I would like to call your attention this evening to the words found in Paul's Epistle to the Romans in chapter 8, reading verses 28, 29 and 30.

From verse 28 to verse 30 in the 8th chapter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans.

And we know that all things work together for good

to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did

foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the first

born among many brethren. Moreover, whom he did predestinate, then he also called, and whom he called

them he also justified, and whom he justified them he also glorified. Now here we come again to another subsection in this marvelous progression of arguments and subsections

which the great apostle works out in this wonderful eighth chapter of this epistle to the Romans.

We have seen, we saw at the very beginning, how it is divided into these various sections,

or if you like, subsections. Only one great theme, which he puts in different ways, marshals different arguments,

and provides us with different reasons for having a full assurance, an absolute certainty

of our ultimate, final, complete salvation and deliverance from everything that sin has ever done to us.

Now, that's the controlling theme of the whole chapter. And here, I say, we move on now

to another form of this one great argument.

The fact that we are moving on is introduced by the word and.

And this, I think, serves two main functions here.

It first of all links it with the main argument, as I say, of the whole chapter.

In other words, he's in effect saying, well, another or an additional reason for this is the one I'm about to put to you.

It's another chain in this great link which is being forged

in order to give us this final and ultimate assurance. I think that's probably the main

connection. But of course it has a subsidiary connection of secondary and a second connection

also. And that is that it is, in a sense, a continuation of what he has just been saying

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