Alba 2-20-2022
GOD'S PURPOSE FOR US
Romans 8:26-30
Purpose, it is important in life isn't it. You find it everywhere. There is even a website called onpurpose.org. Its founder and CEO, Tom Tippin made the following statement:
“We believe in putting purpose before profit. We're a community that helps you find your work in the world: work that matters and work you care about. We believe that only by doing this will we have a chance of solving society's most difficult problems.”
They have a Pathfinder Programme which they say “is designed to enable you to live a more purpose-led life... in this shorter, online course you will use the principles of design thinking to help you create a life and career with intention and purpose.”
That company is located in England, France and Germany though, so it may not be helpful to give purpose to those of us who live in America.
But there is One who has a purpose to provide what we truly need.
The Lord God has purposed several things that meet us in our need.
We find the things that reveal the purpose of God in our text for today, Romans 8:26-30. Lets read:
26 Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.
27 Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.
28 And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. 29 For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.
30 Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.
These verses show that God's purpose is to provide good for those who love Him and are the called. So what does it mean: called according to His purpose? I think the context of this statement provides the answer. First we see...
1. God's Purpose is to Give Us Power for Our Weakness
Verse twenty-six says the Spirit helps us in our weakness. The Greek word translated “helps” is used only one other time in the New Testament in Luke 10 when Martha asks Jesus to tell Mary to help her.
This word help means to bear a burden. So when the Spirit helps us in our weakness it means that He shoulders our burdens with us.
The implication here is that the Holy Spirit doesn’t just take the burden off of us completely and carry it Himself. Instead He offers to bear the burden with us and lighten our load.
Let’s admit a sobering truth—we are saved in weakness. We are not saved because we have something that commends us to God. We are not saved because we are able to make ourselves desirable to God.
We are saved in weakness. Romans 5:6-8 speaks of our condition: “For when we were still without strength, (In other words while we were still weak) in due time Christ died for the ungodly.
7 For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
The power salvation does not come from within ourselves. It comes by the grace of God through the cross of Christ.
And sadly, weakness continues to mark our path through this darkened world. We are susceptible to giving in to temptation, and very much aware that we are sinful beings.
The Spirit of God has a lot of work to do if we are to succeed in this pilgrim walk. I suspect that I’m not speaking only for myself. I imagine that too often each of us feels inadequate to be able to stand firm as we should.
When our life is compared with the Living God we see how weak we are. 1 Corinthians 1:25 reminds us that, “The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men”.
In the verses just before that one, in I Corinthians 1:23-24, the apostle Paul says that though we are weak, God has given a source of power. It says...
“23 but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
Despite our weakness, God’s Spirit works to shepherd us toward glory. Weakness is the laboratory where God mixes His power and His grace into our lives. That’s why this promise of help for God’s children is such good news in a bad news world.
Through salvation in Jesus Christ and through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, God purposes to give us power to live for Him.
The apostle Paul accepted his weakness because it magnified God’s strength. In 2 Corinthians 11:30 he wrote, “If I must boast, I will boast in the things which concern my infirmity.”
The reason he could boast in his weakness was because of the Lord's statement given to encourage him. The Lord told the apostle in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”
So Paul's conclusion in the next verses was, “Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
It is obvious from these verses that acknowledging our weaknesses and being totally dependent on God unleashes power in and through our lives as we serve and reach out to others in His Name.
In 1 Corinthians 2:2-5 Paul wrote, “For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.
“And my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.”
Sometime back the Associated Press carried this story: "Glasgow, Ky.--Leslie Puckett, after struggling to start his car, lifted the hood and discovered that someone had stolen the motor."
Trying to run your Christian life without the Spirit is like trying to drive a car without the engine. Because without the Holy Spirit in our lives there will be no power. God purposes to give us power to deal with our weaknesses through the help of the Holy Spirit.
So we begin to see what it means to be: called according to His purpose. And the context of these verses provide another purpose God has for us.
2. God's Purpose is to Give Us a Prayer Partner
Verse 26 also reveals that, “we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.”
God cares about us so much, about who we are and what we need so much, that He will enter into our minds and hearts, and He will help us pray as we ought, even when we do not know what to say.
There are times when we know we need to pray, we must pray, but the words do not come. There seems to be no way to express what is in our hearts.
When words fail, the Spirit steps in and virtually prays to God, for us and through us. There are times when what we want to say, ought to say, to our God cannot be put into words.
You can probably recall some time or other when you were so burdened you could not utter words in prayer. All you could say was, “O Lord…have mercy!” or words similar to those.
Nevertheless, the Holy Spirit knows the burden, the desire, the longing of the heart of the believer; therefore, He helps us in those times.
This is an amazing idea presented here; that at the very moment when we are struggling to pray and even have no idea for what to pray, just at that point, the Spirit is most obviously at work.
And verse 27 says that the Spirit “makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.” We often need help from a prayer partner because sometimes we ask for things that are not God’s will.
Sometimes we’re not sure how to pray. 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?
Often, we are like a child who wants something that is bound to hurt him or her. We often do not know our own real need. And we may be praying for something that is not in God's will.
One minister told the following story. He said, “I remember in high school I was dating a girl and I wanted to marry her. I even prayed for God to let me marry that girl.” But later he said, “I thank God for unanswered prayer.”
Have you ever asked God for something and He didn’t give it to you and later on you said, “Whew! Thank you, God.” It wasn’t His will.
When we cannot with our finite minds grasp God’s plan, and all we can bring to God is an inarticulate sigh, the Holy Spirit will be our prayer partner and translate it to God the Father according to His will and purpose for us.
So we continue to see what it means to be: called according to His purpose. And the context of these verses provide one more purpose God has for us.
3. God's Purpose is to Give us a Process for Change
Verse 29 tells us that those who are called, “He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.”
What was it that was predestined. It was that those who are saved will be conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. There is an unrelenting concern of God to make us like Jesus.
We are all in a process of change, "becoming something." As followers of Christ we have been called to the highest of purposes. God's purpose for us is to honor the Preeminence of Christ while we are being conformed to His very image.
As believers, we should become more and more like the Master every day. The question we need to ask ourselves – is there a strong family resemblance of Christ in our lives? Are we growing up spiritually and beginning to look more and more like the Lord Jesus?
Truthfully, that ungodly sinners can be transformed into the image of Christ by a miracle of grace is one of the most astounding truths of divine revelation.
Yet God’s greatest purpose, which He has in mind for us, is conformity to His Son. We often wonder why we have to experience troubles. But it is through the toughest times of life that God conforms us into the image of His Son.
Do you remember ever growing and becoming more like Jesus when things were going smoothly in your life? The truth is, God allows circumstances to enter our lives that work similar to the work of a sculptor chipping away on a stone.
These circumstances chip away at our tempers, trim away at our pride, our jealousy, our rebelliousness. Each Christian can have different issues, but God works on us all, for our good, with His Son as the perfect model.
The “all things” of verse 28 truly are “all things,” including sufferings in this present life. The good anticipated is that each Christian will be “conformed to the image of [God’s] Son.”
The process of transformation was initiated with the new birth. It continues throughout this life until it is complete at the return of Christ the Lord. And as verse 30 promises, the final event for a child of God is that each one shall be glorified.
The goal of God’s investment of His Spirit in the life of His people is conformity to the image of Jesus Christ. We have not yet arrived, but we are on the journey.
I know no mortal of whom it can be said is truly Christ-like.
However, I can say with confidence that as we continue to allow the Spirit to work, it will become a reality for each Christian at the end of this earthly journey. For when He appears, we shall be like Him!
We may be assured that this is true because each Christian is one who is: “called according to His purpose.”
And God’s purpose in calling is:
*to give us power for our weakness;
*to give us a prayer partner;
*and to give us a process of change so we may be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ His Son.
That's how He makes all things good!
CONCLUSION:
There is a story that is told of one of golf’s immortal moments which came when a Scotsman demonstrated the new game of golf to President Ulysses S. Grant.
Carefully placing the ball on the tee, he took a mighty swing. The club hit the turf and scattered dirt all over the President’s beard and surrounding vicinity, while the ball contentedly waited on the tee.
Again the Scotsman swung, and again he missed. The President waited patiently through six tries and then quietly stated, "There seems to be a fair amount of exercise in the game, but I fail to see the purpose of the ball. (Campus Life)
So many people have a “fair amount of exercise” in this game of life, but seem to miss life’s true purpose.
Scripture shows that our chief aim in life is to reconnect with God. And God's purpose is to help us, and mold us into Christ-like people.
God has given us His Spirit to make that happen. But that doesn't mean that the Holy Spirit just does everything while we just sit back passively and do nothing.
We need to continue to grow in our faith. We need to continue to pray. And we need to not be conformed to this world but allow God to transform us into the image of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
