The Already But Not Yet

Creation Groans Under the Curse 1:32

There's any number of Katrinas that can enter our world and upset it and change it in ways that make it unrecognizable and in which we have to look back in our mind's eye and remember how it used to be. With that said, is there any mention of hurricanes in the Bible? There's all manner of whirlwinds. There's all manner of tempests and storms that came out of nowhere. World history is filled with terrifying weather, terrifying storms. And that's not to mention earthquakes and volcanoes and pestilences and cancers and hardships and the like. With that said, it's reasonable to ask, especially if you're on the outside looking in, let's say you're new to all this theology and Bible stuff and you say, yes, there is all this terrible stuff, but you Christians say that God is good and he's in control, right? Then why and how, if your God exists and he's all powerful and he's loving and he's good, does all that stuff you were just talking about, why is it here?

Why do we suffer through these things if God is good and if he's in charge? Assuming that a good God governs the world, why does it include so many destructive forces? And even if you can answer that, even if you can answer that, well, it's because of sin, you know, you give the right theological answer, which is the true answer. But if you give that answer, it gets more tricky when you have to say, all right, I can understand why hurricanes exist in the abstract. What I can't understand is why one took out my house, why one destroyed my church, right? That gets more tricky.

When you accept it exists in the abstract, but then you have to look in the particular and say, well, why did that happen to me? Why did it happen to my family, to my church? Those are all very reasonable questions, and people have them. People wonder these things. You have probably wondered these things at some point in time, so we have to be able to answer them. With that said, a good starting place as you try to answer these questions is to remember this. It didn't always used to be this way. Even if you accept right now things are terrible, the world has fallen, there's all this destruction, all this mayhem, you have to remember that's not the way it started. That's not the way it began. That's not the way God created it from the get-go. If you go back to Genesis 1, if you go into Genesis 2, you will find all sorts of wonderful things in the world around us. The flora and the fauna and just a wonderful lush garden and everything was great. And there was no hurricanes. There's no mention of COVIDs and pestilences and the like. I don't think our first parents, Adam and Eve, ever caught a single cold. Maybe they didn't even have a single sneeze in their garden. I really don't know. But I know this much. They were not beset by the evils and the hardships of a fractured planet. Our parents were given dominion over creation, and they were not subject to creation's destructive forces. However, that wonderful condition, such as it was, lasted only two chapters. By the time you get to chapter 3, everything changed. And without detailing all of the events of Genesis chapter 3, you remember the basics. God creates this wonderful, lush planet, lush garden. He plops our parents right in the middle of it. He says, run free. It's your planet. Take dominion over it. This garden, name the creatures. They'll be subject to you. It's all yours. But that tree over there, that tree, that one in the middle, see the one I'm pointing to?

That one, we're not going to eat from that one, okay? We won't eat from that tree, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but everything else, everything else is yours. Now, we remember that the serpent was more clever than all the beasts of the field. He comes in and he tempts Eve. He tempts our first parents to do the very thing that God told them not to do. And he did it by questioning the word of the one who had instructed him. He said, God said such and such, but let's just think about that for a minute. God told you not to eat from it. You know why he doesn't want you to eat from that tree? You know why? It's because the minute that you do, you'll be like Him, knowing good and evil. He doesn't want that. He doesn't want that. He's holding something back from you, something good. If you just partake in it, you'll benefit. See, that's what sin does. Sin tells you if you take something that God told you not to take, if you do something God told you not

Romans 8 and Present Suffering 5:14

to do, that your life will be better as a result. That's what the serpent did at the outset. He hasn't stopped. It's been the same message. Well, they listened. They ate and everything fell. They listened. They ate. Sin entered in. Death came with it. However, that death didn't just affect them but everything that they had dominion over. Everything that they had dominion over. They introduced through their sin a vile scarlet strain into Eden's tranquil world. On the one hand, their sin fractured the relationship with God. We know that. But beyond this, it did something relevant to today's study. It thrust the entire created realm into chaos. We'll see that and we'll see the hope we have as we look through this passage. Let's look at verses 18 through 19 and again, we'll work our way through. Verse 18, this is Paul writing. He says this. He says, for I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared, not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. All right. Just a moment ago, we said that hurricanes and cancer and the like, the result of sin, the result of the fall. And to be clear, these things are horrible, and we don't want to minimize that. We do not want to minimize their impacts. If you've been robbed of something or someone that you love, we do not want to minimize that hurt or that pain, even as we rejoice to know that the future is bright. With that said, verse 18 reminds us two things. It reminds us this, that no matter how bad the pain is today, no matter how great the sense of loss or how acute it might be in the moment, which for some of us it certainly may be. Verse 2 reminds us, number one, that sense of loss, it's temporary. The sense of loss that we have when we lose someone, when we lose those that we love, when we lose circumstances we enjoy, when we lose the health and the mobility we once had, when that sort of thing happens, God's message to you is, hey, this is short-lived. This is a byproduct of where you live. You live in a fallen world. You'll be beset by fallen ills, but it's not always going to be that way. It's temporary, temporary, right? So that's the first thing we see in verse 18. The second thing is that you're suffering a hardship even as terrible as it might be. And for some of us, we've cried crocodile tears over our losses and our griefs and our anxieties and our fears, right? Some of you know exactly what it is to suffer. With that said, what does Paul say? Paul says you could take all that suffering, mount it up together, a giant mountain of pain and tears, and he says it doesn't begin to compare with what the future holds for you. It's not even in the same conversation.

Suffering, Glory, and Christian Hope 7:47

Now, did Paul know something about suffering? Just read the New Testament. He's either being beaten on this page or shipwrecked on that page or imprisoned on the next page or what have you. Ultimately, he was martyred. I think Paul knew a thing or two about suffering. And with that said, the man who could write the book on human suffering says that I've considered this. Verse 18 I've considered this I consider that the sufferings of the here and now the losses and the grief and the hardships and the scars on my back the scars on my psyche he said on the balance of the scales of eternity he says there's no comparison there's no comparison now remember Paul knew something about what he was talking about he knew about suffering and loss and hardship but he also knew something about the promise do you remember the passage I believe in the 2nd Corinthians chapter 12, Paul talks about a man. He says, I knew a man who saw into the third heaven. And he was referring to himself. He's not talking about someone else. He's referring to himself. And he says, I knew a man who went into the third heaven. And he says, the things that he saw there were inexpressible. Now, each time I talk about the third heaven, I have to explain the first heaven. What's the first heaven? The clouds, right? In the antiquity, they had three heavens. The first one you look up and that's the clouds. That's heaven number one. So what's heaven number two. Right, with the stars. You see the clouds, that's heaven one. The stars is heaven number two. The third heaven, that's where God is. That's where God dwells. So he says, I know a man, He saw into the third heaven. And then he says that what he saw, and again, he's talking about himself, but what he saw there, what he heard there was inexpressible. He's had a peek into that future eternity. And later on, he says, you know what? He says, I've seen that, and I've seen this, and I'd rather be there. Now, it's for your sake that I'm here for the present. I've still got work to do. In the economy of God, He's still got things for me to do. And if that involves more hardship, then so be it. I'll do it as long as I'm here, but I'm looking forward to the day when I'm there. And it's not that far off. It's really not that far off for any of us. But that's a reminder.

Everything that we're experiencing right now is temporary, and it doesn't compare to the grand, glorious future that awaits. And the salvation that we'll experience, for what it's worth, as we're going to see in our next verses, extends to the created world around us. Let's look at verses 20 through 23. Verse 20, 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 from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs until now. And some people say death throes, and that's not the idea. We're in birth pangs until now. Verse 23, not only that, but we also have the firstfruits of the Spirit. Even we groan within ourselves, and some of us can relate to that, and we eagerly wait for the adoption, for the redemption of our body. All right, way, way, back, we talked about Genesis at the start. We talked about Genesis 1 and 2 were great. Genesis 3, the sin and the fall, that was not so great. Well, after the fall, after the serpent wiggled on in, after the serpent tempted Adam and Eve, after they ate, and then after they hid, when God approached them, when Christ went looking for them in the garden, he told them the consequences, Adam and Eve, the consequences of what was about to happen. Specifically, God told Adam this. He said, now, now everything's changed. Cursed is the ground for your sake, and toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. All right, so what happened in verse 17 is that God tells Adam, he says, you remember the way it used to be? You liked that, didn't you? You liked the garden and everything was great and the fruits and the good times, all that. He says, well, now it's not going to be so great. And then he names two things. I'm pretty sure that Adam had no frame of reference for thorns and thistles, just like he didn't know cancer and gray hair and what have you. There's all sorts of terrible things that he began to know that he didn't know before. And God says, a couple of those things are going to be thorns and thistles. The work that you're going to have to do just to survive, just to put bread in your stomach, the level of effort it's going to take is going to be significant. You're going to plant in the midst of scalding heat. You're going to get calluses on your hands that you never had before. With the sweat in your brow and the calluses on your hands, you're going to eat your bread and you're going to have to keep doing this over and over and over again. And that's just to eat, let alone just to survive in the world around you that now does have hardships and cancer and sin and death and the like. So at one point, if Adam looks in the past, he says, you know, things were pretty good there in the garden. We had the lion, we had the lamb, and they laid down together, and they don't do that anymore. He thinks back,

The Future Secured by God 12:19

and he thinks, you know, back in the garden, it was wonderful. I looked, and we had rows and rows of carrots, and now we have rows and rows of celery. You know, things have gone from one wonderful estate to one terrible estate. You've got to think he kept doing that, playing through in his mind the way it used to be versus the way it is. Remember how you think how it used to be?

There used to be this on the beach and now there's not. He did that every day. He said the garden used to be great and now I have this. I used to have that experience and now I have this one and the like. He probably played that through his mind time and time again. Sin has side effects. For what it's worth, the same is true for you and I. When you sin and you grab something that you think you want, you think will be good for you, honestly, whenever you sin, that's the trade-off.

God says, hey, let's do this and let's not do that. And when you subvert the two, you usually do so because you think you'll get some tangible benefit from doing it. You say, well, I know what God has said, but this is just too good. I've got to have it. Well, here's the thing. You should never evaluate that choice as if that choice does not have untold side effects that will be reaped from the decision itself.

Sin has side effects. Well, the sin, the cosmic rebellion in the garden, Adam and Eve didn't play through what was going to happen next. They couldn't have even understood just how bad it would get. But the same is true of things in your own world, in your own life. There may be something you do, a choice that you make, something you have that you shouldn't have, or some failure to act when

Enduring the Not Yet 13:43

you should act. There will be consequences from that that you can't even begin to play out. And the reason why is because sin, if you took a glass of pristine water, this is about as pristine as I've got. You take pristine water, right? Take a glass of pristine water. Now, let's say you take a drop of blood and you drop it into this water. Well, what happens? Well, initially, as you look, you see the drop hit the water, and then it begins to expand, and little scarlet tendrils start to go across the balance of the water. Now, if I shake it up or just wait long enough, what's going to happen? Well, one drop will permanently discolor the entire thing. It will affect every molecule within the water itself. That's the nature of sin. You think it's isolated? You think I can have this thing and it won't be costly? I can do this one thing without the ramifications? You have no idea the ramifications of one sinful choice. Consider that this week on some of the things that you may be tempted to do you may think you have a grasp on the worst case scenario you don't begin to have an understanding of the worst case scenario one sin in the garden which functionally was eating a piece of fruit caused the entire created realm to fall into chaos sin has side effects you cannot begin to understand or to measure therefore restrain the sin in your flesh whatever the case is, Adam didn't have a fullness of understanding or even ability to grasp all of that, and yet he was still affected by it.

With that said, verses 20 through 23 that we've just read remind us that although all that's true, although Genesis 3, everything got messed up by the choices of Adam and Eve, and not just Adam and Eve were affected, but the whole of the created realm was affected, although verses 20 through 23 remind us of that, at the same time they remind us that that wasn't the end of the story. I've said before that the two best words in the whole English language strung together, my two favorite words in all the English language are the words Genesis 4.

Genesis 4. Now, why is that? Well, Genesis 4, the fact you can even say Genesis 4, the fact you can even flip to Genesis 4, is a wonderful reminder that mankind's story didn't end in Genesis 3. When it could have, and in the sight of the angels, maybe it should have. Look what they did. Wages of sin is death, time for judgment, time for destruction. The fact we even had a Genesis 4 is a reminder that although man has sinned, that God is determined to pay the debt for that sin.

Although man has sinned, and the wages of sin is death, that God looked down upon our fallen state and decided to do something about it. And so in Genesis 3, in Genesis 3.15, you see God makes a promise. He says, yes, you messed up. Yes, cosmic rebellion. Yes, the consequences are due. And yes, everything's going to be terrible and thorns and thistles. And yet in the midst of that hellscape that this globe is about to become for the next several thousand years at least, in the midst of that, I'm going to send the means for redemption,

Pastoral Application 16:29

the means for reconciliation, the means for a union with me, and that means it's going to be through the personal work of my own son. The seed, remember Genesis 3.15 refers to a seed, capital S if you're looking at the New King James, the seed, a seed will come, one will give birth, a seed will come, and this seed, this seed, this Messiah, this Christ, he will also only pay the debt of Adam and for the rest of us as well. Genesis 4, the fact you could flip past that page reminds us of the promise he made there in Genesis 3.15, that although man had sinned, God was not yet done with us. Now, you and I, we look forward with expectation to reunion, reconciliation, and the end of sin and hardship and death. We look forward to that. But in a sense, verses 20 through 23 say the entire globe is. The entire globe right now is creaking and groaning.

When you see storms whip up out of the gulf, when you hear of earthquakes and tsunamis and hardships and volcanoes that wipe away cities and all that sort of stuff, we're reminded that the whole created realm is broken, but it's groaning for a day when there will be a new earth, a day of redemption not only for mankind and the children of God, but by which all of the created realm will be restored.

All right, let's look at our last verses, verses 24 and 25. Verse 24, for we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope, for why was one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, which is the essence of faith, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance in the here and now when times are hard, right? Let me ask you, how is 2025 going for you? For some of us, maybe it's great. I've been around long enough that some years were very good. I had some years that was a banner year. 1985, I liked 1985. I don't know how it was for you. That was my banner year, you know, 1985. With that said, 1998 was also very good for different reasons, but I've had good years. I've also had some real clunkers. I've had some years that have not been so fun. So how has 2025 been for you? Well, for some of us, maybe it's going quite badly. Maybe for some of us, right now is the most difficult season we've been in. Maybe we look at our finances or our relationships or our losses or our vocation or our health. And we say, this is my worst year. This is my worst year yet. Now, if that's you this morning, I have good news and I have bad news. The bad news is this. It can get even worse yet. The bad news is that as long as you live in a fallen world, you will be beset by fallen ills.

A man who is diagnosed with cancer can also be diagnosed with diabetes. It can go from one state that you think is pretty miserable into another state. Just look at the story of Job.

Christ, Grace, and the Closing Exhortation 19:06

So on the one hand, there's no absolute promise that the calamities of walking through the valley of the shadow of death, that those calamities are necessarily going to expire tomorrow. And for what it's worth, the Bible doesn't sugarcoat that. The Bible doesn't hide this in the dust jacket, the fact that this world is hard. It really doesn't. I don't know where the prosperity Gospel preachers got their idea that God wants you to have your best life now and that if you just have faith that all your problems will disappear and life will be nothing but wine and roses.

I don't know where they got that idea because it's not in this book. What you see in this book is hardship and difficulty and persecution and martyrdom and things that you really don't want. And yet, what God has appointed. And if that's a shock to you, I'm sorry, but again, Scripture does not hide it. So that's the bad news. As long as we're on this side of glory, this stuff can happen.

And it does happen. But here's the good news. The good news, as we've shared at other intervals, is that as this happens, as we undergo it, we don't undergo it alone. The whole promise of the shepherd psalm the most famous passage in all the Bible for many people even non-believers psalm 23 the shepherd psalm the whole promise of it or premise of it is that yea that we walk through the valley of the shadow of death that we will fear no evil why because God is with us as we do so because God is with us as we undergo these hardships tomorrow might get worse I hope it doesn't I really hope it doesn't there's no saying 100 will for all we know Jesus will come back in five minutes and we'll all be safe from all this with that said if tomorrow is difficult if this week is hard, God is with you through that hardship. God stands with you. And in fact, that's not even the right picture. God isn't simply standing next to you to kind of see how you do and maybe giving you an attaboy or what have you. God is holding you, carrying you through this life and through the difficulties. That's a reasonable picture of our relationship with our God. The Apostle Paul was a strong believer, and yet he underwent various hardships. With that said, in verses 24 and 25, Paul doesn't linger on that pain, although he could. But rather, in just two verses, he uses the word hope five times. Then he does so to lift our gaze and to remind us that we're made for someplace better, and it's not far off. 2,000 years ago, a man hung on a cross on calvary. He was a man of sorrows. He was acquainted with grief. While he was on this cross, your sin was placed upon his back. All the things that you've done wrong were placed upon him as if he's the one who did it. Now, why is that good news? Well, it's good news because now when God looks at you, he doesn't see you through the lens of your sin, but rather he sees you through the lens of his own son's righteousness. When you have faith and trust in Jesus Christ, and when you say, I bring nothing to this equation, nothing to the cross I bring, I bring nothing to God, but I don't have to because Jesus paid it all. When you have the faith to believe that, to articulate it, to profess that, like the thief on the cross, that is the means of our salvation. It's hope and faith and trust that Jesus Christ has paid it all. The hope that Paul's referring to here in the closing of this particular text, the hope he's referring to is a hope, not just of our future, not just that there's a heaven, and not just that you'll be there. It's a hope that you have a right relationship with the God who exists there. Heaven isn't just heaven because it's a nice place with cool toys. Heaven is heaven because God is there, and the good news of this text is that you now have a right relationship with him. The cosmic rebellion, you know, you've sinned more times an Adam. One sin, and he was cast from the garden. You've sinned more times than can count. Your relationship should be endlessly fractured, and yet it's not, because on Calvary 2,000 years ago, Jesus paid it all. And that salvation isn't limited simply to your soul, although that should be plenty good enough and plenty of reason to rejoice and say amen. But that salvation extends to everything, the redemption of the world around us. Let me close with this text from the book of revelation. Revelation 21 says this, that I, John, I saw, I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. And God will wipe away every tear, and there will be no more death.

There'll be no more crying. Remember the side effects of sin? They're gone, never to return. But listen to what he says now. There'll be no more pain for the former things that passed away. And then he who sat on the throne declared this, behold, I make all things new. In God's time, there's a new creation. In the fullness of time, there is a restored, created realm which we will dwell. The garden was always a type of heaven. It was always a small picture of what the heaven the heavens looks like. In due time, you'll dwell there with a restored and redeemed relationship with the God who rules there. Let's pray.