And we're not going to be.

And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.

This is a well-known verse from the book of Romans.

It's often used as a means of encouragement.

There's more to it, though, and it's important that we understand this verse in its entirety.

Alistair Begg walks us through this passage today on Truth for Life and explains why

being called by God doesn't give us bragging rights.

Well, we've come to arguably the best known verse in the whole of Romans chapter 8,

verse 28. Many of us have memorized this since we were small, and it is, we might say, a classic verse. People who wouldn't necessarily know where it came from might actually know the verse.

And when you come to such a verse, it's actually quite dangerous.

And the danger is essentially this, that the verse becomes dislodged from its context.

And verse 28 comes after verse 27 and before verse 29. And therefore, the surrounding context, as is always true, but particularly

important that we face up to it, is essential for us. And it is a good time to remind

ourselves that when we listen to the Bible being taught, that the source of the message being

taught is to be the Bible itself. The source of the message is not to be the inventive creativity of the

mind of the preacher. I have all kinds of crazy thoughts in my mind, all sorts of ideas that I

could introduce to you quite routinely on a Sunday. They're not totally irrelevant, but they're

not what this time calls for. No, you have every legitimate

expectation that whatever you hear will actually be found in the Bible. That message from the

Bible is to be discovered on the part of the preacher by carefully exegeting the Scriptures.

And that's the technical word for doing what myself and my colleagues are supposed to do in our study,

and that is look into the scriptures and exeat them in such a way that we can discover what the message is.

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