Sunday Sermon: The Golden Chain of Redemption, Part 2 (Romans 8:29-30)

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.

The Golden Chain of Redemption in Romans 8

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.

Moses, the Burning Bush, and the Sign of Worship

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 for knowledge, predestination, calling, justification, and glorification. I've expounded this out to 10 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 three, 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, seeing 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, 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 is, 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 TIONs 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're 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.