Would you take your copy of the Word of God and turn with me to Romans chapter 8, please? We're talking today about the certainty of God's purpose. Our text is Romans 8 verses 28 through 30. We will not be able to fully expound our text. The outline in your worship folder, I think, has five points to it. We will cover the first two with the Lord's help.
In a day when certainty about anything is unfashionable and considered unscientific and non-intellectual, the child of God can nonetheless say that there are some things that he knows for sure. You see, the Christian life is a life of knowing, not guessing. The child of God may know that he is saved. First John 5 verses 12 and 13, he that has the Son has life. He that has not the Son of God has not life.
These things are right unto you that believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life. The child of God may know that his salvation is secure. The Apostle said in 1 Timothy 1, 12, for I know whom I have believed and am persuaded, convinced that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him, that is the safe keeping of his soul. Furthermore, the child of God may know for certain that his service for the Lord is not fruitless.
1 Corinthians 15, 58, for you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. The child of God may furthermore know that his body will be gloriously resurrected. 2 Corinthians 5, 1, for we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. We know that we have that resurrected body coming. Then the child of God may as well know that he will be like Christ.
In 1 John 3, verse 2 it says, we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. We also have certainty about God's purpose. We may have confidence that he is working in our circumstances for our good as well as his glory. That is because God is sovereign. We need not fear therefore. His purpose will be realized. Our text touches on this.
It 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. We know that God causes all things, whether pleasant or unpleasant, to work together, to be blended together, to be mixed together for our good. That is for those of us who are described as loving God. That's the human side of what the child of God is like. He's one who loves God quite unlike the unsaved person who hates God.
The Christian genuinely loves God, but from the divine side he is described as one who is called according to God's purpose. And that's the emphasis of the text, the purpose of God, the fact that we are called to that purpose and that that purpose is absolutely certain. There is nothing that can short circuit the purpose of God. The certainty of his purpose is guaranteed by five actions of God. They are revealed in our text.
He says in verse 29, 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. And whom he predestined, these he also called. And whom he called, these he also justified. And whom he justified, these he also glorified. You see the five actions. He foreknew, he predestined, he called, he justified, he glorified.
From our perspective as mortal human beings, two of these actions have taken place long before we were born, the first two. Two of the actions have taken place during our lifetime, the second two. And the final one is yet to be experienced by us, its future. So we're in the middle of these verses as far as our life's timeline is concerned.
But I want you to notice that all five of these verbs are in a tense which indicates that as far as God is concerned, they have all already taken place for all believers. Time does not enter into it. These are completed actions by God. They form an unbroken chain reaching from eternity past to eternity future. You see God sees the end from the beginning. They are the same to him. And he decrees all future events as fixed as if it were history.
Because you see being eternal it is history so to speak. He is beyond it. All our text does is to survey for us salvation from God's perspective. The Apostle Paul does not interject. He does not try to reconcile what we might call the human perspective regarding salvation. We will talk about that some. But he is not concerned with that as he presents to us the certainty of God's purpose.
God is that those who are his sons by adoption receive their full inheritance of the glory that is theirs in Jesus Christ. And so the Apostle surveys salvation from God's perspective. Let's take a look at number one, he foreknew. What does it mean that God foreknew? Does it mean that God has advanced knowledge? That he knows before? This word is really transliterated into the English language from the Greek. It's prognosis. Does it mean that God knows ahead of time what's going to take place?
Well, of course it does mean that. God does know what's going to take place. Nothing ever catches God by surprise. God is never frustrated by some unexpected turn of events. He is sovereign. Now, it's difficult for us to understand sovereignty because we live in a democracy, but if we lived perhaps in England we would understand better what sovereignty is all about. But it means that the one who is sovereign has absolutely all power. God is sovereign and in his sovereignty he foreknows.
What does that mean? Well, it means more than knowing in advance. It includes fixing what will happen. It means that there is a choice implied here, that there is a designation involved ahead of time. In other words, when it says that God foreknew, it means that he designated something or someone ahead of time. You see, history is running the course that God has charted for it.
We see this, for example, back in Acts chapter 2. I want you to turn there because it illustrates exactly what I'm talking about. Acts chapter 2. We're going to come right into the middle of Peter's sermon, which is always an impolite thing to do, but he'll forgive us. Please remember as you read this sermon on the day of Pentecost that it was not intended to be primarily a message preaching the gospel that people could be saved, though people were saved.
But it was primarily an indictment against Israel because of her rejection of her Messiah. In verse 22 he says, Men of Israel, listen to these words. Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through him in your midst, just as you yourselves know, this man delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put him to death. Here's the indictment.
You have crucified your Messiah, whom God attested to you to be the Messiah. And notice that he points to their responsibility. He says, you nailed him to a cross by the hands of godless men and put him to death. You did that, he says. You are responsible. But before he says that, he says something that is more significant by far than that. He says this man delivered up, given over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God. The death of Jesus Christ was no accident.
It was not something that got out of hand. God was not caught off guard by what happened to him on the day he was crucified. It was all according to the very plan of God. I want you to notice furthermore that there is one article, The, that modifies two phrases, the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God. That is significant because it means that those two phrases, while they are not the same thing exactly, nonetheless overlay each other. They belong to each other, like a husband and wife.
You cannot separate the predetermined plan of God from his foreknowledge because in so many ways they are part and parcel of each other. The significance of this is that it proves that God's foreknowledge is a part of his predetermining process. In other words, foreknowledge means much more than just knowing something ahead of time, but it means determining something ahead of time.
We'll see more about this truth in a moment, but first I want you to go back to Romans chapter 11 verse 2, where this verb foreknew is used again. In this context, it's used of Israel, God's Old Testament people. The apostle is here answering the question, has God rejected his people? He says, God forbid. In verse 2, he says, God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. He's talking here about the nation of Israel.
I want to read to you, and you may turn there if you like, a verse from the book of Amos in the Old Testament. You say, is there such a book? Yes. One of the minor prophets, chapter 3 of Amos, verse 1, hear this word which the Lord has spoken against you, sons of Israel, against the entire family which he brought up from the land of Egypt. You only have I chosen among all the families of the earth. Therefore, I will punish you for your iniquities.
You see, the Jews of that day thought that because in fact they had been chosen of God, that they were exempt from judgment. God would never punish them. And yet God says, exactly because he had chosen them, their responsibility was even greater, and thus judgment was on the way. The point I want to draw out of there is what God says. You only have I chosen among all the families of the earth. Why did God choose the nation of Israel there in the land of Egypt? Because that was his purpose.
It wasn't because the Jews were down in Egypt seeking after God. God chose them in the land of Egypt because that was his purpose, that he might fulfill what he had said to Abraham and his descendants. Let's back it up further. Why did God choose Abraham there in the land of the Chaldeans, given over undoubtedly to pagan idolatry like those around him? Why did God choose Abraham out of all of those people to be the one through whom the seed of Messiah would be transmitted? I'll tell you why.
Because God purposed to do it. That's why. It was not because Abraham was seeking after God or groping after him in his idolatry, but God appeared to him in the middle of his idolatry and called him because that was what he chose to do. You see, that's the sovereignty of God. And so the Jews, as a nation, are the chosen people of God. And God has not today rejected them, though they have been set aside. And we'll be getting into that in the next few chapters.
If we ever get there, I know somebody says, yes, we'll get there eventually. I want you to turn now to 1 Peter, chapter 1. Romans chapters 9, 10, and 11 talk about Israel being set aside and what God is doing right now and what he's going to do with the Jews. For now, let's turn to 1 Peter, chapter 1, verse 20. I want to return briefly to this theme of Jesus Christ being foreknown. We saw it in Acts 2.
Here it says, after speaking about the blood of Christ shed for our redemption, it says, He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God. What is that telling us?
It means, folks, that before God ever said, let there be light, before God brought into existence matter and space and time, before all of that, God designated the Son to be the Redeemer of man who was yet to be created, who was yet to fall into a sin. He says, He was foreknown before the foundation of the world. That means exactly what it says.
Not just that God knew ahead of time that Christ would die for sins, but that God designated ahead of time, God determined ahead of time that Christ would come and die for sin. I want you to turn back a page, if you have a Bible like mine, to chapter 1 of 1 Peter, verses 1 and 2. We have seen that foreknowledge applies to Israel as a nation. It applies to Jesus Christ. And now we're going to see that it applies to you, if you are a Christian.
Consider an apostle of Jesus Christ to those who reside as aliens scattered, and he names where, who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, that you may obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with his blood. Do you notice there the work of the triune God in our salvation? Part of that is the work of God the Father, and it says that we have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.
Now someone says, I understand what foreknowledge is. It means that God saw ahead of time who was predisposed to believe in Christ, or who would be open to trusting Christ as Savior, and therefore God chose them. That is absolutely not what this means. We have already seen that foreknowledge means more than just knowing ahead of time. It means designation. And what it says here is that we have been chosen according to what God predetermined himself should happen.
Now remember, we're looking at salvation from God's perspective. The implication of this is staggering, because it means that before you were conceived within the womb of your mother, God had already chosen you to be one of his own. It means that before your parents were born, I'm going to take it back farther than that, before the world was created, you were chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father to be one of his sons who should inherit his eternal glory.
That's what foreknowledge means. You say, can you prove that? I think so. Turn over to the book of Revelation, chapter 13, for a moment. Look at verse 8. Sometimes you can compare chapter 17 verse 8, which says something very similar. The context here is the beast, the antichrist, who will come in the last days during the tribulation time. And he says, all who dwell on the earth will worship him. Not Christ now, antichrist.
One whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slain. Do you see that? That verse says that in that time to come, the tribulation period, that most of the earth will worship after the beast. The demons will gather them together and turn them to the lie, and they will believe that he is God. They will follow him to their own damnation.
But there are those who will not follow him, and that is those whose names are written from the foundation of the world in the book of the life of the Lamb who has been slain. Those who have not been written that book will follow him. Those who have, by implication, will not. Notice when the names are written in the book of life of the Lamb, in the foundation of the world.
In other words, when a person trusts Jesus Christ, we should not preach or somehow picture to them that suddenly an angel in heaven has taken a celestial pen and is then writing their name in the Lamb's book of life. Because that book has already been written before creation. And before you were named, or your parents were named, or before your father Adam was even alive. The name that you now possess, your identity, was sealed, secure within the Lamb's book of life.
That is the sovereignty of God. He foreknew. That is what the verse says. Now let's go back to Romans 8. Ah yes, says someone, but I have an objection. I don't doubt that. What about my free will? Somebody says. You are overriding my free will. Would it surprise you to learn that that term free will is not a biblical term in the context of salvation? You will search in vain to find it. I've looked.
It is used in the Old Testament of the offerings that were brought by the people of Israel to the tabernacle, but you will not find the term free will used in the context of salvation. It is not a biblical term in that respect. Furthermore, the concept behind the term free will is a fallacy. And that is because man is only free in his will to choose to do sin. That is because man's heart is evil and desperately wicked.
People don't like that, especially unsaved people, though most Christians would agree to it. The apostle Paul in Ephesians chapter 4 says that the heart of the unsaved man is darkened because he is ignorant. The reason he is ignorant is because of the hardness of his heart. You see, the heart of the sinner is hardened toward God. You say, but I believed in Christ. I chose to believe in him. Yes, that is true. You did.
You did choose to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ under the saving of your soul. You did choose to believe the promise that whosoever will may come, which is a legitimate promise. The only thing is that God had to act on your will so that you would choose it. And if he hadn't acted on your will and taken the first step, you would never have chosen Jesus Christ and believed on him. You were unable to trust the Lord Jesus Christ by the action of the Holy Spirit upon your will.
We will talk some more about that in a moment, but I simply want to point out at this juncture that my friend's salvation is all of grace. It is all of God. Jonah learned that. Jonah went to the University of the Wales-Billy and had a three-day intensive course in graduate seminary. Before he could graduate, he had to give a dissertation to God, and he did. Read it in Jonah chapter 2. He concluded, this is the summary. This was his dissertation. Salvation is of the Lord. You know what happened?
He was graduated. He went right out of the whale, onto the beach, because he had learned the lesson and passed it. You see, he was dead in that whale. The only way he could be saved was if God did it and God did it, because Jonah knew it, that it was all of grace. You say, yes, but I know my faith. I exercise my faith in trusting Christ. Yes, you did exercise faith in trusting Christ, but my friend, that faith itself was a gift from God.
Ephesians 2 verses 8 and 9, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works lest any man should boast. So the very faith that we exercised, our saving faith, is a faith that God gives to us. We did not cooperate with grace in our salvation. We were the recipients of grace in salvation. You see, that way God gets 100% of the glory.
It's not as though God does 95% of it and 5% is yours, because if that was true, then God would get 95% of the glory and you would get 5%. It's not even that God has done 99% and you've done 1% by believing, because then you would still get 1% of the glory. The truth of the biblical gospel is that it's all of the Lord. You say, but wait a minute, that means then that God elects some to go to hell. Oh does it?
You will search the revelation of God about this subject, my friend, and you will fail to find one word that says that, because election has nothing to do with unsaved people. It has only to do with the sons of God. God does not unjustly treat the unsaved. The judgment that any man receives in going to hell is the destiny that he deserves. I believe that we have the testimony of a man from hell who says that, at least by implication.
That is the rich man in Luke chapter 16, because conversation from him is recorded there. You do not find one complaint from that man that he was getting something he did not deserve. You do not hear him say as he speaks from hell, God has been unfair with me. But his concern is that those brothers of his who are still alive on the earth might be saved before they came to that awful place of torment. You see, he knew that he was receiving his just desert.
The very idea that God elects some to go to hell has a wrong implication in it. That implication is that man is somehow neutral. Or perhaps even that he is hoping and desirous of being one of the elect. And if God somehow fails to choose him, then against his wishes, he must be turned away into hell. Some would picture it almost like a conveyor belt on which mankind is passing through life. And they see man as groping after God and hoping that God will choose them.
And yet God chooses this one and that one and another one and almost capriciously overlooks the rest. And then they go on their way despite what they would have wanted. My friend, such a concept is almost blasphemous to mention from the pulpit. Because that is not the way that man is. Man is a hater of God. He has enmity with God. He runs from God. There is none that seeks after God. There is not one who gropes after him. Oh, yes, man is religious. But he does not want the truth.
He does not want the living God. He wants a religion that will comfort him and will tell him he is not so bad after all. That's the religion he wants. Or he wants a religion that will allow him to work for his salvation. So he has something in which to boast. But that is not God's salvation. That is man's salvation. And it is worthless, worthless. The fact that God has graciously chosen any from suffering is evidence of his mercy and his grace. Because all of us deserve that same judgment.
We were all haters of God, despisers of the good. But God in his mercy foreknew us. Then someone says, if some are elected and others are not, then surely those who are not elected are not held responsible for their sins, are they? As a matter of fact, they are. I want you to turn to Romans chapter 2. Look at verse 4. Maybe after what we've said, you'll understand why Paul says what he does here. Because he speaks to a very sincere moralist who refuses to accept Christ.
He says, do you think lightly of the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience? Watch this. Not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance. What leads a person to repentance? His own will? His own free will? No, the kindness of God. But because of your stubbornness, now here is the real heart of man.
Because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who will render to every man according to his deeds. My friend, every man is held accountable to God for his sins. Now, when the sovereignty of God is preached this way, as it is not very often, frankly, there are those who say, I reject that. Before you say that, be careful.
Be sure that you have studied the word of God and know what you say you are rejecting. As a matter of fact, I believe that all Christians believe in the sovereignty of God whether they know it or not and whether they would admit it or not. Because I believe in the first place, every Christian will pray. And prayer is evidence that one believes in the sovereignty of God, or else why pray? Prayer is a recognition that God is the source of all good things.
Prayer is not trying to coerce God out of something. It is simply indicating dependence upon God. And we pray and evidence our dependence because we know he is sovereign. And then I believe every Christian believes in the sovereignty of God because he thanks God for his salvation. That little chorus that we used to sing doesn't say, thank you, me, for saving my soul. Thank you, me, for making me whole. Does it? It doesn't even say, thank you God in me for saving my soul. Does it?
It says, thank you God for saving my soul. Thank you God for making me whole. Then I believe that every Christian really believes in the sovereignty of God because he prays for others to be saved. Why should we pray that if we don't believe that God is sovereign? Someone came after the first service and asked a legitimate question. How should I pray if I don't know who the elect are? And that's a legitimate question.
The answer to that is, we don't know, we can't know who the elect are, therefore let us pray because that's what God has told us to do. Then let him decide how to apply our prayers. Someone else says, well you talk about the sovereignty of God but I can't understand it. Congratulations. Welcome to the redeemed human race. Because we can't understand this. This is beyond us. We can't reconcile it. It's one of those things that is known to the Lord.
Deuteronomy 29, 29 says, the secret things belong to the Lord and this is one of them. You see it's an antinomy because it talks in the Bible about the sovereignty of God and yet the responsibility of man and the two work together perfectly to accomplish God's purpose but we don't know how. Therefore we leave it with God. His ways are higher than ours. The real proper response to this kind of a message that God foreknew is praise God.
Praise God because if it were not for that truth my friend that God foreknew you, you would not be sitting here today as a redeemed child of God. You would still be lost, utterly lost and hopeless in sin. If you have never trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior you cannot legitimately say, well I guess I'm not one of the elect. Because you cannot know that. As a matter of fact if you will trust Jesus Christ that's evidence that you are.
And the invitation is open to you that if you will trust on the name of the Lord you shall be saved. Will you do it? Will you do it? Will you choose to do it? D.L. Moody said as you approach the gate of salvation over it says, for whosoever will may come. And that's the invitation to you. But as we enter through the portal of salvation and trust Jesus Christ and look back on that same gate through which we've passed, it says on this side, chosen in him before the foundation of the world.
Will you trust Jesus Christ as your Savior this morning? As a child of God are you walking worthy of your calling? Next week we will go on to talk about predestination and the calling of God. Join us. Thank you for this truth as deep and mysterious as it is. Thank you for revealing it to us so that we could sit in awe and marvel at your grace that saves any of us. And I pray today that your purpose will be accomplished in this service and in our lives.
Having beheld the glory of our calling, may we now walk as children of God in this world. In Jesus' name, amen.