The Doctrine of Groaning and
Intercession
Romans 8:18–26
We’re in Romans 8. We are in a fabulous section
dealing with future things. Sometimes you work your way through a passage
in your reading and you’re studying, and sometimes in English you can actually
pick out the key word because there’s really very little way to translate it in
the way it is being translated. Often times in English, though, you find
translators follow a rather artificial English style rule, which is don’t use
the same word very often within the same paragraph. The rule says to try
to have stylistic variations in vocabulary but sometimes the Holy Spirit didn’t
quite read the English rulebook and so He uses the same word three or four
times in two or three sentences. He’s making a point.
We’re going to start in verse 18. We’ve studied
some part of 18-21 last time but this time we’re going to make it down to about
verse 27 just before we get to a well-known promise in Romans 8:28. The
key word that we see in this section is a word that shows up first in verse
22. “For we know that the whole creation groans.” In verse 23, “Not
only that but also we ourselves having the first fruits of the Spirit, even as
ourselves groan within ourselves…” So we’ve got the creation groaning and
we’re groaning and then further down when it talks about prayer in verse 26,
“In the same way the Spirit helps [assists] us in our weaknesses for we do not
know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with
groanings too deep for words.” These are unutterable groans so there’s no
audible sound. So three times we’ve got groaning going on.
Now you always thought as a Christian you’re supposed
to have happiness and joy of the Lord in your heart and always be happy and
joyful about everything. As the song says, “I have the joy, joy, joy down
in my heart.” But here we have one of the central chapters on the
spiritual life in the whole Bible that almost every knowledgeable Christian
recognizes as one of the greatest chapters in Scripture. It focuses on our
phase 2, Christian life experience as what? Groaning. Any of us who
have been around for very long should recognize how true that is. On the
one hand, we have a great joy and happiness because we know what our eternal
destiny is. We have stability in our soul in the midst of crises, but
there are difficulties, there are challenges. Health challenges, emotional
challenges, physical, monetary challenges; there’s challenges that we face
dealing with people. We have all kinds of systems testing in terms of our
employment and employers. We have people testing in terms of the same kind
of things.
It goes on and on and on because as we studied in the
last two lessons, in dealing with the reasons and categories for suffering, we
live in the fallen world so the world is corrupt and all of the systems are
corrupt. There’s no ideal form of government until Jesus
returns. When Jesus returns, because He is the God-man and He is absolute
perfection and He will be the head of the Kingdom, there will be a perfect
government and perfect politics. But even in a world with a perfect
government, with a perfect governor, who will be the King of Kings and the Lord
of Lords and a perfect system of laws, there will be an untold number of people
who at the end of a thousand years will reject all that, will claim that it is
all wrong, that Jesus Christ is just out of destroy all the poor people and to
take advantage of all the old people, to take away all of their Medicare and
all of their Medicaid and everything else. The same thing we hear today is
going to be leveled against the perfect rule of the Lord Jesus
Christ. That is because of the corruption of the sin nature on all those
who are born during the one thousand year period of the Millennial Kingdom.
So this is a time of corruption, even though there’s a
partial reversal of the curse when it’s rolled back some during the Millennial
but the curse does not end until we get to the destruction of the present
heavens and earth and God creates a new heavens and a new earth. There is
not going to be a perfect world until we get to that time. Until then, if
you’re a human being and you’re fallen and you’re living with a corrupt body
and you’re living with corrupt sinners and you’re living with corrupt systems
and working in corrupt systems, you’re going to groan. And that groaning
is creation itself groaning because it’s under corruption and we’re going to
groan and it’s not wrong to admit it.
There are a lot of Christians who think it’s wrong for
them to complain. Yes, complaining is wrong but you can complain to God. “Oh,
no, no, no. I don’t want to tell God how hard it is.” Don’t you think he knows?
He’s omniscient. If you’re not telling Him, you’re not being honest with
yourself. That’s one problem Christians have. You can’t face and handle the
problems you’re facing if you’re not willing to admit what those problems are.
And you’re not willing to admit the fact that your faith wavers at times. Read
the Psalms. Read all of those lament psalms when David is groaning and it’s the
same word as used here. The word that’s used for groaning here means to mourn
or to lament something. Read through the Psalms and read all of these passages
where David is groaning about his circumstances, the people that are opposed to
him, and the enemies that he has, the situations he’s going through and he’s
always going back to the Lord. But before he gets focused on the Lord and gets
his mental attitude straight and moves forward, he’s always honest with God
about the negatives of his situation. He doesn’t try to gloss over it.
We can’t get anywhere if we’re not dealing with
reality as it is and think, “Oh, I shouldn’t feel this way because I’m a
Christian. I shouldn’t have these thoughts because I’m a Christian. I
shouldn’t hate my job because I’m a Christian. I shouldn’t have trouble
and have anxiety over going to work with the people I’m going to work with
because I’m a Christian. Yeah, you’re a Christian and you’re a fallen
sinner and you have to go through that; we all have to go through that and
until we face it and be honest with ourselves and with God we’re not really
going to be able to maximize the solutions that God has for us. So I’m
calling this The Doctrine of Groaning and Intercession (Romans
8:17–26).
Let’s just do a little review. We touched on this
last time, “If, and we are children…” Every believer is a child of God teknon, “heirs also, heirs of
God.” That describes every believer at the moment of salvation; we are
regenerate, born again, born into the family of God. We are adopted into
the family of God so that we are going to be trained as children of
God. We’re heirs of God. But the next category is distinct. It’s
“fellow heirs, joint heirs with Christ, if we suffer with Him, in order that we
may also be glorified with Him.”
Now the next verse, the one I talked about
considerably in the last couple of weeks, verse 18, “For I consider that the
sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory
that is to be revealed to us.” Now I went back and took a look at this
verse a little more because I’ve just had trouble understanding this concept of
how this glory is revealed in us. It’s not the preposition en, which can also be instrumental. It’s
eis, which can have a nuance of
within but this preposition in the Greek usually indicates movement and many
times it’s the preposition that’s used if you’re going somewhere. You say,
“I’m going to go to Dallas” and you would use the preposition eis to indicate direction and movement
toward a goal. That’s how this is used.
It’s a preposition that suggests some kind of movement
and direction so what is being moved here toward us is glory. Now isn’t
that an interesting concept? The context we’re talking about here is
suffering. Every believer is going to engage in some sort of
suffering. It may be mild. It may be maximized. It depends on
the circumstances but if you’re a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and at any
level trying to apply doctrine in the world you’re going to face opposition and
hostility at one level. That’s what this suffering is. It’s not
necessarily overt persecution. It’s just facing adversity and difficulty
in life related to your obedience to the Word of God. “For I consider that
the suffering [whatever adversity or difficulty or challenges I face today in
terms of applying the Word], they’re really not worthy to be compared to the
glory that shall be revealed toward us.”
What Paul is saying is that if you or I are growing to
spiritual maturity and we are applying the Word then God is doing something in
our life in terms of bringing glory to Himself. That’s accomplished by
conforming us to the image of His Son. He mentions this in verse 29, so look at
that verse. We’ll get into this more next time as we examine all those words
that Calvinists believe mean we actually have a fatalistic God but that’s
because they distorted the terms. The verse says, “For those He foreknew, He
also predestined...” Predestined simply means to set a goal ahead of time, to
set a destination beforehand. If I get up in the morning and decide I need to
take a trip to Austin, I am going to predestine Austin. I am setting Austin as
my destination ahead of time so the prefix “pre” means before or ahead of time
so I set that destiny.
Jesus Christ’s character is our destiny. He is
conforming us to that goal. That’s the direction God is moving
us. How do be conformed to His character?
One of the ways God uses is suffering. We studied
in Hebrews, chapter 2, where even the Son of God had to learn obedience by the
things that He suffered. It’s not that He was disobedient but He had to go
through that process. As He suffered, He grew and matured spiritually in
His humanity. And so, what Paul is articulating here in verse 18 is that the sufferings are not that important. Get your
eyes off of yourself, quit being self-absorbed with the people who don’t like
you, with the difficulty of the job, with the fact that you’re getting older
and it’s more difficult to read the fine print you need to read when you’re
trying to go through things or whatever else it is. We all go through
these changes. Life gets difficult. Work in this fallen world gets
difficult. We sometimes have overt spiritual opposition from people who
know we’re Christians and they’re just out to get us.
But that difficulty that we go through is nothing
compared to what God is producing in us. That’s essentially what he, Paul,
is saying here. Because something is happening when we’re walking by the
Spirit, God is directing His power, and His character toward us. Often the
word ‘glory’ is used as a synonym for the entire essence of God. So the
sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the essence
of God that will be revealed in us. Now does that passage seem to make a
little more sense? God is creating His character in us. Look at
Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of
God.” There, the ‘glory of God’ is used as a summary term for the essence
of God. We’re fallen short of the essence of God. It’s used the same
way here. The glory that is going to be revealed in us is really the
essence of God that is being revealed in us, His character. We’re being
transformed into that character from grace to grace, as Paul says, so it is a
matter of spiritual growth. That is revealed in us. It’s moving to
us, in a sense, and being produced in us, as we learn to handle the suffering
and as we go forward.
Now Paul is going to add an additional explanation.
See this verse, verse 18, started off with a ‘for’. Everything that comes
between verse 18, and verse 27 is helping us to understand suffering with
Him. So we’re learning to suffer with Him so that we may be
what? Glorified with Him. The way in which we’re glorified with Him
is manifesting His glory in us, His character in us. I bet no one here has
ever read it that way before and I think that brings it out in a much clearer
fashion. As I was going through this today, working on this preposition,
that suddenly struck me that that’s what going on here, this kind of
directional thing with that preposition eis.
We’re going to go to the next step in this explanation
in verses 20. “For the creation was subjected to the futility, not
willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope.” Now this is
another verse I talked about last time to understand what happened when the
fall occurred, what happened when Adam sinned. As a result of his sin, the
whole creation came under condemnation. So it is subjected and this phrase
“in hope” is a phrase that should be understood in terms of a reference
point. It’s a dative of reference. The word is elpis there and it’s in the dative
case. Dative case is used to indicate the indirect object. It’s used
to indicate means or instrument or location but one of the things that it
indicates is reference with regards to something. So God subjected it with
reference to hope.
Now this opens up an interesting line of
thinking. We have to stop and we have to say, “What is the focal point of
hope all through the Scripture?” As I say all the time, it’s not just a
wistful optimism. Like we wake up today and the weather is beautiful and
gorgeous and the weather is probably going to be beautiful and gorgeous tomorrow
and we hope it will be on Saturday because we want to go fishing or hunting or
some outdoor activity but it could rain. We could have another day like
Monday again just to get everything washed out but we’re not sure. We know
that the weather “guessters” say one thing but it can
often change in 24 hours. That’s how we use hope. But that’s not how
God uses hope. Hope is a confident expectation of a certain future
reality. We’re certain, we’re sure, we’re confident. We know something
is going to happen in the future. God subjected, He brought this judgment,
this curse, upon the physical, material universe because He’s focused on where
He’s going to take everything in terms of the future destiny.
“Hope” brings in the future. “Subjected it” is
the past. He subjected it because He understood in His omniscience that in
order to bring about the solution to sin and all the corruption that entered
into the universe because of evil He had to bring everything under
judgment. This eventually would be necessary to bring everything to its
ultimate resolution and the destruction of evil. That’s one of the
difficult things about solving the problem of evil is that we don’t have a mind
that can comprehend all the bits of data that God can comprehend. He recognized
that the pervasiveness of evil and the pervasive destruction of evil are so
great that only His plan could ultimately redeem the planet from the corruption
of sin. Now this is interesting because the word “redemption” is almost
always used in Scripture of redeeming people from sin. It has that idea of
purchasing or paying the purchase price of a slave. The focus in
redemption is almost always people except in this passage.
In this passage we’re not redeeming people but we’re
redeeming the material, physical universe from the corruption of sin. It
didn’t happen at the cross. The cross is what allows it to happen. It
isn’t accomplished until when? When is this redemption of creation going
to come into effect? At the end of the Millennial Kingdom; not at the
beginning but at the end because it’s only when the present earth is finally
destroyed and new heavens and new earth are created that we have a creation
that is free from corruption. So the creation is subjected to futility for
a purpose. It’s not random. You don’t have to understand it. I
don’t have to understand it. One of the most difficult things as a pastor
when people say, “Why did this happen? Why did God do it that way?” I
don’t know. All I have to know is that the Bible said this is why it
happens and it happens for a reason but we don’t understand it. And I
don’t have to explain it. Often we feel like if we can’t explain it,
there’s not an answer. I know my brain is way too finite to come up with
those kinds of answers and it’s unjust and unrealistic to say we ought to come
up with those kinds of answer. We can’t.
We have the general principle that God’s in charge and
He recognizes that this is the only way to get a resolution of the problem of
evil. So, “The creation is subject to futility, not willingly but because
of Him who subjected it in hope.” God is the One who brought that judgment
on the creation because in verse 21, “That the creation itself also will be set
free [delivered] from its slavery [bondage] to corruption into the freedom of
the glory of the children of God.” Now we’ve changed our terminology
again. We’ve gone from “sons of God” which is huios [u(ioj] the adult sons of God back to “children of God” which is every
believer when we experience our true freedom from the sin nature in
glorification of phase 3. Verse 22, “For we know that the whole creation
groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.” Now, I
didn’t have a tremendous amount of time to study this; I spent about an hour
trying to figure out the meaning where this second phrase indicates birth
pains. This phrase does not appear in the original Greek. It just
says, “We groan together or mourn together and we travail together.” The
examples that I saw in the Lexica that I consulted and I have about six or seven
on my computer, which are all the best ones there are, never gave me any usage
examples of these words being used in labor pains context. Now that
doesn’t mean it’s not but I couldn’t find those examples. There’s not a
sense of that in the passage. It’s just that the whole creation groans or
laments. It’s an extremely picturesque word of someone who is in deep
profound grief or mourning. The creation is personified as someone who is
going through tremendous agony over grief over what has happened to creation
over sin and it’s laboring, that is, it is in travail, and it is going through
constant shifts and changes. There are earthquakes and hurricanes and
tornadoes and all kinds of physical disasters that take place on the
planet. “We know the whole creation groans and labors [mourns and is in
travail] or is in agony together until now.
Now this word sustenazo
is translated groaning together. The sus
emphasizes together. It’s the Greek preposition sus plus the verb stenazo
and when it’s combined together it means lamenting together. But the basic
core word is stenazo, which is the
verb which we see showing up in two or three other
verses here in this context. So, not only is the whole creation going
through this physical agony but in verse 23 there’s something in addition going
on, “And not only this…” Not only is the physical world going through this
groaning, “but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even
we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons,
the redemption of our body.” So first of all let’s talk about the concepts
of the first fruits, which is the Greek word aparche
which is a concept that goes back to the Old
Testament. It indicates the beginning of something. For example, it
was an agricultural term and it was used to describe the first harvesting, the
first time when you went out in the fields and you were able to harvest some of
the crop or some of the fruit off the fruit trees and it’s that initial part of
the harvest that was then dedicated to God in a first fruit offering. So
the first fruit emphasizes something from the beginning.
This first fruit is the first fruit of the Spirit or
something that is the beginning of something that is of the Spirit’s
work. So I think that the phrase there, “of the Spirit” which is a
genitive phrase and it simply is what’s called an epexegetical
or explanatory of the first fruits. We’re the beginning of the work of the
Spirit. That wasn’t true in the Old Testament. They didn’t have the
Spirit so this is emphasizing that there’s something new and fresh that’s
happening in the Church Age that’s going to have a role, an impact in the
future time when the groaning ends. Now that takes us right back to what
we read in verse 17, this concept of being joint heirs with Christ. So we
move back and forth in Paul’s thinking with the present suffering to the future
glorification with Christ in an environment where there’s no longer any
sin.
“So we who have the first fruits of the Spirit” also
emphasizes the idea of a pledge. We get this in the phrase that we find in
Ephesians 1:14 that the Holy Spirit in his ministry as the sealing of the
Spirit, is called the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the
purchased possession. There redemption is used in a future tense sense in Ephesians
1:14. Ephesians 4:30 says, “Do not grieve the Holy
Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for [or until] the day of redemption.” So
I think in both of these passages that which is redeemed is the same thing we
have in creation, which is the ultimate completion of the application of God’s
redemptive work. He pays the price at the cross but it’s not until that final
part of creation is overhauled and restored to perfection that redemption is
complete. That’s spoken of as a future tense in terms of the day of redemption.
So we’re the first fruits. We’re the beginning
but it’s looking forward to the completion of the work of the Holy Spirit. And
so we read, “And not only this, but also we ourselves who have the first fruits
of the Spirit..” It also brings in the fact that
we have the fullness of the Spirit. We have all of these magnificent
blessings from God the Holy Spirit and yet we still legitimately
groan. Now we don’t legitimately complain. Paul clearly knocks that
out over in Ephesians 4 that we’re not to complain or be embittered, but here
we are to groan within ourselves. That’s an inarticulate
groaning. Some people need to have this spelled out. That means you
don’t have a gripe session with other Christians about how bad it is living in
a fallen world. It’s within yourself;
it is totally silent. We’re going to come back and have another
concept of ‘within yourself’ in just a minute. That’s why I’m emphasizing
this. It’s inarticulate. It’s not something that’s spoken
about. It’s not something that’s talked about. It’s that we feel in
the very core of our being that there are things that aren’t right with the
world today. We see wars; we see famines; we see things that go wrong on
cruise ships and we say, “This just isn’t right.” We’re living in a fallen
world. Bad things happen because we live in a fallen world that is
characterized by a lack of justice and righteousness. And sometimes nobody
is to blame.
In our arrogance we have to go out and find someone to
blame all the time but there’s no one necessarily to blame. We live in a
fallen world; everything we buy, everything we construct has to be painted, has
to be repaired, and has to be kept up. At times it falls apart even when
we keep it up, even when we paint it, cut it, repair it, it still falls apart
when it’s least convenient because we live in a fallen world. But we have
an internal sense that it’s not right. So, “Not only this but also we
ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan
within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of
the body.” Now, this word “eagerly awaiting” means to anticipate something
enthusiastically. It’s an excited anticipation of something that’s coming. Remember
when you were about six or seven years old and for the first time in your life
you really understood that Christmas meant that you were going to get all kind
of goodies and you just couldn’t go to sleep on Christmas night because you
were going to get a bicycle or, I don’t know, an Elmo doll, or whatever was
popular back then. That’s it! You were going to get it and you could
barely contain yourself. That’s eager anticipation. That’s how we are
to look forward to the coming of Christ.
We’re groaning, we have eager anticipation but that
doesn’t justify believers who just got so tired of dealing with the garbage in
the devil’s world that they committed suicide just because they knew they’d be
face to face with the Lord. That’s not the way to handle it. We have
to recognize, as our Lord did, that we’re living in this fallen, corrupted
world for a purpose and we have a mission in this world. We have to engage
that mission until the Lord takes us home. He’s the one who decides when
it’s time to take us on a permanent R&R back to heaven. But until then
we eagerly wait for that R&R. We’re eagerly looking forward to it just
like kids at Christmas.
We’re eagerly awaiting the adoption. Now wait a
minute. This is a funny phrase here. It’s huiothesia [u(ioqesia] which indicates that adoption which we’ve talked
about before that every believer at the instant they receive Christ is adopted
but this is talking about something in the future. Something
future. We’re adopted at the instant of salvation. That’s clear from
Galatians, chapters 3 and 4, dealing with the doctrine of adoption. But
here the concept of adoption is explained in the next phrase, which is an
appositional phrase. It’s when you have a word and then the next phrase
further defines the word. The adoption here is called the redemption of
our body, and this is the word apolutrosis.
So we have here the idea that the fallen world is going to be redeemed, and the
physical body is going to be redeemed. That occurs for the believer at our
resurrection when we receive a new physical body that somehow is produced from
the molecules and the chemicals of this original body. The reason I say
that is because the only model we have for resurrection is not the widow’s son
with Elisha, not Lazarus, because they were just restored to this physical
life. They hadn’t been dead long enough for the body to go through a lot
of decomposition and decay. It had a little bit but God regenerated that
body and gave them their life back but it was still a physical, mortal
life. The only example we have of true resurrection is the Lord Jesus
Christ and on that first day of the week following the crucifixion when the
disciples, first Mary, goes to the tomb and sees that it’s empty and then the
disciples come to the tomb and see that it’s empty, then Jesus appeared to
them.
The tomb was empty because God didn’t just say, “Poof,
Jesus has a new body”. The body he had before is no longer
there. That physical body that Jesus had in His humanity becomes what is
transformed into his new spiritual body. How that happens, we don’t
know. It’s going to be interesting because for most people in history
we’ve actually gone through a long period of decomposition and decay and there’s
not a lot left. Maybe a few bones here and there but if they went down in
a shipwreck and they were eaten by four or five different sharks, then they’re
just going to be spread all over the ocean. Or if they get hit with a five
hundred ton bomb right on the center of head there’s not going to be a whole
lot left of them left. There’s just going to be a lot of molecules
scattered all over everywhere and if people are cremated and had their ashes
scattered in the Mississippi River, then those molecules are going to be
scattered all over everywhere. I think that the God of the Bible is
powerful enough and knowledgeable enough to know where every one of those
molecules are and he’s going to bring them all back
together. Just think of all those believers who died before the flood and
there wasn’t a whole lot left of their remains on the planet. That all got
scattered and pretty much destroyed.
There are some people who come along and say
Christians shouldn’t be cremated. Some of their arguments are a little
more serious but we lose the reality that we have a God who can put back
together what we think is impossible to put back together. If you think
that if someone is cremated and their ashes are scattered, and that God can’t
put their bodies together from those ashes then you don’t have an omnipotent or
an omniscient God. Now not everybody reduces it to that superficial kind
of argument but some do. God can bring that body back together. I
always have the silly question. If I were to die today and if my eye was
given to somebody for an eye transplant, and my liver for a liver transplant,
and a heart for a heart transplant and the Rapture occurred, do they get to
keep the heart and the liver or do I get that back? Sometimes we all
engage in overthink! All right.
Redemption is only used a few other times in
Romans. This word apolutrosis is used
in, “We’re justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in
Christ Jesus.” Redemption there is definitely related to justification,
which is not in the future but in the past. Ephesians 1:7 redemption is
used in reference to forgiveness. It talks about the payment of a
price. “In whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of
sins.” It’s that payment of a price that occurred at the cross. Ephesians
1:14, “The Holy Spirit is the guarantor of our inheritance until the redemption
of this purchased possession.” That’s a future tense concept there for
redemption. That’s the completion of the process.
Ephesians 4:30, “Don’t grieve the Holy Spirit of God
by whom you are sealed until the day of redemption.” So there’s a past
tense reality when the price was paid and its application over time leads to an
ultimate full realization of the ending of the curse of sin.
Now we come to verse 24, “For in hope we have been
saved…” This, then, is a reference term. It makes more sense if we
say, “We were saved with reference to this hope..” Now
this is the only time in Romans that I have found sozo in a past tense. Every other time sozo is used in a future tense. Romans
5, “We were justified that we might be saved ...” Future
tense. In other passages saved has to do with justification. This is
the only time sozo is used in the
passages on sanctification. So here it seems to be used as a synonym for
phase One. Sometimes in the past I’ve said it’s never used for Phase One
but this could be the one exception that it’s used as a synonym for that time
in which we were justified at point of belief in Christ. “For we were
saved with reference to this hope…” It’s just like the planet, which is
going to be overhauled with reference to hope. God subjected it to
corruption with reference to hope in verse 20. We were saved with
reference to that same future hope and that certain destiny.
Then we see something interesting about hope, “But
hope that is seen is not hope.” Hope is like faith. It’s not based on
sight. It’s based on belief in something that is not seen, not felt, not
subject to empirical verification. We’re simply trusting in the promise of
God. Hope that is seen is not hope. “For who hopes for what he already
sees?” If you hope it’s a present reality but hope focuses on a conviction
of the certainty of a future reality. Verse 25, “But if we hope for what
we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.” But if we hope
we have confident expectation for a future destiny, which we do not see. We do
not have empirical evidence of heaven. Listen, it does not matter how many
children on numerous surgical tables have out of body experiences claiming they
went to heaven while they were under surgery and write bestselling books about
it and have credibility because their daddy is some kind of a pastor. It
doesn’t matter how many of those instances people talk about, that’s hope that
is seen. Our hope in heaven is spoken of in the Bible as an unseen
reality. It’s not based on what some child comes back and tells
us. In fact, if that does anything for your Christian conviction, then I
don’t think you’ve ever learned any doctrine.
Remember what happens with Lazarus, when he died and
the rich man goes to torments and Lazarus is in Abraham’s Bosom, and the rich
man says to Abraham, “Let Lazarus [not the Lazarus who was raised from the
dead] go back and tell my brothers. And Abraham said, “That’s not going to
work because if they don’t believe Moses and the prophets, they’re not going to
believe somebody who came back from the dead.” See, Moses and the prophets
and the New Testament are enough. You don’t need what some little kid
writes in a bestselling book to give you extra confidence in the truth of
Scripture. If you need that, then you don’t have much confidence in
Scripture. Here’s my suggestion. You need to take a long, hard look
at what you really believe, because Moses and the prophets and the apostles in
the New Testament are enough. They’re more certain than what some little
kid is going to tell you because he had hallucinations under anesthesia.
So we hope for what we do not see. This is a
universal principle. We don’t see it. We eagerly wait for it with perseverance. That
means we endure suffering. Perseverance is always a term used in the
Scripture for hanging in there in time of suffering and adversity. Verse
26, “In the same way the Spirit also helps in our weakness…” The word for
weaknesses is the Greek word asthenes. Now
that’s one of my favorite words because way back when I was just getting out of
seminary I read a great article on praying for the sick in James 5 that was one
of the best written articles I’d ever read in a theological journal and it was
talking about we ought to pray for the sick. But the sick there isn’t the
word for sick. It’s the word asthenes
in the noun form. It means those who are either physically weak or
spiritually weak. In the gospels it’s used about 80 percent of the time
for those who are physically weak or sick. Jesus healed the asthenes but there are a few times it’s
used for those who are spiritually weak. When Jesus talks about the spirit
is willing but the flesh is weak. He’s talking about spiritual inability,
spiritual weakness, and spiritual weariness.
“The Spirit also helps our weakness...” This is
talking about spiritual weariness in times of adversity. It’s used that
way in James. “But we do not know how to pray as we should
...” Now I want you to pay attention to that sentence and think
about that sentence because a lot of you heard me say, “Some of the time we
don’t know what we should pray for as we ought.” It doesn’t say
that. It makes a universal, absolute statement. We, as believers in
the Lord Jesus Christ, as creatures, do not know how to pray. That’s an
absolute, universal statement. It doesn’t say we don’t know how to pray in
certain situations. That’s often how it’s used. It just says we just
flat, period, all the time, just don’t know. Why? Because the data
that we do know is such a microscopic, infinitesimal, small amount of all the
information that goes into why that event is happening that we really don’t
have a clue how to pray for it.
But remember, that’s not an excuse to not
pray. It’s not an excuse to just generalize your prayers and say, “God,
you know what to do, so just do it.” Because the examples we have in
Scripture are not that way. That’s why we have to study the
Scriptures. The prayers of Paul are not generalized prayers like that.
They’re very specific in ways we can be specific. In lots of ways we can
be specific because we’re claiming promises, just as the psalmist
does. Many of the psalms are prayers. But we don’t know how to pray
for anything as we ought but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pray, because
we have a translator. So we pray and the Holy Spirit dusts off and cleans
out and straightens whatever the prayer is, so you don’t have to worry about
“Oh, I said it wrong.” Guess what? A lot of us say it wrong, a lot of
the time. The Holy Spirit cleans it up. Verse 26, “For we do not know
how to pray as we should but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”
This should be translated, “With unutterable
groans”. The emphasis is on "unutterable". It’s
silent. Remember I talked about the fact that we groan within
ourselves. It’s not audible. This is the Holy Spirit handling it in
terms of silent prayer. Now there are those within the charismatic
community who try to argue that tongues is a prayer
language. They use this as a support for that. That it’s the Holy
Spirit praying with these unutterable groans. I say, “Well, they’re
unutterable. How come I hear it?” Not only that, but I had this
conversation with one Pentecostal who said, “When I pray in my prayer language,
God answers my prayer more often.” I said, “Really? How do you know
what you pray for?” “Well, I don’t.” “Then how do you know they’re
answered?”
We don’t know how to pray as
we ought. The Holy Spirit makes intercession. This is the word sunantilambano, and I’m not going to say
it again. That’s a long word. It means to assist or to
help. Let’s say Jess over there is working out to unload all the heavy
furniture for the Camp Arete garage sale and he comes
upon this large buffet. Jess has been working out so Jess manipulates it
so he can actually pick it up off the ground and start shuffling like an old
man as he moves it forward and moves it all by himself. Now that’s the picture
here in sunantilambano. The
Holy Spirit is the one who comes along. He doesn’t say, “You can’t carry
that. I’ll carry it for you.” He doesn’t take hold of it and carry
the weight all by himself. No, he says, “I’ll get this end and you get the
other end.” He assists. He doesn’t take it away from us. He
assists us in our prayer. We pray. He assists. We don’t say,
“Oh, he’s going to do it anyway, so I’ll just go about my business and make
some generalized statement.” No, that’s not the idea. It’s that he’s
going to come along and say, “I’m going to take this end and you take that end
and together we’ll make the prayer work.”
So He comes in as an assistant with groanings that are unutterable. They’re
inaudible groanings. This word for intercession
is huperentechano and it just
means to pray on behalf of someone else. But in the next word we have a
different word that’s going to be used for intercession. In verse 27, “And
He [God the Father] who searches the hearts know what the mind of the Spirit is..” The Holy Spirit is one with the Father in the
Trinity. They’re both omniscient so the Father knows exactly what the
Spirit is thinking and He knows the mind of the Spirit “because the Spirit is
making intercession for the saints according to the will of God.” This is
a different word. It’s entuchano
and it means to appeal, to make an appeal to someone. So the Spirit makes
an appeal on behalf of the saints according to the will of God.” So we
pray to the best of our ability. But we pray; we don’t back off. We
don’t say, “I’m not really sure so I’m just going to let the Holy Spirit handle
it.” We do it to the best of our ability and then unbeknownst to us, we
don’t know how it happens, He sort of dusts it off and cleans it up, straightens
out, and then it goes to the throne of God. He is our intercessor.
Verse 34, if you skip down, also uses this same word
for the Lord Jesus Christ. That verse tells us, “Christ Jesus is He who
died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also
intercedes for us.” So both the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ intercede for
us. So that leads us up to verse 28 which says “all things work together
for good”. In context, what are the all things in this passage? It’s
the suffering we’ve been talking about since it was pointed out in verse 17
that we can be a joint-heir with Christ if indeed we suffer with Him. So
when we go through all these adversities and all the things that make us groan,
we can claim a promise that all things, all these things that cause us to
groan, will work together for good to those who love God. There are
questions about that. There are some alternate readings and so we’re going
to have a take a look at some of the finer points in the exegesis of verse 28
when we come back next time.
Now we understand the relationship between groaning,
who groans, the earth groans, the creation groans, we groan but eventually that
groaning is going to be converted into intercessory prayer to God by the Holy
Spirit and eventually everything will be straightened out and evil will be
destroyed at the end of the Millennial Kingdom.