Let the Shepherd Lead

Originally Proclaimed July 15, 2018

Intro:

• As a preteen, I discovered J.R.R Tolkien’s The Hobbit and then the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
• Much to my delight, they transported me into the world of Middle Earth with Hobbits and Dwarves; Men and Elves as well as the darker forces of orcs, trolls, and wraiths.
• The trilogy focused on the long and arduous journey to destroy in the fires of Mount Doom the “one ring”, the ring of power. Fashioned in the ancient past and utilized to dominate the world by the great enemy, Sauron, the ring had to be destroyed before he might capture it and return to power.
• Once the decision is made for the good people of Middle Earth to embark upon the long and arduous journey to destroy this ring, volunteers were called on to take up the task. Tolkien beautifully writes these words,
  • No one answered. The noon-bell rang. Still no one spoke. Frodo glanced at all the faces but they were not turned to him. All the Council sat with downcast eyes, as if in deep thought. A great dread fell on him, as if he was awaiting the pronouncement of some doom that he had long foreseen and vainly hoped might after all never be spoken. An overwhelming longing to rest and remain at peace by Bilbo’s side in Rivendell filled all his heart. At last with an effort he spoke, and wondered to hear his own words, as if some other will was using his small voice. ” I will take the ring,” he said, “though I do not know the way.”

Hook:

• In just that one paragraph Tolkien captures the essence of the struggle we all face when faced with suffering.
  • The downcast eyes of all available; the great dread and sense of doom surely weighs upon each of us. Suffering is certainly coming. The dread and doom increases as we come closer and closer to the reality of our death. If death is the ultimate end, then suffering looms large on our path.
  • The ideal existence at the elvish outpost of Rivendell, stood as a promise of the long and eternally ideal existence for those in Middle Earth. Frodo felt an overwhelming longing to rest and remain in that peace in that place.
• It is the consideration of those two ends: eternal death or eternal peace; which determines the course of each life.
• All the Spirit’s work to awaken us to the reality of a better life comes to a head when we must decide how we will face suffering.
• My hope today is to encourage you with a principle and three supporting reasons that it will help you to face the suffering in your life.

Message Points:

• Verse eighteen sits roughly at the midpoint of our exploration of this chapter.
  • Up to this verse the chapter has focused our attention on the grand difference the Spirit of God makes in us. His transformation of us works its way out in all kinds of unexpected and exciting ways.
  • Now in these verses Paul turns his attention to the present life. Paul knows that this is a life of suffering.
• Today we live in a world separated from a great deal of suffering. Imagine with me how something as common as a trip to the grocery store separates us from some of the suffering of this life.
  • Rather than walking to the store, we hop into our climate controlled cars and in just a few minutes arrive at our destination.
  • If our store is the Aldi, we cannot fool with searching for the quarter required to retrieve our buggy so we conveniently whip it out of our Aldi quarter cozy – attached to our key ring.
  • Upon entering into the climate controlled store we can quickly move from the packaged goods to produce, onto dairy, meats, and frozen foods. We can even sneak a peek at some of the seasonal items that may add to our ease.
    • We never have to think about those that worked to produce the packaged goods.
    • We do not have to consider the back breaking labor of farmers, we merely look at their produce.
    • We do not have to consider the arduous labor that goes into daily milking cows and turning that product into all the dairy products we love.
    • We certainly do not have to think of the uncomfortable and difficult work at the slaughterhouse that butchered the meat for our tables.
  • We check out and expect that no matter how long that person has been working, or what may be going on in their lives that they do their jobs efficiently and courteously. If they fail to display these attributes we will not consider their suffering, but immediately begin to complain about they disrupted an otherwise pleasant trip to the store.
  • Rather than carrying our goods all the way home in our hands, we load them into our climate controlled cars, ride the few short minutes, and honk the horn for help to unload them.
• We do not want to think about the daily suffering that makes our comfortable and convenient lives possible.
  • It is when suffering is unavoidable that we finally begrudgingly consider it.
  • When our parents make us help with chores or we begin a new job the labor makes us consider suffering.
  • When we have that tremendous test or project at work, the complexity and difficulty force us to think about the suffering.
  • When we have too much to do and too little time the crunch brings up our suffering.
  • When our children announce news that shatters our dreams or the doctor walks in and says a word like “cancer” the shock forces us to think of suffering.
  • When that prolonged, messy sadness overcomes our days and living becomes a trial, the darkness casts a shadow on our lives that makes us think of suffering.
• It is at those moments and so many more that we should turn back to Romans 8:18, looking to that underlined verse in our Bibles and seeing Paul’s principle for facing the suffering of this life.
• This is Paul’s principle in a nutshell and it is our only main point today: Our destination’s divine glory redeems the agony of our suffering (8:18).
  • Notice how he comes to this reality. Paul begins the verse by speaking in the first person.
  • In other words he is giving a word of testimony here, as a believer who had been worn out, persecuted and put into prison, flogged and beaten almost to death, and chased out of more towns that we could count.
  • Paul knew suffering! Unlike our missionaries and church planters today there were no mission boards to support him, so he even had to work and labor each day as a tent-maker for his meager existence.
  • He utilizes phrase “consider our present sufferings”.
    • Consideration is not merely an opinion. Paul is saying that he has reasoned or weighed; he has an experiential knowledge in other words that tells him something about his sufferings.
    • Further the word present that we see in front of sufferings correlates in the original language with a phrase Paul uses often that we translate in “this present age”. Thus we should understand not our individual sufferings, but the types of suffering in this fallen age after the advent of Christ.
    • In other words, Paul is making it clear that he is speaking not only of the ordinary suffering that we might face by living. He is speaking as well of the suffering that there is for being a Christin in this world.
  • He then goes on to say there is not comparison between sufferings with “the glory that will be revealed in us.”
    • These words are similar to Paul’s words in 2 Cor. 4:17 which says, “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all”.
    • Paul is saying that if we weigh a glorious eternity and the present moment, eternity will always weigh more.
    • Also notice that the glorious eternity “will be revealed”. While this appears to be a normal phrase to us, in Greek it is called a periphrastic phrase and is most unusual. Such phrases are used for emphasis, and here Paul is using the phrase to communicate the certainty of a future event as if it had already occurred.
    • Finally, glory in the sense Paul uses it here as something to be revealed in us, refers to our final state.
      • It is to be a time and season when we are finally made like in our nature the majestic nature of God in Christ.
      • The brightness, splendor, radiance, greatness, splendor, fame recognition, renown, honor, and prestige that describes God’s glory according to a lexicon will certainly be something that we share.
  • So in essence Paul’s principle for life is to always consider what lies ahead for us.
    • Think for a moment at the difference that would make in your suffering.
    • As a believer your labors can be directed towards a higher and a better purpose. That purpose is why Christians have spoken of “calling” or vocation not merely for clergy but also for every lay person.
    • Difficulty that comes in life need not overwhelm or burden us. We have the freedom to do our best because God has secured our future.
    • The brevity of life in this age need not bother us because God has promised us an eternal existence. We can live life to the fullest without fear of death whenever it might come because of our eternal life.
    • No matter what shock may enter our lives we can be sure that it did not surprise a God who has enough power to provide our new life.
    • And whatever shadows may befall us not, when our Savior shines the light of life into the darkest corners showing the way to eternal life.
    • If our glorious destination as believers is what looms large in our minds, we will willingly enter into suffering as Frodo did in the Lord of the Rings, rather than merely cower in the face of death.
• Friends, I have come to believe from this passage that God chooses to redeem our suffering rather than remove it from our lives.
  • Redemption as we read about it in the Old Testament is a buying back of something that belongs to someone else.
  • God chooses to buy back from us our faithfulness in suffering to use for His glory.
  • Thus, suffering is an enemy, but not the same kind of enemy as sin.
    • Sin is a deadly enemy that can separate us from God in Christ.
    • Suffering is a distracting and complicating enemy that God can strengthen us to overcome.
    • Sin is like a bomb immediately destructive upon impact. Suffering is a heavy burden. As we carry it there will be hardships, but one day we will be able to lay it down.
    • Our principle states that “Our destination’s divine glory redeems the agony of our suffering.” So, to put this together, God buy back or redeems our suffering by delivering us into a glorious future.
• While this principle could stand on its own, Paul supports it with the rest of the verses in our passage this morning. These verses relate three specific reasons for us to focus upon our redemption in this life.
• The majority of the rest of this passage speaks about Creation. Why is Paul is so concerned with discussing Creation when he wants to encourage us to choose to enter into this present suffering?
  • I submit to you that Paul brings up creation for two distinct reasons. First he wants to remind us that Christ came, lived, died and rose again that we might have a Material redemption.
    • Look with me at what these verses say.
    • Verse nineteen tells us that creation waits eagerly for us to be revealed as children of God.
    • Verse twenty begins to tell us why.
      • Creation was subjected as the NIV says to frustration or as other translations may relate futility. This word means emptiness or purposelessness. In other words, if the only reason for life is to do something until you die, the emptiness of that is frustrating.
      • And notice that Creation did not have a choice in the matter.
        • We might think that it was humanity that forced Creation’s hand, but look carefully at verse twenty.
        • We might also consider Satan, but notice that whoever did this had a far reaching hope spelled out for us in verse 21.
        • It must be God who allowed Creation to become subject to the emptiness of death with a very specific a hope.
    • Verse 21 then describes God’s hope for creation – it is a hope for redemption.
      • Notice that God’s hope for Creation is tied to his hope for humanity.
      • God wants Creation to be eternally liberated from decay and ultimately death in the same way that he wants humanity to be free from sin and death.
      • Thus to achieve this God allowed suffering and death into this world so that Christ could come and eternally remove from us suffering and death.
    • Thus the suffering Creation has been through according to verse 22 is like that of a mother whose “groaning” is purposeful and eventually fruitful.
    • This is the point to notice friends. Just as a mother’s suffering and “groaning” brings for a material reward in the form of that baby; so too will our suffering and Creation’s suffering bring for a material reward. What is Creations reward?
      • God promises to materially redeem all of Creation.
      • God’s plan is not to merely redeem out of this existence all believers and then leave this planet to desolation or annihilation.
      • God’s future for earth is not the pockmarked planted marred by suffering and sin. Isaiah 66 and Revelation 22 promise us a New Heaven and Earth.
      • In the same way that God took the void formless earth in Genesis he will take our broken world and will reform it.
      • Randy Alcorn in his book on Heaven describes the material, physical way that God will redeem this planet. It will become in God’s hands “Heaven on Earth”.
      • God repays the earth by restoring and reforming it into Heaven on Earth where the children of God can dwell with Him.
      • If God cares enough about this planet to reform it from its suffering how much more will he reform us?
  • This leads to our second reason for Paul bringing up creation. The material redemption that Creation will one day see began in the bodily redemption of our Savior Jesus Christ.
    • Look at Verse 23 at the very end. There we read that we eagerly await “the redemption of our bodies”. If we are already spiritually saved and secure because of what Christ has done for us, this must mean that we still wait for the temporal redemption of our physical bodies.
    • Think of Christ – His suffering, the cruel passion he endured upon that tree, the inglorious burial in a borrowed tomb. On the third day, what came forth? Was it an ethereal, wispy spirit or a flesh and blood body? Did he not eat with his disciples again, and did he not challenge one of them to even place his hands into his wounds?
    • The resurrected Christ is the firstborn over death – His resurrected life is the first fruit of this new age.
    • In the same manner that Christ’s body was redeemed, albeit changed, we can look forward to the redemption of our bodies in the resurrection.
    • That is why burial is important to Christians. When we place the remains in the ground, just as Jesus’ remains were placed in the ground, we do so in faith that the body, not merely the spirit will one day be raised.
    • God repays us for all the suffering we endured in this body by redeeming and reforming our bodies. But the best is still yet to be considered.
  • That Jesus rose materially, in a redeemed body also leads us to consider the redemption of our relationship with God.
    • Jesus’ resurrection displayed that God accepted his sacrifice upon the cross for our sin. His relationship with His Father, broken by the weight of the sin of the world on him was redeemed.
    • Creation’s redemption was intended so that the children of God might again walk with him upon a new Heaven on Earth.
    • Verse 23 continues by showing us that our redeemed relationship with God is only a taste of what is to come.
    • Notice that verse 23 says that we “who have the first fruits of the Spirit.” The Spirit in doing his work to convert us has brought to us a taste of the new life that there is in Christ.
    • But notice that the taste of new life in Christ is enough to make us “groan” in ways similar to creation. Paul is wanting to connect our suffering to the purposeful suffering of Creation with this word. Our suffering has a meaning, a purpose, and will bring forth something.
    • Then as was mentioned before, the verse says that we are waiting for adoption as sons and redemption of our bodies.
    • Our current condition of salvation is but a taste of the joy there will be when we are fully redeemed.
    • The relationship we have with God for eternity will forever make our suffering seem worthwhile, in the same way a mother’s suffering is worthwhile when she holds her Child.

Conclusion:

• God offers to redeem you suffering with his promise to deliver you into a new relationship and life with Him.
• But if you choose to come to Him, know you will carry some suffering in this life, just as Jesus did.
• In light of the glorious reward the suffering is not even comparable.