“Heidelberg Catechism Q&A 1, What is your only comfort in life and in death? That I am not my own but belong body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful savior Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins with his precious blood; he has set me free from the tyranny of the devil. He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation...”
‘A farmer and his son had a beloved stallion who helped the family earn a living. One day, the horse ran away and their neighbors exclaimed, “Your horse ran away, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.” A few days later, the horse returned home, leading a few wild mares back to the farm as well. The neighbors shouted out, “Your horse has returned, and brought several horses home with him. What great luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.” Later that week, the farmer’s son was trying to break one of the mares and she threw him to the ground, breaking his leg. The villagers cried, “Your son broke his leg, what terrible luck!” The farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.” A few weeks later, soldiers from the national army marched through town, recruiting all the able-bodied boys for the army. They did not take the farmer’s son, still recovering from his injury. Friends shouted, “Your boy is spared, what tremendous luck!” To which the farmer replied, “Maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.”’
That Chinese parable has some wisdom to it. That farmer, unlike those townspeople, recognized that he could not know where events might lead. He didn’t know what would happen as a result of that horse running away. He didn’t know what would happen as a result of that horse returning with three others. That farmer might have something to teach you about responding to circumstances.
But Jesus undoubtedly has something to teach that farmer about how to respond to circumstances. Jesus knows what that farmer doesn’t. That farmer can only say, “maybe so, maybe not. We’ll see.” He can only submit to circumstances. Jesus doesn’t submit to circumstances. He uses circumstances. He can use any circumstance for good—a lost horse, three new horses, a broken leg. In fact, he will use all things for your good if you belong to him.
If you belong to Jesus, all things must work together for your good and your salvation. That is the claim of this sermon: if you belong to Jesus, all things must work together for your good and your salvation.
We will study this in two points. First: all things for good. Second: all things for salvation. First, we will see how all things must work together for good. Second, we will zoom in on a specific good, namely salvation.
First: all things for good. Neither that farmer nor his neighbors had the confidence which belongs to you if you are a follower of Christ. They lived in a world of blind circumstances. They lived in a world of luck and chance. To the men and women of the world that is the way that life seems to go. The Christian knows better, but he only knows better because God has pulled back the curtain and showed him that life unfolds by providence. Providence, as the Catechism puts it, is “the almighty and ever-present power of God by which He upholds, as with His hand, heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty—all things, in fact, come to us not by chance but by His fatherly hand.”
Now how do you know that God’s hand is fatherly? How do you know that His providence is good for you? How do you know that He has your best interests at heart?
Nature wouldn’t tell you that. If you look at the ruby throated hummingbird, you can see that the Creator appreciates beauty. If you look at a newborn baby, you can see that the Creator must be meticulous. But what are you to take away from the fact that sometimes the female praying mantis kills and eats her mate? What are you to do with the fact that fish in aquariums regularly eat their young as food? You can’t draw much moral interpretation from nature. You can’t recognize that God’s hand is fatherly and that His providence is kind by nature and reason alone. You can’t tell that all things must work to the good of those who love God, otherwise that farmer would have known it.
You can only know that God works things to your good because He tells you. He tells you in the Scriptures. The Scriptures are a record of thousands of years of God’s interactions with humanity. He tells you about Himself in His Son. If you want to know what God is like, watch Jesus live his life. Watch him work good for God’s people. Both of these self-disclosures, these words—the word of God and the word made flesh—tell you that God is good and that He has the best interests of His people at heart.
Paul didn’t stumble unto a new truth when he told the Christians in Rome that, “in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”
Paul saw how God worked all things for good in God’s word. He saw that God worked all things for the good of Adam and Eve. Even after they sinned, He provided them animal skins to hide their shame. He removed them from the Garden lest they eat from the tree of life and live forever in sin.
He worked all things for the good of Joseph. Circumstances that seemed against him—being sold by his family into slavery, being unfairly imprisoned, and forgotten—these turned out for the good. As he told his brothers, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”
He worked all things for the good of Rahab. The impending invasion of Israel was very bad news for Jericho, but God used it for Rahab’s good. She left behind her life of prostitution and married into a respectable Israelite family.
He worked all things for the good of Ruth. The death of her husband and father-in-law was not good. Moving to a foreign country was difficult. Her mother-in-law Naomi interpreted all of this as God working all things for her sorrow, but the story of Ruth tells us that is not the case.
God worked all things for the good of Jesus. It is true that he suffered indignity and death, but as a result God highly exalted him and gave him a name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Now each of those biographies has a good deal of sorrow in it. Being sold into slavery wasn’t a good thing for Joseph, but God used it for good. Losing a husband at a young age wasn’t a good thing for Ruth, but God used it for good. Dying a criminal’s death isn’t a good thing, but God used it for good. Don’t fall into the mistake of thinking that simply because God uses all things for good means that all things are good.
Cancer is not good, but God can use it for good. Mental health problems are not good, but God can use them for good. Losing your job is not good, but God can use that for good.
God will work all things for our good, but we don’t always know how. I chose examples from Scripture because we have Scripture’s commentary on these people’s lives. We know the good that God was doing because God has told us. God told us what He was doing in David’s life. God told us what He was doing in Ruth’s life. God told us what He was doing in Jesus’ life. We know how these bad things turned out for the good.
Now we don’t know the specifics of how God does that in every circumstance. We just know the ones that He explained in His word. Be thankful for these explanations. Be like Paul who wrote, “Everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.”
Be thankful for the explanations that we do have but be aware that there are many explanations that we don’t have. Would you ever have deduced that the cruel death of an innocent man would be the best thing that ever happened to you? Of course not. You need the cross explained. You need God to explain how He worked that for good. Don’t be surprised that there are circumstances in your life that you can’t imagine God using for good.
If you have questions about such matters, remember that you are still in the midst of your own story. You are like Joseph in the pit, not Joseph in the palace. While he was in the pit, Joseph didn’t know how God would use that time, but that wasn’t for Joseph to know. He wasn’t the one responsible to work it for good. Remember that: you are not the one responsible for working all things to your good. You are not God. You are responsible to trust Him and to obey Him in your circumstance. He is responsible to work it to your good. That’s what the Bible taught Paul. It taught him that, “in all things God works for the good of those who love Him.” That’s what the life of Christ taught Paul. It taught him that, “in all things God works for the good of those who love Him.”
But what about the cases in which a lover of God reaps no good? What about Josiah? He was a faithful king and he was shot to death by enemy arrows. How did God use those arrows for Josiah’s good? Or what about John Paton’s first wife Mary? John and Mary were missionaries in the South Pacific. Mary died of illness before the conversions. John had to sleep on her grave because the people they were evangelizing were cannibals who would dig up the freshly buried. How did God use that illness and death for Mary’s good?
God must be working towards something more than this life. For God to use all things, including those arrows, for Josiah’s good, He must be working towards something more than this life. For God to use all things, including that illness, for Mary Paton’s good, He must be working towards something more than this life.
You see that in the men and women of Hebrews 11. “These people were still living by faith when they died”, the author writes,”They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth.”
If this life is all that there is then Romans 8:28 is not always true, “we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him.” It was not true for Abraham who saw the promised land but only owned enough of it to bury his wife. If this life is all there is then Romans 8:28 was not true for Josiah or Mary Paton.
If you expect to see how Romans 8:28 is true for all things in your life in this life, you will be disappointed. If you believe that, “in all things God works for the good of those who love Him,” you must believe in the new creation. You must believe that then God will wipe away every tear because as Marilynne Robinson put it, “that is exactly what will be required.”
The good that God has planned for you won’t be complete until all things are made new. That’s the focus of our second point: all things for salvation.
The Catechism alters Romans 8:28. Romans 8:28 reads, “in all things God works for the good.” The catechism reads, “all things must work together for my salvation.” All things must work together for my good-- all things must work together for my salvation.
The Catechism made this change for a number of reasons. The Catechism was written after the Roman Catholic Church anathematized the Protestants. The Catholic Church declared the Protestants unsaved. If the church in which you grew up told you that Christ had rejected you that would disturb you. The Catechism was written, in part, to show people that salvation comes not from the church but from Christ. It was written to tell people that if you belonged to Jesus, then all things must work together for your salvation. Salvation isn’t found by papal decree or by penance. It is found in Christ and his work.
The Catechism also uses the words “for your salvation” instead of “for your good” because salvation is the good Paul delineates in Romans 8:28-30. He wrote, “those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified.” That is the good: predestination, conversion, justification, glorification – in short, salvation.
If you belong to Christ, you know God’s goal for you. It is salvation. Glorification is the final step of that order of salvation. Glorification is all things made new, including you. This is the only good that makes sense in all circumstances.
Glorification is the only good that can make sense of losing a child. Glorification is the only good that can make sense of burying a spouse. Glorification is the only good that can make sense of being a victim of abuse. You might be able to see other goods that God has worked in your life or the lives of others as a result of these sorrows, but they don’t make sense of these sorrows. Only glorification can do that.
God’s people have always set their hope on glorification. Peter told the church, “set your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed at his coming.” Paul told the church, “we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.”
If you are looking for all things to be made right in this life, prepare to be confused. You won’t see how all things work together for your good in this life. You will see many as we saw in our first point, but you will only see how all things are for you good once you are glorified.
In glory, you can see how God used all things to prepare you for Himself. As CS Lewis put it, ‘ye cannot in your present state understand eternity… That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, “No future bliss can make up for it,” not knowing that heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory.’
You will only see how God used all things to prepare you for glory once you are in glory. There is no way to explain it now. It would be like explaining romantic love to an six-year-old boy. He doesn’t have the categories. I don’t have the categories to see every way that God is using everything in my life to prepare me to be with Him, but He is. I know He is because He said He is.
Everything means every single thing. The Catechism is right, “all things must work together for my salvation.” God is using all things to prepare His children to be with Him. He is using the worship service just like He is using your love for your grandchildren. He is using the good things about my childhood just like He is using the bad things about my childhood. He is using aspects of my temperament –good and bad -- to prepare me to be with Him. He is using all things.
Don’t fall into the sacred/secular divide as if some parts of life have everything to do with God and other parts have nothing to do with Him. Don’t think that your Bible reading is preparing you for glory while your time at work isn’t. That’s what we are studying in Adult Sunday School. Don’t think that the love and respect that you do receive in your marriage is preparing you for glory while the ways that your spouse falls short are not preparing you for glory. God uses it all. That’s part of why Paul can say, “for from Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things.”
If you don’t have this mindset, your life will not make sense. If you take your eyes off glorification and demand to see how all things work together for your good today, your life will not make sense. That’s why Paul told the Colossians, “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”
If you belong to Christ, your life won’t make sense until you are with Christ. Your life will only make sense in glory. That’s when you will see how all things have worked together for your good. Now you only see it by faith.
Your whole life is building towards this glorification. Scripture pictures it as a wedding day. Some brides say that their whole life was a preamble to their wedding day. Now in some ways that is overstating the fact, but it isn’t overstating the fact when it comes to the church. Your whole life, Christian, is leading up to the day John saw. ‘I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be His people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.”’
If you belong to Jesus, John wrote that about you. Your whole life is leading up to love. Every life event however meaningful or seemingly meaningless is being used by God to prepare you for that vision. All things must work together for that good. All things must work together for your salvation.
Now you won’t always be able to see how, but that shouldn’t bother you. It shouldn’t bother you because you never could have guessed how the worst event imaginable could be used for your salvation.
The cross is the worst event imaginable. Think it through. Imagine humanity in all its pride and selfishness overpowering God. Imagine humanity judging God as guilty, condemning Him to death, and executing that judgment. There is nothing you can imagine that would be worse than that, and yet that is what God used for your salvation. If God can use that moment for your salvation, then He can use all things for your salvation.
Now, you are not turning all things to your salvation. That is God’s responsibility. “You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary,” as Jonathan Edwards put it.
Don’t think it is within your purview to turn all things to your good. Don’t put that on your shoulders. That rests on God’s shoulders. What you must do is belong to Jesus. “I am not my own, but I belong body and soul in life and in death to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.” That’s when all things must work together for your salvation. Amen.