The Spirit Who Represents Us

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Well, throughout the month of August, I’ve been talking to you about some of the ways that the Holy Spirit is active and involved in our lives. Some of the ways that he ministers to us even today. The Holy Spirit is not just a figment of our imaginations.

He’s not just something the Bible talks about in the abstract. He’s somebody who’s present, who, as we’ve seen in Scripture, he lives within us. If you’re a believer in Jesus Christ, he lives within you and he’s ministering to you.

He’s strengthening you. He’s empowering you. He’s equipping you for service.

And today, as we come to the last Sunday in August, we come to the last of these that I’m going to talk about. These are not the only things that the Holy Spirit does, but we’ve kind of hit the highlights. The one we’re going to talk about this morning is that the Holy Spirit represents us.

He advocates for us. We’re going to see this in Romans chapter 8. You can go ahead and turn there if you want.

We’ll read from it in just a few minutes. But this idea of advocating for somebody is one we hear about from time to time. You advocate for children in the school system.

You advocate for a patient in health care. I got to experience this summer in dealing with Carly Jo as she was in the hospital. Two-year-olds can’t speak for themselves. Actually, let me rephrase that.

They can speak for themselves. Any of you that have been around her know that she does speak for herself. she’s just not easily understood for herself.

So she needed a translator because she, once she kind of came out from the anesthesia, she spent the next few weeks hollering whatever she wanted or needed or didn’t want at the nurses. And so she’d be losing her ever-loving mind, screaming at them. And I’d walk in the room and they’re trying to figure out what she wants.

And she’s screaming, I nink, I nink, I nink. And finally I’d tell them she wants her drink. We’ve learned that.

We’ve been screamed that word a few times, many, many times. So I’d have to tell them this is what she wants. If she says chicken, she’s wanting chicken.

Dilla, she wants a quesadilla. She learned she could order whatever she wanted. We were very limited on what we could order from room service, but she could have whatever she wanted.

Doctit. She wanted chocolate. She discovered, I was not keeping up with my Weight Watchers at that time, and she discovered I had Reese’s Pieces in my bag that I tried to hide from her.

No. And she’d holler for that. She’d also holler, I don’t like that.

I don’t like that. Or she learned the word nasty. I had no idea she’d even heard that word.

But some of the medicine, she screamed it was nasty. So I was having to translate for her and say, this is what she wants. Or she’d look at one of the nurses and say, no, no, no. Die.

She’s saying she doesn’t want you come in near her with that syringe. She wants daddy to give her the medicine or she’d do it with mama too. So we had to, and God love them.

They were just trying to do their job, but she’s an opinionated little person, just like her parents. All right. And so I’d have to translate for her.

I’d have to advocate for her. I’d have to say, this is what she needs at the moment. And you know, there are so many moving parts when you’re in the hospital, they want you to get rest, but then they won’t let you, right?

You’ve all experienced this at some point or another. They would come in and one night they woke her up every 45 minutes. And I knew this because anytime anybody in scrubs would get near her, she’d start screaming for me and she’d wake me up and I’d have to come attend to her.

And I had to tell them the next day, this is crazy, this is getting out of control. And it’s no one person’s fault. There are so many departments at work here.

But y’all want her to get rest and this department has to come do this medicine at this time, this department comes and does this medicine at this time. You schedule x-rays for 4 a. m.

every day. Who wants to be up at 4 a. m.

? I don’t even know who decided that there should be a 4 a. m.

But they’d come in and do that. Then they’d want to do respiratory therapy. I finally had to step in, and as politely as I knew how, because, again, I know they’re just trying to do their job, said, we need to cluster some of these things.

We need to put as many medications together as you can, and we’ll irritate her and do nine things at a time, and then let her sleep. And then no more, she’s doing good on respiratory therapy, no more of that while she’s asleep. We’re trying to go to sleep.

We just put a stop to that altogether. And she finally started getting some rest and she wasn’t so demanding and shrill for her nink later on. You know, she was in a better mood because she got some sleep.

But I had to advocate for her. And that’s kind of what the Holy Spirit does for us. Those are some of the terms that the scriptures use to describe the Holy Spirit’s ministry to us, is that He advocates on our behalf.

As I told you a minute ago, we’re going to be in Romans chapter 8 this morning, and we’re really just going to look at two verses today. Romans chapter 8, verse 26. If you have your Bible and haven’t turned there with me, please do so.

If you’re using your phone, there’s a link to the Scripture in your bulletin, or it’ll be on the screen here for you. But if you’re. .

. y’all are so well-trained. If you can, without too much difficulty, stand with me as we read from God’s Word together.

We’ll look at these two verses this morning, verses 26 and 27. It says, Likewise, the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses, for we do not know what we should pray for as we ought. But the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God. and you may be seated. That’s Paul’s brief description of the ministry of the Holy Spirit as somebody who advocates for us, as somebody who represents us and is advocating for our needs.

So as we read last week in Romans chapter 8, we happen to be in Romans chapter 8 last week as well, talking about the ministry of the Holy Spirit, we left off with verse 17 talking about suffering with Christ. He said if we’re children and the Holy Spirit does remind us that we are the son of God if we are in Christ. He reminds us of that in verse 17 says, if children then heirs, heirs of God and join heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him, that we may be glorified together. Now this doesn’t mean that suffering is a requirement as though we somehow earn our place in heaven through suffering. What this was was a reminder to those Christians who were suffering and were about to go through suffering to hang on because there’s something even better.

As you’re going through this suffering, you can be assured that you will also be glorified with Him. Just like you’ve suffered with Him, you’ll be glorified with Him. So he introduced this idea of suffering in what we read last week.

And in the verses that follow, in verses 18 through 25 here, Paul talked about the reality of that suffering, how every Christian was going to suffer. And he talked about how, really, sometimes the severity of that suffering. Sometimes we will suffer in severe ways, sometimes we will suffer in ways we don’t understand and that do not seem fair.

As I’m saying this to you, my mind goes to thousands of Christians who are or have been in Afghanistan, who are suffering this morning or have been suffering over the previous weeks for things that they didn’t specifically deserve. Sometimes we think that as Christians we come to Christ and it’s just going to be sunshine and roses after that. I heard testimonies years ago where a girl said, I came to Christ and I’ve been happy ever since.

And I thought, what plan did you sign up for? Because that’s not what the rest of us got. And sometimes we’ll look at it and say, somebody’s suffering.

What did they do wrong? What did they do to deserve that? Sometimes we’ll even ask that about ourselves.

What did I do wrong to deserve that? And the reality is that suffering is just part of this world. It’s part of being in a fallen world.

We’re all sinners. This is a sin-sick world, but it doesn’t mean that you did A that automatically leads to B over here. Sometimes sin is just a consequence of the world we live in.

And so he warned these Christians, just because you’re in Christ doesn’t mean you’re going to be immune to suffering. And sometimes it’s going to be severe. And folks, in times of suffering, we may feel like God doesn’t even hear us.

Have you ever been there in a time of prayer? You ever been in those moments where you think, hello, is this thing even on? There was an instance a couple weeks ago where I was praying to God about something.

There was something coming up that it was going to be a mess, and I didn’t want to have to deal with it. I knew that I was going to have to deal with it at some point or another. Problems just rarely go away on their own, right?

I knew I was going to have to deal with it at some point or another, but I just didn’t have the strength to deal with it that day. And so I’m sitting there praying, Lord, I know this is going to happen. I know I’m going to get a text message about this.

by the way, nobody at church, none of y’all, but I knew I was going to get a text message about this issue at some point, and I was going to have to deal with it. And I sat there and just, I was praying. I was praying at my desk.

Lord, can this just hold off until tomorrow? Can you just let me not hear about it tomorrow? And I prayed for a good solid 10, 15 minutes.

Can I just not hear about this tomorrow? And I said, amen, and my phone buzzed, and I looked up and said, so that’s a no, I guess. That’s okay.

Then I had to go deal with it. Sometimes when we’re dealing with difficult situations, sometimes when we’re suffering, it can feel to us like God doesn’t even hear us, like God isn’t even interested. Now, we know that that’s not true, and yet it feels that way.

Those who were suffering for Christ for the first time probably felt the same way that we did. And think about this, many of the believers that he’s writing to in Rome were new converts. They didn’t grow up in church.

They didn’t grow up with somebody telling them about God’s plan, and didn’t tell them about all things working together for good, because it hadn’t been written yet until later on in this chapter. See, many of us have that to fall back on. They’re going through this for the first time wondering, what am I doing wrong?

Wait a minute, I belong to God now, I’m His, I’m His child, and yet I’m going through this, it feels like he doesn’t hear me, like he doesn’t care, like he doesn’t notice. They needed some encouragement as they’re going through this for the first time, and so Paul talked about their suffering here, but he also talked about hope and reassurance. And that’s why we come to verse 26, where he says, likewise, the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses.

It’s a reminder, God has not forgotten you. His Holy Spirit is right there with you, helping you even in those times of weakness. Even in those moments where you feel like I can’t handle the very next thing, the world cannot throw anything else at me or I’m going to lose it.

He said the Spirit helps in our weakness. Part of the way he does that is that the Holy Spirit advocates for our needs before the Father’s throne. If you look at verse 27, it says that while we’re suffering through the world, while we’re dealing with all of the hard circumstances that we are with that often we don’t deserve, or at least feel like we don’t deserve.

When we’re dealing with those circumstances, it says here the Spirit makes intercession for the saints. Now, are the saints the really far off holy people, the really good people? That’s not the way the Bible uses the word saint.

If you were here last week, we talked about how at the moment of conversion, God declares us holy. Now, He spends the rest of our lives teaching us to act like it, but at that moment of conversion. He says, you’re holy.

You’re mine. And so when the Bible talks about the saints, it’s talking about anybody who believes in Jesus Christ, anybody who belongs to Jesus Christ. Now, do I always live up to that description? No, I don’t.

Do you always live up to that description? I’m guessing no. Do we always feel like that’s an accurate description? No.

But he’s not just talking about somebody somewhere far off who’s got it all together and all figured out. He’s talking about all of us who belong to Jesus Christ. So when he says the saints and the Spirit makes intercession for the saints, he’s talking about you. If you belong to Christ, the Holy Spirit there is making intercession.

He’s there pleading your case to the Father on your behalf. He’s constantly speaking to the Father on our behalf. Now, I want to be clear about something.

When I say that he’s, the Holy Spirit is there advocating to the Father on your behalf, this doesn’t mean that the Father doesn’t know what’s going on in your life without the Holy Spirit telling him, okay, he’s God, he knows, right? It also doesn’t mean he doesn’t care until the Holy Spirit kind of twists his arm into it. It doesn’t mean that they’re up there arm wrestling to see who’s going to get their way because the Father wants this and the Holy Spirit’s saying we need that.

They are not on opposite sides here. He’s not advocating for us because the Father needs to be convinced to do what’s best for us. He’s advocating for us as a reminder to us that God is on our side, that God is for us.

It’s a reminder that the Trinity is in agreement about what they’re doing. The Holy Spirit being there and advocating on your behalf is a reminder that God has not forgotten you, that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, all three know what you’re going through. They all know the plans that they have for you, and they are in agreement about what they’re going to do to work that situation out for your good and for their glory.

And by the way, for our good, we have to be careful with that. It doesn’t always mean what we think it ought to mean. Because in that moment a couple weeks ago when I was praying, can I deal with this later?

And God said, no, I don’t think so. Right? Remember that?

By the end of the night, boy, I was so glad it was behind me. It’s over and done with. The band-aid’s ripped off and I remember looking at, I say looking at God, but I remember looking up and praying and saying, you knew what you were doing.

Why did I doubt? Didn’t feel good at the time, but it was what ultimately God knew was best. And so the Father and Son and the Holy Spirit are in agreement. They’re not fighting it out.

They’re in agreement. And the promise that the Holy Spirit is there advocating for us is just a reminder for us. That’s there for our benefit, not the Father’s.

So He’s up there asking the Father to bless us, knowing full well that the Father already wants to and plans to. It’s just reassurance for us, and the blessings that He’s praying for on our behalf are according to the will of God, it says in verse 27. The things He prays for are according to the will of God when He makes that intercession for the saints.

So don’t think that the Holy Spirit necessarily is up there praying for God, praying for the Father to give you a new Mercedes. Him interceding for us is not to fulfill our wish list. It’s to provide what we need, particularly what we need spiritually. What we need is we’re trying to grow closer to Him.

He’s looking at our eternal needs. So in those moments where you feel like, I don’t know what to say as I’m dealing with this person. I don’t know what to do.

I don’t know how to handle this situation. I don’t know how I’m going to deal with this person. I don’t have the strength for it.

In those moments when you don’t have what you need to do what honors him, and yet the strength or the grace or just the right words, whatever it is, those come through at just the right time, that’s because the Holy Spirit is there advocating in line with the Father’s will, making intercession for you so that God will bless you with what you need. So his presence here is a reminder that the Father has our best interest at heart. And ultimately, when you look at this in context of what he says in verses 28 through 30 about conforming us to the image of his son.

What’s good for us is ultimately to make us more like Jesus. I wish God could make my life just perfect and wonderful and devoid of all problems and me still turn out like Jesus, but that doesn’t seem to be the way it works. I seem to learn things the hard way.

And the things that have grown me and changed me and stretched me the most in my entire life have been some of the struggles that God has me through. And it’s a result of those things that I’m able to act more like Jesus would, when I’m able to act more like Jesus would. I don’t say this to you as somebody who has it all down.

I say this to you as somebody who is growing still, that can see where I was and where I am, and recognizes what the Holy Spirit’s done through those times of difficulty. So he’s there advocating for us, pleading with the Father, in line with the Father’s will to keep working on us, to keep blessing us and to keep making us more like Jesus. And His presence assures us that the Father hears and understands.

In those moments where we feel like God doesn’t hear us, in those moments where it feels like our prayers don’t go any higher than the ceiling, it’s the presence of the Holy Spirit that reminds us and assures us that God does hear us and that He does understand. You see, in verse 26, He talks about the times when we don’t know what to pray for as we ought. Have you ever been in a situation where you felt like you needed to pray, but you didn’t know what to say?

that happens to me far more often than I care to admit. This last week, I was driving down the interstate, coming to the office, saying, Lord, I know I’m supposed to pray about this situation, but I’m kind of at a loss of what to pray for. And I sat there in silence for a little bit.

I know the Holy Spirit was advocating. I know the Holy Spirit was translating what was in my heart to the Father’s ears. And eventually, I think the Holy Spirit gave me the words to pray and said, this is what you need to pray for.

But sometimes we are so overwhelmed. Sometimes we are just so spiritually wrung out. Sometimes we’re just so spiritually clueless.

That’s my problem sometimes. That we don’t know how to pray or what we ought to pray for. And in those moments, the Holy Spirit steps in, and verse 26 says, He makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered.

I’m puzzled by that phrase. I really want to understand exactly how that works. And I know it’s outside my capabilities.

One commentator that wrote on this called it, Sighs that baffle words. I guess that’s just as good an expression as any. I don’t know.

There are times that my wife and I can look at each other and just know what the other one’s thinking. Other times I look at my wife and don’t have a clue what she’s thinking. But there are those moments when I look at her and I just know what she’s thinking.

Might be something like that. But there’s something we don’t understand that goes on here where the Holy Spirit takes what we can’t figure out and expresses it for us. So in those times when you feel like God doesn’t hear you because you don’t know what to say, and you feel distant from God because you don’t know what to say, the Holy Spirit is there saying, I know what you’re trying to say.

I’ve got this. The Father can hear even when we can’t speak because of the Holy Spirit. Where our thoughts are confused and they’re limited, His ability to advocate for us with the Father is limitless.

He’s not bound by our confusion. He’s not bound by our language. He can speak on our behalf no matter what’s going on.

And He does this for our benefit, not the Father’s. Again, this is not because the Father doesn’t understand. It’s not because the Father can’t hear us.

This is to reassure us. This is not for the Father’s enlightenment. This is for our encouragement so that we are assured of what’s already the case, that the Father hears us and understands.

God has given you that Holy Spirit for a number of reasons, but one of those reasons is for us to be sure that this connection to God does not just vanish when we feel like it’s gone. He does all of this so that we can be encouraged. And the Holy Spirit assures us that we can fully experience the relationship that Jesus gave us.

We talked about that relationship a little bit last week. The beginning of Romans chapter 8, the Spirit’s ministry, talking about our adoption as children of God. And whether we feel like it or not, the Holy Spirit is there reminding us and assuring us that if we belong to Christ, we can call out to Him and we can call Him Abba, Father.

Which, as I told you last week, is a very intimate term. It means He’s not just far off, but He invites us in close to have a relationship with Him. Abba is the Aramaic word for Daddy.

Do you remember me talking about this? Telling you it creeps me out when anybody but my five children call me Dad or Daddy? That drove me nuts at the hospital. because it’s an intimate term.

It doesn’t feel right when somebody else uses it. And yet we have the right to call him Abba. But there’s something else there that when he says Abba in Aramaic to the Jews and says Father, Pater in the Greek to the Gentiles, he’s also telling his readers that it doesn’t matter where you’ve come from, what your background is, who you were before.

If you’re in Christ, he invites you in close and gives you that relationship and says you belong to him. That’s at the beginning of Romans chapter 8. And then at the end of Romans chapter 8, I encourage you to go read the end of Romans chapter 8 if you haven’t already.

But at the end in verses 31 through 38, he talks about how we are inseparable from God through Jesus Christ. Not only do we have that relationship, but he says you can never lose it. He says nothing will separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. And also at the end of the chapter, he talks about how we’re being transformed, being conformed to the image of God’s Son.

I don’t think it’s by mistake that this description of the advocacy of the Holy Spirit is in between Him telling us that we are adopted and we are His, and then at the end telling us that we can never lose that and that we are through that relationship being transformed to be more like Jesus Christ. The fact that this description is sandwiched there in the middle of these things is telling us something about the relationship. He’s given us this relationship. Jesus has given us this relationship with the Father.

because Jesus died on the cross to pay for our sins in full and rose again to prove it. He threw the doors wide open. He tore the veil in the temple that separated us from a holy God where we could now have a relationship with the Father, not just as his servants and not as we formerly were as his enemies, but now as his children, he invites us in.

But what good is that relationship if we don’t get to experience the fellowship that comes with it? What good is it to Benjamin that he knows that he’s my child, that we have that relationship, but he never gets to talk to me, and I always keep him at arm’s length. Is there any benefit to that relationship?

What good is it to have a relationship where Charlie is my wife, because we have that piece of paper from the government, but yet all the fellowship we have is passing each other on the stairs in between one feeding or another, or one medicine dose or another, or one house cleaning or another, and never have any fellowship, never spend any time together. What good is the relationship without the fellowship? For Him to talk about the way the Holy Spirit advocates for us and keeps us connected, in the middle of this chapter that is all about this incredible relationship, it is a reminder to us that God hasn’t just adopted us as His children and then forgotten us off somewhere in a corner, but that we have full use of the relationship that Jesus has provided to us.

The Holy Spirit is there to assure us that we can come to the Father today, just like we did on day one. That we can talk to the Father on today, just like we did on day one. That we can fellowship with the Father on the bad days just as much as we can on the good days.

That we can come in close and cry out to Him in those moments of struggle just as much as we can in the days on the mountaintop. What if I don’t feel like it? The Bible says it’s true.

We can either believe what God said about it, or we can believe our feelings on the matter. And I’m here to tell you, your feelings will lie to you. My feelings have lied to me.

If you’ve ever been a teenager, you know your feelings will lie to you. Right? Oh, I love him.

Oh, I hate him. Oh, I love him. Oh, I hate him.

Right? Now, that wasn’t the conversation I had with myself. But our feelings lie to us.

And God knew there would be days where even as his children, we feel like he’s distant. The presence of the Holy Spirit says that’s not true. That if we want to communicate with the Father, we can.

good days, bad days when we don’t know what to say that connection is still there Jesus died so that we could be connected to the Father I know you’re probably thinking I thought he died to pay for our sins he did because our sins were what stood between us and the Father Jesus’ death and his resurrection reconciled us to the Father so now we have that relationship why would Jesus pay so high a price to give us something we couldn’t use the Holy Spirit is that assurance that the fellowship is still available and the relationship is still there even when we don’t feel like it. So to bring it in and make it as simple as possible, the Holy Spirit is there to remind us that we can always talk to our Father. You may be in a situation today where you feel like God is distant.

He doesn’t have to be. My grandfather, one of them, died when I was very young. And my grandmother remarried a few.

. . Well, it’s been about 10, 12 years ago now.

remarried a wonderful man. We kind of adopted him in as our grandfather. The first wedding ceremony I ever performed was theirs.

That was kind of fun. I remember they would come to visit our house and they’d be riding in the truck in the front seat. It’s hard to drive from the back seat, I guess, but they’d be in the front seat and she’d be right there in the middle next to him.

And I remember looking at that as they’d drive up and as they’d drive off and think about that story I’ve heard for years and years, the husband and wife, the old married couple, where she says, I just don’t feel like we’re as close as we used to riding in the truck. And he said, well, I’m not the one who moved. Our relationship with God is like that.

God hasn’t moved. We don’t have to be distant from him. So if you’re in a situation today where you feel like he’s distant, he doesn’t have to be.

If you belong to him in Jesus Christ, if you’ve ever trusted Christ as your savior, God is not keeping you at arm’s length. Now there may be sin that you need to deal with. Deal with him.

That’s fine. He’s ready to welcome you back regardless of what you’ve done. If you come to him and seek his forgiveness, he’s ready to welcome you right back in.

But if you just feel like God is distant, he does not have to be. The Holy Spirit is there to assure us that we can cry out to the Father anytime. Keep bringing your needs to God.

Say, I don’t know what to pray. Just pray something. Tell God I don’t know what to pray.

And the Holy Spirit will give you the words. I’m afraid I’ll mess it up. I’m afraid I’ll say the wrong thing.

The Holy Spirit translates it. The Holy Spirit is the best translator in the world, by the way. I don’t know how many times somebody has told me out there, that was the best sermon ever.

And I thought, I could have picked somebody at random off the street and sent them up there and they could have done a better job than what I did today. You know why you heard something different than what I? The Holy Spirit translated it.

I’m convinced of that. If you’re afraid, I don’t know what to say to God, I’m afraid I’ll mess it up. The Holy Spirit intercedes for you with groanings that words cannot express.

He’s not limited by your words. So don’t let your circumstances, if you’re a believer, don’t let your circumstances deceive you into thinking that God is distant or that He has to remain distant. If you belong to Jesus Christ, He is close by and He hears you.

And He wants to have that relationship with you because Jesus Christ died to pay for it so you could have it. The Holy Spirit assures you that a believer can call out to the Father anytime, and the right message is going to get through. If you don’t belong to Jesus, if you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, there’s a reason that God feels distant.

It’s because He is. The Bible teaches that we are all separated from a holy God because we’ve sinned. Cross-timbers, kids, tell me again the definition of sin.

Anything I think, say, do, or don’t do that displeases God. Is that right? All right.

it’s a good definition of sin I need to memorize that anything we think say do or don’t do that displeases God we’ve all done it you say well not me the Bible says you have sometimes we can do it we can sin without an action sometimes we sin in our attitudes every time I think ugly things about somebody on the highway it’s a sin okay we’re all guilty and our sin separates us from God because he’s absolutely holy that’s why he feels distant and the Bible teaches that all of our go