Judg 14:4, However, his father and mother did not know that it was of the Lord, for He was seeking an occasion against the Philistines. Now at that time the Philistines were ruling over Israel. 
	We have spent some time looking at the fact that the Lord and His perfect will and plans are so very far beyond the meagerness of our human understanding and concepts. We may think that we know all that there is to know on some subject or in terms of how we should respond in any given situation. We often get very rigid and codified in stubbornly holding our ideas forth as the only way in which to deal with each prescribed circumstance. Yet, the Lord may have something completely different in the works. 
As we have been discovering, the Lord is not bound by what we think is necessary, nor by what we think He should do and how He should do it. He works to the perfect and complete fulfillment of all that needs to take place for His glory to manifestly evident for all of eternity, whether we see it or not!
	Please understand, He never waivers in terms of any aspect of His Being of Holiness and Truth! There are no gray areas with the Lord. Sin is sin is sin, large or small, felony or misdemeanor as we might look at them. It is all sin and it is all anathema before Him. 
As well, it is not something that will fluctuate with the social currents. What He declared as sin in the Old Testament is still sin in our current dispensation. There is no turning away from it or turning a blind eye on this or that activity. No! God is not relative in terms of how He views the trespasses that we commit against His Perfect Standard of Holiness. Much as man may try to sugar coat and minimize and argue against Him, God’s Word and His Justice and His Righteousness and His Holiness are the same, yesterday, today, and forevermore!
	What we are looking at is the fact that we are incapable of seeing exactly what the Lord is doing so perfectly in the every detail of His Hand in action. This is because we cannot see the end from the beginning. God’s Omniscience and His Omnipotence work together in perfection bringing forth the fullness of His heart in the manifestation of His will and His purpose. That is so beyond the scope of our understanding at times, until the moment that He chooses to reveal what He is doing in the perfection of His handiwork.
	That is why we can so gloriously know in our heart the reality of Rom 8:28. Rom 8:28, And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. 
	We know that God causes all things to work together for good in our lives because He loves us. This is one of those bedrock assurances upon which we can always and forever stand firmly rooted in Jesus Christ! No matter what is happening in the course of our lives, we know that God causes all things to work together for good, fully in line with His plan and His purpose and His perfect will. 
	All things! Not just the things that we consider as good and as a blessing. All things! Not just those elements which seem to be in line with what we have planned and purposed for our lives. All things! Everything! Every bump in the road of our walk with Him; from every skinned knee and every bee sting to every utterly devastating issue which brings forth the pain of self denial and cleansing away of that filthy residue of our old nature! Everything! All things! Yes, even those times of our deepest grief and mourning, those times of our anguish and strife and utter earthly hopelessness, all things! 
	When we have the opportunity to look back at the course of our life in Jesus Christ, with those eyes which have been opened by the working power of the Holy Spirit, we will see an amazing and awesome panorama. We will see how all the times of fear and trembling, the times of heart-ache and suffering, the times of illness and poverty have all worked together for good in our lives.
This is all by the loving and comforting and powerful hand of God in the course of His perfect will! We will see that He has directed and ruled and overruled in the every step of our time on this earth. He has and is protecting. He has always and will always provide. He is working to perfectly establish us into the living relationship with Him that will stand the test of all the eternal ages.
…And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. 
    	In this life, on this road of sojourning with Him each day, we may not understand or comprehend or even think that He is doing us good as each moment passes. But He is! He is dealing with us in the love that knew us even before the universe of His creation was put into place. We cry and we stomp our feet and we stubbornly refuse to obey at times, but still He causes all things to work together for good to and in us. 
He makes His Sovereignty to be a hedge over and in us all the days of our lives. He manifests His perfect will into the every fiber of our being to the point of our perfection in Jesus Christ at the day of our eternal glory in Him.
	As the Apostle Paul further encourages us in his second letter to the Church at Corinth, Chapter 4, verses 7-18, we know that there is a greater purpose at work in these mortal bodies. God has His plan and His way and His means of showing forth the great mercy and love with which He created you and me. Despite all with which we may have to deal on this earth, He is at work bringing forth much more than we could ever even conceive within the scope of our human understanding. 
	2 Cor 4:7-18, But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the surpassing greatness of the power may be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are constantly being delivered over to death for Jesus' sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death works in us, but life in you. But having the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, "I believed, therefore I spoke," we also believe, therefore also we speak; knowing that He who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and will present us with you. For all things are for your sakes, that the grace which is spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God. Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. 
    	By the abiding power of the Holy Spirit, we are given those glimpses into what the Lord God Almighty is bringing into place in our lives. We face the most severe trials and storms, and even the physical death of our earthly lives. The fact is, however, that it will all serve to His glory and His praise in the perfect establishment of the life of Jesus Christ within the hearts and minds of those who are witnesses to the power of God in us, no matter what!
	I am reminded of how the early church was so persecuted by Rome. Those beloved saints of old, our brothers and sisters in Christ, were burned alive, or torn to pieces by the lions in the Coliseum. This was all for sport and for the entertainment of the Roman populace. What should have been the absolute dissolution of this so called Sect of the Way, those believers in the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, actually served to bring the opposite into being. Their persecution and sacrifices led to the overthrowing of that Roman government and society. 
As those early Christians were being so viciously martyred, they were singing songs of praise and adoration to the Lord. This caused the spectators to wonder at why and how these people, who were being so sadistically and brutally tortured and crucified, could so fully trust in their God. They were faced such a certain and violent death, yet they did so with complete peace and with joyful song. 
Rather than being eliminated, and diminished, the early church was growing in leaps and bounds. Eventually even a later Emperor would receive Christ and become a Christian. The whole society was turned upside down because of the power of God that was seen through those early believers. It was their joy-filled testimony, even in the midst of the worst of persecution, which caused all things to work together for good even in the course of that terrible earthly persecution and tribulation. 
The Apostle expresses this very concept of the manifest overruling power of God to the Philippians in either life or death. There is that desire within us to be with the Lord, even now. Yet we know that we are here to serve His plan and His purpose with willingness and with self-sacrifice, to His glory Alone. We have this recounted in Phil 1:19-24, if you would please open to it.
Phil 1:19-24, For I know that this shall turn out for my deliverance through your prayers and the provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, according to my earnest expectation and hope, that I shall not be put to shame in anything, but that with all boldness, Christ shall even now, as always, be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I am to live on in the flesh, this will mean fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which to choose. But I am hard-pressed from both directions, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better; yet to remain on in the flesh is more necessary for your sake. 
    	… For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. This is another of those realities by which God’s Omniscience and Omnipotence are so blended together into the perfection of His will. This is how the Roman empire was so absolutely turned away from such awful paganism into the center of Christianity for so many centuries. It is the means whereby those beloved saints who have gone before us have fully received the reward for that which they suffered on this earth. 
There should be that recognition that the physical life we have on this earth is fleeting and so vastly limited in scope and sequence. This is especially evident when compared with the limitless glory of our exaltation with Jesus in His magnificence and brilliance of Being. This should cause us to hold absolutely no fear of death! 
At the same time we do not seek it! Rather, we pray that our physical lives on this earth will only bring more glory to the Lord in the manner in which He is represented through us unto others in the course of our walk with Him.
	The Writer to the Hebrews helps to bring to the forefront the clarity of the reason that we are so called to live in accordance with the will of God rather than relying on our will and our way and our human understanding. We need to seek The Lord and live our lives in full accordance to the plan that He sets before us. 
Please open to Heb 12:1-13, so we can read this instruction unto seeking the plan and purpose of God above all else in our lives. As we do so, we will discover that God works wondrously and mightily and perfectly to bring about that which will both honor Him and bless us in our obedient service. What He is accomplishing in our lives is our placement into His very family as His beloved children.
	Heb 12:1-13, Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you may not grow weary and lose heart. You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin; and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, "My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, Nor faint when you are reproved by Him; For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, And He scourges every son whom He receives." It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble, and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. 
    	This is something with which we admittedly have a hard time on this earth. We find it difficult to understand how this discipline of God can be so effective to work in us the truth that God loves us and the reality that He truly cares for us. He cherishes us as His very own children in Jesus Christ. 
Our ideas of the course of discipline are so very and extremely rooted in the concepts of punishment and dictatorial control. This is to the point that we are unable to fully ascertain how much of the love of God is infused in the way in which He deals with us. 
	He is Our Heavenly Father, Who shows forth His great grace and love and mercy in the course of His work in our lives. We may not understand why He chooses to deal with us in certain ways, yet it is all grounded in the establishment of something far greater than we could ever imagine! He so loves us that He works through every element of our lives to bring us into the place of knowing Him. We learn complete reliance upon Him and, in so doing, we desire to more perfectly honor Him and to bless Him because of His so great love unto us.
	The Apostle Peter, in 1 Peter 1:3-9, sums up what we have been dealing with as the way in which God rules and overrules in full accordance with His perfect will. We do not need to know the whys and the wherefores and the herewiths of it all. We just need to learn to trust and obey, knowing that God has it all well in hand.
	1 Peter 1:3-9, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ; and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls. So be it!
However, his father and mother did not know that it was of the Lord, for He was seeking an occasion against the Philistines. Now at that time the Philistines were ruling over Israel. Amen.

			
This morning’s benediction is Rom 8:31. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? Amen.