Pandemics & Hurricanes: The Groaning Of Creation

Why the World Is Not as It Should Be 2:12

the future can bring, and it can bring things that we do not want. The world around us, the natural realm is broken. Now, assuming you see that, or at least recognize that there's something we don't like in the natural realm, a reasonable question would be, if God is good, if he's in charge, if he declares the end from the beginning, then why in the world do these things happen? Assuming we acknowledge the existence of all these terrible things in the world around us, and assuming we also acknowledge that God is sovereign, then why do these things happen and continue to happen?

How did the world get this way? Why is God allowing it to remain this way? Well, in today's text in Romans 8, the Apostle Paul is addressing these things, and we're going to study that looking at verses 18 through 25. And as we study, we're not only going to reflect on the terrors of the world around us, but we're also going to rejoice to discover that the brokenness, the futility within the created realm is just for a short season. Furthermore, the world around us, when you look outside these doors and see all these terrible things, you might be inclined to see a world and it's death throes but that's not the way today's passage is going to describe it today's passage it says that the world's not groaning out of death throes it's groaning out of birth pangs and all together different meaning and different context growing out of birth pangs the expectation of something the world is groaning it's creaking it's hurting absolutely and every time you feel the tremble of an earthquake you see the storm out on the gulf every time you read the headlines about the pandemic you recognize that you see the things that are wrong the world around us but Scripture would redirect our focus and say those things are not indicative of a world in its death throes but rather a world in its birth pangs expecting something better something that is just on the horizon coming closer every day let's look now if you would let's look at verse 18 of today's text and we'll work our way through the balance of this past verse 18 for I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory which shall be revealed in us. All right, Romans chapter 8. Of all the books and of all the chapters, this book and this chapter has about as rich and dense theology as you will find anywhere in Scripture, and it's helpful to remember that as we consider this narrow band of text. Now, at the start of Romans chapter 8, Paul is giving his readers, the Christian community in Rome, he's giving them good news. He started out in verse 1 of chapter 8, and he says this. He says, therefore there is now no condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus he's writing to sinners who broke the law of one greater than themselves he's writing to sinners the wages of which is death and he's telling them that they have good news and the good news is this that there's therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus at one time you stood you stood in a place where the anvil the heavy anvil of God's wrath was just over your head but no more. There is therefore now no condemnation for those of us who believe. So he goes on in the first 17 verses to build on that. When he gets to today's text in verse 18, he stops for a minute.

He stops for a minute, and he offers what seems kind of like a parenthetical aside. You know what that is? You're making an argument, you're discussing something, and then for a moment, you just kind of step over here and you segue into something else for a moment. Well, he does that to a degree in verse 18. He stops and he wants to linger on a concept that is particularly wonderful, particularly pleasant.

And he's writing these particularly pleasant words to those who were persecuted.

Romans 8 and the Curse 5:45

And he reminds these persecuted individuals, those folks who are living under the authority and the boot of Rome, He's reminding those who would be persecuted in his own day and in the centuries yet to come this. He says, look, the sufferings of today, the sufferings of this present time, they're not worthy to be compared to the glory of that which awaits. He's writing to the people in Rome. He's writing to those who are under the boot of Caesar. Which Caesar was in power at this time? Nero. He's writing to those on the boot of Rome and the boot of Caesar. Those who are being persecuted will be persecuted for some time yet to come. And he says, look, as bad and horrific and terrible as that is, you not only have all the calamities of the natural realm because they had sicknesses and cancer and all that too you not only that you also have nero but you want to know something encouraging he says in verse 18 he says the sufferings of this present time they're not even worthy to be compared to that which awaits the glory which shall be revealed in us he says as terrible as things can get you ever go to the doctor's office and they walk in to tell them I have some symptom or some problem and they ask you this question they say on a scale of one to five or one to ten or whatever it is tell us what level of pain it is and sometimes it's pretty bad and you say well it's a five it's a ten it couldn't be worse well there's times in life when life seems to conspire against us in such a way that it feels like everything around us is a five or ten feels like life just couldn't be more difficult for us well in verse 18 Paul says as bad as that might be, rejoice to know this, that when you see what's coming, when you see what tomorrow will bring, when you see what your future will hold, when you look at God's golden shores and you dwell there, you'll realize this, that the hurts and the pains and the things that worry and concern you and grieve you now, there isn't even a chart of comparison by which to view these things in contrast to the glory that's coming. You know, Paul knew what he was talking about. If you were look in 2 Corinthians 12. Paul talks about a man who had a vision of heaven. He says, I know a man, and he's talking about himself, but I know a man who was caught up into the third heaven. We've talked about the heavens before. The first heaven is the heaven you look out, you see the clouds and the birds flying. That's heaven number one. The second heaven is the heaven where the stars are and the like. Well, the third heaven, that's where God is. And so he says, I know a man who was caught up in the third heaven and he saw things, he heard things that were inexpressible. Paul had had a vision of what is on the other side. And when he came back, he says, I can't even tell you what I saw, heard, observed there. I can't even relate to you. I'm not even going to try. But he says, know this, it's good. Across his letters, he repeatedly returns to remind us that it's better.

And that's what he's doing in verse 18. He says, what you're fearing and grieving from now, it doesn't even contrast with what's coming. And this is not speculation, like someone just guessing. You know, if you go to the Christian bookstores, there's books of people who claim to have been to heaven or try to guess about heaven that here's what I think heaven's like if you turn on Christian televangelists at two in the morning which I suggest you don't but if you do if you do and they tell you they say hey I saw heaven the other day you know there's some prophet explaining what he saw don't believe it don't listen if Paul didn't bother to tell us all the details then they're not for us at the time being but know this it's better than anything we could imagine no contrast whatsoever now when you look at the world around you and you feel the weight of the hardships and the pain, when you look at all the things that are wrong in the natural realm, when you look at all the things that are wrong in your life, Dear heavens, don't you want something better? Don't you want something better than this? You know, it boggles my mind as how often as Christians we can try to carve out our slice of utopia here in the midst of a war zone. Paul never even tried to do that. Never even would have crossed his mind. When we look around things around us we shouldn't be trying to make ourselves ultimately comfortable and as happy as we can get here we should look forward to that great day that is yet to come as Paul did Paul poured out his life as a drink offering and set his gaze on the upward call in Christ Jesus we saw that in our study of philippians the world around us is not as good as it gets it's not even close and if you need reminders there may be things on your radar this next week that'll remind you don't keep carving out utopia here because you can't do it. Keep your focus on the skies and God's plans and promises for the future. With that said, Paul is reminding us of that in verse 18. But then, as we're going to see now in verses 19 through 21, he not only reminds us that we have a better future, that things will be better for us, and we should keep our eyes and mind on that. He not only says that,

Creation Groans for Redemption 10:20

but he says, look, God's plan of redemption, it doesn't include just you. It includes everything else that you see. In verses 19 through 21, we see that God's plan for redemption isn't just the redemption of sinful man, but it's a redemption that extends to the whole of the created realm. Let's look at verses 19 through 21. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits 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. Because the creation itself also will be delivered. Listen to these words. The creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Let me offer you a pop quiz. How many sins did it take to separate man from God? One. I'm so glad no one ever says two or five or ten. One. One sin. Just one. That was sufficient. That was enough. God said everybody out of the pool, one sin didn't take more than that. With that said, if you remember prior to that sin, if you rewind just a little bit before that, before that first sin, if you were to have looked in the garden, you would have thought, wow, this is pretty nice. This is pretty good. If you were to look at the garden there prior to the first sin, you would have seen that everything was pleasant. If you were to look around with a microscope and look for signs of disease and pandemic and the like, you wouldn't have found it. If you were to look for violence and all sorts of dreadful things in the natural realm at that time, it wouldn't have been there. If you were to look at mankind, he had a wonderful status at that time. He was able to walk and talk with his maker in the cool of the afternoon. The garden was a type, a shadow of something better, a shadow of the heaven to come. With that said, the relationship that Adam and Eve had with their maker, the one that they walked with in the cool of the day, the relationship that they had with their God, it hinged on something. It was a covenantal relationship. It hinged on one thing. What was that? Well, hinged on a law that God had made. God says, you know what? All of this, it's yours.

As Lanny read earlier this morning, God says, hey, this wonderful place, it's yours. Take dominion over it. Just run, be happy, have a good time, take dominion over the fish in the sea and the animals of the land. It's yours. But I got this one thing. You see the tree in the middle? That is not for you. For the day that you eat of it, you shall die. And this was a covenantal arrangement and it hinged on mankind fulfilling the covenant itself and keeping the law that God had made with them. Now, ultimately, as we know, and in fact, ultimately, it didn't take long at all, quickly, ultimately, whatever the case, man was unable to keep that covenant, did partake in the fruit that God told him not to. And this one sin, as we said before, this one sin fractured, fractured the relationship between God and man. But it not only fractured the relationship with God and man,

Suffering and Christian Hope 13:18

but it fractured the relationship between God and the rest of creation as well. Back in Genesis 3, 17, Adam's confessed his sin at this point. He says, God, all right, this is what happened. God told him a number of things. And among the things that God told him, he said this, he says, cursed is the ground for your sake. Y'all did this. You ate the fruit of the tree, but the consequences of your sin is going to fall not just on you, but also on the ground, also on everything else you see. Cursed is the ground for your sake. In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life, both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. After Adam's sin, God said, cursed is the ground for your sake. This implies that Adam's sin not only cursed mankind, but it resulted in a curse on the entirety of the natural realm. If you want to know why pandemics exist, you want to know why there's coronavirus, you want to know why there's earthquakes, you want to know why there's hurricanes, Katrina and the like, all of it, a whole lot of it, can trace its existence back to this day. This verse that we see in Genesis 3.17, cursed is the ground for your sake. All of it can trace itself back to this single sin. What does that tell you about sin? Dear heavens, what does this tell you about sin?

Well, it tells me a couple things. It tells me first and foremost this, sin must be really bad. If one sin, just one, which was functionally the eating of a piece of fruit, if that one sin, that one rebellion, if that one sin was sufficient to not only condemn mankind, the whole lot of humanity for the centuries after, but it also affected the entirety of the created realm as well, if one sin introduced all of that, then among other conclusions we can draw is this, sin must be really bad. Remember that this week. Remember that when we engage in things that seem trifling to us. Remember that when we consider our pet sins. Remember that when we engage in things that we ought not do, that one sin was enough to burn down the house, so to speak, and everyone in it. Sin is bad. It also tells me this, though, that God, God must be really holy.

If one sin was enough to burn the house down, that tells me that God's holiness is off the charts. God's holiness is off the charts if he cannot and will not tolerate one single blemish, one single scarlet tear on the entirety of the created realm. If one dot, one sin was sufficient the thrust, the whole created realm into chaos, this tells me God is holy. God is holy. You know, this analogy I've used in times past. If you were to take a perfect crystal pitcher of water, you got this perfect crystal pitcher of water, you can see through it, the light reflects through it, it's crystal, it's pure, you get thirsty just thinking about that. If you take that, and then if you were to prick your finger and drop one drop of blood into this pitcher of water, what's going to happen? Well, if you were to watch that in slow-mo, if you were to watch that drop hit the water, you'd see this, that immediately upon touching the water, it begins to diffuse across the breadth of the water. You watch and you see these little scarlet tendrils from that single drop of blood begin to stretch out into the water. And then, given enough time, and especially if you stir it together, what happens? The entirety of the water can take on a coloration.

It can be affected, the entirety of the water can be affected by the single drop of blood into it. Now, all analogies fall short of the biblical picture, but I think it's helpful for us to understand this, that one sin at the outset, at the very beginning, was sufficient to affect everything else, to affect everything else in the world around us. Every molecule of creation has been affected by the scarlet poison of one sin.

The Future Liberation of Creation 17:15

Now, if we were just to stop there, if we just closed the book and said, well, that's the news, that's what we got for you, we would all feel this horrible weight of condemnation. And part of the reason we would feel this horrible weight of condemnation, if we closed the book right there and we said one sin can affect and destroy all creation, we would look at ourselves and say, good golly, I myself am responsible for tens or hundreds or millions or thousands of sins just by myself.

I've done more things wrong, it seems like, than I've done right. So if we're even introspective for a moment, if we were to close the book right there, we'd say, all right, that's terrible news, that's it, that's all. I have to stand, or the sort of judgment that Adam did, I am doomed, because I've sinned a lot more than once. You know what the two most wonderful words in the whole human language are?

I've said this before. The two most wonderful words in the entire human language, when you string them together, are these two words. Genesis 4. Now, what do I mean by that? The reason these two words are some of the most magical words in all the world is this, because these two words remind us that mankind survived Genesis 3. And Genesis 3, man's sin, that could have been it. This book, this lengthy book, could have been much shorter if God had simply rendered to man what man was due.

But the fact we have a Genesis 4 and a Genesis 5, the fact we have all the books within the Bible, remind us that although man has sinned, that God is not done with us. Although man has sinned, that God is not done with us. That although man brought this curse upon himself, that God has a plan to free men from the effects of the curse. God has a plan to redeem, to rescue those of us who would otherwise live out our days condemned in a condemned and dying world.

In verse 19, we see this rescue is anticipated. Verse 19 says, the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. It's not just us. Again, the created realm itself, everything was yoked to mankind's fall. And the good news is that the created realm is also yoked to mankind's redemption. And in due time, that redemption will come. Let's look at verses 22 and 23 to build on this.

Verse 22, for we know that the whole creation groans, labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of the body. You know, some folks are absolutely convinced that the world is in its death throes, which is honestly a pretty easy conclusion to draw if you pay attention to everything that exists within mainstream media and the academic community and the like.

You look at the things going on in the world around us and you say, well, the world's doomed. Whether it's environmental concerns or mankind's own propensity for destruction or things like the pandemic and the like, you look around and you say, well, this trajectory doesn't end well. It's doomed. Wellity. Know this, verse 22. God himself does not share that opinion. God himself does not say the world is doomed. He does not say the world is in its death throes.

Rather, what Scripture tells us is that the things that we see are the birth pangs that point to something greater, that point to something better, that's imminent, that's around the corner. Every time a bird's nest falls to the ground, every time a deer is caught in a predator's jaws, every time a tree is consumed with fire, every time a COVID ward fills up, every time these sorts of things happen. That's the groaning that we see here. In a sense, this picture of creation groaning, this is what you call personification. Sometimes Scripture does that.

It's the application of human terms and emotions to something that's non-animate. If you're talking about the world in general and say the world is groaning, the created realm is groaning,

Pastoral Application 21:00

this is personification. Let's talk about in our last verses, verses 24 and 25, how even though we can rightfully think about sin and brokenness and fallenness and why we can rightfully talk about these things let's look at these verses and see that although we're realistic about this stuff that we also talk about it through the lens of hope the lens of optimism all right verses 24 and 25 for we were saved in this hope the hope that's seen it's not hope for why does one hope for what He sees but if we hope for what we do not see we eagerly wait for it with perseverance as we said earlier, one of Paul's objectives in his teachings is to take people like you and I, you and I who nod our head to a lot of the propositional truth of Scripture, and he tries to really just make it real to us in a way that grabs hold of our heart and not just our mind. It's not just something we assent to intellectually, but something we believe and we trust in. That's something Paul regularly does. He's doing it in these verses. He's talking to broken, hurting people, people who desperately want better days. And he says, these days are coming. We hope for what we do not see. It's not here yet. The things you want to be better in life, they may not be here right now, but they are coming. We hope for what we don't see. We wait for it eagerly with perseverance. In your own life, things may be going very badly right now. For some of us in a room this size, this is undoubtedly true. For some of us, we're facing issues that might not be related at all to the pandemic, it might just be related to hurt relationships or financial issues or job issues or what have you.

There can be any number of things, health concerns that are going on in our own life that can leave us just feeling isolated and feel like life is absolutely broken and not likely to get any better in the time yet to come. Now, with that said, I've got bad news and I've got good news. Now, the bad news is this. As long as we live in this fallen world, we're going to be beset by fallen ills.

Now, what do I mean by that? What I mean is that yeah today might be hard well here's the thing next week might be harder Scripture is realistic with us Scripture is honest with us life can throw you things you know some people buy into that old idea that God will never give you more than you can handle dear Lord that is not absolutely not the teaching of Scripture regularly tells us that this world can and does give us more than we can handle but in the context of that hurt it also reminds us that we don't face those things alone. That yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we shall feel no evil for God is with us. The bad news is this is the valley of the shadow of death.

As long as you're here, there's going to be hardship. It is going to be this way. Some days and some weeks will be better than others, God willing. But in general, in general, life is hard. It's difficult. Again, that's the bad news. But the good news is that it won't always be this way. That the hurts and pains you feel for right now, they're a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of your eternal existence that the things you hate right now you will not endure forevermore the Apostle Paul had experienced hardships the Apostle Paul this was a man who was beaten more times than we can count he was jailed multiple times he was shipwrecked he would ultimately be martyred for his fate this was a guy who knew about hardship and yet even as he faced and endured those things he consistently looked up and he remembered better days are coming he remembered

Christ, Grace, and the Closing Exhortation 24:22

there's better days ahead he says I'm made for someplace better I'm gonna run the good race fight the good fight but there's laid up for me a crown of righteousness not only for myself but for all we who believe verse 25 is Paul's effort to give the Romans some greater sense of hope you know I've spent enough time in hospitals and even in funeral homes to know this but if I didn't have some hope that things would get better I would have given up long ago if I didn't believe this I wouldn't be doing what I do. But I do have hope. I do take God at his word. I do understand that my maker, my creator, has told me that better days are ahead and has given me the strength and patience to endure even what's going on today. The same is true for all we who believe. Two thousand years ago, a man who was acquainted with grief hung upon a cross, this man of sorrows. But when he hung there, he bore all of our sins, all of our grief, all of our transgressions. the Lord laid upon him the iniquity of us all. Two thousand years ago, God looked down upon fallen people who were still dealing with the effects of Adam's sin, and whose future was nothing but condemnation, and He determined to send His own Son to save us by taking on the punishment that we deserved. On Calvary, that was completed. The chastisement for our peace was laid upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. Today, I have hope because I believe my future is secured by the personal work of Jesus Christ. Tomorrow may be rough. There may be something I don't want tomorrow. In fact, tomorrow yet to come, there's probably things that if I knew about him now, I would just want to curl up into a ball. But I understand that even in the midst of that, God is with me. I have hope because Jesus, he not only hung on the cross, but he walks with me still. I have hope because the same one who came 2,000 years ago is coming back. He's coming back, and when he does, he's going to right all the wrongs and wipe away all the tears. This morning in closing, as we think about the hardships of this age, we remember and rejoice in the fact that they are for a limited time.

There is a shelf life for all of these things. For the moment, patience. For the moment, faith. For the moment, trust. These are the things that we need, and these are the things that allow us to get through the next number of days, weeks, months, years. But in God's time, he will right all the wrongs. In God's time, he will wipe away all these tears. In God's times, we will fall into his everlasting arms.

And in God's times, there will be no more of the things we hate in the present. The entire universe is waiting on pins and needles for that day. This morning, do not buy into the lie that this world with all of its ups and downs is as good as it gets. It is not. In today's text, we're reminded we haven't seen anything yet. Let's pray.