Purpose Driven Eternity
Romans 8: 28-32
Sermon by Pastor Dennis R. Gleason -- July 10, 2005
28And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them. 29For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn, with many brothers and sisters. 30And having chosen them, he called them to come to him. And he gave them right standing with himself, and he promised them his glory.
31What can we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? 32Since God did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t God, who gave us Christ, also give us everything else?
A dictionary definition of the word purpose tells us this: “Purpose: 1. something one has in mind to get or do; plan; aim; intention. 2. the object or end for which a thing is made, done or used” -- The World Book Dictionary.
There is a story involving Yogi Berra, the well-known catcher for the New York Yankees, and Hank Aaron, who at that time was the chief power hitter for the Milwaukee Braves. The teams were playing in the World Series, and as usual Yogi was keeping up his ceaseless chatter, intended to pep up his teammates on the one hand, and distract the Milwaukee batters on the other. As Aaron came to the plate, Yogi tried to distract him by saying, "Henry, you're holding the bat wrong. You're supposed to hold it so you can read the trademark." Aaron didn't say anything, but when the next pitch came he hit it into the left-field bleachers. After rounding the bases and tagging up at home plate, Aaron looked at Yogi Berra and said, "I didn't come up here to read."
What is God’s purpose? What is it that God intends to do as it relates to us?
In coming to an answer to these questions there are three things in this passage of interest to us this morning:
1. God’s Promise:
a. Last week we considered the fact that “…we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them.”
b. That is the promise of God.
c. In some way the various things that make up my life will somehow work together for my good. That is the truth of the Word of God…even if I have a difficult time figuring out just how it will happen.
d. God says that this is the truth. His Word is true. That is His promise to me and to you…no matter how difficult things might be…His promise is true and He will keep His Word to us.
2. God’s Purpose
God has a purpose and a plan. I suggested last week that God has a plan and He is working the plan out in your life and mine.
Romans 8:29 speaks to the issue of the Purpose or Plan God has for us: “For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn, with many brothers and sisters.”
God’s purpose is a five linked chain that hangs down from Eternity, reaching us with the third link and takes us back into Eternity:
We are foreknown,
We are Predestined,
We are Called
We are Justified
We are Glorified
One of our problems is that we misunderstand what is involved in the Purpose of God because of an unfortunate mis-translation of the word in our text that comes to us as “foreknowledge”. We think of it as some kind of advanced knowledge that God has about what is going to happen. God knows and therefore He acts on what He knows we will do or say or how we will respond to Him.
But that is a very mistaken understanding of the concept.
God’s Foreknowledge is not that at all. It is an advanced determination to carry through a plan, which He has eternally purposed in the counsels of His own will, and which is to be carried through without variation because the Lord brings about what He has thus determined and decreed.
It is not God’s advanced knowledge of something which I shall choose to do.
God’s foreknowledge is God bringing to pass in me something which He has planned for me. 1 Peter 1:2 is a passage which when correctly translated tells us “chosen and destined according to the foreknowledge of God.”
What is in view here is: just our life and service, but our salvation.
Ephesians 1:3-11 will help us here:
3How we praise God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we belong to Christ. 4Long ago, even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. 5His unchanging plan has always been to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. And this gave him great pleasure.
6So we praise God for the wonderful kindness he has poured out on us because we belong to his dearly loved Son. 7He is so rich in kindness that he purchased our freedom through the blood of his Son, and our sins are forgiven. 8He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding.
9God’s secret plan has now been revealed to us; it is a plan centered on Christ, designed long ago according to his good pleasure. 10And this is his plan: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth. 11Furthermore, because of Christ, we have received an inheritance from God,£ for he chose us from the beginning, and all things happen just as he decided long ago.
These verses show us that the plan of God includes our sonship as well as our life.
The Purpose of His Will is His predestination that we should be His sons. This includes our redemption and the forgiveness of our sins.
Paul wants us to understand that God’s foreknowledge is not merely advance knowledge, but a definite predetermination. 1 Peter 1:20 helps us here when we see that Peter says:
20God chose him for this purpose long before the world began, but now in these final days, he was sent to the earth for all to see. And he did this for you.
The word for “chose him” is the same one as used in our text. We thus conclude that the foreknowledge of Him who is omnipotent, omniscient, and unchangeable is nothing more or less than an eternal decree that began in the heart of God who would not be frustrated by the fact that men had sinned and that all men deserved to be separated from Him forever.
God determined that he would not allow his justice to dominate and thus have no human being in Heaven. God’s justice would mean that every human being would be separated from Him.
But God determined that in spite of His justice and in spite of man’s sin He, the God of all love and grace, would take some to heaven in spite of themselves and in spite of their sin.
Mankind is totally depraved. There is nothing good in man that could ever satisfy God. Because of this…the impulse for salvation had to begin with God. Salvation begins with God. He must initiate the process of salvation by quickening those who are dead in their trespasses and sin. No man could ever be saved without this quickening word of God.
God does not perform this quickening work in all men.
Before we object to this fact and begin to think that God is being unfair, consider this:
The wonder of the grace of God is that it includes you and me, when we did not deserve to be included, and that when we were dead, He made us alive in Christ.
John 5:24 should be translated as follows: “He who hears my word and believes on Him who sent me [does so because] he has everlasting life.” Most of us have probably understood the verse to say: “He who hears my word and believes on Him who sent me has [as a result] everlasting life.”
We cannot even believe unless God has already worked in our lives. We need to understand this: God has given us eternal life by God through Jesus Christ. We used that eternal life to hear His Word and to believe on the Father who sent the Son. The origin of all spiritual life is in God and it is imparted to us only through the eternal purpose of God, and through His implementation of that purpose by the Lord Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit.
To Jeremiah God said this, “…I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with loving kindness I have drawn you.” Jeremiah 31:3.
God has always done the drawing of men to himself. Out of all the people of the world He chose Abram…and through Abram a people for his own. They were not chosen because of anything but God’s love and grace. Did Abram deserve to be chosen…no! There was nothing appealing about him or his people…only that he would hear and obey God. See Deuteronomy 7:6-8.
The choosing of Abram was a sovereign choice of one man in the midst of a people who were at the time devil worshipers. None of them, Abram included, knew the true God or anything about Him.
Thus we have an act of sovereign grace that originated in the heart of God and from the love he has for us.
When God, out in eternity before the foundation of the world, decided that He was going to introduce the plan of salvation, He determined to do all things that would center in the glory of Jesus Christ. John 17:6; 3:16 tell us that God gave us Christ Jesus because He loved Christ and He gave us Christ because he loved us.
Christ was lovely…we were filthy
God determined that He was going to take us from earth and join us to Christ.
His plan involved a transformation that would make us as lovely as Christ.
This would be of the greatest glory to God…we who are the foulest would become as lovely as Christ. We who are the most unlike Christ would become like Him.
Our predestination was that we might be conformed to the image of Christ.
Christ is so wonderful…that God determined that He was going to people the universe with an incredibly vast number of replicas of Christ…and we are the raw material of that determination.
The spiritual differences have been bridged and God’s plan is coming to pass day by day as God brings His predestination to effectual calling, to justification and ultimate glorification.
The Holy Spirit has commanded all believers to make their calling and election certain (2 Peter 2:10). How do we do that? We are called to faith and obedience. As we believe and obey God we will be conformed to His image.
All of this leads us to:
3. Our Perspective: If God is for us, who can be against us.
Those God has predestined, He has also called; those He has called, He also justified; and those he has justified; he has glorified.
God will accomplish what he has purposed to do…and that is to bring people like us into glory. He will finish what he has started. He will fully bring to pass what He has determined to do…and that is to conform people like us to the image of His beloved Son, Jesus Christ.
And because of all of this…we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.
Nothing will ever separate us from the love of Christ.
--Dennis Gleason
