Romans 8:19-39

God’s Sovereign Plan

If you brought your copy of God’s word then please turn to Romans chapter eight with me this morning. Isn’t it truly amazing that we get to serve the Great I Am? We serve a God who is all powerful and nothing can stop our God from working His will in this world. That power and authority of God is exactly what I want to talk about today and my hope is that we can all be encouraged that the God we serve is in control no matter the circumstance.

Go ahead and look down with me to verse 19.

Romans 8:19–21 “For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.”

I think that we can all agree in here that aside from Christ, Paul was likely the greatest teacher of God that we have seen. His letters are so rich in knowledge on everything we need as believers. You can find within the same letter the foundations of beginning a relationship with Christ, practical guides on how to walk as a Christian, and finally deeper theology on who God is and it all flows together and makes sense in a way that I could never hope to accomplish. Sometimes though, Paul takes very vast and robust topics or subjects and condenses them down into small sections that make up a side point of His statement. This passage is one of those occasions. If whenever I read this a moment ago you zoned out nearly immediately don’t feel bad, it is a dense bit of scripture, but I think that if we unpack this and zoom back out then we can learn something about God that will encourage us a His people.

What Paul is doing here is really summing up all of history up to this point in just a few short sentences. So then, if we break it down the first thing that we can not is that creation is eagerly waiting for the revealing of the sons of God. By creation of course Paul is referring to everything that we see, all of the things that God created in the heavens and on the earth are waiting for the revealing of the sons of God. Now then who are the sons of God? Notice that we have sons plural meaning that it is not Christ that is being referred to here but rather to us as the adopted sons and daughter of God through Christ. But then why would creation be waiting for the revealing of believers? That is because of the next sentence that states that creation is subjected to futility. This points us all the way back to Adam because you see Adam was the first man to have true freedom in that he had the choice between God and temptation, to either do good or to do evil. As we know Adam made the wrong choice and brought death upon himself and the curse of sin nature to mankind, but what about the rest of creation? Well it says that God subjected all of creation to the punishment of sinfulness. Before we move on think about how important that makes us to God. When man fell God sent the rest of the world into a fallen state with us out of His love for us. If the world were not fallen then we would not be able to live in it. Just as we would not be able to be in the presence of God in our fallen state we cannot live in a perfect world. Either we would destroy it ourselves, or it would destroy us, but either way we needed all of creation to come with us so God subjected all of creation to a fallen state.

C.S. Lewis in His book The Great Divorce gives what i believe to be an excellent illustration of this. This book is told through the eyes of a soul in what seems to be some sort of purgatory, now I know that we do not believe in purgatory, but bear with me. This soul is given an opportunity to get a small taste of heaven and choose if he wants to go deeper into heaven. When he arrives he describes it as being even realer than himself. He says that he is nearly see through and even to walk on the grass is painful because the blades are to real for him to move. This is a great illustration of a fallen man in a perfect world, it would either be unbearable, or we would soon corrupt it ourselves to make it bearable.

This is where we start to see the encouragement though because He did so in hope. In hope because God knew that His redemptive plan had begun. He had a plan for creation and that plan is to redeem all of creation from the slavery of sin just as He does with us. And again, He does it all for us. To one day in His perfect kingdom when He returns to rule and reign here on earth we will have delivered to us this perfect creation to live in. The lion and the lamb laying together, the world without death or tragedy or pain or disease. He gives us a hope to look forward to.

But for now we are in a waiting period.

Romans 8:22 “For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now.”

Creation as a whole yearns to be fixed and is pained with the burden of fallenness. We see that in our world with natural disasters and the way they ravage the world. We see it also in the way that Man treats the world. Look I was raised by a logger turned forester so I am by no means a tree hugger, but you cannot deny that man destroys God’s creation at times. Compare the major cities of today to any stretch of woods and try to tell me that the concrete jungle holds more beauty. And until the day that Christ returns Creation will continue to be pained by itself and by us as we struggle to survive here.

But Paul says that not only does creation feel the groaning but man can now feel it as well.

Romans 8:23 “Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.”

Not all of humanity can feel this groaning, this yearning to be redeemed by God. It is only those of us who have the firstfruits of the Spirit that feel this deep desire to be redeemed by God. It is this first work of the Spirit that is what helps the sinner realize He is lost in need of a savior. It is by this work of the Spirit that a poor soul and find repentance and faith and hope in Jesus Christ.

I have a good friend that for now we will call Bob. Well Bob has a good group of Christian friends that he likes to hang out with and go to Bible studies with. Well one day someone in this group starts inviting a guy we will call Jim to these hangouts and Bible studies. You see the thing is though that Jim was an atheist and a very firm one at that. For everything you gave him he had a scientific theory or article he could quote to try and refute the truths of scripture. Well Bob and the rest of the believers continued inviting him around for months and never saw any progress in Jim until one week out of nowhere Jim started asking questions. He started wanting to know who God was and more about scripture and within a week or so Jim became a believer in Christ. My friend Bob was astonished because of the sudden change in Jim so he went and said to him “Hey man what is different now than a month ago? You just so all of a sudden flipped so what made you change your mind?” and Jim told him that it was hard to explain but it felt like there was something outside of himself calling him into God. That it was as if one week he cared nothing about God and the next He felt a compelling draw towards God and there was nothing he could do but satisfy this need to know God.

This is the firstfruits of the Spirit that we are talking about. Now, not all of us were atheists and have these drastic conversion experiences like Jim, but all of us that are believers have something outside of our own will that is drawing us closer to God. That is compelling us to repent of our sins and learn more about our Father in heaven. Notice also that it says that this is the firstfruits of the Spirit. This is how God begins a relationship with us, but the Spirit is not done there. The Spirit is not limited to regeneration alone, but also to sanctification, to the building up of the fruits of the Spirit love joy peace patience kindness gentleness and self control.

Now we understand that creation is fallen and we understand why creation is fallen, but why is Paul reminding us of this fact?

Romans 8:28 “And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”

If you have went through a hardship within the last six months and I was made aware of it then it is likely that I shared this verse with you. This verse has become one of my favorite in all of scripture and it encourages me and gives me peace in the hardest of times. So is saying here that yes the world is harsh. We will face trials and struggles all our days on this earth and it will hardly ever be easy to just survive, but thankfully we serve a God with a plan. We serve the Great I Am who cannot be stopped so no matter what trials we face we know that our God is bigger. Now there is two things that we need to notice here in this verse though that clarify the statement. First, notice that it says that all things work together for good and not that all things are good. In this verse Paul is not saying that bad things do not happen. I am not standing here today and telling you that the loss of you father or your mother or your son or your daughter was a good thing. Loosing your job, loosing your home, suffering disease and illness are all bad things that have come about through the fallen state of man and the world, but what I am telling you is that the God I serve can take even the worst of things and turn them into good. Now I have to answer the question of how does God do this? How is God going to take my pain and sorrow and turn it into good? I must give you an answer here that I hate to deliver in a sermon, but the answer is that I don’t know. There are many things in my life that I look back on that hurt and caused pain that I still do not know why God had me go through these circumstances, but I have faith that one day in heaven it will all make sense because His word promises that all things work out for those who love Him. Which leads us to our next point and that is a clarifying statement that Paul gives here. This promise is not for the whole world, it is only for those who love God, to those who are called. This is a promise that only a believer, one who has been made regenerate and has a personal relationship with our Lord and Savior, can lay claim to. Bad things happen in this world that are indeed just bad things. Terrible tragedies and accidents, but we as believers can be assured that God has a special plan for those who love Him and He will make sure that something good comes from every circumstance we face.

This plan for our lives is not something that God is just making up as we go either. No it is thought out an masterfully crafted through every detail of our lives.

Romans 8:29–30 “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.”

Now this passage could really get us into the weeds on some deeper topics but for our purpose today it suffices to say this, in every step of God’s plan He thought of you. In the fall of man when God cast the world into a fallen state He thought of you, in the days of the Law and the Prophets and Israels constant failing, He thought of you. When Christ came to earth and suffered as a man He thought of you. As He hung on that tree and died for your sins He thought of you. When you came to that place where you repented of your sins and and found faith in Christ He thought of you and from now until you die you can rest assured that He is thinking of you. He has done everything so far in preparation for His people to come to know Him and we can trust that if He has gotten us this far then why would He live us now?

I will end with one final verse that needs no explanation for us to take with us as we go.

Romans 8:31 “What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?”