Romans chapter 8 and verse 18. And we're going to read again verses 18 to 25, but this week our focus is going to be on verses 19 to 21. So Romans chapter 8, it's page 1,700 and 57 in the church Bibles. Romans chapter 8 and verse 18. I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. So now let's pray. Lord God, thank you for this opportunity this morning to consider your word. And we pray that you will speak to us now through your word. Help us to hear what you have to say to us. Please speak to us. Please encourage us. Please strengthen us for our service of you. And any that don't yet know you, please lead them to put their faith in Jesus. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Now last week we started looking at this section of Romans chapter eight and verses 18 to 25. And we particularly focused on verse 18, which speaks to us about how we need to have a right attitude to our sufferings. We saw last time that suffering is something that we must expect as Christians. We live in a fallen world. We live in bodies which are doomed to die. And although we might sometimes, in God's grace, experience God's healing power in answer to prayer, we must realize that we are living under the sentence of death. And we will feel in our bodies the aches and pains and difficulties of living in bodies which are doomed to die ultimately. And also we have the struggle and difficulty of living in an evil world. And things happen to Christians just like they happen to non-Christians. Christians get robbed. Christians get beaten up. Christians get murdered and raped. It happens. And he'll treat it by others, just like non-Christians do. And in addition, we have extra suffering as Christians, which non-Christians don't have, because we also have suffering which comes directly because we're Christians. Because we love Christ and we live in a world that hates Christ, we're going to get in the neck sometimes from people around us who don't love Jesus. And so we have to expect suffering, but what we saw from this verse also is that we need to, that the suffering that we go through is tiny in comparison with the glory that we will have. Paul says, I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. our sufferings are real, but measured up against the massive glory that's coming to us, we realize that actually they're small, they're minuscule. And we also saw last time that we need as Christians to learn to think in a different way. Paul says, I consider, I reckon, that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. He thinks in a different way. And we saw that we need to learn to think in a different way, to compute, to reckon, to calculate, to work out constantly in our mind. Think to ourself, okay, how big is the suffering I've got now, but how big is that glory that's coming to me? And we need to constantly think in terms of eternity. We're always tempted because we can see the here and now, we can feel the here and now, so it's much, our focus is, we're always tempted to focus on the here and now. But what we have to do as Christians is to learn, as the apostle says in 2 Corinthians, to walk by faith and not by sight. to look forward to what's coming to us, rather than to focus on our present difficulties. So that's what we were thinking about last time. Now, today we're going to be, our focus is going to be on verses 19 to 21. And these verses speak about the eager longing of the created world for what's going to happen when the glory that God has promised to believers, and in fact given to believers, is revealed. And what we see from these verses is that there's an eager anticipation that the creation is saying, hey! If it could, if it would, it would if it could, be saying, I'm so looking forward to this time when we're not suffering anymore. When there's no more of the effects of the fall upon the created world. The creation's longing for that day. And the apostle explains that, about what happened at the fall. He says now, the reason why we see this world out of order is because of Adam's original sin. And that's affected the whole cosmos. But the time's going to come when Jesus comes again, when the glory of the sons of God will be revealed. And when that happens, the creation is going to be set free. from the results of the fall that it's living with at the moment. Now this is a very important, a really important passage for us because it helps us to see, it teaches us that the future hope for us as Christians is to live in a renewed and redeemed earth, a new world, a heavenly, an earth where God has come down. That's what we have at the end of the book of Revelation, isn't it? A new heaven and a new earth, and God comes down to live among men on earth. That's what we're looking forward to. And lots of Christians don't understand that. Lots of Christians think that all we've got to look forward to is like floating around as spirits. Now, what that's talking about is the intermediate state. Between when you die and the resurrection, yes, we will have disembodied spirits. We will be with the Lord in heaven in disembodied spirits. But that's not the end. The end will be that we are resurrected with wonderful new bodies and we will live in this wonderful new world that God is going to make, or renewed world. And it's a tremendous thing, wonderful thing to look forward to. Okay, so that's by way of instruction. Now, how are we going to divide the passage? Well, I think it's very easy to divide these three verses. The three verses split down very neatly. First one, the first section, verse 19, the creation is longing for the glory of the sons of God to be revealed. The second section is verse 20, that the creation is in its present condition of frustration due to the sin of Adam. And then the third section is verse 21, the creation is going to be set free from its bondage to decay. So let's think about these three sections. First of all then, The creation is longing for the sons of God to be revealed. The apostle says in verse 19, the creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. Now this verse 19 is linked to the previous verse, verse 18, the one which we looked at last time. You wouldn't know from our translation, but in the original Greek, at the beginning of verse 19, there is the word for. So this verse is giving the explanation for and the basis for what he says, what the Apostle says in verse 18. And so the Apostle is expanding on what he's been saying on verse 18 and giving the basis for it. And what he's saying is this, that the creation, he says, is waiting in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. Now, what is this when he talks about the creation? What is the creation that he's talking about here? The creation they're talking about here must be, I suggest to you, the physical world, the universe, the stars, the heavens, and also the physical created world, this world that we live in, but also the animals and the plants that live upon this earth. So in other words, it's all of the creation apart from humans and apart from angels and demons. This natural world, in other words. The natural world, he says, is eagerly looking forward. Now, obviously, we know that rocks and stars can't think. and can't speak, indeed even, and trees, you know, contrary to what some people think, trees don't have feelings either. And even animals can't really express themselves, they've got some sort of vague instinctual emotion, but they can't really express themselves. So how can he be saying here that the creation is eagerly longing? Well I think the way to understand it is that he's personifying creation. that as if to say, if the creation could speak or could feel, this is how, this is what it would say. You've got examples in the Old Testament like, talks in the Old Testament about how the trees of the field clap their hands. Well, trees don't clap their hands. But there's a sort of expression of what, of what would, the joy that would be if the natural world could express itself. Now, he uses this term, waits in eager expectation. Now, what does that mean? Well, the Greek word means literally to stand on tiptoe or to sort of be craning your neck. You know, if you just, I don't know if any of you, when there was the royal wedding a few years ago, I don't know if anybody went up to central London to have a look as the carriages went, but I can remember, I'm old enough to remember the wedding of Charles and Diana, so that's how old I am. Now, I can remember, I went up with my brother and we couldn't see a thing, to be honest. He had to sit on my shoulders because we couldn't see anything. It would have been done much better to have watched on the telly, but, What everybody was doing was saying, oh, got to have a look, they want to see, get a glimpse of some of the coach going past the Queen and they want to see it. And that's the sort of idea that you've got here, this, oh, it's coming soon, yeah, let's see it. And that's what, that's the idea that you have here, that the Apostle is talking about here. Now, What is interesting here is that he says that the creation is waiting for the revelation of the sons of God. And now that ties up with the previous verse, just to remind you again, verse 18. I do not, I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. Now this is very interesting. He doesn't say that he's waiting for God's glory to be given to the sons of God. He's saying that creation is in eager expectation for the revelation of the glory of the sons of God. In other words, what he's saying is that the glory that God has already given His glory to His children. It's ours already, if you're a Christian. You already have that. It is yours. You are an heir. It belongs to you. And all that's going to happen when Jesus comes again is that it will be revealed. That glory that we have as Christians will be manifested, will be made obvious. Now, there's a very interesting thing that the apostle says later on in this chapter. It's the same, if you'd look at, just turn over the page at verse 29 and verse 30. which we'll come to, God willing, in a few weeks time, but I just want you to notice here something very striking. He says, these verses are talking about God's eternal purposes of salvation, how for those of us who are Christians, we are saved not ultimately according to our own choice, but ultimately according to God's plan and purpose. And he says this, for those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined he also called, and those he called he also justified, and those he justified he also glorified. Now what I want you to notice is the tense of that last thing. He doesn't say those he justified he will glorify. That's what you would expect, wouldn't it? You'd expect him to say that it's coming up soon that those God justified he's going to glorify. But he doesn't say those he justified he's going to glorify. He says those he justified he glorified past tense. If you're a Christian God has given you his glory. You might say, well, I don't feel very glorious. No, you don't look very glorious, and neither do I. But he has given us his glory. It's ours. And what's going to happen at the resurrection is that glory that he's given to us is going to be revealed. Now, we see this also in Ephesians, in chapter 1 and verse 3. If you're nimble with your Bible, you might want to look, otherwise just listen. But in Ephesians 1 and verse 3, page 1817, the Apostle says, praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. Every blessing that there is to be had is ours already in Christ. It's our possession. Chapter two of Ephesians, having spoken in verses one to three about the dire condition that we were in before we were converted, he says in verse four, But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. It is by grace you've been saved, now verse six, and God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. If you are a Christian, spiritually speaking, you are seated with Christ. Why? In heavenly realms. Why? Because we've been united with Christ. Where is Christ now? Christ is in heaven. So where are you now, spiritually? You're in heaven. What have you got now, spiritually? Glory in Christ. It's yours. That's the staggering thing. Now, Paul says something very similar in Colossians chapter three, page 1834. He says, since then you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. Why? Verse three, before you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. That's where you are, that's where your life is. It's with Christ in heaven. Verse four, when Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. Spiritually, you're with Christ in glory. That's where your life is. You're bound up with Him. And when He comes, when He appears, you'll appear. When His glory is made clear, your glory will be made clear. Just as His glory can't be seen at the moment, your glory can't be seen at the moment, but when Christ comes, His glory will be seen and the glory that you have in Him will also be made clear. It will be revealed. So the experience of glory that we will come into when Christ comes again is a revelation. God is revealing what he has already given to us. And again, I hope you'll bear with me, I found this so exciting as I was looking at it, I thought I should share this with you. Look at 1 Peter also that speaks about this in terms of revelation. 1 Peter 1 and verses 3 to 5. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his great mercy he's given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade, kept in heaven for you. who through faith are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. And then chapter four, 1 Peter chapter four, and verse 12. Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering as though something strange were happening to you, but rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. And then 1 Peter chapter five, verse one. To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder and a witness of Christ's sufferings and as one who will share in the glory to be revealed. Now, if you want, let me kind of give you an illustration which is a bit pathetic because it's so minuscule in comparison to what it's going to be. But imagine you have heard of this fantastic show that's on in the West End. and you've heard that the set of this show has been, the millions of pounds has been spent on the set of this show. It is absolutely mind-boggling. It's the best show, the best set that has ever been. So you go up to the theater, you buy your tickets at great expense, you go up to the theater, you're sitting in the theater, the lights in the auditorium are on, the curtain's down, And you're sitting there, you're waiting, you're waiting, waiting, waiting. The music's going, you're waiting, waiting. When's it gonna start, when's it gonna start? And then the lights start to go down in the auditorium. And you're waiting. And then the curtain goes up. And that glory that was there behind the curtain now is revealed. You now can see with your own eyes this great set that you've heard about, this fantastic show that you've spent so much money for and you've been looking forward to so long. Now you're there. Now it started! And that's a little tiny illustration of what we're talking about today. The glory of God in Christ, the glory that is given to His children, His sons, it's going to be revealed. It's going to be marvelous, it's going to be wonderful. And that's what the creation's looking forward to. Okay, so that's our first point. Now the second point is this, that the reason why the creation is as it is today is because of Adam's sin. And so coming back now to Romans chapter eight, and we look at verse now, verse 20. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it. Now what we learn from this verse is that the sad state of creation, that the creation is in now, is not what it was, how it was when it was created, when it was first created. The creation has been subjected, which implies that before it was subjected, it was not subjected. If you can follow my logic, it must have been without this frustration without this futility, which we'll come to in a moment, prior to its having been subjected. And how was it before it was subjected? Well, I'm sure probably nearly all of us will be familiar with Genesis chapter 1. And what is that refrain that keeps on coming through in Genesis chapter 1? And it was good, and it was good, and it was good, and it was good, again and again and again. We're told the creation was good! And then at the end of creation, in chapter 1 and verse 31, we read, God saw all that he had made and it was very good. It was brilliant. There was nothing wrong with it. Everything was working perfectly. Everything was just perfect, just chiming together, all getting along well, nothing was breaking, nothing was being destroyed, nothing was dying, everything was just fine. But then something happened. The creation was subjected to frustration. Now that word frustration we have in our translation frustration, the Greek word in the original means emptiness. The King James Version translates it vanity, which of course if you know your Bible from Ecclesiastes, everything is vanity, everything is empty. And it links in with the whole of Ecclesiastes, this idea of the futility of life in this fallen world. The new King James and the new American Standard Version, the English Standard Version, used the word futility, which I suppose is a modern version of the word vanity. And what he's saying is that this world in its fallen state is pointless. It's empty. It's devoid of meaning. And you've only got to look at the history of the world to see that this is the case, isn't it? People put in huge amounts of effort to make a nice home for themselves, to buy a lovely house, to go on holiday. to buy some smart clothes or some jewelry. But then these things all just break and disappear and the person eventually dies and all his great wealth is dissipated to others or just gets thrown in the dust into the rubbish bin. And that's life, isn't it? Everything is just, everything goes round and round. Nothing is achieved in human, in terms of this world as it is now. And if you go look forward also then to the next verse, it says, the creation was, it says, it talks about how the liberation, the creation will be liberated from its bondage to decay. There is this, as the other translations puts it, this slavery to corruption. The creation is enslaved to the tendency to decay. Now, the scientists even have a name for it. They call it the second law of thermodynamics. It's a principle that's built into this whole universe as it is at the moment. That everything is just constantly wearing down. Everything is wasting. Everything is decaying. That's the nature of this world subsequent to the fall. And where does it go back to? Well, it goes back to, of course, the curse that God pronounced on Adam and Eve. You remember, I'm sure many of you, in Genesis chapter three, how God said to Adam, first of all to Eve, and then to Adam, you might, if you want to, you might want to look at it. It's right, of course, at the very beginning of the Bible. In Genesis three, God said to Adam, cursed, first, sorry, first to Eve, He says, verse 16 of chapter 3, I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing. With pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you. To Adam, he said, because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, you must not eat. Cursed is the ground because of you. Through painful toil, you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow, you will eat of your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken. For dust you are, and to dust you will return. The whole of creation has been profoundly disrupted through the curse that came upon it as a result of Adam's and Eve's sin. Eve started to experience pain in childbirth. Her relationship with her husband was distorted and he started to exercise a tyrannical rule over her. Adam started to experience toil and difficulty in work. He started to encounter thorns and thistles in his work. He would have to eke out his living by the sweat of his brow, and he would die. He didn't die before. He wasn't going to die before, but now he would die. because dust he was and a dust he would return. And that curse has come down, down through the generations, down to you and down to me. And that's why our bodies are suffering as they are. That's why we're growing old. That's why we are diseased and weak and frail. It hits us all in different ways. But it's the same principle that's at work in all of us. And what Paul is here saying in Romans chapter 8 is it's not just us as individuals feeling the curse in our bodies, but what he's saying in Romans 8 is that the curse actually affected the entire cosmos. The whole universe is bound up with the fate of man. Because man sinned, the whole universe is suffering. And so we find that waste and decay is everywhere. Everything breaks. Things go wrong. Accidents happen. Stars die. Earthquakes happen. There are tsunamis, famines, plagues. Mosquitoes spread malarial parasites killing millions. There are tapeworms which live inside men's guts, causing them to waste away. The Toxicara parasite causes blindness in children. Wasps sting us. Rats invade our homes and cause massive destruction. Nature is red in tooth and claw as animal fights animal for survival. That's the world we're living in. And all of this as a result of the sin of Adam and Eve. And so the Apostle says that the creation was subjected to futility not because of its own choice. The creation didn't ask for this, the trees and the animals and the mountains and the hills. They didn't ask, they didn't choose this futility, this bondage to decay. No, it came upon them as a result of The one who subjected it, now who is the one who subjected it? The answer is God did. Some people say, well it's the devil who brought suffering, so no. God has brought it as a judgment upon this world. Does that say, does that mean that the responsibility is God's? No, the responsibility is man's, man sinned. And that's why, you know, when people rail against God about the suffering in this world, they're so mistaken, because it comes back to man's sin. God said to Adam, on the day you eat, you shall surely die. This is the result of what God said to Adam would happen. Now, we should note in passing that This teaching that death and suffering and destruction has come into this created world as a result of Adam's sin creates a real problem for those who teach what is known as theistic evolution. There are good Christian people who seek to harmonize the teaching of the Bible that God created the world with a theory of evolution put forward by some scientists that the different plants and animals have come about through a process of evolution over millions and millions of years. And they say that God used this process of evolution to bring about the different species. But the problem with this idea is that it entails suffering and death having gone on for millions and millions of years before the creation of Adam. But what this verse teaches is that the suffering of this universe has come about as a result of Adam's sin. So to my mind that makes the theory of evolution impossible in terms of macroevolution. Of course we see microevolution going on all the time. But in terms of macroevolution to explain the origins of species, impossible. Because it implies suffering which came in as a result of the fall happening before the fall. But anyway, that's just by the way. The main thing I want you to see from this is this, that Paul teaches here that the creation is as it is now because of Adam's sin. Now the third thing to see is this, that the creation is going to be set free from its bondage to decay. Verse 21, that the creation, he says, the creation was subjected to frustration in hope, verse 21, that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. Now, we read earlier from Isaiah chapter 11, earlier in our service, this wonderful passage about the different animals all being together and living in harmony with each other, not harming, not destroying, not eating each other, not attacking each other. And I said then that I think there are two applications of that. One is in terms of the church, that in spiritual application we love each other as in the church, but also in terms of the creation itself, that the creation is going to be set free. There will be no more red in tooth and claw at the resurrection. The animals will live in harmony with each other and not harm each other. And humans and animals will live together without harming each other. And humans and humans will live together without harming each other. And there'll be complete peace and harmony in this new world that God is going to make. We see here that God is concerned with not just saving our souls, But God is concerned with saving our bodies as well. And God is not just concerned with saving our souls and our bodies, but he's also concerned with, you know, our world is very concerned. Today the fashion is we've got to save the universe. We've got to save the environment. Well, don't worry, folks. God's going to do it. He will save the environment. He's going to renew the environment. He's going to make it fantastic, paradise on earth. It's all going to be renewed. And part of our experience as Christians will be, part of the delight of the future will be that we will live in this renewed earth. And we'll be satisfied, we'll be happy, we'll be delighted with the recreation of God. Sometimes some Christians are really worried about dying because they're thinking, this is my one chance to enjoy it all. You know, I've got us, you know, there's that book, isn't there? A Hundred Things to Do Before You Die. Well, I've only got to number one. I've got another 99 to do. I haven't done them all yet. And time's running out. I haven't seen this site, I haven't seen that site, haven't been to the Grand Canyon, haven't been to the Alps, haven't been anywhere. Just been stuck in Poplar all my life. But don't worry. There'll be things far better than the Alps, far better than Grand Canyon, far more beautiful than the northern lights in the new world. You'll have millions upon millions upon millions of years to see it all and explore down to the deepest ocean and up to the highest heights. You'll never finish exploring this wonderful world that God's gonna make. So then, what have we seen today? We've seen today that the creation is eagerly waiting for something. The creation is standing on tiptoe, waiting to see the revelation of the glory of the sons of God. That glory has been given to us already. It's ours already in Christ. But when Christ comes, the curtain will be removed and the glory that we have will be manifested. And the creationist says, I can't wait. I want that. If it could speak, that's what it would be saying. And we've seen how the creation is in its present condition because of the fall. It's affected not just us humans, but it's affected the entire cosmos, the entire universe. And we've also seen that the promise is that when we are redeemed fully, when our bodies are fully redeemed, then the creation also will be redeemed. Remember the book of Revelation? What did John see? I saw new heavens and a new earth. And the bride, the city of God coming down from heaven down to earth. and God now living among men, and God wiping every tear from their eyes, their noble sorrow, no more death. The curse is gone. That's what we're looking forward to, a wonderful, wonderful new day. Now, so by way of application, first of all, for those of us who are Christians, let us rejoice. Let us be glad. Don't doubt your salvation, don't doubt what's coming, because if you're a Christian, it's already yours. It's in your possession. It can't be taken from you. Once you believe in Christ, it's yours. So don't worry about that, and be looking forward. Just a little time, not very long now. and the curtains will be opened and the glory that is yours in Christ and the glory that's mine and the glory of all God's people will be revealed. It'll be a wonderful day. So if you're a Christian, look forward. Be glad. Life is tough now. It's very tough. You don't need me to tell you that. But there's something wonderful coming. So through the gloom, through the difficulty, through the heartache, through the tears, Look forward, look up, look up to heaven. See what's coming to you. And for anybody who's not yet a Christian, do you get some idea of what you're missing out on? There are two things that God uses to draw us to himself. There is the fear of hell and there's the promise of glory. What we talked about this morning is the promise of glory. This is the carrot to draw you. The fear of hell is the stick, but here's the carrot. God is saying, look, here you are. Here's something wonderful. Come, come, come. The door's open. The invitation's there. It's all been done for you. Christ has died for your sins. Just come. Just come to him. Receive from him. You don't have to pay anything. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to achieve anything. Just come. and receive, drink that you may have life. May God have mercy upon us all. We'll just have a few moments of quiet for us to pray before we sing our last hymn.