Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Our text today is the first part of the epistle lesson Romans chapter 8 verses 28 to 30.
In the name of Jesus, dear Christian friends, what's your purpose in life?
Why do you exist?
Many people feel like life has no purpose.
They feel that things just happen.
That it's just a roll of the dice is what's going to happen today.
And when you feel like you have no purpose,
then you feel that you're not responsible for anything.
And the feeling of having no responsibility means I can do whatever I want to do.
People who feel that way often let loose and party down.
Drugs, alcohol, sex, taking whatever they want.
Who cares what other people think?
It's all just part of life.
And everything comes and everything goes and it just keeps going on and on and on.
And before long they feel very insignificant in this world.
Nothing is more important to me than my life.
Nothing is really important if you have no sense of purpose.
As Christians, we realize, though, that we do have a purpose in life.
We believe that God has created us in his image, his divine image,
and that he has called us to follow him.
And his desire is for us to love and to serve one another.
The trouble is that we live in a real world.
And that world often causes us to question God and his purpose for our lives.
Those are big realities in life, like the death of a loved one,
or the loss of a job, or the betrayal of a friend.
Those things can rock your faith hard.
And add to that all the little irritations that seem to always be there.
Irritations that seem to always be happening.
Long lines at the store.
The neighbor's dog digging up your flowers.
The car breaking down when you don't have any money to fix it.
The kids coming home from school sick.
The money running out before payday comes.
The list is really endless.
And you throw into that a fight with your spouse,
or a boss who doesn't understand boundaries,
or the bully at school.
And it seems like Murphy's Law is absolutely true.
Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.
And as things begin to pile up, we start to wonder about God,
and about our purpose for life.
Sometimes our human nature takes over,
and we feel like God is punishing us by all of this stuff that's happening in our lives.
We spill something, and we're like, why me Lord?
Sometimes it's a joke, sometimes it's not.
The doctor gives us an unexpected diagnosis, and we utter,
why me Lord, what did I do to deserve this?
What did I do wrong?
Why are you punishing me with this?
At other times, we explain things away,
saying that God can't really be in control of the entire universe.
I mean, there's too many things for him to handle.
He just wound up the clock, and he sits back,
and he watches to see what's going to happen.
And still at other times, we feel like God has completely forgotten us.
We pray, and we pray, and we pray, and we pray,
and nothing happens.
We're still sick, we still lost our job,
we still have trouble with our spouse, or our kids, or our boyfriend, or our girlfriend, or whatever,
and we conclude that God really doesn't care about us.
Those kinds of negative thoughts are not new,
they've existed since the very beginning of time,
and they're common for each and every one of us,
even if we don't want to admit it.
Evidently, the Christians in Rome were having those kinds of questions
those kinds of questions about God's love.
And so Paul asks them in our Epistle lesson,
what shall we say to all of these things that junk in our lives?
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 along with him graciously give us all things?
If Jesus suffered and died in our place, surely he cares for us.
And if he cares for us,
what do we make out of all of these troubles that seem to fill our lives?
God gives us the answer to those kinds of questions in our text for today.
Paul said in Romans 8 verse 28,
Paul said in Romans 8 verse 28,
He didn't say we think, or wouldn't it be nice, or it's possible.
He said, no, we know.
We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.
How do we know that?
We know it because we are God's children.
In the verses that come before our text,
Paul said the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.
It is through the eyes of faith, the faith of a child of God,
that we know God's goodness.
By the Holy Spirit, which we received in baptism,
God tells us that he loves us and that he cares for us.
And by faith, then, we know that God is not punishing us when we have trouble.
We know that he's not too weak to help us.
We know that there are no accidents as far as God is concerned.
We know.
We know that God will use whatever happens in our lives for our good.
A pastor went to visit a shut-in member one day,
and the lady was very troubled by all of the tragedies that she had in her life.
When he arrived, he found that she was embroidering a cover for a pillow.
And he asked if he could look at it.
And as she handed it to him, he purposely turned it over and looked at the back side.
As he's looking at it, he says,
Why are you wasting your time on such a mess?
Oh, pastor, she said, you're looking at the wrong side.
Turn it over.
And as he turned it over and handed it back to her, he said,
That's what you're doing when you worry about all of your troubles.
You're looking at the wrong side of God looking at your life.
Down here on earth, we only see the tangled side of God's providence.
He's looking at the beautiful, organized side.
Paul said in our text that God works good for those who love God.
Why would we love God?
Well, John said we love because he first loved us.
Well, how did how do we know that God loves us?
Well, earlier in the letter to the Romans, Paul affirmed God shows his love for us
in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
It wasn't after we got our lives all straightened out.
It wasn't after we made ourselves presentable.
No, it was while we were still sinners.
While we were dead in our sinful nature.
While we were the enemies of God.
While we were God haters.
That even before we were born, God came into this world to take our place under the law.
To suffer and die for our substitute.
And he did it because he loves us to all eternity.
He loves us to all eternity.
He did it so that our sins could be forgiven.
And that we could be adopted as his sons and daughters.
John wrote, by this we know love, that he laid down his life for us.
And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
As we said last Sunday in the Sunday morning pastor's class,
God's love is sacrificial.
It's agape.
It's only the love that God has for us.
That self-sacrificing love.
We know that God is good.
Because God loves us with his unending love.
As Paul said at the end of our epistle lesson today,
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,
neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,
neither height nor depth, nor anything in all of creation,
will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Because God is good.
And because God loves us.
We believe that God has a purpose for our lives.
Paul wrote in his letter to the church at Ephesus,
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of your own doing.
It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,
which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Paul affirms that God doesn't save us because of our good works.
No, salvation is by God's free grace alone.
However, Paul also affirms that Jesus did save us for good works.
He said, we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,
which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
That's what Paul means in our text when he says that we are called according to his purpose.
God wants us to know him.
He wants us to love him.
He wants us to serve him.
He wants us to use all of the gifts that he gives to us to love and serve other people.
In his book, Wild at Heart, John Eldredge quotes Gil Bailey, who wrote,
don't ask yourself what the world needs.
Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do that.
Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
God's purpose is for you to use whatever makes you come alive.
Whatever trips your trigger, whatever makes you feel great,
and to use those gifts to love him and to serve others.
In our text, Paul spells out God's plan for his people.
I like the way that it's worded in the New Living translation.
Paul said, for God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his son,
so that his son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.
And having chosen them, he called them to come to him.
And having called them, he gave them right standing with himself.
And having given them right standing, he gave them his glory.
When did Jesus begin his work in you?
He knew you even before he started creating the universe.
He knew your name.
He knew when you would be born, when you would die.
He knew whether you'd be a Christian or not.
He knew what gifts he was going to give to you.
He knew it all.
Paul said, he chose them to become like his son.
He called you, and he put his name on you,
He called you, and he put his name on you in holy baptism.
He gave you right standing with God.
Or, as we say in church work, he justified you, or he made you righteous.
And he did that by taking away your sins, and by giving you his goodness.
And through the Holy Spirit, he now glorifies you with his glory.
The glory he had on earth, and the glory that he promises for all eternity.
Now that doesn't mean that we are puppets on a string,
and God allows us to live our lives in this fallen world.
And because he does that, it means we are going to have trouble this side of heaven.
For God's will is not always done on earth, as in heaven.
He allows us to make choices.
Even bad choices.
Choices that lead to hardship.
But the good news in our text is that God often takes those bad things in our lives,
and he turns them around and uses them for good.
In the book of Genesis, we see the brothers of Joseph sell him into slavery.
It's a bad choice.
And yet God is with Joseph.
And Joseph rises to be second in command of Egypt.
Only Pharaoh is higher.
And when his brothers come to Egypt in order to get food during the great famine,
he confronts them, and he comforts them with these words.
You intended to harm me, but God intended it for your good.
To accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.
The same is true today.
Sometimes God allows bad things happen so that he can mold us into his image.
Sometimes he uses adversity to strengthen us and to prepare us,
so that we're able to help other people going through similar kinds of things.
Suppose your young daughter was reaching out to grab the flame on a candle.
What would you do?
You could grab her arm and stop her.
You could scold her and tell her, don't do that.
You could blow out the candle to protect her.
Or, you could let her touch the flame and learn the hard way that it hurts.
You could put her finger under cold water to help heal the burn.
You could use that to teach her about the dangers of fire.
And it would become a lifelong lesson for her.
That's what God often does with us.
By allowing hardship in our lives, he teaches us that he's there to rescue us from evil.
And that he comforts us with his eternal, everlasting love.
And as we trust in him, we are glorified as his children.
During the Great Depression, a man lost his job, exhausted all of his savings,
and even had to forfeit his home.
His grief was amplified as he lost his spouse in death.
And the only thing he had left was his faith, and it was growing weaker day by day.
As he was searching the neighborhood one day, looking for some kind of job,
he came upon a church that was being built.
And as he watched the workers build, he noticed that there was a stonemason there
who was carefully chiseling out a very small triangular set or stone.
And he looked all over, and he couldn't see where it would go,
and so he says, where are you going to put that?
And the workman said, well, see that little opening way up there by the spire?
That's where this piece goes.
I'm shaping it down here so that it fits up there.
The man walked away with tears in his eyes,
because God had spoken to him through the simple words of that stonemason.
I'm shaping it down here so that it fits up there.
My friends, that's what God's doing in our lives and all the events of our lives.
He's holding us in his mighty, everlasting hand,
but he's also shaping us into his image.
So that we might enjoy the glory of his heavenly kingdom.
As Paul said, we know that God causes everything to work together
for the good of those who love him,
and are called according to his purpose for them.
Amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all understanding
keep your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Amen.