"If God is for us who can be against us?"

Romans 8 and the Promise That All Things Work Together for Good

If you would, please turn in your Bibles to the book of Romans, Romans chapter 8. And I'd like to thank the church leadership for the invitation to speak to you tonight and hopefully bring you a word of encouragement from the word of God.

The title of this evening's message is, If God is for us, who can be against us? If God is for us, who can be against us? I'd like to ask you to stand for the reading of God's word. Romans chapter 8, verses 28 through 31.

The apostle Paul writes,. And we know that all things work together for good, to those who love God and to those who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Moreover, whom he predestined, these he also called. In whom he called, these he also justified. In whom he justified, these he also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

Let's pray.

Our Father, we thank you for this time together. Our Father, we thank you for thy word, which is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. Lord, this evening we offer to you the sacrifice of praise, which is the fruit of our lips.

I pray, Father, that you and Christ your Son would receive all the glory. Prepare our hearts and teach us through your word and spirit, I pray. It's in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, you may be seated.

The Context of Romans 8: Suffering, Hope, and the Spirit's Help

There's a few statements here in this passage that I'd like to zero in on. If God is for us, this is the first one, if God is for us, who can be against us? Paul asks this rhetorical question after he makes the statement that all things work together for good.

And who's he speaking to? Well, he's speaking to Christians in the church at Rome. All things work together for good. If you've been a believer for any length of time, you've heard these statements before.

You've heard this question and you've heard this statement. All things work together for good. Be honest. Have you ever wondered? Maybe you didn't say it out loud, but have you ever wondered how can that be true?

Maybe you know it is true, but I think a few of you have wondered that. Now, as for the rhetorical question, if God is for us, who can be against us? There's plenty of people that are against us. There's plenty of people and plenty of things that are seemingly working against us, but in comparison to the Lord and his will, that kind of helps to put it in perspective, I think.

But as for this statement, all things work together for good, notice the Bible doesn't say that all things are good. That's not what it says. God forbid we should ever call evil good and good evil. So the Bible is not saying that all things are good.

It's that all things work together for good. And also notice that there is a condition, isn't there? There's a condition that must be met. In order for all things to work together for your good, you must do what?

You must love God. And I think if we compare Scripture with Scripture, it should be pointed out what Jesus said in John 14, verse 15, if you love me, keep my commandments. We really do need to consider the context.

Not that all things work together for good, we're just declaring this to anybody and everybody. It's for those who are called according to God's purpose, to those who love God. And speaking of context, what's the context of Romans chapter 8?

Let's kind of walk through this for a moment. Romans 8, look at verse 18. Paul says,. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. And that's a reference to the end of the age, that final day when Christ returns and the dead are raised.

This, understand, is where history is headed, to the final day, the revealing of the sons of God. Until then, we must live in this fallen world. As reflected in verse 20, it says,. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope.

Because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.

Not only that, but we also, who have the first fruits of the spirit, and this is a reference to believers who have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within us, even we ourselves groan within ourselves.

I think some are groaning more than others, but we groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. Again, this is a reference to the resurrection. Verse 24,. For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope, for why does one still hope for what he sees?

But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance. Likewise, the spirit also helps in our weaknesses, for we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

Now he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the spirit is, because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. So if I can just stop here for a moment, this is the context of this passage in Romans chapter 8.

Because, again, we live in a fallen world. I don't think too many people would argue with that. We live in a fallen world where there is a great deal of pain, there is a great deal of suffering, but the hope that the Christian faith offers, the hope that Christ offers, is not just hope for the world to come.

It's not just hope of being resurrected someday in the future, going to heaven someday in the future. The hope that Christ offers is also for the here and now.

What is that?

We can have and experience God's peace, God's help, and God's comfort in this fallen world. And then we come to this statement, Romans chapter 8, verse 28. One of, certainly, my favorite verses in the scripture, where Paul says, and we, what?

He doesn't say, and I think, we think, or I hope so. No, he says, and we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called, according to his purpose. But, again, in order for that to be true for you, there's a condition that must be met.

Let's face it, it would be a little misleading, would it not, to simply just go and tell anybody, hey, all things work together for good. I get the sense that there are preachers out there who just tell people things just to make them feel better, like a Band-Aid, you know, just try to make you feel better for right now.

Paul's not doing that. He's being honest, he's giving this great promise, but it's true, he says, we know. So what's the condition? You must love God. You must love God. So what does that mean? If a person is rebelling against God, if a person does not love the Lord Jesus Christ, if a person has no intention of ever obeying God or serving God in this life, then there's no promise here for such a person.

This promise is for those who are called. Those who are called. Paul then goes on in verse 29. Look at verse 29. For whom he foreknew, this section gets a little deeper, and I'd love to preach a whole sermon just on this next verse or two.

For whom he foreknew, that is God, whom God foreknew, he also predestined. That's a word that scares some people, but it's a biblical word. For whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he, which is Christ, might be the firstborn among many brethren.

Moreover, whom he predestined, these he also called. And whom he justified, these he also glorified. So the called here is a reference to true believers in Christ who at the last day will be glorified when Jesus returns to raise them from the dead.

This group is called, you say, well, it's called Christians, believers, many names, many titles, but this group here is called God's elect.

God's elect.

Verses 31 through 33. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who's the us? Taking it in context, who is the us? It's not all of humanity. The us is a reference to God's elect, God's chosen.

What is elect? Well, when we have an election, what do we do? We choose. We choose a leader. That's what election means. Elect means the chosen. So, do all things work together for good? Okay, let me ask you, after all that, do all things work together for good?

Well, yes and no. Depends on who we're talking about. If you are one of God's elect, then yes, all things work together for good. There is no thought more comforting than that. I might be as bold to say there's no thought that we need more right now in this time period than this, just to resolve this in our mind that I believe in Christ, I love Christ, and all things somehow are working together for the good of God's people.

And, let's not forget, to God's glory. All of it is working together and will glorify the Lord. So, what is the end for God's elect? Glory, heaven, being raised from the dead, those who reject God, however, those who do not love the Lord Jesus Christ.

What is their end? Well, the same author, the Apostle Paul, says in 1 Corinthians 16, 22, if any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema, let him be accursed. In other words, let them be eternally condemned.

But, you know, that's why we preach the gospel, because we love the lost. We don't want anyone to meet that fate. Do you love the lost this evening? That's what you were talking about, praying to God, give us a heart for the lost.

You know, it's a temptation to tell people, again, what they want to hear, something that's going to please them. But some people need a hard truth, that if they do not love God and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, the scripture says they are headed to a lost, dark eternity, where they will be separated from God.

That's what we're told. But the book of Revelation says they are tormented day and night in the presence of the Lamb. They want to get away from God. The reality is no one can ever get away from God. God is omniscient.

God is everywhere. The psalmist talked about this. Where can I go? Where can I flee? If I ascend into heaven, you're there. If I make my bed in hell, he's there too. So this is why we preach the gospel, because we love the truth, and we love the lost.

All right.

Joseph, Evil Intentions, and God's Sovereign Providence

Now, just this whole concept. If God is for us, who can be against us? All things work together for good. Let's look at an example of this in the scripture, okay? Let's turn to Genesis chapter 37. Genesis chapter 37, and I will remind you again, the Bible never says that all things are good.

It doesn't say that. Rather, in some translations, put it this way, that God is able to cause all things to work together for good. We saw the word predestination back in Romans chapter 8. This is tied in with the overall subject of God's sovereignty.

Another word you may be familiar with is providence, or divine providence. This is the hand of God, which is guiding human history. We don't have time to get into all of these subjects, but these are things you want to be thinking of as we're going through.

Predestination, God's sovereignty, God's providential care for his people. Okay. Look at Genesis chapter 37. We'll read verses 1 through 5. It says, Now Jacob dwelt in the land where his father was a stranger, in the land of Canaan.

This is the history of Jacob. All of that was just my introduction to the sermon starting now, okay? You guys go a little longer here than we do at Morris Corner. Okay, I'm just kidding.

I'm a little further than just the introduction.

Sorry, back to it. Joseph, being 17 years old, was feeding the flock with his brothers, and the lad was with the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father's wives. And Joseph brought a bad report of them, his brothers, to his father.

Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a tunic, or a coat, of many colors, verse 4. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peaceably to him.

So, we don't have time to read through everything, but many of you are familiar with the story, most. Joseph has a dream where there is symbolism. Basically, in the dream, he is ruling over his brothers.

And then he has another dream where even his father and mother bow before him. And Joseph, he tells them about it. And what does that do? Well, it serves to make them, his brothers anyways, hate him even more.

But the thing about the dream, the dream was prophetic. The dream was from God. It was a prophecy. So his brothers hate him because, why? Well, he gave this bad report. He kind of told on his brothers.

Gave the bad report of them to his father. Also, because of Jacob, the father's actions, he's spoiling Joseph, giving him this coat of many colors. And then this dream, which is from God. So God is involved.

Joseph, the brothers, are involved. Everybody is involved here. And it's a bad situation and it's only going to get worse. So Jacob, who's also called Israel, God changed his name to Israel. Jacob has these sons, 11 sons at this point, Joseph's brothers.

He sends the brothers off to tend to the flock. And then he sends, a little later on, he sends Joseph to go find his brothers. And they see him coming. Look at verse 18. Genesis 37, verse 18. Now, when they saw him far off, even before he came near them, they conspired against him to kill him.

Then they said to one another, Look, this dreamer is coming. Come, therefore, let us now kill him and cast him into some pit. And we shall say some wild beast has devoured him. And we shall see what will become of his dreams.

In other words, he can't rule over us if he's dead. So the ironic thing here is that the brothers, they don't know this. They're not looking at it this way. They're trying to thwart the will of God. They're trying to undo God's plan, but they're playing right into it.

God is going to use their evil actions to bring about the maximum amount of good. And that's what God does. You see evil out there, God's using it for good. Somehow, I don't know how, but he promised he's going to do that.

What's the title of the message? If God is for us, who can be against us? What's the answer to that?

Nobody.

Nobody.

God is for Joseph. So at this point in the story, if you didn't know how it turns out, you might wonder, how on earth can this be? How can this work together for good, this whole concept? Just acknowledge, and again, maybe you've thought this, all things work together for good, and you think, that's impossible.

That's impossible. But what?

With God,.

All things are possible. Jesus said this, Matthew 19, verse 26,.

With God,.

All things are possible. Do you believe that? Do you believe that with God, all things are possible? You know what that requires? It requires one thing. It requires faith. In the gospel of Mark, chapter 9, there was a man who brought his son to Jesus.

His child was suffering, and before Jesus healed the boy, do you remember what he said? Mark 9, 23 and 24, Jesus said to him, if you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes. And immediately, the father of the child cried out and said, Lord, I believe, but help my unbelief.

No doubt, people are wondering right now, or maybe you're thinking back to something that happened to you in your life, or something that happened to a loved one, and it was bad. There's nothing good about it.

To this day, you still haven't seen anything good come from it. And yet, you hear this promise from God's word, that all things work together for good to those who love God. This is where faith comes in.

It's called the Christian faith. What is believing? What is faith? The scripture says faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, Hebrews 11, verse 1. Let's go back to Genesis 37.

I don't know if Joseph ever had those moments where he wondered, but look at verse 23. So it came to pass when Joseph had come to his brothers, that they stripped Joseph of his tunic, the coat of many colors that was on him, and then they took him and cast him into a pit, and the pit was empty, and there was no water in it.

And I don't know what Joseph is thinking, but the suffering starts now. Many, many years of suffering, and we're not trying to downplay, I would never do that, to downplay someone's suffering. Obviously, if you were there, you wouldn't look down into the pit and say, hey Joseph, don't worry about it, this is going to work out for good.

You wouldn't say that. I don't think it would be well received if you did.

So we.

Never want to downplay anyone's suffering. But at this point, his brothers were doing evil. This was evil. And yet God was working, even somehow, working in this. So Joseph is in the pit, and his brothers see a caravan of Ishmaelites going by.

As of this moment, their plan is to kill him. Look at verse 28, then the Midianite traders passed by, so the brothers pulled Joseph up, and lifted him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites. One of the brothers said, well, there's no point of him just dying.

There's no benefit there, except that we get rid of him. Let's make a little money off of this. So they come up with this plan to sell him to the Ishmaelites, or the Midianites, for how much? 20 shekels of silver.

If this was 30, it would fit better.

With our.

Analogy of Christ. But they took Joseph where? To Egypt. Skip down to verse 36. Now the Midianites had sold him in Egypt to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, and captain of the guard. So now Joseph is a slave in Egypt, working for this man, Potiphar.

That may not have been his name. It might have been a title. It doesn't matter. And we remember what happens there. Things actually start going quite well in Potiphar's house, even though Joseph is a slave.

After a while, he's so capable, and God's blessing is upon him, Potiphar basically puts Joseph in charge of his whole estate. He's running.

The place.

Until Potiphar's wife enters the picture. She notices this young Hebrew man around the house, and she tries to seduce him. She wants to. The godly man that he is. Remember, he loves God, and he keeps God's commandments.

He keeps God's commandments. He's not even thinking. He would never commit adultery with her. So one occasion, she grabs him, and he literally runs as fast as he can in the opposite direction. So there she is, holding an article of his clothing, and she's a woman of questionable reputation to begin with.

Now she's offended. Now she's angry. So what does she do? She accuses Joseph of trying to force himself on her. So what happens? Now Joseph, things were going good for a while, now Joseph is put into prison.

Now he's in prison. But, after a short time, because, again, he's so capable, and God's blessing is upon him, and he's doing right. If Joseph lost faith and started sinning, that would short-circuit everything.

After a little while, Joseph is running the prison. And that's where he meets the butler and the baker, and the candlestick maker. Actually, the candlestick maker wasn't there. Just the butler and the baker.

And Pharaoh had them in prison, so the butler and the baker now start having these dreams. And you know that Joseph had dreams, and he's given this ability to interpret dreams. So they have these dreams that really bothers them.

What does Joseph do? He interprets their dreams for them. Basically, what happens is, they come true. The baker is hung, but the chief butler is restored to his position. Before he leaves, however, Joseph asks the butler, when you get out of here and go back into Pharaoh's court, maybe put in a good word for me.

Try to get me out of here. But as soon as he left, he forgot all about Joseph. So things, once again, are going bad. Bad upon bad, things start to turn around. No, they go bad. You ever felt that way?

Things start going good all of a sudden, then something else happens. Then things start going good, and something else happens. Well, that's life, isn't it? But for Joseph, things really seem bad. You think you have it bad?

Consider Joseph's story. That should cheer you up a little bit. What's happening? God is causing all things to work together for his good. Takes a long time, but he eventually sees it. So the butler has forgotten all about Joseph, until one day, now Pharaoh has a dream, and he's greatly distressed.

And then,.

The butler, a little bell goes on. Ding! Oh! Pharaoh, I remember back when I was in prison, I met this Hebrew man who could interpret dreams. So long story short, Pharaoh calls upon Joseph to interpret his dream.

The dream basically, without going through it all, it's about, it's prophetic too, because there's going to be seven years of plenty, followed by seven years of famine. This leads to Joseph coming up with a plan to store food and basically save the nation of Egypt.

So because all of this works out, Pharaoh appoints Joseph as the number two ruler in the land. And he puts him in charge of distributing the grain, because Egypt had all this food stored up, famine was going throughout the land, everyone's coming from far and wide to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph.

Well, wouldn't you know, who shows up? Who shows up? His brothers. Did they recognize him at first? No. No, and he conceals his identity. Why? Because he wants to figure a few things out. Remember, they didn't leave on very good terms.

Going up to them and, hey, it's me, Joseph. Who knows how that would have gone? And Joseph is so wise, he is able to put them into a situation where it's basically a series of tests to see if they are still the spiteful men that they once were.

So Joseph, in his wisdom, puts them through these situations, and finally, because he wants them to recognize what they did. He doesn't want to say, hey, remember me? Remember what you did? That was evil.

That doesn't usually work out, to tell someone, what you're doing is wrong. What you're doing is evil. They need to realize that for themselves. The Holy Spirit of God needs to convict the person. Well, that's what happens.

They realize what they did was wrong. Then Joseph finally reveals himself to his brothers. The whole family comes down to live in Egypt with plenty of food, and they're living under Joseph's protection.

Reunited. A family with more problems. Some families have problems. Everyone has some.

Problems.

This is a family that really had problems. But what happened? They reconciled. They were reunited. Delivered from certain death. What was God doing? Through all of this, what was God doing? He took sin and evil.

The Lord took bad upon bad and was able to cause it all to work together for their good. To reconcile.

The brothers.

To save the lives of many. And then you remember that statement that Joseph made to his brothers. What you meant for evil, God meant for good. Romans 8, 28. And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God and to those who are the called according to his purpose.

And if God is for us, who can be against us? Now before we close, in regard to the things God's people go through today. How God causes all things to work together for our good. I can't tell you how God does that.

All I know is that he promised that he would do it. This is a promise from God. What was the song we sang? Standing on the promises. Are you standing on the promises of God? I hope so. God doesn't break his promises.

People break promises. God doesn't break promises. And finally, there's one more thing that I'd be remiss if I left out. One more example of this that we cannot avoid. 2 ,000 years ago, godless.

Men committed.

The most sinful act the world had ever seen. They crucified the Son of God. That was evil. But what they meant for evil, God meant for good. And what did he do? He brought about the salvation of the whole world.

So then, what shall we say to these things? If God is for us, what? Who can be against us?

Nobody. Let's.

Pray. Lord, I thank you for your word. I thank you for your promises. Help us increase our faith to stand on the promises found in your word. And Lord, if there is anyone listening tonight who has never given their life to you by fully trusting in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ for the forgiveness of their sin, trusting in Christ and in Christ alone, I pray that your Holy Spirit would regenerate their heart even now.

They would experience the gift of everlasting life. All to your glory, we pray it in Jesus'.

Name. Amen.