The Glorious Future (Romans 8:17-27) | Louis Azuma

Speaker: we're continuing in Romans eight.

Romans eight 17 is where we're starting.

We're picking up where we left off last week and if you know what

movie I got the title of the sermon from, I'll give you brownie points.

Kind of.

It's really from a, a different movie, but I like a lot more than

back to the future, but that's okay.

DR.

Four.

No, it's from Penga.

Za Madagascar, which is a great movie.

But anyway, Penga Za Madagascar, you know, when they, anyway, there you go.

Alright, well, Romans eight is where we're gonna be, so make

sure you're there in your Bibles.

Um, and this passage, this passage is kind of long, but what it's got, it's got some

really, really, it's got a lot of weird stuff, a lot of really interesting stuff.

There's, there's a lot of.

Weird beliefs that come out of this passage, but I'm really excited

to talk about it with you because it helps us see what life is

really all about, and it helps us process all the things that happen.

I know, um, you guys might not think about this as much as maybe people

that are older than you, but, um, I was hanging out with my, with Shea's

grandma recently, and my, my grandpa, he lives close by and so we see him a lot.

And, um, something about I, I love hanging out with my grandparents,

but one thing about hanging out with them is it makes me really sad.

Because my grandmas are pretty old.

My grandpa is 96.

He's gonna be, or he's gonna be 90?

Yeah, he's gonna be 96 this year.

No, 97 this year.

He's born in 1929.

Um, and my Shea's grandma is, is like 86 or something, and something

that's really sad when I hang out with them, especially my grandpa.

Is I, I think about the person he used to be, right?

And the things he used to be able to do, like, um, when I was little, like

20 years ago and how active he was.

And now he, he is hard for him to remember things.

And when you hang out with older people, especially older people that are, that

are on their, on their way down, it's a, it's really sad because you realize that

life is filled with so much, so much stuff that just shouldn't be the way it's right.

Like people, there's a country song that.

Um, it's really sad, but it's, it's called, I Wish Grandpa's Never Died.

I don't know if you've ever heard that one before.

And it's a really sad song and it makes you realize, man, like

the world is messed up, right?

People get old people, people die.

Things happen that shouldn't happen, right?

Even sometimes people your age die, and that's even worse.

I was reading about a guy this week.

He had, um, 11 kids and 10 of them.

He lived a long time ago.

That's why he had so many kids.

But he, uh, had 11 kids and he outlived all of them.

Um, and 10 of them died while they were really young.

So he, he buried all 11 of his children and 10 of them died even, you know,

elementary school age or even younger.

And it's so sad.

And our, in our passage, we're gonna see that the Bible

doesn't just sugar coat life.

It doesn't tell you that life's gonna be easy and life's gonna be great.

And, and if you trust God, your life's gonna be perfect.

You're never gonna have any problems and nothing's ever gonna make you sad.

That's not how life really is.

Life in this world is hard, and life in this world has a lot of

problems, and, and the world is messed up and people are messed up.

You and I are messed up.

But what we're gonna see in this life is how to survive suffering.

How to survive all the bad things that happen, all the pain, all the sadness,

all the heartbreak in the world.

Okay?

We're gonna see how to, how to really survive and persevere and trust

God and, and enjoy life even in.

A world that is messed up and, and things don't go the way they're supposed to.

So, look with me, we're gonna start in verse 18 actually.

Okay?

We're gonna look at verse 18.

Romans eight 18.

So Paul, the guy writing this letter, he says, I consider, I'm thinking about,

um, that the sufferings, the hard things that happen of this present time, right?

While we're here on earth, they're not worth comparing.

With the glory that is to that is to be revealed to us.

So he's saying right now, there's suffering happening.

Right now there's pain happening, but one day there's gonna be this thing,

this, this glory, this awesome, this awesome reality, this awesome time

period that's going to be revealed to us.

We're gonna get there and we're gonna see it.

Right now we can't see it, but one day we're gonna see it and he's saying that

it's gonna be so good that it's gonna make this stuff seem not so bad anymore.

It's gonna give us a new perspective about all the bad things that happen, all the

the hard things that you're going through, all the bad things you see on the news

that your parents tell you about one day.

If you are God's child, like we talked about last week, if you're someone who

has the Holy Spirit living in you, who's living for God, and you are adopted

by God and you get to inherit what he's gonna give you as his child, you

will have, you'll get to be with this.

You'll have this amazing, glorious future and you won't.

Really feel so bad about all the things that seem like such a big deal anymore.

So really, our main idea tonight is I, I want you to put suffering in perspective

because right now, when we're alive on earth suffering, all the bad things

that happen feel like a huge deal.

Whether it's small suffering, like, oh, your pet dies.

It's really sad, right?

Or you, you something you really wanted, you really wanted to make the team, or

you really wanted to, to do this thing, and you didn't, you didn't get to go to

the concert or something happens, right?

Those little sufferings, but even big sufferings, right?

Big sufferings, like something someone you care about passes away or something really

sad happens in your family or something on the news happens and, and it's

really shocking and, and, and horrible.

What our passage is gonna help us do is have the right perspective

about all the bad things that happen.

It's gonna help us see what those things really are and what they're really like.

And it's gonna, we're gonna take 'em seriously, but they're

also not gonna overwhelm us like maybe they would otherwise.

Having the right perspective is really important.

I don't know if you've seen any of these things before.

Um, people draw stuff on the sidewalk and they paint stuff on the sidewalk.

So this is a painting on the ground, but if you look at it from the

right angle, it, it looks real.

And it, uh, pretty close, right?

It looks like, oh, they're standing over a, over a big hole in the ground.

Um, but obviously it's not true.

But when you look at it from the right angle, it looks like, whoa.

That's, that's really cool, right?

Or you see something like this, um, this is the same wall, but they

painted it to look like a train.

And so if you look at it from the right angle, it looks really

impressive and really awesome.

So your perspective really matters.

'cause this is what happens if you look at it from the wrong angle.

So this is what, what you're supposed to see it, and then if you see it from the

other side, it looks really weird, right?

Like the, the building is all messed up.

It is not proportional.

And because this is.

From the way it's supposed to be seen, it looks really cool.

The way it's sometimes seen from other angles doesn't

look that cool anymore, right?

It's all about where you're standing.

It's all about your perspective, and that's kind of like suffering, right?

If you're standing at the wrong angle, if you're looking at all

the bad things that happen in your life the wrong way, sometimes they

can be really big and overwhelming.

They can.

They can make people really sad.

They could make you really sad.

Sad enough maybe where you're even depressed or maybe you

even want to end your life.

There's really, there's things that if you look at your suffering at the wrong

angle, it can overwhelm you because you're suffering and your pain and all

the hardship becomes so big, right?

That's why nowadays people are more anxious than they've ever been.

People are more overwhelmed than they've ever been because I think

part of it is the way we look at the world is kind of messed up.

But if you look at it from God's perspective, you'll see it the way

you're supposed to see it, and it'll fit into everything that God is doing.

It's not gonna make 'em go away.

But it's gonna help you see it the right way.

It's not gonna be overwhelming anymore.

It's gonna help you to trust God and persevere, and that has a lot

to do with the Holy Spirit and what we've been talking about.

Okay, so we saw verse 18.

Let's back up a little bit and start in verses 16 and 17.

Okay.

We saw this last week, right?

The Holy Spirit.

He lives inside Christians, and what he does is he bears witness, he testifies

like someone in a courtroom, right with our spirit that we are children of God.

So the Holy Spirit, he.

Shows you, oh yeah, I'm a child of God.

How does he do that?

Well, we talked about this.

Remember, he gives you new desires.

He helps you kill sin, right?

The Holy Spirit changes you, and you start seeing, oh yeah, I, I am a child of God.

I am someone who loves God.

I have new desires.

I have new priorities.

I, I, I love God.

Now, I used to not do that.

So he shows you that you're a child of God, and if you're a child

of God, you're an heir, right?

That's what that word is.

You're an heir, which means you inherit something, right?

In the word heir or in the word inherit, you see the word heir, right?

Um.

You're an heir, you inherit something, right?

Like a lot of think about back in the day, um, especially if

you were like a prince, right?

I think of Lion King, right?

One day, you know, all the stuff, the light touches is gonna be yours, Simba,

except that dark spot over there, right?

Um, that's his inheritance.

He gets all this stuff one day when he grows up because of who his dad is.

If you're a Christian one day, you get a lot of stuff

because your dad is God, right?

Your father is God.

You've been adopted by him, and so you get to inherit best of all, you get him.

You're an He of God.

You get God, right?

We've talked about this before.

The best part about being a Christian is that you get God.

It's not that you get heaven, it's that you get God right?

You get to inherit God, and you are actually a fellow heir with Christ.

In the sense of Christ earned a spot in heaven for you, and he

earns your status as God's child.

So you get to be, and this is kind of weird, you, this sounds a little Mormon,

but you in a sense are Jesus's sibling because you've been adopted by God, and

so you get to inherit all the things that Jesus as God's son would inherit.

So you get to inherit the status of God's son just like Jesus did.

Now, you don't become God.

You don't become divine.

You don't get to do this amazing, you know, you don't get to to be God and

do miracles and stuff, but you get to inherit all the privileges of being

God's son and the Bible it talks about, you'll be able, and we can talk about

this more another time, but it talks about how you get to rule the world.

With Jesus, you reign with Christ.

If you are a Christian, you get these amazing privileges.

So what's happening here, right?

This is right before we talked about the suffering, right?

Verse 18 comes right after this.

And so what Paul is saying is he's saying, look, you're gonna

inherit all this amazing stuff, and hopefully what that does is that

puts your suffering in perspective.

Hopefully what it does for you is it shows you, you know what?

I'm temporarily suffering now, right?

Life is hard now.

There's bad things that happen, but one day where I'm going is so much better.

And so the first thing that you can do to put your suffering in perspective

is look forward to the future.

And that's point number one.

Look forward to the future.

Think about if you're a child of God, what does God have in store for me?

Imagine you are on your way to the most amazing vacation you

could ever think of, right?

Let's say, I don't know, let's say you're gonna Disneyland or you're

going somewhere really cool, um, that you've always wanted to go to, and

you get to be there for like months.

You don't just have to be there for like a day or two.

You get to be there for months.

You get to be there for maybe even a whole year.

You get to live there for a year.

It's gonna be awesome.

But the car ride is like 30 minutes and you have to double

buckle with your sibling.

You have to share the seat and share the seatbelt, and you're crammed in there.

And the air, air conditioning in the car doesn't work.

And they forgot to work to put on deodorant and it smells awful.

The worst 30 minute car you can ever think of, right?

And you're, you're hungry, you're tired.

It's horrible.

That's only 30 minutes though, right?

Those 30 minutes.

They're gonna stink literally, right?

But one, eventually, right after 30 minutes over, you're gonna reach your

vacation and you're gonna be there for months and it's gonna be awesome.

That's kinda like what we're talking about here, except instead, the

vacation's not gonna end, right?

The whole point is, yes, your life, there's gonna be hard things

that happen, there's gonna be really bad things that happen.

But if you're in Christ, if you're someone who trusts Jesus, if

you've been adopted by God, you.

Have this amazing future in store for you that is way better and way

longer and totally worth it, right?

You would definitely sign up for the 30 minute car ride if you knew,

oh yeah, I'm gonna have, you know, a 12 month vacation after this.

Of course I could do that.

Even when you're in the car and it's been 10 minutes and you're like, oh,

I still have 20 more minutes left.

How am I gonna do this?

And you want to complain?

Maybe be like, you know what?

I can do this.

I can make it.

You think?

Maybe you just think about, man, it's gonna be so great when I get there and

I finally get outta this car and I get to be there and do all the fun things

and ride all the rides and sleep in the fancy hotel and do all the cool stuff.

That's what God has in store for his children.

He has an amazing future in store for them.

And.

That is one way, one resource he gives you to look forward to, so you don't have

to, um, lose hope as you suffer right now.

Now, here's the thing.

If you're not a Christian, you shouldn't look forward to the future because this

is the best your life is ever gonna be.

If you're not a Christian, this is the best experience you'll ever

have is your 30 minute car ride.

Because you're gonna live forever under God's wrath.

You're gonna live forever apart from God's goodness, right?

This earth with all its problems is the closest you're ever gonna get

to heaven if you're not a Christian.

And so you don't have this future to look forward to.

And that's why so many people in our society gets so sad apart from God because

they realize, oh, this is the best.

This is the best I've got.

And then I, then I and their world be right, and then I disappear and I'm done.

And they think, man, this is all there is.

But if you're a child of God, right?

If you're a Christian, you have this amazing future to look forward to.

This is the worst your life is ever gonna be.

This 30 minute card is the worst your life is gonna be.

And then one day it's gonna be gone and you're, you're gonna be in this

with God, it's gonna be amazing.

This is the closest to hell you'll ever be.

You're a Christian.

This is the worst.

The worst things that can happen to you are temporary.

The best things that can happen to you last forever.

If you're not a Christian, the best things that happen to you last a little bit.

If you're not a Christian, if you're living for the world,

you're living for yourself.

The best things that happen to you are very short.

You get these great feelings from cool things you buy, or fun

things you do, but they go away.

And the worst feelings.

Are gonna last forever.

'cause you're gonna be apart from God's goodness.

So God gives us this, this great future to look forward to if you're in Christ and we

see that there's, there's a couple things that we see here that right you get God.

And I hope for you if, if you say you're a Christian, I hope that

inheriting God is the best part for you.

I hope that, that you don't want heaven and not God.

I hope that you'd be disappointed if you got to heaven and Jesus wasn't there.

Because that's basically saying, God, I'd rather have heaven than you.

I'd rather have your stuff than you, which we've talked about.

That's really just sin, right?

Sin is, God, I love you.

I love your stuff more than I love you.

That's what sin is.

So the the best part is that you get God, you get to be with God, but

also the fellow heirs with Christ.

Well, what does that mean?

You can, you can do some more study on this and we can talk

about this more, but, um.

For now, all we have time for really is the fact that Christ, he, he's

gonna king, he's gonna be the king.

He's gonna rule the world, and you get to reign along with him, which

is wild when you think about it.

It's crazy.

If you're a Christian, you will inherit the world, which hopefully helps you be

content and not worry about when you lose worldly status or worldly possessions.

Or if you lose money, you can say, well, one day with Jesus,

I'm gonna own everything.

It's not just, not just for me, right?

But I'm gonna own everything.

I can lose some stuff now.

That's okay.

And you inherit his, his honor, his status, right?

One part of being saved isn't just that, right?

The big part is you get your sin paid for and you get to, so you've got it.

Part of it is you just takes away your shame and he gives you his honor, right?

He, he takes away your, your dishonor and your.

Right.

You're, you're, if you think about like your bad reputation and he gives

you his good reputation, so God gives you things to look forward to, right?

He, he, to help you, um, endure the suffering.

'cause you realize these things last forever, right?

These things, being with God, that's gonna be forever.

No one can take that away from you.

No one, it's never gonna end.

It's never gonna get boring.

It's never gonna be disappointing, right?

You've ever been really excited about something and then.

It wasn't everything you wanted it to be.

We were really excited.

Oh, this thing's gonna be awesome.

It's gonna be great.

Maybe it was a concert.

You're like, oh, this person's gonna be so fun.

I'm gonna see them live.

They're gonna sound great.

And then you get to the concert and you have horrible seats, right?

There's no horrible seats in heaven.

It's not gonna let you down, right?

God is not gonna let you down.

It's gonna be actually better than you thought it was gonna be.

So that's one thing that God gives you.

He gives you himself, but he also gives you a bunch of stuff, right?

He, you get to inherit all that he has for you.

But what our passage also does is it shows us that suffering is real.

And it's not just, oh yeah, not a big deal.

Don't worry about it.

It says suffering is real.

And it actually explains that Christians will suffer, even if you

are God's child, you will suffer.

And you see that here at the end of verse 17.

We inherit this stuff, but provided.

That we suffer with him.

The way to heaven is a path of suffering.

That's what Jesus said.

Take up your cross and follow me.

Right?

He didn't say, take up your recliner and follow me.

He didn't say, take up your couch and follow me.

He didn't say, take up your, you know, your, your fancy hotel room and follow me.

He said, take up your cross.

You're gonna have to suffer to follow Jesus.

That's the pathway to being glorified with him to, to being in heaven with Jesus.

And so the Bible is very clear, very, very clear that life as a Christian is hard.

And so our second point, very simple.

Expect life to be hard.

The Bible wants you to expect the right things.

I don't know if you've ever, um, signed up for a class that you

thought was gonna be super easy.

And then it ended up being like really hard.

Um, this happened to me in, well, so I, I used to be really good at math.

Like in elementary school, middle school, I was like super good

at math and I was doing great.

And then progressively math got harder and harder for me.

And I remember when I got to high school, I was, I was in math class and

there was a point where I was just.

I am in way over my head here.

Like I, I had like a, I, I remember my mom asked me, she was like, do we need

to like pull you out of this class?

And for me, I was like, devastated.

'cause I was always like, good at school and all this stuff.

And I was, she, when she asked me that, I was like, heartbroken.

I was like, oh man, I'm such a failure.

Like I can't do this anymore.

Um, and the whole point is I had always expected math to be easy, so

I never learned how to study math.

I never had to as an elementary schooler, and so I never learned

how to actually like study math and learn it when it was hard.

And so then when it got hard, I was like, I don't know what to do.

I don't know how to do this.

I can't study, I don't know how this works.

And I was just like, I ended up actually repeating the class the next year,

my sophomore year, the junior year, I did the same math class my junior

year because I was so bad at it.

And I thought, man, math is gonna be easy for my whole life.

And so I never learned how to study it, and then I got smacked in the face.

In my math class in my sophomore year, and I had to redo it, the Bible.

And God doesn't want that to be you as a Christian.

He doesn't want you to become a Christian, be like, oh, my life's gonna be great.

I'm a Christian now.

Uh, all my problems are gonna go away.

I'm gonna get everything I want.

I'm gonna, maybe you think, oh, I'm gonna have all these great friends and

I'm gonna never have any problems and God's gonna help me with everything.

Everything's gonna be easy.

That's not what God wants you to think.

When you become a Christian, God doesn't want you to become a Christian and

then be like, oh wait, life is hard.

I didn't sign up for this.

God wants you to know what you're getting into.

Um, as a Christian, every Christian must suffer.

Every Christian goes through hard things.

That's part of being a Christian.

If you're a Christian and bad things happen to you, you shouldn't be like,

oh, no, where did this come from?

How did this happen?

You should expect those things to happen.

You should expect to have resistance as a Christian from the world, from yourself.

Your own emotions, your own desires should resist you.

If you're a Christian, there should be friction there and from, if

you're a Christian, you are signing up to be opposed by the devil.

We're gonna learn about this on Sunday, uh, with Pastor pj, but you're going

to see that if you're a Christian, you are putting on a jersey and now the

other team is gonna try to kill you.

The other team is gonna try to take you out.

Satan is going to try to take you out.

If you become a Christian, you should expect opposition as a Christian.

But also you should expect this world to let you down.

You should expect this world to be messed up.

We're gonna briefly just kind of look at some of these

verses here in verses 20 to 22.

I want you to see that words I highlighted in the red, they're not good words.

These are not fun, exciting, happy words.

So the creation, right?

All the world was subjected.

That's kinda like, um, when you subject someone to something, it's

like you put them through it, right?

Um, so the creation was put through futility, which means that.

Stuff isn't the way it's supposed to be.

Stuff lets you down.

Stuff isn't how it's supposed to be.

There's something that doesn't work how you want it to, right?

Futile.

It doesn't work.

It's not going the way it's supposed to work.

The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, right?

Creation didn't choose to be messed up, but because of him

who subjected it, that's God.

Remember Adam sinned.

God cursed not just.

People, but he cursed the ground.

Remember he said, Adam, you're gonna work really hard and there's gonna be

thorns and thistles, and it's gonna be really hard for you to do the things

you're supposed to do now because the world is gonna be messed up.

Right?

That's the reason that work is really hard.

Whether it's homework, whether it's real work, whether it's work in general,

it's, it's hard because the world is messed up, but he didn't subject it.

Just be like, all right, forget it.

I'm done with the world.

He, God did that in hope that the creation itself will be set free, so.

There's a, we're, we're in the, the down part of the rollercoaster,

but it's gonna get better, right?

It's going up pretty soon, but right now it's in bondage.

It's in slavery to corruption, right?

Things die.

The world does not get better and better and better, right?

The world gets worse and worse and worse things you have to

keep repairing things, right?

In the science classes called, um, entropy, right?

Um, things get worse.

That's how life goes Thing.

Like your shoes wear down.

Right.

Your car, you have to keep repairing it.

Your body as you get older, starts breaking down.

Things hurt, things are sore, things don't work the way they're supposed to, right?

You get sick.

So the creation is messed up and, but one day it's not going to be one day.

Um, we're gonna be free from, from that corruption and we're

gonna fully realize all the stuff that, that God has promised us.

In the meantime, we know the whole creation has been growing together

in the pains of childbirth until now.

So these are all bad things, right?

Futility, corruption, pain, right?

These are all hard things, right?

They're all things that aren't fun, that aren't enjoyable, right?

You can ask any of the moms in here.

This is not fun, right?

This is, this is very, very not fun, not enjoyable.

The world is messed up, right?

God wants you to expect the world to let you down.

This is actually a helpful warning for you not to put your hope in the world.

One of the reasons God tells us stuff like this is because he doesn't want

you to fall for the trap that says, Hey, this world is gonna be great.

You should want this forever.

He doesn't want you to fall for the trap that you should.

You should chase after the things that the world offers.

'cause what he's telling you is those things are gonna let you down.

Those things actually are gonna hurt you, right?

You can have the, the, even the best human friendships, right?

The best you could have, the best marriage, you could have the best

house, the best job, best career.

You could have your life on earth.

Go exactly the way you want it to, and it would still let you down and it would

still not be enough, and there would still be really bad things that happen, right?

People are still gonna die, people are still gonna get sick.

Things aren't gonna go the way you want them to go.

The world is messed up.

And part of that is God says, I don't.

He's saying that, 'cause I don't want you to fall for the trap that this

world is all you should live for.

He wants to take your hope and and put it somewhere else.

And that's the point is of all this bad stuff, he's also talking

about all the good stuff, right?

Verse 23, 1 day it's gonna be fixed.

Everything's gonna be fixed.

So that's the analogy of childbirth, right?

It's, it's hard.

There's just all this painful stuff that's happening, but one day it goes away and

you have this awesome kid that you love.

Hopefully, right?

So not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the first

fruits of the spirit, first fruits.

That's like, think like appetizer, you know, like the guy at

Hutchins who's standing outside with the free samples, right?

That's like this, right?

First fruits of the Holy Spirit.

So in a sense, right, first fruits of the spirit.

That's that's us.

We are the, the first signs of the new creation.

You ever think about that?

If you're a Christian, you're a new creation.

God has changed you.

He's given you new desires.

He's given you new priorities.

He's given you new heart.

That's kind of like the, the free samples at Hutchins of what he's gonna do.

'cause one day you're not just gonna have new desires, you're gonna

have completely perfect desires.

You're gonna always want the right things.

You're gonna always love to do what you should love to do.

You're gonna never have to.

Even resist sin.

'cause there won't be any sin in you to resist.

So, right.

It's like instead of having just the little piece of barbecue or a little piece

of brisket, right, you're gonna have the whole brisket when you get to heaven.

Right?

But in the meantime, the Holy Spirit in your life is evidence that one

day the rest of it's gonna happen.

Right.

And the rest of it's gonna be really good.

So the whole creation, the whole Earth along with us, we're waiting

for God to finish this one day.

Right?

He's given us the Holy Spirit, but one day he's gonna.

To fix everything.

The world's not gonna be messed up anymore, and so we're gonna fully

experience all this stuff, right?

Your, your body's gonna be perfect.

Your body's not gonna want to sin anymore.

Your body's not gonna let you down.

Your body's not gonna get hurt.

You're not gonna feel pain anymore.

You're not gonna have bad emotions, you're not gonna be anxious, you're not gonna

be angry, you're not gonna be impatient.

Everything's gonna be like it's supposed to be.

Even though you expect life to be hard one day, God is going to fix it.

And that's what we put our hope in, right?

We don't put our hope in this world.

We put our hope in God.

And that's our third point, is find hope while you wait.

So while you live the hard life of being a Christian, of following Jesus, of denying

yourself, taking up your cross, being opposed by the world, being opposed by

your flesh, being opposed by the devil.

God gives you what you need to be encouraged, to be joyful and to survive

really, to not be depressed, to not be anxious, to not be overwhelmed

by all the bad things that happen

verses 24 and 25.

Talk a lot about hope.

You see that word?

Hope a lot.

And when you receive hope in the Bible, I don't want you to think of

like, oh, I hope it rains tomorrow.

That's not the hope that we're talking about in the Bible.

Hope in the Bible is like confidence.

I want you to think of like confident assurance when I like, rather than saying,

oh, I hope it rains, of like, oh, I hope that Lewis finishes preaching this sermon.

Right?

You know it's gonna happen eventually, right?

You're confident Lewis is gonna stop preaching at some point, right?

So you're confident this is gonna happen rather than, oh, it might happen.

It might not.

So whenever you see hope, that's what you're trying to think of.

Alright.

It's like the difference.

Yeah, I already explained that.

I don't need to explain it more.

So, in a sense, hope is just future looking faith, right?

Hope is just faith that looks forward to something else that's gonna happen.

So it's not too different.

So what we need to do now, right?

To, to not be anxious or depressed or sad or angry about all the bad

things that happen is God gives us things to hope in things, to put our

trust in things, to, to latch onto, grab onto and say, you know what?

This is going like, God is gonna work this out.

God is going to keep me safe, right?

God is going to fix all the problems in the world.

And the first thing right is what we've been talking about is

that one day God is gonna fix it.

He gives us his word.

He gives us his promises that he is going to get rid of all the sin in the world.

All the bad things that have ever happened, he's there.

He's gonna stop him.

They're not gonna happen anymore.

Even things like natural disasters, right?

They're not gonna happen anymore.

People aren't gonna get sick anymore.

People aren't gonna be sad anymore.

People aren't gonna be impatient or gossip or, um, embarrass each other anymore.

God's gonna get rid of all of that.

He's gonna fix everything and it's gonna be the way it's supposed to be.

And then also, right, he gives you, like we talked about, that

inheritance you get to be with God.

You don't have to put your hope and your happiness in, in these short

term things to make you happy.

You can put your hope in God and you get to be with him forever.

So he gives you an incomparable reward, right?

He, he's, he's saying, don't worry about about these,

these little prize right here.

Focus on the grand prize, right?

You don't have to worry about the little stuff.

You can get the best thing, but also he gives us help and that's where we're gonna

finish right here at verses 26 and 27.

So we're hoping, right?

We're putting our confidence in God, but we're not very good at that.

Right some.

'cause sometimes we don't know what God wants us to do.

We don't know exactly how God wants us to live sometimes.

And sometimes we don't even know what we're supposed to pray for, or we

don't even have the ability maybe to do the things that we're gonna do.

And sometimes you're not sure, oh, is God really gonna work this out?

Right?

This really bad thing happened is, is God really gonna make this work?

Right?

Um, my best friend moved away.

Is that really gonna be, am I really gonna be okay?

Or, oh my, my parents are having a really hard time.

Are we gonna be okay?

Or this person I really cared about died or am I gonna be okay?

God gives us help to trust him and trust his plan in those situations,

and that help is actually a person.

It's the Holy Spirit that we've been talking about this whole time.

Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, right?

We're we're weak.

If you're a Christian, if you've been a Christian for any length of time,

you know that you're not able to do all the things that you wish you could do.

You're not able to trust God like you want to.

You're not able to.

Do all and obey God all the ways you want to.

You're not able, you can't even have the energy to do all the

things you'd want to do for God.

And hopefully you're, you know that because you actually want

to do those things, right?

If you're a Christian, the Holy Spirit gives you these new desires and you're

like, oh, I wanna do these things now.

I wanna do all these things for God, and I can't.

I want to kill all this sin in my life, and I can't kill all of it.

I can kill some of it.

I, I'm experiencing some victory, but I can't do all of it.

The Holy Spirit helps you, and one way he helps you is he helps you pray.

He helps you pray for the things that you're supposed to be praying for.

And that's what this is talking about.

The spirit himself intercedes, that's like someone interceding, um, talking

on behalf of someone else, right?

Like, imagine you were really scared of me and you're like, you know, um, Lewis

is really scary, but Shaa is really nice.

So I'll talk to Shaa and I'll ask Shaa to talk to Lewis for me.

Right?

That would be Shea interceding for me, right?

Or for you Anyway.

So the Holy Spirit, he helps us pray the things we wanna pray.

Right.

Sometimes you don't know what you wanna pray for.

You don't know how you're supposed to pray because you don't know what God's will is.

You're like, God, I'm not sure what you want to do.

I don't know where you want me to go to college.

I don't know if you want me to to date this person or not.

I don't know what you want me to do.

The Holy Spirit will help you ask God to do his will, right?

The Holy Spirit is there to help you know what God's will is and to help God.

To help you see, God is accomplishing His will in your life, right?

And that's what we see in verse 27, the Holy Spirit.

He knows your heart.

Oh God knows your heart, and, and God knows the Holy Spirit, because the

Holy Spirit is talking to God for you.

And he's making sure that everything is working out for God's will.

And that's what we'll see next week in verse 28, right?

All things work out for the will of God for those who love him, right?

You can trust that God is working all things, all these

bad things for a good purpose.

We talked about this at winter camp, right?

All the, the hard things that happen, all the things that don't make sense,

all the things that you're not sure God, are you really using this?

Are you really there?

Why would you let this happen?

The Holy Spirit can help you.

Trust God to know, you know what?

God is working this out for good, this really bad thing that happened, this

really sad thing, this really hard thing.

You can trust God.

He is given you the Holy Spirit to help you do it.

You say, God, I wanna trust you.

He says, I'll help you, which that's so awesome, right?

Because you don't know what God's will is all the time.

I don't know what God's will is all the time.

I don't know why God lets certain things happen and why

he doesn't do certain things.

I don't know why God doesn't save this person.

I don't know why God doesn't do this thing or that thing, but I can say, God,

I trust you and I want to trust you.

I know the Holy Spirit will help God help me, right?

And help me trust God.

So as you face all the bad things that happen, right as you, hard things happen

to you, sad things happen to you, I want you to remember that these things are

temporary, but life with God is forever.

And that in the meantime, before you get there, God will help you.

Trust him and help you rejoice even when bad things happen to you.

Okay?

Let's pray and we'll talk about that more in small groups.

Father, we are amazed that you, um, help us to follow you.

You don't just tell us to figure it out.

You don't just want us to try and, and see how we do.

Um, but you actively have.

Come into our lives through your spirit to help us live for

you if, if we really are saved.

And so I pray for the people in this room who are Christians who are

following you, that you would, um, help them to have, um, just deeper

trust in you, more confident assurance and your goodness, and your, your

sovereignty, your control over everything.

I pray for the people in this room who don't know you, who don't

have your Holy Spirit, I pray that you would, um, help them see that

this world will let them down.

Help them to turn away from the temporary things the world has to

offer them and embrace you to be their treasure and their joy forever.

We pray this in Jesus name.

Amen.