Looking forward
Life in the Spirit • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 6 viewsAll of creation, including believers, eagerly wait for future glory.
Notes
Transcript
Prayer
Prayer
In Jesus name, Amen.
Welcome
Welcome
We are in the Sixth week of a sermon series — Life in the Spirit.
To live a life pleasing to God requires the Holy Spirit. It’s non-negotiable. Without the Holy spirit, we can’t love God, live for God or love people. It’s the Holy Spirit that enables us to live a Christ centered life.
Today, I want to speak to people who are frustrated in their walk. Constant ups and downs, discouraged time to time, and feel an inconsistency in their life.
I want to serve you by teaching you the scriptures and providing a solution to these frustrating
Main Passage
Main Passage
I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.
Title
Title
Looking forward.
Introduction
Introduction
How often do we think about eternity? Especially in hard times. The Old Testament is full of foreshadows of eternity. The author of Hebrews reveals to us that Abraham was confidently looking forward to a city whose foundation wasn’t built by man but by God (Hebrews 11:10). While the Israelites were in the wilderness, they were looking forward to the promise land. The wilderness and the promise land were foreshadows of the believers life on earth while waiting to enter into eternity.
This is the hope we have as believers. However, thinking about future eternity is difficult in present suffering.
ME: In certain seasons of my life when I would go through a hard time, all that I can think about was how hard my situation was in the moment. Stuck in my thoughts and emotions, I wasn’t able to see a way out of my frustration and hopelessness.
YOU: Im sure you can relate. Stuck in your present affliction. Wanting a sense of relief but finding none.
Life in the Spirit is not the absence of suffering. On this side of eternity, we are saved but we are not exempt from suffering. The question is how do we deal with it as believers?
We are going to quickly realize, through Paul, that dealing with suffering is more of a perspective problem than it is a situational problem. Our problem in suffering is that we feel and believe we are going to stay in this state forever. However, the perspective that God wants us to have in suffering/difficulty is to focus on our eternal hope.
Context
Context
This is what Paul is trying to do in the passage we are studying today. There is internal conflict in the church in Rome and there is external persecution happening. Christians are suffering as a result of their faith and Paul is going to encourage them. Paul ended last week in Romans 8:17 by sharing that:
Since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.
Transitional Sentence
Transitional Sentence
From this premise, Paul continue in Romans 8:18-25 and is going to point us to three realities: Future hope for creation, God’s children, and the confidence we have as believers.
First Reality: Creation
First Reality: Creation
Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. For all creation is waiting eagerly for that future day when God will reveal who his children really are. Against its will, all creation was subjected to God’s curse. But with eager hope, the creation looks forward to the day when it will join God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay. For we know that all creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.
And to the man he said,
“Since you listened to your wife and ate from the tree
whose fruit I commanded you not to eat,
the ground is cursed because of you.
All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it.
For the land is full of adultery,
and it lies under a curse.
The land itself is in mourning—
its wilderness pastures are dried up.
For they all do evil
and abuse what power they have.
The earth suffers for the sins of its people,
for they have twisted God’s instructions,
violated his laws,
and broken his everlasting covenant.
Therefore, a curse consumes the earth.
Its people must pay the price for their sin.
They are destroyed by fire,
and only a few are left alive.
“If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully keep all his commands that I am giving you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the world. You will experience all these blessings if you obey the Lord your God: Your towns and your fields will be blessed. Your children and your crops will be blessed. The offspring of your herds and flocks will be blessed.
Second Reality: Children
Second Reality: Children
And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.
After waiting another seven days, Noah released the dove again. This time the dove returned to him in the evening with a fresh olive leaf in its beak. Then Noah knew that the floodwaters were almost gone. He waited another seven days and then released the dove again. This time it did not come back.
But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives. And we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior. He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control.
Third Reality: Confidence
Third Reality: Confidence
We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it. But if we look forward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently.)
So what:
So what:
So why is this important?
Negative: Well, what’s the alternative if we don’t have confident hope? We are crushed, driven to despair, feel abandoned by God and are destroyed.
We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies. Yes, we live under constant danger of death because we serve Jesus, so that the life of Jesus will be evident in our dying bodies.
2. Positive: The suffering is shaping us to look more like Jesus & strengthening our hope for what’s to come.
Yes, we live under constant danger of death because we serve Jesus, so that the life of Jesus will be evident in our dying bodies.
We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.
Now what
Now what
Forward
I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me.
Forgetting
No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead,
Focus
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
Prayer:
Prayer:
In Jesus name, amen.
