The Extent of the Believer's Security B

All that can happen to you in this life, good and bad, will ultimately be used by God to bring you to eternal glory.

That is the monumental truth here. Bottom line, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ because everything works together for good, which means our eternal glory. That establishes the doctrine of eternal security.

You may believe everything Scripture says about God's goodness, His mercy, and His protective power, but how can the Bible possibly claim that hard trials are actually good for you? Find out today on Grace To You. Before we get to the lesson though, we want to let you know about a brand new study tool that we are really excited about. And of course, John, I say brand new, but we're really talking about something that has already had a long and fruitful history. And we think bringing it back for a new generation of believers is the thing we ought to do.

So tell us about it. Well, you're talking about study guides. It's been, I don't know how many years, maybe 20 years. At least 20, maybe 25. Maybe 25 years, and we haven't published the study guides. Every once in a while I run into somebody who says, I have a complete set of the study guides.

I think there are 150 of them. Yeah, and it's rare to find a complete set. Yeah, there are passages of Scripture that go verse by verse with an outline and questions that you can ask and answer. They're a study guide.

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Maybe some of them go 100 to 120 pages. They're different, because it depends on how many messages are in each series, and they follow very closely with what you're preaching, which is the benefit. Yeah, and the difference between the study guides and the commentary is the commentaries are verse by verse through a book. The study guides are thematic.

They're subject-related. The opening one is going to be spiritual boot camp, everything you need to know as a foundation to Christian life. So each study guide takes on a different subject but draws that subject out of a specific portion of Scripture or several portions of Scripture that I preached on. Back in the 1980s, we were producing these all over the place, and they were so popular, and so we're going to have our own resurrection of the study guide. It's going to be called Verse by Verse with John MacArthur, and again, the first volume is from a classic sermon series called Spiritual Boot Camp.

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You're going to want a copy, and I'll talk more about how to get it after the lesson. But right now, stay here as John continues his study, The Grip of God. We continue in our study of Romans chapter 8, verse 28, 29 and 30. Now if you just take verse 28, which as I say is part of this summary of the security of the believer, we could divide it into four sections. Verse 28 talks about the extent of our security.

It talks about the recipients of security, the source of security, and the certainty of security comes in verses 29 and 30. Now let's take that first point and let's just talk about the extent of our security. How really secure are we? Well, here is the extent of our security in one simple statement, and we know that God causes all things to work together for good.

That is the extent of our security. That is a tremendously comforting and reassuring statement. There could not be a more reassuring statement than that. Now what we have then in verse 28 is the fact that everything due to this plan of God, due to the will of God, and due to the intercessory work of the Holy Spirit, particularly in verses 26 and 27, he can actually say in verse 28 that everything that happens in your life will work out for good. And the good here, let me say it to you clearly, the good here is eternal glory, okay? The good here is eternal glory. Now that doesn't mean that the only good is going to be realized in eternity. The good here is going to sustain you into eternity.

It involves your eternal glory and it involves getting you to that. You say, well, what do you mean by all things here? Well, there are no limits, so let's talk about it.

Let's see how far we can go with this thing. First of all, and I'll give you two points because there are only two points to make here. There are only two kinds of things that can happen to you.

What are they? Good things and bad things. Pretty simple, isn't it?

It didn't take me long to figure out the outline here. The only things that can happen to you are good things or bad things. And in either case, they work together for what? For good. Our good God is doing good for us constantly as an expression of the goodness of His character and His nature. Our good God has made to us great and precious promises. Our God has given us His good word, which ministers good to us as we learn it and apply it and obey it. God has called the good and holy angels to our aid, to do good for us. And God has designed that saints within the church minister mutually goodness to each other. These are the good things.

Well, all of that is important and all of that is true. But frankly, that is not really the important element of the passage. Go back to the passage for a minute. What the passage is really trying to say to us here is that it's not just good things that work for our good, but it's bad things that work for our good. If everything went exactly the way we wanted it to go, we wouldn't even ask the question whether our salvation would be sustained.

We wouldn't be asking the question, can we lose our salvation if all there was was good? But in spite of all that God does, in spite of all that He has promised and pledged to us, in spite of all that's in His Word, in spite of all the paths of obedience we can walk and thereby be blessed, in spite of the work of holy angels, in spite of the mutual stimulation and goodness of believers around us, in spite of all of that our lives are still filled with bad things, aren't they? Man is born into trouble as the sparks fly upward. Jesus said in the world you're going to have trouble, tribulation. And we have bad things in our lives.

And those become the real issue. Can bad things separate us from God? Can bad things bring us out of a no condemnation status into a condemnation status? Can bad things cause Christ not to love us anymore? Can bad things cause God to remove our salvation?

Well, let's ask the question and let's answer it. There are three categories of bad things that I want you to see, three categories of bad things. Category number one, we'll just call suffering, suffering. Suffering's bad.

I mean, it's reflective of the curse. Adam and Eve didn't suffer in the garden before the fall. There wasn't any pain. There wasn't any sorrow. There weren't any tears.

There wasn't even any death. But the first area of bad things we have to deal with is suffering. Life is just full of it, full of it.

It starts out at the beginning and stays there and maximizes itself at the end in the horrors of death. Life is just full of bad things. But even suffering, which is bad, can work for good. 1 Peter 5, 10 puts it this way, after you've suffered for a little while, the God of all grace who called you to His eternal glory in Christ will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. That's why James 1 says, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, right? Knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience and patience has a perfect work. Suffering produces good.

Why? We learn how to deal with pain and therefore we learn how to help others who deal with it. We learn compassion. We learn patience. We learn gentleness.

We learn trust. We experience grace from God and mercy and sustenance. The goodness of God can come out of suffering.

Think of Joseph. His brothers threw him in a pit, sold him off as a slave. He was thrown into prison, but in the end it all worked together for good.

And that's Genesis 50, 20, you meant it for evil, I meant it for good. And then there was Job. There's a man who suffered, lost everything he had, absolutely everything. All of his children died, lost all of his wealth, all of his crops, all of his land, everything, all of his animals. Then he got ulcers and he got boils.

It was catastrophe without parallel. Through it all, God was working good. And in the end he says this, I heard of thee with the hearing of mine ear, but now my eye seeth thee and I repent in dust and ashes. He learned the greatness and goodness of God through it all.

It was a remarkable, remarkable lesson. Paul, burdened in 2 Corinthians chapter 12 with a thorn in the flesh, prayed three times the Lord would remove it. The Lord said, I'm not removing it. I'm going to leave it there because it humbles you and because in your weakness you're made strong.

When you can't trust yourself and when you're at the end of your own resources, then you have to turn to me and then you become strong. Even his blindness in Acts 9 drove him to Christ. Suffering is good. God uses it to do a number of things.

I'll just recite a few of them. He uses it to teach us to hate sin. You know, when you look at all the suffering in the world as Christians, you don't ask the questions that the world asks. The world says, why does all this happen, right? Why is the world like this? They don't understand because there's no recognition of the impact of sin.

But when you and I look at the suffering in the world, we hate the sin that caused the suffering. You remember Jesus was at the tomb of Lazarus and he started to cry. And you might ask the question, why in the world is he crying? He's about to raise him from the dead. He wasn't crying because Lazarus was dead. He wanted him dead. That's why he hadn't come. When Lazarus was sick, they sent a message and said, come down here, he's sick. Jesus didn't go. He wanted him dead because he wanted this massive miracle right on the porch, as it were, of the Passover season because it was all part of orchestrating the cross and the resurrection. So he wanted him dead.

When he came down there and he saw the family in sorrow and weeping and the torment of having lost their beloved brother, then he wept and he wept, not because Lazarus was dead, but he wept because he could extrapolate from that experience all the suffering of all humanity through all the years when loved ones die. You could see the consequence of sin. And so it teaches us to hate sin. We understand all the suffering in the world gives us an aversion to sin and that's good.

That's a good lesson to learn. And you ought to make a conclusion somewhere along the line in your mind that if sin on a big scale causes so much disaster, it'll cause the same disaster on a smaller scale. It's going to do in your life just what it does in the world.

And if you hate it in the world, you ought to hate it in your own life. Secondly, suffering teaches us to see the evil that is in us. Whenever we suffer, we're reminded that we're still fallen, aren't we? The corruption of our hearts just boils up in our suffering. You suffer and what happens? You get impatient, you become bitter, you begin to question God, doubt God, and you really begin to see the fallenness that's still there. Suffering is good because it'll teach you to hate sin. It'll teach you to see the evil that is in you. Suffering is good also because it'll drive you to God. Like Paul, when you get to the point where you have nowhere to go, you wind up going to him.

And that's good. I don't know about you, but the greater the suffering I experience, the greater my prayer life. Is that not true? When everything's going well, I tend to sort of have to force myself into prayer, but when there's a disaster somewhere or when there's real suffering somewhere, I am compelled to pray. In prosperity, the heart is easily distracted.

In prosperity, the heart is easily divided. Suffering drives out the world and sends us singularly to God. Further, I think suffering is good because it conforms us to Christ. It helps us to experience the fellowship of His sufferings. We begin to understand our Lord to do, as Paul said, sort of bear the marks of Christ. We suffer with Him. Romans tells us that we might reign with Him right here in Romans 8. We participate in Philippians 3, the fellowship of His sufferings.

It helps us to identify with Him and to go to Him as our great High Priest. Suffering also drives out sin. Suffering drives out sin.

In Job 23, verse 10, it says, And when He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold. Suffering will destroy your dreams and your ambitions and your pride and, in many cases, will burn out the dross in your life. The Lord uses suffering as a chastening to drive sin out of.

In Hebrews, it says that to whom the Lord loves, He chastens. Suffering is good because it can drive out our sin. It's good too because, ultimately, it brings joy. Ultimately, it brings joy.

You say, What do you mean? Because Job 5, 17 is right. It says, Happy is the man whom God corrects. Happy is the man whom God corrects. You need to look at the suffering that comes into your life and say, I must be a child of God because every son he scourges, right?

Hebrews 13. And if I'm going through a suffering and a pain, the Lord is refining me, the Lord is scourging me, one or the other, maybe a little of both. And after I have been corrected, while it seems grievous for the moment, in the end, it will bring joy. John 12, Jesus said to the disciples, You're going to suffer, but it's going to be like birth pains. Out of that suffering is going to come joy. And then suffering is good because it produces greater glory.

It produces greater glory. In 2 Corinthians 4, 17, momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison. All the suffering in this life that you endure will be compensated for in the life to come in greater glory. It's a marvelous thing to think about the goodness that comes in suffering. Suffering is good. It works for good. It's not in itself good.

It doesn't feel good. It is an element of the curse and of fallenness, and it is related to the sinful realities in our existence. But it is good because it teaches us to hate sin. It teaches us to see the evil that is in us. It drives us to God. It conforms us to Christ.

It drives sin out. It ultimately produces joy because we've been refined and corrected, and it gains for us an eternal weight of glory. This is a marvelous benefit.

This is a great blessing. Secondly, let's not talk about suffering. Let's talk about something else that is bad in one sense but produces good. Let's call it struggling...struggling. And now we move away from suffering, which has often to do with our physical being, to struggling, which has to do with the moral, spiritual battles we fight. And what I mean by struggling is battling temptation. Even that works together for good.

You say, how? Well, first of all, it sends us to our knees to pray. You know, when the animal sees the hunter coming, he runs to safety. And certainly when the believer sees the enemy coming, he runs into the presence of God. Psalm 42, tempted to despair, David was driven to God. The struggle with temptation drives us to our knees. Secondly, it devastates our spiritual pride.

It shows us that we're really weak. Anybody who parades their pride, anybody who thinks they've arrived spiritually and they're more spiritual and more pious and more godly and more virtuous than somebody else really doesn't understand that we all understand that they are wicked. Because a person who's truly godly is really humble and has had their spiritual pride devastated. And struggling with temptation is the way to do that. Just when you think you've arrived spiritually, here comes that wave of temptation and that struggle and you lose the struggle and you have to go back and ask yourself whether you have really as much spiritual maturity as you think you have. So even the struggle with temptation is good for us. It causes us to lean on the strength of Christ.

That's another element. That's why in 2 Corinthians 12, Paul goes to the Lord in the midst of his struggle. Further, it makes us desire heaven. I don't know about you, but I get weary of the struggle. That's why Paul said, I'd rather depart and be with Christ.

I'm tired of this. To die is gain. So, suffering can work together for good. Struggling can work together for good.

Even temptation, amazingly, can produce good. It can send us to prayer, break our pride, teach us how really weak we are, force us to lean on Christ, to long for heaven. I think of Peter who lost the battle at the arrest of Jesus, lost the battle, the internal battle with temptation, denied Christ, went out and wept bitterly. And those were tears of a man who had learned lessons. He learned so much about his weakness. He learned so much about the wiles of Satan. He learned so much about the importance of praying instead of sleeping. But even temptation could be turned into good for us if we learned those same lessons.

I think that was step one on the road to Peter becoming the man he was in the book of Acts. But let's get to the real issue here. Suffering is bad that produces good. Struggling is bad that produces good. Thirdly, sin is bad that works together for good.

And this is the most notable thing of all. Even the sins of believers work for their good. Everything I've said up to now is true, but really isn't the point here.

This is the point here. You say, how in the world could sin work together for good? How can God cause sinful things to come out for good? It's not by the nature of the sin, but it's by the nature of God's grace and mercy. Because it is God who brings light out of darkness and sweet out of bitter. This in no way lessens the vile, filthy nature of sin, but it shows that sin, listen carefully, cannot ultimately triumph in the believer because God overrules it with His grace and it turns out good. How can it be good? Because it gives an opportunity for God to demonstrate grace and that's good. Because it is covered by the righteousness of Christ and that's good. Should we sin that grace may abound?

No, no, no, no. Our sin deserves eternal hell. Now, as believers, our sin still deserves eternal hell as much as it did before we were saved.

It hasn't changed. It's still wicked. It's still sin. It's still an offense to God. It's still deserving of damnation and eternal punishment, but God in His mercy through Christ overrules that.

That's the point here. The point here is not just that suffering in life and struggling in life, God works together for our good in life. The real point here is that everything that happens in life, the worst of which is sin, is not at all able to overrule the saving purpose of God. That's the main point. That's just an incredible, marvelous reality. Our own sins to us can have a good result if they cause us to be humble, if they cause us to be repentant, if they cause us to praise God for His forgiveness, if they cause us to long for glory, if they cause us to pursue holiness, if they enhance our prayer lives, if they drive us to the Word of God, if they drive us to spiritual accountability and drive us to faithfulness, if the weariness with our sin moves us toward a greater devotion to God and Christ, more worship, more prayer, more Bible study, more faithfulness, more ministry, then there's good out of that.

But that's not the main point. The good that he's talking about here is the good of eternal glory. And there isn't any suffering in life that can alter your eternal glory, and there isn't any struggle in life that can alter your eternal glory, and there isn't even any sin in life that can alter your eternal glory. Everything works together for your good in time and your glory in eternity. All the matters of life, whatever they are, good, bad, all are being worked together by God. Good things like God's nature and God's promises and the Word and prayer and angels and believers are working for your good. Bad things like suffering and struggling and sin work for your good by teaching you to hate sin, teaching you to see your fallenness, to be humiliated before God, to desire God, to conform to Christ, to pray, to be penitent, repentant, long for God's grace, be grateful for forgiveness. But beyond all of those things, which are here and now things, all that can happen to you in this life, good and bad, will ultimately be used by God to bring you to eternal glory.

That is the monumental truth here. Bottom line, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ because everything works together for good, which means our eternal glory. That establishes the doctrine of eternal security and is reiterated in verses 29 and 30, He foreknew, He predestined, He called, He justified, He glorified, and everybody gets there. And that's why in verse 31 you have this explosion into this great concluding benediction. If everything works for our ultimate glory, then nothing can alter that, absolutely nothing.

Well, that's the first point, the extent of security. There is, however, a limitation here, and that's going to be for next time, but the limitation here is given in verse 28. To those who what? Love God and are called according to His purpose.

There is no limit at all on the all things, but there is a limit with regard to whom the all things applies. If I may be so bold to give you a little bit of a preview, everything in the life of a believer works for their good. Conversely, nothing in the life of an unbeliever works ultimately for their good, nothing.

Their good or their bad is before God, wickedness, and it only produces eternal judgment. This is Grace to You with John MacArthur. Thanks for being with us. John's current study is titled The Grip of God. Now, earlier we mentioned that next month we will air John's classic series titled Spiritual Boot Camp, and as a compliment to that series, we have created a study guide. It's a 100-page book that will help you really dig into this foundational teaching, covering prayer and Bible study and more. We want to send you a free copy of The Spiritual Boot Camp study guide if you have never contacted us before, and we want you to get it before the series airs in June, so get in touch today and request your copy.

Call our toll-free number, 800-55-GRACE, or you can order at our website, gty.org. The Spiritual Boot Camp study guide includes questions at the end of each section to help facilitate deeper study and discussion and application, and it makes it an ideal resource for either personal study or group study. Again, we'll send you The Spiritual Boot Camp study guide for free if you've never contacted us before. Call 800-55-GRACE or go to gty.org. And if you're looking for a resource that will deepen your understanding of all Scripture, let me suggest the MacArthur Study Bible.

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