Session 32 – Romans; Romans 8:28: Mark Lanier, 05/17/26

ROM 032_Romans PODCAST_051726
===

[00:00:00] Okay, I'm pretty stoked about class today, and we've got some, some... Every one of you that is here, or everyone watching on the internet, thank you for plugging in. This is, to me, pretty cool stuff, and I'm, I'm just kinda stoked about it. Now, I don't know if you've ever tried to taste cocoa powder. Ugh. Yeah, ew.

It is extremely bitter. You would think that something that's chocolate, and nothing but chocolate, would taste quite tasty. Evidently, it doesn't. It's quite bitter. And I know that I've seen the movie Rocky. It w- it is a classic, and I know it reminds all of us of Coach Bowman. But- ... outside of him, I don't know h- many people who wanna eat raw eggs.

Yeah. Uh, I mean, no thank you. I have zippo [00:01:00] desire. No, I have negative number desire. We would have to get my desire hyped up just to get it to zero desire, okay? I did try some baking soda one time, and all I can say is ick. Now, last night, we took our, four of our grandchildren. So Becky, God bless my wife, saint that she is, um, we have right now a six-year-old, twin four-year-olds, and a three-year-old.

Wow. And they are, um, beyond high energy. And they scatter. And we've got them for 36 hours- ... until we drop them off at school in the morning, and then head to DC. And, um, Becky's got them right now. I don't think she's gonna be in class. I don't think it's humanly possible to get- ... those [00:02:00] kids into church and get into class.

So we pray for Becky. But last night, we took them out to eat at this restaurant, and there was a salt shaker on the table. And one, Zoe, our three-year-old, decided that she just wanted to pour out all of the salt on her food. And so we would take the salt shaker and move it over, and say, "No, no, no. It's not gonna be good."

And she would still, when we weren't looking, because the other three have gone off into zoo land. While we're chasing the zoo animals, we've, she, she's finding that, and she just... Needless to say, salt by itself is not something that you readily eat. Now, have you ever just broken out some vanilla extract?

No. I wanna tell you, I love the smell, but it tastes horrible. And as for vegetable oil- [00:03:00] Uh, I'm not gonna drink it. I mean, it looks like something you should just take the lid off and start chugging. I'm not gonna do it. Uh, I've had flour before, and it's kind of tasteless, but it's, it gums, and it's... I, I just, I use it, don't eat it.

Now, what can I tell you about these ingredients? Except while all of them are s- terrible on their own, you give them to a good baker, and I have no trouble eating the end product. Not at all. I mean, those are disgusting in solo. But if you mix them all together right, I am all in. I will eat that all day long.

Now, I put this out as an introduction because I wanna ask you, what are the ingredients in your life? What do you have in your life as an ingredient? Because it's not always [00:04:00] blue skies and rainbows and sunbeams from Heaven. There are days where you get a painful diagnosis. Some people have to suffer through a broken relationship.

We can experience a devastating loss. I think if you live very long at all, you will have shattered dreams. I think if you walk with the Lord for long, there are times where you're going to feel like you've gotten unanswered prayer. I think all of us find in life, we approach some situations that make no sense.

And these individual ingredients of life may seem to be bitter, raw and hard to swallow, unpleasant and harsh. [00:05:00] But into that idea comes the verse we're gonna look at today. Dale Hearn sent me a, um, a, uh, wrap-up from class last week, and he said, "You made a whole class out of two verses," and he was kinda stoked about that.

Well, Dale, this week we're gonna make a whole class out of one verse. Romans 8:28: "And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to His purpose." Now, I believe, in the Church, this is one of the most quoted and, dare I say, most misunderstood scriptures.

Now, we should not see this as our Christian cliché. This is not just some spiritual Band-Aid we put and slap it on some deep wound. [00:06:00] This should never be bumper sticker theology. But what this is, is a profound and real truth if we understand it. So here's what I'd like to do with this passage today.

First thing we need to do is recognize that context matters. We need to take this piece as a piece of a larger puzzle and put it into place. It makes most sense if we consider the other pieces, verses, that surround it. And then I wanna go through the verse and unpack it as best as we can. Now, those of you who like to really dig and understand Bible, those of you who join me in the Bible nerd [00:07:00] club, we're gonna have some fun this morning, okay?

We're gonna do some stuff that you would do in a seminary class, and it's gonna be great. But we're gonna unpack this verse, and then we wanna spend a section on how we live out the truth that is contained and, and amplified and proclaimed in this promise that Paul gives us. We must begin with the context.

And I'm gonna just back the bus up two verses and get the immediate context rather than going through all of Romans with you right now so we have time to get to the other stuff. But these are the things we talked about last week in a short synopsis because it is critical, and I'm gonna point out a couple of things I didn't point out last week because now they're relevant on this next verse.

You ready? Yeah. Romans 8:26. "Likewise, [00:08:00] the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groaning," plural, groanings, "too deep for words." Now, we talked last week about what it meant for the Spirit to help us, and we really need to see this Greek word that Paul's using.

Sunanti lambano is the, the root verb, but it's a compound verb. If we pull up a chalkboard, there are three words put together in the Greek. This is not one simple verb. It is three different words in the Greek that are all combined together by Paul. The root of it is lambano, which means to grasp something.

I- Can lambano this water. [00:09:00] Uh, it's, it's to grasp at its root idea. So we have to grasp. Anti means to face. I am anti Greg Stay right now. We are face to face. I'm anti. I'm anti. I'm anti. Okay? And then the very important word I want you to pay attention to today is the first word that's all put together here, um, sun.

Sun means together with. This is in the Greek in the present tense, which doesn't mean it's just happening right now. It means it's a constant ongoing action. The spirit is helping us now, and the spirit's helping us now, and the spirit's helping us now. But specifically in the context of what Paul's talking about, the spirit [00:10:00] helps us in prayer and does so all the time.

When we pray, the spirit is sunantilambano. The spirit is helping us. And the illustration that I used last week, which is the best one I know, is when my son-in-law, uh, JT, helped me move some furniture recently. And what he did is he faced me, anti, he grasped, lambano, and together we lifted the furniture.

Sunantilambano. He helped me. Now, some of you are saying, "I read some Greek, and that's not lambano." Lambano is just the first person singular root of the verb. Um, here it's a lambanati because it's third person, not first. But it means in a sense two people who are facing [00:11:00] each other lifting together. The spirit's not lifting without us.

We're not lifting without the spirit. In our prayer life, the spirit is lifting with us in our weakness, and there's a reason why. We don't know what to pray oftentimes. We know we are to pray God's will. But how many of us know God's will? You say, "Well, I've got it down here." Well, great, pray for it. But even Jesus in that prayer recorded in John 19, "Not my will, but thine be done."

And so we need to pray God's will. Uh, uh, uh, Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We need to be praying God's will. This world is [00:12:00] to find its fullness in the will of God. Not my will, not your will, the will of God. So the Spirit helps us in our weakness, asthenia in the Greek.

Um, we can't lift the sofa by ourselves. We're too weak, we're unable, we don't have the power. And so the Spirit helps us in our inability to pray. Now, it's not that we don't know how to pray, it's that we don't know what to pray. We should be praying for the will of God, but we don't always know it. We don't know what to pray as we ought to be praying, as we need to be praying.

We just don't always know. Do we pray for mercy and healing, or do we pray for grace to endure? [00:13:00] Do we pray for one door to open, or do we pray for the right door to open? We, we-- do we, do we pray for it now, or do we pray for it in God's timing? We must always be clear. Paul's not telling us we don't know how to pray.

He's telling us we don't know what to pray. And so the Spirit is going to lift the couch with us in our prayer. And if you wanna hear the Spirit do it, sorry, but he's gonna groan just like we're groaning. This is a theme Paul's used. Creation groans, we groan, the Spirit with us is groaning. But his groaning, here it says too deep for words in the ESV, but, um, alalētois means, um, without sound, [00:14:00] without words.

It's the Spirit's groaning, but we can't hear it. But don't worry. God doesn't need to hear it, because Paul continues, "The one who searches our hearts," that's God the Father. It's an Old Testament expression. God searches the hearts. He knows what is the mind of the Spirit. See? He doesn't need to hear the Spirit's words.

He knows what's in the mind of the Spirit. And so as the Spirit's interceding for the saints according to the will of God, as the Spirit's praying the will of God with us in our prayer, we can rest assured that it's interceding, that it's working on our behalf. So we, we have this and, uh, it's wonderful [00:15:00] because sometimes we don't have the words to pray, and we don't know what to pray.

The need sometimes is too great for us to understand it. The situation is too complex for us to unravel it. The pain is too deep for us to even remotely deal with it. So words may fail, but the Spirit never does because the Spirit can deal with it. That is the context where Paul says, "And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose."

That context makes all the difference in the world of how we understand and translate this verse. Excuse me. If we were to take verse 28 just by itself, "All things work together for good," and we don't have [00:16:00] verses 26 and 27, it might sound like some cosmic optimism. Hey. I will tell you this, that at the time of Paul, it was a very common saying that things will work out in the end, and that's among all the pagans.

Paul's not just giving this cosmic optimism. Paul's put this into a context of the Spirit's gonna be praying with us, and we don't need to worry about how the Spirit's praying and what God's doing with the Spirit's prayer because the Spirit's praying in accordance with the will of God, even when we don't know what that is.

And God's hearing and knows the mind of the Spirit and, and is working things out for the good.

But if you don't have verses 26 and 27, verse 28 could sound just like some [00:17:00] naive positivity. Um, it's all gonna work out. And we can be naive about it, and we don't need to think about it. Or without verses 26 and 27, verse 28 could sound like fatalism. What do I mean by that? Well, I happen to have somebody to tell you.

Is this microphone working we think? Hello, Doris.

No? Uh-oh, hold on. Hold on. Go back. No, no, no. Stop, stop, stop. Okay, hold on. We got a problem here. We need to quit that. We don't need them. That was the cow Sills, wasn't it? Okay, now we're back here Here we go.

When I was just [00:18:00] a little girl, I asked my mother, "What will I be? Will I be pretty? Will I be rich?" Here's what she said to me What'd she say? "Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be. The future's not ours to see. Que sera, sera." Okay. The problem is that's not true. That's fatalism. Hey, whatever it is. Somebody gets killed in-- hit by a car or killed in a car wreck, and we see the cross there on the ground by the highway.

Well, que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be. God will work it out for good. Nothing we can do about it.

That [00:19:00] fatalism is wrong. This is talking in the context of what we can do. We can pray about stuff. We can act on stuff, but we can do it with the assurance that we're not lifting the sofa alone. The Holy Spirit's interceding. The Holy Spirit's lifting. The Holy Spirit's praying, and the Holy Spirit's praying the will of God.

And when God hears the prayers and knows the prayer of the Spirit, God's gonna work this out for the best. So if we have verses twenty-six and twenty-seven, we understand we have a role in this as well as the Spirit. We need to be praying. God didn't put us down here for que sera, sera. He put us down here with good deeds that He planned beforehand for us to be doing.

Jesus didn't say, "Hey, you don't need to pray. The Spirit will pray for you." He said, "Let me teach you how to pray." [00:20:00] Recognize the Father, our Father, Pater ημών, ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, our Father, the one in the heavens. Ἅγιε ἀσθέτω τὸ ὄνομα σου, hallowed be your name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.

We're to be praying for God's kingdom. We're to be working for God's kingdom. We're to be seeking God's kingdom. And when we don't know how and we don't know where and we don't have it figured out, we need not worry and we need not be futile in our thinking because God has His Holy Spirit in us- And the Holy Spirit is praying and groaning with us and helping us in what we're doing.

That's why we live by the Spirit. That's why we pray by the Spirit. That's why we're empowered with the Spirit. And this is not some weak spirit. This is the Spirit that resurrected Jesus Christ from the [00:21:00] dead. Amen. And that's what we have. And we don't need to quench it. Think of a water hose. You don't need to quench it.

We need to turn it on. We need to be praying. We need to be working. And that context matters. So now, let's unpack the verse. This is pretty cool stuff. Just gonna say. And I can say that not because what I'm saying is cool. This is cool stuff, what Paul has written. Here's the verse again. We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose, or oida mende oti hoti toys, um, uh, agaposen.

I don't have my glasses on, so I have trouble reading from there. Um, this verse has some parts to it in the Greek that are easy to [00:22:00] understand. It also has some parts to it that are hard to understand. This is one of those verses where your Bible translators have made a big choice, and you may not know that.

And it will depend upon which Bible translation you read.

Let's do the easy part first, okay? Here's the easy part. We know that for those who love God. Now the word and, which some translators leave out, by the way, it's the, the Greek conjunctive, disjunctive de, D-E, de. Um,

it can, it, it, it, what it sort of means is, keep this in context. It's flowing from [00:23:00] what just came before. You say, yeah, but why is it the second word? It's always, that's its position in a sentence. It always comes as the second word. But, but de means, it can mean and. It could mean but. It could be contrasting with what came before.

But in this situation, it's clearly not contrasting with what he said. It's elucidating and furthering what he said. So they translate it and. So and we know. It's another easy part. Oida men. We know. Now oida men is the word. And it's written, it, it's, it carries an idea of, of present knowledge, even though it's not technically in a present tense.

But it's something that's settled. It's something that's established. This is a statement of fact. [00:24:00] This is something we can be sure of. This is something we know. We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good. We know this. This is settled. This is something we can be confident about.

Excuse me. So we've got, uh, what in Greek is a dale, perfect with present effect. I say dale, I'm more Larry on this one, or Noel, or many of you. This is not-- Paul's not saying we w-wish. Um, Paul's not saying we hope. Paul's saying w-we clearly know. This is a no-brainer, to use modern parlance. It's a no-brainer that for those who [00:25:00] love God, all things work together for good.

Now, the interesting thing is this Greek word of what we know is not the first time Paul's used it in just the verses we're looking at today. He used it two verses before. But in two verses before, he said, "We don't know." It's the same word. Wait a minute. He just put a strong don't in front of it. Ouk. So we don't know what to pray as we ought, but we do know that for those who love God.

Do you see how those two contrast each other? That also lets us know that we need to be reading this in context of those earlier verses. Paul's not left what he said in his mind. He wasn't dic-- You know, sometimes you read some of Paul's letters, and it's pretty apparent when you read them that, you know, Paul was [00:26:00] dictating this stuff by and large.

So he'd have an amuanese, amuan, am-- He'd have a secretary taking down his dictation. And I'm sure, and it's pretty apparent when you read some of Paul, that he didn't just dictate it all at once. He'd do some, and wait a couple of days, maybe wait a week, maybe wait a month, then he'd pick back up on the letter.

Uh, I've got a new book coming out this year. Pretty stoked about it. It's at the printer. Um, but, uh, uh, uh- But it, I didn't write it at once. Took me about a year. I'd write a little bit, I'd write a little bit, and I'd write a little bit. Paul's letters are the same way, but this, he didn't take a break after 8:27.

This is clearly-- He's echoing what he's just dictated. And he's done this... Remember, this letter was not written for [00:27:00] people to read as much as it was for people to hear because these letters, m- you, you, you had fifteen percent literacy. So the letter would be read to the people. And Paul sent it with someone who not only read it, but had a chance to talk to Paul before.

And so that reader that came with the letter was also like a consultant. "What, what, what did he mean by that?" And so you had someone, like, able to say, "Well, you know, I talked to him about that," or, "I asked him about that," or, "I don't have a clue, it never came up," or whatever. But, but that's the way this was done then as opposed to now.

So for the listener and for Paul the dictator, the one dictating, um, we, we see his flow of thought. He, he says, "We don't know what to pray, but we do know that God's [00:28:00] working it out for the best." And so we see that flow there, and that becomes important when we get to the hard part of understanding this verse.

So we've got this. We know, we know that's easy money. No trouble translating it, no trouble understanding it. It's clear. Crystal clear. Then you've got this next phrase, that for those who love God, tois agapōsin ton theon. Um, Greek wears like a sign. Greek words often, especially the nouns, the adjectives, the, um, uh, the, the verbs, they wear signs, for lack of a better way, and the sign tells you where it fits into a sentence, what it is.

And so we've got [00:29:00] tois agapōsin. That's for those who love, and agapōsin is, i- we're, we're in a participle here, but it is from agape. It's a service love. It's a relationship love. It's a, it's a covenant love. And so we can clearly see what Paul means here. He's talking about people who are in a relationship with God.

So this is a truth statement- For those who love God, who are in a relationship with God, a covenant relationship with God. All right. That's easy. Are you ready? Yes. Okay. God, give us mercy, grace, and clarity, please. And we know that for those who love God, [00:30:00] all things, that's panta in the Greek, it's a neuter plural, all things work together.

Now that work together is sunergei. Sun, what does sun mean when you put it at the front of a word? With. We've seen that over and over. Paul's been putting all those words together. Sunantilambano. He's been putting that sun with a bunch of words 'cause this whole thing is about how we are working with God and God is working with us.

And so we can remember that. Now, in English, if this were an... How many of you took English when you were in school?

Good. How many of you remember?[00:31:00]

A very simple sentence in English will have a subject, and then it will have a verb. And sometimes it may have, if the verb's transitive, a direct object. Let me give you an example. Subject, Mark. Verb, teaches. Direct object, class. Mark teaches class. Easy. Now, if you were gonna diagram Romans eight twenty-eight as a sentence, you're gonna have trouble in the Greek.

You can get the verb, sunergei, works together. Sun is work, ergei is... I mean sun is [00:32:00] together with, ergei is works. We get ergonomics from it. Um, so works together, we got the verb. And it wears a f- a, a, a poster on it that tells you it's a third person singular. That's gonna be the subject. He, she, or it works together.

He, she, or it. The question is, what's the subject? You might say, "Well, God works it." God's not in the English or in the Greek

that we're looking at. So is it all things, panta? Well, panta is a plural, not a singular, but [00:33:00] that's okay. It's a neuter plural, so in Greek it takes the singular verb. So it could be all things is-- that-- the l- the, the poster it wears could make it a subject, or it could make it a direct object. It could be either one.

So is all things work together? Is it, uh, the subject, or is it the direct object? Some subject works together all things for good. Which is it? Well, look at what the English Standard Version said. "We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good." They decide it's-- reads like a subject.

Maybe it's a little ambiguous, and you could say it doesn't really give a subject, but it reads like a subject. All things just work together for good. [00:34:00] The New Revised Standard Version, what Baylor used, it says, "We know that all things work together for good for those who love God." It's the subject, all things.

The, um, that is not the New Revised Standard Version. This is, uh, I don't remember what version this was, but it is another version. "We know that all things work together for good to them that love God." It may have been the American Standard Version. You say, "Well, it's pretty clear. Everybody agrees. All things is the subject, so all things work together for good," until you break out your NIV.

Your NIV says, "And we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him," [00:35:00] and the in all things becomes the direct object in a sense. In a sense, not really, but God becomes the subject. God works all things for good. God is the sunergon. He's the coworker. This is God who's coworking for the good.

Say, "Wow, man, I, I was a, I'm a big NIV fan. I'm going with them." Or you say, "No, I'm skittish about the NIV." I'm sticking with the ESV. This is why when you do serious Bible study, you want more than one translation. But it's not just the NIV. The Common English Bible, good solid translation, says, "We know that God works all things together for good, for the ones who love God."[00:36:00]

Wow. What about the New Jerusalem Bible? What does, uh, what does it have to say on this? "We are well aware that God works with those who love Him and turns everything to their good." Amen. What is going on here? Do all things just work out for good if you love the Lord? Or is God the primary mover and the worker here?

I like, um, N.T. Wright, Tom Wright's translation. He said, "We know that in all things, God works for the good with those who love Him." And I like that with because that's part of what I've been saying. This is the soon part. So God [00:37:00] is the worker, but He's working with those who have been called according to His purpose.

I like that. I think that's dead on.

Let's go back. Do you remember verse 26? "The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We don't know what to pray as we ought, but the Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words." Remember, He helps us. It's soon. Paul has used that with talking about the Spirit with us just two verses earlier in the immediate context.

It's God is the other side of the soon. He is the one helping us lift the furniture. He is the other side of the soon. If you go back, soon, together with, it's God together with us. That's the same soon that's put together with the word [00:38:00] work.

So we know that for those who love God, all things work together. S-U, the N looks like a V, soon. It's a compound word, but it's been God's the other part of that soon in the verses leading up to this, not just verse 26. But over and over again, you'll see that S-U-N, usually. The N sometimes changes based upon what you have following.

Go back to Romans 8:17. "If children, then heirs, heirs of God," and it's translated fellow heirs. It's just the word heirs with sun in front. With. We're heirs with, hence fellow heirs. "Provided we [00:39:00] suffer with him." Suffer with, S-U-N. It's an M there because of the next word, but it's the same thing. "We may be glorified with him," S-U-N.

So over and over and over, Paul's been saying S-U-N, us with God, us with God, us with Jesus, us with God, us with the Spirit, us with God, over and over and over before he gets to Romans 8:28 and says, "And we're working together."

Now, here's something interesting. And this is where we're getting into kind of some... I don't know. This may just bore you to tears. I find this so stinking cool. Okay. Um, there is a codex. [00:40:00] Now, originally, as the Bible was written, it was written on scrolls, or it was written on parchment, or it might have been written on, on, uh, papyrus, but it's not written, um, in a book.

Books were just coming into fashion, but early books were called codexes. By the time you get to 500, books are pretty much what you have. So there's a codex, a book, that was considered to have its origin in Alexandria, Egypt, next to Rome, the largest city in the empire, and this is called Codex Alexandrinus, and it's very, very, very old.

It's one of our oldest copies of most of the Bible, certainly of the New Testament. Here's the way it reads, [00:41:00] Romans 8:28. Oidamen, same word. We know de hoti toys agaposen. I have to read this real slow 'cause this is real hard to read. Ton the- uh, ton theon. That's the abbreviation for God. Panta- Sunergei, and then it says, "Ho Theos."

Ho Theos. That's God wearing the label of the subject of the sentence. One of our oldest manuscripts has God as the subject in the verse that says Ho Theos. You say, "Well, I don't quite see the Theos." Let me tell you that, um... Here, let me do it this way. Greeks would abbreviate, the Byzantines were big on this.

They would take the first... See, that's [00:42:00] the first letter of God, the T-H sound. That's a theta, and then you have the epsilon, and then you have the omicron, and then you have the sigma at the end . And what the Greeks would do, so that's T-H-E-O-S, is they would take the first letter, they would take the last letter, and just draw a line over the top.

That means it's an abbreviation. We still do that sort of with William. William is my first name, so I'm familiar with that. It's abbreviated W-M with a line under it. So anyway, that's what we have here. We have Ho Theos, God, and the S at the end looks like a C because it's the capital sigma, and that's the way the Byzantines wrote it.

But that means God is the subject according to one of the oldest manuscripts, Codex [00:43:00] Alexandrinus, that dates around 500 AD. Here's the actual manuscript. I blew the section up. Here you can see it. Ho Theos. God works all things together. Say, "Wow. How, how... 500 AD?" But actually probably more like 450. That's considered extremely old.

But it's not the oldest. We can go back even before that, and there's a codex that is called Vaticanus, and the reason why is 'cause it came from the Vatican. Now, it's been in the Vatican longer than anybody can document. The first time in medieval times that they did an index of what all books were in the Vatican Library, it was already there.

So nobody can tell, but you can tell by the script, by the way [00:44:00] it's written, the font, that this dates around 350 AD. It so happens in 1999, Pope John Paul II, or as I like to call him, JPII He allowed the Vatican to print 100 facsimile copies of the codex, and he signed them, verifying what it is. So we have, in the library, in the...

Don't, like, look for it on the shelves. I went to get this yesterday and, um, I unlocked the rare books cabinet and, uh, all the alarms set off. And, and people came running, thought I was stealing, like, a Dead Sea Scroll or something. I wasn't. I was just stealing Codex Vaticanus. But I wanted you to see the page here.[00:45:00]

And so here we've got it. I mean, this is as old almost as you're gonna get. But you will see here the ho right there, and the theos, which that's a sigma with a line over it for God, theos. And that's what... And then it says eis, um, uh, so unto, um, agathon, unto good. So all things work to good, but it's God who does it.

So we've got two of the most important manuscripts for the earliest, earliest copies we have of the Bible, and they both say it. And you say, "Wow, that's cool." Well, it's not just there. Here's a copy of P 46. P stands for papyrus. This is not parchment, it's a papyrus fragment. So it never made [00:46:00] it into a book.

It predates books. This dates... Some date it as early as 80 AD, but could be 200. So I'll go 200 AD. And it's got Romans, and it's got this section, and it includes God as the subject. So you've got three of the most authoritative old manuscripts that have God as a subject. And you may be saying, "Well, then why on earth isn't that the primary reading?"

Well, it is in the NIV and in others. But the English Standard Version followed the King James tradition. King James was set up and published in 1611. That Codex Alexandrinus, which is now in the British Museum, wasn't given to the Brits until 15 years later, [00:47:00] so they didn't have it when they were doing the King James Version.

And they had much more recent manuscripts than what we've got in age. But that's why some people will translate it that way. Um, if you look at it in- Your Baylor Study Bible, you will see the passage says, um...

Well, sorry this isn't easy. We know that all things work together for good. Whoops. For good, but it's got a little footnote a there, and you can go down and look at that footnote, and it says, "Other ancient authorities read, God makes all things work together for good," or, "In all things, God works for good."

And so they give it to you as an optional footnote. The other ancient authorities being these. Excuse me. [00:48:00] Um, I'm not contagious. I'm over the contagious part. He says as he hacks. Um, anyway, you've got these alt- So this is the hard part, is it God works all things together? And you say, "Well, if you've got it in the ancient manuscripts, why doesn't everybody agree?"

Well, one of the issues when you're trying to figure out what the original said is, does it make more sense that some scribe, some copier inserted God or took God out? Who would take God out? So people think, "Nah, it makes more sense that someone else would've added God to make sure it made sense." But it's clearly been out there and an issue, and people have been saying God since at least 200 AD as they read this.

Either way, it's easy to [00:49:00] finish the verse out. It works together for good, all things, and that is all things. That's an everything bagel. All things work together for good. Paul, what about my suffering? Yep. Paul, what about persecution? Yep. What about tragedy? Yep. What about sin? You better believe it. God is able to work all things.

Now, we gotta be careful. God doesn't cause sin, and God doesn't approve of evil, but God can use it for good purposes. Yes. Amen. It may be a bitter ingredient at the start, but it's all gonna work out for good, which gets us to our final point, how do we live this truth? It's very clear by this passage, wherever you understand it, that not everything is good, but God can use everything for ultimate good.

Now, [00:50:00] we may not understand how, and we may not understand why, but our job is to trust the baker. Your suffering is not wasted. Life's ingredients may seem at times bitter, raw, and hard to swallow, unpleasant, and harsh. But I assure you, the baker is gonna use it for the most delicious chocolate cake you ever could have.

And if you don't like chocolate, then something's wrong with you and you probably haven't followed this whole lesson.

Points for home. First, we are working with the Spirit. This is not we're sitting in the backseat and leaving all [00:51:00] the driving to the chief. We're involved. We got-- We're, we're supposed to be lifting the sofa. We may be scrawny, we may be faithless, we may be troubled, we may have difficulty. We can always be assured He'll lift more than His fair share of the weight.

But we need to show up, and we need to be lifting. The Spirit helps us in our weakness. It doesn't take over for us. Because part of what God wants to do is grow you into the image of Christ. Christ took action for God. Christ tried to give God's compassion. Christ co- tried to give God's, uh, uh, uh, judgment.

Christ, Christ tried to give God's effect to the world around Him. He's gonna train you to be like Christ.

Next, nothing is wasted. [00:52:00] Don't ever feel like your life is wasted. Don't ever feel like you've blown it and God can't use you now. Don't ever feel like all of that stuff that you did and that gunky stuff in your life is gonna stop God from using you for His good purposes. Amen. Because we know in all things God works for the good of those who love Him.

You don't have to que sera sera. You can instead say, "What will be is what God wills." Amen. Amen. Finally, He works all things esagathone, u-u-unto good. But we need to understand good. Good in Paul's talk is Christlikeness. It's [00:53:00] not comfort. His goal is not to make you as comfortable, though He loves and takes delight and pleasure in your comfort and joy.

He's not a mean God. He's not a God who wants you to have a really hard life. But His goal is not to make you comfortable. His goal is to make you like Christ.

In all things, God works for the good, for Christ's likeness for those who love Him. So here's your lunch topic. What are some ways God has used bitter ingredients to grow you in Christ's image? I had lunch last week, it's Mother's Day, um, with Mom, Becky, and Catherine, and some others. And, um, at the-- some point, they wanted to talk about [00:54:00] the lunch topic that I'd given the class.

I'm like, "Man, I've been talking about that for the last hour. I don't wanna talk about that anymore." So this is not obligation, just something that may help you with your lunch. Um, I'm gonna pack up. I've gotta go rescue my wife with four extremely energetic children that we love with all of our hearts, so I can't stay up here.

Um, uh, Brent Johnson, are you in here or did you have to go teach? Brent, if I leave this so people can look at it, can you get this to the library? Okay, let me bless you in the name of Jesus, and I'm out of here. Uh, Lord, in the name of Jesus, I ask your blessings on my friends and on those listening. I ask you to, um, give them the confidence, the absolute confidence that in the midst of whatever their life throws at them, you're working with it.

You're in prayer, you're seeking your will, and you're seeking to make Christ-like [00:55:00] all of your children. We love you, and we honor you. In the name of Jesus, amen.