I want to read a couple of verses
to you. Three, really. Romans chapter 8. Let's read
verses 28, 29, and 30. Romans chapter 8 and verse 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. And then in verse 29 and 30,
He tells us of God's 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. I've tried to have a balance
in my ministry since the Lord called me to preach. When I have
preached, especially to lost people, but to anybody really,
there is a passage of Scripture that's been a great help to me.
And I've tried to use this as a foundation of my theology in
preaching to people. And it's found in Hosea chapter
13 verse 9. It's very easy. You don't have
to turn there. But you can keep this in your
head and read it later. But it says this, O Israel, thou
hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thy help found. And this has been my theology,
brothers and sisters, and it's kept me from getting off into
free will on one side and to fatalism on the other side. Destruction is of man. If a man dies in his sins and
perishes forever, he's got nobody to blame but himself. O Israel,
thou hast destroyed thyself. If a man dies in his sins, he
can't blame his environment, he can't blame his parents, he
can't blame his friends, and he can't even blame his enemies.
If a man dies in his sins, if he perishes, he's got nobody
to blame but himself. Now that's one side of my theology.
And the other side is this, but in me is thy help found. If a man is saved, he owes all
the glory of his salvation to God, to the grace of God in Jesus
Christ. No man can save himself. He don't
have the merit. He don't have the power. He don't
have the will. He don't have the strength. We're
dead in trespasses and sin. And any man is saved, he's saved
by the grace of God. By grace are you saved through
faith. And I don't think any preacher
or any believer will err if he'll hold those two things always
in his heart. Damnation is of man. and salvation
is of the Lord. I have a large stack of notes
on these three verses. I remember when we were on radio,
I preached a series of messages on these two verses. Five golden
links in God's chain of grace. I preached on this and you who
sat under my ministry for years now know that we have looked
at verse 29 and 30 so many times and explained them, went over
each word in detail. And the reason I say that is
for this very reason. I am an uneducated man. They
talk about that one little program that used to be on about smarter
than a fifth grader. Well, I'm not smarter than a
fifth grader. I could not pass the fifth grade test. I'm just
certain of it. But I have preached on this passage countless times
and explained it. And I say that for this reason.
There are men who are very educated. They've been to seminar. They
can tell you every book of the Bible and the history behind
every book. They're brilliant men in one
sense of the word, but they have never preached from this passage. They have never preached it to
the congregations they pastor. All the books that they've written,
they've never written a book about this. They have utterly
neglected these two verses. And I've often wondered, why?
Why? As I read this, you may have
noticed that I read this ten times in these two little short
verses, 29 and 30. You have the personal pronoun
describing God. Ten times in two little short
verses. Isn't that amazing? Speaking
of Himself and His great work and purpose in redemption. Those
who neglect these two verses neglect God. They neglect His
work. And I think if any could accuse
me of preaching too often on these two verses, then probably
my defense would be I'm trying to compensate for those who never
preach on it. They never preach on these two
passages. These verses tell us of God's
eternal purpose in redemption. And this is one of the most amazing
things, is that this glorious truth of God's redeeming purpose
is condensed to these two little old short verses. Isn't that
amazing? God's purpose from eternity past
that reaches all the way in eternity to come is condensed down into
these two short verses. Now that's astounding, isn't
it? That's astounding. You'll notice in these verses
here, we've looked at this before, that the means are left out. He says
nothing about the means by which we're conformed to the image
of Christ. He just says that God has predestinated
us to be conformed to the image of Christ. But He leaves out
the means. If you're going to find the means
by which He conforms us to Christ's image, you're going to have to
go other places to see it. And you'll find there that it's
the new birth. In the new birth we're created
in the image of Jesus Christ in our souls. As we grow in grace
and knowledge, as we look to Christ, as we believe on Him,
We're being conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ,
but He doesn't mention this here. He mentions calling. Those He
predestinated, He also called, but He doesn't mention a thing
about the means, does He? We're called by the Gospel. He
called you to fellowship with His Son by the Gospel. We're
called by the Spirit. We're called to repentance. But
he doesn't mention that here. And he mentions justification.
Brother Wayne's been dealing with that quite some time now
in the book of Romans. But he doesn't mention how we're
justified, does he? We have to go to other places
to see we're justified by the blood of Christ. By the grace
of God, we're justified by faith. And then he mentions being glorified.
Those he called, he justified. And those he justified, he also
glorified. But he doesn't say anything about
it, does he? We have to go other places to see how we're going
to be glorified. When He descends from heaven
with a shout, He's going to change these vile bodies and fashion
them like into His glorious body. Why does He do this? Why does
He leave out all the means and He uses these two short little
verses to tell us of the entire redeeming purpose of God? Let me give you this to think
about. First of all, He does this for this reason. and consider
it this way. We were talking about it, me
and Colleen, before the service. There are some people, and boy,
they have great minds. I mean, they're brilliant thinkers.
They can read. They can read books and retain
almost everything they read. And you know why I thank God
for those people? There are people who can begin in Genesis and
read through Revelations and they remember these things. They
know how to bring them together and put them in their proper
order. And boy, when they write a book and you read it, you say,
man, look at that. I could never do that. I read
a paragraph and I have to go back and read it again because
I lose track of what I'm reading. When I read a sentence, I can't
already retain it. Are you that way? I think. These two verses are
here for people like you and for people like me. We can't
retain very much. We can't go through all the Bible
and put all these things together. But here are two little verses.
You don't hardly have to move your eyes to read them. And you
can retain them. It's almost like they're saying,
turn in here, you simple ones. And read this and let your hearts
rejoice. Here's the eternal purpose of
God. It's written for the simple ones.
This is high doctrine for simple people. And there are some people, and
you and I don't know very much about them because we've had
it made where we live in our lifestyle. We've got all kinds
of time on our hands. We've worked for 30 years or
so and we got a retirement. We can sit back and take it easy.
We went down into the Yucatan, down in Mexico. And while we
were there, we took a day off and went down into the Hennigan
Fields to watch those Mayan Indians working there in the Hennigan
Fields. They work all day long for five dollars. They don't have the money to
buy commentaries. If they did, they don't have
time to read them. They're just working to survive. A man works
all day in the heineken field. He comes home that night maybe
to read two or three verses to his family and have prayer and
go to bed exhausted. And the next day he has to do
it all over again. And the women, they work and
care for their family just to survive. These verses are written
for people like that. Here he does away with all the
means. You don't have to spend hours
poring over chapters and books of the Bible. You just come right
here in these two verses. Here it is. The glorious purpose
of God. The eternal purpose of God in
redemption. And you can read it and rejoice
in the low bottom of your heart. As the dear man used to say,
that here you've grasped it. Here you've got a hold of it
by faith. God's eternal purpose in the
redemption. of His people. I got acquainted
with a Presbyterian pastor up in Muncie. He preached to several
hundreds of people. He had to have two services on
Sunday morning there at the college. And I got acquainted with him.
He's one of the smartest men I've ever known. Of course, if
you know anything about the Presbyterians, They require their pastors to
get doctorates and all this stuff. And I was sitting in his study
talking to him. His name was Petros Roupas. He
was a Greek man. He was sharp. And me and him
were sitting talking about the eternal purpose of God and the
salvation of His people. And I told him, I said, I'm a
trash hauler. I haul trash. And he looked at me and he said,
How did you learn these things? And you know what I told him?
I read it. I just read it. That's all. Where did you read it at? Right
here. In these two little verses. And not only I can do that, but
the most simple among us can do that. And I think this is
one of the reasons. The Holy Spirit moved upon the
Apostle Paul and He said, Paul, even those good things, even
all the means that I'm going to use. Strip it all away and
make it so concise that these people whose hearts are burdened
and their bodies are burdened just from making a living, and
people who are uneducated and they're simple, they can sit
down and quickly look at this and rejoice in God's eternal
purpose and redemption. That's the first thing I would
think that he writes this like this. Turn in here, you're simple. and be wise even in this glorious
deep truth of God's eternal redemption. The second thing we see here
in these verses is this. We've got recorded here the very
first contact the eternal triune God has with our human race. Did you notice there in verse
29 how He says this? He says, for whom He did foreknow. Now notice He didn't say what
He foreknew. He didn't say what He foreknew
they would do. But He said whom He foreknew. These are two precious words.
First of all, He's speaking about particular people. Whom? Those that He foreknew. Not what
they would do or wouldn't do, but He foreknew the persons.
And this word foreknew, it's a very, very precious word. It has to do with foreknowing
people. Foreknowing. And you know nobody
can foreknow anybody, can they? That's an attribute of God that
is omniscience. He's everywhere. He's everywhere,
in all spaces of time. He's out in eternity right now,
before eternity comes. He fills eternity past. When you moms add your little
infant in your womb, you could feel the little infant. You knew
the little infant was there, but you didn't know that infant,
did you? They've just come up with science in the last few
years. They know it's a boy or a girl,
and you can tell that, but you can't know that little person.
You may think, oh, he's going to be as sweet as he can be,
and he turns out to be a little devil. And while he's in the
stomach sometime after he's been in this world a few years, you
wish he'd have stayed there, don't you? You can't know him. You meet your spouse, but you
can't know her until you get acquainted with her, or him,
and then sometimes you make a mistake, don't you? But God has the capacity
to know people before they have a being. He told Jeremiah, before
I farmed you in the womb, I knew you. I knew you and I ordained
you to be a preacher, a pastor. But this word knew, it's not
just to know something or something about somebody. It's a very intimate
word. It means to distinguish, to recognize,
to have intimate knowledge of. And the first time we find this
word knew, it's written concerning Adam and Eve. And it said that
Adam knew his wife. Well, of course he knew her.
God took her from His rib and made a wife and brought her and
introduced her to Adam. Of course He knew her. No, that's
not what it means. He knew His wife and she conceived. See the meaning of that verse?
That word? It's very intimate. It's loving. He knew her effectually. Intimate. And when this Scripture
here says those that He foreknew, it simply means that God loved. He had this affection for them.
The Lord Jesus said, I know my sheep. I know my sheep. And He
loved them, didn't He? He laid down His life for them. Listen to Jeremiah chapter 31
and verse 3. I have loved thee with an everlasting
love. Everlasting love. I have known
you with an everlasting knowledge. God's first contact with our
race is from His nature of love. Before I farmed you in the womb,
I knew you. Before I made the world, I knew
you. Before time, I knew you. And if you go back all the way
back into what the Word describes as the beginning, whenever that
was, He chose us in Christ from the beginning. There He knew
His people. There He loved them. Isn't that
encouraging? Of all the nature of God that's
revealed in His first contact towards this human race, it was
in His nature of love. Look here what Paul says in verse
38 of chapter 8. I am persuaded. I am persuaded. And then he lists
all of these things. Death, life, angels, principalities
of power, things present or things to come, height or depth or any
other creature shall be able to separate us from the love
of God which is in Christ Jesus the Lord. Why was he persuaded?
Well, because they were bound to God. by His eternal love. Back in eternity, they were bound
to Him by love. And whatever happens in time
cannot separate them from that love that bound them to God all
the way back in eternity. We used to sing that old song.
I forgot exactly how it goes. Bound to Him eternally by love,
strong cord. Overcoming daily with the spirit
sword, bound to Him eternally. We sing over those songs, don't
we? Because we've sang them all of our lives. And we sing over
them. But suddenly it dawns upon us,
what's the writer saying? And that's what Paul is saying
here. I'm persuaded that nothing can separate us. Why? Because
we're bound to Him eternally by love's strong cord. I guess
if you had to pick out God's attributes, All of them, His
justice, His goodness, His grace, His mercy, His long-suffering,
His kindness. The one that sticks out more
than any of them when we're talking about election and His eternal
purpose is love, isn't it? It's love. Because He foreknew
His people, and because He foreknew them, because He loved them,
what did He do? He predestinated them to be conformed
to the image of His Son. And that brings me to my third
thing that I wanted to say about this. And you don't have to go
all the way over the Bible trying to figure this out. It's right
here in these two verses, condensed to these two short verses. And
it's this. In verse 29, he tells us about
this glorious, incomprehensible purpose that God has determined
in His love. And what is it? He has predestinated
them to be conformed to the image of His Son. What a glorious purpose it is! It begins with His love and it
ends with conforming them to making them in the very image
of the Lord Jesus Christ. What a glorious purpose that
is! I'd count it a great blessing
if I died in my sin. if God said, I'm just going to
annihilate you. I'm going to annihilate your
body. I'm going to annihilate your soul, your memory. You're
all gone. You cease to exist. Wouldn't
that be a blessing? Wouldn't a rich man in hell count
that a blessing? That'd be a blessing. That'd
be mercy. Or if the Lord said, I'm going to save you from your
sins and I'm going to take your soul up to heaven and you can
just be floating around up there and enjoying the place for all
eternity, I'd say, what a blessing. Thank you so much. What a blessing.
Or if He saved the poor sinner from his sins and made him just
like the angels, what a blessing that would be. But when God says,
none of these things satisfy me, I've got a much higher purpose
than that. in store for you, my children.
I'm going to make you just like My Son." What a wonderful, glorious
purpose that is, to make us just like His Son. The Lord Jesus,
the Son of God, came down from heaven to this earth. He took
to Himself our real humanity with all of its infirmities,
and He did that. that all His people might be
taken up to heaven and taken His glorified humanity to themselves. He became like us that we could
become just like Him. And that's the end of God's purpose. I can't find a thing wrong with
this. I tell you, I can't find a thing wrong with God's eternal
purpose. It's just too wonderful, isn't it? Fourthly, consider this. I've
got five things I wanted to consider with you. And fourthly, consider
this. Poor believers. This is why I
love the way the Holy Spirit writes here, because He writes
to poor believers. This is not just for theologians.
They tell us, and I don't know if this is true or not, but there's
some evidence that this is so. That in the New Testament, there
was a great number in all of these churches who were converted
slaves. They tell us at the time of the
New Testament, like one quarter of the world, 25%, I don't know
how they know this, but they have this statistic that they've
come up with, like one quarter of the world at that time were
slaves. That may be so. I think the Scripture
would prove that there was many, if not most, in the New Testament
church were slaves. Paul often writes to them, doesn't
he? Peter writes to the slaves. And those slaves probably could
hardly read. And they worked such long hours.
Can you imagine them coming here and reading this? And them getting
hold of this wonderful purpose of God? And here is why it was
written. To fill these poor believers
like ourselves with assurance and with quietness of soul. I need assurance. I tell you,
if I can find anywhere in the Bible where it says this is a
verse that's going to give you some assurance, I'm going to
memorize it if I can. Because I need all the assurance
I can get. I'll be honest with you, I do.
Assurance about what? This, that your salvation is
fixed. It's fixed. Are you here tonight
and you're in Christ? Have you been called? Have you
been justified? Is your faith in Christ? You
can know this beyond a shadow of a doubt that your eternal
happiness has already been written down and it's history. And you can't rescind history.
Those He foreknew, He glorified. It's all history. Wouldn't that
give you assurance? I used to think that thief on
the cross that I mentioned this morning, that he had more reason
to have more assurance than any believer has ever had. But you
know, the ground is laid for every believer to have full assurance
of his eternal salvation if he'll just believe. There's no ands or ifs or buts
in these two Scriptures, are there? They're all sure, and
they're all history. Oh, I'd just like to thank sometimes
the Apostle Paul sitting right in this, and he begins to use
present tense. Those that he justified he will
glorify, and the Holy Spirit stops him and says, wait. No,
no, that's not what I said. I said glorified. Those He justified,
He glorified. It's as good as done in the purpose
of God. I have purposed it. I will also
do it, saith the Lord. It's fixed. Oh, what assurance
then of salvation. And you know why we go around
with such long faces? We're doubters. Are we not doubters? We're doubters. You get a hold
of this, dear child of God, that your salvation is fixed. Your
eternal happiness is fixed. Ah, that's your long face will
become a short face. And your sad heart will begin
to laugh and rejoice and dance. It's fixed. What about quietness? About what? Quietness about what? Your struggles. Your heartaches. The fiery trials that seem to
consume you. Your heaviness of heart. Your
present misery. What is it about this truth here
of God's eternal purpose that will quieten your troubled heart? Well, it lets you know this,
that in spite of all your present trouble, it does not and will
not affect in the least God's eternal purpose concerning you. There's something greater than
your past trials or present trials or future trials. And that's
God's sovereign purpose. There are some of us who are
going to doubt ourselves all the way to heaven. Every time
we get a little bit of trouble, oh my soul, am I one of His?
Am I going to make it? Oh, I don't think. And we get
all tore up, don't we? And it's because we've not laid
hold upon this. We've not got it in our hearts.
Let trouble come. It'll help me. That's what you
said this morning. Because it comes from God. If
it would hurt me, it wouldn't come, would it? Because it comes
from the hand of our Father. Everything that comes to the
child of God comes from the hand of His Father. And that's the
truth. Then let it come. Let it come. And I'm not saying it won't ever
change me, especially for a while. And maybe for a while it'll change
me for the worse. But it won't change God's purpose
concerning me, will it? Oh, therefore quietness. Quietness. And this is eternal purpose.
And this eternal purpose will give me present peace in my present
troubles. Because everything is present
right now. But we're looking at something
that's eternal. The Scripture says this. Say
ye to the righteous, it shall be well with him. How can he
be sure in saying that? He knew something about God's
purpose. It shall be well. And say this, the righteous shall
hold on his way. He must, because God has purposed
it. He must hold on his way. God
has purposed it. Lastly is this. Think of this.
Since the eternal purpose of God is fixed, and since the elect
of God will most certainly be saved because of it, how encouraged
and how diligent you and I should be in using and taking advantage
of all the means that God has provided for us to make our calling
and election sure with God. This don't make me presumptuous,
does it you? It makes me want to think, man,
I want to know I'm one of these. I can't make myself one of them.
That's already been settled. But I'll tell you what I can
settle, whether I'm one of them or not. I can settle that. I can bring myself, by God's
grace, to know I'm one of them. That's what Peter said, make
your calling. An election, sure. He didn't
say make your election and calling, did he? Make your calling. When
you've proved your calling, you don't have to doubt your election.
Take heed to the means. And these fellows out here in
sin, my poor dad, bless his poor heart, he lived in sin. He was a preacher and went back
out into his sins. And I told him one day, he said,
I believe I'm one of the Lord's sheep. And I said, I'm not saying
you're not. I don't have eyes to see that. But I said, I'll tell you this,
dear dad, you don't have any reason to believe you are. You
don't have any reason to believe you are. My sheep hear my voice. I know them and they follow me.
Therefore, what I'm saying is since all of this is so, follow
Christ. Stay close to Him. Listen to
His voice. There is where you'll have the
assurance that, yes, I'm one of His. I'm one of His. Because
you can't know whether you're one of His or not until you come
to Christ and as you follow Him. And let us do this. Let us do
what we can under God and seeking the salvation of poor sinners.
If God has elected poor sinners to salvation, then let us use
every scriptural means that we can, testifying to them, witnessing
to them, preaching to them, living in a way that the Lord is glorified
before them. Let us use every scriptural means
for their salvation. And let us pray and hope that
God will use us, this congregation, to save His people in this place. I tell you, one of the greatest
blessings that's ever bestowed upon a congregation is for God
to use that congregation to bring His people to Himself. What a
blessing that is. Let's pray.