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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. So if you would, in your Bible please, open to Romans 8 once again.
This is a chapter that Derek Thomas of Ligonier Ministries said he believes to be the greatest chapter in the
Bible, and he thinks the greatest verse of this chapter is one that we've already looked at, Romans 8, 28.
We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
And then verses 29 and 30, which we've been looking at last week and this week, expound upon that good that God is working all things toward that we read about in verse 28.
Dr. Thomas says the following, the good is our final glorification.
The Lord intends for us to come all the way home and to fill those mansions that Jesus said were being prepared for us.
That's the goal, and that's the ultimate good that God has in store for us.
He ensures that in all things, good things, bad things, evil things, and things that we even do not quite understand, he weaves and coordinates in his sovereignty to ensure that final outcome.
And praise be to God. So, again, open to Romans 8, beginning in verse 28, let us read through verse 30, in honor of the word of the
King, would you please stand? This is the Apostle Paul writing to the church in Rome, and 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 brethren.
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, as we come back to this passage today,
I pray that we just see the goodness of your glorious grace. It is you who has called us, it is you who have worked out in us that we would believe, it is you who has justified us, who is sanctifying us, who is bringing us into glory.
And all of this from beginning to end is the gracious work of God. Lord, as we behold these things today, may it humble us to know that it is not by any work or power that we have achieved these things, but the strength of your
Spirit that is within us, to believe, to grow in that faith, and ultimately to come home to you in that wonderful, glorious heaven that you are preparing for us.
As we read about in Hebrews 11, we are not looking for some sort of earthly city, for even if those
Old Testament faithful had thought that they were going to come back to the land that you had promised, then they would have had the chance to do that.
But even they anticipated a heavenly glory. And so Lord, may that be our expectation as well.
These bodies will give us only a few years. We've even read about that this morning in our congregational reading, we've sung about it in our songs.
But it is you who will bring us into glory and make our bodies to be like his glorious body by the power that enables
Christ to subject all things to himself. It is in the name of Jesus that we pray, amen.
In Exodus chapter 3 is where we have the account of the burning bush.
A lot of times when we think of the burning bush, we're just thinking of God telling
Moses, you're going to go back to Pharaoh and you're going to tell him, let my people go. And for a lot of us, that is kind of the extent of the conversation.
But the conversation goes from chapters 3 into chapter 4. When I was a young man, I was particularly struck by what
God said to Moses. When he said to him, here's how you know that I will be with you.
So he says to Moses, the voice coming from the bush that would not burn up, but is burning with fire nonetheless.
This ground that was now holy ground and Moses had to take his sandals off to stand on it. The voice that came to him said,
I have heard the cries and the afflictions of my people. And I'm going to send you back to Egypt to tell
Pharaoh to let my people go. And Moses, of course, as you know, says, who am
I that I should do this thing? And God's response to nutshell it for you is, it's not about who you are.
It's about who I am. But in the process of saying these things to God, Moses said to God, who am
I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt? This specifically was
God's response in verse 12. But I will be with you. And this shall be the sign for you that I have sent you.
When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.
The sign that God gave Moses was not, Moses, I'll tell you how you're going to know that I'm with you.
We're going to do some amazing things in Egypt. We're going to do some incredible miracles.
There's going to be these plagues, frogs and flies. The Nile is going to turn to blood. It's going to be gross. There's going to be darkness over the whole land.
There will be the death of the firstborn. There'll be hail and fire that'll rain down from heaven. All these things.
It's just could not be anything but me. That's how you will know that I was with you.
That's not what God said. Once you come out of the land of Egypt, you're going to feel like there's nowhere else for you to go.
I'm going to guide you with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. You're going to come to the Red Sea. You're going to feel cornered as Egypt is coming right down upon you.
But you hold that staff up and those waters are going to part. It's going to be the most incredible miracle you've seen in your life. And then you and the
Israelites will walk through on dry land. You'll be safe on the other side. I'll bring the waters crashing down on the Egyptians. Amen.
But that's not what God said. He said, you will know that I was with you because you'll come back here and worship me on this mountain.
That's how you'll know. I'm going to come back to that point again at the end of the message and give some application to that.
But we come back this morning to what we have called the golden chain of redemption. This was the name that the
Puritans gave to this passage in Romans chapter 8, particularly verses 29 and 30.
To summarize what we've looked at so far, now Paul gives five links in this chain.
What we see specifically, foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification, and glorification.
I've expounded this out to ten links based on things that we've seen elsewhere in Romans.
This is where Paul puts those five in that order. But in other things we've seen, even in chapter 8, we read also of atonement, of the external call of the gospel.
We'll read more about that when we get to chapter 10 as well. Faith and repentance, which we'll look at today.
Justification, adoption, sanctification, and glorification. Now as I said to you last week, this is not a process in which you move from one link to the next.
And if you fail at one link, that link gets broken and oh well, I guess I'm not going to be saved. This is an all or nothing chain.
You get all of it or you get none of it. If you're justified, you're going to be sanctified. If you're sanctified, you're going to be glorified, etc.
If God has called you, he will see this through to the end. As said in Philippians 1 .6,
I'm confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it at the day of Christ.
He's not going to start something in you that he's not going to finish. And so that's the confidence that we have in what we read here.
Now let me summarize what we looked at last week. We looked at the first five links of this chain. Today we look at the second set of five.
So first of all, last week we considered foreknowledge. And foreknowledge is simply
God knowing us before we're even born. It is not God knowing what we're going to do before we're born.
It's not God looking down the tunnel of time to know how events are going to play out in the future. It is actually his affection and love for us that he places upon us.
As R .C. Sproul defined it, foreknowledge is foreloved. He has foreloved us.
And the example that we saw as we've been studying in Romans was in chapter 4 with Abraham. God loved
Abraham and placed his affection on him before he ever even called him.
Before Abraham becomes the man who would believe God and it was credited to him as righteousness.
God's plan wasn't going to fail. All that he was going to achieve through Abraham, he's been accomplishing it.
Even down to us today who believe and are saved. So first of all, foreknowledge. God knew us even before we were born.
He placed his affections on us before we even came to be, David says in Psalm 139.
So number two, the second part is predestination or election. So first God knows and then he has elected or predestined for salvation.
Predestined very simply means that that is a destiny that was set for us beforehand.
Election also that word that we use with regards to that we were elected. God chose us. As he said to his disciples, you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit.
The third link in this chain is atonement. So first God knows, then he has predestined, and then he has made the way for us to be saved through Jesus Christ who dies on the cross for our sins.
He provides that atonement which is applied to us through faith. We're getting to that.
But after that is accomplished, after Christ comes in his incarnation, we considered last week, we've been rejoicing in it all this
Christmas season. After the atonement, then the message of what
Jesus just did has to go out. And so next we have the gospel call, the fourth link in the chain.
And this is something that many people hear that won't ever come to faith, but they're not on the chain of redemption unless they come to faith.
So there are many who will hear, Jesus has said, but few who will be chosen. Many are called, but few are chosen.
So the gospel call is that declaration now of what Christ has done. And by faith in Jesus Christ, we are forgiven our sins and have eternal life.
But in order for us to have faith in what has been proclaimed and what has been preached, something has to happen on the inside.
Because we've been reading about as we've been going through Romans, Romans chapter 3, there's no one who does good.
Not even one person. No one even seeks for God. So how is it that we could possibly make a decision to follow
God that would save our souls if we can't do anything good? Then that would undoubtedly be a good thing.
Well then that's the internal call that happens. We heard the external call in the preaching of the gospel.
The Holy Spirit regenerates our hearts so that we can hear what is being said, be convicted over our sin, see
God as majestically as He is through the person of Jesus Christ, and put our faith in Him and be saved.
And so that was where we ended last week with that internal call. Regeneration, conversion.
That we would be changed from the heart to be directed toward Christ.
Where previously we had no ability to do that, the Holy Spirit has drawn us to Himself. As Jesus said in John 6, verse 44, no one can come to me unless the
Father who sent me draws him. So that drawing is that internal call. That regenerating work that we've received by the
Spirit. So now where we pick it up today, the next link in this chain is faith and repentance.
That's where we're at today. So link number six, faith and repentance. Now, I had posted online a few months back what
I believe to be this golden chain of redemption with the extra links that were in it in addition to the five that we have here in Romans 8, 29, and 30.
I posted that online. A pastor friend of mine got in touch with me and he said, I want to challenge you a little bit.
I want to push back on the way that you have that written out because the Puritans put faith and repentance like it was a category that was subsumed into internal call.
And so the internal calling is, the effect of that is going to be faith, therefore, and repentance.
So he said that's not two different links in the chain. That's still the same link in the chain.
But I studied that and I went to Jim Renahan's commentary on the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith and read some of the footnotes that he had in there.
He pointed out that according to the Puritans, faith and repentance are subsumed into the category of effectual calling.
It's only more recent iterations of the Ordo Salutis that separates them out. And I understand that.
But even after studying that, I still was looking at that as there's still an order of something that happens here.
The transformation happens first and then faith and repentance are the result of that transformation.
That's our response to the transformation. So the Holy Spirit does regenerate and he transforms the heart.
As said in Ezekiel 36, he takes out that heart of stone, replaces it with a heart of flesh so that we may be able now to walk in God's statutes and be careful to obey his rules.
This is the transforming power of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. And the result of that then is now faith and repentance.
Now why faith and repentance? Why not just faith? Wouldn't repentance then be to follow faith?
Actually, throughout the scriptures, we see that the two, they're like two sides of the same coin.
And I've pointed this out to you before. When Jesus comes and preaches the gospel, he says, repent and believe the gospel.
So to repent is to turn from something. To believe is to turn to something else.
So just like you would take a coin and as you flip it over, you may be flipping heads down and tails up, but both of them are turning as you flip the coin.
And so in repentance and faith, we're turning from our unbelief to belief in God.
It's simply not enough that we would just stop sinning. You can't stop sinning.
First of all, we've seen that even in here in Romans chapter 8. The one who is of the flesh cannot please
God. So you can't just stop sinning and decide now that I'm going to follow God and I'm going to go obey all of his rules without the transforming power of the spirit to do that in you first.
But in turning from your unbelief and turning from your sin to Christ and his righteousness, we're seeing faith and repentance happen at the same time.
Repent and believe the gospel. And sometimes we'll see this in the scriptures where that word repentance, it will just appear by itself.
Luke 24, 47, when we read that commission that Jesus gives to his disciples at the very end of the gospel of Luke, he says, repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all the nations.
He doesn't mention anything in there about faith, not explicitly, not that word. They will have faith and believe and so be forgiven their sins.
So repentance for the forgiveness of sins proclaimed in his name to all the nations.
And Paul fulfills that in the sermon that he gives at the Areopagus in Acts chapter 17 in Athens, Greece.
He says there in verses 30 and 31, the times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent.
Synonymous with Paul saying he commands everyone everywhere to believe because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed.
And of this, he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.
So that's now our response to that changing internal call that happens by the
Holy Spirit in our hearts. If that has happened, then you will respond by believing.
And I've heard people ask, and I've had this 15 years of my pastoral ministry now, I've heard people ask, how do
I know that I've actually heard that internal call and not just the external call?
How do I know that it's not just, you know, the gospel fell on deaf ears? How do I know that the
Spirit has transformed my heart? The very simple question to this is, do you believe? Do you believe in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins?
Then you have heard that internal calling. You have felt the conviction of your sin.
You have seen that the righteousness I need to be made right with God can only come through faith in Jesus Christ.
And as we read about in Romans 4 -5, to him who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.
And this is our response to the internal call to believe in Jesus, to turn from our unbelief to Christ, and desire now even that we would turn from our sin and walk in righteousness.
So that brings us to the seventh link in this chain. And that seventh link we've heard about plenty in Romans thus far, but always good to get this reminder.
Number seven is justification. And this is what
Paul says here explicitly in Romans 8 -30. Those whom he predestined he also called, those whom he called he also justified.
Now as I had said to you when we were considering justification in chapters 3 -5, justification is a forensic word.
That means that it has to do with the law and the courts. And to be justified means to render just or innocent, to be free from guilt.
If you have been justified, you're forgiven. And by faith is how we receive that justification.
So that's why in the order of the golden chain of redemption, we have faith and repentance that precedes justification.
Because by believing, we are justified. Romans 3 -24, we are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus to be received by what?
Faith. To be received by faith. Romans 3 -28, for we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law.
It's not by our works, it's not by our doing anything. It is because we believed and are therefore declared innocent.
Romans 4 -5, as I quoted to you a moment ago, to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.
And Romans 5 -1, therefore since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our
Lord Jesus Christ. Such a great, glorious, and reassuring word.
Because that peace with God, that's what we needed to be saved. We had offended
God. We had sinned against him. What we deserved for our sin against God was his wrath.
His judgment upon our sin. That's what we deserved. And yet God has been gracious and merciful to those who believe.
His wrath is no longer upon us, but we are now the recipients of his mercy and his grace.
As said in John 3 -36, he who has the Son has life. He who does not obey the
Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. Our condition as sinners against God put us in a place where the wrath of God was on us.
What we deserve is judgment. But what we have by faith in Jesus is peace with God.
He is no longer angry with us if you believe in Christ. He loves you and has promised and will do what needs to be done to bring you into his kingdom.
Now one of the terms you might hear a lot of preachers use, or one of the expressions you might hear them use with regards to justification is, it's just if I'd never done it.
So to be justified means it's just if I'd never done it.
I'm innocent. I'm declared free from my sin and guilt and everything. So God has wiped the slate clean.
But here's the beautiful thing about justification, and this goes beyond fun little kitschy phrases like that to help you remember what justification means.
It is just if I'd never done it, because you're now declared innocent from those faults that you had done against God.
But the fact of the matter remains that you're still going to sin again, right? So even after you became a
Christian, you didn't stop sinning, did you? We went through Romans chapter 7, the previous chapter, and what was
Paul's feeling, his condition throughout that chapter? Wretched man that I am. All the good that I try to do,
I don't do. I go after the stupid sinful thing. That's what I keep going after. Why is it in my flesh that I still want to go against the thing that is in rebellion?
Wretched man that I am who will save me from this body of death and says, praise be to God through Jesus Christ, my
Lord. You didn't just stop sinning, but your desires now are changed.
You don't want the sin anymore. You want the righteousness. And when you sin, you are probably convicted over that now, whereas previously you were like, you didn't have a problem with it.
But now you know it's wrong. Now you know that you've done something that's deserving of God's judgment.
How may I be made right again? And that's why we have beautiful passages like 1
John 1, 9. If we ask forgiveness for our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
So to be justified is not just that all of my previous sins have been wiped away.
It's also with the understanding that if I stumble on this walk of faith,
I'm still not losing my justification. I'm still justified in Christ Jesus.
I'm still made innocent before God because his atoning blood and sacrifice has been applied to me.
So God has not only given us what is needed for us to be made innocent before him, but he is going to keep us in that as well.
We don't lose our justification, but he will sustain us and continue to hold us in that process of redemption that we read about here in this golden chain.
So that is the seventh link in the chain, justification. Eighth is the next one, and that is adoption.
Now, as I said to you last week, that's not in the five links that we have in verses 29 and 30.
We go from those whom he predestined, he also called. Those whom he called, he also justified. And then we're jumping straight from those whom he justified, he also glorified.
Why don't we have adoption and sanctification between justification and glorification as Paul is laying out this golden chain of redemption?
Was that enough T -I -O -N's for you there? Well, it's simply to understand that if you have justification, you have everything.
And again, as we've read previously, if God justifies you, he will sanctify you.
If you're not being sanctified, you weren't being justified. If you're not adopted, if you're not a son or a daughter of God, you weren't justified.
But if you have been justified, you will have the adoption and the sanctification and ultimately leading to glorification.
So as he's been laying this out in the book of Romans, justification is everything. If we are justified by faith and we have peace with God, then obviously the result of that is glorification.
We are going to be glorified. But that's not to say that Paul hasn't spoken about adoption or sanctification.
So let's look at adoption first, since that's definitely the next link in the chain, that we are adopted as sons and daughters.
We did see this previously in Romans 8, though it's not mentioned right here in verses 28 -30.
But in Romans 8 .15, we read that we have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry,
Abba, Father. We can call upon God as our Heavenly Father because we've been adopted into the family of God through Jesus Christ.
You know, when Jesus taught his disciples to pray, when we read the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 5, how does the
Lord's Prayer begin? You know this. Our Father who art in heaven. That was mind -blowing to hear
Jesus say that. I can call upon God as Father? You barely ever see that in the
Old Testament. There's like one or two places in Isaiah and Psalms, and that's it. You don't see a reference to God as Father until Jesus comes and says, you can know him as your
Father through me, the Son who has been sent. And teaching his disciples to pray, he said, pray then like this, our
Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
And that, again, would have been mind -blowing to the disciples and anybody who had been listening to him there.
This was one of the things that incensed the Pharisees because they knew Jesus calling himself the
Son and saying, I and the Father are one, and saying that anyone can come to the
Father through me, that made the Pharisees go, he's calling himself God.
He's putting himself as an equal with God. That's blasphemy. That was the
Pharisees' reaction to that. But there's only one person that can make that claim, and that's Jesus.
And through him, we have a Father in heaven who loves us, whom we can call upon, and we are adopted as sons and daughters of God.
Galatians 4, 5, we've received redemption, or through redemption rather, we receive adoption as sons.
And Ephesians 1, 5, we've been predestined for adoption. In our own statement of faith, in the
London Baptist Confession of Faith, 1689, there is a chapter on adoption. It's actually one of the shortest chapters in the
Second London Baptist Confession of Faith. But here is what is said in that chapter on adoption.
This is what we mean when we understand the Scripture saying that we've been adopted through faith in Jesus Christ.
All those that are justified, God conferred in and for the sake of his only
Son, Jesus Christ, to make partakers of the grace of adoption, by which they are taken into the number and enjoy the liberties and privileges of the children of God.
We have his name put on us, receive the spirit of adoption, have access to the throne of grace with boldness, are enabled to cry,
Abba Father, are pitied, protected, provided for, and chastened by him as by a father, yet never cast off, but sealed to the day of redemption, and inherit the promises as heirs of everlasting salvation.
That's what our statement of faith says about the doctrine of adoption. I once had an older woman who was near death come to me and say, when
I die, what's it going to be like for me when I go home? And I had to say to her,
I don't know, I've never died before, so I don't know what that's like to die and then whatever that process happens.
But I said, let me share this with you and maybe this will help. I had a really great relationship with my dad growing up.
And I remember when we would go on car rides and I'd fall asleep driving in the car and then we would get home and somewhere in there, my dad had carried me from my car seat and put me in bed.
And I'm waking up home, though I don't remember ever getting there. And I said to this woman near death,
I said, I imagine it's going to be a lot like that. Our father will pick us up in his arms and he'll take us home.
And there we will be forever with him in glory. As Chris had talked about in Sunday school this morning, we're going to rejoice in the gospel even when we get to heaven.
This isn't just something that we're rejoicing in here on this side of eternity. We're going to get through heaven's gates and still be praising
God forever because of what he did for us through the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is going to be our praise for eternity to the praise of his glorious grace.
We are told this in John chapter one, verses nine through 12, the true light, which gives light to everyone was coming into the world.
He was in the world and the world was made through him. Yet the world did not know him.
He came to his own and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believe in his name, he gave the right to become children of God who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
You did not pick the family you were born into. You don't pick the family you're born again into.
It is by God's grace that he has called us adopted sons and daughters of God.
And that is that eighth link in the golden chain of redemption adoption.
Number nine is sanctification. And as I said to you, those who are justified will be sanctified.
We've already read about sanctification thus far in Romans. I mentioned to you chapter seven deals with that. And also in chapter six, verse 19, just as you were once, as you once presented your members to slaves or as slaves rather to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness.
So now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.
That word sanctification comes from the Latin word sanctus, which means to make holy. And then whatever Latin word that gives us the fication at the end means to make.
So sanctification very simply means to make holy. And we're in that process now.
I saw a meme, I think I've even used this illustration with you before, but I saw a meme that showed a guy going up an escalator and he stumbled as he was going up the escalator and he's just tumbling, tumbling, tumbling, tumbling the whole time.
The escalator is still going up and he's just rolling and rolling and rolling. I was watching that going, that feels like sanctification right there.
We feel like we're making progress and then stumble and fall and God, how long is this thing going to go?
But again, He's not going to let us go. If we are justified, we will be sanctified.
And in this process of growing in holiness, we are being made right to enter into glory with God.
He will sanctify us to exactly the degree He means to sanctify us before we go home to be with Him.
And that is the sanctification that we are in. I've talked to so many Christians who have said, man, when
I look back to who I was when I was baptized, like, I'm not even sure that guy believed.
It's so much different than who I am now. Maybe I didn't need to get re -baptized because I didn't really believe back then when
I was baptized. And I said, you know, if that's what you want, we can evaluate that. If you think that you need to be baptized, if you don't think that that was actually legitimate the first time that you did it or when you did it.
But you should see that change. You should see that. You should be able to look back at that man or woman who was baptized and say, boy, they were so, what did that, what did that guy know?
I barely knew anything back then. And now I've grown so much to know the Lord and how
He has worked in my life and how He's working all things together for good for those who love, who love
God and are called according to His purpose. We grow in our knowledge of these things.
We grow in love for one another. The fact that you're here and you love the brothers and sisters of the
Lord that you're sitting amongst, at least I hope so. This is even part of our sanctification, that we would grow in love with the body of Christ.
As I heard Tim Challies say, sanctification is a community project. So we do this together.
You just look at the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians chapter 5. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self -control, against such things there is no law.
What do you need in order to do the fruit of the Spirit? The Spirit.
The Spirit. First of all, you need the Spirit. If you don't have the Spirit of God, you can't have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, etc.
What else do you need in order to have the fruit of the Spirit? You need people. You can't just love just in a vacuum.
You need to have people to love. You need to have people that you rejoice with, to show kindness to, to hold one another accountable, even to hold each other to self -control.
These are things that we do together as the body of Christ. No man was meant to worship on an island, unless you are shipwrecked and you end up on an island.
By all means, worship God. Our intention is supposed to be that we are with the body of Christ and growing with this body in this process of sanctification that we are in.
Other passages that we've seen that talk about this. 1 Corinthians 1 .30,
And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.
1 Thessalonians 4 .1 -8 Let me read to you this whole section. Finally then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the
Lord Jesus, that as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please
God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. That's already sanctification.
That you do it more. For you know what instructions that we gave you through the
Lord Jesus. This is verse 3. For this is the will of God, your sanctification. That you abstain from sexual immorality.
That each of you knows how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the
Gentiles who do not know God. That no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the
Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and so solemnly warned you.
For God has called us, not for impurity, but in holiness.
Therefore, whoever disregards this, disregards not man, but God, who gives his
Holy Spirit to you. If we end up with this attitude of thinking like, I can do whatever
I want, I can sin in whatever way that I please because God is just going to forgive me, then we're not demonstrating that we actually have the grace of God.
That was an argument that Paul made back in Romans chapter 6. What are we to say to these things?
Can we who have died to sin still live in it? By no means. We're not to be slaves any longer to the passions of our flesh, making our members slaves to unrighteousness, but rather now in Christ our members are slaves to righteousness.
And we're growing in this, of knowing the good and right thing to do that is pleasing unto
God, and this is our sanctification. Some of you here, even in just the little over two years that I've been here at Providence, you've probably had to go through some process of church discipline.
Because you had been in sin that you recognize, I can't continue in this, and so coming forward and confessing it, then we went through this process of discipline.
That the sin would be rooted out, that you would understand the severity of it, that it would not separate you from Christ or His body any longer, but you would put to death what is earthly in you, and desiring to walk in the righteousness of Christ.
This is sanctification. Even that whole process of church discipline that we practice together, that's a sanctifying process also.
And praise God for that. There was one young man that I said to him, I'm jealous of you, actually.
I'm envious of you being disciplined. Because I walked in sins when I was younger that no one ever found out about.
No one ever came to me and confronted me and convicted me and called me out on it. I was not disciplined.
It was a long process before I finally got to this place of recognizing my own evils that I needed to repent of before God, and at that time
I was not a member in any church. But it is a good and gracious thing when we feel so convicted of our sin, we would do whatever is necessary to get it out.
That we would not live in these things any longer, because as we read here in 1 Thessalonians 4, the
Lord is an avenger in all of these things. God is holy, and we must be holy and righteous before Him in love.
Last week I read to you 1 Peter 1, 1 and 2. I said that this was my favorite passage regarding foreknowledge, but sanctification is also mentioned in these two verses too, so I mentioned them to you again.
Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to those who are elect exiles in the dispersion of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the
Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Christ Jesus and for sprinkling with His blood, may grace and peace be multiplied to you.
We see several links in that chain, right? We see atonement that's mentioned there, we have foreknowledge that's mentioned there, sanctification, and of course the justification that we have received by faith in Christ.
If we have been justified, we will be sanctified. And God is preparing us for that eternal weight of glory that we receive in Christ Jesus.
And that brings us to now finally the tenth link in that golden chain of redemption, and we have that mentioned here in verse 30.
Those whom He predestined, He also called. Those whom He called, He also justified. Those whom He justified,
He also glorified. Now that's spoken about in a past tense, and we saw it previously in Romans 8 .17
spoken about in a future tense. If we are children, so if we've received that spirit of adoption, then we are heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified in Him.
So there in Romans 8 .17 it was talked about as a future expectation. We will be glorified.
It's interesting to note here though that in verse 30, Paul speaks of it almost as like something that's already happened.
Now I've had some people push back on this golden chain of redemption as we've come to understand it and say, well, what was actually being talked about there was the
Old Testament faithful, those who have already believed and therefore have received their sanctification and their glorification, so they have been glorified.
But the thing is, the context in which these verses sit don't set the table for that at all. There's nothing here that sets this up to be, oh, this was talking about Old Testament faithful.
Paul's talking about us. So how is it not being glorified yet that he would speak about it in a past tense sort of way that those whom he justified, he also glorified?
This is what we refer to as the already and the not yet. We are already glorified, but we've not yet attained to our glorification, right?
As Paul says in Colossians chapter three, you are seated with Christ in God, seated in the heavenly places.
Ephesians chapter one talks about this as well. So we've already received a place to sit with him in glory, but you're not sitting with him in glory.
You're sitting in church. So we have received that promise of glorification because again, if God has started this, he will complete this and you will be glorified.
And so it is such a sure thing and such a done deal in this golden chain that it's as if even now we have already received that glorification.
Paul says to the Corinthians, do you not know that we will even judge angels? So you've already been given a promise to sit with Christ in glory and even have a rulership over the nations.
This is what we receive as fellow heirs with Christ Jesus. We're already promised that.
We're already inheritors of it. And so it can be said of us that we who are justified are also glorified.
Let me come back to Moses in Exodus chapter three.
So God promises Moses, I am going to complete this for you. Even as God has promised to us that this is going to be completed for us.
If he foreknew us, if he has predestined us, if he sent
Jesus to die for us, if we've heard that gospel call, if we've received that internal call, if we believe by faith and repent, if we have been justified, adopted, sanctified, glorified, we will receive that ultimate good, that ultimate end that he means to bring us to.
We will receive that glorified place in heaven above with God.
Now what happens with Israel is a type in a shadow of that. They received a land of promise.
Our promised land is glory. But remember, God says to Moses once again, you will know that I was with you when after you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve
God on this mountain. Now as I said to you as a young man when I was reading that passage,
I remember that just absolutely flooring me. Here's what I was going through at that time. I was struggling with my faith.
I was about 18 years old or so. It's not that I didn't believe God was there. I just wanted more.
And so I asked God, can you show me something that I know you're there? Can you direct me, what way am
I supposed to go? What job am I supposed to pick? What woman am I supposed to marry? Like, can you give me something?
I want to see a burning bush type of sign. I want to see my water turn to wine, or the
Red Sea part, something, you know. This is what I am pleading with God. And yet I read this.
I come back to Exodus, because this is where I know all those miracles took place. It's one of the first books of the
Bible that my dad ever had me read from beginning to end. So I come back to Exodus, and I want to see through these signs and wonders, what can
I learn from this? How can I see something like this? And one of the things that I started to recognize as I went through it was that even when the
Israelites saw it, they still didn't stay faithful. So the thing that I was even begging for, like God show me something that I may know that you're there, was never going to be the guarantee of my faith anyway.
And I read this conversation that Moses has with God, and I hear God say, you'll know that I was with you because you will come back here and you will serve
God on this mountain. And here's what I came to recognize. We will know that God is with us when at the end of all things, we come to what's referred to us in Scripture as Mount Zion, that place where God dwells, the place where he lives.
We will come to that place, and we'll worship him. And we'll be able to look back and see everywhere
God was with us through that entire process of redemption we had been going through from beginning to end.
Even things we could not have seen with our own eyes or with our understanding, we'll see many of those things, even in glory.
Because it's said in 1 John 3, 2, we will see him as he is because we will be made to be like him.
We will look back over the whole course of redemptive history and see how God was working in the minutia to bring us to himself and to bring us into glory.
As I've heard John Piper say, there's 10 ,000 things going on around you at any moment in time, and you may be aware of three or four of them.
But we'll get to a day when we will stand with God on that mountain, and we will look back and we will say, oh,
I see it now. I see where you were and what
I didn't understand. You were working out for my good and for your glory.
And we will worship God on that mountain. And hold fast, my friends, to the promise of Christ.
It is the greatest promise that we could ever receive. And I say to you again, in Christ Jesus, your sins are forgiven, and you have everlasting life.
You've been listening to the preaching of Pastor Gabriel Hughes, a presentation of Providence Reformed Baptist Church in Casa Grande, Arizona.
For more information about our church, visit our website at ProvidenceCasagrande .com.
On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, thanking you for listening. Join us again