Dan Herold | Romans 8:18-25 | 7/30/2017
What is your greatest dream? Maybe it’s that you would have the perfect home in the perfect place where you could live and relax with your family. Maybe it’s that car or truck you’ve always dreamed about. Maybe your greatest dream is that there would be no more war or poverty or disease in the world. I don’t know what your greatest dream might be, but we all have them. Some of us might think about them more than others, but we all have them.
In our lesson from Romans 8 today Paul talks about hopes and dreams. He’s still describing what a Christian’s life is like when it is built on the foundation of salvation through faith in Jesus. By now it is abundantly clear that even though we stand on that rock and even though Jesus provided atonement for our sins and reconciled us to God this life is still full of difficulties. Paul has talked about the battle with the sinful nature that a Christian faces everyday and now Paul tells us that a Christian’s life is a life of longing—of hoping, and wanting, and waiting.
Just like you might daydream while at work, or while watching TV at home, as Christians we all share a dream. We all have heard the promises of what God has in store for us in heaven—a life free of trouble, free of sin, and sickness, and pain. He has promised us a perfect place to live where we will never die. But at the same time, we still find ourselves here on earth. We still find ourselves surrounded by the effects of sin and sometimes we even begin to get very attached to this place and all its flaws. Generally, even though we are Christians, we don’t look forward to death. We don’t look forward to our loved ones leaving us, even if we know they are going to heaven, and we don’t look forward to leaving our loved ones either. Nor does it take a whole lot to tempt us to put something before God.
Whether it’s work or play, friends or family, or anything else it isn’t hard for us to find something we would rather do than go to church, study God’s word, or take a few minutes to read a family devotion together. So even though this world is an ugly sin-stained place, sometimes we find ourselves getting pretty attached to it and letting things get in the way of our dream of heaven. Sometimes we might even think that we’d rather stay here than have to go through death to get to heaven.
That’s just the way our minds work…we will almost always prefer something we have experienced and know over something of which we haven’t seen proof. But that’s what sets Christians apart because through the eyes of faith we can see more. We can’t see what it’s like to die and pass from this life to our eternal home in heaven, but we can look at the promises of God through the eyes of faith, and that’s what the Paul leads us to do in these verses from Romans 8.
First of all Paul tells us that he has made a comparison. That he has investigated the two sides of the issue and he’s come to a decision. The conclusion that Paul comes to can only be reached through faith, but for a Christian who has been reconciled to his Lord the decision makes perfect sense. Paul says,
“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”
Sometimes when you are facing a difficult decision a way that you work toward making a decision is by making lists of pros and cons for both side, and the way Paul talks it almost seems like that’s what he did. He wrote down all the pros and cons of living in heaven with God and all the pros and cons of living in this world and his conclusion is that it isn’t even worth comparing the two because the glories of heaven are so much better.
So that’s the basis for his statement that a Christian life is a life of longing—longing for the time when we get to go to our heavenly home. Paul could have stopped there, but he goes on to remind us of why we don’t want to stay here forever and why we should be careful not to become too attached to the things of this world.
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In verse 20 Paul says that all of creation has been subjected to frustration. Now that doesn’t sound pleasant does it? But that is what this world is, isn’t it? It is one big frustration! Last week we talked about how frustrating sin can be. In chapter 7 Paul talked about how he wanted to do good but ended up doing the things he hated and he could never do the good things he wanted to do and always ended up doing the bad things he didn’t want to do. That is the frustration of sin! That’s one of the reasons we don’t want to be here forever. As God’s children we don’t want to be stuck in a place where we can’t please our heavenly Father. Instead we long for the day when we will join him in perfect peace and unity in heaven. We hope that we,
“…will be liberated from bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.”
And in verse 23 Paul points out that it’s not just in nature that we can see the imperfection sin has brought, but it’s evident even in our own bodies. He says,
“we ourselves, who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.”
How many of you like the aches and pains you feel everyday? How many of you like needing to take the medication your doctor prescribes you? How many of you wake up everyday and feel like nothing could be better physically, emotionally, and spiritually? Our bodies are weak! They are a prime example of the effects of sin on this world. Some people need glasses, others need numerous medications to correct imbalances in their bodies, and others are prone to injury.
Even if you don’t think about it daily, do you enjoy living in a world where you know that injury, illness, sadness, and death are always a possibility? That is why we are longing for heaven—because even though Satan wants us to be content with a sinful existence we have been reconciled to a Lord with something far better for us.
And that day is coming! On the last day God is going to raise up all our bodies and make them perfect—he is going to remove everything that makes them week or deficient. But we need to wait for that day to come. We can’t reach that goal and that dream we all have, of a world without sin, on our own. All those other daydreams, the tropical paradise, the mansion, the mountain cabin, the dream car…there’s probably a way that if you worked hard enough and long enough you could earn them. But, sin is part of our nature—we are born with it and we can’t get rid of it. That’s why we long for, why we hope for, the day when we are rescued from this world of sin. The day when we join our Savior in heaven.
That’s what true hope is. Our hope isn’t for something we could get on our own. True hope is for something you can’t earn but something you need to be given—and God promises to give the salvation for which we hope. He doesn’t make you earn it or help to get it, he just gives it as a free gift. Like any other gift though, it’s up to the giver to decide when to give the gift. That doesn’t mean we long for it any less, but that we have to wait patiently for God to work by his own schedule.
No one, not in the Old Testament or New, neither Moses, or any of the prophets, or Jesus, or any of the apostles ever said that life as a Christian was easy. There are lots of struggles, lots of persecution, and lots of temptations. And even when it doesn’t seem like there’s anyone else attacking us, we have to battle our own sinful nature. We have to confront the fact that we are foreigners living in a place that is not our permanent home. We long for the day when we can go home. We long for the day when sin is no longer present. We long for the glorious day that Job described, when
“…In my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes—I and not another. How my heart yearns within me!”
Long for that day. Let it be your greatest hope and dream. God has promised to fill your life with blessings along the way, but eternity in heaven is the greatest of the gifts he has promised. Satan wants you to lose sight of the dream and be content with something lesser. One little word can be the tool you need to silence that temptation: Longing. Our lives as God’s redeemed children are lives of longing—lives longing for the peace and security of eternal life at God’s side in heaven.
In His name,
Amen.