Hope for our Suffering
Romans 8:18-25 ·February 9, 2025· Jacob Jackson
Part of: Romans
Pastoral Assistant Jacob Jackson preaches on finding hope in our suffering through Christ.
Transcript
Show
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors. Select a time to jump to that point in the recording.
Grateful to have another opportunity to bring God's holy word this morning. That's right. It is good and true and worthy of our attention. You know, it wasn't long after our first child was born that Vickrey and I learned to play a game I call Deny the Diaper, okay? It's not a real game, but all parents learn it, I'm convinced. It happens when your child has a dirty diaper and you wait for the other person to smell it and then pretend that you didn't.
We all do it. You pick your child up for a hug, you gag a little bit, and then you set them down and I would say, go give mommy a hug. You know, only like once or twice, right? Uh, sometimes, uh, both parents do this in this diaper version of playing chicken. The diaper is there, okay? You know it, you know it's there, but you won't acknowledge it because if you do, you'll have to deal with it, right? Suffering is like that, though, isn't it? Suffering is something that we are all aware of, but it's something none of us really want to acknowledge or deal with.
And in our passage, Paul starts off with acknowledging suffering and then he points us towards the hope that we have in Christ. Our text is Romans 8, 18 through 25. You can turn there, it'll be up on the screen as well. But our text shows us this morning that in Jesus, we have hope that overcomes our suffering. So let's read the passage together and then we'll jump in. This is the Word of God. It's living and it's active. It's sharper than a two-edged sword.
It teaches us. The Holy Spirit uses it to great effect for our good. And we are all here this morning in this passage by God's will and on purpose. Read the Word with me. Paul says, For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.
For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 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. This is the Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God. This morning we'll see that, number one, hope answers suffering. We'll also see that hope is encompassing, all-encompassing, and that hope is sure. Pray with me, though, first. Lord, thank you for this Word. We pray that you would use it to great effect in our lives. Thank you that you are a God who speaks, and that you've given us your Holy Word, that we may hear you, and that you would use it to transform our hearts. I pray that this Word would minister to us, Lord.
We seek to worship you in it. It's in your name we pray, in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So number one, I want us to see, friends, that hope answers suffering. Read again verse 18 with me. Paul says, For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. And at first read, this verse may feel, or it may seem like a dismissal of suffering. But it isn't that.
That's not what's happening here. Paul doesn't say, don't compare your suffering to hope. He isn't saying to us, look away from your suffering, just try to ignore it. Instead, try to focus on hope. He's not saying that. Paul is saying that when you do compare the sufferings of this present time, that they do not compare at all to future glory. Paul isn't calling us to distract ourselves from suffering. He is calling us to face our suffering and then measure it against the hope we have in Christ.
Friends, hope is not the absence of suffering, but rather hope is a faithful, biblical response to suffering. And what is that hope that we have? We've been talking about it actually the past couple of weeks as we finished up our series in Luke. And in fact, we talk about it every Sunday here when the word is preached. The hope is the promise of the gospel. The hope is our resurrection. The hope is salvation that comes through Christ and Christ alone.
Romans 8, 18, friends, is a verse that you and I, we need to read and we need to hear and then we need to ingest it and believe it. Because oftentimes, I think our response to a statement like, your suffering doesn't compare to your future in Christ. Christ, our response is, you know, it sure doesn't feel that way. If you knew my present sufferings, you wouldn't say that. You wouldn't say they're not worth comparing to future glory. You don't know how painful it is.
You're right, I don't. But God does, friends. And this is not my word, it's God's word. And when God speaks, He doesn't ever lie. This is the power of God's word. If He says it, then it is true. And the point is not to minimize your suffering. Friends, God understands your suffering. He took on human flesh and He experienced life as one of us. Isaiah 53, 3 says He was despised and rejected by men, that He was called a man of sorrows and was acquainted with grief as He was one that people would hide their faces from.
That's how He was despised. And it says we didn't esteem Him at all. God knows that suffering is real. And some of you are going through suffering now. You're going through a lot. Hard things are happening. You are experiencing real suffering. And I want you to know this morning that your God sees you. He sees the cry of your heart. He knows the fear that you may be struggling with. And His word here is not meant to minimize your suffering. It's meant to maximize your view of future glory that we have in Christ.
Because when we behold the promises of God and we set them before our eyes, it gives us a durable and a strong hope. And it's a real answer to the pain that we feel right now. So you and I, we really need this verse. We need to hear this verse this morning. And we need to say to us, ourselves, that this is true. No matter what I am going through, it's true. No matter how hard it is, no matter how painful it is, these current sufferings, they won't even compare to how good my future is in Jesus.
We need to remind ourselves, church, of this often. And we need to believe it. We need to encourage one another with this truth. And we need to pray that God would help us believe it. Why? Because if you've ever been through really hard suffering, you know ignoring it isn't actually helpful. And you know that when others ignore it, it's a good gesture. They don't want to bring up bad things, maybe. But what you really need is you need someone to enter into that suffering with you.
We need to believe this because this gives us hope in the suffering. Our suffering, friends, here's the great hope. It's temporary. It is not eternal. It doesn't last forever. Listen to Paul as he writes to the Corinthians. 2 Corinthians 4, 17 and 18. He says, For this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen they're eternal.
1 Corinthians 15, 54. He continues this. When the perishable puts on the imperishable and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. The forgiveness of our sins through the substitutionary death of Jesus on our behalf is an incredible gift we receive from God, church. But we often can stop there and we don't think too much about everything else that it means to be in union with God through Christ.
It's so much more than just the forgiveness of your sins. That is great. But God offers us so much more to be excited about. Just focusing on the forgiveness, it'd be like winning a vacation on a luxury cruise liner. Like the best that's ever been built. And you're given the best room, the poshest accommodations, and you never leave the room. Right? The room is good. It's great. It's great, but there are other things to see and to marvel over. And we've been talking about some of that, about the resurrection of the body and a new heaven and a new earth.
The promises we have in Christ are like this. Ephesians 2.7 calls the riches we have in Christ the immeasurable riches of His grace and His kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. Immeasurable. When Christ returns, friends, we will get new, glorious bodies that are no longer marred by sin. The perishable, remember Paul says, will give away to the imperishable. The mortal will give way to the immortal. Friends, these new bodies will no longer be in pain.
And that isn't even the best part. Did you know that? Like, I hope I'll have hair, but that's not the best part. In this new state, in these new bodies, you and I will not struggle with sin any longer. What will that be like? I feel like it takes the full force of my imagination just to like creep to the edges of what that will be like. I have no idea. I have no idea. As long as I have been drawing breath, sin has been a part of me. And in Christ, it grieves me.
And one day, it will be gone completely. And that is true for you and me. Listen, I don't know what it's going to be like, but it's going to be absolutely glorious. It's going to be amazing. When we dwell in our future glory, it gives us hope. It gives us strength in our present life now. This is true. It is true because God says it is. We have to practice dwelling on the truth, friends. So the question is, is how? How do we go from being blinded by our suffering so that we cannot see the hope of our future glory to being fixed on our future glory so that we're not blinded by suffering?
How do we do that? Well, friends, the answer is simple. It's almost maddeningly simple. Read God's word and believe it. And that might sound like we want a better solution than that, but we don't have another word given to us by holy God. Last week, Joel pushed us in this direction when he told us that illumination is not just downloaded into our brains matrix style, which I appreciated that reference. If our Bibles sit on our shelves unread, we can expect that the suffering of this world will dwarf our vision of our glorious future in Jesus Christ.
So read your word, church. Read it daily. The Bible tells us that it is a two-edged sword. Friends, swords are useless in combat if you don't wield them. So wield the Bible. The Bible says that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. And like everything else that God says, this is true. You might not even realize that that feeling of emptiness, that hunger you feel will be quenched in the word of God, but it will.
It will. So what we do, we take our anger, we take our disappointment, we take our sorrow, we take our suffering, and we look to the Bible, we look to God's word, and we read Scripture passages that apply to that, and we write them down, we memorize them, and we read them when we struggle because it's a real help for real suffering. I promise you, church, that if you feast on God's word, you will be strengthened in the face of your suffering. So, our text shows us we have hope that answers suffering.
It doesn't ignore suffering. Secondly, I want you and I to see that we have a hope that is all-encompassing. Look at verses 19-22. Starting in verse 19, Paul continues, and he says, for the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. And he says, for the creation was subjected to futility. So let's pause there for just a second, and let's review a little biblical history for context. Genesis 1-31 says, God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.
Right? And there are many beautiful things. We see that even now. We see that there are many beautiful things about creation. Like mountaintop vistas, beautiful sunsets, pleasant weather, are all echoes of the perfect world that God created. Like when I'm in the woods and it's like a nice, cool day and a breeze blows through the trees, like that feels a little heavenly. Like we can almost taste the goodness of what it maybe was like. But then along with these things, there are other things.
Like mosquitoes. Right? Like, listen, I don't know what the purpose of a mosquito was in Eden. Like maybe they sung little hymns in your ear. I don't know. But they're horrible now. Okay? And you can tell that creation has been horribly twisted by sin. Not just in mosquitoes, but we have earthquakes. Guys, we have devastating tornadoes and hurricanes, famine and drought, heat and wildfires. Sin has corrupted all of creation. Not just humanity, but all of creation.
Everything we see on land and sea and in space has been corrupted by sin. See, God, in Genesis 2.15, it says, God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and to keep it. Part of our work was to cultivate and keep the garden. We were supposed to steward all of creation and care for it so that it grew. The creation was supposed to be a testimony to the goodness of God, a physical hymn that would always elicit worship from those who were in it.
But instead, we disobeyed God. And creation, Paul says, to the Romans, was subjected to futility. It was subjected to corruption. And we see those effects all over the world today. Listen, if we're honest, all of creation is either dying or it's trying to kill something. Everything is trying to kill everything. Just watch a nature documentary, okay? The Australian outback is a nightmare. It's a literal nightmare. Everything there will kill you. Okay?
It's not supposed to be like that. Creation is just as broken as we are. Just as twisted by sin as humanity. All of creation fell when humanity did. I have good news for you. Our passage this morning tells us it will not always be this way. The creation, all of creation was not irreparably lost to the corruption of sin. We have hope of a better future that encompasses all of creation. It encompasses all that sin has touched. Our passage says that creation is longing for this.
Longing for the revealing of the sons of God. What does that mean? We often think of creation as animals and plants and rocks, right? The flora and the fauna of the world but remember friends that angels and spiritual beings are also part of God's creation. The spiritual beings that God has created look to see the coming redemption. But I also believe in a very real sense that nature being a part of creation longs for the revealing of the sons of God.
When I was in middle school we did this really cool experiment on phototropism which is just a fancy word for saying that plants will always grow toward the sun, right? And we put a plant in a terrarium and we move the light source like every couple of weeks and wherever we move the light that is the direction that the plant would grow in. It was really cool. I think that the non-sentient parts of creation are longing in this way. Like a plant reaching for life-giving light.
All of creation is longing for the moment will exist in the state that God has created them to exist in when the song of their being will be perfectly reflecting the goodness of the one who created them. Creation is longing for this specific point in redemptive history and I would wager to say that you and I are longing for it too. The word picture in the Greek is like someone leaning it's like that moment in a movie right before all of the tension of the story is resolved.
Creation is leaning forward in its seat so to speak expectantly looking for a solution for all that is broken and destroyed. There's this eager expectation here for the solution of the problem that we see as our text continues to unfold. Look at verse 20. It says for the creation was subjected to futility not willingly but because of him who subjected it. Paul says that creation was subjected not willingly but because of him who subjected it. And the question here as we look at the text is who is the him of verse 20?
Who subjected creation to futility? And we might be tempted to lay the blame on Adam and Eve or on Satan who was Satan who tempted them and they disobeyed and that's true. Absolutely Adam and Eve chose to sin and we all sinned with them and so both parties are morally culpable in the fall of creation but friends ultimately the hymn of verse 20 is God God in his sovereignty subjected creation to futility at the fall of man as a consequence of sin God declared that the sin of man would not just submit mankind to corruption but the stewardship of man creation would fall too and I think this is really important this should actually give us comfort suffering friends is not a wild uncontrollable force that God doesn't know what to do with it is subject to his sovereign rule listen when you're undergoing surgery I don't think anyone loves the idea of a scalpel like the idea of getting cut but it's necessary without the pain of the scalpel healing work can't be done but you also want a master surgeon on the other end God is a master surgeon he wields suffering for good in our lives he accomplishes things in our souls and in our hearts that may not otherwise be accomplished if it were not for the suffering now I'm not saying that suffering is good but what I am saying is that God is good the cross tells us that we sang it this morning while we were yet still sinners Christ died for us God is good and he is good over and through your suffering and I promise you he can use even the worst
parts of your life to bring redemption that is good news isn't it and more good news is this it won't always be this way a full recovery is coming as our passage continues Paul says that creation is longing for the revealing of the God because look at verses 21 and 22 says the creation itself will be set free from bondage from its bondage to corruption it'll obtain the freedom of the of the children of God for we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now when the hope of our future comes to fruition the hope of a new world comes with it creation God to be glorified because it's at that moment that redemption and freedom from corruption will come to everything when man the jewel of creation is glorified all of creation will be glorified along with him creation fell when man fell it'll be raised up when he their savior it is an eternity where we are made perfect and we live in a perfect creation the gospel brings the garden of Eden back full circle except it'll be even better because there'll be no possibility of destroying it because sin will not exist any longer friends this is truth let it give you hope the suffering of this when the people of God are glorified creation itself will obtain freedom and suffering will be no more our text shows us this it shows us one that hope answers suffering we've seen that hope encompasses everything and then I want you to know this last point this hope is sure it's sure look at verse 23 he
says and not only the creation but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons the redemption of our bodies Paul reminds us here that just as creation is eagerly waiting for our glorification we too should be eagerly looking forward to the moment when our adoption is complete every follower of Christ lives in a now but not yet kind of reality right in Jesus we've been adopted as children of God and the completeness of that adoption has not yet arrived it's as good as done but we've not yet been redeemed we've not yet been glorified as we will be and the first fruits of the spirit we too like creation we groan as we wait for this sure hope but it's sure there's nothing worse than a really great promise that gets broken has that ever happened to you maybe you can think of a time when someone promised they would do something or they promised they wouldn't do something and just to go back on their promise and break it if you have experienced that you know it can be devastating hope based off of human promises can be tenuous and fragile but friends when God promises something when God promises something to us hope takes on a different meaning our hope becomes sure you and I can plan on we hope what we do not see we wait for it with patience because it's coming Paul's point here is that you don't need to grasp in your hand a promissory note from God because his word is spoken and his word is sure you can count on this this
is the same God friends that promises us this great hope it's the same God who speaks creation into existence God said let there be light and guess what there's light he says let there be seas and there are seas this is the same God who says to the lame walk and they walk he says to the dead live and Lazarus comes out of the God and they obey so when this God speaks to us that we have a sure hope in Christ that will eclipse the suffering we experience in this world we can draw great hope from this because our God always does what he says he will do your redemption is sure in Christ your salvation is sure your healing is sure Christ has died Christ has risen he will come again and when he comes he brings the culmination of all that we hope for this is cause for us to cry this is cause for us to say our hope is not built on what we can see our hope is built on what God says and you find forgiveness and hope and healing God is waiting for you with open arms to find your forgiveness in him I hope that you will come and find your hope and peace in him that's my sincere desire for you if you've not placed your faith and trust in Jesus as your savior so let me close suffering is a real problem friends it really is and we face it every day as we live in a world that is eagerly longing for the redemption to come but our good God gives us hope that acknowledges this suffering God enters into our suffering with us he bears our burdens and he calls us to come and see our suffering in light
of what awaits us in him and our God has given us a hope that encompasses everything even the deepest pains we have even the places of deep shame will be redeemed by God all things that are touched by sin in your life will be set right there is no pain that you have gone again I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the to be revealed to us these words are true church and you can count on them the promises you have in Christ they will never be broken God is pain and suffering with the hope that is sure in Jesus Christ let us be lights in dark places with the hope that we