Session 29 – Romans; Romans 8:18-22: Mark Lanier, 04/12/26

ROM 029_Romans P29_PODCAST_041226
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[00:00:00] Question, what can you endure if you know something great is coming in the future? Now this is, uh, an introduction that I began writing for this class that we're teaching today. And as I worked through it, I thought about, uh, those parents who worked two jobs to get their kids through school. Uh, uh, there's a lot of that that goes on here.

I love to watch Korean drama. Uh, it's a way I, I work on my Korean or, so that's my excuse, and I, uh, really enjoy it. But, but it's a real big cultural thing there for parents to oftentimes work multiple jobs to get their kids the education and the training they need. And it's a process where people have thought through the ramifications and they've come to a [00:01:00] reasoned conclusion that it's worth it to do this.

Now I also prepared as I prepared this lesson totally a, a, apart from and already this slide. There are soldiers who fight for a greater purpose. These are soldiers who thought it through and come to a reasoned conclusion that it's worth it. I chose as my soldier here, someone who fights. Uh, a Ukrainian who's been Ukraine has been at war for years now trying to defend their country.

And then last night Becky and I had the honor of having dinner with some folks, including Christopher Hayes. Christopher used to teach at Oxford. He is a New Testament scholar. He wrote the book, 8 million Exiles about mission action [00:02:00] research and the Crisis of Forced Migration. Really cool picture on the cover, and he told me a story last night or he told us a story.

He's involved in a, a Christian group that works in the majority world. That's the world where the majority of people are. That has actually the fewest of the world's resources and they work hard with seminaries and they work hard to get, get, uh, books and, and scholastic materials in the hands of people who are bringing up the ministers and the churches in these third world countries.

And these third world areas, and he told us a story last night about Ukraine, and I thought this is the stellar version of people doing something because they're enduring suffering because. They've done a reasoned calculation and they know the gain is [00:03:00] worth it. So I said we only have five minutes, Christopher, for this in the introduction, but would you come share that?

Would you join me in welcoming Christopher Hayes?

Good morning. Well, thank you Mark, for the chance to be here. Uh, I'm the president of a ministry that's called Scholar. Leaders, which right up front totally sounds like an oxymoron, right? You think scholar and you think somebody who's a spectacle and tweed clad squirreled away in a dusty library, not not yours, right?

Reading some medieval manuscript. Um, and that's probably a fair caricature who are our characteristic, uh, characterization of who I was at Oxford. But that's not a fair characterization of who the leaders are that we work within Ukraine. That first week of the war when the Russian tanks rolled across the border at all points of the country's western nor and southern borders, they reached out to us, the folks that we [00:04:00] had invested in over the years, and they asked us for help not to get out of the country to the west, but because they were heading to the east towards the front lines.

You see, these were seminary professors, pastors, but they felt like what faithfulness required of them in that moment. Was to go towards the trenches. And so they mobilized a team of a dozen seminaries and 300 seminarians and pastors and professors who started to head east. They went in little cars and they put, went into hot zones, and they started to pull out the disabled, the elderly, the shellshocked, the people who couldn't get away from the hot zones on their own.

It didn't come without a cost. As many of them were targeted, captured, tortured, and some were even killed in this process. Faithfulness required this of them. And so they brought more than 11,000 people from the hot zones. They transitioned [00:05:00] 43,000 people through their seminary campuses, putting roofs over their heads.

They let a thousand people to the Lord as they migrated their way towards Poland. Let a thousand people to the Lord, pulling these people away from hot zones. That's just, and then put 'em in the seminaries. Keep going. Sorry, I just, some things deserve an exclamation mark. We can be excited about that part to be sure.

And this didn't happen while their seminaries were safe. I think of the scholar leader, Valentine Sunni in the south in Heron, whose campus was taken over by Russians the second day of the war. They turned his dormitories into barracks. They made his campus a crematorium. They burned his theological library because Protestant theology is seen by the Russians as Western propaganda.

And yet he took his whole campus to the west and immediately began doing refugee work. Work there. I think Yvonne Rusin in the north had Ukrainian Evangelical Theological Seminary right up against the edge of Bucha. You may remember the images of [00:06:00] that genocidal massacre of innocent people with white flags tied around their hands, behind their back as they were executed in the streets of bodies being put into shopping carts and pushed to the center of town and tipped unceremoniously into mass graves.

This campus was hit by six missiles. That the beginning of the war, the students and the faculty huddling in the laundry room, which is their basement, and the closest thing they had to a bomb shelter. And this campus, which had 250 students on campus before the war, we wondered if it was gonna be gone as the Russians were pushed back out of Bucha and away from the edge of Kyiv.

I got on a Zoom call with the president of UETS with Valenti Sunni, with our Ukrainian director, Taras. Some four months into the war. And I said, what's it look like for us to be your friend right now? And I expected them to say, more money for refugees, more money for Bibles. And that would've been a great answer.

But they [00:07:00] said, we need to start training pastors again fast. And I'm like, how fast is fast? They're like, Hmm, three months. I'm like, that's a terrible idea you guys. I mean, I can see the blown out window behind Yvonne where, 'cause they haven't been able to put new glasses in since the Russians hit their campus with missiles.

I can see teros in a bomb shelter. You are not ready to start training again. But they explained to me that that first year of the war, the Protestant churches of Ukraine, who comprised less than 2% of the population, lost more than 800 pastors to flight conscription and death. What's more, they had lost more than 40 faculty to the same causes.

And so they were hamstrung in their ability to be able to replace these leaders of the church at the moment in which the Ukrainian people are in their most profound existential need. And so they said, we need to start training again fast. We have to do it light. We have to train for additional professions.

'cause now everybody in the country has PTSD, so we need a bunch of [00:08:00] counselors. And there's a whole bunch of military out there who are. Looking death in the face every day. So we need to train military chaplains and we've gotta replace the pastors and we have to teach them how to answer new questions.

Like, how do you care for an amputee? And they said, can you help us with that? And I said, well, don't you put it that way. Fast forward to last February when my colleague, Dr. Evelyn, fearing and I were in Kyiv again at this same campus that had been hit by so many missiles that had 250 pastors being trained there before the war started.

They had been rebuilding. There was new glass, there was new concrete being put in, and they said, we want you to know that we now have on campus 600 students being trained.

They said, will you come greet them? I said, of course. Let's get to a classroom. They said, oh no, they don't fit in classrooms anymore. We have to put them in the chapel. It's the only room big enough to accommodate our classes. And they said, and I said, that's extraordinary. But they [00:09:00] said, you know, our biggest need right now is enough faculty to train these students.

Now you have to understand that this is a school that was almost at the point of getting an undergrad accredited at the beginning of the war. But they said, we have a need to build a doctoral program. And I said, that's crazy. Again, I find myself saying that prematurely too often, but last August, we were sitting with them in the office.

As they had received accreditation for undergraduate programs in Bible and counseling master's programs in Bible and counseling, and they said, we want to launch the very first catch, this state licensed seminar and Protestant theology in the entire former USSR. Will you help us? And I was smart enough at that point not to say that's crazy.

And they just got that state license a month ago. Oh, thank you, Chris. The, these, these folks. That's, that's, that's the story I wanted, brother. [00:10:00] Thank you. This stuff. Notice that was not a pitch for you to give. That was just news. That's just what's going on. That's firsthand because. Media is, is only so good at what they can convey, but these are people who have decided that they've thought it through.

They, they, they've come to a reasoned conclusion that it's worth enduring the suffering and the pain for what's on the other side. And it is hard for me to stand up and show you the next slide that I had, but I had written this before last night and I was trying to think of where are areas where we, uh, sacrifice that I can communicate the idea of, [00:11:00] we think it through 'em, we decide it's worth doing this just for what's to come.

And on the heels of that. This is a ridiculous slide, but I was thinking there are times where we've got a big meal coming and we decide to skip breakfast and lunch because we've thought it through and we've come to a reasoned conclusion that it's worth it. Please forgive me for such a

Western world problem and illustration. I can tell you this though, the ancients were no different. The ancients had problems. The ancients had suffering. Some would say comparatively greater than ours. They didn't have the medical care we've got. They didn't have the ready access to the conveniences we have, and they had a great deal of suffering and they weren't brutes that [00:12:00] had no concept.

They thought about, why am I suffering? We can read in antiquity, great thinkers who worked through this issue who have thought it through and tried to come to a reasoned conclusion of whether or not it's worth it. And to me, that's coming into focus as we look at Romans eight, verses 18 through 22, where Paul talks about how the whole creation groans.

Now, let's make sure we're in context here. Paul is addressing a church in Rome that knows suffering. It's been split apart because the Jews got kicked outta Rome for a couple of years. They'd started the church, they got kicked out. So the Greeks run the church and then the ro, the Jews come back and when they come back in, they're trying to figure out how, okay, who takes back over this or who now handles that?

And in the midst of all of that. [00:13:00] Hubbub in the church. Paul, who's never been there, but knows many of the people there and the leaders, he writes him a letter. And this letter is a, a a a rhetorical argument almost if you read classical rhetoric. It's got many of the same features of a classic rhetorical argument, and Paul has started it out by saying, Hey, everything's in shambles and there are a bunch of immoral and immoral people.

And let me tell you the reason why. It's technically because all of us are sorry in terms of our moral responsibility with God. If you just take God and his purity, then every Gentile out there is gonna be going to hell. By the same token, Jews don't get uppity. Every Jew's gonna be going to Hell too because none of us achieve the moral perfection that God has as his standard.

That is God. And so we're all going to hell. But for, and [00:14:00] this was Romans three, but for a righteousness, a, a dec a, a not guilty, that is a, a righteousness that, that, that comes by faith in Christ because of what Christ has done. And so he charted through and explained the whole way that we are, are justified by our faith.

And Abraham's a great example. And he said that Abraham's faith was, wa was credited to him. Omi, although it's in the Hess there, but it was credited to him, um, as, as faith, I mean his righteousness. And then he hits Romans six, and in Romans six he says, okay, so if that's the situation, should we just sin so that Grace May abound?

And that is the subject area where we are right now in Romans eight. That's basically [00:15:00] Romans six through Romans eight. Should we sin so that Grace May abound? Is this a situation like the poet out and said, you know, God's great at uh, forgiving sin. I'm great at sinning. If we make a good team. I mean, is that where we are?

He says, no, chapter six, you died to sin. And that's what Romans six was. And then we got to Romans seven where he deals with this question, well, if I died to sin, why do I struggle so much? And he worked through Romans seven and we've worked through that. And now we're in Romans eight. And in Romans eight, he's actually giving the solution.

He's explaining. Started out with those great verses. There's therefore now no condemnation, crema. There's no judgment. There's no sentencing. There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ. The [00:16:00] law of the spirit of life in Christ has set us free from the law of yes sin. You die. Yes sin. You die. Yes sin you die.

And so he's walking through that and we talked about him using Roman adoption law last week to explain it. This week what he's saying is, please understand this is bigger than just you. We, we often think as, uh, you know, we, we are so quick to want people to come to faith in the Lord. And that's, that's good.

That's right. That should be a drive. Amen. Thousand Ukrainians who are migrating, they're putting them up in the sim seminaries. There's got, they've gotta do something with the, these people that they're pulling off the front lines. And it's not like the Motel six is in business and so they're, they're putting 'em up in seminaries on the campuses and, and just anywhere they can [00:17:00] showing Christ and a thousand come to faith.

That's wonderful. We have over 200 come to faith here last, uh, Sunday at Easter. That's wonderful. We must remember that what we're about is not simply we find Jesus, we accept Christ, and we know then that God will hear our prayers and we'll die and we'll be transported off to some ethereal heaven somewhere.

That's not really the biblical story, and if we're not careful, we focus so much on that, that we lose the bigger picture. Let's look at the verses together and then we're gonna break 'em apart. It's good to have you back from Barcelona, bill, um, for, I consider that the sufferings. Of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that's to be revealed to us for the creation.

Weights with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God for the [00:18:00] 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. That's what we want to cover today. We'll do it in three points. Point number one, we're going to look at verse 18. Very carefully. We'll spend most of our time there, the calculated weight of glory. And then we will deal with the second point creations, eager longing, and that's verses 19 through 21.

And then our third point before our points for home is the birth pangs of a new world. And that's Romans 8 22. So let's start with the calculated weight of glory. Paul begins this with this word zoiah [00:19:00] the Greek. For I consider that the sufferings of the present time aren't worth comparing with the glory that has revealed Zoiah.

Lo so my is, um, an interesting word. It was a word that was used for accounting. It's a word that Paul used earlier in Romans four. It's a word that Paul likes here. It's in the present tense. So you'll recall from our classes, one aspect of the present tense is this is an ongoing thing. This is not. Now only it's ongoing.

So we've got a, a present tense idea that Paul has an ongoing reasoned conviction. Uh, this should not be confused as a word that means, um, I'm doing the calculating right now. [00:20:00] This is a word that means I've done the calculating. I've done the, the rational thinking, and right now I'm convinced. I consider right now I'm in the position of someone who has thought about it, who has thought it through, who has made the calculations and come to these conclusions.

Paul never says anything in here about, um. I just feel this way. I, it, it, it, uh, how do you feel, Paul? Oh, I feel that the sufferings of this present time are not worth, yeah. When, when, uh, we were waiting on a verdict to come from, um, the social media trial, uh, all of the press was out in front of the [00:21:00] courthouse.

And the jury deliberated for nine days, and, and the judge had ruled that we had to be within 15 minutes of her courtroom. So when the jury made a decision, we had to get there and we had to rush there. Well, every time we'd come up, most of the time it was because the jury had a question and we had to come into court and figure out how to answer the question.

But every time we'd come, the press would just gaggle on us. The second we got out of the car, is there a verdict? Is there a verdict? Is there a verdict? 'cause they weren't allowed to take cameras in the courthouse, so they've gotta stay outside with their cameras. And the judge only allowed 13 press passes.

So only 13 press people got into the courtroom. So everybody else is just, yo, we wanna know. We want to know. We want to know. And we have press from France. We have press from all over the us. We have press from all over these different places. And so if we get out and then they, and we just say, nah, it's a note.

No, we, we just, uh, uh, no, we're just called in by the judge to deal with something. Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. And then one day [00:22:00] I get out of the car, I've got Rachel and Sarah with me. We're walking into the courthouse and the gaggle of press comes. Is it a note? Is it a. Nope, no note. Has the judge called? Nope.

Judge hadn't called us. What do we have a verdict? He said, I don't think so. Well, why are you here? I said, because of the TTO song. I feel it in my bones. Bones, bones, bones.

I mean, they, they, they, they did, that was culture shock. It was dis, you know, they, they, they've seen me out there praying with all these people. They've seen all of this other stuff and they just, they know who I am and they were like, you listen to tto. And I said, uh, uh, only when I'm running, but, um, feel it in my bones.

Now Paul's not [00:23:00] saying I feel it in my bones.

Paul says.

I have thought through all of this and right now I understand. I am rationally concluding logically, lo giah is the word we get logic from. I am logically deducing. That the sufferings of this present time. Now, Paul had used lo Gmy once before in Romans four, three. He used it in what we called then the heirs form.

PHE is the form, and he, that's where he said that, that the righteousness. Or that the faith of Abraham was counted or credited or low gizo to him as faith. But that's an heiress. We [00:24:00] call it in Greek, a punc tiller heiress, because it means that was a specific point in time that happened. It was credited to him as righteousness.

It's in his bank account. He can go forever. He can just consider that done. Paul's here using a present tense instead, but he's saying, look. I'm telling you right now, I am of the conclusion and this is enduring. It's gonna be true in five minutes. It's gonna be true when Lanier teaches it at CFPC in 2026, that the sufferings and in Greek here, the sufferings, it's plural.

Patha is a plural form. These are plural sufferings, and he adds the word the ta patha because in he's trying to say, this is real suffering. This is specific [00:25:00] sufferings. This ist a generic concept. These are real things. And Paul knew suffering and he'd know even more. He says, and, and everybody then knew the sufferings of this present time.

Now I love this two Greek words for time that you always need to remember. One is kairos, which is what's used here. The other is Kronos like chronology. Think of Kronos like it is 10 0 3. That's Kronos. That's. Calendar time in a sense, generally. Um, uh, um, but, but Kairos is time. That's more an emphasis on the, the age of when I was a kid.

There's a great group that I love to listen to, and they sing this Hokey Toki song, the Age of Aquarius. When the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter [00:26:00] align with Mars, then peace will guide the planets and love will rule the stars. This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius. Well, no, it really wasn't.

That's not the age of Aquarius, but he is talking about an age. He's talking about this time. He's talking about the sufferings of this era. What is the era? What is the time he's talking about? It is the time between resurrection of Christ and the consummation of his work. The end of days, the eschaton. It is the difference between the now and the, not yet.

It's this tense moment. Greek has this word ssis for, for sufferings. It's, it's this tension, this tightness that we feel here. It is the difference between the inauguration of glory with [00:27:00] Christ and Glory's full revelation. And Paul says, look, I've come to a reason, conclusion that the sufferings, the patha of this age, of this time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us now with the glory that is to be is the way they're translating the mellow here.

Mesan Mesan has this idea of, we, we saw it last couple of weeks ago. Uh, it's the idea of what's about to happen. It's, it's what's about to happen, and the, the, the, the sufferings of this present time aren't worth comparing with the glory that's about to happen. It's imminent. We're on the edge of it. We saw it in [00:28:00] Romans eight 13.

And it's so funny because it's a word that speaks to the future, but Paul puts it in the present tense. Because it's something that's always about to happen there. You're you. Well, we don't have time to do that. Sorry. But if you remember those slides here, those were them where he looks at the tension. He was using military at a future point, but he's put it in the present tense.

'cause you're on the very version of this. At a future point, it'll happen, but you're on the verge and that's this idea of it. He's doing the same thing here. You, there's a glory that we're right on the precipice. We're right on the edge. It's coming. It's gonna happen. It is to be done. And where's it going to be revealed?

Almost, uh, most translated to us. But the Greek a, um, ACE Hamas has, has Ace can mean in, but it also has the idea of N two. It's often translated into, [00:29:00] um, Tom Wright does a, a great job of this because he'll emphasize the N two. Aspect of the Ace Hamas there, Tom Wright says that the glory is not merely something we'll observe from the outside.

It's gonna be revealed in us and through us as the means of its disclosure and work in creation. God's. Here's what he's saying, that the idea that the coming glory will transform us. But it will also transform the whole created order through us. It's a manifestation of the idea in the Lord's prayer. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallow be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That's part of how God Jesus [00:30:00] taught us to pray. It is for Paul, a, a, a, a, a foundational principle that in the midst of suffering, he has calculated, he has reasoned, and come to a conclusion that it's incomparably worth it compared to the glory that's gonna be manifested in us and through us.

I mean, it's just a powerful verse. I almost. Dr. Hank almost just stayed on this first, the whole day, um, because I was thinking about the contrast. So one of the greatest, uh, theologies or philosophies of Paul's day was stoicism. Stoicism, uh, from the Greek word stoa because it was originally a philosophy that found itself in the halls of, of, uh, porches of, of, of [00:31:00] Athens, the stoa.

But the stoics, uh, there was a, a, a a a stoic at the time, a contemporary to Paul Seneca was his name. And Seneca, um, was, I mean, like dead on contemporary to Paul. He Seneca, uh, you know, Paul died under Nero, so did Seneca. Uh, Seneca was actually a tutor to Nero when Nero was a little kid. Uh, Seneca would be, uh, sent off and banished from Rome and brought back, we have a lot of his letters.

He was one of the, the, the classic stoics of the day. The church found his morality so akin to Pauls that, that the church itself in the a hundred, 200, 300 years later, uh, uh, developed, uh, letters between Paul and Seneca. Uh, they're, they're fake. Uh, they, they weren't authentic. But it was all part of the idea [00:32:00] that that the early church just really saw a bond between these two.

But there were some stark differences between the stoics of that day. And Paul, the great stoic discipline was this, you can low GI omi, you do low g mite, you do reasonably calculate and come to a conclusion. And the deliberate, rational weighing of your present experience, your suffering. The stoics would say you put it against a larger frame of reference, and if you put it against a larger frame of reference, you won't be mastered by it.

You don't let it run your life because you can't control it. Your, your larger frame of reference may be, here's a bucket of things you can control. Here's a bucket of things you can't control. If you are suffering from the bucket of things you can't control, then just recognize I can't control it and get on about [00:33:00] life.

If you're suffering because of a bucket of things you can control, control it. That was one of the stoic approaches. Another one, uh, which was very common, was the idea that, you know, here we are, we're at, uh, champion Forest Baptist Church, but if you zoom out from here and you get to outer space and you get as far away as you can, seriously, how big are your problems?

I can't even see your city. Much less your church, your house, your car, or you. And so the stoics would say in, when you put it against a larger frame of reference, your problems ain't all that much to bellyache about. So just get on with it, ignore it.

Life is hard and then you die. That's the bumper sticker for stoicism. [00:34:00] But look what Paul says. Paul uses the stoic omi. Paul uses the stoic. I've thought about it, but Paul does not say our sufferings pale in comparison to the grandeur of the universe. So quit bellyaching and being so narcissistic. Paul doesn't say that at all.

Paul says, I've reasoned it through and I've come to a conclusion that the sufferings of the present time aren't worth comparing with the glory that's gonna be revealed in us, that the glory that's gonna be revealed. He is not saying, Hey, uh, you know, get on with it. You're in a larger frame of reference.

Your sufferings are not, he's saying your sufferings are real. They just don't compare with what's coming.[00:35:00]

And he takes it even further and puts it in with creation because he says, and it ain't just you. Lanier creation itself has an eager longing. The creation waits with an eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. Now, some people historically have been bothered by Paul here. Said that, uh, man, was he, uh, uh, into animism or something, you know, where, where, uh, there's a spirit or a a, a presence in the elements, you know, where the, you know, be gentle with the rock because there's the spirit of the rock.

Within the rock. No, he's doing something called personification. He's treating the universe as if it's a person when it's not. Don't think that, that's so unusual to treat things that aren't people as people, because it happens quite often

and it's not [00:36:00] just in veggie tales. It happens in Isaiah where Isaiah talks about the mountains will clap, where uh, the Psalms talk about the rivers will clap. You know, the mountains will sing. So he's personifying creation, but he says, creation waits with eager longing. So if Isaiah can say in Isaiah 55, 12 that the mountains will sing and the trees will clap their hands, or, uh, we can read this in the sumps then, then we got this.

Now Paul puts together this magnificent word, apo cardo. It's three Greek words that he just combines, puts 'em all together and it's just brilliant. Aia. Now, what is aia? Well, remember, it's [00:37:00] important because this is part of Paul's ongoing reasoned conviction that the creation is waiting with an eager longing, an apo.

Cara Docia. APO means from Cara is your head.

Docia is going, here's Apo, Kara Docia. It's, you're craning your head. It's just, it's you craning your head. Creation's craning its head. It is just bending over, stretching. It's great personification. It's now, but what's, what is so interesting? This is gonna drive me buddy buggy. What is so interesting that creation would crane its [00:38:00] head to see it.

It's waiting. It's translated, eager, longing, cran its head. It's waiting with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. Who, who remember sons is generic here, not, not gendered in the sense that this is sons and daughters. In our language it is craning its head for the revealing of the sons of God.

In other words. We're in that same era, and, and next week we're gonna look at how Paul Ben brings the sufferings home to us. But the creation part here, it's looking, it's craning, its neck with an eagerness for when we will be all that we're meant to be.[00:39:00]

This is hugely important and it changes some of our thinking about what life after death is because what God is gonna do in and through us deals with the redemption of creation. I, when I was a kid, I used to think, you know, I'm all for going to heaven. It certainly beats the alternative. But I wonder if I won't get bored after like at least a week of singing, because evidently that's all we do.

We just get around the throne and we just sing. And I thought, you know, after about a week, I might wanna take a breather. And wasn't until I got older that I began to understand. That God, you know, go back to Eden before the sin. God intended humanity. To work with him and to fellowship with him in this, in a created world of perfection.

And we will get a redeemed body [00:40:00] and we will live in a redeemed world, and we will do redeemed work as we sing and worship and do other things in honor of the Lord. That's what, that's where we're headed. But creation itself was subjected to futility. This word futility. Paul sticks it at the beginning of the sentence 'cause it's so important.

He says, for futility

met OTI Here. Metta OTI futility met is not a new word for Paul. It's not a new word for us. If we were reading our Old Testament in Greek, which Paul did and taught from and quoted because it's a huge word in the book of Ecclesiastes, it translates the Hebrew word he, vanity of vanities, says the preacher vanity of [00:41:00] vanities all is vanity.

You can see ma ma uh, ate tone. Mate taste. Ion mate taste. He's, it's vanity. Vanity. He, he, he, he, what he's saying is, this creation was meant to be gorgeous, wonderful, satisfying edenic. It was, it was utopia.

And after the fall. Is not what this world and creation it was meant to be. Creation itself has been subjected to this vanity, to this uselessness, to this futility, and it didn't happen willingly. It wasn't creation. Say, Hey, I'd like to do that. This is because of him who subjected it in. Hope that the creation itself will be set [00:42:00] free from its bondage.

To corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. See, this is all part of what we're about here. We're we're in that middle age, but we're supposed to be working to show what this world will be become. Israel didn't eat pork, wasn't supposed to eat pork. One reason was to show themselves different than the Philistines and everybody else.

And to say, we're set aside and dedicated to God. And then maybe somebody will say, why? So that we can be a light under the nations. Let us tell you about Yahweh. Let us tell you about, you know, there were ways that God, you circumcised the Jewish boys so that they are set aside. And why are you circumcised?

Because God has set us aside. He's called us with a very specific job from us. It's gonna come a Messiah. That's gonna liberate [00:43:00] everyone and restore order and, and, and, and those were things that Israel, well, you and I have things that we're earmarked to be, that make us a light set upon a hill. We're supposed to love our brothers in ways that others don't.

Who's my brother? Love our neighbors. Who's our neighbor? It includes the Samaritan. It includes someone of a different skin color. It includes someone from a different country. It includes if we're not moved by what's happening in Ukraine, if we're not moved by what's happening in the Middle East, if we're not moved by what's happening in certain areas of Africa, if we're not moved by what's happening in North Korea, if we're not moved by what's happening in China, then we're not either attentive.

Or we're not understanding what our job is, is to try to make this world something better than it is when there's a catastrophe. When a hurricane rips through, we should be the ones rushing there as the church, which we do so well. By the way, can I just thank you guys? I'd love being at a multicultural church.

I'm not [00:44:00] preaching at you. I'm preaching at the people on the internet. You listen to me. You need to be like my friends here.

But Paul is saying God's solution to this is bigger than just get you saved. God is gonna undo sin on a cosmic level, and what we see right now is creation's, eager longing, and the birth pains of a new world. Paul says is the last verse we'll look at today. We know the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.

Now we've been talking about how Paul puts words together. And I love the way he does it. And sometimes he just adds things to words because he wants to emphasize something. And one of those, we talked about it a few weeks ago, maybe it was last week, is where, where he'll take soon SUN in the Greek Sigma, oops, salon new.

And he'll take, um, uh, [00:45:00] uh, soon. And, and sometimes it's SUM, sometimes it's just su because it depends on the Greek letters that follow it and whether they're labels and all of this kind of stuff. Ignore all of that. But that su. You see it here in two places. Here and here. This SU means together with, and Paul's saying that we are with the earth suffering right now.

Yeah. Next week we're gonna transition to our part of the suffering where he focuses on that. But we're part of this. We are suffering. The whole of creation is groaning together with us. God's gonna undo sin in us, the effects of sin in us, and God's gonna undo the effects of sin and creation, and we're gonna be part of that redemption of creation.

And creation's eagerly [00:46:00] waiting for this revelation of us as the children of God in the fullness of who we can be. And this is all part of why Paul has reasoned that suffering is worth it for now because of what's coming even here. The pains of childbirth, that means hurting with someone. That's the definition of childbirth, hurting with someone.

Uh, if you've ever, um, experienced giving birth to a child, uh, it's can be a painful process, I am told. But Pastor Jarret one time said that it takes a woman who has experienced natural childbirth to understand how tough it is to be a man with a head cold.

Um.

We've hurt together [00:47:00] with creation, and the neat part about it is it's childbirth that Paul's using as his illustration. That's the start of something new. That's the start of something good. You don't go to uh uh, see a healthy baby that's just been born and bring flowers of mourning. It's a time for rejoicing.

The whole creation's been groaning together in the pains of childbirth up until now, but we know that something better is coming. So I started this out. How can you endure? What can you endure? If you know something great is coming in the future,

I think you can endure a lot. You can endure the. Premature loss of a dear husband. You can endure the loss of a job. [00:48:00] You can endure alienation. You can endure failed efforts. You can re, you can endure disappointing children. You can endure, um, frustration over life. You can endure frustration over yourself.

You can endure so much suffering. You can endure economic hardship. You can endure being where you don't wanna be having the schedule you don't wanna have. You can endure health problems. You can endure bewilderment over what to do. You can endure so much if you have reasoned and calculated and determined that something good is coming in the future.

Which gets us to our points for home Point. For home. Number one, you're allowed to do the math. [00:49:00] You're allowed to think it through. You're allowed to pray about it. You're allowed to, to, to, to try to reason through what you're going through. Paul says, lo Omi. I consider that that means he has thought it through and he has come to a rational conclusion.

You don't have to live by how you feel. You don't have to let the feelings that come from suffering Trump what you know to be true, and you can, even if you don't feel it. You can still live it.

Number two,

this world is in labor. It's groaning with us. [00:50:00] God is not working on destroying who you are and what you're doing when you are his and you're doing his will. He's looking to build you up. He's looking to provide for you. He's looking to secure for you. I love the 23rd Psalm. There's a passage in there. He makes me lie down in green pastures in the Hebrew.

It's a verb form called the hi fill. God makes you do it if you're following the shepherd. You may think, oh, the grass is pretty good over there, but no, he's gonna make you lie down in green pastures. And the word for green there is the fresh, nutritious grass. It's the same word used in Genesis in the creation story.

It's, it's the fresh, nutritious grass. That's where God's gonna [00:51:00] make you. That's the kind of God we have. And sometimes suffering is. The maternity ward, but you're gonna get a kid out of it, and it's gonna be a great kid who's gonna pay for your retirement

point for home. Number three. Redemption is bigger than you thought. Paul is saying. Creation itself will be set free. God is gonna do something incredible in and through us. We're knit into this process, and we get to start on it now. When you see someone hurting, you get to help. When you see someone in need, you get to help.

When you see a crisis here or across the border or across the ocean, or on the other [00:52:00] side of the world. If you can do nothing more than pray, you still pray because you get to help. We should care deeply about every opportunity we have to show the love and compassion of God who is bringing through the maternity ward something greater.

So with that, here's your lunch topic and then we'll pray and be done. If you're eating lunch with anybody. Then, uh, take a picture of this if you want to, but here's an idea for you to talk about over lunch. Where in your own life, where in your own life right now, do you need to reframe something that you've been reading as a decline?

Oh, man, my body's falling apart into something that you should be reading as labor man, God is getting ready to give me a, a new body. I can tell 'cause this one's about [00:53:00] gone.

I'm so excited for that glorified body. God's getting ready man. I can tell he is. He is a lot closer now than he used to be. What was it? Uh, my brother-in-law, Kevin Roberts, heard from his doctor, his doctor. Kevin, you need to take care of yourself because after 40 your parts are outta warranty. I've kept that in mind.

Yeah. You know, my parts been outta warranty for a long time, so, but, but I don't need to see that as decline. That's labor. God's getting ready to do something incredible. I've thought it through. I've come to that reasoned conclusion. Low get. So my. Father in the name of Jesus, I ask you to bless everyone who hears this message and instill in us this confident awareness and expectation of what glory you're going to put in and through us, by the blood of Christ, by the redemption we have [00:54:00] as you raise us and work through us to bring the original creation you had in mind.

Those centuries and eons ago, we long to praise you for eternity. We long to be yours for eternity. We long to work for you for eternity. We do see dimly in the mirror now, but we long to see fully even as we've been fully seen. So we declare in the name of Jesus in this time of labor that we're confident of your glory.

And so we rejoice. Amen.