12-26-10 When We Hurt

We return this morning

to our study of the 8^th chapter of the book of Romans.

We are in the last half of this chapter,

in a section of Paul’s letter

in which he is offering us

the heart of all he has been saying to us in the preceding 7 chapters.

If you’ve been with us in our study the past few weeks

you know that Paul does 3 things for us in this section of the book.

1. In Romans 8:12-17 he offers us 5 evidences of true faith,

5 evidences of the life of Christ within us.

2. Then, in 8:18-30, the section we will study today,

he offers us 5 strong words of encouragement for the times when we hurt.

3. And then he concludes the chapter

with 5 things the Christian must never forget

about God’s relationship with the Christian.

Now, what I just did right there

I have done because it is a helpful teaching tool for us

as we move through these verses together.

But I have to tell you

that even as I do it

there is a part of me that resists doing it

because it carries with it a great risk.

It carries with it the risk

of turning living reality

into dead orthodoxy.

Some of you will remember when Chuck Crapauchettes

was such a vital part of our church life together.

Every Sunday he would sit up here to my right at the keyboard when I was teaching,

and nearly every morning when I finished

if he thought there was something I needed to clarify

he would tell me.

One of his greatest gifts to me in my teaching,

one of the things Chuck would not let me do

is to phrase truth

in a way that sounded like “Bible Doctrine” to him.

He didn’t want just God-words.

He wanted us to relate to the truth

in a way that brought it

not just into our minds,

but into our lives.

I am so grateful for that gift he gave me

because I know how vulnerable we are

to believing that just because we have accumulated knowledge,

or understood the words,

it then means that we also integrated that truth into our lives.

But that isn’t the way it works.

The knowledge can be an important first step,

but only the Spirit of God

can bring us through the sometimes painful process

of turning facts into living truth in our lives.

And when I suggest to you that there are 5 supports for suffering

found in the passage we will look at this morning,

I run the risk of suggesting that

if we memorize these 5,

that act of memorization will in itself equip us to handle the pain.

That is not what is going on here.

This passage has the ability to give us strength, and hope

only to the degree the truths within it become intensely personal.

And what I would suggest you do is this:

in the front of your Bible

jot down 3 words - “When I hurt...”

and then, following those 3 words

put down “Romans 8:18-39".

That passage will actually take you all the way through to the end of the chapter,

but the whole section fits together.

And then, when you go back to this passage

at some time when pain has intruded into your life,

wrestle your way through these words

in the context of your pain.

There will be some of it

that will give you hope and encouragement

as soon as you read it.

There will be some of it

that you will need to churn over,

to bring back to your God

and ask Him how He can say what He has said,

and how these things could possibly be true

given what is going on inside you or around you.

And in that process

these truths will transition from academic platitudes

into strong anchors in your life.

I can never do that for you in a teaching situation.

Only the Spirit of God can do that for you,

and then only as we bring these truths back to God in the midst of our pain.

But this morning we can at least begin the process

by looking at the passage together

to see what Paul tells us we need to know when we hurt.

I mentioned two weeks ago

in our final few minutes together

that this passage contains

3 things we very much need to know about the future,

and 2 things we very much need to know about the present.

I find it fascinating

that Paul begins by talking with us about the future.

I think He does that

because he understands what happens inside us when we hurt.

And one of the first things that happens

is that we become exceptionally vulnerable

to certain types of lies,

lies that cause us to loose all perspective on what’s going on.

And at the head of that list of lies

is the belief

that the pain we feel will never end.

We can so quickly begin to believe

that, rather than our walk with the King

being an ongoing process,

a pilgrimage,

it has suddenly and irreversibly become a point that will never change.

Now, having immersed myself in pain,

I will certainly hurt like this forevermore.

Nothing will ever again change.

Nothing will ever again be as good as it once was,

and of course it certainly could never again be even better.

It’s interesting the things

that can trigger that loss of perspective,

that emptiness,

that inability to see beyond the present moment in our lives.

Even events that, objectively, should be tremendous high times,

if they have been exceptionally stressful or exhausting,

and especially if they have thrust us into some major change

in our life routine or circumstances,

can cause us to loose all sense of the future.

Sandee and I joke now

about a conversation that the two of us had at the dinning room table

just after our Joni Sue was born.

We’d been married just over 3 years at the time,

the three best years either of us had ever lived up to that point.

We both married our best friend,

and discovered in that friendship

a joy and a fulfillment in life

we’d never known before.

To be at peace,

to be secure,

to be safe

was to be with one another.

And then in an instant

this little intruder stormed into our world,

upsetting our ordered life,

altering everything forever.

And we sat there at the table,

following our third or forth sleepless night,

talking with one another about how our Lord had, in His kindness,

given us three wonderful years together,

and then telling one another that now we would just have to face the fact

that happiness as we knew it was over.

We took some little comfort in knowing

that 18 years down the line,

when this little critter was finally out of the house,

we would once again possibly have a chance of reentering the world of happiness.

When I put that memory

next to the one of Sandee and me

counting the days until our next trip out to see our precious daughter,

and about how, each time the phone rings,

there is a hope at the back of our minds that the voice we’ll hear will be hers,

I realize once again that losing perspective

is one of the thing we people do best.

Two weeks ago I mentioned

another vital passage in Scripture

dealing with suffering in the Christian’s life

that also targets this same problem.

1PE 5:8 Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

1PE 5:9 But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world.

1PE 5:10 After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.

1PE 5:11 To Him be dominion forever and ever. Amen.

The crucial words in that whole passage, of course,

are those words “After you have suffered for a little while...”

Those words are carefully designed to force our minds back into perspective,

to force us to remember, to recognize

that pain in the life of the child of God

is never a point at which we arrive,

it is a process He leads us through.

And when we come to Paul’s words to us here in Romans,

in his own way he begins at that same point, with that same lie.

He attacks that lie

that causes us to narrow our vision down

to just this point in time,

this instant as if it is all that will ever be.

And let me read this section of Paul’s letter for us

that offers us the 3 things we need to know about the future at those times when we hurt.

It’s found in Romans 8:18-25.

ROM 8:18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

ROM 8:19 For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.

ROM 8:20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope

ROM 8:21 that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.

ROM 8:22 For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.

ROM 8:23 And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.

ROM 8:24 For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees?

ROM 8:25 But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.

And the three things we need to know about our future are these:

1. Our future glory will infinitely surpass our present suffering. (8:18)

2. This abnormal world will one day be put back right. (8:19-22)

3. The rebellion of your body will end. (8:23-25)

Now, let’s take them one at a time.

Paul begins his hope for the hurting

by blasting a window

into the darkness of our pain.

He does so by targeting one of the first questions we ask ourselves

whenever we hurt.

“What difference does it make, anyway? Is it really worth it?”

Let me tell you what Satan’s lies sound like

so that you can recognize his voice.

He says,

“No one knows what you’re going through,

and what’s more, no one cares.

You are suffering all of this for nothing.

It makes no difference in this life,

and it certainly makes no difference in the next.

No one else is honest.

No one else is moral.

No one else remains faithful when it gets this hard,

because the truth is,

what you do doesn’t really matter all that much.”

So many lies.

And in response to those lies

Paul responds with a remarkable statement.

He says, “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

He not only says it’s worth it,

he not only assures us that our God

knows every detail of everything going on in our lives,

but he says that trying to compare

the pain we are feeling now

with the glory it will bring in the future

is, quite simply, a joke.

There is no comparison.

I love the way Paul worded this same truth

when he wrote to the Corinthian church.

He said,

2CO 4:17 For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison...

He wants us to see the contrast, of course,

between what we are going through now

and what He has in store for us in the future.

And he shows us that contrast

by telling us that even the very worst

of everything that we will ever encounter here and now

is like a “momentary, light affliction”

when compared to the “eternal weight of glory” to be given to us in the future.

Teachings like this are dangerous, of course.

Once they fall into the hands of our religious world

they can so easily end up being reduced to some form of,

“We should be good now

so that we can get stuff in heaven.”

That’s not what Paul is talking about.

You see, the whole issue here

concerns our trust in the integrity of our God.

It’s impossible to suffer

without our minds wrestling with the question,

“What sort of God would let me hurt like this?

What sort of God would allow me to go through this kind of pain?”

And Paul’s first answer to that question

is that He is the kind of God

who never has and never will

allow any scale to go unbalanced,

the kind of God who is debtor to no man,

the kind of God who knows

and who remembers every tear,

every pain,

every agony we feel

that results from our union with Him

and repays to us a hundred thousand fold and more

in response to our fumbling trust in Him and dependance upon Him at those times when we hurt.

PSA 56:8 You have taken account of my wanderings; Put my tears in Your bottle. Are they not in Your book?

PSA 56:9 Then my enemies will turn back in the day when I call; This I know, that God is for me.

This is not the whole answer, by any means,

but it is a crucial first step.

Do you remember the central purpose

for which every one of us are on this earth?

It is the discovery

that our God is absolutely

and eternally

and infinitely GOOD.

He is what we long for,

He is the source of all fulfillment in life.

Nothing more powerfully assaults that truth in our minds

than the intrusion of evil into our lives

and the pain it brings

when we choose righteousness in the face of it.

And Paul begins our defense against those doubts

by telling us He knows,

He cares more than we could ever imagine,

He can and will bring us through,

and He will make certain we will never ever have any regret

over every right choice we’ve ever made.

And then, from there,

Paul turns our attention

to the second strong affirmation we need as we look toward the future.

He tells us what we already know,

that this world in which we live

is not as it should be.

He uses powerful words to describe the world as it now exists.

It is “subjected to futility”,

“in slavery to corruption”,

and it “groans and suffers the pains of childbirth...”.

Our news media

has made an international industry

out of confronting us with that corruption day after day.

Where is it too hot?

Where is it too cold?

Where is there corruption,

and deceit,

and perversion,

and hatred,

and suffering,

and war?

And in response to all that we see

Paul wants us to know two things -

1. This world really is not as our God designed it,

and though it testifies to His creative genius,

it has also been profoundly corrupted

as a direct result of man’s sin.

2. But then he also wants us to know

that at the return of Christ

this world will once again

be brought into perfect subjection to Him.

I do love the powerful mental images created by the Old Testament prophets

when they shared with us what they saw

as they looked forward to what will one day take place on this earth.

With Amos it came in the form of an outcry of his heart when he wrote,

Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. (Amos 5:24).

And as if in response to that outcry

Habakkuk proclaims, For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. (Hab. 2:14).

Isn’t that great!

We now live in a world immersed in corruption,

a world that groans under the suffering that flows from our rebellion against our God,

a world in which we gain just tiny glimpses of the glory and majesty and truth of our God

as we see it through the moral sewage that surrounds us.

But the time will come

when the truth about our God

will flood this world as the waters cover the sea.

Even so, come Lord Jesus! (Rev. 22:20)

But Paul doesn’t stop there.

He takes us one more step

as he points us toward the future.

Because, you see, he knows

that it is not most of all

the evil in the world that tortures us so,

it is the evil that continues to dwell within ourselves.

And his third promise for the future

takes direct aim at what is certainly

the greatest source of suffering

that most of us ever confront -

the mistrained body

in which we continue to live.

And rather than trying to rush through his comments about it

we’ll pick up our study right here next week.