Indications that God is For Us - Part 1

Well, Romans chapter 8, let me invite you to, Turning your Bibles to Romans 8. We're coming back today to our, Study of Romans 567 and 8, a journey to the heart of the gospel. And we come back today to verse 28, and my goal this morning is to cover verse 28 and verse 29. And if you want to give a title to the message this morning, it would be indications that God is for us.

Indications that God is for us. Hopefully, we'll have a PowerPoint. Available, for you. but you should have notes in your bulletin, so you can follow along that way.

Indications that God is for us. Let me read the passage, for you, and then we'll, I'll show you how we'll break this down. Look in your Bibles at Romans chapter 8, verse 28. Paul says, and we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that he would be the firstborn among many brethren. And these whom he predestined, he also called, and these whom he called, he also justified, and these whom he justified, he also glorified. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, OK?

We'll stop there. Paul in This passage, the, the way we're going to break it down is this way. You'll, you'll notice in verses 28, 29, and 30, Paul is communicating something. And then in verse 31, he provides a summation of that and then uses that summation as a launching point.

Essentially, you could graph it this way that Paul is speaking in 28 through 30. some theological truths, and then verse 31, what shall we say to these things and these things at the very least, is referring back to what he has said in verses 28 through 30. 1 could argue it points even further back, but at the very least, 28 through 30. And then Paul recapitulates in a very succinct way.

What shall we say to these things? He then re-expresses What he's been trying to say in verses 28 to 30, in 4 words. He says, let me give you a summary. If you came to Paul and said, give me a brief summary of verses 28, 29, and 30, Paul would say, here it is, God is for us.

That's putting it as simply. As it can be put, God is for us. This is a wonderful truth that we're actually going to be able to marinate in, in the coming weeks. God is for us.

And basically, you can take that concept that God is for us and you can break it open and what spills out is verses 28, 29, and 30, and the theological truths that Paul is giving expression to. In those verses, teaching us guys that if you can internalize and come to understand and appreciate and believe what Paul says in verses 28 to 30, you will never be in any doubt as to whether God is for you. Now, this is a big issue, is it not? The, this question is God for me?

that's something that probably most of us in this room struggle with at one point or another. 11 years ago, a decade into my ministry as a pastor, this truth, God is for me. Really began to rock my world. And I began preaching the gospel to myself every day and every day, at least a few times a day, I was saying these words, they were like candy in my mouth.

God is for me. It just made such a radical difference. God is for us. We need to know that in our moments of failure.

When we have sinned against God, we've, we've made wrong choices and we've had a terrible day spiritually. It's not been a day of upward climbing. It's been a day of spiritual descent, and we reached the end of the day, or we're in the middle of the day, and we're frustrated and we're shocked at, at what has come out of us. And we're thinking, how did I ever get here?

And, and have I ever changed at all? I'm still the same old me. In those moments, is God for us or against us? You might say, well, yeah, I have a hard time believing God is for me on my bad days.

Yesterday I was having a pretty good day and I didn't have any trouble believing God was for me, but today I've, I've really not performed real well, and I'm, I'm just, I'm really having trouble believing God is for me. what that indicates? It indicates that you think a little too highly of how you performed yesterday. Because you don't deserve God to be for you anymore on your best day than you do your worst day.

It is all because of Jesus, and his performance and has nothing to do with yours. God is for us, even in our failures, even in our sin. In fact, he is so for you, he just may discipline you. In order to wean you away from that sin and to make you a deeper participant in His holiness, but he does that because he loves you and he's for you.

In the midst of trials and circumstances that seem to visit us and not the people around us. In those moments we're left with the question, is God for me? It feels like he is against me. I see that he seems to be for other people.

But is he for me given my trials and my circumstances? If you, if you break down theologically at this point, and you conclude God is against me, there is nowhere to go from there other than to defeat and despondency. You're either going to give up, or you're going to say, I need to figure out a way to get him to be for me again, and I'll work my way back into his good graces. And that is a terrible way to live your life, where you're not looking to Jesus, but to yourself.

God is for us and Paul is trying to drive that point home. And technically, in verses 28 to 30, there's 7 indications that God is for us. All we're really gonna have time to do this morning is to barely look at 3. I say 4 on the screen, but in the first service, we, we just got into the 3rd 1.

And so, in all likelihood, that's about as far as we're going to get, this morning. 4 indications that God is for us who are His people. Indication number 1, we find in verse 28, and that is that God works all things together for our good. God works all things together for our good.

God says, hey, I'm for you. And he points to this fact about himself, and that is that he's always continuously working all things together into good. Paul says, and we know that God causes all things to work together into good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. What we have seen is that in every circumstance of our life, like the gospel is not just some piece of good news that you can fit into your life somewhere amongst all the bad.

No, the gospel genuinely makes good news out of every aspect of our lives, including our severest trials. The good news about our trials and hardships and all of our circumstances is that God is at work in all of them. Even the evil that is done against us, and he is working in them, working those circumstances together with other circumstances, and he promises, I am working all of these things into good in your life. That doesn't mean that everything is good.

There are evil things that happen, and we call evil evil, but God works even in the evil. The worst day in human history was the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. And yet God took all of those thousands of evils and wove them into the greatest good that's ever been achieved in the history of the world, and we live in the good of that each day as Christians. And notice Paul's assurance here.

Let me point out a few things we didn't look at last or two weeks ago. He says, and we know that God causes all things. This isn't a theory. Paul says, we know, we know with absolute certainty.

Paul is very confident about this. and that the tense of the verb is that there's, Paul has come to a point in his life where he has come to know this and he's now living in the good of this decision to know this with confidence. He says, we know, we have come to know and we are abiding in that knowledge, that certain knowledge that God is causing all things to work together for our good. Notice also the present element of this.

He says, we know that God right now is causing present tense all things to work together into the good. Paul says, I look at my circumstances right now, and I know this with absolute certainty that God is taking all of my circumstances and he is working them together. Into good. I don't even necessarily see what the good is yet, but I know with certainty that God is working in my present circumstances, working those things together for good.

I may see those things in a year, I may not see them in my lifetime. I may not see them till eternity. But I know with certainty. In the midst of my persecution and the suffering and the anxieties that I am experiencing, that God is at work in absolutely everything in my life, every wound, every hurt, every frustration, every circumstance, every sin that is done against me.

All of my past, all of my present, all of my future, the circumstances that I find myself in, along with other people, God is at work in all of that, and he is going to weave that in to good. You say, well, that's so hard to believe. Well, guys, if you believe that on the worst day in human history, God took the greatest evils ever committed and wove them into the good that, that now saves you, that, that's the most difficult thing to believe. If you believe that, then what do we struggle with?

What are we facing in our lives today that makes that difficult to believe? What I love about Paul's thinking is that it challenges us. here's, here's the problem. We, we tend to do a pretty good job of looking back at our circumstances and saying, what, with the, with the benefit of hindsight, I can see how God used my circumstances in my past for good.

I see his sovereignty. I see his faithfulness in, in orchestrating the events of my past. Now, when that, when that thing was happening to me 5 years ago, I was a mess. I was hysterical.

My attitude was terrible. But what? With hindsight, I see how God worked that together for my good. It was good for me that I was afflicted.

There's things in my character now that would not be there were it not for what God did in my past. So we, we can do that with hindsight, but how much confidence do we have about what's going on today? Can we look at today's circumstances and say, I know God is working everything together. For my good.

He is active. and moving. In everything. I don't think there's a person in this room who fully believes Romans 8:28.

And that's OK. That's what the cross is for, but may God take us deeper into believing. What Paul is affirming here. Paul would say, I'm in Corinth right now.

I've got concerns. When he's reflecting, he is in Corinth as he writes this letter and he says to the Corinthians, at a later point when he was with them in Corinth, he says, I was with you in weakness and in fear and much physical shaking. Paul was emotionally a mess when he was in Corinth and had worries for the Thessalonian church that the devil had undone all of his ministry. There, Paul was Looking over his shoulder at all points to where Christ had to make a personal appearance to him saying, just chill out, Paul.

No one's going to hurt you. I want you to settle here for a while. Paul describes his time in Corinth and other epistles as experiencing affliction. And suffering and persecution.

So Paul is, even as he writes this, experiencing difficulties and challenges. In fact, a part of Paul's circumstances at this point at the writing of Romans is the fact that he wants to see the Roman Christians. He wants to go to Rome. And to preach the gospel there and to meet up with the Roman Christians.

And he starts his letter by saying, I'm, I gotta admit a little bit of frustration here. I pray for you guys all the time. And when I pray, I'm praying that God will help me to get to Rome. I want to be with you and to be blessed by your fellowship and to bless you with anything that I can impart to you.

He says, I do not want you to be unaware, brethren, that often I have planned to come to you, and I've been prevented thus far. I've made plans, and begin to execute those plans, and there's always been hindrances to keep me from coming to Rome. Paul would say that's, if I could do what I wanted, I would be in Rome, being with you guys right now. But get this, Paul basically says, but because I've been prevented from coming to Rome.

I am going to write you a letter in which I explain to you the very gospel that I would love to explain to you face to face. And we today, 2000 years later, have the Book of Romans. That is in part a product of Paul's circumstances and not being able to get to Rome. How much has the book of Romans meant to you?

Some of you got saved from the book of Romans. Romans 5 saved my life spiritually a little over a decade ago, radically changed the way I view my relationship. With God. How much comfort, how much consolation have we derived and continue to derive from even Romans 567 and 8?

What have we been doing the last year and a half or so, but marinating in these expressions of theological truth and gospel truth that we would not be looking at if Paul was not hindered from getting to Rome. Turns out that when God in His providence was allowing Paul to be hindered from getting to Rome, God was thinking about us. 2000 years later. As John Piper So eloquently says, God is always doing a million things.

Always. It's not just, hey, God's doing something. I know he's doing something. God would say, no, no, I'm not just doing something.

I am always doing a million things. Always. And 2000 years ago, born out of the frustration of Paul, if I want to be with the Romans and communicate to them, but I've been prevented. He pens an incredibly beautiful letter that enriches us so.

Even this book is itself a demonstration of the truth of Romans 8:28. How much comfort does this verse give to you that God is for you? Listen to what one writer says, I love this. She says, don't let Romans 8:28 become like an old worn out pair of slippers.

Don't shuffle through life with it. Don't let the truth of God's sovereign dealings in the lives of his children become some detached, abstract fact of life. Every time you encounter a new setback, struggle or obstacle in your life, Romans 8:28 can bloom with new meaning, new encouragement, new hope. It is as new as tomorrow's sunrise and as fresh as your next hardship.

I love that. You say, yeah, that sounds great, but that sounds pie in the sky to me. Well, the sister that wrote those words for us is Johnny Erickson. Who knew and knows what it is like to suffer in July of 1967, she dove into the shallow.

Waters of Chesapeake Bay. And her head struck a rock and it broke her neck and she was left paralyzed from the shoulders down. Her life as she knew it up to that point and all of her hopes and dreams. We shattered and altered in that one awful moment.

By her own testimony, she struggled. Thereafter for quite some time with anger. With bitterness, with depression, and with thoughts of suicide. And not knowing what to do with all of that.

To make her physical circumstances worse, her, her friends who were her age from high school were all heading off to college while she was left at home. With nothing but dead dreams. And a largely dead body fighting for her life. This is the sister who says to us, Romans 8:28 is as new as tomorrow's sunrise and as fresh.

As your next hardship. God has woven her genuinely. tragic hardships. Into much good.

And he has used her in a tremendous way and she has experienced much of his good and has lived a life of celebrating of the goodness of God and the grace of Almighty God. God has used her to write 48 books. I don't think she dreamed of having that reach. Her autobiography back in the 70s was a bestseller at the time, and the spread of her outreach to the disabled and accelerating care, Christian care to the disabled around the world has impacted and touched the lives of millions and millions of people worldwide.

God is still in the process of weaving her hardships together for good, and she's not, God would say she's not even tasted a fraction of it. The greatest good that he has been weaving together will be tasted in the life to come. But let us hear her words. And her challenge, don't let Romans 8:28 become like an old worn pair of slippers that we just shuffle through life wearing.

Let it bloom fresh and minister God's comfort to us in the certain knowledge that God is for us. In all of our circumstances. There's a second indication of God's. The fact that God is for us.

And that brings us into verse 29. And that is that God And some of your notes say this, you can fill this in. God intentionally knew us long before we knew Him. God intentionally knew us long before we knew him.

Paul says, for those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his son. Let's stop right there. And let's just linger over that opening clause. Those whom he for No, that's us that he's talking about, those of us that love God, that have been savingly called according to God's purpose.

Paul is saying we can know this that God foreknew us. This is Paul. just rehearsing, encouraging realities in the midst of his present difficult circumstances. His mind goes back to some point in the past, where he reflects upon and is encouraged by the fact that God knew him long before he knew God.

In fact, unfortunately, verses 29 and 30 is a battleground, a theological battleground where, where, Christians and, and systematic theologians have gone to, to stack their arsenals for battle on competing sides of the theological divide. And there is incredible amounts of theology to derive from this. I do think that Everyone should do well to approach this passage first. With this frame of mind that we are coming alongside of a man in worship.

And who's just relishing his God and his relationship with God. And yes, incredible theology is spilling out, but let us join him in worship and join him in being encouraged by, by these expressions here. One writer says Paul is almost lyrical. as he gives expression of these truths in verse 28, 29, and 30, and one commentator even said that, the greatest exposition of these verses is not found, were or were not written by a systematic theologian.

They've been written by hymn writers. Who have written songs of worship. He says, you want to find the deepest exposition of these truths? Open a hymnal.

And read the songs of worship that have been written by passionate thinkers and believers in Jesus throughout the ages. And Paul, here's where his mind goes. I know he says that God works all things together in the good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. Why do I know this?

Because those whom he foreknew. And so let's just stop and contemplate that, the fact that God foreknew us, or God intentionally knew us long before we knew Him. Now, let me just answer this question first of all. When did God foreknow us?

Obviously if he foreknew us, He knew us before something, and so there's a time reference. And obviously at the very least Paul means that God foreknew us in the sense that he knew us before we knew Him. OK. but we actually have other passages of scripture that can help to locate the timing in which God foreknew us.

Let me just show you that real quick. In Ephesians 1:4, Paul says that God chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. So, something happened, God made a decision about us before the foundation of the world, before the world was created, and that is he chose us. And then in 1 Peter chapter 1, verse 1 and 2, Peter tells us what that choice was based on.

He says, speaking to believers who are chosen, which happened before the foundation of the world, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. So if his choice of us in Christ was before the world was created, and that choice was based on his foreknowledge, then the moment in which God foreknew us would have occurred before the world was created. Which is not surprising for us because even in First Peter 1:20, we learned that Christ in His coming was foreknown before the foundation of the world.

So whatever it means that God foreknew us, this foreknowing happened before he even created the world.

Now, what does it mean when Paul says that God foreknew us? notice the wording, guys, in verse 29, those whom he foreknew, God foreknew people. There are some who read this to mean God foreknew certain things about me. He foreknew that I would make a good decision and that I would choose Christ, and based on him being passively, omnisciently aware of some decision I would make, then predestined me based on what he saw that I would do.

Essentially, that makes me sovereign over my salvation. But aside from that, Paul isn't telling us anything God knew about us or that we would do. He's telling us God foreknew us. We are the objects, we people, persons are the object of this foreknowing.

So what does that mean? Well, you break down the Greek word and it's prognosko. Gosko is the word that's used throughout the New Testament to speak of knowing. And many, many times when it's used in a, context of someone knowing another person, it's a relational term.

It speaks of knowing someone relationally. For example, in Matthew 7:23, Christ says to those who are standing before him at the judgment, he says, and I will declare to them, I never gooscoed you depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. Now, in saying I never knew you, what is Christ saying? Is he saying, what, I wasn't even aware that you were in existence.

I'm sorry, you're gonna have to depart from me. Is that what he's saying, that somehow these people fell outside of his omniscient awareness, his passive, knowledge? No, what he's saying is I've never had a relationship with you. 1 Corinthians 8:3, Paul says if anyone loves God, he is known by God.

Again, it's, Paul is not saying that God is only aware of the existence of people that love him. No, he's saying if someone loves God, you can know by that, that God knows that person relationally. God is involved in a loving relationship with that person. In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, we find Genosko in two really key passages in Hosea, chapter 13 verse 5, God is speaking to the people of Israel, and he says, I cared for you in the wilderness in the land of drought.

And the Greek word is, I genoscoed you in the wilderness, in the land of drought, and he's saying more than just, hey, when you were in the wilderness, I knew you were there. I was omnisciently aware that you were there. That's not what he's saying. I cared for you.

This is a good translation of this word. I cared for you. I related myself to you in a caring, loving way when you were in the wilderness. And Amos 3:2.

God says to the people of Israel, you only, I have chosen among all the families of the earth, and intriguingly enough, the word chosen in the new American Standard, underneath that in the Greek translation of this verse is Genosko. He's like, I canosco you, only you among all the families of the earth. I think chosen is a good translation of that. You are the only nation that I have related to in a covenant way, in a loving way, among all the families in the nations of the earth.

So you get the idea of the word genosco. It speaks of a relational knowing of somebody, a loving relationship with someone. Let me show you this real quick. The only other time in the book of Romans where for no is used is in Romans 11.

1 verse 2, where Paul says, God has not rejected His people, has he? May it never be, for I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. And clearly he's at least talking about the fact that God knew the people of Israel before the point in which Paul is writing this letter, but Paul is even going back to something more ancient, where God and His eternal counsels made a decision to enter into a loving relationship with the Israelite people.

And what was that decision based on? Was it based on some good that he saw in them? Well, let God explain that in Deuteronomy 7. it says, the Lord did not set his love on you.

Speaking to the Jewish people, the Israelites, God didn't set his love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But he did so because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which he swore to your forefathers. I love the logic of that. The Lord did not set his love on you for any other reason, but that he loved you.

And he was keeping a promise that he made to your forefathers. So God made this decision on behalf of His people to enter into loving relationship with them, and he executes that throughout the Old Testament and relating to them in a loving way. And trust me, did God look at the Jewish people in his passive omniscience? He looked ahead into history and he looked at them and said, what, they're going to be a very obedient people.

They're, they're going to be the most believing. And faithful of people among all the families of the world. And so I will choose them. Do you realize Jewish rabbis actually taught that before Christ came.

There were Jewish rabbis that taught that God looked at the Jewish people and esteemed them superior in their holiness. and in their knowledge and in their obedience, and he chose them based on merit that he saw in them. But God is would say, no, no, no, I didn't. In fact, I saw all the worst that there would be about you, but I chose to set my love on you, because I love you.

And because I was keeping a promise that I made to your ancestors. And so let's put all that together for God to foreknow us it means that before the foundation of the world, before the world was created, God set His regard upon us in advance. He premeditated his love for us. He thought about us and made a decision to enter into a loving relationship with us.

One writer says it means whom he set his regard upon or whom he knew from eternity with distinguishing affection and delight, and this expression that God foreknew us or that whom he foreknew, this writer suggests we could translate it whom he foreloved. Those whom God predetermined to enter into a loving relationship with. So, when does your testimony begin? Someone says, tell me about, tell me about your story and how you came to faith in Christ.

Where does your testimony start? Some start on the day of their conversion. Some start weeks or months or maybe years before their conversion, and all of that's fine. But what we can cherish here is the fact that technically, your salvation story begins before the world was created.

It begins before Genesis 12. When God, before he initiated creation, Thought about you and made a prior decision. To so work in your life to bring you into a loving relationship with Himself, that he might have a loving relationship with you. God chose you and premeditated loving you thousands of years before you were converted, before you were born.

And before the world was even, Created. sometimes this happens just in the course of life and the body that you're talking to a brother or sister who's discouraged, and I find myself doing this because we have to be the storykeeper in each other's lives. We just lose our sense of story so easily. And, I see God doing great things in someone's life, but I'm talking to them on a given day and they're discouraged.

And, and I have to tell them, man, look at what God's been doing in your life in recent weeks or in recent months or over the last few years. Look what he's done over the last decade in your life, and then rehearsing some of that, and then to say to them, would God do all of that just to leave you hanging right now? And something about going back in their story for a few months or years, braces them for whatever they're facing at the present time. Well, Paul would say, Let's go back thousands of years.

However long human history has been playing itself out. And then even before then, Paul would say that God has been at work for your eternal benefit, even before. The foundation of the world. And he would say, you can, you can read throughout.

The scripture, human history, and everything God is doing in part, he was doing as a way of executing his plan to set his love upon you. And so you read Genesis one, and God's creating a world. He's creating a stage upon which he can love me in and save me. You read throughout the Old Testament and see, God making a promise to Abraham that all of the nations of the world are going to be blessed through you and you're like, that includes me.

I'm finding myself in the Book of Genesis. God provides a son for him, and then there's Isaac, and then Jacob, and then Jacob's children, and then there's thought that they might die of famine in the land of Canaan, but God had worked it all out and spun everything together to where they were able to go down to Egypt and continue to live in the line of the Messiah continues and The story just unfolds and there's a point in the wilderness where God is, is ready to be done with his people, but Moses intercedes on behalf of his people.

All of that is God. Executing his plan to set his love upon us, and then 2000 years ago before you were born.

God's doing something for you. He, he sent his son into the world, and he lived a perfect life, and he died the death that you will deserve to die. And he was buried and God raised him from the dead and ascended them to his right hand. And then, thousands of years later, you come into existence and think of the odds of you coming into existence.

I was thinking about this a few weeks ago, that of the thousands of years of human history, if just in that chain, just if one time a person had died before the fateful moment of conception would have occurred with one of my ancestors, I wouldn't exist. How many things had to happen just so? For me to even exist. How many things have had to happen just so for me to even live to the day where I first heard the gospel.

All these things I have no control over. And we think we're just going along our merry way and then someone presents the gospel to us, we're seized with conviction. And it's like, oh, I want to believe in Christ. And, and, and then we might think that God's looking down from heaven going, oh, look, there's someone believing in me.

what, let's get that person saved. No, we might think that at the moment, but then as we begin to look back over our life, and then read our Bible and through human history, we're like, God has been loving me for thousands of years. What God is doing in saving me is the fruition of something incredibly ancient, and unspeakably deep that occurred in the inner councils of the Trinity before the world was created. And here's why this encourages us in our circumstances.

You think God would do all of that over such a great span to leave you hanging in some circumstance you find yourself in right now? You think he would invest himself in all of that over that lengthy period of time to not think through every detail of what you encounter from day to day. To leave you in some circumstance that, sorry, I'm not working in that circumstance. This and this and this, yeah, I'm working there.

This one escaped my notice. I'm not working in this circumstance for your good. No, God is too invested in us. See, if we, if we think deeply theologically, it ministers incredible perspective and encouragement to us.

Paul, in the midst of his circumstances, he's like, I know with rock solid certainty that God is causing Everything right now today to work together ultimately for my good and for His glory. And part of the reason I know that is because before the foundation of the world, God intentionally knew me long before I knew him. There's a 3rd Indication of God's love for us. And that he is for us, And I, we're, we're going to have to shut this down.

But fill in the blank here. God predestined us to transformation. Into Christ likeness. Guys, This is so encouraging.

You look at yourself now and you're like, I am so messed up. I have so far to go. I am so often defeated. Look at Christ and all of his beauty, all of his heavenly glory, bodily glory.

Look at his perfection, His love, His holiness, His truthfulness. His intimate relationship with the Father. Look at who Christ is. And God says, that's your destiny.

You're going to look like him. When I'm done with you, you're going to look like that. That should challenge us too because we look at who we are now. And God says, here's what you're going to look like, and we're like, that's very different than what I look like now.

And what work is this going to take? To make me like that. I've got a long way to go. If Someone came to me this morning with this, I'm, I'm about to get involved in some bodybuilding program and they showed me this phenomenal picture of this incredible bodybuilder, solid rock, solid muscle.

And, and I'm looking at that as a, at that as a pencil neck geek that I am, and I'm like, wow, that's very different than what I look like now. And if someone said to me, this is what you're going to look like when we're done with you. I, I might be encouraged, like, whoa, that'll be cool, but then I'll start thinking, wait a minute. Well, OK, what all is going to need to be done.

This is going to be a lot of working out, excruciating pain, and undoubtedly some surgical procedures, But this is going to take a lot. But if I enter into that program, then everything that's done is done in order to bring that image to fruition. And God comes to us with this picture of Christ and his character, his integrity, His holiness, his intimate love relationship with the Father, and even his bodily glory right now in heaven. And God says, when I'm done with you, this is what you're going to look like.

And see guys piecing all this together in every circumstance you face. If you come to God and say, God, this hurts so bad. What are you doing? What's up, God?

What are you doing? God would point to that picture of Christ and say, that's what I'm doing. I, your destiny is to look like him, and I will never allow anything ever to happen in your life that does not help bring to fruition. What you are predestined to look like.

Someone can come to you in any circumstance and say, what's going on? And you can look at them and say, God is making me like Christ. That's my destiny. He has predestined me to conformity.

The transformation into conformity to the image of Christ. So much more to learn here. Let's pray together. Father, I have Held out a few loaves and fish for this multitude this morning.

I pray that you would take my fumbling efforts and And again, that your spirit would cause all of us to hear what you want us to hear. The well is deep here in these verses. And require a better spokesperson than, than I. But I want to learn, Lord, I wanna, I wanna go deep and understanding the depths of the gospel and the depths of the, the, the source of Paul's confidence in the midst of his circumstances.

Where did he get that? It came from a deep understanding of his theology in Christ. Help us. To think long and hard and deliciously about these things, Lord.

Make us deep Christians whose roots go deep. And who can face our present and our future with incredible hope, knowing that we have a God who is always for us. We thank you for the opportunity to give our offerings to you, Lord, receive these funds and do much with them for the glory of Jesus in whose name we pray. And all God's people said,