Romans 8:18-39
18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. 19 For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of Godto be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that[h] the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all.Who hopes for what they already have? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who[i]have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstbornamong many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
More Than Conquerors31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any chargeagainst those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:“For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”[j]37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[k] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Early
in my ministry, I experienced one of the worst moments of my ministry.
I
was visiting the home of some church members. The family had just experienced
the tragic loss of a young member of their family. A nephew, six years old, had
been on his way to school when a drunk driver ran over and killed the child.
It
was one of those terrible moments that unites a community in its grief. A young
child, bright and handsome, snuffed out in a moment by a dirty town drunk.
There was no justice in the tragedy. There was no fairness.
When
I visited the family who were members of my church -- the aunt and uncle of the
child who had died, the uncle told me, "Well, preacher, it was God's will.
I have to believe it was God's will, it is the only comfort I have."
I
look back on that experience as a bad experience, because I know now what I was
just beginning to suspect those years ago, and that is that this man's comfort
was probably a lie.
For
the life of me, I simply could not believe that God had been sitting in heaven
and decided that what the world needed was for the Almighty to make a grown man
become a drunk. For God to put that drunk behind the wheel of a car and to have
that mortal drive down the road until he reached the child, whereupon God made
the drunk turn at just the right moment and hit and mutilate and kill that poor
child.
"It
is the will of God!" -- That is the comfortable lie.
A
child is born with a serious defect.
"It
was God's will," someone will say, but is that true?
A
young father is
killed by a disease that robs his
heart of the ability to sustain his
life, and he dies just days before his wife gives birth
to a son "It was God's will," someone will
say, but is that true?
A
family business is bankrupt. God's will?
In
the earliest teachings of the Old Testament, no one would ever look at suffering
and declare it to be the will of God. It was, instead, the result of evil in the
world. It was in every sense, something that was contrary to the will of God.
In
the book of Job, the man Job suffers from a painful
disease and is visited
by friends, one of whom reflects this early theology that suffering
is caused by evil. This friend tells Job, “I have seen people
plow fields of evil and plant wickedness and evil. Like a storm God destroys
them in his anger...Evil does not grow in the soil, nor does trouble grow out
of the ground. NO! Man brings trouble on
himself." (Job 4:8-9,5:6-7)
Why
is there suffering? Is it God's will?
No,
says the friend of Job, suffering is the result of the evil we do.
The
purpose behind this kind of suffering was to draw people BACK to God.
In
Jeremiah, the voice of God is heard saying, “I will abandon my people until
they have suffered enough for their sins and come looking for me. Perhaps in their suffering they will try to
find me." (Jeremiah 6:15)
There are times when suffering is caused by the evil we do. Our sins bring the
suffering upon us.
So
forget about saying “it was God's will that poor Joe Blow suffered.' Now we can say, “Poor Joe must have sinned
mighty badly. Wonder which
commandment he broke to suffer this
badly."
But
is
this always the case with suffering?
The
child on the bike who is killed by the drunk driver --- what sins did he commit? Or did his father commit
some sin that caused God to kill the son in order to draw a wayward sinful
father back to the Almighty.
That
is not an original question. In Luke’s
Gospel, a group of people approached Jesus with this issue. Reminding him of
the time when a group of devoted Galileans went to make a sacrifice to God and
Pilate decided to sacrifice them, they wondered if this meant that they were
worse sinners than anyone else.
"No
indeed,” was Christ’s answer. (Luke
13:lff) In fact,
referring again to Job's situation, while
one of his friends declares that
people suffer because of their sins, we know that Job
was not suffering for such a reason.
The opening passages of that book take us behind the scenes so that we
can read about the conversation between God and Satan.
Job
is described as a good man; "careful not to do anything evil" (Job
1:1). God himself tells Satan,
"There is no one on earth as faithful and good as Job is. He worships me
and is careful not to do anything
evil." (Job 1:8)
And
yet, Job suffered terribly -- suffering in ways few of us must endure.
Which
raises an interesting question. If
suffering is caused by the evil we do, why do the righteous have to suffer and
why do the bad guys often end up on top of the world?
In
the Old Testament, the psalmist sang "I nearly lost confidence; my faith
was almost gone because I was jealous of the proud when I saw that things go
well for the wicked. They do not suffer
pain; they are strong and healthy. They
do not suffer as other people do; they do not have the troubles others
have." (Psalm 73:1-5)
…………………….
>>>>>>>>>>
You
see, this thing about suffering is a complicated matter -- as complicated as
life itself. Why do we think
that there is a simple answer to the issue of human suffering? Why do we
think that there is simply ONE answer as to why terrible things happen to us?
It
is the will of God," someone will say. And they may be right. Or they may
be terribly wrong.
"It
was because of the sins they did," someone will say. And they may be
right. Or they may be terribly wrong.
"It
is because of the nature of evil in the world," someone will say. And they
may be right. Or in that particular moment they may be terribly wrong.
We
look at suffering and we want to know WHY this had to happen. Maybe it was
God's will. Maybe it was Satan’s. Maybe it was my own fault and no one else’s.
When get out of bed in the middle of the night and I stump my toe in the
darkness it was not so much God's decision or Satan’s --it was due to the fact
that I was just too lazy to turn the light on.
We want to know something about suffering. And the one great thing that we want to know
is WHY.
And
it is the one great thing that we cannot always know.
When
a child is hit by a car driven by a drunk,
and the child with a flash of understanding knows that he is about to
breath his last breath -- that child does
not know why. It is one great thing he will not know.
When
the mother hears the news from the police officer that her child is dead, she and her husband will have a lifetime to
consider the question that their son
may have considered in only the last
instant of life --why? But they will not
know. They may find comfort in saying,
“It was God's will." Or they
may inflict a
greater pain upon themselves by
producing a needless guilt, believing that it
was their own sins that caused their child's death.
But the fact is, this is one great thing they will never know.
God’s
will, result of evil, product of sin?
Who
knows? All they know for sure is that their child suffered, and they now
suffer.
Suffering
is a part of our life. It is woven into
the fabric of our being and into the texture of human history and none of us avoids
it. The Old Testament Psalm says,
"Seventy years is all we have --eighty years if we are strong; and yet all they bring us
is trouble and sorrow; life is soon over
and we are gone." (Psalm 90:10)
A life
full of trouble. Even the best of us
have friends who die. Relatives who are
sick. Even the wealthiest among us have financial fears that keep us awake at
nights.
And
each of us is being stalked by death.
At some future time, we will die.
We
suffer. Our loved ones suffer. And there is never any certainty as to why
these things happen. The Bible gives
many reasons behind the issue of human pain,
and any one of these reasons may apply to our particular troubles -- but
who is to say which reason?
Man
– what a depressing sermon this turned out to be!
But in our
New Testament lesson from Paul's
letter to the Romans is a message of comfort to everyone of us who has ever lost a loved one, or
received a distressing report from our own doctor, or struggled
with the pain of day to day living.
There
is one great thing that Paul is able to know.
In the midst of suffering, he may not know why -- God’s will, or Satan's
temptation -- but there is one thing that Paul does know -- there is one thing
that he can know -- one thing that we can know.
In
his letter Paul says, "I am certain that nothing can separate us from God's love: neither death nor life,
neither angels nor other heavenly rulers or powers, neither the present nor the
future, neither the world above nor the world below. There is nothing in all
creation that will ever be able to separate us from the love of God which is
ours through Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:37-39)
This
beautiful statement comes at the conclusion of a section in which Paul deals with
suffering. He begins that section by saying, "I consider what we suffer at
this present time cannot be compared at all with the glory that is going to be
revealed to us."
Easy
for Paul to say, we may think to ourselves. After all, Paul was a saint of a
man. What did he know of suffering? Did
he ever lose a child to the careless driving of a drunk, or be told by a doctor
that the spot on his x-ray is cancer, or have his marriage dissolve at the end
of years of discord?
No.
But
Paul did know what he was talking about when he used the word "suffering." In one of his letters, Paul listed his own
unique sufferings:
"I
have worked ... I have been in prison
·
... I have been
whipped
·
... I have
been near death
·
Five times
I was given the 39 lashes by the
Jews
·
... Three times
I was whipped by the Romans, once I was stoned.
·
I have been in three
shipwrecks, and once I spent 24 hours in the water. In my
many travels
·
I have been
in danger from floods and from robbers,
·
in danger from fellow
Jews and from Gentiles;
·
there have been
dangers in the cities, dangers in the
wilds, dangers on the high
seas, and
·
dangers from false
friends.
·
There has been
work and toil,
·
often I have gone
without sleep;
·
I have been
hungry
·
and thirsty;
·
I have often
been without enough
food,
·
Shelter or
clothing.
·
And not to mention
other things, every day I am under the pressure of my concern for all the
churches."
Paul
knew suffering. Perhaps not the same
pain as you, or me, but that is true of anyone. Each of us lives a different
life, and we each suffer in a different manner.
Paul
suffered greatly. And yet, he still
wrote in our New Testament lesson, “In all things, God works for good with
those who love him." (Romans 8:28).
You see, Paul
knew that knowing WHY he suffered
was not nearly
so important as something else
to be known.
The
one great thing that we can know is that
God is with us in
our suffering, and therefore, our
suffering cannot defeat
us, separating us from the love and comfort we can have in
Christ. Again, our Scripture this
morning said, “What can separate us from the love of Christ? Can trouble do it, or hardship, or
persecution, or hunger or poverty or danger or death? No, in all these things we have complete
victory through him who loved us! I am
certain that nothing can separate us from his great love." (Romans 8:34-38)
In
the end, there is only one great thing that we can know about our
suffering. We might learn why we
suffer. We might be able to see what good God is able to work through our
suffering. But we might not. But one great thing we can definitely know is
Jesus Christ, the crucified, the one who suffered, is with us. And none of the suffering we endure can
separate us from His love and comfort.
Copyright Maynard Pittendreigh, 2014
