Suffering and the Glory of God - Part VI

February 17, 2008 12:08 pm admin Chapter 8, Romans, Sermon-Texts

Part 6 of the “Suffering and the Glory of God” sermon series. Part 6 is an exegetical treatment of Romans 8:28-30 addressing the themes of God’s effectual calling, foreloving and predestination and how it relates to suffering and faith. This sermon was originally preached February 17th, 2008 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA.

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February 17th, 2008
Pastor Duane M. Smets

Suffering and the Glory of God - Part VI
Romans 8:28-30

28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.

Introduction

Good morning. Let’s read our text for today and pray.

Lord my God, today we deal with words from your book that an enormous ability to either humble your people and anchor their faith in a truth far greater than themselves or these words can so easily seem to harden others and provoke defiance and rebellion. Oh may that not be so today I pray. May we recognize today that you are God and we are not and have only the strength to bow our knees in submission toward your great name. I wrestle today as your preacher. Not knowing quite sure how to feed these truths to your flock. This teaching today is solid food, it is not milk. So for those who as Hebrews 5:12 says need milk and not food yet, would you grant a grace today for my words, may they not embitter and may they not lead to lawlessness. In some way take the hard things and make them soft. For others today God, who are like 1 Corinthians 3:2 says, have only had milk so far and are now ready for some solid food, may they eat richly at your table and come to see a scope of their salvation that they never dreamed was so. I pray for marveling today. May we marvel at your abundant grace and provision and plan of salvation. All for the glory of your Son Jesus, Amen.

Today, I preach on a subject I have never preached on in our nearly 3 years of existence as a church. The main reason being that our author in the book of Romans has not brought this subject up until now. The other reason is the main subject of today’s teaching is mainly for Christians, it is one of our sacred and hidden jewels that members of our family discover when they mature and the time is right.

So if you’re not a Christian today, that’s okay, just let it have this effect on you…let it make you want to be in the family, don’t hear that you can’t be and that we Christians think we are any better than you. We are sinners saved by Jesus and even we don’t quite understand why he saves us, but this text helps us a little bit with that.

Even for many Christians this is not an easy subject, it is not one that can easily be taken in and swallowed and it goes down smooth. It is one that you are going to have to chew on a little bit. So on one hand I want to say, prepare your minds for action. But just that alone won’t do it for us. This subject is one that will not become loved or accepted or comprehended by you unless your whole heart is ready and soft and willing to learn and be taught.

So my plea is two-fold. First, please let these words speak for themselves. Don’t try to force them into some sort of understanding that sits better with you because your afraid of the alternative. Let the Bible dictate to you what you will think and believe and do not try to make the Bible fit into what is already in your head. That’s my first plea.

My second plea is this, please in your heart, position yourself to be soft. Where there are things you may hear today that make you a little uncomfortable and your not quite sure what to think about them, just allow yourself to consider it. Say to yourself, maybe so, and God I just want to believe whatever is really true about your gospel. Let that be your attitude this morning.

The Context of Suffering

The first things we need to do is get a little context of what is going on in this latter half of Romans 8 and this “Suffering and the Glory of God” sermon series. So let me kind of just quickly summarize the last couple weeks for you.

We began looking at these verses, 28-30 two weeks ago. The first week, we dealt with the phrase, “…for those who love God all things work together for good.” We learned that when suffering happens it appears to be bad, but that God has a way of taken what appears to be bad at the time and turning it or working it for good in the future. Then we noted that God only does that for those who love him and not everyone loves him. So I made an appeal for us to love God but not to love him so that things will work our way because then that is not truly loving him, that is using him…but instead to love him for him.

Last week, we picked up the word “purpose” from verse 28 and dealt with the second half of verse 29 about being “conformed to the image of (God’s) Son.” I made the point that the good purpose that God is working all things together for is Jesus. So every suffering that you experience happens or has God’s intended design in it to make you more like Jesus. And we ended saying that it is the most right thing for every one of our lives to be about Jesus because if Jesus really is that great then God’s self-centeredness toward him is the best thing in the world.

Today, we pick up the words that we have left off from verses 28 and 29, and we take them and deal with verse 30. So the main subjects for today are this word, “called” in verse 28, this phrase “those whom he foreknew he also predestined,” and the sentence in verse 30, that “…those whom he predestined he also called and those whom he called he also justified and those whom he justified he also glorified.”

Effectual Calling

Okay so let’s deal with “called.” It first appears in verse 28, “…for those who love God all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose.” Let’s get the thought flow in mind. Not all love God, but for those that do, God takes the bad things and works them together for good…okay then, well who is it that love God? Answer, the ones who are called according to God’s purpose of conforming them into the image of Jesus.

So then what is this calling? Does it mean everybody who hears somebody talk about loving God and his son Jesus? Is that what it means? If I call out right now and I say, “Love God, embrace Jesus Christ.” Does some how my call secure this promise for all of you? Just in your hearing my voice and what I said does God sort of take that and then start working everything for good for all of you here in this room just because you heard that call? No.

That is not what called means here. What we discover in the Bible is that there are two types of calls. Jesus said in Matthew 22:14 “Many are called but few are chosen.” Many hear the call to put faith in Jesus but not all do, right? Why?

The answer is that there is a second type of call. The first type is this general call, the audible call of preachers, the call of Christians to their friends, the call that go out and says “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” That is the gospel offer and call, externally from us humans. But there is second type of call, the call of God and it is effectual. When I call out to you there is no guarantee that you will respond, I can’t, as much as I sometimes might like to, I can’t make you love God and his son, I can’t make you respond. But when God calls, it is effectual, it works.

Let me explain that. A couple verses. There are a ton of verses and there is a ton written on this subject. So I am treading carefully today. If you get our email or sign up for it today at the back, this week I’ll provide a lot of additional resources for you in my journal entry. The effectual calling of God.

1 Peter 2:9-10 “…you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him (God) who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”

This calling is by God, to a people in darkness, and the call is mercy…that is it is unmerited or unearned and in fact the opposite is deserved, that’s what makes mercy mercy. It is not out of a response by God toward anything we are or do.

John 5:25 “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.”

This calling is the voice of God toward the dead in faith, when they hear it they live and believe! We receive this call when we are as Ephesians says, “dead in our trespasses and transgressions (Eph 2:5).” Like a dead body, we have nothing, there is no love for God there. You drop a one ton weight on it and…nothing. God’s call brings us to life. One more verse.

John 6:44 ” No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” And lest you think God draws all, Jesus makes it clear after he says this he says, “But some of you do not believe…this is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.”

So this calling is a drawing of God that works and it is exhibited by faith or belief (same thing). Let me work it out for you. The general external gospel call goes out, like it is right now from me, but then what has to happen for faith to arise out of your hearts is a second call must take place, the effectual, internal call of God. This call is supernatural and it works in your soul and changes your will and when that happens you are drawn to Christ, you sense hope and life, and out of the darkness you see the light of the glory of God! I pray that happens today.

To Be Foreknown is to be Foreloved

Now the questions start to come for some of you. Who does God call then? Paul, our human author of Romans anticipates that question. So in verse 29, he answers “who are called according to his purpose” with “those whom he (God) foreknew.”

So what is foreknowledge? Right away our puny little finite human minds try to start figuring it out. At least mine did ten years ago when I first started studying this. So does that mean God is looking into the future to see who is going to love him and then calling those people? Or if you want the philosophical version, is God considering all the counterfactuals and then opting for the best possible world? No. That is hermeneutical gymnastics going way beyond what the apostle could have ever conceived or intended and on top of it, it doesn’t get you what you want.

Here’s what I mean. What we are seeking when we consider this idea, is to still maintain some level of human freedom or choice that is greater than God’s. We’ll let God be God but there is one area where we say he can’t be God and we draw a circumference around our choice and say, there he must allow me to be totally free.

But think about this idea. God looking into the future and then deciding to effectually call all those who he sees will love him still makes the actual playing out of it right now, in real time, completely determined. So this idea doesn’t get you what you are wanting, self-determinism, but if it makes you feel better, then that’s fine…I won’t fight over it with you, on one condition, that you don’t claim merit before God. You don’t say, God chose to give me the effectual calling so that I love him because he looked into the future and saw that I was one of the good ones who would actually love him.

You see that is the other key thing you can’t escape. If God is looking into the future into supposed possibilities, then what does he see? Does he see goodness in us then? No, whether he looks at us now or what we would be in the future without him, it is the same, deadness and darkness…sinners.

So what does foreknowledge mean then Duane? I’m glad you asked! J This word, to foreknow in the Bible, is applied to people and when it is applied to people it is God’s love and plan for his people. Let me give you a couple examples, listen for the word “know” and how it is used:

To Abraham in Genesis 18:19 “I have known him, so that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord.”

To Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

To God’s people in Amos 3:2 “You only have I known among all the families of earth.”

You see of course God knows everything in the vastness of his mind, it is one of the things that makes him God, that he knows all things. But there is a different kind of knowledge in God, the knowledge of affection, of relationship. Like the relationship between Adam and Eve…when the Bible says Adam knew his wife Eve and she became pregnant (Gen 4:1). God knows those who are his intimately, even before they are born. God knew Abraham, God knew Jeremiah, God knows all his people with an intimate love, even before they are born.

This is what foreknowledge means here, “foreacquaintanceship” or “foreloved” would almost be more accurate. The point here in Romans is that when God sent his Son Jesus into the world he did not send him to live and to die on the cross for the mere chance that some people might, hopefully, possibly, maybe, believe in Him and then be conformed to his glorious image. God’s not that dumb and loves his son and his people to much. The point is that when Jesus went to the cross he took names with him! What names? The names of those whom he foreloved or foreknew.

As Jesus says in John 10, ” I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice (Jn 10:14-16).” Jesus foreloved his sheep when he went to the cross for them.

This is the view of the Bible. In the very first gathering of Jesus’ church in the very first sermon that was ever preached in it, Peter says this…”Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst…this Jesus, (was) delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God (Acts 2:22-23).”

And in verse 29 of our passage in Romans, Paul adds, just to make sure that we get it and don’t run off askew…that this foreknowledge or foreloving, was predestined by God.

Predestination

So at last “predestination.” We come to this huge word in the great and unbreakable golden chain of verse 30. We’ve already said much in talking about foreknowledge, but I’ve reserved a few things here. But before I say them, let me just point out what seem to me to be some innate acknowledgement of this doctrine in us and in our culture.

I was at a tattoo shop the other day talking with a friend and he asked me if I had ever been to a “soul masseuse.” Has anyone ever been to a “soul masseuse?” Apparently you go and the person massages your feet and hands and arms and head and while they are massage you they interpret energy or reactions from your body and they begin to tell you about your life and your destiny. My friend went and was trying to tell me to go not only because it was realizing but he said it “helped him figure out what he was supposed to do with his life.” And based on that he made a decision to move across the country.

You see it is this innate idea within all of us that there is a “supposed to.” What is that? I’ll give you another example. Several years ago John Cusak did a movie called “Serendipity” In the movie his name is “Jonathan” and at the end of the movie his best friend writes an obituary for him. Here’s a portion of it:
“Jonathan Trager, prominent television producer for ESPN, died last night from complications of losing his soul mate and his fiancée. He was 35 years old. Soft-spoken and obsessive, Trager never looked the part of a hopeless romantic. But, in the final days of his life, he revealed an unknown side of his psyche. This hidden quasi-Jungian persona surfaced during the Agatha Christie-like pursuit of his long reputed soul mate, a woman whom he only spent a few precious hours with. Sadly, the protracted search ended late Saturday night in complete and utter failure. Yet even in certain defeat, the courageous Trager secretly clung to the belief that life is not merely a series of meaningless accidents or coincidences. Uh-uh. But rather, its a tapestry of events that culminate in an exquisite, sublime plan. Asked about the loss of his dear friend, Dean Kansky, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and executive editor of the New York Times, described Jonathan as a changed man in the last days of his life. “Things were clearer for him,” Kansky noted. Ultimately Jonathan concluded that if we are to live life in harmony with the universe, we must all possess a powerful faith in what the ancients used to call “fatum”, what we currently refer to as destiny.”

Very interesting. I bring up these two examples for you because I think they show that most people are okay with and even admit a certain predestination, under one condition, it doesn’t have anything to do with God. It’s okay if it is just a blind nebulous force that is just out there, “harmony with the universe,” a vague “supposed to,” but if you say it comes from God then we get real uncomfortable. And then all these objections start flying about free will and if means we are robots then?

If that is you and that’s what you’re thinking right now, don’t worry. You’re not a weirdo. Almost everyone I know goes through something similar when they first encounter these words in the Bible. When I first did 10 years ago I went home and looked up every verse in the Bible that said anything about a choice or decision because it just seemed so outlandish to me.

So here is what I will say about it. Yes, this word is here in the Bible, you can’t cut it out and if you did it would not make you feel better, I’ll explain part in a minute. But yes, it means the word “predestination” is here and yes it means that God ordains or causes or plans what happens to happen and here it is in specific reference to those that God has foreloved.

Ephesians 1:4-5 is a great parallel verse to stand beside this one: “He (God) chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will.” This passage doesn’t deal with why God predestines some for his love and not others and thus effectually calls some and not others. If you want the answer to that question you are just going to have to hang around for a few months until we get into chapter 9 of Romans.

So you have to deal with this. You can’t cut just cut it out because you don’t like it. So let me help you with that. There are sort of two main knee-jerk reactions to this I think. I mentioned them a second ago, well does that just make us robots and then what about free will?

First, this robots thing. Robots were not even around, so that really isn’t even in Paul’s mind but the objection itself sort of speaks to our modern technology driven sense that we can do or accomplish anything. Here is what I say to that notion. Robots are inanimate objects. They are machines. They are not alive. There is more beauty and glory in a flower than a robot. A flower does what God made it to, it displays his glory in it’s beauty and photosynthesis functions, it is a living organism.

So to compare human beings, the peak of God’s creation, those made in his image, with a moral and rational capacity that no other created thing has…is absurd. We are infinitely more complex than a robot. That we do what he makes us to do, bring him glory, has nothing to do with robotics…the objection itself testifies to our own sinfulness in our desire to be God and not have any demands on us. We don’t want anyone to tell us, “I made you for this purpose.” We want to control our own destiny. So you see, it is not an issue of whether we are robots but an issue of who is God and if everything is about his glory or not.

Second, this free will thing. What can I say without getting bogged down here? First the whole terminology is bad. The question of the will is a question of desire which is a moral thing. So to have free desire is to be fully satisfied and happy…it is to be free to be happy, which the Bible universally says comes from by glorifying God. We don’t have freedom because of sin. So we can’t do what we are made to do and want to do, enjoy God and be happy, we are like prisoners chained to the wall longing to have our wills freed.

Second, this is not an issue of choice. The Bible is clear that we make real and meaningful decisions and choices. You must choose who you will serve as Joshua 21:15 says. The issue is not choice. There are choices but that doesn’t mean they are not determined. Every single choice or decision you make has a host of things behind it, circumstances and feelings, that determine what choice you will make. No one makes a “free choice” that has no causes or influences behind it. You are all here today because you have either been here before, wanted to be here, someone invited you…there are a ton of things that determined your choice today. What you are even wearing right now was determined by what clothes you had in your closet and what of those close you felt like wearing depending on if they were clean or if you wore them recently or whatever. Choice is not the issue. You part of what makes a choice is that it is evaluative, you weigh some reasons together that ultimately determine your choice. Choice is not the issue.

Okay then Pastor Duane. If robots are not the issue, and choice is not the issue, and if God really does predestine those whom he foreloves then why does he do it that way?

The Golden Chain

The answer is the golden chain of verse 30. “Those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified and those whom he justified he also glorified.” So let’s fill it out and put it all together. Those whom he foreloves, he predestines a plan to save them, in that plan there is a point in a given individual’s life where they hear the general gospel call and through all kinds of circumstances and other things, God effectually calls, he turns the heart and the will and the desire of that individual to see the glory of Christ. When that happens he gives them the justifying work of Jesus on the cross, his salvation, and from that point on he begins glorifying them…that is conforming them into the image of Jesus. It is as Jonathan Edwards said, an “unbreakable chain” and it is a big sweeping picture.

Why does God do it this way? Let me answer this… Three weeks ago when we first started studying this passage and dealt with that phrase “God works all things together for good for those who love him,” I made this concluding remark…I said, “If you are like me and you find your love for God wavering at times…know this, your love for God is not dependent upon something that you do, feel, or think. It goes much deeper then that.”

I had three different people come up to me afterward and say that was their favorite part of the whole sermon. Now, here is the thing. If you don’t have predestination, then your love for God is completely dependent upon you. So God makes it known that he predestines in order to encourage us, to give us a sure and solid and secure foundation for our faith. As Martin Luther said, “Predestination is a wonderfully sweet thing for those who have the Spirit.”

You see this passage of Scripture is meant to encourage you in the face of suffering. With predestination you can face suffering like no other because then you got a rock under your feet! You’ve got a promise that goes deep and is sure and secure so you can look at the hardest thing you have ever encountered and say “I will get through this because God has guaranteed it, he has called me, he has justified me by pouring out his wrath on Christ, thus I know he will work this for my good and form and conform me into the image of Jesus through it! Hallelujah!”

You don’t get that without predestination, all you get then is fear and insecurity and constant wishy-washyness. And God loves his children way to much to let them sit in fear and to let them be overcome by the sin and hardships of this life.

Conclusion

Let’s conclude. I want to conclude with some warnings. You are not supposed to bring up new material in your conclusion but I’m going to today because I think leaving you with some warnings will be good ways of helping you apply this to your life. This has probably been the most difficult sermon I have ever delivered in terms of how hard it is for us, as sinful human beings, to accept. It would have been so much easier to sort of side-step it, gloss over it, and explain it away…and so many pastors and preachers do. But that wouldn’t have been honest and so we took it head on. So even if you don’t agree with what I have said today, maybe you can at least respect that.

My first warning is a repeat of what I said earlier…If you’re not a Christian today, that’s okay, just let it have this effect on you…let it make you want to be in the family, don’t hear that you can’t be and that we Christians think we are any better than you. We are sinners saved by Jesus and even we don’t quite understand why he saves us, but this text helps us a little bit with that. Join us and become part of the family of the children of God.

Assuming I’ve convinced you today, here are the rest of my warnings:

One, don’t allow God’s revelation of this teaching to you to foster arrogance. If you take this and make it your axe to grind and to go and try argue and convince everyone about it, you will be missing the point of this text. It is meant to humble you, that God’s salvation for you, sinner, it goes way deep and at much planned cost of in the crucifixion of God’s son. You had nothing to do with it, so don’t get proud thinking, “Yes! I’m predestined.”

Two, don’t allow God’s revelation of this teaching to you to foster uncertainty. If you take this and make it a thing to start wondering whether you are predestined or not, you’ve missed the point of this text. It is meant for the opposite, it is meant to calm any anxiety by letting you know that if you truly put your faith in Jesus shed blood on the cross, that is the most sure thing in the world because it goes back to before the world was even made!

Three, don’t allow God’s revelation of this teaching to you foster apathy. If you take this and make into something where you tell yourself, “Well I guess God is going to save whoever he is going to, so suppose it doesn’t matter if I do anything at all…” If you do that you will have turned this text on it’s head and make it into something it does not say or mean at all. There is always a choice and choices are very very meaningful and important and what you do with your life and how you live matters a lot to God. God does not effectually call anyone who has not first heard the general gospel call…so you still need to tell people about Jesus. And God’s purpose for you is to conform you into the image of Jesus, so if you go off use this as a license to go do whatever the hell you feel like thinking it doesn’t matter, you’ve thought wrong. Don’t do that. Instead, let it spark much gratitude and joy and wonder at God’s gift of Christ to you and make it your dedication to become like him and to spread of his gospel among the people of this city, so that they may too find a secure foundation in Jesus.

That’s it, I’m done. I’m going to conclude with one last quote from William Barclay on this passage. His exegesis of it sucks but his application is right on. Listen to this and let it seep into your soul and shine much light onto the glory of Jesus.
“The more a Christian thinks of his experience the more he becomes convinced that he had nothing to do with it and all is of God. Jesus Christ came into this world; He lived; He went to the cross; He rose again; We did nothing to bring that about; that is God’s work. We heard the story of this wondrous love. We did not make the story, we only received the story.”

Let’s receive it today as we pray and go to the table.