Groaning with the Spirit

Groaning

Well, I think the groaning started on Wednesday night. The sewage had a particular stench on that evening.

In case you missed it, three of the wastewater treatment plants in the Hunter returned samples pointing to the fact that there was covid in our region. We have had similar samples in the past, but this time it felt different. Firstly it was three of the plants, and secondly they were telling us the load was higher than previously detected.

Thursday morning we were still groaning. We were willing these samples to be some sort of anomaly. But we heard news first of some cases at Morisset High, and later in the morning, another case at Maitland Christian School, and when our premier took to the press conference at 11am it was no big surprise that the Sydney lockdown had finally reached the Hunter.

The groan gets louder.

For the parents of school students, the groan increased further when the realisation that this meant home learning.

Particularly for the parents who have to juggle work responsibilities with their child’s education. And the guilt that comes with not giving your child the attention they need.

We groan because we know this is not good. We know it’s hard and we don’t know when the end will be. Sure we’ve been told it’s only going to last 7 days, and maybe by chance, it will only be seven days, but I think we’re all bracing ourselves for much longer.

So what do we make of this groan? As Christians, aren’t we meant to be full of joy.

After all, Paul tell us in another one of his letters to rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice.

Should we just put the groan behind us and replace it with a smile?

Well, we might be tempted to say yes, but, it’s perhaps not entirely the stance we should be taking.

You see, while we might hate it when our kids groan at us, the groan recognises that somethings not quite right.

Now perhaps we might groan for selfish reasons, and to be honest, when we groan for selfish reasons then we do just need to get rid of it. Like if you turn the TV off and the kids start groaning. I’m not talking about that sort of groaning.

I’m talking about the groan that results from the broken world in which we live.

Now the thing about a groan is that it’s wordless. And we could argue - shouldn’t we try to put words to our feelings? And on one level the answer is yes. Being able to verbalize how we feel is a good way to work through what we are going through.

It is certainly not my intention this morning to encourage you to just groan every time anything bad happens and then that’s that.

But at the same time there can be some advantages to the wordless groan, and in part, that’s what I want to explore this morning.

You see, this morning, we come to the middle section of this amazing eighth chapter of Romans, and we see this idea of the groan come up a few times, and we’ll see that we are in good company with our groans.

We’ll see how the groan can put us in a good posture to see the glory that is to come.

Context

Let’s first orient ourselves in this letter of Paul’s to the Romans.

You see, Paul has taken us on this amazing journey.

He’s explained the problem of sin to us. That nothing you can do can make you right before God.

But he’s explained that there’s more to the story, because God gave us Jesus who has justified us. Not just forgiven for that mistake you made yesterday, but declared you righteous before God. And all you need is faith, and you can experience the peace of God, and have the hope of the glory of God.

He’s explored our ongoing battle with sin and the law. But this is the beauty of the whole thing - God has provided a way. He has provided a way out of the absolute mess that we are in, and in to a whole new place where all things are being restored.

Last week we made a start in chapter 8, where Paul gives us one of the best pictures we’ll get of what it means to live in this world now in light of the fact that Jesus has already made the way for us.

And to understand this, we need to understand the role of the Holy Spirit, which is where we went last week.

You see, it is the Holy Spirit which enables us to move into the place God wants for us.

We can start living according to the Spirit, and as a result we gain adoption as children of God.

And as we finished the passage last week, Paul started pointing us towards the glory that is to come. Now as he did so, he also introduced the tension we live in, that is, the suffering we have now, and the glory to come. And it is this tension that we turn to now, a tension we’re we will see this groan happen.

Suffering and glory

As we now move into verse 18, Paul makes a statement which helps put this tension into perspective. He says: “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”

And we need to keep this perspective in mind. As I’ll explore shortly, we’ll see a direct connection between the suffering and the glory, but it’s not an equal one for another. What we have now is nothing compared to what we will have.

We’ll groan now, but it will seem like nothing when Jesus returns again, when all thing will be made new again, and when the shalom, the peace we’ve been talking about, will be fully realised. Every day, we will fully know the glory of God which will be ever present. This is the glory that we have to look forward to.

As we talk about our suffering, we need to remember that this is not everything.

Creation

Now as Paul continues, he does something which we might at first thought seem unexpected. He personifies creation. He describes creation waiting… creation being frustrated… and in verse 22, we get this first mention of groaning I’ve been describing, creation groans as in the pain of childbirth.

So what is Paul thinking about when he talks about creation in this sense? Well, I believe he is talking about all of God’s created order. Back in Genesis 1 we see God making the heavens and the earth. He made the birds of the air and the fish in the sea. He made the animals on land, and culminated in humans who were made in his image.

But this whole creation was subjected to frustration. Paul doesn’t elaborate in Romans 8 about how this happened, but if you go back to Genesis 3 when Adam and Eve sinned, God declared: “Cursed is the ground because of you… it will produce thorns and thistles for you...” (Gen 3:17-18).

By introducing creation into the picture here, we’re actually bringing a deeper dimension to the whole discussion of Romans. Unfortunately, we sometimes get stuck with a very narrow perspective on what God did, in fact it can become a very selfish perspective. It’s the result of our individualistic mindset, that is, that salvation is about God saving me, and if I have faith then I go to heaven. That might be true, but it fails to see the bigger picture.

Not only that God is saving others, but a creation perspective as well.

You see creation also faces the bondage to decay - and it is decaying. There are many aspects in which we can see great devastation in the environment.

And God’s redemption plan includes creation - in fact a big feature of when Jesus returns is that we get a new heavens and a new earth.

Now let me just come back to verse 22, because this is where I want to start considering this idea of groaning.

When he uses this idea here, he gives us the image of child birth - and it’s quite an interesting image.

Now, I’ve got three daughters and I had the privilege of being their for each of their births.

And while I recognise every birth story is unique, there are some common features to almost every single birth that has taken place. To put it simply, it involves pain. Of course, as the man, I didn’t experience the pain, although I did experience a crushed hand (but maybe I should stop talking before I start digging myself into a hole).

But the point is one that Jesus actually makes quite well in John 16:21 when he says: “A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come, but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world”.

You see, the pains of child birth are massive. In this pain there is much groaning.

But it is pain that is necessary for the joy that is to come. In the case of child birth, it is that most amazing joy of having that infant, only moments old, being held in your arms. It’s that moment when the child has been wrapped, the crying has stopped, and you gaze upon this most beautiful gift.

In the case of creation, it is groaning, because it’s not right. It’s groaning because of this bondage to decay. But because of what God is doing, it is liberated into the freedom and glory of the children of God.

Our groans

Now we could continue exploring what this means in terms of creation, but I want to move on, because in verse 23, Paul then shifts on to our groans.

He talks about how we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies.

You might question that word “inwardly”. Perhaps our groans aren’t always inward - they’re perhaps quite outward to.

But we get this same sense of the groans of child birth. The suffering is real. The effects of our broken world dominate us so much that we can’t help but groan.

But this is the posture take because we know that this suffering must happen before the glory is fully upon us.

We don’t like it, just like a pregnant woman doesn’t look forward to the pain of child birth, but that pregnant mother knows it’s necessary before she can hold her baby in her arms.

Well let me just bring this back to us trying to understand what happens when we groan.

In our groaning, we can begin to understand what is happening to us. We understand that we live in a world that is subject to frustration, and that this is to be expected because of the falleness of humanity.

But there is an expectant aspect to our groaning, because we know something better is coming.

Expectantly patient

Now there is a tension that we need to hold with this expectation, and in some ways I want to suggest the groaning actually helps. You see in verse 25 he talks about us waiting patiently.

I want to suggest two opposite approaches we can take.

On one side we become too eager for the glory to come. With this eagerness we can lose sight of where God has placed us now.

On the other side, we can become so patient that we forget that something better is to come.

The groaning however reminds us that what we have is not everything, but that we need to wait until the time comes when God’s glory will be fully realised.

The Spirit Groans

Okay, so we’ve looked at the fact that our groans are going in parallel with creations groans. But we’re about to see another somewhat surprising co-groaner.

But it is one which is going to prove very encouraging.

You see, we can feel very lost in our groanings. Almost a sense of helplessness because in the middle of it, the end can feel distant.

But in verse 26 we’re told that the Spirit helps us in our weakness.

Now, there are lots of ways the Spirit helps us. In other places we learns about how the Holy Spirit can teach us, and can provide comfort.

Prayer

But Paul is aware of a very particular weakness that we can often face - our prayer life.

Now for most Christians, we are generally aware that prayer is important. We know that we can have access to God the Father through Jesus the Son by prayer. And through the power of prayer, we can see things happen. Miracles occur. Lives are changed. Difficult situations are made clear.

But here’s the thing. We struggle with it. We get distracted. We forget the things we should be praying for. Or sometimes, as Paul makes explicit mention of in verse 26, we just plain don’t know what we ought to pray for.

I’m sure many of you will have had that experience where someone is close to death, and you just don’t know whether to ask God to heal them or to let them go peacefully.

But sometimes we don’t know what to pray for because life is just so plain complicated and your head gets swamped by everything.

Well, this is where verse 26 becomes enormously comforting. Paul tells us: “…but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans”.

There is something truly beautiful about this. You see, the Spirit is joining us in our groaning. Now in some translations, it says: “with words that cannot be expressed”, however I have it on good authority from people who know Greek much better than me that the translation “wordless groans” is more accurate. In other words, it not that the Spirit is using some sort of language we can’t understand, rather it is this idea that the Spirit is joining us in this period of suffering. You could call it an act of condescension.

But in the process of the Spirit groaning with us, we are helped in our weakness. The prayers we don’t even know how to pray are lifted up through the Spirit.

This is the beauty of it. Even in prayer, it is the Spirit doing the heavy hitting.

And because the Spirit is interceding on our behalf, we know that our prayer are in accordance with the will of God, just as it says in verse 27.

For the Good

And so, here we are. Groaning. Sitting in our suffering. But not alone in our groaning. We groan with creation. But even more surprisingly, we groan with the Spirit who intercede for us in accordance with God’s will.

So where does all this lead. Well, we’ve already talked about the glory that is to come. That there is an end point to all of this.

But we also come to verse 28 which I know is a favourite verse for many Christians. It says: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose”.

You see in this verse we begin to understand what God is doing.

We patiently wait in our suffering, but knowing that God has a bigger purpose - a good purpose.

You see, something good is happening.

Now in the midst of our groaning, it might not always be immediately obvious.

When we see a pandemic which has put half the country into lockdown, we wonder why.

And sometimes we might be tempted to give a quick answer. For instance we can say something like - God’s doing it to teach us patience, or to teach us some other sort of lesson.

Now that may be true. Those outcomes might happen. But I would caution against such quick rationalising.

You see, God has a big purpose and it is good.

And as we stay close to God we start to see how the things in our life are actually working for the good of those who love him.

Now I just cautioned a moment ago against a quick answer to what the good is in our suffering. But actually, Paul does give us an answer in verse 29 and 30.

He tells us that those God foreknew he predestined, and from this we get our adoption, and our justification and finally into glory.

It’s a wonderful thing. Even though we suffer, an almighty change is happening in us that will result in glory. And it all happens because of what God is doing in our lives.

Conclusion

When our current lockdown was announced we all let out a collective groan.

But this should not necessarily be a bad thing.

As we groaned, we joined with creation.

As we groaned we recognised that this world is not as it should be.

And in recognising that it is not as it should be, we pull into focus the fact that there is glory to come. A glory that has come about because Jesus has already won the victory.

But not only do we join with creation in groaning, but the Holy Spirit also joins us in our groaning - in an amazing act of love, he intercedes for us, bringing about God’s good purpose.

This powerful passage in the middle of chapter 8 is such an amazing reminder of what God is doing. We suffer now because we are in a broken world, but God is bringing something new, and we wait patiently for this glory to come.

So don’t be worried if you find yourself letting out a groan, just know that the Spirit is with you, and sending out the prayers we don’t even know how to pray.

So let me pray now...