Sunday Sermon: God Works All Things Together for Good (Romans 8:28)

Romans 8:28 in Context and the Spirit’s Intercession

You're listening to the preaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes, pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on this podcast we feature teaching through a New Testament book, an Old Testament book on Thursday and our Q &A on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to present our sermon series. Here is Pastor Gabe.

Well good morning everyone.

Open in your Bible if you would please to Romans chapter 8. As we come back to our study of Romans 8, we're going to start in that oh so famous verse, verse 28 today. And keeping these things in context, we'll read through verse 30.

That's the passage that we'll be looking at. A couple of weeks ago that we were reading about the work of the Spirit in our hearts and the Spirit interceding for us with groanings too deep for words. Even when our prayers are inadequate to get to God, yet it is the Spirit who intercedes on our behalf that our every prayer is heard.

And God is working even through our prayers to accomplish His great purposes for us. It was after I preached two weeks ago that I was reminded of this quote from Robert Murray McShane who said the following, if I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies, yet the distance makes no difference.

He is praying for me. And we're reminded in light of that, of how God is working all things together for good. For those who love God and are called according to His purpose. Let's stand and read that together in honor of the word of the King.

Romans 8, verses 28 -30. I'm reading from the English Standard Version. Hear the word of the Lord. And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good. For those who are called according to His purpose.

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. And those whom He predestined, He also called. And those whom He called, He also justified.

And those whom He justified, He also glorified. You may be seated as we pray. Heavenly Father, we come to this passage this morning by way of reminder. For I would surely hope that all believers, all Christians know that God is working all things together for good.

For those who love God and are called according to Your purpose. As we explore this verse and its implications, I pray that it brings our eyes, our spiritual gaze, all the more heavenward. For as Jesus instructed of us, seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.

And all the things that we need on earth will be added to us as well. The Apostle Paul in Colossians 3 saying, seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. And we know Christ seated there, enthroned, sovereign and on high is working all things out for our good.

And so with the reminder of this, Lord, we look at our season, at our circumstances, even our day-by-day moments. And see how You by Your providence are working in all of these things to bring us to what we've read here to glory.

And a day will come in which we'll look back on all of this, and we will see exactly how God was working in the midst of our every moment for our good. And may this all be to the praise of Your glorious grace.

We pray these things in Jesus' name and all God's people said, amen. You surely know the story of Joseph. Brother Chris had read that last chapter for us today, verses 1 through 20 of Genesis chapter 50, where Joseph and his brothers had that final conversation after all of these things had been said and done.

When Joseph was a teenager, he was loved by his father Jacob more than the rest of his brothers. And this was to the jealousy of his brothers. They saw that wonderful ornamented coat that was given to Joseph or as we often refer to it as the coat of many colors.

Jacob bestowed upon Joseph the oldest of the children that were born to Rachel, his favored wife. And the brothers were jealous. Then Joseph has these dreams and he talks about how his brothers through these dreams would someday bow down to him.

He had a dream of these sheaves. They were working out in the field and they had their sheaves of grain and the brother's sheaves of grain bowed down to Joseph's sheaf. Then Joseph had another dream where even the sun, moon and 11 stars bowed down to him.

That one even upset Jacob when Joseph was telling that dream. Are you saying that even me and your mother are going to bow down to you? But Jacob remembered all these things and stored them up in his heart.

One day he sent Joseph out to the field to check on his brothers, go see what they're doing. Boy, you can bet that that really thrilled the brothers. That the little one, dad's favorite, is coming out to check on us and report back to dad on how we're doing.

They see Joseph coming in the distance. Hard to miss that ornamented coat. And they said, here comes that dreamer.

Let's kill him.

It was the oldest brother, Reuben, that convinced them not to, but to deal with him in another way. So they threw him in a pit and a group of Ishmaelites came by. They sold Joseph into slavery to those Ishmaelites, those traders who were going to go to Egypt and would end up trading Joseph into slavery.

They took the coat off of Joseph. They tore it. They smeared it with goat's blood and presented it to their father and said, Joseph had been mauled by a wild animal. And Jacob was convinced and he mourned for the death of his son.

Meanwhile, Joseph, so unjustly treated, becomes a slave in the house of Potiphar, and God blesses him so that Joseph is even put in charge of all of Potiphar's house. Now, Potiphar's wife notices this.

She tries to make a move on Joseph. Joseph resists. So, Potiphar's wife accuses Joseph of something he didn't do. Potiphar, incensed, throws Joseph into prison. And it's there while in prison. God blesses Joseph again.

He's even placed in charge of the jail while he's in prison. And there he encounters two prisoners who had worked in the court of Pharaoh, one a cupbearer and one a baker. They had dreams. And Joseph interpreted their dreams.

The baker would be put to death, but the cupbearer would be restored back to the court of Pharaoh. Joseph says to the cupbearer, I'm here for something that I did not do. So when you come back into the court of Pharaoh, would you tell him about me that I may be released from this place?

But wouldn't you know it, the cupbearer gets restored to his position, forgets all about Joseph. Until one day, Pharaoh has a pair of dreams. Pharaoh had a dream that there were seven fat cows that came up out of the Nile and began feeding on the grass.

And while they were eating, seven scrawny cows came up and ate the seven fat cows. But those seven scrawny cows were just as scrawny as they were before they ate the fat cows. Pharaoh wakes up from this dream, but then he goes to sleep.

He has another dream. He dreams that there's a stock with seven plump ears of grain. And the plump ears of grain are eaten by seven scrawny ears of grain. But those scrawny ears of grain are still just as scrawny as they were before they ate the fat ones.

So now Pharaoh wakes up again and he's going, what does all of this mean? He consults his wise man. They can't tell him anything. But the cupbearer remembers, I know a guy who can interpret dreams. So he tells Pharaoh about Joseph.

Pharaoh brings him up out of prison, tells him the dreams and asks for their meaning. Joseph says the dreams are one and the same. They mean the same thing. What's about to happen is Egypt and the whole land is going to undergo seven years of plenty.

There's going to be great produce in all the land. Unlike any sort of fruitfulness that Egypt and the kingdom has ever seen before. But then after that, there's going to become seven years of famine. And it's going to be so bad.

It's going to be unlike any famine there has ever been. It's going to seem like the years of plenty were as nothing. And so Pharaoh says, so what do we do about this? And Joseph says, you need to put somebody in charge who's going to store up grain from the seven years of plenty so that we'll have them during those seven years of famine.

Pharaoh goes, I know just the guy. And he appoints Joseph to be his second in command, second most powerful person in the world at that time under Pharaoh. Puts a ring on him, gives him a big parade, changes his name.

And Joseph is put in charge of taking care of all those years of plenty so that the whole land would be prepared for the years of famine that were about to come. Well, those years of famine came and they were indeed very severe.

Not affecting just Egypt, but even all the way up into the land of Canaan. So that Jacob and his sons now need grain because they have nothing. Jacob hears there's grain down in Egypt. He sends his sons down to Egypt.

And what do they find there? Well, they find Joseph, but don't know that it's him. Joseph recognizes them immediately. And through a series of testing, we'll cut the long story short, he comes to find that these brothers really are quite remorseful over what they did to Joseph 20 years before now has passed by this time.

And Joseph reveals himself to his brothers and shows them that he's still alive and they could hardly believe it. But they weep and embrace one another. Joseph has his father Jacob and all of his household moved down from Canaan into the land of Goshen and they settle there.

And that is where the descendants of Abraham begin to flourish and be fruitful. Then the day came when Jacob died. This was what the portion that brother Chris had read to us. The funeral then that was held in Canaan as Jacob was taken back there and buried in the land that God had promised to give to the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Joseph, in the meantime, comes back to Egypt to fulfill his time there in Egypt, lives to the age of 110. But after Jacob dies, the brothers are convinced now Joseph's going to take out his revenge. It's not going to mourn our father Jacob, he's gone.

So we need to make a deal with Joseph. We need to plead with him that he would not put us to death for that thing that we did to him decades ago. And when Joseph understood that this was the heart of his brothers, he wept, he wept over it.

And he said to these brothers, Brothers, what you did to me, you meant for evil, but God meant it for good. That he would save the lives of many people. As Vodie Bachum has taught on this passage, this whole thing happened so that Joseph would be placed in Egypt so that Judah would be saved, for it's from the line of Judah would come the Savior who would save all of mankind.

And through faith in Jesus Christ, descended from the line of Judah, who died on the cross for us, who rose again from the dead, by faith in him, we have the forgiveness of sins and everlasting life. This is a story that is often used to refer to the providence of God.

Oftentimes the story is twisted, abused, and misapplied. You might be familiar with the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Andrew Lloyd Webber, who turned this into a musical and basically was trying to convey through the musical that if you just trust in God, all your wildest dreams will come true.

But that's not what happened with Joseph. Joseph was still a slave in Egypt. All of his wildest dreams did not come true. But God used these unfortunate events that happened to Joseph. These wicked events that happened to Joseph.

God worked through that to bring about the salvation of many people. And so we can see, even in the life of Joseph, how God is working all things together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose.

My sermon this morning is focusing on just that one verse, Romans 8, 28. However, I'm not going to get into everything today that I want to get into one sermon. So I'm going to break this up into two parts.

I made the mistake.

I told Paula about this this morning. I made the mistake of talking with her about Martin Lloyd-Jones and his series through the book of Romans. Well, he's taking many, many more years to do Romans than I'm taking going through Romans.

And she said on Romans 8, 28, she was like on the fifth sermon or something like that that he was doing on just this one verse. And I said, well, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to do it in one sermon.

And as I was going through my notes and I was preparing for the things I was going to say, I realized I am not going to be able to do this in one sermon. And so we're going to focus on part of the passage today.

We're going to break it up and then come back to the rest of it next week. So the part we're going to focus on is we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good. That's the part we're going to focus on today.

Next week, we're going to come back to understand what is meant by for those who are called according to his purpose. And looking at these things in context with what we have as referred to as the golden chain of redemption.

For those whom he predestined, he also called. For those who he called, he also justified. For those whom he justified, he also glorified. Romans 8, 28 goes right along with all of that. So this is what we're going to be looking at through the remainder of 2025.

What a great series of sermons. What a great study to finish the year on. So focusing on just that part where it says, for those, sorry, and we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.

So here's how I'm going to break up the message this morning. First of all, we're going to consider those first three words, and we know. Next, we're going to consider the next clause that all things work together for good.

And then finally, the clause to those who love God. Kind of breaking it up in the order that the New King James Bible puts it in. But then after that, regarding those who love God, we're also going to make our applications.

Understand the practicality of this as well as we consider the truth behind these words in Romans 8, 28 today. Now to start off, here's the thing I find fascinating about the way this verse begins. We would be tempted to go right into reading, all things work together for good, right?

And that may be the part of the verse that you're most apt to repeat to someone else. You would use it as a platitude or as a proverb of some kind. All things work together for good. That's the part that the verse is remembered for.

But notice that the beginning of this sentence is, and we know that all things work together for good. In the original Greek, it's actually just one word, which means to be aware of or have knowledge of.

So this is really a complete thought that comes from the verse before it. If you would go back to verse 27, let me read this according to the more literal flow that Paul is intending here with the language that is used.

Again, he says it in Greek. That was the original language that Romans was written in. Translating it to English would most closely sound like this. Verse 27 begins, and he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the spirit because the spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God, knowing that to those who love God, all things work together for good to those who are called according to his purpose, period.

There are two reasons why I felt like that was important for us to see that. Number one, because when reading this as a continuous thought from the previous verse, we recognize that this is yet another truth that has been revealed to us from the spirit of God.

Not everyone does know that all things work together for good. How do we know that? Because of the ministry of the Holy Spirit that has been given to every believer. As Paul said to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 2 .12, now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given to us by God.

So we know that all things work together for good because the spirit has taught us this. That's the first reason why I want you to see that. The second reason I wanted us to notice this is because Paul is speaking as if these Christians in Rome already understand this concept.

He's not laying out like this deep doctrinal dissertation on how all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose. He just simply says the statement and he prefaces it with, we know.

Oidamon, understanding that God works all things together for good. He does not have to teach them how all things work together for good. They already know that. And he says this by way of reminder. Not by revealing to them something they don't already know, but that they do know.

We do know that God works all things together for good. He is presenting this as an obvious things Christians should just know about God. He is working all things out for some great purpose for all of us.

And to the praise of his glory. This past week at the Christian school that I teach at, I asked my students this question. Do you believe that nothing happens good or bad unless the Lord has commanded it?

And the room was mostly split in half. Some students said that's true. Some students said that it was false. Of those who said that it was false, it pretty much unanimously came down to free will. God would not cause everything that happens good or bad because that would violate our free will.

But they became startlingly aware of what I was getting at when I read to them Lamentations 3, 37 to 38.

Which says,.

Who has spoken and it came to pass unless the Lord has commanded it? Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come? So are you going to argue with your Bible or perhaps you need to argue with your understanding of free will?

Now, even here in this passage, Jeremiah, who we believe to be the author of Lamentations, Jeremiah presents this question as something of an obvious statement. Again, he doesn't lay out a whole long doctrinal treatise on how it is from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come.

He presents it as a question. Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and bad come? He does not have to teach you that God is in control. Either God commands both the good and the bad or He is not God.

It should be obvious to us that this is how the God who created all things operates in all that has been made. He's not letting anything happen out of His control. Now, if commanded is too harsh a word for you, well, you probably relate better to the word ordination.

We use the word ordain. God has ordained these things. We sing in the old hymn, whatever God has ordained is right. God even ordained that the fall would happen in the Garden of Eden. And if God ordained that that would take place, then He must ultimately be working out to some good through that.

Now, some can contend with that and say, well, I don't believe God ordained the fall in the Garden of Eden. He allowed it to happen. Well, sure, I agree with you. But if He allowed it, then He ordained it.

That's just common sense. If God is all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving, and He created these beings, He knew we're going to disobey Him and eat of the tree that He told them not to eat from and therefore curse all of mankind and so many billions of people down through the ages would end up going to hell, but God created them anyway, then God ordained for that to happen.

And still, even in this wickedness that we commit against God and we're responsible for, no one can blame God for anything that happens. Adam tried that, by the way. The very first man said, the woman you gave to be with me gave me some of the fruit and I ate.

This has already been tried from the first human being to blame God. No one can blame God for their actions. We're all responsible for what we did. And yet, God ordained that all of this would take place for some great and ultimate purpose.

And for those who love God, it's for our good. For those who love Him and have been called according to His purposes. God is working in everything to bring about His ultimate purpose that He decreed from before the foundation of the world.

God is not as the deists believe Him to be. You understand the whole concept of deism? This was this philosophy, more a philosophy than it was a theology that came about in the Enlightenment period when these bigwigs, and literally bigwigs, this was in the age of the powdered wig.

So these powdered wig philosophers were postulating about God and they thought, you know, God did create all things. This all had to come from somewhere. So it came from God who created everything, but He's not actually interacting with His creation.

He doesn't concern Himself with the affairs of mankind. So He created it, He set it all in motion, and then He's just way out there somewhere. He's not down here with the rest of us. But Colossians 1 .16 -17 says that not only did Jesus Christ, the Son of God, create all things, but in Him all things hold together.

If God was not present in the midst of His creation keeping everything from flying apart into mass chaos, and I know some days probably feels that way. If God was not here holding everything together, though we might believe in God, we would have no reason to hope in God.

There would be no reason to believe that He works all things together for good if the deists are correct. But we know that God does work all things together for our good. God is not just out there somewhere, He's right here.

He's with us now. He's been with us through our worship this morning. He is with us in the speaking of His word as we hear it read. Jesus Christ will be with us when we come to the table and eat of His flesh and drink of His blood.

He will be with us in our fellowship this afternoon as we get to know one another over hamburgers and hot dogs. He is with you in the difficult things that you're gonna go through this week. He's with you in your prayers.

He's with you in your joyful moments. God is here and He is with us. And so we can know God being here even in the midst of His creation that He is working all things together for our good and for His glory.

And this we know as the Spirit has led us in our knowing. So that's the first part. We know that all things work together for good. Second part is that all things work together for good. So what is it that we know?

Again, we know that all things work together for good. The bad together. Okay, remember that word together. The bad together with the good even for our good and for His glory. And this working of God ordering each and every circumstance to achieve His ultimate purpose, we call this providence.

Now, as I mentioned, we're gonna be enjoying our monthly potluck today. My dad, when I was growing up, he hated that word potluck. I don't believe in luck. Christians shouldn't believe in luck. So he would refer to it as a pot providence.

So whatever you get to eat today, that's what you get by the providence of God. So God by His providence is working our grill master at the grill to prepare some good food today. Providence is not a word that we find in the Bible, but the idea or the understanding of this is all over the Bible.

Whenever we talk about the sovereignty of God, we are saying that God rules. He's sovereign, like you would refer to a monarch as the sovereign of a kingdom or a land. So God is sovereign in a way that's even greater than any man can be sovereign.

He is sovereign over all that He has made. So to make a statement about God being sovereign is to say that God rules. Providence is how He rules. So in His sovereignty, God reigns. And in His providence, how does He work out those things that He means to bring to the end that He has decreed?

As we recite in our own catechism, the works of providence are His most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing of all of His creatures and their actions. Now, many will acknowledge that God governs, but they don't really want to acknowledge that He governs our actions.

Well, what in the world is He governing if He's not also governing our actions? I spoke at a church in Arkansas a number of years ago, and this was a church that the pastor was fully reformed, and he was bringing that church into an understanding of reformed doctrine and a reformed confession, such as ours, the Second London Baptist Confession, 1689.

But the church wasn't there yet. They were still kind of split in half. Half were very much on the free will, Arminian side, and then the other half were on board with this understanding of what scripture says about God's sovereignty in the work of salvation.

I was asked to come and preach. I ended up teaching a Sunday school class while I was there as well, and it was in the Sunday school class.

We were in a small room,.

30 people. We were kind of packed in there. I think the room was even smaller than what this room used to be before we kind of opened up this wall over here, but we're all kind of packed into that room.

And I had asked this question. I said, do you believe that God governs over everything? And everybody unanimously said, yes, God governs. And then my follow-up question was, do you believe that He governs our actions?

Well, now the room was split in half. About 12 to 15, we're going, yeah, He governs, but governs our actions. Well, you say He governs, but He doesn't govern your actions. Then what does He govern? Then you don't really believe that God governs.

He's really sovereign over anything or everything, or He's not sovereign at all. Many will define providence as God making something good out of a bad situation. Like we're sinners, we mess everything up, but God is providential.

And so He's going to work in our mistakes to make something good come out of it. There was a Southern Baptist Convention president a number of years ago who said the following, quote, I think that God can take everything that happens and accomplish His ultimate will, but not everything that happens is the will of God.

Unquote.

That's a direct quote. So does he just believe that God is there to play cleanup? Like this is a lighter form of deism. God has set everything in motion. I'm going to let you guys kind of work this out.

When I see something that goes really bad, well, then I'll come in and I'll make it straight. That really seems like the definition that He has of providence. But providence is not God just making the best out of a bad circumstance.

Providence is God working in the good and the bad. In order to accomplish this ultimate good that He has decreed from eternity past. The Heidelberg Catechism, question 27 says,. What dost thou mean by the providence of God?

That's the most King James I will get today, I promise. Answer, the almighty and everywhere present power of God, whereby as it were by His hand, He still upholds heaven and earth and all creatures. And so governs then that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, food and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty.

Indeed, all things come not by chance, but by His hand. Louis Burkoff in his systematic theology wrote,. Providence may be defined as that work of God in which He preserves all His creatures, is active in all that happens in the world and directs all things to their appointed end.

In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin wrote,. No wind ever rises or rages without God's special command. Not a drop of rain falls without the express command of God. We must acknowledge God's special providence in every single event.

Charles Spurgeon.

Described this as the moat of dust that dances in the sunbeam. There is not a moat of dust in the sunbeam that God does not have His hand upon. And R .C. Sproul talked about maverick molecules. If there is one maverick molecule anywhere in the universe outside of the will of God, then we have no reason.

To believe.

That God will fulfill any of His promises. But He didn't just start it and let it go. He is here actively working in the midst of all things and in us for our good. And why does God do this? He does it to the praise of His glory.

And that's something, by the way, that the scriptures find no reason to apologize for. God does all things for His glorious purpose. We quoted it this morning or we heard it this morning from Brother Chris giving us the call to worship out of Psalm 23.

He leads us in paths of righteousness.

Why?

For His name's sake. John says in 1 John, you have been saved. You have been forgiven your sins for His name's sake. Praise God that we've been forgiven our sins and given eternal life. All to the praise of His glory.

So that brings us now to the third portion that we're looking at. The third portion of this verse we look at today to those who love God. We know that all things work together for good to those or for those who love God.

Not everything that God is doing is going to work out for the good of every single person,.

Is it?

I hope you're paying close attention to this and kind of logging it in whatever part of your mind you're filling with our study of the book of Romans because at the start of 2026, we're going to get into chapter 9.

And it's there in chapter 9 that we have this stunning reminder that none of us deserves to have anything work out for our good. But God will have mercy on whom He has mercy and He will have compassion on whom He has compassion.

Paul even gives examples. Ishmael, Esau or Pharaoh whom God showed His mighty power through not by showing them good but by bringing them to destruction. So not everything works out for good for everything or for everyone but only for those who love God and are called according to His purpose.

Even the destruction of the wicked works out for our good.

Amen.

But we would still be so motivated and inclined to share the gospel with even our enemies that our enemy would become our brother through faith in Jesus Christ and so not suffer under the wrath of God but be saved and then through the gift of the Holy Spirit come to understand this of how God is working all things for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose.

Now how do you know that you love God? It's a reasonable question, right? How do you know that you love God? You can say that you love God. That's a good start. I think the first way is to just simply answer the question.

Do you love God? Yes. Okay. I got a couple over here that say they love God. Do you love God? Yes. Amen. All right. Beautiful. Then we're on the right track. Remember in John 21 Jesus asked this question of Peter three times.

Peter, do you love me? And three times Peter answers, Lord, you know that I love you. And then Jesus says to Peter, then feed my sheep. So that leads to a second question. Do you desire to obey God? Because if you love God you will want to do what His Son tells you to do.

Jesus said in John 14, 15, you will show me that you love me when you obey my commandments. As 1 John 2, 3 through 6 says, and by this we know that we have come from him if we keep his commandments. Whoever says I know him but does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him.

But whoever keeps his word in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him. Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same manner in which Jesus walked. So some follow-up questions to that.

Do you desire to walk in the same way in which Jesus walked? Do you want holiness? Do you want to put to death what is earthly in you? Because if you say you love Jesus to check a box or signal your virtue or please your tribe, but you're not really living your life in a manner reflective of the Christ whom you say that you love, then it's reasonable to ask, do you really love God?

If you tell me, husband, if you tell me that you love your wife, but you say, I don't really like talking to her.

All that much,.

And I really don't like it when she talks to me, then any one of us have reason to doubt that you're telling the truth when you say that you love your wife. We demonstrate our love for God first by listening to Him.