Dan Herold | Romans 8:28-20 | 8/13/2017
Life is full of choices. Just think how many choices you’ve already made today. You decided what time to get up. You chose which clothes you would put on today. If you had children to get ready this morning you probably chose what they were going to wear. You chose what to eat for breakfast. If you own more than one vehicle you chose which one to drive to church this morning. You may have chosen what to listen to on the radio while you drove to church. You chose where to sit this morning. And those are just the obvious choices that each of us faced so far today. After church you have a whole day of choices and decisions ahead of you.
We come across choices like those all the time and some of those choices have become so normal to us that we don’t even think about them as choices. Take the spot where you are sitting right now. Chances are, it didn’t take you very long to decide where you would sit in church this morning because you’ve encountered that choice so many times before it has almost become second nature for you to sit where you are sitting right now—and there’s nothing wrong with that! The ramifications of where you choose to sit in church aren’t really all that significant in the grand scheme of things.
There are other decisions, though, that we put a lot more time and effort into. Deciding where to go to college, what career you are going to pursue, or who you’re going to marry are much more serious choices. They require some time and some effort to think through. Then, after you’ve thought them through and made a decision, we pursue those choices whole-heartedly. When you decide you want to do something—something serious—and you set your mind to it you pursue it until it is accomplished, don’t you? You hear professional athletes say that all the time. They had a dream to play baseball or football or whatever it might be, and they pursued that dream until it was theirs. They made a choice and they went after it.
In our second lesson this morning, from Romans 8, we heard about a choice that God made. Again, we see that one little word can give us the comfort we need when we face trouble or difficulty. When life, and the world in general, seem to be set against us one little word can give us peace and comfort. That word is “Chosen”—we have been chosen by God. Since he chose us, he is constantly at work to ensure that in the end everything works out for the good of those he has chosen.
Romans 8:28 is a very popular verse. It says,
“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.”
But that verse by itself doesn’t really tell us very much. That verse by itself doesn’t really offer any comfort in and of itself. It doesn’t give us any security when it seems like the whole world is against you. Those words might be the most famous ones from our reading this morning, but in order to know the comfort God offers we need to know the words that come both before and after verse 28.
The pictorial warnings have become mandatory buy viagra pill today in India. They need to be protected appalachianmagazine.com generic cialis online when they are excited to make love. If left untreated, lowest price cialis priapism can permanently damage erectile function. The online facilities will even benefit order cialis online you more by reducing the blood flow. If you only look at that one verse then what you read is that God works for the good of those who love him. If I read that then I have to ask myself, “Do I love God.” And while I can say, “Yes, I do love God,” I also have to say, “I don’t love God as much as I should because I am sinful.” So, when you only read, “God works for the good of those who love him,” and nothing else it makes you wonder if God is really working for your personal good. It puts pressure on you to make sure that you are doing good enough and showing God that you love him so that he’ll work for your good and it takes away any sense of comfort or security. That is the exact opposite of what this verse is saying though, so there has to be more. We have to look at that verse in the context of the whole book of Romans to understand why that one little word, Chosen, is a word of security and comfort.
A couple minutes ago I talked about how we pursue our choices—how we set our minds to a goal and go after it. God does the same thing. When God decides to do something he goes after it full force. He pursues his choices and doesn’t let any obstacle get in the way. This is why it is such a a comforting thing to know that God has chosen us. God chose us to be his children and to live with him in heaven for eternity and he is constantly pursuing that goal with all his infinite strength.
To show us how that is a source of comfort Paul gives us a bit of a timeline in verses 29 and 30. God’s choosing of you predates everything. God chose you to be his own before he created the world. The burden could never be on us to choose God because before we existed we were already chosen by God. Paul says,
“For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.”
It is because God chose you, by his own will and not because there was something we had done to earn his favor, that he is working for your good. In response to being his chosen ones we love him. Our love for God is not something we need to do for God or do to show God what great people we are. We aren’t great people—not on our own—not without God choosing us and having called us according to his purpose. In God’s eyes we are great people, though! We are great because he chose us to be his own and he did everything necessary for us to be righteous in his sight. What was necessary was Jesus Christ, God’s own Son, living and dying for us—atoning for our sins and reconciling us to God.
That’s why this one little word—Chosen— can bring us comfort and joy. It’s not because we chose God or even because God is working for our good. Our peace and security is found in being God’s chosen ones. The ones he loved so much that he was willing to send Jesus to be our Savior—to live, die, and rise again. If God was willing to send Jesus to be our Savior he certainly is going to work things out for our good.
In fact, he already has worked everything out for our good. Our salvation is certain. There’s nothing more that needs to be done. We have already been given the ultimate and greatest good thing there is—eternal life in heaven. God promises that he will use infinite strength and wisdom to that end. Things might not always go the way that we want in this life. We may never understand how some things that happen to us in this world are contributing to our good, but our God was willing to send his son to die for us. That means that we are of great value to him and he won’t play games with our lives. He has chosen us and called us according to his purpose and that purpose is that we would live forever at his side in heaven.
This life is full of choices. Some of them are of little significance and others feel like they carry the weight of the world. When you are weighed down by the choices you face or when you find it difficult to understand why God chose to allow something to happen, or something else not to happen, go back to this one little word to regain your footing and set yourself back on the sure foundation. You are chosen! Chosen by God to be his own, from eternity and into eternity. You are chosen by a God who loves you and is tenaciously striving for your eternal good. You are his and he is yours. Let that be your comfort and your peace.
Amen