SPEAKER_00: Chapter number eight, and uh we'll begin our reading here in just a moment in verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: Is that a line in the back?
SPEAKER_00: Can you hear me?
SPEAKER_00: It's a little bit I think it's a little bit low.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, raise your hand if you can't hear me in the back.
SPEAKER_00: That's a trick question.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Um very good.
SPEAKER_00: Very good.
SPEAKER_00: If I can get a little help back there, just uh give me some assurance.
SPEAKER_00: All right.
SPEAKER_00: Very good.
SPEAKER_00: Romans chapter 8.
SPEAKER_00: Let's all stand together in reverence for God's word.
SPEAKER_00: Romans chapter number 8 and verse number 18.
SPEAKER_00: Brother Dave, can you hear me back there now?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, good.
SPEAKER_00: Romans chapter 8 and verse number 18.
SPEAKER_00: For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.
SPEAKER_00: For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.
SPEAKER_00: For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subject who hath subjected the same in hope.
SPEAKER_00: Because the creature itself shall also be delivered from the bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
SPEAKER_00: Quite an echo up here.
SPEAKER_00: For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
SPEAKER_00: And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption to wit the redemption of our body.
SPEAKER_00: For we are saved by hope.
SPEAKER_00: But hope that is seen is not hope, for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?
SPEAKER_00: But if we hope for that which we see not, then we do with patience wait for it.
SPEAKER_00: Likewise, the spirit also helpeth our infirmities.
SPEAKER_00: For we know not what we should pray for, as we ought.
SPEAKER_00: But the spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.
SPEAKER_00: And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.
SPEAKER_00: And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.
SPEAKER_00: For whom he did foreknow, he did also predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many.
SPEAKER_00: Brethren, let's pray, may we?
SPEAKER_00: Our Father, we come to you today in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We come through the shed blood of your Son Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We come not seeking favor because of ourselves, but because of the sufficiency of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Bless the preaching of your word today.
SPEAKER_00: Speak to our hearts, use the word to penetrate often the hard places, the dark places.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, even maybe the sorrowful places, the wounded places of our lives.
SPEAKER_00: I pray, Father, that our question today might be answered from thy word.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for the Lord Jesus and what he means to us today.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for our salvation in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for your abiding presence.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for your church.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for your goodness that we've experienced in these last days together.
SPEAKER_00: Move us forward as an army as we seek to reach others with the gospel is our prayer, for we pray in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for standing and please be seated together.
SPEAKER_00: It's been noted that a lens isn't something that you look at.
SPEAKER_00: A lens is something that you look through.
SPEAKER_00: A lens shapes what you see, it determines how clearly you see it and even what you miss entirely.
SPEAKER_00: There's different lenses for different things that we want to see.
SPEAKER_00: I've brought a few lenses or a pair of glasses, and you might help give me some insight into which one represents.
SPEAKER_00: So if you if you help me, this would be great if you don't choose to help me.
SPEAKER_00: This illustration is going to fall apart.
SPEAKER_00: So if you'll help me here.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I have a pair of binoculars, and this lens helped me do what?
SPEAKER_00: What does it help me to do?
SPEAKER_00: See, it it brings things far away a little bit closer into view.
SPEAKER_00: So we we did some easy ones early.
SPEAKER_00: Um I have another set of lenses, okay?
SPEAKER_00: These are you like the look, don't you?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Safety lenses.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, what's the purpose of these?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, it keeps people from doing harmful things.
SPEAKER_00: It's like uh you familiar with the the famous last words of a redneck?
SPEAKER_00: Hey Bubba, watch this.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, we need uh need safety glasses, okay?
SPEAKER_00: I have another pair of lenses here.
SPEAKER_00: Uh how about these?
SPEAKER_00: These are sunglasses.
SPEAKER_00: What do these help us do?
SPEAKER_00: Look fashionable, exactly.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so we have have sunglasses.
SPEAKER_00: I have a have another lens here.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, these are swim goggles, okay?
SPEAKER_00: And you can uh scuba in these or use these at home.
SPEAKER_00: These are helpful.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I have a few cool ones left here.
SPEAKER_00: Um, this one's really cool.
SPEAKER_00: How about this one?
SPEAKER_00: All right, this is a welding helmet, all right.
SPEAKER_00: This has a specific purpose, uh, obviously for welding, so we don't want a spark to fly up or uh the radiant light of a welding, some type of joint.
SPEAKER_00: So uh this would have very much a certain purpose.
SPEAKER_00: I have one more that's I'm too cool for this, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: Um, what is this?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is a motorcycle helmet.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, uh we we had some pretty fast motorcycles here for Bible school.
SPEAKER_00: I think 180, 185 mile an hour bicycles, and so uh, yeah, this will protect certain things from flying in your eyes and things like that.
SPEAKER_00: So, needless to say, um, this has a different purpose than this, and this has a different purpose than this, and we would understand that uh a proper lens used in the proper way would keep us safe, or it would help us to see things most clearly.
SPEAKER_00: Or if I could just say it this way, the wrong lens could lead you to disaster.
SPEAKER_00: Someone said, when we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.
SPEAKER_00: We need the right lens to see things clearly.
SPEAKER_00: It was on uh April 12, 1912, that uh the Titanic set sail for New York City.
SPEAKER_00: There were 2,224 people aboard, some of the wealthiest, of course, in the world, 900 crew members to help operate and care for passengers.
SPEAKER_00: On board, there were luxury items such as swimming pools and Turkish baths and gymnasiums and elevators and grand staircases and elegant dining room.
SPEAKER_00: I learned in my research for this little illustration that uh even the Royal Mail uh was on board that famous ship, but there was something notably missing from the millions of items, no doubt, that would have made that first voyage across the Atlantic meaningful.
SPEAKER_00: And that, of course, was a set of binoculars.
SPEAKER_00: Of all the things that the Titanic is known for, it was that missing item that truly cost them dearly.
SPEAKER_00: So you you not only need a lens, but you need the right lens to see things in your life most clearly.
SPEAKER_00: Well, today we're asking a second question of God, and it is this hey God, if you are good, you are a good God.
SPEAKER_00: Why is there so much suffering in the world?
SPEAKER_00: Now, clearly, to see something so poignant, so powerful, so meaningful, we would necessarily need the right lens to see this question most clearly, because I am a finite preacher talking to finite people about the providential movings of an infinite God.
SPEAKER_00: So today we're using the lens of God's word to ask this question.
SPEAKER_00: If you are good, then why is there so much suffering in the world?
SPEAKER_00: Now, there are no doubt wrong lenses that we might use to ask and answer this question.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, think about the lens of randomness.
SPEAKER_00: Some people view suffering, and through that lens they surmise or have this conclusion that this happened for no reason at all.
SPEAKER_00: That suffering is viewed as a meaningless accident of a cold universe, that pain has no purpose, that pain has no design, that suffering has no redeeming value.
SPEAKER_00: If you were a philosopher, you'd call this nihilism, the idea that suffering has no meaning because life itself has no ultimate purpose either, that there's no grand story, no final justice, no ultimate purpose for our lives.
SPEAKER_00: That would be a lens through which we would answer this question, and I would just say clearly, that would be a very faulty lens through which we might ask this question.
SPEAKER_00: We might put on ourselves the lens of punishment.
SPEAKER_00: I am suffering because God is angry with me.
SPEAKER_00: Now, many assume that every hardship in life is a direct correlation with God's retribution in our lives, that God is meeting out a punishment on us for the sufferings and trials of our lives.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to go on record and say as we begin, as we try to find the right pair of glasses for this question, there are times that people suffer for wrongdoing.
SPEAKER_00: Be not deceived, God is not mocked, for whatsoever man soweth, that shall he also reap.
SPEAKER_00: But I also want to say that every time we suffer does not mean that God is angry at us.
SPEAKER_00: There's a third set of lenses that we might use to answer this question.
SPEAKER_00: It would be the lens of victimhood.
SPEAKER_00: My sufferings define my entire life.
SPEAKER_00: That pain becomes one's identity rather than their experience.
SPEAKER_00: This morning I want us to use the lens of the Holy Scriptures and to observe that God has a plan in our suffering.
SPEAKER_00: That He is there in the midst of our suffering, redeeming the value of our suffering.
SPEAKER_00: That we do not live, as we learned two weeks ago, we do not live in a cold, meaningless universe.
SPEAKER_00: We live in a world that is governed by our great God, and everything that occurs in our lives is father filtered through the hands of our good God.
SPEAKER_00: So let's take the scriptures this morning and discover that God uses our trials for future glory.
SPEAKER_00: All the while, the God who entered into that world and suffered as a man is the same God who comforts us in our hour of tribulation.
SPEAKER_00: I have to admit, I'm a bit overwhelmed by this subject, but I'm not overwhelmed by the truth that we find here in Romans chapter 8.
SPEAKER_00: And I've been praying that God will use this passage to be an encouragement to your heart today.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, notice in our passage the reality of suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Notice in verse 18 again, for I reckon, you didn't know that the Apostle Paul was from the south, did you?
SPEAKER_00: For I reckon, I consider it to be so.
SPEAKER_00: Let's use that word.
SPEAKER_00: I consider it to be so.
SPEAKER_00: I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory that will be revealed in us.
SPEAKER_00: Think for a moment about the sufferings of this present time.
SPEAKER_00: We might talk about the world in which we live, the nature of the world in which we live.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I won't spend too much time on this because we've discussed this in our last several weeks together, but the fact of the matter is that our God created a perfect world, and in that perfect world, he created perfect conditions.
SPEAKER_00: That in this world there were conditions that were conducive to happy and healthy living.
SPEAKER_00: That man had a free will to choose, to decide, to determine in his relationship with God.
SPEAKER_00: And of course, in that perfect world, a perfect man and perfect woman were placed in that perfect garden and had free range to all the joys of the Garden of Eden.
SPEAKER_00: That in the midst of the Garden of Eden there was a tree of life, and it was a representation of all that is life, and all that is holy, and all that is healthy, and all that is happy.
SPEAKER_00: And you could revolve your entire life around the tree of life.
SPEAKER_00: You could enjoy all that it means to be a child of God.
SPEAKER_00: But it is human nature always to desire the thing that God says we cannot have.
SPEAKER_00: For there was another tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
SPEAKER_00: And it was around that tree that God said, Do not center your life.
SPEAKER_00: Don't eat of that fruit.
SPEAKER_00: And Eve, of course, was deceived by the serpent.
SPEAKER_00: She ate of the fruit, she gave to her husband with her, and he did eat, and mankind was plunged into sin.
SPEAKER_00: And God begins to discuss the consequences of that sin.
SPEAKER_00: That man would work of the sweat of his brow, he would work in thistled soil, that woman would be in competition with her husband, that would have pain in childbearing.
SPEAKER_00: And the curse on the serpent was that there was a Messiah coming someday that would crush his head and would one day regain all that was lost in the Garden of Eden.
SPEAKER_00: What was not true of Adam and Eve's early life were hurricanes and tornadoes and cancer and separation and anxiety and the great difficulties that mark all of our lives.
SPEAKER_00: But they are true of the world in which we live today.
SPEAKER_00: But let's talk about the nature of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The nature of the world is that it is suffering the consequences of sin.
SPEAKER_00: We will talk about that in just a moment in our passage.
SPEAKER_00: But I want us to think about the nature of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: If you can find it quickly, I want you to go in your Bible to the book of Lamentations, chapter 3.
SPEAKER_00: I think this verse is important.
SPEAKER_00: Lamentations chapter 3 and verse 32.
SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah is going to use an expression here that's going to make you a little uncomfortable.
SPEAKER_00: I want us to read it together.
SPEAKER_00: Lamentations chapter 3, verse 32.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says, but though he caused grief.
SPEAKER_00: Though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies.
SPEAKER_00: For he doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men.
SPEAKER_00: Though he cause grief, he will have compassion.
SPEAKER_00: He doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men.
SPEAKER_00: Now what we mean to imply by this verse are a few things.
SPEAKER_00: This is important that you put your spiritual thinking cap on.
SPEAKER_00: We mean to imply that God is not a sinner.
SPEAKER_00: God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man.
SPEAKER_00: That God is not a sinner, and that God holds sinners accountable.
SPEAKER_00: And when I talk about suffering today, I'm not just talking about that which you have suffered because you have transgressed the known commandments of God.
SPEAKER_00: I'm talking about those things that have happened to you because someone else has chosen to transgress the clear commandments of God.
SPEAKER_00: We are not saying that God does not hold sinners accountable and we are not laying sin at the charge of God.
SPEAKER_00: But what we don't mean to imply is that God, by his very nature, cannot or would not act to bring about grief or calamity in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: We can talk about the sovereignty of God that Adam and Eve had free range of motion to make their own choices, but brother, we are speaking today about the sovereignty of Almighty God.
SPEAKER_00: That though mankind may choose in his conduct, it is the sovereign plan of God that governs all of the affairs of our lives.
SPEAKER_00: If you're writing down notes, I want you to write these simple words down together.
SPEAKER_00: All of our trials are father-filtered.
SPEAKER_00: I've said it twice, maybe we can say it together.
SPEAKER_00: Ready to begin?
SPEAKER_00: All of our trials are father-filtered.
SPEAKER_00: Paul says in Ephesians chapter 1, verse number 11, in whom we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible speaks of these all things.
SPEAKER_00: For example, the rolling of the dice or the lot of which you read in Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says the lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: We read of the failing of sight as the product of the hand of God, the sickness of children, 2 Samuel 12, verse 15.
SPEAKER_00: The suffering of saints, 1 Peter 4, 19.
SPEAKER_00: Wherefore, let them that suffer according to the will of God, the persecution of Christians, the repentance of souls, the gift of faith, the growth of believers, even the crucifixion of God's own son, was done after the counsel of a sovereign God.
SPEAKER_00: All of our trials, our Father.
SPEAKER_00: Filtered.
SPEAKER_00: Devastated, she invited her friend over to discuss the scriptures with her.
SPEAKER_00: She said, I always thought that God was good.
SPEAKER_00: But here I am, a quadriplegic, sitting in a wheelchair, feeling more like God's enemy than his child.
SPEAKER_00: Didn't he want to stop my accident?
SPEAKER_00: Could he have stopped my accident?
SPEAKER_00: Was he even there?
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe the devil was there instead.
SPEAKER_00: The friend she invited that night, his name was Steve.
SPEAKER_00: Decades later, Steve would later speak of that sobering moment of her questioning the goodness of God.
SPEAKER_00: Steve had never met a person his own age in a wheelchair.
SPEAKER_00: I remember I was about 17 years of age.
SPEAKER_00: I went to Fort Sanders Hospital where a young man I'd known my whole life that I'd gone to kindergarten with was paralyzed in a tragic accident.
SPEAKER_00: I remember he was a small young man.
SPEAKER_00: I remember he said they took me to the bottom of Sutherland Drive, right on the campus of University of Tennessee, to a long hill that goes up to the hospital.
SPEAKER_00: They put him in a wheelchair, teaching him the strength to get to the top.
SPEAKER_00: I remember having that same experience as a senior in high school of my friend who would never walk again.
SPEAKER_00: Steve said, I knew what the Bible said about your questions, and a dozen passages came to mind from studying in church.
SPEAKER_00: But he said to Joni, sitting across from you, I realized I had never test-driven those truths on such a difficult track.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing worse than a D in algebra had ever happened to me, but as I looked at you, I kept thinking, if the Bible can't work in this paralyzed girl's life, then it never was for real.
SPEAKER_00: So Joni, I cleared my throat and jumped off the cliff, and in that moment he uttered ten words that changed the trajectory of her entire life.
SPEAKER_00: They'll be on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: God permits what he hates to accomplish what he loves.
SPEAKER_00: As I thought about scripture, I was thinking that God must have hated Lazarus' illness, but he loved the fact he was the resurrection and the life.
SPEAKER_00: He hated David's treachery at the hands of Saul, who sought often to kill him, but he loved the sanctification that occurred in David's life through it.
SPEAKER_00: He hated John's isolation on Patmos for his testimony of faith, but he loved revealing the last days to John on the same island.
SPEAKER_00: I think that God hated the division that came into Joseph's life when his brothers sold him into slavery, but I think God loved the salvation that was brought to the world through the raising up of Joseph from the pit of despair.
SPEAKER_00: I think God hated Peter's denial and cursing as Peter denied his affiliation with Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: But I love, I think he loved Peter's second conversion when he rose from the ashes of destroying his own reputation and testimony, and he preached not in the power of his flesh, but Peter preached in the power of God.
SPEAKER_00: I think God loved that transformation in his life.
SPEAKER_00: There's a few things I think we could all say about suffering this morning from God's Word.
SPEAKER_00: First of all, suffering is universal.
SPEAKER_00: As a pastor, I've spent maybe years of my life in hospitals and nursing homes and sick beds, and I can tell you they're saved and unsaved people in the same ratio of experience.
SPEAKER_00: It's universal.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said in Matthew 5, 45, He maketh his son to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.
SPEAKER_00: Mastane number two, Christ is not a shield from suffering.
SPEAKER_00: All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm persuaded, because I know myself fairly well, and I know some of you fairly well too, that if Jesus were a shield from all the troubles of life, we would seek Jesus not because we need atonement for our sin, not because we need our consciences purged from dead works to serve the living and true God, not because we need to be justified by faith.
SPEAKER_00: We would seek Jesus because of what he could give to us by means of our earthly comfort.
SPEAKER_00: Number three, I think I could say with authority this morning that suffering is God's megaphone to this world.
SPEAKER_00: You know the writings of C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis, whether you know his name or not.
SPEAKER_00: He wrote fictional tales like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
SPEAKER_00: He early in his life had deconstructed his faith and had become an atheist.
SPEAKER_00: Later, he said he became Christianity's most unlikely, unwilling convert.
SPEAKER_00: And he struggled with this issue of suffering and pain.
SPEAKER_00: How could a good God allow bad things in this world?
SPEAKER_00: He said, and I'll read part of this: pain is unmasked, it is unmistakable evil.
SPEAKER_00: Every man knows that something is wrong when he's being hurt.
SPEAKER_00: Pain is not immediately recognizable evil, but evil impossible to ignore.
SPEAKER_00: We can rest content in our sins and in our stupidities.
SPEAKER_00: And anyone who has watched gluttons shoveling down the most exquisite foods as if they did not know what they were eating will admit that we can ignore pleasure.
SPEAKER_00: But pain insists upon being attended to.
SPEAKER_00: If you empathize, will you say amen?
SPEAKER_00: It is sickness that makes us rejoice in health.
SPEAKER_00: It is poverty that makes us rejoice in wealth.
SPEAKER_00: It is abasement that makes us joy in abounding.
SPEAKER_00: It is loneliness that makes us cry out for joy in friendship.
SPEAKER_00: It is God's megaphone to this world that we as creatures made to need God can live as if we don't need God in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: But brother, we all desperately need the power and presence and provision of God in every day of our lives.
SPEAKER_00: The reality of suffering.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think I have to take too much more time to prove that to you.
SPEAKER_00: But Paul doesn't sit with this opening phrase in verse 18, for I reckon, look at it again, please, that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
SPEAKER_00: I speak of the results of our suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Someone noted that it is meaning in the midst of our pain and suffering that we so desperately crave.
SPEAKER_00: Why is God allowing this in my life?
SPEAKER_00: And what greater purpose does God have in this situation?
SPEAKER_00: Paul, in these verses, I wish we had time to look at them in great detail together.
SPEAKER_00: He says, our present reality, he uses words in this passage like groaning or waiting.
SPEAKER_00: He said, we have been made subject to vanity.
SPEAKER_00: We're in the bondage of corruption.
SPEAKER_00: He speaks of travailing in pain together until now, verse 22.
SPEAKER_00: But in the midst of this pain, he also speaks of expectation and hope and deliverance from bondage, and he even speaks of redemption.
SPEAKER_00: As I was thinking through this thought this week, it occurred to me that when we question suffering in our present world, we aren't recognizing that we were not made for time.
SPEAKER_00: We, brother and sister, were made for eternity.
SPEAKER_00: So don't just look at the suffering.
SPEAKER_00: See the glory to follow.
SPEAKER_00: And God, in the midst of our moment of suffering, there's four results I want you to notice about our suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 18, look at it again.
SPEAKER_00: I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, just think of the future glory that God has so trusted you with.
SPEAKER_00: God entrusted a trial to you because there's a future glory that He has reserved for you.
SPEAKER_00: And He's not speaking of heaven when Paul says, I hath not seen and ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man the things that God has prepared for them that love him.
SPEAKER_00: There's future glory awaiting for us.
SPEAKER_00: Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and even an eternal weight of glory.
SPEAKER_00: I heard the story years ago of a missionary who had served for 50 years in Africa.
SPEAKER_00: He was coming home as a retired pastor.
SPEAKER_00: And it just so happened that on the boat was the newly retired president of the United States, Teddy Roosevelt, who had gone to Africa on a big game hunt.
SPEAKER_00: And the missionary had already prepared his heart for all that the president would enjoy when he arrived at port in New York City and all of the celebrations that would attend to the president coming back home.
SPEAKER_00: And sure, the kids say he manifested it.
SPEAKER_00: He manifested what happened.
SPEAKER_00: Indeed, it happened just that way.
SPEAKER_00: He got back to port.
SPEAKER_00: There were parades and ticker tape and celebrations awaiting the United States president who had come back home after a game hunt, and there was no one attending to the missionary at the port.
SPEAKER_00: A lifetime of service for Jesus Christ, and no one was waiting at the port.
SPEAKER_00: No parade, no ticker tape, no signage, no celebration.
SPEAKER_00: He began to stew and to pout and to mope and gripe and complain.
SPEAKER_00: It's not fair, he said to his wife, that the president's returned home and received an entourage of celebration, and we've returned home and no one's waiting for us at the port.
SPEAKER_00: And she just couldn't.
SPEAKER_00: She'd spent long enough time at the pity party, and she said, You just need to go pray.
SPEAKER_00: Tell God about that.
SPEAKER_00: He did.
SPEAKER_00: He poured out his heart to God.
SPEAKER_00: God, it's not fair.
SPEAKER_00: And he said in a still small voice.
SPEAKER_00: God said to him, You're not home yet.
SPEAKER_00: Brother, when we see Jesus, when we arrive at home, his reward will be with him.
SPEAKER_00: There is future glory awaiting for us.
SPEAKER_00: Our light affliction, just for a moment, this vapor of our lives, this spark that flies up for these short days that we have, how painful they may be, will be followed by an eternity of joy and pleasure and peace and joy in the presence of Almighty God.
SPEAKER_00: Can all God's people say amen?
SPEAKER_00: There is future glory awaiting those for us in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: The writer of Hebrews said, We have no continuing city, but we seek one to come.
SPEAKER_00: He said, We're strangers and pilgrims walking through this earth, and one day he wipes away all tears from our eyes, and we are looking forward to that future day of unimpeded glory.
SPEAKER_00: By the way, we all get to heaven the same day.
SPEAKER_00: For there's no night there.
SPEAKER_00: Eternity will be one consistent day of joy and rejoicing in all Christ has done for us.
SPEAKER_00: There's future glory.
SPEAKER_00: Number two, there's the comfort of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: What are the results of suffering?
SPEAKER_00: The comfort of God.
SPEAKER_00: Notice very quickly in your passage.
SPEAKER_00: He uses the word groan here.
SPEAKER_00: Groan.
SPEAKER_00: My wife has had four children.
SPEAKER_00: She's born four children into this world, and I know a little bit about the pain of that.
SPEAKER_00: I've had the common cold a number of times.
SPEAKER_00: The groan.
SPEAKER_00: I was groaning.
SPEAKER_00: Lord help us.
SPEAKER_00: The word here in our passage means a deep sigh, an expressive grief from inward pressure.
SPEAKER_00: Groan.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says here there's three groans.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse, look at verse number 19.
SPEAKER_00: For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God, for the creature was made subject to vanity.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 21.
SPEAKER_00: Look at verse 22.
SPEAKER_00: For we know that the whole creation, what's the word, church, for the whole creation groaneth.
SPEAKER_00: The ground is crying out.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: The ground knows there's a better future to come.
SPEAKER_00: The ground was cursed because of man's sin.
SPEAKER_00: The ground will spring forth again when Jesus the King returns.
SPEAKER_00: The ground, the ground cries out.
SPEAKER_00: I think every time the earth rumbles and shakes and jeers, I think the ground is crying out.
SPEAKER_00: Even so come.
SPEAKER_00: Lord Jesus come.
SPEAKER_00: There's the groan of creation.
SPEAKER_00: And then he said, There's the groan of the believer.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 23, not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Even we ourselves groan.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, we cry out, even so come, Lord Jesus come.
SPEAKER_00: The believer's groaning, the creation is groaning, but oh, look at verse 26.
SPEAKER_00: The scripture says, likewise, the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities, for we know not what we should pray for as we ought.
SPEAKER_00: But the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with what's the word church?
SPEAKER_00: With groanings.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I'm so grateful.
SPEAKER_00: That it is not we that go through trials alone.
SPEAKER_00: It is that the Spirit of God meets us in our place of suffering, and he prays into the ear of God.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, would you help your child?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, would you help?
SPEAKER_00: Would you help Daniel today?
SPEAKER_00: I know he has a common cold, Lord, but give him strength.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, he gives us grace in our time of need.
SPEAKER_00: Aren't you glad you never walk through a trouble alone?
SPEAKER_00: We never walk through a trial, a storm alone.
SPEAKER_00: It's the comfort of the Spirit, the future glory.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a says in number three, we have the promise of him working together all things for good.
SPEAKER_00: That's verse 28.
SPEAKER_00: We know that verse.
SPEAKER_00: All things work together for good.
SPEAKER_00: He did not say they feel good.
SPEAKER_00: He said they work for good.
SPEAKER_00: And the verb there doesn't mean that it's just a one-time thing.
SPEAKER_00: It is all things continually keep on working together for good.
SPEAKER_00: It is that God is always at work in our lives to bring good out of our trials.
SPEAKER_00: Number four, our sanctification.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 29, for whom he did foreknow.
SPEAKER_00: He predestinated to be conformed to the image of his son.
SPEAKER_00: It is God that works in us to use our trials to conform us to the image of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We wouldn't choose the fire for ourselves, but God chooses all of our trials for us because he wants to make us more like Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I can still hear my pastor say, trouble born in the spirit of Christ produces greatness in the life of a believer.
SPEAKER_00: There's a relationship you have today, and you would extricate yourself from that relationship because that person bothers you.
SPEAKER_00: There's a boss at work that troubles you.
SPEAKER_00: There's a situation that troubles you.
SPEAKER_00: There's an illness or pain that troubles you.
SPEAKER_00: And did you ever think that God had brought that person, that trial, that illness, that storm into your life?
SPEAKER_00: He brought that into your life to make you more like Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know what would be good for ourselves, but our Father does.
SPEAKER_00: What a great God we have.
SPEAKER_00: It was Spurgeon that said, He learned to kiss the wave that cast him onto the rock of ages.
SPEAKER_00: Are you listening today?
SPEAKER_00: The results of our suffering.
SPEAKER_00: But I want to get to our third and final thought this morning, the reality of our co-sufferer.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I want you to think about this.
SPEAKER_00: Remember that God we talked about a few weeks ago?
SPEAKER_00: The creator God, the sustaining God?
SPEAKER_00: We proved his existence through creation and morality.
SPEAKER_00: That God, you remember that God that exists outside of time, space, and matter, that transcendent God.
SPEAKER_00: Who eternally was existent without the need for an earth or mankind.
SPEAKER_00: Self-sufficient, self-sustaining.
SPEAKER_00: That's what I am means.
SPEAKER_00: I'm pre-existent, I'm eternal, I'm self-sufficient.
SPEAKER_00: That's God's way of saying I don't need your help.
SPEAKER_00: That God.
SPEAKER_00: That God came into this world and suffered.
SPEAKER_00: He is our co-sufferer.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what one author said: the God who rules the world, designed for the best man, to suffer the worst fate, to save bad people.
SPEAKER_00: I don't mean to burst your self-esteem today.
SPEAKER_00: We often ask, why do good or bad things happen to good people?
SPEAKER_00: Well, according to Romans chapter 3, there is none that doeth good, no, not one.
SPEAKER_00: There are no good people.
SPEAKER_00: All we like sheep have gone astray.
SPEAKER_00: We've all turned to our own way.
SPEAKER_00: And I know what you do.
SPEAKER_00: You watch the Discovery Channel and ID channel on the crime channel because I like true crime, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: And you know I like true crime?
SPEAKER_00: I find people that are way worse than me.
SPEAKER_00: Like the zodiac killer.
SPEAKER_00: That was a bad guy.
SPEAKER_00: Or lady, we don't even know who the zodiac killer was.
SPEAKER_00: But that's in the sermon tonight.
SPEAKER_00: I like to find people that are worse off than me.
SPEAKER_00: But the Bible says all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.
SPEAKER_00: You know what that means?
SPEAKER_00: That means we've all missed the mark.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to tell you something.
SPEAKER_00: If you missed it by five millimeters or five miles, if you miss the mark, you missed the mark.
SPEAKER_00: And all have sinned.
SPEAKER_00: We've all missed the mark.
SPEAKER_00: There are no good people.
SPEAKER_00: There's only one good man, and he was clothed in humanity, and his name is Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And the Son of God came into a world of bad people.
SPEAKER_00: And bad people took the good Son of God and they nailed him to a tree.
SPEAKER_00: They spit in his face.
SPEAKER_00: They plucked out the hair of his beard.
SPEAKER_00: They mocked him, they scourged him, they denied his name.
SPEAKER_00: The God who rules the world designed for the best men to suffer the worst fate to save bad people.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible says Jesus suffered.
SPEAKER_00: Though he were a son, yet he learned obedience by the things he suffered.
SPEAKER_00: Who can have compassion on the ignorant and on them that are out of the way?
SPEAKER_00: For that he himself is compassed with infirmity.
SPEAKER_00: For then must he have often suffered since the foundation of the world.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew 16, 21, from that time forth began Jesus to show unto his disciples how that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things.
SPEAKER_00: Number one, Jesus entered into our sufferings.
SPEAKER_00: Understanding.
SPEAKER_00: We have not a faithful high priest which cannot be touched with the feelings of our infirmities, but he was tempted in all points, like as we are, yet without sin.
SPEAKER_00: Praise God.
SPEAKER_00: My Savior felt my sufferings.
SPEAKER_00: He knows.
SPEAKER_00: He cares.
SPEAKER_00: He understands.
SPEAKER_00: And the lens that I need from Scripture today is that God doesn't exist in some extraneous planet, disconnected, not connected with our world, impersonal and unattainable.
SPEAKER_00: This God came into our world.
SPEAKER_00: He understands.
SPEAKER_00: Brother, can I just say to you, when you enter into prayer and pray to an Almighty God, there is the Lord Jesus Christ sitting at the right hand of God, and He knows what it's like to be betrayed.
SPEAKER_00: He knows what it's like to be lied about.
SPEAKER_00: He knows what it's like to thirst, to hunger, to go without, to not have a place to live.
SPEAKER_00: Our Lord knows the human experience because he became a man.
SPEAKER_00: He understands.
SPEAKER_00: Not only that, he died by suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Redeeming.
SPEAKER_00: Up Calvary's Mountain, one dreadful morn walked Christ my Savior, wearied and worn, facing for sinners' death on the cross, that he might save us from endless loss.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ suffered and he died.
SPEAKER_00: Why did he suffer?
SPEAKER_00: Because God wanted a cinema of how bad sin is.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, oh, but he dies.
SPEAKER_00: He tastes death for every man.
SPEAKER_00: This might sound strange, but Jesus died for the zodiac killer.
SPEAKER_00: He died for sinners.
SPEAKER_00: He suffered the most grotesque death because the most grotesque punishment is due to the worst of sinners.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ paid it all in his sufferings.
SPEAKER_00: And lastly, he engages us when we suffer.
SPEAKER_00: He draws near.
SPEAKER_00: He comes to us.
SPEAKER_00: One more reference and I'll have to close, but Hebrews chapter 2.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews chapter 2 and verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews chapter 2, verse 18.
SPEAKER_00: This verse I think sums up everything that we're trying to say about the Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: He suffered.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody understands what I'm going through.
SPEAKER_00: Oh yes, there is one who knows.
SPEAKER_00: The old song said, Jesus knows all about our struggles.
SPEAKER_00: He identified with our human experience so he can identify with our human suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews, or excuse me, Hebrews chapter 2, verse 18, the scripture says, can we read it together?
SPEAKER_00: Do you have it there in your Bible?
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 2.18.
SPEAKER_00: I want us to read this together.
SPEAKER_00: I want it to sink down into your soul.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 2.18.
SPEAKER_00: Ready to begin.
SPEAKER_00: For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to secure them that are tempted.
SPEAKER_00: Now that's an old English word.
SPEAKER_00: To secure.
SPEAKER_00: Can I read it that way just for clarity?
SPEAKER_00: For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he's able to run to the aid of a hurting child.
SPEAKER_00: That's the God we serve today.
SPEAKER_00: 1931 C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis took a late-night walk with another famous poet of the Lord of the Rings, J.R.
SPEAKER_00: Tolkien.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis, as a professor at Cambridge, had greatly admired the myths of history, stories of heroes sacrificing themselves to save others.
SPEAKER_00: Though he was greatly moved by mythological stories, he struggled to believe the story of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Tolkien explained that those ancient stories were echoes or shadows of a greater reality.
SPEAKER_00: Humanity has always longed for heroes who would suffer and die and conquer death for his own people.
SPEAKER_00: The difference, Tolkien said, is that in Jesus the story is not nearly imagined.
SPEAKER_00: It actually happened.
SPEAKER_00: The myths were whispers, the cross is history.
SPEAKER_00: C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis later wrote that in Christ, the old myth of the dying God came down from the world of legend and imagination into the world of history.
SPEAKER_00: God died and suffered and rose again.
SPEAKER_00: He concluded by saying, and that's why the suffering and death and resurrection of Christ speaks so powerfully to our own suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Christianity does not offer us a God who stands away from pain.
SPEAKER_00: It gives us a Savior who entered into it and carried it and overcame it.
SPEAKER_00: I am He that liveth and was dead.
SPEAKER_00: And I am alive forevermore and have the keys of hell and of death.
SPEAKER_00: Christ enters into our sufferings.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's who he is.
SPEAKER_00: And that's who we are in him.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray, may we?
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Father.