Exposition by Max A Forsythe
Christ Covenant Reformed (PCA)
In
1857, there was a general revolt among the Indian troops who served the British
Rajh.
Atrocities on both sides were common in this struggle for the East Indian
Empire.
All over the Bengal Presidency of Northern India, British garrisons and
residency bureaucrats were either slaughtered or besieged in their command
centers.
The compound at Cawnpore held almost 800 British citizens, who were
forced to surrender.
They were hacked to death; only four survivors lived to report the story.
Such were the expectations of many servants of the Queen in those months
of the Sepoy Mutiny.
In another residency, at Lucknow, the besieged held their position and
prayed for deliverance for almost five months.
Their situation appeared hopeless; the crowd of soldiers, servants and
families expected the worst.
Towards
the end, when their powers of resistance were the lowest, the people were
startled by a wild, unearthly scream.
It came from a corporal’s wife, who had fainted from a fever.
She became giddy with happiness as she asked the others if they had not
heard it?
She fell to her knees and thanked God with a passionate fervor for the
sound that had awakened her.
No one else heard a sound over the roar of cannon and rattle of the
muskets.
The mad girl went around to the batteries, asking: "Dinna ye hear
it? dinna
ye hear it?”
The guns of the residency fell silent; every ear was poised to pick up
the strange sound that Jessie Brown claimed to hear!
Nothing was heard.
But everyone wanted to believe that deliverance was near.
Finally, faint and far away, over the noise of battle, came the shrill
notes of "Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot,"
played as only Scottish
pipers could play them.
Throughout the whole residency three thousand souls fell to their knees
to thank the God of heaven for their relief which had finally arrived.
There was still fighting to be done, and many miles to walk, but they
were safe.
In
a similar sense, Christ's own church finds itself surrounded in an increasingly
pagan culture.
And any Christian who dares to proclaim that Jesus is indeed coming again
is considered, like the corporal's wife in our story, to be mad with some
sickness.
We have to remember that, like that red- headed lassie whose ears were
tuned to hear familiar sounds, our own ears are tuned by the Holy Spirit to hear
of God's grace, His providence and the promise of eternal life in heaven.
But the promise has not yet been completely fulfilled.
And we are waiting for relief.
Christ's church has been waiting now almost two thousand years and the
hope of some has become fretful.
Is He coming?
When will he come?
To those questions we can only proclaim our blessed hope.
We hope for something we do not yet have, but our hope will not be in
vain.
Our patience and suffering will be rewarded in the Lord's own time.
In fact, our present sufferings are but a prelude to glory, as Paul
explains in our passage today.
There
in verse eighteen is our hope pointed out: "I consider that our present
sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in
us."
The word "consider" in the Greek is an accounting word.
In this comparison Paul urges us to believe that the sum total of our
sufferings is so inconsequential when compared to the coming glory that it is
not worth considering!
And yet we so often miss the point.
I
remember a Jacques Cousteau diving program where survivors of a sunken World War
One hospital ship were gathered at the site to view the monitors and to describe
the night of many decades ago.
An elderly nurse kindly asked if the divers would retrieve her alarm
clock that she had left behind sixty years before.
All the trouble, all the expense of exploring an old wreck, and she
wanted her alarm clock!
Are we guilty of such a misplaced perspective when we compare our
sufferings with the promised glory that will be revealed in us when Jesus comes
again?
Paul
urges us to consider that even creation itself waits eagerly for the promised
revelation.
He also points out that creation is frustrated, not by its own choice,
but by the fall of man.
Remember the passage in Genesis 3:17:
"Cursed is the ground because
of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life."
This is where creation was affected.
It is still affected to this day.
But this subjection was made in the hope of relief.
God has determined that the present condition of creation is not to be
its permanent condition.
When redemption is complete, there will be no more curse. There will be a
new heaven and a new earth.
And creation will shine out in its proper splendor, telling out the glory
of God in a way which far surpasses that of our present creation.
For the coming of that great day all of creation groans.
I
remember well the night of an ice storm one February long ago.
As the ice built up on the twigs and limbs, I could hear not only the
tinkle of ice covered branches brushing one another, but also the groans of the
greater limbs as they labored to bear up under their load.
Every few minutes, like the snap of lightning, a limb or branch would
give way and thrash end over end down to the ground.
The ice covered twigs would crash on contact like a crystal chandelier.
It was a long wait for the morning sun to melt the damaging ice.
Again,
several years ago during a drought, the grasses dried up due to a lack of
moisture.
The hay fields failed and other crops barely went to seed.
The last week of the drought I noticed the brittle leaves of our trees.
You know, they were all cupped like little hands praying for rain!
Then the rains came and God's favorite green colors quickly reappeared.
If
nature can react to ice and drought, we ought to take Paul seriously here when
he says that all nature looks forward in hope to that great day when Christ
shall come and all things will be made new.
But Paul goes on in verse twenty-three to detail for us our own reaction
as we hope for glory.
What we have going on here is the fact that, in our conversion and
sanctification experiences, it is not the present suffering upon which we should
focus.
Rather, we should focus upon our adoption as sons and daughters of God.
And this adoption will lead us to eternal glory.
But until then, there are sighs of dissatisfaction and incompleteness.
Have
you ever sat in a Dentist's office, hoping the experience would soon be over?
Do you equally well have your heart set on Christ's coming again in
glory?
I firmly believe, as individuals progress in the sanctification process
of being prepared for glory, that each one consciously begins to realize that
there is a better life to be hoped for.
Paul argues that it is in this hope we are being saved.
But how can we hope for something we do not know?
We discover our answer in verse twenty-six.
The Spirit of God helps us in our weakness!
Even as we grope for words, images and thoughts to understand the meaning
of our passage today, the Holy Spirit intercedes to make it understandable.
Will
you listen, will you hear?
If for some reason all that we have said today does not make any sense,
will you pray to our Father that the Holy Spirit will make His word
comprehensible?
Please remember that, in my own poor way, I am but a shadow of the
heroine there at Lucknow in 1857.
The world would consider me mad as the Hatter in Alice in Wonderland.
All I can do is to come before you and to proclaim that, yes, relief is
on the way; that I can indeed hear the pipes of the Holy Spirit --
not because I have good hearing, but because my ears have been tuned to
hear His grace.
How audacious for me, for you and for all the saints of God to make such
a rash claim.
Were it not for the clear teaching of passages in Scripture such as verse
sixteen before us in Romans eight, how would we dare to proclaim such a
doctrine?
For
many centuries, the grand old organs, large and small, used in practically every
church, have needed to be fine-tuned by master craftsmen.
In our day and age more and more of these finely honed masters are
needing different work, as the instruments they love are more and more being
replaced by electronic equipment.
Instrumentally, it is the passing of an age older than the Reformation.
Resources Used: The Holy Bible, New International Version
Places Preached:Barclay, William. Daily Study Bible: The Letter to the Romans. Background notes only! Bruce, F.F. Tyndale New Testament Commentaries: Romans. MacLaren, Alexander. St Paul's Epistle to the Romans. Olyott, Stuart. The Gospel as it Really is. Pauck, Wilhelm. Library of Christian Classics: Luther: Lectures on Romans.
Christ Covenant REFORMED (Presbyterian Church in America) 24 June 90 Post Office Box 13926 - Columbus, OH 43213-7926
Rom08d.htm 01 October 95
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