Expound: Romans 8:1-27 - Part C

I still remember and I still experience what it was like to come into a relationship with Christ. It was real. It was transformative. It was awesome.

It's all I could think about. And the Holy Spirit did that. He was giving me a foretaste of what heaven is going to be like. When we give our lives to Jesus, we get to live a new life now, but we also gain the promise of eternal life. Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Skip shares how the transformation we experience in Christ here on earth is only a preview of our future in heaven. But before we begin, we want to tell you about a resource that will encourage you even more in your faith. Trials, Temptation, and the Tongue. Those are the mega themes of three booklets from Lenya Heitzig that we're making available this month at connectwithskip.com.

Here's Lenya with more on this bundle. In Don't Tempt Me, I hand you the keys to unlock the thoughts, circumstances, and fears that can cause you to give into temptation. And in Speak No Evil, I encourage you to avoid setting fires with your words and instead use them to bring showers of blessing. Lenya Heitzig's booklets, Don't Tempt Me, Speak No Evil, and Happy Trials provides help, hope, and encouragement in dealing with life's challenges. This bundle of three booklets are yours for a gift of $20 or more to help keep this Bible teaching ministry on the air. Get yours when you give today by calling 800-922-1888 or give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer.

That's connectwithskip.com slash offer. Okay, we're in Romans chapter eight today as we get into the teaching with Skip Heitzig. For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, Abba, Father. The spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.

Notice how the language changes. Sons of God, adoption, children of God. The term adoption is a very important New Testament term.

Paul uses it five times in his writings, and it means to be placed as an adult son or an adult child. In the Roman world, adoption had interesting ramifications. If you were adopted into a Roman family, you immediately, as the adopted son, lost all of the rights and privileges and debts of your previous family, and you were given all the rights and privileges in the new family. In fact, you had the same right as an adopted child as a natural born child in a Roman household. You even became a co-heir when there were inheritance laws or land passed out.

If the children would inherit an estate, the adopted child would get as much as the natural born child. So we became children of God. We were born again. Jesus uses that language. Paul uses the language of adoption.

Placed as adult sons. So we've received the spirit of adoption, verse 15, by whom we cry, Abba, Father. That's an Aramaic term, but also a Hebrew term, Abba. If you go to Israel, you will hear that frequently in the street. In fact, if you're in Jerusalem, you'll hear these little kids crying out, and you will go, I know what that word is.

It's because you've read your Bible. You know Romans. They'll say, Abba, which is Daddy, Father. Now that's how Jesus taught us to pray to God.

He said, when you pray, say, Our Father. It's very different from Jews before Jesus. Rabbis before Jesus never taught their talmidim, their students, to have personal relationship with God in heaven. It was very formal. It was very distant.

It was very remote. God was put off by that. And so when they pray, they didn't even call God, God. They didn't call Him by His name, Yahweh. What they did, when you'll still hear it today in the Orthodox community, they will refer to the Lord or God as Hashem. Hashem. Hashem is Hebrew for the name. So when you want to talk about God, you say, the name said this.

The name did that. How different from when you pray, say, Our Father, Daddy, Abba. So intimate.

So different. And the Jews, when they pray, it's very, very formal. I told you before the typical Jewish prayer, Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, Blessed are you, Lord God, King of the universe. It's recognizing sovereignty. It's recognizing deity. It's recognizing control and immensity, but not intimacy.

You want intimacy, you do this, Abba, Father. Well, we've been adopted. So before you came to Christ, the relationship you had with God was a Hashem relation, a Melech haolam relationship. There was God and human.

But now the relationship has changed. In Christ, you're adopted into the family, so it's not God and human. It's Father, child, son or daughter of the living God.

What a privilege. We cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. And if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.

There's that Roman adoption idea. If indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. Let me translate that idea for you. Everything Jesus received by divine right, you and I have received by divine grace.

You could study that the rest of your life. Everything Jesus has received by divine right as the user of the Spirit of God, by divine right as the unique Son of God. You and I have received as by divine grace as adopted sons and daughters of God. That includes glory, future glory. Even though we suffer temporarily, as He said, I consider the sufferings of this present time not worthy to be compared with the glory which will be revealed in us. In 2 Corinthians 4, Paul said, for our light affliction which is for a moment will become an far exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

So here we are. We have this affliction. Paul says, it's a light affliction. Oh, you don't know my affliction though. It's pretty heavy.

Well, Paul got beat up a whole bunch and beheaded eventually. That's pretty heavy, right? It would probably be harder than yours. So he called it a light affliction, but he said, it's going to work an eternal weight of glory. So when you put our suffering and His glory that we're going to also experience on a scale, that's the idea of this verse, eternal weight of glory, or the 2 Corinthians 4 verse that I quoted, not this verse. But sort of like this verse, it's not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us. 4, verse 19, 4, the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope.

Because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Now notice some of the wording in these verses that we just read. Verse 18, sufferings. Verse 20, futility. Verse 21, bondage of corruption. When God created the world, the universe, what did He say after He made it? He looked at it and said it's what? It's good, but it didn't stay good.

What was good experienced a fall? Sin was introduced because a serpent, Satan, enticed the humans, the first humans, to disobey God. And Paul put it in Romans 5, by one man sin entered the world and death through sin and death spread to all men because all have sinned. Now that's not creation's fault, that was Adam's fault. But the creation was subjected to futility, to emptiness, to the curse. And Paul says it groans.

The bondage, verse 21, of corruption. One of the most plain examples of this is in physics, in the second law of thermodynamics, which is entropy, that in an isolated system energy is lost over time, that things don't stay in their constant state but they deteriorate, they degenerate over time. We experience that daily.

Daily. We look in the mirror, entropy. It's happening all around us.

Second law of thermodynamics, it's in action. We are now subjected to futility. Verse 23, and not only they, but we also who have the first fruits of the spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. So we have been given a foretaste, what he calls here the first fruits. A foretaste, that's how the New Living Translation I think puts it.

A foretaste, a preview of coming attractions. All I can say is I still remember and I still experience what it was like to come into a relationship with Christ. It was real. It was transformative. It was awesome. It's all I could think about.

And the Holy Spirit did that. He was giving me a foretaste of what heaven is going to be like. Now I see through a glass starkly, but I've tasted. And one of the reasons I keep going, why I am motivated to keep going, is because, man, I've tasted it.

I know what it tastes like. So I grew up on Hamburger Helper. My mom loved that because you could just whip it up really quickly, you know, it's in a box.

So I pretty much lived off of that for years. But then I remember when my parents took me to dinner and I had steak and lobster. Do you know how hard it was to go back and eat Hamburger Helper?

Because I've tasted something different. So if somebody says, you know, heaven is all the steak and lobster you can eat. Really? All the steak and lobster you can eat?

Really? Well, I know what that's like. I've tasted it.

It's so awesome. I'm not saying it is. But you're going, it's not?

No, I hope you're not doing that. But anyway, so we have a taste. We've been given the first fruits of the Spirit.

Now think of it this way. First fruits. Remember the 12 spies who were sent into the land of Canaan? And they got fruit of the land, right?

The big huge bunch of grapes that a couple guys carried between their shoulders. They brought it back to the camp of Israel and said, this is the land flowing with milk and honey. We've tasted it and here's the first fruits. Well, that means when we get into the land, that's what we're going to have. We're going to eat that stuff. We're going to enjoy that stuff. So what the Holy Spirit does in the life of the believer in that experience initially and in an ongoing way is lets us give a foretaste of what heaven is going to be like.

We've tasted it. Now we're waiting for the full adoption. So it says, verse 23, we ourselves groan, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. In other words, we've been adopted into the family, but the full reward of the adoption is a whole new body, a resurrected body. That's the idea of verse 11. He will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you. Remember how Paul in 2 Corinthians 5 described death? He said, if our earthly bodies, these tents, or our earthly tent, these bodies are destroyed, we have a building from God made without hands eternal in the heavens.

And right after that, he said, we groan for that. We've tasted, and now we are groaning for the full adoption, the transformation, even of our physical body because He has put eternity in our hearts. So verse 24, for we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope. For why does one still hope for what he sees? If it's been given to you and you see it, you don't have to hope for it.

It's yours. But if we hope for what we do not see, then we eagerly wait for it with perseverance. Likewise, the Spirit also helps our weaknesses, for we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. So far in what we have read, there are three groanings.

Did you notice them? Creation groans, creation is waiting for the curse to be lifted. We groan, believers groan, and more so as we get older, especially when we're promised a brand new body.

We get up in the morning, oh, but I ain't gonna have to all day long for some of us. We groan. We long for, we hope for, and now we have the Holy Spirit groaning. I just want you to notice all those groanings, Paul kind of repeats that theme, and he says, the Spirit makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. What does that mean exactly?

Well, I'm looking at the time, and I'm going to just give you a little bit of a shot at this and see how far I get. Number one, it could refer to the Holy Spirit groanings. That's how some interpret it, that the Holy Spirit makes some form of inarticulate groan, inner Trinitarian communication. It's the Holy Spirit communicating to the Father, the Son. Oh, we don't know what we should pray for as we ought to. God certainly knows what we need. So we might pray, but the Holy Spirit will interpret that correctly according to the will of God.

So here's an example. Paul said, I prayed three times that I might have my thorn in the flesh taken away. Remember that 2 Corinthians chapter 12 passage? I've got a thorn in the flesh. It's a messenger of Satan, always rough, buffets me. I pray that I might have my thorn, always rough, buffets me. I prayed for that three times.

He didn't get what he prayed for. Finally, he said, the Lord told me, my grace is enough for you. I'm going to give you the ability to handle the thorn in the flesh. You're going to get perseverance. You're going to get patience.

You're going to get endurance. So Paul is saying, Lord, I pray for the removal of the thorn in the flesh. The Holy Spirit says to the Father, ignore what Paul just prayed, Father. Don't deliver him from the thorn.

Give him the ability to trust you so that he won't depend on himself. I remember when I prayed for a new car as a kid or a car. Now I was thinking completely different from what I got. I was a new believer. I prayed. I was saving up.

I had something in mind. What I ended up getting for $47 from my brother was a car which second gear did not work in. It had first, third, and reverse. It was bond owed, so it was just kind of beat up and spray painted and bond owed. And it was an eyesore.

It was the neighborhood eyesore. But it did get me around. And it was a lesson in humility. So I'm saying, Lord, I'm praying for that. I would never pray for a Pinto. So I might have prayed for like a Camaro or a Mustang. And God said, no. Holy Spirit said, Father, give him that old gray beater that his brother has.

That's perfect for Skip's first car. It could mean that. It could mean that it's the Holy Spirit's groaning to the Father. That's one possibility.

Here's another possibility. It could be my groaning. The New English Bible translates it with that in mind. It says, through our inarticulate groans, he could be referring possibly to what Paul will mention in Corinthians when he talks about praying in the Spirit, what we would call the gift of tongues. That part of that is that our language is a direct link, our prayer language, our ability to communicate directly from our spirit to God's Spirit. So you know that language is a pact, right? It's an agreement.

It's a covenant. The covenant that you and I share together is called English. There are other languages, of course, but you and I, we don't have that agreement. We don't have that pact, that covenant. But if we did, we could do this in a multilingual way. We could go all sorts of different languages.

I suppose heaven will be that way. But we have a very narrow pact. If in English I were to say the word low, it means the opposite of high. But if you're a Hebrew speaker and I say the word low, it means the opposite of yes. Yes, in Hebrew, is ken. No, in Hebrew, is lo.

It's because it's a different pact. So if I say lo to you, you go, oh yeah, down there. If I say to a Hebrew, lo, they're going like, no, why?

Different pact, different covenant, different understanding. So let's say I have an understanding with you that a code, we're going to come up with our own language. So I'm going to see you after church, so I'm going to see you after church and I'm going to say, uzzawazza, jazzawazza. And when I say uzzawazza, jazzawazza, to you, that will mean let's go and find a restaurant and sit down and have a meal.

Nobody else will know that. So I say uzzawazza, jazzawazza, and you go. And then your response will be surface murphus, calyrex flex, which means, you know, the governor hasn't allowed restaurants to be open, so just throw that out the window, but when it does open, we'll go, but you're buying. Okay, it means all that. So nobody knows it means that.

So I say uzzawazza, jazzawazza, surface murphus, calyrex flex. Now we have come up with a whole different way of communication. Nobody gets it, but we do, right? Do you know that in the Spirit, you and I are afforded a means, a way to communicate to God that bypasses our intellect? This is one of the reasons people don't like praying in the Spirit because they don't understand it. Paul said, my understanding is unfruitful when I pray in tongues, pray in the Spirit. I can't understand it. Nobody can understand unless there's a gift of interpretation, but it's a means by which your Spirit can directly communicate according to the will of God.

Amazing, huh? So it could mean the Holy Spirit will interpret it, or it could mean we, through our, through that pact, that spiritual prayer language called the gift of tongues, is how the Holy Spirit does the groaning. So we have a couple different interpretations, but it says, verse 27, he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. And verse 28 is just so rich, right? It's one of your favorite verses, that if I were just to go over it and close the chapter, which even I couldn't, I'm over time as it is, it would do injustice to it. So I didn't make it through chapter eight, but nice try.

We took a stab at it and we know that the problem is me. So we've learned a lot, right? We've learned a lot in this session. That wraps up Skip Heitzig's message from the series Expound Romans. Now, here's Skip to share how you can keep these teachings coming to you while connecting others to the Lord. The Bible tells us that every day draws us closer to the return of Jesus. One day the Lord will return, and that means our time to reach others with the gospel is urgent.

People need to hear the good news that changed your life and mine. So today I'm asking for your help to reach more people around the world with these teachings from God's word. Here's how you can partner with this ministry to make that happen. Visit connectwithskip.com slash donate to give your gift today. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate or call 800-922-1888. Again, that's 800-922-1888. Coming up tomorrow, Skip Heitzig shares why your weary and anxious heart can rest on the promise of Romans 828. When you look within, it gets worse because you see all of the corruption around you, and if you're honest, you realize I have the same capacities to do any of those things that I am distressed about that I hear about in the news. But when I look to Jesus, then and only then am I at rest. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.