July 14, 2005 Romans 8:18-25
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not yet see, we wait for it patiently.
Do you know anybody that likes to complain a lot? At the least little hangnail they cry to you, “oohh, my finger hurts.” We have a saying for these kinds of people in my household. We call them drama kings and queens! Out come the tears, in comes the child, moaning and groaning because he hurt is knee! So we take them in our arms and continue the drama, “oh, are you ok? Should I call the doctor! Are you going to survive?” They aren’t old enough to recognize the sarcasm, but that’s ok. We tend to call such people whiners or cry babies. We say they need to toughen up a little bit.
On the other hand, maybe we need to soften up a little bit. Is it the necessarily wrong for somebody who does have some pain to complain or cry about it? Is it being a whiner if your finger does hurt and you want to tell someone else about it? How loving is it if some is hurting - even just a little bit - and you just say to them, “suck it up”? Should we just try to ignore something that genuinely hurts? No. Today we’ll learn from God’s Word how -
Groaning is a Godly Thing
Paul begins todays text by acknowledging that suffering is a real thing - as he says talks about “our sufferings.” What kind of sufferings is he talking about? Look at this word in context. Paul says, The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. The creation was subject to frustration and the BONDAGE of DECAY. This goes back to Adam and Eve stuff. Genesis 3:17-19 says, “To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
These words show us that God put an active curse on the ground. This curse was so bad that Paul says creation has been “groaning.” What a picture, huh? The way he personifies creation is really neat - listen to it saying, “oohh. Oohh.” As I was contemplating this text, I was on a walk from Martin Luther College. Going down the road, I saw a huge forest to my right overlooking a wonderful valley. I thought to myself, “where’s the curse? God must have missed this part. Then - a few minutes later, as I got into those woods, I noticed a deerfly buzzing uncontrollably around my head. I couldn’t get the dumb thing off of me. I started swatting and swatting, but the deerfly wouldn’t give up. Then, as I jumped over a brance, I noticed the tail end of a deer. The deer - when it saw me - ran away. I missed it - and it was scared of me. Creation was starting to groan at me. I decided to turn around and start heading home - after all - this deer fly was running to me and the deer were running from me. As I finally got on the road home - I then looked at some of the houses and trees that look so spotless before. I noticed grass that hadn’t been cut, weeds that hadn’t been trimmed, and trees that were leaning and dying. Limbs were completely dry. There was a curse on this creation. I just hadn’t been looking very closely. I got to thinking about pictures I had seen of old artifacts - real bones of turtles that were bigger than men! This earth seems to have been much more grower friendly and animal friendly. But it’s decaying. Creation is groaning. And it’s only going to get worse. Matthew 24:7, 21 says, “There will be famines and earthquakes in various places.” In connection with this he then concludes that, “there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.” The sad thing is that creation did not deserve this. Creation did not choose to be decaying. God made it that way - because of OUR sin. Paul writes that, “creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it.” So the suffering that Paul is talking is about natural physical suffering - things we go through as we live in decay.
We live in the middle of this cursed and decaying ground. Should we ignore this? Should we just pretend that there are no weeds in our gardens? (If you look at mine - you can see I’m trying this approach.) Should we just put on a happy face when we walk outside into a hundred degree day - and the heat hits us like a brick? Should we just act like our wrists and shoulders don’t hurt from having to pick up our children or continuously turn the same piece of equipment at work? Or is it ok to groan? Is it ok to tell others or even say to God, “this yard is driving me crazy!”, or “man is my back hurting!” We tend to take the “suck it up” approach towards life. Think about how willing we are to talk about the wonders of creation - the beautiful hills and the soaring skies! We’ll put beautiful pictures of mountains and hillsides and river streams on our walls. Oh, how we’ll praise God for these wonders! But we forget about the mosquitos, the wild animals, and the hot and cold climates that inhabit God’s creation. We insulate ourselves from the curses on creation as best we can - from the decay of life - behind our sofas and televisions and comfortable beds. When the Tsunami hit - some preachers said, “God didn’t do that! It just happened.” Why do we do this? This is, in effect, choosing to ignore God’s curse on our earth. This is a choosing to not look at the bad stuff in life.
Why do we do this? Why do we hesitate to complain about our bad backs? Why do we choose to explain away the natural disasters that hit? What does it really get down to? We try to live by SIGHT. We don’t like to look at sin and we don’t like to admit weakness! We don’t like to think about the fact that we live in a sinful and decaying world and a weak and fraying body. We want to focus on the positive things - the happy things - the glorious things. Why? Because these things make us HAPPY! These things make us content. These things make us proud. Complaining doesn’t solve anything. Feeling miserable and living in misery doesn’t help anyone! If it doesn’t SOLVE anything, if it doesn’t HELP anyone, then it doesn’t DO any good - there isn’t any GLORY in it. So we say to ourselves, “I’ll ignore it. I won’t talk about it. I’ll think happy thoughts.” You know the problem with this? The decay doesn’t go away. It doesn’t solve our problems. Air conditioning doesn’t go outside. Nice electronics can’t fix my health - not ultimately. The things that we can see and feel and enjoy today won’t last. No matter how much I listen to Robert Schuller I’m still going to suffer and I’m still going to die because I live in a decaying world. How can we be so arrogant and naive to think otherwise?
Paul recognized this simple fact. People suffer because they live in a decaying and cursed world of sin. We groan. That’s understandable. But the end of the session was not to have a groaning session. “Oh, woe is me! I feel your pain. It’s ok.” No. Paul pulled out his theological calculator, and made a calculation. “Let’s see - let’s take 70 or 80 years of suffering, and divided by a thousand, no a million, no - an infinity of years in heaven. How does that compare?”
This was the whole thing that kept Christ going on the way to the cross. Hebrews 12:2 says, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Jesus didn’t want to go to that cross - not humanly speaking. It was going to cause some serious pain. He prayed for the Father to take it away. Yet the Father, knowing that the ultimate curse - the curse of sin, death, and hell, had to go on His Son, told His Son that the only way Jesus could save the world was through the cross. He had to not only look at that ugly cross - He had GO on that ugly cross. But as He did that, Jesus also focused on the glory BEYOND this world. He calculated that the temporary pain that he would suffer on the cross would not compare to the results of that cross. God’s Word says in 2 Corinthians 5:21, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” When Jesus died on that cross, He knew that we would die on that cross. When Jesus rose from the dead, He knew that we would rise from the dead. That’s what kept Him going - the end result of knowing that we would be in heaven with Him - the victorious king. He would be restored to His full glory.
Get out your calculator. Compute this in your brain. In most peoples lives, they don’t even have to suffer a majority of their own life. Sometimes adults have to go through five to twenty years of pain - but this comes after sixty years of health. Even if you have to suffer for eighty years of your life - for your whole life - how does it compare to what will happen on Judgment Day? Paul calls Judgment Day the redemption of our bodies and our adoption as sons. What does that mean? Weren’t we already redeemed and adopted at our baptisms? In John 14:2 Jesus said, “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.” I always used to think of that as Jesus going to heaven and building a nice house with a room in it, fluffing up a nice Green Bay Packers pillow for me with my favorite dog by my side. Preparing a place for me. Ha. Jesus said this on the way to the cross. His preparation is not made with pillows and wallpaper. It was made with a hammer and nails on the wood of a cross - through his hands. When Jesus said on the cross, “it is finished”, his redemption was complete. This Greek word was teteletai, which they would write on paid bills meaning, “paid in full.” So what does the redemption of our bodies and our adoption as sons mean? Jesus concluded in John 14 by saying, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” The redemption of our bodies will be like Jesus coming back to claim what is His. He already paid for us on the cross. When we face Jesus on Judgment Day - He will physically adopt us into His family - not just in the soul but in the body as well.
What a glorious day this will be! Paul calls it literally an “apokalupto” - from where we get the well known word APOCALYPSE - or REVELATION. On the day of resurrection the veil will be lifted. The clothing of sin will be dropped. We’ll be standing naked before our Creator, and we won’t be laughing at each other or running from God! This will be a return to Creation without the bugs that bug us and the backs that ache us. Instead of living by faith and hope, we will live by SIGHT. Imagine what the choir will sound like! Everyone will be coming in on time! Imagine the basses and the tenors, the sopranos and the who knows how many other voices singing in harmony to the glory of God! We can’t even speculate about the physical abilities God will give us - to each his own - to the glory of God - and NO jealousy over whether we’re doorkeepers or lead tenors. Imagine how nice it will be to run a mile and not even be winded. To walk up stairs without even straining! In Revelation 21:22-27 John says, “I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” What a wonderful picture! Creation looks forward to it - and so do we.
When you look at the big picture of this text, then - this is why God wants us to take a close look at Tsunami. He wants us to examine the rotten streams. He wants us to groan about our aching backs. He wants those weeds to grow in your yard. Go ahead, sweat! Go on and bleed. Take a good look at the dirty rotten world we live in - this desert drear. Don’t insulate yourself from the hot day. Remind yourself of the earth your living in. Why? Paul says that, “we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not yet see, we wait for it patiently.” Now is NOT the time to live by SIGHT. If we only smell the flowers and not the bathrooms, we’re going to start liking the smell of this world. We’re going to want to keep it. When God shows you Christ however, he opens your eyes to the rottenness of this world - to crucify the very One that made it! Do you really want to live with this sight? Or wouldn’t you rather live by faith in the Son who died for you? Sometimes the curse of the world is inescapable - you have to look at it. Why does God want us to look at it? Why shouldn’t we ignore it? So that we remember - we live by FAITH - not by SIGHT.
When I was in the Seminary I was playing basketball in intramurals. I was coming down to drive to the lane. I had an open lane to the basket, when another guy came and under ran me - causing me to step on his foot and - crunch, snap. I was in agony - absolute agony. The only thing anyone said to me was, “can you get off the court.” I was furious. I hopped all the way back to the dorm by myself. By that time, the blood had come pouring down my foot - it was throbbing so badly that I cried. Come to find out, I had torn several ligaments in my ankle - which is worse than a break. It took weeks and weeks to get a walking boot off. I couldn’t wait to get to walk and run again. But I had the PROSPECT and HOPE of knowing it would get better. Many people who are diagnosed with terminal cancer, dysfunctional brains, etc., have NO hope of getting better. Not in this life.
Sometimes there is no hope for a cure. It seems as if life is going to be miserable forever. What’s worse, is nobody wants to listen to us groan about our problems. It may seem that nobody cares. They may think you’re “just a whiner.” Here’s news for you - God does care. If you’re living under a burden of sin, under a burden of physical pain, before you take an aspirin, take a deep look at what you’re going through. Let it be a reminder to you that this world is under a curse because of sin - and your body is under a curse because of sin. Go ahead and groan. God expects you to. But then remember - here’s the key - this cursed life won’t last forever! Jesus says, “come to ME, all you who are WEARY and HEAVY BURDENED, and I will give you rest.” Remember that Jesus paid for your curse on the cross. Through faith, find rest in those wounds. Look forward in HOPE to the day He delivers you from this cursed life - to the blessed rest in heaven - where you will SEE Him face to face. Hymn 592 says it well -
Teach me to live that I may dread
The grave as little as my bed.
Teach me to die so that I may
Rise glorious at the awe-full day.
Oh, may my soul on thee repose
And may sweet sleep mine eyelids close,
Sleep that shall me more vig’rous make
To serve my God when I awake. Amen.
