Suffering before Glory

Romans 8:18-27

Intro.
1. "I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us." Have you come to the point of suffering for your being the kind of person you are in Christ?

In the novel, the Fixer, the central character left his surroundings in rural Russia to go to Kiev to find a better way of life. At first fortune seems to shine upon him until there is a murder of a young boy of about 12. Suspicious is cast upon the fixer and he is arrested. Blame had to be placed somewhere. The atmosphere of hate and suspicion led further to his being locked up without a hearing for months and then transferred to prison after the hearing charged as guilty.

In prison he is treated without respect. He is forced to submit to the indecencies of being examined in the nude three to six times daily. He is deprived of heat and proper clothing for the good winter conditions. Attempts were made to poison him. He was denied all contact with the outside. The lawyer for the defense had too strong a case for the Fixer and was hanged himself. The eventual outcome was continued imprisonment right up to the Russian revolution. The basic charge against him--being a Jew.

2. The apostle Paul describes sufferings that had no other basis than being a Christian! Have you come to the point of being deprived of food because you profess Christ? Have you been imprisoned because you believe in him? Have you been deprived of a home because you became a Christian? Have you children been taken from you because you received Christ as saviour? What one thing have you suffered because you are a Christian? If you have not suffered, why not? A verse that always probes deeply into self-examination is 2 Tim 3: 12: "Yes, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." Godly living is not being a fanatic. Godly living is serious living: for Christ. When we take Christ seriously the world takes us seriously and we shall suffer for it.

3. The time will come, as we face the mounting of evil, when we shall face suffering. Suffering was no stranger to the early Christians. Persecution was their experience. The suffering that they endured was only momentary in reference to eternity, it was limited by death ittse1f, and it was terminated by the future glory of the presence of God.

4.What does the future imply for the believer?

I. The complete redemption of us. 23.

1. Thus far, we have seen how Paul speaks of Christ's Spirit within to rule our lives, to enable us to put to death the deeds of the selfish nature of man, but there is no escaping the presence of sin and its disharmony. While we are in Christ we still live in temptation, we still must confess that we sin. The time will come when we will be delivered from the presence of sin.

2. Until we reach life's end, or until Christ comes to us, there is help in our weaknesses. Verse 26 gives great encouragement. When we are cast down, without wisdom on deciding the next move, we are told that the Spirit helps us in our weaknesses. He prays intelligently what we have not been able to articulate. He knows what is in our minds that we cannot get out. The very sighs of our souls are understood and the Spirit thus intercedes for us according to the will of God.

3. Billy Graham indicates the problems we face in his prayer every night. He prayed that God would cleans him from the world’s impressions and influences. The book of revelation indicates some of the issues we face as humans. “ I heard a loud voice shout from the throne: God's home is now with his people. He will live with them, and they will be his own. Yes, God will make his home among his people. He will wipe all tears from their eyes, and there will be no more death, suffering, crying, or pain. These things of the past are gone forever.” (Rev.21.3-4) These are issues on the negative side, being free from them, but we cannot fathom the positive issues. The imagination can play with the words of Paul, “eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love him.

II. The Return of the creation, v.21

1. A remarkable truth of the book of Romans and other verses in the bible point to a future renovation of the world. This may not have seemed necessary a generation or so ago, but our world is steadily becoming more and more corrupted.

Life is being killed off. Fish are killed by the drain-off of pesticides used to kill crop insects. Familiar birds are disappearing, poisoned by the chemicals in the insects they eat. The air a Chicagoan breathes in a single day contains as much pollution as he'd get from two packs of cigarets.

Now, from a scientists at a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, comes another warning. It appears that man is creating a major change in his weather. Air pollution is causing the skies to become cloudier, and seems to be making the climate colder. The sun will be seen less and less. A clear blue sky may, in time, be a rarity." (BB, p.18, April 1969)

In another release from the University of Iowa, an ecologist at the U. of I. warns of the increasing population exposition and the attendant problems. "One of these dangers is that man may be depleting his oxygen _Supply. Each year man is consuming this oxygen bv burning fossil fuels at a great rate than in the preceding year. And at the same time he is removing, largely by paving, vast acreage of plants from oxygen production. The U.S. alone is paving an estimated one million acres per year. The threat to our oxygen supply is further aggravated by the accelerating dumping of pesticides and other pollutants into
our environment. According to Food and Drug administration estimates, as many as a million man-made substances are put each year into the sea--where –70 percent or more of all oxygen is produced. Pesticides have already measurable depressed oxygen production thereby affecting the tiny planktonic diatoms which carry out photosynthesis." (The Spectator, March 1969, p.5)

2. The World of man is hardly making strides toward a return to the paradise of Eden. Rather as man's life is expanded thru the years, the world will probably become worse. Man hardly wakes up quick enough to stop the problems. Paul's point here is that the creation will be made new. The New and Old Testaments point to a future day when God will make a new heaven and a new earth. A redemption of our world will also take place alongside the full complete redemption
of our selves.

3. Since man's early beg into sin. The ground was cursed be removed only when the story of redemption is completed and God makes all things new.

III. Suffering is borne in hope and faith. 24-25-

1. A nihilist is one who says that nothing of value exists in the world. There is no reason for choosing one thing over another. Something of this was expressed in the Time Essay of March 28,1969 when a student of Rutgers U. expressed, "I'm a nihilist. I'm proud of it, proud of it! I want to destroy this blankety country. No hope, not in 50 years. Tactics? It's too late. Let's break what we can.
Make as many answer as we can. Tear them apart." (p.40)

It is difficult to see how a person who denies values wants to bring his own personal justice in makng others answer by destroying them and all they have. It may be that grave internal problems in the future
will take from his family, friends, and property. How will you respond to it? Will it be borne in hope and faith?

2. Suppose that you have given yourself to God’s service in
a way like that of Donald Hoke (MM, Jan.1964, p.22) who had become a missionary to Japan. Upon his arrival and beginning of his work his boys were hit with a succession of children's diseases,
culminating in a year-long siege of glandular fever. Then his wife went to bed with a painfully chronic disease that involved a five-hour midnight ride down strange mountain roads to Tokyo, three weeks in the hospital and subsequent care since then. On the heels of that I went to bed for three weeks with a virulent infection."
If something like this happens to you, how do you take it?

3. All kinds of things like this happened to Paul and he wrote to the suffering Christians at Rome, In this hope we were saved, or better being kept, preserved, sustained in our trials, by hope. He means, 'Our trials are too great that nothing but the prospect of future deliverance would uphold us; and the prospect is sufficient to enable us to bear them with patience.

Victor Frankl describes his experience in the concentration in world war II on one bad day. Lined up the men were informed about the many actions that would, from then on, be regarded as sabotage and
therefore punishable by immediate death by hanging. Among these were crimes such as cutting small strips from our old blankets (in order to improvise ankle supports) and very minor "thefts.

A few days previously a semi-starved prisoner had broken into the potato store room to steal a few pounds of potatoes. The theft had been discovered and some prisoners had recognized the "burglar. 1 When the camp authorities heard about it they ordered that the guilty man be given up to them or the whole camp would starve for a day. Naturally the 2500 men preferred to fast.

On the evening of this day of fasting we lay in our earthen huts--in a very low mood. Very little was said and every word sounded irritable. Then, to make matters even worse, the light went out. Tempers reached their lowest ebb. The senior warden of the block called upon Frankl then to speak to the men. He began by "mentioning the most trivial of comforts first. I said that even in this Europe in the sixth winter of the Second World War, our situation was not the most terrible we could think of. Whoever was still alive had reason for hope. Health, family, happiness, professional abilities, fortune, position in society--all these were things that could be achieved again or restored. After all, we still had our bones intact. Whatever we had gone through could still be an asset to us in the future." He then quoted a statement from a German philosopher, (Nietzsche; That which does not kill me, makes me stronger. He continued by noting the chances for survival were small, about one in 20. "But I also told them that, in spite of this, I had no intention of losing hope and giving up. For no man knew what the future would bring, much less the next hour. He not only mentioned the future, but also the past; all its joys and how its light shone even in the present darkness.

Again he quoted a poet--what you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you. He then spoke of the many opportunities of giving life a meaning. He told his comrades that human life, under any
circumstance, never cease to have a meaning, and that this infinite meaning of life includes suffering and dying, privation, and death. They must not lose hope but should keep their courage in the certainty that the hopelessness of our struggle did not detract from its dignity and its meaning.” (Man's Search for Meaning, p. 132.)

4. Paul knew a great deal more about the future than Frankl did. He knew of the finis of suffering and the
hope of life in Christ. Faith in Christ is the basis of hope.