SPEAKER_00: And they lived happily ever after.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that how every good fairy tale ends?
SPEAKER_00: At the conclusion of a good fairy tale or a really good story, when you hear that phrase, the main characters' lives are not over, they've just begun.
SPEAKER_00: They've vanquished some evil, they've overcome some challenge.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they've married the love of their life.
SPEAKER_00: And now, at the end of the story, now that these good things have come, they can rest happily forever in peace.
SPEAKER_00: Does that resonate with you?
SPEAKER_00: Can you relate to that?
SPEAKER_00: Probably not in this world because we call them fairy tales.
SPEAKER_00: It makes for a nice story, but that's not really reality for us in this world.
SPEAKER_00: One inescapable fact that we have to face is that nobody gets out of life without suffering.
SPEAKER_00: We may succeed now and fail later.
SPEAKER_00: Every time we get to say hello to some new life, it seems and it feels like we've got to say goodbye to somebody else that we love.
SPEAKER_00: Bad choices that you've made, can't those come back to haunt us time and time again?
SPEAKER_00: And maybe not even the choice you made.
SPEAKER_00: What if somebody else made a choice that had nothing to do with you, but you're affected by it?
SPEAKER_00: Over and over and over.
SPEAKER_00: Some things aren't our fault, they're nobody's fault.
SPEAKER_00: They're just senseless.
SPEAKER_00: It seems random, and none of it seems fair.
SPEAKER_00: And in addition to the universal suffering that humans face, isn't it true that Christians have a unique form of suffering that they must experience?
SPEAKER_00: You remember in Acts 9, verse 16, Ananias was trying to tell the Lord, do you know who Paul is?
SPEAKER_00: Before I talked to this Saul, I've heard he persecutes the church, and the Lord reassured him and said, I'll show him what he must suffer for the sake of my name.
SPEAKER_00: Paul was going to have to suffer some things because of who he was going to follow.
SPEAKER_00: You're going to have to suffer some things if we're going to follow Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Can you describe the agony like Paul did in your own life?
SPEAKER_00: Acts 7, verse 24.
SPEAKER_00: Wanting to do the right thing, but you just can't make it happen.
SPEAKER_00: Not wanting to sin, you don't want to sin anymore.
SPEAKER_00: You want to be done with that.
SPEAKER_00: And you keep falling into it.
SPEAKER_00: Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?
SPEAKER_00: That's a form of suffering we experience.
SPEAKER_00: And even in the last lesson that we looked at, we were assured that if we want to be fellow heirs with Christ and be glorified like Christ, well, we're told that we can expect suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with Him.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't it so easy to get caught up in the present time, all this suffering we've been describing and thinking about, obsessing over injustice, desperately trying to understand why, and miserably sometimes sinking into our own unique pain.
SPEAKER_00: Well, in our text this morning, Romans chapter 8, verse 18 through 30, the Apostle Paul helps us to break free from what is right now, what's going on right now in this present age, and challenges us to think about what will be.
SPEAKER_00: I'd like for us to look at that.
SPEAKER_00: So glad to see everyone this morning.
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of a depressing start to a sermon, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00: Talking about the suffering that we're going to experience.
SPEAKER_00: I hope that you'll be uplifted actually and encouraged by this lesson.
SPEAKER_00: I want to welcome you and invite you to open your Bibles and turn over to Romans chapter 8 and verse 18, is where we're going to be reading from starting this morning.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't have your Bible with you, you forgot it, or maybe you don't own a Bible, encourage you to get one of those chair Bibles that's in the chair in front of you.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't have a Bible at all, we want to invite you to just take that home with you.
SPEAKER_00: We want everyone to have access to God's word.
SPEAKER_00: And this is how we find the answers that God wants us to know at life.
SPEAKER_00: Romans chapter 8, look at verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
SPEAKER_00: In a sense, it's true that no amount of good things you experience are going to make up for the ugly, hard things you're going to go through.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't always work out evenly.
SPEAKER_00: However, for the Christian who has an eternal perspective, we can look forward to something that we've never experienced in this world.
SPEAKER_00: The Christian can look forward to glory, Paul says.
SPEAKER_00: And he uses the creation as an example for us.
SPEAKER_00: The creation.
SPEAKER_00: Look there in verses 21 or 19 through 22 with me.
SPEAKER_00: For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.
SPEAKER_00: For the creation was subjected to futility not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope, that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption, into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
SPEAKER_00: For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.
SPEAKER_00: He describes the corruption that exists in this world.
SPEAKER_00: How many times does our text just now use words to describe the state of our world?
SPEAKER_00: Take a look at this with me.
SPEAKER_00: These are words worth highlighting or underlining in your verses, in your book there.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 20, subjected to futility, we read, set free from its slavery.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 21, slavery of corruption.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 22, look at what how the creation is personified, groaning and suffering, and suffering pains.
SPEAKER_00: Do you need this text to describe that to you?
SPEAKER_00: Were you unaware that the world is full of corruption and suffering?
SPEAKER_00: How much war is going on in this world now?
SPEAKER_00: Are you happy about the wars that are going on?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe war is a necessary part of life, but war is a hell on earth in some ways.
SPEAKER_00: It's horrible.
SPEAKER_00: The loss of life.
SPEAKER_00: Injustice?
SPEAKER_00: The strong preying on the helpless?
SPEAKER_00: How about all the innocent blood that's been shed?
SPEAKER_00: You remember back in Genesis 4, verse 10, when Cain murdered his brother Abel?
SPEAKER_00: This is the first murder that we read about.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord says to Cain, What have you done?
SPEAKER_00: The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground.
SPEAKER_00: If it was crying with one innocent man's blood to the Lord, how much is the earth crying out right now?
SPEAKER_00: Thousands of years of violence.
SPEAKER_00: How did it get this bad?
SPEAKER_00: We spent the first part of our Romans series, do you remember, talking about the devastating effects of sin in an individual's life, haven't we?
SPEAKER_00: How sin causes death, how sin causes separation from God, how none of us are exempt, because all of us have made the same heartbreaking choice, and our sins have separated us from God.
SPEAKER_00: This is not what was intended for the creation, was it?
SPEAKER_00: That's why words like futile and vain are used in verse 20.
SPEAKER_00: It's the idea that this creation is now, in a sense, pointless, it's empty.
SPEAKER_00: It's not able to fulfill the purpose that God created it for.
SPEAKER_00: God created both man and this world to be in perfect harmony with him.
SPEAKER_00: And in the garden, it was humanity's choice, not the creation's choice that created this burden on the world.
SPEAKER_00: That's why verse 20 says, not willingly.
SPEAKER_00: The creation didn't have a choice in this.
SPEAKER_00: The creation didn't choose to sin.
SPEAKER_00: Who chose to sin?
SPEAKER_00: We did.
SPEAKER_00: And the creation suffers a curse right along with mankind for that.
SPEAKER_00: And its current existence and its current destiny are tied up with mankind.
SPEAKER_00: Right now, because of sin, we are not who we will be and who we could be.
SPEAKER_00: And this world is not home for God's children.
SPEAKER_00: Look at what how Paul personifies the creation there.
SPEAKER_00: Towards the end of our reading, we just read, Paul personifies this world as an individual who is groaning.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you know what it is to groan, but maybe only half of us in this room know what it is to groan the way Paul's describing, because he's describing a woman who is experiencing the pains, by the way, that are part of a curse, part of that curse in Genesis, the pains associated not only with giving birth, the physical act of giving birth, but even just being pregnant and bearing that child.
SPEAKER_00: Those things are certainly a burden.
SPEAKER_00: Those pains are certainly intense.
SPEAKER_00: Every expecting mother at some point stresses, complains, and groans that this is never going to end.
SPEAKER_00: Emma said, I think the last month was the longest month.
SPEAKER_00: Had four months tied up in it.
SPEAKER_00: One midwife told my wife, no one ever stays pregnant forever, though.
SPEAKER_00: There's an earnest expectation that's associated with this, that the creation is personified as.
SPEAKER_00: Aren't we already children and adopted co-heirs with Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: What more do we have to wait for?
SPEAKER_00: Well, this is described as the first fruits.
SPEAKER_00: Take a look at that word first fruits.
SPEAKER_00: Paul describes these blessings and everything else spiritual that we may enjoy as the first part of a harvest.
SPEAKER_00: Just because a farmer has received crops early in the season doesn't mean that he's received all the crops he's going to, does it?
SPEAKER_00: Just because he's enjoying something in the here and now doesn't mean that the work is over or that the blessings are over.
SPEAKER_00: If that doesn't make sense, consider this for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Has God given you peace as a Christian?
SPEAKER_00: You ever have turbulent times still?
SPEAKER_00: Has God freed you from sin?
SPEAKER_00: You still struggle with it?
SPEAKER_00: Are you adopted as his child?
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Are you home yet?
SPEAKER_00: We are waiting eagerly too, is what Paul is describing.
SPEAKER_00: We are waiting eagerly to.
SPEAKER_00: One day, Christians will share in the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: And one day we will receive our promised inheritance.
SPEAKER_00: One day we won't have to deal with the struggle, the tug of war that we described in our class this morning between the flesh and the spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul describes this confident waiting, this eager expectation as hope.
SPEAKER_00: That's what biblical hope is.
SPEAKER_00: Not having realized the promised lesson and confidently waiting for it.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a dream, it's not a fantasy, it's not something that might happen if we're lucky.
SPEAKER_00: It's something that the Christian can count on and should wait on with confidence.
SPEAKER_00: The confidence is placed in the God who promised it.
SPEAKER_00: And has given us the proof, he says, by all those blessings that we enjoy here now.
SPEAKER_00: He calls those the first fruits.
SPEAKER_00: And we can look forward to much more.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 24 and 25, Paul goes on to explain this hope.
SPEAKER_00: In hope we have been saved.
SPEAKER_00: But hope that is seen is not hope.
SPEAKER_00: For who hopes for what he has already seen?
SPEAKER_00: If we hope for what we do not see with perseverance, we wait eagerly for it.
SPEAKER_00: How are you going to get by until the first the full harvest is realized?
SPEAKER_00: Well, we're going to watch confidently, as Paul says, and we're going to pray.
SPEAKER_00: Watch and pray.
SPEAKER_00: When I was a teenager, I had my first full-time job.
SPEAKER_00: And it is not an enviable job that I had for my first time, first full-time job.
SPEAKER_00: I hired on as a laborer for a general contractor who specialized in home remodels.
SPEAKER_00: And as you can imagine, with some with someone, a teenager with no experience, you can imagine the type of jobs I got the pleasure of working on.
SPEAKER_00: I was the lowest on the totem pole, and if it was a dirty, hot, sweaty job that nobody else wanted to do, that's the one I got all that summer.
SPEAKER_00: Roofing, framing, concrete ports.
SPEAKER_00: My first week working, I was not, my body and my mind were not prepared for what I went through.
SPEAKER_00: Had all kinds of calluses that were not quite developed, tearing my hands up.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember just slumping over exhausted on the couch, just absolutely tired.
SPEAKER_00: My dad looked at me and he jokingly said, son, all you have to do now is repeat that every week for the next 50 years and you'll be golden.
SPEAKER_00: Now he's joking, of course.
SPEAKER_00: But do we ever get the feeling that God is looking at what we're suffering and what we're struggling through, what we're waiting for and what we're praying for?
SPEAKER_00: Do we ever get the feeling that God is treating us that way?
SPEAKER_00: But just hang it, just hang on, you know, wait, wait till the end of your life and you'll be good.
SPEAKER_00: You ever feel like God is indifferent to how much you're hurting?
SPEAKER_00: You personally, I mean.
SPEAKER_00: You ever get the sense that God doesn't know how hard it is for you to keep waiting?
SPEAKER_00: You're not God.
SPEAKER_00: A day may be a thousand years in his eyes, but it sure is a thousand years a day, it seems.
SPEAKER_00: Do you even know what to say about how you feel?
SPEAKER_00: Do you even know how you feel?
SPEAKER_00: God is sensitive, and God is aware of what you are feeling and what you are having to endure in this life while you wait for future glory.
SPEAKER_00: That's the direct intercession of the Spirit Himself.
SPEAKER_00: We can read that there in verses 26 and 27.
SPEAKER_00: In the same way, the Spirit also helps our weaknesses.
SPEAKER_00: For we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.
SPEAKER_00: And he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
SPEAKER_00: While we focus on the future, and while we pray about our current situation, we're weak.
SPEAKER_00: We're weak, Paul says.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know how to pray, we don't even know what to pray for.
SPEAKER_00: And when we do, we don't even know how to put it into words sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: We fail and we falter.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 7, we don't always act the way we should.
SPEAKER_00: Brothers and sisters, do not ever think for a moment that God is indifferent to your pain, to your tears, and to your sin that you're struggling with.
SPEAKER_00: When you feel something so deeply and can't articulate it, know that the Spirit not only understands, but he is presenting it before the Father, before the throne of God.
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit is serving as an in-between.
SPEAKER_00: That's what intercession is interceder for God's adopted children, making it clear he compassionately cares for his children.
SPEAKER_00: In spite of our weakness, we are loved and cared for and helped through everything that we're going through.
SPEAKER_00: Tonight, Brother Nate's going to talk to us about how God, Jesus, is actively interceding for our saved well being.
SPEAKER_00: Encourage you to be here for that lesson as well.
SPEAKER_00: The Spirit is helping translate those groanings that have no words but say so much before the Father's throne.
SPEAKER_00: The other thing that God provides for us, besides His Holy Spirit, is God provides us some insider information to help us endure.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you like to be on the inside and know how things are working out behind the scenes?
SPEAKER_00: Philosophers throughout time have wrestled with the big questions.
SPEAKER_00: The big questions are usually one-word questions that have a whole lot tied up into them.
SPEAKER_00: Big questions like why?
SPEAKER_00: Big questions like how?
SPEAKER_00: Why is this happening to me?
SPEAKER_00: Why does it have to be this way?
SPEAKER_00: How can God allow this to happen?
SPEAKER_00: How could this ever be a good thing?
SPEAKER_00: Do you ever find yourself frustrated that you don't get to see the answer to all these questions, especially in specifics in your life?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe sometimes, like Joseph, we're blessed to look back at life and say, ah, that's why I was sold into slavery.
SPEAKER_00: It was for God's people so that God could fulfill his promises.
SPEAKER_00: That's a great thing when we can look back and we can clearly see how God was working through hard times in our life and through suffering.
SPEAKER_00: But what about the things that we don't know?
SPEAKER_00: What about the answers we never get?
SPEAKER_00: The questions we never get answered.
SPEAKER_00: It's sometimes frustrating.
SPEAKER_00: And if you've ever felt this way about your circumstances, I want you to underline or note somehow in your Bible a word there in verse 28.
SPEAKER_00: And we know, we know, there's something you can know.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: You may not get to know the answer to every question that is frustrating you in this world.
SPEAKER_00: But just because we don't know that, don't miss out on what you can know.
SPEAKER_00: These things, these answers to this question, the things that you can know, lay a great foundation of comfort for you when we don't have the answers.
SPEAKER_00: Just because we can't make sense of something doesn't mean that God is not working it all out.
SPEAKER_00: First note that he says we know that God causes not some things, but God causes all things to work together.
SPEAKER_00: There is no accident or some mistake that thwarts God's plans.
SPEAKER_00: There is no event or suffering that somehow slipped under God's radar.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't know how to work with that one.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because he didn't, he wasn't aware of it.
SPEAKER_00: There's no unexpected detours that God didn't see coming that throw him off.
SPEAKER_00: He can, he is, and he will use the choices that we make and the choices that others make for his plans and his purposes.
SPEAKER_00: Note also that he causes all things to work together for good for those that love God and are called to his purposes.
SPEAKER_00: God is actively involved for the betterment of his saints.
SPEAKER_00: And he not only wants what is good for us, but he wants, he's able to work even the things that are undoing us towards our favor and towards our betterment.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 29 and 30 further explain this concept.
SPEAKER_00: For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brethren.
SPEAKER_00: And those whom he predestined, he also called, and these whom he called, he also justified, and these whom he justified, he also glorified.
SPEAKER_00: Here we are on full circle from where we started.
SPEAKER_00: The glory of God that is to be revealed.
SPEAKER_00: God has predestined a plan, and you are part of it, is what he's saying.
SPEAKER_00: Don't get hung up on that word and all the baggage of false doctrine that can be tied up in this idea of predestination.
SPEAKER_00: Quite simply, in this passage, it's another way of saying that what God is doing now, the work that God has done through Christ, his son, the plan that he has for all of us in this room, for all of humanity, was no accident.
SPEAKER_00: It is our destiny.
SPEAKER_00: It is our destiny if we'll take and answer the call, is what he's saying.
SPEAKER_00: Paul has given us again the example of his son Jesus to help us see.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Why did Jesus have to suffer, we may ask?
SPEAKER_00: Why did he have to bear the weight of sin?
SPEAKER_00: And how could the humiliating death on the cross work out for anything good?
SPEAKER_00: How could anything good happen from this?
SPEAKER_00: Well, the same God that caused those events to result in our salvation and Christ's glorification and our future sharing in God's glory is able to do the same thing for you with the present suffering, even if we don't get to see and understand how it's all working out.
SPEAKER_00: The same God is working in us, his children, whom he has called and justified and glorified.
SPEAKER_00: What a comforting, encouraging, and actually confidence-boosting thought to know that we're safe in God's hands while we wait for future glory that God has in store for us.
SPEAKER_00: Remember our first verse we looked at, verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, what we're experiencing now is nothing compared to the glory that will be over there.
SPEAKER_00: Every heartbreaking loss, every disappointment, every negative happening, all of these are very quickly gonna fade into nothing.
SPEAKER_00: Because they're not worthy to be compared when we see the glory of heaven and complete unity with him.
SPEAKER_00: That is something worth waiting for.
SPEAKER_00: And I hope we can take Paul's encouragement to the Romans and be encouraged ourselves to wait, patiently wait with eager expectation for future glory with him.
SPEAKER_00: Over and over again, maybe you noticed some things in this passage.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've noticed it throughout the entire letter to the Romans, but there are some qualifying statements that God has placed on all these blessings that we've been talking about.
SPEAKER_00: Did you notice that he mentions the revealing of the sons of God?
SPEAKER_00: It's not everybody, but the sons of God whose glory will be revealed.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 21, we see similar language, the children of God.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 23, those first fruits are those that have the first, or we are blessed, we're waiting because we have the first fruits of the Spirit dwelling in us.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 27 for the saints.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 28, for those who love God, those called according to his purpose.
SPEAKER_00: A question for you this morning, if you're sitting among us, is do you belong in this category?
SPEAKER_00: Are you one of God's children?
SPEAKER_00: Do you even know if you're one of God's children?
SPEAKER_00: If you're outside of Christ, you're actually not guaranteed any of these promises.
SPEAKER_00: But look at verse 30 again.
SPEAKER_00: As part of God's predestined plan, he has called you.
SPEAKER_00: He's calling.
SPEAKER_00: Can I remind you of some statements that Paul has made earlier in the letter to the Romans?
SPEAKER_00: Romans 5, verse 1, Paul says, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Do you have faith in God?
SPEAKER_00: Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God?
SPEAKER_00: And will you place your faith in him and his ability to work these things out for you?
SPEAKER_00: Paul states that that faith is going to lead to justification and peace with God, the very peace that we've been talking about this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We could pair this idea with Romans 6, verse 3.
SPEAKER_00: Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ have been baptized into his death?
SPEAKER_00: If you have that faith in Christ and you have not yet, are you ready to put to death the deeds of the flesh?
SPEAKER_00: Are you ready to put to death sin in your mortal body?
SPEAKER_00: Paul is making a connection here between the faith that we profess and the obedient act that we'll submit to, putting to death the deeds of our flesh, crucifying that old man, being buried with him in baptism.
SPEAKER_00: That's the faith, that's the act of obedience that puts our faith into action.
SPEAKER_00: Faith, obedience, and confident hope await you if you're outside of Christ, if you'll put him on.
SPEAKER_00: Can we help you with that this morning?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're ready.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you have some questions and you want to study with us.
SPEAKER_00: Well, we would love to visit with you.
SPEAKER_00: We would love to study with you and explain this more because we want all men to be saved, because that's what the Lord wants.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord is calling.
SPEAKER_00: We're happy to study with you later, but if you already know what you need to do, to put on Christ in baptism, wash away your sins, and enjoy confident hope with Him.
SPEAKER_00: Then we invite you to make your spiritual need known this morning as we sing a song that's been prepared.
SPEAKER_00: Let's say what is