There are millions of semi-Christians and pseudo-Christians who think of God as a kind-heart philanthropist.
They picture the Lord as a Being full of love and good wishes for all His creatures,
Their God is saddened when His favorite people are bitten by vipers.
Because He is a God of love, He hates that they are sick, but He can only do so much to protect them.
And their God wants to take everyone to Heaven, but since not everyone wants to go, it will be with tears that He will have to watch them being tossed by the Devil into Hell.
Unfortunately for those people, but fortunately for us, this is not the God that we find in the Bible.
And that kind of Christian is not the Christian that we find the pages of the Word of God either.
The last paragraph of Romans 8 speaks about the love of God – the love of Christ.
“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”
Nothing “shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Those pseudo-Christians to whom I just referred may love those words as much as I do, but they don’t appreciate them as much.
When disasters fall, they shake their heads and think, “if only God’s power was as strong as His love.”
You and I know that both the love of God and the power of God are completely limitless.
This morning, I would like us to think about Romans 8 in the light of the events of Acts 27 and 28.
This is not directly a study of Acts, but rather a commentary on it from the Book of Romans.
My desire is to magnify the one true and living God, and to strengthen the saints in Christ Jesus.
But if there are any among us who are unsure of their salvation,
the God, Who cannot lie, has made a promise of eternal life.
Take that promise to yourself; believe the promise of God.
This statement belongs only to one group of people – not to everyone and not to two separate groups either.
And because of that fact, it is very, very important that look to see if WE are included in that blessed group.
All things work together for good to those who have been called according to God’s purpose.
According to James Strong in his Concordance, the word “called” is a very limited word.
He says that it means “invited (by God in the proclamation of the Gospel) to obtain eternal salvation in the kingdom through Christ;”
Or “called to (the discharge of) some office” or simple “divinely selected and appointed.”
And those who are thus called become those who love God.
It’s not that people choose to love God and then God chooses to choose them.
There are none by nature that seeketh after God, because all of us sinners are gone out of the way;
No natural child of Adam loves Jehovah.
We have no way of knowing how many of those “called ones” there were on that doomed grain ship, sailing from Egypt to Rome, but we know that there were at least three.
There was the Apostle Paul and his companions Aristarchus and Luke.
We don’t know how the Lord called Luke and Aristarchus,
but the invitation and conversion of Paul, the former persecutor of the Christians, has been dramatically described several times in the Word of God.
Of that lady with the box full of precious ointment, the Lord Jesus had said,
but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little.”
So Paul was included in the group of which he wrote here in Romans 8:28.
“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
But how do we know that all things work together for the good of the saint and the glory of the Lord?
Because we have statements and promises to that effect from the God who cannot lie.
And because we see the fulfillment of those promises in the lives of multitudes in the Word of God.
And because, even though the last chapter has not been written in our lives, many of us can see the direction that the blessings of the Lord are taking us right at this moment.
Paul wrote the words of Romans 8 quite some time before he was caught in that Mediterranean hurricane.
But if, during that storm, when it appeared that the ship was going down, you had asked him if he still believed what he wrote to the Roman Christians, he would have said “absolutely.”
And even if 5-minutes after he had been bitten by that deadly serpent, you asked him about Romans 8:28, he would still have said, “of course I believe it; that is the promise of the omnipotent God.”
After making that statement, the rest of Romans 8 is spent in explaining the reasons that all things work together and conclude in goodness.
But it needs to be clearly understood that there is no promise here that every detail in the life of the Christian will be good in themselves.
I explained a week ago how I was once bitten by a snake.
But I didn’t die, and it actually makes for an interesting story.
Certainly Paul didn’t enjoy it, but neither did he panic, curse God or curl into the fetal position and wait for death.
Did Paul enjoy this ship-wreck or any of the others that he suffered throughout his life? Of course not.
But the Lord had brought him through them all, and if necessary He could bring him through a dozen more.
These things were not a problem for this one who loved the Lord.
The people whom He called, He foreknew.
Elsewhere, as in Ephesians, we are told that both the calling and the foreknowing were in eternity past.
And this foreknowledge was not of what those people would do, but was of those people themselves.
It was not foreknowledge of their faith and repentance, but of the people.
Those special people were then predestinated to be conformed to Christ Jesus, called to salvation and eventually saved.
I think that it’s wonderful to meditate on the relationship between what took place in eternity past and what will take place in eternity future.
As far as the Lord is concerned the Christian’s glorification is already accomplished:
But for us, who are still trapped in the web of time, that glorification has not yet begun.
God Who is above time, and the creator of time, isn’t confined to time.
He isn’t obligated to follow a line of chronological events – point 1, then item 2, and then point 3.
And likewise, so was the Christian’s repentance, his faith and his justification, according to God’s decree even before time was begun.
If our translation to Heaven – our occupation of the mansion that the Lord has gone to prepare for us . . .
If this mortal has already put on immortality, and our earthy bodies have already been made eternal . . .
If we have already been glorified in the mind and decree of God . . .
The problem is that for us, time hasn’t yet finished its course and the details are still being ironed out.
And we can be absolutely sure and confident in that.
So after the PLAN of God, or in conjunction with it, the POWER of God means – all things work together for good.
“What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?”
There may be people, not knowing any better, who say that God can’t do certain things.
But those who know the Bible joyfully admit with Job,
“Our God is in the Heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased.”
And when poisonous serpents, or even spiritual serpents inject us with their venom, all we need to do is shake them off into the fire, and we will be spared.
There is no force, no enemy, no sin, no sinner, no demon and no Devil greater than our God.
Again, I say, it is sin to tempt the Lord into saving us from ourselves and stupid choices,
the Lord can remove his sting, if that is His will.
One of the wonderful and mysterious doctrines of the Word of God is that the Christian is “in Christ Jesus.”
It’s a bigger subject than we can handle here this morning, but here are just a few scriptures:
“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”
“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first, then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”
And in some ways what is done to Christ is also done to those who are in Christ.
When our Saviour is glorified then the Christian will be glorified as well.
And how can the Christian be condemned when he is in Christ and Christ died, arose and is even at the right hand of God.
“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,
Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
When Paul referred to the love of God in this passage, he was not referring to the Lord’s good wishes.
In this case the love of God cannot be separated from the Lord’s purpose for those whom He loves.
The two-week storm which drove the little ship from Crete to Malta was distressful and troublesome,
Neither did the storm mean that God had stopped loving his called and chosen ones.
For two weeks the passengers on board that ship couldn’t hardly eat a meal.
And that hunger couldn’t break the cord between God and those whom He loved, nor was it the cause.
Then assuming that the wrath of Satan was at least partially involved in these events, neither wicked angels, principalities or powers could separate those saints from the Lord.
And neither could the depths of the sea or the creatures of that sea.
Just as the angel of God had told Paul, and just as Paul in turn had told the people on board that ship, there wasn’t the loss of a single life.
And that was because “all things work together for good to those that love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose.”
This brings me back to a couple points in a message a few weeks ago:
Just as Paul, Luke and Aristarchus were delivered from the storm –
When God saves a SOUL, it isn’t because that soul deserves to be saved.
Both those physical salvations and spiritual salvation come out of God’s grace.
The soul that the Lord saves is guided, companioned, counseled, directed and in a sense carried every step of the way from the cross to the crown.
It is completely impossible for that soul to get lost, go lost or be lost.
Because, once again, in the estimation, plan and purpose of God, that soul is already at its eternal destination.
We may have to pass through 30, 50 or 70 years of Christian living, storms and vipers before we arrive at our heavenly home, but not so the decree of God.
If by the grace of God you have been convicted of your sins and you’ve been brought to your knees before Him . . .
If you have repented of your sins before the holiness of the Lord . . .
Then there is no reason to fear the loss of your salvation – for any reason, including your own failures.
If you have ever possessed God’s salvation then you will possess it until the day the eternal God dies;
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
No matter how long the list and no matter how dire the listings, we are more than conquerors through him that loves us.
“Let not (the realization and trust in God’s) mercy and truth forsake thee: bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine heart:
So shalt thou find favour and good understanding in the sight of God and man.
Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.
In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.”