God Is For Us

Title: God Is For Us Text: Romans 8:18-39

Introduction:

I have a friend who was married not long ago to a man she had been acquainted with in high school. The man was very shy. The woman had a lot of personality, vivaciousness and energy.

After graduating from high school, she had many problems---she took drugs for awhile, got married at least once, had children by a couple of different men, and raged her way through life. She eventually came to Christ.

She went to her twentieth high school reunion and there met the man she would later marry. He had been raised in a Christian home and had taken his faith seriously over the years since high school. They realized they were both Christians, began to develop a relationship, and eventually were married. Early in the course of their friendship, he told her, "I fell in love with you when I was sixteen. I have loved you and I have thought of you every day since." She was unaware, during twenty years of unhealthy relationships, that someone could love her.

What the end of the eighth chapter of the book of Romans says, to put it briefly, is that God thinks of us every day. And not just every day, but every minute of every day. We fill his thoughts. He is enthusiastic about us and committed to us. As we go through the passage before us this week, we will see that the Lord God of the universe has thought about us before anything else was created. He knows everything that is true about us. He is bringing about our glorification. We will also find that when evil assails us the Lord Jesus intercedes for us, speaking to the throne of heaven on our behalf, defending us from accusation. In every expression of himself---Father, Son and Spirit---God cares for us.

I. Freedom from Discouragement – No Frustration v18-30

Paul in this section deals with the very real problem of suffering and pan. The best way to understand this section is to note the three groans that are discussed.

A. Creation Groans (v18-22)

1.When God finished His creation, He declared it as a good creation. Genesis 1:31 And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

2.But today it is groaning creation. There is suffering and death, there is pain, all which is of course the result of Adam’s sin.

3.Verse 18 Paul describes creation as suffering, verse 19 vanity, verse 20 in bondage, verse 21 decaying, and in verse 22 pain.

4.Paul illustrates it to a woman in labor, there is pain but the pain will end when the child is delivered. One day creation will be delivered, and the groaning of Creation will become a glorious creation.

5.As believer our focus should not be on today’s sufferings, but on tomorrow’s

2 Cor. 4:15-18 For all things are for your sakes, that the grace which is spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God. [16] Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. [17] For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, [18] while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

B. We believer’s Groan v23-25

 The reason we groan is because we have experienced the firstfruits of the Spirit: A foretaste of the glory to come. This causes us to want to see the Lord, receive a new body, and live with Him and serve Him forever. That’s what he meant by eagerly awaiting for the adoption the redemption of our body.

 For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; [21] who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself. Phil. 3:20-21 looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus; Titus 2:13

3. We know that what we are suffering right now will one day give way to eternal glory.

C.The Holy Spirit Groans v25-30

Today the Holy Spirit groans with us and feels the burdens of our weaknesses and suffering.

But the spirit does more than groan, He prays for us in His groanings so that we might be led into the will of God.