Absolutely Persuaded Series

The 8th chapter of Romans is a spiritual palace of comfort and challenge built for the children of

God. Nothing could be more optimistic than the words we find here that all works for good, and

that if God is before us who can be against us. God has given His Son who intercedes of us, and

nothing can separate from His love. We are more than conquerors. Such an optimistic view of

things seems to be more than we can believe. We wonder if the writer is some arm chair

philosopher who never got his hands dirty, and never knew what it was to suffer. It would be

easy for him to sit in his patted chair and write about life, while his servants bring him his

mid-afternoon snack.

But wait! We are talking about the wrong man. The author of this chapter is a soldier from

the battlefront. He knows what it is like to be hated, despised, beaten, stoned, shipwrecked, and

imprisoned. The Apostle Paul was not writing from a sheltered life, but from one that knew the

stress of constant combat and serious struggles. It is important to keep this in mind as we

consider his words.

Let's look first at-

I. HIS CERTAINTY. v. 28.

He says, "We know" and in verse 38, "I am persuaded." In a day when nothing seemed

certain, and governments can rise or fall overnight, and where text books change their contents

every year, we wonder if we can be certain of anything. We can never be sure if things will get

better, and we never know whether or not tragedy is waiting around the next corner. There is a

superficial optimism that tries to make things look brighter by whitewashing the dark facts, but

no one but the blind can find any comfort in this. We don't find this in Paul, for he never buries

his head in the sand saying all is well.

A news item in a Canadian paper during hunting season said, "Sam Higgins was accidentally

shot yesterday while hunting. One of the wounds is pronounced fatal, but his friends will be glad

to hear that the other wounds are not considered dangerous." They could have gone on to say

half of the shots never even hit him, but what comfort is that when the fact is he is dead? Paul is

not whitewashing the facts. He sees the reality of evil in the world. His confidence is not in the

world or self. His confidence is in God. He could say with the unknown poet,

Yet in this maddening maze of things,

And tossed by storm and flood,

To one fixed trust my spirit clings,

I know that God is good.

II. HIS CLAIM. v. 28. "All things work together for good."

Certainty Paul is not trying to say that everything in the world is good. Paul knows that the

world is evil. He has proof of that in his own body. "He had been to the whipping post so many

times that if he had gone to heaven backwards they would have recognized him by his scars."

Paul does not mean to give the impression that all that happens is God's will. He certainly knew

the Lord's Prayer that said, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." We would not need to

pray that if God's will was always perfectly done.

Most of the misery and suffering in the world is not God's will. It is not God's will that little

girls be kidnaped and murdered. It is not God's will that babies be born deformed. It is not God's

will that your appendix breaks and you have to have surgery. In a world where God's will does

not fully reign, sin curses all, and all suffer the consequences. What does Paul mean then when

he says all things work for good? First of all we need to know what he meant by good. Did he

mean that all works together for our health? No, for he just said that we groan in our bodies, and

he told in chapter 7 of the war in his body, and in another place of his thorn in the flesh.

Did he mean that works for our happiness and pleasure? No, for Paul was often in distress

and his heart was heavy with all of his cares for the churches because of their many problems. He

had few pleasures and much pain. Paul's idea of the highest good is seen in verse 29, which is to

be conformed to His image. That is the goal of our life, and to that end all things work together.

The path may be filled with pits of pain and trails of tragedy may join it, but God in His