Learning to Groan

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Don Filcek; Romans 8:18-25 Learning to Groan

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to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsek preaches his series in the book of Romans, A Righteousness from God.
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Let's listen in. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsek, I'm the lead pastor here.
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And as Dave said, today is Father's Day, and so let me encourage you to honor your father in whatever capacity you can, if you still can.
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Give him a call, give him a visit, but I think it's a great thing that our culture recognizes a day set aside to honor what scripture tells us to do, to honor our father, and then another day, obviously, to honor our mothers as well.
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But I'm glad for another Sunday morning to be together to worship in community. I think it's glorious that God gives us this opportunity.
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And this morning, we're gonna have a parent dedication service. There's a lot of things that are going on this morning. It's obviously
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Father's Day, parent dedication service. We're gonna have some time to sing some songs of praise to God together.
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Then I'm gonna preach a bit on the book of Romans, taking off a little bit smaller chunk, but the next chunk of scripture there as we're walking through that book.
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And then we're gonna have a chance to remember the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on our behalf by taking communion as a church family at the end of the service.
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And so, knowing that I was gonna have a little bit less time to preach because we're doing this parent dedication thing this morning,
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I considered maybe just picking a different passage instead of continuing on in the book of Romans. Sometimes I do that, and I'm like, maybe
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I'll just pick a passage that kind of focuses in a little bit more on family or something like that. But the more that I read the next passage in the book of Romans and read that next passage over and over again, the more it came to focus that this is a very valuable text for us to consider in the light of parenting.
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Obviously, in the light of everything, every scripture comes to bear on every life in a variety of ways. But in light of parents dedicating themselves to the task of godly parenting, that's what we're gonna see here in just a few moments after we sing some songs.
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So, our text this morning begins with a comparison of this present era of sufferings with the future glory that will be revealed to those who are in Christ.
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So, it's a contrast a little bit. The present sufferings with a future glory.
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And it really takes for granted, I mean, Paul is directly addressing those who are followers of Jesus Christ and the hope that we live in in the present because of the past work that he's done and the future being sealed by his
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Holy Spirit. And so, the text is then gonna take us down a brief history of the broken creation.
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How many of you knew that the world around you is a bit broken? You've noticed that. You're broken, the world is broken, stuff is broken, and it's constantly getting broke.
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And so, explaining the reason, the text is gonna be explaining the reason we all have experienced a discouraging futility to life.
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I think we know that. And this passage doesn't leave us, though, in the futility of this world, but we are reminded that there's a restoration that is coming.
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And really, the futility that we experience in the world around us is so that we would hope for something more than this, so that we wouldn't nail our tent pegs too firmly to this ground, but we would actually recognize that there is something else that our hearts long for, and I think we all know that.
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And so, we're reminded that there is a restoration that is coming here in this text. We are those who now recognize that our hope and trust must not be placed in the things of this broken and futile world.
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Instead, this world, according to this text, has been groaning in pain like a woman in the throes of childbirth, the text tells us.
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And it's groaning, and it's longing for a change, longing for a restoration, longing for redemption, as it is awaiting the birth of a new kingdom at the return of Jesus Christ, our
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Lord and Savior. And we are those who groan with creation as well.
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We are a longing people. We are a hopeful people. We are a sojourning people, a people who have not yet found our home.
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But it is for this hope that we were saved, the text tells us, and as a hopeful people in a futile world are calling us to be those who wait.
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And if we wait, it says, we wait with an enduring patience. What a great message to parents who wanna raise godly children in a world that is subject to futility.
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To be reminded here on this day of dedication that our goal is not to connect our children well to this world, not even to connect our own hearts well to this world, but to connect our hearts and connect our children and connect the next generation and connect our coworkers and connect our neighbors and all of those around us to connect them well to a new citizenship that is available.
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To give them a taste of the way that things should be so that they will grow up to groan together with us.
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A groaning that laments the futility of a world broken by sin, a groaning that keeps us from establishing our trust and resting in this world, a groaning that results in trust and hope for a future, a future that we cannot yet see.
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So if you're not already there, please open your Bibles to Romans 8, verses 18 through 25. That's what we're gonna read this morning.
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Romans 8, 18 through 25, that's the content of our message. Remember, church, that this is a chance that we have to hear from God through his written word, what he desired to reveal to us about the way that he rolls and the way that we ought to live.
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And so Romans 8, 18 through 25, if you don't have a Bible with you or a device to navigate to the
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Bible, you can grab the Bible under the seat in front of you. There should be one in the row in front of you under the seat.
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You can grab one of those, follow along. Romans 8, 18 through 25. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
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For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.
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For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
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For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.
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And not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the firstfruits of the spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for the adoption of sons, the redemption of our bodies.
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For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what he sees, but if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the hope that we have in Jesus Christ.
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And I thank you that you are just so willing to be direct and honest with us about the futility of the world around us.
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It's refreshing sometimes to encounter your word in a way that speaks to our experience and to the way that we really see things, not a hyper -spiritual, everything's
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A -okay and put on a smiley face and wear a mask here at church and how's everybody doing just fine.
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But we know we live in a broken world. Every single person in this room has faced some kind of mess this week because of the futility and brokenness that's here.
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And so you give us, in this text, you give us a license to groan, a license to long for something different, to long for better, to long for restoration, to long for redemption, to long for eternity with you.
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And so, Father, I pray that in that license that you would just allow our hearts now to rejoice because we are those who actually have a hope beyond the futility of this world.
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We don't live in this being ultimate any longer, but we know there is more. And so,
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Father, as people who have been set free with that hope in our minds and in our hearts, I pray that you would release us to worship you with enthusiasm and with joy and with gladness this morning as we sing these songs.
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And then as these families come here in just a moment, I know that there's probably even some nerves and some anxiety in these fathers about an opportunity to get up and speak in front of people.
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I pray that you would calm their nerves and give them the ability to just testify to their desires to be godly parents in raising their kids.
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And, Father, that all of this would be for your honor and for your glory that we do here this morning in Jesus' name, amen.
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You can go ahead and be seated. But remember, if at any time during the message, if you need to get up and get more coffee or juice, take advantage of that.
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You're not gonna distract me if you need to get up at all during the message. The restrooms are out the double doors down the hallway on the left -hand side if you need that.
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And then I would just ask that you do me a favor and keep your Bibles open to Romans 8, 18 through 25, or your device or whatever you're looking at the
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Bible on, but so that you can see the flow of the text and you can see that the things that I'm saying are coming from God's word.
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I'll be referencing it throughout. But I wanna start off with a little bit of a setup question. It's a simple question.
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It's a question I already know the answer to. But I would like you to raise your hand on this one. I'd like you to actually raise your hand up high and hold it there for just a second.
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How many of you have been at times discouraged? I knew it. I had that feeling in my gut that there was a lot of us.
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But now, let me just ask you the follow -up question. How many of you have been discouraged but felt like it wasn't okay to express it?
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Raise your hand on that one. You've been discouraged, but you didn't feel like you were allowed to say it to anybody.
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You didn't feel like it was appropriate. You didn't think it was culturally, like you're in a pit and you walk past somebody and they say, how you doing?
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And you say, fine, just fine. What is that?
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I don't wanna get into it. And of course, that's part of it. Some of it's cultural. They didn't really want you to give them a treatise on your day or every bad thing.
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That wasn't the nature of their question. But there's something about that. And I think even in the church, we can have that at times.
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I think many of us were raised in a culture and in a context of religion where we were supposed to put on a happy face.
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You were supposed to have it all together. And the tendency is to pretend that everything is going just fine in everybody's lives.
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As a matter of fact, better than most, right? We're supposed to be living the victory. We are supposed to be positive and upbeat and encouraging to everybody at all times.
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But this text has the potential to be a game changer for many of us. It isn't a message that you'd expect to hear at church.
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That's okay to be disappointed. It's okay to be frustrated with this life.
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This is a message that's real. It's a message that's earthy. It's really down to earth. It isn't pious or super spiritual.
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I find it crazy encouraging because it outright validates my groaning. It gives you the right to sigh over your life.
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It gives you the right to roll your eyes at circumstances and to express discouragement with the world around you.
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I'm gonna be identifying for us seven vital truths that are meant to inform the way that we look at the world around us from this text.
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And remember that all of this is in the context of Paul explaining how to live the Christian life.
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He's already expressed the gospel. He's expressed the brokenness of humanity through the first three chapters, really delving into sin.
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He's talked about the way that salvation comes from a righteousness from God given to us at the cross of Jesus Christ by faith that anybody who believes that Christ covered your sins and his punishment was taken there at the cross for you, that you are brought into the family of God with all of these riches and things that have been expressed in previous chapters in the book of Romans.
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And now, really from Romans six through Romans eight, we've been talking about now that you are saved, how do you live this life?
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And so these are seven vital truths meant to help us to understand how to navigate a broken world that we live in.
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And these truths are written here to help us to figure out how the spirit will guide us. We talked about a spirit -driven life and now, what kind of things is the spirit gonna drive us into?
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The first is this vital truth found in verse 18. Future glory, future glory outweighs present suffering.
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Future glory outweighs present suffering. And by the way, I realize what I just said, this isn't a bait and switch.
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It could feel like it because I just told you this message wasn't gonna be super spiritual and pious. And then the passage starts out with what could be labeled as a pious and super spiritual comment.
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If you're going through intense suffering, how many of you want somebody to walk up to you and say, hey, but don't forget about heaven? Don't forget about heaven, right?
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Do you see how, that's the flippant, super spiritual kind of answer, right? And I mean, that's where you get punched in the face, right?
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Somebody that's gonna let you have it, right? You just lost a loved one, you just lost your job, you just lost something and you don't know how you're gonna get out of this pit that you're in and then just, but heaven.
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But that's not what Paul is saying here. You have to understand that certainly we need to take these truths on, especially for those of you that maybe are going through good times.
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Maybe things are clicking for you. Maybe it's going well. You need to take on these messages during the good times so that it flavors when you go through those pits, when you go through those dire times.
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Paul's flat out stating truth. It is true what he is saying here. Context and when to speak it matters, right?
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That matters, so you don't just go around slinging this left and right with everybody who's going through hardship. This is not your silver bullet to problems.
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But it is true. And here's what you need to take into account here. Paul was eminently qualified to address this issue.
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Paul was crazy qualified, more qualified than most of us in this room. Paul who was shipwrecked for the cause of the gospel.
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Paul who was beaten, he was pelted with rocks, he was backstabbed by friends, he was hit with rocks so bad and so physically damaged that they thought he was dead, grabbed him by the ankle and drug him outside of the town of Lystra and put him in the garbage heap.
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They thought he was dead. He was at least unconscious and barely breathing enough. I mean, it's unclear, when
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I preach that in the book of Acts I wasn't even sure if he was dead and was resurrected or whether or not he actually was just faint and close to death and was nursed back to health.
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But he takes a road trip the next day, so I'm guessing that something miraculous happened here. He may well have been killed in that scenario.
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So that's the very Paul, that Paul was the one who was saying that the sufferings of this present time do not hold a candle to the glory that will be revealed to us.
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Is that true? Yes, is that a truth that we need to grasp in our day in and day out lives?
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Absolutely, that's a vital truth to how we are to navigate this broken and fallen world.
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The suffering of this present time can't hold a candle, cannot hold a candle to the glory that will be revealed to us.
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This text is starting with optimism because it's not gonna remain there. Paul takes, he understands and is gonna explain to us the darkness is real, it's a real darkness.
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It's not a figment of our imagination. It's not like we just need to rise above the, there is really no suffering, not any
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Buddhist philosophy or something like that. The thing is just to recognize there is no real suffering at the end of the day and it's all just good and that's an illusion or something like that.
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No, the darkness is real. There's a real darkness, there's a real brokenness. There is indeed a genuine futility to life.
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You felt it, it's real. You weren't making it up, you weren't pretending. Paul isn't denying that there is suffering.
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He is just saying that our eyes, listen to me carefully, Recast. Our eyes will behold things that are incomparably better.
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Our feet will go places that our minds cannot imagine or picture. Our tongues will taste banquets.
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Our arms will embrace the one who died for us. That is what is the future of anyone who is in Christ.
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Paul is setting any and all present suffering in its rightful place and indescribable glory is going to be revealed to God's children and that is where our hope rests.
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The second point is a little bit of a strange point in understanding the truth, but it is important in our understanding of how we navigate this created world as Christians in a broken world and that is simply this, that humanity is the pinnacle of creation.
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A strange thing to bring out here, but in verse 19, that's kind of what he's getting at there. With the fall of humanity came the fall of creation and as verse 19 says, creation's restoration depends on the restoration of the children of God.
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As humanity goes, so goes the created order and we're awaiting and creation is awaiting a restoration of the sons of God.
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Creation is waiting for us to be restored so it can be restored. You see, we were intended to be, as created in God's image, the only thing on this planet that bears the image of God.
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We were like ambassadors to this world. We're like his vice regents taking care of it, tending to it, improving it, making it better.
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That's what the whole garden thing was about in the beginning. We're his image bearers to creation and so all of creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.
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The word, by the way, it's really a cool word. The word in Greek that's for waits with eager longing here in verse 19 occurs three times in this text.
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It's like Dave was talking about in introducing that song. It's the word that's just an extreme anticipation, a crazy, radical interpretation.
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It occurs in verse 19 and verse 23 and in verse 25 of our text this morning and the word is a very picturesque Greek word.
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It means to extend the head away from the body. In other words, a craning of the neck kind of anticipation.
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I don't really struggle with this a whole lot but some of you that are shorter have been in a crowd and you maybe wanted to see, maybe you wanted to see the artist you were there to hear play in concert and you had to crane your neck with anticipation to see a glimpse of whatever it was.
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Maybe it was somebody that was marching in a parade or something like that. But how many of you know what I'm talking about? The short ones. No, all of us have had that experience, even the tall ones.
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There are times when you crane your neck. There's an anticipation that's wrapped up in this word of desire to just get a glimpse to just see what it is and in this case, it's the restoration of the sons of God that creation is craning its neck, just longing to see the first glimpse of a restored, glorified humanity.
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It's a picture of the created order around us. Of course, there's a personification. It's not like creation is a being like mother nature or something like that.
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That's not what Paul is on about at all here. He's just basically personifying creation and saying all of it is tied up with the weight of the cosmos, the universe, everything in the created order, the animals.
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Everything is tied up to the restoration of humanity and even nature indicates a brokenness that needs to be restored.
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The word, by the way, that Greek word is a word of extreme anticipation and built into this natural system is a hunger for a return to glory.
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But creation is not awaiting its own restoration in this verse, in verse 19. It's pictured here craning its neck for the first signs of a restoration of humanity because we are the caretakers of creation.
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The third point in this text, the third vital truth that we need to understand as Christians navigating this broken world is that God has infused this world with futility.
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You heard that right. God has infused this world with futility.
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Well, wait a minute, Don. I thought God was on my side. I thought he always wanted everything to work out just right. I thought he always, always only gave good things.
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I thought, well, how could God infuse this created order with futility? Well, if you just go back to the most simple explanation of this is to go back into Genesis and see as the man and woman fell in Genesis chapter three that God doles out punishments and he even punishes the work and he says thorns are gonna grow on the earth and there's gonna be toil and it's gonna be harder and things are not gonna work right and your tractors are gonna break down and things are gonna rust out and they're gonna break and that's what we're looking at here.
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That's when this whole thing was subjected to futility. That's why it's hard to live on planet earth.
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The created world was actively, actively subjected to futility and it was subjected it says in verse 20 by one who added futility with a mind, whoever it was that subjected it had a mind toward hope and that's why we believe that this is
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God with a hope for restoration. Adam and Eve didn't eat the fruit. Some people have bantered back and forth well maybe this is
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Adam that subjected it to futility. Well no, he didn't do it in hope. He did it in sin.
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Adam and Eve did this in sin but God has subjected this world and our lives to futility with a mindset towards hope, towards restoration.
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But let that sink in for a moment. God has intentionally made life more difficult for humanity.
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Intentionally. And this might at first glance be discouraging. I mean just in all honesty, how many of you would say that sounds a bit discouraging?
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Like you just have face value. Like is that what my God is like? Would he do that? But futility, and futility is not a tame word.
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Futility means emptiness. It means added difficulty in our day in and day out like thorns now grow in our gardens.
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It means natural disasters. It means rust. It means decay, rot, floods, thefts, murders, diseases.
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It means that life is not easy. There's no easy button. Despite what the commercials would tell you.
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And here's where things get real. Verse 20 is outright acknowledging that there is indeed a level of futility in your daily life.
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Every day that feels monotonous. Every day that has felt futile to you.
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Every day that has been discouraging and difficult for you. That's a Romans 8 20 kind of day.
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And anyone who denies the futility of this life is probably on too many drugs. Everyone in this room has lived their share of futile days.
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I don't need you to raise your hand on that one. And this doesn't seem so encouraging when we press on through the text and get to the next points and we find that there's encouragement in this because of the reason why
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God has subjected it to futility. There's a reason, a loving reason, a kind reason, a gracious reason that he would not allow you to settle down too well in the here and now.
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And that is because God gave this futility, according to verse 21, in hope. At the end of verse 20, on into 21, actually for some reason the person who divided the verses decided to just cut off and lop off the end of the beginning of verse 21 and tacked it on to the end of 20.
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It should all be in one sentence there. But he did this in hope. And I just want to clarify, there's a scientific word.
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I mean, people who study physics and understand the world around us, there's a scientific word for this bondage to corruption.
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You see that phrase in verse 21, but there's a really, a shorter, more concise word for bondage to corruption in verse 21.
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It's the word entropy. How many of you ever heard the word entropy before? It's the reality that things are moving towards lesser states of energy.
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Things are, in other words, just to put it in layman's terms, things are busted and they're breaking down. They get worse.
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Our bodies are subject to entropy. Our cars are subject to entropy. All things moving towards lower, lower, lower states of energy.
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I can see some of you starting to nod off as I'm talking. Entropy, okay? It's just like a natural thing is to slow down.
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That's why we have coffee here. You need to, get up, stoke up. Let's get this back up and running. But it seems like we're reading a document here written 2 ,000 years ago about God ordaining a law of physics due to the fall of humanity, and that's what
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I believe. I know that society tells us we cannot be both scientists and Christians. We can't love science and believe the
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Bible, but I completely reject that notion. I absolutely love science. I know that some of you really love science, and you've taken science class.
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I took an anatomy and physiology class, just out of the blue, because I wanted to in college. I took astronomy. Absolutely love the stars and the planets and all that stuff.
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Had a telescope for a while. Michigan's not a great place to, you need to go to Arizona if you wanna really see the sky.
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Michigan's not great for that. Lot of cloud cover. Don't have a, I don't have a telescope anymore. Anyways, I love science, and I see science as ultimately an endeavor in finding the order and structure to that which
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God has laid down. He's, by the very nature of having a creator, we can see consistency.
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We can see the rules and the laws making sense, the way that he's designed it, but there's futility in that system called entropy.
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He made it so that things are moving toward lower states of energy due to our fall, so that metal, rust, weeds grow, climates change.
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And science can tell you that this happens, but science cannot tell you why this happens.
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And here in our text, God says, why entropy? He's added futility into this present created order to loosen our grip on this, to loosen our grip on this life.
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It's hard to put our trust in things that rust out, although we'll try. It's hard to really put any kind of ultimate trust in things that break down and things that get stole and things that get destroyed in floods.
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You see, God has subjected his world to a hope -producing futility, a hope -producing futility.
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And the hope is that this entropy, this bondage to corruption, according to the text, will one day cease.
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Creation is looking forward to a day when it will be set free from the laws of entropy.
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And it will be on the day that the children of God receive their freedom, the freedom of the glory to which we have been created when we are restored to the way that we were originally meant to be, pure and holy caretakers of the world around us, pure and holy representatives of God to creation and to each other, and in right relationship with our creator.
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What a glorious day that will be. How many of you are looking forward to that day? You're looking forward to that day? I sure am. I am looking forward to that day.
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Creation is looking forward to that day. But we're not yet what we're meant to be, and that's one thing that we need to fundamentally understand as we navigate this created order.
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We are not what we were made to be, but hear me carefully, church. We are not yet what we're meant to be, but the right word to define what we will be is glory.
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That is the word the text uses. The glory of the sons of God. The glory that will be ours given by our heavenly father as image bearers rightly restored.
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Right now we at best are like a broken and shattered mirror that cannot reflect accurately
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God, but on that day he will put the mirror back together and we will reflect him as perfect image bearers.
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What a glorious day. And so God gave this current order, this current structure, this current world we live in, he gave it futility in hope, and then the fifth point, the whole creation groans and so do we, verses 22 through 23.
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Every earthquake, every tsunami, every eruption of the earth, every mass shooting, every daily headline that demonstrates to us this futility of life certainly pains us, it certainly hurts us, it grieves us, it causes groaning.
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We ought not to think of it as an unproductive pain, it's a reminder to us that this world is not what it's supposed to be, but it will get there at the hand of our heavenly father.
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This old era of sin and death will give birth to a new kingdom is the metaphor that's being used here, the idea of childbirth and that the natural order is like a woman in the throes of childbirth.
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A pain, a severe pain, a significant pain, but a productive pain. I was in the room for three all natural, no pain medication kind of births.
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I'm gonna refuse to elaborate too much on childbirth as a guy.
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I can say I was there, kinda. I almost passed out, the nurse actually attended to me at one point and gave me a
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Snickers bar. You're looking a little pale there, you need something to eat. Linda was unimpressed.
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I was in awe of this woman. And honestly, I can testify that she scares me a little bit after those days.
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Okay, just a little bit more scared at watching her ability to endure pain. Like it's like, whoa.
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So Paul knows here in the text that as a man, he is treading on shaky ground and dangerous ground using childbirth as a metaphor as a guy, right?
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Like that's a, be careful with that, guys. But he also knows he's using an extreme example of pain and turmoil.
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Creation is in upheaval. Creation is not merely sitting and awaiting the new kingdom and the restoration of the subjects of the king.
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Creation is beside herself. She is in intense pain and agony, but it's a productive pain, but it is indeed very tumultuous.
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And according to verse 23, it isn't just creation that groans, but so do we.
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So do we. We who have the firstfruits of the spirit, it says in the text, groan inwardly as we await for the finality of our adoption, even the redemption of our failing and faltering bodies that are subject to this decay and subject to this entropy.
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The passage is calling us into a genuine interaction with this fallen world. I think some of us have felt like the calling of the
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Christian is to skate from mountaintop experience to mountaintop experience and never allow the valleys to touch us.
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And certainly even we know in our minds that we sometimes find ourselves, how did I get down here? I'm supposed to be up there skipping across the top.
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Joy, joy, joy. Happiness, happiness, happiness. Smile, smile, smile. And at the end of the day, we know that it's not all that.
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So what do we do with that? When we have those sleepless nights and those dark times of the soul, this passage is allowing us to genuinely interact with the fallen world, a world that results in groaning.
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We're not supposed to be a gumdrop and rainbow dispenser. It's okay to groan.
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It's okay to lament the brokenness of the world around us and the brokenness within us. It's okay to sit in the pain of others who are hurting.
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It's okay to call others into your pain and sorrow, something we are probably even less gifted and skilled at, to actually invite others in when we're hurting, to not hurt and grieve alone.
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It's okay to take the world as it truly is in its futility, its sadness, its pain, its misery.
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The Christian is not called to a blind and ignorant view of the world around us. We are called to stand resolutely with eyes wide open, eyes wide open to the world full of catastrophe, full of pain, full of suffering, with death and disease.
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And we groan, there's gotta be something better.
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And we crane our necks, stretching our head away from our body, looking for one glimpse.
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Just give us a glimpse. Man, come soon, Lord. Longing for just a glimpse.
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How many of you are longing, longing for that glimpse? We eagerly await the resurrection.
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We have a hunger and an appetite for the return of our King. We want just one glance of the Lord. The one who will ride in on the white horse to save the day.
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The hero who will one day come for his people. The sixth thing, the sixth vital truth in this text.
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After the whole creation groans, and so do we, which was the fifth. The sixth is the spirit bridges the futility and the hope so that we're not resting, and we're not stuck in this futility.
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If it's just groaning, that's a sad message. I can't leave you there. Paul doesn't leave you there.
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God doesn't leave you there. Even as I study this passage, it all seemed to be spiraling downhill pretty fast as I study it, you know, verse by verse by verse.
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The world is subjected to futility, according to this text. It's full of suffering. It's not a pretty picture. And all of this occurs in the midst of a section of the book of Romans that has been focused on how we ought to live the
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Christian life. And it seems bleak. Creation is groaning. Christians are groaning.
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We have no promise that the hardships and sufferings are gonna skip our households. So how in the world can we get hope from this message?
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And so much, if we're honest, in so much of our real suffering and futility, the new heavens and the new earth seem so far away.
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Do you know what I'm talking about? When you're going through it, it just seems so long and so far.
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And then verse 23. Verse 23. We have within us the first fruits of the
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Spirit. A spark of revival. A spark of hope.
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He is a down payment of the life that is to come. He is like the money that's put down, saying on a house that there's more money on the way.
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He is the promise. The Spirit is the promise of more.
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At harvest time every year, a good Israelite in the Old Testament times, according to Old Testament law, would take the first portion of the harvest and give it to the tabernacle or the temple as an offering called the first fruits.
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And it would be brought in from all over Israel and it would be the first, usually probably about a tenth of the, of the first tenth of the haul.
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As you're harvesting your grain, you're harvesting your grapes, you're making raisins, you take the first 10 % of that product and you take it in to offer it to God.
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On that day and that age, that was risky. Super risky.
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Take the first that you get and give it away to God. What if a storm came and destroyed the rest of the crop in the night?
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What if someone stole the remaining grain or the field caught fire after you had harvested that first 10 %?
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I mean, we could really use that. And I mean, if you're living in a culture in a time where it's hand to mouth,
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I mean, what you grow is what you eat and you don't grow anything, you don't eat anything. How many of you recognize that that would be pretty risky?
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That's a scary notion. Now, when we give, if God lays it on your heart to give, we give and it's just kind of like, does that come out of the first or the last or whatever?
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I just get a paycheck, right? And so I'll just give a portion of that. Is it kind of first or whatever? It's kind of a weird way to think about it.
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But in that day and that age, it was very risky. And this was an intentional offering that indicated trust in God for a harvest that was yet to come.
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And we trust by God's grace that there's more on the way. In this sense, then, the
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Holy Spirit being called a first fruit like that, the Holy Spirit is given to followers in the present as a pledge that more is on the way.
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The Holy Spirit living in us, the Holy Spirit living through us, the Holy Spirit always present with us for power, for strength, for endurance.
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The Spirit is what keeps us from utter despair in the here and now. All things groan, but not all things despair.
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The children of God groan inwardly, but we groan with a craning of the neck kind of anticipation because we know what's coming.
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We know how the story ends. And that leads to the final point. The final vital truth for all of us is the seventh point.
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We live in between. We live in between. Verses 24 and 25 are expressing that.
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The word hope is kind of an in -between word. Verse 24 says, for in this hope, hope is a future word, a looking forward to something, an anticipation of something that you can't see, you don't know it.
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I can't say rightly that I hope that Juwan Howard becomes the Michigan, boy, I really hope that Michigan looks at him for their next basketball coach.
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I'd be foolish. He's already in, right? Like, why would I hope for that? He's already there. So you don't hope for something you can see if you already see it.
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Man, I hope that Recast gets a building someday. What? I mean, check me into the doctor and see if I'm already in the head if I say something like that.
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We're already in a building. You don't hope for what you can see. Hope is an anticipation for that which you can't see.
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And verse 24 says, for in this hope, future, we were saved, past.
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Do you see the life and everything? Therefore, that you live is in between those two points. We're saved in hope for the future.
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Past salvation, future hope. Paul is reminding all of us to put our present, sufferings and all, in the context of our past and our future.
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We've been saved by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross. We have a hope for the future when
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God will free us to glory and he will also, at that time, free creation from the bondage of destruction.
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And until that day, we anticipate it with a patient endurance, as verse 25 ends.
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Patient endurance. The life of the believer is not to be one of desperate clamoring for satisfaction, clamoring for pleasure and expectation in this life.
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How tightly are you clinging? Are you trying to get blood from a turnip here? You're not gonna get it. You can't milk out of this life what your heart longs for.
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This world doesn't have it. So it's not to be a desperate clamoring for the things of this world.
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We are those who understand that this creation is subjected to futility. We know rightly that this life cannot satisfy us and we live accordingly.
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We should live accordingly. We should live with diminished expectations on the world in the here and now as we await the glory that is not worth comparing to the sufferings of this present age.
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And so consider three applications before we come to communion this morning together. The first is simple, straightforward from the text.
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Don't expect this life to be enough. Don't expect this life to be enough.
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We wait eagerly with hope. We pray earnestly for God to redeem, to restore, to rescue, to come and save.
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And we do it all with joy and we do it all with hope because our trust for good things is no longer centered on the fleeting pleasures of this world.
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But it is rooted in the solid trust that God will lead his sons and daughters up out of this mess to the freedom of the glory of the children of God, even to the degree of the redemption of our body's resurrection.
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One of my favorite quotes from C .S. Lewis, there's a lot of good quotes from him, but it honestly is in my top five, maybe even,
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I've used it enough that it might very well be my favorite. I just love this quote. C .S. Lewis said this, "'The
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Christian has a great advantage over other men.'" Oh, he got my attention. What in the world? I mean, we have a greater advantage.
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How many of you would agree with that statement off the top? Christian has an advantage. What is that advantage? He says, "'The
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Christian has a great advantage "'over other men, not by being less fallen than they, "'nor less doomed to live in a fallen world.'"
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So, he's saying, your advantage is not that you sin less. That's not your advantage.
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And your advantage is not that the world treats you better. Did you already know that? That's not your advantage.
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So, what is your advantage? "'The Christian has a great advantage over other men, "'not by being less fallen than they, "'nor less doomed to live in a fallen world, "'but by knowing that he is a fallen man "'in a fallen world.'"
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That's the advantage. Your expectations are different. What do you expect the world to give you?
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What do you think the world owes you? What are you hoping to obtain from this life?
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What do you think it's gonna give you tomorrow? What do you expect from your job? What do you expect from your family? What do you expect from?
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On and on and on. Knowing that we are fallen in a fallen world is an advantage.
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It'd be foolish, then, for us to read this text, not the quote from C .S. Lewis, but the text of Romans, and it'd be foolish for us to read this text and then go back to our life tomorrow or this afternoon acting like this futile creation has what we need.
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But I fear that many of us are capable of that. I know I am. I'm very capable of hearing this and walking out and hoping for really good things from the world around me, expecting those things to satisfy.
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And I would say there's a word for that. It's foolish. The second application is learn to groan.
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Boy, I think this is hard for Christians to do. And I think part of it is that we fear, and rightly so, we should fear going across the line from groaning and lamenting to complaining and whining.
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Do you know what I'm talking about? And the fact of the matter is, many of us, some of us in the room are actually pretty good at complaining and whining. We're not so good at groaning.
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So this isn't whining and complaining 101 here in the text. This text is not a license to complain about the weather or whatever.
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Groaning is all set in the context of anticipation, of recognizing the brokenness in the world around you and longing for more, recognizing that which sin has broken and has corrupted.
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It's acknowledging the reality of the suffering and brokenness of the world, and it's all with a mind to anticipating the return of our king to finish the redemption that he has begun in us.
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Learn to groan and learn to be okay, saying, man, it's been a tough week. It's even maybe felt like a futile week.
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It's felt kind of empty at times and kind of like I just couldn't get ahead. And I just felt the brokenness that God has infused in this world.
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The last thing, fundamental to this entire message, put your hope in God.
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You can't get past this world without hope in God. You will expect this life to be all that there is, and if you expect this life is all there is,
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I'm really sad to tell you it's just not gonna satisfy you. You cannot be satisfied by trying to get what your heart longs for from this world.
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So we're gonna come to communion here to remember that Jesus came into the futility. He entered this brokenness.
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He entered, he suffered here with us and for us. And from within the futile system, he took on the pattern of sin and death.
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He lived a sinless life and he conquered sin on the cross, and he conquered death three days later at the empty tomb.
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And that's where hope comes from in this creation that has been subjected to futility. Hope has been born in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
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And for all who belong to Jesus Christ, by faith, I encourage you to come to the tables of communion as a reminder this week, as your reminder this week, that his body was broken for us and his blood was shed for us.
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And if you haven't accepted Jesus as your king, and you've not asked him to save you, then I'd encourage you to just skip over communion, remain in your seat, take in this song, but let me encourage you to come out of your futility to the hope that is available in Christ and Christ alone.
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All of creation experiences futility, but only those who are in Christ. Only those who have the down payment of the spirit can be moved from the place of futility to the craning the neck kind of anticipation that results in patient endurance in the sufferings of this world.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you so much for the hope that we have in you and just the sensible explanation of the world around us that the text gives us that makes sense of the way that we see things, that we know our cars rust, and we know that things break down, and we know that we stub our toes, and just little petty things that can really annoy and aggravate all the way up to the very large headline kind of devastating things that are going around globally and natural disasters.
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And Father, there just could be such a weight on our shoulders. And I pray that you would help us to groan rightly and correctly, but groan as those who, yes, indeed, are injured and wounded in the darkness of this world, but I pray that you would also move us by your spirit from that place of futility to the place of hope.
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That we would be those who crane our necks with an anticipation and a hope for the coming of our
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Lord who will set it all right. So, Father, I pray that even in the darkness of this message that you would spark within us a joy that comes from knowing our future, a joy that comes from knowing that there is a glory coming that far outshines, far outshines any weight of suffering that we may endure here in this place.