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I. IN WHAT RESPECTS THE CREATURES ARE SAID TO GROAN, for many of them are properly incapable of groaning.

1. The sensible part of creation really groans, each after its kind (Joel 1:18).

2. The whole creation appears in a mournful mood and groaning posture. The sun, the eye of the world, has often a veil drawn over it for many days, and he with the rest of the lights of heaven are covered with blackness, like mourners. The earth, trees, and plants upon it, lay aside their ornaments, and every head among them is bald.

3. The whole creation, if they could, would groan, for they have good reason (Luke 10:40). And it is well for man that the creatures cannot represent their misery as it deserves, otherwise they would deafen him with their complaints, and make him continually uneasy with their groans.

4. The Spirit of God is grieved, and groaneth (so to speak) in the creatures (Amos 2:13). God is everywhere present, quickening, influencing, preserving, and governing all the creatures, according to their several natures (Acts 17:25; Hebrews 1:3). Hence it is evident that the abuse done to the creatures riseth to God Himself.

5. Serious Christians groan in behalf of the creatures.

II. WHAT DISTRESSES THE CREATURES SO MUCH THAT THEY GROAN? Why, truly, they got a large share of the curse to bear for man's sake (Genesis 3:17).

1. The whole creation, by man's sin, has fallen far short of its beneficial and nutritive quality in comparison of what it originally was at its creation (Psalm 107:34).

2. The whole creation, by man's sin, has come far short of its ultimate end, the glory of God. The whole creation was made to be a book, wherein men might read the name of God; a stringed instrument, by which men were to praise Him; a looking-glass in which to behold His glory (Romans 1:20). The book is as it were sealed. They have lost the art of praising, hence the instrument is hung by, being to little purpose in the possession of such persons. They care not for beholding His glory, therefore the looking-glass is overlooked, and very little use is made of it. Under this vanity they groan also.

3. The nature of the whole creation is in some sort altered. When God looked on His creatures He saw that they were very good (Genesis 1:31). Where is the creature that has no evil about it now? The sun sometimes scorches man and the fruits of the ground; at other times his absence makes the earth as iron that he cannot stand before the cold. The air often sickens and kills him. The distempered winds often sink him in the sea. Out of the earth, where he is to get his meat, sometimes he meets with poisonous herbs.

4. The creature has fallen into the hands of God's enemies, and is forced to serve them. When man left God, all the creatures would have left him if God had not subjected them anew to him (ver. 20). We see how far some of them have gone in renouncing their service to him (Job 39:7, 8).

5. They are used by sinners to ends for which God never made them. Never did a beast speak but once (Numbers 22:28, 30), and that was a complaint on man for abusing it to an end for which God never made it. And, could the creature speak to us, we would hear many complaints that way. There are two things which make hard service —

(1) Continual toil without profit. The creatures have no intermission in their service (Ecclesiastes 1:5, 8). But oh, where is the profit of it all? The sun never rests. But, alas! men see to sin more by it. The night waits on us in its turn, and the thief and adulterer get their lusts fulfilled with it. The air waits about us continually, and the swearer gets sworn by it, the liar lied by it. The earth and sea wait on us with their produce, and people get their sensuality and pride nourished by it. What wonder they groan to be brought to this pass?

(2) Hard labour, and much loss by it (Habakkuk 2:13). The creatures not only toil for vanity, but as it were in the fire, where they smart for their pains. The covetous oppressor's money groans (James 5:4). The oppressor builds his house by blood and oppression, and the very stones and timber cry out (Habakkuk 2:11).

6. The creatures partake with man in his miseries. They that have life live groaning with him; they are liable to sickness, pains, and sores as well as he; and they die groaning with him. In the deluge, in Sodom, in Egypt they were destroyed with him. The inanimate creatures suffer with him also (Deuteronomy 28:23; Job 37:10; Hosea 2:21).

III. HOW, AND BY WHAT RIGHT, CAN THE HARMLESS CREATURES BE MADE TO GROAN FOR OUR SAKES?

1. Because of their relation to sinful man, who has a subordinate interest in them, and that by the same justice that the whole which a malefactor has smarts with him (Joshua 7:24). The sun is a light to him, therefore it is overclouded; it nourishes his ground, therefore its influences are restrained. His flocks furnish him with conveniences, therefore they suffer.

2. Because of their usefulness to him, by the same right that, in war, one takes from his enemy whatever may be of use to him. Pharaoh will not let Israel go, and the cattle, and the very trees and water of Egypt, smart (see also Hosea 4:3; Haggai 1:4-11).

3. By the same right one takes a sword from a man wherewith he is running at him. The creatures are idols of jealousy often to provoke God, and therefore He strikes them down. Often, and most justly, does God punish sinners in that wherein they have sinned.

4. By the same right one takes back his loan when he gets no thanks for it, but, on the contrary, it is improved against himself (Hosea 2:8, 9).

5. By the same right a prince levies a fine on a man when he might take his life. It is a mercy God deals not with ourselves as with the creatures for our sake (Lamentations 3:22).

IV. THE IMPROVEMENT OF THIS DOCTRINE. The creatures groan out these lessons to us:

1. That God is angry with us (Habakkuk 3:8).

2. That sin is a heavy burden which none are able to bear up under.

3. That God is a jealous and just God, who will not suffer sin to go unpunished.

4. That creatures are ever weak pillars to lean to (Ecclesiastes 1:2).

5. That the service of the creatures to sinful man is an imposition on them (ver. 20).

6. That the creatures are wearied of the world lying in wickedness, and would fain have it brought to an end (ver. 19).

(T. Boston, D.D.)

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KJV: For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.

WEB: For the creation waits with eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.