Where Are You?

Where are You?

Romans Series

CCCAG August 16th, 2020

Scripture- Romans 8:18-25 (Julie Reading)

A quick question to start us out this morning-

How many people here have ever had a long process to achieve a goal?

For some of us who were in the military, your basic training and AIT was a long process. About 14 weeks of basic training and three to six months of schooling before you could even start doing the job you signed up to do.

Another thing many military members are familiar with is being deployed for months or even years away from their home and loved ones. If they have a calendar in their locker, often they'll have the day they scheduled to go home circled with a big thick red marker. I remember if we had 46 days left before we went home, we would say we had 45 days and a wake up just to shorten it down a little bit .

Others when you were in college spent two to four years studying and sacrificing and giving up a large amount of your time that other people were spending on vacations and other hobbies to achieve the goal of a degree that would help you do the thing that you wanted to do for a living.

Maybe you had been saving up to take a once in a lifetime vacation trip, and you had to spend months or years looking forward to the time where you would actually leave to go on that trip.

Something many of the women here may have felt at one time in their lives was looking forward to the due date of their children. This is especially true in the last three months when everything swells up gets sore and even finding a comfortable position to sleep in is challenging.

That sense of longing for something in the future is a pretty common human experience that we all go through at one point or another in our lives.

Even right now we are all probably thinking back to that kind of situation in our lives where we are all looking forward for something to happen.

In our continuation of our Romans series, we have been spending the last few weeks in Romans chapter 8. Last week we asked the question of “who's are you”?

This week the question that Paul poses to us is “where are you”?

We're going to be reading in Romans chapter 8 verses 18 through 25.

Rom 8:18-25

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons 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 glorious freedom 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.

23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?

25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

NIV

Prayer

As we read our scriptures for this morning, we are not the only ones who are looking forward to future events.

The Apostle Paul uses something called anthropomorphism. That's a big word that means to give human characteristics to something that is not human.

In verse 19 Paul says at the creation waits an eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.

Obviously, no one would suggest that the entirety of all creation is sentient, meaning that it has thoughts an emotion and awareness of its being.

Paul is using this type of language to show those of us who have trusted Jesus as Lord and God and savior and King what we have to look forward to in the future.

As he does this, he calls those who are saved, “Sons of God”. That phrase in New Testament terms is meant to be inclusive to men and woman as we see throughout Paul’s writings and others scriptures including even the Words of Jesus.

Don’t get hung up on it just indicating “sons”. Don’t feel left out ladies.

I. Son’s Of God- the meaning

This term Son’s of God has a lot of meaning in scripture, and to understand it term better, we have two reference points within the bible we should look at.