Waiting takes many different shapes. Waiting for the Indiana Jones movie…waiting on the plane with SkyMall…waiting in the doctors office…
Wait and its derivatives occur about 35 times in the New Testament, but there’s a nice cluster here in Romans 8. The only three times it occurs in this book are right here in this chapter.
John Mayer’s “Waiting on the World to Change” (view Sunday’s version here) is essentially a defeatist approach to revolution and redemption.
Read Romans 8:18-22, here we see something different. We see that the world is in fact waiting on us. This is the picture of the song “Wait Upon the Lord.”
1. The world waits (18-22)
a. Look at the world it’s in pain. There are wars ravaging African and Asian nations. There are famines in Myanmar and in Ethiopia. There are earthquakes in China. These are birth pains.
b. Jesus says in Matthew 24:6-8, “And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places: all this is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”
c. If we understand this shouldn’t we have a better solution than government?
d. The church waits sometimes with a near-sighted hope on several levels:
i. Global level – We have bought into the lie that the true power lies in government, not in the Holy Spirit.
ii. Local level – Transition, new personalities at our church.
iii. Personal level – We wait to get serious about Jesus until we’re a little bit older.
iv. We need to stop waiting on the world because the world is waiting on us!
2. The church hopes (23-25)
a. The world may wait, wait defeated, as a bystander watching a crime helpless to stop it. The church hopes. Notice the change in the language. Before creation, that is the natural created order, waits for what for us!
b. The world is waiting for you and the world is waiting for me. Because the world was solely made for you and for me, for the sons and daughters of God. When we are not who we are supposed to be creation can not either.
c. Waiting is waiting, hope here means confident expectation. Confident that God who has started this work inside of us will be faithful to complete it! Confident that these birth pains are not in vain! Birth pains signal birth and they give hope. They fill us with expectation.
3. God works (26-31)
a. Our role is minimal really, the world may wait and we hope, but God works. Even prayer is an initiative by God.
b. God-sized hope/God-sighted hope (8:28-30)
i. Jeremiah 31:31-34
ii. “A large family” (8:29)
iii. “Desires everyone to be saved” (1 Timothy 2:4)
c. Listen to what Paul says here in verse 29-30: God foreknew you, God knew you before you knew him. Knowing that he called you to himself. He loved you enough to not have you remain the same, but decided that you should become like his son Jesus. He called you and since you couldn’t come to him, he came to you and justified you. It wasn’t enough to save you, he wants to glorify you…making you eternally like Jesus.
d. Access information about the ministry of Scott and Kathi Parish and Asian Access here.
Conclusion -
“The world is waiting for you to become like Christ.”
So what are you waiting for? God has already given you the victory…Romans 8:31, “What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us?”
