The Fruit of Joy

Debbie and I were having a discussion several days back about messages and sermons and what to give. She had mentioned to me that a sermon on the subject of joy would be perhaps especially helpful. Since I get a lot of very good ideas from her in terms of my messages and what I speak on, I took that to heart and wasn't able to work it up exactly at the time we were talking about it. But as things tend to work in certain ways to make you realize that maybe God's angling and pushing and nudging you in a certain direction to either, in my case, address something or to speak on a particular topic.

I was browsing some of the magazines at my local library branch a little bit later, a few days after that, and I ran across an article that caught my attention for a couple of reasons. First of all, because it was talking about the topic of keeping a diary or keeping a journal, something that you all know that is near and dear to my heart.

Secondly, it just happens to be probably the most famous of diaries. It was an article about the most famous of diaries, at least in our modern times. It was a story about the young Jewish girl named Anne Frank, who was immortalized for us, at least, by her book, the diary of Anne Frank, which is still on reading lists in schools. Have the ladies read this book here?

You didn't read that book, but it was touched on in another book that you had a couple of years ago in your women's reading club. But, of course, the diary of Anne Frank, or the diary of a young girl published after her death, is quite well known. When I read this article, I found that in the current issue of the National Geographic Adventure magazine, it finally prompted me to put this book on my reading list.

I do need to read that book. That's probably something I need to do. This article about her journal was focusing on what it means to survive. The excerpts that they brought out in this article taken from her diary, I found to be quite interesting. It also was timely. The article was written because, had she lived and survived World War II and the Holocaust, and we're still alive today, she would have turned 80 this past June.

So that was how she would have been had she lived. But the author brings out that, in her case, the lessons learned are talking about how simple that lesson about survival. And it's not how long you live, but how well you live. He writes here, and I'll just read a few excerpts, he said that Anne Frank, who was basically incarcerated from 1942 until 1944, for a little more than two years, she and her family were hid in an attic of a family in the Netherlands and kept from the purge of the Nazis at that particular time.

And while she was there, she kept this diary. But he says here that Anne Frank saw her captivity as a chance to face, quote, the difficult task of improving herself. And as she worked steadily through the days and the weeks, she, quote, discovered an inner happiness underneath her superficial and cheerful exterior. She described, one time within her diary, she wrote up a prospectus and a guide to the secret annex.

This is what she called the room that they were living in, the secret annex. And so she wrote up a prospectus and guide, with a little sense of humor, as if it were a resort opened year-round for people to visit. She described their diet as low-fat. Their food was running out, and Frank had begun to starve, yet she was still making jokes. In her very last entry, she talks of her, quote, ability to appreciate the lighter side of things. Anne Frank recognized the reality of her situation.

She could see her own impending doom, and yet she was determined to go on with her life. She exhibited a classic ability to survive through surrender. Survival by surrender means accepting the fact that you might die, while simultaneously embracing and trying to extend the life you have. It means letting go of the process of living. Another quote from Anne's diary says, I see the annex as if we were a patch of blue sky, surrounded by menacing black clouds. The perfectly round spot on which we're standing is still safe, but the clouds are moving in on us.

Her mother advised her to think of all the suffering in the world and to be thankful. Frank's advice to herself was to, quote, think of all the beauty. She had her moments of weakness, too. Another quote, All I really want is to be an honest-to-goodness teenager. And despite all that was working against her, she succeeded. She lived like a teenager, right down to her own self-doubt, but also found opportunity in adversity.

As she put it, quote, beauty remains even in misfortune. Reflecting on her previous life as a pampered middle-class kid, she wrote, quote, It's a good thing that at the height of my glory I was suddenly plunged into reality. I look back at that Anne Frank, pre-captivity Anne Frank, as a pleasant, amusing, but superficial girl who has nothing to do with me. Anne Frank had undergone the transformation that is characteristic of the survival journey, and as the end approached, she lay in bed at night reflecting on, quote, the world, nature, and the tremendous beauty of everything. All that splendor, a person who has courage and faith, will never die in misery.

How a young girl in an attic writing in her journal transcended what it means to survive. It's the title of the article. It's in the current edition of National Geographic Adventure. I don't care to read that. It was, I thought, a very moving article from several levels that caught my attention. I alluded to the fact that a couple of years ago, one of the books that you ladies had read was about a time traveler. It was a fictitious device of a man who kind of encountered people from the past and lessons from their lives, and Anne Frank was one of them, you may recall.

Debbie had taken notes in her journal about her reading on that. She was giving this to me when we were talking about it yesterday. Some of the statements from this book, a chapter in the book where they were talking about Anne Frank.

In fact, the theme of the lesson that this traveler learned from the fictitious journey and meeting of Anne Frank, as recounted in this book, the one quality that was exhibited here was that of joy. He was taken in this dream that he had, he was taken to Anne Frank to learn joy. The notes that Debbie had taken, just to mention a few of them, as they were quoted in that book, "...happiness is not an emotional phantom floating in and out of my life. Happiness is a choice. I will greet each day with laughter. Laughter is an outward expression of enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is the fuel that moves the world. People are drawn to me because I have laughter in my heart.

I am the possessor of a grateful spirit, as a fresh breeze cleanses smoke from the air so a grateful spirit removes the cloud of despair. It is impossible for the seeds of depression to take root in a thankful heart. When I pray, I must show thankfulness before asking for more. I am thankful for sight, sound, and breath. More than that is the miracle of abundance. Greet each day with laughter. Smile at all I meet. Possess a grateful spirit. Today I choose to be happy." Those are some of the quotes that Debbie pulled out from that chapter in her reading about Anne Frank.

Joy, I think we all recognize, is one of the fruits of God's Holy Spirit that is listed in Galatians, the fifth chapter. Love, joy, peace. Joy is the second of the fruits of God's Spirit that is listed there. As you know, and may remember from your reading of that book, at least for all of us here, the real essence of what joy is, it is really a choice. Joy is different from happiness or gladness or exuberance. Joy and the fruit of that spirit that God's Spirit actually can enable us to develop within our minds and life and heart is actually a choice. In that sense, you have to say that all of the fruits of the Spirit are something we have to reach out and choose to take in Bible.

But joy is especially so in it being different from the normal gladness and happiness because joy is the ability to accept what has been dealt in our life, what is before us, and to work with it as we can.

And to come to that point, we have to have a very broad, basic, fundamental grasp of certain concepts that God has for us to really understand what joy is and how we can develop that. It's one thing to ask for it. It's certainly enough to be aware that we need that, and by God's Spirit we can cultivate that in our life.

But the depths of joy are rooted within something that, quite frankly, gets a little deeper because it gets to a fundamental understanding of subjects like justification and redemption and salvation that are kind of big theological topics from the Bible.

But there is one chapter in the Scriptures that I think leads us into a deeper understanding of this concept of joy and really how God's Spirit does work to bring that out. And it's a well-known chapter to us. And I want to take us through an overview of this chapter from the book of Romans today. It is a chapter that we all know because it is one of the most soaring and uplifting of some of Paul's writings.

It's the eighth chapter of the book of Romans. I've begun a Bible study up in the Fort Wayne congregation going through the book of Romans, at least an overview of the book of Romans. And some of my readings and studying on it have been quite enlightening. I was looking at this, chapter 8, and made the connection between this concept of joy and what is found right here smack in the middle of one of the heaviest books of the Bible. The book of Romans is...oh my!

You start reading the book of Romans and you can sail off or just give up in despair in terms of some of the things that are said. There are profound thoughts. You get into some of Paul's difficult theology that sometimes people twist to their destruction, as Peter explained. But when you really do sort it out and line out what Paul says, there's not any contradiction. It's not doing away with God's law.

It is very clear. In fact, you understand that Paul, throughout the book of Romans, is establishing God's law, not tearing it away, not tearing it apart and throwing it out the door. But he's also, in this book, goes into some very deep and profound things. Chapter 8 is where we find such a verse as verse 28, where I think we all might know.

It says, How many times have you quoted that, thought about it, or had it quoted to you? Especially when you're in the midst of a trial. And we think, well, all things work together for good. And we think, how's that work? What does that mean? And we really think that when we may be very sick, lost our job, what does that really mean? And what does that have to do with joy? Well, it has a lot to do with that topic. If we look carefully into this book, we can understand, I think, some things. And I want to take us through, not a verse-by-verse exposition, but kind of an overview down to that particular verse and some of the following ones.

But let's go back to the beginning of the verse, of the chapter in Romans 8, and go forward a bit and understand a little bit here. In verse 1 of Romans 8, as we begin this study here to understand joy, Paul writes, he says, There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.

I'm not going to get into exactly how the distinctions that may be brought out here. That's beyond the scope of the sermon here today, but this is a very positive statement and an encouragement. There's no condemnation to those who are in Christ who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. This is a chapter about God's Spirit that really expands on God's Spirit working within us. You almost have to connect these two verses with a thought back in chapter 5 and verse 1.

If you turn a page back and you look at chapter 5 of Romans and verse 1, this is the thought you have to connect with Romans 8 verses 1 and 2. In Romans 5 verse 1, he says, Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Justification is a big-ticket theological word, but really all it means is being made right. You were sent sinned. You were made just through faith by Christ's sacrifice. We're, in a sense, brought back into a relationship with God through the grace of God and through forgiveness.

That's all that justification really in its heart means. You don't have to go into a seminary to understand justification, or you don't have to read Martin Luther's expositions on the book of Romans. Having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Through whom also we have access by faith into this grace, in which we stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. This is a theme or an idea of the grace that we live within and under, like an umbrella, canopy of protection, as we have been justified through Christ's sacrifice once that has been accepted. We have peace through God through Christ.

Now, go back to Romans 8. Again, understand the way you have to read Paul sometimes is to realize that he'll take a point and then he'll go off in different directions. Then he'll come back to it a couple of chapters later. Back to Romans 8, there's no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. You have to understand what that means throughout the process of repentance, baptism, acceptance of that sacrifice, and repentance of our past life and a desire to walk.

Once that happens, there's no condemnation. We're not walking around one day. We're under grace. We sin. All of a sudden, we're condemned. That's not the way God works with us. We may sin. We may need to repent. But the grace of God does not automatically be removed from us every time we slip up once we have been justified through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. We do live in a relationship with God that you can define as grace. It's far more than just the bloody forgiveness of a sacrifice. It's a way of life, grace is. It is a relationship with God that is tuned and defined by grace and what it means.

This is really where he begins to get into it in chapter 8. He says, we have to be walking according to the Spirit, being led by the Spirit, God's Spirit in us. He goes on to talk about that. In verse 11, he says, If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

Verse 14, For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. This is fleshed out in the book of chapter 8. We must have God's Spirit to be a son of God. We are led by that Spirit. It works within us and raises us into a different life and relationship. But it is through the Spirit that dwells within us. That, then, going back to verse 3 and 4, is really, when you understand it, just by that Spirit that we then can fulfill the righteousness of the law.

In verse 3, he says, What the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending his own Son, and the likeness of sinful flesh on account of sin. He condemned sin in the flesh, under the Old Covenant. Without God's Spirit, it was impossible to observe the Spirit of the law, the full Spirit of the law.

And it was well-nigh for some even to obey the letter of the law. But that relationship did not involve the Spirit. That did not involve the ultimate sacrifice of Christ that the New Covenant does. He condemned sin in the flesh, at the end of verse 3, that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

The righteous requirement of the law. There is a righteous requirement of the law to live in righteousness. God's law defines what righteousness is. But the Spirit of God helps us to live by that type of righteousness as Christ lives in us, as God's Spirit dwells within us. Verse 4 is a very important verse to understand that the law is not done away. There is a righteous requirement of the law that must be fulfilled in us, and it's done as we are led by God's Holy Spirit.

That means we are walking by the Spirit rather than to be carnally minded. Verse 6 reminds us that to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God, it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you're not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.

If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his. Again, we should understand that and realize that God's Spirit is given to those who obey him. It is given according to Acts 2 and verse 38 after repentance and baptism. Then the receipt of the Holy Spirit is given, and that's what binds a convert into the spiritual body of Jesus Christ.

Paul is taking that basic knowledge to a deeper level of understanding here in chapter 8 as he talks about the work of God's indwelling Spirit within us to help us and lead us by Christ in us to develop and to fulfill the righteous requirement of the law.

That's why the words of Jeremiah quoted in the book of Hebrews 10 show that God's relationship with us today in the New Covenant is one of writing the law on our hearts by the Spirit. That's how that is done. That law defines a way of life, defines a relationship with God, and we are able to accomplish that.

And he goes on in verse 16. It says, It says, And if children, then heirs, heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together. So God's Spirit brings us into a relationship where we are children, heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ of that glory and that ultimate glory which will be realized at the resurrection. But he says something else here in verse 17 that he's going to then go into for the remainder of this chapter and bring out the positive. He says, And so he refers to Christ's suffering, which we commemorate each year on the Passover service.

We take those symbols of the bread and wine and the death of Jesus for our sins and the suffering that he went through. But in verse 17, Paul reminds us that we suffer. And when we do suffer what he's saying, that's part of that relationship that makes us joint heirs with Christ, makes us children of God. It is that we also are going to suffer with him. This is where it gets into the kind of the hard part.

Because we understand up to here God's Spirit, how it works within us and leads us. We're led by the Spirit of God. We're His. And we must be led by the Spirit of God. It must dwell in us. If it doesn't, then we're not His, verse 9 tells us. So we know that's an essential ingredient. And that brings us to a point of justification, if you will, to where we begin a relationship and a process that's going to end in the inheritance that is the promise of glory as a child of God.

This and many other scriptures would fill in all of that. But that brings us to a point of understanding, the process, really, of redemption and what we desire. Verse 18 says, I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. The sufferings of this time. Okay, we can all relate to that, can't we? The sufferings of this life that we have. They're not worthy to be compared with that glory which will be revealed in us.

It hasn't been yet. We have a foretaste of it through God's Spirit. But the fullness of that, 1 Corinthians 15, shows this is not until the time of the resurrection. And it goes on, and this is where he gets into waxing very, very eloquently and poetic, almost, about the creation.

And how we all eagerly await for the revealing of the sons of God. And how the entire creation was subjected to futility. Not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope. Verse 22, we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs until now. Not only that, but we also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan.

So here's the allusion to the first fruits, which brings us to the Feast of Pentecost, which we observe every year as one of God's Holy Days. The first fruits of the Spirit that is working within the people of God in this age prior to Christ's Second Coming. We also, who have the first fruits, so this speaks directly to us and to the people of God and to the Church. We groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. We are saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope. Why does one still hope for what he sees?

So we're waiting. There is something yet ahead. And God's Spirit helps us and works with us. Verse 26, it helps us in our weaknesses. We don't know what to pray for as we should, but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. It searches the hearts and the minds of the Spirit. It's because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And here Paul gets into some very direct and complicated, it's not really complicated, but it is a teaching and an understanding that God's Spirit really, as it works in us, as the power of God, communicates.

And it's that touch point, it's that means by which God knows what's going on and is working with us through His grace in our lives every day as we yield to it and seek to be led more and more by God's Spirit. We are waiting for the redemption of our body to be redeemed, to have this body change at the time of the resurrection.

And so Paul here is saying something about that redemption that, again, is a point just to stop and to think about. Redemption is very important to this process of salvation. It's very important to the process of life.

To redeem something is to a sense buy back. You redeem it. When I was growing up, you would take a book full of top value stamps, redemption stamps. Once you filled it up, you would take it to a redemption center and you'd get a mixer, an iron, a radio, a piece of patio furniture or something. You would redeem what you had for something else. You take something that you make an exchange for something that you really do want. And to be redeemed in the sense of a spiritual relationship with God is to, in a sense, be brought back into a relationship that is favorable and to be redeemed in God's eyes.

It is very fundamental to human nature to want to seek redemption when we have fallen. And that's not the best term because I don't want to get into that theological concept of falling from grace. But when someone messes up, your children mess up, or you ever messed up in your family, you want to get back into good graces of mom and dad. Your children want to get back in a good relationship. They want to redeem themselves. We want to redeem ourselves if we offend someone. We seek redemption because of our bad behavior. What Paul has been saying up to this point is that redemption is not something you can earn spiritually with God. It comes by the grace of God. And no matter how bad we have been before baptism, we can't earn our way into a redeemed state or state of grace with God. That's free and unmerited. And even after we're baptized, if we mess up again, we still can't redeem ourselves by any works or anything.

We have to acknowledge our mistake, seek God's forgiveness, and be redeemed. And that is, again, getting to the choice that we make that is really at the essence of joy, where we recognize we have that opportunity. And through God's Spirit, we can make that choice to accept that redemption and believe that it is there. Too often, because of mistakes we make, sometimes we think we can never be forgiven. You ever felt that way? You said something or you did something pre-baptism, post-baptism, pre-conversion, post-conversion life, and you think, God cannot forgive that. And we labor, and we labor with guilt. That's a fundamental part of looking at the flesh or walking in the flesh and not really understanding what we have available from God.

And yet, it's kind of a part of life. God's people should be able to move beyond that, but sometimes we don't. I look around at our examples around us at times, and I see sometimes I look at some people, famous people, in their lives and what they're doing. And I kind of try to keep a distance, and I sometimes wonder that they're spending their life and seeking redemption.

I used to listen. There's a radio host out of New York by the name of Don Imus. I know a lot of you know who he is and have listened to him. I used to watch him on MSNBC until he made a very stupid racial comment a couple of years ago that created a big uproar.

His brand of radio was, you know, anarchical, ironic and cynical and blasting pomposity. He would make fun of people, but I would listen to him because he always had newsmakers on, and politicians. It was very informative to listen to those. Also, I had some good country music on there, too, that helped me keep up with some of the latest music that was coming out.

But he made a really big, dumb mistake a year and a half, two years ago, with a comment that he made that lost that contract. He's back on in another contract. I listened to him now. I downloaded his interviews on iTunes as a podcast. I listened to it when I'm working out at the gym once a week. Usually, it's to catch up on some of the newsmakers that he has. But Don Imus was famous in the 70s and 80s. He basically says it was a lost decade for him because he was mired in drugs and alcohol, as he was a big-time disc jockey in New York.

He says it was a lost decade for me. And it was. He did not live an exemplary life, but he was famous, popular, and had the money to waste himself like that. Well, he married a woman that kind of cleaned him up. She was a vegetarian. She put him on a diet. He's approaching 70s and has got prostate cancer.

But in the last 10 to 15 years, he has done a lot of things. He raises a lot of money for charity. He has a ranch out in New Mexico called the Imus Cattle Ranch for Kids with Cancer. He pays full freight for any kid with cancer that can get into his camp. They go out and spend a week roping and riding out west with horses. These kids go home and many of them die. He gives them a week on his cattle ranch.

He has to raise millions of dollars to keep that going. A lot of famous people pony up a lot of money to keep it going. He talks about it and raises money for other efforts. As I've watched him listen to him over the years, I thought, you know, you're trying to redeem yourself. You're seeking redemption for your lost decade of life. That's okay. I have no problem with that. He still makes his mistakes. Perhaps not everybody's cup of tea.

He reminds me of characters from my childhood. I used to come through my dad's gas station every morning at 6 o'clock and drink coffee with my dad. They were sinners. They were profligate in many ways. They were bigger than life when I was growing up. When I listened to Don Imus in the morning sometimes, it kind of takes me back to my childhood. It reminds me of characters that hung around my dad's gas station. So I was like, he's not everybody's cup of tea. He's not a perfect example.

But I thought, you know, you're seeking redemption. That's okay because in the process, some other people are getting the benefit from what he is seeking to do. But there's not anything that's going to buy him redemption except the sacrifice of Christ and a relationship with God, which one day he will have. Another story this week caught my attention in the same way. I subscribed to Newsweek. I'm debating whether to keep my subscription to Newsweek.

It's still coming in. This week's Newsweek cover article on the current debate over universal national health care. It had a picture of Senator Edward Kennedy on the front cover, who for his number of years in the Senate, this has been his passion. It is his last great cause, as this article goes on.

The title, we're almost there, the long struggle for universal health care, Edward M. Kennedy. He's going to send a folder out as it begins, the article that he wrote. He calls it, The Cause of My Life. We know Edward Kennedy. He'd known the family all of our lives. He's the last surviving Kennedy son. He himself has had a very checkered past, which I don't need to go into here. He is dying of a brain tumor. He knows it. He's been granted a lease on life, as he brings out, because he can afford quality health care.

I'm not wanting to get into that debate here today. But as I was reading his article, and I will give Newsweek credit, they were somewhat even-handed. They put in all the bad of the last 40, 50 years of his life. I don't need to go rehearse all of that, because he's had a very checkered life in his own personal life. He's come down to the end of his life, and this is the cause of his life, that he could lead this as his legacy, universal health care.

Now, I don't want to get into that debate. I'm not going there today, so that's not even my point. When I looked at it, looked at the whole scope of his life, again, you have to stand back, and you can have your personal feelings about a Kennedy, this Kennedy, universal health care, the whole story. And I had to think, you know, you're seeking redemption, too. And that's okay. I'm not quibbling with that. And I thought, are you seeking redemption for your life through this? Maybe. I don't know. I'm not judging. Man, it's not my position. It's just a comment. But these two examples, to me, show something about our human nature and our desire to seek redemption for our mistakes.

Maybe years of bad behavior. Maybe just one slip-up. And yet we spend a whole lifetime seeking to be redeemed in somebody's eyes. A public, a nation, a wife, a son, a daughter, whatever it might be. Redemption, when we really break it down to the biblical knowledge, redemption comes from God by His grace, by His Spirit, and by that relationship.

And when we know that, we choose to know that, then we can have joy, a deep inner conviction bound by the fruit of joy that really helps us to understand God and understand what we have available from Him and how to understand what He's doing and what's happening in our life. And with that set up, then we can go into the verse that I quoted earlier, verse 28 of Romans 8, where it says, we know all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.

It's one of those memory scriptures that we put up. We may have it pasted somewhere, written someplace, and it's a very encouraging scripture. In this one verse, we have five things that we are told about God's work with us, and what God is doing with us.

If you look at it and you break it down carefully. Number one, we are told that God is at work in our lives. Despite all the suffering and the other problems that are mentioned in the preceding verses, especially verse 17, where it says, indeed, we suffer with Him that we may be glorified together. You have to read verse 17, verse 28 in context.

It tells us that God is at work in our lives. We know that for those who love God, He is working. He's very active on our behalf for those who love God. But He is working in our lives. That is how you begin to understand the things that happen and begin to choose joy. Number two, this verse tells us that God is at work for the good of His church and for His people.

He is at work for the good of all of His people. Number three, this tells us that God works for good in all things. A little bit different in all things because that's what verse 28 says, that all things do work together. When you break down the way this really is, there are better translations from what we normally have here in the authorized version. But God is working for good in all things.

And that would include the suffering that is mentioned in verse 17. That all things, even the bad things, can produce good if we approach it, if we understand it. It also would mean the groanings of verse 23 that we read about. We who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves. It's not too unusual for any of us, as God's people, to groan. Why? When? We groan. Well, that's what verse 28 is telling us, that God works for good in all things.

Nothing, not even the negative, is beyond the scope of God's guidance and God's work within our lives. We have to understand that. The fourth thing that verse 28 is telling us is that God works in all things for the good of those who love Him. Those who love Him. Which means that we must love God through all the trials and the suffering if we're to understand the why.

This is not unknown to us, but again, we have to understand what we are reading when we read a comfort verse like this. That we have to continue to love God through the trials and the suffering. The fifth thing we're told in this verse is that those who love God are called according to His purpose. There is a purpose in the groaning. There is a purpose in the suffering. There is a reason. We have to spend our time, our hours, our prayers, our thoughts, choosing to be joyful in order to understand that.

What this is saying is that life is not a random mess, which it often seems when you look at some lives and sometimes even within ours, it can get a little bit out of control with what we may be facing, what's coming in on us, how we're feeling. It may just seem like it's a random mess and we want to throw it all up in the air, start all over again, or wish it had never come down to this, but it is not.

Life is according. If we are truly led by God's Spirit, life is not a random mess. There is a purpose there. That's what verse 28 is talking about. We are called according to the purpose that He is working out.

He goes into the next two verses here, 29 and 30, and He talks about this concept of predestination, which I don't have the time to get into, but it is what is predestined as God's purpose to bring many sons to glory.

It's not that you or I were the way we are and who we are was predestined, and we are predestined to either be saved or to be lost, which is one archaic interpretation of that verse. That's not what it means at all. But God's purpose is predestined. And once we engage in that and are joined into that purpose, verse 28 applies.

And we understand something that is profound. These five things we know and we don't always understand. We don't always welcome what happens to us. But Scripture examples abound to tell us that God, even in the midst of a problem, is working out. What did Joseph tell his brothers? Back in Genesis, chapter 50.

When the whole story was done and he came before his brothers and was rejoined with them. Hold your place here and go back to Genesis chapter 50 and verse 20. Remember, Joseph was sold off by his brothers because of their envy and jealousy. Went into Egypt, had years of his life robbed, so to speak. But in time, he climbed up the ladder, became second in command, saved his family, ultimately went back home, was reunited with his brothers. And he said to them, verse 19, Do not be afraid, for am I in the place of God? But as for you, you meant evil against me when they sold him off. They wanted to kill him. Remember? They didn't want to see him around the family anymore. You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day to save many people alive. You don't come to that conclusion until many years into your life. And after you've gone through something, and you've stuck it out, and you're able to look back on it, and understand it from the perspective of many years and time gone by. And if you've ever come to that in something in your life, count yourself most fortunate to be led by God's Spirit to come to that. People take advantage of us. I'm going to use another term. Things happen, don't they? I think I've told this story before. The only reason we ever wound up in Indiana 26 years ago was because somebody else wanted the congregation that I was pastoring. They wanted him, and he could get him, and he got him. And so we got moved to Indiana. Politics? Yes. It happened. We had a brand new home we just bought. Trees weren't even rooted in the ground. Happy life. We wound up going to Fort Wayne, Indiana. Couldn't figure it out. Then later on, I found out some of the inner workings. Okay, fine. I still had a good job. Still doing what I like to do. A good group of people in Fort Wayne. And it was not probably for 15 or 20 years later that I finally figured it out.

I feel, to this day, convicted that God was behind that move. Even though there were human beings involved in it, it wasn't what was really working. God was working. And I came to understand from reading the story here of Joseph. You have to understand that God is working in your life and leading by His Spirit, in the bad times, even when some of the human beings involved are some of the most illogical. You fill in your own adjectives on that. If you believe that you are walking in the Spirit, God is working with you, then we stick it out. Sometimes we suffer for righteousness' sake. And we have to come to that point. But the Scriptures are replete with this. Jeremiah wrote to the exiles from God in Jeremiah 29 verse 11. And he said, I mean good for you. Even in the exile of His covenant people, God says, you're going to come back. I'm still working with you, even through this particular time. Christ's death was engineered by human politics. And yet it fulfilled the greatest aspect of God's plan. So, looking at verse 28 of Romans 8, we see these convictions here. We have to understand really what it's saying. And so when we understand that, then we choose to be joyful. And that is what brings us the inner peace, the ability to reflect on, you know, to have a life that enables us to see good, beauty, and to move on. Rather than to be eaten up with anger, resentment over, yes, injustice, yes, wrongs, yes, suffering. Whether it's engineered by someone else, by our own doings, or by our genetic makeup. As illness takes over, something happens. This is what these are telling us. When you go back then to Romans, Paul then moves into, beginning with verse 31, another fabulous section as he builds into describing this relationship that we have with God that is at the heart of a joyful relationship with God and life. Verse 31 then, he says, What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? Now the way Paul is going to be asking about five questions in these next few verses, five questions, but they are unanswerable questions because of the way he words them. Notice, the first one is in verse 31. If God is for us, who can be against us? Well, the answer is nobody. That's the unanswerable. God's for us. Nobody, really, in the long run can be against us. So we do want God for us. And God is for us. This is what he's saying. There are plenty of examples in the Bible of people or nations that God was against, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, even Israel, when they got caught up in idolatry, God was against them and he dealt with them very decisively. You don't want God against you. You want God for you. He is for us. He is for us. And if he is, then nobody can be against us. But God is on our side. He goes on in verse 32. He did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all. How shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

He will graciously give us all things because he didn't even spare his own Son. We have to look at what we're saying there because God did not spare his Son and gave him to die. He will give us all things. Now there you have to think for a minute and let your mind kind of in your own way. I'm not going to try to lead you in that here, but you've got to realize that when the Scripture says, for God so loved the world he gave his only begotten Son, that that was indeed what he did. Now you and I could not and would not want to willingly give up our child.

But God did that because what had transpired in that miraculous event of events was a relationship with the Father and Christ that was a Father-Son relationship. It was something that the Father wanted to be. We're getting way deep theology here and I don't even begin to understand it myself. So I'm not going to try to expound it on it except to put it out there to help you to understand it in the context of this verse, that if God gave that up and he did give up something and he did understand the suffering of that loss, he's going to give us all things.

If he gave that, he's going to give all things. All things. That's what verse 32 is saying because he didn't spare his Son. Verse 33, Who shall bring a charge against God's elect? It's God who justifies. Again, it's an unanswerable question. God justifies. We better not bring a charge of condemnation. We can evaluate and there's a time and a place to evaluate actions. But leave the judgment to God. Leave what comes to ultimate need for justification to God.

If we choose that, we're not going to condemn ourselves and we're not going to condemn each other and take our relationships to such extremes where it's impossible to ever reconcile with your brother because we enter into a spirit of judgment that is not ours. Don't let yourself get to that point with anybody because God is the one who will justify it. And if we understand that, then we will not condemn ourselves and we will not condemn one another.

It can go a long way toward even our interpersonal relationships. In verse 34, Who is he who condemns? It's Christ who died and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Christ rescues us from every form of condemnation. Every form of condemnation. Christ is at the right hand of the Father.

Hebrews 10 shows us that Christ intercedes for us as our high priest. That's his role today. He is ascended to that position and he intercedes for us. That we are not condemned, that we don't stand in a condemnatory relationship with God, we continue in God's grace. Now that is not to then justify or to be able to continue in sin. Remember the righteous requirement of the law. Verse 4 of Romans 8 has to be fulfilled. We have to grow out of whatever it is that we may fall into. This relationship that where God doesn't condemn us and Christ rescues us from every form of condemnation that may come our way is not to continue there but to allow us space to grow.

If we choose, and if we choose to exercise a joy because of this knowledge, we can do that and not be caught up by looking at just our immediate circumstances. Verse 35 says, Who will separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? You mentioned seven events that are possible, things that could separate us. Very real-life problems. Very real-life problems. Persecution. Distress. Do you ever see a distressed sale? A piece of property that goes up for a distressed sale? It's been neglected. Weeds are grown, paint's chipping off, windows are smashed out. It's a distressed property, as they say in the real estate world. It's been neglected. Life is neglected.

It's not been lived and led by the Spirit of God. That life could separate us from the love of Christ, but it doesn't have to. When you look at this, we really can't be too glib and complacent about our life in Christ, what has been described in this chapter, and our life in the Church of God.

It's not anything to take lightly. I know most of you don't. Don't ever let yourself get to the point where you take this calling, you take this knowledge, you take this life lightly. And we just would get to the point where we would toss it off for something cheaper. We cannot be complacent about our life. It's very serious business.

This is what Paul is saying. I have to think that a teenager like Anne Frank was in some very serious business. She was able to write her way into immortality, so to speak, by the ability that she put down in words in a diary to explain some things about herself and what she was learning. We should be able to do the same thing.

This is where we are. Now, this chapter goes on. There have been five unanswerable type questions that are challenges here. He goes on and says, as it is written in verse 36, For your sake we are killed all day long, we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Yet in all these things were more than conquerors through him who loved us.

Paul is writing from a spirit of joy. We are more than conquerors, despite all of this. He had lived through his own versions of distress and persecutions. He says we are conquerors through him who loved us. As Paul is writing here, you have to realize he chose to understand his predicaments, his life, his calling, what had happened, and where that placed him in a relationship to God.

He is writing here in a very deeply personal way, and yet a profoundly spiritual way, under God's Spirit, to help us understand. Now, we come down to verse 38 and verse 39 that end chapter 8 of Romans.

These two verses are what I like to call one of the Star Wars sections of the Bible. When you really look at what he says here, he really starts going off into space here. He says, I am persuaded that neither life nor death. Okay, we understand that. Nothing that happens in life, not even the entry into the grave, nor being piled on, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers.

Now, that is where he kind of gets off into the Star Wars right there, because he's saying, no fallen angel, no demonic power, no dark force, no evil. And this is really what he's talking about. This is, you know, Mr. Brockless's sermonette kind of ties in right here, where he was talking about those angels that were put into a place of restraint. That would be a whole other sermon to just go through and show Christ's dominance and what he ascended to in terms of those angelic forces, good or evil as well as good.

When you look at the Paul's scriptures together. But all of this is not anything we need to worry about. You can choose to get yourself all scared over a horror flick or some of the demonic stories that are there. Sometimes you can't escape them because the commercials are on television. But for the life of me, I don't know why anybody would spend $15 or $10 or whatever it is to get scared over these things or to put them in your mind. But what Paul is saying, these are very real powers and forces at work in the universe.

And they are at work against the plan of God and the people of God. And he says these angels, these principalities are powers. They have no sway over you. They are, and we must realize, very much at work. Then he goes on and he says, nor things present, nor things to come. That's a little time and space lingo. Things present, the here and now, or the future.

None of that. Nothing within this physical universe that we can see and what we even can't see and much less understand. And the powers that are there, nor height, nor depth. And then he says in verse 39, nor any other created thing. Created thing. This is almost like a catch-all phrase at this point. But the commentaries say that within the Hellenic world, the Greek mindset that dominated that ancient world, there were the myths and the ideas of created things.

I mean, you could get into astrology, you could include astrology or a belief that created the alignment of the planets and all that do affect one's destiny, decisions, daily life. And that has no place, Paul is saying, for us. Those things don't separate us. They don't impact our lives. They have nothing to do with us. There is no power there. There is nothing to consult. There is nothing to worship. There is nothing to give the thought in the time of day to distract from this. He says, there is nothing, and he concludes by saying, that we'll be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Nothing. He pretty well covers everything about the universe, life, time and space, powers that be, things in life and even death. This is a description of how to come to a point where you really do let God's Spirit lead you and to live a life of the Spirit. And, if you will, experience the reality of the joy of God's Spirit, that fruit of God's Holy Spirit.

By understanding who we are, what we are involved with and God's relationship with us, and what has transpired and is working for us. This is a very, very powerful, encouraging section of the Scripture to understand from that perspective. And, if we can come to that in our own thoughts about God and what He's doing with us, we can meet the challenges and the obstacles and the need we should. And, if we choose joy, if we choose to greet each day from this perspective, from this worldview, if you will, then there's nothing that's going to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus.

And, that is a pretty good way to live.