All Things Working Together
Romans 8:28
Everyone likes encouragement and today we will look at one of the most encouraging and outstanding promises of God. The context of our study is from verses Romans 8:18-27 which we looked at last week where we learned: After we have been saved by the love and grace of Christ, we still suffer and groan within our hearts as we wait confidently and patiently, like expectant MOTHERS in labor for the completion of our salvation, our glorification in Christ; we wait for the reception of our new and eternal bodies.
But the promise for followers of Jesus from Romans 8:28 says. “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.” We can understand the “all things” as everything that has and is happening in our lives. The term “For Good” is GOD’S higher GOOD. It HIS intended end of all things: God is using this earthly timeframe and the happenings in your life in HIS KINGDOM that is NOT OF THIS WORLD. He is preparing a place for satan and all of his angels and followers that will be outside of God’s Kingdom; That place will be a place TOTALLY VOID OF ANY GODLY GRACE whatsoever, which is foreign to anyone on this earth.
“And we know that God causes all things to work together for good (God’s HIGHER GOOD) So WHO are the beneficiaries of God’s Promise for all things in this life “TO WORK TOGETHER FOR HIS GOOD”.
The Promise Is Not for Everybody
The verse explains that God DOES NOT GIVE THIS PROMISE of “all things working together” to everybody in the world. In effect, Paul says that if you don’t LOVE GOD, you can’t claim this promise. If you don’t LOVE GOD, everything isn’t someday going to work out for “GOOD”. If you are not called according to God’s PURPOSE, you can’t claim this promise. If you do not LOVE God, eternal optimism is not in view. If you don’t love God, pessimism is in view for you because “all things” in your life are NOT going to work for “GOOD”.
If you DO NOT LOVE God, then Romans 2:5 states your present condition: “But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.” If you are walking through life every day and you do NOT LOVE God, then every day and in every circumstance that happens to you, things may SEEM TO BE WORKING OUT FOR YOU, but ACTUALLY you are storing up eternal punishment for yourself. By not LOVING God, you are refusing to acknowledge and serve Him AS God.
You may appear rich and prosperous or you may appear poor, you may be healthy or sick, you may be ambitious or lazy, but either way, you are STILL storing up eternal wrath for yourself IF YOU CAN’T SAY WITH CERTAINTY: LORD God, I LOVE YOU: God’s Word says that if you do not love God and you are not called according to God’s purposes, ALL of your life experiences are not leading to good at all, but your life is heading to eternal misery. That’s a frightening thought!
Can This Promise Be for Me?
You may be thinking: Who Receives this Promise? How can God’s Promise be True for Me? The promise IS true for you, IF YOU LOVE God! God doesn’t “work all things out for good” because you truly love Him. You truly love Him because He saved you. It doesn’t mean that you love God perfectly because none of us do ANYTHING perfectly, but if YOU DO LOVE God, it means you aren’t going IN AND OUT OF LOVE with God. LOVING God doesn’t mean that when things are going well, you love God because you FEEL LOVED BY HIM, and when things aren’t going well, you don’t FEEL loved, so you don’t love Him.
It isn’t having a Lukewarm Love for God like the Christians of Laodicea. It means that God has called you from the darkness of NOT even knowing Him into the light of LOVING Him. It means that once you were an enemy of God, but now you are a lover of God. For those whom God has called, LOVE FOR God DEFINES your very life. LOVING FOR God DEFINES how you occupy your God-given time, talents and resources.
The Church in our society is ignoring sin and the eternal consequences that will occur on account of sin. MANY Christians have been deceived by the philosophies and THINGS of the WORLD, just like in the Apostle John’s day. OUR DAILY priorities should include times of confession, repentance before God BECAUSE of His Saving Grace and BECAUSE we do not LOVE HIM PERFECTLY. We should be in an attitude of WORSHIP not SUDNAY, but ALL DAY as LIVING SACRIFICES to Him. We spend more time considering “the DAILY NEWS” than we do fellowshipping with the Savior who is THE GOOD NEWS.
We seem to measure the quality of our lives by how much entertainment, good food and free time we can spend on ourselves in a day. If we work, sometimes we think: I did my job all day, so the “balance of the day is mine”, as if we have “rights” to our time and resources. (And in the back of our minds we think: How dare God think differently!) Every bit of our lives should demonstrate just HOW MUCH WE LOVE God, including our work and leisure!
Loving God is not thinking that we are meeting God’s needs. Paul said this in Acts 17:25; “And he (God) is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.” We’re never doing God a “favor” with anything we do. It may seem like an insult to you, but you are not doing God any favors at all by giving Him your love, your life, your money, or your service. He is God and He doesn’t NEED anything from you. You NEED HIM!
LOVE FOR God is NOT loving God’s gifts. Forgiveness and eternal life are gifts that are invaluable and we SHOULD appreciate and love those gifts, but that is not LOVE FOR GOD. The way that we live for HIM certainly shows appreciation and gratitude TO God, but it doesn’t mean that we are LOVING GOD.
Example: People can certainly appreciate freedom in our country. They love freedom and rights until it has to COST THEM something. They selfishly love their freedom but not their country nor those who sacrifice FOR that freedom. We may love the benefits that God has given to us, but that doesn’t automatically translate into LOVING GOD.
LOVE FOR God is not about affection or doing. John Piper says: “Love for God is a matter of the heart’s esteem for God before it produces anything else. It is something INTERNAL …It is not, in essence, a deliberated choice or a deed. It is more like a reflex OF THE HEART to the perfections of God revealed especially in Christ. If you equate the deeds of love with the essence of love you will produce hypocrites – people who imitate the deeds and claim to love God when their hearts are far from him. If you equate love for God with love for his gifts, you produce hypocrites – people who are very glad to feel forgiven and declared righteous and delivered from hell and heaven-bound, but have no pleasure in God himself. They don’t love God. They just don’t want to have bad guilt feelings or go to hell.” (from sermon on Romans 8:28 Part 1)
TRUE LOVE FOR God
So what is LOVE FOR God? TRUE LOVE FOR God Is LOVE THAT goes beyond the gifts that God has given and gazes on His GLORY, to God’s very essence. It is beholding and loving God in all of His Infinite Greatness, Extreme Holiness, His Astronomical out-of-this-world ability to CREATE, to SUSTAIN, to SAVE, and to preserve, and LOVING HIM FOR WHO HE IS. It is loving Him for being God. Who wants to be loved ONLY for what they can do? Even as creatures, we have a desire to be loved for who we are. How much do you think the CREATOR of all things should BE LOVED For WHO HE IS.
True Love for God Is Love that Treasures the Giver. God doesn’t need to be loved, but He DESERVES to be loved because He is ALMIGHTY, SOVEREIGN, INCREDIBLE, AWESOME God, even IF He never GAVE you one thing! God works out all things for good, not for everybody, but for THOSE WHO TRULY LOVE HIM from the heart and with the heart, for WHO HE IS, not what He gives! He deserves to be LOVED, revered, worshiped, and honored as God, just because HE IS God. Loving God reveres and worships God beyond His Gifts.
If you want to experiment with something, experiment with laundry soaps, toothpaste, or cooking, but DON’T experiment with things which are of eternal consequence! Do you have a desire for this promise, “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God,” to be true for you? Then DON’T continue to live your life as some sort of SPIRITUAL EXPERIMENT by mixing this or that or by trying something different.
My hope FOR YOU is that you’ll not leave here today and go about your life as if it is just business as usual. I hope that you don’t leave here and turn on the TV or dash out for lunch, or go entertain yourself, but that you would earnestly seek the HOLY ALMIGHTY God who promises to work ALL THINGS TOGETHER for them that LOVE HIM.
Consider the TRUE GOD:
1. Take this CLEAR promise of God and LOOK THROUGH IT but not AT IT, as you would through a window or eyeglasses. LOOK THROUGH it! LOOK PAST IT: Look through to the God who gives the promise. Pray to the God who has created the entire universe by His Word. Pray to the God who holds the stars in place, to the God who knows absolutely everything about everything. Talk to Him about everything that you KNOW HIM TO BE!
2. While you are talking to Him, REALIZE that Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of God doesn’t consist of people who are trying harder, not of people who feel good about themselves, or those who feel they are doing and giving their share for God. The Kingdom consists of those who TRULY LOVE God and serve Him in Godliness BECAUSE GOD HAS GIVEN THEM NEW HEARTS TO DO SO. It IS BY THE SUPREME and ALMIGHTY act of God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the power of His Spirit that HE GIVES NEW HEARTS SO THAT we WILL LOVE and SERVE HIM. His forgiveness and new life are given entirely on the merits of Jesus’ atonement for sin and victory over death. The Holy Spirit rids us of our sinful and selfish heart and then empowers us to LOVE and SERVE God. HUMBLY ASK this God for a new Heart.
We need new Spirits that are in TOTAL DEPENDENCE upon God. Satan has used The American Dream to steal the Hope of Heaven from so many people, and you know what? THEY DON’T EVEN REALIZE IT! PEOPLE THINK they are GOOD with God because they have the STUFF they need. Even if they don’t, but they have food and a roof over their heads, they think: Everything is good. Some think they MUST be good with God because they have good jobs or retirements. But things AREN’T really good, because in their hearts, they don’t really LOVE God. They “TOLERATE” God by putting a little bit of religion into their lives.
3. Seek GOD with all your Heart. Read Deut. 30:6- "Moreover the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live.” The verb for “will circumcise” is not a future tense but represents the TYPE OF ACTION that God performs upon hearts IN ORDER for you to Love the LORD your God with all your heart and soul. HUMBLY ask God to give you this new heart by His Spirit, according to the work that Jesus has accomplished through His perfect Life, Death, Resurrection, and Ascension as Lord and King.
IT’S in your HEART OF HEARTS that God causes you to love Him. The only way you can LOVE GOD is if He CUTS AWAY your self-serving heart and gives you HIS RADICALLY SELFLESS LOVING HEART. God DOESN’T SAY: All you have to do is recite “the sinner’s prayer” and you’re good, although God certainly will hear your earnest prayer. God doesn’t say: “GIVE your heart to Jesus.” He doesn’t need or want your sinful heart. He creates new HEARTS in those who earnestly seek Him; He doesn’t recondition or renovate OLD HEARTS. We don’t give up anything to receive HIS gift, but we will sacrifice EVERYTHING after He enables us to CONTINUE seeking and Loving Him with all our Hearts. Consider these verses from God’s Word, of how He works by His GRACE in your heart:
1 Chronicles 28:9 says: “Serve him with wholehearted devotion and with a willing mind, for the LORD searches every heart and understands every motive behind the thoughts. If you SEEK HIM, He will be found by you; but if you forsake Him, He will reject you forever.”
Psalm 22:26: “The poor will eat and be satisfied; they who SEEK the LORD will praise HIM-- may your hearts live forever!”
Psalm 24:3 “Who may ascend the hill of the LORD? Who may stand in his holy place?4 He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to an idol or swear by what is false.5 He will receive blessing from the LORD and vindication from God his Savior. 6 Such is the generation of those who SEEK him, who SEEK your face, O God of Jacob.”
Isaiah 55:6: SEEK the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near. 7 Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.”
Amos 5:4: 'This is what the LORD says to the house of Israel: "SEEK me and live!”
Hebrews 11:6: “without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly SEEK him.”
What is the opposite of “seek”? You should know this from the kid’s game of “hide and seek”. If you are seeking God in your life, you are diligently trying to find Him. It is those who are carefully trying to find God, who find Him. If you are NOT diligently looking for Him, you are trying to hide from Him. If He has been found by you, it is impossible to do anything but love Him!
OUTLINE:
The context: We have been saved in Christ but are still suffering and groaning within our hearts as we wait for the completion of our salvation and our new and eternal bodies.
I. The Promise of “all things working together” is Not for Everybody. (Rom 2:5)
A. If you do not LOVE God, you are storing up eternal punishment for yourself.
B. If you do not love God and you are not called according to God’s purposes, ALL of your life experiences are leading to eternal misery.
II. How can the Promise of “all things working for GOOD” be true for me?
A. The promise is true for YOU, IF you LOVE GOD.
B. LOVING God DEFINES your very life.
C. LOVING God is Not:
1. meeting God’s needs. (Acts 17:25)
2. loving God’s gifts.
3. about affection or doing. (John 21:15-17)
D. TRUE LOVE FOR God:
1. Is LOVE THAT goes beyond the gifts to gaze on His glory. (who He is)
2. Is Love that Treasures the Giver.
III. Consider the TRUE God.
A. Pray through the promise TO the God who gives the promise.
B. HUMBLY ASK this God for a new Heart.
C. Seek Him with all of your HEART.
Deut. 29:29-30:20, 1 Chron 28:9, Ps 24:3-6, 22:26, Isa 55:6-7, Amos 5:4, Heb 11:6
