The Holy Spirit and Prayer ( #7 of Doctrinal Statement)

Well, good morning. It may seem a little strange this morning. It seems strange to me. It seems like we were kind of all flipped around or whatever, because we really appreciate Vern's ministry week after week and only a few times a year. If you count the number of times that Vern is not up here, it's pretty incredible in the five years he's been here. So I really appreciate him being here week by week so faithful. And Mike and I occasionally get a chance to come up, and it's a real privilege and honor to do that.

And bear with me. You know, it's a little bit nerve-wracking, but I enjoy it. God's Word is wonderful. We have a tremendous passage to look at this morning, and so we'll just go from there. All right, let me see if I can get myself a little bit... I like to use notes, so we'll see if this works out. I know it's Vernon. He's just so great, he has it all in his head. It's somewhere in my head. I don't know. Hopefully it'll come out. All right.

OK, so maybe to give a little background here, as Vern said, I'd like to read the doctrinal statement concerning the Holy Spirit, and then we'll kind of branch off from there and basically come back to the two verses that Vern read for you. It says, the Holy Spirit, we believe in the deity and personality of the Holy Spirit. Certain ministries have been committed to him in this age. He convicts the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. He's responsible for the regeneration, indwelling, enlightening, and sealing unto the day of redemption for each believer. He baptizes each believer into the one body of Christ, the church, and into the person and work of Christ, his death, burial, and resurrection. He transforms each believer into the image of Christ as a believer beholds Christ in the word of God.

And just about a year ago, in May of last year, Mike, in a very similar situation and kind of pinching for Vern, he went over this entire doctoral statement, every single aspect he went through. And actually, it's available on the website. If you go back to May of last year, if you're interested in the doctoral section, you can find his. It's incredible. He went through every single point in there. And Mike mailed me his charts and I just 50 some charts and I about fell on the floor when I looked at him. I said, this is incredible.

I'm only going to touch on a very small aspect, and I think it probably fits into the indwelling ministry of the Spirit, how He indwells us, and we're going to see how that indwelling ministry is involved with intercession for us on our behalf. So with that kind of as a groundwork, let's go on here. So we're going to kind of go through this kind of piece by piece, verse by verse. Actually, another little side light.

This particular set of verses were presented in the Romans class, and this happens to occur on the Snowstorm Sunday, I'll call it, back in January. We had quite a few of those, as you remember. And one Sunday, I got a call, I think Nancy may have called me or Vern called me and said, should we come?

So that actually postponed this message by an entire week. Well, if you're a teacher, That's like music to your ears because that gives you another week. That's another week for you to prepare. And I said, wow, another whole week to prepare. So I've had that week, which is back in January, and then this past week. So it's been really great.

So anyway, enough introduction. So it starts off in the same way. And I believe that kind of focuses back on the previous verses. And many times you'll see, therefore, some summary statement. I believe it focuses back on the previous verses, in chapter 8 especially. And so let's just, I have a chart here that kind of picks out, actually, okay, I'm going to say what the chart says. I'm getting ahead of myself here a little bit. So I think it refers back to the verses that occur in chapter 8. So let's just kind of go through some of those verses.

The first of those I kind of pick ones I thought were this is by no means an exclusive list But certainly ones in chapter 8 is a wonderful Declaration of the Spirit's ministry in the life of the believer. So the first point is in verse 2 It says basically that the Spirit has freed you you bit and that's a once for all he's freed you once once for all you've been set free from the law of sin and death a wonderful declaration of what the Spirit's done then in verse 6 It says that basically the mindset dominated by the Spirit is life and peace. Wonderful declaration of what the Spirit has done for us. In verse 11, it tells us that the Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead also will give life to your mortal bodies.

And then in verse 14, it talks about for all who are being led by the Spirit, these are the sons of God. And then we go on to the 16 and 17. And here's his testimony about the believer. The Spirit Himself testifies about the believer with our spirit that we are children of God and they are also heirs of God. So wonderful testimony about the Spirit. But now as we move into these two verses, we're going to see a wonderful ministry unfolded about the ministry in terms of the prayer life of the believer. And we're going to find here God's grace kind of just flowed out in a marvelous way.

Because we're going to find that we have some severe limitations in this area. Okay, so back to the main verse here. So it says, in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness. Very important, and if I pronounce this wrong, raise your hand or something, Bonnie will probably tell me. It's actually singular weakness that's going to be key. It's a singular weakness it's talking about. That's a key aspect here. In the same way, the Spirit also helps our weakness.

So I tried to break this down into kind of simple clauses, simple phrases. So the Spirit is a subject here, also helps as a verb. In this case, this verb is a very kind of graphic verb. It's the idea to join in to help. The Spirit joins in to help. the believer as he prays. And it's in the present tense. He's presently, ongoing, constantly helping us, or joining in to help us. And I actually have Vines in his expository dictionary. This is his definition. And the word literally is joins in to help.

And it's the idea that he, at the very bottom there, talks about to take a share in, or help in bearing, or to help in general. And I think there's a really good, and one thing to think about here, I want to read this passage here in just a second, this passage about Martha and Mary. This helping is not to say, okay, Holy Spirit, take over. It's a sharing. He is aiding us. He's coming to our aid.

Think about His very name, the Holy Spirit's very name, like in John is the helper, the one who's called along in time of help. So He's performing that function, I believe, as described in this verse. So let's look at, I'm just going to read them out ahead of time, I wouldn't have to flip through.

In Luke 10, 38 and 40, this is Martha and Mary, and it says, Now, as they were traveling along, he entered a village and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. And she had a sister called Mary, who was seated at the Lord's feet, listening to his word. But Martha was distracted with all her preparations. And she came to him and said, Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the serving alone?

Tell her to help me. I'll just stop there. Tell her to help me. Tell her to come alongside to help me. She didn't say, I want Mary to do all the work. Mary, you take over. I want to go sit in the Lord's feet. She didn't say that. She said, I want her to join in to help me. I think that. It's the same word that's used in this passage.

He wants to join in to help me, not to replace me, not to do the work myself, but to join in to help. So that's really the thrust here. So as we go through this passage, we're going to see how that's kind of a key aspect, that the Spirit is not taking over. It's not like, Holy Spirit, take over for me. No, He's going to join in to help us. And the rest of the verse will explain what that ministry is about. So let's go on to the next part. So I've kind of added in the expanded translation. The Spirit also joins in to help our weakness. So now we come to this word weakness in the singular. I'm going to force myself to say it in the singular. I probably won't succeed there. Okay, so the question is, what is our weakness in this passage?

And as scripture many times, just keep on reading. I think Vern sent me the other day, he sent me a copy of this one page, or not one page, maybe it was five, ten pages, that says, don't just read one verse. If you read one verse of scripture, read the passage, read the context. And so many times as you read on, the questions are answered as you read on in the text of the verse. So, we'll read on here.

So, weakness here is a noun, and it's indicating inability to produce results. So, it says that the spirit joins in to help our inability to produce results. So, boy, we've got a problem already here. We have an inability to produce results. Well, what are we talking about here? So, let's look at, let's see if I can show you here. Actually, what I did, I found it was helpful here if we kind of had to try to literally render this.

So let's look at the Spirit joins in to help the weakness, or sometimes if you look through different verses, they'll be translated infirmity. So we have an inherent weakness and infirmity. So the Spirit of God is going to join in to help that singular weakness.

And this is not talking about generic weaknesses. You know, you could say, well, hey, I got a bum foot. I got a bum leg. My back aches. I mean, we have all kinds of weaknesses in our lives. But it's not talking about that. It's a singular weakness. So I found it helpful if we look at Scripture and we look at Paul. Paul's always a wonderful example. And he has a lot to say about weakness singular and weaknesses plural. He talks about both of those in a lot of detail, and he actually has some kind of remarkable things to say about both of those cases.

One of those is in 1 Corinthians. I'd like to read the first two verses as well here. In 1 Corinthians 2, starting in verse 1, And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God, For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling." I thought it was kind of noteworthy that Paul says, here's his focus. His focus was to know Christ. And oh, by the way, I came to you not the slickest speaker, not the most, you know, I came to you trembling. I came to you in fear. And I can relate to that. So, you know, maybe you don't pronounce all the words right. Maybe you don't have it all together in your mind.

But your desire is that people know Christ. And that's what Paul's desire is. And that's what our desire here in this body is, that people come to know Christ. So Paul said, hey, I have a weakness. I came to you in fear and trembling. So that's one example of weakness. And then he really kind of goes into turbo mode, as Vern would say here. And in 2 Corinthians 12, 19, he's got weakness singular and weakness is plural. And he's going to say amazingly enough that he's going to boast about his weakness. Boy, I'm going to boast about my weakness, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

He realizes that his inherent weakness is OK. God didn't condemn Paul for having weaknesses. On the contrary. Just the contrary of that. So weakness is not a bad thing, but it's to understand what that weakness is and how that fits into what God is doing in a believer's life. So that's kind of the key. So let me just read this verse here.

It says, and he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you. For power is perfected in weakness, singular. Most gladly, therefore, I would rather boast about my weaknesses so the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore, I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, distresses, with persecution, with difficulties for Christ's sake, for when I am weak, then I am strong.

So I think one of the things you carry away is that he's saying is I don't have the inherent ability to live the Christian life. But God does. So my weakness is actually an asset because I'm not going to try to do it. And that's a good thing for us to remember. When we try to live the Christian life, that's probably not a good thing, to put it mildly. So Paul says, when I am weak, that I am strong. He's basically saying that God has to live the Christian life. I have to allow him to do that. I have to respond by faith.

But I think it's important here to stop for a second and not get too carried away with weakness, but to realize that there are wonderful things, wonderful possessions that the believer has. Every single believer has these wonderful possessions or positions in Christ. So just as a reminder of that, I listed a couple of verses in Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 3.

It says, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. So we're not deficient in any spiritual blessing. Every single one we're sufficient in. So we have no weakness there. And then in Colossians chapter 2 and verse 9, for in him all the fullness of the deity dwells in bodily form, and in him you have been made complete, and he is head over all rule and authority. So we've been made complete. Nothing needs to be added to our salvation. It is totally complete. We're complete in him.

So as we think about this weakness, we need to put it in perspective. Our position is secure in him. We can depend upon that. We can count upon that. There's no need to say, well, this weakness is going to be an issue in my life. We're to recognize that we have that and depend upon God to basically solve the problem. And we're going to see how he solves the problem. OK. All right, so let's go on here.

So going on with the verse, the spirit also helps our weakness, singular. So now we're going to get to the heart of the matter, the weakness, the singular weakness. For we do not know how to pray as we should. So actually, if you think about that, that's kind of a remarkable statement.

So do we give up prayer life? We say, OK, I'm finished with praying. It says here, we don't know how to pray as we should. Done with? Over? He's not telling us to do that. Actually, I think there's a word in here that could be better translated, and I'll point that out in just a second here. We're going to dissect this verse.

OK. The word no here is this word oida. There's two primary words in the Greek, oida and gnosko. And oida means complete knowledge, complete knowledge of the situation, full, complete knowledge. So he's saying here, we don't have full, complete knowledge of how to pray. And you think, well, maybe that is true. Do we know all things? Do we know the infinite beginning? Do we know what tomorrow holes? Do we know, in any given situation, do we know what's going to happen? I'll just give you some examples of that. This is some personal examples.

Actually, I see Ryan there, and there's Mark. I have both my sons here today for Father's Day, and it's kind of neat they came down from Fort Collins. But I can remember back, this is back several years for Ryan, and this is in terms of prayer. I mean, I pray for my sons, you know, a lot. I pray for their well-being, their health, but sometimes they do wild things.

Well, Ryan was jumping on a trampoline one day, and he bounced into the metal part and broke his jaw. Well, I got a phone call and said, meet me at the emergency room, your son broke his jaw. So I did, and on the way I prayed for him. I prayed that his jaw would be fixed and he would recover, and the Lord was gracious and answered that prayer. I mean, if you think about it, that wasn't a forgiven. That was my prayer.

I prayed for my sons, warning them, but I really didn't know the outcome. So we don't know many times the outcome. And then with Mark, back in January, actually on the same day I was to preach this message in Sunday school, he told his car. We got a call. I told him my car. My prayer was, Lord, I assume there's no complications, there's no lasting effects of toting your car being flipped upside down.

And the Lord was gracious. But we really don't know, as we pray for our loved ones, we do not know, we do not know God's will in that situation. And that's what I think is trying to be conveyed here. We really don't know. And that's, actually that's okay. Because that drives us to, that drives us to trust the Lord, trust in Him, that He knows And He will work out according to His will. And that's kind of the, if there's one thing you carry away from here today is that we're to trust Him, even though we have this weakness, we're to trust Him for the outcome and not to rely upon ourselves. You know, sometimes I try to engineer my prayers. I'm an engineer. I say, okay, Lord, if you do this and that and that and that, this long circle, wow, I entered that prayer, all these things are going to happen. None of them may happen. Zero may happen, and probably zero will happen. None will happen. So, I mean, that's just kind of, you know, we're kind of that way. I want it to happen this way, Lord, and this way, and that way, and that way, and that way. Okay, well, I'm getting a little far afield here, I think.

Let's go on. So this actually is interesting. This word is in the perfect tense, and that's the idea of a past completed action, something happened in the past with results up into the present. So I tried to kind of bring that across into the English. Let's see. Actually, let me see. OK, actually, another point here. I'm getting points upon points.

The word the word we do not know how how to pray. Actually, you know, that could be better translated. There's really it's really the what how almost indicates we don't. We don't understand the mechanism in the Christian life for prayer. And I'm going to show you that shortly. God has laid out a wonderful... He describes how we're to pray. We're to pray to the Father in the name of the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit. And we're going to show that.

But He hasn't told us the what. I couldn't pray for my son that a certain thing would happen exactly. I don't know the what. So I think better translated, we do not know the what we should pray for as is necessary. So now here's my expanded translation, using the perfect tense. So this makes us pretty not knowing too much. So if you use that tense with that verb, it says, we did not know the what to pray for in the past, and we continue not to know the what to pray for up into the present as we ought. So we do not have God's infinite knowledge. We are not God. We are His children. We do not have knowledge of the future. God does, and we rely upon Him.

So that just, maybe it's kind of stating the obvious, but I found that kind of really enlightening. And so let's look at an example of that in Paul's life. In 2 Corinthians 12, verses 7-9, It says, Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelation, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me, to keep me from exalting myself. Concerning this, I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness, Most gladly, therefore, will I rather boast about my weaknesses, plural, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore, I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake, when I am weak, then I am strong.

So we see here, you know, how was Paul praying? Was he saying, boy, those thorns are great. Those thorns in the flesh are just wonderful. Lord, amen. Right on. No, it took him a while. It took him a while. It took him three times, in fact, right? It took him three times to say, Lord, it's okay. Those thorns in the flesh are okay.

And I think that's much the way we are. We start out and we pray with my sons. I pray for their health and their well-being and for every relative I have. And I pray for their well-being. But many times, as the Lord unfolds the situation, you say, Lord, okay, you have a plan here. It wasn't my plan, it wasn't my thoughts, but I can accept that. And Paul accepted that. And he says, you know, your grace is sufficient. So that's a wonderful thing, to be able to trust the Lord. Okay, so let's go on.

OK, so now this is maybe a little bit of a review. I wanted to kind of do this because I didn't want to say, hey, we have no clue about prayer. And there's a lot said about prayer in the New Testament. And this is kind of just a short little summary of that. And this comes out of major Bible themes, which we've done several times here.

And it's important to realize that we're under grace, that prayer under grace is kind of a new ballgame, a wonderful new ballgame. New ground of prayer after the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ and the giving of the Holy Spirit. New relationship between the Godhead and the believer. We're joined to Christ as members of his body.

All believers are in a favored position. You know, isn't that wonderful? We're in a favored position. We're not begging God. We're already in His favor. We have His favor. We have His ear. I mean, the Old Testament, quite a different picture. They were pleading with God, begging with God, trying to get God's attention, they thought. We don't need to do that. We already have His attention.

And a prayer is one of the blessings of the believer in the life under grace. Prayer into grace, we're told in John's gospel, John 16, it's to be in Christ's name. He says, until now you have asked for nothing in my name. Ask and you will receive. In that day you shall ask in my name. So we're told to ask in our Savior's name. We're told to ask in his name.

And that's an important thing. And it involves the whole Godhead, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We're to offer the prayer in the Father's name, according to John 16. Offer the prayer to the Father in the name of the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit. Some important things to keep in mind here is that prayer is not arbitrary.

We're told it should be through Him. It's because of our union with Christ. We're praying based upon our union with Christ. So it's to be through Him and not to Him. He's not some way far off. We're in union with Him. So it's prayer in my name. Prayer is to be by the Holy Spirit, not to the Holy Spirit. Once again, this wonderful union that we have by means of the Holy Spirit.

So those couple of charts are just kind of a quick summary of what we do, and there's a lot more. This is kind of bare bones, but these are things to keep in mind. We know a lot about prayer. But we're also finding out some areas we do not know about.

Okay, so what does God do about our ignorance in our prayer life? And wonderfully, He has a plan. As we go on in the verse, we just keep reading. He says, But the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. So the Spirit is going to intercede on our behalf.

It says with groanings too deep for words. You know, some of these I remember back when we had the class Sunday school class, you know, some of these things you think too deep for words. It sounds kind of mysterious. It sounds like some kind of mysterious thing, but it actually isn't very mysterious. So kind of keep that, you know, too deep for words.

Is this some kind of special way I talk or, you know, or, you know, we'll see in a second here. OK. So basically intercedes is, in the present tense, he's constantly interceding on our behalf. And the word intercede is the idea to argue on behalf of another. And let's just look at Vine's definition here. It's to make petition or to intercede on behalf of another.

So, you know, there's an example of that in the Old Testament. I'm just going to maybe highlight a few portions of that. Actually, I don't actually have it listed here, but it's actually a story of Sodom and Gomorrah where Abraham, you know, he comes to God. This is one of the really interesting passages. He comes to God and he says, in essence, there's some righteous people in Sodom and Gomorrah, God. And are you going to destroy that entire city with those righteous people?

What if there's 50? What if there's 40? The number keeps going down lower and lower and lower. It gets down to 10, and the discussion ends. He's interceding on behalf of those in that town, that there might be righteous people there that would incur God's wrath because of that. And God, ultimately, apparently weren't 10 righteous in Sodom and Gomorrah, right? Because he destroyed the city.

But it's interesting, that's an example of a human example of interceding on behalf of another. So the Holy Spirit, in a sense, is on our side. He's going to intercede on our behalf. It's kind of a compound word, intercede plus on behalf of. And actually, Elijah pleaded with God kind of on the negative sense. I think this is the case where he pleaded against Israel. Look what they've done to you. You like these guys? They've done all kinds of terrible things. They've killed your prophets and all that kind of stuff. So it can be used in that sense, too. So let's carry on here.

So we've kind of covered the idea of interceding. Now he intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And groanings here, and let's just see, where do I want to go here? Groanings, okay. Let's just look at the definition here. Groanings is this idea of an inward expression of feeling or sorrow. And actually I kind of like the definition. It's a wanting and a waiting for things to be put right.

If you think about, and actually Romans covers three kinds of groanings. We're going to see that it covers that the creation is groaning, The believer is groaning and the Holy Spirit is groaning. So the three groanings that are mentioned in the Romans 8 passage. And we're on the one about the Holy Spirit groaning. So let's just kind of look at a couple of things. Let's look at the one about creation groaning.

It says in 8.22, it says, for we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth until now. And it talks about the believer. And even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons. So there's groaning in terms of the creation, there's groaning in terms of the believer.

So that kind of leads us to a question here. So we see creation groaning, we're groaning, and the Spirit is groaning. So is there any difference between those three? And I thought about this and I asked that question. Is there any difference between those kind of groanings? You know, you look at that. So let's just look at the verse. Let's go look at the verse and see what it says.

It says that the spirit himself intercedes with groanings too deep for words. So words are So too deep for words, it's important to understand what too deep for words means. If we're going to decide whether the groaning of the Holy Spirit is different from creation groaning or the believer groaning, it's important to understand what too deep for words means. So let's see if we can do that. And I have another rendering, what we says, the same verse, but just, and this is a helpful, this is very helpful here. I haven't defined what too deep for words mean, but the spirit himself comes to our rescue by interceding with Unutterable groanings. Hmm, unutterable. Can you hear unutterable? Can you hear something that isn't uttered?

It's hard to say. I practiced that two or three times and my tongue was a mess. Probably still going to be a mess. OK. It's basically that word for too deep for words is unexpressed or unutterable groanings. So you can't hear them. It's a negative of speaking. So you're not going to hear anything. So back to our question.

It seems to me that the point is made here that the ministry that the Holy Spirit is going to carry out is going to be without words. You're not going to hear anything. He's going to carry this out without a word being spoken. But he's going to faithfully carry this ministry out. And that seems somewhat in contrast to our groanings. I know when I groan, sometimes Bonnie will say, Roger, you're preoccupied. What's going on? What are you doing? You're kind of thinking, I'm thinking about something. So I'm groaning maybe.

And creation groaning, that may be a tougher one. Even though we were in California one time and we heard on this beach, when the waves came in, the rocks would quake. They would make a sound. It reminded me of the rocks crying out. I was just amazed. It was in Southern California, Sun Beach, and the waves would come in and you'd hear this kind of crackling sound. Wow.

I was thinking about creation. Creation is saying something here. So anyway, that's... So my point here is that the Holy Spirit is going to... There's not going to be an audible sound here. You're not going to hear anything. So we're not looking for... that we're going to hear anything. But he's still going to carry out his ministry.

So I think God's grace You know, we're not asking for it. We haven't asked the Lord. Lord, please, I don't have a clue how to pray. I don't know what your will is in this matter. My desire is that this person get well and be healthy, but maybe, I don't know, maybe you're going to take him to be with you. We don't know.

And there's a similarity, but it's without words. Okay, so now we come to verse 27. And he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is. So here we're going to kind of find out, we know that he's going to intercede without words, and now we're going to see, well, how does this fit with God's will? 27 is going to kind of tell us that.

But it kind of phrases it interestingly. The subject of this clause here is, he who searches the hearts. So the question is, who is this he who searches the hearts? And it turns out that's a pretty familiar passage in scripture. It's spoken of in both Old and New Testament. Let me just see if I have. First of all, let's look at searches here. Searches is this word that to search or examine pretty. He's going to search or examine. He was searchers or examines. OK, so in the first Chronicles 28, nine, it says.

As for you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father and serve him with your whole heart and willing mind. For the Lord searches all hearts and understands the intent of thoughts. And I'll just stop there. So it declares here that God, the Father, understands the intent and thoughts of the heart.

He searches the hearts. He knows the hearts. We find a similar statement in Revelation there. where Christ says, I am He who searches the minds and the hearts. This is really a picture of the Godhead. We have the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Christ has spoken of the searching of hearts. The Father searches the hearts. And it says the Spirit, we're going to find out, knows the mind of God. They all know what's going on. So if we have the Holy Spirit interceding for us, He knows God's will.

I mean, it couldn't be better. It couldn't be a better situation. Okay. Let's see. And basically this is, it's in the present tense. He's, he's, he's constantly searching, is constantly going on. So now the word, um, for no. And here, another interesting, uh, Oida again, complete full knowledge.

So what's interesting is in the previous verse, we didn't have complete and full knowledge. We didn't know, but who has complete and full knowledge, but the spirit of God. Or the Godhead, actually. The Godhead has full and complete knowledge. So I tried to render that, expand that. God knew the mind of the spirit in the past and continues to know the mind of the spirit up into the present. And actually, I have a verse that I think kind of complements that. It says in 1 Corinthians 2, 10 and 11, for to us God revealed them through his spirit.

For the spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so, the thoughts of God no one knows except the spirit of God. So the Godhead knows collectively all things, understands all things.

And wonderfully, we have the Holy Spirit interceding on our behalf. And it says here that he knows the mind of the spirit, what one has in mind, basically, OK, so let's just go on here. OK, so the last, we're coming to the end of the road here. Hopefully we haven't gone too far. OK.

It says, because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. He intercedes, and this is ongoing, presently active. He intercedes for the saints, since God knows the mind of the Spirit, and the Spirit knows the mind of God. He, the Holy Spirit, intercedes for the saints. for the saints, or it's on behalf of the saints. And it's actually literally, if you notice, the will of God is actually in italics. It's basically according to God. So the Holy Spirit is working on behalf of the saints in concert with the will of God. I mean, that's an incredible statement. So really, the fact that we don't know the what to pray for really shouldn't discourage us. It should encourage us that the Holy Spirit knows the will of God.

And he's interceding on our behalf. So in summary, on behalf of the saints and according to God. So I took Weiss' New Testament, and he kind of puts in a lot of the points I tried to bring out. And this is like an expanded translation, if you will. And in like manner, also the Spirit lends us a helping hand. with reference to our weakness, singular, for the particular thing that we should pray for according to what is necessary in the nature of the case, we do not know with absolute knowledge.

But the spirit himself comes to our rescue by interceding with unutterable groanings. Moreover, he who is constantly searching the hearts knows what is the mind of the spirit because, according to God, He continually makes intercession on behalf of the saints. So, just two last points. The Holy Spirit is interceding for us with these unspeakable things and for things to be put right, with these groanings for things to be put right. The Holy Spirit continues to intercede on our behalf according to God's will. So, let's pray.

Dear Father, we thank you so much, Lord. We thank you for your word, Father. We thank you that you Know all things, Lord. We're thankful, Lord, that we don't know the what. As Paul said, I'd rather boast about my weakness. So we boast that we don't know the what, but we rely upon you that you know the in from beginning, Lord. You know all things and that you're working things out according to your plans and your purposes. In Christ's name, amen.