Sermon Transcript
And y’all look great. Thanks for being here. And let’s dig in as to why we’re here. Okay, we’ll start with Romans 8, verses 20 to 39. 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 the pains of childbirth until now. 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. 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.
Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what his— what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that For those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined, he also called; and those whom he called, he also justified; and those whom he justified, he also glorified; What then shall we say to these things?
If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn?
Christ Jesus is the one who died— more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, for your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
As a church, we’ve been studying the book of Romans for the past couple months, and we’ve said really Romans is about the gospel. Now, if you’re new to Christianity, uh, the gospel is what Jesus has done on our behalf to reconcile us to God, to remove our shame and guilt, to give us a future. The gospel is what Jesus has accomplished. For us. It is not what we must accomplish for him, you know, to earn his favor or forgiveness.
It’s what he’s done, not what we do, which releases us from the worry of if we’ve been good enough, right enough, long enough. Because the gospel tells us that Jesus was good enough, right enough, long enough in our place. He lived the life we ought to live And we get the credit for it, for the life he lived. At the same time, he took the blame for the life that we have lived. That’s what the cross was about.
Our condemnation, our guilt, our penalty went, went on to him. In other words, he’s our substitute. We exchange with him. Every debt in our account goes to him, and every credit in his account transfers to us. Uh, we said on Easter, if you were here, the gospel is Christ’s success exchanged for our failure, his strength exchanged for our weakness, his righteousness exchanged for our sin, his faithfulness exchanged for our unfaithfulness, his acceptance exchanged for our rejection, his approval exchanged for our condemnation, his fullness exchanged for our emptiness, His riches for our poverty, his light for our darkness, his beauty for our brokenness, his honor for our disgrace, his victory for our defeat.
We have his success, strength, righteousness, faithfulness, acceptance, approval, fullness, riches, light, beauty, honor, and victory. That’s what the gospel provides us, and that’s really what Romans is about. It’s what we’ve been studying, um, It’s an unparalleled treasure. We really never get to the bottom of mining its riches. Paul, who is the author of Romans, he says in one of his other letters, no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor heart imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.
It can take a lifetime to begin our— to get our minds around what the gospel provides. Um, and today we come to the second half of Romans 8, which is one of the passages in scripture that touches on the magnitude of what we have in Christ. It still doesn’t detail everything, but for 20 verses or so, it covers quite a bit. And as we look at these verses today, we will see the redemption of the physical, the redemption of injustices And then what shall we say in response? The redemption of the physical, redemption of injustices, and what shall we say in response?
So first, the redemption of the physical, um, our bodies and the earth. We’ll say this a few different ways, but one of the unique features of Christianity is that one day the brokenness of the physical world will be restored. Um, specifically our bodies, our flesh and blood, and the earth itself. We’ll start with our bodies and then we’ll combine the earth along with them. So our bodies— one of the more maddening parts of getting older is not only the increasing amounts of aches and pains, but also that aches and pains occur for seemingly no reason at all.
We could have done nothing to injure ourselves, and yet it still hurts. Um, one of the comedians that Beth and I enjoy, he has this bit about how one day he came into work limping, right? So, so his friends of course ask him, like, what did you do? You know, did you pull a muscle when you’re working out? No.
Were you hiking? No. Skiing? No. Were you in some kind of accident?
No. Well then, how’d you hurt yourself? Why, you know, why are you limping? And he says, well, you know, I was, uh, sleeping.
I, uh, I became severely injured while I was resting and unconscious. And then he asks, you know what, why do our bodies get to the point that we need to prepare them to lay down? You know, at a certain age we need to start stretching as if we’re about to run a marathon before we get into bed at night. Isn’t that frustrating? You know, I’m, I’m only 44, uh, but that has already started.
And I consider myself pretty active. I am pretty active. Okay. But last fall, I was just, I was standing motionless, like, like this, not moving at all. Hadn’t raised an arm, turned my hips, nothing, just motionless.
And I pinched a nerve in my neck. I was like, I couldn’t turn my head left for a month by doing nothing. Like the nerve just pinched itself. It’s like, welcome to the middle of my 40s, I guess. The older we get, the more easily we break, the longer it takes to heal.
You know, our skin gets looser and thinner, we fall apart, our bodies are decaying, and we have a sense that it shouldn’t be that way. We believe there’s something wrong with our situation. And when that nerve pinched itself, I didn’t say, oh, it’s just part of the beauty of life. No, as I was angry, right? Like, why is my body giving up on me?
I’ve tried to treat it so well and it’s forsaking me. We don’t like our decay.
Same as when someone passes away. We groan, we hate it, we rage against it, we try to prevent it. We know there’s something wrong with it. It’s like the system is broken, because it is. It’s part of our fallen world.
It’s one of the results when sin polluted everything at the beginning of time. It’s creation itself and us as part of creation. All, all of it is corrupted. Um, Sam Alberry, who’s a Christian author and pastor, he’s commenting on these verses. He says the good world that God so carefully made has been put out of joint in some way.
It no longer runs smoothly. It sputters and falters. The world is not always a wonderful place to be. Quite apart from the suffering caused by us, the natural world itself can be vicious and cruel. Just a glance at today’s world headlines includes stories of disease and natural disasters wreaking havoc in many places.
This frustration to which it has been subjected is not its natural happy state. This explains some of our perplexity at the sufferings we experience. We have only ever lived in a world where these sorts of difficulties occur. We’ve never known anything else, and yet we can’t reconcile ourselves to it. Our gut reaction is that these things should not be so.
This sense is hard to explain other than as a memory trace of a different world where things— such things did not happen, a homing device to the way the world was intended to be. End quote. You hear what he’s saying? Even though pain and suffering and decay is all that we have ever known, somehow we also know there’s something wrong with it. We’ve only ever had one home, you know, the earth.
It’s marked by disease, death, and decay, but it sure doesn’t feel like home. It feels out of place, out of joint. We know somehow it once was and ought to be good, safe, whole, uncorrupted. And the promise of Christianity is that creation itself, and us with it, will be redeemed back to how it was. This is verses 21 through 23.
Creation itself will be set free from its bondage, uh, 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 the pains of childbirth until now. And not only creation, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit, but we still groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for the redemption of our bodies. Paul explains that us and the earth together are waiting to be redeemed in a type of physical resurrection. Now we already have part of our redemption, um, as those who hope in Christ.
We’ve already been redeemed inwardly. This is the first fruits of the Spirit he mentioned. You know, our shame and guilt’s removed, we’re reconciled with God, we’ve been given a high status and significance that isn’t based on if we measure up, it’s based on Jesus measuring up for us. All of that inner redemption has already happened. That’s the first fruits of the Spirit.
But we’re waiting with groans for the outer redemption, the redemption of the physical. And one day, at the renewal of all things, as Jesus rose from the grave with a physical body never to decay again, so will we, and so will the world. Um, now, for the, for the people who struggle to believe in Jesus’ physical resurrection who may say, you know, Jesus rising from the dead was only spiritual, you know, his soul lived on but his body didn’t, or his resurrection’s metaphorical, it’s a, it’s a good story that symbolizes that things can be made new, it teaches us, you know, the sun will rise tomorrow, is it, you know, it’s a story of hope but his body didn’t come back to life, you know, his resurrection was only spiritual or metaphorical, right, but it still gives us hope. Okay, if that’s you if you don’t believe in the physical resurrection, I would challenge you. You’re undermining the very hope that you think the story provides.
Because on the one hand, you’re saying the resurrection story shows us that renewal is possible, but then on the other hand, you’re saying renewal didn’t happen. The physical wasn’t renewed. It’s still subject to decay. You’re undermining your own hope. If you want to believe in renewal, believe in renewal.
Believe in the resurrection of the physical. And Christians believe, as one commentator put it, there is a glory coming that will be so blindingly powerful that when it falls upon us, it will envelop the whole created order and glorify it along with us. We will bring nature with us into a renewed, restored, and redeemed reality. Or as C.S. Lewis put it, God will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature pulsing all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine.
It’s the redemption of the physical.
Second, redemption of injustices. The wrongs against us will, one, be reversed, and two, used to elevate us. It is perhaps Christianity’s most staggering claim, because when we’ve suffered loss, when people have wronged us, when we’ve been the victims of injustices— and we all have been to different degrees, I mean, evil has harmed all of us, some more, some of us more than others— and in those moments, part of, part of the hopelessness we feel is that we will never get back what was taken from us. Maybe we had an idea about what our future would be, and now that picture can never happen. Our lives are permanently changed for the worse, we believe, and there doesn’t really seem to be anything that anybody can do about it.
Not really. You know, generally the hope that our world can offer in moments like that is through systems like our courts and such. You know, if perpetrators have committed evil against us, the legal system can penalize them, which is important. That’s great when justice is done. We pray for that.
But just because the perpetrator is punished, it doesn’t mean that our lives are put back together. Even if we receive some kind of financial settlement for the losses against us, that would be helpful. Again, that’s important and good, but depending on what happened to us, financial settlements can’t always make us whole. Again. You might remember, you know, a number of years ago Larry Nassar, who was a doctor for the women’s gymnastics, uh, the U.S. women’s gymnastics team— Nassar was found guilty of abusing hundreds of women U.S. gymnasts who had— who he had been trusted to treat.
And as a result, Larry Nassar is now serving multiple sentences totaling up to be well beyond a life sentence. Additionally, victims won You know, multiple financial settlements— $500 million from Michigan State, $300 million, $380 million from the Olympics, $140 million from the Justice Department. All those legal outcomes, those are necessary and good, but it can’t restore what was lost. One of the victims who was first to blow the whistle on Nassar— this is Rachel Denhollander— she said no amount of money would ever be able to repair what was broken. Loss of innocence, safety, physical autonomy.
You know, it’s like even basically a billion dollars doesn’t put back what was before. The legal system can’t reverse the effects of evil. And to tell you the truth, outside of biblical faith, religion or spirituality doesn’t really get us there either, because generally the hope in most religions is, yes, this world is hard, Terrible things happen here, but if you try your best and have some faith, you go to an afterlife marked with bliss and comfort. It’s like the afterlife is a consolation of sorts for the troubles of this world. We escape from the difficulty here to go to paradise elsewhere.
That’s the hope of most religions. This is not bad, you know, we’d take it if that’s all we can get. But again, it doesn’t fix what happened It’s similar to the financial settlement. Instead of putting back together whatever is broken, right, we’re compensated with something else. But that is not the hope of Christianity.
Christianity teaches both a reversal of the wrongs and also that the wrongs will be used to elevate us. Now, we’ve already alluded to the reversal of the wrongs by mentioning the renewal of the whole world, that the physical world, the reversal of death, destruction, disease, the But the, but the resurrection and renewal of the world means much more than just reversing entropy and decay. Because when Jesus rose from the dead and his broken body was put back together, it was also a reversal of all the evil and sin that put him on the cross in the first place. Everything that had been taken from him was restored to him. You know, this innocent man who had been executed, he got his life back.
The legal system can’t do that, but God can. And that’s a picture of what will happen globally at the renewal of all things. It, it means every wrong set right. We get back all that was lost, every wound, whether it’s physical, emotional, psychological, mental. And Jesus would have had, you know, many of those, right, through his betrayal, torture, execution.
But it was all healed. It was all repaired.
And such will be the wounds of the world— everything put back together. Injustices against us will be reversed. But they aren’t only reversed. Part of our redemption in Christ is that the evil we experience is used to elevate us even further. Every wrong committed against us, instead of ruining us as would be its intent— I mean, every evil or injustice against us, it wants to destroy us.
That’s its goal, bring us down. But instead of it destroying us, God will turn it on its head and make it serve us. To accomplish the opposite of its intent. We will have more than we would have had if it hadn’t happened. We will get an even better future than we would have had without it.
That’s an incredible claim, and we find it in 2 verses in these— in this passage. One, Romans 8:28: We know that for those who love God, all things work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose. All things work together for good. Doesn’t say all things are good. Not all things are.
Evil and injustice are real and wrong and painful, but those things will be turned on their head. Instead of them bringing us down like they want to do, they will be used to bring us up. Similarly, verse 37, after Paul lists all these terrible things— trials, persecution, famine— he says that in regard to them, we are more than conquerors. Verse 37: In all these things— trials, persecution, famine, sword— we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. We’re more than conquerors.
So it’s not just the terrible things are defeated, thwarted, because if they simply ceased, then we would be regular conquerors. That’s regular conquering. You know, something tries to end us, but it is prevented from ending us. That’s conquering it. But we are more than conquerors, meaning instead of evil and injustice simply being stopped, they remain in our story until the renewal of all things for the purpose of serving us for our good, to elevate us.
It’s a total humiliation of evil and injustice. Evil and injustice are forced to accomplish the opposite of what they want to accomplish. It’s a subjugation of the enemy. It’s more than conquering. And that’s what we have in Christ.
That’s the kind of redemption that he brings. He takes— like we just sang— he takes what was meant for evil and he turns it for our good. And if you don’t see how that’s possible, especially with the magnitude of tragedies that we see, The best picture of this concept in scripture is the crucifixion and resurrection. Again, crucifixion— this massive injustice. A totally innocent man was executed, you know, by an angry, jealous mob.
It’s full of lies, false accusations, corruption, deceit, abuses of power. It’s like darkness put Jesus on the cross. It attempted to end Jesus. Its intent was to destroy him, but it accomplished the opposite. The crucifixion didn’t subtract from Jesus’ glory, it added to it.
It elevated him even further. Jesus is more glorious than he would have been without the crucifixion, because on the cross we see the all-powerful one lay down his power to lift us up. On the cross, we see a God who is willing to pay the debt that we owe. On the cross, we see the judge standing in place of the guilty, taking the punishment that the guilty deserve so that the guilty may go free. No other god does that.
Gods don’t make themselves less to make us more. They don’t pay the debt that we owe them. Certainly no other god bears his own wrath that the guilty deserve. It’s unheard of. It’s unparalleled.
His glory is unrivaled, and we see it on the cross. We see it because of the cross. This terrible injustice is used to add to his glory. It didn’t end him. It exalted him.
It was used for his good.
How maddening it must have been for the forces of evil that they did their worst and it resulted in displaying Christ as even more magnificent and beautiful. He’s more than a conqueror of the darkness that led to his crucifixion.
And such will be our story if our hope is in him. What the enemy meant for evil will be turned and used for our good. Now, I will not dare to guess how your specific troubles will be used to elevate you. I will not try to write your story. It will be unique to you, and only you will be able to tell it.
But I do know If you are in Christ, your troubles will not ruin you. Instead, they will provide something for you that wouldn’t have been possible without them. If God took something as evil and dark as the crucifixion and turned it on its head, he will take whatever is in your life and make it serve you. So Question— not our last point, just a question— if God turns terrible things in our story around so that we are more than we would have been otherwise, what’s the best way to pray when we’re in a difficult season, when everything seems dark and hopeless in our lives? Do we pray to get out of that kind of spot?
Would it be best for us to get out of it? Would it have been best for Jesus to get out of the crucifixion?
If he avoided the cross, would that have been preferable?
No. So should we pray for our sufferings to end?
We can. Jesus did. In fact, he actually prayed to get out of that. Remember the Garden of Gethsemane? Jesus is about to get arrested and executed, and he prayed.
He said, Father, if possible, take this cup from me. Get me out, Lord. But then he added, not my will, yours be done, Father. He’s saying, this is bad, I’d rather not do it, but at the same time, I know your plan will always be better, so do your plan. The early church prayed something similar.
There’s an account in Acts 4. This is after Jesus was crucified, resurrected, ascended into heaven, and the early church is growing. But they’re facing persecution. In fact, there’s these murderous threats against them. So they start praying.
It’s Acts 4, starting in verse 24. Um, and, and in their, in their prayer, they first, they first remember Jesus’ crucifixion was more than it seemed at the time, because at the time they thought it was the worst thing ever. While they saw Jesus on the cross, this is as bad as it can get. But then later It turned out to be the best thing ever. They even say in their prayer, they say all of, all of, all the things that led to the crucifixion, all of that was predestined to happen.
It was part of God’s plan. So they take what they’ve learned from the crucifixion, that God can turn utter darkness into brilliant light, and then they apply it in their prayer for themselves about these murderous threats that are against them. And they say, it’s Acts 4:29, They say this, Lord, you know, as they’re getting death threats, they, they just pray, Lord, consider these threats, just take them into account. It’s very similar to Jesus’ prayer, like, let your will be done. It’s like they realize they don’t know how these might fit into God’s plan.
Maybe it’s best for them to get out of it. Maybe it is best for their enemies to have a change of heart, give them favor. Maybe that is best. Or maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s like Jesus’ crucifixion.
Maybe the threats are best. They don’t know, so they pray, simply consider these threats. Now, if they could see everything that God sees, if they knew specifically how God was going to turn evil into good, they would pray for that. But they don’t know how God’s going to do it, so their prayers can only go so far. And this is where Paul comes in our passage and explains that God’s Spirit prays for us when we don’t know what to pray.
God prays for us. It’s verses 26 and 28. The Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans too deep for words. The Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. The Spirit prays what we would pray if we knew everything that God knows.
The Spirit prays for the specific ways that tragedy will be turned into glory. He prays for God’s plan, for God’s will that we don’t know, that we can’t fathom, like the disciples couldn’t fathom Jesus’ crucifixion would add to his glory. That was totally beyond anything they would have ever conceived. But the Spirit was praying for it because he knew the plan, and he’s praying for your life right now.
Whatever is so dark that you can’t see any possible way out, you certainly can’t see how this darkness that surrounds you will be turned into brilliant light. You don’t know. But the Spirit knows, and he’s praying for it for you. He’s praying for your complete redemption— every wrong set right, every brokenness restored, every decay reversed. The Spirit’s praying for that.
God wants that. God’s working toward that. God will do that complete redemption. You have God in your corner like that.
Which brings us to our last point. So what shall we say in response? As Paul says in these verses, if God is for us, who can be against us? This last section of Romans 8, if you’re ever going to memorize anything I, I put this at the top of my list. Paul describes if Jesus would go through the crucifixion for you, there’s nothing he won’t do.
If he didn’t walk away then, he will never walk away. He is for you. He is for you. He is for you. And if he is for you, who can condemn you?
Who can bring you down? What could stand against you? Nothing. Nothing can ruin you. Paul asked, who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Nothing that comes against you shall stand. In fact, it’ll be used for your good. God is for you. He’s got you.
And if he’s for you, who can be against you? Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for Romans 8, which touches on the magnitude of what you have provided for us in Christ. We pray that it would be real in our hearts, Lord. May it fill us with the confidence that it ought to.
May it be real to us that we are yours, that you have us. That you are for us, that you, that you’ve known us since before the foundation of the world, that you chose us, that you justified us, that you will glorify us. Lord, we are safe in your arms. You will reverse the bad things that have happened to us, and you will actually turn them for our good. Incredible claim.
We pray that it may be real in our hearts. Pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
