Pentecost 8 Romans 8: 18-25
August 3, 2014
What’s one of your first thoughts when you wake up in the morning? That depends on what you’re waking up to. A hard day at work or school? A crying baby who needs a diaper change? Subzero temps and a driveway plugged with 2 feet of snow? Aching joints? There days when you just want to roll over, pull the covers over your head, and go back to sleep. But if today your son or daughter is coming home from Afghanistan, or you’re starting your summer vacation, or it’s your birthday and you’re having a big party, you jump out of bed to begin a new, exciting day.
What do you suppose one of Paul’s first thoughts was in the morning? We weren’t there to ask him, but as we read these verses in Romans 8 he gives a good clue. No matter what he was facing each morning– and many of those days were full of trouble – I have a hunch that one of his first thoughts was,“I am going to heaven!” That’s how he encourages you and me and every child of God to start and live their day. Through Jesus our sins have been atoned for, we are righteous in God’s sight, reconciled and at peace with him, baptized into his family and victorious in our battle with sin. Now our heavenly Father lifts our eyes towardthe goal of our faith, our future home in heaven,where all his children long to be.
I. Our comfort in suffering
It doesn’t take much to see that this isn’t heaven. Life here is filled with pain and suffering, and all of creation suffers right along with us. Fields and gardens are frustrated by competition from weeds and thistles. Dear pets grow old and die.The peaceful atmosphere is frustrated by violent upheavals that produce storms and hurricanes. Floods, earthquakes,blizzards, droughts, epidemics bring death and destruction. Why does all this happen? Paul explains:“For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the One Who subjected it.”When Adam and Eve fell into sin, God made every nook and cranny of their life suffer the effects with them. He created all things to serve man, but now it would serve man in a different way. Now it would be a constant reminder of sin’s ugliness and how sin brings ruin and hardship and trouble and grief, and all of it is a preview of much greater, eternal trouble and grief when this life ends. As long as this world of sin endures nothing here will ever be free of pain or sorrow. We can’t turn this world into heaven.We can’t save our planet, no matter how much we recycle and “go green”.No matter how much God allows us to understand genetics to help relieve some suffering, we’ll never find solutions to all the thousands of illnesses. This sin-infected world will keep deteriorating until God finally destroysit, because it must finally be destroyed.
Yet the original beauty of God’s creation is still there behind the scars of sin, longing for the day when sin and all its effects will be destroyed.“The creation waits in eager expectation” for the day when it “will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” Paul pictures all created things – the trees, the rocks, the hills, the valleys, and the animals – standing on tip-toe, stretching their necks as if to peek over the fence of time to see what heaven will be like.
Believers in Jesus are standing on tip-toe, too. We understand why suffering is part of this life. We know that God will use it for our good - all thepains, heartaches and disappointments – and we know itis only temporary.Paul compares it to labor pains. Any mom who has suffered through labor pains knows that, as intense as the painmay be, those painsended injoy and happiness. It’s just as Jesus said: “A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born, she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you. Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.”
Look around. This world is in birth pains. You and I groan inside. But the pains will pass. The day is quickly coming when believers in Jesus will receive“our adoption as sons.” At God’s commandour bodies will be transformed into fantastic, glorious bodies like Jesus’ body after His resurrection. Whatever discomforts and heartaches a believer in Jesus endures nowwill one day prove to be “light and momentary” – hardly worth mentioning - a thing of the past, forgotten forever when we arrive in heaven. There we’ll have no more heart problems, tooth aches, back aches, medical bills, depressing days, sorrow or grief. In heaven we will be with our Savior. We will see Jesus’ warm smile face-to-face and enjoy his everlasting love. In heaven there really is a “happily ever after.” We will be free from all sin, all heartache, all pain, disappointment, suffering and tears. In heaven we’ll never hear the word “death” again and never use another Kleenix. We’ll be with Jesus, our Savior. We’ll be reunited with every fellow Christian who left this life before us. In heaven we will know only how to love purely, to serve unselfishly, to care completely, to be the kind of people God wants us to be and that by faith we long to be. In heaven thereis no more envy, jealousy, pride, self-centeredness, harsh words, or hurt feelings. By God’s grace that’s the future Jesus lived and died to earn for us and is now preparing for us. Heaven is waiting for you and for me.
God’s grace keeps pointing us to heaven, reminding us “that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us,” making our first thought in the morning and our last thought at night to be, “I’m going to heaven!”
2. Our certainty when in doubt.
I’m sure you’ve heard about the movie that just came out titled, “Heaven is for Real”. It’s based on a book that a father wrote about his 4-year-old son’s experience when he died during an operation and was revived. His son told about seeing family members in the beauties of heaven and sitting on the Holy Spirit’s lap and talking with Jesus. Lots of people bought the book and are seeing the movie because here’s someone who’s been there. We’ve never seen it. We’ve never knelt on heaven’s ground, breathed heaven’s air, or touched heaven’s splendor. People just want to know that it is real.
I hope you don’t rush out to buy the book or see the movie. You already know that heaven is for real. God himself tells us in his Word, and his own Son even came down from heaven to tell us that it is real. In fact, on his last night with his disciples before he was arrested, it’s what he talked about most. “In my father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you I will come back and take you to be with me, so that where I am, you also will be.” Jesus wanted them and you and me to go to heaven so much that “for the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame”. If heaven wasn’t real or so wonderful Jesus never would have gone through the torments to bear the punishment for our sins and rescue us from hell to make sure we get there.
And he wouldn’t have told us about it or given us the faith to believe it. But “we….have the first fruits of the Spirit.”The “first fruits” were the first tender heads of the grain crop that Jewish farmers would gather up and offer in thanksgiving to God. The first fruits were like a down payment from God, assuring the farmer that soon there would be a whole crop to harvest for his family. Jesus has givenus his Holy Spirit as the “first fruits”, a down payment,with thepromiseof much, muchmore to come.Heaven is as real as the Spirit who lives in our hearts.
“I am going to heaven!” This is why Paul, when in prison and facing death, said, “I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far” and why he said, “Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling.” This is why he wrote to fellow Christians, “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” This is why Peterreminded fellow Christians during their time of hardship and persecution that they were given a “new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance than can never perish, spoil, or fade, kept in heaven for you.” A glorious future with the Lord was on the heart of the writer of Psalm 73 as he prayed, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire beside you.” And all the believers of old like Noah, Abraham, Moses set all their priorities as believers who were “longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. Hebrews 11:16
Every day you awaken to a world filled with frustrations, but every day you are one day closer to being in heaven.God has given you the down payment through faith in Jesus, so “if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.”May thegood seed of his Word, planted in our hearts, keep us growingwith the fruit of love for God and for one another as we make our way home and bring others with us along the way! Amen.