(28) and We Know That in All Things God Works for the Good of Those Who Love Him, Who Have

Do you ever pray for bad things to happen? I can’t imagine that you do. Do bad things ever happen to you? Of course they do. If you watched the news this week, then you know that an 84-year-old man named Nhia Yang had been missing for one week. His son found his dead body hanging from a tree at a Noyes Park in Milwaukee. You don’t pray to have your grandfather with Alzheimer’s wander off to a golf course and kill himself. Just like you don’t pray to get sick. You don’t pray for cancer. You don’t pray for conflict at work. You don’t pray to be short-staffed or underpaid. You don’t pray to go broke. You don’t pray to go to war. You don’t pray for the 9/11s, the tornadoes, or the heart surgeries in little babies. But still, they happen.

And God has plenty to say about all that. In fact, I am certain that every one of you knows exactly what God says about all of that and even how we should feel about all that. The passage we have in front of us this morning is quite possibly the most quoted passage in the entire Bible. You have said it about a thousand times and have heard it another two-thousand times. It’s the one that begins, “And we know that in all things …”

Whew! That makes you feel better, doesn’t it? Takes all the fear right away, doesn’t it? Not really. Is there a difference in your feelings between, on the one hand, waiting to find out if you really have cancer and, on the other hand, hearing from the doctor that you absolutely do not have cancer? There is. In the first instance, you are plenty scared and fearful. In the second, you are plenty relieved and grateful. Is there a difference in your feelings between, on the one hand, coming home to a nice clean house and, on the other hand, coming home to see a broken-into house? There is. Is there a difference between, on the one hand, seeing your grandfather rocking in his easy chair and, on the other hand, not knowing where he is and wondering if you’re ever again going to see him sit there? There is.

In every one of those situations, plus all the bad situations in the current day-to-day of your life, do you have the same confidence that everything really is going to be just fine? No fears? No tears? No pits in your stomach? No lumps in your throat? You don’t. But God is going to bring us a little closer to that today by making an old passage new to our hearts.

(28) And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Baseball players are some of the most superstitious people in the world. The players have lucky batting gloves, lucky hats, lucky bats. Some players have to adjust their batting gloves before every pitch. Most players refuse to step directly on the foul line when going on or off the field. A player on the Houston Astros didn’t wash his batting helmet for an entire year because he thought it would end his hot streak. And when asked why he participates in all these silly superstitions, he simply said, “As a ballplayer, you have so many things working against you, you need all the help you can get.”

Can you count all the things in your life that are working against you? In your head right now, just try to come up with as many as you can. Keep track on your fingers as you go. Do you have it? Everybody’s answer in here should be the same. You can count on one hand all the things in your life that are working against you. You should have zero fingers up because there is nothing. Everything in your life is working for you.

If you memorized this verse in the King James Bible, then you have a better sense of what Paul is really saying here. The King James Version says, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God.” All things are working for your good. All things, not some things, not most things, not plenty of things; but absolutely, without exception, all things.

Do you know who Steven Curtis Chapman is? Steven has been a very successful Christian musician for more than 20 years. He’s won five Grammy awards, 54 Dove awards, has had 44 no. 1 singles, and more than 10 million albums sold. Steven and his wife, Mary Beth, had three children of their own and then adopted three girls from China. In the year 2000, they founded a foundation, named after one of their adopted daughters, to help families facing financial burdens with adopting. This past May, the entire family was home in Tennessee. One of the teenage sons was moving the family SUV out of the driveway when he accidently ran over his youngest sister, little 5-year-old Maria. Maria died.

Three years earlier, in an interview in the magazine, Today’s Christian, Mary Beth, the mom, was asked about the difficulties with adopting foreign children. She said, “There may or not be issues ahead for us. [But] whether it’s all peaches-and-cream or it’s miserable, this is God’s work.”

And, of course, they didn’t pray for something miserable to happen, but even though something miserable did happen, it doesn’t change the fact that, through it, God is working.

Can God accomplish good things through tragedy? Ask Paul. It was a tragedy what he did in Jerusalem. His persecution in Jerusalem scattered the Christian church to far away places, forcing families to live where they never have, to figure out life in ways they never wanted, to say good-bye to loved ones killed in horrific ways they never dreamed. But God used that tragedy to plant his church in a hundred new places it had never before been, make it flourish and spread, and call countless new Christians to faith and home with him.

Can God accomplish good things through tragedy? Of course he can. But Paul doesn’t just say that he can. He says that he will. “We know,” Paul says. We don’t doubt, we don’t wonder, we don’t hope; we know that all things work together for our good; even against people’s best intentions.

Sometimes bad things happen by accident. Sometimes a little girl is run over by an SUV unintentionally. But sometimes they happen on purpose. Paul intentionally wanted to hurt God’s church. He made a decision to persecute and kill Christians. Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery on purpose. They couldn’t stand the punk. He was arrogant and unwanted, so tragedy and pain is what, for their brother, they intended.

The devil didn’t accidentally afflict Job. He didn’t accidentally pierce Paul. He didn’t accidentally put Jesus on a cross or regret hearing Jesus’ painful call. He intentionally brought even on Jesus incredible tragedy, which we know worked together with God’s good purpose to bless you and me. We know that a murderer named Paul worked to bring God’s church healing. We know that Joseph’s slavery worked to eventually lead a nation, and we know that a painful cross was used to give us forgiveness and salvation.

And, if that’s true, then what else do you know? You know that your cancer is working to bless you. You know that your poverty is working to help you. You know that your conflict is working to assist you. You know that your enemies are rallying around you. It’s something they may not intentionally do, but because God uses all things to bless you, we know the good is coming for you.

And because we know that, we never complain to God as if all is lost. We never stay up late and cry ourselves to sleep because we believe it can’t work out well for me. We never become bitter about life and complain about life and tell people that all’s lost, and that if God’s going to treat me this way, if I can’t really trust him to deliver me from the biggest struggles of my day, then I’m just going to give in to my sin and go astray.

One of the reasons you do hear all those things is because we are limited in our ability to see what’s going to happen to you and me. Karen and I both prayed that we would marry other people. Before we met each other, we were both in serious relationships with other people in high school, and we both prayed during those relationships that they would grow into an engagement and marriage. They didn’t. Karen’s family was crushed. Mine was relieved. God had something better in mind for me that I couldn’t see. I hope she feels the same way.

We are limited in our ability to see what good things God has in mind for you and me. But just because we are limited does not mean that we have no ability. God has already shown you the most impressive part of your future.

(29) 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. (30) And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. Thomas Watson once said, “Eternity to the godly is a day that has no sunset.” In other words, it’s a day you wish would never end. But because, as Jesus said, each day is full of its own trouble, that is a day you have never truly had. But Jesus has.

In the book of Philippians, Paul tells us that God elevated Jesus to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name so that every tragedy, enemy, trouble, and pain must submit to him. And here, God says that he has predetermined that you will be conformed to his likeness, that you are guaranteed the same thing. And, of course, when is that going to happen? It will happen in heaven.

The best thing God has in mind for his children is when they leave this world behind to live with him. God’s greatest goal for you is life in heaven, not paradise on earth, which means that he is not going to work out every single trouble for your good while you’re here on earth. Job’s family never came back. Joseph lost decades with his father he would never get back. Paul’s thorn in the flesh never went away. Marie Chapman remains dead to this day. But none of those things took their heaven away. Neither will your troubles take away yours.

Rob Cutshaw owned a little roadside shop outside Andrews, North Carolina. He collected rocks and sold them to collectors and jewelry makers. He didn’t know much about rocks. He collected and sold them mainly because he liked to look at them, even though the rock-collecting didn’t always pay the bills. While Rob was digging for rocks one day in 1957, he found one that he described as “purdy and big.” He thought the rock might be able to get him close to $500, but he’d take something less if something urgent came up, like paying the electric bill. Initially, nobody wanted it, so he kept the big blue rock under his bed. It turns out that Rob almost sold for a couple hundred dollars what is today called “The Star of David” sapphire, the largest sapphire ever found, which today could easily sell for millions of dollars

God would never take that close to losing you. In our reading from Matthew, we heard how much God wants you to value his Word, to be ready to give up all you have to hold onto this one treasure. Paul tells you here, that God’s greatest treasure is you. And he practiced what he preached. He gave up the only Son he had to hold on to you.

And he’s had plenty of time to reconsider if this is something he wanted to undo. Paul said that God foreknew you, that, long ago in eternity, God chose to be with you. And in all those millennia since then, he has done nothing to indicate that he has reneged on his choice to treasure you.

Paul says he predestined you. In other words, he sets boundaries around your life. If he knows that cancer is going to drive you closer to him, he lets it in. If he knows that getting that raise is going to lead you astray, he keeps the gate closed and the temptation far away. And he knows.

And in case you are tempted to believe that God is going to pick a different treasure for all the times we try to prove that we know better, Paul says that God has called you. He calls you his daughter. He calls you his son. He calls you forgiven. He calls you through his Word to remind you that your time worrying in this world is done, because Paul reminds us that God has justified you, which means that, through Jesus, God treats you just-as-if-you’d never sinned, which means that God has no reason to exclude you from the heaven he promises you when Paul tells you that God has already in his mind glorified you.