C’s: cut, color, clarity, carats, and certification. Recently, they’ve added a sixth C— conscience, which is whether or not the diamond is ethically sourced. So this morning, So we’re going to look at Romans 8:28 phrase by phrase, and I want to point out the six C’s of the diamond that is Romans 8:28.

The First C stands for Certainty. “We know” is how verse 28 starts.

Paul's not scratching his head saying, “We think,” or “We hope,” Or, maybe God causes all things to work together for good. He says, "We KNOW." The verb is in the perfect tense, which means it is a completed, once and for all, never to be repeated action. And it is in the indicative mood, which means it is a simple statement of fact. So we could translate “we know” as, “this is settled. We know it with absolute knowledge and complete certainty. As sure as the sun rises, We know this.”

Several times in the book of Romans, Paul talks about things that we can know with this kind of certainty.

• We know that God is just (Romans 2:2)

• We know that suffering produces endurance (Romans 5:3)

• We know that our old self was crucified (Romans 6:6)

• We know that Christ will never die again (Romans 6:9)

These are all things we can know with certainty. So add to that the certainty that God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love God.

The Bible is honest about the fact that there are things in life we don’t know. Both Habakuk and Job wondered why God would allow bad things to happen. Isaac said that he didn’t know the hour of his death. And neither do we. We don’t know the day Jesus will come back. And according to Mark 13:32, neither does Jesus Himself.