Suffering and Glory

Romans 8:17-27

In the four sermons of Advent this past December, we looked at birth stories in the Bible but I never talked about the experience of giving birth.

Bill Cosby is an American comedian and actor and he once said that the pain of childbirth was overrated by women. “Men,” he said, “suffer a pain far worse than childbirth and that is when you take your date to the movies, put your arm on the chair behind her and leave it there for two hours.”

The truth is that unless we experience a certain pain ourselves, it is impossible to know how it feels for someone else. Carol Burnett, an American comedian and actor told Bill Cosby “If you want to know what childbirth is like, take your lower lip and pull it over your head.”

I have been told childbirth might be like men passing a stone from their gall bladder through the urinary tract. However it is expressed, childbirth is a painful experience.

If childbirth hurts so much, why do women have babies? Maybe the first time can be excused because they didn’t know. But then why do women want to have a second baby, or a third or fourth?

If you are opposed to abortion and get pregnant, you have to at least reluctantly go through with it. But I observe something different. I do not see women who are pregnant dreading the birth experience. I see women who are pregnant looking forward to giving birth. If giving birth is so painful, why is this? Women eagerly try to get pregnant so they can bear another child, despite the pain involved. Why?

When Paul was looking for an image to express the longing we have for God’s kingdom to come in its fullness even while we live in the suffering of this world, it was the image of childbirth he used. And he used the pain of childbirth as an image of this longing because it is inseparably intertwined with the joy of giving birth.

I was present at the birth of my youngest sister’s first child. She wanted this to be a family affair so there were about ten of us in the room as she was in labor. I sat in a chair by the bed where she was lying and to pass the time I worked on an anagram puzzle. This is a puzzle where the letters of a word are rearranged and you have to figure out how to arrange them to make a word. I sat there looking at a five letter word and just as my sister had a strong contraction and groaned with the pain and effort of the contraction the word came to me, agony. This is a true story.

She went through a painful labor but then as her daughter was laid at her breast, there was such a look of ecstatic joy on her face. Pain and joy. Suffering and glory.

This is the theme of these verses from Paul’s letter. He has finished his discussion of justification, how we are made pure or righteous in the eyes of God, and his discussion of sanctification, the process by which we are made to be more holy as we cooperate with the Holy Spirit in a life-long pursuit of holiness.

Now he takes up our future glorification, the glory that awaits us when we die our physical death. And as pain and joy are inseparably intertwined in birth, so are suffering and glory as we anticipate our future in heaven.

John Stott makes four observations about suffering and glory in his commentary on this passage and I want to take us through them this morning.

First, he points out that suffering and glory are inseparably connected.

I have already mentioned this, but let me discuss some implications.

I have a friend who told me that this year he wants to see more of God’s power in his life. I hear many people tell me some version of this and I have often wanted this for myself. It is good to want more of God’s power in our lives. Someone tells me, “I want to have a powerful ministry of healing and deliverance,” and that is a good thing to want. Or I am told, “I want to have the power of Elisha in my life,” and that too is admirable. We read of Paul and Peter and the miracles that accompanied their lives and we think how wonderful it would be if our ministry was also accompanied by these miracles.

When my friend told me he wanted more of God’s power in his life, I asked him, “Are you ready to suffer more for Jesus?”

My observation is that people with powerful ministries do not have easy lives. (There are some television evangelists and faith healers who do have easy lives with multiple homes and expensive cars, but these do not fit under the category of powerful ministries in my book.) Do you want to see the miracles in your ministry that Paul had in his? If yes, then are you willing to suffer like Paul did in his ministry?

I wonder if the reason why we do not have more of God’s power in our lives is that we are unwilling to sacrifice for God. We make choices for our comfort and ease of life. We want the glory but we don’t want to suffer for it.

This is the theme of John Fischer’s song, Nobody Wants to Die

You want to have wisdom

Without making mistakes

You want to have money

Without the work that it takes

You want to be loved

But you don’t want the heartaches

Everyone wants to get to heaven Lord

Nobody wants to die

Everyone wants to get to heaven Lord

Nobody wants to die

You want to be forgiven

Without taking the blame

You want to eat forbidden fruit

Without leaving a stain

You want the glory

But you don’t want the shame

Everyone wants to get to heaven Lord

Nobody wants to die

Everyone wants to get to heaven Lord

Nobody wants to die

You want to be a winner

Without taking a loss

You want to be a disciple

Without counting the cost

You want to follow Jesus

But you don’t want to go to the cross

Everyone wants to get to heaven Lord

Nobody wants to die

Everyone wants to get to heaven Lord

Nobody wants to die

Coasting downhill does not get you to heaven. Doing what comes naturally and most easily takes us away from God. Effort needs to be expended to grow in intimacy with Jesus. To be a Christian is to pedal uphill, swim upstream, climb up the mountain.

If we want to share with Jesus his glory in heaven, we have to push through the suffering of this life.

There is an old Frank Sinatra song with these lyrics:

Love and marriage, love and marriage

Go together like a horse and carriage

This I tell you brother

You can’t have one without the other

The same is true with the Christian life. You can’t have the glory of heaven without the suffering of earth. Paul ended last week’s text with this verse:

Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.

Jesus said (Luke 12:8-9)

“I tell you, whoever acknowledges me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge him before the angels of God. ⁹ But he who disowns me before men will be disowned before the angels of God.

Stand with Christ, walk with Christ, do whatever you do in the name of Christ. Lift up the name of Jesus and proclaim him in all that you do. Take on any of the consequences, good or bad that come from standing with Christ. Share in his sufferings so you can also share in his glory in heaven.

Stott’s second observation is that the reason suffering and glory are so inseparably connected is that they reflect the two ages that overlap.

I have shared this several times before, but with the rapid turnover in this church, I want to explain it once again. Helmut Thielicke was a twentieth century German theologian who developed an understanding of the two ages we live in that has helped me to understand the tensions we face as Christians.

You can see this diagram in your bulletin.

The ellipse on the left, the Old Era, represents the fallen world from the time of man’s first sin until the establishment of God’s Kingdom on earth. This takes us from Genesis all the way through Revelation. The ellipse on the right, the New Era, represents essentially and predominantly the Kingdom of heaven on earth, which is mostly yet to come. This takes us from the first coming of Christ into eternity.

But notice that these two ellipses overlap. The Old Era began with the fall of Adam and Eve and ends when Christ returns. The new Era began with the first coming of Jesus and goes on into eternity. So the overlap began with the first coming of Christ and will end when Christ returns. This is the period of time in which we life. This overlap is the age of the church and it is dominated by the grace of God.

God’s grace is necessary because in this overlap, although we are drawn by faith into the kingdom of God, we are still limited by the Old Era. Satan has been defeated but has not yet been cast into oblivion. Christ has been made King but has not yet been seated on his throne. The promise has been given but is not yet completely fulfilled. This is the reason we have so much difficulty living a Christian life.

Now to get the point of suffering and glory, this first era is the age of suffering and the second era is the age of glory. Because we live in the overlap of these two eras, suffering and glory are inseparably intertwined.

We live in the Old Era which is a world dominated by entropy, Newton’s second law of thermodynamics. In this era, we are moving from a state of order to disorder. This is the natural progression of things. You can expend energy to build a house but if you do not continue to expend energy to maintain it, it will become a wreck in just a few short years.

We live in a world of death, decay and destruction that requires our expending energy to draw closer to God, but we are heading to an eternal world where what comes naturally to us will lead us closer to God.

John spoke of this eternal world in his Revelation, when he saw a new heaven and a new earth and he heard

a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ⁴ He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

We live as Christians in this overlap of the two eras with one foot in the suffering of this world and the other in the glory of the kingdom that has come and has yet to come in all its fullness.

Paul wrote about this in II Corinthians:

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

⁷ But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.

As we grow in faith we have a treasure being built in heaven, but at the same time our own bodies and all around us is wasting away. Because of this, Paul continued:

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.

At the age of 57 I experience aches and pains I never felt before. As I age, this will only get worse. I have watched people age and die and it is not a pretty picture.

For some people, aging is only depressing but for others it is a necessary path leading to a glorious end. My mother and aunt died convinced that there was nothing after death. They were convinced that God did not exist and were angrily vehement in this belief, of lack of belief. Dying was an end of suffering but there was nothing positive ahead of them.

Noreen Maxwell died in December 2006, a little more than a year ago, and she approached death with a great longing to be with Jesus.

We live in a world in which all that we see is in a state of decay and will one day cease to exist. John wrote in I John 2:17

The world and its desires pass away, but the one who does the will of God lives forever.

The treasure we store up in heaven through our obedience to God will last, everything else will be destroyed.

It is critical to our Christians lives to understand this.

In the American political race taking place right now, politicians have to figure out who they think is going to win and come out in support of that person. If they guess right, they will be rewarded when that person is elected president of the United States. If they guess wrong, their wrong choice will be held against them.

As Christians, we need to know who is going to ultimately win. Because God’s kingdom will win and the world we live in will lose, is it critical that we choose for what will win, what will last, what will endure into eternity.

Stott’s third observation is that suffering and glory cannot be compared.

This is where childbirth is such a good image. Giving birth is painful but the joy of having a child growing in the womb, feeling the baby move, knowing that the baby has hiccups, knowing where the head and feet are as the baby moves in the womb, these are wonderful experiences that make the discomfort worthwhile. But these are dwarfed by the experience of giving birth when the baby enters the world and is laid at the mother’s breast. It’s a girl! or It’s a boy! Or sometimes both!

If a mother went through the pain of childbirth to deliver carrots, there would be no carrots in the world. Who wants to suffer like that to produce carrots? No matter how good they taste, no one will suffer that much for them. But the joy of a baby makes the suffering worthwhile and so women continue to want babies.

It is because babies are so wonderful that women are willing to suffer to have them. In the same way, it is because our eternal presence with Jesus is so wonderful that we are willing to endure suffering to get there.

In the passage from II Corinthians I just quoted, Paul wrote:

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. ¹⁷ For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. ¹⁸ So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Paul was resisted and rejected, beaten and flogged,. He gave up the comforts of married life and a home where he could sit at night and relax. He gave up a salary that would provide for him in his retirement. When he made his travel plans, he did so knowing that when he entered a city and began to preach, he would most likely be rejected and beaten – and yet he went into the city and preached anyway.

These beatings, floggings and other hardships were the light and momentary troubles Paul was thinking about when he wrote these words.

Paul rejected what the world offered him because he knew that no matter how wonderful the rewards of this world, the rewards of heaven would outshine them.

When we make choices, we have to choose between the rewards of this world and the rewards of heaven. We have to choose between doing what everyone else is doing and what we know is the right thing to do. We have to choose between taking a job that will pay us more money and going where God has called us to go. We have to choose between satisfying our sexual desire and waiting for marriage. We have to choose between lying and accepting the consequences for what it is we have done.

The reality of heaven must be more powerful than the reality of the world around us, otherwise we will not be willing to make godly decisions. We have to grow in our understanding of the realities of eternal life with God if we want to be able to resist the temptations of this world.

I am convinced that when we get to heaven we will discover that the things we thought were so wonderful here on earth will seem not as wonderful. And I believe that when we get to heaven we will discover that the suffering we had to endure will not seem as terrible as we thought it was.

No matter how wonderful the meal looks in front of you, it can not compare with the wedding banquet that awaits you in heaven. Suffer with Christ now so you can share his glory in heaven.

Stott’s fourth observation is that all of creation is suffering and waiting for glory.

It is not just me who is suffering. It is not just we who are suffering and it is not just all of mankind who is suffering. The picture is much larger than we think it is. All of creation is struggling and groaning, as in childbirth.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

Jesus used this imagery himself when he talked about the end times. (Mark 13)

There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.

We are groaning, longing for a release from this life to live life as it was meant to be lived. Creation groans alongside us.

In John’s Revelation he began his description of the kingdom of God by describing the birth of a new world (21)

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away

It is into this new heaven and new earth that we will live as new creations in Christ and this is our deep longing.

Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

From our earthly perspective, it can seem that the end is in doubt. We observe the rise and fall of churches around the world. We see church leaders fall to sexual and financial temptation. We see the rise of secularism and indifference to Christian truth. We see all this and we can worry about how it will be in the end. But once again, it is much more than just us. There is an inevitable move toward the end when Christ will take his throne and Satan will be cast into oblivion.

We are like a piece of wood floating on a tidal wave that is rushing to the shore. There is nothing that will stop the wave from crashing on the beach. And while the piece of wood may think it is what is going to crash on the beach, it is the wall of water in the wave that will crash and the wood is just part of the mass of water.

We, along with all of creation, are moving toward the end when we will all come before the judgement throne of God. Whether you decide to walk with Christ or not, the Kingdom of God will come in all its fullness. There is not a question mark to be found in this discussion. It will happen. From the moment that Christ broke the power of death and was raised to new life, it has been clear what will happen. These centuries have been a battle for the eternal lives of men and women who will enter into God’s kingdom but the inevitability of the kingdom of God coming into its fullness has never been in doubt.

So decide today on whose side you will fight. Joshua made his declaration long ago when he spoke to Israel at Shechem: (Joshua 24:15)

But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve,

But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.

This week you will have to make decisions. Will you stand with Christ?

In periods of persecution, most Christians have turned away from Jesus to save themselves. It has always been a minority of those who go to church who stand with Jesus and suffer with him when persecution comes.

This is not a call to seek suffering. If you have a choice and can either take a path that is safe and beautiful or a path that is dangerous and takes you through a garbage dump, take the path that is safe and beautiful. God does not want us to look for ways in which we can suffer.

But if following Christ takes you into unpleasant places where you will suffer, don’t hesitate. Keep walking with Jesus.

If God is calling you to a powerful ministry of healing and deliverance, go for it – but resist the temptations of financial gain and individual glory that will come to you.

Don’t be afraid to stand up and identify yourself as a Christian. Don’t be afraid to express a Christian point of view in a discussion. If people want to dismiss what you say and think less of you because you are one of those religious fanatics, so be it. Stand with Christ so he will affirm you in heaven.

Pay whatever price has to be paid to walk with Christ and you will share with Christ his glory when you finally come into his kingdom in heaven.