That's better.
Technology is interesting. I was
struggle with those things, but I noticed that technology is kind of new here in wisconsin
The Zoom was on back at the chapel and all these ladies up front had never seen, I guess, a TV before.
I don't know. It's just kind of interesting.
Appreciate you guys hosting me this weekend. First visit to Wisconsin and hopefully not the last because it's a beautiful place, but more importantly, some beautiful folks and I appreciate the chance to get to know you a little bit.
This weekend.
You know, everybody loves a happy ending, don't they?
whether it's
Cinderella, where the beautiful downtrodden young girl
the help of a fairy godmother, of course.
goes to the ball, falls in love with the prince.
And they live happily ever after.
Or maybe it's the story of the miracle on ice, the 1980 US Olympic team that
took on a bunch of
Russian army professionals on their way to winning the gold medal that year.
Perhaps it's Indiana Jones where the hero gets the treasure, gets the girl and foils the bad guys along the way.
Again, a tremendously happy ending where everybody walks out of the theater feeling good.
Or maybe even as Shrek, just the ugly ogre who in the end finds true love and saves the kingdom.
We all like a happy ending, don't we?
But what about those scripts that don't end?
Happily.
Some of you senior saints might remember the movie shane
I read this book, I think I was in sixth grade, but it's a 1953 Western set in Wyoming.
And just sometime after the Civil War, I don't even know exactly the timing, but
There's a stranger who wanders into town one day and his name is Shane.
And he's hired by a local rancher to help out on the homestead. And he's a quiet man and just does his job and kind of befriends this little boy Joey here that you see at the bottom of the screen.
But of course, there's a mean old land baron who wants to take everybody's land and
And he's just kind of a big meanie.
to use nice terms.
And so he comes and he's hassling the rancher and Shane comes to the rescue and saves the day and beats up the bad guys.
But then I guess one day the ranchers threatened the life of the owner of this ranch. And so they're planning the strategy to come in and to kill this man. And again.
upsteps our hero, Shane, and comes into town and kills some of the bad guys. And then he gets on his horse and he's kind of riding off into the sunset as often Westerns.
have an ending.
But then we as the audience see the same thing little Joey sees. There's blood dripping from our hero.
And he just rides off into the wind set or the sunset as Joey's yelling, Shane, don't go, Shane.
And Hollywood leaves us wondering what happened to our hero.
Maybe it's even worse. Maybe you remember the movie Champ.
We're young, cute Ricky Schroeder is the star of the film, 1979 and
His father's an ex-boxing champion. Billy Flynn is his name in the movie. And his career is kind of
on the downward slide, you might say, and he's raising his young TJ. He'd gone through a divorce earlier in life.
And Kijay lovingly calls his dad the champ.
Hey, champ. And
obvious reasons. But, you know, after a pretty tough career, the champ
have some problems and falls into drinking.
and becomes a bit of an alcoholic.
But still a little
Ricky Schroeder's in love with his dad and he idolizes him. He's his hero
Then Billy's ex-wife comes on the scene with her new husband and
And it turns out that an argument ensues and and the champ
punches the new husband
And oh, by the way, when the officers come, he assaults a police officer as well. So the champ ends up in jail.
So then, um.
A little TJ gets to end up gets taken from his dad and goes to his ex
mom who doesn't know his mom because they were divorced when he was a child
And his dad told him that his mom had died in an accident.
And so here you have little TJ in the midst of this
love triangle and just it's a kind of a gripping story
But Champ gets out of jail.
And in a few weeks and is given an opportunity for one last fight. And again, this is Hollywood. You know how these things go. And so we're expecting, all right, the champ's going to just get the big payday.
And he and TJ will be reunited and we'll have a happy ending.
And so the fight goes on and champs taking a beating. You can see there he's pretty cut up and
Against the doctor's orders, he continues to fight, even though the doctors tell him to throw in the towel. And of course, you know, he comes back and wins in a miraculous knockout victory.
And so they go to the locker room after the fight and
and um
Billy faints.
And he's laying on the floor and TJ runs over and you're, champ, what's wrong, champ? Get up.
And he kind of gets his bearings and he said.
Are you happy that I won, son?
He said, yeah, you're the champ.
And then he dies.
And we're left with TJ saying, champ, don't go, don't leave me, champ.
And if you saw the movie, if you're like me, you were devastated.
that's not supposed to happen.
The good guys always win.
And of course, old yeller, how can we forget the story of
Little boy, again, 1957. So hopefully none of these movies are going to get me in trouble. They're good enough. But this is a rancher in Kansas who brings home this stray dog and his son
Travis, I think it's the boy's name, and he just falls in love with his dog, as boys often do, and they become buddies and Old Yeller is just kind of a rascal of a dog. He goes around and he's scaring chickens out of the coop and
Barking at the cows on the field.
and uh
But he's never away from Travis. Everywhere he goes, they're together.
And he, through the movie, he has a covenant kind of a
a run in with a cow and with some foxes, I think it is. But finally, an angry wolf and they fight
And Yeller is bitten.
by this this wolf during the fight. And unfortunately, he gets rabies.
And so they have him locked up in a cage outside and mom goes out to feed them and
Yeller attacks mom.
And so they came in and they tell Travis
We're going to have to put her down.
And young Travis, you can see they're very young voices.
He's my dog. I'll do it.
And again, this tear-jerking scene, this young boy whose best friend
has turned rabid.
puts a bullet in his dog's head?
Who writes this stuff?
These people are terrible.
But you know, in real life, there's not always happy endings, is there?
Sometimes we feel like life just isn't fair.
Somehow and someone is out to get you.
you're getting your more than your fair share of tough breaks.
disappointing news, frustrating circumstances.
I read this story. I just have to share it. It's apparently a true story from the
compensation board in britain
about an accident report.
And it says, this is an accident report. It was printed in the newspaper in Britain from the workers compensation Board. And this is a brick layers report
a true story. It says, dear sir.
I am writing in response to your request for additional information in block three of the accident report form.
I put poor planning
That's the cause of my accident.
You ask for further explanation, and so I trust that the following details will be sufficient.
I'm a bricklayer by trade.
On the day of the accident, I was working alone on the roof of a six-story building.
When I completed my work, I found that I had some bricks left over, which weighed
later to be found slightly in excess of 500 pounds.
So rather than carry the bricks down by hand, I decided to lower them in a barrel using a pulley that was attached to the side of the building on the sixth floor.
So I secured the rope at ground level and I went up under the roof
I loaded the bricks into the barrel. I went down again and untied the rope, holding it tightly.
to ensure a slow descent of the BRICS.
You'll note in block 11 of the accident report form that my weight is 135 pounds.
Due to my surprise at being jerked off the ground so suddenly.
I lost my presence of mind and forgot to let go of the rope.
Needless to say, I proceeded at a rapid rate up the side of the building
In the vicinity of the third floor.
I met the barrel.
which was now proceeding down the side of the building at an equally impressive speed.
This explains the fractured skull.
minor abrasions and the broken collarbone that I listed in section three of the accident report form.
Slowed only slightly, I continued my rapid ascent
Not stopping until the fingers on my right hand were buried two knuckles deep into the pulley.
Unfortunately, by this time, I had regained my presence of mind and
was able to hold tightly to the rope.
In spite of the excruciating pain I was now beginning to experience.
At approximately the same time, however.
The barrel of bricks hit the ground at the bottom
And fell apart.
Now devoid of the weight of the bricks, the barrel weighed approximately 50 pounds.
I refer to you again to my weight as listed on block 11 of the forum.
As you might imagine, I began a rapid descent down the side of the building.
And in the vicinity of the third floor, I again met the barrel, this time coming up.
This accounts for the two fractured ankles, broken tooth, and severe lacerbations of my legs and lower body.
Here, my luck began to change slightly.
The encounter with the barrel seemed to slow me down enough to have lessened my injuries when I fell onto the pile of bricks.
Unfortunately, only three vertebrae were cracked in that incident.
I'm sorry to report, however.
that as I lay there on the pile of bricks in pain and unable to move.
I, again, lost my composure and presence of mind.
And let go of the rope.
I lay there watching the barrel begin its journey back onto me.
This explains the two broken legs.
I hope this clears things up sincerely.
Clive R. Gould.
You ever had a day that felt like that?
Nothing seemed to be going right.
Maybe you've had a month like that or a year like that
or a life like that.
Where bad things just keep happening to you.
Maybe you're asking, who wrote this script?
I didn't sign up for this.
And you know what? In some ways you're right.
We often don't choose the circumstances of our life
God does.
And the question that I have for us this morning is how do we respond
to the script that god writes.
our lives.
God is sovereign.
He's in control of our lives.
And somehow he's working his master plan throughout of all mankind at the same time.
He's keeping track of the things that everybody's doing
What's happening in circumstances in our lives
But why?
Well, the Bible tells that he's doing it ultimately to glorify himself, but also in the process to conform Christians
to the image of his son.
How does he do that?
It doesn't mean that we live happily ever after.
Although ultimately, praise God, we will.
But it doesn't mean that the good guys always win.
Eventually, yes. As I said, that's absolutely true.
But in the end.
doesn't necessarily mean this life on earth.
You know, sometimes life is really hard.
Sometimes we lose our jobs.
Sometimes we get sick.
Sometimes we're lonely and feel like maybe they'll never be
that special someone in our lives.
Sometimes we can't have children or maybe we're sorry that we had children.
maybe we get overlooked for a ministry opportunity and we think that it's not even fair in the church.
maybe we serve week after week and get no recognition for it.
Sometimes we just feel like nobody cares.
just can't win.
Bad things happen to good people.
All the time.
And so when those things happen to us, and they do or they will.
we have a choice to make.
We can choose to trust god
Or we can get upset with them.
We can believe that God loves us.
And that is a plan for us
Or we can choose to believe that he doesn't care.
And we're left to figure all this out on our own.
Turn with me in your Bibles, if you would, to Genesis chapter
37?
And it's 29 verses, but I want to read the whole chapter because it really sets the stage for what I'm talking about this morning.
So Genesis 37
We'll start reading, of course, in verse 1.
The second time I've done this this weekend.
Genesis is different than Exodus.
There we go. Genesis 37.
Jacob lived in the land where
His father had sojourned the land of Canaan.
These are the records of the generations of Jacob.
Joseph, when he was 17 years of age, was pastoring the flock with his brothers while he was still a youth.
Along with the sons of Bilhah, the sons of Zilpha.
his father's wives. And Joseph brought back a bad report about them to their father.
Now Israel loved Joseph more than all of his sons. We talked about favorite sons earlier. That's a bad thing.
Because he was a son of his old age and he made him a very colored tunic.
His brother saw that their father loved them more than all the brothers, and so they hated him.
And they couldn't speak to him on friendly terms.
Then Joseph had a dream, and when he told his brothers they hated him even more.
And he said to them, please listen to the stream which I've had.
For behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and lo, my sheaf rose up.
and stood erect, and behold, your sheaves gathered round and bowed down to my sheath.
Then his brother said to him, are you actually going to reign over us?
Are you really going to rule over us? And then they hated him even more. So hate times three.
They hated him because of his dreams and because of his words.
Now, he still had another dream and related it to his brother. And he said, Lo, I…
Still had another dream and behold, the sun and the moon and the 11 stars were bowing down to me.
He related it to his father and his brothers and his father rebuked him and he said, what's this dream that you've had? Shall I and your mother and your brothers actually come and bow down ourselves before you?
His brothers were jealous of him.
But his father kept the saying in mind.
Then his brothers went to pasture their flocks in Shechem and Israel said to Joseph, are your brothers not pastoring the flock in Shechem? Come and I will send you to them.
And he said, I'll go. So then he said, go now and see to the welfare of your brothers and the welfare of the flock and bring word back to me. So he sent
And from the valley of Hebron and he came to shechem.
A man found him and behold, he was wandering the field and
He said, hey, what are you looking for?
I'm looking for my brothers. Please tell me where they're pastoring their flock.
And the man said, oh, they've moved on from here. I heard them say, let's go to Dotham.
So Joseph went after his brothers and found them at Dothan.
And when they saw him from a distance and before he could get close to them, they plotted against him to put him to death.
They said to one another, here comes the dreamer.
Now come, let us kill them and throw him into one of the pits. And we'll say, a wild beast has devoured him.
Then let's see what will become of his dreams.
But Reuben heard this and he rescued him out of their hands and said, let's not take his life.
So Ruben further said, shed no blood.
Throw them into this pit that's in the wilderness, but don't lay your hands on them.
that he might he won't rescue him out of their hands to restore him to his father.
So it came about when Joseph reached his brothers that they stripped him of his tunic, the very colored tunic that his father gave him.
And they took them and they threw him into the pit.
Now the pit was empty without any water in it.
And listen to the callousness here.
Then they sat down to eat a meal.
While the brother lay desperate in a pit.
They raised their eyes and looked and a caravan of Ishmaelites was coming from Gilead and their camels bearing aromatic gum and balm and myrrh on their way to bring them down to Egypt.
So Judah said to his brothers, well, what profit is it if we kill our brother
and cover up his blood. Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, not lay our hands on them.
He is our brother, you know, our own flesh.
And the brothers listened to him.
Then the Midianite traders pass by, so they pulled them out of the pit
and sold them to the Ishmaelites for 20 shekels of silver.
Thus, they brought Joseph into Egypt.
Now, Reuben returned to the pit and behold, Joseph was not in it, and he tore his garments and he returned to his brother and said, the bull is not there.
As for me, where am I to go?
So they took Joseph's tunic and they slaughtered a male goat and dipped the tunic in blood.
Then they sent a very colored tunic and brought it to their father and said, we found this.
Please examine it to see whether it's your sons or not.
And he examined it and he said it is
my son's tunic.
A wild beast has devoured him. Joseph has surely been torn to pieces.
So Jacob tore his clothes
And put sackcloth on his loins
and mourned his son for many days.
Then his sons and his daughters arose to comfort him.
But he refused.
to be comforted. And he said, surely I will go down to Sheol in mourning for my son.
So his father wept for him.
tragic story if you really think about it. Again, we read these stories in the Bible and we say, okay, that was many years ago, and that's a cool story. I'm sure there's a lesson in there.
But imagine this if you were
one of the brothers.
Is that kind of hatred possible?
You know, I was the youngest of three boys and I was a past
And I paid for it.
But I don't think my brothers would have killed me.
or sold me into slavery.
And then for those of you that have children.
Maybe you can imagine being
Jacob.
my baby.
The firstborn of my favorite wife, maybe you're not going to say that.
is gone.
Look at verse…
35.
All his sons and his daughters arose to comfort him.
But he refused.
to be comforted.
Have you been there?
You ever been in a situation just really, really hurt
And you didn't understand, God, how could you let this happen?
How could this possibly be a good thing?
And so rather than turning to God.
you just wallow.
and hurt and in pity.
and in misery.
You know, Joseph was thrown into a pit
And maybe Jacob went into a pit of despair.
He refused to allow God to comfort him.
And sometimes, to be honest, I think we do the same.
Maybe some of you are there this morning. I don't know.
I want to contrast that response to
the response of david of
in 1 Samuel.
So 1 Samuel 29, we'll set the stage for us.
In verses 1 through 4.
1 Samuel 29.
Verses 1 through 4.
Now the Philistines gathered together all their armies to Apik.
While the Israelites were camping by the spring, which is in Jezreel.
And the lords of the Philistines were proceeding on by hundreds and by thousands.
And David and his men were proceeding on the rear with Achish.
I don't know if you remember the story, but David had been fleeing from Saul and he went into enemy territory.
We kind of faked, like he was a lunatic and then he
In this case, he kind of teams up with this King Achish to say, hey, I'll go and fight against
Israel for you. And when he went and went raided in the south and was actually killing the people of that land and lying to the king, we won't get into that ethics of that for now, but he's with Achish as the Philistines are gathering for this huge
of war.
In verse 3, the commanders of the Philistines said, what are these Hebrews doing here?
And Nacos said to the commanders of the Philistines.
Is this not David, the servant of Saul, the king of Israel, who's been with me these days, or rather these years?
And I found no fault in him from the day that he deserted
to me until this day.
But the commanders of the Philistines were angry with them and the commanders of the Philistines said, make the man go back that he may return to his place where you've assigned him. Don't let him go down to battle with us, or maybe in the battle
He becomes our adversary.
For what could this man make himself accepted to his lord
You know, kind of like this would be a great plan
Would it not be these heads of these men? And so David gets sent back
to Ziklag. So over in chapter 30,
Here's where the tragedy begins.
It happened when David and his men came back to Ziglag on the third day, so they'd been gone for a long weekend.
The Amalekites had made a raid on the Negev and on Ziklag and had overthrown Ziklag and burned it with fire.
So he gets home and his town has been destroyed.
It gets worse. They took captive the women and all who were in it, both small and great, without killing anyone, and they carried them off and went their way.
So now his family has been kidnapped.
So your house is destroyed.
Your wife and your kids have been kidnapped.
How's your day going so far?
When David and his men came to the city, behold, it was burned with fire. Oh, I saw that. Sorry, read that. Then David and the people were with him lifted their voices and wept, as would we.
Until there was no strength in them to weep any longer.
Now, David's two wives had been taken captive, Ahinoam, the Jezreelitis, and Abigail, the widow of Nabal the Carmelite.
Moreover, David was greatly distressed. Why? Because if people spoke of stoning him.
For all the people were embittered, each one of his sons and his daughters.
David, this is your fault.
Okay, so it's not bad enough that is
his houses and his city have been devastated.
His wives and his children have been kidnapped.
Now all these men, his army, want to kill him.
Because he's the leader.
Pretty bad day.
But David.
strengthened himself in the Lord.
And that word in other translations can mean comforted.
He comforted himself.
Both Jacob and David had absolutely terrible circumstances in their life.
More than I've ever imagined in terms of just difficulties.
in tough situations.
One, refused.
to be comforted.
Another comforted himself.
in the Lord.
What about us?
So with the time we have left this morning.
I want to take a look at Romans chapter eight, I think, Mandy, for…
reading that for us this morning.
But Romans 8 has some
Very simple things to say.
And like most of the things I say, it's not necessarily new information.
But hopefully a reminder that can encourage us.
Just for sake of context, this is an outline of Romans. It's not necessarily the best or the only one in the world, but you see there
the major points
Righteousness is needed.
Where sin is condemned in the first
Three chapters and righteousness imputed
There's some big theological words that we use, throw around. And here in this section that's highlighted in yellow, righteousness is imparted or sanctification.
from chapter six through chapter eight.
And so we want to just, I guess, maybe to define sanctification, separation from the sinful and the setting apart for the purposes of God.
So the message is pretty simple. God loves you and always be there for you.
Why don't we, let's see okay yeah i talked about sanctification. I guess in Rome, well, in the Bible, there's kind of three
tenses of sanctification. There's positional sanctification, the when you trust Christ as your Savior, you are sanctified. You are set apart.
your positionally sanctified.
Then there's perfect sanctification when we get to heaven
will be completely set apart from sin in the presence of the Lord. And oh, what a joy that'll be.
But in the meantime, there's a thing called life.
And we are in the process
being made more and more like Jesus Christ.
And that is progressive sanctification to use
some of the terms that are thrown around in Christian circles today.
And so in Romans 8, we're going to see that we're free from a number of things.
In verse one of chapter eight.
It says that we're free from condemnation. There is therefore now no condemnation.
For those who are in Christ Jesus.
In verses 8 to 12, we read that we're free to live by the Spirit, not by the flesh.
Because the Spirit of God lives within those of us who have trusted
Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior.
In verses 16 to 18, we're free from discouragement.
If we keep our focus on our future inheritance rather than the suffering
of the present days.
But we don't have to dwell on those things
I know life, again, life is hard, but we don't have to dwell on those things if we have the proper focus.
This is my daughter.
That's a hospital room. And this right here
is an IV.
And the reason I show that was because
This was the first time in her life, I think she's 17 in this picture. This is the first time in her life that she didn't cry when she got poked by a needle.
It was February 26, 2012, and the date is significant for a lot of things, but this was kind of a joke to begin with, but it turned out to be very serious.
But we were at Sunday school and she said that her stomach was hurting.
And so, uh.
we waited till after class and through the break the
fellowship time and she said, Dad, my stomach's still really hurting
So mom took her to the emergency room while I
Stayed at the service.
And after the service I went and they were still sitting in the emergency room because that's how emergency rooms work.
And so after about an hour, she said.
Oh, I think the pain is going away.
We can go home. I said, sweetheart, we've been here for a couple hours. We're going to see this thing through.
So they brought her into a room and um
15 minutes later, she had this IV in her arm.
I guess the long story was she ended up
Well, projectile vomiting, which you probably don't need to know. But then it turned out she had something called a cholodocal cyst.
which resulted in
surgery being needed, but before the surgery, they needed to shrink the size of the cyst
The only way to do that was for to have nothing in her mouth
for six weeks. So she got a PICC line and walked around school with a backpack and a
thing of milk that would have looked like feeding herself.
And so it ended up being
I think it was 62 days with nothing
And their mouth other than toothpaste and rinse.
And anyway, that's a different story, long story where I thought she was going to die and
had to go through some interesting conversations with the Lord. But this, again, this was kind of funny with the IV because she'd never had one before. This is before we knew that was a big deal. And so I was making fun of her and posted this on Facebook.
And like I said, it was the first time she ever
didn't cry when she got poked with some sort of needle.
And you know why? It's because when I saw the nurse coming in, I started talking to her. I pulled my chair close up to the bed and I held her hand and I said, look at me.
And I started talking to her. And I can't remember what we talked about, probably something silly.
But she was focused on me.
And before she knew it, she had an IV in her arm.
She was focused on her father.
Not the pain.
Now, again, tragedy struck and God was faithful
but
Focusing on the Father.
Rather than the pain. If we look at Romans 8, 18,
It says, for I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared.
with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
And maybe ladies can appreciate this a little bit. I understand the pain of childbirth is not fun.
I've been there a couple of times from the outside looking in.
And it doesn't look like a pleasant experience.
But I would say probably 99.78% of women in the history of mankind
or get the pain soon after they see that.
glorious little child in their arms.
Have you ever thought about heaven?
How glorious is that going to be?
Yeah, life is hard. I get it.
But where's our focus?
If we focus on the Father and the glories to come.
oftentimes we don't notice that
painful pricks of this life.
In the last verses of Romans 8, we're reminded that through life's struggles.
cause there for us.
R.A. Tory calls this section of scripture a soft pillow
for a tired heart.
So what I want to do, as I said, is just kind of walk through these last verses in the chapter
And remind you of three things.
All things were together for good.
God is for us.
And nothing, as we read this morning, can separate us from the love of God.
So let's read Romans chapter 8.
Starting in verse
28.
And we know that God causes all things to work together for good.
to those who love God and to those who are called according to his purpose.
For those he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son.
so that he would be the firstborn among many brethren.
And to these whom he predestined, he also called.
And to those who called, he called, those he also justified.
And to those whom he justified, he also glorified.
What should we say to these things if God is for us, who's against us?
He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all, howling not also with him?
freely give us all things.
Who will bring a charge against God's elect?
God's the one who justifies. Who's the one that condemns?
Christ Jesus is he who died, yes, rather who was raised.
who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword?
Just as it is written, for your sake.
We're being put to death all day long.
we were considered a sheep to be slaughtered.
But in all these things, we overwhelmingly conquer
Through him who loved us.
For I'm convinced that neither death nor life nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present or things to come
nor powers, nor height, nor debt.
or any other creative thing can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus.
Our Lord.
It says there that we know
with absolute knowledge.
that God causes all things.
Causes is in the active present tense
a continuous activity
of God himself. And he causes all things from the Greek, meaning all things
For good. That is his ultimate good.
to those who love God.
And are called according to his purpose.
That's the good that he's talking about, his purpose, not my feeling good.
purposes and intellectual decision
which the will is bent to accomplish.
Someone said, God is too loving to be unkind.
And too wise to make a mistake.
God's working a plan in your life and certainly a familiar verse
Many of us will know Jeremiah 29, 11.
But you know, the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for calamity.
to give you a future and a hope.
What's the plan?
Verse 29.
that we would be conformed
to the image of his son.
we have in that verse there, the idea of foreknowledge, which is a knowledge with a purpose
I think it was Spurgeon that said, I know God chose me before I was born because he never would have chosen me afterwards.
It says that they were predestined to be conformed, predestined is to determine in advance
And to be conformed is the word sumorphalo.
Which will get the word metamorphosis from
to bring the same form with the outward expression of an inward essence or nature.
The Christians transformed in his inner heart to resemble the lord jesus
which results in a change of outward expression that reflects the character.
of the Lord.
What does your character reflect this morning?
It says here in verse 29 the
we'd be conformed to the image of his son. And that word image is icon or iconos in the Greek.
And that's, we're familiar with icons. And so I'm going to give you a little test here.
target. This is the audience participation part. Your kids can hear you on TV. This is kind of cool. Technology. It's amazing.
Old little guy now.
gel oil.
Okay, this next one's kind of like, if you missed this next one, just kill yourself.
I couldn't white it out. I don't know. Technology issues.
That's my son.
family likeness.
we look like
our kids or they look like us.
Verse 29 says that we're going to be conformed
to the image of his son.
God's promise is that you
in character, not in facial features are going to look like the Lord Jesus.
That's his purpose.
That's our good. In 2 Corinthians 3.18, but we all with unfulfilled face will be beholding as in a mirror the glory of the lord
are being transformed into the same image.
From glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.
God is in the process of making you look like Jesus.
And sometimes that's difficult. Sometimes it hurts.
But that's his plan.
And it's to our benefit.
Point number two, God is for us.
What shall we say then to these things? If God is for us, who's against us?
He who did not spare his own son
but delivered him up for us all.
How will he not also with him freely give us all things?
who will bring a charge against God's elect? God's the one who justifies.
So it says…
In verse 31 there, if God is for us, you see that
Well, that word if really should be translated there since
Because there's no doubt that God loves us.
In fact, he demonstrated his own love toward us and that yet while we were yet sinners.
Christ died for us.
So it's not a wondering, it's an absolute fact.
And so because he loves us, we know he's on our side.
We were talking…
Well, we played pickleball yesterday and that was
disaster for some of us, but others not so much.
Let's think of a different sport. Let's think of basketball.
I know Luke played a little bit in high school. I don't know who anybody else in the room played, but let's say we're going to have a challenge, two on two basketball. And Luke, you can take you and anybody else in the room.
you need to say who you would take.
Because it doesn't matter. Because I have LeBron on my team.
Okay, so I'd actually give you two other people in the room.
LeBron's for me.
What do you got?
Okay, and that's kind of a silly example
I'm not comparing LeBron anywhere close to God, but you get the point.
If I want to play basketball, I'm going to find the best basketball player
Currently, not ever.
If I want to win life, I'm going to pick God.
And regardless of who goes against me.
God is for me.
And I'm going to win.
He didn't spare his own son.
How will he not also freely give us all things?
God is for us.
In fact, we would read in ephesians
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.
I remember watching the Brady Bunch growing up. Again, old time stuff. And Peter Brady saved this girl's life. The shelf was going to fall over in the store and he got out of the way. And so the mom was like, pick anything you want in the store. It's yours.
And I can just imagine as a little 10-year-old boy walking into the store, toy store, and just there's
all the toys that I could imagine.
And he got to pick one.
Well, imagine all of the glories of heaven
And you don't get to pick one. God says, they're all yours.
Everything here, every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places is yours because I love you.
God is for us. Man, we got to remember that.
2 Peter tells us that he's given us everything
pertaining to life and godliness.
So if you're going to survive in this world, you've got everything you need.
What a wonderful savior.
It says there in verse 33, who will bring a charge against God's elect? And we know who that is. It's Satan.
He's the accuser of the brethren.
And I don't know if you've ever stood accused
When I was in middle school, I was in band and
We had a student teacher for a semester and he was a jerk.
Hope you're not watching.
And everybody, most people hated him.
He was just so mean. So one day
Somebody stole his keys.
And I'm not going to say it was a drummer, but somebody stole his keys.
And so what he did was he
all things work together for good, by the way.
Okay, so…
We were in the key story.
So it turned out that one of the drummers
had, you know how drummers are just, they're spazzes. So over the years he had
knocked a hole in the sheetrock with his
with his drumstick and he had dropped the keys
Down thing.
So point being is I was accused and I could stand
innocent before this man.
But then there was the time
I was at my cousin's house for his birthday.
And they had a swimming pool. So we're all on the pool and nature called. And so I had to answer the call.
And so I went into the restroom that was just kind of like here and then the swimming pool is right outside.
And so I heard like all this excitement going on
And I wanted to see what's going on. And so I looked at the toilet and I go, well, I can't stand on the toilet. That's not tall enough. But oh, there's that toilet paper roll hold holder. I can stand on that.
I was a little kid, man, cut me some slack.
So I went to stand on it and
Ripped it right out of the wall.
And so then I just kind of, you know, stuck it back up there
And ran out and jumped into the pool.
And so then my uncle, there was, I think there was four, eight cousins there that day.
And so we got all lined up and it was like.
who broke the toilet paper roll?
And I was guilty.
I had to admit it, I felt so bad.
Satan is constantly accusing God.
accusing you.
before God.
But it doesn't matter because God is for us.
He intercedes for us. It says in verse 34,
Jesus Christ is he who died, yes, rather who was raised, who's at the right hand of God.
who also intercedes
For us.
Hebrews 7.25.
says that he says that
always lives.
to make intercession for them.
What's Jesus doing right now?
Perhaps interceding for you
And for me.
It says in Romans 8, 26,
In the same way the spirit helps our weaknesses, for we don't know how we should pray. The Spirit himself intercedes for us.
with groanings too deep for words. So we have goddess for us.
Jesus is interceding for us and the Holy Spirit is interceding for us.
Can we lose? Not a chance.
God is on our side. And that's why we can, as it says in Hebrews 4, 16, draw near with confidence.
to the throne of grace.
Nothing can separate us from the love of God.
We read those verses a couple of times this morning, so we won't read them again.
But it talks about tribulation. Maybe that's outward pressure, distress, it will be inward pressure.
you know, Paul in 2 Corinthians 11 talks about all of the trials and the difficulties that he went through in life.
God uses those circumstances, again, to change us into the image of his son.
And it says, and all these things we overwhelmingly conquer.
Through him who loves us.
You guys know who that is?
His name is Michael Phelps.
I printed out some stats about Michael Phelps. If you can tell, he's a swimmer. He's a very excited swimmer in that picture.
He started his Olympic career in 2004.
When he won six gold and two silver medals.
He competed again in 2008.
2012 and 2016.
garnishing 23 gold medals and five silvers over that 16-year span.
It says here that in 2004,
Phelps, 10 gold medals.
were more than Spain.
With his six medals in London.
He would have been the 13th overall country
In terms of metal count.
Only eight countries in the London Olympics in 2012 won more gold medals than Eichel Phelps.
He didn't just kind of do okay in swimming.
He overwhelmingly conquered his opponents.
That's what that word means.
We are overwhelmingly conquerors. And it's not through our moral influence. It's not through human rights. It's not through the ballot box.
It's not through the betterment of humanity or better interracial communication and understanding.
It's not more tolerance and acceptance. It's not any human effort whatsoever.
It's through him who loved us.
We become Christians by placing our faith in Jesus Christ and him alone for our eternal destiny.
That's how we have victory in the Christian life.
Complete trust, independence.
upon him.
Are you convinced this morning that God can take care of all your problems?
But he causes all things.
to work together for good.
Let's go back to Genesis and finish our story.
of joseph.
We left him as a
A prisoner of these Midianites.
He gets to Egypt and things kind of start
Turn pretty well for him. He's a good worker and he becomes successful. He's
Good looking young man, apparently. He's got a lot going for him, but…
then life again takes a turn for the worse.
The wife of his master took a liking to him and tried to seduce him and continually to refuse her advances. He finally
Gets himself in a
compromising situation and gets thrown in jail because
the husband has to believe his foolish wife.
So now he's a slave.
And he's a slave in jail.
Can it get worse?
Again, he seems to be doing pretty well. And within a short time, he's kind of running the jail, which I'm not sure that's anything to be proud of, but God continues to bless him, it seems.
And you know the story, there's a couple of dreams that occur between a couple of the king's
servants and he interprets the dreams and they come true and he says, hey, remember your brother, you know, throw…
Throw a man a bone and the guy forgets.
And it's not for another two years in jail until the
the cupbearer remembers, oh, wait a minute, there was this guy.
And so he gets out of jail and you know he's promoted to kind of number two in command. Things are going well. But you know how long it's been?
Since that day back in the desert when
You got thrown in a pit?
13 years.
So again, make this real.
It's not a Bible story.
Sometimes it's your reality.
13 years being mistreated, misunderstood, falsely accused, aided.
ignored, imprisoned.
Perhaps even beaten.
For nothing. What did he do wrong?
But now in our story, things are going pretty well for Joseph. So we're getting a little bit excited.
But remember, it's still, he's been separated from his family for all that time. Some of you ladies couldn't believe you've been separated from your kids for like two days.
It's so exciting for you to see them.
But the story goes on, you know, there's the famine and Joseph got some great ideas and
the king is very wealthy and everybody's got to start coming to Egypt to get their food.
And that's
Joseph is reunited with his family through some interesting circumstances that we don't have time to talk about and gets to spend 17 more years with his father before he dies.
Did Joseph have a good life?
Or a bad life.
Let me just read you an excerpt from
Genesis chapter 50.
When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, what if Joseph should bear a grudge against us and pay us back in full for all the wrong which we've done to him?
So they sent a message to Joseph saying, your father charged
Before he died saying, Thus you shall say to Joseph.
Please forgive. I beg you the transgressions of your brothers and their sin.
But they did you wrong and now please
forgive the transgressions of the servants of the God of your father.
And Joseph wept when they spoke to him.
Then his brothers also came and fell down before him and said, Behold, we are your servants.
dream much. But Joseph said to them, don't be afraid. Am I in God's place?
As for you, you meant evil against me.
But God meant it for good.
In order to bring about this present result.
to preserve many people alive
So therefore, don't be afraid.
I'll provide for you and your little ones
So he comforted them.
and spoke kindly to them.
You meant evil against me, but God.
meant it for good. Can you believe that?
Do you think you would have responded that way?
I'm pretty sure I would not have.
God meant all that for good.
over well probably
three quarters of his life.
miserable.
What are you going through this morning?
Marital difficulties?
financial struggles.
Worried about losing your job or maybe finding one?
having trouble getting along with your neighbors?
people you work with?
Your kids?
Maybe you're struggling with a particular sin that just won't seem to go away.
Perhaps you're frustrated in ministry.
seeing no results or not the results you're expecting or hoping for.
maybe you don't know what the future holds and you're worried.
You're anxious.
Remember Romans 8.
all things were together for good.
God is for you.
And nothing can separate you.
from the love of God.
God writes a script for every one of our lives.
we can trust him all the way to the final scene.
Because he's a good God.
And one day he'll welcome us into heaven.
with open arms.
Let's pray.
Lord, we thank you so much for who you are.
Thank you for your son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who
gave himself on our behalf.
Lord, help us to remember that
you are for us. You're on our side and you're you're working
a beautiful, miraculous
metamorphosis of making us look like your son.
And Lord, in those times when difficult times
circumstances hit our lives, help us to remember how good you are.
And to trust you.
And thank you, Lord, that through the trials of life that we can not just
squeak by and eke out a miserable existence till we get to heaven.
But we can overwhelmingly conquer.
through him who loved us.
Lord, thank you so much for loving us first.
in jesus name amen