Romans 8:28-32 • The Gift that Keeps Giving
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
Let me ask that you would turn in your Bibles to Romans chapter 8. Romans chapter 8 is we'll consider this day verses 28 through 32. The reason I thought about it in terms of what we wish the season meant for us in a Facebook post that I read this last week, the post said this, "Did not sleep much last night, but got in a few solid hours of worrying."
Somehow we wish the season had an answer to all of that, and the Word of God does. Let me ask that you would stand as we would look at Romans 8 verses 28 through 32. What is the answer to all of that anxiety in us? The Apostle Paul writes, "And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.
For those whom He foreknew, He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers.
And those whom He predestined, He also called, and those whom He called, He also justified.
And those whom He justified, He also glorified.
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all. How will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?"
Let's pray together.
Heavenly Father, the words are almost too much to comprehend.
We struggle humanly even to take them in.
That You who gave us Jesus would not stop there.
But for those who love You, You would give all things to the purpose of helping us know the glory and the eternity that is in Him.
Help us to understand how that is not simply a promise of the past, but for the present, and all days to come, that we who tend to doubt You and to be the solution to our own problems despite the worry that kills us through it would turn to You and know the peace that passes understanding in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whose name we pray, Amen. Please be seated. At Christmastime, we talk and we sing and we sentimentalize about the gift in the manger. "Unto you this day is born in the city of David, a Savior who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign to you. You will find the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger." We love it.
And wish the gift had some meaning beyond a manger moment.
After all, as much as we appreciate the wonderful story and the wonderful music and the wonderful worship that accompanies it, we do wish that there was some meaning for the present day.
That the manger gift is not just something that we accept on Christmas season and then stuff away with other gifts in a neglected closet that we hardly think of the rest of the year.
We really want the gift that will keep on giving.
Now even as I say that phrase, depending on the generation you are, you are thinking of different things.
I doubt if many of you are old enough to remember when at least we have record of the phrase originating the gift that keeps on giving. In the early 1920s, Victor Radio, that was to become RCA, promised that if you bought their radios, you'd get the gift that keeps on giving.
In 1928, Hotpoint Kitchen Appliances borrowed, that is to say, stole the phrase, "Give mother what she really wants this season, the all-white Hotpoint electric range, the gift that keeps on giving." Now I don't know if that's what mother wanted, but that's what Hotpoint was offering.
By the time you get to the 1960s, RCA color television promised to be the gift that keeps on giving.
By 1977, more of you will recognize this, Kodak Cameras, "Give the gift that keeps on giving, picture after picture."
And then finally, everyone may recognize, 2016, Godiva Chocolates.
They offered a holiday gift box, the box that keeps on giving. The reason inside the one box, there were four boxes of luxury chocolates. Now that will keep you coming back for more.
It's all really expressing the same desire.
We want the joy to last.
We want the gift not just to be for a moment. We want it to linger. We want it to move on. We want it to affect us long-term. And when we talk about the manger gift, as much as we appreciate it, we profoundly desire that it would be the gift that keeps on giving when I'm struggling at work to make a boss happy or satisfy a patient or a partner or a board or an insurance company.
What gift is it then?
I want a gift that will keep on giving when I'm struggling at the holidays just to keep my family civil with one another, that we really can't have a holiday together when I can't sleep at night because I'm worrying what people are going to say to one another or who's not going to show or who shows in what will cause what will happen then.
We want the gift to keep on giving when I'm just trying to get some sleep.
And I can't turn off the day or the worry about tomorrow.
We want the gift that keeps on giving. We want Christ's gift to have some present significance. And as much as we appreciate the glitter and the wreaths and the lights and the trees, we do wonder if it will have any meaning beyond the season.
The apostle is knowing that reality, and the same one who told us about the gift that came
tells us its continuing significance by helping us just remember what God is doing beyond that moment. I mean, after all, what is God making if He's not just Santa in a workshop at the North Pole?
What is God doing for today? Verse 28 says it as clearly as any place in the Bible. We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose. What is God doing?
He's working all things, past, present, future, time, eternity, neighbor, friend, trauma, blessing,
all things are being worked together for good. And the purpose of that working is described. Verse 29, "For those whom God foreknew He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers." There's the purpose on display that what God has in mind is to create many siblings of the Lord Jesus, that Jesus would be the older brother of all that God loves, that there would be this great family in process that God would be not only making us more like Jesus, He would be including us in Christ's family. And the way that that is happening, if you will, the process is He foreknew, He predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son. He knew ahead of time those in whose hearts He would need to work, and He had a plan, the plan to make us despite sin and weakness and flaw and imperfection more and more like Jesus so that ultimately there would be this great family gathering in which we would be included in the divine household, that God would say, "You're mine. You're part of my family."
And as much as we like the sound of that and the sentiment of it, something in us reacts.
God says that I'm going to be like Jesus, that He's going to love me as much as He does my older brother, Jesus Himself. How could that be?
God says to us, "You're mine," and inside we're saying, "Get real.
I know the mess of my life. I know the mess of my heart. I know the sins I struggle with. I know all the things that are part of my present reality that make it senseless to say that God would look at me and say, "You're going to be like Jesus. I'm going to love you as much as Jesus, and you're going to be part of the divine family." How could that possibly be with what we know about ourselves? And what the Lord is saying through His apostle here is, "I want you to know that I am not settling for the what is.
I am planning for the what shall be, and I value you and treasure you, not on the basis of what is, but what I know I am making you to be."
On the path that I jogged for a lot of years in St. Louis, there was an old estate, large,
large piece of land with a great house decaying on it. And one day on that estate, a sign appeared out front.
"18 luxury homes to be built on this site."
Now I looked at that and I think, "That is nuts.
I mean, just look at that piece of land, the gnarly trees, the overgrown bushes, the stagnant lake that takes a third of the property, the twisted drive, the neglected land with the ravines and the ditches that have just eroded away. 18 luxury homes there, that's nuts."
But of course, I was not looking with an architect's eye.
The architect doesn't just look at what is. The architect values the land because of what can be.
And when our Lord is looking at us, He is not just settling for the what is. We know the ditches, the awfulness, the things that are a mess, and we say, "God, you can't possibly value me the way you would your own child because I know the reality of who I am.
I'm a mess."
God says, "I can clean up messes."
We say there are things that are not straight in my life.
And God says, "I can straighten them out."
We say, "My past has done me in."
God says, "I'm not done.
God, I let you down.
Child, you weren't holding me up."
We look at all the things that ought to disqualify us, and God is simply reminding us of the process. After all, what happened on that estate? Ultimately, you recognize that the landscapers came in, and they took out the gnarly trees, and the bushes that were not appropriate, they went as well. God straightened out the drive. God didn't straighten out the drive. The contractors did, but they were under God's plan.
The contractors straightened out the drive.
And the scars of the ditches and the ravines that were there, they were filled in too.
And the estate house, flaking of paint, dark and unkempt, became the 18 luxury homes that I would have loved to live in, because God was doing something far beyond my understanding, sight, and ability, as He is doing for every one of us, as He is saying, "I work all things together for good for those who are called according to my purpose," because it is so hard to take in. God actually begins to describe the process by which He works. We begin looking at verse 29 last week, "Those whom God foreknew, He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers." First there's just sight selection. God knows the hearts in which He needs to work. And as He begins to know those hearts in which He begins to work, He has a plan for them. And so we are told ahead of time, before we are fully cognizant of what God is doing, He is purposing to bring the reality of Christ's likeness and purpose into our lives, that He would be the firstborn among many brothers, that just as Christ came to this earth to look like us, that the purpose is ultimately that we would be like Him. And God in doing that plan is bringing all kinds of things to bear.
The next verse says, "Even more, those whom He predestined, He also called." Those whom He called, He also justified.
As you think about the architectural process of preparing that land, calls begin to go out to the inspectors, to the engineers, both for the land as well as the building, to the contractors to begin to build. And you think of the Holy Spirit doing that same process of calling for us as the Spirit begins to inspect our hearts and teach us to do the same. Is that really right before the Lord? Is your heart really following after Him? Is this what's good for you or for your family? Has selfishness and self-dependence, has greed and pride and lust and anger and unforgiveness, is it now eroding your heart? And as we begin to inspect our hearts under the reality of the Holy Spirit convicting us of sin, we begin to recognize the engineers have to say something different's got to be done here. The land has to be retooled. The scars of my past and my sin that have eroded deep ravines into my heart's hurt. God has to take care of that. And ultimately not only are we convicted of our sin, but we are convinced of the grace of God as the engineers through the Scriptures are telling us, this is what needs to be done. Everything we're convinced of, the need of the grace of God, all that work of the Holy Spirit convicting us of sin, convincing us of the grace of God.
And it's a calling process that can literally be taking decades in our lives.
Would you think of that reality?
Who was the parent that witnessed to you decades ago and just now the Holy Spirit is beginning to take those words and move them into your heart? Were you beginning to sense the significance of them? Or the person who was a neighbor who invited you to Grace Family Christmas and the songs that were just sentiment for so long with the testimonies that were there on the screens of people who are suffering and yet trusting God. You begin to feel this aching for in a fallen and suffering world, could it really be that God would have some means of filling in the scars and the ravines of your life? Could it really be that as somebody was telling you about a child who's come to faith in Jesus Christ that they were speaking about something you yourself deeply long for, that God has been working through time and circumstance and person and neighbor, tragedy as well as the end of your own resources to be calling you to understand your need of Him.
And that need is explained as we don't just see the site being selected and planned and prepared but ultimately the site clearing described.
We are told that those God called in verse 30, He also justified.
Here is that process by which God Himself says He will execute justice, judging sin,
and declaring just people made right with Himself despite their sin. How does that happen? In justice He makes sure that there is a penalty for what is wrong, for injustice, for selfishness. It has to be in a moral universe. But in mercy God made sure that that justice was poured out on His Son. And when we in faith believe that my sin and its penalty was put on Jesus, then God says I take the sin off of you, I put it on my son, and I declare you right, just made right with myself. And that's clearing away the sin, clearing away the junk, clearing the things we hate in our hearts and lives. And God says I know what is there, but I'm not settling for the what is. I am preparing and working all things far beyond who you are right now for what I plan for you to become.
It's something we have to remind ourselves over and over again because we typically treasure ourselves, value ourselves only on the basis of the past or the present, and that is deadly
for a spiritual walk.
I think of it in terms of my own life as I had to learn the significance of what it means. I mean deep down in your soul to believe that you are justified before the God of the universe when everything about your own life would say no way.
When I was in college one of my very good friends was a very talented pre-med student.
Able, smart, doing great. But as great as he did, the more accolades he got, it seemed to just swamp him emotionally.
The more he did well, the more he spiraled down into depression.
By his junior year, I and other friends of him just seemed almost weekly to have to keep propping him up. You're okay, you're doing fine, it will be fine.
Nothing seemed to help.
Finally, one Saturday night, seeking solace of some sort, he had too much to drink and let his guard down.
And then he told us, senior year of high school, out on a drive, rural area late one night,
came across a car accident where a car had run off the road, down into a culvert. A man was injured in the car and could not get out and my friend could not free him.
So he drove to a nearby farmhouse, up the drive, knocked on the door. It was late. The woman who lived there, scared to come to the door. Finally she came. He explained the situation. Man hurt, car accident, he can't get out of the car. Please call for help. And when the woman got it, she turned away from the door, ready to make the phone call, and then in hesitation turned back to the front door with an important question.
The man in the ditch, is he black or is he white?
And my friend who is African American, feeling the oppression, the weight, the unfairness on himself and his family for generations, now coming to bear in this single moment, exploded in rage. He is white and now he's your problem and my friend drove away. I don't mean he just drove away from the farmhouse, I mean he drove away.
And now it haunted him.
A young man who was preparing to save lives by his education, recognized that he already had the moment that he could have and did not.
He never knew what happened to the man in the culvert.
I must tell you my friend who spiraled into depression to this day, I don't know what happened to him.
I wish I know what his heart had been able to hear.
There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.
God looks at the messiness and he says, "I can wipe it away. Though your sins be a scarlet, I can make them white as snow. Though the ravines of sin and guilt have worked themselves deep into the scars of your heart, God says, "I can fill it with my love." Where you says, "I'm stagnant in my love for you," God says, "I can fill your heart again with streams of living water."
As you begin to recognize how great is my love for you despite how awful is your past,
God is declaring to his people, he's declaring to us, "I am working all things together for good that is far more than you could do. It's far more than you deserve." But it is the nature of a God who came in a manger to give himself or his people when they did not deserve it and could not have made it happen. He said, "I will work far beyond you. I will work far beyond the moment. I will work far beyond the past or the present." Why? Because I'm not settling for the what is.
I am working for the future. What is that?
I mean, we've talked about the process of site selection and the site plan and the site preparation, the site clearing. Is that the end of the story?
No.
Where's the building?
Somebody's got to build something. And of course that has been explained. Well what is the final edifice? You recognize those whom God justified into verse 30. The Scriptures say he also glorified.
That where those luxury homes appeared where there had been decay is ultimately what God is promising is, "Well, I will prepare a home for you. I will prepare a home for myself in your heart by my Holy Spirit so that you would become my very temple and ultimately you will be with me in eternity forever." I mean, what does that glory look like? We don't have to guess. It's in the same chapter. What is the glorified existence that we are being promised? Verse 21 of chapter 8, "The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God." Just as sin entered this world to corrupt it, to put it in the bondage of decay in which we all live and have since Adam.
Nonetheless, there will become that time in which God says, "Even as I am freeing souls for myself eternally, I am freeing creation from its bondage to decay so that ultimately there will be a world made perfect."
And it's not just physical reality. You recognize verse 23 of chapter 8 says, "And not only the creation, but we ourselves
who have the firstfruits of the Spirit," remember the desires and the deeds that are changing, we have those firstfruits of the Spirit. What else?
"Grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies."
Yes, there is a spiritual reality. Yes, we will be united soul and spirit with God forever, but that's not all that's being said. There will also be a redemption of our physical bodies.
There will be resurrection bodies as God Himself in Christ showed us what could happen, free of death, free of sin, free of corrosion. No more fears, no more pain, no more tears, no crying again, made right with God, right with one another, a perfect world with perfect bodies, perfect relationship with Him.
The ultimacy of that is it's so much glory, it's so overwhelming that the impact on us is explained right now. It's verse 18 of the same chapter. Paul writes, "For I consider that the sufferings of the present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us.
All things work together for good." He does not say all things feel good.
All things seem good. All things can be explained. He does not say any of that. He says all things work together for good. If it's all things in a broken, corrupt, and fallen world, what that means is not just the Christmas presents, not just the sweet music, but time and trauma and tragedy and trial as much as they create in us dependence, a sense that our resources are not enough even for the world we face, much less the devil that we face, that I need somebody beyond myself, beyond my resources, that over and over again I'm being forced to recognize I need the work of a Father in heaven. And not only do I need His work in my behalf, all things need to be coordinated because I can't make sense of this life and world if the sufferings are here with no cause and no purpose. And so God, now I'm just going to confess to you, these are the deep minds of Christian faith as I'm going deep after the gold into the mysteries of our existence. As God is saying, all things are being worked together for your good because if you knew, if you did not know that you needed God at all, if the tragedy never came, if the hurt never came, if you never thought you needed God at all, then your eternity would become so insecure. And so the God who says, "Here's the glory.
Here's what I'm accomplishing. I'm creating your heart's love for me. And because I'm creating your heart's love for me, you are going to be in that perfect body, in that perfect world, in a perfect relationship with me forever." And when you know that's the goal in the sufferings, which are but for this existence, are not worth comparing with the glory that shall be revealed in you. Because what erodes heart and life and pleasantness and even self-confidence at that point has a single purpose, and it is ultimately to unite our souls and our bodies in God's perfect plan for all eternity.
And the beauty of that is what helps me endure now.
For a lot of years, our family and vacationing in Colorado, one of the favorite places our kids liked to go was the great Sand Dunes National Park, which appears in just an unusual place in the middle of this huge mountain valley in the Rockies, are sand dunes down in a valley that nonetheless rise to almost a thousand feet tall.
How did they get there? What's happening there? Running through the mountain valley is the Madonna River. And as the Madonna River is washing through the valley, it's taking sand off the mountain, even sand off the dunes, and it's taking that sand down to a lower valley where there's this most unusual mountain formation where the way the valleys between the mountain ranges comes and the way the wind blows, that sand that has been washed down into the lower valley is lifted into the air and blown back upon the dunes and keeps lifting them higher and higher. They're washed and then lifted higher, washed and then lifted higher.
And what God is doing in our lives as He's washing us from self-dependence, washing us of the guilt of our sin, washing us of the despair that our days could be anything is actually building us up higher and higher so that we are being conformed daily by the years through time more and more to the likeness of Jesus Christ lifted higher and higher so that ultimately what we have before us is the glory that God intended all along as He
is washing us to lift us as He intended.
What should we say to this?
Well, actually that's Paul's question.
He asked it directly in verse 31.
What shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? What shall we make of all this? Well, first there's a great gift that has already come our way. What is the great gift? God is for us knowing the worst about us, knowing our failures as parents, knowing our failures as people at work, knowing our failure and witness, knowing our failure even to be what we want to be. Nonetheless God is for us.
And how I know that is He did not spare His own Son but delivered Him up for us all. That there is this great statement of treasure for treasure.
God who treasured His own Son, if He's going to value me and you so much that He would provide His Son for us, then He is saying to us, "Not only am I for you, not only did I send my Son as a great gift to you, I'm preparing you to be a gift to me.
I'm enlarging my household. I'm enlarging Christ's siblings."
So that ultimately there is this great family gathering. And the proof of our treasure is not what we are right now.
It's what our destination is in the glory that God is preparing.
I think of it in terms of a Christmas commercial that appeared some years ago. Some of you will remember it. You are what you drive.
Now I must tell you, I was offended by that commercial because I was driving a Ford Pinto,
100,000 miles, rusty fenders, paint flaking off. Oh no, that's what I am. I refuse to accept it.
Actually biblically, we are not what we drive.
We are our destination.
What is our destination? It is glory. It is experiencing fully the treasure that we are to God and the treasure that He is to us. And knowing that that is the glory that God has prepared for us, we recognize that while we have every reason to say, "God, you shouldn't care about me. You know I've disappointed you. You know I've turned away from you. You know I've done what you required." And God is saying, "I know all of that. And I provided a path for you, and I provided a way for you, and I still treasure you because I am not valuing you based upon the what is.
I'm valuing you based upon what you shall be."
And just to make it clear how definite is that value, right there at the end of verse 30, there's this most unusual wording, "And those whom God justified He also glorified," as though it's something past like already happened, already done, and yet you know glory is ahead of us. How could it already be done?
It was right there in those opening words, "Those whom He foreknew."
He knows what He's doing.
He knows your destination. He knows my destination.
And knowing what He intends for us, He's already fixed His regard for us. Yeah, I'm running by the estate, and I'm going, "Well, that place is a mess. There's no value in there."
But somebody knew what the value was going to be, and they valued that property based upon what the glory was to come. And so God is dealing with each of us. And the ultimate promise to us in verse 32 is how we know this is true. He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things? There it is again, all things being given to us. It's almost as though the apostle, when he said it in verse 28, knows that we can't quite take it in.
All things being worked together for good. And now that we are as treasured to God as His own Son because we in faith are becoming the siblings of Jesus, so that He values us like His own child, like Jesus, how could that be? Because we've been purchased at so high a price, treasure for treasure.
But ultimately we begin to recognize that what God is saying is, "I'm going to show you how good you are, how precious you are to me.
I'm going to give you all things."
What do you want for Christmas?
Bicycle, latest version of we, golf clubs, Roomba or fishing reels.
Diamond rings.
How about all things?
How about all things being worked together for good?
That makes diamond rings just small potatoes.
All things being worked together for good.
I think about that in a day that will come very soon now.
You know the kids will get up early, and in the dawn's early light, we'll head toward the room with the tree, and there will be presents under it, and just for a little bit. Even the adults who have had trouble sleeping that night, not just because of Santa, because of the worries that stretch them and don't go away because it's Christmas.
Just for a few moments, those adults, the grandparents and the adults, they'll have this time in which their hearts and their minds enter into the laughter and the smiles of the children, and for just a little bit.
They will enjoy the gift giving.
But what they will long for is the gift that keeps on giving.
Can the joy stretch?
Can there be something beyond the moment that helps me?
And so I'll ask you if you can remember, when you walk into that room with the gifts, see all the ribbons and the glitter and the gloss under the tree, you might just see it. There's another gift under the tree.
Sometimes only adults can see it. It's kind of back in the dark, kind of a way into a corner.
It's the world, time, and eternity.
All for you.
As God is saying, all things, all things are being worked together for your eternal good.
That's a pretty good gift.
May God grant it to your heart so that when you need the gift that keeps on giving, you will know He has given you all things in time, earth, and eternity for your soul's sake forever.
Merry Christmas. You're getting everything.
Amen. Father, so work your will into our hearts so that we would recognize the greatness of the gospel promises. Our hearts hardly can take it in, and the sufferings and the trials of the moment make us feel it could not be real.
But you showed us your character in Christ Jesus. You showed us a hand that could work beyond a circumstance for an ultimate and eternal good. And you who did that, you are still working all things together for good. Teach it to our hearts. Help us to claim it in an hour of need, not just for ourselves, but for friend and family and child who needs to claim it too.
All our minds and the peace that passes understanding that we might know the God who has created all things is using all things for our good and our eternity in Christ Jesus. So we pray in His name. Amen.