Pentecost

 A man commissioned Picasso to paint a portrait of his wife. But when Picasso showed him the abstract painting, he was startled. "That image doesn't look at all like my wife!" Pablo replied, "Really? How does she really look?" The man pulled a picture from his wallet & showed it to Picasso. Pablo examined the picture. "Small, isn't she?" Today is Pentecost Sunday. Birthday of the Church. The day we celebrate when Jesus gave His Spirit to the church. So, how many of us have the Holy Spirit? How do You recognize whether He's active in your life? When He's speaking? What's your image of Him? We all have an image of the Holy Spirit. Comforter, when we grieve or hurt. Counselor when we don't know what to do or which way to go. Nurturer when we're drained. 3rd Person of the Godhead. We all have an image. But whatever our image of the Holy Spirit is, it can't compare to reality. Any image is as distorted as Picasso's picture of that wife. Today's verses show us that & more. Let's look at Ro 8:22-27. 22We know the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Really?? Creation is inanimate. How can it groan? Creation started suffering when people did. At The Fall. In Ge 3:17, God said, "Cursed is the earth." (Ground, earth-same Hebrew word.) Ever since, all creation has suffered futility, decay, & death. Till The Fall, nothing wore out or decayed. Ever since? Everyone & everything dies & decays. We all suffer the futility of decay & death. We're very aware of it. Did you know Creation suffers with us? Nature spins out of control. Natural disasters that God never planned. Earthquakes. Volcanoes. Cataclysmic storms. Tsunamis. Human mismanagement of the planet makes it worse. Nature, all Creation groans with humanity. Christians, too. Really? For us, death may be a door to eternity. But we still suffer death. Same as every other creature. Is there any good news? Yes! All our groaning is the birthing process for God's New Creation. As Creation & humanity wait, we groan. But our groaning is like childbirth. When the pain finishes its work, there's great joy. Creation's suffering will result such joy that the pain is forgotten. The problem? We live in the now. Perfect good & joy are not yet. What benefit for Christians is now? Plenty! 23aWe already have the 1stfruits of the Spirit. Only believers have the Spirit. He's the 1stfruits of a harvest. At harvest, the 1stfruits guarantee the rest to come. The Holy Spirit is our guarantee of the rest to come. The point? What we have now is good. Even so, we don't have the fullness of the Spirit! (Never mind resurrected bodies.) Nor the rest of all God promised-no more evil. No more death. No more decay. No more sadness. Joy, for eternity! That's all not yet. The Holy Spirit is our guarantee that it's coming. That's our hope! Look at 2 Cor 5:5. What we now have of the Holy Spirit we now have is God's pledge. He's God's guarantee to give us the rest! Imagine that! All we now know & have of the Holy Spirit is only 1stfruits! The tiniest part guaranteeing the harvest! There's that much more! God promises! We just have to get through now. Until then, 23bWe groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons. We're already God's children. Our inheritance is now guaranteed legally. The Holy Spirit is God's pledge to give us the rest. But does anyone feel like we have the fullness of our adoption? Of course not! We still suffer. Illness. Aches. Pain. Bereavement. Death. The more we suffer, the more we groan-inwardly, if not outwardly. And the more eagerly we wait. For what? The fullness of our adoption. 23cThe redemption of our bodies. In a sense, we're already redeemed. In Jn 17:3, Jesus says to know God & Jesus is eternal life. We already have eternal life. We enjoy it now. But we don't yet have its fullness. Our bodies aren't yet perfected. They still wear out & die. Our bodies aren't fully redeemed, because we aren't resurrected! Not yet. We live in the now & the not yet. Even so, our hope is sure! 24aIn this hope we were saved. What hope? Hope of the fullness of our redemption. The fullness of the Spirit. The fullness of the redemption of our bodies-resurrection. We have eternal life now. We have His Spirit in us. We already have eternal life. We've been reborn. But can we see it? Can we tell that His Spirit is in us by looking at each other? (Hint: if there's no joy in our face, it might be harder to see! LOL!) We can't see it. Our now is framed by a sure hope of the not yet. Our down payment is here. The rest is coming. That's our hope. 24bBut hope that's seen is no hope at all. Really? Christian hope requires faith. It's like Paul says in Heb 11:1. Faith is being certain of what we hope for & certain of what we don't see. Faith = that certainty! God promised, so our hope is certain. Besides, 24cWho hopes for what he already has? If we already had the fullness of God's promises, why would we need faith or hope? 25If we hope for what we don't yet have, we wait for it patiently. Waiting. Patience. Not our strong suit! We already know that. When it comes to patience, we're all weak. (YMMV. Still, I don't know anyone who claims to be strong in patient waiting.) But guess what? We have help! Really? 26aThe Spirit helps us in our weakness. How? The Spirit's fruit (LJPPatienceKGFGSelf-Control). If He's in us, He'll produce His patience & self-control in us! Just remain in Him. He'll produce the fruit in us! Just remain in Him. Keep our focus on Him. (As long as Peter looked at Jesus, He walked on water.) Focus on Jesus. We'll gain more than just His patience & self-control to wait patiently. In Him we'll also gain His love, joy, peace, kindness, & goodness. There's another way we enjoy the Holy Spirit, now. At times, we KNOW 26bWe don't know what we ought to pray for. We all have those times. Our physical or emotional pain is so great we have no words. We don't know what to pray. Even if we knew, we couldn't voice it. Maybe we're standing beside a loved one who's near death. What do we pray (even if we could)? We know what we want. But pain overwhelms us. We're mute. There's an aspect we rarely consider. What does God want? No matter how much we want something, do we talk it over with God? If not, we really don't know what we ought to pray for. Job, most righteous man of his day, didn't know what to pray. (He explains it for 29 chapters!) In 1 Kgs 19:3-4, Elijah, a courageous prophet shows us he doesn't know what he should pray for. And we know Mary Magdalene loved Jesus. A lot! But look at Jn 20:15. Talking to resurrected Jesus in the garden (= prayer) is confused. ("Where's His body?") We're in good company. We don't know either. In Mk 14:34-36, Jesus models how to pray for something that may not be God's will. In the Garden of Gethsemane, 3 times He prayed the same. "Father, take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will." He kept asking until He knew the Father's will. As soon as He knew God's will, He got up, woke the disciples, & went to meet His destiny. Even if we don't know what to pray, the Spirit does! And He helps! 26cThe Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words can't express. When words fail & all we can do is groan, He groans with us. He prays what we should've for us. He does so even when we THINK we know what to pray for. 27aAnd He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit. The Father understands the Spirit's prayer for us, even if we don't. 27bThe Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will. He comes to our aid whenever we need help. That's real help! When we feel frustrated because we don't know what to pray, relax. The Spirit does. He understands how we feel. What we want. What the Father wants. And He'll help, according to the Father's will! Glory is waiting for us. It's beyond our wildest imaginations. Even imaginations of the most gifted fantasy / sci-fi writers. You & I will be glorious creatures! How glorious? If we saw each other now that way, we'd be tempted to fall down & worship. THAT glorious! Even so, that's all not yet. we live in the now. Weakness & decay. We hope for the coming glory. But we see our weakness & the decay all around us. And we groan. We aren't alone! We're surrounded by the sympathetic groanings of Creation & the Holy Spirit. One day, our groanings will be replaced by glory! The 1stfruits of the Spirit is our guarantee. The full harvest of our glorious inheritance is on the way. For now, we wait. And hope. And pray. Firstfruits of the Spirit - Romans 8:22-27 Page 1 of 1