「わたしたちを支える聖霊の助けと執り成し」六月第四主日礼拝 宣教 2025年6月22日
ローマの信徒への手紙 Romans 8章26〜27節 牧師 河野信一郎
Good morning. As the hot and humid days continue, we thank God for the blessing of being invited by Him to Okubo Church this morning and to be His worshipers. We sincerely welcome our guests, those who have been attending our services online, and those who have returned to our church after a long absence. We pray that God will protect each of you in your daily health and walk.
Well, tomorrow, the 23rd, is Okinawa’s Memorial Day, the Day of Life’s Treasure. My wife, who had spent almost half a day staring at the computer to prepare a PowerPoint presentation for a presentation from a women’s group right after this morning’s service, muttered to me. When she tries to find pictures of Okinawa on the Internet, we are only shown the bright lights of the sunny skies, beautiful ocean views and sandy beaches, bustling tourist spots, and natural resorts, but we on mainland Japan cannot find the dark side of Okinawa’s wartime suffering and the pain and scars of 80 years after the war, We on the mainland should know more about the pain, suffering, and anguish that the Okinawan people have endured. We need to remember Okinawa and pray for it.
Also, from today until Sunday the 29th, it is “Seminary Week” to remember and pray for the seminary students who are studying at the seminary with devotion. There will be an appeal for donations to support the seminary students and a time for testimonies from students studying at Tokyo Theological Seminary after next week’s service, but we must remember and pray to God for the serious situation in which the number of seminary students studying and being trained to become pastors and evangelists at the seminary is drastically decreasing.
There are many other issues that we should remember and pray for ourselves and our families, as well as for society and the world. There are matters that we should pray for the church and the church family. Even in our daily lives, there are problems that we need to overcome, and the current situation is that one difficulty goes away and another one comes back. There are many things that cannot be solved by our own strength and efforts alone, and many materials that make us anxious. It is difficult to share such suffering and troubles with the people around us, and just doing so requires a great deal of determination and strength.
When we hit a tremendous wall, we become confused and don’t know what to do, and our hearts gradually become weak, as if we can only protect ourselves, and our hearts have no room for the words to always be glad, to pray constantly, and to be thankful for all that we do. I sometimes feel like I can’t live, that I can’t live. There are times when we feel crushed by anxiety and fear, and we cannot pray to God, or cannot shout even if we wanted to. However, even in such critical situations, God is close to us. The Holy Spirit is always with us, comforting us, encouraging us, and supporting us. He helps us.
In Romans 8:26, the Apostle Paul says, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness”. This is God’s Word. This “spirit” is the Holy Spirit. And by “our weakness” I do not mean human weakness, but the weakness of the believer, the weakness of the Christian. Even though we believe in Jesus, are connected to Him, and are considered children of God, we are still weak. We need to acknowledge that we are not stronger because we have become Christians, but that our weakness remains even as Christians.
However, there is strength in weakness for those who believe in Jesus. It is not strength in ourselves, but God’s promise and His love that He will always be with us. The Spirit also helps us in our weakness,” meaning that the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. Therein lies our hope, our comfort, and our encouragement.
We have weakness of body, weakness of mind, and weakness of faith. As we age, our bodies deteriorate and we feel physical weakness. When we are sick or injured, our bodies and minds weaken at the same time. When the mind is anxious, troubled, or sad, the mind weakens. The mind and body are linked. When the mind cannot move forward, the body cannot move forward either.
Believing in Jesus and having faith does not mean that our minds and bodies will be strong. Even though God has given us faith through Jesus Christ, we experience times of weakness of mind, times of distress, and times of suffering, and we experience slumps of faith when we are so overwhelmed by our distress and troubles that we cannot pray to God. How about you?
Paul honestly states that “we do not know how we should pray” and that there are times when he does not know how to pray. Since even Paul was sometimes unsure of what to pray for, we should be even more so. By “how we should pray,” he means that we don’t know what we should pray for, what we should pray for, or why we should pray at all.
When we fall into a spiritual slump, we become confused and feel that there is no point in praying. The reason we feel this way is because God is not the center of our hearts, but our own thoughts are the main axis. Your mind is without God. To be unable to pray is to forget that God loves you and to stop having fellowship with God. It means that we try to live on our own strength.
However, God, who knows us in our weakness, has sent a helper, the Holy Spirit, in Jesus’ place to be with us in our weakness. God has compassion on us who are weak in mind, body, and faith, and the Holy Spirit is always with us to help us. The second half of verse 26 says, “We do not know how we should pray, but the ‘spirit’ itself ‘is’. This “but” is very important and expresses God’s mercy.
Even when we become weak in the face of challenges and problems and lose sight of who we should pray to, what we should pray for, and the meaning of what we pray for, the Holy Spirit helps us, turns our hearts toward God, leads us into fellowship with Him, and continues to encourage our hearts in that fellowship. He continues to encourage our hearts in that fellowship. This is God’s work of mercy and grace, not ours.
Here we read, “‘The Spirit’ also helps us in our weakness.” The Greek word for “help” is a combination of three words: “with,” “on behalf of,” and “to take on/undertake”. As we face suffering and are tossed about in our daily lives, the faith we have been given weakens, our hearts become distant from God, and we are unable to pray. However, the Holy Spirit does not abandon us when we are unable to pray, but stays with us and prays to God on our behalf.
In other words, the Holy Spirit takes our prayers, our unspoken groans and cries, and delivers them to God. That is the meaning of the word “intercession. We have the grace of God the Holy Spirit, who loves us and helps us even when we think that our faith is weak and that we are hopeless, to walk with us.
The Holy Spirit is a God who takes on the burden of our sins, just as Jesus took on the burden of our sins, and the Holy Spirit takes on the suffering, sorrow, and pain that prevents us from praying to God, and causes us to turn our hearts away from God. The Holy Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that cannot be expressed in words” means that the Holy Spirit groans on our behalf, cries out to God, bears our burdens with us, and delivers our thoughts to God.
Therefore, let us not try to live by our own strength, but let us choose by faith to live by the power of God’s love and the power of Jesus’ resurrection, with daily help from the Helper, the Holy Spirit, and let us give thanks and receive joy, peace, and hope from God. Let us sincerely seek to be filled with the Holy Spirit. To do this, first admit your weakness, open your heart, and believe in Jesus as your Savior. The Holy Spirit will enter that open heart and walk with you.
Verse 27 says, “He who discerns the hearts of men knows what the thoughts of the ‘spirit’ are. For the “spirit” intercedes for the holy ones according to the will of God. God sees into the heart of each one of us. He knows everything. He knows our physical and mental condition better than we do. Therefore, the secret of receiving peace, joy, and gratitude is to surrender everything in our hearts to God.
It is very interesting to note that God “knows what the thoughts of the ‘spirit’ are,” Paul says. What are the “thoughts of the Spirit”? As the second half of verse 27 says, the desire of the Holy Spirit for us is that we be transformed into holy people who live according to the will of God. It is the Holy Spirit who can do this. He wants to transform us into holy people who will walk according to God’s will.
God knows that desire well. God knows this because it is God’s desire and Jesus’ desire as well. The Holy Spirit is sent to us by God as Jesus’ substitute to help us and to intercede for us daily so that we can live as holy people before God.
When we seek to live by trusting in the Holy Spirit, who loves us, is with us, helps us, and intercedes for us in our weakness, we are transformed into people who pray, who change from living only for ourselves to living for God and our neighbors, and who live without despair and without hope, even when we are weak. Even though we may be weak, we will not despair, but will live with hope. Let us believe in the Holy Spirit and let us walk through our days always rejoicing, always praying, and giving thanks for everything.