Sermon Tone Analysis

Call to Worship - Psalm 95

Introduction

Groaning Not Grumbling, Psalm not a Sin

It was not long after the people of Israel triumphantly left their Egyptian shackles of slavery behind; after they witnessed God part the sea in two and walked between two walls of water on dry ground; after the people of Israel were led by Moses himself in a song of praise to the God of their salvation.

It was not long after all of this, that God’s people begin to grumble because they had no water to drink.

In Exodus 16 it says that just 6 weeks after leaving Egypt that the people began to grumble saying, Exodus 16:3 “Would that we had died by the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt when we sat by the pots of meat when we ate bread to the full; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

God cared for His people, and He gave them bread from heaven, and they still grumbled.

And then after walking through the desert to the very edge of the promised land, Israel sent 12 spies into the land, and 10 of those spies gave a bad report that filled the people with fear.

And guess what they did - they grumbled, Numbers 14:2 “Would that we had died in the land of Egypt!

Or would that we had died in this wilderness!”

They would have rather died than go through with conquering the promised land.

And I bring this example before you to set up a contrast.

That first generation of Israelites who left Egypt were a people filled with fear and lacking faith.

And so, when they encountered suffering and difficult circumstances, they grumbled instead of having faith in the God who had just delivered them from the most powerful empire in the world, separated an entire sea for them to walk through, and caused bread to rain from heaven and rocks to pour forth water.

Now compare that to the words of David in, Psalm 13:1-3 “1 How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever?

How long will You hide Your face from me? 2 How long shall I take counsel in my soul, Having sorrow in my heart all the day?

How long will my enemy be exalted over me? 3 Consider and answer me, O Lord my God; Enlighten my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death,”

David is not grumbling here.

Amid intense suffering, David does not grumble...instead he groans with faith to His God.

It has often been said that complaint about God is a sin, complaint offered to God is a psalm- why?

Because it is a groan birthed by faith and hope.

Context

The inevitable reality of the human experience is that there will be times of suffering.

Israel went through it.

David went through it.

Even the Son of God suffered.

But what differentiated David from the Exodus Israelites, and what should differentiate the Saints from the Aints is this, we should not grumble like those without hope.

Instead, when we suffer, we should groan with faith and hope as we look to God to bring us into glory.

This is what we learned from last week’s text which Pastor Jeff preached to us.

Romans 8:23 “we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.”

We children of God groan, but we groan with anticipation, with a hope for the unseen, like the child standing in a long, slow-moving line, straining his neck, standing on his tippy toes to try and see through the gates of Disneyland.

We groan with faith-fueled, Holy Spirit-empowered hope until we are finally and fully redeemed - until we reach glory - a glory that is not worthy of being compared to our present sufferings.

We eagerly endure the trials of this world whether they come in the form of torture or tragedy with groaning in our hearts and with our eyes fixed on our Savior who will make all things gloriously new.

We groan unto glory.

And in our text today, Paul adds one of the most surprising and encouraging and comforting and incredible truths to this teaching on groaning unto glory: and it’s this…

We do not groan alone.

Main Point and Structure

We do not groan alone, for The Holy Spirit groans with us as He sufficiently helps us in our weakness by interceding for us.

This is the main point of these two verses before us: The Holy Spirit groans with us as He helps us by interceding for us.

We do not groan alone.

And we see this wonderful argument built with three successive points.

In verse 26a we will see the Spirit’s Assistance, in 26b we will learn of our Weakness or our Anemia, and in verses 26c-27 we will study the Spirit’s Advocacy on our behalf.

1.

The Spirit's Assistance – 26a

2. Our Anemia – 26b

3. The Spirit’s Advocacy – 26c-27

Transition

Let’s begin by looking to the Spirit’s Assistance, read with me the first part of verse 26.The Spirit’s Assistance - vs 26a

The Spirit’s Assistance - 26a

Likewise

Paul begins with this phrase, “Likewise” or “in the same way” which is a way of pointing backward.

In verses 23-25 Paul made the point that we are sustained and enabled to persevere our present sufferings through God-given hope.

Listen as I read these verses to you, Romans 8:23-25

We groan as we eagerly await glory and that groaning is hope-filled.

So when Paul says “in the same way” he is pointing back to this hope that sustains us.

And he is saying that in the same way that the hope for future glory sustains us amid our present sufferings, the Spirit also comes to our help.

The Spirit Helps

And Paul has been highlighting the Spirit’s role as a Helper in the Christian life throughout chapter 8 of Romans.

Paul mentions the Spirit 33 times in Romans and out of those 33 instances, the Spirit is mentioned 18 times in Romans chapter 8:1-27.

The Spirit empowers us to fulfill the law of God and kill our sin in verses 4 and 13.

In verses 10 and 11 we saw that He subdues our fallen nature by giving life to our spirit and will do the same to our bodies at the resurrection.

He actively affirms the reality of our adoption as children of the Father and fellow heirs of Christ in vs 16-17.

And as we just read in verse 23, His very prescience acts as a guarantee of our glorious inheritance.

And in our passage today, Paul writes that the Spirit helps us in our weakness.

He is our Helper.

And that is exactly who He was promised to be.

In John 14, Christ prepared His disciples for His departure and He comforted them with this promise, John 14:16-17, 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, 17 even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.

You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.

He is our helper, given to us as a gift by the Father, who abides with and in us.

And Paul says that He helps us in our weakness.

Which is our second point today, Our Anemia.

Look with me again at verse 26.

Our Anemia - vs 26b

The Spirit helps us in our weakness.

For we do not know what to pray for as we ought.

The word for help here carries the idea of co-laboring, of someone coming alongside another to share the weight of a burden.

However, the Spirit’s help in this instance is not 50/50.

The Spirit helps us...in our weakness.

A few years ago, I moved one of those backyard swing sets from my in-law's backyard.

With help of course.

I had both of my fathers, my brother, my brother-in-law, and a handful of my most loyal friends help me move this large swing set.

Now there are about 8 places to grab on to when you lift this swing-set and when it came time to move it, I was not one of the 8.

I held the chains of the three swings so that they didn’t get in the way.

It’s not that I am powerless, there were just more qualified individuals present.

In that scenario was I involved?

Yes.

Was I doing most of the work or at least half of the work?

No. My 8 family members and friends were helping me in my weakness.

So, it is with the Spirit when he helps us.

We are deficient, He is sufficient.

Our Weakness

It’s easy to think of a thousand ways in which we are weak and in need of the Spirit’s help.

But Paul has a specific weakness he wants to highlight.

Look back down at verse 26.

“we do not know what to pray for as we ought.”

Paul is not pointing out some sin here.

He is simply referring to the reality that all of us are not the Spiritual giants we would like to be and sometimes think we are.

See that Paul does not use the word, “how” here.

Surely we often struggle with how to pray, but Paul is pointing out that we are not good judges of praying for what we think we need.

We do not know what to pray for as we ought.

That term points to a target - there is something we ought to pray for that we don’t always pray for.