If you would open your Bibles
to Romans chapter 8. Romans chapter 8. We'll start in Romans 8 verse
28. Read to the end of the chapter. Romans 8.28, And we know that
all things work together for good to them that love God, to
them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did
foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image
of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Moreover, whom He did predestinate, them He also called. And whom
He called, them He also justified. And whom He justified, them He
also glorified. What shall we then say to these
things? If God be for us, who can be
against us? He that spared not His own Son,
but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also
freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the
charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth. Who
is He that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea,
rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand
of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us
from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress,
or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, for thy sake
we are killed all the day long. We are accounted as sheep for
the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are
more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded
that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities,
nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height,
nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us
from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." The title of my message is look
to the end. Look to the end. This is a message
of hope. If you look at the top of your
Bible, mine says, the ground and assurance of a Christian's
hope. But to get there, to get to the
words of hope, we need to go through some sludge first. We
need to go through a bit of mess. And that mess is our lives. Our
lives are a mess. They're just a mess. And anything
that we try to describe them or think otherwise is simply
because we're just used to it. Anything that we do, we're just
used to being that way. Our sin is who we are. When we
do something, if we lie, we deceive someone, it's not a big deal
to us because we've been doing it for our whole life. If we
were to look at anything on the news and flash back 20, 30, 40
years ago and let them see something that has happened today, they
would be mortified. They would hear about an event
and think, that actually happened? And yet when we see it, it's
just another thing. We're used to it. Things over
time, we just get worse and worse and worse. An example of that
would be in a three word phrase that we use constantly with each
other. Three words that I think I say
more than any other. I say, how are you? Before this
message, I determined to myself before anybody walked in that
door, I'm not going to use that phrase. The third person who
came in was Karen, and I said it to her. And the fifth was
Stacia, and I said it to her. It's just habit. We say, how
are you to each other so often? And yet, if we're honest with
ourselves, we don't really care. We don't really care about how
you're doing. I didn't consciously say that.
I just said it subconsciously because that's the nice thing
to do. We give answers that aren't even the truth. We both said,
good, how are you? We give the same answers over
and over. Oftentimes, it's good. Oftentimes,
it's I'm OK. And maybe with someone we feel
really comfortable with, we might say, I'm all right. But if we
were forced to give an answer to the question of how are you,
that answer would usually be very different. Sometimes, we
think we are good. Sometimes, we might just have
a moment we think we're great. More often, we would say that
we're not doing well or bad or things are awful. But really,
I think the answer we would usually give would be more of a, I don't
know, because we really just don't know. We're such a mess
and we're so deceived by our own sin that our sin doesn't
even bother us anymore. Now, all these things I'm saying,
and I should have prefaced this, These are all to the people it's
describing in verse 28. And we know that all things work
together for good to them that love God, to them who are called. I'm talking about the people
that are saved by the Lord Jesus Christ, the sheep, the chosen,
the elected. And yet our lives are a mess
still. The big difference between those
who are saved and those who are not is two things the Lord does
for us. The first is he makes us to acknowledge
and see that we're sinners. He makes us to see who we are.
And that's a scary thing, to see who you are, to actually
realize that everything I'm doing is sinful. That even when I do
something that someone else praises me for is because in the back
of the mind, I know that there's a benefit coming down the road,
or I'm scared that someone will judge me because I'll do something
that they'll think is wrong. It's not because I'm doing the
right thing, but acknowledging that we're sinners to to be shown
that of the Lord. And the second one is that the
Lord shows us who he is. Now, if the first one is scary,
seeing that we're sinners, the moment that a child of God sees
the Lord, sees him in his holiness, sees him in his perfection, sees
him in his omniscience, his power, it is a total different thing.
It is the thing that makes a sinner break. It is the thing that scares
us to death. Because when we're shown those
two things, there's only one result. I can't do this. Who I am and
who He is, those two things can't come together. I will be judged
for who I am. Thankfully, the Lord gives us
things in the scriptures that gives us hope. There are lines,
there are verses such as, look unto me and be ye saved, all
the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is none else. There's
verses that say, whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name,
He'll give it to you. It says, come unto me all that
ye labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Those
things are a comfort. But when we know who we are,
that's not enough. Now, it's not enough because
it's not true. It's not enough because the Lord
isn't able. It's because we can't do that. When the Lord says, look unto
me, I don't want to look. When he says, ask the Father,
I forget to ask. When he says, come unto me, I
can't come to him. We have to have the Lord do it
for us. He must do those things, which
is why we can see verses that say, no man can come to me except
the Father, which hath sent me, draw him, and I will raise him
at the last day. That's what we must hear. This
funeral yesterday for our brother D, It was a joyous occasion. I mean, that sounds odd saying
that, but the Lord was glorified in it. But in being there, Dee's
son, Jackson, who was 16, got up and spoke a few words. And
it took me back, because 26 and a half years ago, at 16, my mom
died. And I remember those events.
And I remember this specific verse in this chapter giving
me peace and giving me hope. And I read, and we know that
all things work together for good to them that love God and
to them who are called. There's never been a moment in
my life that I did not think that my mother loved God. And
there was never a moment in my life that I didn't think that
she was called. Never. But yet, in knowing those two
things, I really didn't have peace and hope about that situation. I tried a lot of different things.
I finally got to the place where I thought, is it my fault? And
ultimately, you get to the place where I thought, I'm just going
to try to ignore this. If I ignore it, then it's easier. And that's foolish, but yet,
if I think about it half the time, that's half the amount
of time that I have to worry about it. And it wasn't until
later in life, and I feel like I was reliving the moment that
is told of Henry Mahan so often of Rolf Barnard telling him to
quote this verse and he leaves off the part about according
to his purpose. But once I saw that last phrase,
that's when you find peace and hope. Because we do know, and
anyone who reads this book knows, that all things work together
for good to them who love God and to them who are called. But
until we understand that everything that happens is because of His
purpose, we can't understand it. The Lord has to show us that
He's in control. He has to show us that all these
things that happen, all these trials, these sicknesses, the
mess that we're in, are all things that simply just draw us back
to ourselves and to this world. And all of those things are simply
a distraction. And because if we see that it's
His purpose and He's in control, what that does is it lets us
look to the end. It lets us look to Him. It makes
us look to Him. Because of everything in between,
everything that is so difficult, that is so tough, that is so
hard, the only peace and hope we have is to look to the end. Look to Him, look to what the
Lord Jesus Christ has done, and that's what we'll see through
this passage. Look here in verse 28, and let's go through a few
of these verses. And we know that all things work together
for good to them that love God, to them who are called according
to His purpose. For whom He did foreknow, He
also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that
He might be the firstborn among many brethren. For whom He did
foreknow, who the Lord knew before. Before what? Before everything. Before us, before this flesh,
before the earth, before time itself. Before all of that, He
knew us. And this isn't a simple thing
of he knew that we would exist, but he knew us intimately. He chose us. He put us in him. That's how he knew us. He predestinated. He determined what was going
to happen. It's not just choosing us, but
he determined what would happen every single step. And what he
determined was that we would be conformed to the image of
the Lord Jesus Christ. Those two things I talked about
earlier, where we would find out, we know that we see our
sin and we see who he is, the only way to meet those two things,
there's no human way possible that you can reconcile me being
a sinner and him being a holy God. Apart from this, where it
says, we would be conformed to the image of his son, we would
be like him. That's our only hope. that he
might be the firstborn among many brethren. Verse 30 says,
moreover, whom he did predestinate. I love this, moreover. That's
not all, there's more to this. Whom he predestinated, them he
called. The Lord Jesus Christ did not
choose a people and then wait to see if they would call upon
him. Because we wouldn't, nobody would. He called them. He chose a people and He knew
in our sin who we are, He had to call us. So He called us.
And whom He called, them He justified. It wasn't enough that He called
us. If He called us to Him, we're still sinners, we're still who
we are. But He justified us. By His sacrifice, His perfect
life, His substitution, He justified us. And whom He justified, them
He also glorified. Who is the only person who deserves
glory? The Lord Jesus Christ. For us
to be glorified, it means we are in Him. That's the only way. Every man and woman has to stand
before judgment. And the only hope we have is
that we will be looked upon in the Lord Jesus Christ. And in
that moment, heaven, it's just glorious. And the only way we
can be there is in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's our only hope.
Verse 31, what shall we then say to these things? That good
news, and there's even more good news before that through this
whole chapter, but what we've just read, what shall we then
say to these things? There are a lot of people who
have read these verses. This couple set of verses here,
especially verse 28, is quoted a lot. That is a verse that if
you start saying that, if you say, and we know that all things
work together, a lot of people can finish that verse for you.
What shall we then say to these things? There are a lot of things
said about these verses. There are a lot of things said
about these. But what shall we say? What shall the child of
God say to these verses? We say, if God be for us, who
can be against us? We say, if we're in him, that's
all we need. We don't need to fret about all
these things, all these things that make our lives a mess, all
this stuff that distracts us. It's irrelevant. It is completely
irrelevant. Now, I worry about these things.
I stress about them all the time, but we don't need to. If God
is for us, who can be against us? Who can be against us? Verse
32 says, he that spared not his own son, but delivered him up
for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us
all things? God in heaven above, spared not
His own Son for His children, for His sheep. He delivered Him
up for us all. Now, why was that done? That
was done because that was the only way for salvation for His
people. That's the only way. There was
no other possible way. He would not have done that had
that not been the only hope for sinners. He delivered him up
for us. How shall then, if he would do
that, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? We have every single thing in
our Lord and Savior. Everything we could possibly
need. In him, all the things that we
hope for and want in this life, he gives us in the next. If we
were to think to ourselves and think of I, humanly speaking,
worldly, earthly speaking, if you could think of one thing,
anything you could possibly have, one request, anything, ultimate
power, you could have unbelievable riches, you could have wisdom,
you could have health forever, perfect health, all these things.
All of those things the Lord Jesus Christ provides for His
sheep for eternity. He's the great physician. We
don't have to worry about our health. He is omniscient. He's
all-powerful. We don't need power on this earth
for this fleeting moment that we're here. Wisdom? He is our
wisdom. He is wisdom. All these things. Wealth? The streets are made
of gold and glory. It's just walking along on something
else as if it was insignificant. He is everything. Look here at
verse 33. Or verse 34, who, I'm sorry,
three, who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? A few verses ahead, it said,
if God be for us, who can be against us? That's telling us
if we're in the Lord Jesus Christ, no one can stand against us.
No one can. But we'll have to look at it
a different angle here and say the same thing. Who shall lay
anything to the charge of God's elect? If you're a child of God,
nothing can be charged against you. This doesn't even say nothing
can be found guilty. You can't be found guilty of
something. This says you can't even be charged. In the Lord
Jesus Christ, he is so perfect, no one is foolish enough to even
charge him of anything. And that's what we get. In this
life, our distractions, so many of them are charges against us,
claims against us. Whether it's someone we know,
someone we don't know, or even ourselves, we are constantly
charged with things because we're guilty. Because we do them. If someone says something bad
about me, if they missed in that moment, they would have gotten
me a few minutes earlier or a few minutes into the future. But
in the Lord Jesus Christ, no one can lay anything to the charge
of God's elect. Nothing. No one will ever accuse
us of a thing because we're perfect in Him. It says, Who shall lay
anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifies. He is the one who does it. When
it says we can't be charged anything, that's not because of anything
we did. It is because He justified us. He is the reason for that.
Verse 34, Who is He that condemneth? Is it Christ that died? Yea,
rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand
of God, who also maketh intercession for us. The Lord Jesus Christ
took our place. He made intercession for us.
There will be people who he will not make intercession for. I mean, it says. also maketh
intercession for us." Who's the us? It's been repeated through
this chapter. Them that love God, them that
are called, them that are predestined to be with Him, those that are
chosen, that's the people He makes intercession for. If He
did not choose you, He will not step in for you. But those who
He chose, He will make intercession for us. Imagine if every single
time someone came to you and claimed something of you or something,
that someone stepped in and said, that was me. That would put that
on my account. That debt he owes, that's my
debt. That punishment he deserves,
that's my punishment. Everything, every single thing
we have done, everything we deserve, all of it, he stepped in and
made intercession on our account. He took all our punishments.
Verse 35, who shall separate us from the love of Christ? So
all this stuff I said, this says that He made intercession for
us, He chose us, He predestinated us, He called us, He justified
us, He glorified us. All those, everyone that's in
the Lord Jesus Christ, He did all that stuff. What if we're
not in Him? What if something happens? What
if we somehow get separated? I was somewhere just the other
day, and one of my kids just kinda went this direction. And
you have that quick three second moment where you're like, where
are they? In just a flash, It says here,
who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Who could possibly
do that? Well, in case you're thinking
in your mind, maybe this, maybe this. The next verses cover everything
possible. Anything you're thinking about
is covered in these next few phrases. Listen to this. Who
shall separate us from the love of Christ? Or who is the person
that is going to intercede? Who is going to mess this up?
Who can change this? Shall it be tribulation or distress? Could it be trouble? Could it
be that? Could it be persecution? Could it be famine? Could it
be nakedness or peril or sword? Could any of these things do
this? Could it be troubles inside our own mind, our distresses?
Could it be troubles from about, persecutions from someone else?
Could it be famine? Could it be our hunger? Could
it be our nakedness, the fact we don't have any righteousness
on our own? Could it be peril? Could it be sword? Could it be
death? Is death enough to separate us? As it is written, verse 36,
for thy sake we are killed all the day long. We are accounted
as sheep for the slaughter. 35, verse 35 asks a couple questions. Verse 36 is a comment that is
put in in that moment. This is something to let us know
who we are. Just in case we've gotten a little
bit excited about ourselves through all these verses, verse 36 says,
it's written in the scriptures, who these children of God are,
who the elected are. For thy sake, we are killed all
the day long. We are accounted as sheep for
the slaughter. We don't do anything on our own. We are as simple as the sheep
for the shepherd. We go where we're told, we're
guided where we need to be taken. All of that happens. We have
no value other than our death. That's all we have. We are worthless
until the day that we die. We are accounted as sheep for
the slaughter. Now it says that to let us know,
above those things I said, tribulation, distress, persecution, famine,
nakedness, peril, sore, all of those things get us. We succumb
to those things on a consistent basis. But in the Lord Jesus
Christ, look at verse 37, nay, no, none of those things will
do that. In all these things, We are more
than conquerors through Him that loved us. We are victorious over
all these things because of Him, through Him, in Him. And why
is that? Is that because we look to Him,
we came to Him, we chose Him, we asked for Him to do it? No,
it's because He loved us. He called us. That's why we call
upon him. He is the one who looked to us,
chose us, grabbed us. And that's why we look to him.
We can't do that apart from him. We read verses and we see things
that say, happy is he whose hope is in the Lord, his God. That's
the only place that we find hope. And all of these things, these
perils, these tribulations. I'm going to repeat this. It
keeps bringing us back to ourselves. All the things that happen in
this world just happen through sin and cause us to look away
from the Lord. They distract us from it. And
if you go through the scriptures, the title of this message is
Look to the End. We need to look past all these things. Look to
the Lord. And everything that happens in
this life, it's all purposed of Him. But we don't look at
the things that happen. We don't look at these things.
We look at the end. We look at what He did and where
we end up. The Lord Jesus Christ chose us
and we will be with Him. A couple examples of this. We
go through trials all the time. Our brother Eric preaching here
a couple weeks ago talked about the woman caught in the act of
adultery. It's hard to imagine a trial much worse than that.
This woman was probably set up by the Pharisees. They didn't
take the man, they just took her. They probably didn't give
her the dignity of even letting her get her clothes. They drug
her back in front of a group of people, in front of the Lord,
to have her killed. That trial that she went through,
all of that, and what happened in the end? She saw the Lord
through that. Now would she go back and change
a moment of all of that that happened for what happened in
the end? Think about sickness. Think about the woman with the
issue of blood. She took every single thing she had in her life,
every person she could go to, every dime she had, everything,
all to heal herself and she couldn't do it. That affliction was with
her just constantly. And what happened because of
that confliction, the affliction, the Lord used that and it brought
her to him. She came on her hands and knees.
And if I just can touch him through that, she found the Lord. Would
she have changed all that? Think about the lunatic, the
one in the cave that was just crazy. His whole life is all
anybody called him was a lunatic. And the Lord came to him. and
controlled him and changed him and turned his mind and he couldn't
shut up about the Lord. That's all he wanted to do was
talk about the Lord who had healed him, who'd saved him. He wouldn't
change all that that happened. Think about some people in the
scriptures whose entire lives were just a mess. We talk about
that with us. Think about Joseph as a teenager.
His brothers sell him into slavery. They were going to kill him,
but the guilt of them got that. They were like, well, we don't
want his blood on our hands. We'll let someone else do it. And everything that
he did, it just kept going bad. He'd get thrown in jail and they'd
lie on him and all this stuff happened. All of it. He said
in the end, you meant it for evil, but God meant it under
good. Think about the woman at the well. That woman showed up
in the heat of the day to get water, and the Lord was there.
That timing was just perfect for the Lord. You know, I mean,
He predestinated His purpose. That woman's entire life was
predicated that she would be so ashamed of herself that she
couldn't come to the well when everyone else did. She did not
want to be seen of anyone else. All of that, her entire life
was set up so that that moment she would come and see the Lord.
And it says in that story then, many of the Samaritans believed
on Him for the saying of the woman. She said, He's a prophet. He knows everything about me.
He must be the Savior. Think about blind Bartimaeus.
I love blind Bartimaeus. He was blind his whole life. He was blind, miserable. His existence was sitting on
the ground, laying on the ground, begging anyone to give him anything
he could possibly have to survive. He couldn't do anything for himself.
And all of that led him to the moment to when the Savior came
by and he said, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me. wouldn't
have changed anything. And then lastly, what about the
thief on the cross? His life led him to where he
was going to be put to death. Everything in his life led to
that one moment to where he would be beside the Lord. And he starts
it off by railing on him, yelling at him and saying all these things.
And at the end, in just a moment, the Lord shows him who he is.
And he says to him at the end, thou shalt be with me in paradise.
All these things that happen, all this stuff I've called a
mess, all these things through our life, all of it is for His
purpose. In that verse, look up at verse
28 again. It says, And we know that all things work together
for good to them that love God, to them who are called according
to His purpose. There's not a single thing in
there that says anything about this life. That good work together
for good. That's not on this earth. That's
not in this flesh. That's an eternity in the Lord
Jesus Christ. We can't have anything good.
There's nothing good about us. He is good. He is great. He is
wonderful. Everything this is talking about
is what we have to look forward to. It's what we have in the
end in the Lord Jesus Christ. Look here, and we'll finish up.
Look at verse 38. It says, For I am persuaded that neither
death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers,
nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth,
nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the
love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. These are wonderful. There's no gap in these things. When it says neither death nor
life, there's nothing else. There's either death or life.
Angels are principalities. Heavenly beings, creatures of
hell, any man, all of that, that covers everything. Nor powers,
nor things that are present, nor things that are come. Anything
that exists now, anything in the future, none of it can do
it. Anything high, low, any creature, nothing can separate us from
the love of God. Why do you think that this is
repeated multiple times? Why do you think in this simple
12 verses here that it keeps telling us, nothing can separate
you, nothing can tear you apart, nothing can do that? Because
we have to be told over and over and over again. We've got to
hear it. And how come nothing can separate us? How come all
that stuff? Because the love of God, which
is in Christ Jesus our Lord, it's in Him. Now, I started talking
about, Our lives being a mess and all those kind of things.
And let me give just a little illustration. We've talked about
the highs and the low and all these kind of things. Our lives
are like riding a roller coaster for the first time. Being put
on a roller coaster for the first time and then being put blindfolded
at the beginning. And then strapped in and then
taken off. There are going to be highs.
There are going to be lows. There are going to be twists.
There's going to be turns. We don't know when the high is
coming. We don't know when the low is coming. We don't know
when a turn is coming. We don't know anything. When
we're going down, we don't know how long the down is going to
last. When we're going up, we don't know how long the up is
going to last. We have heard things that make us think maybe
we know what's happening next. We have seen things, we've been
told things that give us guidance, but we can't see anything. We
can't see a thing. And in all of that, we have to
realize the same two things that we have to realize about ourselves.
The first is that you're strapped in for the ride, and you can't
do anything about it once it starts. You have to ride it out
to the end. There's nothing you can do. And
the second thing is, Everything on that ride, everything, 100%
of it, was predetermined before you ever got on the ride by the
person who created the ride. Every part of it. They determined
how long the ride was going to be, they determined how short
it was going to be, how high you were going to go, how low
you were going to go. They determined if you were going to go upside
down or not. They determined everything about the ride and
you're just on the ride. That is what this life is like. The Lord Jesus Christ created
this earth, created us, and we are predetermined to have a set
number of days, a set number of moments. We are predetermined
to have the same highs and lows that He determined we needed.
He gave us everything. He determined it. And we can't
be distracted by those things because it's His purpose. And
the reason that that's okay and we find hope in that is because
we know it is for our good. For someone that calls us his
children, his child, that someone that we can describe as love,
he is love. He determined for everything
to be exactly a certain way for us so that we might be in him
for eternity. And that's where we find our
hope. No matter how bad things are, is it not glorious to think
one day this flesh will be gone and we'll be sitting at the feet
of the Lord Jesus Christ? I hope I can take this advice. I hope I can, even for a moment,
stop thinking of all the things that bother me and the things
of this earth and just look to the Lord. We must look to Him
for everything. All right.