Romans 8:26-30 | "Hope in the Darkness"

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Good morning.

Have a Bible.

I encourage you to take it and to open it to the book of Romans.

I know your Bible or your bulletin says Matthew, but we're not going to do that this morning.

As has been mentioned and prayed, this has been a rough time.

Rough for all of us in in different kinds of ways.

I guess we're already two-thirds of the way through September.

So it's been about a month ago now.

I sent an email to our elders that I think scared some of them.

I sent an email to them asking them to pray for our staff because I felt as though we were in the midst of a intense spiritual time where our enemy was seeking to discourage us in various ways.

I was gone last Sunday.

Thank you to Webb for filling in.

That was planned, uh, I don't know, a month and a half ago.

I don't know when when we first planned for Webb to speak again.

But it was an opportune time because my grandmother passed away.

So I was on my way back from Wyoming and Montana last Sunday during the service.

And as I started to get back into the swing of things on Monday, started to think about Matthew chapter 9.

Matthew 9 · chapter mention

And no matter what I did, I just didn't seem to be able to get into it.

Not that unusual, especially on a Monday.

But I just couldn't seem to focus much, couldn't figure out what was going on with the text.

And then on Tuesday, which is my primary study day, spent hours wrestling and praying and asking the Lord what the text was saying and where he wanted us to go.

And really couldn't get any traction.

Wednesday morning started very similarly.

And by that time I'm starting to get frustrated.

Because I need to have my sermon done by Thursday, usually.

Actually, I want to have it done the week before, but that didn't happen.

It kept changing large sections of what I was thinking about in Matthew chapter 9.

Matthew 9 · chapter mention

And as I was getting ready to leave the office on Wednesday afternoon for a couple of hours before coming back for evening things here.

That is when we got the phone call about Ruth's car accident.

And immediately we were we were up at the hospital and I changed everything.

I changed everything.

There was no time back then to think.

Hardly time to pray, except for the Burnson family.

And pretty soon it's Saturday.

And I'm thinking, I'm not ready to preach Matthew chapter nine.

So I've done what no preacher should do.

I prepared for this morning last night, on Saturday night, thinking and praying through what the Lord would have us look at and how He would have us be encouraged.

If you aren't familiar with our fellowship, if you're a visitor or fairly new here, we've not had a tragedy like this in many years, where it's been this quick, this sudden.

Where does the Lord want us to go?

So in the end, I settled on Romans chapter 8.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

And I trust that as we look at this, the Lord will bring some fruit and some encouragement out of it for all of us, no matter where you are in your life.

Puritan pastor J.C.

Ryle wrote, There is nothing which shows our ignorance so much as our patience under trouble.

We forget that every cross is a message from God and intended to do us good in the end.

Trials, he wrote, are intended to make us think, to wean us from the world, to send us to the Bible, to drive us to our knees.

Health is a good thing, but sickness is far better if it leads us to God.

Prosperity is a great mercy, but adversity is a greater one if it brings us to Christ.

Trials and suffering make you cling to Christ even more.

And the truth is that trials come to God's people.

They come in many forms, many shapes, many sizes.

They come in all the wrong times, right?

But they always come with a purpose.

They always come with a purpose designed by God.

James tells us in James chapter 1 to count it all.

James 1 · chapter mention

Joy when?

When you face trials of many kinds, right?

What he means is that there's a deep-seated rest and joy, even, that we can have in the midst of the trials and the hardships and the brokenness of life.

We can have a joy that rests in Christ that is driven not by the circumstances we face in life, but by Christ Himself.

That doesn't remove in any way the pain and the agony and the hurt and the emotions of the moment.

But Christ gives us a place to rest in him.

And this is a truth that people in the first century church were constantly learning.

They faced rejection like we've never seen.

Exile, driven away from their homes, losing everything, beatings, even the most horrific kinds of death because of Jesus.

So naturally, they would struggle to rejoice in what God did for them.

And you and I are no different.

Be honest with yourself for a moment.

This is church, it's a safe place to be honest.

Be honest with yourself for a moment.

Life doesn't always turn out the way you expected, does it?

Following Jesus doesn't guarantee you freedom from sorrow or brokenness or pain or agony or loss or even from the difficulties of sinful decisions and choices.

If you are a Christian, be ready for life to disappoint you.

Be ready for life to hurt in many different ways.

Don't be surprised when things don't go as you expected.

Be ready for those things.

And you might ask, well, how do I be ready?

Trust Jesus.

Trust Jesus.

Here's what you will learn if you trust Jesus, if you really do that.

And it's something that many, many Christians haven't yet learned.

When you trust in Jesus, even in the hard times, even in the times when you can't see around the corner, even in the times when you are in the midst of that deep, dark valley of life and all you can feel is the darkness oppressing around you.

When you trust him, you will find he will help you through them.

Maybe not in the way you expected, but he will help you through them.

But it's hard, isn't it?

It's hard walking in this deep, dark valley we call life.

There are troubles, galore.

Calamities are piling up.

Pain sometimes hits us wave after wave after wave.

Maybe the bills are piling up unpaid, and you're struggling to figure out how is this gonna get cleared out?

Trips to the doctor overwhelm us.

Sin.

Sin in the midst of all of that keeps tripping us up again and again and again, bringing more sorrow, sorrow on sorrow as we grieve over our sin.

And then there are just the regular everyday troubles and trials of living in a broken, sin-cursed world.

What hope is there in following the shepherd through the valley of deep darkness?

I hope that Romans chapter 8 will bring some clarity to that.

Romans 8 · chapter mention

I think we see here, and beginning in verse 26, two major reasons.

Two major reasons to find hope in this dark valley we call life.

If you have your Bible, I encourage you to follow along or your device.

Verse 26 as I read.

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

But the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

And he who searches the hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit.

Why does he know?

Because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.

For those who are called according to his purpose.

For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

And those whom he predestined, he also called.

And those whom he called, he also justified, and those whom he justified, he also glorified.

Amen.

You familiar with Elizabeth Elliot?

If you're not, you should be.

She is the widow of Jim Elliot, who was martyred by the native peoples of Ecuador in 1956.

Elizabeth has written, Our vision is so limited that we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering.

She goes on, the love of God did not protect his own son.

He will not necessarily protect us, not from anything it takes to make us like his son.

A lot of hammering and chiseling and purifying by fire will have to go into the process.

End quote.

Now, we're in a safe place.

We're all here because we want to worship God, and so we would all give a hearty amen to that statement and to that truth.

But what we wrestle with is the process.

For the vast majority of his children, God employs painful and agonizing methods to make us like his son.

He uses, as it were, like she used an illustration, a hammer and a chisel.

A hammer striking a blow to drive a sharp chisel into our being, to break off parts of us that are not fit for his kingdom.

He uses the circumstances of life to crush us, to break us, to humble us and bring us low so that he can begin to lift us back up after breaking us and forming us into what he wants us to be.

Those broken pieces are then molded into exactly what he desires in us.

Those are the kinds of things that the psalmist speaks of when he refers to that valley of deep darkness.

We have a hard time, though, seeing beyond the darkness, don't we?

Because when we take our eyes off the shepherd, what do we see?

Darkness everywhere.

That's all we see.

And so here, in the midst of perhaps a very dark week for many of us, I hope we begin to see some hope, beginning in verse 26.

We see a couple of elements of hope here.

First, we need to find hope in our divine help.

We have divine help in the midst of our circumstances, in the midst of our situation.

What is our situation?

A limited one.

We live in a technologically advanced world.

We have immense capabilities that even just a few years ago would be beyond most of our imaginations.

And sometimes it feels as though we can do anything.

And then comes the blow from the hammer onto the chisel.

And we realize all of a sudden we're very limited.

We can't do everything.

We don't have it all together.

That's what's all included here in this word weakness.

Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness.

That word weakness speaks of an incapacity for something, it's a severe limitation.

It's not just, oh, I'm weak, and so today I'm struggling to do this.

No, it's more than that.

It's an inability, it's an incapacitation to do something.

So let's not just then go from here to take this out of its context and say, oh, this is talking about my limitation in my physical abilities or in my mental abilities.

You know, I've heard classmates in the past say that this is referring to, this is going to be applied directly to a test that I haven't studied for.

The weakness or the limitation, the incapacity being referred to here is a very specific one, and it involves communication with God Himself.

We have a weakness in being able to speak to our Father.

Now, in the context, the picture here is that valley of deep darkness, that place of brokenness, of suffering, of following the shepherd.

Speaks of being subjected to futility, of being bound as a slave to the corruption that's in this world.

And in that dark place, we don't always know how to pray to our Father.

We lack knowledge of what we should pray.

Maybe we don't know what God's will is.

Maybe we may not be able to think in the moment about how to clearly express our prayers.

Maybe we're just feeling feelings all over and we're all stressed out and we don't even know how to get words out.

Maybe we're like the creation and we're groaning within ourselves for the will of God to be done, but we just don't have the words to say.

Our Father says, Come to me anyway.

Just come to me anyway.

We are to express our hearts to our Father, but sometimes, perhaps many times, we simply don't have the knowledge, the know-how to express what's inside.

And so our Father has given us some hope in the form of help.

Specifically, a person, his spirit, the Holy Spirit, our great intercessor.

We do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes.

What's an intercessor?

Somebody who stands in the gap.

Somebody who says, You can't do this, so I'm going to step in here and help.

It's as though we don't have corded phone lines anymore.

All cell phones.

But it's as though the telephone line between us and heaven has been snipped in the midst of the brokenness.

And the Spirit says, You're struggling.

You don't know how to bridge this, but I'm going to step in.

I'm going to be the gap.

See, the Father has not left us without a means of communication.

You ever been in one of those situations where you're in an area that has absolutely no cell phone reception, but you need to make a call?

Maybe you've been out in the middle of North Dakota somewhere and no cell phone reception and your car is broken down.

What happens then?

Well, depending on your makeup, you might start to stress a little bit.

Your blood pressure might rise a little bit.

Maybe you're one of those people that thinks, oh, I just walk to the next community and get some help.

Somebody will drive along.

Well, sometimes in the middle of North Dakota, somebody doesn't drive along for a really long time.

Sometimes it's a long walk.

What happens then?

Anxiety begins to rise.

Maybe it's panic.

Maybe your anxiety level rises to the same level as your blood pressure.

That's what it would be all the time if there were no intercessor between us and our Father.

But God has made it so that there is no place and there is no time and there is no situation in which we cannot speak with him.

Even if we don't know the words to speak in the midst of the brokenness, in the midst of the darkness, in the midst of the suffering, he has provided a way.

And that way is accomplished through groanings too deep for words.

Now, beloved, those are not your groanings.

I know we groan a lot.

Those are not your groanings.

These are the spirit's groanings.

These are the unspoken sounds of the Spirit of the living God communicating with God the Father.

He takes what's in our hearts and communicates that in some way to the Father.

So through the Spirit, the Father knows what is in the hearts of his children.

He knows what his children desire to say, but don't know how to say.

Look at verse 27.

He, who's the he?

Well, he's the one who searches hearts.

The one who searches hearts, who is the Father, knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints.

So it's not the Spirit searching you.

It's the Father searching you.

And he knows the mind of the Spirit.

See, the Father desires to know what's inside of you.

He desires to know your heart.

He desires to know the darkness.

He desires to know the suffering, the pain, how deep the valley is in your life.

He wants to know.

He wants to hear.

And when we are unable to communicate to him because we don't know how or we don't know what to say, the Holy Spirit living.

Within us, because we are children of the Father, takes what's in our hearts and communicates it to the Father.

For some strange reason, my dad seemed to know everything I ever did.

I grew up in small towns, beloved.

There's no secrets.

Somehow it always got back to my dad.

But he didn't know what was in my heart.

He often didn't know what I was thinking.

But your father, who is in heaven, knows the mind of the spirit.

And the spirit lives within you and knows what your heart desires to say.

But doesn't know how to say.

What does the spirit communicate to the father?

Well, he takes what's in our hearts, what's in our inner being, that doesn't necessarily have a way out.

There's nothing that your heavenly father needs to know that he does not know.

Now we might we might pray to God for something that is not in line with his will.

Maybe we're praying for something selfish.

We're praying with the wrong heart, and so there's not the kind of answer that we would like to have.

But the Holy Spirit always communicates according to the will of the Father.

He always does.

He never does anything that is not within the will of God, and so he takes what's inside of us and he communicates it to the Father in a way that pleases our Father.

He's always praying effectively for us because he prays always according to the will of the Father.

That is hope in the midst of the storm.

We might not know what to pray, but the Spirit who lives within us knows not only what to pray, but how to pray, and he makes that communication effective.

That means you are never out of reach of your father's ear.

You may be following the shepherd and feel as though you've lost track of the shepherd, and he's so far ahead of you that you can't see him.

Your father knows.

He's not out of reach.

That's one element of hope.

A second element of hope is that we can trust in God's purpose.

There's an important pattern to notice in most of the psalms.

Whenever the psalmist cries out, why?

Or maybe it's why?

Or how long?

Oh Lord.

Expressing those, those heart cries that just seem to be present.

So many of the psalms, it doesn't just end there.

It keeps going, and by the end of the psalm, it comes around to some element of trust, of expressing trust in God Himself.

That's what's going on here.

We can trust our God, and that is a basis of hope.

Is that how you see yourself functioning?

Here in these verses, we can see that we can trust in God's sovereignty.

Even when life feels out of control, he's in control.

We can trust in his providence, that everything, every day is directed by his hand.

We can trust in his care for his children.

God's children can understand the Father's character and how that applies to our present circumstances.

And so we trust that he does not change.

He is always faithful.

He is always loving.

He is always caring.

He is always wanting what is good for his children.

That's exactly what we're told.

The Father's purpose is for the good of his children.

Now there's so much here to work through to understand what's going on here.

We're just kind of given a 30,000-foot level.

And we know, we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good.

What are the all things?

I think as we work our way through this passage, this is one of those situations where the all is not qualified.

In other words, all means all.

Everything.

Every large and broad situation in your life, every detail of your life, every microscopic element of your circumstances for your good.

But the emphasis in this context is on the suffering, on the darkness, on the trials, on the brokenness that the children of God endure as they follow Jesus in this life.

That's the primary thing connected to the all things.

Now I think it would be fairly easy for us all to get on the same page and say, yes, God uses all of the good things in life for our good.

But that's not what's going on here.

I think the principal issue here is that God uses all the bad for the good of his children.

He uses all the unexplainable for the good of his children.

He uses all the pain, all the sorrow, all the loss, all the brokenness.

That's something that takes a little getting used to.

Note how this verse begins in verse 28.

We know.

No, he doesn't say, suppose God uses everything for your good.

Or God might, if you do this.

He doesn't say we feel as though this is what God does.

No, it says we know.

It's definitive, right?

God uses all things, all suffering things, all painful things, all agonizing things, all troubling things, all difficult things, all unquestioning things, all questionable things, all uncertain things, all for the good of his children.

And that is something that we know definitely without a doubt.

That means that if we are to gain any hope in the midst of the storms of life, we must come to know this truth.

And we must know it not simply in an intellectual way, where it's where it's filed in the filing system of your brain, but in your innermost being.

It has to be the guide that rules your life.

It has to be your anchor in the midst of the raging storm.

Now, for whom is this true?

For whom is it true that God works all things together for good?

Well, he says, for those who love God, right?

But at the end of the verse, that's sort of qualified for those who are called according to his purpose.

This is an important question.

Who are those that love God for whom all things work together for good?

It's an important question because if you went out on the streets of Grand Forks this afternoon and you took a survey, I would venture to guess that six, seven, eight, nine people out of ten would say, Yes, I love God.

If that's all you're asking, they would say, Yes, I love God.

But that's a very general statement, so it's clarified later for those who are called according to God's purpose.

In other words, who are the ones who love God?

They're the ones whom God has called according to his purpose.

Think of it this way: God does not necessarily call everyone who claims to love him.

But, flip it around, everyone who is called by God does indeed love him.

So God works all things, even brokenness, even suffering, for good for those whom he calls and who love him.

Well, then we have to figure out what call mean.

We're all about defining terms this morning.

What does call mean?

Well, in this context, I think it means that God calls sinners who are in rebellion of his will to be his children through the Spirit's work of freeing them from slavery to sin and death and adopting them into his own family.

We might say it's a call to salvation.

And here it's what we call an effectual call.

In other words, when God calls a rebel to himself, the rebel comes.

We know that because it goes all the way back to chapter three, where it says, by nature, every human being refuses God's call.

There's no one who desires God.

No, not one at all.

There's none who seeks after him.

Not one of us by nature desires God.

But in this call is a summons to come to him, and that summons overcomes all human resistance and effectually persuades the rebel to trust in Christ.

We know that it is effectual because of verse 30.

All those who are called are justified.

They're declared righteous.

All those who are called are justified and glorified.

As though it's already done.

So when God issues this call, the end will be glory for that person.

It's an effective call.

So do you see what's happening here?

It's marvelously glorious.

God takes rebels who hate him and makes them his full-fledged children by paying the price for their rebellion himself, thereby freeing them from slavery to that old way of life, that old debt, and binding them to himself.

But he doesn't stop there.

He has guaranteed those rebels turned children and inheritance and glory with the Son of God Himself.

But the road to that complete redemption is long and it's dark.

And it hurts.

But God will not allow anything in this life, including suffering, to be wasted.

He will use it for good in the lives of those children who were once rebels.

And if God is going to effectually call someone to himself, he's also going to then work to fulfill his purpose.

Called according to his purpose.

What's his purpose?

I love this.

It's to make us like Jesus.

When God says he will cause everything to work out for your good, what is that good?

It's to make you more like Jesus.

That is the ultimate good.

So here we begin to see how in the world this darkness, this brokenness, this suffering world could bring good to us.

It's because in the purpose of God it makes us more like Jesus.

That word conformed means to be made like something.

To have a similar form to it, to be similar.

And in this case, it's to be like the Son of the living God.

Now, how do we know this?

How can that be hope in the midst of the darkness?

Well, that answer can be found yet again in the Father's purpose.

It says He foreknew us.

We don't have time, our time's running away from me already.

We don't have time to get into the details here, but God knew us beforehand.

If you connect that with Ephesians chapter 1, God knew us before the foundation of the world was set in place.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

God determined for you as his child before the foundation of the world.

To use absolutely everything to make you like Jesus.

Oh, but there's one more glorious element.

It's finished.

It's as good as done.

God has a predetermined plan to mold all of his adopted children to be like Jesus.

And that plan includes suffering.

But suffering and the circumstances of this life, even sin in our lives, will not keep God from completing his work.

Philippians chapter 1, verse 6.

Philippians 1:6

For he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion.

Not might.

Will.

We see that here in Romans chapter 8, verse 30.

Romans 8:30

By the past tense nature of all of these actions, those whom he called, he also justified.

Those whom he justified, he also glorified.

It's as good as done in the eyes of the Father.

It's completed.

Now we still sin, sometimes miserably.

We still live in frail bodies affected by the curse of sin in this world.

But in the mind of God the Father, if you have placed your faith in the Son, it is as though you are already standing before Him, completely formed into the image of the Savior, glorified.

Done.

So what hope is there in the midst of the storms of life?

First, you're never outside of cell reception.

He's always there.

One of the things I love about backpacking in the mountains is there's no cell phone reception.

My wife has asked me, can't you take a satellite phone or something?

Well, yes.

Feels like that defeats the purpose sometimes.

But you can always call on the Father.

Even if you don't have the words to say.

And because of that, you can trust in his purpose in your life.

If you have been called to him, then you are secure in him, and the storms of life will never steal you away from him.

He will complete his work in you.

And that, my friends, means that all things work together for your good, because he will ensure that you become like his son.

Nothing will snatch you out of God's purpose to wrap you up in his love and make you like Jesus.

He will hold you.

And he will hold you fast.

Lord Jesus.

Sometimes the brokenness of this world distracts us.

And we need a reminder like this to look once again to you.

Oh, we want to trust.

We want to trust even when we can't make sense of the world.

We want to trust even when we don't have answers.

May your spirit communicate that trust to you, and may you in return strengthen us.

Strengthen us to trust you more each day.

Enable us to hold on to you as you hold on to us.

Ultimately, we cannot maintain our hold.

Life is too evil.

There's too much in this world that we cannot hold on to you.

So you must hold on to us.

And so we claim your promise.

Lord Jesus, that you hold us in your hand.

And that the Father too holds us.

And nothing will ever snatch us out as you accomplish your purpose in us.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.