To Those Who Love God

Romans 8.28 says that, for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose. In light of that passage, any bad thing that ever takes place in your life ultimately is a good thing. But there's another side to that story. There's another face on that coin. If you do not love God, then every good thing that has ever happened to you is ultimately a bad thing. Think about that for a moment.

The contrast couldn't be clearer, could it? Hello, and welcome to Renewing Your Mind. I'm Lee Webb. We have been featuring Dr. R.C. Sproul's series Providence, God in Control.

Today R.C. is going to focus on this often quoted passage of Scripture with a sober warning. As we have been studying the providence of God, we have looked on a couple of occasions at perhaps the most famous passage in all of Scripture that gives comfort to us about divine providence, and that's Romans 8 to 28, in which Paul says, all things work together for good for those who love the Lord and who are called according to His purpose.

And we've looked at the danger of confusing good and evil, of calling good evil and evil good. But what I want us to look at on this occasion are some of the important qualifiers that we find in this verse. Remember it says, all things work together for good for whom? For those who love God and for those who are called according to His purpose. That is, this is not a blanket universal promise from the mouth of God whereby God says, I'm going to make everything that ever happens work together for the good and for the benefit of everybody to whom it happens or by whom it happens.

There's a restriction in this promise. The promise is given for those who love God. Dear friends, if you don't love God, there is no guarantee whatsoever that everything that happens to you is happening ultimately for your good. If you are not numbered among those who are called according to God's purpose, if you are actively working against the purposes of God, don't dare take refuge in this verse because the providence of God, beloved, is a two-edged sword. We have seen that God's providence includes His government and that God's execution of His government includes His execution of justice.

And in His justice, He will punish impenitent sinners. That is a scary thought. Indeed, friends, it's the scariest of all possible thoughts.

It's the one thought that no unbeliever ever wants to think. A person who refuses to submit to God will, even if he acknowledges the existence of God, will place his trust and his hope that God will capriciously, whimsically forgive everything that the person ever does and never call the person into account. Ours is a culture that finds punishment for crime more and more repulsive. When a young man commits an act of vandalism, willfully, wantingly destroying and marring other people's property, it becomes an international incident when the local authorities seek to punish him. If there is an outcry in this world against the punishments rendered by human governments, how much more is there a protest against any idea that God might punish us? Now I realize that part of the uproar about the caning incident in Singapore that took place in our past history and created such controversy in the United States may be open to questions about whether the punishment was cruel and unusual, whether justice was really served.

But along with that dispute, the news media also was busy polling people in America about whether it is appropriate to spank children in the school, whether corporal punishment is ever legitimate. And my purpose today is not to engage our thinking on those specific issues. I'm only saying these things to remind you that we have a growing opposition and repugnance to the very concept of punishment. But God is not interested in being politically correct. God does not rule by referendum.

God does not take His cue from the government system of Singapore or for the government system from the United States. And God has decreed the punishment of evil. And the Scripture tells us that He has set a day in which He will judge the whole world in which He will call every human being to accountability. Now if those people do not love God, the supposed good things that they have received from God's hand during their lifetime will actually work against them.

We're told in Scripture that one of the most basic, fundamental, and foundational sins of the human heart is the sin of ingratitude. And Paul tells us in the first chapter of Romans that God's wrath is revealed from heaven. He tells us that that wrath is not revealed against innocence or against righteousness or against goodness. God is not a tyrant.

He's not capricious. But rather His wrath is revealed against ungodliness and unrighteousness. And the most basic ungodly thing we do as His creatures is, as Paul says, they would not honor Him as God, neither were they grateful.

Think about it. Perhaps the two most frequent offenses that we make against God is a stubborn, abject refusal to honor Him as God. Let me speak very candidly to you right now, personally, wherever you are, every person who hears my voice, in the privacy of your own mind, where the only person who can intrude upon that privacy is God Himself.

No one else can read your mind. I want you to ask yourself in that interior chamber of your own consciousness, do you honor God? Do you have a sense of reverence and of devotion and affection for the God who made you?

According to Paul, Paul is saying that God has made His presence known clearly and manifestly, that God has already revealed His existence to you. And he says that all of us in our fallen, corrupt human nature repress that knowledge. We fight against that knowledge.

We seek to flee from that knowledge, and we end up refusing to honor God in our mind. And the second thing is, neither were they grateful. Now, you know how you can be offended in your life when you bend over backwards, walk the second mile, make a sacrifice of some sort for another human being, making something good possible for them, doing something good for them, giving them something that has been costly to you, and then you realize they have absolutely no appreciation whatsoever. They display no gratitude. They show no sense of being grateful for your gift. And you realize how offensive that is to you. Well, it's also offensive to God because the Scriptures tell us that every good and perfect gift that we have ever received in this world comes to us from God, everything. You may think that you have pulled yourself up from your own bootstraps and that you've earned and deserved every single benefit that you've ever received. You take the credit for it. You don't take into account that whatever skill you have, whatever gifts you have were bestowed upon you by your Creator. You insult Him by calling your success either a matter of your own skill or even worse, a matter of luck. You have despised the benefits of God.

Now, what is the price tag for that? You see, every time that God gives us a gift, every time God is gracious to us can become an occasion for the increase of our sin. If for no other reason than that every time we received a gift from God, we refuse to acknowledge that it comes from God and refuse to express gratitude to God for it, we become guilty of the sin of gratitude. Now, I have said already when we look at this passage, this tremendous passage in Romans 8, all things work together for good for those who love God and for those who are called according to His purposes, that in light of that passage, any bad thing that ever takes place in your life ultimately is a good thing. But there's another side to that story.

There's another face on that coin. If you do not love God, then every good thing that has ever happened to you is ultimately a bad thing because it is working now toward your destruction because through God's goodness you have hardened your heart and increased your hostility to Him. And with every gift that He gives you, your guilt is multiplied as long as you refuse to be grateful.

So in simple terms, what this text is teaching us is that for those who love God, there is no such thing ultimately as a tragedy. And for those who despise God, there is no such thing ultimately as a blessing. You see, because if you don't love God, your blessings will be your curse. And if you do love Him, your curse will be your blessing.

There aren't any other alternatives. I had a professor in seminary who makes a distinction not only between good and bad, but he tends to really confuse our thinking when he talks about good-good and good-bad and bad-good and bad-bad. Now, he uses that confusing distinction to express what I've been talking about today with respect to Romans 8.28. A good-bad thing is something that humanly speaking on our level of experience is really a bad thing. My sin is really bad, and we don't want to make the mistake of calling my sin good.

It is bad. Now, when my professor said, it's good-bad, he means it's bad with respect to what you did, just as the case of Joseph's brothers did something evil to their brother, and it really was evil, and they were really held accountable by God for that evil. But God's providence working through that bad brought good. The clearest example is Judas. Judas's treachery was real treachery. It was real evil. We don't want to say that his evil was good. No, but it certainly is good that he committed it, because through his treason came the atonement. That's why we call the celebration of the atonement of Christ Good Friday, not Bad Friday.

At the time, it was viewed as Bad Friday, but in the providence of God and in the plan of God, it was shown to be the best day in the history of this planet, because it was the day of your redemption. Now, on the other hand, bad good is when something good happens to you that works together for your judgment, where the outcome is bad. And that's what I'm saying, that when we despise the gifts of God, the blessings of God, that all things are working together for our bad. Every blessing to the impenitent person becomes a tragedy. Every good and perfect gift that God bestows upon him ultimately heaps piles of coal upon his head, because his ingratitude and his injustice towards God is increasingly multiplied.

And as Paul says in the same epistle, the sad news is that that person is treasuring up wrath against the day of wrath. I've mentioned already the international incident of caning that took place in Singapore, where the president of the United States sought to intercede and try to have the government of Singapore not go through with this penalty. And out of deference to the president of the United States, the president of Singapore said, well, we'll reduce the number of lashes from six to four.

And the president of Singapore saw that as an act of mercy and of grace. The sinner in hell would do anything that he could to reduce the number of his lashes by one. And dear friends, we have this very foolish propensity to believe not only that God will not punish us, but we hedge our bets by saying if He does punish us, all of our sins are equally serious and there'll be no difference in the punishment. I've heard men say to me, well, I lusted after that woman. I may as well go ahead and commit adultery because I won't be any more guilty than I already am.

I may have no reason to put any restraints on my behavior because even if there is punishment, it's all the same. Paul said no. Every single time you refuse to be grateful to the gift of God, that ingratitude goes into a bank account, into a treasury. It is not the treasury of merit. It is not the treasury of the riches of Christ.

It is not the treasury of blessing. It is the treasury of wrath. Paul said we are heaping up wrath against the day of wrath. You may hope and pray that there is no such thing as a day of wrath, but if the Old Testament prophets taught anything, they taught that there is a pointed day of wrath. If Jesus ever taught anything, Jesus of Nazareth emphasized the chilling truth that there will be a day of judgment and that every idle word that we speak will be brought into account. So we would hope that God has no wrath, but He does have wrath, and that there will be no day of wrath, but there is a day of wrath.

And if God is capable of wrath and if He has appointed a day of wrath, the worst thing that we could possibly do is to pile it up, to keep putting investments in the bank, to keep paying into that account, heaping up, treasuring up, storing up wrath against the day of wrath, which the Bible says will be a day of darkness with no light in it. And so do you see that Romans 8.28 is good news and it's bad news. For those who love God and who are called according to His purpose and who rejoice in His providential government, it's the best of all possible news. For those who remain ungrateful and unloving towards God, it's the worst of all possible news.

What kind of news is it for you? It's sobering, isn't it? Thought-provoking. And for those who love God and are called according to His purpose, it's comforting. We're glad you've joined us today for Renewing Your Mind.

I'm Lee Webb. We are wrapping up a week of messages from Dr. R.C. Sproul's series Provenance, God in Control.

R.C. has helped us examine this often-neglected doctrine explaining that God works out His plan in all things for the good of His children. And as we've learned, that includes those times when we're facing pain, loss, or uncertainty. We'd like to send you the full series. It's 15 messages that we'll provide to you as a digital download. We'll also include the 25th anniversary edition of Dr. Sproul's book, The Invisible Hand.

In it, R.C. looks at providence not just from a doctrinal viewpoint, but also from the concrete experiences of the people whose lives and struggles are recorded for us in Scripture. Both of these resources will help you address the issues and the questions that arise with regard to God's providence. So contact us today with a donation of any amount, and we will send both of them to you. Our phone number is 800-435-4343.

But you can also make your request and give your gift online at renewingyourmind.org. Chris Larson has stopped by the studio. Chris is our president and CEO here at Ligonier Ministries. And you know, Chris, as we hear R.C. teach this series, we are so grateful for the straightforward yet humble way he addressed matters like the providence of God.

Lee, as I listen to R.C. teach in a timeless way, it reminds me of just the effectiveness of God's Word. We don't need to devise human strategies for advancing the kingdom of God. It really just comes down to the simple proclamation of God's Word. We receive testimonies all the time, literally every day from people around the world who've been helped by the teaching they receive through Renewing Your Mind and Ligonier's many other outreaches. Listen to this testimony, Lee. This is from Assimwe in Uganda.

R.C. Sproul's teachings have been of great importance from the moment I got saved, which was around July of last year. The days in which I received the true gospel, I had lost all hope, seeing myself as not worthy, never to make it there. But through the grace of God, I am there, not because I deserve it and not because I did anything entirely to deserve it.

It was entirely His grace through and through. And he continues, Where I am from in Uganda, there's a lot of prosperity gospel being pushed through the media to the churches. And I was part of a church that was deeply involved. I was alienated from the truth, dead in sin.

It hurts me a lot still seeing so much of the teaching around and it's the one that dominates in most of the churches. While at home, I listened to most of Ligonier's teaching, which enables me to grow in the knowledge of my Lord and also shows me how to apply that knowledge, which in return has had a direct impact on my worship and my view of God. One thing I really love about R.C. Sproul is that he makes complicated concepts easy to understand through simple illustrations. For example, his book Chosen by God enabled me to understand predestination and also appreciate it and love it. I really appreciate the Renewing Your Mind podcast, Ask Ligonier, Luther in Real Time, Five Minutes in Church History, Simply Put, and recently, ultimately, and not forgetting RefNet.

R.C. Sproul rested from his works, but you have carried on his work and it's spreading to other parts of the world. And in that same way, it reached me here in Uganda because of God using men who stand for the truth alone.

Thank you, Ligonier. Pray for me as I am in my quest for a good local church, one that entirely honors Christ. We will definitely be praying for a same way. And Chris, as you often say, this is the type of thing that puts wind in our sails.

It is. And for our dear listeners out there, continue to pray that the Lord would bless the preaching and teaching through Renewing Your Mind. Thank you, Chris, for sharing a same way story. And we will be praying for him and the many others around the world that we will probably never meet this side of heaven who are being touched by this ministry. We're grateful. Renewing Your Mind is the listener supported outreach of Ligonier Ministries. I hope you have a great weekend and I hope you'll make plans to join us again Monday. Thank you.