A New Testament passage and the passage from which the teaching will be primarily taken is found in Romans 8 beginning in verse 26. Romans 8 beginning in verse 26. Let's pray together. Father, as we come to your word, we ask that it would teach us, guide us, lead us, change us, in Jesus' name, amen. This is God's word. Likewise, 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 groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is in the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined, to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that we might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined, he also called. And those whom he called, he also justified. And those whom he justified, he also glorified. Whenever difficulties befall us, no matter the seriousness or category, be they financial or medical or relational or career or family-oriented, one of the questions that comes to mind goes something like this. What did I do wrong? Or why did God let this happen to me? When you ask that question, what did I do wrong, there's usually a lot of people around to tell you what you did wrong, even if they're wrong. That's the most universal reaction, whether you're a Christian or not. Some Christians believe that their temporal well-being is directly linked to their obedience to God's commands. The thinking is particularly evident on Christian television, at least in the United States. If you obey, especially if you give, God will bless you, especially financially or at least in good health. And sometimes he does. But even if you're not a Christian, you might think like that. You might say something like this. If you see someone have a run of bad fortune, you might wonder, what do they do to deserve this? Karma is coming after them. Or the universe keeps score. Or maybe you're simply a pessimist and you might think something like this. No good deed goes unpunished. Now some of you met my father. He was here a couple of times over the years. And all of you have come to the conclusion about what a wonderful man he was, so gracious, et cetera, et cetera. And most of that is true, or it was true most of the time. My dad's a pessimist or was, I'm sure he's not now. And a little of it rubbed off on me. I remember one year Tracy had the opportunity to go with a friend of ours, a longtime friend that we went to university with, Robin. And they had a cabin on Lake Erie in Canada. Has back when you could just cross the Canadian border without a passport or showing your driver's license. Anyway, so she left for a week. And I was at home in the middle of July with our six kids. For the very first night that she was gone, Jessica had gone to stay with a friend, not for the night, just to hang out, pal around. And I heard a doorbell ringing and I went and opened the door. And the father of the friend, the girl that she had gone to visit, was holding Jessica in his arms. She had been playing on the trampoline and had twisted her ankle so bad it had swelled up. And so she handed her off to me and I put her on the couch and got some ice. I remember thinking, she is the only one that's going to be of any help to me this week. She's the only girl and I have five sons. So the next morning, I came downstairs Monday morning and Joe was watching TV, David and Dan were eating cereal at the table and there was water all over the floor. All over the floor. And I said to them, I said, where is this water coming from? And these two sharp as attack sons sitting there eating cereal looked up at me and in unison said, what water? I mean, it was all over the floor. Well, what had happened is there had been a we had a septic tank and there had been a kink in one of the channels that the water goes down to the septic tank. And so it had backed up and they'd come out of the downstairs bathroom toilet. Fortunately, it was clear. Well, the water went down the vents, shorted out the motor for the fan and circuit board so we had no air conditioning. It was 95 degrees. What's that translate to in about 40, I think, close to Celsius. So I called the people that know how to fix septic tanks and I asked them if they could do it and the guy said, well, it's, you know, after working hours now, it's going to cost $840. If we come tomorrow, it'll be 695. So I called my parents and I told them what was going on just to talk to another adult and I told them 840 tonight, 695 tomorrow, which is Tuesday. My mom without missing a beat said, how much for Wednesday? So Tracy's on vacation and the song you picked to find time to leave me Lucille came to mind. In perspective, these things are just annoyances. But in the middle of it all, I'm tempted to ask why, Lord, why? Like Tevye and the fiddler on the roof. Did you have to pick now to make my horse lame? Me, I understand, but what did my horse ever do to you? Having been in the ministry now for 40 years. These are the questions that people ask when someone is sick or injured or a marriage is in trouble. Or kids are falling away from the faith or failing in school or there's trouble of some kind. They ask that question. They ask why, Lord, what did I do? And what's worse is sometimes that's what our friends asked too. But what we've read in the scriptures and what is true is that God causes all things to work together for good for those who love God and who are called according to his purposes. I can recall one woman in her grief saying to me, and don't give me that God causes all things to work together for good. It's the last thing she wanted to hear, but it's the thing that gives us the most hope. It's the most comforting words of all scripture if we believe them because it tells us that the God who loves us has not abandoned us no matter how bad things look for us. Even the most horrible things that happen to us, God causes to work together for good for us. Now does that mean all things are good? No, no, no. If you get robbed, if you get beat up, it's not a good thing that it happened to you. But God causes those things to work together for good. God is never caught by surprise, taken off guard, wondering what to do next, scrambling to figure things out. It's not as though on the morning that I described God was taking a nap. He knew everything before it happened. I want us to look for a few minutes at a passage in John chapter 9. It's about the old city of Jerusalem and the pool of Salam. We'll read it in a second. One article I read said workers preparing a sewage pipe in the old city of Jerusalem have discovered the biblical pool of salons, a freshwater reservoir that was a major gathering place in ancient times for Jews making religious pilgrimages to the city and the reputed site where Jesus cured a blind man from birth, a man blind from birth, according to the Gospel of John. The pool was fed by the now famous Hezekiah's tunnel and is much grander affair than archaeologists previously believed. With three tiers of stone stairs allowing easy access to the water, scholars have said that there wasn't a pool of salons and that John was using a religious conceit to illustrate a point, said New Testament scholar James Charlesworth of Princeton Theological Seminary. What do you expect from Princeton? Now we have found the pool of Salam exactly where John said it was in the Gospel that was thought to be pure theology is now shown to be grounded in history. The newly discovered pool is less than 200 yards from another pool of Salam. This one, a reconstruction built in AD 400 and 460 by the Empress Eudocia of Byzantium, who oversaw the rebuilding of several biblical sites. Why do I talk about all this history? It's to show you that what is in the Bible is not only theological, it's not only good for our instruction, but it's rooted and grounded in history, in actual history. So in John 9 it says as he passed by he saw a man blind from birth. And disciples asked Rabbi who sinned? This man or his parents that he was born blind. That was the prevailing notion that if somebody was blind it was because somebody sinned. Either the man personally or his parents. But you notice he'd been born blind and they still thought maybe it was because he sinned. So the assumption is that his sin could have preceded his birth. Jesus answered, it was not that this man sinned or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day, the night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. Having said these things, he spat on the ground and made mud with saliva. Then he anointed the man's eyes with mud and said to him, go wash in the pool of Salome, which means scent. So he went and washed and came back seeing. Here we have a story of a man blind from birth. We don't know how old he is. We're not sure, but his parents say later in the story he is of age. When the rulers started asking him what had happened, how did he recover his sight, they said, ask him, he is of age. Meaning that he is considered an adult, so we have a man who is most likely in his 20s or older. He has been blind from birth. The disciples asked the question, who sinned? This has to be somebody's fault, who sinned? That's the question. That's the question that comes up in our hearts and our minds. I can remember when things had gone pretty badly at the first church I planted in Indianapolis. Other pastors would ask me, what did you do? How did you let this happen? The assumption was that I had done something. I'm sure that I had in some way, but that was the question. But a year earlier, I was invited to church planning conferences all over the country. Our church plan had started with 12 people and had grown to 200. 60 people had professed faith. And everyone wanted to know, how did you do it? So they could do it too. But I had no idea. After the difficulties, they were asking a similar question with a different motive. What happened? Why were they asking? They were asking so they could avoid making the same mistake themselves. If I can believe that he did something wrong, then I can avoid doing that thing and avoid the pain. But it doesn't work that way. What I came to understand is this. Better men than me have suffered more than me. And worse men than me have had greater success than me. In Luke 13 it says, now there were some present at the time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood piloted mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, do you think these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans? Because they suffered this way, I tell you no. But unless you repent, you too will all perish. So when something bad happens to a group of people, when there's some catastrophe and we see this and we wonder why the warning from God is repent or worse will happen to you. And I'll remind you again, although I probably said it a thousand times, repentance means to turn from your sin back to God. Then he says, there were the eighteen who died when the tower of Siloam fell on them. Do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you no. But unless you repent, you too will all perish. So in John 9, why is this man born blind? Being blind in that time was worse than it is now. Less understanding, less help. People assumed you or somebody you were related to had done something wrong. There was no braille. When my mom went nearly blind, she had books on tape. There was no such thing. You most likely had to beg in the street and people assumed you or your family were being punished for their sins. But it's not because of his sins. Then why? Jesus said, neither this man nor his parents sinned. This is the inference. But this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. Wow. Think about that. What Jesus is saying is this man had endured a lifetime of being blind up until now. He hadn't been able to see as a baby, as a child, growing up and the assumptions were all negative on him. He had become a man and he still couldn't see. And he had to wonder, why did this happen to me? Decades of suffering so that Jesus could heal him. Does that bother you? We wouldn't do that to someone. You see the temptation? The temptation is to think I'm more moral than Jesus. I wouldn't have done that. I'd do it differently. It's like when Jesus was in the bottom of the boat resting and the disciples were dealing with a storm at sea and they woke him up and they said, don't you care that we're perishing? And that's what we're prone to think is that don't you care. And we want to believe that if it was us, if we were in charge, we would have done better. But that's not true. Other things are more important to Jesus than the things that are important to me. And this is where the spirit helps our weaknesses. God views time differently. 20 years of suffering, yet this man has been dead for 2000. He's immortalized in the pages of scripture and apparently saved from his sins and he's now with Jesus in heaven. If you could go back and ask him, would you rather not have been blind and lived a normal life? Because he must have wondered why, why God, why did why did this have to happen to me? If you could ask him that after the fact, he would say, absolutely not. I might have never met Jesus. I might have never been saved. I wouldn't have been in heaven all these years. So whatever it is you're going through, whatever it is you think is unfair, whoever it is that you lost, the answer is all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose. The scriptures provide us with examples of how God's good purpose in the lives of his people do not always seem good in the moment. And this is another way that the Bible helps us by reminding us of God's word. John 14 verse 25, these things I've spoken to you while I'm still with you, but the helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to you remembrance all that I've said to you. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, let them neither be afraid. The Holy Spirit helps our weaknesses by teaching us through scripture and reminding us what he said. Of course the caveat is you need to read it first. You have to read it in order to be reminded of it. We're almost to a new year and every year that I've been with you I've reminded you that there are all kinds of read through the Bible in a year things that you can find online you can Google them. And they'll take you through how to read your Bible in a year once if you want, twice for some of you who are more ambitious. But the Bible has several examples of things not going well for God's people. Remember Joseph in Genesis 37 his brothers were jealous of him because he seemed to be his father's favorite. And they threw him into a pit and then sold him into slavery. And the people he sold that bought him then sold him into slavery ended up in Egypt. And then he did well for a while and then Potiphar's wife accused him of attacking her and he was sent to prison. He was there for a while and then he was released and God was gracious to him and he rose to second in power to Pharaoh. And he was able through his wisdom to save the people from the drought. And when his brothers finally came to Egypt to get grain and they recognized him. I'm sure they thought he was dead. He said you meant it for evil but God meant it for good. Think about that. If all of that could befall Joseph and God meant it for good even though his brothers meant it for evil. I don't know all of your stories but I know some of you and I don't think any of you have been sold into slavery thrown in a pit, maliciously accused and thrown in a dungeon. And yet this is what Joseph suffered and he says God meant it for good. Job lost all his earthly possessions including his health and although we know why it took place because we see even the heavenly picture. Job never receives an explanation this side of heaven. Paul himself experiences imprisonment which is at the time seemed to halt the expansion of the gospel but actually advanced it through the letters he wrote while he was in prison. I heard a story once about a man who was in ministry and they were expecting a child and when his child was born his son was born blind. There was a person who was antagonistic toward the gospel and he heard about the child and was gleefully awaiting for the young pastor to blame God. And this young pastor went to his senior pastor who read to him this passage from Exodus 4. Moses said to the Lord I have never been eloquent neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant I am slow of speech and tongue. The Lord said to him who gave man his mouth, who makes him deaf or mute, who gives him sight or makes him blind, is it not I the Lord? Now go I will help you speak and I will teach you what to say. So this person antagonistic to the gospel was overhearing the conversation. And the man went and told his wife we have been blessed with a beautiful baby boy. As a result the man listening became a believer. All things work together for good. The ultimate good is the glory of God demonstrated through the salvation of men. Acts chapter 2 says men of Israel listen to the words Jesus of Nazarene. A man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through him in your midst just as you yourselves know. This man delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God you nailed to the cross by the hands of Godless men and put him to death. But God raised him up again and put an end to the agony of death since it was impossible for him to be held in its power. You see the best person who ever lived suffered the worst indignities and pain of any of us for us. What shall we say then to these things if God is for us who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Do you believe that? I hope you do. And if you've never put your faith in Christ now is the time to believe that whatever you've gone through is momentary light affliction. No matter how much it is no matter how long it's been. All things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose.