Trinity Plus 4 (2024)

As we continue in the Trinity Season I would remind you of the Green decor around us. I am wearing Green and our altar is also decorated in Green. It represents that like a growing Garden is green when healthy, so the church aspires to healthy green growth. Wonderfully, today, the reading in St. Paul’s Epistle is a reading with an Agricultural bent, or at least with the created order in mind, which includes plants and agriculture.

It is also a reading that explores the long-term effects the Gospel has on the places it goes and how those long-term effect helps us to process short-term hardships. The reading talks about present sufferings. That begs the question, what are the present sufferings that Paul talks about?

Hardship of 1st century life

Hardships in Roman Empire

Hardships of early church

It's healthy to think about these things and remember that as members of the American Church, we experience some suffering, but not to the level of 1st-century Christians. HEAR ME when I say that our suffering is suffering. I do not mean to diminish the Dark Nights of the soul that exist in this room. But also we could be asked by God to suffer further, and walking through that we will need texts like Romans 8 to do so with our faith in tact.

The Main Point: Everywhere we take the Gospel message it gives hope of something better than our best and our worst circumstances.

First the text.

[18] For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

So a moment ago we mentioned the possibilities of the sufferings mentioned. Life was hard in that time and in a different way, life is hard today. For those without a commitment to God all of life is just trying to minimalize suffering and see if you can walk through hard things quickly and get back to making the past of these 80-90 years

But that is not us, suffering for us points to a greater glory. CS Lewis wrote a paper once called the weight of Glory.

It is written that we shall “stand before” Him, shall appear, shall be inspected. The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination, shall find approval, shall please God. To please God...to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness...to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son—it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is.

But also he says this… “Meanwhile the cross comes before the crown and tomorrow is a Monday morning. A cleft has opened in the pitiless walls of the world, and we are invited to follow our great Captain inside.”

A great Glory awaits us paid for by Jesus on the cross, and in following him unto death we get eternal life. This future Glory is not of equal value but of much lesser value.

We suffer temporary hardship here, and get eternal delight of God in the next life.

[20] For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope

So now the apostle Paul is going to do an poetic personification, by giving creation a human like ability, that is to suffer and to have hope. We know that mountains trees and rock do not suffer and have hope. Fish and elk can suffer but probably not experience hope. Maybe very highly functioning mammals like Elephants and Whales can have something a kin to hope, and yet it is not near the level that we experience these things. At the same time all of these things Mountains fish and elephants experience the result of the fall. To extend our lives and minimize suffering we eat the animals mine the mountains burn the trees. I think it is a permission God has given mankind on this side of Adam and Eves sin, I imagine when the earth and its people are restored to Glory those activities will either cease or be changed. That is a guess, in the mean time the destruction of the created order is described as waiting for a new reality that comes about at the end of all things, when the true sons of God will be revealed.

[21] 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.

When we are restored to as free as we were in the garden, so too will all creation.

[22] For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.

The hardship of creation is ratcheted up to a comparison with childbirth

Childbirth then and now.

[23] And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Creation does not suffer alone, we do alongside them. Even though we have the knowledge of resurrection hope. The Elephants do not know that the restoration of the planet is coming. But they do mourn their dead to the point of death. We know what is to come, we have seen lives changed by the resurrection. Yet we weep for our dead, we suffer the woes of this life.

Saint Paul does not mock our suffering but he does resolve it like a dissident chord.

The Main Point: Everywhere we take the Gospel message it gives hope of something better than our best and our worst circumstances.

So the Trinity season applications of this verse.

The work of bringing God’s kingdom will bring suffering. Sleeping in feels amazing, yet how much more glorious is the resurrection when we awake to serve our fellow man.

The creature comforts of living in the US make life as wonderful or at least bearable as it's ever been for any human. And Yet believers climb into planes, trains, and automobiles to go the edges of the planet and proclaim Christ where he is now known.

Christians in persecuted areas of the world cling fast to Christ as their property is seized and family injured.

We need to work always to be heavily minded. The Glory that will be revealed will be to come into the presence of God. I know I beat this drum over and over again..and I guess I should keep on beating this drum. The purpose of our liturgy is to keep us absolutely heavenly minded. We lift up our hearts into heaven, we join the angels in son, and we come to the banquet of God to eat from him and of him. In doing so we keep heaven right in front of us our suffering becomes a bearable reality on the road to glory.

We need to come along side those who suffer for the Gospel and those who suffer the hard ships of the human experince. Pray for missionaries and the persecuted church, visit the sick, and the lonley, feed the hungry cloth the poor. We are ambassadors of this glorious kingdom bringing the good news of our glorious salvation to a groaning planet, and you only get the joy of participation if you actually participate.

The Main Point: Everywhere we take the Gospel message it gives hope of something better than our best and our worst circumstances.

Consider the alternative friends. That we are alone on this blue marble called Earth, suffering only because a careless universe allowed the chemistry of our atmosphere to break down just so. The cause of your suffering is the radioactive decay of the universe in its search of equilibrium. And the only reason you suffer less than a neighbor is where and when you were born…in that scenario you can only thank your luck stars literally, but you have to remember that they don't care. And every moment of your hardship and mourning tempt you to wave your fist at the emptiness of the heavens, except again there is no one there to care about any of it.

Or God is there and he does care. Creas so much in fact that he steps out of his space and into ours. Experiences the great hardships, refugee status, hunger, poverty, death of loved one, betrayal of friends, torture while innocent, and to breath his last forsaken. And for his suffering he will be given the infinite Glory of God’s attention, which he then gives to us, even though we deserve the infinite pain of God’s wrath.

Oh Christian, [18] For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. [19] For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. [20] For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope [21] 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. [22] For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. [23] And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. (ESV)