Grace, mercy and peace are yours from God our Father through our Lord and our Savior Jesus Christ.

Direct us now, O gracious Lord, to hear aright your Holy Word.
Assist your minister to preach, and let the Holy Spirit teach.
Let eternal life be found by all who hear the Gospel sound.  Amen.

Since not many of you know me very well yet, when I was in high school, not only did I love playing for my high school football team, but I also nerded out on a lot of things.  One of the things I nerded out on was sailing vessels.  I knew everything about sails and pirates.  I could list all the historical pirates.  I was heavily invested in sloops, clipper ships, Man o' Wars, and everything about the ancient, tall ship sailing vessels.  I seem to know all about them.  In fact, when our family went to Boston, my most exciting part was seeing the USS Constitution, Old Ironsides from the Revolutionary War, which was a sailing vessel that is still an active vessel in the United States Navy.  

For my birthday when I was in high school, my family got me a trip on the USS Providence, which is a replica of the Providence that John Paul Jones used in the Revolutionary War.  John Paul Jones was the guy who said, “I have not yet begun to fight.”  That guy, his first ship and first command was on the Providence, and I got to go on Lake Michigan, in this replica of this sailing boat.  I was super excited until I saw the waves.  Lake Michigan was angry that day.  From the breakwaters, we saw the water shooting straight up and this 110-foot boat, it seemed like we were safe, but that boat started going up and down and side to side.  They thought it was a pleasure cruise.  They had a table out for snacks and things.  Nobody touched the table.  The table was going sideways and back and forth.  People started getting sick and headed to the edge of the boat to deposit their lunch into the sea.  And I, being the nerd that I was, instead of sitting there, I went to get as close as I could to the Captain because I wanted to hear him bark out orders and what orders he was going to bark out during this storm as the ship was going up and down and side to side.  I went up and I looked at the Captain, and he was as calm as a cucumber.  The crew was doing their thing as if they were on a pleasure cruise!  The passengers were losing their minds, but the crew was completely calm.  They knew their ship.  They knew their path.  They knew their job.  They knew the waves.  

Today the apostle Paul is talking to Christians who feel like they are on a ship and it’s going up and down and sideways and sideways and he is encouraging them to look to their Captain, to look to Jesus, because in Christ, they are inseparable from God’s work and His love.  So today, that is my message to you as well.  In Christ, founded in Christ, in Christ, you are inseparable from God’s work in your life and His love in your life.

Paul begins by saying all things work together for our good, for the good of those who love God.  He is not saying that all things are good.  Isn’t that kind of the trap we fall into?  When something terrible happens to us, we think “There will be something good from this.”  We say that enough that we somehow think that it’s good that bad things happen to us.  “This is a good thing that my loved one died.”  Or “This is a good thing that this person abandoned me,” like this is as if it were a good thing.  It’s not.  That’s not what Paul is saying.  It’s not a good thing when you are being tormented by your sinful nature.  It’s not a good thing to deal with cancer or disease.  But Paul IS saying God works for the good.  He works all those things for the good.  

And then we lead to who gets to decide what is good.  Do I get to decide what is good?  That means if I lose somebody, therefore somebody should come and return and be better than that.  Or if I get a disease, that means that somehow I’m going to get better.  “If I get to decide the good, then that’s great!  All things work for the good.  I have no problem with that because I get to decide what’s good.”  But that’s not what Paul is saying.

All things work together for the good of those who have been called according to His purpose.  Oh… What is that?  What is God’s purpose then?  Paul outlines His purpose in the following verses.  He says:  “For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.  And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.”  That’s God’s purpose.

 
As you look at that list of verbs (foreknew, predestined, called, justified, glorified), it’s taking you from before the beginning of the world all the way to end of this current world, to the life to come, glorified.  You would think that this is some sort of timeline, as if there is some way that we can affect this timeline in some way.  He is not using a timeline.  He is talking about God, who is time-less.  The God who creates time, who creates the concept of time, has made a chain of events.  He has made a sequence of events and that’s one of the reasons why I have a chain today.  It’s that it all starts with Christ, when He says:  “…he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers…”  So if you look at God’s sequence of events in Galatians 5 in terms of a chain, it starts with Christ, then God foreknew, then God predestined, then God called, then God justified, then God glorified.  These are all things that are inseparable.  There is a link.  It’s not a timeline.  

To explain this a little bit further, he uses a Greek grammar called the gnomic aorist, which is a Greek construction that is used when you want to make a universal truth.  For example, in classical Greek, they would say “Art loves fortune and fortune, art.”  What it means is basically artists like art, but they really like money.  They’re doing the art so that someone could pay them and they make a living.  And then, do you really like art?  Maybe you like art a lot more if you have money to spend on the art to bring it into your home.  So art loves fortune and fortune, art.  It’s a universal truth.  There is no timeline.  It’s not chicken and the egg, not one before the other.  It is just a truth.

Paul says the same thing.  It all starts with Christ.  God foreknew, predestined, and called you through the Gospel, through the means of grace.  God chooses the means of grace.  God chooses that.  God calls you into the Gospel.  God keeps you in the true faith until life everlasting, glorified.  It’s a chain that can’t be broken.  So all things, all things work for your good, for this purpose, to bring you to glory.  If bad things happen to you (and they do happen to you), God is going to use them in part of this chain to bring you to glory.  

We like to insert ourselves into this chain.  We like to say “Well, yes, but I had to make a decision for Christ.  I had to decide to follow Christ before God was going to do anything for me, including having me glorified in heaven.”  Or “God must have known that I was going to believe, therefore, that’s what played into His decision when He foreknew, predestined, called, justified and glorified.  There is something in me.”  Paul says there is nothing in you.  If there was something in you, then this wouldn’t be a chain.  This wouldn’t be a certain thing.  

We don’t deserve that God do any work in our lives.  That’s a truth we oftentimes don’t want to accept.  If we examine ourselves according to the Ten Commandments, how well have you carried yourself as a husband or a wife or a single person?  Have you loved God with all your heart and gladly heard His Word?  Have you been disobedient to the law of God, proud of your sin, or unforgiving of others?  Have you been selfish, lazy, envious or quarrelsome?  Have you lied?  Have you deceived someone else?  Have you taken something that wasn’t yours?  Have you given anyone a bad name?  Have you permitted indecent thoughts to linger in your mind?  Have you failed to do what is right and good?  We want to insert ourselves into the chain and say there’s something in us that is good, but there is nothing in us that is good.

With God, it’s His choice.  He chose Christ.  He chose to bring Christ to you.  He chose to link you to this chain.  In Christ, you are inseparable, so He calls you to the Gospel.  He brought you to faith through the means of grace.  He had that water and the Word at your baptism.  He gives you the Lord’s Supper.  He gives you His Word, whether in worship or at home.  That’s all part of God’s plan.  When those terrible things happen and it seems like the wind and the waves go up and down, God still is there for you, in this chain.  He is still preserving you in the one true Christian faith until you see Him in life everlasting.  

We sang in that hymn, “Be still, my soul; your Jesus can repay from his own fullness all he takes away.”  Sometimes we are so narrow-minded that we think it’s right here and now that He is going to repay all the things He has taken away, but let’s talk about this chain.  We’re talking about Job.  Remember Job?  He lost seven children and then at the end of Job, he got seven more children and you think “Wait a minute!”  At the end of Job, he had seven children in heaven and he is restored back to those children at the end of his life, not during his life.  

This is an unbroken chain.  God’s work is sure and certain in His means of grace, but yet, we still struggle.  We often, like Peter, get angry or doubt.  Doubt this truth.  Doubt the content of our faith.  We doubt God’s love for us when our life seems to be up and down and sideways.  I think we get to this point of doubt because we look for love in all the wrong places.  

Paul mentions troubles, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, dangers, sword, death, life, angels, demons, present, future; all can be things that are like waves crashing against us.  All of these things can shake up our love for Christ and for God.  If our relationship to God was dependent on our love for Him, pick any of those bad things that Paul mentions.  Not knowing where your next meal is coming from, or “There is demonic stuff happening in my country,” or “How could you let all these things happen in this world when I’m trying to bring children up in this world?”  “Lord, I love you, but the future is so uncertain right now.  I don’t think you got this.  I don’t think you’re in control.”  We are looking for God’s love in all the wrong places.  

All of the chaos that Paul mentions cannot break the chain that starts with Christ and ends with the glorification in heaven.  That’s how much He loves you.  But even when you don’t know where your next meal is coming from or you don’t know what the future holds or when you think demons are back, nothing can separate you from His love, because this chain is set.  It is unbreakable.  You are inseparable from God’s love because of Christ, like I mentioned in the Children’s Devotion.  How does a little child know that God loves them?  It’s because Jesus died on the cross.  

How do you know that God loves you?  Don’t look in the wrong places.  Don’t look at your life and the situations of your life.  Look to the content of your faith.  Look to “Yes, Jesus died for me.  That’s how much He loves me.”  Paul says if God loves you so much to give His own Son, doesn’t that mean He loves you right now?  What can separate you from the love of Christ?  Trouble?  Hardship?  No.  

That’s what makes Christians different.  It’s not that we never feel like we’re on a ship and it’s going up and down and left and right and all over the place.  It’s that we are anchored and we are looking to our Captain, who still loves us.  We know He still loves us because that chain is unbroken and it cannot be broken.  

That’s why Psalm 73 is my favorite Psalm.  It’s because Asaph has the same question.  He looked for love in all the wrong places.  He looks for God’s work in all the wrong places.  He is looking at the world and saying “This world is going” (as we would say today) “to hell in a handbasket.  It just seems like the evil people keep doing evil things and they are prospering and God’s people are suffering and God’s people are having a hard time.  Why Lord?  Why aren’t you doing something about this?  Where are you?”  It just builds and builds and he doesn’t get an answer and he gets frustrated and he changes the question.  “Who are you?  What have you promised?”  

Paul does the same thing.  He reminds us who God is.  He is a God who, in Christ, set Himself on a chain of events that cannot be broken.  He called you to faith, and keeps you in the true faith through the Word and Sacraments.  He will lead you into glory.  That is who our God is.  That is what He has promised.  And when the storms of life happen (and they will happen), it doesn’t shake this wonderful truth that in Christ, you and I are inseparable from God’s work in our lives and we are inseparable from His love.  Amen.

And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:7) Amen.