We ended last week with verse 28 which is so comforting to the church because it gives hope in times of seeming hopelessness; it gives purpose to events and circumstances which seem to be at a loss for any purpose, and it gives direction during times of wandering.

But most important, it directs our eyes back to the Sovereign God "who causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who have been called according to His purpose."

Paul is about to expand on this call of God in the next few verses and he will put into focus what it means to be one of the called and what blessings are attached to this call.

God's purpose in Christ for humanity is conformity to Christ's glorious image. He purposed from all eternity to bring many sons to glory through the redemptive work of Christ. (Heb.2:10) The process He uses is found in Rom.8:29-30. The call to His purpose is through the Gospel which works with the word of God in accordance with the work of the Holy Spirit.

The call is universal and it goes out to all humanity everywhere. But it's a call that demands personal response; a turning from ourselves to embrace Jesus Christ as the One who can deliver us from the power and the penalty of sin, and give us new life and a new everlasting relationship with our God.

Sometimes there's the tendency to look at salvation in a Pied-Piper sort of fashion where the Piper goes through the town indiscriminately calling everyone out with his music. Not knowing anyone personally, he simply puts out a call and who ever comes and who ever stays .

But God is the all-knowing, Almighty One who determines the beginning from the end with the express purpose of bringing about His will which is to know us and for us to personally know and love Him.

Rom 8:29 "For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers."

William Barclay in his commentary on Romans speaks to this issue of foreknowledge when he singles out the word "to know" as applied to God knowing people in the sense of foreknowledge & predestination.

He says, "The O.T. has an illuminating use of the word "to Know". I knew you in the wilderness, said God to Hosea about the people of Israel (Hos 13:5) You only have I known of all the families of the earth, said God to Amos (Amos 3:2). When the Bible speaks of God knowing a man, it means that He has a purpose and a plan and a task for that man. And when we look back upon our Christian experience, all we can say is, "I did not do this; I could never have done this; God did everything: And we know well that this does not take freewill away. God knew Israel, but the day came when Israel refused the destiny God meant for her to have."

"For those God foreknew he also predestined..." Now, even though Paul is introducing some very interesting Theological propositions here, his point is not to establish a Theological Treatise on predestination. In fact, the people to whom he is writing probably understood the O.T. teaching of predestination which we see all throughout the N.T.

The word foreknew in our text is the Greek word proginosko and it simply means to know beforehand. The word predestined in the Greek is proorizo and it means to predetermine.

And so if we were to go back to our text it could read Rom 8:29 "For those God knew (beforehand) he also (predetermined) to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers."

In the context he has been explaining the weakness of the flesh and how the Spirit strengthens us; even prays on our behalf. He has also told us how the cares of this world can be perceived to have no design at all, and yet we see clearly how God works all things together for our good.

He's showing us how God is in control of all things. Nothing is hid from God and nothing is outside of His Master plan which centers on the salvation of His people.

In the O.T. we saw how God chose a people to follow Him. And the question might be asked, what were the qualifications for these people to be called out by God? Were they to be noble, trustworthy, faithful; were they required to have vast numbers in their tribe or nation, and possess wealth beyond measure?

If you and I were in the process of choosing someone for an important task, some of these qualifications, along with many more, would come into play. But notice why God chooses this people which would be known as Israel.

Deu 7:6 "For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.
7 The LORD did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples.
8 But it was because the LORD loved you and kept the oath he swore to your forefathers that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt."

God chose them because He loved them. And He loved them simply because He chose to love them. They were not a particularly lovely people, in fact if compared to the Egyptians they were probably very similar in many ways.

And yet we're told that God didn't choose the Egyptians, He chose the Israelites. Just as God chose Abraham, a man who lived among Gentile pagan worshippers many years before, and had made a covenant to bring him into a promised land, God was now fulfilling that promise in Israel who is descended from Abraham, and He chooses them to carry out His will.

God foreknew them and He predestined them to be a holy people, which means a people set apart for a special purpose. Now I know that a lot of people cringe when we start talking about such things as God's foreknowledge and predestination.

But these terms should lose any repulsive feature because an individual's salvation isn't based on their moral state, but God predestining us to become children of God through Christ and also becoming Christ-like, set apart for His purpose.

That God has a Sovereign plan doesn't mean that life is fatalistic: 'It's all going to go God's way anyhow, what's the use.' No, life is not fatalistic.

God's Sovereignty is a matter of great comfort and peace. He doesn't force His love upon us as if we were robots. His plan cannot fail, but it must be embraced in order to receive it. Even though people may reject so great an offer by God doesn't nullify the offer.

You see, though this may be a mystery to our finite minds, the Sovereignty of God and our free will work side by side. It's a term known as Antinomy. According to the Random House College Dictionary antinomy means: "a contradiction between two statements, both apparently obtained by correct reasoning."

All throughout Scripture God tells us that He has all authority and power and that He chooses people for His purposes and foreordains all that takes place.

There are many verses we could look at to demonstrate this, but I'll share three areas: Daniel say's in Dan 2:20 "Praise be to the name of God for ever and ever; wisdom and power are his.
21 He changes times and seasons; he sets up kings and deposes them. He gives wisdom to the wise and knowledge to the discerning."

Pro 8:14 "Counsel and sound judgment are mine; I have understanding and power.
15 By me kings reign and rulers make laws that are just;
16 by me princes govern, and all nobles who rule on earth."

Act 17:24 "The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.
25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.
26 From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live."

The time in which we live and the place in which we live has been foreordained and predetermined by God. With our Sovereign Lord there is no chance. This is the God we serve, the One who chooses men to love and serve Him; the God who is Almighty and does all according to His will. With God all things have a purpose, even trials in our lives.

So, Drew you're telling me that God has ordained all that will happen in this world. What about this free will you talk about?

Well, in God's Sovereignty it was His good pleasure to ordain free will. And though we may not fully understand how the two work together we see it clearly all throughout scripture just as clearly as we see that God is the One Who "sets up kings and deposes them."

Jer 18:6 "O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?" declares the LORD. "Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. (SOVEREIGNTY)

Jer 18:7 If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed,
8 and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned.
9 And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted,
10 and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it." (FREE-WILL)

God has ordained both, but in the ordaining He still has final authority and full control as He is the King of kings and Lord of lords. None can stay His hand.

Speaking to Job of the great beast Leviathan, our God puts His Sovereignty and Almightiness into perspective for Job. He says in Job 41:10 "No one is so fierce that he dares to arouse him (Leviathan). Who then is he that can stand before Me? 11) Who has given to Me that I should repay him? Whatever is under the whole heaven is Mine."

God's good pleasure and will are nothing to be afraid of. This teaching of foreknowledge and predestination is actually a very comforting teaching. Chuck Smith in his book, "The Gospel according to Grace" say's, "Of course I believe in predestination, since it's plainly taught in the Scriptures. The doctrine could be assumed, even if the word was never explicitly used. It's a thrilling truth that doesn't upset me at all. The fact that He chose me and began a good work in me proves that He'll continue to perform it. He wouldn't bring me this far and then dump me."

God's good pleasure and will for His people in Christ is for us to be adopted sons and daughters as He works in us and conforms us to the image of His Son. Phi 2:13 "for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose."

Eph 1:5 "he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will--
6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves."

And He does promise to work in us... Phi 1:6 "being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."

And if there was any doubt about God's good pleasure and will to be only for our good listen to Luk 12:32 "Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom."

How true that is and how wonderful to know that all that Christ has purchased for us has been given to us. We belong to God, and God's Kingdom belongs to us. But we don't belong to ourselves.

1Co 6:19 "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body."

The God of all creation has given us all things in Christ. Rev 1:5 "and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood,
6 and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father--to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen."

Praise God He chose us and that our future in Christ is secure. But have you ever wondered how He knew us beforehand? If you were the Creator and you were all-knowing then you would know who you were going to create and when you were going to give them life.

And if you were infinite in your knowledge and power you would be able to predetermine what you would want for that life. This may sound scary, in that God has established our steps, but we must never forget that we have been called by God to WALK in those steps by FAITH.

Somehow our free wills are given to us by God to love Him and obey Him so that we aren't some kind of marionette just moving as God moves the strings.

From all of eternity God chose you and me in Christ with the express purpose of being conformed to the likeness of His Son and as Paul states further in Eph 1:4 "For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight."

Paul conveys this same truth in a little different way to the Ephesians in Eph 1:11 "In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will,
12 in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory."

What does it mean to be conformed into the likeness of God's Son? There are actually three senses in which we were created to be conformed into the likeness of God's Son. We can only fully experience two of them.

1) The first one was in the Garden of Eden.... Gen 1:26 "Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness...
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them."

From the very beginning we were created to reflect the image of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Only Adam and Eve did that perfectly until they sinned. Since that time man, though created to reflect his God, can only be a tarnished glimmer of the man he was supposed to be in fellowship with his Creator.

This perfect sinless state is not something you and I can experience in this life. It happened once with our first representatives.

But this brings up the second sense of being conformed into the image of Jesus Christ. Since the fall in the Garden men could not reflect the spiritual nature they had been given because that spiritual nature was dead to the things of God, having been cut off from a spiritual relationship with the Spiritual Creator because of sin.

This doesn't mean that sinful, separated men can't reflect anything of their Creator. Intelligence, wisdom, the ability to love and carry on relationships with other people all reflect the attributes which belong to God and have been given to all men. However, those attributes which we possess from God are imperfect.

Of course this is why God also chose to predestinate His beloved Son to come into this world to bring us back into a relationship with Himself. We read in Acts 2:22-24 ..... Peter's first sermon which resulted in 3,000 people coming to Christ... "Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know-- this Man, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. And God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power."

When we place our faith in Christ as Lord and Savior that ability to reflect our Creator and Savior is restored to a great degree. Where there was only death, life exists. Where we only sought to please the flesh, the Spirit enables us to please God by faith.

The more we submit to the Spirit the more we are able to conform to the image of our Savior working in our lives. This is an inward working, not just some superficial conformity as Robertson says in his commentary on this portion of Romans. He goes on to say that this Greek phrase "expresses the gradual change in us till we acquire the likeness of Christ the Son of God so that we ourselves shall ultimately have the family likeness of sons of God."

We have been saved to not only bear the family name, but to allow people to see the family resemblance to our heavenly Father here and now so that others may see Christ in us, the hope of glory.

And one day we will bear that resemblance perfectly. That is our glorious destiny on the other side in His presence. And that is the third aspect of being conformed into the image of God's Son.

And that's why Paul says in verse 30 "And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified."

In glory is when the fullness of our adoption comes into play. In glory is when we will see Him face to face. 1Jo 3:2 "Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is."

1Co 15:49 "And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.
51 Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed--
52 in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed."

Our hope is to come into God's presence and enjoy His fellowship forever. But we must never forget that we have been called by God to be part of His family today. Today He desires that we reflect His Son's image and today He gives us His power by His Spirit to accomplish this.

That is His foreordained and predetermined will for our lives . But He calls us to walk in that will and not seek the flesh above the Spirit. The hope in this life is that as we seek Him and submit to Him on a daily basis He promises to bring us closer to Himself in this life with the hope that He will ultimately bring us home.

Conformity to Christ is a daily process known as sanctification. And with sanctification there are no short-cuts. Just as we first responded to the call of the Holy Spirit who gave us eyes to see our need for Jesus Christ's offer of redemption by faith, we must daily respond by faith to His call to be holy as we submit to the power of the Spirit.

God uses the circumstances of our lives to conform us into Christ's image. Such circumstances can either cause doubt and sorrow or we can grow in Christ through such events and use them as an opportunity to exercise our faith, to His glory.

We need the kind of faith that trusts that God does in fact work all things together for our good. And if our faith is weak in that area we need to come to God and seek Him and His power to enable us to rest in such promises. He will come through for us because it is His delight that we grow in Christ. But He also provides the means for such growth.

Dave Hunt makes the comment: "The fruit of faith is not necessarily the deliverance or blessing one prefers, but the igniting of such love for God that one's greatest joy becomes obedience to His will no matter what the consequence."

May we surrender and see Christ's life in us to His glory and our good. And may we always consider how we may go out into all the world and make disciples of Jesus Christ, so that they too may know Christ and have the hope of being part of the family of God.

Again, don't ever forget the promise from God when you're tempted to wonder if God is still at work in your life. Phi 1:6 "being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."

And so my prayer for all of us is the same prayer the writer of Hebrews had for his listeners. Heb 13:20 "May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep,
21 equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.