Latest / Reformed Thinking / From Weakness to Assurance: The Spirit’s Intercession and God’s Unbreakable Saving Purpose (Romans 8:26–31)

Transcript

From Weakness to Assurance: The Spirit’s Intercession and God’s Unbreakable Saving Purpose (Romans 8:26–31) · Reformed Thinking

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  Hello and welcome to reformed Thinking.
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  We are so glad you're joining us today.
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  Yeah, we really are. Our mission on this deep dive is
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  to well to take a specific stack of theological sources and
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  extract the core insights for you.
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  Right. The goal is to hand you a clear,
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  thorough understanding of the material.
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  I mean, we want to equip you to be well informed without
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  feeling, you know, totally overwhelmed by the massive flood
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  of opinions out there. They're just so many hot takes
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  that characterize modern religious discussions.
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  And it gets. It's exhausting.
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  It really does. So today we are focusing our
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  attention on a staggering, sweeping section of Scripture.
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  We are looking at Romans chapter 8, verses 26 through 31.
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  And we are examining this text strictly through a Protestant
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  reformed theological perspective.
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  Yes, adhering closely to the doctrines outlined in the
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  Westminster Confession of Faith. The sources we are working with
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  today deal with a massive, universally recognized tension.
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  Right on one side you have human frailty.
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  Yeah, the undeniable reality of our weakness, our physical
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  breakdown and our psychological exhaustion.
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  And then on the other side, you have the absolute, unshakable
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  certainty of God's sovereign decree.
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  OK, let's unpack this. Before we get into the specific
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  grammar of these verses, could you set the redemptive
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  historical stage for the listener?
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  Yeah, I'd love to. Just so we understand the
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  framework we are operating within.
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  Well, to grasp the immense weight of the Apostle Paul's
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  argument here, you have to realize that belief fevers
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  currently live in a very specific redemptive historical
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  dispensation. We usually call this the Church
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  Age, right? Absolutely.
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  It is a distinct defined period separating the initial earthly
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  ministry, crucifixion and resurrection of Christ from His
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  final glorious visible return. The return to judge the living
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  and the dead. Spot on.
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  And during this current age, Christians possess what the
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  apostle calls the first fruits of the Holy Spirit.
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  First, fruits. So in the ancient agrarian
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  context, that would be the initial visible ripening of the
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  crop, right? Yeah, precisely.
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  They were the tangible guarantee that the full, massive harvest
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  was absolutely guaranteed to follow.
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  So believers today have genuine fellowship with God.
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  They possess the verdict of justification.
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  Right. And they hold the internal seal,
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  guaranteeing their future glory. But, and I think this is the
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  critical tension, they still inhabit A fractured, groaning
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  creation. Oh, without a doubt, The fall of
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  humanity and Eden introduced widespread corruption, physical
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  decay, and universal suffering into the world.
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  And Christians are absolutely not exempt from that reality.
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  Not at all. I mean, they live in bodies that
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  get sick, their joints ache, their minds suffer from chemical
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  imbalances. They face heartbreaking
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  tragedies and deal with intense, crushing sorrow.
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  Right. And the overarching goal this
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  specific text in Romans is to offer indestructible assurance
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  to faint Saints. So Paul is essentially taking
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  the battered, weary believer by the hand.
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  Yeah, and he is moving them away from their subjective internal
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  groaning. And pointing them directly
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  outward. Yes, outward toward the
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  objective, unshakable decree of the Father.
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  So this is not a text offering shallow sentimental optimism.
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  No, it is not a greeting card platitude.
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  It is a theological anchor. Designed to stabilize the soul
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  of the listener when the X external world feels, well,
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  completely out of control. It demands that we look at our
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  own decay and then look up at the eternal mechanics of
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  salvation. That sets up the problem
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  beautifully, because the sources start with a very sobering,
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  blunt assessment of the believers current condition.
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  They really do. The text opens with the
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  statement that we are weak. Right.
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  It completely rejects the modern cultural trends that constantly
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  tell you to, you know, look within for strength.
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  Or to manifest your destiny. See this everywhere today.
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  Pop psychology, social media influencers, and even some very
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  visible church movements suggest that if you just visualize a
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  better reality. Or if you dig down far enough
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  into your own reserves of willpower, you can overcome any
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  obstacle. Yeah, the message is always
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  about self actualization, but this text refuses to flatter the
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  listener. It does.
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  It begins by stating that the Christian life in this current
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  age is a condition of absolute dependence.
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  Marked by severe frailty, it tells you without any trigger
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  coding that your own resources are completely insufficient for
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  the task at hand. And the specific nature of this
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  frailty requires careful definition.
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  Because we tend to shrink it down to mere physical tiredness,
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  right? Yeah, we do.
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  When the text speaks of weakness, it is not simply
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  referring to needing an app. Although bodily exhaustion is
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  certainly part of living in a fallen.
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  World for sure, but this weakness is a comprehensive
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  systemic inability to interpret suffering.
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  Combined with an inability to even know what to pray for as
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  you ought. Right Christians frequently find
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  themselves in situations where they have zero idea what God is
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  doing through a painful Providence.
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  Because they lack the omniscience required to see the
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  massive, intricate design behind their affliction.
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  And because they cannot see the blueprint, when they attempt to
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  pray, they are paralyzed by confusion.
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  This frailty stands in stark contrast to the absolute demands
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  of the law, doesn't it? Oh, incredibly so.
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  The law requires perfect, continuous Holy Communion with
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  God. It demands flawless obedience
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  and flawless communication from a pure heart.
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  And faced with that holy standard, the frail believer is
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  just silenced. I mean, they possess A
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  regenerated, sincere desire to commune with their creator.
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  But their ignorance, their limited perspective, and their
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  agonizing sorrow leave them entirely at a loss.
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  Unable to articulate their needs perfectly, they know they should
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  speak to God, but the words just turn to ash in their mouths.
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  Let's make this tangible for the listener.
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  Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, imagine sitting in a
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  stark, sterile hospital waiting room at 2:00 in the morning.
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  Oh wow, yeah. The fluorescent lights are
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  buzzing overhead. The coffee in your paper cup
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  went cold hours ago. And someone you love more than
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  your own life is behind double doors in surgery, right?
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  The sheer weight of the grief and the panic is completely
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  paralyzing. It is entirely overwhelming.
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  You are a Christian, you know you should pray.
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  You know you should be crying out to Evan.
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  But your mind is entirely blank. You.
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  Cannot form a single coherent sentence.
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  You have no idea what to ask. For should you pray for a
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  miraculous healing? Should you pray for the doctors
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  to have steady hands? Or should you pray for the grace
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  to handle an impending loss? The silence in your own head is
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  agonizing. And you feel like an absolute
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  failure as a believer because you cannot find the words to
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  speak to your Creator in the darkest hour of your life.
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  So what does this all mean for the listener who feels like a
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  failure because they don't have the right words when tragedy
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  strikes? Well, think about someone who
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  just had their entire career dismantled, or someone watching
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  their marriage dissolved despite years of counseling.
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  I desperately want to pray, but it feels like being asked to
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  give a flawless, highly technical speech in a foreign
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  language you haven't mastered yet.
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  That is a great analogy. Imagine standing at a podium in
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  front of a massive crowd of native speakers.
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  You have notes in front of you, but your vision is blurring.
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  Your throat is completely dry. And the grammar rules you
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  studied have just vanished from your memory.
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  Right. You know the audience is
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  waiting. You know the language has
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  correct syntax, but when you open your mouth, you only
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  produce fragmented, broken, embarrassing syllables.
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  Well, you feel like you are failing the assignment of
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  prayer. You feel like God must be
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  looking down in disappointment at your inability to string
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  together a faithful, coherent request.
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  But that scenario of standing at the podium perfectly illustrates
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  why realizing our complete inability is actually a
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  staggering, gracious gift. How so?
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  Well, in reformed theology we refer to the third use of the
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  law. Right.
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  The law reveals the holy character of God and exposes our
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  complete systemic inability to meet His standard.
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  And this exposure is designed to crush any lingering sense of
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  self determinism. So when you sit in that hospital
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  waiting room or stand at that metaphorical podium and realize
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  you cannot put together a coherent prayer.
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  That realization shatters the illusion that you can manage
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  your own spiritual performance. It strips away your pride.
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  Yes, it prepares you to rely entirely on divine grace rather
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  than your own articulation. You stop trying to manufacture a
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  flawless performance in that foreign language and you look
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  outside yourself for an advocate.
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  You realize you need an intercessor.
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  The text uses our very inability to pray as the starting point to
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  show that our security rests entirely in God's provision.
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  Not in our own eloquence or our own theological vocabulary.
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  If our salvation depended on our ability to pray perfectly during
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  a crisis, we would all be condemned.
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  Absolutely. But God uses the crushing weight
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  of that realization to force us to look to the provision He has
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  already made. Which brings us directly to the
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  provision of the divine helper. Yeah, the sources highlight a
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  very specific, incredibly vivid Greek verb from the text
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  regarding the Holy Spirit. The word is Sunanti lambanatai.
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  It translates to how the Spirit helps us in our weakness.
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  I want to break this down because the etymology here is
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  brilliant. It is a compound word, yeah.
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  Sun means together with, anti means opposite or against, and
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  lambano means to take hold of. So this is not someone standing
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  on the sidelines holding a clipboard and cheering for you
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  while you do the heavy lifting. Not at all.
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  This term describes a person coming alongside you, looking at
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  a crushing, unbearable burden, moving to the opposite side of
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  it and taking hold of the massive weight.
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  Imagine you were trying to move a massive solid oak dining table
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  across A room. Oh man, your knees are buckling,
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  your grip is slipping and you are about to be pinned
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  underneath it. And then the spirit steps into
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  the room, walks to the opposite end of the table, grabs hold of
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  the wood, and bears the weight with you.
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  He takes the brunt of the mass so you are not crushed.
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  What's fascinating here is the precise manner in which the
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  Spirit helps, The text says. He intercedes for us with
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  groanings too deep for words. And we must carefully clarify
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  the Reformed cessationist perspective provided in the
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  sources regarding this phrase. We definitely do.
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  These groanings are not ecstatic, audible Pentecostal
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  tongues. They are not novel, continuous
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  revelations added to the Canon of Scripture.
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  Right. They represent the intense,
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  internal, wordless translation of our needs by the Spirit.
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  So when you are reduced to nothing but sighs, tears and
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  physical groans of anguish, the Holy Spirit takes those
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  fragmented words, expressions, and.
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  He translates them into the perfect holy vocabulary of
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  heaven. He advocates for you internally.
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  He does not wave a wand and remove the trial immediately.
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  But He enters intimately into the struggle of your infirmity
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  and provides the exact articulation that you lack.
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  He takes your broken syllables from that podium and turns them
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  into a flawless legal and familial petition before the
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  throne of God. The Holy Spirit is functioning
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  as the perfect translator of human grief.
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  That internal advocacy introduces is the flawless
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  harmony of the Trinity. It really does.
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  The text explains that the Father searches the hearts of
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  believers. And he knows the mind of the
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  Spirit. It portrays a divine, unbroken
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  transaction happening entirely independent of our own
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  eloquence. We bring our broken size.
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  The Spirit translates those size into perfect petitions, and the
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  Father receives them. It is a closed loop of divine
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  grace that completely bypasses our cognitive failures.
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  Because there is 0 miscommunication in heaven, the
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  Father who searches the human heart and sees every hidden fear
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  and unexpressed sorrow knows precisely what the Spirit is
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  articulating. Every wordless sigh from the
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  believer, once translated by the Spirit, is perfectly aligned
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  with God's sovereign will. The text explicitly states that
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  the Spirit intercedes for the Saints according to the will of
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  God. And this objective reality
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  completely shuts down modern mysticism.
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  Oh, absolutely. Mysticism often teaches that you
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  must achieve a certain heightened emotional state or
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  completely empty your mind through meditation to truly
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  connect with the divine. It makes the connection
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  dependent on your psychological state.
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  But this text roots your experience firmly in the
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  objective will of God. Even when your emotions are
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  entirely chaotic, your adrenaline is spiking, and your
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  mind is clouded by blinding grief.
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  The Spirit's intercession is flawless, orderly, and perfectly
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  matched to the Father's eternal plan.
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  Your security does not depend on your ability to maintain
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  emotional equilibrium. It depends on the perfect
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  uninterrupted communication between the 1st and 3rd persons
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  of the Trinity. The Father and the Spirit are in
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  absolute agreement about what you need in that very moment.
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  Yeah, so the Spirit is perfectly translating our groanings and
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  there is 0 miscommunication in heaven.
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  What is the actual result on the ground?
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  That is the big question. How does that divine transaction
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  change the physical suffering we are experiencing today?
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  And that question brings us to the massive, heavily quoted
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  promise of Romans chapter 8, verse verse 28.
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  The promise that all things work together for good.
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  You see this verse everywhere. It gets painted on rustic wooden
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  signs, printed on coffee mugs and cross stitched onto pillows.
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  But our sources point out how easily and how dangerously this
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  verse is misunderstood and abused when it is stripped of
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  its theological context. It is frequently used as a
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  bandage to cover up gaping wounds.
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  A rigorous theological correction based on the sources
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  is absolutely necessary here. We must explicitly and firmly
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  reject the prosperity gospel. Because the prosperity gospel
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  manipulates this text to promise material wealth, physical ease,
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  and visible earthly success. It tells you that if you just
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  have enough faith, the good God will bring you is a bigger
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  house, a perfect medical report, a massive bank account, and
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  allies completely free from friction.
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  It treats God like a cosmic vending machine.
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  But the text strictly defines what the good actually is in the
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  very next verse. Right.
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  The good is conformity to the image of Jesus Christ.
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  God's grand design is to take fallen rebellious sinners and
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  shape them into the moral, spiritual and functional
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  likeness of His Son. Therefore, the good promised in
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  verse 28 is not circumstantial ease, it is spiritual and
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  eternal blessing. It is the guarantee that your
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  character will eventually mirror the character of the savior.
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  But how does a believer reconcile intense, soul crushing
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  grief with this specific promise?
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  It is so difficult. If someone loses a child in a
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  tragic accident or watches a spouse succumb to a slow,
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  agonizing terminal illness, calling that specific event good
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  feels intensely offensive on a human level.
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  Fuels callous. I've heard people use the
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  analogy of a surgeon's scalpel to explain this.
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  You know the idea that the cut causes pain, but the physician's
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  design is complete healing. That is a helpful way to look
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  at. It but I want to use a different
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  analogy that captures the intensity of the process.
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  Think of a master meddler just finding silver.
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  OK, I am tracking with you. The silver is placed into a
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  Crucible and shoved into a blistering, blinding fire.
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  The heat is intolerable. The impurities are burned away
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  violently. Right.
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  The silver feels nothing but the agonizing heat of the furnace
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  and it seems like it will be completely consumed.
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  But the meddler just never leaves the fire unattended.
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  He watches the Crucible intensely.
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  He controls the bellows, and he only removes the silver from the
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  flames when he can look down into the molten metal and see
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  his own reflection staring back at him.
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  Wow. So how does the Westminster
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  Confession, specifically Chapter 5 on Providence, frame this
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  difficult reality of God orchestrating the fire?
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  Well, the Westminster Confessions teaching on
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  Providence provides immense bedrock stability here.
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  It explains that God, the Great Creator of all things, does
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  uphold, direct, dispose and govern all creatures, actions
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  and things, from the greatest even to the least.
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  He is not a distant clockmaker who wound up the universe and
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  walked away. This means that even bitter
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  providence's intense persecution, devastating
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  financial loss, agonizing relational betrayal, and
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  physical illness are actively orchestrated by divine
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  Providence. God does.
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  Not simply manage events after they happen.
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  He orders them. He controls the bellows of that
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  refining fire. And the sources clarify A
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  crucial distinction here. The text never calls a terminal
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  illness, A tragic loss, or a sinful action intrinsically
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  good. Evils remain real evils.
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  Sin remains sin. Enemies are real enemies.
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  But they operate entirely under the sovereign governing hand of
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  God. He uses those bitter, painful
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  circumstances to accomplish the sanctification of his people.
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  He uses the fire to burn away the dross of our idolatry, to
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  loosen our tight grip on this passing world.
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  To expose remaining sin in our hearts and to fix our hope
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  entirely on the future glory. The pain is agonizingly real,
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  but it is never purposeless. It is wielded by a father
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  determined to make his children resemble his son.
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  And he will not stop the refining process until that
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  image is perfected. So if God is controlling the
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  bellows, when did he actually decide to put us in the fire?
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  When was this massive plan formulated?
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  Answering that question signals a massive shift in the text.
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  We move from the earthly experience of groaning and
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  suffering in verse 28, and the apostle Paul transports the
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  listener all the way back into eternity past.
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  We are introduced to the concept of the Ordo salutis, or the
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  Golden chain of sovereign grace, found in verses 29 and 30.
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  We are now looking at the eternal blueprint drawn up
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  before time even began. And to understand the absolute
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  certainty of God's Providence, we have to examine the specific
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  links in this unbreakable chain, beginning with foreknowledge.
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  The Greek word used here is proegno, yes.
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  Yes, and the sources are intensely focused on firmly
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  refuting the Armenian view of this specific word.
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  The Armenian perspective suggests that God simply looked
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  down the corridors of time, using his omniscience to see who
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  would eventually choose him of their own free will.
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  Once he foresaw that future decision, he then reacted to it
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  by electing them. That view is disastrous because
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  it turns God into a passive observer who depends entirely on
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  human initiative. It makes the creator wait on
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  the. But drawing on the text and
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  referencing Old Testament passages like Amos chapter 3
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  verse 2 where God says to Israel, you only have I known of
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  all the families of the earth. Foreknowledge is defined
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  strictly as fore loving. In the biblical idiom, for God,
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  to know someone is not simply to have cognitive data about them.
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  It is for him to enter into an intimate, distinguishing
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  covenantal relationship with them.
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  Therefore, foreknowledge is a prior sovereign choice to love
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  His people for the foundation of the world.
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  He did not foresee our faith and reward it.
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  He for loved us when we were dead in sin.
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  And that prior uncaused love is the actual root cause of our
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  eventual faith. Here's where it gets really
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  interesting. The text points out the specific
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  overarching goal this predestination.
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  It says that the aim of predestining us is making Christ
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  the first born among many brothers.
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  This completely shifts the focal point of the entire universe.
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  We tend to think of salvation as being all about us.
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  Could you elaborate on why this specific phrase makes salvation
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  intensely Christ centered rather than human centered?
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  Why is our rescue actually about the sun?
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  That is a vital paradigm shift. Often we view salvation entirely
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  through the lens of human benefit.
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  We think salvation exists primarily to rescue us from hell
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  and grant us eternal comfort. Well, it certainly accomplishes
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  those incredible benefits for us.
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  God's grand design is much larger and much more glorious.
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  His primary purpose and predestination is to create a
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  massive, redeemed Holy Family where Jesus Christ is supreme.
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  The title first born in ancient cultures, indicates rank,
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  preeminence, and the highest honor.
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  So the believer's salvation brings eternal, visible glory to
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  the Son. The father is actively honoring
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  the son by surrounding him with a multitude of redeemed brothers
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  and sisters who reflect his moral.
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  Beauty, you are a gift from the Father to the Son.
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  Therefore, your personal salvation is caught up in a
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  cosmic purpose that centers entirely on magnifying Jesus
• 20:17
  Christ. When you realize that your
• 20:19
  salvation exists to glorify the Son, it provides an unshakable
• 20:22
  bedrock foundation for your assurance.
• 20:25
  The father will not fail to honor his son, which means he
• 20:27
  will not fail to preserve and protect those he is predestined
• 20:31
  to make up that redeemed family. If you could be lost, the son
• 20:34
  will be robbed of his inheritance.
• 20:36
  Exactly. I mean spot on.
• 20:37
  That is the core of it. Let's walk the listener through
• 20:40
  the next links in this golden chain, moving from the silent
• 20:43
  councils of eternity pass directly into the noise and
• 20:46
  chaos of the timeline of human history.
• 20:48
  The text says those he predestined he also called.
• 20:53
  We need to highlight the specific theological concept of
• 20:56
  the effectual call. This is completely different
• 20:59
  from a general outward invitation.
• 21:01
  It is not like a billboard on the side of the highway that
• 21:03
  anyone can drive past, read and choose to ignore based on their
• 21:08
  mood. The effectual call is tied
• 21:10
  directly and necessarily to the confessional doctrine of total
• 21:13
  depravity. Right, Total depravity does not
• 21:16
  mean every human is as evil as they could possibly be.
• 21:19
  But it means that every single part of human nature, the mind,
• 21:23
  the will, the emotions, is corrupted by the fall.
• 21:26
  This leaves the natural man spiritually dead and completely
• 21:30
  unable to respond to the gospel on his own initiative.
• 21:32
  A corpse cannot hear a dinner bell.
• 21:34
  Such a stark picture, but it's true.
• 21:37
  If God only issued a general outward invitation, no one would
• 21:40
  ever answer. Because the spiritually dead
• 21:42
  soul hates the light and cannot choose it.
• 21:44
  The effectual call is the internal, irresistible
• 21:48
  resurrecting work of the Holy Spirit.
• 21:50
  He quickens the dead soul. He reaches in and removes the
• 21:53
  heart of stone. He implants a heart of flesh,
• 21:55
  and he grants the actual gift of faith.
• 21:57
  The dead soul does not logically evaluate the options and choose
• 22:01
  to come alive. God commands life.
• 22:04
  It is precisely what happened when Jesus stood outside the
• 22:07
  sealed tomb of Lazarus. Lazarus was dead, bound in grave
• 22:11
  clothes and decaying. Jesus did not ask for his
• 22:14
  permission. He issued an effectual call.
• 22:17
  Lazarus come out. The call itself carried the life
• 22:20
  giving force required to obey it and right.
• 22:22
  After that effectual call wakes the dead soul, the very next
• 22:25
  link is justification. Those whom he called, he also
• 22:28
  justified. The dead man is not only given
• 22:31
  life, he is given a completely new legal standing.
• 22:34
  Let's dig into the mechanics of this verdict.
• 22:36
  Justification through solified faith alone is a definitive
• 22:40
  legal declaration. Imagine a terrifying courtroom
• 22:42
  scene. You are standing before the
• 22:44
  perfectly holy judge of the universe, and the prosecution
• 22:47
  has an airtight case against you.
• 22:49
  Your condemnation is certain, but suddenly the judge slams the
• 22:53
  gavel and declares you, the guilty Sinner, completely
• 22:57
  righteous. He does this not because you
• 22:59
  have actually become practically perfect or because you promise
• 23:02
  to do better next time. But because the perfect,
• 23:05
  flawless righteousness of Jesus Christ is imputed or credited
• 23:09
  directly to your account. Your sins were credited to
• 23:12
  Christ on the cross, and His perfect record of obedience is
• 23:16
  credited to you. And we must explicitly contrast
• 23:19
  this legal declaration with the Roman Catholic doctrine of
• 23:22
  infused righteousness, which was formalized at the Council of
• 23:25
  Trent. The Catholic view teaches that
• 23:27
  grace is infused or poured into the believer, making them
• 23:30
  inherently internally righteous over time.
• 23:33
  In that system, your justification depends on your
• 23:36
  ongoing cooperation with that infused grace.
• 23:38
  If you sing gravely, you lose your justified status and must
• 23:41
  regain it through the sacraments.
• 23:43
  It places the believer on a terrifying treadmill of
• 23:45
  spiritual performance. But the Reformed Protestant view
• 23:49
  insist the justification is an instantaneous, irrevocable legal
• 23:52
  verdict based entirely on an alien righteousness.
• 23:56
  The righteousness of Christ completely outside of us.
• 23:58
  This is the great indicative of the Gospel.
• 24:01
  It declares a historical fact what has already been
• 24:04
  accomplished on your behalf. It establishes absolute,
• 24:07
  permanent peace with God the Judge.
• 24:09
  And that legal peace leads us to a striking beautiful grammatical
• 24:14
  detail regarding the final link in the chain glorification.
• 24:18
  The sources point out that the Greek word used for glorified
• 24:21
  adoxysen is written in the aorist tense.
• 24:25
  For the listener who hasn't studied Greek, this tense choice
• 24:28
  by the apostle Paul is absolutely staggering when you
• 24:31
  think about the timeline of your life.
• 24:32
  If we connect this to the bigger picture of reformed eschatology,
• 24:36
  we see the already not yet tension clearly and beautifully
• 24:39
  displayed. The Aorus tense generally
• 24:41
  indicates a completed definite action.
• 24:44
  Even though your final glorification, the future
• 24:46
  physical resurrection of your body from the grave, and your
• 24:48
  absolute perfection and holiness is a future event from your
• 24:52
  limited perspective on the timeline of human history.
• 24:55
  Apostle Paul writes about it in the past tense.
• 24:57
  In the mind of God, because His eternal decree is completely
• 25:01
  sovereign and unchangeable, your future glorification is already
• 25:04
  an accomplished historical fact. The shame is absolutely
• 25:08
  unbroken. Not a single person is lost in
• 25:11
  the wilderness between foreknowledge and glorification.
• 25:14
  Those whom he foreknew, he glorified.
• 25:17
  The identical exact group of people makes it all the way
• 25:20
  through the process. This grammatical reality
• 25:22
  completely destroys any system of legalism or any lingering,
• 25:27
  agonizing fear that you might lose your salvation.
• 25:30
  If your glorification is already a completed action in the divine
• 25:33
  decree, you cannot fall out of the chain.
• 25:36
  God does not start a work in eternity past only to lose you
• 25:40
  to a moment of weakness in the present.
• 25:42
  This incredible towering theological build up brings the
• 25:45
  listener to the rhetorical climax of the entire chapter in
• 25:48
  verse 31. If God is for us, who can be
• 25:51
  against us? This is clearly not a student
• 25:53
  politely asking a professor For more information.
• 25:56
  This is a shout of defiant joy. The.
• 25:58
  Apostle has stacked up the massive weight of the evidence.
• 26:01
  The Spirit's perfect intercession.
• 26:03
  The sovereign orchestration of every bitter Providence.
• 26:06
  The unbroken chain stretching from eternity past to eternity
• 26:09
  future. And he looks out at a hostile,
• 26:12
  decaying world and issues a challenge.
• 26:15
  To fully grasp the magnitude of this defiant joy, we must define
• 26:19
  what God is for us actually entails.
• 26:22
  It means that the Almighty, the Creator of the cosmos, the One
• 26:25
  who spoke galaxies into existence, has entered into a
• 26:28
  binding, irrevocable covenantal relationship with His Elect.
• 26:32
  And that covenant is sealed by the shed blood of Jesus Christ.
• 26:35
  The Law gospel distinction is vital to interpreting this verse
• 26:38
  properly. The law looks at our sin, our
• 26:40
  daily rebellion, and our continued frustrating frailty,
• 26:44
  and it declares that we deserve to have God actively against us.
• 26:47
  The law demands pure, unyielding justice.
• 26:50
  But the gospel announces that through our union with Christ,
• 26:53
  God has already exhausted his holy wrath on the cross.
• 26:55
  The Ledger is clear, therefore before he is now eternally
• 26:59
  immutably for us. His posture toward you is not
• 27:01
  one of hesitation, frustration, or reluctance.
• 27:04
  It is a posture of invincible fatherly favor.
• 27:07
  The judge has stepped down from the bench, taking off his robes
• 27:10
  and adopted the defendant. Wait, I have to stop you there.
• 27:13
  I can hear a listener pushing back right now, raising a very
• 27:16
  natural, very human objection. OK, let's hear it if.
• 27:19
  God already views my glorification in the past tense,
• 27:23
  and my justification is a completed legal declaration that
• 27:26
  cannot be revoked. Human nature says great, I'm
• 27:30
  entirely safe. The pressure is off.
• 27:32
  I can live however I want. Yeah, that's a common response.
• 27:35
  Doesn't this doctrine immediately breed spiritual
• 27:38
  laziness? If the future is completely
• 27:40
  locked in, why bother fighting sin?
• 27:42
  Why not just indulge the flesh? That is the classic historical
• 27:45
  accusation of antinomianism, a word which literally means being
• 27:50
  against the law. The reformed sources carefully
• 27:53
  guard against this deadly error. The accusation completely
• 27:56
  misunderstands the nature of regeneration.
• 27:58
  The indicative of our secure justification, the fact that we
• 28:02
  are already declared righteous, does not create laziness or
• 28:05
  rebellion. Rather, it is the very thing
• 28:07
  that fuels the imperative of grateful obedience.
• 28:10
  When you truly, thoroughly grasp that the Almighty God is for you
• 28:14
  and that He spared not His own Son to secure your salvation, it
• 28:18
  generates entirely new holy affections within you.
• 28:22
  It produces an intense gratitude that makes you hate the sin that
• 28:26
  required Christ to suffer in the first place.
• 28:28
  God being for us is not a license to sin.
• 28:31
  It is the immense engine that drives our pursuit of.
• 28:34
  Holiness, you do not obey the law in order to keep your spot
• 28:37
  in the golden chain. You obey because being placed in
• 28:40
  the golden chain has radically altered your nature, giving you
• 28:43
  a sincere desire to please the Father who secured your destiny.
• 28:47
  The dead heart of stone that loves sin has been replaced by a
• 28:50
  living heart of flesh that loves God.
• 28:52
  I want to bring these lofty theological concepts down from
• 28:55
  the clouds and apply them to the ground.
• 28:57
  That's a great idea. How do we apply this massive
• 29:00
  text to the weary, battered people listening right now?
• 29:03
  What does this say to families dealing with constant draining
• 29:06
  conflict, to singles feeling intense, aching isolation, or to
• 29:10
  church office bearers who are completely exhausted by the
• 29:13
  relentless demands of ministry? The application must go directly
• 29:17
  to the bedrock foundation of their assurance.
• 29:20
  The Westminster Confession in Chapter 18 on the assurance of
• 29:23
  grace and salvation teaches that true peace is not found in your
• 29:27
  fluctuating feelings. Families, singles and office
• 29:30
  bearers constantly experience massive emotional highs and
• 29:34
  agonizing lows. You will have days where you
• 29:37
  feel incredibly close to God and days where you feel entirely
• 29:40
  abandoned. If your assurance is tied to
• 29:43
  your emotional state, you will be tossed around violently by
• 29:46
  every difficult circumstance. True lasting assurance is rooted
• 29:49
  in the objective, unchangeable decree of God.
• 29:52
  When you are exhausted, you must stop looking inward at your own
• 29:56
  weak performance and look outward to the objective truth
• 29:59
  of the Golden chain. However, as Reformed
• 30:01
  theologians, we must also provide a stern, urgent warning
• 30:05
  to the unbeliever listening. The massive promises in this
• 30:08
  text that all things work for good and that God is immutably
• 30:11
  for us, are strictly limited to those who are in Christ.
• 30:15
  Outside of Christ, there is absolutely no promise that your
• 30:18
  suffering will produce a glorious end.
• 30:20
  Outside of Christ, God is a consuming fire.
• 30:22
  It is a strict, urgent call to repentance.
• 30:26
  The unbeliever must flee from their self righteousness, run to
• 30:29
  the unconquerable Savior, place their faith entirely in Him, and
• 30:34
  testify to that inward reality through believers baptism,
• 30:37
  joining the visible body of the church.
• 30:39
  Let's talk about the life of that visible church.
• 30:42
  How does a physical act performed in a modest church
• 30:45
  building on a random Sunday morning connect a frail human
• 30:49
  being to this massive eternal decree established before time
• 30:52
  began? That vital connection is made
• 30:55
  through the means of grace, specifically the sacrament of
• 30:57
  the Lord's Supper. Which the Reformed tradition
• 30:59
  calls the visible word. We do not simply hear the gospel
• 31:03
  preach to our ears. God condescends to our weakness
• 31:06
  by letting us see it, touch it, and taste it.
• 31:07
  The bread and the cup are tangible physical seals of the
• 31:10
  Covenant of Grace. When a weary, doubting believer
• 31:13
  comes to the table and receives the torn bread and the bitter
• 31:16
  wine, those physical elements confirm the preached word.
• 31:20
  They offer physical, sensory proof that God did not spare his
• 31:23
  own Son, but gave him up for us all.
• 31:25
  When you hold the bread, you are holding a physical guarantee.
• 31:29
  If God went to the extreme unimaginable length of
• 31:33
  sacrificing Christ on the cross to secure your justification,
• 31:36
  the physical elements guarantee that He will certainly finish
• 31:40
  the rest of the golden chain. The Lord's Supper brings the
• 31:43
  massive, invisible reality of eternity past right into the
• 31:49
  present physical moment. Strengthening the faint St. for
• 31:52
  the grueling week ahead, it bridges the gap between the
• 31:55
  Eternal Decree and your present frailty.
• 31:58
  So what does this all mean? Let's synthesize everything
• 32:01
  we've covered today. Your entire assurance rests
• 32:03
  completely and exclusively on the Triune God.
• 32:06
  It rests on the decreeing Father, who planned your
• 32:08
  salvation before the stars were. Formed the interceding spirit
• 32:12
  who Florida State translates your broken size in the hospital
• 32:14
  waiting room. And the unconquerable Son, whose
• 32:17
  perfect righteousness secures your permanent legal standing in
• 32:20
  the courtroom of heaven. It does not rest on your
• 32:22
  eloquence, your willpower or your ability to manage your
• 32:25
  chaotic circumstances. Think about that aorist tense we
• 32:28
  discussed. The fact that God speaks of your
• 32:31
  glorification in the past tense as an accomplished historical
• 32:34
  fact. If you're already seated at the
• 32:36
  heavenly banquet in the mind of God, how does that rewrite your
• 32:40
  personal history right now? It means the worst tragedies you
• 32:44
  face on earth, the deepest losses and the most agonizing
• 32:47
  pain are actually happening to a person who has already won the
• 32:50
  victory. You aren't fighting for your
• 32:52
  life, you're experiencing the timeline of a life that is
• 32:55
  already eternally safe. You are walking through a
• 32:58
  battlefield wearing armor that has already deflected the fatal
• 33:01
  blow. How does that change the way you
• 33:04
  face tomorrow's anxieties? It changes everything.
• 33:07
  Thank you for joining us for this deep dive on Reformed
• 33:09
  thinking. Keep questioning, keep studying,
• 33:12
  and rest securely in the objective, unshakable truth of
• 33:15
  God's sovereign grace.