The Teaching – October 24, 2010

It’s Not What You Know; It’s What You Don’t Know That Counts”

Romans 8: 26-28

We’ve been looking at Romans 8, and we’re looking at Romans 8 again, today. I invite you to take your bibles. If you don’t have one, you can find one in the pew. We’re looking at Romans 8: 26-28. I won’t go back and read, but what I will do is to say to you that last week when we finished up we were talking about hope. That we are saved in hope. The whole idea of being saved in hope is that it’s something we haven’t seen yet. We have a foretaste of the Holy Spirit. In other words, when I receive, and when you receive Christ, and we come into a reconciled relationship with God, the Holy Spirit comes inside of us. The Spirit of Christ. As I’ve said before, it’s a down payment, earnest money of what we’re going to experience in the future. But like Paul says in Romans, we look at this mirror and it’s very, very cloudy for us. It’s hard to distinguish. Having cataract surgery several weeks ago, it’s amazing for myself, anyway, of how hazy things were, and how clear they are now. I was telling somebody yesterday. I can no longer look directly at you, because I can see your faces. And that doesn’t mean you’re ugly, at all, but I can read your expressions. Sometimes I can tell you’re bored. I can see you’re shaking your head thinking what is he talking about? I don’t want to be distracted by that, so I’m looking above you. I’m looking at the trees outside. That’s what they tell us to do. And then I see you as you’re falling asleep. Somebody said yesterday that they’re going to fall asleep. And I asked them, if you do, just please don’t snore. That’s my criteria.

We are saved in hope because it is something we don’t see. I thought Dick’s illustration of that was really awesome. You know when he said he’s standing out front and he can’t see what’s behind him, back here, going on. He was running an account of what our final total was, and it’s not about numbers, but around 90-100 people milling around here. From the Lamb Center. From Iglesia Adventista, the Spanish church that meets here on Saturday. From the neighborhood, and our folks as well. We just had a wonderful time together. I didn’t even sleep last night. I was still so energized by the whole thing. I woke up this morning about 1:30 and that was it for me. I just laid there and prayed. My energy level was really high. It was an incredible day for us and I’m so thankful for that day.

Looking at, now, where I want to go with verse 26. Paul is continuing this thought that we are saved in hope. And it is something that we have not seen yet. It is something that we have not yet fully experienced. So this is the reason he writes these words. And in the same way the spirit, this spirit, who is in us who is going to be praying for us. Listen to these words. In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. What is our weakness? Our weakness is the fact that we cannot see. I can’t see what’s going to happen. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know what God is doing until I get in the middle of it. And then I say, yes, this is what God is doing. How many times do we, in church, and we, as families, and people in general, we’re busy and doing stuff, and we’re trying to do something good. And yet, sometimes even though it’s something that’s good, it’s not exactly what God is about. And you know, and I know when we’re involved in what God is about, there is a flow to it and an experience of it that is just elating in many, many ways. In the same way, the Spirit also helps our weakness.

Our weakness is we do not see. For we do not know how to pray as we should. That makes sense. If I can’t see the future, if I don’t know what God is doing, how in the world can I pray for it? Okay, I’m going to get out my blackboard. Go ahead and lower it Bob. You can’t see the board, that’s how high-tech it is. Okay? Very, very high-tech. And if I was asking you today let’s list some things that we could pray for, one thing would be if your son or daughter was trying to get into Harvard, and they said, “Dad, mom, grandma, grandpa, whatever, would you please pray for me? I really would like to get into Harvard.” What are you going to do? You’re probably going to go to God and say, “Father would you please help Jane get into Harvard.” Another one. Someone goes to the doctor and the doctor says, “Oh man, you’ve got full blown diabetes, and it’s not good. And so this person calls the church and says, “Would you put me on the prayer list? I’ve got this awful diabetes. The onset doesn’t sound good. The prognosis is not good.” So we put that person on the prayer list, and probably what we’re praying when we get together is, what? Please help this diabetes to go away. Help them to be healed from this diabetes. We want Jane in Harvard. We want this person healed from diabetes. Third one. We’ve got Sally over here, and Sally’s been out of work for two years. She’s a single mom. She’s run out of all of her unemployment. She’s even tapped into her retirement. And she’s living on a string, and it’s not looking good. Sally says to the Women’s Fellowship Circle, “I’ve just applied for this job, and I really want it.” What is the WFC going to do? They’re going to say, “Oh God, please let Sally have this job.” That makes sense. All three of those instances make sense to me. There’s not one of those instances that doesn’t make sense. However, this verse says I don’t know what to pray for because I can’t see. Because I’m just hoping. I’m hoping, and I can’t see what God is doing, therefore, the Spirit prays for me in my weakness. Let’s move on a little further and we’ll bring this together, hopefully.

For we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. Those groanings that I have. Those groanings that come from me. Those groanings that are just my heart, that God knows and sees because His Spirit resides there. And the spirit is an intimate relationship with God the Father. The Spirit of Christ. So we’re back to this relationship, we’re back to this symbiotic relationship. We’re back to this John 15, He is the vine, I am a branch, and I’ve got to abide in Him. And if I abide in Him, He’ll abide in me. The Father will abide in me. This relationship is a beautiful, wonderful thing. It’s an incredible thing that you and I are abiding in the very Godhead. And the very Godhead has taken some responsibility in my life. Because you see, it could be that if Sally gets this job, it might not be the right job for her. There might be a better job. God may have a different thing in mind totally. So there needs to be some interaction between me and God whereby I’m praying for something, but my deepest prayer is that Sally will be blessed. That Sally will be in the right place that God has for her so that she can be all that God has created her to be. And there’s this relationship with God the Father because He has a creation, and a universe that He’s put together. And part of it is that Sally be in a job or, who knows, maybe out of work a little bit longer, so she finds a dependency on God that she has never known before in her life. And her children are able to see their mother praying and being faithful and caring and saying, “God’s going to supply. God’s going to meet our needs.” No matter what. Now matter this job, or the next job or whatever. Because, you see, the Spirit is the only one that knows.

And it’s true for Harvard. What if we prayed, and she went to Harvard, and it was the wrong place. What if she fell in with the wrong crowd? Or, she got involved in some studies and got distracted or discouraged and dropped out. Whereas, if she had gone somewhere else, she may have had a deeper appreciation for education. I don’t know. But you understand my point. My point is, I don’t know; we don’t know. I can guess. I can go on what I can see, but until God reveals it to me, what he’s doing, or until I turn around in hindsight and see what he’s doing, I don’t know. I do know this, with all my heart; I believe we were supposed to do yesterday, what we did. I know it now. I didn’t know before we did it.

It started out as a tailgate thing. We were trying to come up with some ideas and Dick said, “Well, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we do a tailgate thing with the men and maybe we can involve the neighborhood.” And I’m saying, a tex-mex tailgate. And I’m thinking I don’t know how we’re going to do a tex-mex anything around here. I like Dick and all, but that’s just a screwball idea. And we were just sitting around the old staff table thinking about things. We didn’t go with the tailgate idea, but what we did do was keep working with God and talking and getting a little inspiration here and little inspiration there. And then, all of a sudden, we think, why don’t we have this chili cook-off? And that’s a pretty good idea. And then all of sudden we’ve got a moon bounce, and we’ve got some kids stuff. All of a sudden Dick and I are walking around the neighborhood and making great friends, a few enemies, handing out cards. Last Thursday we did 120 houses and we had a ball. It was great fun. I knocked on this one door and this guy opened the door and said, “WHAT DO YOU WANT?!?” “I don’t want anything”, I said. “I’m Jim Hoffman, pastor of Fairfax Baptist Church.” He said, “Oh, I just had a salesman here and we had a bad, bad time.” It’s great. We probably hit about 400 homes. Well you see, this is part of the wonder of it all. So then this little tailgate thing becomes a chili cook-off and it involves children, and not only the men, but women and then not only the neighborhood but we were able to work with the Lamb Center and get homeless people here, and they came. We could invite the Spanish church and we got to fellowship. It was great. It was incredible. But we didn’t see that at first. We were trying to take our vision to a truck out there with some grills on it with about 10 guys standing around shooting the bull. That’s nice. There’s nothing wrong with that. But God’s got something else in mind if you just work with him. If you just allow yourself to pray in such a way that you don’t hold on to what you’re praying for as the final answer.

I was listening to NPR this morning coming in; I came in early this morning so I got to see the sunrise, which was nice. They were doing something on NPR about the mind; mind tools. They had this lady who was a neuroscience person and one of the things she said in the program had something to do with what I’m telling you about. When we think, we don’t always think in such a way that we see the whole picture. And she had a quote, and the quote was “Nothing is the final answer”. How many things in our world that you know and I know have been changed? The earth is flat. That’s the final answer. No, it’s not the final answer. Guess what, its round. Well, let’s see, how about the big bang theory? That’s the final answer. Well, it might not be the final answer. The universe is expanding, or the universe is contracting or whatever. Nothing is the final answer. You can’t make the tailgate thing the final answer. Neither can you make anything about what you and I and God are involved in as the final answer, because He may be doing something else. And we need to find out what it is. And how you find it out is to groan. You know, you’re praying for something and you’ve got an idea about what you want, and what you think is right and all of that which meets the criteria for your life, but you and I both have to get to that place where we stop as Jesus did in the garden of Gethsemane, and just groan. That’s what he did, you know. He groaned so hard that blood came out of the corpuscles of his body where sweat would be coming out. That’s groaning. The Holy Spirit interpreting Jesus’ own groans to the Father. Those connections just like you and I have. Those groans so powerful that God knows you so well, he knows his universe so well, and see we’re about building, we’re about the kingdom. I’ve been doing this for over 40 years, been in church work. I can remember back in 1970 we brought the drums and the guitars in. We had a tuba for a bass; we didn’t have a bass player. One of the deacons said, “No, we’ve never done it this way before”. That is what would kill the church and kill you and kill your family. We’ve never done it this way before. So what? Maybe we should. When Jesus died on the cross, guess what the Jews said? “We’ve never done it this way before. We’ve killed some animals. We’ve sacrificed some birds. We’ve burned some incense. But nobody has climbed up on the funeral pyre, and no God/Man has ever been crucified.” And they couldn’t see the Father in it, and they were blinded by their own stumbling block. But you see that’s what God is. That’s what He does. It’s incredible isn’t it? I think it is. I believe you do too.

We’re in the groanings. We don’t know. We can’t see. Let’s move on here. And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit. The He is capitalized. God is the heart searcher. That’s the word. Heart searcher. God is searching your heart to know exactly what you need. And he is in touch with the Spirit. And the spirit is praying out of that heart-searching mode. God is attempting to meet your heart needs. None of us knows what that means. None of us. It’s like the more information we have the worst it is. You know they’re saying a lot of our young people today don’t do well because they have so many opportunities and so many ways to go it paralyzes them and they can’t make up their mind. I tell you what, if you really want to be cruel to somebody, send them to the store for some cereal, and tell them buy whatever they think is best. Go to the cereal aisle; I mean there’s chocolate, there’s dough whatever, and there’s reds and greens and whatever, there’s granola and there’s glutton-free stuff that my daughter would give me. You can’t imagine all the stuff. You would have a conniption fit. The responsibility of picking out cereal. The options. But I want to tell you something. I believe this with all my heart. God makes this thing real simple. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and body. It’s a shame, you know, we love God and in loving God, what do you do? You receive what he gives you. You see you’re the recipient. You receive. Remember my little story about Christmas and being part of a numbered gift exchange, and going to my Mom and Dad’s and looking over and seeing somebody open a gift and thinking, God, I wish they had gotten my number. I open mine, and it’s a roll of lifesavers, and someone else is getting a BB gun, or something. And I’m thinking, who got my number? The Grinch who stole Christmas? I don’t know. But receive it and say thank you God. You say, “God I know you’re going to do something wonderful.” Did you hear Ruth again? I know you’re going to do something wonderful. I know you’re going to do something great.

Julian gave testimony at bible study today. Julian has pancreatic cancer. He had begun his chemo and had to go to the hospital for some particular reason and found out his blood markings had lowered from 4000 to 2000 (the lower they are the better they are). We had prayer last week at our Monday night HOPE group, and on Tuesday he finds out his blood markings are down to 1200. We anointed both him and Joan and prayed and laid hands on them. Nothing here. I’m not a healer, but I tell you, I do know who is. Amen. And that’s the way it’s going right now. But you know the key to this; because I know them both, they are ready to receive what God has for them. They are ready to receive. You don’t fight cancer. You overcome it. You don’t let it destroy you. You overcome it.

We’re more than conquerors to Christ who loves us. I’m not fighting anything. You know who fights my battles? They call Jesus the great and glorious physician. That’s who He is. God has all the names. God has all the titles. The Holy Spirit has the titles. He’s the one who walks beside us. He’s our comforter, he’s our healer. He’s all the things we need. 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. I can’t see the will of God, and I’ll be dog darn it, if anyone has the right to point their finger in my face, or if I have the right to point my finger in your face and tell you what you ought to do. Or, you tell me what I ought to do. You don’t know. The bible says so. And I don’t know. The Holy Spirit is the only one who’s praying the right prayer. The only one. And you aren’t the Holy Spirit, and I am not either. And I can’t judge, neither can you. We best be walking along side of each other, loving each other, supporting each other, encouraging either other and praying that the will of God falls upon us and blesses us and blesses everyone else around us.

We know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God; to those who are called according to his purposes. This is not a verse to eliminate anybody. This is a verse that goes along with everything else. Go back to verse one. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. This is who Paul is talking to. If the spirit of Christ is in you, you are children of God. This is not elimination. This is to state the fact of who we are. He’s writing to us and he’s saying to us, that God is going to cause everything to work out for the good for you. Because you are called, and you are redeemed, and you are blessed, and it’s going to happen.

Oral Roberts was right, you’ve got to give him credit. He’d come on television, he’d look at people and say, “Something good is going to happen to you.” And people believed it. And they should have. Because something good is going to happen to you. I don’t care how it is for you right now. I don’t care how it is for the church of God. I don’t care how many empty spaces we have or how many filled spaces we have. I’m telling you right now. God is doing the work, and he is going to finish that work. And he desires that we be part of it. You and I should look to heaven, and look to him and say, “Let’s go.” “Let’s do it.” “How do you want me to be?” “What do you want me to pray?” “How do you want me to feel?” “Give me a vision.” “Let me see.” “Show me just one thing.” “Give me one step.”