Living Hope Church

Pastor Phil Steiger: If you would turn with me, please, to Romans chapter 8. I promise you at some point we will get to Romans chapter 10 and that beautiful passage of scripture. But this morning we're in Romans chapter 8 and in a minute we're going to be reading through verses 23 through 25 to focus our attention on some of the things that are inside of that passage of scripture.

As we've been going through this particular section here in Romans chapter 8, we have watched how Paul has been expanding on how the glory of God is going to be revealed. The kind of glory that puts the suffering in this life to shame. Paul began this section by saying I have considered that the suffering of this world cannot be compared to the glory that will be revealed.

In order to make sense of the greatness of that glory, he pulled in the story of creation itself. It's not just something that happens within me or that I might feel from time to time, but it is literally a cosmic redemption that God is at work at. God's good creation was subjected to futility. We'll read some of this language again this morning.

But it was also subjected to futility in the hope of the salvation or the revealing, the redemption of the children of God. So creation groans for and anticipates God bringing his plan to completion. So as he raises the issue of creation, he now takes that same set of concepts and pulls it back into our lives as believers. Paul now is going to say that we also groan with eager expectation.

God's promises are true. So our hope in him is true and sure. Part of what has struck me this week as I've gone through this passage of scripture is this sense that the hope that we have been given actually shapes our lives. It's not just a feeling or an emotion we have somewhere rolling around in the back of our head that maybe something will happen in the future.

But the way that Christian hope works, it drives us, it shapes us, it gives us courage and faith in this life, meaning and grounding and purpose in the hope that we have been given. We know the pain of this world, we can recount that. But the Christian also knows the assurance of the goodness and the power of God.

Then again coming back to what is really the central theme of Romans chapter 8 is the presence and the work of the Holy Spirit inside of our lives. The Spirit is given to us as what Paul calls in this passage the first fruits of all that God will complete in his time. In our passage of scripture this morning, a couple of the thoughts that are going to help us make sense of things.

The first is the Spirit is the first fruit of God's promises. This idea of the Spirit as first fruits is a robust image inside of scripture. When scripture speaks of first fruits, it speaks of it in terms of what we owe God, what we owe the Lord, and then it turns into something that God has given us in his promises and in the presence and power of his Holy Spirit.

What we have been given with the empowering presence of God is literally just the beginning of all that God is going to unfold. So the Spirit is the first fruit of God's promises. Secondly, I hope this point makes sense to us this morning that hope in God will change your life. It will change your life, the way that it works.

We hope because God isn't done yet. Paul's going to say something interesting in this passage that the reason we have the kind of hope that we have is that we don't see it all yet. It's not all yet come to fruition and so this hope drives us, it propels us, it shapes us. Then we endure in that hope because we know, we absolutely know, and I use that word in the strongest sense possible, we know this is all true.

Everything that has happened, everything that has been given to us now, and everything that God has promised will happen. We endure, we are patient is the word that's used in this text. We are patient because we know that this is true. Let's read this passage of scripture beginning in Romans chapter 8, verse 23. Friends, this is the word of the Lord.

"And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience."

Creation is groaning, he has said. Creation is waiting for, anticipating the culmination of God's plan, the redemption of humanity and the things of God. He says, then it's not only creation, but it is us as well. We have this same tension, we have this same groaning and expectation. Creation we saw is this combination.

Right now, creation is this combination of the good glory of God and the decay of our sin. Autumn is good for my soul. I don't know about you, but we get to autumn, especially in the mountains, and we watch the colors begin to change, the weather changes, and there's something in my soul that goes, "Ah, this just feels right. This just feels good."

There's beauty inside of creation because God has put it there. He's put it there for us to see it and that it would then turn our eyes to him in his greatness, in his glory. But we also recount the brokenness of creation. So it itself is this combination of the good glory of God and the decay of sin. Even creation itself groans for God's work to be finalized. And so do we.

Paul says we groan inwardly and we eagerly expect or anticipate our adoption as the children of God and the redemption of our bodies. This is powerful language. These are the things at the core of what we believe in the promises that we have been given as the children of God. So when he says those things that we're longing for, the Spirit has been given to us as the first fruits of that, the first taste of these things that God is fulfilling.

This image of first fruits is a useful image inside of scripture. It is often used in scripture, in the Old Testament especially, and then it shows up in this unique way inside of the New Testament. In the Old Testament, the notion of first fruits is so important that there's actually a feast dedicated to it, the Feast of the First Fruits.

It happens in the spring and the idea is that the people of God, when they come to offer their sacrifices from the winter harvest, they bring the very first thing that they pulled out of the ground. They bring the best of their flock to God and they offer the first fruits of what they have to God in his temple as an act of worship.

The act of sacrifice in the Old Testament, the people of God are being taught that everything you have has been given to you by God. So an act of worship, an act of sacrifice, an act of devotion says that I'm going to take the very first of all that I've received from the land, the very first of the fruit of my labor, the best of my flock. I'm going to give it to God; it all belongs to him anyway.

This is my act of sacrifice and worship is literally the first fruit. There are times in the word of God, and I enjoy these conversations because of the way that they're developed. The book of Malachi has a conversation like this where God gets frustrated with his people because when they come and bring the sacrifices, they're not bringing the first fruit.

They've saved that for themselves; they're going to breed those rams and those sheep; they're not going to give them to God. If I've got a little bit of my wheat left over from my field, I'm going to bring that. So God says, "You have dishonored my sacrifice." It's a conversation there in the book of Malachi and the priests go, "How in the world have we dishonored you?"

He said, "Because you have brought me every lame and blind and useless animal you have. You wouldn't use those animals; you wouldn't give those animals to your political governor in tribute, yet for some reason you think the last and worst that you have belongs to me." God says you've dishonored me by doing that. We're being taught that it's just the opposite.

Everything I have is a gift from God. It comes from his abundance in creation, the abundance of his goodness and grace inside of my life. So then when I turn around in my act of sacrifice, it needs to be the best of what I have as well. God says give me the best as a pledge, as a reminder to you that everything you have has been given to you by me in the first place.

So now when the Holy Spirit is given to us as the first fruits, it is God giving us this pledge. The third member of the Trinity indwells his people and his church as God's empowering presence as a pledge that everything that I have said will come to pass. Everything I said I will give you, I have given you and I will give you.

So the Spirit as the first fruits is God's seal. It is literally in scripture his guarantee of what he will give his children and is giving his children. So the Spirit is his guarantee of all that is to come. Paul uses that language in 2nd Corinthians chapter 1, verses 21 and 22. He says this, "And it is God who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our hearts as a guarantee."

It is this stamp, it is this presence that all that God has promised will in fact come true. We can't pass over this incredible fact that God has actually put his Spirit inside of the lives of his children. The Holy Spirit is not in... the King James language was Holy Ghost. So even growing up as a little kid reading "Holy Ghost, Holy Ghost," that puts a certain image in your brain.

You know, he's just sort of floating out there somewhere, you don't really see him, it's kind of mysterious. He's not floating out there somewhere doing something we can't quite really put our finger on. The Spirit of God, as Paul said, dwells in you, Christian, and is alive inside of you, is the very presence of God drawing you to God himself, teaching you about Jesus, convicting you of sin, bringing you into conformity in the fruit of the Spirit.

The Spirit of God is inside of us, God himself with us. It's incredible that the Christian is the temple of the Holy Spirit, that God has put this taste of his promises, this taste even of heaven itself inside of the lives of his children. This made me think of this passage of scripture from the book of Ecclesiastes.

Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verse 11, part of that verse says this, "He," meaning God, "has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into your heart." Every human heart in fact longs for God. That is why we are so good at creating God's substitutes, because we have this innate hardwired sense by God himself to be drawn for him.

He's put the desire for these things, and so the way Paul puts it in this passage is that you and I groan inwardly. We still wait for the completion of these things. We want more of God. We need more of God. We groan in this eager expectation for the promises of God to be fulfilled.

So we eagerly anticipate, he says, our adoption as the children of God and the redemption of our bodies. We have been adopted by God and we will find our final and complete adoption by God when we see him face to face. We have received our redemption and we will receive our full redemption and salvation when we see God face to face.

This is part of something that we've discussed as we go from Romans chapter 7 into Romans chapter 8, is this truth about the way the kingdom of God works. We said the kingdom of God is here now, but the kingdom of God in its fullness has not yet come to pass. So we talk in terms of the now and the not yet.

We have been given these things, but we still live inside of these bodies and inside of this world. So the kingdom of God is here now, but there's coming a day when God's going to put all of this right and we're going to see him face to face. So this is this tension that we feel and oftentimes scripture will talk in those terms that we will receive our salvation.

Well, if I'm a child of God, aren't I saved? Yes. Will I receive salvation? Yes, because there's more to come. Listen to how the book of Hebrews puts this. In Hebrews chapter 9, verses 27 and 28, the text says this, "And just as is appointed for man to die once and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly awaiting for him."

So Christ is coming again and he will complete the salvation of his children. We will be saved from these mortal bodies and broken creation and we will find the redemption of our bodies. We talked about this, the glorified body, the immortal body, in the new heavens and the new earth. We will be saved. Yeah, I'm saved now, but someday the child of God is going to be saved, right?

If you're listening to this in audio, it's going to be hard to get the emphasis on that one. Our adoption as children, the redemption of our bodies, the resurrection of these bodies. We are embodied souls now; this is how God has created us. That's how we will be with him for all of eternity as well.

Because of Christ, all of this groaning in creation and in us as well will come to an end and our expectation, our hope, will come to fruition. This beautiful chapter in 1st Corinthians, 1st Corinthians chapter 15, the Apostle Paul talks about the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the truth of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, how we know it is true that he physically rose from the dead.

Then he talks about the consequences of that, how that plays out inside of our lives and he finishes that glorious chapter with this kind of crescendo, this exclamation of glory and anticipation. So at the end of that chapter in 1st Corinthians chapter 15, he says this, "When the perishable puts on the imperishable and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?"

"The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." This is an incredible thing that the Christian, the believer, is able to say even while we still groan. We feel the pain of death. We know the pain of loss. We know what that is like.

But then we look at the resurrection of Jesus Christ. When we put our hope in the things that are true, we can say with the Apostle Paul, "In the end, death, you're done." That sting, that pain will be gone forever because God has taken what is mortal and perishable and he's made it immortal, imperishable. It's beautiful. This is part of our hope.

The Apostle Paul says, "For it is in this hope that we were saved." This hope of our salvation, this gives us a wonderful opportunity to spend some time reflecting on what it means to have hope as a Christian. This groaning for what is yet to come, the promises of God that are both now and not yet. Paul says we were saved in this hope and this hope will come true.

This hope that all of this groaning is going to come to an end. This hope that our bodies really will be resurrected in eternity with God. This hope that our souls and our bodies will be in God and his glory forever in this unmediated relationship with the God who created us. "I will be with their God and they will be with me," right?

He says in the book of Jeremiah, part of that promise is that no longer will anyone have to teach his neighbor about me because everyone will just know me. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. This hope that our sin is forgiven and that we are sons and daughters of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the King of Heaven and Earth and all things.

The salvation of the Christian is full of this kind of hope. The hope in the things that God has done and God has given and that God has promised. This reminds me of some of the things that are at the very beginning of this book, set the stage for everything that the Apostle Paul is trying to talk about in this book.

In Romans 1, verses 16 and 17, he said this, "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written: the righteous shall live by faith." I know these things are true.

I've traveled the world spreading the gospel of Jesus and it is the power of salvation to everyone who believes. It's this beautiful unique power that belongs to the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is the makeup of our hope. Paul says we continue to hope. "Who hopes for what he sees?" What he means by that is when it all comes to fruition, when we are there, the hope has actually come.

If you think about hoping for Christmas Day to show up, on December 25th at noon, nobody says, "Man, I hope Christmas comes." Because Christmas is there; you're there; you're in it; it's the middle of the day. But you hope for the kids hope for it to come and inevitably it always shows up. So Paul says that's where we are now, is in this hopeful anticipation for all of these things to come true.

But there's coming a day when with your own eyes you will see it all and there's no hope left there because it is all there and true. It's incredible. Christian hope, we tend to use the word hope in really light and easy ways. The word of God treats Christian hope in a different kind of fashion.

I want to think about it like this: Christian hope is not wishful thinking; it is confident expectation. It is confident expectation. The strength of your hope as a Christian does not rely in you, in your emotional state, in your capacity to maintain your devotional life. It doesn't rely on all that you can do in order to make things happen.

Your hope relies in God himself. So we put our hope in God. We don't put our hope in our ability to make things happen. That isn't the kind of Christian hope that we're talking about here. Hope in God himself and the confident expectation that all of this is true. The Greek word elpis literally means confident expectation.

I know this is going to happen. Hope as wishful thinking is not the kind of thing that we are talking about here. Wishful thinking, that notion of hope often is some sort of desire or even simplistic desire that things are going to turn out the way that we want them to. We squint, we cross our fingers, we sort of bear down and go, "Man, I really hope the Rockies can win a game next season."

That is simplistic unrealistic expectation, right? I hope and we use the word hope like that. "I hope I can do well on my next test." Well, that relies on my desire and my capacity and my study skills and maybe I will, maybe I won't. Maybe I'm going to be asked a question I just didn't study for at all. All of this is hope that may or may not come true.

That's wishful thinking. That's not what we're talking about. Our salvation is in this hope, this confident expectation of who God is, what he has said, and all he will do. This is hope that is based on what we know is true, what we're convinced is true. That means that we're able to hang on to it even in pain and struggle.

A few years ago, Heather and I were at dinner with some friends and we were talking about the Christian life and the conversation sort of turned around to these moments in life where it's difficult to live the Christian faith. It was in the context of, you know, there are these times when God gives us these kind of very real spiritual experiences, these mountaintop experiences.

Our emotions are truly wrapped up in it, something unique and spiritual has truly happened to us. If that kind of thing has happened to you, you know that those moments kind of give you some encouragement and strength and you kind of keep moving on. But in that conversation, the question was, well, what do you do when it's been a long time since if you haven't felt something like that happen?

So in that conversation as we were talking, just about everybody around that table could recount one of those events in their past where, "Man, I know I felt it in a unique way; something interesting and unique and spiritual happened at this point and it has stuck with me and it's been good for me." Part of what I mentioned at that table was this: "If I can be honest," I said, "it's been a very long time since something like that has happened to me."

"But I am so convinced that all of this is true that I endure. I don't do what I do because God gives me some sort of unique spiritual encounter every Friday afternoon and suddenly the sermon is magically dropped in my lap." Some of you think that happens. Some of you think God missed it this week; he just missed it this week. But we endure because we know it's true.

God will give us his grace from time to time in unique ways. He really does do that. But friends, when push comes to shove, when the furnace begins to burn, do you know this is true? Is your hope on him? Is your hope firm in God himself? You may be thinking of this passage in the book of Hebrews.

Hebrews chapter 11, often called the Hall of Faith. That entire chapter recounts a bunch of stories from the Old Testament, some that we know and some that are just mentioned by the author with names of people we don't know. The people who by faith endured for God, did the things that God told them, commanded them, promised to them.

In Hebrews 11, verse 1, it just begins like this: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." That chapter is going to repeat the phrase over and over again: "By faith, by faith, by faith, by faith they did this." But he begins by saying this: the grounding, the bedrock, the foundation is the hope.

Faith is the assurance, faith is the conviction. I know these things to be true, so now my trust in God, my confidence in God, my willingness to believe that what he has told me to do is right and good, that faith becomes the evidence of everything I know to be true. Our lives, our belief, our actions become the conviction, the evidence that all that we hope for is true.

Our trust in God is not an emotion; it is our firm grasp on reality itself. Our minds are convinced that what God said is true and we know it to be as true as anything else we believe to be true. We also know that it's not just that, but it's the story of an all-powerful, truly, purely good God who will bring all of cosmic history and human history into his plan and he will save your soul.

This is hope. Paul finishes this passage by saying if we hope for what we do not see, which is where we are now, we do not grasp, we're not in the middle of that fullness of the glory of God yet, he said we wait for it with patience. That word patience here is also translated throughout the New Testament as the word endurance.

We wait for it enduring, waiting for it to come to pass. The Greek word for endurance, hypomone, it literally means steadfastness. This word here for patience, steadfastness, endurance, someone who is not swayed from their purpose. Again, often when we read a word like patience, we're tempted to think, "Well, that's what you do when you sit down and twiddle your thumbs and wait for stuff to happen."

Now sometimes that's how we act out our patience; there's nothing else we can do so we just kind of wait for things to happen. Biblical patience, this kind of patience, this kind of endurance is active. It actually propels our lives. It changes our priorities. It changes the direction of our lives from time to time because we are waiting for the fulfillment of all that we hope for and we know is true.

That now becomes the shape of this life. Our hope placed in the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ will change the way we live. It will change the way we live. This is important for the Christian because the world is full of false hopes, full of false hopes. The world is full of people who will sell you false hope all day long.

Hope is a very powerful trait inside of the human heart. It is a powerful tool. It is a powerful emotion. So when people want to get you to do something they want you to do, it is very easy for them to push that button. "I can bring all of your hopes and dreams true." I'm going to push that. If the human heart is not grounded in Jesus Christ, it is easy to make this kind of equation.

Something inside of me needs everything fixed. Something inside of me needs justice to be done. Something inside of me needs all the things that I see that are wrong made right. This person, this program, this whatever it is, promises to do all of that for me, they will fulfill all of my hopes and so I'm in.

In the moment a human being can give you false hope and we buy into that, they can make us do anything they want us to do. Then inevitably when those hopes fall apart, and sometimes they fall apart in spectacular, horrible, and bloody fashion, guess who gets blamed? We get blamed. You get blamed. "Well, they're not at fault; you didn't do your job."

This is not how hope in Jesus Christ works. You see, the gospel is true and truth grounds our hopes and shapes our patient endurance. It is God who will bring it to pass. It is God who will reshape this world. It is God who is redeeming creation. It is God who is redeeming the lives of his children. It is God who's pulling everything into himself inevitably.

As I thought about how it is that hope, especially hope in Christ, shapes our lives, changes our lives, there were several stories and individuals in scripture that just kind of came to the surface for me. As we read their stories and how they play out, we watch how hope in God turned them into the people that they became inside of the word of God.

The first actually comes at the end of Hebrews chapter 11 and I want to make this point here: our hope outlasts whatever this life brings. It will outlast whatever this life brings. The things that we hope for in God, we may or may not see all of them come to pass or all of them come to fruition. But as the story of the word of God gives it to us, that's okay.

Because there are people in the word of God, there are people that we know in our lives and our past who have courageously and faithfully given their lives to Jesus Christ and they died not seeing the complete fulfillment, but they died as faithful, enduring, courageous followers of Jesus Christ. And they won. They won. The word of God says this kind of thing for us.

Hebrews chapter 11, verses 39 and 40, after this whole list of the Hall of Faith and those who by faith did the things that God told them to do, at the very end it says this in Hebrews 11:39 and 40, "All these were approved through their faith, but they did not receive what was promised. Since God has provided something better for us, so that they would not be made perfect without us."

God is still bringing these things to fruition. We are still in the middle of that story. We are still in the story of "by faith" are we walking in patient endurance with God. We're still inside of this story. So the hope of the Christian outlasts whatever this life brings. We see this also in the word of God.

Christian hope enables us to do great things in spite of overwhelming odds. That might feel a little bit trite to some of us, but it is powerfully evident inside of the word of God. I was thinking about the life of Esther in the Old Testament. This young lady who is a Jew living in Persia, so they're living as this marginal society inside of another culture altogether.

She finds herself inside of the King's palace, and as she is inside of the King's palace, this beautiful young lady, her essentially uncle discovers this plot that's been worked in the background where the Jews are actually all going to lose their lives and the King without knowing it has given his approval to it.

And there's really only one person who can actually get the ear of the King and change things. But Esther knows as well that if I just walk into the court of the King and he doesn't ask for me first, I could lose my life. But her uncle Mordecai is telling her, "You're the only one who can do this."

And so here is this critical conversation in the book of Esther that changes everything for the people of God. There's a phrase in here, if you know one phrase from the book of Esther, this is where that phrase comes from. In Esther chapter 4, the conversation goes like this: "Then Mordecai told them to reply to Esther: Do not think to yourself that in the King's palace you will escape any more than all of the other Jews."

"They will kill you too, Esther. For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place. God will still accomplish his purpose. But you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" Then Esther told them to reply to Mordecai: "Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, the capital city, and hold a fast on my behalf."

"Pray for me. And do not eat or drink for three days, night or day. I and my young women will also fast as you do. Then I will go to the King, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish." Someone has to stand up. Someone has to do what is right right now. Esther, you're the only one who can do it.

Don't think that if you sort of slip into the background that you're going to escape too. They will kill you too. You have no place of privilege that will save you from the evil that is rising around us. Will you stand up and do what is right, even if it means your life? You get that speech and Esther goes, "Okay. But here's what I need. I need you guys praying for me. We're going to pray. And then I'm going to go in three days and we're going to see what happens."

Is God's promise to maintain his people on earth forever going to be held up? Mordecai says, "Yes, it will." And Esther says, "Okay, I'm going to be a part of that now." You see, the grounding of our hope in what is true can actually cause us to do things, give us reason to do things that otherwise we simply would not have it within us to do.

But if we ground ourselves this way in the hope of God, what else is possible? What else is possible? Another character that struck me, I want to think about him like this: our hope in God creates a supreme peace about life until it all comes true. I was thinking about the character of Daniel, and I love this guy in the Old Testament.

Daniel is taken as a slave in exile when he's probably in his teens, and by the time that book ends, there's a good chance that Daniel's in his 80s. He's been around for a very long time. He has seen it all come and go. And he and his friends have shown extreme courage in the face of death itself throughout this book.

Daniel in the second half of the book has all of these incredible visions that God keeps giving him about the rising and falling of nations and empires through the ages until God himself will finally come, put an end to all of that, and God's final and eternal kingdom will come. This mountain that is not shaped by human hands is going to rise and is going to cover all of creation.

So Daniel has seen it all in visions with God. He gets to the end of the book of Daniel in chapter 12 and this angel is still conversing with Daniel. What kind of life is it when you can keep saying, "Well, so then the angel told me this and then the angel told me that." So here he is at the end of this book and this angel is saying, "This is going to happen, this is going to happen, and this is going to happen and then the end is going to come."

Daniel's wrestling with that. Even with everything he's seen, even with the life that he has lived, he's still wrestling with that. So as the book ends, we get this conversation between Daniel and this angel who's been revealing these things to him. In Daniel chapter 12, verses 8 and 9, and then at the very end in verse 13, the conversation goes like this: "I heard, but I did not understand."

"Then I said: O my Lord, what shall be the outcome of these things? And he said: Go your way, Daniel, for the words are shut up and sealed until the time of the end. But go your way till the end and you shall rest and shall stand in your allotted place at the end of the days." I long to see these things fulfilled.

I see the brutality of the empires that I have lived through. I've watched my people brought into slavery. I have seen the promise of God that the kingdom will come and all of this will be put right and evil will be gotten rid of. When will this happen? And the angel says, "Be at peace, Daniel. It's okay. You're going to reach the end of your life and you'll be brought into your allotted place. You will be with us."

And God in his sovereignty will bring all of this into fruition. If I learn to put my hope in Jesus Christ and the truth of his word and all that he has given us, come what may, no matter what it is that we see, we are given the opportunity to just be at peace until the day comes. Isn't that beautiful? We can be at peace until the day comes.

Then I thought about this guy and I have to end with this guy because this one is the most brutal to talk about. Our hope in God means that even in the darkest moment we can hold fast to the promises of God. Some of the most powerful examples in scripture are of those who genuinely suffer in this life and are still able, through all of their groaning and travailing and conversing with God and back and forth and hearing from friends and being confused about why things happen, who in the end can say, "No matter what, I know I will see my God."

This is the story of Job with all of its complexity, with all of its difficulty. And there's probably coming a day when we will actually go through the book of Job. I'm not making any promises. If God is good, he will come before that day shows up. But Job at the very beginning, you see the word of God says that Job is a righteous man. It says it a few times at the beginning of the book, he's a righteous man.

And yet his life falls apart. And the vast majority of that book is Job and three friends who wrestle with what that means. Right in the middle of that story, long before it's resolved by the way, we get this conversation as Job every now and then breaks in and he sort of reveals his heart, his desire to know God and wisdom, and he says this in Job chapter 19.

And the first half of it is ironic because the first half, it's all come true. "O that my words were written! O that they were inscribed in a book! O that with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in rock forever! For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me."

We groan, eagerly anticipating the redemption of the sons and daughters of God. And I know, I know that I will see him with my very eyes. Do you know that? Do you know that? Let's pray.