Latest / Reformed Thinking / Saved in Hope: Waiting with Patient Endurance for Promised Glory (Romans 8:24–25)
Transcript
- 0:00Welcome to Reform Thinking. You know, living in the year
- 0:032026 presents a massive, a really massive psychological
- 0:08challenge for the Christian. It really does.
- 0:10Yeah, because we exist in a society that is fundamentally
- 0:13allergic to waiting. Just think about the rhythm of
- 0:16your day right now. You are completely surrounded by
- 0:19high speed connectivity. Oh.
- 0:21Absolutely you can. I mean you can order a
- 0:23specialized product from across the globe and have a drone drop
- 0:26it on your porch before you even finish dinner.
- 0:28We are conditioned by instant digital validation.
- 0:30We post a thought and expect immediate likes, comments, and
- 0:34shares. Right.
- 0:35And if a web page takes 3 seconds to load, well, we lose
- 0:37our minds. We really do.
- 0:39We stare at our phones and if those 3 little typing bubbles
- 0:41from a friend suddenly disappear, a wave of actual
- 0:45panic sets in. It is a severe reaction.
- 0:47We live in a culture drowning in clinical anxiety, mostly because
- 0:51it demands visible security and immediate gratification.
- 0:54Right now, everything in our environment trains us to believe
- 0:57that delay is a defect. It trains us to hate the waiting
- 1:00room. Spot on.
- 1:02So as we begin this deep dive, I want to invite you to consider a
- 1:06radical proposition. What if the agonizing wait for
- 1:09relief in your life is not a sign of God's neglect?
- 1:13What if that dark, uncomfortable waiting room is the precise
- 1:16environment where true faith actually breathes?
- 1:19That is the core thesis we are examining today.
- 1:21Grasping it requires a massive shift in how you view reality.
- 1:26Our goal for this deep dive is to look at the severe tension
- 1:29every Christian feels. It is that tension between
- 1:32possessing salvation right now as an objective fact and waiting
- 1:35for its full, visible completion.
- 1:37Right, because salvation is intrinsically tied to an unseen
- 1:40hope. Yes, a concept firmly rooted in
- 1:42the sovereign decrees of God. You cannot decouple the
- 1:45Christian life from this unseen reality without completely
- 1:48losing the Gospel. And to accomplish this mission,
- 1:50we brought a stack of theological treatises to the
- 1:53table today. Specifically, we are looking at
- 1:55rigorous expositions of Romans 8.2425.
- 1:59Those sources unpack the grammar, the historical context,
- 2:02and the theological weight of what it means to be saved in
- 2:04hope. But before we get to the actual
- 2:07text, we have to recognize that the Apostle Paul did not write
- 2:10this letter in a vacuum. To grasp why he wrote about
- 2:13unseen hope, we first have to look at the crushing, visible
- 2:16reality his original audience faced.
- 2:19Well, we are looking at the city of Rome in 8057 under the reign
- 2:23of the Emperor Nero. The original recipients of this
- 2:26letter lived in the epicenter of the Pax Romana.
- 2:29The Roman peace. Right.
- 2:31They were completely surrounded by colossal architecture,
- 2:34military triumphs, and the pervasive cult of the emperor.
- 2:38The Roman Empire was a culture that worshipped visible strength
- 2:41and immediate conquest. Everything about their society
- 2:44was designed to project invincibility to the naked eye.
- 2:47Yes, if you walk the streets of Rome, you would see the Palatine
- 2:50Hill looming over you, covered in the massive tangible wealth
- 2:53of the Emperor. You would smell the incense
- 2:56burning on Pagan altars. Wow, just a complete sensory
- 2:58overload. Exactly.
- 3:00You would hear the absolute roar of the crowds as the legions
- 3:03returned with the spoils of war, parading through the streets.
- 3:07The entire apparatus of the state was designed to convince
- 3:10you that Caesar was the undisputed Lord of the earth.
- 3:13And then in stark contrast to all of that visible, undeniable
- 3:17might you have the Christian Church in Rome.
- 3:20They were a marginalized, often persecuted minority.
- 3:24Gathering in small damp house churches or underground, Yeah.
- 3:28And the glorious Kingdom they proclaimed was entirely
- 3:31invisible. They had no temples, no military
- 3:34might, no political influence, and 0 societal standing.
- 3:37None at all. The Pagan neighbors of these
- 3:39early Christians could look at the Palatine Hill and see the
- 3:42undeniable proof of the Emperors rule, and then they looked at
- 3:45the Christians who claimed to worship the true King of the
- 3:47universe, yet possess 0 visible proof of that kingship in their
- 3:51daily circumstances. Because their king had been
- 3:54executed on a Roman cross. Right.
- 3:56The promised glory of the church was completely unseen.
- 3:58That is the intense high stakes environment where Paul drops
- 4:02this theological anchor. It is a striking contrast.
- 4:06The early Christians were asking the same questions you might ask
- 4:08today when you look at the wealth and ease of the secular
- 4:11world compared to your own struggles.
- 4:13Yeah, that tension is so real. Romans 8.2425 operates as a
- 4:18massive structural bridge within the letter to answer that
- 4:21specific tension. In chapters 3 through 5, Paul
- 4:24establishes the legal declaration of justification.
- 4:27Which is the bedrock truth that sinners are declared righteous
- 4:30before God by grace alone through faith alone.
- 4:33With the righteousness of Christ imputed to their account, yes.
- 4:36Then, at the end of chapter 8 and verses 28 to 39, he lays out
- 4:41the unbreakable chain of final glorification, culminating in
- 4:45the promise that absolutely nothing can separate you from
- 4:47the love. Of God and verses 24 and 25 sit
- 4:50right between those two monumental realities.
- 4:52They do. Paul is explaining how you live
- 4:54in the gap between the past verdict of justification and the
- 4:58future realization of glorification.
- 5:00And that gap is defined by a specific tension, which
- 5:04theologians call the already, not yet.
- 5:06You're already justified, but you are not yet glorified.
- 5:10Our sources highlight a threefold groaning that Paul
- 5:13describes in the verses leading up to our main text.
- 5:16He says that creation groans, believers groan, and the Holy
- 5:19Spirit groans. Right, I was reading one of our
- 5:22sources and came up with an analogy to help picture this
- 5:25tension. Imagine you are standing inside
- 5:28a dilapidated, leaking house. The roof is caving in, the wind
- 5:32is howling through the broken windows, the floorboards are
- 5:35rotting and you are shivering in the bitter cold.
- 5:38That sounds miserable. It is, but in your hand you are
- 5:40holding the ironclad notarized deed to a flawless billion
- 5:44dollar mansion. The D is real, The inheritance
- 5:47is legally yours. The transaction has cleared.
- 5:50It is guaranteed. But you are still standing in
- 5:52the leaking house. Yes, and you still feel the
- 5:54freezing rain hitting your face. That analogy captures the
- 5:57tension Florida State having the legal deed does not stop the
- 6:00rain from falling on your shoulders today.
- 6:03In verse 23, Paul says the believers possess the first
- 6:05fruits of the Spirit. Which people often
- 6:08misunderstand. Very much so.
- 6:10A common misunderstanding in the modern church is the assumption
- 6:14that the Holy Spirit's presence should numb the believer to the
- 6:17pain of the fall. There is this expectation that
- 6:20if you have the Spirit, you should float above the miseries
- 6:24of life in a bubble of perpetual blitz.
- 6:26Like some kind of spiritual anesthetic.
- 6:28Exactly. But the text argues the precise
- 6:31opposite. Having the first fruits of the
- 6:34Spirit actually intensifies the ache.
- 6:36The more grace you taste, the more you yearn for the physical
- 6:39redemption of the body. Because the contrast becomes so
- 6:42obvious. Right, you groan, because the
- 6:44Holy Spirit has awakened your dead heart to recognize how
- 6:47broken this fallen world truly is.
- 6:49Before you were regenerated, you were perfectly content living in
- 6:52the leaky house. You thought the mud and the rain
- 6:54were normal. Yes, but now, because the Spirit
- 6:57has given you a taste of the coming Kingdom, the current
- 7:00state of decay is agonizing. I was looking at the Greek text
- 7:03in the treatises and this brings up a massive grammatical point.
- 7:07Because if the believer's current experience is filled
- 7:09with sickness, decay and groaning, well, if you were
- 7:13looking at your life and all you see is a leaking roof, how do
- 7:16you know the deed in your hand is actually legitimate?
- 7:19That is the logical next question.
- 7:21On what legal basis do you possess any hope at all?
- 7:25Paul answers this by using a very specific verb he writes for
- 7:27in this hope we were saved. In the original Greek, we were
- 7:31saved as a single word isthelman.
- 7:33Yes, it is an arost passive indicative verb.
- 7:36And the theological weight carried by that grammatical
- 7:39parsing is absolutely massive. The aorist tense denotes a
- 7:42completed historical action in the past.
- 7:45It means your salvation is a finished event.
- 7:48It is not an ongoing project. That is correct, and we must
- 7:51unpack the rest of that grammatical parsing.
- 7:53The passive voice means that the action was done to you.
- 7:57You did not save yourself. You are the passive recipient of
- 8:00an action entirely performed by God.
- 8:02And the indicative mood means this is a statement of objective
- 8:07historical fact. It is not a hypothetical
- 8:10scenario or a wish. This grammatical reality ties
- 8:14directly to the Westminster Confessions teaching on
- 8:16effectual calling and justification.
- 8:18Which is a core Protestant doctrine.
- 8:21Reformed theology insists that salvation is monarchistic.
- 8:24Monarchism means one worker. God is the sole active agent in
- 8:29raising the spiritually dead Sinner to life.
- 8:31He does all the heavy lifting. He does the only lifting.
- 8:34Salvation is not a progressive state based on human merit, nor
- 8:38is it a conditional offer that you maintain by your own
- 8:40strength. It is a sovereign decree enacted
- 8:43by God, applied to you entirely by His grace.
- 8:46OK, but look. I have to stop right here and
- 8:48ask the question that every listener is feeling right now.
- 8:50If God did 100% of the work in the past and it's completely
- 8:53finished, well, why do I feel like such a mess right now?
- 8:55It is a fair question. If my justification is a done
- 8:58deal, why am I still dealing with crippling anxiety?
- 9:02Why hasn't God fixed my physical ailments?
- 9:05Why is there still cancer and divorce and severe financial
- 9:08ruin in the lives of justified believers?
- 9:11If I am fully saved, why does my life look so utterly unsaved?
- 9:15Sometimes it feels like a massive contradiction.
- 9:18That is the critical question of the Christian life.
- 9:22Answering it requires us to distinguish between the legal
- 9:25reality of justification and the future consummation of
- 9:28glorification. The delay of your physical
- 9:30glorification does not invalidate the legal verdict of
- 9:34your justification. So the paperwork is settled even
- 9:37if the house isn't built. Yet exactly you feel unfinished
- 9:40because your physical body and your surrounding environment are
- 9:42still subject to the curse of the Fall, even though your soul
- 9:45has been regenerated and your legal standing before God has
- 9:48been permanently settled. This grammatical reality, as
- 9:51Song of the Men We Were saved, completely refutes the severe
- 9:55errors of Arminianism and Roman Catholicism.
- 9:57Let's expand on that, because those systems treat salvation
- 10:00very differently. They do.
- 10:02In the Roman Catholic system, as defined by the Council of Trent,
- 10:05justification is viewed as a progressive state.
- 10:08They teach the grace is infused into you and you must cooperate
- 10:12with that grace to become actually inherently righteous.
- 10:15It's a cooperative effort in their view, yes.
- 10:18If you commit a mortal sin, or if you fail to maintain that
- 10:21state of grace through the sacraments in your own merit,
- 10:23you lose your justification. Arminianism operates on a
- 10:27similar conditional framework, where your final salvation
- 10:30depends on your free will, choosing to persevere to the
- 10:33end. So in both views it relies on
- 10:35you. Precisely both of those systems
- 10:38make salvation conditional on your present performance, your
- 10:41moral cooperation, or your visible state of grace.
- 10:44They teach that if you are suffering heavily or battling
- 10:46sin, your status before God is in jeopardy.
- 10:49Which is terrifying. It is, but Paul uses the aorist
- 10:53passive indicative. To declare that you're standing
- 10:55before God is an unalterable historical fact.
- 10:59Your current suffering, your physical weakness, and even your
- 11:03daily battles with remaining sin have absolutely no bearing on
- 11:07the validity of your past justification.
- 11:09You are completely secure even while you are groaning.
- 11:12But wait, if my salvation is already a finished legal fact,
- 11:16then my hope for the future can't just be wishing on a star.
- 11:19We have to completely strip down and rebuild what the word hope
- 11:23even means in this context. We do because the modern
- 11:25definition is flawed. Because the way people use the
- 11:28word hope today is pure uncertainty.
- 11:30Someone says I hope my team wins the championship or I hope the
- 11:33traffic is light on my way to work.
- 11:35It is just a projection of a desire with 0 guarantee of
- 11:39fulfillment. It is a fragile emotion based on
- 11:41circumstances we cannot control. The ancient Greco Roman world
- 11:45viewed hope in a very similar, albeit more cynical light.
- 11:49Historical writers like Hesiod viewed Hope Elpis in the Greek
- 11:52as a deceptive illusion, like a trick.
- 11:54Yes, if you look at the myth, the Pandora's Box, after all the
- 11:58evils are unleashed upon humanity, the only thing left
- 12:01inside the box is hope. For the Pagan mind, hope was
- 12:05just a coping mechanism, a naive dream that blinded you to the
- 12:09harsh realities of fate. Wow, that is incredibly bleak.
- 12:12It was considered the final trick played on humanity by the
- 12:15gods to keep them toiling in misery.
- 12:18But Paul radically redefines Elpis for the Christian biblical
- 12:22hope is not wishful thinking. It is a blood bought certainty.
- 12:26It is the sphere in which our salvation operates.
- 12:29Paul lays out an ironclad logic in verse 24.
- 12:32He says hope that is seen is not hope for.
- 12:34Who hopes for what he sees? Let's break that down because it
- 12:37is brilliant if you can see it. You do not hope for.
- 12:39It it becomes a matter of sight, not hope, right?
- 12:41Therefore, the absolute absence of visible fulfilment is the
- 12:44exact prerequisite for hope to exist.
- 12:47Think about waiting for the sun to rise.
- 12:49You don't hope the sun is shining at noon when you can
- 12:51feel the heat on your face and see the light in the sky.
- 12:54No, you already possess it. You hope for the dawn when it is
- 12:57pitch black outside. You hope in the dark precisely
- 13:00because you know the mechanics of the solar system guarantee
- 13:02the sun's arrival. The darkness is the necessary
- 13:06condition for your hope to be exercised.
- 13:09If there is no darkness, there is no hope.
- 13:11If there is no delay, there is no faith.
- 13:14This raises an urgent warning for you, the listener.
- 13:17You must guard against the spiritual confusion of demanding
- 13:20that God justify himself to your 5 senses.
- 13:23We fall into that trap so easily.
- 13:25We do. We are physical creatures, and
- 13:27we naturally want physical proof.
- 13:29When we are hurting, we want God to show up and fix the immediate
- 13:32problem so we can see his goodness.
- 13:34But Paul is teaching that what is unseen, the glorified body,
- 13:37the renewed cosmos, the visible return of Christ, is far more
- 13:41permanent than what is seen. The visible things are actually
- 13:43temporary. Yes, the things you can see
- 13:45right now are decay, illness, persecution, economic collapse,
- 13:50and political instability. The visible world is passing
- 13:53away. To base your assurance on what
- 13:56you can see is to build your house on shifting sand.
- 13:59You must judge reality by the objective promises of God's
- 14:02Word, not by the temporary appearances of this fallen age.
- 14:06Which is incredibly hard because everything you just said goes
- 14:09against our natural human instincts.
- 14:11We hate this unseen waiting period.
- 14:13We absolutely despise the dark. When my Internet goes down for 5
- 14:16minutes, my blood pressure spikes.
- 14:18We all feel that panic. And this causes a severe
- 14:20collision between God's law and the human heart.
- 14:23We are faced with the reality of waiting and our immediate
- 14:26reaction is rebellion. We must apply a strict law
- 14:28gospel distinction here to understand that rebellion, the
- 14:31law, acts as a mirror, exposing our innate refusal to trust God
- 14:35in the dark. It shows us what is really
- 14:37inside us, yes. When you feel the crushing
- 14:40weight of impatience, the law is revealing your idolatrous demand
- 14:44for immediate sensory gratification.
- 14:47Impatience is not just a minor personality flaw, it is a
- 14:50violation of the first commandment.
- 14:51That is a heavy thought. It is an idolatrous demand that
- 14:55God operate on your timeline. It exposes our murmuring against
- 15:00God's Providence. We want the crown without the
- 15:02cross. We want the resurrection without
- 15:04the crucifixion. We want the benefits of the
- 15:07Kingdom without the trial of waiting for the King.
- 15:09We want all the glory with none of the groaning.
- 15:12Exactly. The law condemns this impatience
- 15:15as a failure to trust the goodness and sovereignty of God.
- 15:19It shows us that we want to be the sovereign rulers of our own
- 15:22lives. And the law leaves us entirely
- 15:24condemned in that impatience. If our salvation depended on our
- 15:27ability to wait patiently without complaining, well, we
- 15:30would all be damned. So we have to pivot to the
- 15:31gospel. The gospel provides the remedy.
- 15:34The Gospel announces that Christ perfectly waited upon the Father
- 15:38during his earthly ministry. Jesus endured the ultimate
- 15:40affliction. He suffered the agony of the
- 15:43garden, sweating drops of blood as he anticipated the wrath of
- 15:46God. He endured the horrors of the
- 15:48cross, trusting entirely in the unseen joy set before.
- 15:51Him, he modeled perfect endurance.
- 15:53Yes, and His active obedience in perfectly keeping the law,
- 15:57including the law of perfect patience, and His passive
- 16:00obedience and suffering the wrath of God, provides the
- 16:03flawless righteousness that we lack.
- 16:06When God looks at the justified believer, He does not see your
- 16:09frantic pacing or your angry complaints.
- 16:12He sees the perfect patient endurance of Jesus Christ
- 16:15imputed to you. Because Christ has fulfilled the
- 16:18law on your behalf, you are now free to wait.
- 16:22The burden of earning your salvation through perfect
- 16:25patience has been lifted. But we need to define what that
- 16:28waiting actually looks like in practice.
- 16:30It's not just sitting around. No, it is highly active.
- 16:33Paul uses the Greek word hypo money, which is often translated
- 16:36as patience or endurance. This word is a compound of hypo
- 16:40meaning under and Manu meaning to remain.
- 16:43It literally means to remain under.
- 16:44To remain under a heavy load, it makes me think of the Roman
- 16:47soldiers Paul would have seen every day.
- 16:49They had a battle formation called the Testudo, or the
- 16:52Tortoise, where they would lock their Shields together over
- 16:54their heads to block a barrage of incoming arrows.
- 16:57A brilliant defensive maneuver. Right.
- 16:59They had to stay under that heavy shield wall.
- 17:01If one man broke rank or dropped his shield because his arms were
- 17:04tired, the whole unit was vulnerable.
- 17:07Hypomonia is not sitting in a waiting room reading a magazine
- 17:10while you casually wait for your name to be.
- 17:11Oh, it is far more demanding. It is the militant muscular
- 17:15stance of a soldier staying under a crushing load without
- 17:18buckling. It is holding the line when the
- 17:20enemy is advancing. That is an excellent
- 17:23illustration, but this race is a vital point of distinction.
- 17:27How does a believer actually stay under that load without
- 17:30just resorting to a secular stoic grit?
- 17:33Yeah. How is this different from a
- 17:35secular mindset of, you know, just puff it out, pull yourself
- 17:38up by your bootstraps and don't let them see you cry?
- 17:40Because Stoicism is just another form of self-reliance, and it
- 17:43eventually breaks. Stoicism is just pride masking
- 17:46itself as endurance. The difference for the Christian
- 17:49is the Holy Spirit and the objective promises of God.
- 17:52Right? In Reformed theology we refer to
- 17:54the third use of the law. The law no longer condemns the
- 17:57justified believer because Christ took the condemnation,
- 18:01but it now acts as a guide for Christian living.
- 18:03It gives us the path to walk on, yes.
- 18:06The believer is fueled by the Holy Spirit toward grateful
- 18:09obedience. The waiting we are called to is
- 18:12highly active. It is filled with prayer,
- 18:14corporate worship, the reading of the Word, and the fierce
- 18:17pursuit of holiness. You aren't just enduring
- 18:20passively. Not at all.
- 18:21You stay under the load by actively engaging the means of
- 18:24grace, knowing that the strength to endure comes from the Spirit
- 18:28of Christ dwelling within you, not from your own natural
- 18:31willpower. You endure because you are
- 18:34tethered to something outside of yourself.
- 18:36And we cannot sustain this muscular steadfastness by
- 18:40staring at our own willpower. Our eyes must lock onto a
- 18:44specific historical anchor. There is no free floating
- 18:47generic optimism in Romans 8. Paul does not say just keep your
- 18:50chin up, things will get better. There would be useless advice.
- 18:53It really would hope is grounded objectively in the finished work
- 18:56of Jesus. Romans 8 starts with the
- 18:58definitive declaration. There is therefore now no
- 19:01condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
- 19:04Because there is no condemnation, the future is a
- 19:06promised inheritance. It is secure.
- 19:08Right. It is not a realm of terror or
- 19:11judgement. Christ is the objective ground
- 19:13of our hope because He absorbed the wrath we deserved.
- 19:17Christ is the ground of our hope, but he's also the
- 19:20guarantee of our hope. Paul refers to Christ as the
- 19:23first fruits. We need to understand the
- 19:26agrarian context of that term. The farming context, right?
- 19:28Yes. In the ancient world, the first
- 19:31fruits were the initial crop harvested.
- 19:34When a farmer brought in the first sheaf of grain, it was not
- 19:37just a symbol, it was the physical guarantee that the rest
- 19:39of the massive harvest was coming.
- 19:41The proof of what is next? Exactly.
- 19:43The first fruits and the final harvest are of the exact same
- 19:46nature. Christ's physical, historical
- 19:48resurrection from the dead is the absolute proof that the
- 19:51grave will lose its grip on you. The empty tomb outside Jerusalem
- 19:55is God's unalterable receipt of purchase.
- 19:58It is the guarantee that your physical body will also be
- 20:00raised from the dead, free from corruption.
- 20:03So Christ is the ground and He is the guarantee.
- 20:06But the sources also point out that He is the goal.
- 20:09Christ is not just the ticket to a better location.
- 20:11He is the destination. Yeah, heaven is not just a place
- 20:15with streets of gold where you get to play golf all day without
- 20:17any back pain. That is a cartoonish Pagan view
- 20:21of the afterlife. Conformity to Christ is a
- 20:24supreme treasure of heaven. To understand this goal, we look
- 20:28to the threefold office of Christ as defined in our
- 20:31Reformed Confessions. He operates as prophet, priest
- 20:34and king and these offices are actively functioning right now
- 20:38in your waiting period. Tell us how that works today.
- 20:41As prophet, Christ speaks the authoritative word of truth
- 20:44against the relentless lies of our anxious culture.
- 20:47When your own mind is lying to you, telling you that God has
- 20:50abandoned you, the prophetic word of Christ cuts through that
- 20:53darkness with objective truth. We need that truth so
- 20:56desperately. We do as priest.
- 20:58He continually intercedes for the groaning believer.
- 21:01He is at the right hand of the Father, applying in the merits
- 21:03of His blood, praying for you when you are too weak to pray
- 21:06for yourself. His intercession changes your
- 21:08daily standing before the Father.
- 21:10It is a constant mediation. Yes, and as King, He sovereignly
- 21:14rules over every single detail of this cursed creation.
- 21:18All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him.
- 21:21He is orchestrating your trials. You're waiting and you're
- 21:24groaning for your ultimate sanctification.
- 21:27Therefore, you're conformity to Him, submitting to His prophetic
- 21:30word, resting in His priestly intercession, and obeying His
- 21:34kingly rule is the ultimate goal of your salvation.
- 21:37This biblical call to wait patiently for an unseen king
- 21:40stands in violent opposition to the loudest voices in the modern
- 21:44church and secular culture. Let's speak directly to the
- 21:46reality of the year 2026. It is a harsh reality.
- 21:49It is we mentioned earlier that we are conditioned by instant
- 21:52digital validation. We have an allergic reaction to
- 21:55delay. When we don't get immediate
- 21:56visible security, we panic. And what happens when a culture
- 22:00terrified of waiting infects the church?
- 22:02You get the massive theological disasters of the prosperity
- 22:05gospel and over realized eschatology.
- 22:07Disasters is the right word. These are not just varying
- 22:10opinions. They are false gospels.
- 22:12They are heresies that demand God materialize unseen glory
- 22:17into immediate health, wealth, and emotional ecstasy.
- 22:20Right now, the prosperity preacher looks at the
- 22:23congregation and says if you have enough faith, God will cure
- 22:26your cancer today, He will fix your marriage tomorrow, and He
- 22:29will make you rich by Friday. Just writing checks God never
- 22:32promised to cash. Exactly.
- 22:34This movement attempts to turn the not yet of the future into
- 22:38the already of the present. They take the promises of
- 22:40glorification and demand them in the state of justification.
- 22:44And doing that is pastoral malpractice.
- 22:46It is literally destroying people's faith.
- 22:48It is lethal. It teaches suffers that their
- 22:50physical pain or financial struggle is a result of a lack
- 22:54of faith. It places a crushing burden on
- 22:56the weak. Blaming the victim.
- 22:58Yes, if you are sick, it must be because you didn't believe hard
- 23:01enough. It redefines the normal sphere
- 23:04of Christian waiting as a spiritual failure.
- 23:07But Paul tells us the groaning is the necessary consequence of
- 23:10possessing the Spirit in a fallen world.
- 23:13To tell a groaning Christian that their pain is a sign of
- 23:16weak faith is demonic. It robs them of the very comfort
- 23:20Paul is trying to provide in Romans 8.
- 23:22This demand for the immediate also shows up in secret
- 23:25sensitive pragmatism. We see a modern evangelical
- 23:28trend of trying to manufacture sensory driven worship
- 23:31experiences. Which is incredibly common now.
- 23:33Yeah, churches use concert lighting.
- 23:35Massive subwoofers, lasers, and fog machines to manipulate the
- 23:38room so people can feel God. They measure the success of a
- 23:42service by how intense the visible emotional reaction is.
- 23:45If people are crying and raising their hands during the bridge of
- 23:48a song, the service was a success.
- 23:50If they are quietly reflecting on the word, the service was
- 23:53considered dead. Measuring divine blessing by
- 23:55visible success or emotional highs is a highly dangerous form
- 24:00of spiritual pragmatism. It trains the believer to judge
- 24:04their standing before God based on their shifting moods or the
- 24:08production value of a Sunday service.
- 24:10It makes faith entirely subjective, yes.
- 24:13Believers must judge their standing by the objective
- 24:16promises of the Covenant. Your feelings will betray you.
- 24:20The fog machine will run out of fluid.
- 24:22The emotional high will completely fade by Monday
- 24:24morning, when you have to go back to a hostile workplace or
- 24:26deal with a rebellious child. The real world hits hard.
- 24:29It does, but the objective decree of your justification
- 24:33remains. You must tether your hope to the
- 24:35unchangeable word, not your fluctuating sensory experience.
- 24:39Which is why this massive theological weight isn't meant
- 24:42to be carried alone in a private spiritual vacuum.
- 24:45Paul wrote the book of Romans to a church.
- 24:47He didn't write it to an isolated individual sitting
- 24:50alone in a forest trying to muster up hope.
- 24:52Believers are commanded to build a congregational culture of
- 24:55hope. A healthy Reformed Church builds
- 24:57a culture that allows the weak to groan without shame.
- 24:59That is so rare today. It is, but it is necessary.
- 25:04When a brother or sister is suffering under the crushing
- 25:07weight of illness or grief, the congregation does not shame them
- 25:11for lacking faith. We do not throw shallow
- 25:13platitudes at them. Instead, the corporate body
- 25:17holds up the certainty of the resurrection for the weary.
- 25:20We hold the line for them. Yes, we carry one another's
- 25:23burdens. We weep with those who weep
- 25:26while simultaneously pointing them to the empty tomb.
- 25:29We read the word over them when they're too tired to read it
- 25:31themselves. And God gives us something
- 25:33tangible to help us in our weakness.
- 25:36While we wait for the physical return of the King, God provides
- 25:39a physical sign to sustain our weak faith, The sacraments.
- 25:43We aren't just left with abstract thoughts.
- 25:45We are given physical elements. We specifically look to the
- 25:48Lord's Table as Protestants adhering to the Westminster
- 25:51Confession. We believe the sacraments are
- 25:53the visible word. God accommodating our frame.
- 25:56Yes, God knows we are embodied creatures who struggle to trust
- 26:00what we cannot see. He knows that when you are
- 26:03exhausted, your intellect often fails you.
- 26:06So He has given us the bread and the cup.
- 26:08When you participate in the Lord's Supper, you are receiving
- 26:11a physical sign and seal of the covenant of grace.
- 26:14You can actually taste it. Exactly.
- 26:16The Holy Spirit uses the physical act of tasting the
- 26:19bread and drinking the wine to nourish your soul for the not
- 26:22yet. It bridges the gap between our
- 26:24current groaning in the pews and our future glorification at the
- 26:28marriage supper of the Lamb. It is God's accommodation to our
- 26:31weakness, giving us something to taste and see that the Lord is
- 26:34good even as we wait for the final consummation.
- 26:37It is a brilliant comfort. The physical elements bypass our
- 26:40intellectual doubts and anchor as to the historical reality of
- 26:44Christ's broken body and shed blood.
- 26:46Let's summarize the core points of our deep dive today.
- 26:49Salvation is an accomplished legal fact.
- 26:52It is finished in the past by the monarchistic work of God.
- 26:55Therefore, groaning in the present is completely normal.
- 26:59It is expected. Right.
- 27:00True hope actually requires the absence of sight.
- 27:03If you can see it, you aren't hoping for it.
- 27:05The darkness is the prerequisite for faith.
- 27:08And finally, Christ's historical resurrection guarantees your
- 27:11future physical resurrection. You are saved in an unseen hope,
- 27:16and you are called to a muscular steadfastness, staying under the
- 27:19load until the King returns. As we conclude, I want to leave
- 27:23you with a thought to chew on regarding the modern digital
- 27:26world we inhabit in 2026. Think about the massive amounts
- 27:29of energy you spend curating perfected, flawless avatars of
- 27:33yourself online. It is exhausting.
- 27:36We use filters, we edit our photos, We carefully select what
- 27:38we post to hide our flaws. It is a digital attempt to
- 27:42possess the glorified body. Right now, we want an image of
- 27:45ourselves that is free from aging, decay, weakness and
- 27:48failure. But that digital glory is a
- 27:50ghost. It is a counterfeit.
- 27:52It provides 0 actual comfort when the real storms of life
- 27:55hit. It's an illusion that vanishes
- 27:57the moment you turn off your screen.
- 27:58It is a cheap substitute for what God has actually promised
- 28:01you. The challenge for you today is
- 28:03to stop trying to manufacture a counterfeit visible glory today.
- 28:07Stop exhausting yourself trying to curate an illusion of
- 28:11perfection in a fallen world. Allow yourself to be weak.
- 28:14Allow yourself to groan and instead of looking for immediate
- 28:17gratification, rest your full weight on the physical upcoming
- 28:21resurrection guaranteed by the empty tomb of Jesus Christ.
- 28:25The unseen glory that is coming is far more real than the
- 28:28digital facade you can see on your phone.
- 28:30When you break your arm. The X-ray shows the jagged line
- 28:33and the doctor says, there it is.
- 28:34We want things to be that visible.
- 28:36We want our salvation to be that visible right now.
- 28:38We want an X-ray of our soul to prove we are secure.
- 28:41But God has called you to wait in the dark, trusting the
- 28:43ironclad deed you hold in your hand.
- 28:46Thank you for joining us for this deep dive on Reformed
- 28:48thinking. Keep resting in the unseen hope.