And yet they were experiencing social ostracism because of their lifestyle change.
They knew economic hardship due to loss of income.
They experienced religious pressures because of the prevalent pagan idolatry.
And they knew the meaning of rejection and misunderstanding in their families because
of Jesus Christ.
These are the same kinds of subtle pressures and quiet sufferings which all godly Christians
endure from time to time.
We learn in verse 17 that suffering is in the first place sure.
He says, if indeed we suffer with Him.
The idea is that it is an assumption.
The if is not actually a doubt, it's an assumption that we will suffer with Him.
If as is the case we suffer with Him is Paul's thought here.
Suffering is sure.
But notice also that suffering is shared.
We suffer with Christ.
The apostle Paul wrote to the Philippians and he said to them, for it is graciously
given for Christ's sake that you might suffer with Him.
And not only believe on Him, but that you might suffer with Him.
That too is the gracious gift of God and honor, the highest privilege that we can have is
that we might endure suffering because of our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Our suffering is shared with Christ.
And he says that our suffering is significant because it leads to glory.
Just as surely as travail leads to childbirth, so suffering leads to glory.
Not a meritorious kind of glory, a suffering rather do we endure, but a preparatory suffering.
Our suffering is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory, which the apostle says in
2 Corinthians 4 verses 17 and 18 is not even worthy to be compared to the sufferings we
have now.
He says that glory is so great.
It is so majestic.
It is so awesome to consider that it's not even worthy to put into the same scales with
a little bit of temporal suffering that we have in this world.
Our suffering is sure, our suffering is shared, our suffering is significant.
And whether our suffering be because we are Christians or we suffer the kinds of disappointments,
hardships, uncertainty, and pain that all people know, in the midst of our suffering
we sometimes forget what God has in store for us in the future.
That failure to remember causes us to lose a sharp spiritual focus so that we can develop
a spiritual myopia, a short-sightedness, so that we lose the longer, more distant view
of things.
I hope as we look at this text tonight that we will have an eye check, that we will check
our distant vision, perhaps sharpen our focus as we consider the culmination of God's calling
in our lives, the glory which is to come.
Now this was on Paul's mind.
This was not something that he wrote about without thought.
He says in verse 18, for I consider, I reckon, he says.
Paul is saying after careful thought, after having given this a great deal of prayerful
introspection, he says, this is my fixed conclusion.
What is that, Paul?
That the present time and the suffering that we have now is not worthy to be compared to
the glory to be revealed in us.
He says here that we should consider the coming glory that we will have with Jesus Christ
and two truths about it.
The first truth about the coming glory is that it is the hope of creation.
In verses 19 through 22, the apostle gives us a paragraph regarding what is sometimes
called cosmic soteriology.
It is a word about the salvation of the cosmos, the universe that God has created.
He explains to us that the universe, that the creation is right now suffering.
It is suffering because of Adam's sin.
We know this from Genesis chapter 3.
He says in verse 20 that the creation was subjected to futility.
The word futility here comes from a verb that means to seek without finding anything.
The idea in the word is that it involves an inability to reach a goal, a coming short
of achieving one's potential.
It's a frustration.
He says that the creation around us, both animate and inanimate, is frustrated.
It is experiencing futility.
And that because of no fault of its own.
It has been brought down to that point of frustration by God Himself.
The creation originally given to Adam was a creation that was perfect.
As you and I look around today, we see the suffering of animals.
We see the depletion of resources.
We observe the imbalance of natural forces, the pollution of our ecology, the extinction
of some kinds of life.
As we observe all of that, we have to realize that that exists because of our sin.
The perfect creation was brought down and subjected to all of that travail and suffering
and futility because of the sin of humankind.
You say, well, why did God do that?
Why did God bring the creation down when Adam fell into sin?
Well, the answer to that is He did it so that man might still be able to have a certain
rule over it.
You see, the environment was made to fit a fallen king.
He says that the creation now groans.
It waits eagerly, He says in verse 19, for the revealing of the sons of God.
That subjection to futility was one that was made in hope.
The creation itself will one day share in redeemed mankind's deliverance from sin.
Eventually, there will be a transformation in the creation corresponding to the Christian's
redemption.
He says in verse 2 that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free.
That very same verb is used by God in the text here regarding the creation.
It is eagerly looking forward to its own liberation, its own freedom from the futility to which
it has been subjected by God.
It longs for that day.
It is anticipating eagerly the freedom that is known by God's dear children.
You say, when will that be?
The answer to that is during the millennium.
In Acts 3, 21, it is called the period of restoration of all things.
Jesus refers to it in Matthew 19, 28 as the regeneration.
In the millennial reign of Jesus Christ, the creation itself will experience the liberation
for which it longs now.
Ultimately, God will fashion it anew into a new heaven and a new earth.
But understand that the creation that was made good now groans as it too eagerly awaits
the coming glory.
The coming glory is the hope of creation.
But secondly, it is the hope of the Christian, the hope of the Christian.
The apostle says in verse 23, not only does the creation grow as though it were in childbirth,
but he says, we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan
within ourselves.
Notice that he is speaking to those who have what he calls the first fruits of the Spirit.
Most of you probably know, but it bears repeating, the first fruits is a term, a biblical term
that was drawn from agriculture in that day.
It referred to the first of the harvest.
It was the first cutting, the first pieces of fruit.
The first evidence that the harvest was now ripened.
It was the pledge of all that was to come.
There was a feast in Israel called the feast of first fruits.
At that time, at the beginning of harvest, they were to go into their barley fields and
to cut down sheaves of barley to bring that then to the temple and to wave it before the
Lord.
That was an offering of first fruits.
What it symbolized was that just as they presented the first fruits to the Lord, they recognized
that all of the harvest also belonged to him.
Now this term first fruits is used in the New Testament of Christ.
In 1 Corinthians 15-20 it says, now Christ has been raised from the dead the first fruits
of those who are asleep.
He's the first of his kind in his resurrection body.
He represents what all of us will one day be who belong to him.
He's the first fruits of that resurrection.
The term is also used of Christians.
For example, James 1-18 says, in the exercise of his God's will, he brought us forth by
the word of truth so that we might be, as it were, the first fruits among his creatures.
So we are called the first fruits, the first of the harvest which is to come.
In 1 Corinthians 16-15 it is said of the household of Stephanas that they were the first fruits
of Achaia.
In other words, Paul is saying that they were among his first converts in that province.
And now there were going to be others saved like the household of Stephanas.
They were the first fruits.
Again the word is used in Revelation 14-4 of the 144,000 Jewish evangelists, 12,000 from
each tribe.
And it says, these have been purchased from among men as first fruits to God and to the
Lamb.
The 144,000 are saved and sealed at the beginning of the tribulation period as representatives
of the greater harvest to come of both Jew and Gentile who will be saved in those years
when God's judgment is poured out upon the earth.
Now here, in Romans chapter 8, the word first fruits is used of the Holy Spirit.
It calls the Holy Spirit the first fruits.
What does that mean?
It means that he is given to us as a guarantee of the future glory that is to come.
He has brought to us now a foretaste of glory divine, as Fanny Crosby wrote in the hymn
Blessed Assurance.
But he is only the first fruits of that glory to come.
He guarantees to us that we will participate one day in the fullness of that which now
we have only tasted and enjoyed.
He is called a pledge, a similar concept in 2 Corinthians 1, 22.
God also sealed us and gave us the Spirit in our hearts as a pledge, he says.
Or in Ephesians 1, 13 and 14, having also believed, you were sealed in him with the
Holy Spirit of promise who is given as a pledge of our inheritance with a view to the redemption
of God's own possession to the praise of his glory.
One of the reasons that I am so convicted and assured about the security of the believer
is the fact that God has already given to us a down payment, an assurance, a pledge
that one day we will receive the fullness of the salvation that we have been given in
Jesus Christ.
And so we have the Holy Spirit within us as the first fruits, but we groan, he says.
Now the groaning that we have is not one of pain, there is occasionally that kind of groaning
too.
But the groaning he has in mind here is the same kind of groaning that is in nature.
It is the groaning of anticipation.
It is the groaning of expectation, the looking forward to of that glory that is to come.
The full inheritance that we have in Jesus Christ will be the revelation of Christ and
our being made like him, which involves what he calls in verse 23 the redemption of our
body.
There he is referring to that consummating act of our salvation when our physical bodies
will be changed from their lowly form at present to be like Christ's body of glory.
You and I are saved in anticipation of that.
Our gospel is a gospel of hope.
We don't yet see it.
I don't see it.
If we would see it, it would not be hope, he points out.
No, it's for this hope that we don't now see, but we anticipate that we have been saved.
And it's toward the assurance that we will receive it, that we have been given the first
fruits of the Spirit.
Paul is telling us here that the future glory is so full and so complete that it cannot
be fully experienced in the bodies that we have.
Our bodies have to be changed so that we then can experience the glory that is to come.
Dr. Leslie Allen writes, the salvation given at conversion has implicit in it promises
which have yet to be fulfilled.
Holy experience may now bombard the believer's senses, but it cannot reasonably invalidate
his glorious hope because its fulfillment essentially lies in the future.
We are the children of God right now, make no mistake about that.
We have eternal life at this moment.
But beloved, we are primarily a people of the future.
We are not a people of this world.
We are a people of a world that is to come.
We are the first fruits of his creation.
I don't know all that that means.
I don't know all that God is going to create in that new heaven and new earth.
But whatever it is, it is so wonderful that words in this book could not express it all.
You and I have all of that in store.
We will share in that coming glory.
It is not small.
It is not imaginary.
It is very real.
And it is so humongous that God cannot possibly put into one book all that it contains.
That is the hope of the Christian, the glory that is to come.
He says we eagerly wait with perseverance.
How is it that we eagerly wait with perseverance?
How practically speaking can we do that?
Sometimes life gets tough.
We go through sufferings, whether physical or emotional or persecution.
And we wonder when is this glory going to come?
And we say what the psalmist of old, oh Lord how long?
How long?
How is it that we wait eagerly in perseverance?
Let me just give you a couple of thoughts about that.
If we are going to wait eagerly with patience, we need to number one reckon our sufferings
like Paul did, to see that we are going to suffer in this world, they are sure.
To see that they are shared, that Christ suffers with us.
He knows our pain that we pass through.
And to see that our suffering is significant.
We have to keep that in mind.
As you compute all of the factors of your life and you see the hardship and the heartache
and the disappointments, keep all of that in mind.
Be sure that you are going to suffer in this world.
Don't be surprised by it.
But Christ shares it with you and it is significant because it is working in you and exceeding
eternal weight of glory.
The best is yet to come for you.
It is passing.
Suffering must precede glory.
Reckon your suffering like Paul did.
Secondly, be diligent in your ministry to others.
When you and I are passing through suffering, it helps us to keep busy ministering to other
people.
Keep before ourselves the fact that when Christ come, we will one day stand at his Bema seat.
And we have an intense desire that when we stand there before him on that day, that we
might receive a full reward and not be robbed of any of it by carelessness and sloppiness
and unfaithfulness in this world.
And so as you and I pass through this world and we eagerly wait with patience, let's keep
in mind that second thought.
I want to be diligent in my ministry to others because when I stand before Christ, I want
a full reward.
And then thirdly, if I want to wait eagerly with patience, I must stay in the Word.
I must stay in the Word of God to give me perspective of what life is all about.
If I don't, I'm liable to end up like Elijah did and get discouraged and think I'm all
by myself.
We forget our focus and so I need to keep myself in the Word of God.
Are you keeping yourself in the Word?
And finally, if you and I are going to eagerly wait with perseverance, then we need to develop
a romance with Jesus Christ and keep that romance strong.
We must not allow the flame of devotion to burn low in our lives.
We must preserve it.
Jude said, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our
Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life.
Keep yourselves in the love of God.
What does he mean?
He means in essence this, I'll paraphrase it.
Keep yourselves in love with God.
That's what he's saying.
Make sure that your heart beats with a passion for Jesus Christ.
Don't allow yourself to become a spiritual adulterer or adulteress.
Don't allow anyone or anything else take his spot, the spot of first love, the spot of
preeminence in your life.
I want to tell you that if you'll do those things, if you'll reckon your suffering like
Paul did, if you'll be diligent in your ministry to others, if you'll stay in the Word to keep
your perspective, if you'll develop a romance with Jesus Christ, then you will also eagerly
wait with patience the glory that is to come.
One of my favorite hymns talks about the glory that is to come.
It's one that I'd like you to sing with me.
If you'll take your hymnal.
All of creation would join you in singing that because the creation around us tonight
groans with eager anticipation for this day when Christ will come and give us glory.
Beloved, let our hearts too eagerly anticipate His coming, eagerly anticipate it with patience.
Let's pray.
Lord Jesus, I pray that we will tonight, above every other concern of life, every other goal,
every other motive, will have this as number one, eagerly anticipating the coming glory.
Lord remind us as we pass through the battlefield of life, as we walk through the pilgrimage
on this earth, that the best, the glory, is yet to come.
And may we be willing to suffer whatever you call us to suffer, that we might one day realize
the fullness of glory.
May we faithfully serve you here that we might not be robbed of any reward on that day when
we stand before your beam of seed.
Cause our hearts, I pray, as we go from this service and through this week to beat with
anticipation and longing for your coming and the glory that comes with you.
We pray this in your blessed name, keeping in view and in focus your blessed hope and
your return.
Amen.
Good night.
A couple hours later, King thirsty, King struggling, King trembling, a мож invest