The Best Chapter in the Bible (6): Hope of Glory


Sermon by Derek Thomas on July 19, 2009 Romans 8:18-25

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The Lord’s Day
Morning

July 19, 2009

Romans 8:18-25


“Hope of Glory”

Dr. Derek W. H.
Thomas

Blessed be the Lord,
the God of Israel,
who alone does wondrous things. Let
us worship God.

Lord, our God, we
come into your presence in the name and by the merit of our Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ. The creation, the
rocks and hills and rivers and seas praise Your name.
The stars in the firmament above sing Your praises.
They show forth Your handiwork.
All that is owes its existence to You.
Creation was made, came into being, by the word of Your power.
And we join this morning, as Your redeemed people, to praise and adore
You. We lift up our voices in Your
presence. We join with angels and
archangels and cherubim and seraphim and the Church triumphant on the other side
to sing the praises of our God. How
sweet the name of Jesus sounds in a believer’s ear.
It calms his sorrows and heals his wounds and drives away his fear.
Father we pray this morning as we come into Your presence in the name of
Your Son, the Lord Jesus, and by the help and ministry of Your Spirit, that You
would help us to worship You in spirit and in truth.
May Your word dwell richly within our hearts by faith this morning.
Hear us. Forgive us our
sins. We ask it all in Jesus’ name.
Amen.

Please be seated.

Turn with me to the eighth chapter of Romans in this summer
series that we’ve been calling “The Best Chapter in the Bible.”
Now we come this morning to verses 18 through 25.
Romans 8, verses 18 through 25.
Before we read the passage together, let’s look to God in prayer.

Lord our God, we
once again bow in Your presence. We
are doing so because we want to acknowledge that we can’t even read the Bible
correctly apart from the help of Your Spirit.
So we pray now, that by Your Spirit, we might read, mark, learn and
inwardly digest and all for Jesus’ sake.
Amen.

This is God’s holy and inherent Word:

“For I consider that the
sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is
to be revealed to us. For the
creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.
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. For we know that the whole
creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.
And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of
the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the
redemption of our bodies. 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.”

Amen. May the
Lord add His blessing to that reading of His holy and inherent Word.

Three people are missing and presumed dead following a
landslide in a town just southwest of
Berlin. The
controversial drug, Thalidomide, does not improve survival rates of patients
with a certain form of lung cancer.
Over 100 people, Americans and British students have been quarantined in China due to an outbreak of
suspected Swine Flu. The southern
elephant seal is in danger of extinction, one apparently of over 44,000 species
on the planet that are on the extinction threat list.
Well, those are the headlines on yesterday’s BBC news webpage – same old,
same old. Death, disease, disaster,
and cruelty to animals, all because of sin, our sin, mans’ sin, the sin of Adam
in the Garden of Eden.

Johnny Cash, no, you know I’m not a fan, but Johnny Cash, you may have
seen the movie, I was going to say “Walking the Plank”, but it’s “Walking the
Line.” In “Walking the Line”, you
may have seen Johnny Cash sing that song that goes like this, and, I’m not going
to sing it, I’m just going to read you the words. (laughter)
“I’d love to wear a rainbow every day, and tell the world that
everything’s okay, but I’ll try to carry off a little darkness on my back ‘till
things are brighter. I’m the man in
black.” Well, if you know Johnny
Cash, of course, that’s what he is.
He is the man that carries the burden of this broken world upon his back and
apparently that’s why he wore black.
It’s a broken world. It is a
broken world. It’s a world under a
curse.

And that’s what Paul is talking about here in Romans chapter 8.
He’s talking about creation and he’s talking about suffering.
What’s led him to say that, of course, is what he’s already said in verse
17 when he had spoken about adoption – that we are heirs, heirs of God and joint
heirs with Jesus Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him that we may also be
glorified together. And that link
between suffering and glorification, suffering and glory is what Paul is
expanding on in these verses.

We live in a world full of
suffering. I’d rather think that
Paul had been reading Kohelet, the preacher king who wrote the book of
Ecclesiastes. You know in the Greek
translation of the Hebrew text of Ecclesiastes, you’ll know the refrain in
Ecclesiastes, “vanity of vanity, all is
vanity. There is nothing new under
the sun.”
Well that word
“vanity” is the word translated here in Romans 8 as “futility”.
The world has been subjected to futility.
The world has been subjected to vanity.
He says in verse 19 and 20 and 21 and again in 22, creation is longing
for redemption. Creation is subject
to futility. Creation is under
bondage to decay. Creation is in
birth pangs. He changes the
metaphor, but it is the same illusion, the same idea.
We live in a fallen world, a world of emptiness and frustration and
meaninglessness or futility. The
sun rises and falls, the preacher says in Ecclesiastes, but it never seems to
reach its destination. The wind
blows and blows but nothing ever seems to be gained.
The waters run into the sea but the sea never seems to get full.
There is nothing new under the sun.

You know it. You work hard,
you save for retirement, and then the market crashes.
You buy your retirement home and the wind blows it down.
Fairy tales are fairy tales, but real life is different.
You can have all the money in the world, but very often people with the
most money are the most miserable people in all the world.
And it’s been like that ever since the fall.
It’s been like that ever since Genesis 3:17-19.
God has cursed the ground.
You toil and labor but thistles and thorns frustrate your labor.
God has subjected it to futility.
He has entered into a judicial curse, a judicial punishment.
That is the world in which we live.
Don’t over personalize the sufferings that you have to endure in this
world. Don’t assume as a matter of
course that every suffering is some kind of direct punishment on you.
Yes, search your heart, yes, let suffering humble you, but don’t add to
the pain. The whole creation
groans. It is part of God’s decree,
and Christians, even the godliest Christians, suffer along with it.

The creation is subject to futility.
That’s the second law of thermodynamics isn’t it?
It’s the law known as Entropy – that everything is running down.
It’s built into the universe, that there is this tendency to disorder.
It’s amazing, isn’t it, how many Christians want to remove God from the
suffering in the world and become quasi-deists in the process.
Men and women, I have to tell you that Christians have never found any
comfort in Deism. We live in a
fallen world. We live in a broken
world. We live in a world subject
to futility. We live in a world
subject to frustration and disorder.

But here’s what you do.
Here’s what you do if you’re a believer.
Here’s what you do if you are indwelt by the Spirit of God.
Here’s what you do if you‘re an adopted child of God and an heir of God
and a joint heir with Jesus Christ.
Look at it in verse 18:
“I consider”, “I consider”, “I reckon”.
Yes, I see what happens all around me, I feel the
frustrations of all that occurs around me and in me, but I “reckon”, I
“consider”, I take a Christian worldview.
I see what I can see with my eyes, but with the eye of faith, I
consider
, I reckon, I see another point of view.
I see a world that is running down, but I see something beyond that; I
see a God who is in control. I see
a God who has subjected it to futility.
I see a God of providence – that things happen because there is a divine
plan and purpose. In Jesus, there
is hope. You notice how, at the end
of verse 20, that’s the point of change in the text.
“The creation was subjected to
futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it
(that is God)
in hope that the creation itself
will be set free from bondage.”

In hope! Creation is longing for
something, “the revelation of the sons of
God”
he puts it in verse 19.
“The freedom of the glory of the children
of God”
, he puts it in verse 21.
Creation is longing for it.

I love J. D. Phillips’ rendition that creation is “standing on tiptoe” as
though trying to peer over the wall, over the fence of futility to the hope that
resides in Jesus. It’s the pangs of
childbirth. These are not death
pangs, but birth pangs. And what is
creation longing for? Well, Paul
has a variety of ways of describing that.
He describes it as liberation from futility here in Romans 8.
In Colossians chapter 1 he uses a different metaphor.
He talks about creation being “reconciled
to Himself”
. Peter, on the Day
of Pentecost, or after the Day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 3, speaks about the
restoration of all things” and Jesus
in Matthew 19 speaks about the “regeneration
of all things”
, actually using the same word as Jesus employed when he spoke
to Nicodemus and said to him, “you must be born again or you must be born from
above to enter the kingdom of God.
Jesus is saying the creation itself, the cosmos, the universe itself is waiting
for its regeneration, its rebirth.

Now, you may ask the question, how can the Jungfrau, or the Matterhorn,
or the Grand Canyon or Niagara Falls
be subject to futility? I had the
enormous privilege of seeing the Matterhorn
just ten days or so ago, and it takes your breath away.
Its shear scale, its shear beauty, is awesome.
It speaks of the handiwork of God.
How can the Matterhorn or the Jungfrau or Niagara
Falls or the Grand Canyon be said to
be subject to futility? The answer,
it seems to me, is that so long as man, who is at the center stage of creation,
so long as man doesn’t view those and see the glory of God, it has been
subjected to futility. What the eye
of faith sees, is what Isaiah speaks to at the end of his prophecy in chapters
65 and 66 when he speaks of the new heavens and the new earth.
Yes, creation is subject to futility, yes, creation seems to be running
down, yes, creation as we know it seems to be subject to frustration, but with
the eye of faith, there is coming a day, a glorious day, when there will be a
new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness will dwell.

You know, I’m asked all the time:
Will there be animals in heaven?
And the answer to that question is…duh!
Of course! I mean, people
ask that question — have you never read Isaiah chapter 11?

“The wolf shall lie down with the
lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat and the calf and the
lion and the fattened calf together and the little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze, their young shall lie down together and
the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over all of the cobra and the weaned child
shall put his hand in the adder’s den.
They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth
shall be full of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.”

Now, you may interpret that
passage as a post-millennialist and think that that refers to some latter day
glory before Jesus returns, and you’re perfectly at liberty to do that, but I
rather think that what Isaiah is actually talking about here is the new heavens
and the new earth of which he speaks in the closing two chapters of his
prophecy. And, oh to be sure,
that’s metaphorical language, that’s poetic language, but it speaks of a new
creation! Not just as
glorious and diverse as this one, but more glorious; more glorious than
you had ever imagined it to be.
That’s what creation is longing for.
That’s what every earthquake speaks to.
That’s what every tornado speaks to.
That’s what every hurricane speaks to.
It’s creation in its birth pangs, waiting for the manifestation of the
sons of God. And not just creation
in general, but Paul’s main point, that we also, not just creation, but we
also
, verse 23 “we ourselves, who
have the first fruits of the Spirit”
the down payment if you like, the
initial promise of more and greater to come, now are we the sons of God
in Jesus Christ.
“But it does not yet appear what we shall
be, but we know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him.”

We live in a world just like creation itself.
We live in a world in frustration and bondage to decay.
Jeremy was referring to it in his prayer this morning.
Paul has been referring to it in the previous chapter of Romans 7, “the
groaning”
. Do you know what it
is to groan?
“Oh wretched man that I am, who shall
deliver me from the body of this death?”

I long to be free from sin.
I long to be free from the tyranny of sin.
I long to be free from the entropy of this moral body.
I was telling the folks in the first service of my relative decay.
I was moving my office, not here, but at the seminary this week, and I
wouldn’t like to tell you how many books I have. I have a lot of books.
I should also tell you that it was the interns that did most of the work
for me. I directed, told them where
to go and which shelf what books went on, but I have to tell you that the next
day I ached in every core of my being.
There were parts of me that ached that I didn’t know I had.
Paul has been talking about that in Romans 7, but in a spiritual sense –
groaning under the weight, under the burden of sin’s decay and longing, yes for
the new creation, longing for a new body, longing for that body that isn’t
subject to disease and age and sickness and death.

Calvin makes that extraordinary comment when he is speaking on 1 Peter:
“God has so ordered the Church from the very beginning, that death is the way to
life and the cross the way to victory.”
That’s this world. To get
the crown, there must first of all be the cross.
“If any man will come after Me, he
must deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.”

And what Paul is longing for here, and it’s the longing that every child
of God knows, it’s not just the salvation of our souls, Paul isn’t thinking
about a heaven whereby we are floating on clouds somewhere adrift in heaven
plucking harps. No, he talks about
redemption of our bodies and in verse 23
“the redemption of our bodies.”

I get the impression, I can’t quite prove it, but I get the impression
that when I read the New Testament that Paul believes that more is gained in
Christ than was lost in Adam. More
is gained in Christ than was lost in Adam.
Paul isn’t envisaging a return to
Eden. It’s
not just a return to Eden before the Fall in that state of
probation. No, he’s thinking of
something even more grand than that, and even more definitive than that, and
more everlasting than that. And the
word he gives it here in this passage in verse 18
“they considered that the sufferings of
the present time are not worth comparing with the glory that will be
revealed to us.”
Perhaps, even in
us.

Do you remember how Paul says something very similar in 2 Corinthians
chapter 4? That our
“momentary, light affliction cannot be
compared to the weight of glory.”

There’s this momentary, light affliction and then there is the
weight of glory. There’s suffering
now, there’s heartache now, there’s frustration now, there’s disorder and decay
now, but there’s glory to come.
There’s glory to come.

What is glory? The Hebrew
word for “glory” means weight; something heavy, something substantial.
The best description I think that gets closest to what Paul is trying to
say here is that given by C.S. Lewis.
In 1941 you’ll remember there was war in the world.
In 1941, C.S. Lewis was asked to preach a sermon in
OxfordUniversity
at St. Mary’s in OxfordUniversity.
It has become quite famous and it’s called
The Weight of Glory.
Let me read to you just a little section of it.
And it’s, yes, it’s C.S. Lewis so it’s a little artsy, it’s a little
poetry, a little fanciful, but he’s trying to describe the indescribable.

We are to shine like the sun.
We are to be given the morning star.
I think I began to see what it means.
In one way of course, God has already given us the morning star.
You can go and enjoy the gift of many a fine morning if you get up early
enough. What more, you may ask, do
we want? Ah, but we want so much
more. Something the books on
aesthetics take little notice of, but the poets and mythologies know all about
it. We do not want merely to see
beauty, for God knows even that it bounty enough.
We want something else which can hardly be put into words.
To be united with the beauty, to pass into the beauty, to receive it into
ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.
That’s why the poets tells us such lovely falsehoods.
They talk as if the west wind could really sweep into the human soul, but
it can’t. They tell us that beauty
born of murmuring sound will pass into a human face, but it won’t, or not yet.
For if we take the imagery of Scripture seriously, if we believe that God
will one day give us the morning star and cause us to be put on the splendor of
the sun, then we may surmise that both ancient myths and model poetry so false
as history may be very near the truth as prophecy.

At present, we are on the outside
of the world. The wrong side of the
door. We discern the freshness and
the purity of the morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure.
We cannot mingle with the splendors we see, but the leaves of the New
Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so.
Someday, God willing, we shall get in, when human souls have become as
perfect in voluntary obedience as the inanimate creation in its lifeless
obedience. Then they will put on
its glory, or rather that greater glory of which creation is only the first
sketch.

Well, he’s a poet of course, and
it’s a little poetic, but I tell you that’s what Paul is trying to get us to see
this morning – to reckon, to discern.
I don’t know what suffering you may be going through in your particular
life or family. There could be a
thousand different things going on here this morning among the children of God,
but for this moment, see beyond that.
See suffering as the pathway that leads to the redemption of your bodies,
and the glory, in all of its beauty, its ethereal beauty, the beauty of the new
heavens and the new earth in which righteousness will dwell, which is what God
has prepared for those that love Him.

Well, I can’t find the words to describe it, you see.
And in fact, neither can the Bible.
“Eye has not seen, nor ear heard,
neither has it entered into the hearts of men what God has prepared for those
that love Him.”
That’s hope.
What a great and extraordinary vision that it to keep before us so that,
as Paul says at the end of this passage,
“we may live our lives in patience”
with endurance, knowing for sure what
lies before us.

Father we thank you
for Your Word. Thank you for this
extraordinary statement of what lies before us as Your children.
Encourage us, motivate us, challenge us, equip us.
Give Your servants who are passing through the fire this morning patience
and endurance to see that which cannot be see, to hear that which cannot be
heard, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Receive the Lord’s benediction:

Grace, mercy and peace, from God our Father and the Lord
Jesus Christ be with you all.

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