Perfect Prayers and Perfect Providence

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches his series in the

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Book of Romans, A Righteousness from God. Let's listen in. Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church.

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As Dave said, I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor here, and I also wanna welcome you. I'm glad that you've taken time out of your busy week to gather together with God's people.

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It's a privilege and an honor that we have to be together and to hear from his word and to sing praises to God.

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It's a glorious thing. I'm really glad to be back after a week of my family serving up at Camp Bearkell.

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We had a great time a couple weeks ago and then I've been back this week preparing a sermon for us this morning. But I'm really glad for Zach Lloyd filling in in my absence and I felt like if you didn't get a chance to hear that message last week,

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I would encourage you to jump on the podcast or go to the website and check it out. I think he hit home run and it impacted me and my heart and so I'd encourage you if you get a chance to go back.

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I'm really grateful how God brings things together like the way that his message expanded right off and just kind of took off right where we were in the book of Romans.

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Him speaking in the book of Ecclesiastes, which it's not very often you hear a message on futility, but it's kind of we got two in a row there thinking about the book of Romans, talking two weeks ago about how creation has been subjected to futility and then him just picking up where we left off in the book of Ecclesiastes.

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And so this morning we have a couple of guests with us. Some of you maybe already met them out in the lobby as you were coming in, but Jim and Rachel Bennett are here this morning with their two daughters,

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Mary Emma and Lydia. So if you guys can go ahead and stand up and just so everybody can kind of see who you are. They're here, they're representing

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Camp Barrick Hill. They both graduated from Western Michigan University, so they're kind of familiar with the area. You guys can go ahead and sit down, but I encourage you to get an opportunity if you get a chance to talk with them out there and figure out who they are and the ministry that God is calling them to.

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Just to clarify why I just did that, because we don't do that very often, Recast has filed the paperwork to become a member church of Camp Barrick Hill this year.

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We're gonna be on their board agenda for approval in October. And what that entails is just kind of a participation in the ministry that they're doing there.

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And so it gives us a little bit more buy -in in terms of being able to be represented on their advisory board and things like that.

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But it also means that we're just kind of a way for the church to throw behind them and say we support what you do and we love what you do.

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And that looks like us sending volunteers up there to help them out, which we're already doing routinely. We're sending campers to their retreats and to their summer camps, which we're doing already this summer.

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And then we financially support the ministry there. And so the board voted earlier this month to help Jim and Rachel Bennett with their monthly financial support to help them to get up to camp.

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They are currently at 65 % of their need, but their goal is to be up there on the residential staff and live there on the camp property and be a blessing and help out there.

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And you can talk with them about the specifics of what their role will be if you'd like to. The cost, by the way, of sending a camper to Barrichel, how many of you have ever been to Camp Barrichel?

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I'm just curious, go ahead and raise your hand if you've been there. Or how many of you have sent somebody up to Camp Barrichel? So a lot of you are familiar with Camp Barrichel.

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It is currently about half the going rate of sending a kid to camp. So if you price out other camps in the state of Michigan, it costs about half.

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And part of the reason why is the very reason that they're raising support. Their residential staff, their full -time workers at the camp all raise funds like a missionary in order to be able to work up there.

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And so that's why we're helping to take them on. The camp doesn't pay their salary, but different churches and people take them on.

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And like I said, they're about 65%. When they're at 100%, they can go up and be a blessing to the camp. So I encourage you to get to know them during the connection time or after the potluck later today.

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They're gonna be here and hang out through that too. So get a chance to talk with them. The past two Sundays have been kind of heavy, kind of heavy in terms of the topic.

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I mentioned futility from the book of Romans and then the book of Ecclesiastes there.

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Two weeks ago, I preached a message called learning to groan how we as Christians actually need to learn how to groan about the things that are going on and groan with one another in the sense of recognizing that this is not all that there is.

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There's more to life than the things that we experience here. And praise God, how many of you are glad that there's more that is going to happen in the future than the problems and the pain and the suffering of this life?

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I'm very glad for that. And so that's the hope that Paul has been giving us during this stretch of the book of Romans.

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And he's identified for us in Romans 8, 18 through 25, we saw him address suffering and hardship in light of the

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Christian life. And he identified that our calling as Christians is to a patient endurance during the routine everyday sufferings of life.

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And then last week, as God would have it, Zach brought a message from Ecclesiastes called joy on a tether, which is, again, a good metaphor, a good illustration of what it's like to live in a life where there's a lot of futility.

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You unload the dishwasher, the dishes get dirty. You load the dishwasher, you unload the dishwasher, the dishes get dirty, and it's a cycle.

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How many of you notice that cycle in your life? There's a little bit of futility. You put away the toys and the kids get the toys out, then the toys are put away, then they get back out.

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You know, you clean the floor, then it gets dirty and on and on and on it goes. So my hope is that a little bit of the tension in all of that breaks a bit this week, and I think that's

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Paul's intention. You know, suffering, groaning, futility, tethered joy can make for some hard messages that can be difficult.

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They're real messages. I love how the Bible addresses real life. It doesn't kind of fake us out and pretend that everything's rosy and good.

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But God is a rescuing God. For those who are walking with Christ in this life, we know that we are not left alone.

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That is the clear message of the New Testament. And in our text this morning, we see the sovereign God expressing his presence with his people.

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His spirit in our hearts, interceding with the Father in perfect prayers for us, according to this text.

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And his goodness being worked out in all things for those who love him, his perfect providence.

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And lastly, the ultimate hope that we all have, that he who began a good work in us will indeed finish it, that he has a perfect plan that he is working out.

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And we will one day be like his son because of the sovereign will of God over the life of everyone who belongs to him.

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So, if you haven't already turned there, turn over in your Bibles or navigate in your device over to Romans chapter eight, verses 26 through 30.

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Romans eight, 26 through 30. If you don't have a Bible or a means to navigate to a Bible app or something like that, you can grab the

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Bible under the seat in front of you. There should be one in your row there. And Romans eight, 26 through 30. Everybody kind of paying attention to God's word.

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We just have this privilege every week. By the way, those of you who own a Bible, raise your hand if you own a Bible or a means to get there.

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You have an immense privilege because God speaks to us through this word. And that's what we're about to do,

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Recast. We have the privilege of corporately together taking in and hearing from the almighty

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God. So, let's listen in. Likewise, the spirit helps us in our weakness.

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For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

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And he who searches hearts knows what is in the mind of the spirit because the spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

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And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose.

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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.

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And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the privilege that it is to gather together in your name, for the privilege it is to hear from your word.

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And ultimately, for the privilege it is to be encouraged by you, the one who holds the keys of condemnation, the one who could justly throw us all away, lock us all away for the sins that we've committed, but you are the one who encourages us.

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You are the one who brings us back to the reality that you have let your spirit, sent your spirit to live in our hearts, those who belong to you.

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What a glory, what a joy, what a delight, what an amazing reality that you would intercede on our behalf where we fall short.

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You'd be present, constantly working toward the good and that ultimate, awesome, glorious good purpose of the salvation, that we would be like your son, made righteous.

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We look forward to that day of glorification. And Father, I pray that right now our hearts, as those who have been justified, as those who have been declared righteous, not that we live righteous, but that we've been declared righteous, that we, in that status, in that state, we would lift our voices before you in praise and in glory to you because you are the one who has done it, you are the one who has worked, you are the one who has called, you predestined, you called, you justified and glorified.

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And so, Father, I pray that that chain would not be lost on us this morning, but you would allow all the distractions of life to fade away as we have an opportunity to sing your praises to your glory.

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In Jesus' name, amen. Yeah, you can go ahead and be seated. And thanks a lot to the band for leading us.

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I always appreciate the time and effort that Dave puts in and the band there. I would encourage you to get comfortable over the remainder of our time together.

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Keep your Bibles open to Romans 8, 26 through 30 so that you can reference that. We're gonna be talking through that passage and kind of taking it chunk by chunk.

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But also remember that if at any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts while supplies last back there, take advantage of that.

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Restrooms, if you need them, are out the double doors down the hallway on the left -hand side for those of you that aren't familiar with the building. So those are back there.

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But our goal over the remainder of our time is to keep our focus on God's word. So let's dive in. Romans 6 through 8 has followed the contours of real life on this broken planet.

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It's really emphasizing and focusing on sanctification, a big word that means the work that God is doing in the lives of his children.

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And Paul established earlier in the book of Romans that no one is righteous. He also established that the wrath of God is being poured out on unrighteousness and ungodliness.

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That's the problem that the book of Romans is setting up for the human race that it's all addressing.

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It's all trying to reconcile that and trying to remedy that and trying to explain to us how God has remedied the situation where God's, by his character, by his nature, by the way that he rolls and by his holiness, punishes and his wrath is poured out on unrighteousness and ungodliness.

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But then from chapters four through six in Romans, he expressed that the gospel results in righteousness.

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The good news that Jesus came and took the punishment for us results in a righteousness from God. Not a righteousness we can earn, but a righteousness that is credited to us, that is given to us on the basis of faith and trust that Jesus has paid the punishment necessary for our individual sins.

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And that is the hope that is being presented as the good news, the gospel in the book of Romans. The problem,

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God's anger and wrath is poured out on unrighteousness and ungodliness. That's all of us. All of us have acted that way.

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And so how can we be saved then? And the interesting thing is the gospel, the good news, is simply that he poured out the punishment we deserve on his son.

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And so that's where we've been. For those of you that are new here and you haven't taken in this whole series yet, all of those sermons are available online.

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By the way, you can jump on our website or podcast and check those out. But then from chapter six through eight, they've been explaining that the

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Christian life doesn't set up shop with sin. They've been explaining that the Christian life doesn't set up shop with the law.

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And so the question is, how do we live this life? And that's what Paul has been addressing from Romans six all the way up to the present text that we're looking at today.

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And the height of this passage, the height of understanding what God is doing in the life of a person who is now saved, the pinnacle of it is found at the opening of chapter eight.

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We've already gone there. And again, you can go back and listen to that. But Paul expressed the most mind -bending, hope -inducing reality of the

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Christian life, one that we often miss in evangelical circles, and it is simply this, that the Holy Spirit dwells in his children.

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That is the glory, that is the beauty, that is the majesty of this text. And the hope of the

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Christian life is the Holy Spirit in you, living through you, yielding to what he desires to do in you, him illuminating the word, bringing all of this, all of this ministry of the

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Holy Spirit and the things that he does for the follower of Jesus Christ. The very

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Holy Spirit of God, the third person of the Trinity, dwelling in everyone who has received Jesus Christ and the work that he did on the cross by faith.

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And so, just like Paul, it seems like Paul's character, he kinda goes and he plunges us into the cold water, and then he brings us out, warms us in the sun, and then plunges us again.

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And so he doesn't leave us up for long. And the previous text that we looked at plunged us back into that cold water of reality.

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He mentioned that suffering is real. This is two weeks ago. Suffering is real, creation groans.

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Longing for the birth of a new kingdom. We also, he said, as believers, he's talking to Christians, he says, we also groan in a longing anticipation of the day when the king will arrive and set it all right.

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And how many of you have groaned? How many of you have groaned in the last month? Just like, oh man, really, again, that?

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And some of it's induced by our own battle with sin, right? Some of it's where we inflict ourselves in many ways, don't we?

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But then there's just the reality of life happening to you as well. Sometimes it's just a simple groan because you opened a car door and hit your own knee with your car door, right?

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Sometimes it's just circumstances that happen, or there's bigger things that are going on in some of your lives that I know about, and it can be really tough.

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And so the fact of the matter is, we groan with a longing anticipation of that day when he will return. But we're not left to ourselves in the groaning.

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This is where we come back up out of that cold water. He's gonna warm us a little bit. We're not left to endure suffering and hardship and futility alone.

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And there are three things that God gives to his people in the text this morning. He is giving these three things to us this morning so that we can be encouraged in our walk through what he's already acknowledged is indeed a difficult life.

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He hasn't minimized that. He hasn't pushed suffering to the side and said, suffering, just pretend that doesn't exist. Let's just live in all the gumdrops and rainbows and everything just all really delightful and joyful.

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But he acknowledged that there really is suffering, and there really is pain, there really is problem, but you're not alone in it.

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And that's where he's gonna go. So here are the three things for those of you that are note takers. Here's the three main points. I don't always give you three points, and I certainly don't always alliterate.

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You're welcome. Verses 26 through 27, what God gives us, he gives us the

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Holy Spirit's perfect prayers. The first thing that he gives to us in this text that are shown at four, our walk through this world, perfect prayers.

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The second thing is in verse 28, perfect providence. And then verses 29 through 30, a perfect plan.

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So perfect prayers, perfect providence, perfect plan. Like I said, you're welcome. But the first thing that God gives us are these perfect prayers.

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So let's dive into that and think this through here in verses 26 through 27. The last thing that the

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Spirit was shown to be actively doing in the text, in other words, the last thing that we can expect the

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Spirit to do in the life of a believer is that it said a few verses ago that the

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Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are his children. So a fundamental work of the Spirit is that he gives you confidence that you are indeed in the faith, that you are indeed a follower of Jesus Christ.

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And he's there in the life of a believer giving confidence through showing your life improvement, by warring with sin and by battling with sin.

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And that just means that if you fought sin, if you battled sin, there's confidence, there's a hope that comes because the

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Spirit is in you, guiding you and directing you to battle against the sin that you see in your life regularly.

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And so that's the last thing that the Spirit was shown to be doing in explaining the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Verse 26 is picking that up and giving us another ministry of the

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Holy Spirit here. And the ministry is this. It says in the text, he helps you in your weakness.

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He helps all of us, he helps those who are followers of Christ and those who are in Christ, he helps us in our weakness.

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Now Paul doesn't feel like he needs to prove our weakness. He takes for granted that you are weak.

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Do you see it in the text there? He's like, the Holy Spirit helps you because you're weak. Now, how does that make you feel?

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How does that make you feel? I mean, if I were to walk up to someone and say, since you're weak, let me help you with that bag of groceries,

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I might expect to get punched in the face, right? Like, it's like, what are you talking about, bro? Like, I got this. How many of you do that, by the way?

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You try to get it all in one trip? Anybody with me on that? You're going from the garage, and it's like, I'm not making another trip, and then you're stuck, like, how do

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I shut this trunk and not break the eggs, but you do it anyways. But no, you don't just walk up to someone and say, you're weak, you're weak.

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But Paul is, in essence, saying, you are weak, and so that's why the Spirit helps you, and I'm actually glad for that, because I think if we're all honest in our hearts and in ourselves, we know that we're weak.

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You really know it, and I'm not talking about physically weak, although we are in the grand scheme of things, we're pretty weak.

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You put yourself up against an elephant, you're weak. It doesn't matter who the biggest bodybuilder is, right? So, I mean, we're weak in a cosmic sense, but ultimately, we know our own particular weaknesses.

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We know our frailty, we know our tendency towards temper or towards apathy or towards whatever it might be, laziness, all kinds of things that crowd into our lives and their weaknesses, their problems.

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But Paul is interested in a specific brand of weakness, there's a specific type of weakness that he's talking about here, and it's simply this, this is the weakness that he wants to address in our lives as Christians.

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You're ignorant about what to pray for. You're weak at prayer. You don't even know, and in your weakness, you don't know how or what to pray for.

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Now, I don't wanna soften this ignorance too much, and I mean, my tendency was like, certainly we know some things to pray for, don't we?

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I mean, Paul actually gives a list and at times tells us, hey, pray for this, or hey, pray for that, or I can give you some prayer requests, and we know some things that we ought to pray for, so how do we, do we always get it wrong?

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But Paul doesn't even go into that. He's not as interested as we are in answering some of the specific nuances of the questions, because he takes for granted that this is a given.

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You are indeed weak in that you don't know what you should pray for, and if you think about prayer as an alignment of our will with God's, how many of you wanna ask for what

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God wants for you, what is best for you? If you know that God has the best for you, then don't you wanna be asking for that?

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Do you see what I'm saying? And so, by the way, raise your hand on that. Do you want what God wants for you? Like, you want that, okay, good.

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So, I mean, if we want that, then that's what Paul is going on about, then we ought to be asking for that, but we don't know exactly what his will is for the future in our lives.

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And so, it's, we never know how to line up our prayers with the will of God is the point.

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That's where he's going with this, and I feel this all the time. I feel this as a pastor, I feel this as a father,

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I feel this as a husband, I feel this just as a leader in the community, I don't always know what I'm supposed to be asking for.

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Do you guys relate to that? Have any of you ever sat down and prayed over someone who was sick? And what you wanna pray, right,

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I mean, what is it that you wanna pray? Healing, I think I heard that. Healing, you wanna pray that they would be healed.

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And so, we know that that's what our hearts desire, but have you ever been conflicted not knowing, is it

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God's will that this person is healed? What if they're not? What if that's not what he wants?

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And so, there's a conflicting feeling about prayer at times.

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I don't know whether to pray for healing or to pray for strength and comfort in the midst of suffering. I don't know if I should be praying for growth for the church, strength in a plateauing ministry, or praying that God would help me to gracefully manage a shrinking ministry.

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I never know which direction things are going. I don't have a crystal ball. I can't see the future to know exactly what I'm supposed to be asking for moment by moment.

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And now, some of you are bothered by what I just said because praying for growth is a no -brainer, right? You always pray for the good stuff.

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Right, isn't that what we, is that, raise your hand if that's your tendency. You really generally pray for the, you've never asked

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God to smite you? Okay, I think that we're all probably raising our hands inside right now.

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Like, yeah, you don't pray, God, please give me a really rough week this week. I mean, of course not, and so, we're always praying for the good, but hear me carefully.

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If I definitively knew, and I know that you can't definitively know this, but if I knew definitively that God's will, and I'm using this as an illustration.

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I don't see any indication this is happening, but if I knew definitively that it was God's will to shrink Recast over the next 10 years, if I knew that that was what was gonna happen here, and I knew definitively that that's what

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God had for the future of this congregation, which we know in our heads could be the case, don't we?

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Do you know that that could be the case? That could be what he wants. Wouldn't the right thing to be, wouldn't the right thing to pray, wouldn't the prayer that we ought to pray be give us grace and strength to finish faithfully, to finish well, wouldn't that be the right prayer?

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Rather than us going out and saying, well, give us growth, give us growth, give us growth. If I knew without a doubt that that's the future, that if I knew it without a doubt that that was in the next 10 years, that would impact my prayer life.

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If I knew that that was what was going to happen. You see, what I'm getting at is we only ever utter imperfect prayers.

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That's all we have access to in our finite beings. And for a passage that's seeking to encourage us,

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Paul is getting off to a pretty slow start here. But God, God knows what, we ought to pray.

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So I'm gonna say this, I'm gonna say this statement and it seems kind of a little strange at first, but really, when it comes to prayer, we're always left with guesswork.

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God, I ask for you to grow this church if it be your will.

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God, I ask for you to heal and eradicate this cancer if it be your will. God, I ask for you to push back the waters and dry out the devastation and the flooding that's happened in this area if it be your will.

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Only ever imperfect prayers. Not sure exactly if I'm asking for the right thing.

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Paul's getting off to a slow start here and encouraging us. It's as if he says here in the text, hey, you're living your life in a futile world.

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Talking about the Christian life. Hey, you're living your life here in a futile world. You're groaning, you're craning your neck with an anticipation, waiting and hoping for a future kingdom where everything will be set right.

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And in the meantime, you're completely awful at prayer. You don't get it, you don't even get that right.

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I mean, what kind of encouragement is this? But look at the middle of verse 26.

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But God, but God enters into this. The middle of verse 26.

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But the spirit who is always with us in our hearts intercedes for us with groanings that are too deep for words.

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God in our prayers. God interceding. We do not pray, you have never ever prayed alone.

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You have never made a request that was stand alone prayer. He has always been with you, praying for the right things for you.

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The spirit is always lifting up our needs. He is actively, routinely, with complete knowledge of our situation, knowing us better than we know ourselves, petitioning the

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Father on our behalf for exactly what we need.

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And this intercession is a shoring up of the gaps between what we pray and what we ought to pray, as the text says.

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So that when we pray, God remove the cancer and his will is to allow us to be a testimony of dying well, the

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Holy Spirit supplements our prayer with, eternal Father, give him strength to die well.

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And that's what he's praying. The prayers are not audible. It says in the text they're unspoken, they're wordless prayers.

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You don't hear the spirit interceding for you. But this is a matter of faith, trusting that the spirit is shoring up our weakness and bringing perfect petitions to the

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Father, perfect prayers. By the way, this is not about speaking in tongues, as some of you maybe were raised in more

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Pentecostal or charismatic churches or backgrounds. This is not a text that's about that at all. It cannot be because in context,

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Paul is speaking encouragement here to all believers, not merely those who would say that they have the gift of tongues or those who would have the gift of tongues, but it is an encouragement to everyone that the spirit is doing this for us.

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And it even declares them to be wordless, a wordless petition, a wordless intercession. And the reason

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I call these perfect prayers is because verse 27, explaining the relationship of the Holy Spirit and the

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Father in relationship to his will and what he's asking on our behalf. The Father, who searches all hearts, knows exactly what is in the mind of the spirit at all times because the mind of the

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Holy Spirit and the mind of the Almighty God are linked in perfect unity together. So that the spirit's intercession for us always, only, ever is according to the will of God.

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He's always asking exactly what's right. He knows your future, and he's petitioning the

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Father on behalf that the best glory, the best glory available in your life, the best good available in your life is coming for you because of the work of the spirit in your life.

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Now for many of us, this might lead our hearts to wonder, you know, Paul, why not just say that God's perfect will is always done and leave it at that?

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That would have taken fewer words and we would have had none of this wordless groaning business to deal with or any of that.

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You could have just said, well, you know, the spirit always gets done in your life what needs to happen.

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But that betrays our tendency to be more transactional with God instead of relational with God.

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You see, God is very interested in showing himself to be faithful, to be present with his people through every twist and turn, through every dark valley and every mountaintop.

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Every dark valley and every one of the highest peaks of life, there is the Holy Spirit of God tirelessly, ceaselessly praying perfect prayers for you if you belong to Christ by faith.

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This is a reality that is meant for your encouragement. I've found deep encouragement in this just this past week.

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So since you do not know what you ought to pray, give it an approximation, pitch it out there and trust in the spirit who always supplements our feeble requests with what we really need.

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He is faithful to pray against our foolish prayers, prayers like, Lord, please give me a Lamborghini, when what

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God desires for us to drive is a Hyundai Sonata or a Chevy Malibu. But God doesn't only give us perfect prayers, that's the first point, but tied closely to this is his perfect providence.

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We always have the spirit praying for the right things, but that might not sound so comforting in the real world where car breaks fail, diseases strike, loved ones die.

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And if I'm praying for God to grow his kingdom through Recast Church here in Matawan, think about my illustration from before.

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If I'm praying for that, I'm saying, God, please grow this church, grow your kingdom, grow the outreach and grow the opportunity that we have to reach out to more for your kingdom.

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And the spirit is correcting my prayer for asking for strength during a decline. And how is that a genuine encouragement to me?

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How could that be encouraging? And so Paul brings it to encouragement, even the difficulties, even the bad things that we might be asking for healing and he might be saying, this is it.

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Of course, we're not gonna be privy to that in advance, but Paul's bringing it to encouragement by reminding us that God is good and always has good in the plan for his people.

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His ultimate purpose for all of his children is always, only, ever the best good for us. Now, this is not a message of prosperity because of what's gonna come in verses 29 through 30, a definition of the good, an explanation of what is the good in this plan.

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Those verses are gonna explain what is the good that is spoken of in verse 28, but further remember that verse 28 comes in the context of God correcting our wayward prayers.

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We're asking wrong and so he's fixing it. So Paul's statement in verse 28 starts off by taking for granted that his readers already know that God has a good plan for us.

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Are you guys getting some kind of a rustling from this thing? Or is that just in my ear? Okay.

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Sorry about that. That got awkward. But Paul's statement in verse 28 starts off by taking for granted that his readers already know that God has good in store for us.

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We already know that and I actually take for granted that everybody here, I assume that everyone here who is a genuine believer, a genuine follower of Jesus Christ, already knows that God will work all things out for good for you.

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Did you already know that? You already had some sense of that. Now we wanna put it on posters and make a big deal out of it, but at the end of the day, it's just another verse in the

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Bible and although everyone is valuable and everyone is great, we highlight this. Many people have this one memorized.

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This is one that you wanna memorize and you wanna hold on to, but they don't have a whole lot in Leviticus memorized and held on to, but this is the one that we zero in on and, but the fact of the matter is, you were saved unto a hope for eternity.

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This is kind of a no -brainer in a sense. You were saved unto a hope for eternity in a kingdom without sin, without suffering, without death, without disease.

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That is your destiny if you belong to Christ. How many of you are rejoicing in that?

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Maybe even this morning you're just like, man, that sounds really delightful. That sounds joyful. That sounds like what my hope is built on.

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The very basis of faith in Jesus is that he will fix it all in the end. He will rule and reign in perfect glory over the new heavens and the new earth.

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So I take for granted that you already know he has some good in store for you. An ultimate good in store for you if you belong to Christ and you've been forgiven by faith in him.

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So there are a couple of variations in the translation of verse 28 that make a difference. Subtle difference, but an important difference.

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And I will rarely say this. You can mark it down that on this date, Don said he liked the

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NIV better than the ESV on this one verse. But I do. And it's because the

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NIV has God as the subject here, which is I think where he belongs in the Greek grammar. And it is

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God who works all things for good. Not that all things happen to work out for good.

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We know that that's not the case. That would be a falsehood there. All things don't work out in a good sense and just generally like the world is just kind of like some kind of karma is going towards goodness or something like that.

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Not at all. But it is God who is active in the text and in the verse to work out the good for those who belong to him and are called according to his purposes, those who love him.

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But either way, this verse is expressing that all circumstances are used by God for good for those who love

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God and have been called according to his purposes. And God is not only giving us perfect prayers, but he's also giving us perfect providence, his provision, his plan that he's working out in the way that he's working in our day to day.

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He's orchestrating a good plan that will result in maximal glory. Now, I don't believe that most people who read this on a motivational post or on a coffee mug consider a flat tire on the way to work in the all things.

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He's working together all things, even flat tires? No. Whoever makes those posters seems to think that all things are touchdowns, buzzer beater, three pointers at the end of a game, and promotions, and raises, and good things, right?

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The posters never show a flat tire when they quote this verse, right?

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It's always something good, always something that's a blessing. But let me issue a caution regarding the use of this passage.

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I've shared this a few times before, but within days of my mother dying, which was 24 years ago this month that my mother passed away,

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I had someone sit down on a bench and literally ask me the question, Don, what's God teaching you through this?

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I wanted to punch him. I literally got up and I walked away. Because the last thing

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I wanted to think of was that this was all just an elaborate classroom experience, where the only thing was that God had something he needed to show me, and he needed to show it to me so hard that he would take my mom.

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Do you see how this could be abused? Do you see how this concept, well, what's the silver lining,

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Don? What's the silver lining to your pain? What's the silver lining to your suffering?

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And each one of us in this room could stand up here and share just as much pain and suffering as I just did. I mean, all of us have it, and so how do we respond to one another?

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And that's going back to a couple weeks ago. Learning to groan with one another, learning to suffer with one another, learning to hurt for one another.

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Not run into the silver lining, and that's not what this verse, that's not what this verse is about. This passage is not promising to you a silver lining here on this earth.

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It is not encouraging us to look for the good that comes out of circumstances, brokenness, and sin. That's not it, because we gotta go on to verses 29 and 30.

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But instead, this verse is pointing to a much bigger thing that God is doing, a glorious and majestic, big -picture thing.

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This is not encouraging us to say to someone whose fiance just walked out on them, well, God must have someone better.

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How do you know that? That's trite, that's misleading. Or I'm sure you just lost your job because he's got a better one for you.

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No, you might end up just, you know, shoveling dog dew, I don't know. You can't promise that.

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But it sounds right, doesn't it? It feels like the right advice, but my goodness, we've gotta be careful with this.

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Instead of entering into the pain, we just try to mask it over here. Let me give you a band -aid for that lost limb.

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And we've gotta be careful. And here's the problem. As if the hope is somewhere in the bigger and better, shinier object here in this world.

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As if that's what we ought to be pointing to. A better job, oh, you wrecked your car? I'm sure he's got a better one for you.

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What? No, I'm sure he has eternity for you. That's the only place of the hope.

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My goodness, folks, we should not be encouraging people's eyes towards the shinier object here in this world.

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Because guess what? That car's gonna fail, too. That job's gonna end, too. There's gonna be problems everywhere you go on this planet.

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That's why we talked about futility. That's why I love that Zach's message just came just before this one.

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Because we know that there's pain. We know that there's suffering. And how do we process that?

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This passage doesn't exist so we can offer trite, non -groaning, non -entering into the pain with others kind of advice.

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This passage exists to root our ultimate joy in a deep, theological, ultimate goodness of God.

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He will fix it in the end. And so that leads to the third point, his perfect plan.

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For those who love him, for those who are called according to his glorious notice in the text, it is singular, he has a purpose.

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He does not have purposes. He has a singular purpose in this text.

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And he is working a perfect plan towards that one purpose of restoration of all things.

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And that's spelled out in verses 29 through 30. Here is the good. Here is the good, here is the good.

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The plan looks like this. Those he entered into a relationship with in advance, that is the word for new, he predetermined to mold them into the image of his son.

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That is the destiny, to look like Jesus. Those he predestined to be like his son, he then called, and those he called, he justified.

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That is, he declared them righteous. And those that he declared righteous, he glorified.

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For those who love him, for those who are called according to his purpose, another way of saying for those who are his, for those who have been saved by his blood and his sacrifice, all of these things of life are marching us in step.

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Ultimately, marching, marching, marching towards his perfect plan. His plan of salvation is the place of our hope.

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Paul would never want our hope to be placed in the here and now. Don't forget that Paul said only a few verses ago that he is confident that the present suffering of this life cannot hold a candle to the glory that will be revealed to us who belong to Jesus.

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Paul is not denying suffering. He would never tell us to look for the silver lining here in this world of suffering.

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As if the hope to overcome the loss of something here under the sun would be to get better broken and corruptible stuff that will rot and rust here under the sun.

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That would be a futile and hopeless system to place our trust in things that we know will indeed fail.

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But instead he's saying trust in the spirit for his perfect prayers. And those perfect prayers lead to the perfect providence in your present days.

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And all that comes at you is a part of God's ultimate good providence so that our hope will be firmly established in his perfect plan of salvation.

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That is the place of hope as we walk through this broken world. And let me defend for a moment this glorious chain of salvation here at the very end of this text in the last verse that flies in the face of the suffering of this world.

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That's what it's there for. It's there to say nana nana to the suffering. He says

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God's foreknowledge is there. And those he foreknew, he also predestined.

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God's foreknowledge is not talking about him knowing something about you before you existed. That's not the

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Greek word. As if to say he knew you would believe so he chose you, that would be an abuse of this text.

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The word knowledge that is the root of the Greek word here of foreknow or preknow is a deeply relational word.

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In other words, Paul is saying God entered into a relationship with some before they even existed.

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And this more explicitly pointed out in chapter nine and unless you think that I'm going off the rails here in context in chapter nine, he's gonna take it even further than that.

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But in verse 29, Paul intentionally emphasizes predestination by expounding on it.

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It's the only one in this chain that he actually breaks out and says something extra about. Foreknow, predestine, call, justify, glorify.

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And there's only one that he gives a couple sentences to and it's predestination. He explains why

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God chose us before. He predestined those he entered into a relationship with so that they would be molded into the image of his son.

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That's what he has predestined us for. That your hope is that he selected you to be like his son.

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And he will carry that to completion. And he did that so that Jesus would be preeminent over all things.

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And be preeminent, be first born among many brothers and sisters. And then from there he called those he had previously chosen and we could interject in here fairly that those he called responded by faith and then he justified them by placing all of their sins on the shoulders of Christ who willingly took those sins on our behalf.

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And then those he justified, he also glorified. Now the verb tense of the word glorified, this is the only place that it occurs this way in the writings of Paul because it's almost always a future tense and here it's a past tense.

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And scholars expect the word glorified in verse 30 to be a future tense because it's something that's coming for us.

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Because Paul usually reserves that word for the future work that God is going to do in his people at the return of Christ.

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When we will finally be fully like Jesus. All of our sins purged and cleansed and all of us washed and then we will be like him and we will see him even as we have been known.

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But in encouraging us, I believe that Paul wants to paint this work as a done deal and that's why he uses a past tense verb for it.

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It's as good as done in your life. Glorification, yes, it is something that's going to come for you but it is definitively something that is coming for you if you belong to Christ.

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You will be conformed to the image of his son, Jesus Christ in perfection and glory and righteousness.

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And he wants to emphasize that so he uses a past tense verb to just show the whole thing as a done deal.

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This is a package for you. So the end result of this text is meant to be for your encouragement,

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I hope it is for you this morning. God offers to his children the perfect prayers of the spirit while we walk in this broken world.

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He offers a perfect providence in the present that is constantly guiding us to his perfect plan of salvation that is coming for anyone who belongs to him.

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And all of this leads to one final hope for his people. We will be like his son. Anybody look forward to that?

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Without sin, completely glorified, completely what you were made and designed to be without sin, without suffering, without pain, without the specter of death over your life any longer.

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He will glorify those he justified. Those he justified, he faithfully called. Those he faithfully called, he predestined to be like his son and those he predestined to be like his son, he entered into a relationship with before they even existed.

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Pretty intense chain of events there. But one that we've been wrapped up into and caught up into in Christ.

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And all of this, of course, makes sense only through the cross of Jesus Christ. And so as we take communion together this morning, let's bring our thoughts back to the cross.

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I invite anyone here who belongs to Jesus to go to one of the tables in the back during this next song and take a cracker to remember the body of Jesus Christ that was broken for us.

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And then take a cup of juice to remember his blood that was shed for us. These benefits of perfect prayer, perfect providence, and a perfect plan are only available to those who have received that faithful call and responded with faith.

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And so if you've not yet responded by faith to the sacrifice of Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins, I would love to talk with you this afternoon at some point.

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We're gonna be having a baptism service here shortly. What we're gonna do is we're gonna take communion together. Dave's gonna play a song during communion.

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And then we're gonna be dismissed to go get kids. If you have to leave, I understand that. But man, I would love for most of you to stay and take in this baptism.

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It's gonna be great. We're gonna have seven people baptized here. And then we're gonna have a potluck afterwards. Everybody's invited. Even if you just showed up here this morning and you're like,

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I don't know what, and I didn't bring any food or whatever, please join us. There's gonna be plenty of food. And then let me just encourage you, though, that if this part, just thinking about faith, and I don't know if I'm in with Christ, I don't know if I've ever asked him to save me from my sins, then please come and talk with me.

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Come and catch me during the potluck or even after the service in those 15 minutes where we're just hanging out.

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Feel free to talk with me about the hope that's available for you in Christ. And then those of you who belong to Jesus, this is meant to be a message of comfort this week.

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There's not a lot of application, there's not a lot of go do this stuff, but keep praying. But trust in the

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Spirit to get it right. Don't give up on prayer because you're like, okay, well, the Spirit will take care of it for me. Engage and get involved, because again, it's that relational, not transactional, it's relational with God.

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And then trust in the goodness of God in the day to day and know and trust that he is working out an ultimate and perfect plan for every single one who he calls child.

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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for your grace. I thank you for your kindness to us that speaks to us so directly in your word that gives us encouragement for the down times and for the times when we feel devastated and broken and we don't even know what to pray.

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We don't know how we ought to pray. And I just thank you for your Spirit who fills in those gaps for us and shares what is perfect and right and good to ask for.

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And that you are guiding us toward a good end, Father. I don't know where I would be without that knowledge that this is going somewhere good.

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I think I'd be terrified. I'd just be fearful of what the world was throwing at me and terrified of the direction of the world and the politics and everything,

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Father. It would just be a terrifying place to live. But Father, I have hope because of you, because of your

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Son and his sacrifice. Father, if there's anybody here who does not know the freedom that's available through Jesus Christ, I pray that today might be a day of salvation, a day of faith, a day of saying,

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I surrender to Jesus and I want him to be my Lord and my Savior and I accept what he did on the cross for me.

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Father, for those who are already in, I pray that today would be a day of deep encouragement, that we would have another tool in our arsenal of recognition that our prayers, yes, as weak as they are, are being assisted and helped in our weakness by the

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Spirit. And I pray that you would walk with us, trusting in your goodness this week, in Jesus' name.