Lord, being able to gather together
and study your word. Father, as we get back into this
Roman study, I thank you, Lord, for the truth that is there.
Though we are not going slowly through it, Father, there are
bold and wonderful truths about the gospel of grace, about the
righteousness that is ours in Christ Jesus, the truth of who
you are and what you've done for your people. Father, we are
blessed to know it, blessed to be able to see it, blessed to
be able to understand and comprehend the fullness of the gospel because
so many people are blinded to it. So as we learn, as we grow,
as we rejoice and thanksgiving, knowing what you've done on our
behalf, help us to take this truth and to challenge others
to answer the question, what is the gospel? And we pray these
things in Jesus' name. Amen. Romans chapter 8. Romans chapter 8. It was some months ago. As a
matter of fact, it might have been December last time we were
in... It might have been November last time we were in Romans. Romans chapter 8, we're going
to be tonight in verse 18. That's where we're going to pick
up. There's a lot here still in the 8th chapter, and as we
get going we will see more and more and more truth. After a couple of weeks I'll
do an open time of Q&A so that we're not rushing by things,
and then we'll go right back in. As a matter of fact, it'll
be a full night of Q&A. We might just do Q&A at the end of one of the
messages. But here I want to start in verse
12 and read down through verse 25 and then we'll begin. So then,
brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according
to the flesh. For if you live according to
the flesh, you will die. But if, living by the Spirit,
you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For
all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you
did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear,
but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we
cry, Abba, Father. The spirit himself bears witness
with our spirit that we are the children of God. And if children,
then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided
we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with
him. For I consider that the sufferings
of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory
that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager
longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation
was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him
who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set
free from its bondage to corruption and attain the freedom of the
glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation
has been groaning together in pains of childbirth until now.
And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first
fruits of the spirit, groan inwardly as we await eagerly for adoption
as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope, we
were saved. Now hope that is seen is not
hope, for who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what
we do not see, we wait for it with patience. Now let me start
at the end there and let me define with you how I like in my home
to define patience. Patience is waiting without complaining. That's how we define it in my
home. So if we have a patient spirit, that means we're not
fussing, we're not asking are we there yet, we're not saying
how much longer, we're not squirming in our seats, we're not, you
know, banging on the table or anything else that Robin or I
might do because we're impatient. But we are waiting without complaining. And friends, I'll tell you what,
I don't know of many people who can do that holistically in their
lives. But what Paul is referring to in this latter part of this
text in verse 25, we wait without complaining because we have a
hope that we do not see. You see? And that hope seems
hopeless when things seem hopeless. And that's really what Paul is
referring to here. When we see in verse 18, He is
explaining, He is expounding upon what we've already learned
some months ago. That we, if we are in Christ,
we are fellow heirs, we are partakers of the divine glory that we will
share with Christ, or otherwise He will share with us, provided
we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified with Him. And so in that, we have a really
clear picture of something that is so antithetical to our day.
It goes against everything we know as a culture. As a matter
of fact, it goes against the very thing that most people tell
me when they try to explain to me how God is good. You ever
had that conversation? Well, God is good, and I like
to say, why? How? Why do you say such things?
Well, God's always good. Well, it's a true statement,
but I want people to tell me why. Why is it that God is good
in their mind, in their opinion, in their understanding, in their
vernacular, in their words? I want them to tell me why God
is good. And most of the time, I hear something related to what
God has done for them, related to what God is doing now for
them, related to what God will do for them, in the way of material
possessions, in the way of health. In the way of money, in the way
of a job, in the way of something, no matter what it may be, it
has to do with the physical realm of this life. People say that
God is good because He gave me these trinkets. God is good because
He gave me this stuff. God is good because He provided
for me. Now, God is a provider. By the will and the mercy of
God, we have the jobs that we have. By the will and mercy of
God, we have the income that we have. for no matter how good
we are, God can shut it all down like that. But God also permits
unbelievers to have these same blessings. So sometimes I even
have the conversation about a specific heretical teaching that me and
a brother were talking about on Wednesday of last week, that
so many people think that if God is not giving you these things,
it's because you lack the faith to receive them. But it's not
true at all. But the charlatans of our world
will go ahead and tell you that you have not received as they
have received because you have not believed in faith that God
would give it to you. But we forget that the Scripture
doesn't promise us anything. The Scripture doesn't promise
us life in the body. The Scripture doesn't promise
us joy in the earth. The Scripture doesn't promise
us a life of not suffering. The Scripture doesn't promise
us healing or none of those things. The Scripture promises us glory. The Scripture promises us that
we will be glorified with Jesus Christ. That no matter what we
experience in this life, which is not our best life now, we
will receive the fullness of the glory of Christ upon His
return. Friends, that is what we long
for. That is why Paul says down in the end of verse 25 of Romans
8, we wait patiently with hope that we cannot see. Friends,
if hope was tied into what we could measure and hold and observe
and see, then it would not be hope. As a matter of fact, Paul
says the same thing when he writes to the Hebrews, that faith that
is visible is not faith. We hope for that that we cannot
see, because we have been granted these beautiful promises through
our Father, who is in heaven, through the Son who has secured
them through the finished work on the cross, His obedience and
righteousness accredited to us. So, all of this being said, trying
to get back into the mood of Romans, we need to put forefront
in our mind the reality that all of the apostles and all of
the New Testament writing, even our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,
who is our God, tells us very clearly that the saints above
all people will suffer greatly. We will. He has not promised
us a life of not suffering, though there are seasons where we can
attempt to have reprieve. We find the joy in the midst
of pain to know that our glory is not in this earth, but it
is the glory that has been promised to us that is out of this world,
that is beyond this light momentary affliction that Paul says when
he's speaking to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians 4. that prepares
us for an eternal weight of glory that is beyond all comparison. He relates the same thing to
the Romans here. And He says we will be glorified
with Him. We call Him Papa, Abba, Father. We are not the children that
have to cower and grovel and beg and hide and not show our
faces. We are not children who have
been put away by God until we get things right. We have been
called His righteousness. We have been called His children
because we are. And He has loved us with an everlasting
love that never began and will never end. And because of His
love for us, His children, He put to death Jesus the Christ
so that He could be just in the forgiveness of our sins. And friends, we go bold before
the throne of grace with our Father. no matter who else is
in the room. This is the relationship that
we have in Christ Jesus with God the Father, and that we would
suffer with Him in order that we will be glorified also with
Him, because we are heirs of the promises of God. Verse 18,
4. Now Paul is going to talk about
this suffering. He's going to give a point of
view that will help us peer into the eyes of Paul. And I've done
this numerous times throughout our journey here in Romans and
sometimes in Philippians and Ephesians and other places. I
always like to reiterate and recapitulate the sufferings of
Paul. Paul who was a Pharisee. Paul
who was of the tribe of Benjamin. Paul who was a very studied,
a very honorable. He was an up-and-coming guy that
had everything before him. The brass ring of Judaism had
been handed to him and he had grabbed hold of it. with both
hands and both feet and his teeth. He was rising to the top of stardom
and there was nowhere else in the society that he knew that
was higher than where Paul was. Paul was also someone who had
great wealth. He was someone who had great
ability. He was someone who had great respect and glory and honor. The very fact that they would
violate, that the Jews in Acts chapter 7 would break the law
of Rome by the authority of Saul of Tarsus, by putting their cloaks
at his feet, signifying he approved of the judicial execution of
Stephen for blasphemy, shows that Saul had clout and no one
feared him. And likewise, he had no fear
at all, as we see after the persecution that began through Saul in Acts
chapter 8. But Saul, who calls himself Paul,
that's the name that we use, same name, different language
if you can, Paul suffered even beyond that. He let all of that
go. He was ridiculed. He was ostracized. He had no family. He had no wealth. He had no freedom. He who was
a teacher and a proud ruler became a slave and a prisoner. The very thing that was illegal
for him to receive, the forty lashes minus one, he received
numerous times. He was stoned and left for dead.
He was shipwrecked. He was imprisoned unjustly and
he suffered greatly. Paul suffered greatly. And He
caused His suffering light, momentary affliction. Because when He would
look at the stripes of His life, and the scars of his soul. He knew full well that he was
suffering for the sake of Christ, for the sake of Christ's body,
who is the church. Put these two things together
in your mind, if you will. Saul. Saul, why do you persecute
me? These are the words of Jesus
the Lord as He commanded Saul, as He regenerated Saul and blinded
his physical lives by giving him spiritual sight. on the road
to Damascus. Saul had never once in his life
ever persecuted the man Jesus, but by persecuting his body,
those for whom he died, he directly persecuted Jesus himself. And the antithesis or the counter
to that is now that Paul was able to see he had been born
again and saved by the grace and the mercy of Christ. He would
become the apostle to the Gentiles He would become the teacher and
the preacher, the evangelist to the unclean, the sinners,
the dogs, the wicked, the evil, the nasty drugs, the dredges
of society. Paul would become their apostle. He would become the pastor of
their pastors. And He would preach to them the
unsearchable riches of Jesus Christ, the mystery now made
known that it is not those who are the blood of Abraham, but
those who have been given the blood of Jesus as their only
hope and righteousness and atoning sacrifice. This is Paul's legacy. And as he persecuted the body
of Christ, such persecuting Christ, when Paul suffered greatly in
his human flesh, and then he served the body of Christ in
that suffering, he was actually serving Christ directly in his
suffering. Friends, there's something to
learn from this. As a congregation, as believers, we need to recognize
that when we serve each other in suffering, we indeed are stacking
up a celebratory glory for ourselves that will be released with, I
don't even know the word that I could use as an adjective,
but it will be majestic and rewarding and satisfactory. Every thirst
that we could ever know in this life, emotionally and spiritually
and physically, is fulfilled in the appearing of our Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ. When He comes to us, when we
see Him face to face, and the way that that is manifested in
the anticipation of our hope and treasure this life, this
side of heaven, is when we suffer together as the church for the
sake of one another. It makes you think about suffering,
doesn't it? And Paul says, all of these things that we are now
experiencing are normative, for we are not of this world. I mean,
outside the boundaries of normal suffering, all people suffer
the same way. Health and life, relationships,
divorce, all sorts of things, financial, emotional, sickness,
it doesn't matter. There's no one that can escape
the nature of the fall in relation to suffering this life. But there's
an extra layer of suffering that we as believers deal with, isn't
there? And that is the suffering that happens spiritually when
the enemy of God is permitted to work against us by the will
of God. And in these things, sometimes
we find extreme darkness. But it is in the darkness of
our abilities as human beings that the light of the gospel
of grace shines greater than could ever be seen. And so Paul
wants us, Paul wanted his audience to know now that we can know
that all of this suffering inclusive of people who hate you because
of the gospel, people who hate you because you stand on the
authority of Scripture, not haughtily, not as a jerk, being bold for
Christ, it's not about stomping our feet like a toddler and calling
people names and ridiculing others and reviling. Anytime we revile
anyone or mock anyone, I'll just say this and I can prove it in
the context of Scripture, anytime we revile or mock, we are wicked. in our actions. When we proclaim
the gospel of grace against even the most vile of satanic cults
that are out there, we do it with humility and with respect,
with a supernatural affection for those who are refusing it,
that we, if we could, would give up our own salvation for the
sake of them. That needs to be the heart of a believer. And
I'll tell you what, It's hard to love people like that. Praise
God that Jesus loved us as enemies like that. We have a spiritual element of
suffering. And Paul says, adding to all
of this, I consider that the sufferings of this present time
are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed
to us. Think about it. Paul says they're not worth comparing. Some of my children enjoy nature. Some of my children enjoy looking
at creatures and bugs and things of that sort. Some of my children
who all will, either group, you can decide which one fits in
which group, but some of my children are horrified of creatures. Some
of my children are horrified of bugs. Some of them, if a ladybug
were to light upon them, would break their own neck to get away.
And we think, oh, it's just a ladybug. A gnat. When Katie was a baby
and we would visit here, didn't have gnats where we lived, she
would call them repeat bugs, because they would fly out of
your mouth, into your nose, and out of your nose, into your mouth,
and out of your mouth, into your eye, and they would never stop.
They just repeated the same thing over and over again. But on repeat
bugs, she wasn't very scared of them. But there have been
some of my children who would leap out of the window of a moving
vehicle just to stay away from the repeat bugs. Now you think
about that in comparison. Why are you scared of a gnat?
Why are you scared of a bug that all it can do is fly on your
nose or land on your face? Why would you be scared of something
like that when there is a Godzilla outside ready to devour you?
When there is a sinkhole swelling up underneath us, it's going
to swallow our entire city. When the earth is about to shake
and crush us all to death, when a volcano is about to erupt,
you see the point I'm making? Some people are fearful of germs.
I don't like germs, but I'm not fearful of them. That's why I
keep them away from me, so I don't have to be fearful of them. But
some people are so fearful, I've counseled with them before, that
they have a compulsory issue that they cannot exist in the
real world. They develop what's known as agoraphobia sometimes,
that they cannot leave their own house for fear of contamination. And you think, why are you scared
of that which you cannot see? But there's so much else to be
scared of. Friends, that's the same thing
that's happening with many of us as we fear the sufferings
of this present time. But if we could put them into
perspective, if we could take See, that's the point Paul's
making. We can't even use an analogy or a metaphor or a picture
or a comparison. There's no way for me to come
up with anything that I could say that could give you the distance
between present suffering and future glory. Nothing. And that's why it is so true,
we now do not have to, what? Consider it. It is so far away
that when we look to that which is unseen, as Paul tells in 2
Corinthians, when we look to that that is glorious, Jesus
Christ and the future promises of God in Him, then what happens,
I hear the old hymn that as the things of this world grow strangely
dim, The more I look at the face of Christ, the world grows strangely
dim. The more I look at Christ, the
things of the suffering that I experience grow strangely dim.
They begin to become less effectual for us, less important, less
real, and Christ becomes live for us. Paul says it's going to be revealed
to us. In verse 19, look how he begins to expound upon this.
He says, for the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing
of the sons of God. Creation. There's been that dogwood-ish
tree outside the window of our building for as long as we've
been here, it's probably It's four years old. It's a small
tree. But every year it blooms, dies,
the leaves fall off. The leaves haven't fallen off
this year because we've got 30 degrees one day and 80 degrees the next.
It just doesn't know what to do. But most of the time, it
just does what it does. It sits there when the hurricanes
have come through and bent its leaves and its limbs all the
way down. It just sort of sits there. It never complains. It
never does anything except what it was created to do, which is
sit there and bloom and die and bloom and die and bloom and die.
It's never stopped me for counsel. It's never stopped me for a handout.
It's never tapped on the window and said, y'all are too loud
in here, I'm trying to rest. It's never done anything except
what it is supposed to do. But Paul says, in the context
of suffering, that that tree has been exposed and subjected
to the futility of the fall of man. What does that look like
for a tree? I don't know. Have you ever wept
for it? Have you ever prayed for it? This will make sense
in a minute. Have you stayed up all night
when it was cold to cover it up? Have you bought firewood
and tried not to get too close because the tree is scared of
fire? Ooh! But you wanted it to have a little warmth? When
the birds picked at its berries and ate them? When the kids with
the skateboards came along and grabbed hold of the limbs and
broke it? Did we weep and mourn over the tree? No! but yet it
was suffering patiently. And in the same way that tree
suffers in the context of its existence, I think Paul is making
a comparison that we should suffer in the same manner. How are we doing in that? I'm
just saying possibly. Listen to what I say, not what
I don't say. Because of Him who subjected
it, we know that creation is subjected to the futility of
the fall. We see the weather. We see the disasters. We see
animals and creatures. We have extinct creatures in
this world. We have creatures that are extinct
now that were not extinct when I was a child. We have endangered
species that will probably disappear. before our children are grown
with children. Subjected to futility. Why? In hope that the creation itself
will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the
freedom and the glory of the children of God. Now, let's put
this in perspective again. Just as we don't contemplate
the suffering of that tree, In comparison to the glory of Christ
that's promised to us, our suffering should be just that important
to us, as the tree's suffering is to us. Now, that's a far stretch
in this illustration. But the Scripture says that even
what God has made with His hands, the creation, not humans, but
the creation, is going to be glorified so much more than are
we looking forward to being glorified. We are longing for the day. And as we groan inwardly in the
same manner now, creation has been groaning together as if
in the pains of childbirth. You see that. And we know that
souls are not in trees. animals and bugs and repeat bugs
and all these other scary creatures that can devour us in our dreams.
They don't have eternity with a consciousness. But they are still in bondage
to the corruption of sin. We should not consider that we
who are image bearers of our Creator with new hearts and minds,
with the promise of glory, should suffer any less. You see what
He's doing there? He's given us a comparison and
a parallel of suffering. He's given us an illustration
of the fact that we're not alone in our suffering, even the birds
are suffering. And He's showing us that there's
a greater thing that awaits us, a greater glory, a greater hope,
And so here we look and we understand verse 23 is exactly what I just
said. Paul explains it. And not only
the creation, but we ourselves. So just as creation is groaning
together and awaiting the revelation of the sons of God, that's when
all these things shall be revealed. The elect and the reprobate shall
be separated forever. So we are also together as one
group, as one body, as one portion of creation, the elect of God. We are also suffering, but we
also have the first fruits of the Holy Spirit. What does that
mean? That means of the first believers
that ever were, The first believers that ever were were in this point
of history. The Holy Spirit moves in the
life of believers. Now, there were believers who
were born of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, pre-Christ. But now, all of a sudden, here
we are. We are filled with the Spirit of God. We are, in fact,
given the Spirit of God. We are, in fact, indwelled with
the Spirit of God. We are the children of God. We
are no longer in the flesh. We aren't longing as we suffer
and laboring in our suffering. to make God happy so that He
can save us. We're not trying to work in our
own righteousness in any particular manner by which we could stand
before God justified. We have the Spirit of God and
because of that we are adopted as children. So one day Daddy's going to come
and save us out of this corruption. It's a promise. But until then,
He's told us to keep our eyes on the promise. He's told us
to keep our eyes on the finished work of Christ, which is the
guarantee, which is why we have the Holy Spirit, which is our
seal. See, the seal for the believer is the spirit. But even though
we have the spirit, it doesn't mean we don't groan. It doesn't
mean we don't moan. But we're waiting for that day
of adoption. Look at the latter part of verse
23. And not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the
firstfruits of the spirit. Now, keep in mind, I'm going very
fast. What we're covering tonight would take 15 weeks to exposit
in small pieces. Grown inwardly, we grown inwardly. as we await eagerly for adoptions
as sons. And that word there meaning children,
sons and daughters. So we groan inwardly as we await
eagerly for adoptions as sons. The redemption of our bodies.
Okay. Now I have to put a little side
note here and stand on a soapbox for a second. There are many
people who believe that this hope was fulfilled for these
people. that they were already resurrected
and glorified and moved on. And nobody else will be resurrected.
There are some people who believe that only Christ will be resurrected. Well, let me ask you this question.
We're groaning in our bodies, we're groaning in our inward
being, we're groaning like creation in our physical experiences of
life, emotionally and physically, mentally, physiologically and
biologically. The escape from this corruption,
of course, we're not even talking about the judgment of God here
because we've already been taught we've escaped that. Now we're
talking about as we suffer, we're free from judgment. Oh, but what
about this? When does this get over? When
is my body not going to hurt? When it's made new. When that tree is made new. We will be made new. What's that
look like? We don't get that picture. God
doesn't lay it out. The new heavens and the new earth.
Here's the picture book. But there's a promise there.
So because of that, we believe in a literal resurrection and
a glorification. Just as Jesus was resurrected
and glorified, so shall we who are in Him, His body, be just
like Him in His body. And so this hope, this redemption
is the end, is the end, listen to this, this redemption is the
end of what we look for in our salvation. I remember growing
up thinking, until I was probably about the second grade, that
everything that had to do with salvation ended at death of my
body. everything. But having become a student in
my early 20s of John, John's writing, the United Epistles
and the Gospels, I see that John's vision of salvation ended not
in the ethereal realm of heaven, but resulted in the glorification
of the saints with Christ together as human beings or whatever type
of bodies we might have. I'm sure we'll be still called
in that sense, I don't know what we'll be called, but as people, as
persons. We have something to look forward
to whereby we not only escape the corruption of this world,
but we also establish a new world in which we live as not just
God's creation, but God's regenerative, redeemed creation. The Spirit of God keeps us in this
safely by helping us remain to look at this hope which we cannot
see, and we cannot fathom, and it has not been recorded for
us in pictures, we just know because God is our Father and
we are His children, and because Christ has satisfied all the
requirements for that condition, we have something grand to look
forward to. Heaven is not the terminal position
of the elect. We are to be raised to life and
experience the created world where Christ is over all things,
where there is no sin, where there is no temptation of sin,
where there is no death, where there is no tears. Friends, I
cry when I'm happy. There are certain things that
move me to tears in this life because they give me joy. Does that mean that there'll
be a happiness beyond that? Yeah. What's it like? I don't know. But I'll be honest
with you, I don't want to jump over Jesus to the experience.
Because quite honestly, Christ is the prize for me. Christ is
the prize for you. Christ is the crown of life.
Christ is the crowns of glory. He is, and our affection for
Him, here's the end of this, our affection for Him and the
exuberance and the ecstatic nature in which we are continually being
pressed by God the Spirit through the Word and through our assembly
to love Him more and more and more. When we get it all, we
have Him. And I think if Jesus were handing
out awards, I would be irritated. I would be irritated if He called
my name. And this is all theoretical. I'm not saying He'll be calling
my name to give me some prizes. But if He called my name to come
up there and brag about me, what an absurd idolatry Jesus would
permit. He can't do that, can He? He
must give glory to God in all things. So, Christ is the reward. Christ is our hope. And friends,
this life of suffering is priming the pump for that day. The more
we hurt, the greater the reward. The deeper the groanings, the
greater the hallelujahs. This is what the Bible teaches
us. For in this hope, we were saved. We hope in the finished
work of Jesus Christ that carries us all the way home, not just
to heaven, but back. All the way. All the way home. And we do not hope for that which
we can understand and see and hold and touch. We do understand
it. But it's incomprehensible in
its fullness because we can't imagine what this must be like. But if we hope for what we do
not see, we wait for it with patience. Now I'm going to continue
in verse 26, and then we're going to stop there tonight. Likewise,
as the Spirit has filled us and sealed us and given us hope,
the Spirit works. Because isn't this the next thing
that happens in our suffering? What happens when the soul is
given up? What happens when the mind has
labored to the point where it can no longer grab hold of Christ? When it cannot pray. It's hard to sit across the counseling
desk for so many years and not really understand this principle.
And then having experienced it on my own, now I can see it clearly. It's amazing how that works. Is that when we are at our weakest
place, it is not the strength or the essence of our faith that
carries us through. It is the faithfulness of Jesus
Christ to keep us. It is the faithfulness of God
the Holy Spirit to seal us. And when we have even cried out,
I quit, God secures us and seals us just the same. Friends, there
is an epidemic of guilty condemnation in the world in which we live.
Works-based performance assurance, Sins that aren't sins according
to God's Word that we have to hold to. A level of expectation
that the religious elites of our day continue to drive upon
the saints. Conditional believism. Every
time you turn around there's something being added to the
gospel. Everywhere you look, someone else is proclaiming to
be saved but cannot even articulate the finished work of Jesus Christ.
Friends, they're not born again if they don't know that Christ
has saved them in the way that Christ has saved them. What do we do at the end of our
rope? We do not listen to the enemy. We do not listen to those
whom the enemy speaks through, even sometimes each other. We
do not listen to our flesh, we do not listen to the mirror of
our soul as we measure it against each other or against other people.
Well, I'm not as bad as that guy or I'm not as weak as that
person, etc. We have nothing else to look
at except Christ. And when it's all said and done,
you don't stand guilty because you were not faithful through
and through when you're in pain. Because Christ will not leave
you. He will not abandon you. He will never cast you out. Now
what does that do for us when we remember this hope? We will
be raised to life with Christ. See, it doesn't end here. We're
not working to try to make sure we make it. God has secured us. Christ has redeemed us. We are
finished. in the hope of it all, but we're
not finished in the journey. But when we think we have nowhere
else to turn and we cannot even pray, verse 26, I told you I
was going to talk about this. Likewise, the spirit helps us
in our weakness. How? How does God work for His
people? What does the scripture teach
us about how God purposes His eternal decrees in the life of
this world, specifically His people? He says that we pray
and ask Him and He does it. How is it that God can work in
us and in our circumstances when we can't even pray? When all
we can pray is, oh God, oh God, oh God. For we do not know what to pray
as we ought, but the Spirit God, the Spirit
Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words."
That's why I don't want to go beyond this because there's a
lot there. I want to take time with that. The Spirit who is
God intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. God, the
Holy Spirit that is in us, prays to God the Father for us when
we cannot pray. Beloved, even when your faith
is a shipwreck, not because you believed heresy, but even when
your faith is a shipwreck because of suffering, God is praying
when you cannot. Talk about abandonment, when we feel as though God is
not there, He is praying for us. When we feel like there's
no hope tomorrow, He is praying for us. When we don't know what
the end is going to be, that's when we go to the Word of God,
that's when we cry out, that's when we come unashamedly and
just let the people see the brokenness of our soul. And we suffer well
by looking to that which we have been given as a promise. And it's secure. The insanity of that teaching
is that unregenerate people cannot fathom that that is comforting. An invisible God inside my belly
is praying unheard prayers for my behalf to the sky. I mean,
that's literally how it comes out sometimes when people try
to refute that. What am I supposed to do? Just
sit around and rest? Yes. But it doesn't look like
what we think sitting around and resting does. Sometimes it
looks like agony. Sometimes the joy that we have
is so covered by the suffering that Peter says it is inexpressible.
But it's there, isn't it? the fullness of our joy, as Paul
prays to the church of Ephesus, that they would be filled with
all the fullness of God. How? That they understand and
comprehend the knowledge of the breadth and the depth and the
width and the height of the love of God for them, which is in
Christ Jesus, that He has given them, and that God would be glorified
and honored and exalted to the praise of His own glory forever
and ever through all generations in Christ Jesus and through the
church of all generations. We suffer well to the glory of
God and that glory is ours to share when we finish. There's nothing else to say. And by golly, if you know that
the Spirit is praying, if God is praying, then I can tell you
one thing, the prayers of God are far more effectual than mine.
Because I will pray for everything that I think I want, and everything
that I think I need, and in the end, what do we do? But, your
will be done. We always had that, but your
will be done. Your will be done, Father. When God the Spirit prays
for us, His will is always done. For in verse 27, he who searches
the hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the
Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. If we get too logical, we'll
say, well, we should be in torment forever and never able to pray,
and everything will go according to plan. And it's fun, and we don't want
to teach it that way. But friends, we ought to have
that attitude when we see the suffering. We ought to have that mindset
when we see the suffering. So in that, I will leave us tonight
that we would just really rest hold, grab hold of this rest
that is in Christ Jesus. Let's pray. We thank you, Lord,
for your word. God, I thank you for giving us
some