Suffering and the Glory of God – Part I

Part I of an exegetical treatment of Romans 8:18-25 addressing the theme of suffering and how natural evil relates to moral evil in the plan of God’s glory. This sermon was originally preached January 13th, 2008 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA.

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January 13th, 2008
Pastor Duane M. Smets

Suffering and the Glory of God – Part I
Romans 8:18-25

I. The place of suffering in the book of Romans
II. The glory of God makes it all worth it (v.18)
III. All of God’s creation cries out (v.19-22)
A. Subjection (v.20)
B. Bondage (v.21)
C. Birth-pangs (v.22)
IV. All of God’s children cry out (v.23-25)
A. The Spirit (v.23b)
B. New Bodies (v.23c)
C. In Hope (v.24-25)

Introduction – Read text and pray.

I. The place of suffering in the book of Romans

Today we are beginning of a new series called “Suffering and the Glory of God.” We are studying through book of Romans, chapter by chapter, verse by verse, word by word…and because of that it takes time, so we’ve set aside a couple years to do this. We’re hoping and expecting that you’ll stick around! J The reason we do it that way is because of the time distance, culture distance, language distance, spiritual distance…the only other option would be to just fly by stuff, not really dig in, not really understand and I just can’t do that.

But here is the problem, if we just trudged through Romans week after week for five years, that would get old, really old. The rest of the Bible would get ignored, we wouldn’t get a full view of God or what it means to be a Christian. So what we do is we break up our studies of Romans into series. In between sermons, I preach from other places in the Bibles and during certain seasons, like Christmas-advent, we take several weeks away from Romans and study other things.

So, it’s been awhile for us since we’ve been in Romans…my daughter was born and I took a few weeks off after that…then it was Christmas and the New Year…it’s been nearly 3 months for us, so it’s good to be back! And we are coming back to Romans and diving right in and it’s thick…we’re diving right into a passage that’s all about suffering, a huge and hard topic.

So the first thing I want to do, because some of you are just joining us, and because it’s been a while for most of us, I want to quickly review Romans to see how suffering fits in. Romans is a book about God…he is the hero of the story. The story is of a courtroom. In this courtroom God is good, all humans are not, we are guilty of loving God, the creator of the universe who gives us life and breath, we have done evil and wrong and deserve penalty. So God sends Jesus, his son. Jesus lives the life we know should but can’t, dies death we deserve in our place, and then gives us faith in his person and work and we get justified, right before God, and all the goodness of Jesus gets put to our account in the courtroom of heaven before God.

After that there is some stuff to deal with in the book of Romans, like what about sin after becoming a Christian, after receiving this courtroom gift, what are we to do, how do we follow Jesus as a master, how do we deal with the internal conflict and struggle we feel at times as Christians, what is our new life with Jesus’ Spirit supposed to look like? The most recent thing, our last series was “The Jesus family Series”, where we learn that we get adopted and become part of a spiritual family…where God becomes our daddy, Jesus our brother, and we will inherit the whole world along with him. The last phrase we dealt with in Romans ended by saying that we are “heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”

So suffering comes in the context of book of Romans, saying “alright you’ve already become a Christian…now I need to tell you something, it does not mean everything is going to be sunny days with no problems, there is suffering and it’s real and if you haven’t experienced it yet you will, so let me tell you why so that when it happens you will not be uprooted…you will not give up and say forget it, if this is what I get for following Jesus then screw it!” God inspired this portion of Scripture so that our faith might go deep and be able to handle anything that comes our way and so that when full glory comes we will have a capacity for understanding it’s greatness and beauty, and not just think “Oh, cool and go back to playing Halo 3. ”

So suffering, suffering… Let me bring some reality to the table. For some, you are happy right now. Life is going well for you. You are excited about the new year. Some of you are getting married, some thinking about getting married. Some have new jobs, new classes, new babies (that’s me!) and the last thing you want to do today is talk about suffering. Don’t worry, my goal isn’t to try and make us all emo sad by the end of this sermon. But first we need to bring some reality to the table. All it takes is the click of the ipod and a sad sad song, filled with suffering and pain is immediate…Bright Eyes, Ryan Adams, Damien Rice all quickly come to my mind. For some Christmas and New Years may have been a very dark part of the year for you and you are just glad it is over.

Here is some reality. In the past two weeks I had a conversation with a very good friend who is afraid his wife may have cancer. At my job, two of my co-workers have recently discovered they have cancer. And my Aunt too, just found out she has cancer. What does the Bible have to say about cancer? What about friendships you have with people who’s brother or sister committed suicide? What about a Tiger that escapes out of the San Fransisco Zoo attacking a vistor and killing him? What about fires that ravaged 368,000 acres, killed 10 people and destroyed 1750 homes? Does the Bible have to say anything about that? What about the tears of a Grandma, who has lost her husband and two of her own children? What does the Bible say?

What does the Bible say about suffering? Here’s Paul, the author of Romans, his thesis: Verse 18, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us.” Wow…really? Really Paul, you really think that? “Yes. Let me tell you why.”

First notice something he does, in that statement…he makes an assertion about history and time. He says, “the sufferings of this present time.” Neither Paul, nor the the rest of the Bible, views history as something that had no beginning and has no end and is just spinning out of control…no, it’s going somewhere. Suffering belongs to this time, this age, this stage in the course of history and there is a state coming, when for the saints of God, those who put their faith in Jesus…suffering will be no more because glory will be revealed in them and things will change.

Glory will be revealed. It is interesting that the word “glory” itself in Hebrew, in the Old Testament means “weight” and Paul makes this statement saying the glory will outweight the suffering. And Paul wasn’t someone who didn’t know anything about suffering. In 2 Corinthians, another letter he wrote, he talks about how he’s been beaten, and shipwrecked by storms, and at times driven to despair and then he makes this statement, “this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison (2 Cor 4:17).” I think he is saying the same thing there as he is here in Romans.

C.S. Lewis picked up on it and wrote a little book called, “The Weight of Glory.” In his poetic way he writes of bitter pain, saying that in it we can be left feeling “utterly and absolutely outside, repelled, exiled, estranged, finally and unspeakably ignored…but to be called in, welcomed, received, acknowledged…to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside…and to be summoned (in) would be glory and honor beyond all our merits and also the healing of that old ache.”

III. All of God’s creation cries out (v.19-22)

The ache, the groan, the cry. Creation feels it and experiences it and so does God’s children. This week, let’s talk about all of creation and then next week we’ll talk about God’s children. So look in verse 19, “the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.” Sons means children of God, so you girls don’t think you’re getting excluded…but creation, creation waits, with eager longing for God’s glory.

There’s one Greek word behind the two words that get translated “eager longing” and the Greek word is much more picturesque. It means standing on your tippy toes and stretching out your head, looking out across the horizon. Surfers in San Diego know this one, where you stand on the edge of the cliff, like Sunset Cliffs or in Del Mar or Encinitas, or when you look out across the beach and you try to see what the surf looks like coming in before you go out. Or perhaps you have waited in the San Diego airport for a loved one and you are constantly looking for them to walk down that hall and come down the escalator. This is eager longing. Creation here this passage is personified, pictured with human feelings and characterstics. And creation longs and awaits for the children of God to be revealed.

What is up with that? Why does creation, the plants and the animals, why does creation care about what is up with Christians? Three things: subjection, bondage, and birth-pangs.

A. Subjection (v.20)

Verse 20, “For the creation was subjected to futulity, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope…” This verse is huge and I want you to get it. There is a futility to creation. There is something wrong with it. Our environmentalists friends, know this well. Global warming is kind of a hot button. Also, the sun is a star and its getting bigger and it will eventually melt our planet and we will all die. There are endangered species and there are animals that at one time existed and now do not. There is something violent and bloody and seemingly wrong about the way animals act. Our plants are broken. The colors of flowers should not fade and shrivel and turn brown and die. Earthquakes and floods and fires and tornadoes…Creation should not be breaking down. The second law of thermodynamics, entropy, order to chaos…shows a broken system.

And here is the massive truth in this verse: creation is that way for a reason, it was subjected to it…Paul carries the personification, creation didn’t will to be that way, something happened and things changed and it was subjected to this futility. What is going on here?

Two things. One, who subjected it and two why did he subject it. First, it is God who subjected it. How do we know this? Because, only God would or could do such a thing “in hope!” Satan does not do things in hope. If we turn to the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, Adam did not subject the world to dissarray in hope! I am utterly perplexed by the answers of so many supposedly Christian leaders and teachers and preachers today who feel that they somehow must get God off the hook for there being suffering and evil in the world. We don’t need to do that! He is just fine and can take care of himself.

So many today, would rather say that there is no reason, it’s just meaningless. The famous athiest Friedrich Nietzsche just says to embrace and accept suffering because it is just part of the cycle of the universe. Eastern philosophies call suffering dukkha which we must liberate ourselves from through meditation. Some want a God but just one that wound up the universe like music box and is just letting it run and he has nothing to do with it (diests). Or there is the open theists want to say that God was just not smart enough to see the future and know what was going to happen once he created and now there are all these problems he can’t fix and is try to learn from us how to fix them. God, doesn’t need us to get him off the hook. The Bible answers just fine.

Here is the story, when God subjected creation to futility, it’s in Genesis 3, God created the universe and the earth and everything in it and he said it was good. He made man and put him on the earth and gave him a wife and things were good. Then the man and the woman sinned by not listening to and thus not loving or worshipping the God who made them and everything they enjoyed. So God shows up, he is good, a good and upright judge and he judges them and hands down a sentence. Here it is,

Genesis 3:16-19 “To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. 17 And to Adam he said, Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; 18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.””

So since way back, thousands of years, whenever this happened, since then, creation has been under a curse, sentence handed down by God because of human sin. Here’s the answer to the why question, why did he subject it. To show and teach us the seriousness of sin. To demonstrate that disobeying and not loving God who has loved and given us so much is a heinous, horrific thing. Thus, all natural evil in the world is a statement about the complete awfulness of human sin. The meaning of every plant that grows thistles and dies, the meaning of every back that gets sore from swinging a hammer or sitting at a desk, the meaning of every tear that is shed over the death of a loved one…is that sin is serious and that God is holy and right and good.

B. Bondage (v.21)

But there is an end to it for God’s children. Creation stands on its tippy toes looking out across the horizon for the day when verse 21, it “will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” When Jesus returns and his brothers and sisters receive their inheritance, creation itself will be changed, it will be freed. Right now it is in bondage, it is not functiong in the way that God designed it to and it is not functioning in the way that it will for the majority of it’s life and existence in eternity. It will be unbound from it’s broken futility.

Here is some pictures from the Bible of the creation unbound. Revelation 21:4 & 22:1 “(Jesus) will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be any mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away…the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, (will flow) from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruits.” Then Isaiah 11:6-9 “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together, and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze (notice not each each other anymore, the vegans are happy!); their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hold of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the snake’s den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

This is a breathtaking vision. And let me just pause for a second, before you dismiss this as just complete fantasy. Isn’t this the way we wish it was? The way we know it should be? Isn’t the reason why such a thing is appealing to us is because it is what we long for?

C. Birth-pangs (v.22)

Last point for today, the childbirth pains. This brings the two sentiments of creation, the subjection and the future freedom together. Paul makes an analogy of childbirth. He says that like the labor that a mother goes through when she gives birth, it is painful, it is suffering, but the result is worth it.

My daughter is 9 weeks old now and my wife assures me that giving birth is far more painful than anything I have felt. Apparently it is worse than getting tattooed or breaking bones or getting stiches. J And I believe it, it looked pretty gnarly! But now, holding little Adina…she is so worth it! If you ask my wife she would go through it all over again for sure, just to have her. Maybe not right away but she’d go through it! J

Paul says, creation and the suffering it experiences and causes is the like the pains of childbirth. It will not last forever. It has an appointed end. Jesus himself said, “In this world you will have trouble but take heart because I have overcome the world (Jn 16:33).” Jesus overcame the world when he died for sin on the cross so that there would be an end to suffering and death, that it wouldn’t just continue on eternally. He made a way for there to be eternal life instead of eternal, unended death. And when Jesus returns to sit on that throne with water coming out of it in the middle of the city…things will be different and all those who held on to him, didn’t abandon their confession and allegience when it got tough, their identity as his brothers and sisters, his familiy, will be made known to everyone.

Conclusion

We’ll talk more about what is ahead for us individually next week and how we can know that. But let me end today with a few thing for you to think about and ways you can apply this passage to your lives.

1. Don’t single yourself out. When you suffer, don’t think poor me, how unfair. All of creation groans and is in pain and havoc. Don’t overpersonalize things so much when you think that you individually are somehow being slighted. Don’t think that it’s just karma. When bad stuff happens to you it isn’t like God is sitting up in the sky with some sort of stick and he pokes you every time you do something bad.

2. Realize the seriousness of your sin. Recognize that not listening and trusting and following and loving God is a serious serious thing. So serious that God would subject all of creation to such suffering because of it. Don’t take your sin lightly, but be quick to repent and ask for grace and forgiveness. Put your faith in Jesus and his perfect life and death for you.

3. Don’t live your life solely for the now. Think long-term, think about eternity and what is ahead. Set your sights further. Realize that God is a big big God and history is going somewhere and there is a wonderful weight of glory ahead for those who are his. So cherish God as your God through belief in Jesus, don’t put eternity at risk because you want what you want and you want it now.

4. Lastly, be amazed at Jesus, who he is and what he has done for us on the cross. If what Adam did so long ago had such far reaching effects…think of how much more what Jesus did will have an effect on this universe. And if he is your Lord and Master and Savior you will experience that and not be on the hell side of things. Jesus’ cross is cosmos changing! That is huge. The cross of Christ is a big deal! Resolve to continually take in all you can of Christ and him crucified.

Now’s the time when all Christians are welcome to receive communion and all members of The Resolve Church partner in the gospel in our worship of giving.

If you are Christian or becoming one today, worship Jesus when you come to this table. If you need to repent of some things, do that. If you need to give thanks, do that. Receive the gift of Christ, his perfect live and perfect death for you.