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July 10, 2005
Pentecost 8
Romans 8:18-25
Pastor Joel Zank

There is Hope for Discouraged Christians!

(Romans 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 firstfruits 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.

In Christ Jesus, the author of our faith and the foundation of our hope, dear fellow redeemed,

"Meaningless! Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless" (Ecclesiastes 1:2). With these discouraging words, King Solomon begins the book of Scripture known as Ecclesiastes. It's a short book of the Bible, just twelve chapters long, but from beginning to end, Solomon describes life as meaningless no less than thirty-five times.

I can relate to Solomon; how about you? No matter what we do, there just don't seem to be enough happy days, not nearly enough peaceful moments. Instead we seem to go from one trouble to the next, from one worry to another. Friends, if you ever feel this way, take heart, for as St. Paul shows us today, There is Hope for Discouraged Christians! In fact there's plenty of hope - there's 1) Creation's Hope, 2) God's Hope, and there's 3) Our Hope.

Isn't this great news? Discouraged Christians need all the hope they can get from everywhere they can get it! That's because one of the most dreadful things about discouragement is the loneliness that comes with it. When we're feeling down, we imagine that everyone else is doing so well, that they can't relate to us and our troubles. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact St. Paul lets us in on a little secret today: God's whole creation is painfully aware of what Paul calls our "present sufferings." Paul says "The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed" (Romans 8:19).

The sons of God are those who believe in Christ as Savior. Now I know that many people, perhaps even many of us, have the idea that Christians should enjoy a pain-free existence here on earth. But the truth is we don't. Like the rest of the world, we Christians get sick, our jobs get cut, our families split up, our bills pile up and our loved ones die. So when it comes to troubled lives, it's impossible to tell believers apart from unbelievers. Both have their share of problems. But all creation is hoping that we believers will soon be revealed. In other words, creation is expecting that the Lord will soon return to separate us Christians from those who reject him. The unbelievers will be sent off to hell, a place of unspeakable and unending misery, while we believers will finally inherit the eternity of bliss and joy that God has promised to us.

The whole creation has this hope for us. I don't know how that can be, but God's Word says it's so. In fact, St. Paul tells us that creation is much more that a casual observer of our lives, it actually has a vested interest in what happens to you and me. He says, "For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God" (Romans 8:20-21).

God made the whole universe, including the earth and all that fills it for one purpose; he made all things to serve Adam and Eve and all their descendants. You'll recall that God created Adam and Eve to be perfect people. He made their world perfect too. God's people were to live forever. Their food, water and air would need to sustain them eternally. So therre were found in these things no toxins, no harmful bacteria, and no deadly diseases. Nor were earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, or title waves. The earth was quite literally a paradise. But all that changed in a second when our first parents chose to rebel against God. Adam and Eve chose to sin rather than to obey. They chose death over life, for themselves and for us because each of us has inherited their sin.

And yet we might wonder what all this has to do with creation. Nature hadn't rebelled against God. It had obeyed his every law perfectly-the law of gravity, the laws of physics. Why should the earth feel the affects of our sin? Why? Because it was God's will. God chose to subject the creation to frustration, the frustration of no longer being a perfect place to live. How could it be? The wages of our sin is death. The creation would have to play a role in carrying out God's justice. Rather than protecting sinners, the earth would now take part in poisoning them. It would become a breeding ground for sickness and disease. Its forces of nature would, at times, wipe out entire civilizations. In many ways creation has turned against us. We know this from earth's history, and not just ancient history. We've seen it with our own eyes. We know firsthand what a deadly place this world can be. Do you remember how many thousands of people died in the tsunami last December?

Here's something that I want you to think about. What if all that we knew about our Creator came only through experiences like that one? Wouldn't we have to conclude that God is always an angry Judge bent on punishing us? We could think nothing else! If that were the case, our lives would be hopeless. But as it is, God has revealed a great deal more about himself here in the verses of Scripture.

For example, from these verses in the book of Romans we learn that God subjected creation to frustration not out of anger toward us sinners, but in the hope that creation along with all of us would be delivered from the bondage of sin into the freedom of holiness.

For God's hope to be realized, we sinners need a constant reminder of how terrible sin really is. Even now in this world of death and decay we often fall, or should I say, jump into temptation. We frequently believe sin's lies and chase the pleasures it pretends to offer us. What if all these sins of ours carried no earthly consequences, no sorrow or pain here and now? What if we went about our sinful lives every day in a perfect world where everything we touched turned to gold? Do you think there is any way in such a scenario that God's law could convict us of our sin and convince us of our need for a Savior? No way at all. Instead we would go right on chasing after sin until it led us through the gates of hell where it is too late to be sorry.

In his great mercy, God couldn't let that happen. So right after our first parents sinned, God cursed the earth. He made it a place where sinners would live out their days in painful toil. But again, so that you do not think God to be one who delights in our pain, remember that the curse came only after the promise - God's promise to send into this world through the woman's offspring, a serpent-crusher, a Satan-smasher who would take the place of us sinners and set us right again with God. Through his saving work our alliance with Satan would end. We would die to sin and be reborn as the children of God. All this has been accomplished not by a curse, but by the promise. And yet the curse serves the promise, doesn't it? For as often as we feel the effects of that curse, as often as we experience the sorrow and pain of living in this sinful world, we turn to the promise and cling to it, not by our own power, but by the power of the promise and the faith God has given us to believe it.

So for now the curse remains in place. All creation groans beneath its weight, but the groan is not a death gasp; it's the groan of one who is in labor. St. Paul writes, "We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24For in this hope we were saved" (Romans 8:22-24a).

Good news my friends: God's hope is about to be realized! The creation is about to give birth to a new heaven and a new earth where there "...will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain..." for the old sinful order of things will pass away (Revelation 21:4). The earth is about to liberated from its bondage to decay. But wait, the news gets even better. The same things is about to happen to us! By God's grace, God's hope becomes our hope. I say by grace because in love that we don't deserve God has chosen us to adopt you and me as he sons. No that doesn't mean that the world to come is for men only. We need to remember that In Paul's day only sons were legal heirs, so Paul calls us all "sons," men and women, to assure us that regardless of our gender we are all God's adopted heirs, heirs who are about to inherit the glories of a sin-free body and a sin-free world.

In the meantime we groan, just as creation does. We groan because of life's troubles. We groan because of our sin-what it does to us and to others. But not all our groaning is caused by sorrow. No small part of it comes from our longing to be home with God. God planted this hope in us when he gave us his Spirit.

It is the Holy Spirit who taught us to know and to believe that Jesus Christ is the friend and Substitute of sinners, who took our sins away from us and put in their place his own perfection so that God now considers us holy. Not only that, the Holy Spirit has convinced us that Jesus died with our sins to pay their punishment and then rose from the dead to make sure that their guilt doesn't haunt us.

All this we believe thanks to God's Holy Spirit who is the firstfruits of all the blessings that await us in heaven. In Old Testament days, God required his people to give him the firstfruits of their harvest as an offering. By doing so they were expressing their trust in God. They could afford to give him the first portion of their harvest because God promised them more food to come, plenty to live on. In these New Testament days, it is God who gives us an offering-his Holy Spirit as a down payment of more blessings to come.

How we need the Spirit! Jesus has redeemed us body and soul. He has bought us back from sin. Our forgiven spirit's are at peace with God. But so often we doubt this because we still feel the burdens of sin in our body; these hearts often ache, these eyes often shed tears; even in the grave these bodies are subject to death and decay. But God has made these bodies the temple of his Spirit and with this gift he says to us, "You can trust me. I'm putting my precious Spirit in you as a pledge that I'm coming back for your body, to free it from sin and death forever!"

This is our hope, and as Paul says, "...in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? 25But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently" (Romans 8:24-25). Christian hope is not wishful thinking. It is a confident and eager expectation that what we are waiting for will soon be reality. So as Paul says, you and I can afford to be patient even in the face of suffering. For as we've seen today, suffering is not our punishment from God, but rather it's a part of his gracious plan for us. Believing this to be true by the Spirit's power, each of us can say with the Lord's Apostle: "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us" (Romans 8:18). Dear friends, may God grant each of us this hope and keep strong within us all, for Jesus sake. Amen.