S. REDEMPTIVE SUFFERING
REDEMPTIVE SUFFERING
10-17-54b
Rom 8:17-25 We pick up this evening at Rom 8:17-25. In Rom 8:17-25. And now we read God’s word:
“If children then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if so be, that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together, for I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation waiteth for the manifestation of the children of God. For the creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who had subjected the same in hope. Because the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together unto now. And not only they, but ourselves also who have the first fruits of the spirit.
Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting are the adoption, to wit; namely, the redemption of our body. For we are saved by hope. But hope that is seen is not hope, for when a men seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that, we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.” The title of the message is: “Redemptive suffering.” In the re-creation of the world. For the world shall be re-created. All of it. The firmament above, and the earth below, the fowls that fly, the fish that swim, the little creatures that creep, and the man who walks in the earth. The flower that buds, the tree that dies, the grass of the fields, everything that God has made, will be remade. All that God has created will be re-created. There shall be a new heaven and a new earth. That is the eternal, unwavering plan of Almighty God. In these three verses, one can record, can read the entire work of God in creation, from the beginning to the ending. In Gen 1:1-31, on the sixth day, at the conclusion of God’s work, the Bible says: “And God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very, very good.” The 2nd verse is in this text; Acts -- Rom 8:22 : “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.” And Rev 2:3 and Rev 22:3 : “And there shall be no more curse.” That is the course of this entire created work and purpose of God. In the beginning it was perfect. It was marred, but some day, it will be perfect and unmarred again.
Those three verses are the past and the present and the future of God’s work in this created universe. What was and what is, and what is to be. The perfection in the beginning that the man marred. And the punishment that he now bears. And the glorious hope for which all of us now move. In the beginning, God saw all that he did, and it was very good. And the now, for we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain until now. And the glorious hope that is to come. There will be a new heaven and a new earth. And there will be no more curse. In that glorious scheme. In that magnificent, incomparably blessed plan of God, Paul here writes some marvelous things. In the 19th verse, he says: The whole creation is on tiptoe, waiting, expectant for the manifestation. The Greek word there is Apocalypse. And in many of your Bibles, many of these translations, you won’t find the last book in the Bible called the Revelation, you call it the Apocalypse. The Apocalypse is the Greek word for “unveiling.” It is translated “Revelation.” The Apocalypse, the uncovering, the whole creation, Paul says, all of it is earnestly waiting, expecting, on tiptoe for the unveiling, the uncovering, the Apocalypse of the children of God. For the whole creation, Paul says, was made subject to vanity, to futility, to unproductiveness, not willingly, not of itself. It was cursed for man’s sake. God never made the ground to bear thorns or thistles.
God never intended for there to be a Sahara Desert to rob the earth of his glow. God intended for the whole creation to be like the Garden of Eden. But the creation was made subject to futility, to unproductiveness, to vanity by reason not of itself, but it was cursed for man’s sake. The whole creation was made subject to vanity and futility, not willingly, but by reason of him who has subjected the same in hope. God did it. God cursed the ground on account of the man. But he did it with the infinite goal of that marvelous consummation that reaches out through the ages. And some day shall bring us a better heaven and a better earth.
Because the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. All of the creation shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption.
There will be a day when the soil will no longer bring forth thorns and thistles. There will be a day when the animals of the field will no longer suffer and die.
Every time you pass down the sidewalk and there is a little creature that has been stepped on mashed out and flattened and it is dead. Every time you drive down the highway and there is a possum or there is an armadillo and a car has run over it or a little squirrel out there on the street where we live.
Everywhere in this world that you see the carcass of a poor earth creature, it is but a reminder of the bondage of corruption into which this earth has been plunged because of man’s sins.
God never made a creature to die. God never made a creature to have a fang or a tooth or a claw. God never made a creature to be poisonous. He never meant for the rattlesnake or the asp, these things were brought in the world by virtue of the sin and the transgression of the man who disobeyed the commandment of Almighty God. And the entire creation is in the bondage of corruption. And the death that we see everywhere is the great “Amen” to that terrible curse that fell upon our world. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together. That looks forward to the birth.
Whenever you have somebody traveling, that word is used altogether either figuratively or actually with regard to birth. And we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.
Travailing, there is to be a new day. There is to be a new day for all of this world, not just for the humanity. Not just for the people. But for all of God’s creation. All of God’s world is to be delivered out of the bondage of corruption.
I can’t say this, but it will be exactly like this. But all I can say is, that God’s book looks that way, it turns that way. It moves in that way. The bird that dies, the bird will live again. The animal that died, the animal will live again. The insects that dies, it will live again. All earth’s creation will be liberated out of bondage. And then it won’t have a sting in it and it won’t have an ant bite in it and it won’t have a cockatrice’s poison in it. It won’t have a fang in it or a claw. But tell be perfect like God intended for it to be. Do you ever look at the butterfly. Sometimes they are the most gorgeous creatures. God meant all of his little insects to be beautiful like those butterflies. Even a snake. Did you ever see the marvelous colorings of a snake?
God created that serpent in the Garden of Eden, it was a perfect animal. And some of its beauty can still be seen in those configuring colors that sometimes glorify the body of that animal of the dust.
It is because it was cursed that it crawls on its belly and eats dust all of the days of its life. But God never intended that. And some day there will be the re-making of this whole universe. And the birds will be beautiful and perfect. And God’s insects will fly like beautiful butterflies. And everything will be just as the hand of God could make it. And behold, it will be very, very good. When we go to heaven, we’re not going to be up there by ourselves. Lonesome like. Everything gone. We’ll have trees there. The trees will be re-made. And they won’t die. They won’t shed their leaves. The leaves are for the healing of the people. And it bears fruit, not just in the autumn when the apples are ripe. Not just in the early part of the summer when -- what gets ripe? Cherries. When the cherries get ripe. Not just in the winter when something else gets ripe. But they will ripen all year long. The trees will be like God intended for his trees to be. Bearing fruit every month. And the rivers won’t overflow their banks. And we won’t have any hassles and cares knocking at our doors. But it will be perfect. Everything will be just as God intended it. Now, we’re in the bondage of corruption, but we travail in pain, looking toward to the new creation. Not only they, not only all creation suffers, but we ourselves also who have the first fruits of the spirit. Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, namely, the redemption of our bodies.
Isn’t that a funny thing? Isn’t that a strange thing? The Lord God began with a man’s body, with this house of clay in which he lives and tabernacles. God began with a body. And God ends with our bodies. The re-created, immortalized, glorified body in which we live.
I was preaching one day. And I was preach nothing Luk 24:1-53. I was preaching on that passage where Jesus said: You are frightened as though you were looking at a spirit. I’m not a spirit. Handle me and see. For a spirit hath not flesh and bones such as ye see me have. And he said: Have you any meat? And they gave him a piece of a broiled fish of and an honeycomb. And he ate before them. And in the passage in John, the same experience.
Come and put your hand -- put your finger in the nail print in my hand and thrust your hand into my side. That it is I, myself, that you are seeing.
I was preaching that in the resurrection, in the new world, out there in glory, in heaven, that heaven is a place. And has to be a place because a body has to be in a place.
You might put five thousand spirits on a part of that little doohickey there. I don’t know how many spirits you can put right there on that doohickey. But I know this, you can’t put bodies on that thing. A body has to have space. And Jesus has a body. He was resurrected from the dead, in the body in which he lived in the days of his flesh. And we shall be resurrected like him. You’ll be you, and I’ll be I. Only you’ll be better and I’ll ought to be. By God’s grace shall be, all of us, all of us. Re-created. That’s what I was preaching. And there was somebody there -- there was a somebody there from another faith. And another religion. And in that faith and in that religion, they say mind is everything and that when you are sick, you know, you just got a trickle in your mind, you are not really sick. And that you don’t die, you just think you die. And that you don’t have body and you don’t have materiality, oh, that’s just thinking, you know. And it is that religion. And somebody was there in that religion listening to me preach. And when they went out, they were very, very disgusted. And they said to the family that brought them this once, that one said, “I never heard such a crass material preacher. Never.”
Why, said that one, “These things are great spiritual trues. We’re not going to have any materialitys. We’re not going to have any bodies. We’re not going to have any of objects of the earth or of time or of tide. But over there, all of us are going to be spirits. And all of us are going to be mind. And all of it is going to be thought. And all of it is going to be intelligence.”
Well, if that’s what it is, I’m not interested in going there. I don’t to live the rest of eternity with just a bunch of spirits; disembodied spirits. Scares me to death just to think about. I don’t even relish the idea. Don’t even like it. Don’t even like it. And I’m not the only one. Paul doesn’t like that either. In the II Corinthians letter and in 2Co 5:1-21, the apostle Paul writes, saying: How glorious it is going to be that when we -- when earthly house is dissolved, we have another house, one made with God, eternal in the heaven. For this we groan.
Just like he says here: “For we ourselves who are in this house, we groan within ourselves waiting for the redemption of our bodies.” In 2Co 5:1-21 letter, Paul is saying: Not that we would be unclothed, not that we would be naked; that is, not that we want to be a disembodied spirit. Nobody who has any intelligence or religion or knows the book would look forward to a disembodiment.
Paul says: Not that we would be disembodied, unclothed, but clothed upon that mortality may be swallowed up.
Paul is saying there: What we look forward to is a new body, a new house, a new tabernacle, one that doesn’t grow old. One in which our hair doesn’t turn gray and our hair doesn’t turn loose. A body in which your eyes stay good. One that your limbs stay strong. One in which you won’t grow old. But you always are like God intended for us to be.
That’s what we want. And that’s what I look forward to. I would like to be handsome, wouldn’t you? Oh, think of. Well, brother, I’m going to be handsome some of these days. Some of these days. And wouldn’t you like to be pretty? Don’t have to go to the beauty parlor, just made that way and stay that way.
Get a permanent and it will last all of eternity. Think of that. Think of that. Isn’t that glorious? It is wonderful. And that’s what God’s book says.
God’s book has nothing about disembodiment. Could I say it like this? The holy scriptures, God’s book abhors disembodiment like nature abhors a vacuum. Nature cannot bear a vacuum. It rushes to fill it up. So with this holy revelation. The book of God cannot bear disembodiment. God’s word cannot bear the death of the body and the liberation of the spirit and the spirit just stay a spirit.
No, sir. Jesus said: And the third day, I shall rise again. The third day, live again. The third day, I shall be raised incorruptible and he was. And he was and he is. And he has a body and he’s in glory. And some day, we’re going to be raised. We’re going to be raised incorruptible. We shall have a body and the whole creation shall be re-made with us.
What a glorious prospect. For we are saved by hope, no. For we are saved unto this hope. We are saved into this state of hope. We live as Christian people in this hope. Their hope in sin is not hopeful. When a man sin, what doth he have hope for?
We don’t see it yet. We are still dying. We’re still suffering. We’ve still in this body. We’ve still enthroned in this house in which we live. But if we hope for that, we see not. Then do we with patience wait for it. It is coming. Some of these glorious, marvelous days, it is coming.
Now, modern materialism and atheistic infidelity look down through the years that lie ahead and all they can see, all they can know, all they can discover is just death, light, darkness, the end. That’s all. When they think of us, mankind, crass materialism, blatant infidelity. All they can see and know is just that the man is a pawn in the hand of forces he cannot resist. We are just a play before powers that are dumb and inexorably and impersonal and passionless.
We’re just so many automata slaves. The product of the caprice of circumstance and heredity. That’s all. That’s all. But to the Christian, to a man of God, to the one who believes the revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ, in all of this vast created earth and its history and its travail and pain, in it all, God has an infinite and a glorious plan.
Now, may I speak of that plan? As Paul has presented it here. But I reckon that the sufferings of this present world are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For we are the children of God. Joint heirs with Christ. If so be, that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. And then the go back: For the creation was made subject to vanity, to futility, to death. Not willingly, not of itself, but by reason of God who subject it the same in hope. God allowed all of this and God did all of this. The curse when the man transgressed and the death that comes upon us. God did it all and God allowed it all. Because there is an infinite reaching out of the Almighty toward some glorious consummation, toward that final and holy end for which God made us and this world.
Now, in that plan of God, in that reaching out, God’s plan included suffering and trial, discouragement, temptation, all of the weariness and burden of life. What he says: The groanings within ourselves. It has a place. It has a part.
There is a vast difference between God’s creating and God’s redeeming. When God created this world, he did it at no cost at all. He just said it and that’s it. Just spoke and there it was.
God just said: Let there be light. And there was light. God said: Let the heavens appear and the firmament and the division of the clouds above and the waters in the sea below. And there it was. And God spoke into existence by fiat all of these things. And he made the stars also. And he just threw in those five hundred million, billion, trillion, quadrillion, centillion, the rest of them he just threw them in extra.
He just did that on the side. That was just nothing. That was just the way God made the world. It was nothing to him to make all of that. Just did it just like that. But the Lord God did something. He made a man whom he could love and who could love him. To whom he could talk and to whom could talk to him. And he made that man in his own image, morally free. And when he did, God laid himself open to an infinite hurt. As long as what is on the outside is kept on the outside, it will never bother you. Never bother you. A star, whatever that star is or isn’t, all of those created works of God, they’re outside of God’s heart.
They are outside of God’s soul and his love. He just created them and they were on the outside. But when the Lord God made a man, the man could love God and God could love the man. And the Lord God took the man into his heart and loved him. And gave himself to him. And the Lord God looked upon the man as someone who could respond. And when he did that, God laid himself open to an infinite, unbelievable and indescribable hurt.
You see, to create, he could do it by fiat. Just say the word. But to redeem, he had to suffer and to die. Because he loved the man. And Christ died for the man and Christ is God in the flesh. God dying, and God suffering for the man that he made. And create, but you can’t redeem without suffering. As long as it is on the outside, it is nothing. But when it gets on the inside, it suffers. And God suffered. And in that infinite plan, suffering has an infinite part. Christ suffered. And out of his suffering came the cross, came the gospel, came our redemption. And out of the suffering of his apostles came this New Testament. And the Lord Jesus received his suffering from the hand of God. The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it? The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it? My Father gave it to me.
What meant that terrible draft? What meant that terrible poison in that cup? No, God did it, says Jesus. God did it. The apostle Paul’s attitude was the same. Men put that chain on Paul’s arm. No, sir. Paul says: God put that chain on my arm. That’s God’s chain. Caesar put you in prison. No, sir, says Paul. I’m the prisoner of the Lord. It is God’s world. And I’m suffering as from the hands of God.
Now, in this creation, in this new world, God has a place for us. One of the most unusual passages in the Bible is in the I Colossians letter and in the 24th verse: “We now rejoice in sufferings and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ.” In the redemption of this world, suffering has a part in the infinite plan of God. Christ suffered, Paul suffered, the apostles suffered, and we have a part in that trial of our faith. And that groaning of our soul and that suffering in your lives. We have a part in it, too.
We are to fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ, that is, Christ suffered completely for our salvation. And our atonement is far from finished. But in the plan of God, there are many, many other sufferings that Christ does not bear. You bear them.
You pay that price. And in the created order of God, we have a part. And that’s why it is a glorious type. In I Peter, Peter said: The trial, the tribulation, the burden of your faith is precious though it be tried by fire. And in another passage in the 4th of Corinthians, Paul says: “For our afflictions which is but for a season worketh for us a far more eternal and exceeding way of glory.” And in the text here, in Rom 8:1-39 : “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” Our trial, our tribulation, our groanings, our burden of spirit and of life, all of these things are but God’s way of making the new heaven and the new earth and fitting us for a more glorious citizenship than any we have ever known here below. Our trials have a part. They are from God. They are from his hand. He planned them in an infinite all-gracious love. Into a mystery which I cannot understand. But they are from his hands. They seek us. Have you been out to the fair? I’m glad you don’t go on Sunday. Glad you’re here. But I think all of us ought to go to the fair during the week. And not any of us go to the fair on Sunday. So we’ll go to the fair on the days of the week. And all of us ought to. Many of these visitors that have been with us the last two Sundays have come from afar to visit the fair. And our glorious church. And you have been a blessing to us. When you go out to the fair, by all means, I think, you ought to see the Winston Diamond of New York and all of those glorious diamonds that are possessed by Winston. You will see the Hope Diamond. The most historic and colorful and dramatic of all of the jewels of the world.
You will see the Brazilian Diamond out there. You will see many others. They are wonderful things to behold. Never could buy one. Wouldn’t have it unless somebody gave it to me. I’d be afraid somebody would knock me in the head if I walked down the street with it.
I’m glad they have it and I don’t. But it is a glorious thing to see. Well, when you go out there, you’ll see a man and he’s grinding diamonds. He’s polishing diamonds. He’s taking those little old ugly, dirty-looking, off-colored, discolored looking worthless little rocks. And he’s grinding them out there and he’s making out of them those beautiful, beautiful gems that so beautifully are graced by you glorious girls.
I didn’t say that they grace you. You grace them. Over there in Siam I went to a gem factory. That man was a Dutchman. He came from Holland. He was grinding diamonds up. And went down there to Bangkok in Siam where they mine oh, many jewels in India and in Malaya, and especially Zircons.
He had over two thousand girls work nothing that gem factory. And they were taking those dirty little old stones, those lack-luster things and they grind and grind and grind them and pretty soon, they would come out like a piece of God’s heaven. And as I went with him and looked all through that wonderful place and then finally, to his office. And he opened up those great safes where he had those jewels by the pocket full, by the bucket full, he had more than I ever saw than what was in the world.
He looked at several of them and sent them to me. And then he took his hand and picked them up and let them fall like that. And they would sparkle under that glorious sun. It looked like they belonged to heaven itself. It looked like it came out of glory. As he did that, he smiled and turned to me and said, “Fellow, who would ever have guessed that these beautiful gems would come from those dirty-looking little stones that you saw a moment ago?” What makes them shine? What makes them glorious? What makes them full of the splendor and the light of Almighty God?
You know what? It is the grinding and the grinding and the grinding and the grinding. Without the grinding and the grinding, they look like dirty-little rocks to me. They look like sorry little pebbles to me. They don’t shine. They are not pretty. They don’t have any color. They’re not anything. And a diamond or a jewel or an emerald or a ruby or a zircon, nothing, nothing, it looks like just another rock. But they take it and they grind and they grind and they grind and they grind. And they liberate the splendor and the fire that God put in its soul.
That’s you. That’s you. The grinding and grinding, and the toil and the groaning.