Not a Chance

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And we remain standing for the Word of God to give due honor and reverence to what it is.
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It is the very Word of the living God.
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And we're going to read Romans 8, beginning in verse 28, and we're going to read all the way down to the end of the chapter.
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That's verse 39.
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So while standing, we'll read.
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And it says, And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.
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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.
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And those whom he called, he also justified.
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And those whom he justified, he also glorified.
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What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies, who is to condemn.
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Jesus Christ is the one who died more than that who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.
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Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, for your sake we are being killed all the day long.
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We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.
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No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
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For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
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Amen.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for the Word.
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I thank you for an opportunity to preach.
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And Lord, I have missed this pulpit.
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I've missed the opportunity to preach the last few weeks.
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I thank you for Brother Andy preaching and filling this pulpit.
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And I thank you for the opportunity to be here again today.
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And I pray, Lord, that you would keep me from error.
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For I know my capacity for error.
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And I know, Lord, that I am an imperfect man.
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I am a sinner.
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And I need your grace.
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I need your Holy Spirit if I am to preach or write.
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And I pray, Lord, for the hearers.
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Lord, that you would open ears and eyes.
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And more importantly, that you would open hearts.
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And that by the power of your Spirit, that you would speak the Word to them.
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And Lord, today might be the day that those who have not yet bowed the knee to Christ might recognize that there is no other Lord.
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There is no other Savior.
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And Lord, those who have bowed to Jesus Christ, that they would understand today the security of the work that He has done.
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And we thank you for all this, Lord.
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And pray your blessing on it in Jesus' name.
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Amen.
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Well, as I said, I must say I missed being here and preaching.
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It's one of the great joys that God has given me in life is the opportunity to preach His Word.
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And being out of the pulpit for a few weeks is a rather odd feeling.
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So I'm grateful to be back.
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And for those of you who don't remember, before I took the break, we had been in a study on the subject of the Reformation.
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And the reason for that, and I don't want to belabor this too long because I have a lot to say about the text this morning, but the reason for this study is that in just two weeks, on October 31st, we're going to be celebrating the 500th anniversary of what would be considered the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.
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The official beginning of the Protestant Reformation is when Martin Luther published those 95 Theses by nailing them to the door of the church in Wittenberg and sparking a flame that had been stoking for a while, but he sparked a really strong inferno which became the Protestant Reformation with those 95 Theses.
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So every year on October 31st, we celebrate Reformation Day.
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We celebrate the day he did that.
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Well, it just so happens that this year is the year of the 500th anniversary.
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This is the 500th year.
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1517 is when it happened.
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And this year, of course, 2017, we're celebrating that.
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And this series has been about Reformation history, but what we're doing is we're looking at a confession of faith.
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And we are looking at the first London Baptist confession of faith.
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And if you haven't been here to understand why, we would look at this one as opposed to maybe the Heidelberg Confession or maybe one of the other confessions.
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This particular confession was a confession that was written by seven churches in England for the purpose of differentiating themselves from the Anabaptists who had gone very radical in their teachings, and also from the recognized Anglican communion.
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So they were separating themselves out and identifying themselves as orthodox in their faith, orthodox in their theology, sound in their view of the church and the ministry, and they were identifying who they were.
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And the more I read this confession, the more I realize how much we have in common as a church with these 17th century English Baptists.
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Now, we're not a Baptist church by association.
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We're not affiliated with the SBC or the American Baptist Church or the Independent Baptist Church.
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But as far as theologically is concerned, we are so close to what these churches believed, I felt like this was the confession that we should look at for this study.
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And so we have done that.
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And we have gone through four of the articles so far.
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We've looked at the nature of God.
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We've looked at the Trinity.
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We've looked at God and His providence over all things.
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And we have looked at the original sin, not just the first sin.
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People often confuse original sin and first sin.
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The first sin was the sin of Adam when he sinned.
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Original sin is the result of that first sin.
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When Adam sinned, he brought death and destruction and curse on the world.
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That's what we call original sin, the result of the first sin.
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And that was the last thing we studied just three weeks ago.
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Well, today we're at Article 5.
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And no, this is not Scripture.
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I want to make sure you understand that a confession of faith is not Scripture.
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But the way that we're using it is sort of like an outline.
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And when I get up and preach, I use the Scripture, but I also use my outline.
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Well, we're using the confession, as it were, sort of like a sermonic outline.
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It's not infallible any more than I am.
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But it's based on the Word of God, and the Word of God is infallible.
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So where the confession agrees with the Word of God, we agree with the confession.
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Where the confession disagrees with the Word of God, we disagree with the confession.
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It's just that easy.
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People ask me all the time about John Calvin.
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Do you agree with everything John Calvin said? No.
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Absolutely not.
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There are some things he said that I think were very wrong.
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And yet, if somebody called me a Calvinist, I'm not going to fight them.
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Because there are things that he believed that I do believe in.
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And so it just becomes an issue of I take the good and I throw away the bad.
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No problem.
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I can do that.
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The only place I can't do that is with the Word of God.
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If there's something in the Word of God I don't like, that's a problem with me.
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And so I've got to conform myself to this.
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And I've got to conform my doctrine to this.
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And my confessions have to conform to this.
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So we understand now what we're doing.
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So if you look on the back of your bulletin, you'll notice that I've typed out, or I had Miss Pat, rather, type out the confession for you.
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This is Article 5.
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This is where we are today.
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And I'm going to read it out loud.
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You're welcome to follow along with me.
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It says in Article 5, God in His infinite power and wisdom doth dispose all things to the end for which they were created, that neither good nor evil befalls any by chance or without His providence, and that whatsoever befalls the elect is by His appointment for His glory and their good.
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Now you'll notice underneath it, the writers of the Confession give scriptural references.
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We're not going to look at all of them, but our focus is going to be on the last one, which is Romans 8.
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Well, it's not even on there, but it was originally, it just didn't get printed.
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The last one on the list should be Romans 8 and 28.
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Three things that this article stresses.
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Number one, everything God decrees is with a purpose.
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Everything God decrees has a purpose.
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There is no such thing as a purposeless event.
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Sometimes I hear pastors on TV when something bad happens, they'll say, well, God wasn't involved with that.
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God doesn't get involved with the bad.
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God's only involved with the good.
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That's wrong.
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It's just plain wrong.
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The Bible doesn't teach that.
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The Bible doesn't describe God that way.
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It's hard though to understand sometimes that when we experience bad that God is involved.
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But if we believe that God is involved in the good, we have to believe God is involved with the bad, because He's orchestrating it all for His purpose.
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And that's what this confession says.
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It says, everything God decrees, He does so with a purpose.
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And the second thing it says is that nothing good or bad comes about by chance.
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That's why the title of today's sermon is Not a Chance.
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People always like to ascribe chance as the causal factor of their life's circumstances.
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They'll say, well, I don't know why that happened.
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It must have just happened by chance.
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But chance doesn't have any power.
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Chance isn't a thing.
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Do you know what chance is? Chance is how we determine the probability of something.
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Chance is how you determine whether or not something is going to happen based upon the odds.
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For instance, I looked this up, because I don't play the lottery.
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But I looked it up as I was preparing for the message, and I found out that if you do play the lottery, there is a 1 in 175 million chance that you're going to win.
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And I tell you what, the people who host the lottery like those odds.
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But that's what we call, that's chance.
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In the sense that chance is simply how you identify the probability of something based upon our understanding of statistics and possibility.
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But do you understand that in the mind of God, there's no such thing as a possibility? You say, what do you mean by that? God doesn't look at the world in probability and possibility, as if he didn't know.
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You say, what are you talking about? Well, let me ask you this, does God not know what's going to happen today? And if he knows for certain, can it happen any other way? And if it could happen any other way, does he really know for certain? See, this is my problem with the Arminian, because the Arminian believes God knows exactly what's going to happen, but he doesn't have any real control over it.
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And I say, now wait a second, if he knows what's going to happen for certain, and it can't happen any other way, are you saying that it can? Well, no, I'm not saying that it can.
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So it's determined, yes.
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Well, I don't like the word determined.
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Okay, whatever.
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My point and the point of the confession is that people say all the time they live, their lives are up to chance.
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There's no chance in God's view.
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Now, in your view, there is.
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And from our perspective, there is.
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I go today, there's a chance I could fall.
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Ashley, no offense, fell.
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Sorry, I didn't mean to bring that up so soon.
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A little open wound there.
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You know, there was a chance in her mind.
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You know, she's coming to chase the baby, falls down.
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But did that happen by chance in the mind of God? You see, the last thing this says is that God appoints all things that befall the elect for His glory and their good.
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So the three things this confession says, everything God does, He does with a purpose, nothing good or bad happens by chance because there is no such thing.
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And He appoints all things that befall His elect for His glory and their good.
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And that's a huge claim.
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But it's not a claim that's devoid of Scripture.
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And I don't know where I, you know, some of you guys have gone, you know, you've come to us from other churches.
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Some of you are here and you're not, when I say the word reformed or if I use the term Calvinist or something like that, you get like, I've never heard these things before.
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Let me tell you something that really is the stress point of this theology.
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It is that God is sovereign.
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The sovereignty of God.
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I mean, you know, you didn't come here not knowing that today.
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We have it on the sign.
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It says sovereign grace.
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I mean, there's no, you know, it's not a secret.
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And you say, well, where do you get this idea of God's sovereignty? From the word of God.
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And I wish this morning, sometimes I wish I could just preach for hours.
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And I know nobody else wishes that.
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But I never get to really lay everything out.
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And that's part of why we're going through the confession.
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Because so much of what is in this confession is just good theology.
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It's a reminder for us.
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But today I want to lay out Romans 8, 28 through 39.
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Now, I'm going to tell you, we're probably just going to get to verse 28.
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And then I'm going to have to rush to the end.
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Because 28 by itself, everybody knows Romans 8, 28.
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Unbelievers know Romans 8, 28.
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It was on scrubs.
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I mean, it was.
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There was a lady that worked in the nursing facility.
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And she would go around saying, God works everything for good.
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God works everything for good.
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And the doctors would make fun of her for saying that.
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But the problem was, she was misquoting the text.
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And people often do.
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You see, I've taught on Romans 8, 28 several times over the years.
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And every time I stress this one fact, nobody ever quotes it exactly as it's written.
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Nobody ever quotes it in its complete statement.
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They only quote the part that really sounds nice.
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Everything works for good.
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God works everything for good.
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That is not what it says.
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Let's read it.
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Just verse 28.
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Now, we're reading in the ESV.
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It says this, and we know.
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By the way, the we has a context.
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That is a pronoun.
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It has an antecedent.
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And the antecedent of we is believers or the elect.
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That's the we.
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We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.
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For those who are called according to His purpose.
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That's the whole quote.
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Notice the part that's left out.
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When you just say God works everything for good.
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The part that's left out is the for whom.
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In fact, I want to quote from the New American Standard Bible.
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I like the NASV.
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In fact, years ago, we decided as a church to go with the ESV, and it's a wonderful text.
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But sometimes the NAS is more literal in one sense, but it's less readable in another.
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So people tend to like the ESV for its readable quality.
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But the NAS is very strict, literal.
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So sometimes it's good to read it if you're looking for something that's very, very strict to the original language.
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And the New American Standard says this.
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Hear it with me.
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And we know that God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love God.
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To those who are called according to His purpose.
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You see, the NAS says God causes all things to work together.
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And I just like that phrase, because that is what the underlying Greek is trying to say.
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It's not as if everything just sort of works out.
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It's not as if everything's just sort of fate.
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And it's just sort of by fate going to work out for the good.
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But no, God is actively causing it to work together.
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He's actively doing it.
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Things that are happening are not independent of Him.
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In fact, they're completely dependent on Him to work together for the good.
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They're not doing that just because they do.
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They're doing it because God makes them do.
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But as I said earlier, it's not for everyone.
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And this passage is so clear because the most crucial aspect of this passage that is always overlooked is that it does not say God is working for everyone's good.
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It qualifies in two ways for those it's working for.
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Number one, it says God is causing all things to work together for good to those who love God.
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So the first thing it says is that God is causing all things to work together for good for those who love God.
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And I've heard people say, well, everybody loves God.
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There's only a few atheists out there.
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They only run about one or two percent of society.
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And most everybody else loves God.
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Beloved, and I hope this isn't a news flash, but not everybody loves God.
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In fact, if I could be so bold as to say the vast majority of the world hates God.
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And I'm not saying that to be particularly offensive.
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But I've demonstrated this.
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If you go out and talk to people about God and you describe God as He is in Scripture, a God who is willing to judge people for their sins, willing to bring the wrath of His eternal hell on their sins, they will reject that and they will spurn that and they will hate that.
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And they will say this, that's not the God I worship.
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And I say, I know, because you're worshiping a God you've made up.
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You've created an idol.
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That's what everybody does.
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The Bible says that men, knowing the truth that God has put in their hearts, rather than believing that truth, suppress it in unrighteousness and choose to worship the created things rather than the Creator.
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This is what men do.
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This is what all men do naturally until God supernaturally changes their heart.
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We worship that which we want.
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We want God to be like us.
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And so we build a God in our own mind.
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Recently I heard a person arguing and they said that the majority of people love God.
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They said Muslims love God and Hindus love God and all of this.
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And in that sense I would ask this.
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Did the followers of Baal love Him? Who is Baal? That's the God of the Old Testament pagans? Sometimes called Baal.
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Right? Did the followers of Baal love Baal? Yeah? Did that make Him less of a false god? How about all the Egyptian gods? Did not the Egyptians love their gods? Did they not build shrines to their gods that stand till today? And yet would we not say that the deities of Egypt were false deities? In fact were not all ten plagues that God brought upon Egypt? Plagues against the false gods of Egypt? And somebody says well they love God.
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No they love the false god that they have chosen to follow.
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The vast majority of the people in this world do not love the true and living God.
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So when it says that God causes all things to work together for those who love God.
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Right there it separates a pretty small percentage of humanity.
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It's scary, it's sad, it's frightening to think about how real that is.
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But it is.
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But the second thing he says about them, he says not only do they love God.
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But they are called according to His purpose.
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What does it mean to be called by God? Well the Bible describes two types of calling.
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There is the general call of the gospel.
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And then there is the effectual call of the spirit who opens the heart to believe.
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The general call of the gospel is when I stand out at the football game with that megaphone.
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And I call people believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.
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That's the general call of the gospel.
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I say I'm here because I love you, we're not part of Westboro, we're not nuts.
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That's the first thing we say.
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We say we're not crazy, we're here because we love you and we want to share the gospel with you.
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I said and we ask you to consider the fact that you will all face God one day.
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And every one of us will face God either in Christ or outside of Christ.
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And just like in Noah's day, whether you were in the ark or outside of the ark was the only thing that mattered.
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Because if you were inside the ark, you were inside God's protective shelter.
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And the storms of God's wrath were raging outside but you were safe within.
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That's a picture of Jesus Christ.
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But if you were outside of the ark, no matter how good you could swim, eventually you're going to be overtaken by the wrath of God.
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So that's the only two, you can either be in Christ or outside of Christ.
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And so when we say that, that's the general call of the gospel.
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But the Bible describes what we call the effectual call.
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That call that God places on the heart that results in a change.
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I'll give you an example.
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If I call my child, we'll use Hope.
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Hope, come here.
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Hope, come here.
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I'll probably say it 15 times.
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And depending on her level of willingness to obey at that moment, she may or she may not come.
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But when Jesus stood at the tomb of Lazarus, and he said, Lazarus, come forth.
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God gave Lazarus' four-day dead body life.
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And he came.
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That's the difference between the general call.
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We call all men to repentance.
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We trust that God will give some life and they will come.
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And that's how they come.
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Because God gives them life.
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You say, where do you find this in scripture? Well, look at verse 30.
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Romans 8.28 says, we just read it.
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Romans 8.28 says that, And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.
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For those that 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 what? He called.
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See, this is the thing that gets me.
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Because some people say, well, God calls everybody.
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And then He predestines those who respond.
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Here's the problem with that.
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That's not what it says.
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It says, those whom He predestined, those He called.
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If you say it the other way, you're backwards in the text.
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If you say it the other way, you're putting the cart before the horse.
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The predestination comes before the calling.
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Man, if that can't make you reformed.
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I mean, I'm serious, that's it.
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The predestination precedes the call.
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And it's right there.
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I didn't write this.
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You got a problem, take it up with Paul.
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I don't like the way he ordered it.
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Well, talk to him.
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This is why it says in Acts 13, 48.
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It says, when the Gentiles heard the gospel, as many as had been ordained to eternal life, believed.
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Didn't say as many as believed were ordained to eternal life.
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It says, as many as had been ordained, believed.
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The belief followed the ordination of God.
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If you are a believer today, it is the absolute cause of God that you are a believer.
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He is the one who saved you.
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He is the one who opened your heart to believe.
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He is the cause of your salvation.
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From beginning to end, it is all Him.
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Does that mean you didn't believe? No, you believed.
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But outside of those sovereign majesty, grace of God, you wouldn't have.
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So what do you owe to your faith? To the grace of God.
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I owe it all to the grace of God.
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I have nothing that I bring.
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I have nothing that I can hand to God and say, See, you are glad to have me.
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You are blessed.
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People don't like this because it takes the power out of their hands.
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And I have always said this.
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I have said, I am so glad my salvation is in His hands and not mine.
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If my salvation was in my hands, number one, I wouldn't have got it.
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And second, I wouldn't have been able to keep it if I did.
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And I could, again, be here all day.
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But when it talks about the called, that's what it's saying.
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But it says we are called to something.
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It says we are called according to His purpose.
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What is the purpose? Purpose is in verse 29.
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It says, We know that for those who love God, all things work together.
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For those who are called according to His purpose, for 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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You know why God called you? He called you so that you would be conformed to the image of His Son.
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That's the purpose.
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And by the way, that's the good.
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You see, a lot of people have problems with Romans 8.28.
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The biggest problem they have with Romans 8.28 is they have a wrong view of good.
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They say, God works everything together for my good.
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What is good? Good is the Mercedes.
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Good is the best parking space.
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Good is the full bank account.
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Good is the full pantry.
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Good is the house with 13 stories.
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Good is the respect of my peers.
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Good is the respect of my co-workers.
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Good is the blessed attire that inspires and encourages everyone else to look at me.
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That's not the good of Romans 8.28.
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The good of Romans 8.28 is the confirmation to Christ in Romans 8.29.
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The good that you were saved for was to be conformed to the image of His Son.
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And that good may mean living in a shack in a foreign country, planting a flag for Jesus Christ, and eating bread and water the rest of your days.
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That may be the good that God has for you.
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You say, well, I don't think that's very good.
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Well, then you've got a wrong view of good.
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And that's the problem with Romans 8.28.
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The problem is we misunderstand good.
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And we misunderstand who the good is for.
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We talk about our children all the time.
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My wife and I are always thinking about their futures.
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And, you know, Cody's getting to be 17 now, and thinking about what he's going to do with his life.
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And, you know, college, he's already doing the dual enrollment thing.
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And we think about maybe he'll go in the military.
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And with Ashley, she's already in college.
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We don't know what God's going to do with her.
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She's got some dreams and some visions of what she wants to do with her life.
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And we think about these things.
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And we say, what's God going to do with our children? Here's the thing.
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A lot of people's idea of success is making sure they get that degree or making sure they get that job or making sure they get that money, making sure they get that taken care of.
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That account is full.
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Success is that my children are conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.
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Not my success.
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It's not mine to do.
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I can't save my kids any more than I can save yours.
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But that's the desire.
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If my son came to me tomorrow and said, I want to join the Marines, hey, simplify.
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But if he came to me tomorrow and said, Dad, I want to take Jesus somewhere he's never been heard, simplify.
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Always faithful.
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You see, that's that's that's success.
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That's the goal.
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That's the good.
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And that's the promise.
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That if you are his and he is yours.
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No matter what.
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No matter what.
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He is working you toward that good.
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And that good doesn't always come.
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Without pain.
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In fact, I would say that that good never comes without pain.
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But look up a few verses in verse 18.
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You're in Romans 8.
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Anyway, look up a verse 18.
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For I consider.
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That the sufferings of this present time.
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Are not to be compared.
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To the glory that is to be revealed to us.
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That's the promise.
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And I love the Old Testament scripture that says in Psalm 30.
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Though the sorrow may last for the night.
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His joy comes in the morning.
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That's the joy that we all have to look forward to.
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Your life may be a struggle right now.
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And for many of you it is.
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And I can't promise that today.
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And tomorrow.
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And the next day.
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Isn't going to continue being a struggle.
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But I can tell you this.
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It is not a purposeless struggle.
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God is causing everything in your life.
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To work together.
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For his glory.
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And your good.
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But only if you're his.
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And that's the point.
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I wish I had time.
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And I don't.
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My time has come and gone.
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There's so much more in this passage.
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And I encourage you to meditate on it.
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And read it.
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But know this.
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It is for those who are his.
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Are you his? That's the question of today.
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Are you his? Say, I don't know.
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Jesus' first words that he preached.
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That we know of.
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In the first part of the book of Mark.
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He came preaching repent.
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For the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
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If you don't know if you are his.
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The word of God calls you to repent of your sins.
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And trust in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Repentance towards God.
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And faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Yes, it's God who will do it.
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Yes, it is God who will open your heart.
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So I invite you.
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To close your eyes and listen.
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Let's close our eyes.
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Let's listen.
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God, we thank you for this time.
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We thank you for being willing.
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To open our hearts.
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And for Lord, those who have.
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Come to know Christ already.
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I pray that this would be for them.
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An encouragement to know.
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That neither death nor life.
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Nor angels nor powers.
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Nor things present.
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Nor things to come.
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Nor anything else.
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And all creation.
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Can separate them from the love of God.
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In Christ Jesus their Lord.
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I pray for them.
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And Lord, if they do not know Christ.
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I pray that they would understand.
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That this promise is not universal.
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This promise is for the believer.
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Lord, that they might repent.
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Lord, that they might believe.
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And Lord, that you might confirm in their hearts.
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That faith today.
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Is our prayer.
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In Jesus name and for his sake.
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Amen.