Suffering and Groaning
Scripture Texts: Romans 8:18-22
What a gloriously beautiful week and weekend it has been. What a great end to the summer. Warm days, cool evenings. This is why we all love living in the PNW. The beauty of the mountains, the lush green everywhere, the rivers, lakes and oceans, the San Juan’s. The cedar and pine forests. The vast variety of flowers and flowering bushes.
And that’s just what’s around us. How many of us have taken in the beauty and grandeur of God’s creation all over the earth, national parks, Glacier, Yosemite, Zion, Grand Canyon, Hawaii, Alaska, Colorado, Alps, Costa Rica, Banff, Lake Louise, Cabo, Catalina. The star filled sky, the Milky Way and Aurora Borealis. And the wonder of the vast variety of living creatures.
The beauty and glory of creation reveals the magnificent beauty and glory of our supremely powerful Creator. Who has stood amazed at the wonder of God’s creation and not worshipped Him and said, “The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof.”
Why does Paul spoil this by talking about creation in the bondage of corruption? As you drive around Washington or vacation do you think about the fallenness? Yet we all hear the news headlines of the miseries of life on this planet, of storms, floods, fires, tornadoes, hurricanes.
Paul is leading us step by step to understand our life of sanctification in the Holy Spirit. We have the Spirit of adoption making us sons of God and as sons of God we have an inheritance, we are heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ (8:15-17).
Then Paul adds that clause, heirs with Christ provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him (8:17). But Paul doesn’t leave us to despair, he encourages us that the sufferings of this present life are nothing, not even worth comparing to the glory that is to come.
Remember how Paul said the sum total of all human suffering on earth will be like some particles of dust on the scales in comparison to the future glory? Your pain is less than a drop in the ocean of glory. He is going to now show how this is true by giving us an aerial view of creation and history to show us where it is all leading.
Paul goes cosmic on us and says look at creation. All of creation is suffering and is weary with the futility of it all, but it is looking forward with longing to deliverance and glory.
If you are suffering in any way, God has given this text for you. If you have not particularly suffered, your time will come, and you will want to remember this.
How often have you heard someone say in the midst of some great misery, or suffering, pain or death, I don’t know how those who have no faith in God survive?
For believers there is something unbelievers don’t understand or have. Hope. Preserver, don’t throw away your hope. How do we know future glory far outweighs all the world’s present suffering? Because Romans 8:19-27 gives us three groanings, the groaning of creation, the groaning of Christians/the Church, and the groaning of the Holy Spirit. We will spend a week on each.