Help in Our Weakness (Part 1 of 2)

There are times when the burdens of life for homeless is to our knees when we realize how truly weak we are. But it is in our weakness that God reveals his strength but are subject today on Truth for Life weekend as Alistair Begg continues a study called life in the spirit where in Romans chapter 8 verses 26 and 27 we pick up Paul's argument is told is that the creation is groaning, he tells us that the church is groaning and quite remarkably, he tells us that God himself is groaning in the same way the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for. Alternatively, how we ought to pray, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express.

And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will on then I during this past week.

I enjoy the privilege along with a friend of listening is a young man whom I never met before or told us how it was that he came to believe in Jesus told us how it was that he became a Christian by the striking thing that he said was that the Holy Spirit essentially took over his life and use the exact phrase, but that was generally the area in which he spoke. I find that very interesting and I made note of it because it struck me as being in the same category as the response of a young Asian girl. When I asked her in Harvard Square how it was that she become a Christian and on that occasion, she said to me, I entered through the narrow gate and I always remember that because it was such a striking response when I asked this young man and how did you become a Christian.

He said while the Holy Spirit invaded my life and actually was very helpful for them to do so because although the details of how he arrived at that position with his own. The reality about which he spoke is a reality which he shares with every other true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and I wanted to just a moment this morning to stand back from verses 26 and 27 because it will be sung here this morning who have no prior knowledge of chapter 8, or even perhaps a prior knowledge of the Bible. Tall, so I want you to notice that in verse nine of chapter 8. The distinguishing mark or one of the distinguishing marks of Christian is that the spirit of God lives in them.

You, however, he says, are not controlled by the sinful nature which is the state of being unconverted, which is the normal condition of every day life. We may not like the sound of that.

But what the Bible says is what either controlled by the sinful nature or elsewhere controlled by the spirit of God by nature. The former is true by grace. The latter becomes a reality. He says in verse 15 that we've been adopted into God's family were no longer aliens and strays and in verse 16 he says the spirit of God within us actually testifies with our spirit that we are God's children so this is something very different from an individual who says I have an interest in theology or I like to read about spiritual things or I am an attender at a local congregation, all of which is a matter of interest and maybe it's on the help of this is something very, very different from all of that namely that the spirit testifies within his within the real new and the real me that we are actually the children of God that we have become something of the work that we were in before and in the case of this young man. He said that's what happened to me the spirit of God invaded my life I became his child. I wonder, is this what it of God invaded your life and would you be able to testify in the same way now as we go through the studies we've seen that the reality of this experience is one that takes us down the same path as that which was walked by Jesus. And in verse 17 we are children and heirs of God coheirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we might share in his glory you have this juxtaposition between suffering and glory. Some people have an idea that Christianity exists to take men and women out of the realm of suffering and bring them into the realm of tranquility or of ease somehow or another to fly above and beyond all of the turbulence of life and that's why they seek it out and when they find it. That hasn't happened and they turn away from it and they say well it's no use at all. I might as well about a self-help book from the library and tried to fix myself for all the help of that was because I thought I was going to be done with all of these things I've been listening to some Christians, and it sounds as though their life is becoming much harder since they became followers of Jesus than it ever was before.

How could that be, well, because the path of discipleship is the path that Jesus walked.

He walked the path of suffering into the realm of glory know the word glory is an interesting word isn't you don't really find it used very often except in Christian circles, I know some would say it is a glorious sunset door that was a glorious meal even now finally you choose very often even as an adjective, and certainly not as a noun, and since we are using it and since it's an important word here. We are to understand what Paul is talking about and essentially it is this that glory is the outward manifestation or the outward shining of the invisible God, that God's glory on God's character and his power and his majesty, which are all invisible to us, becoming visible as he makes himself known.

There is a glory that attaches to creation that when you stand and you look up into the night sky, you realize the vastness of the day, the solar system. There you look up into the galaxy that is our Milky Way find yourself saying something far greater than anything we have ever know you take a tiny child in your arms and you look at the way that they are so intricately fashion speaks to God's glory because one of the ways in which God has manifested his glory is in the creation not just in the creation of our world and our cosmos but in the individual creation of you and me. You have been made in the image of God and one of the ways that the invisible God becomes visible is in his creation. While you say, but isn't the creation or the visibility of God somewhat large in our life's good answer is yes and the Bible tells us why and if you would like to take a moment I want to show you how Paul traces this argument here even in Romans, and you need to go back to Romans chapter 1 and two, verse 21, where Paul is describing the fact that although men and women knew God knew God atheism is a choice. Atheism is a decision atheism is an act of rebellion.

No one is born an atheist. Everyone is born with an innate knowledge of God. Men and women choose to deny the existence of God.

Contemporary atheism wants to suggest that we were all born atheistic and a few crazy individuals have chosen to invent the notion of a creator. The Bible says no. And here Paul explains, for although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him. In gratitude is always a mark of ungodliness, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claim to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged and here's our word exchange the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles what he saying is that when God made man when he made Adam and Eve, he made them in his image. Adam and Eve turned their back on God. They disobeyed God and the image of God is now marred inhumanity and at the heart of that is idolatry. It is the worship of someone or something other than the creator to whom we are accountable and these substitute guards are as prevalent in 21st century Western culture as they were in the cultures of Mesopotamia and Assyria and the Amalekites and so on, all the way through the journey that is given to us in the Bible, misdirected worship is at the heart of it. When Paul then takes us forward. He says in chapter 3 and in verse 23 that there is actually no difference between the Gentile person who's in this predicament or the Jewish person who's in this predicament. That's really what is been arguing. He argues the Gentile situation in Romans one and then he says, but I do. There is no peculiar advantage to you, actually being a Jew sends you even in your Judaism substitute guards for the true and living God. And then he gets to it in verse 23. There's no difference. He says for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. None of us gives to God the glory that he deserves. Despite the fact it is the Scottish catechism tells is the chief end of man.

The reason for our existence is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever made in his image. We possess a dignity that is distinct from the beasts. As sinners, that dignity is marked and as a result of that.

Our reach, always exceeds our grass.

Paul then comes to the solution and wonderfully so many years the chapter flying and what he's been pointing how it is that they exchange that we have made exchanging God's glory for the shameful substitutes is an exchange that is more than matched by the exchange of God himself, who has in Jesus exchanged all the glory that he knows in heaven for all the shame and the poverty and the dirtiness and the sinfulness of error and that the great exchange that man has made in substituting himself for God has been addressed by the great exchange that God has made in substituting himself for man so that Jesus says takes the place of the sinner on the cross, thereby making a reality acceptance with God for all who are trusting in his provision and that's why in chapter 5 he says, in light of this, and this is the summarize for chapters. He says therefore being justified by faith, not by anything that we have done being justified by faith. Faith in what faith in this great exchange that God is provided in Jesus as Savior. Therefore being justified by faith, we have present tense peace with God.

We have access into this grace in which we stand now and here we go and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God and what is actually doing. There is he setting the scene for that to which he comes back here in chapter 8. Not only are we going to see God's glory, but God's glory is going to be seen in us. When John writes about this in first Johnny says. And we know that when we see it in. We will be like him up always been addressing this in this chapter 8 and he's been pointing out to his readers and we are his readers that the messed up nature of our world has to do with the fighter. We are messed up window broken down world because we are broken down people, the nature of the breakdown is the breakdown in relationships between ourselves and God our Creator.

Instead of laws going to the provision that the creator is made for us. We go to our own little creations seeking some are another to make sense of our lives to fill up our days with the adoration of that which is less than what God is intended, and hence the futility in the sense of emptiness that pervades things.

It is then, in light of this, that he tells us in verse 22 that the creation is groaning that in verse 23 the people of God are groaning and that in verse 26 and here is the wonder of wonders beneath our groanings, God himself is groaning and what he describes in verses 26 and 27 is phenomenal. It is mysterious. It is wonderful. It is almost beyond our ability to grasp, namely, to what we have described for us here is the groaning of God, praying to God. God the Holy Spirit. The third person of the Trinity, who now lives within the life of a believer speaking to God the father in and through the prayers and the cries in the intercessions of those who are his children is different. Christianity is for most notions of spirituality and and world religions. Every day we live our lives the great attempt is to flatten onto one terrain. Any notion of a god or gods or an interest in God or awareness of God or whatever else it is an Christianity stubbornly refuses to be pressed down into that mill you not on account of arrogance, but on account of the inevitability of the fight that the claims of Christianity stand out as being so unbelievable as to almost amend that we would consider them as true know where I verse 26 and I think you be relieved about that because that's where we should be and it is here that we are told that the spirit helps us in our weakness. He's been describing life in the spirit is the spirit that is at work in creation.

It is the spirit that is at work in our lives, and it is the spirit now who helps us in our weakness. Let's address this in two ways. First of all acknowledging this to be true. Generally, and then acknowledging it to be true, specifically in the context that Paul gives us here Paul has been very clear concerning the nature of weakness and classically so in second Corinthians, and in chapter 12 and as he reaches the apex of his argument. He says in verse seven of two Corinthians 12 to keep me from becoming conceited or from getting a big head because he said I've had revelations of God that are so unbelievable that I couldn't even begin to talk about and that could give me a sense of dominance and priority and so on, and God recognizing that to keep me from getting a big fat head. He gave me a thorn in my flesh.

We don't know what it is. If we needed to know we would've been told we know that it was a torment to him and something that he would like to be rid of the last the Lord three times if he would take it away from him and three times the answer came back no because God told him my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. My power is made perfect in weakness.

Okay says.

Therefore, deduction. If that's the case I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest upon me, for he says when I am weak, then I am strong. Paradoxical as it is ironic, especially when you say that within the context of 21st-century America because the one thing that you're not supposed to admit to his weakness, everyone is a winner in America in a book called nurture shock new thinking about children. The book says modern parents are wanting to nurture so skillfully that mother nature will gasp in admiration at the marvels. Their parenting produces from the soft clay of children. The assumption is that thinking highly of oneself is prerequisite for high achievement, and that's why I and some of you have actually started to do this, it would little notes in the lunchbox of your children telling them their genius. The fact that it in finished her cereal that he left the room, a royal shambles and have a been a pain in your neck for the last seven days. Didn't start you because you've been buying so much of the spirit of the age that you actually believe that this is the key to the well-being in the future of your trial.

Let me tell you what is the key to the effectiveness and well-being of your child. The discovery of their own personal inadequacy and the discovery that in that inadequacy.

There is the opportunity for growth and for achievement Peggy Noonan writing in the Wall Street 2009 July 2009.

She writes for 13 years. The self-esteem movement told the young there perfect in every way and shielding something you in history an entire generation with no proper sense of inadequacy got a lot of wrong sense of inadequacy, which are about a proper sense of inadequacy. The proper sense of inadequacy that comes when you jump rope with ropes you realize you recollects you realize that when you saw Sugar Ray Leonard doing that thing didn't didn't didn't didn't didn't it and you tried it you look like the village idiot, that's fine.

You're not sugar Ray Leonard, you're not going to be relax. He probably can do many of the things you do when you see the reason I mention this is because if we're going to read our Bibles and were going to allow our Bibles to speak into all the world in which we live that we need to identify the world in which we live and bring it into contrast or confluence with the instruction of Scripture help in our weakness. That's the title of her message today from Alastair big on Truth for Life weekend as part of our series called life in the spirit maybe you were thinking today about someone you'd like to share this message with. Or maybe you'd like to revisit previous messages in the study.

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