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We're at verse 26 of Romans 8 and Paul just completed a paragraph from verse 18 to 25 in which he had helped us with our suffering by putting it in a global context, indeed a universe-wide context.

And now he says, likewise, that's my understanding of the word likewise.

I've been helping you with a particular angle on your suffering, your groaning. I said to you that you are

an air and you're going to make it to the inheritance. But I said you'll make it to the inheritance of glory if you suffer with him.

And then I talked about your suffering in relationship to the upheavals and futility and the corruption and bondage of the universe and how God

would bring you into his glory and then the universe would follow and I hope that was helpful Paul says.

Likewise, the spirit helps us in our weakness.

For we do not know what to pray 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 because the spirit intercedes for the Saints according to the will of God.

Whose groanings are these. It doesn't say the Holy Spirit groans. It says the Holy Spirit groans. It says

the spirit himself intercedes with groanings. Might mean that the Holy Spirit's

groaning, or might it mean that those are our

groanings awakened and sustained and carried and informed and made holy and pure and

deep and meaningful by the Holy Spirit. Thus he is interceding for us through our groanings and with our groanings?

What's the answer to that question?

Well, I think it's the latter, and I'll give you about five contextual reasons. Number one,

the Holy Spirit has no reason to groan. These groanings are because of our weakness. He has none.

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