Suffering and the Glory of God – Part II

Part 2 of an exegetical treatment of Romans 8:18-25 addressing the theme of suffering and how God’s Spirit enables us to groan and wait for new bodies in a secure hope. This sermon was originally preached January 20th, 2008 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA.

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January 20th, 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

Good morning church family. Today we continue in our new series “Suffering and the Glory of God.” This is the second sermon from Romans 8:18-25. Let’s read it and pray.

Last week I mainly dealt with verses 18-22 and how the creation cries out, it groan and eagerly waits for the glory of God to be revealed in God’s children. This week we’ll deal mainly with verses 23-25 and how God’s children cry out and groan and eagerly await for the glory of God to be revealed in them.

Before we get into it, let me just set up this passage. Verse 18 is Paul’s thesis, “The sufferings of the present time is not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” The question on the table is whether what God has planned ahead in the revealing of his glory outweighs the suffering we experience now and thus makes it all worth it? I said last week that the design of these words in the book of Romans is to let Christians know what kind of faith they have, it is one that is greater than suffering.

This text is designed to help you hold on to Christ when suffering happens. By suffering, the Bible here has all and any kind of pain that you experience, physical, emotional, psychological, moral, from all kinds of causes…it is all suffering. From the slightest thing to the serious thing…from general exhaustion and crushed expectation to life threatening illness, it’s all suffering. And this portion of the Bible exists to help you if you are a Christian so that if you or someone you love ends up having their house burned to the ground or you end up on a hospital bed, you willl have some capacity for it and not resort to despair and say, “Why me!!! Doesn’t God love me? I guess none of it is true after all. And then abandon Christ.”

It is my goal today to make you long-term Christians that when suffering strikes, beacause it will, your reaction will be to fall on knees instead of run. So many run. I want to make you like Job, when sufffering struck him, he prayed a prayer and said of God, “Though he slay me, I will yet trust in him (Job 13:15).”

IV. All of God’s children cry out (v.23-25)

Okay, let’s go to work. The Bible has good stuff here. Verse 23, “Not only the creation…” That was last week, we looked at the creation, how creation is subjected to futility, how creation is not how it is supposed to be, there is something wrong with it is broken, flowers are not intended to turn brown and die, the violence and fear and death of animals is not supposed to be…and it is all that way only for (verse 18) this present time, a temporary age, era, or stage of history and that one day it will end. It is part of a judicial sentence handed down from God because of the sin of humans.

The message is that sin is bad. All natural evil is an enormous ever present sermon to us that moral evil, yours and my sin is a big deal. And the creation, eagerly longs…that is anxiously awaits or stands on it’s tippy toes with it’s neck stretched forward and looks for the day when it will end! That was last week. This week we look as ourselves, we Christians, we groan and anxiously await, eagerly long, standing on our tippy toes and stretching our necks forward looking for our full adoption and redeemed bodies in hope. So last week creation cries out, this week God’s children cry out.

A. The Spirit (v.23b)

Let’s look at verse 23 again, “And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons…” Now there is an incredible reversal and picture here I want to show you. In order to see it you got to understand what firstfruits are.

In the time when this was written, one of the most common jobs was being a farmer, kind of like how working with computers is one of the most common jobs in San Diego, we’re a tech city. And something everyone would have understood, especially Jews because their Bible talks about it, is firstfruits.

Firstfruits in the Bible are what God’s people give to him out of worship. So for example, I have an orange tree in my backyard, I just noticed the other day that about three of the oranges are just about ripe. Now if San Diego operated primarily with the trading of goods rather than money, then I would cut my three oranges off my tree and go and give them to God by coming to church and putting them in that little offering box over there.

This is the idea of firstfruits, that the first of everything we make belongs to God because it all comes from him and those who love God and are committed to him and his mission, support it by giving out of their hard earned labor both as sign of their commitment and also as a pledge to worship him in the way that they spend the rest of their money.

This is often not how Christians give. So let me teach you. It is a firstfruits, not a last fruits. Many people, who are part of a church give based on two things. One, if they are giving to a specific thing where they know exactly how their money will be used before they give it. Or two, if after they’ve already spent their money on everything they want and/or need to spend it on, if after that there is anything left, then they give. That’s not the Biblical idea, it’s a firstfruits right off the top that you entrust to God, through the leaders he’s put before you, your fruit. It is not a conditional last-fruits.

Now, we at The Resolved Church are not all about making money, so don’t get the wrong idea. I only address this because it is in our text. And if you are a guest or considering about making this your church, then this doesn’t apply to you until you make that decision. If this is your church and especially if you are an official member, this is how and why we give. Now some of you I know give cash, which is why you should use one of these envelopes. But most of the money that comes in for our church is in checks and Gary Warkentin, our financial administator tells me that the financial budget of this church, which is about $2400 dollars a month, averaging about $600 dollars a week, is carried by six people and we don’t make it. Last month we were -$1000 short and that has been the trend, over the last year we were -10,000 short. I just tell you that so you know where we are at and what are needs are.

Now, let’s bring back the analogy and I’ll show you the reversal. So in the Bible, firstfruits is something we give to God, but here what is the firstfruit? It is something God gives to us…the firstfruit of the Spirit. Firstfruits is reveresed! God gives to us His Spirit. This is the adoption that is initiated, where we come into the family…God gives us a firstfruit his very Spirit. This is what Jesus promised for those who believe in him.

Before Jesus died and rose again and went to be with the Father, Jesus said he would return but in the time between, this present time or era, when there is suffering, that’s the time we’re still in now, this is what he said for those who believed in him and followed him, John 14:16-18;25-27 “(the Father) will give you another helper, to be with you forever…the Spirit of truth…will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you…Because I live you will also live…These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your rememberance all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you…Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”

What great words from Jesus about this firstfruit of the Spirit! How much we need to hear that in our time of suffering, that we are not alone, there is not reason to be troubled or afraid, if you are a Christian, you have the Holy Spirit of God. In Ephesians 1:13-14 Paul, the author of Romans, said it another way, In (Jesus), when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, (you) were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we aquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.”

What does that mean? It means a ton of stuff about how God’s spirit empowers us and purifies us and manifests his presence to us and illuminate God’s word to us and unifies us…but we’ll just stick with these verses in Romans for today and deal with more next week. What is one evidence from this verse in Romans that God’s Spirit is inside you, which Jesus says is a great help? It’s in the second half of verse 23 we “groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons.” We groan! We wait eagerly! And that is a gift!

Godly, Spirit groaning is a gift! Everyone groans but there is a Godly Spirit groaning for Christians…it is the difference between groaning in death and groaning in birth. That is the illustration we looked at last week. The groaning or pain in childbearing, which all the mom’s say, “Yes, that’s painful!” But it is pain in eager expectation for that moment when the baby finally comes out, takes his/her first breath and cries and then the mom pulls her close and joy fills her eyes with tears.

Our adoption is like the little photograph paper from the ultrasound. We are in God’s family, he is our father, Jesus is our brother, the adoption is for sure. But right now we are in pregnancy stage, when we await our full adoption, when the life that has been started in the womb of this world is waiting to come out into the glorious new creation that God has prepared in the world to come.

Groaning in death is the opposite. It is when you have no assurance of your salvation. When you know you have not lived your life for God, you know you don’t love him, you have not embraced the provision of his son Jesus and when you die, and you have no assurance of what will happen! Your groaning is a groaning of death and despair. And the neverending death of hell is around the corner.

It makes a difference how you groan, whether for birth or for death. The point is this. If you are a Christian, you have God’s Spirit, which enables you to face suffering in a whole different way. You groan for sure, but you groan in eager waiting, because you know that your suffering will end, you know what is ahead…the glory of God revealed in us!

B. New Bodies (v.23c)

But what is this glory of God to be revealed in us that this passage of the Bible talks about? Again there is much we could say, but we’ll just stick with Romans for today. It’s in the last part of verse 23, “the rededemtion of our bodies.” When we suffer, we groan, and we groan in eager waiting for new, redeemed, bodies.

The assumption here, what is implicitly acknowledged is that there is something wrong with our bodies, with the human body. Perhaps you’re not a Christian yet, and you are looking in at Christians from the outside and thinking to yourself: “Christians don’t look so hot! These sons and daughters of God…they don’t look much better than everybody else. They still get sore throats and colds. Their bones still break and if they get cut they bleed. They still get diseases like cancer and they die. They still sin and are not loving and forgiving and they often hurt each other and people around them. Yes, maybe Jesus was good and maybe Jesus rose from the dead but Christians are just the same as everyone else.”

Yes, those things are true…the difference is in who Christians trust for their salvation and what that person does for us. Redemption is a buying back, the getting back of an item or the going back to time when things were similar to the way they were before. Last week we looked at the reason for why creation is subjected to futility and we looked at Genesis 3:16-19 where God hands down the curse on creation in response to the sin of the first humans, Adam and Eve. This week we go to the same place to look for the answer of what we are getting back in the future glory to be revealed, what is the redemption of our bodies?

Genesis 3:17-19,22-24 “17 To Adam (God) 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…22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.”

The answer to the question of why our bodies break down and suffer is because of sin, from not loving and trusting God and instead disobeying him. We have such a tendency to want to dimish the seriousness of our sin. But we need not look any further than death to see how serious it is before a perfectly holy and loving God. The human body is not intended to return to dust. Mankind is intedend to reach out his hand and eat of the tree of life forever. The redemption of our bodies. Our bodies will go back to the way they were originally made and will become the way God intends them to be for eternity.

We will be ourselves and have the same names and the same racial identities, we will still eat and drink and have bodies that can smell and hear and touch…but we will be free, no longer having our wills bound by sin, a free will finally granted unto so that we might be who long to be but just can’t seem to be. Finally a free will to do that which it was made by God to do, to love and glorify and worship God and to live life in light of him, no longer a bound will held back by sin, corruption, pain and suffering.

Sometimes heaven is falsely considered as just this unending time of singing songs. It’s not that at all, it is life the way it should be, life like this only better, without the bad…Sure, there will be time of singing, but there will also be feasts and banquets, play and travel, talks with Jesus and our friends and our family and our spouses.

C. In Hope (v.24-25)

How can this be? Isn’t that just a little too fantastic? Perhaps that seems too fairtale-ish to you. Perhaps you say, “How could you really know any of that is true Duane? My suffering is real, I know that! How can glory to be revealed outweigh that?!” The last point of our sermon found in verse 24-25. “For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

“In this hope we were saved.” This is what we hope for. In the Bible, 1 Peter 3:15 asks the question of what the “reason (is) for the hope that is in you.” The answer is that Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior, rose from the dead. This is heart of Christianity upon which all Jesus disciples gave their lives. They saw the risen Jesus and ate with him and talked with and saw him appear to more than 500 people at one time. Jesus rose from the dead and that changes everything. Christianity is worldview changing.

How can we know that we will receive the redemption of our bodies, because Jesus did. Jesus died and rose and received a body just like that and promised it to all who put their faith, their trust, in him that his death covers their sin and satisfies the debt of wrath in death that we owe to God. This is justification, getting just or right before God.

In the courtroom of heaven, you stand before God the judge, you plead guilty, guilty of sin and deserving of death and hell, but you plead Jesus, Jesus life and death in your place. And God accepts Jesus’ as sufficient for you. And then God promises a resurrected body like Jesus’s for when you life ends on this earth or unti Jesus returns to earth.

Jesus Christ is the answer to all suffering. In the garden of Eden mankind fell and was thrown out away, cursed to death and suffering, separated from the tree of life but God sent his son Jesus into the world to die upon a tree in order that all suffering might not just continue on and on forever, but that there might be an end. An end to it in each of our individual lives and an end to the age, this present evil age of suffering.

In this hope we were saved. It is interesting that he uses past tense here because most of the time, Paul refers to salvation the future, it is to be saved from the wrath to come in response to sin. But here he uses it past tense to point to the security of hope, because hope in the Bible is not just wishful thinking, like I hope I win the lottery. It is secure, grounded thinking, like if you were somehow able to time travel and read the newspaper for tomorrow and know what numbers were going to win. That’s bibilical hope, it is the assurance of faith.

It is like John Calvin says, “Hope is nothing else than perseverance in faith. For when we have once believed the word of God, it remains that we persevere until the accomplishment of these things. Hence, as faith is the mother of hope, so it is kept up by it, so as not to give way.”

Here is how hope works in face of suffering. Yesterday, about 20 blocks from my house, a 58 year old woman parked her car on a hill in El Cajon Blvd. She turned off the ignitiion but forgot to left the car in neutral and didn’t pull the e-brake. As she got out of the car it started to roll backward and her own door knocked her down on the ground and then her car rolled over her. Now she is in the hospital with serious injuries. What does the Bible say about that? How does hope work in a situation like that? How would you respond if it happened to you?

If I could go see that woman in the hospital today, and if it turned out she wasn’t a Chrisitan here is what I would say. “Ma’m I’m so sorry this happened to you. I long for the day when our minds will not be so effected that we forget things. If in that moment she grabbed my hand, and with tear fear filled despair looked at me and said “I don’t think I’m going to make it.” I would tell her this, In Romans 8 the Bible says we have a hope that goes beyond what we see and I know right now what you see looks pretty discouraging. Jesus died on the cross so that the suffering we experience now, in this life, will one day end, and that if we die before that day, those who put their faith in him, will not suffer any longer but enter a new world filled with joy, free of pain and suffering. Jesus rose from the dead and if you embrace Jesus and confess that you haven’t loved God like you ought, then he will forgive you and give you his Spirit. Jesus’ Spirit will be a comfort and a help to you in this hour, and you will need not fear death and discouragment because if you don’t make it through this, Jesus will raise you up and give you a new body like his. Jesus knows what it is like to suffer and he suffered for you so that you don’t have to forever. You can have that hope.”

That’s what I would say. Faith in Jesus turns into hope for the future and we eagerly wait that glory with patience.

Conclusion

Let’s conclude. I want to try and bring it all one step further for us. Is it worth it? Suffering is real, whether it is in your mind, or in your body. Is it worth it? It is almost easier to think of someone else from the outside looking in, like that woman in a hospital. But what about when it happens to you. What will be your response?

In that moment, if your back is broken and every joint in your body hurts, your mind feels like a mess, food does not sound good, and nothing seems to be going right. What is your response? Do you bail on your faith or do cry out in hope along with all of creation and say, “Come Lord Jesus Come! Take my ransomed soul away! Let the glory of the children of God be made known! Do you fall down on your knees and worship or do you run? Do you groan with eager waiting and expectation or do you groan with death spasms and denial? Do you say I trust you my God or do you say, forget it!”

We cannot afford to not have our sight set on eternity. So many think that it is so far off and so irrelevant to this life, when the key to this life is to have your sight set on eternity…that is what really changes things now.

My prayer for you and for me is that when suffering strikes, the Holy Spirit, who is in all of those who put faith in Jesus, that the Holy Spirit would enable me to groan a groan in pain that looks forward to birth, to the revealing of the sons of God. I pray in that moment that I will be able to look to the security of the cross in that Jesus died for me in my place and rose again and because I am his and he is mine, I shall one day be like him and receive a redeemed body like his. Suffering will have it’s day for all those who cling to Jesus Christ.

Let me close with the some of the words of a great old hymn we sing sometimes here:

My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness
I dare not trust the sweetest frame
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name
On Christ the solid rock I stand
All other ground is sinking sand

When darkness veils his lovely face
I rest on His unchanging grace
In every high and stormy gale
My anchor holds within the veil
On Christ the solid rock I stand
All other ground is sinking sand

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