to me justified he also glorified. What then shall we say to this? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own son but with him are for us all, will he not also give us all things with him? Who shall bring any charge against God? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus is bad, yes, who is raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who in being there is seeds for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? So to delusion or distress or persecution or salmon or nakedness or peril or sword as it is written for last take we are being killed all the day long. We are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. Now friends, we are dealing for since Monday night, on through the night and to my night and probably on into the last night. So I am the Book of Romans, looking particularly at that Romans chapter 8 and team awful one particular verse. I want to call your attention to one of the glories of the 8 chapters. I pointed out one night here that most of the New Testament consists of letters and about all we know about Paul except what Luke tells us in the narrative of the Book of Acts. We learn from Paul's own writing. His letters, a letter, shows up so much about a person and so we just feel like we know Paul real well because we just see down inside the guy, we see inside the life of the prophet, we see the beat of his heart through his letters. Every one of these letters it just comes through, the measure of this man who is a token of God's grace and Romans is just like that. Now Romans is a great theological treatise. It's probably the most doctrinal theological book in the Bible. It's almost a systematic theology book. So what a theology teacher Paul was. He just called stated with a heartbeat of the evangelist. Evangelism and theology go together. In the Bible, election and evangelism go right together you can never separate them. One starts an eternity to the other issues out here. God's work and the people he brings to Jesus bringing him finished the Christ. And in Paul, the very first line in the book of Romans, if you never noticed it, you ought to know what the first and last lines in the book of Roman are. Romans are because they just ought to take the measure of the man of Paul. They did sit forth the real purpose that dominated Paul after he became a Christian. Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, Paul to be an apostle, set a part for the gospel of God. Paul said, look, I've been set apart from my mother's room called by God, made to know his son in order that I might proclaim the gospel of God. And the very last line in the book of Romans, I like this to the only wise God be glory forever through Jesus Christ our Lord, the gospel of God and the glory of God were the dominant factors in the purpose that motivated Paul through his ministry after he seemed to know Christ. Isn't that tremendous? Just think of a man living to tell the gospel the good news of God and to glorify God. That's the real fruit of God's fading work in the life of the sinner. The two Christians lost others to know the good news about how God say sinners and that he say sinners and he wants to glorify God with this message. So Paul does in this great book of Romans. He's proclaiming good news. Now, I just read to you a pretty passage. You got those words in the election predestination for knowledge, my purpose or laugh. That's heavy. That's gospel. You see the wonderful thing about the presentation of all these great trees in the Bible is they're given for their biblical divine purpose of bringing comfort and joy and assurance to God's people. Friends, what a tragedy. These things were never written by God receiving. When God begins to reveal to us mysteries that he can't tell us everything about because we can't take them out. But still he's pleased just because we know he's a good and gracious, holy, just God. God begins to reveal to us how he really does save us. It's not to destroy us. It's not to make us destroy. It's not to distract us. It's not to make us upset. God is doing this to just show us. Look folks, I want you to know that I got that. I'm doing this a great and good God if it works. Trust and rejoice that I'm the God who will such wealth even to my side. So you see Paul when he deals with these doctrines like election and so forth is always presenting them as good news. This isn't bad news. It's good news that God has opened the door to save center. He never did that for fallen angels. There's two kind of fallen creatures in creation only two kinds. And men and angels. Not all angels fail only a portion. Satan and there are the fallen angels, but still a great host of angels. Probably most of the angels never have rebuild against God. That's a whole human race has. But God never did make any position for love. He never made any provision for salvation for fallen angels. Never. From their rebellion against God till their finally deemed in their internal condemnation, angels have never been given any hope. So they don't deserve it. And God didn't choose to do it. He just didn't elect to do it, we'll say. But with men God did differently. Now he didn't arrest anything either. Any more than he did fallen angels. He didn't arrest any kind of lab or any kind of provision. But God has chosen to save a great multitude of people for himself. And it reveals to us the measures of this. The mediated addition that he has and that's what Paul is doing here. Now read some words. Now listen to this. We know that in everything. God works for good. For those who love him, we're Paul according to his purpose. For we know for those who before you, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son. In the order that he might be the first born among many brethren. But those who and those who be predestined he also call those who we call he also just about those who he just about he also glorified. It's not difficult to see the truth of God sovereign provision here in bringing men to Christ. The book of Romans divides up very inadequately on this kind of division. But this is a very comprehensive one. So chapter 1 through chapter 8 salvation. From chapter 8 through chapter 11 predestination from chapter 12 through chapter 16 application. Now chapter 8 is peculiar. It falls into two categories. It ends with a section on salvation and begins the section on predestination. It was a clowning. It's a lot about the chapter in there. The answer describing justification by Pastor Cunman has been condemned any sin and sanctification. Now I chapter 8 Paul begins to reveal the blessings that belong to believers. And one of the great blessings that belong to us is God is filling us a little about the wonder of his grace. Paul speaks of it like this. I just it just moves me almost to tears when I think of this chapter. So it means so much to me for so many other reasons. I'll mention one or two tonight. But in the season chapter 1 Paul says this, according to the purpose of his will and according to the riches of his grace, God's purpose sent his grace as a blessing of sinners. And he has richly bestowed and he has greatly lavished all those of here his grace upon sinners. And Paul is talking about that lavishness now of God. And God is showing you saying he's revealing through the apostle Paul some of the mysteries about how God and a magnificent sweet salvation has so much more than some people think that now you don't have to know all of this to be seen. But since God is revealed it just blesses our hearts to see all I gotta let us see. And then we just see where God lists the vision. Stop and we say, Well, I know behind what I'm looking at is that great God and I can trust him. And I know when I get all the answers, they're gonna be right. But look at the sweet here. In these verses from verse 28 on B. 30, we have the sweet from eternity past to eternity in the future. You see he's talking about God's purpose, according to his purpose. Now the book of Ephesians makes it clear that God's savings purpose had its rise before the world was ever created. In the great covenant of grace, God already had results. Listen, Jesus, coming into this world, wasn't an emergency plan. Give a holy spirit father and son, they can get together a few years before Jesus came into a look. We gotta do some about your situation. Look and we do. And Jesus is our look and the father first go. And you know, that's not the way it is at all. We before the first fragment of the universe was ever made, God, the father, son, and holy spirit, and a great covenant of grace gave origin to the salvation that would save sinful men when man fell into sin. And so it goes way back there in God's grace purpose. So that's DC before creation. And then because of his purpose, because God purpose to save the people and purpose the people that he would say he for a new and predestinated them. His knowledge was perfect on the basis of his will and his purpose. Now all of that is placed before we ever came along. I mean, our salvation, God's grace purpose, his foreknowledge, his predestinating work, his plan, his design, he was working on it. We back there in the confines of the great sound God when there wasn't anything at all in existence. But one God, father, son, and holy spirit. And he had centuries on his heart. Then it begins to move into time. It says, Lord, to be predestinated, he also called. Now that was in the time. Every one of us who were in Christ today had that time come in our lives when we were called into him. Many of us remember that time. It differs. We didn't all come in at the same time. All through human history men have been brought by God's grace into his saving grace. And many of us here have come in. Maybe somebody in here came to Christ the same day I did. I don't know. That was on the last day of February 1940, but not too many did I guess. We came in different. Some of us don't even remember when we came into him. But we know we're in him. God called us. We got to let God have a great deal of variety here. I know that sometimes as an evangelist, I sound like. And that's where he's now with offset that. But unless you know the time and place that you were converted, you aren't converted. Now friends, the Bible doesn't teach that and that isn't right. It is true that most of the people who give testimony isn't about the only one to will. I'm sad to say. Are those who can say, I know just when it was when God called me with an affectural call. And I've left. Really saw my need in Christ and was drawing to him in grace and faith. Those are the ones who give the testimony. But for others who can, I believe even give greater testimony. I had a dear friend who's now in heaven who is on the board of reformed theological seminary back in his beginning. That's the first property we ever set. The property we started out with there in Jackson, Mississippi. There's only one day you said, you know, I went through a period after we had a speech at our church that just about dovey crazy. He said, now I've been a satisfied and happy Christian for a number of years. He said that I wasn't satisfied with myself. I knew that I was having to grow in the Lord, but I love Jesus. And everything in them. He said, we had a speaker that just implied or said that if you didn't know the day and the time you became a Christian, you weren't wanting me. He said, I never had known the day and the time. I could never isolate it. But he said, I trusted Jesus and I've loved him. I tried to bring him into it. And he said, that got on my heart. And I said, that's a great man of God. He knows the Bible much better than I do. And he said that if I don't know the day and the time, and he said it just, it's that I, right here in this room, we're just a few years before. It's a man with a great businessman in the Tennessee. He said, I call my pastor Tony to come out and speak with me. And give me some help. And when he came out, he sat down with him. The businessman told him he said, I'm being great consternation. He said, I believed in Jesus and trusted him but said, I don't know when it happened. And therefore, I can't really be sure I'm saved. And I need some help. You're my pastor. And I want you to give me some help here now. And he said, the pastor, give him some help. He said, he put it like this. He says, I'll tell you my brother. I want to tell you about when I was a boy. He said, when I was a boy, we grew up in a country and the farm said, we had an old mayor that you could just back kids on. You could just started their neck and stack them on all the way back to last one. I just light off the tail. He said, how do they make them stick on so that old mayor grind all day? And they could do anything and pull their ears and twitch her and kick her in the size. And she'd never jerk her junk. She'd just, you know, like that. And she was the best sour thing we had and put her on a wagon. Put her on a buggy. He said, she would just, everybody in the family just love her. And she didn't like that. It's always been that way. It's been an old everything. She's a coach. She's been a general thing. So that's that mayor gave birth to a cat coach and said, the time came when it was time to break that coach and said, well, the hard man, it worked my dad and really said, I was out there just as a kid, said, they were going to break the coach and said, the way we had broken coach in the past was we just took them up with this old mayor. Said, we just took them up to a wagon with her. And so that was about the best way to get them hearts broken because that old mayor was so calm. And so that a young coach getting with her would just start getting to it really easily. So they took this coach and said, we put that coach up the hard man did with the mayor and said, man, the coach just went crazy. So that coach just did just went literally crazy and said, just everybody was upset didn't know what to do. Could hardly get the coach calmed down. And the hard man was trying to jerk their aims. Just literally he said, and finally got to exactly it. He just reached back and got a stick of, as they said, there was a two before we lined down in the ditch there. But he's too long. Said, he got a hold of that thing. And he just whammed that coach across the head. Said, the coach fell down right with a trace of everything right on. Just fell down right in the middle of all of it. You know, kicking his feet and said, we all thought the coach had been killed by his man and killed her coach. And I said, it did turn out it wouldn't that. Or I said, after a little while, a coach, shook around, lifted his head up a little bit, began to stagger up and got up and said, got everything hooked up again. And he said the coach just went right along with the mayor. I said, if you can imagine a conversation at that point with those two, go something like this. If you just stepped up that old mayor and said, I want to ask you a question, are you really broken in? The old mayor would say, well, it looks like it doesn't. Yeah, but when did it happen? The old mayor would say, oh, I don't remember. I've gone for a long time. I don't remember. I didn't do anything there.
But if you step up to that coach and you say, when were you broken in, the coach would say, is that day right back into the old man grab the two before and hit me on the head with it? Now, some of us are kind of like that cold. We got hit in the head somewhere along the way and we know when it happened and where. And we're the ones who get testimony, but I got a friend, a friend who's got a wonderful testimony. I got a great friend. I was preaching two years ago in a congregation in a meeting out in the country and I didn't this man was lived in another state and I looked back and saw him somebody and I don't know what he was doing there. I didn't know. He must have been passing through town and saw the sign, every time I meet him, every time I see him, and he came out to the meeting. But as soon as I came here and I told the people, I said, now just before I preach, we're going to stand and sing another hymn because there's a great sinner who's been saved by grace just stepped in. A friend of mine I've known and I said, folks, I want you to hear a great testimony. You probably have never heard a greater testimony in all your life about the sovereign power of a mighty God who can reach down and take an awful sinner and make a child of God. And I want you to hear it. So while we're singing everybody's watching to see who that miserable lady scoundrel was and you know what they were thinking all the time, you walked down and down again. The reason I've always loved him for the way he looked he just, you know, he owed beans all the time. He said, just beans, you know, and he walked down, you know, just his face just beam and walked up to the wall he was going on just beam and everybody could look at him, you know, and there's something in there that made him pull a joy. And as any step up, he said, friends, I just thank God for the privilege of being there in testimony. I just praise God, just say to the senator like me, he said, I've got a great testimony. God is marvellously safe, though we could send him. He said, friends, my testimony is as long as I can remember, I've loved and trusted Jesus. God worked in the heart of a little cow before he could even know what was happening. So when I first began to hear Jesus and could even remember Him, I began interested in learning to learn. And he was called, according to God's purpose, and then justified, made right before God, and then it moved on out into eternity in the future, glorified. That's when Jesus comes, and we go on into the new heavens and the new earth. So you see Paul is just, he just given a magnificent picture. He said, look, what's happened to us? Started happening before time, it was happening. It didn't start happening in time. It started happening in the eternal God of light of a great God who in love and out of a great purpose designed our salvation. In the course of time, one by one, all around the world through the ages, he brought us to Jesus, and we're going to be with him in glory forever. Now that's the magnificent suite. Now notice the detail. Verse 28 gives us that. The magnificent detail in Bob's ear. We know that in everything, that's the detail. God works for good, for those who love Him, for those who are called, according to His purpose. Friends, that's the detail. And how gives us, we've got to see more than the majestic magnificent suite of God's great savings, man. We also see the magnificent of the detail that always seems. And the life of God's people are covered by the ban and marvelous province, according to the purpose of God. But don't forget, let me read you something that says just about the same thing from the first chapter of Ephesians, and here's the way it goes. In him, Christ, according to the purpose of him who does everything who works, everything, according to the council of His will. Don't you smell like home but three years ago. She had a real battle with cancer for three years, within the hospital for six weeks. Every day we read the scriptures together and play together. We still hope that God would spare life, but we need to remind not. And on that very last night, God was gracious as he was conscious up till almost the moment he took her to heaven. And that last night about nine o'clock, she went to heaven at one thirty, about nine o'clock, we had her about a reading time. And this is what we shared together because we can see the end that it looks like God is going to take her. And we didn't understand it. There's so many reasons we could think of why he wouldn't, but this was enough for us. He works all things after the council of his own will. And he had told us a long time ago that his will is good, but in ours is often bad. We'll have to be confident in his will. And there's good confidence there. And that's what Paul has talked about. We know something. Now listen, what charge is about against God's will? Charge number one. You Christians aren't different from those of us who aren't Christians. Look at your centers just like we are. Paul's answer is that he gives us this. We say by Romans seven and Romans eight, yes, we're sinners. We are. But we're not sinners like we once were before we were in Jesus. Nor like those who are yet not in Christ. For now we're different. God has done something to it. He's stirred us up to repentance. He's done something for it. He's purchased us by the blood of Jesus and our judgment has been born by Christ and satisfaction. He's done something in it. The Holy Spirit has come in and is sanctifying our lives so that now we're beginning to live for him and we're learning to walk his way. Seniors, yes, but not like we were before we came in Christ or those who aren't in him. Another charge, you Christians suffer just like everybody else do. What can we say for him? No, we have to say yes. We suffer because friends we do. Jesus said we would. Jesus told his disciples friends. In this world you will have tribulation. We often never to expect. Not to. I wish it weren't like that. I just wish the Lord Jesus has said, now look, everybody who comes into me will never shed a tear again, never have any hurt, never get sick, never die, never lose anything, never lose anyone. I just wish it were like that. Jesus never promised that to us. That comes later in another place. But right now Jesus said to everyone who came to me and said, you're going to have tribulation in this world. And so Peter wrote, you know, and he said, look, Christians, don't be surprised. It's a fiery trial that comes upon you. The implication is, I mean, we were never promised anything else. So we have to say to these people, he says, you Christians suffer just like we do. We have to say, well, part, we suffer. We do. Look at Paul. Was there ever a man more committed to God than Paul? And yet if you read the 11 chapters, the book of 2nd Corinthians, you find the list of the different Pauls. He never got any vacation from trouble. God kept that man under pressure and under fire. All is ministry. We just list everything that he was enduring and he endured it until finally that he said that we can tell him from the tradition. Now we, we Christians, we have to say yes, we suffer, but we suffer. We suffer the same things, the un-Christian, the pagan world as, but we don't suffer like they do. We Christians suffer vastly differently. We suffer, but we don't suffer like people who have no hope. We don't suffer like people who have no God. We suffer any comfort because we know something. That's our comfort. We know something about our suffering. That turns like Sweden while the pagan turns there. We know something and here's what we know. We know that in everything that we suffer, God is at work for good. That's what we know. I'm glad Paul put it just like that. I'm glad he didn't say we understand because we don't. I believe there are more things I know than there are things I understand. So a lot of things I don't understand. And this is one of them. I don't understand it, but I know it. We know that in everything, God works for good. You see, this is an insurance policy that the heavenly Father gives every child. Complete service. No insurance company in the world would give a guarantee like this. You can do it unless you have omniscience or omnipotence and omnipotence available. Only God can make a promise like this. Make available to us an insurance like this. That God covers every child he brings into Jesus Christ with a policy that just covers everything. And I tell you the one thing about it. You see, the fine plant needs to make it more wonderful. The more you study it, look at it, the bigger the coverage instead of the less the coverage. Everything. Think about it. And it isn't easy to believe the way. It's so hard to believe that. If God would let you write it, I'd take it so everybody could believe it. If God had said Sam Harrison, rewrite that so that more people can get ahold of it. Here's the way that God did. One of two ways. We know all that in some things God works for good. But that wouldn't be worth no one would it. Because what's happening to you, you wouldn't be sure was one of those things that was going to work out for good. Or we could put it like this. We know that in most things God works for good. But that wouldn't be worth believing either would it. I mean, because we still don't know whether what's happening to be right now that's crushing me. This may not be one of these. Maybe this isn't going to work out for you. And so the word that makes it hard to believe is the word that makes it worth believing, the word all thing. And Paul is particularly thinking about our problem. He's been listening down there. He says in verse 35, regulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, so would all that sort of thing. These can come on Christians. You know, friends, we Christians have a, we fall into an error sometimes. And maybe somebody here has, and I believe I can identify who has in a minute. We fall into an error thinking that God has given us, if we're especially good Christians, some sort of an exemption from trouble. At least from troubles like worldly Christians and pagan families. We believe we've got a special protection. The reason I think that is our enemy to people every non-ion. Good Christians too. I mean, people who I really believe are saved. A lot of them. We've done in the best of our heart. It's hard to get it out. And most people who however they've seen will never let it out. Sometimes they're presidents of women of the church. Sometimes they're here to the minute of the church. Sometimes they're elders in the church. Sometimes they're ministers. Sometimes they're ministers. Why? Sometimes they're deacons. Sometimes they're soul winners. Leaders in the programs of the church. You can never tell where they'll be found. And this is a standard. We generally keep covered up, but sometimes it comes out. And that is, a heart that carries a grudge against God. A heart that really believes that somewhere along the line God didn't do me right. My husband died. My husband's been just still alive. God didn't do me right. I'm not going to talk about them in good Christian. But I don't like it. I don't believe that didn't be right. There are people who carry a grudge against God in your heart. And that somehow must read into the fact that we feel that somewhere, somehow, good Christians have a special kind of extension. If I'm a third-winning, sold-out, sanctified, separated Christian. My neighbors, a little girl, may get grounded death by a truck on a way to scoot, but that'll never happen to me. On account of God has put me over here in the protective care of a sanctified soul and in sold-out, surrendered Christian. And my neighbor is may not be a Christian at all. And if we ever get to thinking like that, then our child gets grounded death under the leaves of the truck. What happened? What happened to a friend of mine? He's now in heaven. Thank God he got right before he went to heaven. A dear old doctor in North Carolina, he married a lovely girl. God blesses actually deepening the church man. I'm telling you for a doctor, he was exactly the man who could be. I mean, he really was. God gives him a little for your old girl. A little girl, a little girl. It's really for you before she died. Beautiful, lovely, awful of their eye. They just loved her. Begin to rear in the church, took a little girl's sunny scooters. She was old enough to get to go to sunny scooters. At old three, she was stricken with an illness. Now it should be handled pretty well, I think, but back then it couldn't. And within about a week, 10 days, a little girl died. This doctor later, when he became my friend, was telling me about it. He said, you know, I went to the funeral, but never went back into a church for 20 years. He said, I took two one or two positions. I didn't know which was right, and I didn't care, but I knew one of the two was. He literally wasn't any God, or if it wasn't God, he wasn't a good God. At my three year old little girl. He'd been faithful in the church. He'd served the Lord as faithfully as he knew how to do it. And God had let this happen to him and his little girl. Now the tragedy is for him. The same doctor could be a church the next morning after he's set by the bedside of other people's little girls and boys and their tragedies and things face of our fathers, but when it struck him, that's different. He had been a real, actually servant of the Lord and God had let this happen to him. That's bad, isn't it? Ever had me, you like that? Here was a man who really felt he had some kind of special protection, and then when he found out he didn't have any exemption at all, from that kind of thing. Now, if it's like that, then what comfort do we have? If we're really alive, both the things that we call tragedy striking us, what comfort do we have? Here's what it is. We know something. We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him. God is with us. That's just part of it. And that's generally where the Christian stops and it didn't go far enough there. It isn't enough to have God with us. Thank God he is. Thank God for his promise of presence. Open the book eyes here. He has such a marvelous declaration here. He says, look, I have chosen you and not test you all fear not for I am with you. Do not dismay for I am with you. I'm your God. And then over in chapter 43, he says, this fear not for I have redeemed you. I have called you by my name. You are a man. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. And thank God for that. There's comfort annoying that this great God is with me and my troubles with. Frank just got to go further and that and that's what Paul is talking about here. He isn't just present with us. His purpose is that work in what he let's happen to us. Look, a Christian Paul says his one whose life is hidden with Christ in God. Here's the Christian hidden inside, hidden in God, just like this, as someone is illiterate. And if anything strikes my life right here, it has to come through God to get to me. God has to have said it or let it come. And he wants to let even the devil sense something on Paul. God permitted the devil to give Paul a thorn in the flesh and Paul seemed to God about it and said, Lord, the devil came through with it. And I want your help. And the Lord will need to take the thorn away because he said, look, I let that thorn come not to take it out. But I was going to defeat the devil by his own designs and turn what he did to you and the blessings that will make you the right kind of a possible for me. I'm going to give you grace to be blessed by God. The purpose of God for good. God's purpose, you know, friends, we don't have to know what the, what the purpose is. If we just know there's meaning, there's some help. If some tragedy strikes me, something that just staggers me, some loss, God really doesn't have to tell me everything he's about. It's enough for me if I just know this isn't some crazy accident. This isn't some kind of bad luck. God is at work. And wherever this came from, God is at work already converted like he converted me for good, for those who love him and call according to his purpose. And Paul says, we know this. That word know that you there comes from the Greek word seed. In a way you could say, Paul, it's saying we see that now we have seen it sometimes. Everybody in here has had something happened in your life that now you can see God has worked for good. You can even see the good that God worked out of it. But that didn't true of a lot of things. Every one of us in here have had things happened in our lives that we still don't understand how and we're God's ever going to put his answers. He's going to work it out. We just don't see it yet. Except in this way, we see it in faith. We see it in faith. And God tells us about it in verse 32, who did not spare his own son but gave him up for his all. Really not also give us all things with him. Now let me give you what that really says, I think. I was holding a meeting two or three years ago, something like that in a church and a young lady had been out to dinner and had dinner the day before and the home of a young couple, I believe it was the youngest person who went to church at every dinner with. Our husband was a decent in the church and they just had a lovely family and one of us had two little children. One was I guess me the one of them were your school age, but one was just about school age and so the next day I got a call from the lady and she said you don't be at the church and I said yes, she said I want to come down. My husband and I talked with you a little bit and so they came down and sat with me and said now we enjoyed having you for dinner yesterday. He said you saw a little son. Did you notice that the oldest one had something wrong with him? Well, I said well, I thought I did. It seemed to me that he was having some difficulty when he ran, particularly seeing running across the room, looked like his motor reactions were peculiar. Well, they said that's right and they gave me the story behind if they'd been about everywhere. They gave me the name of the difficulty I remember what it was, but the prognosis was that there was no cure for what was wrong. A little boy might live into his teenage years, might even go as far as 20, hardly anybody did, not much further than that. Within three years, a little child was about five, maybe six at that time. Within about three or four years, a little boy would probably have to go to a wheelchair or not be able to walk anymore. It was going to be a progressive thing. It would not affect his mind, but it was going to deteriorate his body. They were so composed and such wonderful Christians. They were. I don't know anything I'm saying that doesn't mean that they weren't Christians. They were wonderful Christians. I knew what they were trying to say to me. They couldn't get it out. They were being so sweet about it and being so everything, but I knew here they are. I mean, what are they doing here? The way they are, like they got it all under control. So here they are though. So I just took a shot in the dark. I said, I want to ask you a question. I said, you know, I've just been here long enough to know how active you are for Christ, and I've been able to sense your devotion to God and Jesus Christ, and I got a question that puzzled me. I want you to tell me how in the world you can serve a God like you're doing. How can you serve a God that will do what he's doing to your little son? And I said, that little son has hardly lived old enough to really know what he sends on. That little boy has done nothing but bring sunshine and blessing into the world. And I want you to tell me how you can be a faithful servant and serve a God who lets that happen to a little boy like this. And friend, I've ever in all my life have seen as much bitterness come into a face as came into the face of that mother. And she, I mean, gritted her to ground her teeth. She said, Mr. Patterson, I can scarcely forgive God for this. And then it all came out, all the best. Christian's yes, but I guess you can understand it again. I mean, who couldn't tell me that this was a terrible thing for them. And I didn't, you know, I knew I've opened up something. I didn't hardly know how to handle it. And God helped me there. And he brought this first in my mind. And I told her, I said, you know, I want to tell you, I want to tell you, he's talking to her because her husband had said much. I said, I just want you to know, first of all, that my heart really goes after your little son. I said, first of all, I'm so sorry for him, because I just, I know that it's a hit of him. Incapacity, he's going to increasingly be incapacitated in the, in finally bad. But I said, I'm sorry about another thing. I really, my heart just goes after your little son because I can see he has a mother who cannot really teach him about the level God. And he sure needs it. And then I told her, I said, you know what she's done. You've made your God's love by your son, and you've never had any right to do that. He was an only measure God's love by his son. Look at him. He lived a manhood and he never said, he brought the greatest blessing the world is ever known. He was so good, so perfect. Everything about him is absolutely perfect. He went about doing good. He just blessed people. The world was blessed. Never has there been such a period of blessing on the planet Earth as took place as Jesus Christ and all his goodness lived here. And yet he suffered like no one has ever suffered. The greatest tragedy from a human part of you that ever occurred to place. He was recreated, put to the most awful death, rejected by even those who claimed to be religious, and bore a suffering that no one in all the world but God himself really understands. Nobody ever suffered like he did. And yet God has turned that for the greatest blessing in the world. On the basis of that, God has been able to say such. And so you look at him, God spared not his own son. It's awful. I know there's good in it. He delivered him up for a great purpose. He caused wrath upon all the sun but there's purpose there. A good purpose there. That good purpose was. He did it for us. That we might be saved. And every one of us represent a part of God's purpose who were in Jesus Christ today. And every one of us who were in Christ represent part of the purpose. It was involved in that awful suffering. And Jesus knew that even when he went into He suffered. That's the essence. And it was good enough for those dear pets. That's all they wanted. That's all they needed. And he forgave God if you want to put it like that. But just so glad to get some really just to see, you know, that there is a measure that we can use that establishes and holds God's love. And when these trials come, yes, God has already shown. He can take the worst thing that ever happened. He did the rejection of Jesus and turned it into the greatest blessing the world has ever known. So he can take the trials in my life. He will. I can trust it. I don't need to see it yet, but when I get to heaven I will. Then we will. Oh friends listen. Let's crazy now. Let's fall down before you can say, or do you do all things well because we're going to someday. And then we're going to be so ashamed if we don't do it now. Because when we get to heaven and we're able to look back and see number one, all the tragedies and dangers we came close to and didn't even know it. Friends, you have a heart attack right here. Right now, I don't like every one of us in this small line in a dead heart attack. If we knew how close we came to death this very day and didn't know it. Man, when you get to heaven and see how God led you along and kept you, you're going to hold you and say, God, I know. Oh, how you did what you did, Lord. Not only that, the things we do know have happened that have staggered us and made us almost want to say, God, otherwise you're good or not. We're going to seize in the alternatives. We're going to see what it would have been if God hadn't used that method. And then we're going to say, Oh, God, look what could have happened had you not built this. Oh, Lord, you've done all things well. I've done it, Lord. That's why we bow in reverence before a sovereign God who works all things that to the counsel of his own will. And for those outside of Christ, friends, everything is working together for all to make dissolution and destruction. In Christ is the only safety. Dear friend, if you sense in your heart, you're not in Christ tonight. Isn't there some earnest desire to come in to God's good providence and step into Jesus? Repentance and faith. Repentance because we've got to turn around. We're going our own direction. We're running our own lives. We're living in our own simple way. We've got to turn around and retute that an embrace that wonderful son who already has suffered for the sins of sinners. Made absolute satisfaction for all these people. We turn and take them. Turn our lives over to the ideas to follow him by his grace. And if you've never done it, friend, that's a bad world you're living in. Now the Christ means without hope and without God. You don't want to be like that, do you? But in Christ, no condemnation all sins forgiven. A God who is a great father who works everything in your life together for good, sharing his presence, his power, his peace with you until at last he will share his heavenly home with you as we'll see tomorrow night. No, we Christian suffer but and we suffer the same things that's unsafe people suffer. Death, tragedies, disappointments, but we want suffer the same way. We know something. Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible killed me. And I'm one of the little ones that belong to him, our little tiny somebody. And God's looking at me. God will take care of you. Do you not dismay? Thank God for it. So let's sing our testimony to him tonight. It's in him number 305, just the first standard, 305. Now then so that everybody maybe more can sing to him in just a minute they can sing it now. I want us to pray before we sing. This is the him we're going to sing. We're going to sing this testimony. We've been praying prayers not tonight. We're going to give a testimony. Here's our testimony all the way. My Savior leads me. What have I to ask beside? Can I doubt his tender mercy? Who's through life has been my guide? Heavenly peace divine is comfort here by faith in him to do well for I know whatever it follows me. Jesus do it all things well. And yet there may be somebody here right now who is not in Christ. And yet God brought you here for that. So let's bow his presence. Friends, Jesus stands in our midst. If you're willing now, if you're hardest prepared, it turns on your way to Jesus. Call upon him to have mercy on you. This seeks him to come into your life and be your Savior. Jesus has given gracious promises to all who this approach is. I stand at the door and lock if anyone opens up. I will come in. Here's my voice and open the door. I'll come in. Take me right now just while we bow in prayer and sing with the rest of us and sing the testimony that you can sing for the rest of your life. And it's a good one. Let's bow before him. Come to Christ now. Turning from your sins and repentance and placing Jesus calling on him, committing your life to be his now as he gives you grace from this day on.