Frustration to Freedom

Romans 8:18-27

INTRO: King’s kid found

·        Have you ever felt very out of place?

·        Imagine a king loses his son… he’s found at 14 yrs. old.  He comes to live in the palace.  How will he act?  How comfortable will he be?  The fact of his sonship will remove his difficulties in growing into his sonship.

B.          Context from Romans

C.         Preview: Three groanings

1.                         We groan and suffer because, while we are now thoroughly right with God, our earthly nature is still in the process of being made perfect.  Our actions are being brought into alignment with our right standing with God through faith in Jesus. This groaning ends when we are made perfect, “glorified.”

2.                         The creation groans as it was caught up in our rebellion against God’s rule in our life, the “fall,” and is waiting until we are made perfect in heaven, “glorified.”  It is evidence of the partial state of world redemption.

3.                                                   This process of being made perfect, or holy, is something the Holy Spirit wants more than we do, so when we don’t even know how to pray, he does.

D.         READ ROMANS 8:18-27

I.       creation groans till we’re glorified, vs.19-25

·        That future is so great; the whole creation is not only waiting, but involved.

A.          The creation groans as it was caught up in our rebellion against God’s rule in our life, the “fall,” and is waiting until we are made perfect in heaven, “glorified.”  It is evidence of the partial state of world redemption.

·        GENESIS 3:17-18 says, “Then to Adam He said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, ’You shall not eat from it’; Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you will eat of it All the days of your life. "Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you will eat the plants of the field

·        We drug the creation into the curse, and it is being rescued from the curse along with us.

·        Sons revealed as different from the false; the tares or goats.

·        When our freedom is fully effected, the creation will also be freed.  Are we not already redeemed in Christ?  In our position, yes!  In the work of Jesus on the cross to justify us, yes!  In our daily life’s battle with the flesh, No!

II.    We groan till we’re glorified, vs.18, 21b, 23

A.          We groan & suffer because, while we are now right with God, our earthly nature is still in the process of being made perfect.  Our actions are being brought into alignment with our right standing with God through faith in Jesus.

·        As we still see in nature the effects of the curse, so it is with us.

INTRO: ILLUSTRATION (video clip)

o       Tim Allen plays a New York commodities trader in Jungle to Jungle.  He discovers that his estranged wife, who has gone into the jungles of Venezuela for ten years, unknown to him had a son, his son, Mimiseku.  Mimiseku comes back to New York with his dad, but has a hard time fitting into the role of a New York commodities trader’s son.

o       In t/scene he learns several things about eating habits the hard way.

o       We resemble Mimiseku in way.  We are children of the King, but we struggle greatly trying to live like children in His Kingdom.

·        Following in the Spirit does create “cross-carrying-suffering,”

·        Our Spiritual nature is fully redeemed, and we have the Spirit’s fellowship as the first fruits of the rolling back of the curse.  He now again can walk with us, but we are not back in the Garden of Eden world.

·        Vs.14-16 declare we are already sons, but some portion is incomplete, the fleshly/worldly part.

·        The flesh is still a problem as we wait for new bodies (not disembodied state)

·        As the creation groaned to be recreated, as we groan to live in freedom from the curse that we still feel in the flesh.

B.          Groaning ends when we are made perfect, “glorified.”

·        So with the help and guarantee of the Spirit we wait patiently for the fullness of our redemption at death, or the second coming.

·        The future reward makes this suffering price pale in comparison to the glory which we will receive.

·        2Co 4:16b-17 Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.   For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.

·        “How dare you trivialize the intensity of my suffering!”  Trust me, I am not.  I am intensifying your anticipation for the enormity of the GLORY!

·        Freedom from groaning, from sin, from decay, from broken relationships, and broken lives; into glory perfect bodies, perfect thoughts, relationships, love, etc.

III.  the spirit groans as he prepares us for glory, vs.26-27

A.          This process of being made perfect, or holy, is something the Holy Spirit wants more than we do, so when we don’t even know how to pray, he does.

·        Vs 26 “in the same way…” same as what?  The same struggle between our redeemed nature and our old nature that causes our groaning causes the Spirit to groan with and for us.  He wants us sanctified more than we want it.

·        First fruits are those picked at the very beginning of the harvest.  The reaping, and gleaning are still to come, but they are already being seen and tasted.

·        He even prays for us when we don’t even know exactly how to pray.

·        He prays us into the will of God, who knows our hearts and the Spirit’s mind.

invitatION