What? I don't know. I just thought you all knew what
they did, but it's okay with me. I just, I didn't get the
script. Yes. Well, good to be back. It's only been two and a half
weeks. You know, it's been short when you come back and you see
your grandkids and you're not moved to say, my, how you've grown.
Cause it's just not much changed in the last two and a half weeks.
So would you open your Bibles to Romans chapter eight? I'm always a little afraid when
I preach like this that I will have selected to preach a sermon
that I've preached here before. If I did that, I guess God wanted
you to hear it again. But I don't think I preached
this one here before. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
thank you for this opportunity to meet in the name of your Son,
and we pray that according to the promise, where two or three
are gathered in that name, Lord Jesus, you would be among us.
Thank you that you, by your Spirit, are able to captivate our thoughts,
for they are so prone to wonder here and there. We thank you
you're able to corral your sheep, and cause them to pause from
their day-to-day lives and come together for worship like this,
and that You would bless us with Your presence and with an understanding
of Your Scriptures. We can say, Lord, of all men,
we are most blessed. We give You thanks for all of
this in the name of Christ. Let's begin reading at verse
18 in Romans 8. For I reckon 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 creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of
God. For the creature was made subject
to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected
the same in hope. Because the creature itself also
shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious
liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation
groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now, and not only
they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit,
even we ourselves grown within ourselves waiting for the adoption
to wit the redemption of our body." In my first year of Bible school, for roughly four hours a day,
I think it was, that we would all gather in one building. There
were 200 and some students at this Bible school. And the first
quarter, we were just seated alphabetically. So I ended up
seated next to a girl named Joy Thomas. And she was well-named,
for she did exude a great deal of joy. And she was a lot of
fun to be around. And last year is the great COVID
lockdown took effect. Uh, we reconnected through our
schools or common schools, Facebook page. And she posted this, you
know, as people started to feel bad under the constraints that
were put upon us. She wrote, I know this when this
ends and it will. Every game will sell out. Every
restaurant will have a two-hour wait. Every kid will be glad
to be in school. Everyone will love their job.
The stock market will skyrocket. Every other house will be teepeed,
and we'll all embrace and shake hands. That's going to be a pretty
good day. Hang in there, world. Now, that
kind of gives you an idea of what kind of person she is. Now,
so far it hadn't worked out exactly like she predicted. But that's a different discussion,
not for the pulpit. But I responded. And what a beautiful
picture of the hope of the believer. When this ends, this existence
and this struggle between flesh and spirit, trial, disappointment, doubts
and fear, and dear child of God, it will end. Every saint will
be glad to be in the presence of Christ. The attendance of
every worship gathering will be a multitude no one can number. Our joy in Christ will skyrocket. Every dwelling will be marked
with the blood of the Lamb on the post and the lintel. And
every one of God's people will have forgotten their fleshly
divisions and embrace one another with unhindered love. And best
of all, the one having not seen we love, him we shall see. Indeed, as the hymn says, what
a day that will be. I went on to say I didn't mean
to hijack your post. But the thought of the sense
of freedom and gladness we will feel once this virus has run
its course made me think of the end of this age when all creation
will be brought into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. And so I looked at this text
of scripture, having referred to it in my comment, and found
that its meaning was much broader than I had ever considered before. And I suppose we experience a
lot of that as we go through the years. We thought we understood
the scripture and then years later we read it again, find
out there was facets to it that we were too young and inexperienced
years ago to even know they were things to think about. This is not only speaking of
our experience. but the experience of all creation,
the glorious liberty of the sons of God. It tells us that this
existence has meaning and significance, that we are not accidents, that
all that we see and experience serves a purpose. Everything
is heading to a glorious end, not just an end like stop, an
end as in a purpose, a reason, a goal. And all that we see that is now
broken and wrong shall be fixed. To understand this passage properly,
we've got to go to the beginning of the Bible. And if you'll turn
with me, we'll go back to Genesis chapter 2. Now Genesis chapter 2 is not,
as some Bible skeptics like to say, a contradictory account
of creation, different from what is in chapter 1. It's the same
story, just focusing on one aspect of it. And I don't understand
why people can't see that. I guess they're looking for any
reason they can to discount the Scriptures. But in verse 15, It says, And the LORD took the
man, and put him into the garden of Eden, to dress it, and to
keep it. And the LORD God commanded the
man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely
eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not
eat of it. For in the day that thou eatest
thereof thou shalt surely die. Adam's put in the garden, and
he's given this rule. You're free to eat from any tree
in the garden, but you must not eat from the tree of knowledge
of good and evil, for when you eat it, you will surely die. Now that's the rule. That's the
law that God laid down for them. They were free. They were as
free as any humans have ever been. Man's freedom is never
absolute, for there is always someone above him to whom he
must give an account. So when we speak of freedom,
we're not talking about absolutes, nor are, in this message, are
we trying to address the subject of the freedom of the will or
the lack of the freedom of the will. We're not talking about
that kind of freedom. But think of it now, Adam and Eve were
put in this garden, and there were many trees in the garden,
many plants, many that were beautiful to look at, good for food. Remember,
this is what Eve saw in the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil, that it was beautiful to look at, good for food, and able
to make one wise, and all this. There were plenty of others.
And the Lord said, I give you all of this, all of it, but this
one. Now we don't know whether that was the only one of its
kind. It doesn't matter. God could
have picked out any tree. He could have had a whole grove
of apple trees. He said, you can have all of
these, but this one apple tree right here. And that was a token
of His authority over man. And that was the purpose that
it served. He said, you can have all the trees, but this one. Now, you turn to Genesis chapter
3. The rule. You are free to have
anything in this garden. It's all yours, but this one.
That's the rule. Then he says in chapter 3 verse
17, Adam and Eve have eaten of the tree which was forbidden.
And unto Adam he said, because thou hast hearkened unto the
voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded
thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it, cursed is the ground
for thy sake, and sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of
thy life." Notice this, he didn't say to Adam right away, cursed
are you. He said, cursed is the ground. In sorrow shalt thou eat of it
all the days of thy life. Thorns also, and thistles shall
it bring forth to thee. And thou shalt eat the herb of
the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till
thou return to the ground. For out of it wast thou taken, for dust thou art, and unto dust
shalt thou return." We read the rule, and now we
see the consequences. of breaking it. When God makes rules, God is
just. And if there are rules made with
consequent blessings, and the breaking of which brings curses,
He makes it clear what He is and He follows through. But it's
important for us now to notice here in Genesis 3 as we see the
results of breaking that single law that God gave to Adam and
Eve, we notice these things. The effect of Adam's sin went
farther than Adam himself. Everything that makes our lives
difficult came about by Adam's sin. Absolutely everything. Death
and everything that leads up to it, every pain you ever felt, every
tear you ever shed, every failure you ever experienced, every fear
that grips your heart, every disappointment that breaks your
heart started right here. Now, I know that there are what
we might call natural consequences for the sins that we commit. But in all reality, everything
that goes wrong is a result of this single sin. In one sense, in the book of
history, there's only been one sin. And death came by it. And since
death came by it, Everything that leads up to death also came
by that sin. But there's even more. All other
living things suffered as a result of Adam's sin. Now they didn't
suffer as a result of Eve's sin. Why not? Eve was not the representative. Eve, though made in the image
of God just like Adam, She did not stand as a representative
head of the human race. I thought one thing interesting
to note when you read about, you know, the fall of man as
they say, Eve ate some of it. And she gave some to her husband
and he ate it and when he ate it, they knew they were naked. Not when Eve ate it. It's not
like she ate it and goes, I got no clothes on. Here, take some
of this Adam. No. There was no knowledge of
sin, no shame of their naked estate until Adam ate. And his sin brought about sorrow,
not just for himself, but for his wife, for all his descendants,
for all living creatures. Because we get the sense there
was no such thing as death before this. There's more. The very physical world, non-living
things, became subject to frustration. Go back to Romans 8. Actually, the King James says,
subject to corruption. Verse 20. not corruption, but
vanity. For the creature was made subject
to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected
the same in hope. Now this word is not often used
in the scriptures. I think a total of, well, this
very word, only three times, but the root word that it comes
from I believe was another nine times. But it always points to
this concept of futility, of uselessness. In Ephesians 4.17
it talks about that we should not walk like the Gentiles in
the futility of their minds. And Peter talks about those who
are springs without water and mist driven by storm. And it
says, for they mouth empty boastful words. And I can read you many more. But you get the idea. Useless. Empty. Hollow. Solomon wrote an entire book
about this. Vanity of vanity. All is vanity. Now to understand the book of
Ecclesiastes, you've got to understand what he means by that phrase,
under the sun. And to understand that phrase,
you've got to understand how they viewed the universe. There's
us, there's the heavens between us and the sun, and beyond the
sun is God. And when he says life under the
sun, he means life without consideration of the God who is beyond it.
Life as the atheist sees it. And what is life if there is
no God? Utterly meaningless and useless. They were all up in arms year
and a half ago, you know, but people started to die of COVID.
And, um, I don't know what the number's up to now. And it's
not as though I make light of it. Death is death, however it
comes. And it's a sorrowful thing. But if there's no God, it doesn't
matter whether 600,000 die or 600 million die. It doesn't matter
whether we live. or not. Nothing matters if there
is no God. In talking to atheists, I've
asked them that, you know, because they get real indignant about
their values. And they talk about religion,
you know, that restricts man, you know, and how religious people
have been, have treated people wickedly. And I say, well, what
do they do? Well, they killed someone. Well, what's wrong with
that? And they don't have an answer.
Why is it wrong to kill a human being if there's no God? Why is anything right or wrong,
good or bad, if there is no God? Are we to judge all things simply
by whether or not they make humans feel better? Is that the totality
of it? Shall we go with hedonism and the only thing that gives
meaning to our existence is pleasurable experiences? Well, you and I
likely know that The pursuit of pleasurable experiences without
restraint always results in unpleasant experiences. And even if they say that the
pleasure of humans is what we should seek, you can always say,
why? Nothing means anything if there is no God. And that's what
Solomon was saying. It's vanity. The sun comes up,
it goes down. Next morning it comes up, it
goes down. Crops come up, you harvest them,
you eat. Then you go through the winter,
plant more seed, more harvest. You're born, you live, you die.
And it means nothing if life is under the sun. But we have a hope beyond the
sun. There is meaning and significance
to our existence. And there is a value to pursue,
something that is essentially intrinsically good. You know,
in the Declaration of Independence, it starts out, we hold these
truths to be self-evident. And their idea was, you don't
need to make an argument for these truths. Anybody who's honest
knows they're true. And there are things which are
essentially true. There are things which are essentially
good. In this universe, this creation,
history is moving towards the realization of that which is
good and true. The whole creation was subjected
to this vanity. We can get scientific about it
and call it the law of entropy because it doesn't matter what
you build, it falls down eventually. It doesn't matter what you gather,
eventually it gets spread back out. It doesn't matter what you
do, eventually it gets undone. It was subject to this vanity,
this uselessness, this meaninglessness, but it was subjected in hope. Hope. What hope? That a day would come when the
curse is removed. A day would come when the bondage
of corruption would cease. And that which creation was intended
to be will be realized. Verse 22 says, For we know that
the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until
now. are a part of this creation. The whole creation groans and
travails. Death came upon man. He became
subject to this vanity, this uselessness and meaninglessness
of existence that leads to death. But man is an interesting creature,
a curious creature. He's not just an animal. He is
an animal. We are. We have bodies. We have
a physical aspect to our existence, and then we have a spiritual
aspect to our existence. And this spiritual aspect is
what I believe is meant by the image of God. Because apes, other
primates that are most closely related to us as animals, they
don't have spirit. And I can't tell you what spirit
is, but I can tell you what it does. Spirit is that which connects
us to God. It is that part of us which is
like the God who created us. For it is written, God is spirit,
and they who worship Him must worship Him in spirit. Well,
you know, our dogs or our cats, we may be very affectionate with
them and we are able to connect with them as animal to animal
and experience the kind of emotions that animals have. But our dogs
and cats never worship. That is, they don't worship God.
They have no means by which to connect with Him. But man was
made with that. Now, when Adam sinned, it says
he died. He's saying, in the day you eat,
dying you shall die. Well, Adam's body didn't drop
to the ground that day. His body started dying. But it
took 930 years to happen. But that day he died spiritually.
He lost his connection to God. And the whole creation, as it
were, lost its connection to God and became subject to this
vanity. But now here we are. We who have
been born again by the Spirit of God. What's happened to us?
Well, God has given us new spiritual life. And this revival Reviving
of life is not merely a revival of the spiritual life that Adam
had. How do I know? The spiritual
life that Adam had could die. And it did. He could fall. We can't. We who have been born
again have a life that will not die. I suppose you could call
it mortal in the sense that it's utterly dependent on God, and
if God were to just withdraw its supports, it would die, but
there's nothing about that spiritual life that necessitates its death. In other words, remember the
Bible talks about new heavens and new earth? It is my belief,
and I think the scriptures support this, that new life created in
us is part of that new heavens and new earth. That's why our
citizenship's in heaven, not here. It's not like God came in the
new birth and simply administered some heavenly CPR and restored
us to what we are. This was a brand new life, a
new creation beginning. But this spirit of the new creation
still lives in a body, exists in a body that's part of the
old creation. It's bound to it. We are stuck in a body that's
still part of the old heavens and earth. And this spiritual
aspect of us must share a mind or consciousness with that body.
So inwardly, we grow. And this is what I believe Paul
meant when he said, O wretched man that I am. He wasn't just
talking about his sinfulness. He was talking about this awful
struggle that only believers experience, having this newborn
spirit which loves God and desires to be united with God and to
fellowship with God in perfect unity, and yet it's stuck in
this body of death. That's why he said, O wretched
man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death? He
knew where the problem was. You see, spiritually speaking,
there's nothing wrong with us. Years ago, I was preaching for
Brother Tim and James, and I said, believers don't have spiritual
problems. They may have some problems about some spiritual
things, but they're fleshly problems about spiritual things. That
which is born of God does not sin. That which has been reborn
within us is the perfect creative work of God. There's nothing
wrong with it. The struggle is that it exists
in a body that there's nothing right with it. It's got to work
through a brain that is a total mess. We wait for our adoption, says
Paul. Now, when he speaks of waiting
for our adoption, this may confuse us. Are we not already adopted? We have to understand what adoption
was back then. Adoption is not what made you
part of a family. Adoption was what made you an
heir. And it may be, and generally speaking, these adoptions, as
Paul was using the word, they were of adults. Commonly it's in Roman generals.
If one of their leaders did very well and brought the general
glory because of their excellence, they would adopt them. They would
make them heirs. And so when it says we wait for
our adoption, he's not talking about that we aren't already
children of God. We are. But we have not yet received
our inheritance. See, this adoption. It says we are predestined to
the adoption of sons. Now if you're predestined to
something, that's something that's not yet yours, not yet experienced. It's something yet to come. We're
predestined to the adoption of sons and it speaks of the creation
being brought into the glorious liberty of the children of God. We are the children of God, the
sons of God, but the day is coming when we shall receive our inheritance,
the redemption of our bodies. Redemption is a two-fold thing.
Now normally, if we say the word redemption, all we're thinking
about is the payment of the redemption price. And that's certainly vital. There is no redemption without
payment of a price. If a man is a slave and you go
and simply set him free, sneak in at night and open up wherever
he's kept and say, let's get out of here, that's not redemption. And the man is really not free
forever. He has to look over his shoulder.
There must be a price paid. But redemption is not fulfilled
until the thing paid for is actually possessed. This concept, actually,
we see it when we go buy a house. Often you go to the closing,
it's set for a certain day, and you write the check, and you've
paid for it. But then it'll say, and the owner
may take possession at such and such a time. You've paid for
that house, but it's not yours until that date. Now, they can't
refuse to give it to you on that date. They can't change the terms
before that date, but still, you can't move in. Redemption, a purchase involves
paying the price and taking possession. Just today, I demonstrated that
aspect. Went up to the counter, paid
for some things, and walked away. And Bonnie says, don't you want
to take that stuff with you? If I'd have driven away, if we'd
have gone on our way to the trip, I wouldn't have come back for
it. Well, I'd have paid for it, but I didn't have possession
of it. Jesus Christ paid a redemption price. He bought something. He's
going to come get it. He won't forget it. He's not
like me. He's not absent-minded. Remember what the thief said?
Remember me when you come into your kingdom. Don't forget about
me. And our God remembers us. He'll not leave us on the counter.
He paid the price and He's coming back to get what is rightfully
His. And that is called the redemption
of our bodies. What's He talking about? Resurrection.
These bodies which are truly a part of us. Now, my mom used
to try to describe this, the real you is the Spirit. No, the
real you is both. You know, it's not as though
I can say, well, I've been spiritually reborn, so when I sin now, that's
not really me sinning. Yes, it is. It's you sinning. Because you
are body and spirit and shall forever be that. But this body
is still under a curse. That's why it dies. God hasn't done anything to our
bodies. That's why we don't set up outward
manifestations that someone must exhibit before we will consider
them to be believers. I hear people say, oh, when I
got saved, you know, I had a problem with liquor, but I've not wanted
any liquor since then. And if God saves you, He'll set
you free from that. I have no doubt that there are
some of God's elect whom God has graciously delivered them
from whatever they were addicted to the moment He gave them spiritual
life. He doesn't do that with all of
them. He leaves most of us struggling. The Spirit wars against the flesh
and the flesh against the Spirit. Therefore, you don't do what
you want to do. Neither side ever gets all of what it wants.
What are we waiting for? We're waiting for our Lord to
come. And with the voice of the archangel and the trump of God,
to cause the graves to open and the dead to rise. And for us
in body to be made new. We patiently wait for this. We
can't make it happen. We're looking for that glorious
liberty. We have some liberty now, don't
we? We have a spiritual liberty.
We're not in bondage to the law anymore. We're not in bondage
to man-made regulations. We're not even in bondage to
the ceremonial regulations that God imposed upon the Jews for
a particular purpose. We're free. I hear people say,
well, you know, believers, when they worship, they ought to dress
a certain way. Well, not for God. I guarantee you God doesn't care.
We dress out of respect to one another. We dress as people kind
of expect us to so that we don't stand out. So that we don't become
a distraction during worship. We didn't come here to show off
that we're rich. We didn't come here to try to prove we're casual.
We came here to worship, and whatever works, works. But what
I'm saying is, as free-born children of God, we may worship God by
whatever forms we want, provided they're according to the Gospel. We can sing with very, what we
might call, serious music. Or we can sing with very upbeat
music. We can sing old-fashioned music.
We can sing modern music. Why? We're free. We're not in
bonds with that. The world, which is under the
curse, operates under touch not, taste not, handle not. We're
not part of that anymore. But friends, our freedom to worship
according to the form we want, our freedom maybe to partake
of alcohol if we want, our freedom to do Things that other churches,
conservative churches don't do. Christ didn't come and shed his
blood for things like that. Such blood brought glorious liberty. A liberty we won't really know
until we're free from this body of death. What does that mean for us now?
Well, it means we wait. We wait in patience. We can't
bring this about. We can't bring it about in ourselves.
We can't bring it about in others. We grieve over our sin. We need
never be afraid because of it, but we grieve over it. We must
never allow ourselves to think that because we've been saved
by grace, it's no longer of significance how we live. It is of significance. Grace forgives all sin and excuses
none. There's a difference between
forgiveness and excuses. But we do understand why we struggle.
And therefore, it means we do not have to be discouraged by
the struggle. We know why it's there. We don't
want it. We long for the day it's over. But as we struggle, and when
in the struggle we fail, and fail miserably, we don't have
to stand back and say, I must be lost. No, it doesn't mean
you're lost. It means you're a mess. But God's going to fix
the mess someday. It means we can't excuse it,
but we need never fear. Why? It says, sin shall not have
dominion over you, for you are not under law, you're under grace. People have used that to say,
yeah, if you're under grace, you could live free from sin
because sin doesn't have dominion over you. You don't have to. That's not what the word dominion
means. Dominion is not about power. It's about authority.
And there is a distinction in the Greek words. Dominion is
about lordship and authority. Power is about something else.
Sin still has a lot of power over us. has no authority. And of all the authority it lost,
it lost this. It can't kill us. What is the power of sin? Death. Or the strength of sin
is death. It doesn't have it anymore. We're
free of that. And then it means as we live
our lives waiting for the redemption of our bodies, waiting for the
full experience of the glorious liberty of the children of God,
while we're waiting, we're merciful to one another. We understand
why they do what they do. We don't say, ah, that person
must be lost. Really now? Well, I wouldn't
do that. Don't ever say that. That's like
just daring God. Don't put the Lord to the test.
You don't want to test Him on that. Maybe you haven't done that.
And if you haven't, it's only because God was pleased to restrain
you in a way He did not restrain that other fellow, but He restrained
that fellow in a way He doesn't restrain you. None of us got
any bragging rights here. We recognize sin is sin, but
knowing where it comes from, among our brethren, we can be
most merciful. We can be merciful of their offenses
against us. We can be merciful when we see
them do things that are incredibly wrong, if that's the right way
to put it, and we scratch our heads and we can't understand.
How could a child of God do that? If it has not already come to
you, it will come to you sometime. How can I be a child of God and
have done what I've done? In fact, I think if that hasn't
ever come to your mind, it may be. That would be more of an
indication you are a child of God. How can I be a child of
God and still want the things I want, do the things I do, fall
the way I fall? Here's why. It's part of this
creation. It's under a curse. It hasn't been changed a bit.
But thank God one day it will be. It will be changed every
bit as much as my dead spirit which hated God, couldn't believe
God, was like the devil itself. It was changed into one who loved
God. One who knew God and desired to know Him better. And then
one of these days, God's going to make the body catch up. And
what a day that'll be. What would it be like to worship
and not be distracted? To love one another without the
least bit of animosity. All the things we want to do
from the inner man, but find so difficult, shall be, as they
say, as easy as falling off a log. It'll be natural. That's the glorious liberty of
the children of God. Is there a dismissal or do I
just say we're done? Well, okay, let's pray. Father, we thank you for what
we have read and we pray that the thoughts that have been spoken
will be used by you to train our hearts used by you to make
us yearn even more for that day. We thank you, Lord, that though
we are still sinners, and in our flesh there's no good thing,
yet you have chosen us and redeemed us and called us, and you will come and take possession
of that which you have redeemed. This is our hope. In Christ's name we pray, amen.