If God Loves You, Why Does Life Still Hurt? // Romans 8:18-25

All right, good morning, Two-City Church. That video, like all of our videos, teaches many lessons. And one of them is this, that people reach people. OK, buildings don't reach people. Programs don't reach people. People reach people. OK, but one of the reasons that we plant churches and launch campuses is to reach one more person and reach one more generation. And if you're new, and there's got to be a lot of you that are new, it's July, you're moving here for grad school or because you got the new job. Welcome. Let me tell you something about us, OK? We are now four campuses. OK, we're one church in multiple locations. But just two years ago, we had just this campus until Lexington. Lexington, I want to tell you, you are our first-born son in whom we are well-pleased, right? Lexington went out, OK, in the business world, they call these people early adopters, OK? And we watched it, and we saw it work, and we said, man, this gives us hope to try this other places, OK? Then we had the opportunity to go to Butner, OK? Men of Butner, we love you, and we want you to continue to experience the freedom that is found only in Christ. I was just talking to our prison director, Brad, and he told me that we now have over 50 volunteers who are heading to Butler, yeah, that's right, Butner, sorry, Butner, to

minister there. And now we've got our Multiply campus, which is becoming our Davie campus, and we are hoping to launch at Davie High this fall. I'm hoping, praying, planning that it'll be on our 10th anniversary, which would be right around mid-September. That would be really, really special. If you want to know why do we launch campuses, we do it to reach one more person and one more generation. Here's the truth, OK? I just want you to know this. The local church, OK, the church, I should say, is most effective when it is most local, OK? I know you might drive past 45 churches to get here, OK? You might be willing to drive 25 minutes, 35 minutes, 45 minutes, but you're lost, friends and neighbors won't, and so we want to be the church in the community, and we're excited. So let's take a moment, pray for our campuses, and then we're going to look at a passage of Scripture. Just get ready. I'll pray for this too. We're looking at one of the most important texts in the entire Bible on having hope in the midst of suffering. That's what we're going to talk about today. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for our campuses. Thank you for Lexington, for Pastor Luke and his leadership there, for Pastor Matt, Matt Jernigan, going down and leading the way with his family, and just that launch team, that core team.

We thank you for the people, our team, who's been at the Multiply Campus and are eagerly waiting to get to Davie High. We pray you continue to open up doors and opportunities. We pray for the men at Butner, Lord, that they would experience the gospel in such a powerful way that liberates them, and that you would use them to reach other men at Butner. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, here's something, I don't know where you're at, spiritually, all of you, okay? I don't know each of you, but here's what we can all kind of agree on, okay? The world is not the way it's supposed to be, right? All you have to do is check your online news, or I don't know if you call it Twitter or X, okay? And there's just bad news everywhere, okay? We even invented a term for it, doom scrolling, okay? Because it's just so terrible, just name it, doom scrolling, right? Guys, and here's what Paul's going to talk about today. Both the creation and our bodies are broken, right? And we know this, Venezuela, think about this, okay? If you don't know this, you should know this, okay? They had two earthquakes, 39 seconds apart. That we know of, almost 5,000 people sadly died, and 17,000 people were injured. The earth is not supposed to break like that. We see it everywhere, there's earthquakes, there's volcanoes, there's tornadoes, there's hurricanes, there's floods, there's droughts, there's wildfires. I mean, that's just to name a few things, okay?

And then, you know, just the animal world isn't working like it should. Do you see, anyone else see this picture? I got to show you this picture. Have you seen this picture? He's okay, or else I wouldn't put it up there, okay? This is, it became a meme, this is a true story. This is like a guy, grandpa, and he takes his kid, or grandkid, to, you can take it down, to Yellowstone, and a bison runs after him and knocks him eight feet in the air, he breaks his femur, but he'll be fine, okay? Guys, bison, we're not supposed to do that to us, okay? So what, and then our bodies are just broken, okay? I'm not just talking about getting old, which is hard. You know, there's mental illness, okay? There's anxiety, there's allergies, there's cancer, there's tumors, there's chronic illness, and then we don't have time to get into, and Paul doesn't address it today, all the broken relationships in our life, okay? So here's what we're gonna talk about today. This is what Paul's gonna try to answer, anything he does. a good job under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which is this. If we're, speaking of Christians, if we're God's children, why is life so painful? So if everything, Paul, that you've said in Romans, especially in Romans 8, 1 through 17, is true, and like, God's not mad at me anymore, well, that's good to know, and sin's not a problem anymore, well, that's also good to know, well, then why do I suffer so much?

Why do bad things still happen to me? Well, that's what we're going to try to look at, and this is so important, guys, because we live in a time where so few people have hope. We live in a hope recession. One study I read this week from the Wall Street Journal, this is the first time in a long time, 80% of Americans do not think their children have a brighter future than they had. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to read this real slowly, okay? So if you came for the first time, we don't always talk about suffering, but today we are, so welcome. Okay, here we go. But I want to read this to you. We're going to read the entire thing, okay? And I'll read it slowly. For I consider, so Paul's like, I'm going to tell you how I think about suffering. By the way, why does Paul not tell you how he feels about suffering? Because we all feel the same about suffering. We need to think differently about it. Okay. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time, 2026, are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. How often do you think about that? Probably not enough. For the creation, which will be mentioned five times, waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. Did you know creation was doing that? For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it. Here's the first encouragement, 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, yes, we who have the first fruits of the Holy Spirit, we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons. Well, I thought we were adopted. I thought that was what last week's one was about. 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. Okay, Paul's got to talk about suffering. We're going to talk about suffering today. Suffering is really important to talk about. Here's why, because you're 100% going to suffer. The longer you live, okay, I promise you this, the longer you live and the more people that you love, the more you will suffer. Plus, I don't know how often you want to think about this, everybody you know in love will die or you will die and say goodbye to everyone you know and love. You're like, this is the most discouraging sermon I've ever heard. It gets, it eventually gets better. Okay, but here's the thing, here's the problem with you and here's the problem with me and I don't know if it's our parents' fault or all the goofy shows we watch or all the filtered lives on social media that we follow, but we have a big problem, which is we don't expect to suffer. Like in the wedding vows, okay, you get married,

like everyone gets married in their 30s now, but you get married in your 30s, get married in your 20s and you stand up there and you look great and you say, for better or for worse, but what are you thinking? We're from good families, it's going to be for better. For you know, for a sicker, or what, no, in sickness, not for sicker, in sickness and in health and what do you think? You think we count our macros and Cheetos, Pilates and we're going to be fine, you know? For richer or poorer, we're both in medical school, don't worry about it, we don't think, right? We think other people are going to suffer. So we just have terrible expectations and then worse, when we suffer, we have a terrible perspective, okay? When it comes to suffering, there's different things, okay? So some people can try to deny suffering, this is what the Buddhists do. By the way, you really can't deny suffering, you know, some people would say it's probably the most real thing you can't argue yourself out of, your own pain. But the Buddhists, here's what they say, not that, you know, but although like, every once in a while, this Eastern stuff becomes popular, but basically Buddhism basically says, you're suffering because you're too attached to the world,

the key to not suffering is not caring. Good luck with that. The Stoics, which young men love the Stoics because we have a masculinity crisis in our culture, so everybody's all of a sudden has Marcus Aurelius, you know, on their nightstand, okay? And they're reading all this, okay, and the Stoics, which is certainly better than the Buddhists are just like, well, be a man and bear it. You can't, here's the kind of Stoic statement is like, you can't help what happens to you, okay? You can only help how you respond. That's all you're in control of. A lot of young men are attracted to that. But here's what Tim Keller says, he's dead and with the Lord, okay? He's a famous Christian, famous pastor in New York City, okay? Here's what he said. He said this in his book on suffering. He said, Americans, well, he actually said Western civilization, but we'll say Americans by extension. He said, are the worst people at suffering in human history. And he said, here's why, because the goal of life for the American, right? What does everyone say about their kids? I just want them to be happy and healthy. That's what we've shriveled down the goal of our kids. It's also the goal for us. And to be an autonomous, free, happy person is the goal of life. So, anytime there's any suffering, it's not potentially a teacher, it's only an enemy and an intruder, which is going to take away from you. So, here's what I want us to do today.

We're going to look at this together and hopefully have some hope. Because, like, I saw this guy, you know, I don't know, you can probably buy this shirt. I saw this guy, and he was wearing a shirt, and it just said on it, Hope Dealer, which made me think, drug dealer. You know, that's what I thought when I saw it. But I love that because I don't know if he was a Christian or not, but that is what Christians should be. We should be so full of hope. But, in fact, Peter says, this guy named Peter who wrote part of the New Testament, he said, always be ready to give an answer for the hope that is in you. Well, when do people ask about your hope? They don't ask about your hope when your life is going well, I promise you. When you got the new house, and the new spouse, and the new car, and the kid's great. They only ask you about your hope when you're hoping in something they're not hoping in. Okay. With our time together, first, I want us to see the logic of suffering. Let me show you this. Verse 18, we're going to camp out here for a few minutes. Paul goes, let's get logical. Let's not get them…we can all get them…suffering is very emotional. Let's start being logical. Here's what he says. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. Okay. You need to know who's talking to you.

If you don't know the Bible very well, welcome. We're glad you're here. Let me explain something. The Apostle Paul suffered immensely. Okay. This is not a guy writing about his seasonal allergies. Okay. This is not what he's writing, okay? No one wants to hear suffering from the person who goes, I suffered so much. In fact, today, I went to Starbucks and they got my order wrong. I told them, oh, no. You know what I'm saying? Like, we don't want to hear about that. Here's what Paul did. Paul was shipwrecked four times. He says he was shipwrecked three times, but that was before what happened in Acts chapter 27. I mean, Paul, you do not want to go on a cruise with Paul. Okay. He's not good on the water. Shipwrecked four times, beaten with rods, stoned. And if you're new, not that type of stone. This was with rocks. Okay. I mean, you know, he just, sleepless nights in prison, betrayed by friends, and burdened by the church. I mean, Paul suffered enormously. And so Paul goes, here's what I do. He said, I consider my sufferings.

And the word consider there, I don't do this a lot to get into the original Greek language, but just know it's a math term. It basically means I've done the math, I've come to the bottom line, I've calculated it. He says, and when I've thought about all of them, he goes, my sufferings now are not worthy to be compared with the glory that's coming. Now, here's what's interesting. Paul does something that we should do. Paul compares his sufferings with something else. But here's the problem with you and the problem with me. We compare our sufferings to the wrong thing. Here's what we do. Have you ever suffered and what you compared your suffering to was somebody in your life who wasn't suffering? I'm single, they're married. We can't have kids, they have beautiful kids. I'm underemployed, he has a great job. We do that all the time. Or here's another thing. So we either compare our suffering with somebody else's well-being. We compare our suffering with what we think we deserve. We don't say that part out loud, but we do say it in our prayers. God, I'm single, but I did the whole purity ring thing. I'm struggling financially, but I prayed to receive Dave Ramsey into my heart. Saying you're paying attention. So it's like we do this, right? My kid is rebellious, okay? But that other family who's not even very godly and their kid wasn't even student ministry, he's walking with the Lord. We also compare our sufferings.

Here's what we do wrongly, okay? We compare our sufferings and instead of saying, what does Paul say? It's going to get better. What do we say? What's the famous American thing to say? And there's some utility in this. But this is how we comfort ourselves and we comfort other people. It could be worse. The at least gospel. Well, at least you have your health. Well, at least you have insurance. Well, at least it was quick. Paul goes, guys, you have to believe. Here's the key. Here's the first thing about suffering, Christian. If you're gonna suffer well, you have to believe in two ages. You have to believe in a present age and an age to come. Modern Americans are one-agers. They get 80 laps around the sun. You can see it. Why are bucket lists such a big deal? Because everyone's gonna die and disappear and we're not gonna be able to go to Greece if we don't, right? Why is suffering so important? Why is FOMO such a big deal? Fear of missing out. Because I only have,

the average American lives their life like they're at a theme park and they get one day to be there and if anybody holds up the line, they're angry. Can I be honest? Many of you in here, on paper, you're two-agers. Oh yeah, there's this life and there's the life to come. So on paper, you're two-agers, but practically, you're a one-ager. If we could look at your budget and we could look at your schedule and we could look at your credit cards and we could look at your calendar, we could tell you how many ages you really believe in. Paul goes, guys, we're not gonna be able to go through this intense amount of suffering. In fact, Paul doesn't ever say it's not a big deal. Paul's never gonna say your sufferings are not a big deal. Because it's just downright, the more you read of human history, the more that you realize how horrible it has been for most people for almost all of human history. Paul goes, it's not that I'm gonna try to say your suffering isn't horrible. I'm gonna say, compared to the glory that is to be revealed, it's not even worth comparing. We'll get there. But Paul says, look at this, verse 19, Paul goes, to try to explain this, Paul says, I have to start with creation

and then I'll move to the church. Verse 19, for the creation, look at this, waits with eager longing. That's important because in a few more verses, we're basically told to do the same thing. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. It's this idea that the creation is standing on its tiptoes waiting for something to happen or someone to come back. Look at verse 20. For the creation was subjected, this is what we've been talking about, to futility. Not willingly, it didn't want to, 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. Okay, real quick, I've never done this before. We're gonna talk about how we should think about creation. Okay, I've never done this. I don't think in 10 years. First off, I want you to know the Bible personifies creation, right? So the heavens declare the glory of God. In this passage, it's in bondage, but it's eagerly waiting. Other passages talk about the trees clapping their hands and the mountains singing and the rocks declaring. And we may think that's silly, but you know what? That's deep in us. You don't have to teach a kid

to put a smiley face on a son. Isn't that weird? We personify everything. Thomas the train has a face. And by the way, so does your car. Isn't that interesting? The front of every car looks like a human face. We personify everything. Now, we need to talk about creation, okay? And then we're gonna talk about ourselves and how it all works together. Here's what I wanna say when it comes to creation. As much as I hate to say it, the environmentalists are partly right, but mostly wrong. No, thank God, thank God. No, but let's talk about it, okay? Seriously, let's think about this together, okay? Because this has been, by the way, this is something, if you're like over 40, you don't really care about this stuff. But if you're under 40, you have eco-anxiety and stuff like that, okay? So we're gonna talk about it. So here's what we can all agree. We're gonna talk about what we can all agree with, okay? Here's the thing, and this actually, so it talks about the creation's groaning, right? And the creation's under bondage, okay? That makes everybody sad.

Here's why. Because everybody loves creation. Everybody. Couple years ago, we went out to see my sister-in-law. She lives in Seattle. So I went to the People's Republic of Seattle. And when I was there, you know, I don't run as much anymore, but I used to run in the mornings a lot. And so I'm running, and I am like, this is the most...we're standing in West Seattle. So this is such an amazing place. There's Mount Rainier, and water's everywhere, and I'm just like... I'm stereotyping a little bit, but I'm like, we're in an environment where so many people want nothing to do with the Creator, but they absolutely love the creation. Here, I can prove it to you. Everyone loves creation because nobody vacations away from creation. Right? The more money you have, the closer you get to a mountain, a beach, a lake, the most expensive properties in the world are closest to creation. So we can all agree, we all love creation, okay? Here's where we all can also agree, something is wrong with creation. Okay? Like modern people, they think creation is like a Monet painting. It's like creation is mosquitoes, and reptiles, and terrible diseases. I mean, it's all...something is wrong. Okay, even when you try to enjoy creation, you're like, it's broken. You go to the beach, you're like, I'm going to get my beach body, I'm going to get tan, and you get stung by a jellyfish and get sunburned. Right? Now, here's the thing.

The problem with creation...this is where the radical environmentalists are wrong. The problem with creation is not carbon emissions. It's that it's cursed. The problem with creation is not fossil fuels. It's that it's fallen and broken. The problem is actually way bigger than the average person realizes. Now, here also is where the environmentalist types are right, in part. The environmentalists want to blame us, you, me, us, humans, right? And they do it wrongly by, you know, saying if there was...you know, there should be less of you, and you're a virus on the earth, and you're a plague, and you're a cancer, and all that. But here's where they're right. God does say in Genesis 3 that the ground is cursed because of us. So, in other words, our sin, which doesn't feel like a big deal, is such a big deal that it has affected the entire creation, including our bodies, negatively. Now, Pastor John Piper, here I am quoting these old guys, but Pastor John Piper, another great pastor, he asked this question. He said, well, wait a second, if sin's in our hearts, then why would God let sin affect our bodies and our creation? You know what his answer is? Because you don't care that sin's in your heart. You know, I wish we cared. I wish we cared that our hearts were full of sin, but you know when we care? When the creation starts groaning, and when our bodies start falling apart, we start caring. The final thing that the environmentalists get right, but not fully right, is that creation does need to be liberated. But, you know, it's interesting. It says creation is looking and longing.

What is it looking for? Is it looking at the parasupports? You don't even know what that is. We'll cut up some of them. Is it looking for the UN? No. Is it looking for public policy? It's not. It's looking for people. It says that the creation, this is powerful, is waiting for the last person to get saved because then it knows that it gets to be renewed. In other words, we're not going to, I mean, recycle, reduce, reuse, ride your bike, get a smaller SUV, whatever you want to do. But you're not going to save creation, God is. Now, we are to steward creation, not because the earth is our mother, but because God is our father. So I'm not, you know, I'm not just saying do what everyone do. Pick up your litter and, you know, all that. But I'm saying the problem is way bigger and Paul's like, I got to talk about this. In fact, he says, okay, he says, look, not just the creation is groaning. Look here, verse 22. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. Okay, so now we're to like, sometimes at the beginning, I've like, I got the main point, okay, because it just comes up at the beginning of the sermon or the text. Now, I have the main point, okay? Like, if you're like wanting to know what is this whole passage about, here's what it is.

We had to go some places to get here. Your suffering, Christian, has a due date. Paul kind of referenced it earlier. Hey, there's the present age and there's the age to come. But he gives this idea of groaning. Okay, so groaning, you know, everybody groans, okay? Some of you groan when your alarm went off this morning, okay, and that's why you're at the 11 o'clock service. Okay, we're going to see it. Okay, some of you, I mean, if you're old enough, you groan every time you sit down and every time you get up. I can hear you. If you followed wake sports, you groan, right? It's like everyone misses a field goal. You can literally, you can hear it in the stadium. It's involuntary. Everybody groans. Now, it's interesting because there's a difference between groaning and grumbling. So, it's interesting, and you'll see this next week. I just didn't have enough time to get us to verse 26. We'll pick up there next week. In verse 26, it says, the Holy Spirit groans. Literally, same word. So, groaning can't be a sin if the Holy Spirit does it. If creation did it and we did it, we could say, maybe it's good, maybe it's bad. Here's the difference between groaning and grumbling. Grumbling is a sin. Grumbling looks to the past and says, God is not good.

That was the number one sin of the Israelites in the wilderness. Groaning doesn't look to the past. Grumbling looks to the past and says, God is not good. Groaning looks to the future and says, God is not done. God is not finished. Faith look... Groaning is what faith looks and feels like in a broken, fallen world. But it's important to talk about the type of groaning, okay? So, here's the type of groaning. He says that the creation, including us, that we groan in the pains of childbirth. Are you ready for me to talk about childbirth up here just for just a little bit? Right. But I know, here I am a man, mansplaining to you about childbirth. Okay, here it is. And by the way, if you're a father in here, you can't say anything during this time. You can't even nod, just sit there quietly. Like, can I laugh? Can I...no, you can't do any of that. Not during this. What's interesting, think about this, okay? I have three kids, Margaret and I have three kids, which means three different times I have, as the husband, gotten to experience childbirth. Now, Margie's not here today.

She doesn't love when I talk about this, but I prayed about it and I feel good about it. No, I won't go into detail. Any husband knows this. It is like, it doesn't matter. We did all the classes, all of them, extra classes. I think it was called a Braxton. I mean, we did it all. And I mean, you know, we were fully prepared and no one's prepared, right? And there is so much stuff that happens, okay? But it is obviously unbelievably painful. But here's what happens. As soon as the baby is born, right? Remember a baby comes out and they wrap the baby up like a little burrito, you know, and then they hand the baby to the mom. And mom, again, I'm not a mom, but almost for the moment forgets all the pain. Or if the pain was there still, it knows it's worth it. In fact, any mom, every mom, but I'll just pick on any mom who has more than one kid decided it was worth it. Because the first time you can say, well, I didn't know, right? Some of you go, we got six kids. You win, okay? There you go. But think about that. It's like that is the one of the most painful experiences on earth. And women voluntarily do it again. Why? Because on the other end is life. Think about it this way. Say I'm like, I blindfold you and I take you up to the hospital,

over to the hospital, and I say, we're going to get off on a floor. And we get off on a floor, but you don't know what floor we're on. And you hear a woman screaming. Your response to that screaming will be, what floor do we get off on? Are we on the oncology unit? It's not good. You don't want to hear anyone screaming on the oncology unit. Are we on the labor and delivery unit? What you know is, oh, life is on the other end. In fact, think about it, the more... Here's what it tells us. Number one, our suffering is producing something. It's productive. And guys, we have to... We will go mental if we do not believe there's meaning in our suffering. Do you know that everything changed for Domino's when they added the pizza tracker? Now, everyone uses it. And you expect that it's like, no, why? Because it's like, we can handle 25 minutes for pizza, I just need to know, are you making? Are you baking? Are you... All right. Why do the airline... Why on these... If you ever fly international or cross-country, why do they let you... Why is like the main screen tracking the flight? They don't need to do that. It puts everybody at ease.

It's an eight-hour flight, it's a six-hour flight, but I want you to see the whole time you're making progress. Secondly, it tells you that it's getting more intense. The deeper the pain, the more often the proverbial contractions, the closer you are to life on the other end. So, Paul gives us this illustration and then he says this, verse 23, and not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit grown inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. So, I told you this kind of when we were reading it at the beginning. Last week, we're told that we're adopted. This week, we're told that we're waiting for our adoption. Okay, we live in what's...here's another theological term for your Sunday morning, we live in what's called the already not yet. Here's a way to say it, like the best way I know how to say it. If you're a Christian, your salvation is true, and your salvation is real. But unfortunately, your salvation, and you know it and I know it, we know it, is incomplete. So, you're forgiven of your sins, but you don't always feel forgiven, and you've been set free from your sins, but you still kind of walk in them, and you have the Holy Spirit, but only as a down payment. And we see God, what did Paul say, through a mere dimly? And one day, we'll see him face to face. So, what we're longing for, I think we'll talk about this more next week. What we're longing for is the redemption of our bodies. So, this is basically, another way to say it, is the last thing that gets saved is your body. And you have to die, or Christ has to return. Now, whenever you talk about the redemption of your body, if you're under like 30 years old, you're like, I don't care.

Because, you know, you don't. But as soon as you get like 40, 50 years old, it's going to happen to all of us, time and gravity take over, no matter how many creams and crunches you do, okay? It's going to happen, right? If you're 20 years old, you can order like a Pizza Hut supreme pizza and eat it at midnight and wake up feeling amazing. You do that at 55, you're putting out an incident report of some sort, something that happened to you. This is just how it works. And the older you get, right? And aging is very hard on people, and I've talked about that. The more you desire the redemption of your bodies. And here's what he says. Did you notice he says, the Holy Spirit is the first fruits. Now, I've told you about first fruits, you've heard about first fruits. Think about it, I want to give us a new illustration. I'll use an illustration that wouldn't have been able to be used back then, an appetizer. You know, most people don't have enough food. You think about trying to explain an appetizer to somebody who lived hundreds of years ago? It's what we eat before we eat. You have enough food to eat before you eat? Yeah. But think about this. An appetizer is a foretaste. You ever go to some restaurant and, you know, they say, I don't know what your favorite appetizer is. I'm trying to think of one right now. I mean, you know, fried pickles, okay?

Not your kind of thing, but maybe my kind of thing. You know, and you have them, and you're like, those were so good. If that's what their appetizer tastes like, I wonder what the chef makes. You're like, no chef makes fried pickles. But you know what I'm saying, yeah. I wonder what the chef's cooking. That's the same thing. The little bit that God has given us, which is a lot, but I'm saying, it's all foretaste and appetizers. But the problem is once you've tasted it, you want the whole meal. But there's just certain things we can't have yet because they're simply not available yet. So here's where Paul ends. Verse 24, he says this, for in this hope, we were saved. Now, hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what he sees. This is the first time Paul begins to define hope. Earlier, he described it, he said, God subjected the creation to futility in hope. He talked about a present age and a future age, but here he basically says, we were saved in this hope. So here's what hope is and what hope isn't. Well, let me start with what it isn't. Hope is not wishful thinking. You know, we use the word hope. You know this, I think, but we use the word hope very differently than the Bible does. We say things like, I hope the Carolina Panthers have a good season. That is not biblical hope. That is not realistic hope. What you mean by that is like, you know, if I could have what I want,

this is what I'd want because I love them and, you know... It's some version of like optimism and wishful thinking, which then makes people think, man, I just wish I was more of an extrovert. I wish I had that kind of personality or temperament that was just naturally optimistic. Hope doesn't come from within us. Hope is faith looking forward. Hope is a confident expectation of all that God has promised, okay? And that's why hope comes from God's word. You have to get in God's word and go, God, I am gonna hold your feet to the furnace for everything you've promised that you're gonna do. I'm going to absolutely 100% believe your promises even in light of so many painful things in my life, which is why, by the way, this is what he says. He says, for in this hope we were saved. Now, hope that is seen is not hope, okay? He says, for who hopes for what he sees? Here's the hard thing. You can't see your hope, smell your hope. It's not part of your five senses. So here's what he says. But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience, okay? So Paul is very honest. There are two ages, the present age and the coming age. And there are two realities. We are very hopeful while we wait.

And if we're terrible at suffering, we may be worse at waiting. Anyone else get upset when your web page takes longer than three seconds to load? When one of your 14 streaming services has a brief glitch and there's a few minutes you can't watch something? When you didn't pay $10 to have the YouTube subscription so you have to watch a five-second intro video? Like what is, like all of that, it's all silly stuff, I know. But like we are, you know, Amazon tells you your package is gonna take three days instead of two days. It's like, what happened? We are just so terrible at waiting. But let me give you an encouraging word, and you know this is true. Almost all of the most meaningful work that God's gonna do in your life is gonna happen while you wait. Almost all of your deepest discipleship is gonna happen while you wait. And if you're in a season right now of waiting because you're suffering and you're looking for something, I want you to know you're in good company. Moses had to wait 40 years twice. David, young man, had to wait, you know, 15 years from being anointed to being king. Joseph, unfortunately, was waiting during the best, most marriageable years of his life while he was single and healthy. Abraham was waiting while he was old

for the promises of God. And while we wait, we worship, and while we wait, we wrestle. Because here's what it says. I want us to go back and look at one last thing that I skipped over, because I want you to see this. He says this in verse 20. Three, and not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit, we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. Paul talks about, when I told you earlier, I said we groan in the pains of childbirth, but what I didn't talk about is it says that we actually groan inwardly as we wait. And what are we waiting for? We're waiting for heaven. We're not home yet, right? I don't know if you ever heard of the story of John Newton. He wrote Amazing Grace. That's really all you need to know about him, but you know what he said? He said, the average Christian's life, he said, is as if they were the poorest person that they've ever known. I mean, imagine you guys were poor. Some of you, that would be very hard, but just imagine for a second that you were poor, and you had no money. And then you find out that you have this unbelievable estate

that you're going to get to inherit. And he said what happens is, and then imagine that the Christian gets in, he's speaking metaphorically, the Christian gets in his carriage, and he begins to go miles and miles and miles to go get this, go to the castle to get his inheritance. And John Newton says what happens is the carriage breaks down one mile before he gets there. So the man has to get out of his carriage and walk through the mud and walk up the hill to get to the castle to get his inheritance. He said, but too often, he said, could you imagine that man complaining about his carriage? He said, so often we're complaining about something instead of realizing we are almost home, but not home yet. He says here that we groan inwardly. Now, that means two things. That means that when you're groaning, and some of you know this, it means that it's internal, and it's in the deepest part of you. But here's also what it means when it says that we groan internally. It often means some of you are groaning and nobody knows it. I mean, I would imagine that in a church of our size across our campuses, there is somebody who cries. cried, some of you cried on your way to church today. And there are others of you that something was said here that reminded you of something or you saw somebody and you're going to get in your car and you're going to cry on the way home.

And some of you are groaning over the condition of your marriage and you feel like you can't even talk to your spouse about it. Some of you are groaning about something that's going on with your kids and you don't even know how to approach it with them. And I want to let you know, we want to...the church, partly, guys, what we do when we gather together is we gather to groan together. That's why, by the way, if you haven't noticed, we don't only sing happy chipper songs. We sing songs about life and death and our sin and the need for forgiveness and suffering and trusting God in this world because when we groan, we don't just groan inward. Hopefully, we groan Godward. And in a minute, what we're going to do is we're going to sing some songs and we particularly, Donovan and his team, chose two songs to sing that are really about the promises of God and what we believe. And in just a minute, when you stand and when you sing, if you're a Christian, there's two types of ways you sing. You either sing because you believe it or you sing because you want to believe it. And sometimes, you come together and where you are in life, you're singing because you're like, I believe this, I'm experiencing, it's true. And sometimes, you're singing the words going, God, would you please help me to believe this? Well, you know, John Newton in that story about the man with the carriage and he's in the mud and he's complaining and he's not, you know, he needs to head up the castle instead. You know, the one part of the... He's John Newton, so I'm not trying to correct him. But the one part that he forgot in that whole story is that actually the king

of the castle comes down to meet you when the carriage breaks and comes to walk you back up to the castle. So you see, we have a God who groans. Think about it this way. God has had one son without sin, but no sons without suffering. And our whole hope that there's two ages and that what's coming is better than what is, is because of what happened on Good Friday 2,000 years ago. And you know what's interesting? I had this thought for the first time this week. It was at the cross where creation again groaned. If you read all the accounts of the cross, you're like, why is it turning dark? Why are the rocks splitting? Why is there an earthquake? It's like the entire creation is groaning ready to be saved. See, we have a God that not just suffers for us but suffered with us. Christianity doesn't give us a distant God, it gives us a God with scars. And Jesus groaned. You can read... There's a moment where he's healing a guy who's deaf and he sees all this unbelief around him and it says he sighed or literally groaned. He goes to Lazarus' tomb and even though he knows he's... You know, this is how it all works, I guess, in the mind and heart of God. Even though he knows he's going to raise Lazarus from the dead, Jesus still weeps, he groans. So I just want... Here's the thing, I want us to be the most hopeful church and I want us to be ready to suffer. I'm not here, this sermon, this evening, this ending right here, I'm not here to scare you, I'm here to prepare you.

Charles Spurgeon, he used to teach his pastors on Friday morning, young pastors, and he said to pastors, he said, the job of a pastor is to prepare the ark before it rains. And I just got to imagine that in a room of this size, we're about halfway through the year, that there are some of you that are going to get a phone call before the end of the year, that when you get this phone call, it's going to be a before and after phone call. That happens to people. I mean, how could it not? And across all of our campuses, something I...actually, as I say that, some of you have already gotten that phone call this year. And we want to be a place, I've said this from day one, where people's lives can fall apart and where we can suffer and groan and trust God together. So just a minute, I'm going to pray and then I want you to stand and I want you to sing, whether you believe it or you're hoping to believe it, we're going to rejoice together in the promises of God. Let's pray. Lord, I don't know all of the suffering that people are going through. There's people who are struggling financially, there are people who are struggling mentally, there are people who are struggling emotionally, there are people who are brokenhearted over the condition of their children or their family or their parents. And we groan, Lord. And we'll talk next week. Sometimes we don't even know, we'll see this, we don't even know what to pray, so the Holy Spirit has to lead us with groaning. Lord, would you help us to trust you? Would you help us to keep worshiping? to keep walking with you, to keep wrestling,

would you use your people and your word and your spirit to bring encouragement? Pray all this in Jesus' name. You can stand, you can sing, come forward.