Hope in Christ

Introduction

Paul has been walking us through our current legal status before the Lord, and here, in Chapter 8, Paul has been further unraveling the legal status that we currently hold. He has made this stark contrast between who we were, and who we are now, in Christ. We know what we were rescued from, and we know what we’re rescued to. Now, when I say that we know what we are rescued to, I mean that Paul as told us, but it can be hard to make sense of that. What exactly are we rescued to? Now, Roland and I both have recommended Randy Alcorn’s Heaven to help open your eyes to what eternity with the Father could look like, but the truth is, all we know is that it will be more wonderful than we could ever imagine.

That is the basis of what Paul is writing about here in our passage for today, Romans 8:19-25. We are awaiting the day that we will be in glory with the Father, but if you’re anything like me, even with a firm understanding of Justification by Faith Alone, I can still find myself wondering… What am I supposed to do with the season of my life that I feel far from God? I read that not a single condemnation can be brought against me, from Romans 8:1, but what if I feel like I haven’t been seeking the Lord the way I ought to? I know that if I were God, I wouldn’t forgive me after I have been offered the beauty of the Gospel, yet neglected to embrace the Gospel Truth fully.

There’s an excellent book by Dane Ortlund called, Gentle and Lowly. I will be referencing this book a lot today. His main premise is that Jesus in just one place in all of scripture tells us about His heart. The core, driving force of all that He does. In Matthew 11:29, Jesus says, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Jesus, describing His own heart, says that He is Gentle and Lowly. We’ll get into that more after we read, but…

I am at constant risk of doing the very thing Dane Ortlund talks about in his book,. He says, “We project onto Jesus our skewed instincts about how the world works… And without realizing what we are doing, we quietly assume that one so high and exalted has corresponding difficulty drawing near to the despicable and unclean.”

It’s often easier for me to cry out with Paul, “I am the chief among sinners!” I know my heart. I know how bent, and broken, and wicked it is. I know just how despicable and unclean I am. As I know more about God, It’s hard for me to understand how this perfect, holy, lovely, great God, could love a sinner like me.

Well, our passage this morning will deal with hope in eternity, but what I really want to talk about this morning is our hope that we will make it to eternity. Our hope for today. And our hope for today is in, as the title of Ortlund’s book, that we have a Savior who is not angry and wrathful, nor cold and judgmental, but we have a Savior who is Gentle and Lowly in heart.

Let’s stand for the reading of God’s word.

Romans 8:19-25

We await our adoption as sons and daughters in the day of Glory, in our fully resurrected bodies, beside and fully resurrected Christ as heirs with Him. The Future Glory that awaits us is one that we can and should eagerly look forward to. This is the kind of hope that gives us reason to live our lives here with a higher purpose, because we know that all of our suffering here will give way to peace and glory in eternity. We look forward to a place where there will be no more pain, no more suffering. A place where we will be in the presence of the Father, in a perfectly and completely unified relationship with Him that has no end. Where everything we do will be a perfect act of worship. Where we will continue the true work that began in the Garden. This is what awaits us, and this is what we look forward to in hope.

Paul gets at the meaning a hope here when he says that, “hope that is seen is not hope.” I’ve used the definition of hope as a forward looking faith. And Paul has just finished walking us through the hope that we have because of the finished work of Jesus. Now, because of that work, we know that not a single condemnation can be brought against us.

This is our eternal hope, but there is more to hope than just knowing that good is coming in the future. Hope also has an emotional component. I’ve been wrestling though this for the last couple of weeks, and the Lord has met me here, and shown me that my hope is not in a mechanical understanding of how atonement works, or the surety of the judicial language of justification, but my hope is in Jesus, who is gentle and lowly at heart.

Now, emotions can be fickle things. They, along with every other part of us, are tainted with the stain of sin. They’ve been broken and perverted. If I tell you that you are emotional, you don’t hear me telling you that you are human, or that you reflect the image of God, or that you are expressing your emotions as Jesus did. You hear me saying that you are unstable, irrational, flowing through life on the river of your feelings.

I know this, because I recently told Marissa that one of my favorite things about her how she is driven by her strong feelings. How she is a woman of conviction, and always follows through on the things she feels strongly about. She didn’t much like that, because she heard me saying that she was emotional, and took that as an insult rather than a complement.

I honestly meant it as a complement, but that’s not often how we take words about our feelings. If I’m honest, the reason I love how Marissa can always clearly and accurately describe her emotions, and then act on them, is because that has never been a strength of mine. The Lord has been faithful to always show me His heart through my thick skull, but recently, I’ve been overcome by the beauty and vibrance of the Heart of Jesus.

Now, before we go any further, I want to make something explicitly clear. Everything that we have read so far is reason for true hope. When I read Paul’s words, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” I get goosebumps and a shiver down my spine. Those very words elicit an emotional response from within me. The point that I want to make today is that our hope is in the finished work of Jesus, just as much as the current, ongoing, intercessory work of the High Priest, Jesus.

I want to unpack this is 3 main points today. Our Hope in Jesus the Man, Our hope in Jesus the Intercessor, and Our Hope in Jesus the Savior.

1. Our Hope in Jesus, the Man

It’s easy to forget the humanity of Jesus. John Calvin, writing on the humanity of Jesus put it this way. “the Son of God having clothed Himself with our flesh, of his own accord clothed Himself also with human feelings, so that he did not differ at all from His brethren, sin only excepted.” Jesus is fully God, no doubt, but He lived on this earth as a man more fully human than any of us.

If I say that Jesus is fully God, and fully man, all hopefully agree. Jesus has both the full divine nature of God and the full human nature of man. There has never been a moment that Jesus was not divine, but there was a time, before the incarnation that He was not man. He was the Word of God, as John describes Him in the beginning of his gospel account of Jesus. Jesus is called co-eternal with the Father and the Spirit. God has no beginning and no end. But Jesus condescended Himself in human flesh to live on this Earth. He lived a his whole life as a sinless man, bore the cross for our sins, died the death we deserved, then, defeating death, rose from the grave, then ascended into Heaven.

So, Jesus was a man. We’re all comfortable saying that. Now, what if I say that Jesus is a man, we may have never thought of Jesus that way. This is the significance of the ascension. Jesus rose from the grave, walked the earth again in His resurrection body, then, in that body, ascended into heaven. He was fully man here on earth, no doubt, but He is still fully man now, seated at the right hand of the Father.

This may sound like splitting hairs, or you may be asking why this matters to you. Well, it matters for a whole host of reasons. The same Jesus, who, as Ortlund writes, “knows what it is to be thirsty, hungry, despised, rejected, scorned, shamed, embarrassed, abandoned, misunderstood, falsely accused, suffocated, tortured, and killed.” That Jesus is the same Jesus who is seated at the right hand of the Father. He didn’t leave His human body behind to take up His etherial throne, but He sits on His etherial throne in the same body that he resurrected to. His perfect body. So, to think of Jesus now as any different in Glory than He was while he walked the earth is a mistake.

In Hebrews 4:14-16, we read about Jesus as our High Priest, and the significance of His humanity in that position.

Hebrews 4:14–16 “Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

Verses 14 and 16 both work out the implications of the statement made in v. 15. We have a High Priest who can sympathize with our weakness. The greek word there for sympathize, sunpathesai, is a compound word that means to co-suffer. He doesn’t just look down on us with pity, but he has compassion on us. He feels our pain, our suffering, our temptation.

Last weekend, a group of us went backpacking on the North Carolina/ Tennessee border, and when we got to the top of the mountain, I experienced wind like I’ve rarely experienced before. It would come in these strong gusts that would blow you to the other side of the trail, then when it let up, you would stumble back to the other side of the trail.

C.S. Lewis gives an image of temptation like walking head-on into that kind of wind. You can carry on for a while, but, with a strong enough wind, eventually, the man lies down, giving in—and thus not knowing what it would have been like 10 minutes later. Jesus never gave in, but endured temptation that none of us have ever experienced. That is the kind of Savior that you have. One who took on flesh like yours in every way, yet without sin.

Jesus doesn’t just know what it’s like to suffer, he has compassion on you, and feels your suffering alongside you. And it’s because we have this kind of Savior, Jesus. This Great High Priest, that, as v. 16 says, we can “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

2. Our Hope in Jesus, the Intercessor

In monarchical times, the king represented God before the people, and the High Priest represented the people before their God. Jesus is both King and High Priest. He is himself God, and He is the complete and final revelation of who He Himself is. But He is also man, able to represent His Bride before His Father, as High Priest.

Jesus, at this very moment, is interceding for you. He is praying for you, as we speak. He, through the power of the Holy Spirit is within you, and knows you intimately, and has made you a part of His own body.

Consider Ephesians 5:29–30 “For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.”

Jesus, seeing the weak and diseased members of His body, doesn’t look down on you with scornful pity, but He is right there with you, because you are Him. He has compassion on you, nourishing you back to health. Sustaining you to finish the race. Jesus doesn’t look at you as a burden, He looks at you as a cherished member of your body. Jesus isn’t praying for a new body, He’s praying for His body to be made new. He is praying for you to be made new by the grace and mercy of the Savior who is gentle and lowly at heart.

And to you, who feels that your burden is too much to bring to Jesus, hear the words of Jesus from Matthew 11:29–30 “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.””

This gentle and lowly Savior welcomes you to take His yoke upon you. A yoke is a wooden crossbar with two head holes that you would attach to oxen or donkeys, allowing them to pull a piece of farming equipment together. Jesus’ offer here is for you to yoke yourself to Him, along with all of your weakness, all of your baggage, all of your burdens. And when you put your head into the yoke, you realize that your feet don’t even touch the ground and the plow starts moving. When Jesus says that His yoke is easy, He means that it is easy. So easy, in fact, that you couldn’t do a single thing in your own strength to help him push the plow along.

And now, in our humanity, surely we ask, how could so great, so perfect, so holy, so wonderful a Savior accept me? I don’t deserve a savior like that. I’ve sinned some big sins, more than that, I’m still a sinner. What if I want Jesus, but He doesn’t want me back? What if He doesn’t accept me?

John Bunyan writes, “They that are coming to Jesus Christ are often times heartily afraid that Jesus Christ will not receive them.”

He finds great comfort in the words of Jesus in John 6:37 “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”

Bunyan continues, “This observation is implied in the text. I gather it from the largeness and openness of the promise: “I will in no wise cast out.”

There is no objection that you can raise. Jesus is not waiting for you to get your life together for you to come to Him, He is begging you to come in your weakness and brokenness. It is for that very reason that He bore the cross, so that sinners like you and I could be restored to the Father, and made one with Him.

Ortlund writes, “His heart is the grees pastures and still waters of endless reassurances of his presence and comfort, whatever our present spiritual accomplishments. It is who He is.

He paid the price of our sins for us, He welcomes us to be His, He offers us His salvation, then He sustains us to the end, making endless intercession for us. He is even praying for you when your prayer life is struggling. No conditions, just perfect compassion from your perfect Savior.

3. Our Hope in Jesus, the Savior.

As Paul says earlier in Romans, through one man, Adam, sin entered the world, and through one man, Jesus, sin and death have been defeated. Through Adam, we were separated from God, but God, in His mercy, promised a Savior in Genesis 3. He promises Abraham that He will bless Him and His seed. He comes to dwell in the midst of His people in the wilderness, in the Tabernacle.

Remember, the Tabernacle needed to be cleansed when it was constructed. Even the materials it was made from were stained by sin. It had to be cleansed with the blood of animals. But the blood of those animals was never sufficient, because it had to be cleansed over and over again.

Not so with Jesus, He, the perfect savior, is Himself the Clean One. When Jesus’ blood was spilled, He purified us once and for all. He was the spotless Lamb of God, whose blood was fully sufficient for the sinfulness of man. His blood was offered one time for the purification of all mankind and all creation, and His blood alone is sufficient.

And when He died, the clean one descended to the grave, redeeming even death itself. That now, death is not something to be feared for those who are in Jesus, because He has cleansed even the grave. And when He was raised from the dead, in His resurrected body, He wasn’t just raised to new life here on Earth, but He ascended into Heaven with the Father. He laid the straight and narrow path that leads to Eternity with the Father.

In the full humanity and full divinity of Jesus, we have a perfect and complete Savior who has offered His perfect and complete salvation to us. He alone was able to live such a perfect life, He alone was able to offer such a perfect sacrifice, He alone was able to defeat sin and the grave, and restore us to right relationship with the Father.

The saving work of Jesus happened in one moment on the cross. The Justification for our sin is received in one moment. We have been made in right legal standing with God. But we weren’t just given a Savior for that one moment. We are given a savior that that calls us to Himself, and walks beside us.

Hebrews 7:25 “Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.”

Conclusion

Romans 8:24–25 “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.”

Our hope is as much in the saving work of Jesus as it is in the Person of Jesus. Jesus the Man, Jesus the Intercessor, Jesus the Savior. We can rest in Him alone.

This hopeful patience is a patience from a place of rest. We aren’t seeking this inward place of rest in ourselves, but an outward place of rest in the person of Jesus. He is more fully man that we could ever know, and he is more fully God than we could ever know.

It is in the sacrifice of Jesus that we have hope for eternity, and it is in the very person of Jesus in whom we have hope for tomorrow. We have a savior who took on our flesh, and became like us in every way, except for sin. We have a Savior who doesn’t just pray for us in our moments of weakness or suffering, but be feels our weakness and suffering, and He has compassion on us. He co-suffered with us, and now invites us to co-suffer with Him. He offers us His easy yoke and His easy burden. He calls all those, not who are strong and proud, but those who are burdened and heavy laden, and He will give you rest.

Your Savior knows you and loves you intimately. He knows the true cost of your sin. He paid the price for you. And now, no matter how far from Him you feel, He welcomes you with open arms. And when you do come back to Him, seeking relationship with the one you know you have wronged, he doesn’t scold you. He doesn’t say how dare you. He welcomes you with the loving embrace of a Savior who is Gentle and Lowly in heart.

If you know this Savior, and you have given your life to Him, I extend His welcome to you, to rest in His peace. To experience His goodness, His holiness, His greatness, as much as you experience His grace, His mercy, and His Gentleness.

And for you who don’t know Jesus as your Savior, but feel the burdens of life, who is feeling weak and beat down, in desperate need of rest, I offer you Jesus. If you have any desire at all to know more about who this Savior is, repent and believe the Gospel, and you will be saved. There is no one too far off, not one too far gone that Jesus’ blood doesn’t cover. He died for your sins, and He alone can give you rest now, and rest for Eternity.