Supernatural Assurance
Romans 8:26-3
Bruce Miller
Supernatural Assurance
We are in a powerful series: Supernatural, a study of Romans chapter eight. At Christ Fellowship a series such as this involves more than worship services. We follow a simple discipleship pattern, a rhythm that grows us to be better followers of Jesus: Study the Word, Hear the Word, Discuss the Word and Live the Word. Each week study the Word yourself as you engage God on the biblical text we will teach that week; then come to worship gatherings where you hear the Word in a sermon; then connect in a group where you discuss that same biblical text and finally go live the Word to impact others. It’s a very simple, powerful weekly discipleship rhythm that will change your life: Study the Word, Hear the Word, Discuss the Word and Live the Word.
If you have missed elements of the weekly discipleship rhythm during the Supernatural series, you have the opportunity to get into the rhythm with our next series. Let me tell you what’s coming. Right after spring break on March 20th we are starting a new series that drives to the heart of Christ Fellowship and unfolds where God is taking us with our vision to multiply. This is a directional series for our entire church. We’re calling it: Movement to Multiply our Heart. I want every Life Group to do the sermon-based study this time. We are entering a unique season in the life of Christ Fellowship to come together not only in our study, but in our hearts and in our vision. In your heart right now, I’m asking you to make the decision that you will do the next study and ask your group to do it too. This is a pivotal time in the life of Christ Fellowship and perhaps in your life.
Right now let’s open our Bibles to the amazing Romans chapter eight. What’s the big point of this chapter? You can live a supernatural life by the Spirit because of God’s amazing gifts in Christ. Today we are diving into verses twenty-six to thirty-one, a section in which we will discover supernatural assurance. One aspect of a supernatural life is living with supernatural assurance no matter what you face.
The Bible is realistic. It says that we are weak. In ourselves we fall apart. At times we can’t even pray and don’t know what to pray for. Life can be really hard, insecure, scary. It’s a rough world. This last week, I’ve prayed for people with these situations and more: a grown daughter has a major car accident, unconscious in ICU with bleeding on the brain; being told you need to go look for a job because you will not have yours; a fellow parent calls to tell you your son was at a party where everyone was smoking pot. He confesses.
Life is crazy hard; why?! Is it all just meaningless; does God care? There is so much opposition in this life; sometimes it can feel like everyone is against you; everything is against you. You just want to give up. This is when you need Romans eight, especially the section we are looking at today. The point of our passage today is that you can enjoy supernatural assurance (in spite of your weakness and in the difficulties that happen) by knowing three amazing things God does for you. Let’s walk into the biblical text to see the amazing things God does for us that enable us to live with supernatural assurance.
Please stand for the reading of God’s Word. I am reading from the NIV (2011) translation that just came out:
26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.28 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. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
What’s the point of this text: you can enjoy supernatural assurance (in spite of your weakness and in the difficulties that happen) by knowing three amazing things God does for you: one, the Spirit helps you in your weakness by interceding for you according to the will of God; two, God works everything for your ultimate good by completing your salvation until you are conformed to the image of Jesus in glory; three, God is for you! So nothing can prevail against you! You can follow along with the outline in your program as we unpack this rich, comforting, strengthening truth.
Verse twenty-six says the Spirit helps us. The Greek word for help means to bear a burden with us. The Spirit shoulders our burdens with us. The Spirit helps us by interceding for us. In the depths of your inability to cope with life, the Spirit intercedes for you.
The Spirit intercedes for you
When you are at the end of yourself, the Spirit is there. When you can’t even pray, the Spirit prays for you.
In your weakness, when you don’t know what to pray.
In your weakness, when you don’t know how to pray, the Spirit intercedes for you. We are weak. We have bodies subject to decay. We live in a fallen world that groans. We share in the sufferings of Christ. We feel the pull of the flesh enticing us to disobey God.
Sometimes we’re not sure what to pray for. Do we pray for healing or for the strength to endure our illness? Do we pray to escape troubles or to be faithful in the midst of them? Sometimes we can’t even pray. Have you ever been so depressed or so stunned that you could not make prayers come out of your mouth? Sometimes we are so beat down, so exhausted, so depleted that we can’t even pray. We are weak.
In these times the Spirit intercedes for us. How does the Spirit pray for us? The text says the Spirit prays with “wordless groans.” What is this? Notice is the Spirit who groans not us and that the groans are inaudible.
The point is that the Spirit’s deep concern for our needs causes the Spirit to groan for us. He knows our deepest needs and greatest concerns. In our weakness, our inability to cope with life, the Spirit intercedes for us.
In accordance with God’s will
The Spirit does this in accordance with God’s will. God knows the mind of the Spirit and the Spirit knows the will of God so the Spirit always prays for our best, which is the will of God. So we can have confidence. When we don’t know what to pray for, the Spirit does. When we worry that our prayers might be for things that are not best for us, we need not despair, but depend on the Spirit’s prayers for us in the will of God, so we can have supernatural assurance. What assurance! The Spirit intercedes for us with wordless groans in accordance with God’s will.
For those who are believers in Jesus, I want us to take a moment now to reflect on this spiritual mystery, even to experience it to the extent that is possible. I’ve asked Ruth to play on the piano for a minute as we thank the Spirit for interceding for us even right now. You may not feel anything, but you can have confidence that the Spirit is groaning for you. In your soul, even without words, long for the will of God, to know Christ, to become like Christ, to help others find and follow Christ; to be with Christ in glory. If you can’t pray, this is your time to know with supernatural assurance that the Spirit is praying for you.
Our confidence in the Spirit’s intercession on our behalf leads to the second amazing thing that we can know God does for us. Not only does the Spirit intercede for you, but also God works everything for your good. In some ways, verse twenty-eight climaxes Paul’s affirmation of believer’s eternal security in Christ. We can have unshakeable confidence, supernatural assurance, because God himself is working everything for our ultimate good.
God works everything for your good
Romans eight, twenty-eight is one of the most famous verses in the Bible. In a recent search analysis it came up second to John 3:16 as the most searched for verse in the Bible. It has also been misunderstood. What does Paul say in Romans eight- twenty-eight?
28 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.
This is more than a general optimism that everything is going to work out fine. This is not a Pollyanish hope. Rather this is a deep confidence that God is working out his purposes for our ultimate good even through the difficulties, confusions and frustrations in the moment. Life is not the random mess it sometimes appears to be. (Stott, John R. W. The Message of Romans: God’s good news for the world. Downers Grove. Inter Varsity Press, 1994 (Pp 248))
Romans eight- twenty-eight is justly famous because it gives a second foundation for our supernatural assurance. You can live a supernatural life with supernatural assurance because God is working all things for your good. We don’t usually understand what God is doing, much less welcome it, but we can be confident that in all things he is working for our supreme good. Current crises and reversals are not ultimately destructive.
For whom does this amazing promise apply? It is for those who love him; those who are called according to his purpose. One phrase looks from the human side the other from the divine side. The point is that this promise applies, given that you are a believer.
Given that you are a believer
This promise is for believers in Jesus Christ. If you have not yet trusted in Jesus Christ as your God, then you cannot claim this supernatural assurance. But believers can “wrap their souls in it!” (Hughes, R. Kent. Preaching the Word, Romans: Righteousness from Heaven. Wheaton. Crossway Books, 1991 (Pp 167)) Now that we know to whom the promise applies, let’s ask what it means. Specifically, what is the “good” to which God is working all things? It can’t mean that we will always get what we want or even what we think is good in our opinion. We must be careful to define “good” in God’s terms, not ours. The idea that this verse promises the believer material wealth or physical well-being, for instance, betrays a typically Western perversion of “good” into an exclusively material interpretation. (Moo, Douglas. The New International Commentary on the New Testament: The Epistle to the Romans. Grand Rapids. William B. Eerdmans, 1996 (Pp 530)) This verse does not mean you get the cheery red corvette. The clue is in verse twenty-nine. To what has God predestined us, or directed our lives? Predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. The good to which God is working all things is that we would be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, so that he would be the first among many brothers and sisters.
To be conformed to the image of Jesus
Our ultimate good is to become like our Savior. We know from what we’ve studied in Romans chapter eight that we are in Christ and he is in us. We know that, like Christ, we will be raised from the dead. Our transformation began the moment we were saved and it continues until the day we are glorified with Jesus in a new body.
In this current time not all things are intrinsically good or pleasant. In fact we know this world is full of evil and suffering. A devil is running amuck; sin abounds; people hurt each other. But we are confident that God takes the evil and works it for our ultimate good. Tough times today are not an obstacle to our ultimate victory, but are means in which God is making us more and more like Jesus, his son.
The phrase “conformed to the image” conveys the idea of being fitted to a pattern. We are becoming like Jesus in love, faith and holiness. We are becoming people who love unconditionally as Jesus did with amazing grace for the least, the lost and lonely. We are becoming like Jesus in that we see with his eyes and think with his mind. We become more compassionate. We love good and hate evil. We live pure lives. God uses all the things that happen, good and bad, to shape us into Christ-like people.
What does this look like? I talked with a mature Christian in Christ Fellowship who had a job change not of his own choosing. Does Romans eight twenty-eight mean that he will be sure to get a better job with a higher salary? No. That might be our idea of good. In faith, this man told me that at first he wondered why this would happen right now just when he was getting excited to give to the Movement to Multiply. Then I believe God gave him this insight. He said, “I can see God using this to take me and my wife to deeper levels of faith because now it will be more difficult to give what we want to give. God is growing our faith and dependence on him, not on a job or a salary or a company.” That is God shaping him and his wife to be more like Jesus who perfectly depended on his Father.
We must be careful not to interpret “good” in our own terms. Sometimes when a fiancé breaks off the engagement, God has a much better life partner for you or he may call you to a season of singleness to use you in a ministry that would be impossible or very difficult for a married person. I’ve had more than one person tell me they were glad they lost their job because of how God transformed their values, shaking them out of a materialistic lifestyle that did not even realize they has been trapped into.
Sometimes God does bless in material ways. Years ago an arsonist torched the church offices of the church in which I served in Plano. I lost my entire large library. The insurance settlement drug on forever. In the summer of 1996 our family was moving to McKinney to start Christ Fellowship. We had a contract on our home in Plano and one on our home in McKinney. The contract in Plano fell through so we did not have the money to close in McKinney. On the day the money was required, my wife Tamara was on her knees praying. She opened the mail and there was the insurance check from the fire, which covered what we needed. In story after story believers can look back and see how God worked everything for good, sometimes the blessings are material.
In our weakness we may not know what to pray, but what we do know is nothing comes into our lives that God does not use for his wise and good purposes. The Apostle Paul struggled with a very difficult issue that he never discloses, but refers to as his “thorn in the flesh.” Whatever it was, it was very painful. He prayed to have his thorn in the flesh removed three times and God revealed to him that this was not his will. God said,
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Paul replied, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power might rest on me. That’s why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” (2 Cor. 12:7-10).
Paul lived Romans eight twenty-eight.
In verses twenty-nine and thirty Paul explains how God works everything for good. He assures us that nothing can thwart God’s purposes in salvation. He works everything for our good from the beginning to the end; from being known by God to being glorified by God.
From beginning (known) to the end (glorified)
With a series of five verbs Paul describes what’s been called the golden chain, an unbreakable series of actions that give us supernatural assurance. If you are a believer, you need to have no fear that your salvation might not be secure. Sometimes people ask if you can lose your salvation? Of course not. It never depended on you in the first place. Salvation depends on God’s grace, on what Jesus Christ did on the cross. We simply receive salvation as a gift by faith. These verses give us one more solid basis for supernatural assurance.
Sadly many people have tripped over these verses into theological controversy. Using the names of the historical figures John Calvin and Jacob Arminius; people use the labels Calvinism and Armeniansm to describe systems of thought. The word “predestination” has become a battle term. However as New Testament scholar James Dunn writes, “Paul is not inviting reflection on the classic problems of determinism and free will.” (Dunn, James D. G. Word Biblical Commentary, Volume 38: Romans 1-8 Dallas. Word Books, 1988 (Pp 486))
Those important theological issues are not Paul’s topic. My favorite commentator on Romans, Douglas Moo, writes on these verses, “But we must not lose sight of Paul’s main point, namely to assure believers that God has a plan he is unfolding, one that provides fully our future glory. He wants us to come away from this text not with theological questions but with a renewed sense of assurance: that the God who began a good work in us will indeed bring it to completion in the day of Christ Jesus (Phil. 1:6). (Moo, Douglas J. The NIV Application Commentary: from biblical text…to contemporary life: Romans. Grand Rapids. Zondervan, 2000 (Pp 271))
You can have supernatural assurance because your salvation is secure. What God has begun in you, He will complete. Nothing can stop God’s salvation. All five verbs are so sure that they are in the past tense, Aorist in Greek. We are known, destined, called, justified and glorified. No genuine believer needs to ever wonder whether or not God will let you into heaven. You don’t have to worry that you have committed some unpardonable sin. God will complete what he has begun in this unbreakable chain. You’ve been adopted and your Father will come to get you. You’ve been redeemed so you will be resurrected with a new body. There are no ifs ands or buts; God’s purpose will be fulfilled.
What does that mean for us today? It means we can live supernatural lives of supernatural assurance. No matter what happens to us or to those we love, we know; we know, that in all things God is working for our good. Last summer we studied the life of Joseph in the book of Genesis. Joseph’s brothers hated him out of jealousy, so they threw him into a pit, then they sold him into slavery. Later, Joseph was falsely accused by a woman who tried to seduce him and then screamed rape. He was put in prison. Someone powerful promised to get him out, but forgot. To put it mildly, Joseph could have been discouraged. Years later through an amazing sequence of events, Joseph became second in charge of all of Egypt. During a horrible seven-year famine, God used Joseph to save the nation of Israel. In the last chapter of the story Joseph confronts his brothers. In the capstone message of the whole story, Joseph says,
20 You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. Genesis 50:20 (NIV84).
Joseph does not minimize what they did. He faces the fact that his brothers intended to harm him. But God. I love those two words, “but God.” Yes evil is real and terrible, but God. Here is the great truth, our deepest confidence: God is greater than evil. God weaves the ultimate tapestry. We only see a few of the threads, but God sees it all. Evil cannot and will not triumph. Whatever is against you, God will work it for good.
Do you believe this truth: that in all things God is working for the good of those who love him? Let’s put it into practice. On paper, on your smart phone or in your mind, list “things” in your life that are hard to see how God might be working them for any good – confess to him that you trust him. Or list what makes you doubt your salvation – give your doubts to God knowing that he has known you, predestined, called, justified and glorified you.
We have covered two solid truths; two amazing things that God does for us to give us supernatural assurance. We have one left in our final verse. Verse thirty-one is a hinge verse between this section and the final one. It is one of my favorite verses in the Bible.
31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
To which the clear answer is no one.
God is for you so nothing can prevail against you
God is for you. That summarizes the Gospel as Paul has developed it in the first eight chapters of Romans. Paul is beginning his crescendo that we will see next week. Since God is for us, no enemy, no obstacle, can ultimately beat you. We can have ultimate confidence, supernatural assurance.
If you were going into a two on two basketball game and you could choose any player in the world who has ever played the game, who would you want playing with you? You and Michael Jordon at his best could take on anyone here. In a tennis match you pick Roger Federer as your doubles partner; in a boxing match you pick the heavy-weight champion of the world – Muhammad Ali at his best. Now, what if God is on your team? No matter what game you are playing, no matter what battle you are fighting, if God is on your side, you win. Who wants to take on God?
Listen to the truth: God is for you. God is for you. God is for you. All the powers and demons of hell might throw down against us; bring it on. We have God. Hell loses. This is core biblical truth. Psalm twenty-three says I will fear no evil for you are with me. If you are a believer, then God is for you.
What if you are not a believer? Then you do not have supernatural assurance. You do not have the Spirit interceding for you. You do not have the promise that God is working in all things for your good. You do not have God on your side. If you are not a believer, I urge you to trust in Jesus today. Right now in your heart, tell God you want to trust in Jesus. God promises to save those who trust in Jesus for eternal life.
Then all the promises apply to you. You can live a supernatural life. God is for you. You will be glorified. With all the believers here, you can say: God is for me. Is that too bold? Is that not what the Bible says? God is for you. Say it with me: God is for me. God is for me. Make it personal. God is for Bruce. Put your name in the blank. God is for Bruce.
You can enjoy supernatural assurance (in spite of your weakness and in the difficulties that happen) by knowing three amazing things God does for you: the Spirit helps you in your weakness by interceding for you according to the will of God; God works everything for your ultimate good by completing your salvation to the end of being conformed to the image of Jesus in glory; God is for you! So nothing can be against you! That is supernatural assurance!
To view the video of this sermon, visit: http://www.christfellowshipeldorado.com/sermon/supernatural-assurance/
