My Present Suffering And Future Glory Series

NOTE:

This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.

ENGAGE

This week our country had plenty of opportunities to think about and witness suffering. On Tuesday, we observed the 17th anniversary of the September 11 terror attacks on our country where nearly 3,000 people were killed and another 6,000 injured. And this weekend, many along the east coast are suffering the effects of a massive Hurricane Florence and we won’t know for some time the total among of damages done by that storm both in terms of human lives and property damage.

And when that kind of suffering occurs, it’s interesting to watch how people try to explain it. This week, those on the left predictably blamed President Trump and global warming for the power of Hurricane Florence, much in the same way they claimed that President Bush somehow steered Hurricane Katrina toward New Orleans back in 2005.

And just as predictably, some Christians claimed that those same events were God’s judgment on our country for our sin – usually sins that they don’t particularly struggle with like homosexuality or abortion, but almost never sins like greed, covetousness, gossip, or other sins that they do struggle with. While I agree that our country certainly deserves God’s judgment, the question I want to ask those people is why did God only judge the people who were in those two buildings in New York or in the Pentagon or on the four planes that were used in the attacks on September 11? Or why did He only judge the east coast with Hurricane Florence or the Gulf Coast with Hurricane Katrina? Are they somehow more sinful than all the rest of us?

TENSION

I know that every one of us in this room this morning are personally familiar with suffering, either in our own lives or in the lives of our loved ones. Right now, some of you are struggling to make ends meet financially. Some of you have a horrible job situation. Some of you are having problems in your marriages or with other relationships. Some of you are heartbroken as you watch your kids fall away from their faith. And some of you are suffering through tremendous physical illness and pain.

And even if you’re not presently in the midst of some difficulty, unless you die and go to be with Jesus or He returns to this earth before then, you will undoubtedly find yourselve there in the future.

And just like people are trying to find answers about terror attacks and natural disasters, when those difficulties come, we usually want answers, too, don’t we? We want to know how a loving, all-powerful God can allow that kind of suffering in our world, particularly for those who have committed their lives to Him.

This is actually a question we dealt with not too long ago in our sermon series we titled “Hard Questions, Honest Answers”. But it’s such an important topic that it is well worth spending some more time discussing it this morning.

TRUTH

Last week, we left off in our study of Romans, with verse 17 of Romans chapter 8, where Paul wrote that God’s children are heirs of God and fellow heirs with Jesus “provided we suffer with him…” In the passage we looked at last week, we said that suffering with Jesus was one of the three ways that the Holy Spirit bears witness that we are children of God. And I promised that we would explore that idea in more detail today. So that’s what we’re going to do.

[Read Romans 8:18-25]

My original plan was to cover verses 18-30 this week, but as I began to work on the message I realized that there was a good reason that some of the pastors that I regularly use as a resource preached anywhere between 7 and more than 20 sermons on those 13 verses. While I’m not going to go into quite that much detail, I am now planning to spend the next four weeks on that passage because there is just so much here.

Today we’ll look at the biggest chunk of that section because the verses we just read all deal with the same big idea, which Paul lays out for us right at the beginning of the passage and which I’ve paraphrased like this:

The hurt of present suffering

is far outweighed by

the hope of future glory

In order to help us understand that idea, Paul addresses the past, the present, and the future, both as it applies to His creation and as it applies to those who are His children. So the way we’re going to analyze this passage is to break it down into its past, present and future components, and then we’ll see if we can’t make some practical application for our daily lives.