Special 9
Roger Henderson · Sep 13, 2015
Specials
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926515175237

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Well, this morning, I have the privilege of covering this wonderful passage. Actually, I had a chance to cover this passage previously about 10 years ago. But I look back on what I did 10 years ago, and there's just so much more, so much I missed 10 years ago. So bear with me. Hopefully, this will be exciting to you.

So this passage really talks about a ministry that we probably know about of the Holy Spirit, but maybe we've forgotten or haven't really thought about recently. Mike Dole had a class on the ministries of the Holy Spirit, which I think was really fantastic. This is one of those ministries that we don't really have to ask about. We don't have to ask for anything here. God is going to do something on our behalf. And it's wonderful, just like with our position in Christ, it's wonderful to realize what God's doing in our life.

So with that said, let's just kind of jump into the passage here. So first of all, it says, I'm going to start off with just the very first part in the same way. It's a connective, connecting the rest of, I believe, chapter 8 with this verse. And so the question, what is it referring to? It seems like it's referring to the ministries that are already spoken about in chapter 8. And I've listed some of those ministries in about four or five verses here.

For the law, the spirit of life in Christ, has set you free from the law of sin and death. So the Holy Spirit is referred to in different ways here in this passage in Romans 8. He's referred to here as the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, has set you free from the law of sin and death.

We're free. We're now a new creation in Christ. Then in verse 6, in chapter 8, it talks about for the mind set on the flesh is death. but the mindset on the spirit is life and peace. We have life and peace in our Savior, something we didn't have before we knew him as our Savior.

Then in 11 it says, but the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, who raised Jesus Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you. And then in 14, actually we covered this recently, Mike covered this recently. I thought of this as a conditional statement. But I think it could be positional as well.

For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. Talks about the ministry of the Holy Spirit is leading the believer. And then lastly here, the Spirit of him, a spirit himself, testifies with our spirit that we are children of God. And if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.

So that's kind of the previous verses that talk about the Spirit in his work. But the first little phrase in verse 26 is, it says, in the same way, the Spirit also helps our weakness. So the idea here is that, the verb here is that He also helps. And that's kind of interesting.

We're going to see here an aspect of the Holy Spirit that we did not actually, we don't have to pray about, we don't have to come before God and ask for, he recognizes that we have a weakness. And one of the key things is recognizing, well, what is this weakness that is talked about? Also a key part is to realize, if you notice there, that weakness is singular. So he's not talking about, you could say, I have many weaknesses as a believer in the Lord Jesus. And I have a fleshly nature, and I have many weaknesses. But he's going to zoom in here on a particular weakness that we need help in. And some have said we shouldn't ask for help, and I agree with that. But what's interesting here, God sees a need and he helps us. So I see it as a different aspect. Bob Eccle and I have a discussion about that many times, but I think this is a valid place here for it.

Okay, so actually the verb tense here is present, indicative, active. And if you kind of bring that across, it's a continuous thing, continuous action. He's continually helping our weakness. And it's a statement of fact. And it's a Holy Spirit who's performing the action. He's coming to our aid, coming to our assistance in doing this. So the word for helps, or also helps, is actually this word, and I'm not going to attempt to pronounce it in the Greek. It actually literally joins in to help, and it signifies to take hold of, at the side of, to take a share in, or help in bearing.

If you think about the word that is used, This is a verb. Think of the noun that's used of the Holy Spirit in John. Like in the Gospel of John, in John 14, verse 16, it says, this is Christ speaking, I will ask the Father, and he will give you another helper. And that's a noun form of this, it's a noun, which has a very close connection with this word.

And the helper is the idea of one who is called alongside, called alongside to give help or render service. So the Holy Spirit is called the helper, that he may be with you forever. So his name is helper, or one who's called alongside, and his ministry is one who joins in to help.

So it's used in a particularly interesting passage, a very familiar passage of Martha and Mary. So let's read that. It's in Luke chapter 10 and verse 38. It says, now as they were traveling along, this is Christ, he entered a village, and a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister called Mary, who was seated at the Lord's feet, listening to her words.

But Martha was distracted with all her preparations, and she came up 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. So what's interesting is here, Martha didn't, and I think it's going to focus in on this word and the mystery of the Holy Spirit, Martha didn't ask the Lord Jesus, I want to have Mary come and do all my work. She never asked. She didn't say, Lord, I'm tired of working. Let Mary do the work. I want to sit here at your feet. She says, no, I want Mary to come and join in to help me. She wanted to be a coworker.

So what's interesting here is, excuse me, It's that the Holy Spirit wants to come alongside, as this word says, He comes alongside to aid us in our prayer life, we're going to see, ultimately. So we're going to see that we have a weakness in our prayer life, and we're going to see more about that.

But this passage indicates that the The action the Holy Spirit's taking is one of not replacing us. It's not saying, okay, you stand aside, the Holy Spirit's going to pray for you. No, the Holy Spirit's going to, he's going to help you in your prayer. He's going to, actually we're going to see, he's going to modify your prayer, which seems rather unusual, rather astounding that God, the God of the universe is going to modify your prayer. And I'm going to get ahead of myself a little bit here. He's going to modify your prayer that can be answered.

So that's pretty astounding work the Holy Spirit's going to do here. So the Spirit also helps or joins in to help our weakness. So what is our weakness in this passage? Weakness here is literally an inability to produce results. Literally, it's the Spirit joins in to help. And here's where it comes in the singular noun form or singular verb form, the weakness of us. It's singular, not plural.

So first of all, let's think about the things that we have no weakness in. In our position in the Lord Jesus Christ, there's no weakness. In Ephesians 1, 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 there's no weakness in there. We don't have a weakness in our spiritual blessings. We have every single blessing that the Lord has provided for us. Then it talks about our completeness in Him. There's no lack. We're totally complete in the Lord Jesus in our position.

So the question is, what is this weakness? And I've kind of thought about this, and I think the only thing that kind of connects to me that's a singular aspect of a believer's life, and maybe you've thought of it too, is the fact that Romans 6 tells us that we have a very singular weakness. And that singular weakness is because of our nature from Adam, our fallen nature from Adam. And our prayers can be self-focused rather than God-focused or Christ-focused. And I think that's a weakness that's being spoken of here.

And the Holy Spirit wants to come along and make our prayer focused on God and not focused on ourselves. You could argue, well, OK, I have a need. How can I focus on God and not express my need? And I think we'll see how that plays out here in a bit.

So I think the singular weakness spoken of here is the fact that we have a sin nature. And that's what limits our ability to pray properly. Okay, as we continue on that verse, it says, for we do not know how to pray. So, right off the bat here, you say, well, wait a minute.

If I read my Bible, I know how to pray. I was told how to pray. A lot of times, Scripture tells me a lot about prayer. It tells me how to pray. So, what does this tell me? For we do not know how to pray. So, it must be telling me something else. And the word no here is oida. It's the idea to know or to have knowledge. It's perfect, indicative, active.

And that's kind of interesting is because it's going to talk about the fact that we're in a permanent state of ignorance. Because we're not God, obviously, we don't have perfect insight into every situation that we want to pray about. We don't really understand all the details of our situation. We understand some, the part that we're suffering possibly. We understand when we want relief, but we don't understand everything.

So God is going to come along, the Holy Spirit is going to come along, and he's going to minister us, and our prayer will then be acceptable to God. And God can answer that prayer. And literally, it says, we do not know the what we should pray for as is necessary. So there's kind of two parts here. The first part is that it says, we do not know the what. And that's what I was kind of speaking of. We don't know the specifics to pray about. We may know the specific need. But we don't know the specific point to make with God. And the as is necessary, or is the idea of absolute necessity. And that word is used when the Lord talked with Nicodemus. He said, you must be born again. So that's an absolute requirement.

So we do not know the what we should pray that is necessary. We don't know the necessary element we need to pray about here. OK, so let's go on here. So let's talk here. I kind of alluded to this a little bit. Let's just kind of review briefly about what we know about prayer in the New Testament. And then we'll kind of come back to the idea of this weakness we have in the Holy Spirit's ministry. OK. So first of all, in the New Testament era, all prayer is under grace. We have a new ground of prayer. after the death and resurrection and ascension of Christ and the giving of the Holy Spirit.

This new relationship between the Godhead and the believer, a new relationship between the Godhead and the believer, we're joined to the Lord as members of his body. We have this union with Christ. We have this intimate union with Christ that never can be changed, never can be separated. All believers are in a favored position with Christ.

So if you think about it, we're in an incredible place. We have Christ living his life through us. It's one of blessing our life under grace. But we have trials. Scripture says, don't be surprised, as we've been saying in 1 Peter, don't be surprised at the fiery trials that you have. That's not to be outside the scope of a believer's life. Prayer under grace is in Christ's name. We'll see that in a variety of passages. Basically, Christ kind of did a comparison. He said, In the John 16 passage he says until now you've asked nothing in my name Ask and you will receive in that day. You will ask in my name.

So we're to ask in the name of the Lord Jesus So we see that in the age of grace That we the three three persons of the Godhead are involved the Father Son and Holy Spirit We're to offer the prayer to the Father in the name of the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit And additionally, the order is really not arbitrary. It says prayer is through him or through Christ. And it says in John 14, whatever you ask in my name, then prayer is also to be by him or by the Holy Spirit, by means of the Holy Spirit. So we see that the whole Godhead is involved in our prayer life.

And each member, and now we're going to see that the ministry of the Holy Spirit is going to be one of that of rendering aid or coming alongside to help us in our prayer because we don't know how to pray or don't know the what of the prayer. So what is the weakness in our prayer life?

All right. So before we quite get there, we're going to talk a little bit more about the rest of this verse here. But the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. So this is really going to be focused more right now on the action of the Spirit in our life. So first of all it talks about how He intercedes for us.

The idea is to intercede on behalf of another. It's a compound word, intercede or plead on behalf. And I like this. A.T. Robertson had this quote. It's a picturesque word for the rescue by one who happens on one who's in trouble. So as if you were traveling along, and you found a person in trouble, and you came to his aid. The Holy Spirit is, that's his ministry in our life in prayer. And it talks about how does he communicate this intercession.

This is rather unique. phraseology here, it says, with groanings too deep for words. And groanings here is an inward or unexpressed feeling of sorrow. There's emotion here. And I thought that, and there's actually a parallel passage, or parallel verse, in Mark 7, 34. Let's go here first. In Mark 7, 34, the Lord Jesus was is talking here and he's actually going to heal this gentleman here.

He has no speech. Jesus took him aside from the crowd by himself and put his finger into his ear and after spitting he touched his tongue with his saliva and looking up into heaven with a deep sigh he said to him be opened. So basically that looking up to heaven with a deep sigh is the same word, this groaning And what's interesting here is that the Lord, we're going to see the Holy Spirit's ministry is one of groaning, but in a special way. The groaning that is spoken of here, the Lord, he had some audible sound, right? And we notice that it talks about the whole creation is groaning earlier in Romans.

It talks about in Romans 8.23. Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for the adoption as sons. So these groanings are in an audible sense. We groan and we sigh, just like the Lord did when he healed that gentleman. But the Holy Spirit's going to offer a unique kind of groaning here. So there's the three kinds of groaning we see here.

We see creation groaning, our groaning, and now we're going to see the Spirit's groaning. So we see here, it's actually, and Luis kind of brings it out, he brings the important part of this, but the Spirit himself comes to our rescue by interceding with unutterable groanings.

There's no sound. There's no audible sound here. Unexpressed, unutterable. Unutterable is a negative speech to utter. God's grace is shown in that he intercedes for us without us asking. His intercession is similar to the groaning we saw about in creation groaning, but without words. So He's going to interact with the Father, we're going to see. The Holy Spirit's going to interact with the Father to make our prayer acceptable to Him, because we don't know how to pray.

Then 27 says, He who searches the heart knows what the mind of the Spirit is. So the subject here is He who searches the hearts, and He knows what the mind of the Spirit is. So searches here is the idea to search or examine. So who is searching the heart here? So in the context, the he here is God the Father. So God the Father is searching men's hearts. This is talking about believers, I believe, here.

And actually, there's a couple of verses here in Chronicles and Revelation I like to kind of go through. They're interesting because God's ministry As we saw in terms of prayer, all three persons of the Trinity are involved. So God the Father is involved in this ministry here. It says in 1 Chronicles 28, As for you, my son Solomon, know the God of your father and serve him with a whole heart and a willing mind.

For the Lord searches all hearts and understands every intent of the thoughts. And then it kind of continues on. So that part, for the Lord searches all hearts and understands every intent of the heart. So that actually speaks of the saved and the unsaved. But in this context here, we're talking about He's searching the hearts of the believer. And then in Revelation, it talks about a similar piece of information. It talks about the fact that I am He, God is speaking here, I am He who searches the minds and the hearts.

God is the one who's searching the minds and the hearts. So the first part of this verse is that God is searching the minds and the hearts. And then the second part of this is that He's searching the minds and the hearts, and in addition to that, He knows what is the mind of the Spirit. So He's searching our hearts.

In addition, He's having, if you will, communications with the Holy Spirit. And it's in the perfect tense here. It means that God the Father and the Holy Spirit, they know each other's minds. They understand that. And we can see part of that in, let me just read here in Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians chapter 2, in verse 10 and 11, it says, for to us God has revealed them through the Spirit.

For the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God, So that's kind of the first. 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 a man, which is in him? Even so, the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. So the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, understands God's thoughts.

He understands God's ways, if you will. They're one. They're one in essence. So what's happening here? God understands our hearts. And he understands what the mind of the Spirit is. So we're going to see here that he's going to communicate something here. And it talks about mind. He understands what is the mind of the Spirit. I'm just going to go past that for right now.

And it says, because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And so the he here is, I believe, this is the Holy Spirit. He, the Holy Spirit, intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And in the verb tense here, he's continually making intercession. It's in the present tense. It's on behalf of the saints, literally according to God's will.

So actually, I'm moving along really super fast here. Probably should have taken a little more time, but let me just go here, and I'll go to a summary here. It seems kind of soon to summarize, but okay, so let's just look at this. Maybe we can spend a little more time here.

The Holy Spirit's ministry is that of joining in to help our weakness, and it's a singular weakness. So that's kind of the first aspect we saw. The Holy Spirit joins in to help our weakness. The singular weakness of the believer is our sin nature. We've been taught how to pray, and I listed just the obvious ones. Prayers are offered to the Father, in the name of the Son, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

But we do not know the what we should pray for as is necessary in the case. And that's kind of the crux of the situation. This talks about the singular weakness in terms of our prayer life, that we do not know the what. God understands the what. He knows the situation perfectly. But we don't understand the what. What is necessary?

What's the correct prayer to pray? So I'm not discouraging you to pray. What I'm saying is that the Holy Spirit is going to aid us in our prayer. The Holy Spirit comes to our rescue, since we are ignorant, by interceding with us with unutterable groanings.

So this is pretty amazing. I think that, you know, and actually Vanya and I talked about this quite a bit over this last week. This actually takes a burden off our shoulders because I'm not sure if you're like me I you know a situation will come along and I'll thank you know Lord if I can just pray the right prayer if I can have just the right words I Can get that answered and and this this verse blows it out of the water Because what it says is that I don't know I don't have that knowledge and I can spend all my time trying to get just the right words I can start front to back and back to front. I can start with a problem and go this way or a problem and go that way.

It doesn't matter. The Holy Spirit wants to come along. He knows God's mind. He knows God's heart. There's communication. God knows my heart. And the Holy Spirit's going to fill in that lacking that I have, that ignorance that I have. So this takes a burden off me. It also tells me that God wants to answer our prayers because he sent the third person of the Trinity to aid us in our prayer life. So it's just incredible. I mean, this is an aspect which I kind of knew about, but not really fully. So this takes a burden. I can pray my heart.

You know, I would have a hard time not praying for my child. You know, so okay, maybe it's the Lord's will that my child break his leg. Okay, that sounds, that's not a, you know, legs do heal. But I would have a hard time praying, well Lord, it's okay you can break his leg. I would have a difficult time doing that.

But God has no problem with that. He understands all things for all time. He may understand that breaking my child's leg may help him in his life. He may learn something from that. I see it as a difficulty that I don't want my child to go through. So I can relax, I can pray, Lord, I don't want my child's leg to be broken. But the Holy Spirit's going to come along and he's going to make that prayer acceptable to God. Say, well, in this case, that may have to happen for your child.

And I think about, let's just, remember Paul's prayer back in, and he prayed in ignorance. And this has always kind of astounded me. Paul prayed in ignorance. You know, if I think that I, let me find it here. Okay, in 2 Corinthians chapter 12, Paul talks about, he prayed a prayer. I'm sure you guys are probably familiar with this prayer. He prayed for something to be taken away.

He had a problem. We have problems, right? He had a problem, he didn't want the problem. We have problems, we don't want the problems. Okay? Here's Paul's prayer. 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." So Paul came to the Lord and he said, I don't want this thorn in the flesh.

We don't know exactly what that is. It's been speculated that was possibly a hearing problem, possibly some other kind of problem. He didn't want that problem. It was a hindrance to him. And we're very similar. We have this problem, this issue in our life. We don't want that problem. We say, Lord, take it away. But Paul's going to learn from that. He's going to learn something. He already learned something in the way he phrases this already. He learned something from that.

I think the Lord wants us to learn as well. And so basically, 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. That's an interesting phrase. We're talking about our weakness. He says that his power is perfected in our weakness. You know, that's amazing, amazing. Most likely, therefore, I would rather boast about my weakness so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. So I think this is part of the learning process.

As we trust the Lord, as we walk by faith, as we pray, we pray our heart, we pray for, we don't say, well, I'm going to be super spiritual here and I'm going to pray that, you know, The obviously thing I don't want to happen does happen. I can't do that. That wouldn't be honest. I'd be a hypocrite if I prayed for calamity to happen. God understands calamity. He allows calamity. He can handle it. I can't.

So this is saying that I can pray my heart, but the Holy Spirit's going to come along, and he's going to intercede for me with groanings. And those groanings are these passionate interactions. There's emotion there. just like with Christ when he looked up to heaven with man. And it says, God the Father is constantly searching our hearts and knows the mind of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit continually makes intercession for us in accordance with the will of God.

And I actually had a few more points. It wasn't enough, right? I had about five more points here to make. And I've actually probably said this in various ways. I think God wants our prayers answered. I said, based upon what I've learned here, that He sends the Holy Spirit, He wants our prayers answered. I mean, that is really comforting. The Holy Spirit comes alongside, makes our prayers answerable. He makes our prayers answerable. We could not pray the prayer the Holy Spirit will give to the Father, but the Holy Spirit can.

God wants us to trust Him for the answer in His time. That's why, actually, I had Randy read the last Romans 8 28 because we have to believe that if we believe if we say well God I I can't take your answer I can't handle your answer you answer this way I can't handle that answer no he says I want you to trust me and that's why he says in Romans 8 28 right all things not just some things he says he says all things And we know God causes all things to work together for the good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. So we have to believe that as part of this process. And a couple other points here is that God has provided the Holy Spirit interceding to make our prayers answerable. So our prayers are answerable as the Holy Spirit makes them that way. And last, this is a repetition again, our part is to trust his provision in our prayer life. I think that's just so, it comes down to trusting him. Do we trust him that his answer to our prayer is the right answer?

Sometimes we don't. I can say I don't sometimes. But I think he wants us to be convinced of that. Just like Paul was convinced that his thorn in the flesh, it was okay to have that thorn in the flesh. You could argue, well, it's a lot different when it's the life of my child, or whatever it might be. It can be overwhelming. But he says, no, trust me. Trust me for that.

So actually, the last chart I had here was just, I really enjoy Wiest. And so he kind of summarizes, he puts in the original language and tries to make it a little more full translation. So it says, and in like manner, also the spirit lends us a helping hand with reference to our weakness. I like that, lends us a helping hand with reference to our weakness.

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 certainty. We're ignorant. We don't know. But the Spirit himself comes to our rescue. This is the idea. He comes to our rescue by interceding with unutterable groanings.

Moreover, He who is constantly searching our hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because according to God, He continually makes intercession on our behalf. So I think this is just a tremendous, if you haven't looked at it before in recent times, I think it's just tremendous. And it takes, in my mind, it takes the pressure off our prayer life, allows God to work through us. We pray our hearts for the situation, realizing that the Holy Spirit will present that prayer acceptable to Him.

And then the last part is, again, I've repeated myself a few times here, trusting Him. Do we trust Him for the outcome of the prayers? Do we trust Him whether it's what we would consider a yes or we consider a no or maybe hasn't happened yet, we don't know. Do we accept all, do we accept the, you know, the yes ones are easy. If your prayers answered today, hey, great, right on.

If it takes 10 years, that's a long time. Or maybe it's no. And do we accept, you know, do we accept God's will? And that's, you know, that's That's an important thing. It's important to come to that peace about that. And I think this passage is to help us there. If we realize God is doing everything that is necessary to make our prayers acceptable to Him.

He's not leaving one thing out so we can trust Him. Okay, well let's close then. Dear Heavenly Father, we just thank you so much Lord. We thank you for the marvelous ministry of the Holy Spirit that comes alongside and helps our weakness. And we thank you that you're a God that cares for us and you provide your spirit in this ministry. We ask this in Christ's name. Amen.