A Life of Hope -- Romans 8:18-39
Elder Mike Clifton
6/5/11
A life of Hope from Romans 8:18-39
In our men’s Bible study on Monday nights, we have taken on the study of Romans. That is not a small book, and it has taken us a long time just to get to Chapter 9. When I mentioned that I was thinking of doing this mini talk on Romans 8, Dennis and Ron said, “In just one Sunday? No way! You can spend weeks on Romans 8.” They might be able to spend weeks, but I’m good for just one sitting.
Why Romans 8? We are all pretty much familiar with the verses. It does not say anything that we have not heard before. Yet, we all are affected by it. Nicki still gets all goose bumpy when we read or sing from Romans 8:38 and 39. I like that it deals with what is happening around us – those things that seem so unfair and out-of-our control. And Romans 8 gives us hope when we are looking for something better. So with what is happening around us today, I believe that Romans 8 has something timely for us.
Just watching or listening to the news is enough to spoil your day: Flooding and really bad tornadoes all over the Midwest; young people being abused and murdered…. If you are still able to watch or listen to the news, then you have a pretty tough hide. We have limited our news watching lately because it just reminds us of all the suffering around us and brings us down.
But all that is going on now just pales into insignificance when you look at Japan. It's hard to even relate to the numbers. Whole towns smashed and then washed away. Just gone. Tens of thousands of people unaccounted for. Probably dead. Over a million homeless in the snow. Told to stay indoors to avoid the radio-active cloud; but nowhere indoors to stay.
And you watch, and there's nothing you can do to even touch it. There's no way to help that's more than a drop in the bucket. And you shake your head and you groan. It's enough to make you want to cry out for something better.
With all the new events happening every day, we've almost stopped noticing Colonel Gaddafi bombing his own people. And nobody's even been talking about Egypt lately. And Syria: the road blocks and the tear gas and the bullets.
But when you see and remember what’s going on, you groan. Again, at the sight of ordinary people. Just like us. In chaos… and in despair.
And even all those things maybe seem distant and remote and irrelevant compared to your own private struggles and disappointments: Your disappointing diagnosis from the specialist, your upcoming surgery, the chemotherapy, the crushing circumstances that from time to time face our friends, continuing unemployment, aches and pains that don’t go away. And you sense it's only a matter of time, if it hasn’t happened already, before these things happen to you.
I'd prefer to live in a world where bad things happened to bad people. And good things happened to good people. I'd rather live in a world where evil dictators like Gaddafi automatically get cancer, and the rest of us don't. Where rapists and the pedophiles face unexpected tragedy, and the rest of us don't.
I'd rather a world that wasn't groaning.
But that's not the way it is.
Of course, when it comes to world events like the earthquake in Japan, the questions start. Like, where was God? Like, was Japan somehow being punished? Like, is this the start of the end of the world? Oh yea. You might remember the end of the world was last week.
But let's get things in perspective.
The fact is there are 100,000 earthquakes every year. That's one earthquake somewhere in the world... every five minutes. Usually minor.
Once every two weeks, somewhere in the world, you'll get a magnitude 5 or 6. That's the kind of world it is.
Once every month or so a magnitude 7. Maybe in a desert. Maybe New Zealand.
And once every 50 years or so, there's a 9. Regular as clockwork. Welcome to planet Earth.
Of course, most of the time we're insulated because most of the time it's somewhere else and not hurting us. Most of the time we are not even hearing about it. But the reality is that that's the kind of groaning world we live with.
And so if you want to make yourself safe and comfortable here, if you want to make this heaven on earth you are kidding yourself. Because it is not meant to be.
Sometimes we want God to change the nature of things. But only when it isn’t working to up our expectations. Take gravity for instance. We like it and we understand how it works until we fall. Then we want God to fix it, make some modifications, so that we are not affected by its properties. And the amazing thing is that sometimes He does modify things. I remember a miracle that happened when a man fell from an airplane, and he was not wearing a parachute. He fell several thousand feet. He should have been a goner for sure. However, he fell along a steep hillside with just the right kind of brush growing there that managed to slow down his fall, without breaking him to pieces. Now notice, God did not change gravity for that man. He did, however, answer his frantic prayer on the way down.
Now we know that when most of us fall we suffer more than a few bruises. So what’s it all about?
The Christian life is a future-looking life. It's a life of hope. And we can handle our suffering in this life, because there's a new birth to look forward to and that should make everything else fade into insignificance. Should.
That's what Paul’s saying in verse 24 and 25. He says the Christian life is not the life of “we've got it already.” And that's where so many Christians are kidding themselves; there are some churches that believe that if you're a Christian you won't get sick; if you're a Christian you'll get rich; of course, these days you'll still meet Christians that tell you you don’t have enough faith if the bad things persist in your life. They're the “grin and bear it,” “power-of-positive-thinking” group – the ones who will tell you that if you're a real Christian, and you're living by the Spirit, you’ll never face tragedy. You are going to meet people who tell you that if you're a real Christian, you'll have a constant sensation that God's right there beside you, and life will be just like a stroll in the park with your heavenly friend. They think they can exist as if they are no longer living in a groaning world at all.
They're kidding themselves. Because Paul says, our eye has to be fixed on something further ahead than that. Not on the already, but on the not yet.
If you're a Christian who's been knocked around a bit, if you're a Christian who knows what it means to suffer, hang on to that. Because the mature Christian is the Christian with a few scrapes in the paintwork, a few rattles in the old engine, who is waiting patiently for what he does not yet have, instead of boasting as if he has it all already.
Let me quickly tell you what has happened in Romans 1-7. The Apostle Paul has been talking about transformation. And he says a revolution has come that the world has been waiting for right from the start. In a world that's gone so badly wrong, in a world that's bent on worshipping created things rather than the creator, in a world where he says even the Jews with their law from God are no better than anybody else... he says at last, God has acted to put things right. That in the death of Christ, and in the gift of the Holy Spirit, we are in a whole new era: an era of transformed hearts and minds.
To which comes the objection. Well, if this is the new era, why are we still groaning?
Read verse 23. Because Christians don't get a free pass out the back door. "It's not just the creation groaning," says Paul. It's we Christians as well. "Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies."
Creation groans. We groan. And not only that; in verse 26, he says even God's Holy Spirit groans. Can you imagine that? When you're totally wrung out, when you've run out of prayer, he says the Spirit helps us in our weakness, and intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.
You want to know what life's like. It's us groaning with the spirit groaning in a groaning world.
Which paints a pretty bleak picture. Except for the fact that here in Romans 8, Paul puts it all in perspective.
He says that in hope we were saved. And again, verse 24. "But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have we wait for it patiently."
You know, there's an idea Paul uses three times in the passage we're looking at. The first time in verse 19. A word that's meant to define the Christian life. It's just one word in Greek. But it's translated in verse 19 as the phrase waits in eager expectation. A word that literally means stretching out your neck. Craning your neck to catch a glimpse of the train coming down the track or a glimpse of the bus you've been waiting for. Searching the sky for the final landing of the Space Shuttle in Florida.
In the old days we might have called this rubber necking. The same idea is again here in verse 23. He says, “We groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.”
And in verse 25 the same word is used. Where our English translation just says, wait patiently, it means, “eagerly looking forward stretching out your neck to something far, far better than we have now.”
Now here is how many of us live. Here is the American mindset. We'll build heaven on earth; we'll put in double pane windows; we'll build a nice patio; we'll manicure the lawns and air-condition the house, and we'll be comfortable, and we'll be safe. And we think we can make life so comfortable and so good and so convenient that there's no reason to stretch out our necks at all. No need to look forward. Because we've got it all now.
I have to be honest and say very often I want to be like that. I want to pretend life is going to be easy. And we can all get pretty good at that; can't we? Hiding around in our things, we don’t have to face reality.
And again, there are churches that reaffirm that. They say God wants you to be wealthy and well, and you just have to claim it and you have it.
Paul says creation is groaning, and we groan with it. But we look forward.
In verse 18, Paul says, “Look, compared to the good things that are coming, the pain we are going through now isn't even worth talking about.” He writes, "I consider our present sufferings are not even worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us." He's talking about the new creation. Everything will be put right, and we will live with no more tears. There the frustration and decay we live with here will be absolutely reversed.
And the thing we're waiting for, he says, the thing we Christians can look forward to, is "the redemption of our bodies." Because he says, we are groaning because we are trapped here in these bodies that are getting older, these bodies that are decaying, these bodies that always want to sin, these fragile bodies that are so easily crushed or washed away by a tidal wave. The day is coming when we are going to trade them in. And we will be finally seen as what we really are: The children of God. His adopted kids.
See, life now isn't like a walk in the garden with God. And if you think it is, you're kidding yourself. But Paul says... one day it will be. So look forward to that.
And we are reminded each Sunday during communion of what Christ did for us and what is in store for us in the future. Because we're not one of those churches that promises and pretends that in this life, all is well. We're not one of those churches that say if you have enough faith you'll always be healed. We're not one of those churches that say if you have faith, you'll prosper and be kept safe from life's tsunamis.
Does that tell you something about the kind of church we are? If you're a Christian who's been roughed up a little, if you're a Christian who knows what it means to suffer, who's waiting patiently in a groaning world as part of a church family that bears one another's burdens, you should feel right at home. And I hope that is the way we feel here at Grace Covenant Church.
And yet in our extended church family there has been death. There has been illness. There has been anxiety. There has been family turmoil. There has been financial hardship. There has been unexpected disaster. You just have to read the Covenant Connection, and you know what it's like to be part of the struggle.
Now those were great days when Jesus walked the earth and healed the sick – when with a word he turned back the waves. There has been no greater day than the day, three days after he died, when he stood up again.
But that was just a preview of the day that lies ahead.
Paul says the real Christian is the Christian who doesn't pretend. Who faces up to real life, but looks back at what God has done in the past. Who in the midst of the groaning, looks forward with absolute confidence and says, “If God is for us... who can be against us? If God counts us innocent through the death of his son, who can condemn us?” It's worth looking forward to. But it is not yet.
In the midst of catastrophe we are called to compassion. In the hard times, we are called, not to condemn lack of faith, but to help. In all of it, unsurprised and unshaken. Because in all of it, we are the people of hope; no matter what happens, we are anchored to God's good intentions for us.
The apostle Paul, as he writes these words, knows what it's like to be hounded and persecuted from town to town. He knows what it's like to be beaten and shipwrecked. But listen to his confidence... Romans 8 from verse 37. Hardship? No problem. Hunger? That's okay. Danger? It's his middle name. Demons? Powers? 40 foot waves? Every time it's the same answer. Nothing, nothing, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. This creation is groaning, subjected to frustration. Nevertheless, the best is yet to come. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? ...
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
And so, we stretch our necks and look forward with patience and with joy.
©You’re welcome to recycle these resources for your church free of charge. However, if you find them useful, please consider making a donation to the ministry of GCC
Elder Mike Clifton
6/5/11
A life of Hope from Romans 8:18-39
In our men’s Bible study on Monday nights, we have taken on the study of Romans. That is not a small book, and it has taken us a long time just to get to Chapter 9. When I mentioned that I was thinking of doing this mini talk on Romans 8, Dennis and Ron said, “In just one Sunday? No way! You can spend weeks on Romans 8.” They might be able to spend weeks, but I’m good for just one sitting.
Why Romans 8? We are all pretty much familiar with the verses. It does not say anything that we have not heard before. Yet, we all are affected by it. Nicki still gets all goose bumpy when we read or sing from Romans 8:38 and 39. I like that it deals with what is happening around us – those things that seem so unfair and out-of-our control. And Romans 8 gives us hope when we are looking for something better. So with what is happening around us today, I believe that Romans 8 has something timely for us.
Just watching or listening to the news is enough to spoil your day: Flooding and really bad tornadoes all over the Midwest; young people being abused and murdered…. If you are still able to watch or listen to the news, then you have a pretty tough hide. We have limited our news watching lately because it just reminds us of all the suffering around us and brings us down.
But all that is going on now just pales into insignificance when you look at Japan. It's hard to even relate to the numbers. Whole towns smashed and then washed away. Just gone. Tens of thousands of people unaccounted for. Probably dead. Over a million homeless in the snow. Told to stay indoors to avoid the radio-active cloud; but nowhere indoors to stay.
And you watch, and there's nothing you can do to even touch it. There's no way to help that's more than a drop in the bucket. And you shake your head and you groan. It's enough to make you want to cry out for something better.
With all the new events happening every day, we've almost stopped noticing Colonel Gaddafi bombing his own people. And nobody's even been talking about Egypt lately. And Syria: the road blocks and the tear gas and the bullets.
But when you see and remember what’s going on, you groan. Again, at the sight of ordinary people. Just like us. In chaos… and in despair.
And even all those things maybe seem distant and remote and irrelevant compared to your own private struggles and disappointments: Your disappointing diagnosis from the specialist, your upcoming surgery, the chemotherapy, the crushing circumstances that from time to time face our friends, continuing unemployment, aches and pains that don’t go away. And you sense it's only a matter of time, if it hasn’t happened already, before these things happen to you.
I'd prefer to live in a world where bad things happened to bad people. And good things happened to good people. I'd rather live in a world where evil dictators like Gaddafi automatically get cancer, and the rest of us don't. Where rapists and the pedophiles face unexpected tragedy, and the rest of us don't.
I'd rather a world that wasn't groaning.
But that's not the way it is.
Of course, when it comes to world events like the earthquake in Japan, the questions start. Like, where was God? Like, was Japan somehow being punished? Like, is this the start of the end of the world? Oh yea. You might remember the end of the world was last week.
But let's get things in perspective.
The fact is there are 100,000 earthquakes every year. That's one earthquake somewhere in the world... every five minutes. Usually minor.
Once every two weeks, somewhere in the world, you'll get a magnitude 5 or 6. That's the kind of world it is.
Once every month or so a magnitude 7. Maybe in a desert. Maybe New Zealand.
And once every 50 years or so, there's a 9. Regular as clockwork. Welcome to planet Earth.
Of course, most of the time we're insulated because most of the time it's somewhere else and not hurting us. Most of the time we are not even hearing about it. But the reality is that that's the kind of groaning world we live with.
And so if you want to make yourself safe and comfortable here, if you want to make this heaven on earth you are kidding yourself. Because it is not meant to be.
Sometimes we want God to change the nature of things. But only when it isn’t working to up our expectations. Take gravity for instance. We like it and we understand how it works until we fall. Then we want God to fix it, make some modifications, so that we are not affected by its properties. And the amazing thing is that sometimes He does modify things. I remember a miracle that happened when a man fell from an airplane, and he was not wearing a parachute. He fell several thousand feet. He should have been a goner for sure. However, he fell along a steep hillside with just the right kind of brush growing there that managed to slow down his fall, without breaking him to pieces. Now notice, God did not change gravity for that man. He did, however, answer his frantic prayer on the way down.
Now we know that when most of us fall we suffer more than a few bruises. So what’s it all about?
The Christian life is a future-looking life. It's a life of hope. And we can handle our suffering in this life, because there's a new birth to look forward to and that should make everything else fade into insignificance. Should.
That's what Paul’s saying in verse 24 and 25. He says the Christian life is not the life of “we've got it already.” And that's where so many Christians are kidding themselves; there are some churches that believe that if you're a Christian you won't get sick; if you're a Christian you'll get rich; of course, these days you'll still meet Christians that tell you you don’t have enough faith if the bad things persist in your life. They're the “grin and bear it,” “power-of-positive-thinking” group – the ones who will tell you that if you're a real Christian, and you're living by the Spirit, you’ll never face tragedy. You are going to meet people who tell you that if you're a real Christian, you'll have a constant sensation that God's right there beside you, and life will be just like a stroll in the park with your heavenly friend. They think they can exist as if they are no longer living in a groaning world at all.
They're kidding themselves. Because Paul says, our eye has to be fixed on something further ahead than that. Not on the already, but on the not yet.
If you're a Christian who's been knocked around a bit, if you're a Christian who knows what it means to suffer, hang on to that. Because the mature Christian is the Christian with a few scrapes in the paintwork, a few rattles in the old engine, who is waiting patiently for what he does not yet have, instead of boasting as if he has it all already.
Let me quickly tell you what has happened in Romans 1-7. The Apostle Paul has been talking about transformation. And he says a revolution has come that the world has been waiting for right from the start. In a world that's gone so badly wrong, in a world that's bent on worshipping created things rather than the creator, in a world where he says even the Jews with their law from God are no better than anybody else... he says at last, God has acted to put things right. That in the death of Christ, and in the gift of the Holy Spirit, we are in a whole new era: an era of transformed hearts and minds.
To which comes the objection. Well, if this is the new era, why are we still groaning?
Read verse 23. Because Christians don't get a free pass out the back door. "It's not just the creation groaning," says Paul. It's we Christians as well. "Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies."
Creation groans. We groan. And not only that; in verse 26, he says even God's Holy Spirit groans. Can you imagine that? When you're totally wrung out, when you've run out of prayer, he says the Spirit helps us in our weakness, and intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.
You want to know what life's like. It's us groaning with the spirit groaning in a groaning world.
Which paints a pretty bleak picture. Except for the fact that here in Romans 8, Paul puts it all in perspective.
He says that in hope we were saved. And again, verse 24. "But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have we wait for it patiently."
You know, there's an idea Paul uses three times in the passage we're looking at. The first time in verse 19. A word that's meant to define the Christian life. It's just one word in Greek. But it's translated in verse 19 as the phrase waits in eager expectation. A word that literally means stretching out your neck. Craning your neck to catch a glimpse of the train coming down the track or a glimpse of the bus you've been waiting for. Searching the sky for the final landing of the Space Shuttle in Florida.
In the old days we might have called this rubber necking. The same idea is again here in verse 23. He says, “We groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.”
And in verse 25 the same word is used. Where our English translation just says, wait patiently, it means, “eagerly looking forward stretching out your neck to something far, far better than we have now.”
Now here is how many of us live. Here is the American mindset. We'll build heaven on earth; we'll put in double pane windows; we'll build a nice patio; we'll manicure the lawns and air-condition the house, and we'll be comfortable, and we'll be safe. And we think we can make life so comfortable and so good and so convenient that there's no reason to stretch out our necks at all. No need to look forward. Because we've got it all now.
I have to be honest and say very often I want to be like that. I want to pretend life is going to be easy. And we can all get pretty good at that; can't we? Hiding around in our things, we don’t have to face reality.
And again, there are churches that reaffirm that. They say God wants you to be wealthy and well, and you just have to claim it and you have it.
Paul says creation is groaning, and we groan with it. But we look forward.
In verse 18, Paul says, “Look, compared to the good things that are coming, the pain we are going through now isn't even worth talking about.” He writes, "I consider our present sufferings are not even worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us." He's talking about the new creation. Everything will be put right, and we will live with no more tears. There the frustration and decay we live with here will be absolutely reversed.
And the thing we're waiting for, he says, the thing we Christians can look forward to, is "the redemption of our bodies." Because he says, we are groaning because we are trapped here in these bodies that are getting older, these bodies that are decaying, these bodies that always want to sin, these fragile bodies that are so easily crushed or washed away by a tidal wave. The day is coming when we are going to trade them in. And we will be finally seen as what we really are: The children of God. His adopted kids.
See, life now isn't like a walk in the garden with God. And if you think it is, you're kidding yourself. But Paul says... one day it will be. So look forward to that.
And we are reminded each Sunday during communion of what Christ did for us and what is in store for us in the future. Because we're not one of those churches that promises and pretends that in this life, all is well. We're not one of those churches that say if you have enough faith you'll always be healed. We're not one of those churches that say if you have faith, you'll prosper and be kept safe from life's tsunamis.
Does that tell you something about the kind of church we are? If you're a Christian who's been roughed up a little, if you're a Christian who knows what it means to suffer, who's waiting patiently in a groaning world as part of a church family that bears one another's burdens, you should feel right at home. And I hope that is the way we feel here at Grace Covenant Church.
And yet in our extended church family there has been death. There has been illness. There has been anxiety. There has been family turmoil. There has been financial hardship. There has been unexpected disaster. You just have to read the Covenant Connection, and you know what it's like to be part of the struggle.
Now those were great days when Jesus walked the earth and healed the sick – when with a word he turned back the waves. There has been no greater day than the day, three days after he died, when he stood up again.
But that was just a preview of the day that lies ahead.
Paul says the real Christian is the Christian who doesn't pretend. Who faces up to real life, but looks back at what God has done in the past. Who in the midst of the groaning, looks forward with absolute confidence and says, “If God is for us... who can be against us? If God counts us innocent through the death of his son, who can condemn us?” It's worth looking forward to. But it is not yet.
In the midst of catastrophe we are called to compassion. In the hard times, we are called, not to condemn lack of faith, but to help. In all of it, unsurprised and unshaken. Because in all of it, we are the people of hope; no matter what happens, we are anchored to God's good intentions for us.
The apostle Paul, as he writes these words, knows what it's like to be hounded and persecuted from town to town. He knows what it's like to be beaten and shipwrecked. But listen to his confidence... Romans 8 from verse 37. Hardship? No problem. Hunger? That's okay. Danger? It's his middle name. Demons? Powers? 40 foot waves? Every time it's the same answer. Nothing, nothing, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. This creation is groaning, subjected to frustration. Nevertheless, the best is yet to come. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? ...
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
And so, we stretch our necks and look forward with patience and with joy.
©You’re welcome to recycle these resources for your church free of charge. However, if you find them useful, please consider making a donation to the ministry of GCC
