Romans 8:28And we know that to them that love God all things work together for good, even to them that are called according to his purpose. 29For whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren: 30and whom he foreordained, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.

When the King James says, “all things work together for good,” it does not mean, they work that way on their own, or by some power of fate. It means that God makes all things work together for good. Paul is not saying all things are good. He is saying all things are turned by God for good for those that love Him.

The life of Job can show us this better than anyone.

Job 38:1 Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said,
2 Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
3 Gird up now your loins like a man; for I will demand of you, and answer you me.

What is going on in this remarkable exchange when God finally shows up to answer Job? When Job asks these questions, he is not asking these questions from the perspective of someone who is losing his faith. He’s not asking these questions from the perspective of a modern-day agnostic who is not quite sure that God is there. “How can I believe in a God who is there and who is just if I’m suffering like this?” That’s not what’s going on in Job’s mind.

What’s going on in Job’s mind is, “I know God is there, I know he is sovereign, I know he is good, but that’s exactly what does not make sense. I know he can do anything, but if he’s good and can do anything, why am I suffering like this. Job’s givens are God is sovereign and God is good, and that’s what gives him the problem. He is not prepared to deny God’s sovereignty.

Harold Kushner does in his book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, in a basic review says, “Well, God isn’t omnipotent after all. Poor God. He sort of slipped and things got out of hand. He made a bad move in the chess game, and the Devil won that round.”

Job is not prepared to say that. Although Job does not know about the conversation between Satan and God, he knows, at some level, if God is sovereign, God’s sovereign hand (his omnipotence) embraces even the suffering Job himself is going through. He knows that.

He cannot deny that or he denies the nature of God, but if God is sovereign, if God is omnipotent and Job doesn’t deserve this suffering, then maybe it’s God’s goodness that has to be sacrificed. That is why Job begins to question even the justice of God. The first thing to recognize is, both in Job’s complaint and in God’s answer, there remains mystery.

God does not answer Job’s question directly. He does not give him information that resolves the tension. At the end of the day, Job does not say, “I understand now.”

He says, rather, “I repent,” and what he repents of is not some sin that brought down this judgment, but rather, the sin that came about in the wake of the suffering: the rebellion, the questioning of God’s goodness, the way he started minimizing God’s holiness. “I’m sorry I even addressed you like that. Before, I understood something about your character, but now I have heard you speak, and I am crushed by this vision of your greatness, and I put my hand to my mouth.”

The givens are God’s control is absolute, God’s goodness must not questioned, human responsibility is not, thereby, weakened. Those are the givens, and the appropriate human response is faith.

If you understand how big God is, the text says in the flow of the narrative as a whole, there may come times when you will not understand, but you will trust.

If you want final culminating proof in the goodness of God, you can always go to Calvary. Whenever we are inclined to doubt the goodness of God, we can just return to the cross, for there God’s love is so greatly manifested. He gave his own Son; how shall he not also with him freely give us all things? We have some evidences of God’s love Job never knew.

What we do not have the right to do is to demand God give us an explanation for everything or to minimize or qualify God’s omnipotence as if somehow God lost control at this stage, because if we do that, we can no longer find any consolation or solace in reposing our faith in him. God’s questions to Job are designed to make Job understand God is much, much greater than Job could ever imagine, and whatever alternatives we may have when it comes to suffering, doubting God’s essential character is not an option.

The Certainty of the Promise

This is a promise of God, it does not matter what happens, I don’t care how bad it may seem, we can say, I know that I know that I know that this is going to work together for God’s glory and for my good.

F. B. Meyer said, if any promise of God should fail, the heavens would clothe themselves with sackcloth. The sun, moon and stars would reel from their courses. The universe would rock, and a hollow wind would moan through a ruined creation, the awful creation, that God can lie.

It is a Complete Promise

And we know that all things work together for good.

All things, the good and the bad things that happen.

Think about how God worked with the people of Judah. And, God carried the people of Judah away to a strange land. It would be as if the Russians had subjugated the United States and took us and put us in Siberia.

Jeremiah 24:5, where God is speaking about how He carried His people away. God says, I acknowledge them that are carried away captive of Judah, whom I have sent out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans, for their good.

We don’t know how to handle our blessings. And it seems like the more that God blesses us, the more arrogant and more sinful that we get.

Joseph. what a wonderful man was Joseph! Joseph loved God with all of his heart. But you know what happened to Joseph? Genesis 50:20: but as for you, you thought evil against me. Do you have somebody who’s doing you wrong? Do you have an enemy? Just keep on loving God. Because, but as for you, you thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good. You see, all things work together for good your enemy trying to do your harm.

The satanic things work together for good. Did you know that God uses the devil?

That may be a surprise to you. But Paul had an affliction. That affliction was called a thorn in the flesh. And then, Paul called it a messenger of Satan. But he says, there was given to me a messenger of Satan. Who gave it to him? God gave it to him. You say, I don’t understand this. Well, you see, all things work together for good, and God rules in the heavens. And even Satan unwittingly becomes the servant of God.

Pharaoh has decided that all Jewish babies are going to be put to death. But God takes a little baby, puts that little baby in the bulrushes, and Pharaoh’s daughter comes by and decides that she wants to bathe in the Nile. Can you imagine this, this princess who can bathe in her marble tubs?

God is the Cause of the Promise

Conditions of the Promise

This is not a promise for everyone. To them that love God. You can’t put your initial by this, unless you love God. Despisers of God cannot claim this promise. Haters of God cannot claim this privilege and this promise. You know, nobody on earth who can love God more than I can, or you can, or anybody else. Anybody can love God as much as they want to love God, and that is the condition for having Romans 8:28 work in your life: “

Romans 2:5 describes the way this person’s experience affects his future: “Because of your hard and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.”

Paul says that we must be people who love God. In the original, this is the first thing in the verse: “We know that for those who love God all things work together for good.”

What the Love of God Is Not

So what does it mean to love God?

Loving God is not meeting his needs.

The essence of loving God is not the things that love for God prompts you to do. Love for God may prompt you to leave mother and father and forsake all that to declare his glory among the nations.

Love for God is a matter of the heart’s esteem for God before it produces anything else. It is something internal and involves spiritual emotions. It is not, a deliberated choice or a deed. It is more like a reflex of the heart to the perfections of God revealed especially in Christ.

If you equate the deeds of love with the essence of love you will produce hypocrites—people who imitate the deeds and claim to love God when their hearts are far from him. If you equate love for God with love for his gifts, you produce hypocrites—people who are very glad to feel forgiven and declared righteous and delivered from hell and heaven-bound, but have no pleasure in God himself. They don’t love God. They just don’t want to have bad guilt feelings or go to hell.

Love for God is being satisfied in God himself beyond his gifts.

This is the trap of many people who think that the love of God is essentially gratitude for his blessings. I will love God when he treats me well enough, because, they say, love for God is essentially a response to receiving his gifts.

The escape from the trap one must look through the promise to God himself first, before he applies the promise to you, and behold God himself in and through his promise. Look first at all that he has done in history to reveal himself. Look especially at Jesus Christ and the glory that he had before he came, and the glory of his sacrificial coming and his servanthood and suffering. Look at the mercy and wrath and justice of God mingled on the cross for utterly undeserving sinners.

For those that don’t love God.

How seemingly good things can work against you.

Think about Jesus. Is Jesus good or is Jesus bad? It all depends. If you receive Him, He’s wonderful. But if you don’t receive Him, He works together for bad.

Did you know that Jesus is the door? Those who refuse Him, His righteousness and His holiness say, you cannot come in here. All things work together for bad to those who don’t love God.

Is the resurrection of Jesus Christ good? But what about if you’re not saved, is it good? No. In Acts chapter seventeen, the apostle Paul, preaching on Mars Hill, said this: God has appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained.

Whereof he hath given assurance unto all men in that he raised him from the dead. It means that the assurance of judgment is the resurrection of Jesus. Why? Well, you can’t hold court, if the judge is dead. And you can’t hold court, if the defendant is dead. What Paul is saying is this: that the same God that raised up Jesus Christ is the God that will raise you up, and you’ll come to judgment.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ seals your doom.

Consequences of the Promise

Do you know what the good is that all things are working together for? To make you like Jesus. The good is that we be conformed to the image of God’s Son.

What Effect Should This Have on Us?

If you are not a believer in Jesus, I pray that the effect will be to make you long to trust him. Having God on your side and not against you is infinitely important. Remember, If God is for you, who can be against you. Trusting Christ is the only way to have God be for you.

If you are a believer, then you will not respond to this message and to the truth of Romans 8:28 with passivity toward the devil and resignation toward evil and a casual attitude toward American consumerism and materialism.

If all things work together for my good, then I cannot be ultimately defeated in the cause of Christ. This is a call to take risks to spread a passion for God’s supremacy in all things for the joy of all peoples. This is a call to go to a hard place or do a hard thing in the cause of love. This is a call to do something radical and crazy in the eyes of the world.

For the Glory of God.