of Romans, one of the high points of all of the Bible, Romans chapter 8. And what we're going to do is consider for a few moments a topic that I considered with the group that we met with, the FIRE Conference, just a few weeks back. We're calling this Eagerly Awaiting Our Glorious Hope. And this passage has to do with suffering. Some of you are going through suffering right now. Some of you have been through suffering. all of us will go through suffering at some point in our lives. And I want us today to focus upon what we're going to do with the suffering. That is how we're gonna look through that suffering to the glorious hope that God has for us. We don't normally think of hope when we think of suffering. We think just the opposite. We think of despair as we go through difficult, very, very difficult times. There is no longer any condemnation. that faces those who are in Christ Jesus. In the book of Romans, if you were with us a few years ago as we went through, we have been justified, we are now being sanctified, and we will be glorified in the future. And if by the Spirit we put to death the deeds of the body, we will live. That is the promise. Even more, we are now being led by the Spirit as adopted sons. We are now children of God. Heirs of God, fellow heirs of Christ, things should be going just great for us. What could possibly go wrong? Well, this morning we're going to look at verses 18 through 25 of Romans chapter 8 in this so-called inner sanctuary within the cathedral of the Christian faith, as it's sometimes been called. Romans 8 is kind of the high point of the Bible. If you were to look at places in the Bible that are most encouraging, this would be one of the chapters you would go to. This is the inner sanctuary of the cathedral of the Christian faith, the tree of life in the midst of the Garden of Eden, the highest peak in a range of mountains, is one definition that's been given to this chapter. But Paul has just slipped in a big qualifier to the joy that we experience in Christ with the end of verse 17 of Romans chapter 8. Let me just read verse 16, and I'll read through the text, and I think we'll get a better picture of what's going on. Verse 16, the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. Then he says the strangest thing, provided we suffer with him in order that we might be glorified with him. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the 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 pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves. Shift here, verse 23. The creation's groaning, and now we. We ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we eagerly wait for adoption, the sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what he sees. But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. May God bless to us the reading of this word. Let's just pray as we go into this text. Father, we ask that you will help us to see this morning that the downward spiral of creation as it groans, awaiting the time when the sons of God will be revealed. We pray that we might see that as a picture of our lives as we groan sometimes and we go downward in our despair, not understanding that these are the pains of childbirth. Lord, that you're bringing us to something that is far more glorious. The suffering that we are experiencing right now, Father, only anticipates the greatness of the joy and the glory that we will experience in the future. Father, help us to have this grasp of eternity. We pray as we look at this text, and may we learn to wait for that with patience. We ask this in Jesus' precious name, amen. We talk about suffering. You can't find many better examples than the Apostle Paul. In fact, I think you could say Paul held a doctorate in the subject of suffering. He was a tenured professor in the school. Forty lashes, five times, beaten with rods three times, stoned once, shipwrecked three times, adrift at sea a night and a day, frequent journeys, danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from his own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea. Danger from false brothers in toil and hardship through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food and cold and exposure. And then he says, and apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of anxiety for all the churches. The Apostle Paul knew what it meant to suffer. We've had our own share of significant sufferings in this church. Cancers, service-related injuries, Delicate medication imbalances that could go either way when people are having difficulty with pain in their lives. Things that can easily go haywire. The pain of parents with children who have left the faith. There's lots of pain that's been in our midst and we have gone through it together. To a much lesser degree, I think about the very minimal kinds of suffering that I personally have experienced in my own life in the pulpit. Petty criticisms, minor doctrinal opposition, there have been some depressions, yes, some significant church division. I think about how ill qualified I am to speak on this subject of Christian suffering. But when we come to a passage like this, We come to the Lord with the opportunity to rise up to 50,000 feet and look at what God is doing in the panorama of redemptive history in our suffering to prepare us for the glory that is coming. I wanna ask you one question as believers today in the sufferings of Christ, one simple question. Is God sovereign over suffering or is he not? I would assert this morning that he is not only sovereign over all suffering, he has actually designed that suffering in order to bring glory to us. Now this is a massive thought. If you get your mind wrapped around this, if you get your heart wrapped around this, it will enable you to face the suffering that will certainly follow in your life. Because suffering is the necessary path to glory, Paul tells us in this text, we must in that suffering eagerly await our glorious hope. When we're going through the suffering, that's the time to anticipate the joy that God is going to bring us in the future, in the eschaton, certainly, in heaven, but even here on earth. be able to enjoy Him through that suffering. Now given that suffering is a prerequisite for glory, we get to glory through suffering, and so we eagerly and patiently await our hope, our adoption, and the redemption of our bodies. Verse 17 is really a hinge verse diving into our text today, provided we suffer with Him in order that we might be glorified with Him. Paul's point in this hinge verse is that if we are heirs of God and joint heirs of Christ, we must suffer with him. We must suffer just as he has identified himself with us and we are in him, now we must suffer with him. Leon Morris put it this way, that this is not meaningless pain that we're going through. Paul knew that our suffering would produce glory in us. That's what suffering does for us. Now what he's going to do in this text today, and I've given you a handout that has an outline that is kind of, I hope it'll be helpful. I just lost my copy of it here somewhere. In this particular outline, you're going to see, thank you, Edward. I have an outline here, I just don't have this one. We're gonna look at two parts. in this approach to suffering. We're gonna look at creation, first of all, and then we're gonna look at the Christian. This is what you call an argument from the lesser to the greater. Paul's making an argument that suffering is the necessary path to glory in creation. And then he's gonna shift gears at verse 23 and talk about us, which you would think is less important, but in fact, it's more important. All of what's happening in creation is anticipating what God is going to do with us. And we're gonna look at both of these aspects from the standpoint of the already and the not yet. Y'all have heard this before, I'm sure, but we're going to talk a little bit about this this morning. What is true for creation is true for the Christian with respect to what God is doing. The Christian worldview, if I back up and get at a really high altitude now, is rooted in the teaching of a cosmic fall. That is, there was a time when Adam and Eve sinned. They fell from God's grace. They sinned against God. That was the introduction of sin into the world. This is taught from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation, the story of redemptive history and what God is doing. All of nature has been affected by the sin of Adam, in which we are all participants. And that will continue until the new heaven and the new earth arrive. What we all need to get a grasp of this morning is something of the glory of what is coming. So I'm just going to give you a quick thousand mile an hour tour through redemptive history to get you some idea of where we're going and how we can get there. First of all, God created the heavens and the earth back in Genesis 1. You all know the story. Man fell in sin, disobeying God's clear command to not eat of the tree, much as we regularly and willfully sin today. One result of that sin was God's curse upon the ground, upon the earth. To Adam he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Curse it is the ground because of you. The ground, terra firma. Curse it is the ground because of you. In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat of the plants of the field." And this curse comes upon Adam, upon the earth that Adam is to live on. God then eventually judged the people of the earth with a flood that destroyed but did not annihilate the created world. You remember the story of Noah's flood. It covered all of the earth. And everything was destroyed, but the earth itself was preserved through it. It was not totally annihilated. Eight living souls, as well as the plant and animal kingdoms, survived that judgment, showing God's intent to preserve all of the created order. God later promised Abraham a land, a people, and a blessing. We know these three promises. The near-term fulfillment of which was clearly the land of Canaan coming to the Jews, the physical descendants of Abraham, multiplying through Isaac, the blessing that Abraham's descendants were going to be to the Gentile peoples of the region in which they lived, the land, the people, and the blessing. Then God sent Moses to bring the nation of Israel to the promised land, to give him the law covenant, that would sustain his people and would be their guardian until Messiah would come. That's the purpose of the law, was to guide us to Christ. He gives that to Moses. God sustained his people even after that through incredible unfaithfulness to him. Through the times of the judges and the prophets and even the kings, and they look like they're getting further and further away. God gives King David his everlasting covenant through which he brings the Messiah. to whom all of the law, the prophets, and the writings pointed. God then brought Jesus as a Messiah, here at the focal point of redemptive history, to be the king of his new people, to fulfill all that Abraham, Moses, the law, and the prophets, and the writings had promised, including the promise of land, people, and blessing that had been given to Abraham, our forefather, some 1,900 years earlier. But the surprise of redemptive history was that the fulfillment of the land, the people, and the blessing would not just be the near-term physical aspects of land, people, and blessing. It would also be that of a new land, that is, the heavenly Jerusalem, the new heaven and the new earth, which is future to us today. Hebrews 11, verse 16, they desire a better country, that is a heavenly one. Hebrews 12, 22, we come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, the innumerable angels and festal gathering, we're facing a new land in the future. There's a new people, God has a new covenant people comprised of Jews and Gentiles in one body. spoken of it by Paul in Ephesians. In Ephesians chapter 2, he himself, Christ himself is our peace who has made us both one. and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility. That is the Mosaic law. He's broken down that law that divided between Jew and Gentile, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace. This is what Christ accomplished through the cross. And thirdly, there's a new blessing. The message of the gospel of Jesus Christ is now centrifugal as opposed to centripetal. That is, Jerusalem goes to all the earth instead of all the earth coming to Jerusalem. In the Old Testament, under the Old Covenant, the Gentiles are called to come and worship in Jerusalem. But under the New Covenant, God's people are sent out with the message of the gospel to the corners of the earth, that they might proclaim the good news of the gospel to every tribe and tongue and people and nation. This means that God will, in the future, bring about an inheritance for his people. There's been an already fulfillment of God's promises to his people, but there's to be a not yet fulfillment. They call this inaugurated eschatology. You want a big buzzword here. God's already inaugurated the kingdom, and he's going to bring it to pass. He's going to bring it to completion in the future, a part of which we have on display before us in this transition today in our text from the already sufferings to the not yet glory. The already sufferings cannot be compared to the not yet glory. The sufferings that we have been through cannot, they pale in comparison to the glory that will be revealed to us in the future. Romans chapter eight and verse 18, our first verse in the text, I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed in us. Think about that the next time you're hurting, okay? It can't be compared to the glory that God is going to work in your life. Back on the ground in Rome in A.D. 57 when Paul wrote this letter, probably from Corinth, he's saying that the sufferings that he has experienced in his day were trivial compared to the glory that is to be revealed in him. All those shipwrecks, all those beatings, all the rejection that he had as he preached the gospel and was scorned for it, for bringing new life. to the nations of the world. All of that suffering is going to pale in comparison to what God is going to do for him in the future and for us. Let me read this wonderful verse from 2 Corinthians chapter 4, talking about our affliction. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. As we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are not seen. For the things that are seen are transient, for the things that are unseen are eternal. How nearsighted we get when it comes to suffering. We can only focus on what is happening to us, right? I know how it feels. Just when you have a miserable cold, all you can think of is how bad you feel. You're not thinking about the glory that waits you on the other side. The things that God is working in your life to prepare you for the glory that is to come. What we can't see is the breathtaking beauty of eternity with Christ. John Piper put it this way in one of his sermons, it's one of his memorable sermons, where he describes heaven not as a place where you're sitting around on a cloud with a harp in your hands like some of the cartoons depict, but rather you're climbing up this large scale of mountains with a breathtaking view And you go through all this labor and this energy consumed to get to the very top. And you get to the top and you look at this wide expanse that's before you of glory, of creation. And in the distance, there is another ridgeline. And so you have the opportunity to climb that second ridge. And you go up. This is eternity, where we constantly have increasing spheres of God's glory to admire, to worship. and to glory. And it goes on for eternity and eternity and eternity, each one better than the last. This is what we're to think of in terms of what is in store for us as believers today going through our temporary sufferings. The sufferings of this present time just cannot be compared to the glory that is to be revealed. The already creation waits for the not yet revealing of the sons of God. This is another already not yet. Verse 19, for the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. Right now, the creation is waiting for the people of God to be made known. So the first exegetical question we have to ask here in the text is what is this creation that Paul is referring to here? There are many, many views on this. Cranfield lists eight different ones. The big contenders of the creation here are, number one, the entire created universe, including humans and plants. Secondly, the human part of creation only. And thirdly, the one that I hold to, that it refers to the subhuman creation, plants and animals and so forth. Since Paul clearly distinguishes between creation and we ourselves in verses 22 and 23, it's likely that creation, this passage, generally does not include believers. the not willingly of verse 20 would seem to rule out humans as the fall willingly occurred. The vast majority of modern commentators prefer number three, which I said I'd take. That is that it refers to the subhuman creation, that is plants and animals. If it is the subhuman creation that Paul's referring to here, then what we have in the passage is a literary technique of personification. Remember back to your high school English days. Personification is where you give human characteristics to something that is not human. In the Bible, we have this frequently. The hills gird themselves with joy, the book of Psalms. The meadows clothe themselves with flocks. The valleys deck themselves with grain. They shout and sing together for joy. Creation now is taking on a personhood in this passage. The creation waits with eager longing. The verb here for eager longing is like watching a parade. Some of you went to the Belton Parade, I'm sure, the other day and got the chance to watch the bands and all the things that take place in parades. And the eager longing is the craning of your neck, looking at what's coming next in the parade that's going before you. Creation is eagerly longing for something to happen. And that something is what God is going to do in revealing the sons of God. What is anticipated? The revealing of the sons of God. Now this suggests that the sons of God, that is true believers, are not known for sure before this time. Now this is a staggering thought because most of us think we know who's a Christian and who's not. Most of us have got that figured out and we don't have to worry about that. But this idea brings to mind the thought that God is keeping some of this secret until the last day. There may be some surprises in heaven, okay? It's striking that the Bible is saying here that we don't know the actual identity of believers until this last day. God's grace will be magnified in the unlikely people that show themselves present in the kingdom of God. Think of the unlikely men of faith we already know about in the Bible, the likes of Lot and Jephthah. And Samson, and here's my favorite one, Manasseh, a guy that if you're reading through the Bible, you write him off right away. He offered up his kids in the fire. But he repented. And the Bible presents to us that there are a lot of people who we don't think are believers that God is going to make known to us in that day. There may be many more 11th hour recipients of God's grace than we could ever imagine. That changes our viewpoint, doesn't it, in dealing with other people. We see everybody as an opportunity for God's grace. And so we share the gospel of grace with them. The already and the not yet. Creation waits for the revealing of the sons of God. Third, the creation was already subjected to futility. This is verse 20. For the creation itself 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 God. The word futility evokes a negative reaction in all of us. Futility is the idea of emptiness, of purposelessness. Everyone wants to have some meaning in life. We don't want to have a futile life. And what it's saying here is that everyone wants to have some meaning in life. And for the inanimate creation to experience futility is particularly noteworthy. This futility has been imposed by God. That's the clear inference of the text. That is, The part of the curse of Adam's sin, bring the curse to the ground, was that there would be futility in working the ground. Curse it is the ground because of you. The ground did not desire this curse, certainly, nor did the man who is now forced to eke a living out of it. The whole enterprise is futile. The ground has been resisting farming for a long time now. If you've tried to raise a garden, or if you've ever worked on a farm, you know how difficult it is to deal with bugs, and beetles, and disease, and weeds, and other plants that are crowding out the good plants. R.C. Sproul tells the Greek myth of the character Sisyphus, who used all of his energy to push a huge rock to the top of the mountain. But when he finally got to the top of the mountain, he would roll back down again. And so he had to push it all back up again, all the way back up again. This is an example of futility. Just the opposite, by the way, of the mountain ranges where you get to see greater and greater things and get to advance in understanding God's glory. This is describing a futile situation where life just goes on in meaningless drudgery. Nothing can be fulfilled. The inanimate creation has been subjected to futility in the already. The creation that we live in is in a futile situation right now. That's what he's saying. But this creation, in hope now, it is in hope, that is confident assurance, that the creation will be set free one day in the not yet. Verse 21. 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. Everything's working together for good. He's gonna get to that in a few verses here. For a believer, everything works together for good to those who love God, who are called according to His purpose. Right now, the creation is in bondage. It's in slavery. This inanimate creation has been placed in slavery to corruption. A better word here is decay. Wood rots. Plastic deforms. Bathrooms need remodeling. Cars need junking. Computer programs get old. This year they retired BibleWorks, my favorite software program. Everything wears out. And we press on with the new thing. Everything is going through a period of decay, but there will be a day, Paul says, when things don't wear out. The not yet here in verse 21b is that creation will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. So things are going to get better. And we as believers can have great hope that God is working this new creation, this new heaven, this new earth in our future. There's a hint here that what's in store for creation is not annihilation, but transformation, not total destruction, but restoration. Some of you are familiar with the Bible or familiar with verses that talk about the coming burning of the earth. It's very prominent in the book of 2 Peter. It's all gonna burn. It's one of the favorite slogans I remember growing up with. Don't invest anything in the earth because it's all gonna pass away. There's a sense in which that is true, certainly. Peter says, the bodies will be burned up and dissolved. The earth and the works that are done in it will be exposed, on it will be exposed. The heavens will be set on fire and dissolved and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn. But you've got to read the whole Bible and you've got to read Peter in context. He also parallels the day of the Lord burning with the destruction of the earth by water in Noah's day. Here's what he says in 2 Peter 3.6, the world that then existed was deluged with water. Remember Noah's flood was deluged with water. and perished. By the same word, the heavens and the earth that now exist are sorted for fire being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly." The implication here is that there's a parallel, the fire destruction in 2 Peter may parallel the water destruction of Noah's flood. That there will not be a total annihilation but some kind of transformative restoration And I think this is the right view. This is much debated, and you can take whatever view you wish on this, but I think the scripture overall supports the idea that there is a restorative process that God's going to take place in destroying what is old. Peter bases much of his end time thinking upon Isaiah to further this argument, which seems to focus upon transformation. For example, Isaiah says, the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, the calf and the lion and the fatted calf together and a little child shall lead them. This anticipates creation being restored. In addition, Paul says in Colossians that God will, through Christ, reconcile all things to himself. Daniel preached to this idea just a few weeks back, seeming to indicate a restoration rather than a total destruction. Colossians 1.20, through him to reconcile all things to himself, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. And then closing out this section on the day of the Lord, Peter says this, but according to his promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Now I want us to have this bright outlook on the future. This is very biblical for us to be optimists as to what God is doing. Yes, there is going to be judgment on this world, but God is going to bring out something far greater, far better. Creation will be set free from bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. Fourthly, what we do know is shown in verse 22 that the already creation has been groaning together in pains of childbirth until now, Romans 8, 22. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now, at least up until Paul's day. The creation has been groaning together in pains of childbirth. The word means to groan together with or lament Various parts of creation have been working together, have been groaning together, and having childbirth pains together. The irony, of course, in this metaphor, and I'm sure that's why Paul used these words, is that the childbirth analogy there is both pain and joy. The pain must come in order for the joy to follow. And that's the point, I think, of what he's saying here. I've never gone through childbirth, but I've watched four of them. And I can tell you, this is true, there is great pain and there is great joy. And what God is going to do in the future is bring great joy out of the excruciating, endless, seemingly endless pain that you're going through right now. God is designing for you a glory that cannot be imagined through this pain, but you have to go through the pain to get to the glory. You have to endure the pain. That's what verse 17 says, provided we suffer with him in order that we must be glorified with him. Well then verse 23 we hit the great shift of the text. It goes from creation to the Christian. The a fortiori, remember, to the greater. What was true of creation is much more true in the case of the Christian. What we saw of suffering giving way to glory and creation is even more significant with the Christian. Verse 23, and not only the creation, but we ourselves, he's bringing it down to us, we ourselves who have the first fruits of the spirit grown inwardly as we await eagerly the adoption of sons, the redemption of our bodies. The idea is that we ourselves, the already believers, people here on this earth who believe in Christ, just like the inanimate creation, are groaning. We all admit that we're groaning down here. Life is not always fun, okay? But we do have with us right now the firstfruits of the Spirit. God has given us the anticipation of how great this glory is gonna be by giving us the Holy Spirit right here and now. It's the beauty of the Trinity. The triune God is living within us. We have the Holy Spirit dwelling, living within us, unlike the Old Testament, where he worked in sporadic events and occasions. The day of Pentecost, we have the Spirit coming down upon God's people, and he permanently indwells us, showing the presence of God in our lives and everything that we do. This is a great foretaste of what's going to come in glory. The spirit comes to us as a first fruit of the new creation. A first fruit was the first part of a harvest. It guaranteed what was going to come, and it was a good sample of what was going to come as well. A down payment, so to speak, of what was to come in the future. Paul uses the term first fruit in this passage a little differently. Not as a gift to God, what the Jews offered to God, the first fruits of the harvest, but what God gives to his people. the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Christian today has a gift of the Spirit as a down payment for what is going to come in the eschaton, in the future. So the entire first part of this passage, verses 18 through 22, which pointed us to the already creation giving way to the not yet creation, now serves as a picture of what happens with the believer. The already Christian has the first fruits of the Spirit right now and now groans within himself awaiting the not yet adoption, which is the redemption of his body. In other words, believers today are groaning or sighing, as it's sometimes translated, as they anticipate what will come. And Murray puts it, a symphony of sighs. I love that term. We're in a symphony of sighs. We're all uttering sighs. Oh, why are we going through this? But it's a symphony of beautiful music as to what is to come. paving the way for what is to come in the future. We are now eagerly awaiting the adoption of sons. We have already received the spirit of adoption, verse 15, but we have not yet finally been adopted until the redemption of our bodies. That doesn't happen until Christ comes again and we go to be with him. The dead in Christ will rise first, and then we who are alive and will remain shall be caught up together with him to be with the Lord in the air. And so we shall ever be with the Lord, Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 4. That day is coming. That day is what we call the redemption of our bodies. When our bodies are made like Christ's, our bodies are transformed, and they will stay that way for all of eternity. This is, I think, what this passage is referring to, the day when that redemption takes place. 1 John puts it this way, chapter three, beloved, we are God's children now. And what we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that when he appears, we will be like him for we shall see him as he is. Then 1 Corinthians 15, the great resurrection chapter of the New Testament. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. That's the redemption of the body. That's the glory that we're looking toward in the future. Our suffering bodies are anticipating their redemption. For this perishable body, 1 Corinthians 15, 53, must put on the imperishable, and the mortal must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. And that's what's going to happen. It may not be far off, by the way, folks. It may be happening soon here. Oh, death, where is your victory? Oh, death, where is your sting? As we experience the death around us in our culture today, as we experience the demise of our society, as we see everything that we held dear biblically being trashed in front of us today, as the evil one is wreaking havoc within our culture and the current sexual revolution and all the things that are going on in our culture, we sometimes get so depressed. Well, number one, I'd say turn off the news. And number two, I would say, turn on the good news. Turn on the good news of what God is doing. Our future is glorious. Our future is bright. We are saved in hope. In this hope, you were saved, already saved in hope. We have already been saved, and the hope is a confident assurance of what is going to happen. It's not a wishful thinking idea. Kittles Theological Dictionary says, if hope is fixed on God embraces at once three elements. Number one, expectation of the future. Number two, trust. And three, the patience of waiting. That's the part we don't like. I don't want to wait. I want to be happy right now. I want to be free of this pain right now. And sometimes God gives you pain that doesn't go away. And we need to understand when that pain comes, it doesn't go away, that God has designed that pain to accomplish the purpose of your sanctification, so that you might enjoy the glory that will be forever and ever and ever. It was in this hope, our waiting eagerly for adoption as sons, that we were saved. We believed in the not yet of the eternal salvation at the time we became Christians, but by definition, hope is not hope in the past, it's hope in the future. We're anticipating what God will do in the future. You can't hope in something that has already occurred. You hope in something that has not yet occurred. So in order for you to experience hope, you need to, now in the present day, anticipate what God is going to do in the future, and take great joy in it, and believe in it. Those three elements, expectation of the future, trust, and patience as we wait. The already Christian hopes for his not yet adoption redemption. Well, the key word here is endurance, fortitude, steadfastness, perseverance. We must suffer in the now. We must persevere in order to see glory. So in conclusion, what God does in creation, verses 18 through 22, he does for the Christian, verses 23 through 25. Our suffering, whether it's self-induced or externally induced, is all part of the sovereign hand of God in our lives. It's our necessary path to glory. You can't get to glory unless you go through the suffering. Let us live in anticipation of the not yet, the coming glory with our Savior. And may we have the patience to wait for it. Some of you may be going through great adversity right now. Decisions to make that you can't make because you don't have all the factors that you need to make the decision and you're flummoxed, you're confused about what to do. You may be going through a disease that is not curable. There are a lot of those out there. You may be going through situations and relationships that are not easily mendable. God is using these situations to work within you, this work of great glory. As I preached this section of Romans about five years ago, we were going through, I was going through my own calamity here in this church, and I own it as my calamity. But God used Romans 8, And also the famous 1995 Spurgeon biography that John Piper did to rescue me, to show me his sovereignty through calamity. And I will tell you, he kept me. And he will keep you. Martin Luther, the father of the Protestant Reformation, wrote the hymn that we're going to close with today after the Lord's Supper. And I want you to think about this in advance. You know the song, we've sung it lots of times. From the depths of woe I raise to you the voice of lamentation. I want to bring one verse to your attention. Think about it as we sing it later. What though I wait the live long night until the dawn appeareth. This is Martin Luther, 1523. He knew something about suffering. What though I wait the live long light until the dawn appeareth, my heart still trusteth in his might. It doubteth not nor feareth. Do thus, O ye of Israel, see ye of the Spirit born indeed, and wait till God appeareth. Let's pray. Father, I pray this morning that those of us who are suffering will see what you are doing in our lives, and Lord, that you will cause us to trust you for what you are preparing us for. If there are those here this morning who have never experienced your grace, I pray, Lord, that they will bow before you today, bend the knee before you and worship you and receive the gospel, the good news that a holy God has sent his son lovingly to be crucified on a cross for people who wish to crucify him. Father, we thank you for this great grace. And Lord, may that grace sustain us as we go through