Who works it all for good?

I was greatly blessed last Sunday to preach on Romans 8:28-30 at Twynholm. Here it is.

Further to what I spoke on, I thought I would add the following thoughts:

After much thought on the whole issue, I find it difficult to comprehend a notion of God without complete sovereignty.

God's providence includes the sustaining of the whole Universe. Without God's continual work, the Universe would not be. We know that prophecy comes to pass, that God had a plan of redemption before time, that He can ordain events to come to pass as He wishes. I do not see how this can be so without Romans 8:28 talking about God's complete sovereignty over all things.

How can we have confidence in prayer, confidence in salvation, or confidence that we will be be in heaven without a Sovereign God who holds all of these things in His hands?

Have you heard of the butterfly effect? It is the idea that a butterfly flapping it's wings in Peru can cause a storm in London. The premise is that even tiny changes can have massive effects. Lets say that a moth landed on lamp of the Virgin Mary's Gandmother's lamp, it caught light, fell on the floor and burnt the house down, resulting in her death. This would mean that Jesus would not be born to Mary. What if the birth went wrong? What if Mary didn't want a child and decided to have an abortion? Or if a robber killed the teenage Jesus for money?

If you look at the whole string of things that must have been exactly so for Christ to be born, for the prophecy to be fulfilled, you will get an idea of just how much does have to be exactly right for things to come to pass as prophesied. If God were not in control of the will of Mary, causing her to want to carry the child, if He were not in control of the moth that thankfully did not land on Mary's Grandmother's lamp, then the only alternative is that the Universe is subject to Quantum Randomness (google for it!)

Our sovereign God is in the driving seat of life, he is in control of Quantum Randomness, and on this solid rock I can have my faith in Him, in Jesus Christ and his work on the cross.