"Our Great Intercessor''
Text: Romans 8:18-27
7-19-2026
May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, Oh Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen. That's an appropriate prayer for us to begin with, since we're going to be looking at what makes our prayers pleasing and acceptable to God. And we'll do so by digging into the latter portion of our Epistle Lesson. In verse 26 St. Paul says, "Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness." The word "likewise" indicates he's making a comparison of similar things. So, what's he comparing? Well, earlier in verse 18, Paul was telling us how Christians can endure the pain and suffering of this life because we focus on the glory that awaits us in heaven which far outweighs all the bad stuff. It gives us patience and hope. And so, Paul says, "Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness." In other words, we're not just left to bite our lip and endure the pain alone. God sends His Holy Spirit to help us "in our weakness" which in turn gives us hope.
Notice that the Holy Spirit doesn't remove our weakness. As long as we live in this sinful world, we will have the weakness of our sinful human nature to contend with. But having received the Holy Spirit in our Baptism, we now have a Divine Helper to assist us through it all. The word Paul uses when he says the Holy Spirit "helps us" is very rare. It's only used one other time in the New Testament. In Luke 10 Jesus was at the house of Lazarus and his 2 sisters, Mary and Martha. Mary was seated at Christ's feet listening to Him. Martha, though, was busy preparing supper and got upset because she was having to do it all alone. So, she asked Jesus to tell Mary to "help" her. Martha wanted someone to chip in; someone to assist her. In a similar fashion, the Holy Spirit helps us, that is, He assists us with our day-to-day struggles in this world of sin, because we're too weak on our own.
Even though we pretend to be strong, we desperately need strength from God to endure the pain and suffering of this life. We need His strength as we struggle with the temptation to sin. We need His strength to hold onto our hope of eternal life. And prayer is our connection with God where we can ask for His strength in our weakness. But Paul says the problem is that "we do not know what to pray for as we ought..." In other words, we don't know what to pray for nor how to properly do it. Let's face it. Our sinful desires often invade our prayers. Sometimes pride creeps in and we pray like the Pharisee in Luke 18, thanking God that we're not as bad as those rotten sinners over there, rather than humbly confessing our own sins and asking for God's forgiveness. Sometimes greed and selfishness creep in as we go to God with a long list of "Gimme this, and gimme that." We fail to pray for the needs of others or thank Him for His many blessings. Anger and resentment can also pollute our prayers. Because of this, the Holy Spirit has to sift through our prayers and remove all that garbage. If we'll let Him, He corrects those sinful attitudes. He convicts our hearts so that we repent and confess our sins and receive God's forgiveness. Then, He teaches us how to properly pray and what to ask for. St. Paul says that the Holy Spirit intercedes for us "in accordance with God's will."
When our children were small, my wife and I taught them how to pray. We would sit them on our laps and help them fold their little hands by firmly placing our hands over theirs so they couldn't mess around. And then we would lead them in praying to God. Quite often we'd say a phrase and have them repeat it. In doing so, we helped them form their prayers because they didn't know yet how to pray properly. As they matured, we guided them so that their prayers would mature along with them. The Holy Spirit does the same for us. No matter how old we are, we need Him to teach us how to pray properly. We need Him to help us mature in our prayer life. And that's exactly the work He does within us.
But messed-up or immature prayer is not always the main problem. All too often the real issue is no prayers at all! For some of us, the only time we even think to pray to God is right here on Sunday morning or an occasional, rapid-fire "Come Lord Jesus" before we eat. And sometimes, our minds are off in la-la land during the prayers here in church. How can I be so sure? Because I've struggled with those very same problems. To be blunt, it's impossible for the Holy Spirit to sift through prayers that don't existent. He can help you form prayers that are pleasing and acceptable to God but first you have to engage your mind and take the time to pray letting Him transform those prayers.
Twice in our reading, St. Paul says that the Holy Spirit "intercedes" for us. "Intercede" means to "make a request on behalf of someone else." That's what the Holy Spirit does for us. He's our Great Intercessor. He takes our requests right to the throne of God on our behalf. Paul goes on to say that the Holy Spirit "intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words." The structure of that sentence in English makes it sound like the Spirit is groaning as He offers up our requests. But that's not correct. The Holy Spirit is God Almighty, the third person of the Trinity. He doesn't groan under the weight of sin that Paul mentioned earlier. But it's our groans that He deciphers and forms into a prayer. Our deepest pains and desires sometimes never make it into words but they still weigh on our hearts. Have you ever felt that way? I don't know about you, but I have a long list of people and things to pray about every day. There are other people and things that cross my mind throughout the day that weigh on my heart and I want to pray for them. Sometimes, all I can do is sigh. I'm groaning inside because I don't know just exactly what to pray for or how to say it. The good news is that the Holy Spirit knows. Paul says He knows our hearts intimately because He "searches hearts." He knows our hidden thoughts of what's troubling us and making us groan. And He takes those deep, unspoken concerns of ours and offers them up as pleasing requests before God.
That bit of good news is for our comfort. The Holy Spirit is our intercessor who is right here with us, not far away in heaven somewhere. So, our innermost prayers and requests, even those which are mere groanings, are heard by God as if we were standing in heaven before His throne.
Somewhat in line with that, I heard of a man who was writing a book about the churches in our country. As part of his research, he visited churches all across the United States. He was taking notes and photos of a huge cathedral in San Francisco when he noticed something odd. On the wall in the narthex there was a golden phone with a sign over it which read, "$10,000 per minute." He found the Pastor and asked what it was. The Pastor said "That's a phone line to heaven. If you pay the price, you can talk directly to God!" The man thanked him and traveled on. Strangely enough, he found golden phones with the same sign in churches all across the nation. Finally, he stopped at a small church in Iowa. Again, he saw the golden phone, but this time the sign read: "50 cents per call." Fascinated, he found the Pastor and said, "I've been in churches all across the U.S. and they also had the golden phone. I was told it was a direct line to heaven. But in the other churches it cost $10,000 per minute. How come yours says only 50 cents per call?" The Pastor smiled and said, "That's because it's a local call!"
Now, those of you who were born and raised in the Hawkeye state want to believe that's true. But the fact of the matter is that we don't need a golden phone, nor do we have to pay anything to have direct communications with God. We don't have to pray through, or to, a dead saint. Every believer in Christ has free and unlimited access to God. Jesus died on the cross to remove the barrier of sin between us and God. Through His suffering and death, He paid the price for our sins and reopened the line of communication between God and His beloved children. Jesus promised to send the Holy Spirit to help us. The Holy Spirit came and made His home in our hearts when we were Baptized. Now, He's there helping us listen to God's voice as we hear it through His Holy Word. He's there helping us live as children of God. He's there teaching us how to pray. And He's there as our Great Intercessor, taking our deepest concerns and prayers-even the ones we cannot verbalize-and He presents them as pleasing requests to our loving, heavenly Father.
Don't worry or wonder if God will hear your prayers for fear of not getting the words just right. Knowing the Holy Spirit is there as our intercessor gives us confidence to pray without ceasing, even when we can't come up with the right words. He makes the simplest prayer of a small child acceptable to God. He makes all of our feeble attempts at prayer acceptable to our heavenly Father. He even takes our deepest desires, which can only come out as a groan, acceptable to God. As our great intercessor, the Holy Spirit assures us that God hears and answers those prayers for the sake of Jesus Christ. So, pray and pray often knowing that the Holy Spirit is right here with you, helping you in your weakness. Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria!