Sermons

FILTER BY:

← back to list

Feb 02, 2020

Believing in His goodness while suspecting His absence

Believing in His goodness while suspecting His absence

Passage: Romans 8:18-25

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: Elevator Pitch: The Good News in One Chapter, Romans 8

Paul has made stark and soaring claims so far. His words might fall flat if he never addressed how his news means to answer our experience with suffering. How are we to understand what defies reason? How are we to hope when so much, so fast, can dash it against a rock of anguish?

Order of Worship

Pre Service: Romans 8:18-19
Call to Worship: 1 Peter 1:3-7
Sermon Title: Believing in His goodness while suspecting His absence
Old Testament Reading: Ecclesiastes 1:1-14
Central Text: Romans 8:18-25
Benediction: Revelation 21:1,3-5
Post-Service Text: Romans 8:22-24

Illustration

Shadowlands - Awful Mess

Readings & Scripture

Pre Service: Romans 8:18-19
18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.

Call to Worship: 1 Peter 1:3-7
LEADER: 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you,
PEOPLE: In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, 7 so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire —may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Old Testament Reading: Ecclesiastes 1:1-14
 LEADER: The words of the Teacher, son of David, king in Jerusalem:
2 “Meaningless! Meaningless! says the Teacher. “Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaningless.”
3 What do people gain from all their labor at which they toil under the sun?
4 Generations come and generations go but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises and the sun sets and hurries back to where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course.
7 All streams flow into the sea yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again.
8 All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.
9 What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. 11 No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.
14 I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind.

Central Text: Romans 8:18-25
8 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 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. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Benediction: Revelation 21:1,3-5
LEADER: 1 Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.
3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.
PEOPLE: 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.” 5 And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”

Post-Service Text: Romans 8:22-24
22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved.

Related Scripture

  • Genesis 3:17-19
  • Job 19:25-27
  • Psalms of Lament
  • Ecclesiastes 1:2-11
  • Isaiah 11:6-9
  • Isaiah 65:17
  • Matthew 5:10-12
  • John 16:20-22
  • Acts 5:1-41
  • Romans 5:1-5
  • Romans 16:20
  • 2 Corinthians 4:16-18
  • James 1:2-4, 12
  • 1 Peter 1:5-6

Discussion Questions & Applications:

  1. What is your acquaintance with suffering, whether yours or someone close to you? What thoughts and feelings have accompanied the experience? What specific thoughts about God might’ve surfaced? Why might an agnostic or atheist look to suffering as a solid argument for their belief?
  2. To have faith while you’re suffering rests in part in having hope in glory. If glory is the fulfillment of what God has begun, what are the different aspects of that glory here in this passage? Why would those matter?
  3. In the preceding passage he said we have been given the spirit of adoption--a settled case so to speak. Here he mentions a looking forward to our adoption. Which is it--a past or future thing? Why could it be both?
  4. What’s the difference between an impatient and a patient waiting? (Have any personal examples?) What’s required to wait patiently, beside a sheer force of will? How does what God has already done in Christ meant to encourage us to hope in what is still to come? But more importantly how does that claim of what He’s done have any effect on your patient waiting in hope?
  5. Why might Paul mention the Holy Spirit as the “firstfruits”? What does he mean? (More on the Spirit in next week’s passage)
  6. No one is prepared for the suffering they face. What in your present desire to trust Him might serve you in your future experiences of suffering when that trust is challenged? How would this text want to answer you? How might that change your experience with suffering if you deeply believed it?

Quotes:

  • Things change in the blink of an eye. People go to work and don’t come back. One minute they’re living and the next minute they’re not. And, it doesn’t matter who you are, there is nothing you can do about it. . . .We never know when our time here will be over, so we all need to make the most of every minute we have. - Kobe Bryant
  • No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear. - CS Lewis
  • Either this world, my mother, is a monster, or I myself am a freak. - Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
  • . . .it is faith that set us free from optimism long ago and taught us hope instead. - David Bentley Hart
  • That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. - Eugene Peterson
  • When we feel pain, when we suffer, when we die, let us turn to this, firmly believing and certain that it is not we alone, but Christ and the church who are in pain and suffering and dying with us. - Luther
  • Suffering is a mystery as deep as any in our existence. It is not of course a mystery whose reality some doubt. Suffering keeps its face hid from each while making itself known to all.... We are one in suffering. Some are wealthy, some bright; some athletic, some admired. But we all suffer. For we all prize and love; and in this present existence of ours, prizing and loving yield suffering. Love in our world is suffering love.... This, said Jesus, is the command of the Holy One: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ In commanding us to love, God invites us to suffer. - Nicolas Wolterstorff
  • It's so mysterious, the land of tears. - The Little Prince
  • For glory meant good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last. - C.S. Lewis
  • Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It’s not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. - Vaclav Havel
  • ...our faith is in a God who has come to rescue His creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred. For while Christ takes the suffering of his creatures up into his own, it is not because he or they had need of suffering, but because he would not abandon his creatures to the grave. And while we know that the victory over evil and death has been won, we know also that it is a victory yet to come, and that creation therefore, as Paul says, groans in expectation of the glory that will one day be revealed. Until then, the world remains a place of struggle between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, life and death; and, in such a world, our portion is charity. - David Bentley Hart
  • he who lives in hope danceth without music. - George Herbert
  • . . .glory. . .good report with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last. - C.S. Lewis
  • If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world. - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Sermons/resources: 

Media

 

Books

Enduring Divine Absence by Joseph Minich