New Year's Groanings

New Year’s Groanings

Romans 8:18-27

Online Sermon: http://www.mckeesfamily.com/?page_id=3567

Ever since God announced a curse upon this world it has been incredibly difficult to survive and thrive amongst the “thorns” of life. Living through the pain of violence, disease, starvation, neglect, discrimination, loosing loved ones and watching one’s body break down in old age one can’t help but cry out “Abba, Father please save me!” While one might think that this kind of prayer would always be answered with healing and comfortable living, God not only refuses to remove the curse until the appointed time but promises that those who participate in His death will suffer and be persecuted for righteousness sake (Philippians 3:10; John 15:18-25). Even though “creation glows with thousands of beauties” earth often seems like a penal colony in which its thorns and thistles can fracture the body and mind so severely that life at best appears to be meaningless and at worst torturous! While this world is no longer the one that “God pronounced very good,” Romans 8:18-27 states we as Christians can experience unspeakable joy while living on this earth when we allow our groaning to focus not on our current suffering but on the glory we are about to receive!

Our Sin Lead to the Curse

It took God a mere six days to create paradise but just a few moments for humanity to place it under the curse of decay and death. One can’t help but wonder how those living in paradise could ever want more and yet we learn that Adam and Eve willingly partook of the fruit merely based on Satan’s promise they would become like God (Genesis 3:6-7). While we could blame their foolish disobedience as being the reason for the pain we have living in this fallen world, we cannot escape the fact that our black hearts also “readily echoes the voice of Satan.” Even with the Holy Spirit living inside of us and seeing God as our portion forever (1 Corinthians 6:19; Psalms 73:25-26), our indulgences in evil words, thoughts and deeds prove we are just as guilty for the curse as Adam and Eve (Romans 3:23, 6:23, chapter 7)! The thorns of sorrow and pain are not mere products of injustice, but we have outright purchased them by not hating evil enough to embrace the command to be holy as God is holy (Romans 12:9; 1 Peter 1:15). And yet despite our wretchedness and filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6) Paul tells us that in our groanings we can find incredible hope!

Hope in Groanings (verses 19-23, 26-27)

For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

First, one finds incredible hope in the groanings of creation. Ever since “Adam abdicated his role as God’s vizier and caretaker (cf. 8:20; Gen 1:26–28),” the curse that fell on a “guilty” humanity also fell on the “guiltless” creation. Like humanity the physical world of matter, plants and animals have been subject to decay and death and is subsequently frustrated due to its incompleteness. Paul says creation groans with intense interest and desire with pangs of childbirth for the age of renewal, the day when it will be brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. When Jesus comes again He will undo Satan’s destructive works and all of creation will receive unspeakable joy of a new heaven and new earth where human or beast will not harm one another and the whole earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord (Isaiah 11:6-9)! It will be in this restored Garden of Eden that God will dwell with His people, wipe the tears from their eyes and their curse of decay and death (Revelation 21). We have great hope in knowing that all of creation not only testifies to God’s eternal power and divine nature (Romans 1:20) but also His desire to come good on His promise of restoring a home where we can walk and talk with Him in His garden!

Second, one finds incredible hope in the groanings for our new bodies. Having been sown perishable, in dishonor and ravaged with the weaknesses of aches, pains, weariness, exhausting toil, sickness and eventual death (1 Corinthians 15:42); we long for the day when the Spirit will resurrect (Romans 8:11–13) and transform our physical to a spiritual body that is sown in power, sinless, eternal, glorious and like the resurrection body of the glorified Lord Jesus Christ (Philippians 3:20, 21). Even though our physical bodies are the seat of the weakness and our sinful nature, they are not to be seen as evil for they are not only fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalms 139) but are the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) and as such are to be offered as living sacrifices (Romans 12:1) so that “Christ might be magnified and God might be glorified in them.” Even though our physical bodies make “obedience and worship visible and touchable” while living in this fallen world, since flesh and blood cannot enter the kingdom of God and our salvation is not complete without the redemption of “our bodies as well as our spirits and souls;” Apostle Paul says we are to place our hope in God to give us the highest nature of humanity, an eternal, incorruptible, honorable spiritual body fit for heaven!