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Groaning for the Future
Romans 8:18-25
Last week, we looked at Romans 8:18…
“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”
And we can read that, hear those words, and affirm that we believe them in our heads. But deep in our hearts, we are still asking, “Is it really worth it? Is our inheritance really grand enough to thrill our hearts and deserve our total commitment? Or is Christian faith just a nice little thing, a little crutch that gets me to feel better about life and death and hardship?”
We live in a cynical world, and we cannot help but ask for more proof. So, the Holy Spirit guided the apostle Paul to write some amazing words to prove it to our hearts! He wants us to feel this deeply, to know it and to believe it and to experience a difference because of it! And so he takes us outside and tells us to look around at the beauty of creation. You look at the birds in flight, a butterfly wisp by, a flower blooming, a mountain looming, an ocean’s waves crashing, the sun blazing.
And he tells you a story of how all of creation feels about the future glory that is promised to the children of God!
1. Creation is Groaning for the Future (Romans 8:19-22)
"The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.
For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope
that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time."
What is the most amazing thing you’ve ever seen? Was it the Grand Canyon? A majestic mountain range? The roaring ocean? The vastness of the universe—thousands of stars as you looked up into a deep, dark, clear night sky? The birth of a child? A field of wild flowers?
There are moments that you wish would last forever. You are at total peace, enjoying the grandeur of nature. You can hardly contain yourself as you feel as if, for that moment, you are connected with God in a way beyond words. The creation sings forth praises for the Creator. There is a reason why we sense the need to go to the ocean, to the Grand Canyon, to the mountains. God made the creation so that it could proclaim the glory of the Creator! Just as a great song glorifies the composer, a beautiful painting glorifies the painter, a majestic building glorifies the architect, all of creation glorifies the Creator.
Creation—wow! She is amazing, beautiful, awe-inspiring. And yet, she is not what she was created to be.
Scientists discovered and stated in the Second Law of Thermodynamics that “Nature seems to ‘prefer’ disorder or chaos.” Things in nature tend toward entropy or disorder.
Nature has been marred, deformed. She is only a shadow of her former self. She is decaying, slowly dying.
She is groaning. And she knows why.
“The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope…” (Romans 8:19-20)
As Hurricane Isabel thrashed the East coast, we (all the way inland in Ohio) felt her effects.
Earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, typhoons, tornadoes…The creation has been subjected to frustration. Why? Not by its own choice—but by the will of God himself!
Looking back in Genesis, we see that when God created everything, “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.”
(Genesis 1:31). Not just “pretty good,” or “Yea, its okay, if you like that sort of thing…” But very good—there could be no higher assessment of the creation than that in the Hebrew. One translation puts it this way:
“God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was excellent in every way.”
(NLT)
But then something happened. The pinnacle of his creation, the humans, rebelled against the creator. The only creatures made in the very image of God, the only creatures that could have deep intimate relationship with the Creator-Father turned their backs on him.
And since humanity is the highpoint of all creation, the central reason for all creation, the consequences of their awful decision affected all of the rest of creation as well. In light of Adam’s sin, God tells him that men will struggle to scratch a living from the earth. But that the earth will “grow thorns and thistles for you, though you will eat of its grains.”
Humanity’s fall into sin marred the “goodness” of creation, and creation has ever since been in a state of “frustration.” This frustration, according to our passage, was
“not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it.” God chose to do this to creation—as God, he has the right to do this. The futility and corruption and groaning of the creation are judicial—the result of God’s judicial decree. Entropy is not just a natural consequence of material events. God decreed the futility and groaning of the world—he did it in response to sin! He chose to curse creation for what humanity had done.
He must have had a good reason to do such a horrible thing! What could it have been?
Here is God’s purpose for causing all of creation to be frustrated, his reason for allowing all the misery in the world:
He wants to show us that sin is horrific. As John Piper put it, “All natural evil is a statement about the horror of moral evil. If you see a suffering in the world that is unspeakably horrible, let it make you shudder at how unspeakably horrible sin is against an infinitely holy God. The meaning of futility and the meaning of corruption and the meaning of our groaning is that sin - falling short of the glory of God - is ghastly, hideous, repulsive beyond imagination.”
We have, for far too long, lived in the God-robbing mindset of the Modern Age—where everything must be explained through natural, material processes. We are told that the reason everything is decaying is because of that Second Law of Thermodynamics, and we are taught to be satisfied with that answer, as if the scientists have not only answered the “what” but also the “why.” But they have not answered the “why”—why is everything subject to entropy? The frustration of nature is meant to point us to the holiness of God and the unspeakable outrage that sin is against this God. The point of our miseries, our futility, our sicknesses, our groaning is to teach us the horror of sin! It is all because of the curse on creation due to humanity’s sin.
Here’s a gut-check. How do you react to this biblical teaching? If your reaction to this teaching is that maybe God went too far, that it seems like an overreaction to curse not only sinful people, but also all of creation, then maybe your understanding of the ugliness of sin and your grasp on the holiness of God needs reshaped! If you do not grasp this foundational concept, then the next phrase in our passage gets sapped of its power as
well—“in hope.”
“The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope…” (Romans 8:19-20)
God did not merely subject all of creation to frustration; he did in “in hope.” He wanted all of creation to look forward to a time when this would not any longer be its lot. He not only cursed all creation, but (right there in Genesis 3!) he put into place the means by which all of creation would be freed from that very frustration—through his Son, Jesus Christ.
And since the curse on creation is the result of the curse on the children of God, the redemption of creation will be the result of the redemption of the children of God.
“…in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”
(Romans 8:20b-21)
Everything will be set free from frustration and decay—when we who are his children are given our hope of salvation—the freedom from our decaying bodies and sinfulness and frustration.
So, as amazing as all of nature may seem to us, it is not even as great as it one day will be! I think this is why those “mountaintop experiences” are so fleeting in the here and now. The creation in which we live was meant to proclaim God’s glory—but it cannot do so in completeness because of the current state of things.
But there will come a time when this creation will be re-created, when creation itself will experience renewal, when the creation will once again be “very good” or “excellent!” God originally created all of this to be the place in which he can be in relationship with us, so the picture in the Bible is that there will be a “New Heaven and New Earth” in the future, where we will indeed dwell with God for all eternity.
But until then, we live in this time of the “already-not yet,” between the time of Christ’s first coming and his second. It is a time in which we experience groaning as well.
2. We are also Groaning for the Future (Romans 8:22-25)
"We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
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.
For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has?
But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently."
The first thing that we must grasp is that it is “normal” to feel inward groaning in our present situation. Even those who are God’s children, who are promised the inheritance of the very Kingdom of God GROAN! Even we who have a sovereign God who works all things together for our good GROAN! Even we who are the bride of Christ GROAN! Even we for whom God gave his One and Only Son—yes, even we GROAN under the curse of creation.
In other words, don't overly personalize your suffering. Don't assume that this is some particular punishment or result of a particular sin. Search your heart in the time of pain. Let it make you serious and vigilant and humble. But don't add misery to misery that is not intended. The
whole creation groans! It is a general divine decree on the whole
world. And Paul's point is: even the precious children of God must suffer with Christ in it.
And I think that this passage indicates that we might even groan more than others! For we have the “firstfruits of the Spirit,” we know that there is more to life than this present situation. We long for more because we have been promised more. So, when your heart is aching to be rid of sin and frustration and weakness, I want you to know that it is not because your Christian life is not working, but because it is working! Holy restlessness is part of the Christian life, and if you feel that, you can know that you indeed are indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God!
For you are feeling the groaning associated with hope. Those who have no hope for something better, do not yearn for it. But if Christ is your life, you look forward to greater things to come! You are looking forward to experiencing GLORY!
We are yearning for that future time—what Jesus spoke of in Matthew 13:43, "Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father."
As Paul wrote in Colossians 3:4, “When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.”
The whole creation is eager for this moment, for that is when everything will experience redemption! That’s what verse 21 said:
“The creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”
So, as a child of God, you have hope. Not just, “pie-in-the-sky” hope, a “golly, I sure hope I get a new bike for Christmas hope,” but a REAL hope, a SURE hope, a hope that is based on the very CHARACTER of the One who made the promise—God Himself!
No more destructive hurricanes or tornadoes or floods or droughts or plagues or diseases or accidents or harmful animals or insects or viruses or heart attacks.
The prophecy of Isaiah 65:17 will come to pass, when God says, “Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.”
And the prophecy of Revelation 21:1-5 will come to pass as well, where the apostle John looked into the
future—“I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the
first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more…He will wipe away every
tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be
mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.
And he who was seated on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things
new.’”
You see, the world will have to be glorified so that it is the suitable environment for us to enjoy the freedom of the glory given to the very children of God. In other words, our freedom and our glory will be so great that only a glorified world will be adequate to suit our almost infinite capacities for happiness.
In the best moments in life, we smile and say, “I wish this could last forever.” I remember saying that one shining day in the Colorado Rockies—surrounded by the GLORY of God’s creation. Of course, it did not last forever. It was a fleeting experience.
When we enter into our inheritance, when we live forever in the Kingdom of God, we will say, “I wish this could last forever,”
and it will!
And having that perspective—looking forward with yearning and hope—will get us through the groaning in this life we live.
And you know what? Holding tight to that hope will free you up in this life to radically live for God! We become willing to pay any price to follow Jesus, for we have nothing to lose and everything to gain!
“This is why God does not aim primarily at our will-power. He does more than help us grit our teeth and try to be good. If we get this, really get it, we cannot help but follow Jesus and consider it a privilege. The promise of glory has the power to lift a struggling saint out of complacency and shift him into high gear. If we sense the greatness of the glory to come, we cannot be typical modern people—grasping, self-preserving, timid.” (Raymond C. Ortlund, Jr, Supernatural Living for Natural people)
Let us allow the treasure of Christ to overwhelm the insipid treasures of this world! Let us be a transformed people, ready to go the distance, be in the vanguard, and take on anything the world can throw at us—all for the hope of glory to come!
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