Romans Chapter 8 Verse 18

• I remember when I was a kid.  We adopted this dog, Charlie.  Charlie was a mess.  He didn’t know how to act.  He would claw through the doors in our house.  He would do his business right in the living room…he even would jump up onto the counter to get whatever food was there and one time he got into a chocolate bunny…that was gross.  Ever see what chocolate does to a dog?
• I bring that up to make a point.  You see Charlie being adopted into my family, he had to learn not to do those things just like you and I…as adopted sons and daughters, the suffering we experience presently is for the purpose of adapting us spiritually and will one day disappear totally when we go home.
• You see as a Christian, I experience suffering in this place, at this time, in hard situations and circumstance because in reality I have become an alien in this world.  This world is dominated by men who are dominated by their flesh.  Not so with me.  We are, I am ruled by the spirit and the world does not understand that.  1 Peter 4:4 says that the world thinks I’m strange, thinks we’re strange, thinks you’re strange because you do not do what they do.  One translation says, they think it strange that you no longer go with them in this violent wasting of life and so they dis you man…they speak evil of you.  Why?
• Because inevitably, I become a threat to them.  A threat to their violent wasting of life because I have no desire to join in it with them…I have some sort of difference, some sort of strength that they do not…and that strength isn’t even aggressive, but it is offensive…and it is consistent and so persecution comes, evil comes our way but now you see why we were told by Jesus to rejoice when we are persecuted for His name’s sake…because it give us and them proof positive that this world is not our home.  That there has been a change in me and God is at work here man…and ultimately you’ll end up getting that text, getting that call by that one friend, that one relative, and they’ll say, “can we talk.”
• And then they’ll unload on you.  How hard their life is.  How tired they are.  How afraid they are.  How lost they are and you walk them right up and introduce them to Jesus and YOU will get to watch the weight of sin and condemnation lift right off of them.  And then one day you’ll over hear them giving their testimony and you’re name will come up…”you know, when I used to watch him and hang out with him, I knew there was something different, something real…”  And you know that is Jesus using you man and great is your reward…
• The glory to be revealed here, now, later and in eternity so greatly over powers our sufferings now…that’s wisdom.  Paul called his hardship, “light affliction” in 2 Corinthians 4:17 calling it momentary compared to the eternal weight of glory saying that he does not look to what is seen but to what is not seen because what is seen is temporary but what is not seen is eternal…

Romans Chapter 8 Verse 19

• What does that mean?  Revealing of the sons of God?  Simply this.  That whatever circumstance you are in today.  Whatever hardship, whatever struggle, whatever suffering…if you want to see what God is trying to show you, if you want to eternally grasp a deeper revelation of truth, a more intimate connection to the God who is entirely outside of time and above all the earth and everything in it…then consider much less the pain of the day, and exalt to priority in your heart and mind the return of Jesus…because that is when the sons of God are revealed.
• Its 1 John Chapter 3.  John writes, “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children (sons and daughters) of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.  Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.  And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.”
• Everytime I see someone locked in frustration, pain and turmoil over a situation…locked down in it man…strife in the home, envy at work, in the family, division in their lives…I know where their focus is…the mirror, and the day…both of which are the seen…temporary.  But when I encounter peace, joy, gentleness, kindness, love and forbearance…I know where their hope is…where their focus is…I perceive wisdom man…and when Jesus appears, which is soon, all will be gone in an instant…in the twinkling of an eye…
• It’s kinda like leaving a job.  You ever leave a job?  So many responsibilities and stress and deadlines and then you walk out that door and this odd sensation hits you because you’re not coming back there tomorrow, the next day or the next day.  You’re not coming back ever…I remember walking out of my last college class…it was like “whoa, it’s over.”  Stress vaporized man…that is the life of the one who earnestly and eagerly (gotsta have both man!) awaits the coming of Jesus.
• Now, here’s the thing for today.  You say, “well Jesus didn’t return right then when you were making that point and I feel ya but I’m still anxious, I’m still scared, I’m still worried…”  Then how about you allowing Jesus to come back right now?  In your heart.  Come back to the throne man…and get that idol off of it.  Let Him reign and trust Him that even though the present suffering is there, just as it was for Paul…rejected everywhere he went, mocked, left hungry, left friendless, thrown in jail, shipwrecked, beaten to death and utterly despised, Jesus sat securely on the throne seat of his heart and he thrived man!  And you and I are not lesser than him!  Both Paul and I have the same Father, the same molecular construct, the same capacity and the same Spirit of power available to us…the only possible difference, I may focus more than he did on futility…

Romans Chapter 8 Verses 20 - 21

• That word for futility is literally, “emptiness.”  We have all been created to know God.  To fellowship with Him and to be with Him.  That was the deal in the Garden.  But sin has wrought in us a void created by being apart from our Creator.  Our deepest most inner desire is to have companionship with our Creator…and this world sees dollar signs. 
• Do you know why businesses exist?  Most people say to make money…to turn a profit…or to make good products that add to the experience of life.  The truth is a business exists to create a customer…that is the grad school text book answer and that is the truth.  Businesses exist to create customers…and all those other things manifest…they just come about.  They are secondary.  And the world system sees billions of people in need…and so we have Oxyclean.  If you use this then you will be so thrilled with your white socks!  We have the Ginsu Knife…and if you buy it, then all your dreams…will come true! 
• We have sitcoms and such that promote that next relationship that next sexual experience that next recreation and folks fall prey to it, why?  Because they want “something.”  Yet they grope in the dark, we do, you and I…in our emptiness until we place the round peg into the round hole…and we meet our Father…then this emptiness, this futility, this hole…is satisfied.  And peace enters.  Nothing else will satisfy.  Nothing else. 
• It is simply and finally and completely the “glorious liberty of the children of God” that is needed and desired by creation…

Romans Chapter 8 Verses 22 – 23

• So those that do not know Him groan with that deep hollowness, that unsatisfied scream from within them…that they try to fill and try to fill and try to fill but never do because they never turn to Jesus but even those that have…even we groan at the present time eagerly and earnestly (remember from before) eagerly and earnestly waiting to be done with all of this…to be with the Lord in our redeemed and eternal bodily form.  Paul talks all about that in 2 Cor 5.
• Why groan?  I guess you’re not me…lol!  Listen this spirit, alive forever…this transport device, this tent…decaying on me…breaking down and my spirit’s desire is to be free from this limitation, this restriction and oh by the way this flesh that constantly seeks to bring me into the bondage of corruption!
• And so eeeeeerybody groaning!  Unbelievers because “I can’t get no…satisfaction…” and believers because we have this Ferrari eternal spirit in this ford festiva broken down vehicle!  One groans in futility…one groans in hope…but all groan!  Why?  Cause this place is fallen man.  Perishing yo!  We’re in the dump of existence here in a way where the treasures will be removed (THE CLAW – Toy Story) and the refuse will be burned ultimately…but no one will stay here…this place will eventually, utterly, entirely pass away…and so we within it groan with it!

Romans Chapter 8 Verse 24

• At that point hope is irrelevant.  Now it’s simply come to pass, right?  Hope and faith, these are only available to those who aren’t currently seeing with their flesh…and that is why Jesus said in John Chapter 20, “you believe because you have seen but blessed are those who have not seen yet believe.”  Why?  Because their hope, their faith is not based on any aspect of the flesh.  Any aspect of the temporal.  And so temporary hardship, circumstance, pain comes about…that kind of hope and faith, completely disjointed from the fleshly side of the coin, doesn’t fail!
• It remains!  It even surges!  How blessed, you see!  That kind of hope and faith require a dismissal and denial of the flesh entirely!  And therefore enter endurance, strength, capability, capacity, perseverance!

Romans Chapter 8 Verse 25

• And talk to me Paul about the genesis of this hope.  The origin of this faith.  The power plant of this perseverance…

Romans Chapter 8 Verses 26 – 27

• And so the Spirit helps us, He intercedes for us…in other words He guides us man and even searches our inner most being that even when we don’t know what to do, what to pray, we can’t see the forest for the trees…He can and so, in the life of the believer, even God is interceding, working things out, cutting the path…when we can barely even see the hand in front of our face for the sake of the darkness.
• Not so with the unbeliever.  This is the terror of the lost.  Darkness all around.  Pain and depravity prevailing…tough situation enters…no Spirit within to guide…no ears to hear the voice of the Lord calling to them, “this way…not that way” and so their lives….downward spiral man…tail spin so many times…all things working to proliferate and bring about their ultimate destruction…not so at all for the child of God…the one who has the God of all living, abiding within them…in fact, for them, it’s the exact opposite…

Romans Chapter 8 Verse 28

• Listen, even for the believer outward circumstances are often hard to understand and when I come against times that I can’t understand or figure out or even sometimes feels as if I can’t endure, foundational verses like this one become my anchor man.  I lean on these.  Not just in tongue.  What weakness!  Not just in factual belief…what deception…but in spirit and in truth man actually believing and living it out.  And in that I can rest, I can love, I can have kindness and gentles and service to Jesus and to others even in the most uncomfortable places believing that even this present suffering is bringing about far greater weight of eternal glory IF I walk in the spirit and choose to give God the glory!
• Precisely what Jesus showed us…as He suffered.  As He knew His destination was the cross at the betrayel of His friend and the condemnation of His people…yet He rested and brought glory to God the Father!  Look at the next verse…

Romans 8 Verses 29 – 30

• See that?  Conformed into the image of His Son?  What does that mean?  That means to be led by Jesus man…Led by His example and led by His ever-present indwelling Spirit that continually delivers the liberty of the children of God!
• And lots of talk here about predestination and I don’t have time to fully develop this doctrinal truth but predestination, in the Biblical sense, does not mean that God picked and chose only some that would be saved but rather He saw from the foundations of the world the end of the story…those who would choose Him…and those who would not…and so understand Biblical predestination is not limited atonement…no God died for the sins of all the world…that anyone who would come to Him, anyone, would be saved…His will is that ALL men would not perish…see the stack of Bible truths? 
• And so no!  Biblical predestination is not limitation upon God’s saving power but rather it is as described in 1 Peter Chapter 1 that the elect are chosen and predestined according to the foreknowledge of God the Father that they’d choose to be set apart of their own free will and accept the blood of Jesus Christ as their sin atoning sacrifice. 
• The point of this scripture is that He has called us and those that have responded, He has justified us, and ultimately He has glorified.  Isn’t that awesome?  Anyone in here glorified?  Me either but God speaks about it in the past tense…as if we are already perfect, why?  Because we are HIDDEN in Him.  In God’s eyes…in His view…So awesome, eh?  What Jesus has accomplished for you and for me and for ANYONE who would believe…Boy that gives us strength doesn’t it…

Romans Chapter 8 Verse 31

• Um, no one.  Folks may come against us but who stacks up against our God?  Um, no one.  Even discouragement when it comes, when we feel that we are being made an example, being forsaken…when it comes…Paul gives us a weapon of truth against that!

Romans Chapter 8 Verses 32 – 34

• And so in light of all of that…

Romans Chapter 8 Verses 35 – 39

• Man nothing can defeat love like this!  Nothing can separate you.  God is not even reluctant now to help and to provide for you in that precise predicament you are in presently.  It is us who resist His will!  Oh but if we just get with Him man…denying what we can see in faith and earnest hope of the truth presented to us this morning, what we often can only see in the spirit, and often we cannot see with our eyes…then we are more than conquerors Paul says.
• How can we be more than conquerors?  More than winners eventually?  We can be conquerors today!  To say that we are more than conquerors is to say that victory not only comes after the battle, but victory comes in the midst of it too man…right here, right now…there is no other place I’d rather be…than in His love…trusting Him man….
• Reminding myself that His love for me is not predicated on me!  It is absolutely founded, established and maintained upon Jesus.  And check this out…being uncaused on my part, it is constant and it remains.  Good or bad, rich or poor, in sickness or in health, His love remains…and so I believe, I trust, I rest, and I am set free BOOM…more than a conqueror.  His will for us all!