The Spirit Makes Intercession
Romans 8:26-27 · Roger Henderson · Jan 28, 2007
Romans (2005-07), No. 67
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926015202122

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

Before we start, does anybody have maybe some questions that have come to mind over the years in reading these two verses? I mean, these are two very interesting verses. I mean, they give a picture into something that's presently going on in a believer's life. And I think it's just really, really neat. We get a chance to look at this. But you don't have to have a question. But I thought if you had something, and I could say, well, maybe we'll answer that. Maybe we won't. Hopefully we will.

But if you had some, Is there something that puzzles you about this? Do you say, wow, this is kind of interesting? Wayne? I grew up thinking that sometimes while we're praying we might not say the right words, and well, no one knows what I mean. And I was thinking of this verse, but it isn't necessarily the case. It sounds like the Spirit himself prays whether we're praying or not.

OK, well, that's a good thing to keep in mind. I think we can answer. some part of that. That's good. Other thoughts about this first? I think Bob had some going on thoughts. I think this is really subliminal. I think this is ongoing all the time. I think that the oneness that we have with Christ and God really makes our relationship, actually our position, really established beyond our consciousness. And sometimes we get We get clues of what's going on here, but I think even in the absence of conscious intellectual thought, there's this communication between the Heavenly Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Okay, that's good. I think this really shows the wonderful reality of what we have in Christ.

And it's happening presently in our condition. This is interesting. This is a present condition thing that's going on, and it's incredible. It's incredible things. Other thoughts? Go ahead. Great. No, I agree. I agree. We're going to see that hopefully. All right. So let's just we'll kind of jump into here.

Okay, so the first part of the verse says, in the same way the spirit also helps our weakness. So I want to kind of dissect that part, and especially just that first little phrase, in the same way, you know, that looks back. Let me just go ahead and just go here. In the same way, it kind of refers back to what has been said before. And that's why I had you read the previous section. And I'm not 100% sure on this. And I certainly appreciate any other thoughts. But it kind of looks like that if you go back to verse, and let me see, I didn't exactly do that.

If you go back to verse 18, if you have your Bibles, if you go back to verse 18, what we see in 18 through 25, we see you know, the promise of what God's going to do. Things right now are in corruption. We have a fallen world, and we see that the creation is groaning, and that the believer is groaning, and God says, I'm going to make things right. In glory, things are going to be put right, the wrongs are going to be put right. And the Holy Spirit's involved in that. So, you know, in 18, this was looking forward to that heavenly scene or the time when things are put right.

For I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with a glory that is to be revealed. So it's future to be revealed in us. And then down in verse 23, it says, and not only this, but we also ourselves having the first fruits of the spirit. So we've been given the firstfruits of the Spirit, we ourselves grown within ourselves waiting eagerly for our adoptions as sons and the redemption of our bodies.

So it seems like to me that if you look at the verses 18 through 26, God is going to accomplish something in the future. But now we're going to shift into, and this in the same way says, well in the same way God's going to make things right in the future. He's going to do something right now in the present. And that's where maybe you say, well, I don't quite see that. But it does in the same way. And then he's going to go into what the Spirit's going to do in the present time.

And that was what I thought in terms of, well, how do you connect up in the same way? It's sort of like saying, well, I baked a cake in the same way I'm going to bake a pie. Bake a pie, bake a cake. Yeah, I guess that's right. Anyway. So I was looking for similarities, and it didn't exactly jump out at me, but the more I thought about it, it was what God is going to do in the future as contrasted to what he's going to do right now in the present. If that sounds reasonable, let's move on here.

So basically the first phrase is, after, in the same way, the spirit also helps our weakness. And also helps, that's one word in the Greek, And let's just go ahead and look at that. And actually, it could be, the spirit also helps, and also helps is kind of a compound word, and we're going to look at that in a second. It joins in to help. The spirit joins in to help our weakness.

And that word is, and I'm not sure I can pronounce it, but it's a compound word, and the first part of that word talks about together, the sun, or S-Y-N, And then there's the anti-A-N-T-I after that. I'm looking here and probably going crazy. But that little S-Y-N is the A-N-T-I.

And then there's Lambinomai, which is basically the idea of help. So it basically is to take and share in, to help in bearing, to help in general. And it's present active indicative. So it's going on right now in the present. So the spirit is joining in to help our weakness. So I want to look at a passage here. And this is a favorite one that I think we've all been through maybe a few times. And it's always good to come back to and a lot of times raises questions. But let's look at Luke.

Can I get somebody to read Luke chapter 10? and verse 38 through 40 and this is Martha and Mary. And it came to pass as they went that he entered into a certain village and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary who also sat at Jesus' feet and heard his word. But Martha was comforted about much serving and came to him and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? Bid her therefore that she help me. Okay, and the very last part, bid her to help me.

So that's the same words we have here. Join in to help. And what's interesting is, it's not like, and this is going to answer some of these questions, it's not like, okay, stand back, Mary, you do it. I'm just going to stand back here and you help me and you get it done. And I'll watch you and you get it done. No, it's join in to help right now, at the present time, immediately. So we're going to work this out together.

Reminds me of like two days ago, Lots of snow out in front. I drive up, Vern's out there shoveling the snow. So I joined in to help him. At that moment, I joined in to help Vern shoveling the snow out in the sidewalk out there, and so did Mike. So we all joined in to help. Immediately at that time, we didn't say, Vern, you sit down, you've been doing it too long, because you've been doing it for an hour before that, which I felt kind of bad about. But we joined in to help, and we all worked together, and then an hour later we made the progress you see out there, which is sledgehammers and the whole works.

It was interesting. So anyway, we joined in to help. So that's the idea. It's not that the spirit, in the context, the spirit doesn't take over. You don't say, OK, your job, I'm out of here. He joins in to help you. So keep that in mind. He doesn't take the entire load. He doesn't, you don't stand back.

And actually, an expanded, to lend a hand together with and at the same time. That's kind of the key, at the same time. It's not, well, the Spirit's going to help you sometime down the road. No, right now, at this present time, which is really kind of cool, if you think about it. Right now, at this present time. We're talking about prayer here. This is good stuff. OK.

Another thing, another kind of side light. The Spirit's ministry, this really is part of what the Spirit is all about. And let's look at John 14 for a second. John 14 and verse 26. And I think depending upon your translations, the word's going to be translated comforter or helper. But it's going to be the same word.

In verse 26 it says, but the helper, this word we have here, the one who comes right now at this present time, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you." And isn't that what the Spirit's doing 24-7 all the time with us? He's always doing that. I mean, I know we all who teach, you get in the Word and you start looking at something and all of a sudden it's just like, wow, I never saw that before. I cannot tell you how many times I have. I never saw that before. Boy, that's interesting. Look at that. Look what God has done for me.

So the spirit, he's the helper. He's the one that comes alongside. And he shows us a wonderful truth. And it occurs also in chapter 15, 15-26. Very similar kind of thing. And when the helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, that is the spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness of me. And so on. And then there's actually another one in 16-7. But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Helper shall not come to you." And so on.

So this is part of the Spirit's ministry, to come alongside right now, immediately, in the present time. That's a wonderful thing, wonderful truth to hang on to and to believe. Okay, so now the question is, what's our weakness in this passage? Why is He coming to help us? So that's a question. Hopefully, we'll answer that in the next couple of charts. And it's hopefully it's pretty obvious, too. So we don't know how to pray. Excellent. Excellent. Exactly. Perfect. And we'll see.

There's actually some neat parts about that. So basically, we don't know how to pray. And that's kind of an interesting thing. And I talked with Vani. She said, well, but we're told to pray at all times. We don't know how to pray, but pray at all times. Oh, wait a minute. Is there a conflict here?

Hopefully, we'll talk about that, too. OK, good. All right, so here's a literal, actually, OK, let's look at, I'm sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself for a little bit. So weakness, let's look at weakness a little bit. And this is going to kind of answer or kind of go into the answer to the question here of what Jim said. So actually, something to observe here, the spirit also, or joins in to help, our weakness.

And weakness, in this passage, is actually a noun. And also, it's singular. So this is very, very interesting. It's a singular noun. So is there a clue about that? And weakness is obvious. It's the inability to produce results. We can't produce results. But the spirit is going to come in and help our weakness. Singular. Singular weakness. Interesting. And actually, let me just show you. And also, what's even more interesting, there's a different article there. It's literally the spirit joins in to help the weakness, or sometimes it's rendered infirmity.

Maybe King James has infirmity of us. So we have a singular, the singular weakness. So it's not to say, and we're going to look at some other weakness in general as talked about in scripture, but this is zooming in on the singular weakness. It's a noun, so it's just like I could say, right, I have a singular weakness in my knee, my right knee here, right knee, let's try the right knee here, my right knee, that's a singular, I'll be fine, left knee, my left knee has a weakness. That's why it's so singular. That's why it's so singular, right.

Right, what knew he was talking about. Okay, all right. Let's see. Okay, so there's lots of questions that kind of come to mind about this. Okay, so let's look at, I thought it'd be good to kind of step back and say, okay, what does scripture have to say about weakness? And, okay, so the first thing I thought about was let's look at, Paul is always just an excellent example, if you can find things of Paul. So what did Paul... He talked about weakness.

He talked about it in 1 Corinthians 2.3, I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling.

And then another passage, in 2 Corinthians 12.9, and he said to me, the Lord is talking to him, my grace is sufficient for you. for power is perfected in weakness. Now, you notice so far here, we've all got singular, but now it's going to kind of change here. Most gladly, therefore, I would rather boast about my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Verse 10, therefore, I am well content in weaknesses, with insults and distresses and persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake, for when I am weak, than I am strong." So Paul talked about his weakness. And what's interesting is, and it's true in this passage, God doesn't condemn us for that weakness. He just says, you have a weakness. He doesn't say, get busy, get working on that weakness.

And I think maybe that's another trap you can fall into, the works trap. Well, hey, I've got a weakness. I've got to get busy on this one. Well, the Lord says... Go ahead, Art. Is this weakness a physical weakness or spiritual or both? Okay, we're going to answer that question.

Because you look here, right, and he's talking about, in this context, he had a thorn in the flesh. We're going to read that passage. Look farther back. He had a thorn in the flesh. And that seems like that's a physical weakness. But I think in the context, we're going to see a different case in the Romans passage here. We're going to see it's a different, I don't believe it's a physical weakness. But we'll see that more, hopefully. OK. But I also wanted to just kind of put our feet in the ground.

But there's really no weakness in our position in Christ. This is not something we say, well, OK, yeah, I've been given all spiritual blessings, but I got this weakness. God isn't saying that. I'm trying not to give the answer to say more than I want to say, but in a second I'll give the rest of the story. There's no weakness in our position, and I just had a couple of verses here about that. We're blessed to be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

So Roger, I have a question now. My question is, so when we pray and we say, and I guess since I've been learning and growing and identification, I don't say, Lord, help me do this. So now you're saying that, well, maybe, we are saying that. And this is where I want to explain, and Bob is actually right about waiting a little bit. And I agree with you and actually that's what I was trying to put in place and hopefully I can explain that there's no conflict there You know, we're not asking that we're not asking the Lord the Lord Lord is telling us we have a weakness. We're not asking And the fact that the Holy Spirit is called the helper is not necessary for us to call on him for help.

And that seems kind of totally contradictory. I know, but hopefully we can explain part of that. So I'll carry on here a little bit. He is helping. Right. And he just says, you have a weakness. He doesn't say, you have to, you know, you have to ask. He says, you have a weakness and I provide for that weakness. And that's what, that's a wonderful part.

It could be taught though. that you could ask for help. Right. And that's the thing that I think has done well at Holly Hills over the years that we talked about the fact I have this wonderful position in Christ and what happens is you're asking for something you already have. I did that. I can remember in times of difficult times I said Lord I need your help and I need to be resting in you. I need to be in this position and then I realized I already have that position so I'm asking for something I already have.

And that's where we want to make sure we don't get messed up. And that's what hopefully we can see here. Bob, did you want to add something? Don't we often need help in our condition? We do. And this is exactly what the Lord... We need help in our condition. In our prayer life, we need help. We absolutely need help. And hopefully I can zero in on that. We've already kind of said it, but I want to kind of expand on what's been said. So we need help in our prayer life.

There's no question about it. And there's a very obvious reason why we do, and I've been holding back here a little bit, but we're going to keep going here. Another one, just the wonderful things we have in Christ. For in Him all the fullness of the deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete. We're complete. We're complete in Him. But in that completeness, we have a weakness.

And as was talked about, as Jim pointed out, the rest of the story is, if you read the rest of the verse, the spirit also helps our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we should. So now we want to kind of zoom in on what does it mean about do not know. Well, what's that all about? And there's some really cool things about this. OK, no is oida. And it's in the perfect tense, which is really interesting.

That means we didn't know it in the past. We don't know it now. So we're not doing too well. We didn't know it in the past, and we don't know it now. OK? All right, so that's perfect tense. So let's kind of move on from there. Roger, could I take a poll maybe and see what you think of this, what the class thinks of this? OK. The idea, let's reflect where we've come in Romans, where we're at now.

Remember Paul was really intellectually engaged in the truths of Romans 1 through 6, right? He knew his sins were forgiven, that he was made righteous in Christ, that he was crucified, dead and buried, and risen in newness of life. And then Romans 7, right? OK, so in a sense, what is the role of the Holy Spirit in the life of a believer? It's to reveal Christ Jesus in the believer, correct? Right, absolutely. So that's the energy, right?

And so the helping concept, I mean, I agree with kind of Margaret's thought here. I mean, is it, I'm going to carry it so far, and then I'm going to ask the Lord Jesus Christ to help me on to finish up? No, I mean, we're not talking about, I think, a weakness that's intrinsic in the flesh, meaning the old man. I mean, in other words, the old man can never come to the Lord rightfully in prayer, correct? Right. I would agree. I would agree.

So as a believer, as we struggle to pray, and you're going to get into this in more detail, the role of the Holy Spirit, I think there is, we come to a certain point, and the relationship of the God to his Son to the Spirit is so profound and so infinite in capability that we are weak in our inability to enter into that knowledge. So that helping is really It's our fate that by the Spirit things are communicated, right? In other words, the Holy Spirit's job isn't to take our intrinsic moral weaknesses... No, and actually it's not talking...

Right, absolutely. This is just the difference between the creation and the Creator. We are not God. We do not have infinite knowledge. And that's a key thing. We do not know We do not know. Oido. We didn't know it in the past. God knows it. He knew it in the past. He knows it in the future. That's why I want to zoom in on it. It's the difference between the Creator and the creation. Even though we're one in Him, we do not have infinite knowledge. We do not know. He's informing us.

He's saying, I'm informing that you have a weakness, but here's the wonderful news. my spirit is going to do something about that. He's going to enter into that and do something about that. And maybe weaknesses, because you have physical weaknesses, maybe infirmities, I don't know.

I'm trying to think what's a better word. Anyway, so that's where I'm heading. So let me just see here. Sure, go ahead. So are you saying then that our weakness is specific to our Exactly, exactly. In fact, I want to show you this next thing. We'll show you that.

Another interesting thing is that we do not know, even though it's Oida. Actually, there's another part. I'm trying to jump ahead here just a little bit. We do not know which is Oida. And this thing where it says how to pray, that probably, looking at the original, is not really the best. It really reads, we do not know the what. we should pray for. This is exactly between the Creator and creation. The Creator knows all things. He knows the what that you need. We don't know the what.

For example, like with Mark, I pray for health for my son. I pray that he isn't injured in accidents. I pray on the positive. The Lord may have this accident my son had, He may use that. I wouldn't have prayed if my son rolled over his car in I-25 in Fort Collins in the middle of a snowstorm. I would never pray that.

But the Lord, he may know, well, when he does that, he's going to realize, well, hey, maybe life is short. Maybe I'll get, you know, who knows, whatever. And that's what, get married, have kids. The thing that grandparents pray for. She knows what to pray for. Yeah, she knows it, right? She's the only one here that knows. She's the only one that knows the what.

In my TV games, that's what mine says, for we know not what we pray for. It's incredible. It's the what. What's incredible is here, and this is just incredible, if you expand that translation and fold in the perfect tense, we didn't know the what to pray for in the past, and we continue not to know the what to pray for up into the present, as we ought, or as is necessary, might be better. So we are ignorant, and that's just the way it is.

God is God. He knows everything. We do not. We are the creation. So he's just telling us, this is the way it is. You don't know the future. And Paul said, he gloried in his weakness. He said, it's okay. It's okay to have weakness. And I think we say, Amen, Lord. I don't know. I don't know the what. To me, this was just so exciting. I said, wow, I don't know the what. Praise the Lord.

So we pray in ignorance. We pray for the positive. I pray that my son doesn't get hurt and so on. Does that help in some of the questions that have been asked? Let's look at Paul's prayer. Here's an example, and this is kind of cool. Paul prayed in ignorance for something that wasn't the Lord's will. Think about this prayer. We're going to look at this in a second. He prayed in ignorance. He prayed for something he didn't know. He didn't know about. And we do the same thing. 2 Corinthians. We've looked at this a little bit before already. 2 Corinthians. Chapter 12. Can I get someone to read 7-9? Chapter 12, 7-9.

David? And because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, For this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me, a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan above me, to keep me from exalting myself. Concerning this, I entreated the Lord three times that it might depart from me, and He has said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, that the power of Christ may dwell in me. So in verse 8, he says, I entreated, and actually some render that begged. I mean, I look at myself, that's just like what I do. Lord, I don't want this to happen. From my perspective, this should not be happening. But we don't know the what. We don't know the what.

The Lord does. So here we have Paul. He said, I have this thorn in the flesh. Lord, I beg you, remove it from me. Three times he did that. That sounds just like me, just like us. We do the same thing. So I think what's cool about this is the Lord is telling us that we have this weakness. And we're going to see the next part. He's going to tell us what he's going to do about that. He doesn't say, well, you've got a weakness. You're on your own. He's going to do something about that weakness, which is wonderful. That's the rest of this verse. He's going to tell us about. But I wanted to have this as a slight diversion here. And maybe we just can zoom through this.

From the major Bible theme study, I just pulled up some charts, and there's just kind of talking about, this is what Bob was saying, we have a wonderful privilege under grace, this wonderful union we have with Christ. You know, the new grounds of prayer after the death and resurrection, ascension of Christ, the giving of the Holy Spirit, this new relationship, we're joined to the Lord, part of his body, we're in a favored position, you know, he hears our prayer, And prayer is one of the wonderful blessings that the believer has under grace. He can pray. We have access to the Father unhindered. So prayer is a wonderful thing. So we have to place that weakness in perspective. It's just a very fact that we're the creation.

And then another section here. Prayer under grace will be in Christ's name. And that's a very key point. I'm just going to kind of zoom through these. Prayer under grace involves the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit offered to the Father in the name of the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit. This is kind of a neat thing right here, if you look at this. You've got to study it a little bit.

If you look at those passages, prayer is to be through Him and by Him. We're not praying someone to a long way off. This is our wonderful union. We're praying through him, enabled through him, and by him, by the Holy Spirit. So those are wonderful facts about prayer. So you can look at those. I just kind of wanted to say, hey, prayer, we're still to pray, and it's a wonderful privilege. OK, so now let's go on to the rest of this verse.

So we've established that we have a weakness, and we don't know the what. We don't really know the what. We're ignorant of what to pray for. It says, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. So here's what the Lord's going to do about our problem. So he's going to intercede for us.

So let's look at that a little bit. Intercede is to make a petition, intercede on behalf of another. And actually we're going to see this occur two times. It occurs in 26 and it occurs in 27. So the spirit himself is going to intercede for us. But it's really, it's an interesting way in this verse what's going to happen here.

And I was thinking back, given the time we have, if you go back to Genesis, you think about interceding on behalf of another. Remember Abraham in Sodom and Gomorrah? He went to the Lord. He had this dialogue. Now, Lord, what if there are 50 righteous? Would you take that whole city out? How about 45? He keeps going down. How about 10? The conversation stopped at 10.

So the Spirit is interceding on behalf of us. So when we're in this union with Christ, in union with God, the Spirit's going to intercede on our behalf. That's a wonderful, wonderful truth. So it's a compound word. Intercede on behalf of, or plead on behalf of. And actually, another example is in Romans 11.

We won't go there for now. Elijah pleaded with God. Same word. So let's look at... So we've been through this before. And intercedes is a present tense verb. So he's going to presently intercede with us with groanings. It says too deep for words. And the groanings, as I pointed out before, is an inward feeling of sorrow. And actually, if you look at a couple of those passages, You'll see that Christ in that passage...

In fact, actually, let's just look at Mark 7.34 just for a second. We've actually talked about some of this a little bit before, but it wouldn't hurt to do it again. 7.34, I'm sorry. 7.34.

And this is where there's a deaf and dumb man is healed. In 33, it says, and he took him aside from the multitudes by himself and put his finger into his ear. And after spinning, he touched his tongue with his saliva and looking up to heaven with a deep sigh, he said, Ephrathah? Is that right? That is, be opened. So it's a concern.

It's a deep feeling. Actually, I kind of came up with it, and maybe I think Bob alluded to this. It's more than just There's sorrow involved in that or concern involved, but it's wanting things to be right. And I kind of had a definition of groaning. It's wanting and waiting for things to be right. You want things to be put right.

The Lord Jesus wanted this man to be healed. And for us, we're going to see the spirit groans. He wants things to be communicated, in a sense. He wants things to be communicated in terms of our prayer. And we saw this before. There are two other cases in Romans 8. The whole creation groans, and then it says, and we ourselves groan within ourselves. OK, so here's a question.

What's the difference? Think about these two passages plus our passage. What's the difference? between the spirit groaning, our groanings, and creation groaning. Is there any fundamental difference about these groanings that you see, that kind of jumps off the page, or maybe doesn't jump off the page, but maybe that you notice? And it's kind of an obvious one. The creation and our groanings is in one of waiting for something to happen.

OK. Well, actually, that's one I hadn't. That's good. I actually hadn't thought of that one, but I'm thinking of another one. But that's good. That's absolutely right. I agree with you on that one. But what's a what's a fundamental difference between what's happening? And actually, the translation does. I don't believe the translation helps you here. This is my and I will try to put that right in the next page. So there's a fundamental difference between, and it's, I'm not saying it.

Well, okay, I guess you could say that. Okay, the creation, I don't know, the creation's fallen, we're fallen. Okay, that's good. Are you asking what's in common between all three? Or different, I'm looking for the difference. Well, what's common first? What do you see common?

I'll take either one. I'm not proud. I have somebody who's talking. Hey, I'll take what Dipper's saying. I'm sorry, Dave. I'm giving you a hard time. I think the journeys of the spirit aren't actually able to be uttered rather than the other ones are. Absolutely. You're right on the money. But I find this too deep for words kind of gives us this mystical woo-woo. I don't think it's that at all.

He's just saying, you can't hear it. Creation groans, you can hear, I pointed out, when the rocks cry out, the heavens declare, there's actually sound. And we groan, we sigh, the Lord sighed, but there's no sound to this. There's no utterance. And that's actually, if you go to the next chart here, actually, the word could be rendered unutterable or unexpressed. It's a negative to speak or to utter. So there's no sound.

He does this silently. You hear all kinds of off-the-wall kind of stuff sometimes. My prayer life, there's gibberish, and that's the Spirit. That's not it. There's no sound to this. You can't hear it. That's a fundamental difference between what the Spirit's doing. We can't hear it. It's among the Trinity. Oh, exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And that's coming up next. So I think it's just wonderful. God's grace is showing that He intercedes for us.

We didn't ask for this. We didn't say, Lord, and we shouldn't. We don't need it. Lord, please help me to pray right about this. And I have to be careful. That probably isn't a bad prayer, but I'm probably getting a little bit overboard here. I mean, obviously, I want to pray I don't want to pray for silly things, but I want to pray for things that are significant.

So that aspect is right. He's going to do this regardless. And there seems to be a similarity, because it's the same word. That word appears three times in Romans 8, and it's basically the same word. But in our case, it's without words. There are no words that are spoken. Okay, so now we're going to, let's see here. Okay, so let's keep going here. Okay,

27. And he who searches the hearts. So here we're going to kind of see, this is kind of phase two of this. We have a weakness. The Lord has provided for that weakness by the Holy Spirit with unutterable words communicating our need. And now we're going to kind of get a view into the Godhead.

He who searches the hearts, and that's actually the subject of that clause there, knows what is the mind of the spirit. So this is going to tell us, and this is kind of mind-boggling, this is going to tell us the closeness and interaction of the Godhead. If you look in scripture, it talks about, in the Old Testament, in fact, let's just show you here. And the word searches is to search or examine And the question comes up, well, who's searching the hearts?

Who's doing this? So who do you think that is? We're running out of time here. Who's searching the hearts? And if you look at those passages, you can answer that question. Well, I'll just go ahead in the interest of time here. That's OK. You guys have been great about interaction. OK.

So basically in the Chronicles passage, it's basically God. God is the one that searches. It says that God searches all hearts in the Corinthians passage. And then in the Revelations passage, it says, I am he who searches the minds and the hearts. So that's a characteristic of God. God knows the minds and the hearts of all men.

But this is telling us of a relationship between God, and it seems like, you know, you say, well, is that God the Father? It almost seems like it. It's just God, the Godhead, knows the mind and the spirit. And there's an interesting, let's just go on here. And this is, once again, it's this perfect tense. So it says, in a sense that God knew it in the past and they know it up into the present. So it's an ongoing, it's a fact.

He who searches the hearts, God knows the mind of the Spirit. It says there's no disconnect between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They know, and the Spirit in a sense is the expression of the thought of God. And that's really some neat things. There's really a cool verse here.

In 1 Corinthians 2.10 it says, The thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Interesting phraseology. The thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God.

The thoughts of God seem to be resident, if you will, with the Spirit. Don't ask me to explain how that works with the Father and the Son, but it's really interesting. So God knew the mind of the Spirit in the past. Godhead, you could say, knew the mind of the Spirit in the past, and He continues to know the mind of the Spirit up into the present.

So that's just speaking of the interaction of God and how He does things. Mind is this word... Actually, it's what one has in mind. Sometimes it's rendered mindset. So, there is a knowledge among the Godhead of what's going on. There's no disconnect there. So now, the first statement is made. God knows the mindset of the spirit. There's no disconnect. They're one in essence. All is known.

And it says, Because, speaking of the Spirit, He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. So the Spirit, on our behalf, is going to intercede for God. We don't know the what, but here the Spirit comes along. He knows what the will of God is.

Incredible. Without a word, He communicates that to the Father. I think that's just incredible. So I start praying, Lord, keep my son safe while he's driving on I-25. And the Lord says, I hear that, Roger, but I have a plan. I'm going to let your son flip over. And he does. So he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And actually, the will of God is in italics there. It's actually according to God. He continually makes intercession, present tense, on behalf of the saints. and it is according to God.

So there's no disconnect, they're one in essence. I really like Weiss' translation. He doesn't have every aspect in here, but he has a lot of it in here. If it's need, I can cut and paste his translation up there for us. So let me just read that for us.

And in like manner, also the Spirit 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 knowledge. But the Spirit himself 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, or according to his will, He continually makes intercession on behalf of the saints.

Incredible verses. Actually, I was so thankful that Bob, we get to the switch, I got to do this. I mean, I just, it's been really, I got a little extra week, too, and it's been wonderful. So I've really enjoyed these two passages, and hopefully I'll communicate some of that to you guys, too. Any other questions or thoughts?

Go ahead. in terms of verse 27 where it says, and he that searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the spirit. And as you know in the Greek, know can have three different meanings, gnosis, epi-gnosis, and voida, which is really what's used here. And if you think about the relationship that the believer has with the Godhead, it really is a gnosis and occasionally at the epi-gnosis level. Here, the fact that the spirit knows the mind of God and God knows the mind of the spirit is factual knowledge. This isn't a relationship that needs to be kind of built on in terms of levels of relevance. It's in fact fact. Exactly, exactly. Objective truth is how I would say it. And we're to believe that.

There's no disconnect. It's not like, well, I've got to get close to the Spirit here and convince Him I've got a problem. No, no, that's great. I think it's just a very comforting passage because it says, you know, and I sometimes I've said, well, I'm at a loss of how to pray for things. Many times we are. He knows, the Spirit knows the will of God. And He's going to pray on your behalf.

Incredible stuff. It really is. Incredible stuff. And actually what's neat, we're going to go right into Jim's passages here next week. Interesting, he says, this intimate relationship, and then when he comes back in verse 28, all things work together for good. How could they not? How could they not? Because we've already laid the foundation. How could they not work together for good?

Art? You know, I know what you're saying, and this is part of the thing. We're to be praying. We're not to be lax in our prayer. But what's interesting is, as we said, we don't know. We aren't God. But the Lord wants us to pray anyway. He doesn't say, well, you don't know my will, but He wants us to pray. Because that's an interaction. That's a conditional interaction we have with God.

But He doesn't say, oh, and by the way, because you didn't pray for this, It's not part of the picture. You don't know about it. I have my prayer list and I forgot about this one. It's not going to happen. It's really incredible stuff. He asks us to pray about all things at all times. The fact that that's where we have a weakness, we don't pray. I think we should be praying, but we know that his spirit is going to intercede on our behalf. We said, Lord, I'm counting upon that. I didn't pray about all the aspects here, but I know that you know the Father's will.

He does. Back there with the groanings. That's the emotion that you see in the creation and the believer. We groan. Oh, I want this to be right. Things are so awful in this world. Sin is just reigning. Man is doing terrible things. And his spirit intercedes. Let's close then. Dear Father, we thank you, Lord. We thank you for this time, Father. Thank you for your word, Lord. Thank you that we can count upon what your spirit is doing as we pray, Father.