Joy In The Waiting
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
True joy isn’t the denial of pain—it’s the anticipation of glory.
Good morning, please keep your Bibles open with me to Romans 8.
I remember this season as I experienced it as a young child, even younger than my children are now. There was an anticipation for Christmas that seemed more tortuous every day - the decorations were a constant reminder that in the living room was a tree, and underneath that tree were presents that I could not open until Christmas. Now that I am grown and have more life experience to draw on, I will admit that the sense of anticipation in my heart for Christmas is not what it used to be, because my relation to it is different. When my kids were babies and they began understanding Christmas more and more, it got really exciting! I loved seeing their faces light up with anticipation when they saw the tree. But I will admit, the Christmas season hasn’t really seemed the same for us this year. I shared a few weeks ago some of the details of our journey over the last few years, how our family has moved across the country twice, how I have had medical problem after medical problem, how my kids have gotten older and life has been a special kind of chaotic.
To me, the fact that this Christmas season has seemed to be hampered by life is a telling truth - that I have been looking at Christmas wrong in my heart for a long time. As a child, the presents were a way to help me be excited about Christmas, because there is supposed to be a great deal of anticipation in our hearts. We obviously can’t have the expectation that our children will understand the deepest levels of what that anticipation is supposed to mean, but this week, I am greatful for our theme today because I have been reminded in my preparation time that the joy surrounding Christmas isn’t about the gifts, the songs or even the different parties we get to go too, but rather, the joy of the Christmas season is revealed in the anticipation of Christ’s coming. We celebrate as a reminder of His first coming with an eye of eager anticipation in our hearts for His second coming.
If you take one thing away from today, let it be this: True joy isn’t the denial of pain—it’s the anticipation of glory.
If you are a note taker and don’t have a copy of the bulletin, here is the basic outline we will be following this morning:
Creation Groans (8:19-22)
We Groan Too (8:23)
We Wait With Hope (8:24-25)
Creation Groans (8:19-22)
Creation Groans (8:19-22)
Read with me starting in verse…
19 For the creation eagerly waits with anticipation for God’s sons to be revealed.
20 For the creation was subjected to futility—not willingly, but because of him who subjected it—in the hope
21 that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage to decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children.
22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now.
What does Paul mean by God’s sons, here? Is he somehow saying that Jesus isn’t the only son of God since he is using a plural form of that notion here - or could he have something else in mind?
To answer that, I would invite you to turn in your Bibles to
10 He was in the world, and the world was created through him, and yet the world did not recognize him.
11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.
12 But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be children of God, to those who believe in his name,
13 who were born, not of natural descent, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.
The poetic language that John uses to describe the wonder of Jesus in John 1 points at the beauty and the level of sacrifice it was for Jesus to come to Earth and live among humanity. In this passage we see that He rewards those who receive Him in faith with the right to be called what? “Children of God…” Not to harp on this too long, but for those who don’t believe on Christ for their salvation - does this include them? No! There is a watershed reality here - there are those who belong to God - the children of God, and there are those who belong to… the DEVIL!
It has been that way since the fall!
15 I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.
Here, God is pronouncing the curses against those involved with the first sin on mankind and he delineates the offspring of the woman with the offspring of the serpent. We understand as soon as Genesis chapter 4 that God isn’t talking about direct blood descendents, but rather those who follow in the footsteps of the serpent as opposed to those who seek after God.
In Genesis 4, we see the example of Cain and Abel. God specifically warned Cain that sin was crouching at the door, waiting for him, and urged him that if he did what was right that he would be accepted. Instead, after being counseled by God Himself, Cain still allowed himself to burn in anger to the point where he would kill his own brother. Cain clearly wasn’t a son of God, but a son of the Devil.
But ever since the original sin in the Garden of Eden, creation has know that something was broken and has groaned to be reconciled from the curse placed on it because of the sin of mankind. Creation itself waits in anticipation for Christ to restore all things back to the way God originally designed them to be - in absolute perfection!
Paul says that all of creation has been groaning in labor pains until now.
R.C. Sproul said this:
At the present time the whole creation groans together waiting for the redemption of the sons of God, but at the consummation of His kingdom the Lord will usher in a new heaven and a new earth, and that earth will be owned by the meek.
R. C. Sproul
What did Paul mean that creation itself “will be set free from its bondage to decay,” or that “creation has been groaning with labor pains until now?”
Earth, when God created it, was perfect. There were no such things as natural disasters - it was a safe place to live. But after the fall, creation became subject to decay (or death) like Paul says in our passage, and because of that - we see things like natural disasters where danger and death are a re result of the brokenness of creation by sin. These disasters are the groanings of labor pains Paul describes as creation itself is waiting in anticipation for Christ’s return where everything will be restored to original perfection - where there will be a new Heaven and a new Earth.
True joy isn’t the denial of pain—it’s the anticipation of glory.
We Groan Too (8:23)
We Groan Too (8:23)
Read with me again, starting in verse…
23 Not only that, but we ourselves who have the Spirit as the firstfruits—we also groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
Notice how he starts this verse off? With a contrast - “not only that, but…” What he’s doing is showing the relation between what he just said, that creation is groaning with labor pains, and that we ourselves who have the Holy Spirit also groan with creation as we are waiting for the redemption of our bodies.
So the same way that creation groans, knowing that things aren’t the way that they should be - knowing that things aren’t the way God designed them to be, we too groan with these kinds of labor pains. We discussed what labor pains in nature look like - natural disasters, hostility in nature, etc. What do these groans look like in humanity? This is by no means exhaustive, but here are a few ways that humanity groans with labor pains as we await the redemption of our bodies:
Death. Death is not natural and was not factored into God’s original design. We do know that after the first family sinned that God expelled them from the garden before they could eat from the tree of eternal life so that they would not have immortality.
22 The Lord God said, “Since the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil, he must not reach out, take from the tree of life, eat, and live forever.”
23 So the Lord God sent him away from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken.
24 He drove the man out and stationed the cherubim and the flaming, whirling sword east of the garden of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life.
God determined that if mankind was to know good and evil that we must not have eternal life in the body - His plan was to redeem us and renew our bodies so that we could one day be freed from the effects of sin. Death, though dismal and dark, has its place in God’s plan.
This time of year, death can be especially painful. For some of us, it will be our first Christmas since the loss of a loved one, and it serves as a reminder of the pain of that loss. To those of us in that situation, let me encourage you that death doesn’t get the final say - we turn our gaze and focus to the one who defeated death and subjugates all things to Himself.
54 When this corruptible body is clothed with incorruptibility, and this mortal body is clothed with immortality, then the saying that is written will take place: Death has been swallowed up in victory.
55 Where, death, is your victory? Where, death, is your sting?
56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!
We find ourselves waiting for the redemption of our bodies with the joy of knowing that Christ has already secured the victory! Death causes great pain to those of us left behind and those of us on the doorstep of death, but we can still maintain our joy because of the permanence of His victory.
2. Sickness. Illness was not meant to be something that we experienced originally.
3 There is no soundness in my body because of your indignation; there is no health in my bones because of my sin.
David linked the ailments in his body to sin - whether he was speaking of being sick because of his specific sin or original sin, I am not completely sure - it seems that he equates his personal sin and God’s indignation against his sin is the reason for his ailment - which was a common Jewish belief of the time that we even see Jesus’ own disciples wrestle with. The reality is that sickness came as a result of the fall, but is still subject to the will of God.
1 As he was passing by, he saw a man blind from birth.
2 His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
3 “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” Jesus answered. “This came about so that God’s works might be displayed in him.
The human body is a miraculous thing! I remember as a child hearing that the mechanics involved in a loving cell are more complicated than the highest level of mechanical achievement at the time: The Space Shuttle. The reality of sickness is that it is completely impartial - it comes to those we think deserve it and those we think don’t deserve it all the same - it is out of our control, but it doesn’t have to impact our joy.
16 Therefore we do not give up. Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person is being renewed day by day.
17 For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory.
18 So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
Sickness is something that can only impact our physical bodies during the course of this life - and what is this life? It is but a vapor! If our eternal existence was laid out like a book, this life would be a molecule of ink in the introduction compared to everything we will experience after. Our bodies may waste away, but God can use that for His purpose!
7 …Therefore, so that I would not exalt myself, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to torment me so that I would not exalt myself.
8 Concerning this, I pleaded with the Lord three times that it would leave me.
9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.” Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me.
Sickness teaches us to rely on Christ and to submit ourselves to Him - and I know, it is not a fun lesson to learn! It is not an assignment I would sign up for myself if I had the option. I know there are so many in this church dealing with chronic issues of pain, sickness, infection, disease that challenges our ability to look at life with a sense of joy. If I am going to be completely honest, when we were going through the process of getting my cancer diagnosed and trying to figure out what that meant for me in terms of life-expectancy, I fell into a bit of depression. We didn’t know at first if I had a year left or if I would be able to live out a normal life, and it put everything on hold for us - I closed my business down to be able to focus more on my family and on ministry than trying to make a profit making cabinets. Sickness has caused a lot of heartache for us this year, but we still have more than enough reason to be joyful!
God has not only mobilized our community here in Sprague, but He has used my sickness to draw people closer to Him through prayer all across the world. God can and will use whatever we are going through for our good - we just have to be faithful to give Him the benefit-of-the-doubt when we are in the midst of it.
28 We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.
That includes sickness and disease! It is a horrible thing to go through, but in Christ we can still have tremendous joy despite those circumstances because He walks with us through them and uses them to make us more and more into the people He wants us to be. The worst thing that can happen because of sickness is death - and what is death to a believer? Nothing more than the vehicle to carry us to Jesus. We can have tremendous joy even in the midst of sickness!
3. Continued propensity for sin. The last way humanity groans that I will speak about today is our continued draw towards sin. Theologically speaking, a lot of questions arise in the conversation of free will and the human’s responsibility to respond to God in faith. I believe that due to original sin, every part of a human (mind, will, emotions, body) is corrupted by sin, making everyone utterly unable to turn to God or do true good on their own, thus requiring God's grace for salvation. I believe that vestages of the flesh still exist in believers even after they are saved, causing Paul to exclaim,
15 For I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not practice what I want to do, but I do what I hate.
16 Now if I do what I do not want to do, I agree with the law that it is good.
17 So now I am no longer the one doing it, but it is sin living in me.
18 For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do what is good is with me, but there is no ability to do it.
19 For I do not do the good that I want to do, but I practice the evil that I do not want to do.
20 Now if I do what I do not want, I am no longer the one that does it, but it is the sin that lives in me.
21 So I discover this law: When I want to do what is good, evil is present with me.
22 For in my inner self I delight in God’s law,
23 but I see a different law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body.
24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?
25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I myself am serving the law of God, but with my flesh, the law of sin.
Even though we are prone to sin, Christ not only made a way for us to be free from the penalty of sin in dying the death that we deserved, but He also lived the life that we should have lived and credits that to our account through faith as well - so not only are we free from the wrath we deserve, but we are also given the righteousness of Christ that we don’t deserve - in Christ we receive grace after grace after grace, so even in our sin we have reason to rejoice in the amazing promises of Christ!
American Theologian Timothy George said this:
So long as we live in the flesh, we will continue to struggle with sin and to “groan” along with the fallen creation around us (Rom 8:18–26). Perfectionism this side of heaven is an illusion.
Timothy George
So not only does creation groan in the waiting, but humanity too also groans as we wait for the redemption of our bodies when Christ comes back - we are in a waiting season like Mary and Joseph were when they were making the trek from Nazareth to Bethlehem. It was hard, but they had so much reason to rejoice - and there joy is our joy too!
True joy isn’t the denial of pain—it’s the anticipation of glory.
We Wait With Hope (8:24-25)
We Wait With Hope (8:24-25)
Read with me one last time, starting in verse…
24 Now in this hope we were saved, but hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees?
25 Now if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with patience.
The language used here is a good example of the fact that words are important. In English, the phrase “…we were saved…” is rendered simply in the past tense, but in the Greek, it is communicated in what is called the aorist, and this communicates a single action that has been fully completed. So what we see is the dichotomy between the fact that our salvation has an aspect of “already but not yet…” to it - we have been saved - Jesus died for our sin and paid the penalty for us in the past - that is done. Many of us have already received Christ in faith and have been forgiven of our sin because of his death on the cross - and we have also had his righteous life credited to our account by that some profession of faith. Those things have already been accomplished - but what does Paul say? In this hope! What is hope? It is an expectation for a future reality. So we see both aspects here of “already” - in that everything needed for our salvation is complete, and aspects of “not yet…” that there is a future aspect that we are waiting for that is the substance of the hope to which Paul is referring.
Have any of you ever gone to God in prayer and asked why you can’t just go home now? Perhaps the pressures of life weighed so much that the idea of hope seemed as foreign a concept as theoretical astrophysics? My kids asked me once why God doesn’t just take people to Heaven when they get saved. My first answer is that if all the Christians went to Heaven the moment they were saved, who would be left to spread the gospel and evangelize the lost?
The one thing we will not be able to do in Heaven that we can do on Earth is evangelize.
My second answer is that Christ is still in the process of preparing a place for us in the Father’s house.
1 “Don’t let your heart be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me.
2 In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?
3 If I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am you may be also.
The first advent ushered in the age of grace, where God chose to replace the law with grace, because the law had already done its job, showing that we could never earn our way to the Father by our own merit. We do see how the Jews of Jesus’ day had mistakenly assumed that the Messiah would be a political figure to restore political power to the Jews for self-governance, but God was after a much much deeper issue - to do away with the sin that separated the creation from their creator.
The second advent that we are waiting for now will bring in the culminating efforts of what Christ started 2,000 years ago - sin will be completely defeated forever, creation will be renewed to perfection and there will be a new Heaven and a new Earth.
1 Then 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.
2 I also saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband.
3 Then I heard a loud voice from the throne: Look, God’s dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them. They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and will be their God.
4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away.
5 Then the one seated on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new.” He also said, “Write, because these words are faithful and true.”
There is a treasure waiting for us in Christ’s advent, because He is glorious! We often let things stack up and distract us from the hope and joy we have - the monotony of the day-to-day or the trials and hard seasons of life. That is one of the amazing blessings of Christmas! It reminds us to focus on Christ and the joy we have in Him!
Why can we have joy in Christ? Because He has overcome the grave! Because He defeated death and by faith, gives His people everlasting life with Him! Because all the things He promised were validated by the Resurrection of Christ!
31 What, then, are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us?
32 He did not even spare his own Son but gave him up for us all. How will he not also with him grant us everything?
33 Who can bring an accusation against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies.
34 Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is the one who died, but even more, has been raised; he also is at the right hand of God and intercedes for us.
35 Who can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
36 As it is written: Because of you we are being put to death all day long; we are counted as sheep to be slaughtered.
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers,
39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Does this mean we wont experience pain or suffering? By no means! It means that we assuredly wont go through them alone. But nothing changes what God has done or what God will do. That’s why our hope and expectations
True joy isn’t the denial of pain—it’s the anticipation of glory.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Brothers and sisters, the same way creation groans in labor pains, anxiously awaiting the restoration Christ will bring - the same way Mary waited in anticipation for the birth of Christ, we too find ourselves waiting for His return, groaning in the brokenness we see around us because we know that Jesus has something better in store for us. The Joy we find in the Lord comes in the promise of His return and the promise of His presence with us through the Holy Spirit. In this life we will experience pain, sorrow and even moments of feeling completely hopeless - but in Christ we have access to an unshakable joy because nothing can ever defeat Christ or keep Him from coming back to fulfill His promise.
In speaking of the groans we experience and how they relate to Christ’s return, Charles Spurgeon said this:
In the nativity of the Savior there is joy for us—the babe in Bethlehem born; God has taken man into communion with Himself. Jesus the Savior: here is release from the groans of sin; here is an end to the moans of despair. He comes to break the bars of brass, and to cut the gates of iron asunder.
Charles Spurgeon
Because of Jesus, the sons of God - those who trust on the name of Christ for salvation - are free from the burdens of the curse because of the anticipation we have in His return. Now it is true that believer and nonbeliever alike will experience the return of the Lord - but they will experience it from two greatly different perspectives. For us who believe, His coming will be met with an eager anticipation, like the child waiting for Christmas morning, because we know that He is coming to restore what is broken and make us whole in Him. For the nonbeliever, when they realize what is happening, they will be met by the conviction of their sins and realizing the reality of their rejection of Christ - they will understand the judgment that awaits them.
Church - do we live today like people with Joy? I was recently told by someone I highly respect that I have become someone who tends to lack the Joy of the Lord in my life. Perhaps they’ve noticed I’ve succumbed to several knock-out blows from life but haven’t recovered where it matters most - and I appreciated that observation and them sharing that observation with me because we all need to know when we are in need of course corrections, amen? I know I’m not perfect and that my journey with Christ is just as messy as anybody’s because I am a sinner like everyone else - being a pastor doesn’t make me immune from needing to hear hard things sometimes.
I would encourage you to take some time to reflect today on how much joy you have in your life. If you are like me and you notice you need more joy, there isn’t any self-help guru out there that can help you - but you can take the focus off yourself and devote yourself to knowing Christ more. We’ve spoken about spiritual disciplines, and I think that is a great place to start!
