GOD IS FOR US
Romans 8:26-30
* Don Moen is a name which is well known among modern day musicians. He has written some of the most beloved and sung songs of our time. As a writer/producer/publisher, he and the team at Integrity Music developed and released Worship projects for choirs. One of those was entitled, “God for Us”. Did you realize that in His sovereignty God is actually “FOR” us?
* God is actually for everyone of His crown creation (that would be you and me), even those who don’t know Him, don’t want to know Him, and don’t care about Him. For those God’s desire is found in 2 Peter 3:9. It is God’s desire that all men come to Christ and be saved. He is even for those who reject Him. He sent Jesus to forgive sin, remake us, and give us life both abundance and eternal.
* He is also for those of us who KNOW Him, have a relationship with Him, and believes in His Son Jesus. And that is what Paul is writing about in Romans 8. He is having a “believer to believer” conversation and it seems he is offering encouragement believers who need encouraging in the face of trials. Let’s look at the many ways God let’s us know He is FOR US.
1. God’s Provision for us – God provides everything we need. When God created Adam, Adam needed life and God provided His own breath. When you and I were in sin and needed forgiveness, God provided a Savior in Jesus. When our soul needed stirring to come to faith, God provided the Holy Spirit. When we accepted His offer of salvation, we needed a helper to guide and direct us, once again, God provided the Holy Spirit.
a. The Spirit’s Availability – Verse 26 says in part, “In the same way the Spirit also joins to us help.” When we come to Jesus in faith, God provides the Spirit to be our counselor, guide and friend. He is always available. He is available to be our comforter, our conscious, as well as our counselor. He is one that will never mislead, misinform, and misdirect you. You can lean on the on the Holy Spirit for every decision you make. He is always available to help us in our “weakness.” I will remind you of what the Bible says, “In our weakness, He is strong.” He is available to help us make good decisions, to join hand in hand and heart with heart with us, & even more,
b. The Spirit’s Assistance – Have you ever thought about what the Holy Spirit, which God provides us, does regularly for us? He “intercedes.” Candidly, one of the things we miss is that our minds are finite while God is infinite.
* This means we don’t have the concepts, let alone the words, to pray and ask for exactly what we need. Yes, we can express some things in “earthly” language, but the Spirit of God in us speaks to the Son of God (at the right hand of the Father) and by the time our request gets to the ears of the Father it has been completely clarified. But it doesn’t stop there.
c. The Spirit’s Assignment – Please don’t miss this concept. God has provided a way of salvation for us and then He has given to us the Holy Spirit to be available and give assistance to us, but it’s not just any assistance. The Holy Spirit has a divine assignment, “to keep us in the will of God for our lives.” Now, think about this; the very part of the Godhead which has been given to us to keep us in God’s divine will is the very part of God which many believers discount. Is it any wonder that so the church and believers have lost influence in our culture? But listen, God is still for us. He wants us to get with the program and appropriate the Holy Spirit to help us in our lives. But God’s provision is not all He has for us.
2. God’s Progression for us – Another concept which God gives in His word is that “He is for us so much that He gives us a process or a progression which leads us through this life and gives us hope for tomorrow.” Progression can be a good thing (if you are headed right). Years ago, we were collecting money to build a building. We put a visual aid up in the worship center, kind of like a thermometer (I guess every church has done this). Each week, we made it a part of our celebration time to raise the “temperature” on the thermometer. When we make progress, life is good. Verse 28 is one of the most familiar verses (which is often misquoted) in the Bible.
a. The Origin – for our progress is that “We know.” In most of the world’s religions, their deity doesn’t want you to know things. Much of the time many unanswered questions exists. However, from the beginning of time, God has wanted His crown creation to KNOW. In Matthew 13, Jesus was asked why He spoke in parables. His response was this; “So YOU will know and they won’t.” Additionally, the Apostle John says, “that you may know.” God wants us to be informed, confident, and secure. He doesn’t want us ignorant, He wants us to know. That’s why He gave us the Bible and the Spirit. This is the first step of understanding and salvation.
b. The Operation - How exactly does this “knowing” progress or operate? He wants us to know that “All Things” are at work in our lives.
* Here’s what we sometimes miss; everything in your life is being used by God to make you into the person He wants you to be. Now, you may be saying, “What about the bad things?” Truthfully, God allows the bad things to come into our lives for a reason. Good, bad, and/or neutral, God is in charge and He wants you to be the best you can be. By the way, He’s not real interested in our comfort; He is more interested in our maturity and will do and allow whatever He deems best to shape us.
c. The Objective – is that everything we experience “Works Together” to mature us in our faith and in our walk with Christ. Turn with me to Job 42 let’s see what happened in Job’s life AFTER the disasters which came His way. The truth is, the book of Job ended with not really knowing why all this had happened to him. Before we read, consider this; whatever loss you have experience in your life, Job experienced one just as difficult. You may say, “I went bankrupt and lost everything or my retirement evaporated in the stock market.” Job had all his possession taken from Him. You may say, “I lost a spouse or a child and no one knows how I feel.” Job does. Job can even say, “My friends abandoned me and attempted to mislead me.” At the end of the day, Job seemed to have ingrained in His spirit Romans 8:28, so let’s read his word.(Verses 1-6). Everything which happens to you and me works in tandem with the sovereignty of God.
d. The Outcome - is “For Good to those who love Him and are called.” Did you hear that? It says, “For good.” God is so much for each of us that He only wants the best for us, good. However, He doesn’t define ‘good’ like we do. For us “good” is all about us, our wants, and desires. The good which God is talking about is the eternal good. That is, the “looking beyond yourself. Remember God created the Light and said, “It is good.” Light is not simply good for the moment light is always good. When God looks at us, He sees His Children and because He’s good (who sees the beginning from the end) He not only wants the best for us, but uses everything in our lives to give us His best, making us God’s man or God’s woman.
e. The Object – of all these things are “His good purposes.” Not only does God simply want the best for us, but He has a purpose and a plan for us as His Children. The Old Testament reminds us that “Our ways are not HIS ways and our thoughts are not HIS thoughts.” Honestly, in the moment sometimes we may think, “This is bad” and a month later know better.
* In God’s economy bad circumstance have a way of making us better.
From July to October 1987, dozens of fires scorched more than 1.2 million acres of Yellowstone National Park, destroying forest land in approximately half the park. To many watching television across the nation, this was a total disaster, but not to former Yellowstone Park Superintendent Thomas O. Hobbs. "Good things come out of seemingly bad things," he said. Even though the current scene was marked by ruined landscape. Hobbs explained that major fires can actually benefit the park in the long run. Burnouts rejuvenate park land by cleansing it of insect and plant disease before the natural growth cycle starts again.
* This is exactly what God does for us in the spiritual realm. It is the process of progress. When things seemingly bad come to you, look ahead.
3. God’s Plan for us. – Verses 29-30 give us a great pictorial display of God’s plan for His Children. I might add that as I have read, studied, and come to understand verse 29, it seems this verse have been the one of the sources of confusion and misunderstanding by believers. (Let read verse 29) It is neither my desire nor is it my task to turn this message into a ‘seminary class’ on theology, but allow me to (hopefully) clear up some issues.
* The ground floor for understanding is this; God is sovereign. He knows the end from the beginning. He created it all, He designed it all, He controls it all, and He knows it all. In His sovereignty God can, no doubt, look down the timeline and see the end of all time. He sees it clearly and correctly. If He couldn’t do this, He wouldn’t be God.
* The next truth we must get our hands around is that He is an infinite God and we are a finite people. There is no way for us to understand all that God does, is doing, or will do. Additionally, we cannot understand HOW He does it. The prophets, the disciples, nor the Ancients, can understand how God works or all that He is doing. Please be careful about preachers, teachers, or believers, who think they have it all, figured out.
* God, in His foreknowledge and sovereignty, probably knows every person who is going to be saved. So from God’s perspective, He knows. However, seeing things from Man’s perspective, we must make a choice. When the Holy Spirit stirs your heart to be saved, you have a choice. When God speaks about reforming your life, you have a choice. You have a choice because God has allowed you the privilege of making a choice. When we come to Christ—one day—we will be conformed into Him image. 1 John tells us that “When we see Him, we shall be like HE is.” I Thessalonians says, “At the trumpet call of God we will be changed.” God’s plan for us is to be change from this sinful, wretched body of clay into a body which has heavenly significance. Our mortal shall put on immortality.
* There are three stages listed in His plan for each of us.
a) To Be Called – We think of a calling from God as being for “vocational ministry” and certainly anyone who engages in ministry as a vocation should voice a divine call. If they do not, then money is their object. However, God places several calls on every believer. The first call is the call to be saved. If God, through the ministry of the Holy Spirit, doesn’t call you, then you cannot be saved. The next call is your place of service. Is it to be a vocational or an ad vocational journey? Notice, that EVERYONE receives this call. We could offer many other calls, just know that the Bible teaches that “the gifts and callings of God are without repentance, or better said, are irrevocable.” God is calling.
b) To Be Justified – God’s plan for us is to be justified or made right before Him. It is true that Jesus died for our sin but it is equally true that He was RAISED for our JUSTIFICATION. He died to make us clean and was raised to clear our record.
It seems that there was a man in England who put his Rolls-Royce on a boat and went across to the continent to go on a holiday. While he was driving around Europe, something happened to the motor of his car. He called the Rolls-Royce people back in England and asked, "I’m having trouble with my car; what do you suggest I do?" Well, the Rolls-Royce people flew a mechanic over! The mechanic repaired the car and flew back to England
and left the man to continue his holiday. As you can imagine, the fellow was wondering, "How much is this going to cost me?" So when he got back to England, he wrote the people a letter and asked how much he owed them. He received a letter from the office that read: "Dear Sir: There is no record anywhere in our files that anything ever went wrong with a Rolls-Royce." That is justification.
* God’s plan is for those who trust Him to be called, to be justified, and;
c) To Be Glorified – What a great thought! Think about it, Jesus came to earth and appeared like us so that one day we will go to Heaven and appear like Him. In 1972, the Oak Ridge Boys Quartet released what was to be one of their last totally gospel albums. The title of this album was “Light” and contained many great titles. One tune was a song written by Andrea Crouch entitled, “It won’t be long.” As the song progressed, the bass singer (Noel Fox) did a recitation which says, “Beloved, Now we are the sons of God. And it doth not yet appear what we shall be like. But when Christ shall appear, we shall be like HIM. In all of His majesty, splendor, & glory. We shall see Him, JUST AS HE IS!” I still have the vinyl album at my house and would get chills to hear him voice those words again. That deep voice painted a coming picture.
God is for us! He is for YOU! He’s giving you a call today? Is it to be saved?
