Sermon - Romans 8:26-39 – Nothing Can Separate Us from God's Love

Rev. Jeffrey T. Howard

Sermon - Romans 8:26-39 – Nothing Can Separate Us from God's Love

Pitts Creek and Beaver Dam Churches

July 24, 2011

So far in the eighth chapter of the Book of Romans, we have been listening to the Apostle Paul tell us that we are not good enough. We are not good enough to restore the image of God we were created with. We are not good enough to return creation to its original goodness. Since we are not good enough are only hope is that a superior outside force will come and make thing right. The good news is that God has come to counter the effects of sin and restore us and all of creation. God has come in the person of the Holy Spirit.

As the final example of how we are good enough Paul turns to one of his favorite subjects, prayer. Because of sin we are not even able to pray as we should. With this warning in mind let us pray.

“Grant unto us, O Lord, to be occupied in the mysteries of thy heavenly wisdom, with true progress in piety, to thy glory and our own edification. Amen.” (John Calvin)

To begin this morning let's take a look at Romans 8:26-28.

²⁶ In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. ²⁷ 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. ²⁸ 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.

There are essentially two kinds of prayers. The first is the liturgical prayer. These prayers are written down, sometimes approved by a church council, and often memorized. This morning's prayer of confession was a liturgical prayer, and we use these often in worship. Liturgical prayers are good at using language to express the mystery, the majesty and the otherness of God. The Lord's Prayer, taught to us by Jesus Christ, is a great example of liturgical prayer. In this church we still stay the Lord's Prayer using the King James Translation with it rich Elizabethan English that preserves the majesty of God. But there is a problem with liturgical prayers. They can become mechanical with over use. You say that same prayer over and over again and eventually you are just pronouncing the words. Any meaning in those words is lost. I experience this with the Apostles Creed. I had said it so many times that I could say it aloud in church while thinking about something else. When I became a pastor, four years ago, I decided to give it a rest and and have the congregation respond with less familiar passages from scripture or the Book of Confessions. Lately I have felt a need to return to these important words of believe, and we will be saying the Apostles Creed together more often.

The second type of prayer is often used by churches as a corrective to mechanical liturgical prayers. It is called the spontaneous prayer. These prayers are not written down and are rarely memorized. They come the heart whenever the need to talk to God arises. In spontaneous prayers we address God directly and bring him our gratitude, our requests, our confessions, our problems and our feelings. We authentically bring ourselves to God.

But like liturgical prayer there can be a problem with spontaneous prayers. When God becomes familiar to us and we lose the sense of majesty and mystery that surrounds God. Sometime with spontaneous prays God become a best friend, who always answers the phone, and will listen to your problems for as long as you want to talk.

So which of these kinds of prayers should we use? I think that both are important and there needs to be a balance in church and our individual prayer lives. This is what I want. But what does God want? What kind of prayers does God want to hear?

The Apostle Paul was an avid prayer. He prayed constantly for churches. If anyone knew how to pray it was Paul. But Paul confesses that we really don't know how to pray. I've experienced this in our morning prayers. Every day at 6am we gather for prayer. I often wonder what God wants us to do with this time. Should we meditate on scripture. Should we talk about scripture? Should we pray silently or out loud? Should we limit our prayers to the church and community or pray for the whole world? Should we say the Lord's Prayer every morning? I have to admit, with Paul, that I really have no idea how God wants us to pray.

Prayer should be very natural for us. It is just communication with our creator. We were made to communicate with God. But as a result of sin we no longer know how to pray. We sense that we must pray, and we follow other's example of how to pray, but we really don't know how God wants us to pray because sin has so distorted us.

Our only hope is that God will restore the communication channel with us. We have a basic need to hear God's voice. We long to know what God wants for us. But there is no way that we can communicate with God, the creator of the universe, on our own. Why would our majestic God in heaven listen to our prayers? How could limited finite creatures like us every hope to communicate with an unlimited, infinite God?

Paul's answer is profound. The only way we could communicate with God in prayer is through the working of our triune God. God, the Holy Spirit, enters us and knows our deepest thoughts, feelings and desires. The Holy Spirit then communicates these to God, the Son, who because of his humanity can think our thoughts, feel our feelings, and have our desires. Jesus Christ then uses his divinity to communicate all of these to God, the Father. And so God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, knows our thoughts, our feelings and our desires without us even saying a word. And the processed is reversed as God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, blesses us with love.

So how should we pray? Should we use words that are printed and memorized? Should we just talk to a person named, God? Maybe we shouldn't use words at all. Maybe God is not interested in words, because words are a human invention. Maybe we just need to be silent and let the Holy Spirit act within us by communicating our thoughts, feelings and desires without words.

This is why we use a third kind of prayer. It is a prayer that is neither written down nor consisting of words addressed to God. This kind of pray is called silent prayer. In silent prayer we rest in the arms of God, enjoying his presences and allowing him to communicate to us confident that he already knows who we are.

As the Apostle Paul rested in God arms he heard God's voice. This is what God said:

²⁹ For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. ³⁰ And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

God knew you before you were created. He already knows everything about you. These is nothing that you have to tell God. And this God, who created you, has also chosen you to be made in the image of his son. Even though this image has be completely defaced by sin God will send his Spirit to restore this image and to call you to restore all of creation. You have been been restored and given new life to glorify God because God loves you.

³¹ What, then, shall we say in response to this?

If God is for us, who can be against us?

³² He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all-- how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

³³ Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.

³⁴ Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died-- more than that, who was raised to life-- is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.

³⁵ Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? ³⁶ As it is written: "For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered."

³⁷ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

³⁸ For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹ neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Amen.