Hindsight is 2020

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

But once again, we have the opportunity this morning to gather in his name and to express what Jude 1 3 calls The faith once and for all delivered to the saints and as we do so we remember that our help is in the name of the Lord Praise the Lord I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart in the company of the upright in the congregation Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them. Full of splendor and majesty is his work, and his righteousness endures forever. He has caused his wondrous works to be remembered. The Lord is gracious and merciful. He provides food for those who fear him.

He remembers his covenant forever. He has shown his people the power of his works in giving them the inheritance of the nations. The works of his hands are fruitful and just. All his precepts are trustworthy. They are established forever and ever to be performed with faithfulness and uprightness. He sent redemption to his people. He has commanded his covenant forever. Holy and awesome is his name. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. All those who practice it have a good understanding. His praise endures forever.

And Father, we indeed praise your name this morning, and we thank you for the blessed hope that we have been given in Christ. The psalmist declares that the works of your hand are fruitful and just and we ask that this be true of us as well as we walk in the fear of the Lord. All around us are those who stumble in darkness while professing to be full of light. May you grant them repentance and bring them into covenant with you so that they too may experience your many blessings. Even though we groan in this fallen world, our groaning is not like the worlds. We groan with anticipation when the perishable is replaced with the imperishable. And as we await that day may our joy increase more and more to the praise of your name everywhere we trod. We pray this in the name of Jesus.

Amen. As you know, this is the point in our liturgy where we take time to confess our sins before heading into a time of consecration and communion. And And we start this section with a short exhortation on some particular sin to think about and to avoid. And as I was pondering on what to focus on, I recalled an exhortation my daughter gave me the other night as we were doing dishes. It was the end of a day filled with lots of goodness and craziness that comes with 12 family members all living together. Now, it sounds silly now, but I I was irritated by the fact that I couldn’t find enough storage containers, let alone space in the fridge or freezer to place all the leftovers.

I know, first world problem. Chaos is one of my Achilles heels. And apparently this little light of mine wasn’t shining like it’s supposed to be. Now I thought I was doing a pretty good job of keeping my irritation under control and I was even thinking about Shawn’s recent exhortations to practice emotional self-control. But apparently I wasn’t doing a very good job of it and was a very good job hiding my frustration because my sweet daughter drew me aside and pointed out that my lack of joy was not making it much fun to do dishes with her or with me. Her exhortation was kind and appropriate and I received it pretty well even if it did stain my pride a little bit. Now I share this example to highlight the area of sin that I do want us to focus on and that is resenting rebukes. I don’t know anyone except perhaps Ryan that actually likes getting rebuked, yet the fact that we are sinners guarantees that we need them occasionally.

Ever since Adam and Eve man has relied on hiding as its go-to solution to dealing with sin. We don’t like having our sin pointed out to us. Perhaps if we hated sin the way we are supposed to, we would actually welcome rebukes. Proverbs tells us faithful are the wounds of a friend and many are the kisses of an enemy. It also tells us the way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice. We would do well if we learned to welcome the wounds of a friend when they rightly call out our own sin. We would do well if we would learn to not let fear keep us from wounding a friend in this manner when they need it. But again that would be a topic for another day. If this sin or any other sin is hindering you from fellowship this morning, this is the time to confess those sins to God and to receive His forgiveness. And as we do so, normally you are invited, if you’re able and desire to, to kneel and to then make your confession before the Lord. So let’s take a minute and do that now. Father, if

you were to weigh us on the scale of your justice, not one of us could begin to tip the scale in our favor. We have sinned much and all the self-righteousness that we place on the scale to counter our sin is as filthy rags. If it were not for Christ there would be no hope for us, but because his righteousness has been applied to us, the scales have been irreversibly tipped in our favor. We have been made righteous in Him. We are redeemed. More than that, we are counted among your beloved and our joint heirs with Christ. May we never be guilty of thinking our sin too great or your grace too small, nor think lightly of how great our salvation truly is. Thank you for the forgiveness of all our sins and the newness of life that comes with it.

We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen. You’re invited to stand. Our Assurance of Forgiveness this morning is found in Psalm 130. The bulletin only has a few verses from that passage. I’m gonna read all of it, because it’s all good. Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my pleas for mercy. If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared. I wait for the Lord. My soul waits, and in his word I hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, more than watchmen for the morning.

O Israel, hope in the Lord. For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him a plentiful redemption. And he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities. Our scripture reading for this morning comes from Romans chapter eight. We’ll be reading verses one through 17, Romans eight, one through 17, and I’ll be reading from the English Standard Version. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.

In order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit as life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law, indeed it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit.

If in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you, anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. So then, brothers, we are debtors not to the flesh to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the Spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children then heirs, heirs of God, and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. Let’s pray together. Father, if we were to try to make sense of this life without the assistance of your word, we would be even more confused and frustrated than we already are. Yet this is the folly that our culture engages in all the time.

We are grateful for the hope and the wisdom that are offered to your children, the victory in Christ. Please enable us to submit with joy to your word and trusting you. We are grateful, as ever, for the work of Christ and we offer our prayers to you in obedience and in his name. All around us the world does seem to have gone mad. We pervert the marriage bed and call it love. We dismember our own offspring before they’re even born, and we call it a health practice. We foolishly lay aside personal freedoms of the great cost of human lives, and we call it submission. We ask that you would be the chief object of our submission, whatever that looks like day by day.

Please give us wisdom and joy to face these days with grace and to broaden our platform for influence in a confused and a conflicted culture. Please help us to love our neighbors nearby in such a way as to bring blessing to our neighbors who are far away. We do ask that you be kind to heal and grow the faith of those in our circle with ongoing health problems, including Ruth Callender’s mom, Jeff Hathaway, Morgan, Dawn, Marjorie, Ralph, and Mary Kay. Any others I did not mention, we thank you that both Ruth Ann, Houghland, and Dave Light have new knees and that their bodies seem to be adjusting well. We pray for the continued recovery of Rachel, speaking of knees, after her injury several weeks ago.

And we ask that you would give answers to Sean’s doctors. They try to figure out what is going on with him as he has some scary symptoms on crispness night. We thank you that he is now resting at home. We pray for his complete and his speedy recovery. As Laura’s spinal tap will be happening soon, we pray that it would yield conclusive and negative results as they try to rule out MS. We thank you for the good reports that they have received so far. We thank you for the progress that Ralph has made in his cancer battle and that his body seems to be responding so well to the chemotherapy. We pray that Debbie’s cautionary cancer-free status would only be confirmed when she has her next scan at the end of January.

We pray for a speedy and full recovery for any who are battling COVID-19 or other illnesses who are in our circle and please enable our circle to achieve herd immunity very quickly with no lasting physical consequences for any of our people or our loved ones. We would include in that number this friend of Carol Slices, Cheryl, and her husband, Dave, who both have tested positive. We pray that you would heal them quickly and we thank you that they do know you. And for others who are facing physical conditions that are maybe not chronic that I failed to mention, we ask that you would give us all, all of us, the proper and optimistic long lens through which to view our struggles here.

physical and otherwise, we thank you that these things are but temporary, please grant us the maturity to see that and to live in faith accordingly. We lift to you Project 92, the Good Shepherd Children’s Home, I-Squared Ministries and Antioch Adoptions asking you to provide for their financial needs and to grant wisdom to their leadership. And as the calendar year turns, we pray that 2021 would arrive with plenty of reason for optimism because of the work in Christ, if nothing else, and we rejoice that you are on the throne and that you are sovereign, you are in control, and that you can form us, according to your word, to the image of your son, whom we behold when we gather like we are doing this morning.

So we pray that we would be able, by your grace, to ascribe to you worship that is fitting for who you are, and we ask this all in the name of your son, amen. Father, your love indeed is never ending. That is the characteristic you have marked yourself out with throughout your revelation to man, your Hasad love, your loving kindness, that covenant making love by which you choose those that you will put your affection upon and you do all that is necessary to bring them into unity with yourself. And this morning we gather because you have brought us through the blood of your own son, Jesus Christ into a relationship with you that can and will never end.

And that gives us great joy this morning. May you turn our minds now in our hearts to your word that in it we may behold wonderful things about your work and about your character and about how we ought to live as those who are children of the king. And this we ask in the name of your son, amen.

It is a joy and privilege to be with you, though ideally not under such circumstances. The next time Sean is willing to allow me to stand in his pulpit, he does not need to fake a heart attack. He need only ask. And I’d like to thank my father for the use of his NASB preaching Bible, his tie and his jacket. And one last point of clarification. I am a preacher boy who lives in Spokane, but I’m a preacher boy from Marysville. Thank you very much. So if you’ve got your outlines this morning, your notes, you’ll see that the title of of today’s message as hindsight is 2020, or a year of groanings considered as the basis for convinced optimism in 2021 and beyond.

I remember thinking a few years back when I first heard people talking about, and then in 2020, we’ll be doing such and such, I thought, man, every marketing guru, every motivational speaker, every CEO has gotta be salivating for their 2020 plan, right? the year of vision. We are going to have a crystal clear picture of exactly where we wanna go. And I just imagine all the different things that would be unfolded in this year is all the big thinkers and all the big dreamers did their big thinking and did their big dreaming. And then God chimed in. And things did not turn out quite as people had expected. It turns out we are bad at controlling the future.

Turns out we’re also really bad at learning from the past. They say hindsight is 20-20, but now that 20-20 is almost entirely in hindsight, it’s quite obvious that few have studied the lessons of history, and we are very busy recapitulating some of the worst ideas from previous generations. In many ways, things look bleak. And it turns out you can’t fix what’s wrong with the world with riots and fire. Turns out the media can’t figure out what we’re supposed to do. Turns out pundits, politicians, medical professionals, even Twitter itself, have all failed to solve the challenges of the past year. And if some of you are on Twitter and you think you solved all the challenges of the past year, you can send me a link afterwards.

Depression, suicide, domestic violence, anxiety, A host of other symptoms of hopelessness are spiking not only nationally, but globally. And as a youth pastor, I’m particularly alarmed to see the shocking numbers we see in our youth communities. I think it’s fair to say even Christians have felt the tug on their own hearts, the drain on their own souls. And perhaps there are some of you here this morning feel a little weary as 2020 limps to an end. And so I want to encourage us to embark on a brave quest this morning to look back at 2020 without changing or whitewashing any of its sufferings and find there in clear and unmistakable letters like the stone letters in the silver chair but before they eroded, a reason for rejoicing.

and let us rejoice both at the year that has gone by and the year that is coming. And we will take for our passage this morning the rest of the eighth chapter of Romans, beginning in verse 18, and we will allow these three questions to guide us. And if you kids got your kids’ corner and you wanna fill in all your blanks right at the beginning, the three questions that will guide us this morning are have you considered, do you know, and are you convinced? And so let us take that first question then and ask ourselves, have you considered? Turn with me to Romans chapter 8 beginning in verse 18. It says this, 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.

And so my question for us this morning is, have you considered that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us? Paul’s approach to life here is a considered approach. That word considered is the word we get our English word logic from. He’s not like, you know, I just feel good about things. He says, no, I’ve done the math on a very important word problem. If we subtract the sufferings of this life from the glory to come, is there anything left? In literary terms, he’s asked the question, Is there any way that the end of the book of history can make reading so much sadness and evil over so many thousands of years worth it?

And Paul’s conclusion is given in the same breath as the consideration. Comparing the sufferings of this life to the glory to come makes the calculator return an error message. The end of the story is so good and satisfying that it is impossible to call any other chapter in the book a bad chapter, no matter how dark. But Paul doesn’t leave it to our imaginations to fill in the blanks on how this could be. He lays out an argument, a well-considered argument. And perhaps a little surprisingly, he begins with the theology of groaning.

How many copies do you think a book called Your Best Life Now would sell if the subtitle was A study of groaning and suffering. What Paul writes here is not a book a publisher would commission, but it is a book the Creator inspired and it has the timeless benefit of actually being true. And so let’s look at the groaning first of a universe under a curse. In verses 19 to 22 we see creation groans in hope. Look at verse 19, for the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. Here is anticipation at the scale of the universe. Paul stretches language to get to these truths. Anxious longing meets eager waiting.

And what is this waiting for? Why it is nothing less than the unveiling, the revealing of the sons of God. That’s us. That’s us.

Paul has just finished telling us about our adoption in Christ and here he tells us our adoption has cosmic implications. The bedraggled urchins that God adopted from the gutter of sin are being sanctified. They are being perfected. And when that process is complete and we are revealed to be what we have been called to become, ah, this, this is the moment the entirety of creation is about to jump out of its quantum pants with excitement to see. Why such excitement? Well because it’s the story of everything. Look at verse 20. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in a hope 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. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. When man fell he fell as an act of his will. Creation however was felled like a tree cut down in its prime by a sharp axe. Who did this? Adam did not curse the

universe although it was on his account that the curse came. No, the universe came under a curse because of the one who cursed it, God. But notice this. When the universe was brought under the curse, it was not done in despair, but in hope. And what is that hope? That slavery to corruption, bondage to futility is the crisis, not the climax of the story of history. There is a bright resolution to this fallenness. There is a glorious denouement for space, time, and matter. And did you catch the language used to describe this amazing moment when the hope of nature shall become sight? By the way, you don’t have to look very far to see nature groaning for it.

If you need a refresher, look up BBC’s series, The Trials of Life. And you’ll see lots of cute things murdering each other. What is the moment when creation is no longer full of Bambi being eaten alive? We learned in verse 18 that it is the glory to be revealed to us. In verse 19 we saw that it is connected to the revealing of the sons of God. And now in verse 20 we see that nature and we the children of God are going to be given their long-awaited hallelujah when they experience the freedom of the glory of the children of God. Consider that. The glory of God is going to reveal to us and an anxious world that we shall bear His image so perfectly that His own glory radiates from us. For this reason, the whole of creation groans today, not with despair, but with anticipation. The pain is not the pain of death, it is the pain of childbirth. It’s become an inside joke in our youth ministry to look at the challenges in life that give way to glory and remark, the baby is coming.

And we need to have that phrase in our soul. When we see travail in creation, when we see travail in our soul, we are reminded this is not how we die. The baby is coming. It is how we can remember to join in with creation in its anticipation. And indeed we do as Paul goes on to explain. Not only does creation grown in hope, Christians grown in hope. Christian’s grown in hope. Look at me at verse 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. Again, Paul gives us a summary statement and then explains how it works.

Christian’s grown just as creation groans. And that word grown there isn’t a word that means a loud weeping or a loud crying as you see some places in Scripture. It’s a sigh. It’s that deep but soft groan at the realization that something is wrong. Paul’s not talking here primarily about our reaction in the moment of immediate pain and the moment of great crisis. He’s talking about, if you will, the background radiation of the curse. It’s the constant awareness and general botheredness of our souls experience when we observe that things are not as they should be. Anybody had an occasion to experience that this year at some point?

Just me. Okay. Sometimes we think that the Christian is meant to get above such things. We should be all smiles and hoorahs all the time. But Paul says that being a Christian means we grown more, not less than others. And we do so for the very reason that we have hope. And that is because we have tasted of what is to come. As verse 8 taught us in Romans chapter 8, we have in Christ come to receive the Holy Spirit within us. And that Spirit is not a passive occupant of our soul. He is an active presence in what He promises and in what He produces. He promises us a full salvation to be revealed in the last times. And He is both the sign and the seal of our election to the family of God.

But He also produces in us by way of those first fruits of the Spirit, that fruit which must also and always accompany the work of the Spirit in sanctifying us. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. And here’s the problem we have. The recovery process of holiness wakes us up to just how much work remains to be done. It sends us into fits of consternation such as Paul experienced at the end of Romans 7. It makes us realize that we are wretched men and that we live in a world of wretched men. The adoption papers have been finalized for the children of God. The court of heaven has added our names to the roles of the royal family, but we still stand with passports in hand in the world of pollution, filthy gutters, and disease. We are adopted but the carriage has not yet come to take us home, and thus we eagerly await our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. As a reminder, the Christian hope is not an ethereal spiritual hope when you pit spiritual against physical.

The Christian hope is a meaty hope. It is a hope in the resurrection. This we have not yet experienced, though we have tasted of what it promises to be. And so we groan as we look inside ourselves and see the battle with the flesh that continues. We groan as we look at the world around us and see wicked men just like us doing wicked things. We groan as our own feeble flesh fades away because we have tasted of what it shall be. We have tasted of what relationships would look like with real love and real kindness, of what leadership would look like with real self-control and real gentleness, we’ve begun to anticipate what it will be to exist with voices and fingers and noses and taste buds free from the curse.

And so we sigh, and so we groan in anticipation, as Paul states in verse 24, for in hope we have been saved, But hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it. Most of you, hopefully, no longer live in hope when it comes to what you’ll get for your Christmas presents.

The annual shipping crunch may have prolonged the hope for some of you. But I imagine most packages intended for the Christmas tree made it on time. But we don’t live in the days after Christmas, we live in the weeks leading up to Christmas. We’ve received confirmation that our order has been processed and the gift has been shipped. And now we eagerly wait. When it comes, all the waiting will be worth it. Until it comes notice, we persevere with eager waiting. It is not a passive waiting. It is not a cringing waiting. It is not a sit in the bunker and twiddle thy thumbs, praying, maranatha waiting. We persevere.

Because it’s assured and because it’s coming, we work with hope. We work with joy even as we groan. And our encouragement in that is this, that we do not persevere alone, not the children of God. Look at verse 26. “‘In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness. For we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with,’ that word again, groanings too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. Do you ever feel like you want to long for glory more than you can find the capacity to do so? I think many of us have run into to that where we realize there are truths, there are treasures that have been revealed to us that I just cannot express as they ought to be expressed.

It turns out we are all incapable of expressing our hearts with the substance and the truthfulness and the longing that we should. And what a grace that one lives within us who can completely make up for this lack. Just as the sun lives to intercede for us before the throne of God as relates to our justification, so the Spirit intercedes for us in relation to our sanctification.

He expresses the groanings and the sighings, our conditioned occasions at a level beyond the capacity of language itself. The spirit knows us fully and the Father knows the spirit fully and the Spirit communicates us to the Father fully and all of this happens in a way that is fully in line with the will of God. How cool is that? How cool is that? All of creation groans with hope because the redemption of space, time, and matter is connected to the glory God will reveal in us when we are presented as glorious in the future. All of God’s children groan with hope because we see the work of the Spirit within us and we sense just a glimpse of what is to come. That’s what Paul has considered. That’s what he He has logic.

When fallen men look at the creation and declare vanity of vanities, we hear the rivers and the stars cry back, until… When fallen men look at their own hearts and declare vanity of vanities, the spirit working within the children of God causes us to join creation and declare, until… So Christian, have you considered 2020 as not being worth comparing to the glory that is coming? Have you done the math? Are you afraid to turn the next page in history and see what is written there? Or are you excited to follow the plot through to the glorious end?

If you consider things correctly, you won’t avoid groaning and sighing, you will probably do it more often. But they are the size of Pilgrim looking to the celestial city on the horizon and not of pliable who fails to ever get further than the slew of despond.

The unbeliever has his strength sapped when he sees the brokenness of the world and realizes no man has the power to push back the darkness. The believer who has considered rightly is strengthened as he groans and perseveres in his eager waiting.” So consider well, Christian. Consider well. But there is a second question I would pose to you this morning, and that is this. Do you know? Do you know? with me beginning in verse 28. And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose. Do you know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose? Having considered the question of future glory and human suffering from the perspective of the eagerly waiting creation, Paul pivots now to consider the question from the perspective of heaven and how the will of God buttresses and steals our hope.

That steel is in the metal, not as in where did my hope go. The realization of God’s involvement brings with it certain knowledge. The word for no here is not the word we more often see in scripture, which talks about that experiential knowledge. This is textbook knowledge. This is a fact we’ve studied and memorized. This is the grammar of glory, if you will. It’s a word that talks about information learned and comprehended reality on the page in letters. And this is the reality. God has chosen a people to call to himself. Those people love him. And God causes all things to work together for good to them. That’s a fact.

This is the way things work in God’s universe. This is the active principle at play, even during the curse. This is the controlling rule we know in the middle of our present sufferings. In other words, Paul is returning to his opening math equation, and he’s making the shocking observation that God is able to calculate in such a way that the minus sign actually adds to the final result. What kind of math is this?

It is the calculus of divine love. Paul turns his attention to this topic of divine love for the remainder of the chapter and will follow him all the way up to one of the highest peaks of doxology, one of the highest outbursts of praise in all of scripture. And I encourage you, it’s worth hiking the whole way on foot and smelling every flower along the way, but we’ve only got time to take the gondola to the top, but I think you’ll still enjoy the view. Looking at this topic of divine love in verses 29 and 30, we see love predestines our glory. Love predestines our glory. Look at verse 29. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to become conformed to the image of his son, so that he would be the firstborn among many brethren, And these whom he predestined he also called, and these whom he called he also justified, and these whom he justified he also glorified.

So okay, these be fighting words around the globe and across history. Whether you’re Acts as Calvinist or Arminian, you grind it here. I’m pretty sure I know what labels on most of the Acts is in the room this morning. But before we all drag our soap boxes out and have fun preaching to the collective choir, Stop and remember why these verses are here. And I don’t mean here as in here in in the Bible, I mean here as in here in the flow of Paul’s argument. They are here to tell us why Christian optimism has a backbone. They’re here to tell us that the book we are reading of time and of Scripture is not a tragedy even though it contains much that is tragic. They lift a great burden that we often perceived to be on our shoulders and remind us whose shoulders it really lies on.

Have you ever seen a small child help their father carry a heavy load? They have all the seriousness on their face to indicate that the task is indeed only going to be successful by their great efforts. And what they lack, however, is the actual strength to contribute to the work in any meaningful way. It’s the father who bears all the weight. This verse reminds the spiritual child and all of us, God’s got this. Don’t worry. We know informationally that God is working all things out for our good in the way a child should know that his or her father can move a large object from here to there. God’s knowledge, however, is different.

word about God knowing us is the word that means experiential knowledge. He knows he can move in a saving way because he feels already the full weight of what that will entail and knows he can bear the burden. So the fore knowledge of God is the basis for the faith knowledge of the Christian. What What is it that God knows in this sense? It is that defaced men and women will be conformed to the image of his son so perfectly that they will once again reflect his image without distortion.

And to this end, God has undertaken to determine, to destined, indeed to predestined, all his chosen ones to experience his will in time as an effectual calling, as a full justification, and a complete sanctification that results in glorification. How do we know that God is working all things out for good toward us? Toward those who love God? It is because God has determined that we shall be glorified in the soul and in the flesh, to the everlasting joy of all God’s children and the redemption of all God’s created universe. Everything God has planned for the future hinges on Him, completing the work He has begun in you, and He’s doing that work through 2020. The love of God which motivates His actions towards us and which we will see explicitly highlighted shortly, predestines our glory as surely as it predestines the glory of Christ mentioned here as the firstborn among many brethren itself. Don’t worry about God writing a check here that you can’t cash. Man, that’s a lot of pressure, God. You’ve sent me on this journey and if I

don’t make it to the end then like all your plans fall apart. No, because our God provisions what He predestines. Love predestines our glory, also love provisions our glory. Look with me at verse 31. And by the way, if you haven’t noticed, Paul is no longer dictating these verses from a seated position. Right, he’s on his feet. He’s pacing around the room. He’s starting to gesticulate a little bit furiously. Here is a menuensis is trying to keep up, probably throwing in some amens along the way. Paul’s building steam. Listen then to the string of rhetorical questions that Paul is going to use to underscore just how well we have been positioned by the sovereign grace of God to inherit all the blessings he has promised his children. He begins in verse 31 by setting it up saying, what then shall we say to these things? He’s not gonna wait for us to go, I don’t know Paul, right? This is just his way of saying, buckle up, I’ve got something to say.

Paul has anticipated objections to his teaching throughout the book of Romans. He’s going to do it that extensively again in chapter 9. And he isn’t wasting any time at present giving a soft and lengthy explanation to any pushback. He’s just going to dunk on the doubters here with this cataract of unanswerable questions. And so you might say, but Paul, here in Rome, we’re facing persecution from the highest levels of government. How will these things come to pass? And Paul asks, if God is for us, who is against us? Like really? OK, OK, but between now and glory, there’s so many seasons of hardship. How am I to face everything that lies between me and then?

Verse 32, he who did not spare his own son but delivered him over for us all. How will he not also with him freely give us all things?” OK, that sounds nice. But you don’t know how wretched a man I am. God isn’t going to give me anything when he sees what is so often in my heart. Verse 33, who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies. You say that like it’s just a simple thing. Do you not see that I deserve to be condemned to hell? Verse 34. Well, who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died. Yes, rather, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.

And perhaps in desperation, his interlocutor replies, one more time, Paul, you tempt my heart to joy, but I still feel I must resist it. I have lost so much and so many. The affection of today is so often the hostility of tomorrow. With one as unholy as I, in a world as fickle as this, in a universe as complicated and messy and broken and rebellious as mine, how can there be hope that tomorrow will not bring about not the love but the very hatred of a holy God? And so Paul writes, who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness, or peril, or sword.

Because yes, that is the world we live in. Just as it is written, for your sake we are being put to death all day long. We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered. Can it get really, really bad in this world? Yeah. Saw a number of our brothers and sisters in Africa died Christmas morning. in an attack. But, verse 37, in all these things we overwhelmingly, what? Good, I was hoping that was in your translation too, yes. Conquer, conquer through him who loved us overwhelmingly. Overwhelmingly, not in the sense that like you’re going to make it. Overwhelming in the sense that the entire universe is going to be reconciled to Jesus Christ, and it hinges around the accomplished work of Jesus Christ reaching its fruition in your revelation of being glorious in the image of God.

Even if they kill you, and oh, Christian, do you know this? Is it a fact in your mind as clear as 1 plus 1 equals 2? Will depression and anxiety drive your Savior away? Will COVID-19 or cancer steal from you the ends for which He placed His love upon you? Will the folly of youth or the infirmities of old age diminish His delight in the object of the finished work of His beloved Son? Will the death of God’s children or the evil we experience prove so large that they ultimately overshadow or even compete with the glory that is to come at the revealing of the sons of God?

No, indeed. And so when we look back over a year that’s been kind of rough, we say, sigh, glory’s coming. Do you know this? Do you live like you know this? Do your friends see in you the fountain of encouragement that comes from one anchored in the rock? Or instead, do they find in us a ready conversation partner, always willing to complain and worry and be anxious about every page God is writing in history? A faith unconsidered is foreign to the Scriptures. A faith without knowledge is foreign to the Scriptures. What we have considered and what we have known must for the Christian produce a settled optimism that can smile at 2020 and turn without flinching to 2021.

A faith that will be convincing to a world in darkness is a faith that is convinced. And so I turn to my final question for this morning. Are you convinced? Are you convinced? Look with me at verse 38. For I am convinced that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Brothers and sisters, what a unique opportunity God has given to his church in these times. For so long, the soft glow of general affluence, the fact that we have not had war on our shores, the distraction of fads and entertainment have meant that Christian joy had to compete so many neon lights and so many artificial sources of illumination. But here in these times God has seen fit to remove the illusion of stability, to remove the illusion of peace, in some cases to remove the presence of comfort.

And we have a world suddenly realizing that it has a massive castle it has built on sand. The church has the opportunity to shine in a way that it has not for a long time. Here in Marysville there are opportunities abounding for people who live in darkness and people who are hopeless to see not a bunch of crazy people who refuse to acknowledge the the hardships of life, but a bunch of people suffering alongside them in hope, and a bunch of people who have fought for joy and found it, and who hold their heads high in the face of the curse as those who know that they have already overwhelmingly conquered through Christ who loves them. Are you convinced? Are Are you convinced that death no longer can send you to the second death because of the merits of Christ?

Are you convinced that nothing in life can alter the determination God made about His chosen ones before we were even born? Are you convinced that the mightiest angel in the hosts of Heaven’s army is powerless to come between you and Christ’s love? Are you convinced that the principalities cannot scheme, tempt, manipulate, or ambush you in such a way that you lose your adoption into the affectionate family of our Father? Are you convinced that this present time contains no sufficient foe, nor does the future depart you from divine smiles? Are you convinced that no force of nature or personality, no property of the material world no matter how high or how deep, can challenge divine love?

Are you convinced that nothing that has or ever will have the property of being a created thing will wedge between the bond of Abba and child? And what does that leave then unaddressed? Nothing remains in all of creation. Nothing remains at all except the creator himself. Shall God ever separate us from his love? Well, were his love a love which flowed from our merits, then this thought should make our blood run cold.

But this is not where the love of God comes from. It is a love which comes from the affections of God for and the satisfaction of God in the blood and the righteousness of the Messiah, Jesus, our King. I would like to invite the music team to come forward as we prepare to close our study this morning. Looking back on 2020, in hindsight, we should have great clarity. Have you considered the glory to come as unworthy of comparison to the sufferings of today? every groan of your soul anticipate that day? Do you know that God is causing all things to work together for good to His children? Is your heart at peace knowing the predestined and provisioned work of God on your behalf? Are you convinced that the child of God and the love of the Father are utterly inseparable, then declare that God can write dark chapters but he can’t write bad chapters. 2020 was a good chapter.

2021 will bring us closer yet to glory and therefore it promises to be even better. Long has Mary’s valaine in sin and error pining. For this reason we grown within. But Jesus was born. And for this reason we will shortly sing. And for this reason we will shortly give of our earthly treasure as an offering of joyful thanksgiving this morning. For this reason we will shortly take symbolically of the body and the blood of Jesus. And for this reason all the children of God will arrive at a day, a day which we will then consider to have been soon, in which glory pulverizes all its enemies. But first we sing. Well now we come to the time where we will commune together and celebrate what Jesus has done for us.

Chris really couldn’t have picked a more glorious passage to celebrate this. then I’d just like to make you think a little bit about the one little phrase in there, glory revealed in us. In 1 John 3 2 it says that we will be like him okay at some point and he is making us into that and Romans 8 is just a glorious passage when you’re down in the dumps, read it, you can’t get too far down to read that. And the idea that if we live that way, even at the worst of times, you don’t know what you’re doing to the people that you’re talking to. And if you’re just with believers, everybody gets lifted by that. And it’s It’s an important thing to keep remembering.

And I like this part of our liturgy, this fourth C communion, that we all together celebrate this. And I think that we do see it as a symbol, but I think something is happening in our congregation when we do this every week. and we sing that breaks down another little barrier to unite us in a very supernatural way with God as we are taking these elements and demonstrating this, it does demonstrate that we live on a different plane than the rest of the world. And how can you not hear a sermon on Romans 8 and not think that, that it is a supernatural event that He is bringing us into the next life and giving you glimpses of it through His written word.

And there are times in your life when you feel that. And I think that those things are from God and I think that you should enjoy them. And it’s really a pleasure. All right, after we’ve taken communion, now we’re to the last thing, the charge. I think it’s really kind of interesting.

And my thing is, you hear me often say it, you are that light to a lot of people out there that don’t know. And so you in your own personal way can be that instrument that God can use for those people. So remember that as we go out into this crazy world. So here’s our charge. It’s from 2 Corinthians 4, 16 through 18. So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. As we look not to the things that we see, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. So go and remember that and have a great week and we’ll see you in 2021.

And my thing is, you hear me often say it, you are that light to a lot of people out there that don’t know. And so you in your own personal way can be that instrument that God can use for those people. So remember that as we go out into this crazy world. So here’s our charge. It’s from 2 Corinthians 4, 16 through 18. So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. As we look not to the things that we see, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.