The day will come when it will be creation's day of jubilee, emancipation, liberation from sin and the curse.
It will not be absolute when it begins at Christ's return, but it will be drastic nonetheless. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, and thus we shall always be with the Lord. For us, for we who believe, once we leave this life, we will always be with the Lord. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching through the book of Romans.
Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the book of Romans chapter 8 as he begins his message, Heaven Bound. Romans chapter 8, if you have your Bibles, please turn to Romans chapter 8. We will stand and take verses 18 through 19, but we'll try to get to verse 30 and the exposition. Heaven Bound is the title of this message. Romans chapter 8, verses 18 and 19, please stand for the reading of God's Word. 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. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God.
Please be seated. Well, he's now making comparisons. This whole 8th chapter is about being saved and he's now making comparisons between the sufferings in this lifetime and the future glory of the Christian where there will be no more sufferings. Creation will be one day liberated from the destruction and the decay and death. A nice parallel, I think, to this section that we have verses 18 through 30 is 1 Corinthians. Now, make it 2 Corinthians.
Anybody have a third? 2 Corinthians chapter 1, I think, is actually into chapter 2, and the Bible does that. It has these parallel sections that just accentuate the meaning in the Spirit. If you are new to Christ, going through the Scripture verse by verse, if you hang in there, you will greatly improve at understanding what the Bible has to offer you.
Well, let's look at the 18th verse. For I consider that the suffering of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. Well, Paul is saying God is not idle in the midst of hardship and suffering and just what this life throws at us. God is not idle.
He is working on something for his people. One pastor from decades ago, long time been in heaven, said, I could not have the presumption to write these words if they were not in God's holy book. I agree with that. What right would I have to make such an assumption that the life after this one is going to far outshine what we now are experiencing? Only through God's revelation do we have a right to be able to say such a thing with the conviction that we have. He earlier, or about this time, wrote to the Corinthians something very similar. He said, for our light affliction, 2 Corinthians 4, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory for our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding weight of glory. Sounds like he's repeating himself in that verse.
Well, because he is emphasizing his point. I consider the sufferings of this present time in this life are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed. Now, by this time that he penned this Roman letter, he had already suffered quite a bit for Christ, more than probably any of us here. There was that plot to kill him in Damascus soon after he became a Christian. Then he goes to his beloved Jerusalem and there's a plot to kill him there too, so he has to get out of there.
Then there was this attempted stoning at a place called Iconium. Then he goes to Lystra from Iconium and they stone him there. They catch up to him. He's chased from Antioch. He's mobbed in Thessalonica, chased out of there to Berea, chased from Berea.
Then he gets to Corinth. There's a plot to kill him there. Well, first there's a plot to cancel him. I don't know about that in this age to cancel culture. They tried to cancel him using the court to do it.
It did not work. In Ephesus, there was a riot, which they would have killed him if they could have got their hands on him. His friends had to restrain him from going near the people that were rioting. And then again at Corinth, there was a plot once more to end his life.
The one who writes these things, I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory, which shall be revealed in us, has a great conviction that heaven is going to be far better than this, and that he is heaven bound because, of course, the Christian has, as we're supposed to, our eyes on eternity. After this letter, Paul suffered more hardship, more persecutions. He was abused again in Jerusalem. Then he suffered shipwreck as a prisoner.
Snake bite when he survived the shipwreck. There was the cold and all that went with that bad day that he survived and those with him. There was the caning at Philippi, and ultimately there was death and a lot of other junk in between. He could have avoided all of it by just not serving Christ. And that's what makes that first chapter in 2 Thessalonians, which was written much earlier than the Roman letter, profound because they were suffering for their newfound faith in Christ. I'd like to point out that when that church in Thessalonica was founded by Paul, Silas with him, when they arrived in Thessalonica, they had just left Philippi, where Paul was caned, and Silas. So they had the wounds still on their back when they're preaching this gospel, and they made converts.
And then, then, the rest of Christodom, it wasn't as widespread as it is today, but it was growing increasingly, knew about that church in Thessalonica, how they were persecuted and how they were persevering in the midst of it all. So we should aim to proclaim that it is worth the pain to reach the kingdom. We're not saved to have a better life, but an eternal life.
Now that doesn't mean we cannot have a better life, but it means that the priority is on eternal life. We are saved by justification, not the escape of tribulation. So every Christian in a setting like ours, where we're relatively unpersecuted, relative to other places that are physically, financially persecuted, we should always be ready in our heads. It's like, you know, if I see action, if I see the combat that comes with persecution, Lord, may I shine brightly through it all. May I follow the footsteps of your servants, and there are many of them.
Paul wrote to the church at Philippi that he again was used by God to start, that again he suffered that, where he suffered that caning. He said that you may become blameless and harmless children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world. I think our generation outcrookets that generation. I don't know that there's ever been, they're so out of their minds.
If you told them there's a spaceship behind the moon waiting for them, they'd believe you. They're just, Satan has just really got a lot of people. The church has no time to be goofy. The church has no time to be a pain in the neck. The church has to shine. The sufferings of the martyrs was more purposeful than pitiful. I mean, you consider them, and there's some level of pity, of course, but the purpose behind what martyrs have endured over the ages, the Jews, they suffered persecution, too, for upholding the faith. In the book of Daniel, there's Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace. They became the first firemen in Scripture. Did I say that before?
I got a feeling I did. Anyway, the obedience to Christ makes the pain meaningful, and it does something else. It denies hell its pleasure.
That alone is appealing. He says, in us, the bottom part of verse 18, transformation into Christ's likeness. That should be the goal of every believer. I want to be like Christ.
I know that I won't max that out, but how much ground will I cover if I get just a little bit of it? That's how potent Christ's likeness is, and we can measure that when we see people who claim to be Christians and behave nothing like Christ. Verse 19, For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. The earnest expectation.
The Greek has sort of a, I guess we could put it this way, stretching out of the neck, an eagerness looking over the crowd kind of a picture. And he personifies creation in this verse, longing for transformation from the curse. All creation wants out of the curse that is upon it. David, in writing in Psalm 27, he expresses this longing to be with Christ, as we do when we sing songs of worship, when we pray, when we serve.
Serving is prayer in action if the heart is right. One thing I have desired of the Lord, that I will seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, to inquire in his temple. That's what he wanted out of life, eternal life.
He loved how he ends the 23rd Psalm, Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Heaven bound, part of our message to the world, but on Christ's terms, the revealing of the sons of God, the second coming of Christ, that's what he's referencing here, for our earnest expectation, our eagerness of the creation waits for the revealing of the sons of God, for the earnest expectation. We want Christ to return, put an end to this mess. Matthew chapter 13, Then the righteous will shine forth as the Son in the kingdom of their Father.
Well, Christ was doing that, left us that example. So the day will come when it will be creation's day of jubilee, emancipation, liberation from sin and the curse. It will not be absolute when it begins at Christ's return, but it will be drastic nonetheless. 1 Thessalonians chapter 4, And thus we shall always be with the Lord. For us, for we who believe, once we leave this life, we will always be with the Lord.
There will be no threat as to where we will spend eternity. Verse 20, For the creation was subjected to fertility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope. Verse 21, Because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Well, I've commented on much of that in previous verse. Sin existed in the spiritual creation.
Before man was created, Satan and his fallen angels. And that has spread to man, but it wasn't by accident. It was by disobedience. You can't downsize disobedience. You cannot downsize Christ's unlikeness.
It's a very serious thing. And with that fall of man, physical creation was reduced. It was turned into something God did not desire, but yet God continued forward. He didn't say, okay, let's just throw that one away and try this again, because it would have just happened over again. Creation did not ask for this curse, this mess that we're in.
None of us have. The only one that's asked to be part of this mess is Christ, born of a virgin. That external influence, that leaven, that corruption there in Eden was, of course, the devil. And all creation suffered because of man's fall, because of Satan's meddling.
Okay, we get that. What are we going to do about it? What's your role?
What's your contribution? In the 20th verse, he says, because of him who subjected it in hope. Well, God allowed this.
That's what he's saying. He has a plan. God allowed creation's fall, and he was ready for it. The hope is not the hope of will it be or possibility, but the hope of anticipation of what it is going to be. So without the curse and the cure, which is the cross of Christ, how would God's great love and mercy ever be known? If everything was okay, how could we ever? When does God get put under pressure so that we can see what's really there? Well, through creation. And if I can phrase it that way, I mean, you really can't put God under pressure. But from our perspective, we know that this is not what he wants, and that forms a sort of a pressure.
But he has a solution. The fall of man afforded God opportunity to exhibit not only his sovereignty, but his love, his justice. And so as creator, God has every right to subject creation to choice under pressure, pressure of the curse, and that's where we are right now. Creation is subject to choice.
The humans are the ones with the choice, but all creation is suffering to get through this process. He subjected the angels. Well, he did not subject the angels to choice, the ones that rebelled in heaven. They had free will, and some of them decided to rebel against God.
That was their choice. And those angels, incidentally, they were in the throne room of God. They were in the abode of God. That is what's different between we and them.
We've not been to heaven to see God on his throne. For us, it's all mankind. Mankind on earth is subject to choice where there is a curse, there is a free will, and there's an opportunity to trust God's sight unseen, we could say, although faith has eyes of its own. God wants creation to recognize him for who he is. Those fallen angels that make up Satan, because when we say Satan, it's not limited to Lucifer. It includes all of the demonic world, all of the fallen angels, they make up the enemy of humanity and of God, of course. And what they did or stopped doing, refused to do, was recognize God for who he was.
And so they lost everything on a gamble, thinking that they could overcome him. Now God has a creation of people, and he still wants us to find him worthy of our praise, of our trust, of our obedience, of all the things that go in that. God wants to be loved, and he is created so that he could be loved. Adam was Lord of Eden, but he lost it all. We believers, we will inherit all things, heirs of God and joint heirs in Christ. It says that in Romans 8, verse 17. And then when you look at Revelation talks about us being heirs, James in his letter, we are heirs of the kingdom. God is going to bless, he's going to reward.
This is not all that there is. Being heaven bound is so much to it that God has remained quite silent on the details, assuring us that there's nothing like it. Perhaps this is why evil is so hateful against the saved, because evil has thrown it all away, and the saved are the ones receiving it. They may have forfeited it, we're not.
We're going towards it. Verse 22, for we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. There are three groans recorded in this section of Scripture indicating that God is very sensitive to what is happening. Here in verse 22, creation groans. In verse 23, we groan.
And then we get to verse 26 and we find God groaning, because it is not what he intended it to be. It is every bit of a curse. Everywhere we look, there is the desire for relief in this life. Scavengers can't be happy with their diet.
For example, flies and maggots seem to have it worse of all. But every crushed seashell that we come across on the beach or wherever we are, every dead and rotten log, every fossil that is found, these proclaim that all is not well outside of Christ. These proclaim that disobeying God has ruin attached to it, death. Sin has made the history of man a tragedy. But Jesus overturned creation's plight with a greater tragedy, the tragedy of the cross.
We see where this is going. We hopefully build ourselves up so we can get others to see it, because every Christian should have a burden for the lost. We all should want to see people saved. We all should understand what the alternative to salvation is. And so there is an undisclosed worthy purpose behind the immense suffering allowed by God, as Paul referenced it, that He has allowed this to go forward in hope, better things, not the hope of possibility, but the hope of anticipation, a purpose so worthwhile that it could be achieved no other way.
If there was another way for God to populate heaven with created beings who recognize His glory and His splendor, who love Him back, who recognize His justice and His sovereignty and omniscience and omnipotence, if there was another way to fill heaven with those type of people, He would have done it. It is not. This is the way it's done. I think that's part of what Christ said, if possible, take this cup.
Well, it's not possible. It's the only way. You're going to remove the sin, it's got to be a perfect offering, and you're it. Of course, He understood that, but He pulls it out into the light so we can see it happening. We can learn these lessons about how God does what He does and how blameless God is, verse 23. Not only that, but we also who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption of the redemption of our body. Well, not only that, beginning of verse 23, but we also who have the first fruits of the Spirit. Well, those are the saved in Christ. Before His return, us now, Christians since the resurrection of Christ, Paul wrote to the Corinthians, Christ the first fruits, afterward those who are Christ at His coming. And that would be, of course, the church, true believers.
Now, when I say church, I mean the true church, not the apostate church, the church that is determined to obey the Lord, to follow the Scriptures as best they know how in the Holy Spirit. But the first bone of the flock, now, when Paul wrote this, he's writing to Romans, he knows that the Jews would understand this and probably the Gentile Christians now in the church would have understood this. The first bone of the flocks, the first bone of your harvest, your crops, your grains, your vegetables, at harvest time, they belong to God. They were to be given back to God.
It was just a small portion, less than a tenth. At harvest time, the Israelite went into his field of grain and cut a sheaf and he took that to the temple. It was a symbol of the first fruits and there he presented it to God.
He was saying, God, all of this comes from you and I recognize that and I'm grateful for this. And again, you have a giant field of wheat when you take a handful and that's all you had to take to the temple for that particular offering. And in fact, all the offerings speak of sin and the damage that it has caused in symbol and type it has because you could never really capture all of history's misery through just one offering of an animal.
But you could get the picture. You get close enough to understand things aren't what God meant them to be. When God created man and Adam and Eve, there was no death. That came because of disobedience. Well, Christ, he was cut. He was removed and he was presented as the perfect offering. So that sheaf offering, of course, speaks of the coming Christ, the first fruits of God's redemption, representing a lot more fruit to come.
When you cut that sheaf and you took it to the temple, you were saying, here's just a portion, but there's so much more. Thanks for joining us for today's teaching on Cross-Reference Radio. This is the daily radio ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia.
We're currently going through the book of Romans. If you're in need of hearing this message again or want to listen to others like it, head over to crossreferenceradio.com. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast, too, so you'll never miss another edition. Just go to your favorite podcast app to subscribe. On our website, you'll be able to learn a little more about the ministry of Cross-Reference Radio, so make a note of it, crossreferenceradio.com. That's all we have time for today, but thanks so much for listening. Pastor Rick will be back next time in the book of Romans, here on Cross-Reference Radio.
