Overcoming Depression Part 3
“It’s All Good”
Romans 8:28-37
Have you ever read the account of Joseph in Genesis (starting in
chapter 41)? Young Joseph is the ‘favorite’
of his dad Isaac, but he ends up having one bad thing after another happen to
him. He finally ends up an an Egyptian jail,
under false charges. There is a glimmer
of hope as a cupbearer promises to remember him when he gets out, but of course
he forgot!
1.
That account is a setup for our message today,
because we could all relate to Joseph at some point in our life.
a.
When it seems like everything is working against
us. Nothing is going our way.
b.
And we wonder, "can anything good come from
this?"
2.
There are some times in our life when bad things
happen, and we can see the good that came out of it.
a.
There are other times when bad things happen,
and maybe we don’t see the good, but we trust that something good surely will
come from it...
b.
Then there the those times when when something
hits us right between the eyes, - trial- travesty - tragedy - and we think to
ourselves “NOTHING good will come of this at all!”
3.
And the question always comes up in our mind “What
is God doing? How could God let this
happen? Is He even paying attention?
a.
The answer to that question is yes, but we have
to realze that sometimes there's a bigger picture, a greater good in motion.
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.
4.
To me, this is one of the most radical,
mystical, yet powerful verses in the bible.
a.
If you think about it, it’s an audacious
statement for Paul to make:
b.
That ALL THINGS; not some things, or even most
things…
c.
but ALL THINGS somehow work together; in other
words, they’re not “similar” or “vaguely related,” they are actually working
together towards a single goal…
d.
That is going to turn out “for good,” for you
and I
e.
In other words…. “It’s all good!”
5.
I used to have a boss that whenever we had a
difficult situation, we’d be discussing the possible scenarios, and he’d say “well,
you know what, it’s going to work out one way or the other..."
a.
It’s true!
Things do work out, we’re just not sure if we going to like how they
work out!
b.
If it works out good, then fine, if it turns out
bad, then count me out!
6.
I might have written this verse to read;
"good things" work together for good!
a.
Because I don't want the bad things in my life!
b.
We can understand how the good things work for
good - 'cause they're good!
c.
How will the bad things work out for good?
7.
But what Paul is telling us is: The important thing isn’t whether we LIKE how
something works out,
a.
The important is that God is going to use every
situation in our lives in such a way that it will produce something GOOD for
you and me.
8.
Well, let’s look at the next verse, because the
next verse gives us a clue about the purpose of why we sometimes have go
through difficult things...
29 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. 30
Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He
also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.
9.
The key phrase being that we are “predestined to
be conformed to the image of His Son”
a.
In other words, it is God's intent that we
become more like Jesus
b.
We know that prayer, reading and meditating on
His word, and fellowship with Him will conform us...
c.
But God also uses the circumstances that come
into our life, both good and bad, as tools that also work to conform or shape
us into the image of His Son Jesus Christ.
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. 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.
10. I
want to tie that in with vs 16-17
The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are
children of God, 17 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. (vs 16-17)
11. You
may have thought I skipped over verse 17;
No, I was saving it for now, and here’s why:
a.
Our Heavenly Father has ‘predetermined’ to
conform us to the image of His Son...
b.
How are we conformed? Word, prayer,
fellowship...
c.
But part of the process of being conformed into
the image of His Son, Jesus, is the ministry of suffering.
12. Granted,
it’s not the best selling point for becoming a Christian, “Hey, accept Christ,
and you too can suffer!”
a.
But here’s the reality: Everyone suffers at some point or another in
this life.
b.
We live in a fallen world, where sin, evil,
sickness, even death, are part of the equation that we humans face every day.
c.
But for the Christian, when those hard times
come, they actually serve a purpose.
13. Think
about it, change is HARD. Whether it’s
working to change your daily disciplines, or working out at the gym to change
your body
a.
NO PAIN - NO GAIN. It’s true!
b.
If being strong and healthy were easy, everyone
would be strong and healthy!
c.
It’s easy to eat too lay around and be a couch
potatoe…
d.
Eating healthy, working out, getting up
early, … they’re the hard, but necessary
things!
14. If
you look at a beautiful sculpture, the finished product is stunning,
a.
but you have to realize that the material the
artist started with went through some violent processes to become beautiful.
b.
cutting, scraping, filing, shaving... That piece
of wood suffered
15. Look
at a beautiful gem, not only was is subjected to thousands of years of heat and
pressure,
a.
But when the gemologist started working on it,
there was cutting, grinding, polishing, rolling around in a abrasion tub (look
up)
16. Well
guess what, it's the same in this Christian life...
a.
We come into this Christian life with the dross
and residue that the world and sin left on us, and we need some serious
sculpting.
b.
There are area’s that need to be cut away,
surfaces that need grinding and polishing...
c.
God is the Master gemologist. He sees what we
can be, and so He gets to work molding and shaping and transforming us to the
image of His son.
17. But
this shaping, molding and transformation process can be a very painful process
at times.
a.
And at times, a certain amount of adversity and
conflict is what required to bring about that change.
18. Not
only does He shape and mold us, but He uses circumstances to place us where we
need to be, and when we need to be there, to accomplish the purposes that He
has predestined for our lives
God brings men into deep waters, not to drown them,
but to cleanse them. John Aughey
19. I
think of Chuck Colson, who went to be with the Lord in 2012, many of you may
have heard him on the radio through his show Breakpoint.
a.
Colson was a lawyer who joined The Nixon
administration in 1968 as a "fixer," and ended up being a part of the
Watergate scandal.
b.
After he was indicted in 1974, Raytheon Company
chairman of the board Thomas L. Phillips gave him a book, C.S. Lewis Mere
Christianity.
c.
Colson read it, and it changed his life; He
became a born again Christian.
d.
Shortly after, he changed his plea from taking
the 5th, and he pled guilty to obstruction of justice, and was sentenced to
prison
20. While
in prison, he started a bible study, and he began to have a heart for those men
who, while they had committed crimes and needed to repay their debt to society,
a.
He knew that a relationship with God could
change the trajectory of their lives…
b.
After his release in, Colson founded Prison
Fellowship, which today is "the nation's largest outreach to prisoners,
ex-prisoners, and their families"
21. In
other words God can use the messes that we get ourselves into, to bring Glory
to His name and change lives
a.
You know that on that day in 1974 when Colsen
received his indictment, he was looking at complete wreckage of his life, all
he had worked for.
b.
Law license, gone. Career, gone.
Reputation, gone. Savings, gone
(lawyers are expensive).
c.
And what impact was that going to have on his
family?
d.
Yet God used that total mess, to bring Chuck to
a place where he was able to impact thousands of lives over the next thirty six
years!
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places
in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that
we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us
to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure
of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us
accepted in the Beloved. Eph 1:2-5
30 Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom
He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also
glorified.
22. See
what Paul is doing here isn’t laying out a doctrine of “predestination” where
God makes every decision for us, and we’re locked into a destiny…
a.
He’s describing that fact that your Eternal
Heavenly Father, before He even formed the world, Looked into the future and
saw you!
b.
He loved you, He chose you, and He sent His Son
to into this physical realm to pay the price for your sin, so that you could
stand blameless before Him:
c.
And in doing so He set in motion a plan for your
life, that perhaps you’ve only began to scratch the surface of!
23. And
know that plan does includes good things, and blessings;
a.
But that plan will also include hard things,
difficult things, even tragedies,
b.
And somehow, the great mystery that we do not
fully understand, our Heavenly Father will turn those hard things into
beautiful things...
24. I
think of one of the families in our church, her mom was a chronic alcoholic who
mocked God, made fun of her daughter for being a Christian!
a.
But one night her husband, in a drunken rage,
shot her in the head.
b.
They rushed her to the hospital, and it did not
look good, they ended up removing one half of her brain, and she spent the next
six weeks in a coma, they didn’t know if she’d ever wake up.
c.
Well during those six weeks, people from our
church (my wife being one of them) would sit in her room, read scripture, play
worship music,
d.
And one day, she opened her eyes, raised her
hand, and started worshiping God!
25. Now
if you had asked that family on the night we were at New Hanover Emergency
room, “is this a good thing” - I think we all know the answer to that question.
a.
But one year later, when Barbara rolled into
church in her wheelchair for the first time, everyone in that family, everyone
in our church, understood that God had taken something that was meant for evil,
b.
and turned it into something incredible,
something beautiful, something that majestically declared the goodness of our
God!
God’s Everlasting Love
31 What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us,
who can be against us? 32 He who 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? 33 Who
shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is he
who condemns? It is Christ who died, and
furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes
intercession for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall
tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or
sword? 36 As it is written: “For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are
accounted as sheep for the slaughter.” 37 Yet in all these things we are more
than conquerors through Him who loved us. 38 For I am persuaded that neither
death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present
nor things to come, 39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall
be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
26. You
see guys, the beautiful and powerful truth here is that God LOVES YOU, and He
is FOR YOU!
a.
And if He loves you, and is for you, who or what
can be against you!
b.
Trials, hard times, persecution, sickness,
layoff, bankruptcy, even death - NOTHING can break the bond between us and our
Heavenly Father!
c.
That is the God that saw you, chose you, saved
you, proclaimed you to be a joint heir with His only begotten Son...
27. You
want to know what happened with Joseph?
He sat in that prison for two years,
a.
But during those years he remained faithful to
God, and God remained faithful to him.
b.
He ended up becoming the trustee of the prison!
c.
And one day when the Pharaoh had a dream that
freaked him out, that cupbearer remembered, “hey, I know a guy…”
d.
He brings Joseph up to Pharaoh, he interprets
Pharaoh’s dream, it saves the nation of Egypt from a famine, and Pharaoh made
Joseph the Prime Minister!
e.
You could say he went from the pit to the
palace!
f.
And Joseph not only saved Egypt, he saved his
family as well
But as for you, 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. Gen 50:20
28. If
Joseph brothers hadn’t hated him, they’d have never thrown him into that pit,
and sold him to slave traders.
a.
If they hadn’t sold him to slave traders, he
wouldn’t have ended up a slave at Potiphar's house
b.
If he hadn’t been a slave at Potiphar’s house,
he never would have ended up in jail
c.
If he hadn’t been in that jail cell, he never
would have met up with the baker and the cupbearer, and interpreted their
dreams
d.
If the cup bearer hadn’t forgotten about Joseph
for two years (thanks man!), Joseph wouldn’t have been available for the cup
bearer to bring to Pharaoh to interpret his dream, had he been released (he
would have gone back home!)
29. And
if Joseph hadn’t been Prime Minister of Egypt, he wouldn’t have been in a
position to bring his entire family to Egypt, settle them in Goshen, and
provide food for them so that they survived the famine….
a.
THUS ENSURING THE SURVIVAL OF THE NATION OF
ISRAEL, AND THE COMING MESSIAH THAT WOULD BE BORN INTO THAT NATION.
30. That
my friends is the reason that we, you and I, those who have placed their faith
in Jesus Christ, can walk through this life VICTORIOUS…
a.
And our God will not only sustain us, He will
take the hard things, the things that were meant for evil,
b.
And make Beautiful things out of them...
c.
Why? How?
"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
Copyright © 2014 Clay Ritter.
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