Well, if you have a Bible, please turn with me to Romans chapter 8. I'm going to take a look at verses 18 through 25, Romans 8, 18 through 25. If you're using one of the Bibles that we have underneath the chair in front of you, it's on page 1201. And while you're turning there, let me remind you that this is the first Sunday of the month. So we do get a chance to celebrate the Lord's Supper together. And then we also have an opportunity to give a second offering as you leave. There will be deacons at the doors. If you're able to give just a little more, and that will go directly to people that are in financial need, either in our church or in our community. So it's a really great way for us to continue to serve people in the name of Jesus. So let's look at Romans 8, starting in verse 18. Here now God's holy and true Word. The Apostle Paul writes, For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed. 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, grown 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. The word of the Lord. Let's pray. Father, once again, we thank you and we ask that you would bless us now as we look into your word that you would use this time to transform us to give faith to those who don't have it and to strengthen faith to those who do. We pray, Lord, that you would use this as a time to help us cherish Christ and the amazing promises that we have in him. And so we just ask that you would bless this time, Holy Spirit, work inside of us now that we would be better able and excited to take the good news to our neighbors as well as to the nations. For it's in Jesus' name that we pray, Amen. Well, this morning is our last sermon in the All Things News series, which we've been in now for several weeks. And we've covered a lot of things that are few things anyway that are new that we receive through faith in Christ. Like, for example, the first week after Easter, we talked about how we receive a new status and how through faith alone, not anything that we do or could do. But simply through faith alone, we receive a new status. We go from having the status of being guilty and deserving God's judgment to through faith being declared righteous and deserving of God's blessing, because Jesus's death on the cross is paid for our sin and his perfect life is attributed to us. So we're righteous in Christ, free from guilt and shame. The week after that, we talked about how we also receive a new identity that we get to become a child of God through faith, and therefore are entitled to all the amazing realities that comes with being a child of God, one of which is being free from the pain of not knowing who we really are. Once we know who's we are, then we can begin to understand who we are. Last week, we talked about how through faith we have power. The Holy Spirit dwells within us to give us power, and that's how people who follow Jesus are able to grow. They're able to change. They're able to become more like Jesus and experience real transformation in their lives. And it's because of the work of the Holy Spirit, and the fact that Jesus has broken the power of sin over us on the cross and given us the Holy Spirit to empower us. So this morning, we get to talk about another thing, these other things we already have. We have a new status, we have a new identity, we have the Holy Spirit within us to give us power if we have faith. But what we're going to talk about this morning is yet to come. We're going to talk about this future, this new future that we're promised, and it is an amazing, amazing future. Sometimes people would say that thinking about what's going to happen, going to heaven, or being in the heavens, new heavens and new earth is great and all. But it doesn't really impact our daily life, but that's just not true. What we're going to be talking about today has a huge impact on our daily life, especially for those who are wrestling with suffering and pain and things like that, which the vast majority of us are. So this morning we're going to focus on this, that through faith in Christ we are promised a future so glorious that it enables us to patiently endure suffering in this life. So the more that we believe that we've got this glorious future ahead of us, the more it helps us to patiently endure the things that we're facing right now. So we're going to talk about this in three ways. We'll talk about disproportionate joy, and then the world and our bodies, the two brand new things that we will have, or renewed things we will have, and then we'll talk about site for sore eyes, disproportionate joy, our world and our bodies and the site for sore eyes. Let's talk about disproportionate joy. Keep your bibles open. We're going to look at basically all these verses again here this morning. I want to look at verse 18 first. I love this verse. This is one of my favorite verses in the New Testament. Here's what Paul says. He says, for I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. Now, when he says the sufferings, you got to understand he's talking about anything and everything that we go through that's difficult and hard. You can translate that same Greek word as sufferings as it is here or as misfortune, calamity, evil, affliction, hardship, pain. So all of the different things that we would struggle through, the things that would cause sadness, misery, and pain in our lives are wrapped up in that. That's the sufferings he's talking about. And then he says the glory that is to be revealed, these are the two things he's talking about. And the glory that work can also be translated as magnificence or excellence. Or in this case, it's got the nuance of a glorious condition that we will be in. And so ultimately what he's doing here is it's it's it's like he's quantifying the amount of suffering if you were to quantify the amount of suffering that we go through in our lives. And then if you were to quantify the amount of joy and bliss and happiness and just amazingness that we're going to experience in the next life, it wouldn't even be worth comparing them. It wouldn't even be worth comparing them. It'd be like trying to compare you know an eight ounce glass of water with the 350 quintillion gallons of water in the world's oceans. Yeah, that's right. That's a quintillion. Million, billion trillion, quadrillion quintillion. Wow. Right. And so what he's saying is the difference is so vast that it's not even worth comparing him. What he's saying is that when Christ returns the amount of joy and happiness that we will experience will be profoundly disproportionate to the amount of suffering that we've experienced in this one. And when you know that when you know that what comes after a life that does have suffering, when you know that what comes after is unbelievable joy and bliss, it does help you get through the hard times right now. It's easier to face something difficult if you know that it's temporary and eventually it's going to lead into something that's really amazing. I know I've told you that I've gone fishing a few times in Canada with my dad and what we do is we take a little airplane that's got the pontoons and fly up to a lake that's really far away. There's no roads. You have to fly there. And normally when we do that, we get to go in this pretty good size airplane with a lot of room and seating and it takes us up there. But the last time I went when we showed up, I saw an anybody little airplane. And I'm claustrophobic and my fellow claustrophobes will tell you that claustrophobia really isn't about small spaces like it's not about being in a small space. If it fits, I sit. It's not about a small space. It's about being trapped in a small space. So when I see this little tiny airplane, my heart starts to panic. Like for people who have real claustrophobic, I mean it's a real panic when we feel like we can't get away from wherever we are. When I tell my dad, I'm like, I don't know if I can do this. And he says, well, well, there's not really another option. And he said it's, you know, it's only 40 minutes. I was like 40 minutes for four full days of amazing fishing time with my dad, beautiful nature. I can do this. I figured I can do the 40 minutes so I can get the thousands of minutes on the other side. And so we get into the airplane. And as soon as they kind of shut the doors and I feel everything closing in around me, they start the engine. And it's at that moment that I start yelling, I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this. Turn off the plane. I can't do this. I need to get out and the pilot didn't hear me or probably just completely ignored me. And just took that plane off. And so that whole 40 minutes, I was just like, it's like a, it's a crazy panic. But the entire time I was praying, you know, mostly because I didn't want to make a mess in the plane. And I was, I was praying. And then I was also realizing it's just 40 minutes. And then it's so much amazing time with my dad and Canada. And that's why God tells us what he has in store for us. He doesn't tell us everything. We can't, we can't know exactly how amazing it's going to be. But he wants us to know that on the other side of all these things that we are suffering through when Christ returns, it's going to be so amazing. We're going to experience so much more joy than the amount of suffering that we experienced in this life. It's designed to help us get through these times so that through faith in Christ as we face our suffering and the hard things that we go through, we can know I'm going to get through this. And then on the other side, it's amazing, phenomenal forever. We can remember that after this life, when Jesus returns and makes us new, we, we will, Revelation 21, for we'll take place. He will wipe away every tear from our eyes. And death shall be no more. Neither shall they'll be mourning or crying or pain anymore for the former things have passed away. As we face difficult things, we can remember it is really difficult now. And, and, and our, we should not minimize our pain. I mean the things that we're wrestling with really do hurt. But at the same time, if we can remember what Psalm 16 11 says, that in God's presence, there is fullness of joy. At God's right hand, there are pleasures forevermore awaiting us. As we feel like I just can't do this. I can't do this anymore. We can say no. I can, I can do this. I can keep going because, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2, 9, no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no heart has even imagined. What God has in store for those who he has saved in Christ. So it is, it is a powerful thing to think about what will come. That's why, look at verse 25. This was why Paul says, if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. And that word patience is a Greek word that also means endurance. It literally means perseveringly. That's what this reality of what's to come. Our new future helps us do. It helps us wait through suffering perseveringly, patiently, enduring. And one of the things I want to also point out is about the word hope. The word hope in the Bible and the New Testament doesn't, isn't like a kind of a wish, something that we wish would happen. Hope is a solid expectation. A literal translation would be an expectation of what's going to happen. And in fact, the Chinese character for the word hope, particularly referring to the Christian hope, is really, really cool. The Chinese character in the language or in Chinese is a picture of a little girl who is on her tiptoes looking out a window so because she knows something's coming. And so you could translate this as we expect what we do not see. It helps us to have patience and there's a lot of things that we're going through that we're struggling through that are hard to handle. That's why we need to know what's beyond those things so that we can have this patience and this endurance. A couple of the things that make it really difficult is the way the world is and the way our bodies are. So let's talk about the world in our bodies, look at verses 19 through 23. Paul says, 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. So basically he's saying that the whole world, the whole entire world is broken. It's got problems that cause problems in our lives. It's he says it's subjected to futility that word futility can also mean vanity or deprivation. What he's saying there is that the world itself, even the most amazing things in the world, like we look at the Grand Canyon or a mountain range or things like that and we think wow that is absolutely amazing. Even those things are deprived of how glorious things will be when the world is liberated from its bondage to corruption. When he says bondage to corruption, that Greek word corruption is its forerun and it means decay. So the reason things are breaking this world, the reason things don't last, the reason that food spoils, the reason that you have to buy new things because they broke or they have to get repaired, nothing seems to last is because the world is in bondage to decay. Everything breaks down. Everything goes from order to disorder. If you're a science fan, this is called the second law of thermodynamics or everything moving towards entropy, everything breaks down. And it is because of the way the world is, the world is in bondage, everything in the world breaks down because it's in bondage to decay and disorder and chaos. But the good news is that what Paul is saying here is that the creation itself will be set free from that bondage, set free from its bondage to corruption or decay and obtain freedom, the freedom of the glory of the children of God. In other words, it will become a place where everything is perfect and everything is pristine and everything works perfectly all the time. Nothing breaks down. Nothing lets you down. Everything is just absolutely perfect all the time because things are not in bondage to decay anymore. Now they can just be and they can be beautiful. And another reality about the brokenness of the world is the weather. Even the weather and these natural disasters, these things that take place and take all these lives and cost all this money, even those things are a result of the way the world is. You think about what just happened in Nepal, how sad, over 6,000, maybe as many as 10,000 people died in the earthquake there, 14,000, probably even more injured once they count everything, billions of dollars of damage. Things like that happen because the world itself is in bondage to decay, disorder, chaos. By the way, if you want to help, you can make a donation for the people in Nepal at www.mtw.org. It's our Denominations Missions Agency. We have a disaster relief fund and team and so people will be going and they'll be sending resources Hannah and I made a donation. Maybe you guys can do that to www.mtw.org. But nonetheless, the reality is that the reason that the world doesn't work right, the reason why things break and don't last and have to be repaired or restored or replaced, the reason is because of the fall. We can go all the way back to Genesis 3 and I've got a little bit on the screen here for you. But basically, when Avonese sinned and God is speaking to Adam, what he says is part of it, he says cursed is the ground because of you. So it's not just humanity that's cursed because of the fall, but it's the ground itself, it's the earth, it's the world. He says cursed is the ground because of you. In pain shall you eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you and you shall eat the plants of the field by the sweat of your face. You shall eat bread till you return to the ground for out of it you were taken for your dust and to dust you shall return. So why do things break? Why do not things last? Why are their natural disasters? It is because when Adam and Eve sinned, they brought curse upon the ground. The world doesn't work the way it's supposed to, everything continues to break down.
What we're seeing here is that it's not always going to be this way. In fact, we sing about it. We sing about it every Christmas. Because there's a line in joy to the world that is exactly about what we're talking about this morning. How about a little Christmas in May? Sing this with me. No more let's sin and sorrow grow or thorns infest the ground. He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found far as the curse is found far as far as the curse is found. Amen. Right? And so we sing that we know because of Jesus has come and what he has done, the world will not be like this. He will remake it, restore it into an unbelievably amazing place for us to be. The gospel is not only the good news that through faith in Christ we're forgiven and the power of sin is broken, we're declared righteous, we become children of God. We have the power of the Holy Spirit but also that we have an incredible home awaiting us when Christ returns. And just so you know, he's not throwing this world away and making us a new one. In Revelation 21.5, he says, I am making all things new, not all new things. And so it's this place. He's going to remake, liberate it from its bondage to decay and it becomes a fully restored and amazing place where nothing ever goes wrong. Nothing breaks. There is no such thing as a natural disaster and everything is perfect all the time. And we get to live there with also restored bodies. Let's take a look at verse 23. It's not just the plate, the world is made perfect, renewed, but you and me too. He says, and not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. Now when he says, waiting for adoption, we already are adopted by God through faith, but he's talking about the fulfillment of our adoption when we are redeemed in our bodies. Our bodies being set free from their bondage to decay as well. When he says, grown inwardly, he's letting us know that he knows what it is to feel pain. That's what the Greek word it means to groan with grief. And so everybody in here that has felt pain which is everybody in here. And especially those who are experiencing regular chronic pain. What Paul is saying here is he's saying, I know. I know that feeling. I know those moments when you just sigh. Because you want so free to be, or you want so bad to be free from your pain. And that's what he, that's the good news. That's what he's saying. The redemption of our bodies. That means our bodies being released from their bondage to decay. Now, we're not Gnostic, okay? He's not talking about being separated from your body and now you can be okay. We're talking about when Jesus returns and we all get our bodies back, our same bodies. We are resurrected, risen from the dead. We get our bodies. We will be in our bodies. But they will be amazing bodies in John 640. Jesus said, for this is the will of my father, that everyone who looks on the sun and believes in him should have eternal life. And I will raise him up on the last day. So what we're talking about is we will get our bodies back. But they will be glorified bodies that are fully restored to their pristine, perfectly functioning, pre-fall condition except even better, particularly because we won't even be able to sin anymore. And we will have these perfect bodies that work perfectly all the time. There's no pain. They just function perfectly. You just feel amazing all the time. In fact, Paul and Peter, Peter and 1 Peter 1 and Paul and 1 Corinthians 15 both refer to our bodies as imperishable, which is really cool because right here in Romans 8, Paul uses the word decay or in bondage to corruption or decay. And that word is fora. Well, the word imperishable is authora, which is the negation. So basically, Jesus undoes it. He sets us free from having bodies that are in bondage to decay. And instead, we get bodies that are not in bondage to decay but that just work. And they work perfectly and it feels amazing all the time. So all the things that we feel that cause pain on a regular basis that we say goodbye headaches, no more flu, coughs, colds, allergies, asthma, arthritis, celator, diabetes, celiac disease, chronic pain, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease doesn't exist in the new heavens, a new earth. Chemical imbalances, bad hips, bad shoulders, bad eyes, bad ears, not going to happen. Lungs won't collapse, hearts won't have attacks, cancer will be a thing of the past, AIDS, Ebola, you name it, nothing will be there. If you wear glasses, wear them now. It's your last chance.
You know, WebMD says that over a billion people on this planet live with some form of disability, a billion. You know, when Jesus, in his earthly life and ministry, you know, he healed people, but then those people later died. And it's kind of like, well, Jesus, why didn't, why did you heal them? They're just going to die anyway. Jesus, why did he heal people? He was demonstrating what it's going to be like when he brings the kingdom. He was demonstrating what happens when the kingdom comes, that there is healing. And when he comes, when he returns, he's going to raise us, give us our old bodies back, but they will have been made perfect, and they will be absolutely amazing all the time. Just like when he said to the paralytic, he said, your sins are forgiven, and he also said, take up your mat and walk. And when he comes, when he brings the kingdom, I was telling this to Noah, my six-year-old son the other day, and he said, I just don't understand, dad. And I said, well, Jesus is going to bring heaven to earth. I mean, it's going to come down, he's going to come down out of the sky and establish heaven here. God's will be done here like it is in heaven. He said, yeah, I just don't understand. And I said, what don't you understand? It's going to be heaven on earth. And he said, I just don't understand how Jesus is going to bring everything with him at one time. I said, he'll figure it out, Noah. He'll figure it out. So, when we realize that, when we're facing our bodily pains, knowing that Jesus is going to come back, and he is going to give us these newly remade bodies, restored bodies, your body, my body, but made perfect, when we have that belief, it helps us to face the pains that we're having now. And we still sigh, Paul's not diminishing how bad things hurt. He's just saying that when Christ returns, we will be made new. We will be liberated from our bondage to decay our bodies when we made perfect. 25, verse 25. But if we hope or if we expect what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Interesting that he says what we do not see, right? Because one of the things that you would imagine he might say is that if we expect or if we hope for the things we do not yet feel, then we wait with him for patience, but he says see. And so let's talk about sight for sore eyes. Look at 24 and 25. I was listening to some of the lectures from the Gospel Coalition Conference that was here recently, and one of them was by Dr. Scott Swain. And he was explaining what we're going to talk about here. And so I'm really thankful for the way he taught on this. And ultimately, what we need to understand is that when Christ returns, we will see him. We will see God with our own two eyes, and he will be the ultimate source of our joy. And that's interesting here, right here, as Paul's talking about these things, the emphasis is on sight. So look at 24. He says, for this is the hope, for in this hope we were saved. He says, now hope that a scene is not hope for who hopes for what he sees. In other words, I don't hope this Bible is in my hand. I can see it. Right? What he's saying is, but if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. And the reality that we have to understand is that it's in seeing God with our own two eyes, that is going to be the ultimate source of our joy. So yes, there will be no more suffering in the new heavens and new earth, not at all. And that's going to be amazing. And yes, also, it will be a totally perfect remade world. Nothing will ever go wrong in the world. Yes. And that's going to be amazing. And we're also going to have these perfected bodies and it's going to feel awesome all the time. But what is the most amazing thing is that we will get to actually see him with our own two eyes. Dr. Swain says, right now, we see God with our ears because we hear these things and we go on faith. But when he returns, we'll see him. And that is what will transform us entirely. Revelation 224 says that they will see his face. And 1 John 3 verse 2 says, beloved, we are God's children now and what we will be has yet has not yet appeared. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is. If we can only begin to imagine what it's going to be like to see his face. Charles Virgin said that one short glimpse, one transitory vision of his glory, one brief glance at his mard but now exalted and beaming countenance would repay a world of trouble. Here's what he means by that. He means that when we see his face, all the things that we've suffered with, all the pain that we've had, all the fears, all the worry is just going to go away because we will know that he's real. We will see him and it will change everything. When we see his face and we think about everything that we've struggled through, if we're able to speak, what we will say is it was worth it because looking at him is going to change everything. It's like when you see all these videos on Facebook and YouTube of when a military parent comes home after being away for some time and surprises their child. You haven't seen those. You should look them up. They're really great. There's tons of them. One of my favorite is when it's actually happened in South Carolina and a woman and her two children, her daughter and her son were at the South Carolina football game and they were honoring soldiers who were overseas at the game and so they were brought out onto the field and people cheered for them and cheered for the father who was overseas. The man, the announcer, came over to the loudspeaker and he said, if everybody will direct their attention to the screen and all of a sudden the dad's face is on the screen and immediately the mom and the daughter and the son, the tears start streaming on their face and he starts talking on the video and he's saying that he loves them and he misses them and he's proud of them and he can't wait to see them again. They're just, you know, they're just trembling because they can see him and then he says at the end of the video and I want you to know I'm going to see you really, really, really soon. And then the announcer says, ladies and gentlemen, we want to welcome him here and he begins to walk out onto the field and the crowd in that end of the football stadium just goes wild and everybody's cheering and the mom and the daughter and the son, they take off. And they run their hearts out until they get to him and they can see him. They've known he was there. They knew that, you know, I'm sure they talked him on the phone and read emails and all these things but now they can see his face and they just break down. And all the videos are like that. They're all like that. You know, these little kids, they look up and they smile because it's dad but then all of a sudden it hits them and they just melt down because now all their fears is my dad coming home. It's my mom coming home and I ever going to really see them again. They all, they all goes away because they can see their face. And what God wants you to know what your king and savior wants you to know is that whatever we're going through in this life, one day you will see his face and everything all our pain will just go away and we'll live suffering free in a perfect world with perfect bodies. The holding the face of our king forever. Isn't that amazing? Let's pray. All gracious and almighty God, we can't even begin to imagine what it will be like to behold your face to see you with our own two eyes.
We can't imagine what it would be like to not suffer. We can't imagine what it would be like in a perfect world and we can't imagine some of us really can't imagine having a body without pain. We we grown inwardly waiting. So would you get this part of the gospel down deep, deep, deep into the recesses of our hearts so that as we face the hardships of a broken world and a broken bodies that we would have endurance because of what is to come all because of what Jesus has done in living for us and dying for us on the cross and rising for our justification. We thank you and we praise you and we ask that you would help us trust you every day all day until we see your face. In Jesus name.