Title: The Intercession of the Spirit

Text: Rom 8:26- 27

Date: 2-03-08.am

Ro 8:26-27

26 And in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; 27 and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. NASB

Introduction:

People are fascinated with the idea of super-heros. I’m not sure anymore about who the current super hero’s are I’m sure there is a host of bizarre and unbelievable heros. Not like the more logical super heros like I grew up with like Aquaman, Batman, the Green Lantern, Spiderman and of course Mighty Mouse those really believable kind of super heros. Still I believe at the top of the list is Superman.

Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. A super-hero you can relate to. Who disguised as Clark Kent, a mild-mannered reporter for a great Metropolitan Newspaper, fights a never ending battle for truth justice and the American way.

We all wish we had a super friend to rescue us, but we don't. Or do we? Actually, as believers, we have a super friend who is far more powerful than any imaginary hero. We have the Holy Spirit.

Paul says the Spirit also helps our weakness. He certainly does that in a number of ways. He frees us from sin, enables us to fulfill God's law, changes our nature, empowers us for victory, confirms our adoption, and guarantees our glory. He sets us free to live the Christian life. He sets us apart to a new relationship; and He gives us hope in the midst of suffering in a fallen world. He is the Spirit of strength who helps us in our weakness.

The intercession of the Spirit

One of the particular areas of weakness in the Christian life is our prayer life and Paul addresses that in verses 26 and 27.

"In the same way" Paul says in v. 26 links this passage to what he has previously written particularly in reference to the indwelling of the Spirit in the life of the believer. The word weakness means lack of strength or the lack of capacity to understand something; the lack of ability to restrain immoral desires; or to bear up under trials and troubles. The indwelling Spirit helps us to understand the things of God. He helps us to understand the Bible as more than just a book, but as God's revelation of Himself to mankind. Paul shared with us about the weakness of the flesh in chapter 7. Without the help of the Spirit of God we are unable to control the old self, we remain slaves to sin and as Paul said we are unable to please God. Without Him we would be left to bear trails and troubles and suffering of this world alone.

He Helps Our Weakness in Prayer

An essential element to appropriating the Spirit and power of God in our lives is through communication with God in prayer and most of us could testify that we are weak in that area of our lives. Prayer is and always has been one of the great mysteries of the Christian life. The Jesus’ own disciples did not understand that great mystery. They sought the Lord to teach them to pray in Lk 11:1. In response to their request Jesus gave them what we refer to as the Lord's prayer, or the model prayer in verse 2-4.

It wasn't that they didn't know how to pray or what prayer was or that they had never prayed or been taught to pray to God, but they did not fully comprehend the fullness of what prayer was. They saw Jesus prayer life and they wanted to know how to pray like He did.

Like the apostles we know about prayer, we know God listens and hears prayer, but we show by our lack of commitment to prayer our lack of fervency or intensity in practical praying that we really don't comprehend the awesomeness of being able to communicate with the living God. We fail to understand the importance of prayer and the greatness of that gift God has given us to communicate with Him. I think that’s part of the reason Christians don't pray. You may be different but depending on which survey you look at you find the average evangelical Christian today prays on average only about 3 minutes a day and what may be worse the average evangelical minister on average prays only between 5 and 10 minutes per day.

That leaves little doubt of the weakness in prayer through out Christianity. Maybe we don't pray more because we sense our own inadequacy, not only in approaching God, but in knowing exactly how to pray or what to pray.

How many times have you done something you knew was wrong, you knew was sin and felt unworthy of going before God in prayer sometimes even ashamed to plead for forgiveness again. I meas sometimes we just fail and think God doesn’t even want to hear me say I’m sorry I just keep doing this or that, I just keep repeating my mistakes and I know He’s tired of hearing me say ask for forgiveness.

How many times have you wondered how to pray for a friend or loved one who is suffering from a serious illness, or there is some type of situation in your life or the life a friend or a family, and you just don't know what to say or what to pray or even how to begin to pray for the situation. This is part of what Paul is talking about in 8:26b. We have the Holy Spirit to intercede for us in prayer.

The Bible gives us a number of examples of how and what to pray for others. I think my favorite is Col 1 :9-14

9 For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. 10 And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, 11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully 12 giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light. 13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. [NIV)

Here Paul prays for a daily filling for believers concerning God's will; he prays for a closer walk that pleases God; he prays for supernatural strengthening, and he gives thanks for our deliverance. But, Paul also understood there are simply going to be those times when we have recognize our finiteness and give ourselves and our prayer over to God, allowing the Spirit to make intercession in situations like that.

But that kind of intercession is only part of what Paul is talking about.

He wrote the Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words is the way the NASB translates it. Groanings that can not be uttered the KJV says and the NIV says groans that words cannot express.

What are these groans? This is not glossolalia or speaking in tongues, or praying in tongues. There is nothing in the context of Romans 8:26-27 that’s even remotely related to the issue of tongues. Paul is referring to the Spirit here, not the individual.

That phrase Paul used to begin verse 26, “In the same manner” also refers to what Paul had previously written of creation groaning in anxious expectation (v. 22), and of our own groaning within our selves (v. 23) waiting for the consummation of our redemption. In both cases he is referring to an intense desire or longing within creation and within the believer for the consummation of God’s eternal plan of redemption. Not that creation or persons are audibly groaning. In the same way Paul now speaks of the intense emotional/spiritual involvement of the Spirit as well in that expectation and particularly His involvement in the area of prayer.

To understand that a little better we look at the prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane in Lk chapter 22. After the final supper Jesus went into the garden and in verse 44 we see the intensity of Jesus' prayer. The Bile says And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground. NASB That word agony means there was a great struggle within His Spirit and intense concern about what was about to take place, not only what it meant for Him, but what it meant for us.

God is intensely involved in our relationship with Him. He is intensely involved in love concern and compassion for us and this is expressed in human terms describing the Spirit's intercession as being beyond words. The groans themselves are not inexpressible, in other words they are not audible groans we can’t understand. Paul is referring to the Spirits’ intense desire and intercession for us that can’t be described or expressed in human terms. Now, it may be that while we are praying our own desire and intensity evolves to the point where we ourselves are groaning and weeping, but that’s not the focus of this verse. He’s not talking about our groaning but rather about the Spirit’s desire as He becomes involved in our praying.

The meaning of the Spirit's groaning v. 27

Though these “groanings” may be unexpressible in human terms they are not without meaning. The meaning of the Spirit’s groaning is clear to the one who has complete access to the human heart. Who is that? God. God alone has access to the human heart and His understanding does not depend on our ability to articulate our concerns. He knows the hearts of men and women and the mind of the Spirit which intercedes is the mind of God and intercedes according to His will.

I like the way Robert Mounce expresses this, he says, "The Spirit comes to the aid of believers baffled by the perplexity of prayer and takes their concerns to God with an intensity far greater than we could ever imagine.

I think the key to understanding what Paul is talking about in this passage comes from preceding verses which talks about the labor pains of creation and our expectation of the fulfillment of our adoption as well as the following verse which addresses our predestining to be conformed to the image of God. When we look at these verses in context Paul is not just talking about our intercession for ourselves and others or our prayer in general. Paul is talking about the Spirits intense desire, longing and intercession in the sense of our genuinely seeking God’s will for our lives and the desire to conform to the image of God.

When we pray usually we are wanting something, wanting something to go our way or go in our favor or wanting not to have to go through something or face something. Let all the paper work go through on the new house. Let me do good on the job interview or on the test; let me get that promotion or that raise things like that; or don’t let the test show something bad or heal me of this or, let the surgery go well and the recovery be speedy. And there is nothing wrong with those kinds of prayers. Paul says in Phil 4:6-7 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything (all inclusive) by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. NASB We ought to be praying those kinds of prayers. The same applies to our prayers of intercession for others, those in our families and those on our prayer lists we pray for what we think is the best outcome in a particular situation whether it’s deliverance or healing or whatever and those are good things. We ought to pray for those things and we need to yield to the Spirit’s intercession in those times. But I think what Paul is talking about here is the bigger picture and that is conforming us and our will to the image and will of God.

Go back to verse 26 And in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness. We are fallen humans living in a fallen world. All of our understanding and ability as great and wonderful as it might be is tainted and marred by sin. It would be wonderful if I had the mind of God and knew the best thing for each of you in every situation, it would be even more wonderful if I had that kind of understanding for my own life. But I don’t and neither do you and because of that Paul says “we do not know how to pray as we should.” Well God gave us a model prayer, isn’t it sufficient to pray that. That obviously is good place to start. The truth is even when we pray that we don’t know what it means. When we repeat that prayer and pray Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done do we really know or really mean what we are asking? Would we pray that prayer in sincerity if we knew it meant certain hardship for us. Would we be sincere in praying that pray if we knew we would face execution on a cross tomorrow or next Friday. I think we would all have reservations about that.

But I think when we are sincere in our faith and in our desire to be more like our Father and to be conformed to His image even when we are weak in our understanding of what that is and what it might entail because of sin the Spirit intercedes in a way we can’t understand to help us achieve that goal. Paul wrote, He who searches the heart, who is God, knows what the mind of the Spirit is. Notice he doesn’t say knows what our mind is, but what the Spirit’s mind is which of course is the mind of God and the Spirit is interceding for us according to the will of God.

We are like children. We know what we like and we think we know what’s best and right for us. But children do to. If you put a plate of candy and cookies on the table for every meal alongside a plate of vegetables and the kids have the chance to make the choice 99% of the time they will choose the candy and cookies. They taste better, they are more fun and you could explain nutrition all day long but if given the choice chocolate or veggies you know which is going first. They might understand wanting to be healthy and strong but the doesn’t mean they want to eat what makes them healthy and strong. I struggle with that as an adult. In a similar way we understand the call to be conformed to the image of God, we even have the desire to be conformed to the image of God but not necessarily what it takes to get us there or what we must go through to get there or what God wants us to go through to accomplish His will. We don’t know what trials we may face tomorrow but God does and the Spirit intercedes for us as we encounter those trials.

This is what Jesus said to Peter in Lk 22:31-32 "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat; 32 but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers. "

NASB

Just as Jesus interceded for Peter and also continues to interceded for us too, the Spirit intercedes for us with such a deep intense desire it can’t be described in words.

What a wonderful, wonderful promise that is we have from God about what the Spirit is doing in our prayer life. We need to remember, when we talk about prayer, we are not talking about just presenting God with a list of things we want and how we want them done. Prayer does include lists of things and people in includes a lot of different kinds of things but primarily when we talk about prayer we are talking about finding the mind and the will of God and conforming to that.

In our prayer life we want to allow the Spirit to intercede between us and God not only praying God’s will for us in ways we can’t fully understand but also conveying God’s will to us in ways we can understand. We want to spend and need to spend enough time in prayer to allow that to happen.

The challenge for us this morning is to become that kind of a prayer warriors, praying in the Spirit, through the Spirit and with the Spirit. In order to do that we must give ourselves completely to God through Jesus Christ. We must not only use the phrase “thy will be done” when we pray, we must actually surrender our will to Him so that His will can be done. We must hear and heed His call to "Come, follow me" and willingly follow His footsteps where ever they may go. We invite you to do that this morning, come and follow Him.