O.S. Hawkins, Chancellor at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, preached from Romans 8:26-27, in SWBTS Chapel on August 28, 2025.
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Thank you, and for the privilege of opening the book of God to the people of God this morning. And welcome to chapel. And I know many of you are new students, and I want to challenge you to make an effort to make chapel a priority in your life. You know you look back over your life. I started here as an MDiv student, 56 years ago in a few months in this January. So you don’t have to add it up. I’m 78 Okay, save your time, because I want you to stay with me. But I look back on some of the defining moments of my life, and they came when my buddy Jack Graham and I, my lifelong friend, would be sitting together over here in chapel. We never missed it, and we’d hear a message that became a defining moment. I remember a message preached on Amos and the plumb line one time that reset the whole course of my life. And so I pray maybe today, you look back over here like I am today, 50 years ago, and remember that that was a defining moment in my life. Jesus is going to be passing by in chapel, and one of the saddest verses in the Bible says Thomas wasn’t there when Jesus came.
So I want to challenge you to make chapel a real priority in your life. You know a lot of your college students first first semester I came to know Christ when I was 17 years old, never heard a prayer in my home, never saw the Bible open in my home. I grew up over on the east side of Fort Worth. I didn’t know Matthew Mark, Luke and John were books of the Bible, and could count on one hand how many times I’d ever been in church. That was midnight mass on Christmas Eve with my cousins, who were all Catholics, and young man shared Christ with me, took me to the Sagamore Hill Baptist Church. I heard the gospel for the first time that morning when I came to know Christ. And the first thing that happened in that service, we sang a hymn. It was the first Christian hymn, not only I’d ever sung, I had ever heard. It was the one we just sang. Come Thou Fount of every blessing. You know, I asked the asked the ministry of music after that service, if I could borrow a hymnal and take it home. I’d just come to Christ that morning, I took it home, and I memorized that hymn that afternoon. And I can’t tell you how many times in those early days of the Christian faith, and even till this day, I will come to temptations corner, and those words will surface in my mind Prone to wander, Lord, I fear it prone to leave the God I love. No, here’s my heart. Take and seal it. Seal it for thy courts above.
You’re going to learn theology here from some wonderful professors, like I did. They not these professors because they weren’t even alive when I was here. But let me tell you where you can really learn theology is in the great hymns of the church that are being lost in a lot of churches. So I want to challenge you as you memorize Scripture. I want to challenge you to memorize these great hymns. We sang a phenomenal hymn at convocation two days ago. And can it be that I should gain an entrance in the Savior’s book? I hope you’ll take these hymns and memorize them, and you’ll learn as much theology, almost in them as you will sitting in systematic theology class here. So having said all that, let me just say that you’re a part now you have just come in a miracle. And what’s taking place here on this campus at Southwestern seminary, and we’ve seen a great resurgence of energy and life in our school, and increase enrollment every semester now for three years, our giving is is better than it’s been in decades, and there’s so many little mercy drops falling around us, so many signs of God’s blessing and encouragement.
Sir, you’re coming at a great time, but I want you to know the secret of the turnaround of southwestern seminary and what is happening began over in the Rotunda in a prayer meeting that’s continued to this day every Monday and all the other times, led by our faculty and Melania Monroe, whose father, Dr. T.W. Hunt is in heaven, but his spirit still hovers on this campus. He was a faculty member here in the in the music school, and was a great prayer warrior, and so we thank God for the emphasis. Dr Dockery is putting on prayer. And it’s at that point that I want us to come to our text today and open your Bibles to one of the real mountain peaks of Scripture, the eighth chapter of the book of Romans. And in Romans, chapter eight, you. Now, beginning in verse 26 The Bible says, likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness, 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 hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit?
Because the Spirit intercedes for the saints. And here’s the key, according to the will of God. Have you ever had a prayer partner? I mean, I mean a real prayer partner, somebody you can really trust, someone who’s always available, someone that you can share your deepest needs with, that you know has your back and you know will agree. You know, the Bible says if two of you agree in prayers to touch anything you can have it. Have you ever had a real prayer partner that you could really trust that was always available to you, that you could share your deepest needs and prayer needs. You say, well, I sure wish I did. I’d like to have one like that. Well, you do, and I want to introduce him to you today. He’s right here in this text where the apostle says that the Spirit Himself helps us in our weaknesses, for we do not always know what to pray for as well. Isn’t that the truth, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession within us with groanings which cannot be uttered. This is nonverbal, and he always prays through us according to the will of God.
So, I want to introduce you to this prayer partner that I want you to take with you from this place and make your constant prayer partner throughout life. You know when we come to a passage of Scripture, always, when I’m looking at one and about to prepare a sermon, I ask myself several questions, who, what, where, why, when, how and when we come to this passage and the time that remains today, I want to ask a few of those questions. And the first question we need to ask is this one, who about whom are we talking speaking this morning. Listen to what the text says in verse 26 it says, likewise, the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, that’s about whom we’re speaking the Holy Spirit of God.
You know, there are a lot of people in a lot of churches that are not unlike those Paul encountered in Acts 19, when he got to Ephesus, and he began to talk to them about that and say, Whoa, wait a minute. Verse two, he said, wait just a minute. We’ve not even so much heard that there is a Holy Spirit. You know, there are many churches around America today that that could be said today, that they’re not aware of who he is and the dynamic power that he has in our lives. One of the saddest verses in the whole Bible is found in Mark chapter 14, verse 50. It says at the crucifixion that all very inclusion, all the disciples, forsook him and fled. Think about that they had three and a half years. They had lived with him, 24/7, they had seen these miracles.
They had heard these messages. They had watched his life. They had seen the importance of prayer, and in his hour of greatest need, all of those guys that they he had been pouring himself into, they all forsook him and fled. But then something happened just a few weeks later, because in Acts four, Simon Peter, who denied him three times that night, is beaten and imprisoned and instructed to never preach in the name of Christ again. And in Acts 420 what does he say? I can’t help but speak the things I’ve seen and heard and how all of these disciples forsook him and fled. And every single one of them then, except John, died, violent, vicious, brutal, martyrs. Death, this sown in two, crucified, upside down, decapitated, all went to their martyrs. Death, faithful. What happened? What changed their cowardice into such courage? Pentecost had come in Acts two, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit came to indwell the believer, never to leave us, to empower us for service. And here in Romans eight, up earlier in verse 11, you know what it says.
It says the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in you. Now, if you could come awaken to that scripture today, you don’t need to hear another word. If you could leave. This place, knowing that the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead is alive in you. If you could come to the realization Paul did in Colossians, Christ in me, the hope of glory, it would be a defining moment in your life. If our Lord were, if the Apostle Paul were speaking in a lot of churches today, he would say the same thing in them that he said in First Corinthians, 16, verse nine to the Corinthians, he would say, What? What? Don’t you know that your body is the temple, the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, and that you’re not your own. You’ve been bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God with your bodies. One of the foundational truths of the Christian faith is that God is one our Jewish friends in their synagogues this week will all repeat the Shema from the book of Deuteronomy. Hear O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord, is one, and we affirm that that he is one, yet he’s manifested in three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. You know, Jesus didn’t just show up at Bethlehem.
You know, we sometimes get that idea at Christmas time. We put out them, our manger scenes and our creches, and we, we talk about them, and we, it’s as though Jesus just showed up at Bethlehem, read the first few verses of John’s of John’s gospel, and what does he say in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by Him. He was there in creation. And without Him was not anything made that was made. And as we turn our pages through the Old Testament, we see one christophany after another after another, an appearance of the pre Incarnate Christ, like in the like in the fiery furnace of Daniel, the fourth man in the fiery furnace. Jesus didn’t show up at Bethlehem. He was there in the beginning at creation and the Holy Spirit. He didn’t just show up at Pentecost. There are over 31,000 verse verses in your Bible. I think 31,000 102 somewhere around there. And the Holy Spirit is in the first two shows up on the first page. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
And listen to verse two, and the Spirit of God was what hovering over the face of the waters. He was there in creation. He didn’t just show up there at Pentecost. Who are we about? Whom are we speaking the Holy Spirit, our prayer partner. He is the one who resides in us and helps us in our weaknesses. You know, in John 14, we focus on that great mountain peak of Scripture. In John 14, the night before the crucifixion, Jesus in the upper room comforting In My Father’s house, he said, are many matches, but what he’s doing in chapter 14 is instructing us about the Trinity. This is what happens. He says, in verse seven, he says, if you had known me, you would have known my Father also. And Philip. Philip says, well, Lord, show us the Father and it will suffice. Show us the Father, and it’ll be enough for us. And Jesus says, Whoever Philip has seen me has seen the Father. Jesus instructs them about the Father. They are one. And then he goes on in verse 16, to remind them that the Holy Spirit is one with the Father and the Son. And in chapter, in verse 16, he says, I will ask the Father, and He will give you another comforter, another helper to be with you forever. And just so they didn’t misunderstand about whom he’s speaking even the spirit of truth. He said, I’m going to leave you, but I’m going to leave you another comforter. Now the key to understanding that text, that verse 16, is that little word another because those of you who are taking Greek right now are going to soon learn that there are different words in our English vernacular, another that are in Greek.
One is heteros. It means another of a different kind. I’ve got a somewhere. I’ve got a cheap plastic pen in my pocket. I like it because it writes If I had an experience. Fancy Mont Blanc pen, fountain pen. Here, I could say, here is a pen and here is another pen, and I’d be right, but it’s another of a different kind. We get our word heterosexual from that word heteros. The other is allos, which means same make, same model identical, just like it. If I held up this pen, this paper, made plastic pen, and I had another one just like it, I’d say, Here’s a pen and here’s another one. That’s the word I’d use. It’s identical. That’s the word Jesus used when he said, I’m going to pray the Father and he’s going to send you another comfort of the Holy Spirit. Same make, same model. It’s me. I’m coming back in the person of the Holy Spirit, and He said, He will abide with you forever. None of us ever have to have to pray. What?
What David prayed in that great 51st psalm, Lord, take not thy Holy Spirit from me, because he comes to dwell in us and to live in us forever, never to leave us, to empower us for service. So about whom are we speaking? Ask yourself the question, Who? The Holy Spirit? The Holy Spirit. So let’s ask another question, what? What does he do? Look what it says in verse 26 the Spirit helps us. He helps us. That’s what he does, the Holy Spirit who’s alive in you right now, some of you just not aware of it, not letting him, but he’s there to help you, to lend a helping hand. You know that in you look in your New Testament, Dr. Street, Dr. Wicker, and these other folks that are going to be teaching you Greek are going to show you.
This is one of the one of the longest compound verbs in the New Testament, 17 letters long. And it’s used, you know, when the other time it’s used is in Luke chapter 10, verse 40, at Bethany in the home of Mary and Martha and Lazarus. And Mary’s out there at the feet of Jesus with the men, and she’s worshiping, and she’s sitting and Martha’s in the kitchen preparing a meal for everybody, slaving and working and cooking. And finally, she has enough, and she comes out into the room, and she looks at Jesus in Luke, 10, verse 40, and she says, Would you tell her? And points at Mary, would you tell my sister to come in here and help me?
Same word, same word that’s used there. This is what the Holy Spirit does for you. Just as Mary went back in the kitchen, grabbed a pan, started stirring what was ever in it, started washing the dishes, started helping her. So, the Holy Spirit is in you to come alongside as a paraclete to help you in your prayer life. That’s why Jesus said in Matthew 25 there in the garden, watch and pray. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. The Holy Spirit helps us. He lends a hand to us. You know, I was preaching. I know just enough oblo Espanol. I know just enough Spanish to get myself in trouble. Okay, I’m not fluent as much as I think I am. So I was preaching a year or two ago down in the valley in a Hispanic church, and I had memorized Dr. Locker, my introduction in Spanish.
And I thought, Man, I’m going to woo these guys. I’m just going to get up there and not need that interpreter. And well, I got about halfway through that introduction, started stuttering and stammering, and all of a sudden the pastor came up with a smile on his face. And so I just switched back over to English, and he started translating. And he began to tell those people and translate in perfect Spanish what I was trying to say and what I said in English, that’s what the Holy Spirit does. He comes alongside us and those things we’re trying to pray and we’re trying to articulate, he comes along and he takes what’s in our heart, and He offers it to the Father, and he translates what’s in our heart, even though we don’t have the words to say it. He helps us. Who the Holy Spirit? That’s your part partner. What? What does he do? He helps us. Ask yourself a third question, Where? Where does he help us? Look what it says the Holy Spirit helps us. Where?
In our weakness, in our weakness. The word means cripple, invalid. Weak. The truth is, many of us are not very healthy when it comes to our prayer life, and so we have a prayer partner who comes along to help us. Where does he come along in our weakness at the very point where we need it so desperately. The Lord Jesus knows we’re weak in prayer. Look at the disciples in Gethsemane, all they had seen, all they had been through. He’s over there, a few feet away, sweating, drops of blood, agonizing. He says, Stay here and pray. And he comes back. And what you remember, what they’re doing, they’re snoring, they’re asleep. And he says, Could you not watch with me, pray with me for one hour in my time of greatest need? He knows our weaknesses, and just because somebody is there to help us doesn’t mean we let them. You know, in life, there are a lot of people that want to come alongside and help us, and sometimes we just don’t let them. We don’t want their help. We think they don’t We don’t need their help.
Well, the Holy Spirit is in you to help you where you’re weak, in your weaknesses, and we don’t do it because sometimes, as acts seven, says, We resist the Holy Spirit. There these, these three major sins against the Holy Spirit, acts seven, some of us are guilty of resisting the Holy Spirit. Some of us in Ephesians, four are guilty of grieving the Holy Spirit. You know that you can grieve the Holy Spirit when you don’t let him help you in your weaknesses, like a parent whose child has gone wayward and will not let them help them and will not take their advice, and they’re grieved in their heart sometimes we not only just don’t we resist him or grieve Him, sometimes we find in the Thessalonian letter that sometimes we quench the Holy Spirit. Do you know we can quench the Holy Spirit when he comes alongside to help us, and we don’t let him. Just because somebody’s there to help you, doesn’t mean you let them so who the Holy Spirit? What he helps us where in our weaknesses, because we’re weak, where we ought to be strong in prayer. Now we ask a fourth question, why? Why does he do this? Well, the Spirit helps us in our weaknesses. Look what it says next, because we don’t know what to pray for as we ought. Isn’t that the truth we come to a circumstance or situation in life, in crisis, time in life, or somebody we know does that we’re interceding for, and we don’t know what to pray for as we should. That’s why the Holy Spirit comes into you, helps you in your weakness. Why?
Because we don’t know how to pray for as we ought. Now, that word ought, it appears over 100 times in the New Testament, but the majority of times it’s not translated ought. The majority of times we read this word, you know what it’s translated, must John three, you must be born again. Same word. Jesus didn’t say, Hey, listen, this is something you ought to give thought to. You ought to think about this. You ought to do this. No, he said, What, you must be born again. We don’t know how to pray for as we must, we must be people of prayer in the Christian life. And look, we’re not the only ones that don’t know how to pray. Everybody is filled. Look at Paul. Remember what happened to Paul in Second Corinthians 12? He had what he called a thorn in the flesh. We don’t know what it was, but it was physical. It was some kind of a physical affliction that was bugging him and bothering him. Some people think it was his eyesight that had gone bad.
Maybe he had, you know, he says to the Galatians, see in what large letters I’m writing you. Some of us think it was epilepsy. We don’t know what it was, but whatever it was, it was some physical affliction that was bothering him. So what did he do? He went to prayer about it, and he prayed and asked the Lord to take it away. God didn’t do it. He didn’t know what to pray for. Is he ought? He asked a second time and God didn’t do it. He asked a third time and God didn’t do it. And then God said, listen, Paul, My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in your what weaknesses? Weaknesses, the very thing we are. He comes along to help us because we don’t know what to pray for, as we ought. My wife’s sitting over here. We’ve been married 55 years last month. Yeah, you can applaud that. So women have a way of stereotyping their husbands sometimes. Let me just, let me harp on you women for just a moment in this message. And you know at what point that happened to us early in our marriage. I would never, ever stop and ask anybody for directions to get somewhere.
And sometimes we’d be going somewhere early on in our life and marriage, and we never had a lot of arguments. Well, this is one time we could get a little tense. Why don’t you just. Stop and ask somebody, and then I’d take another turn. It’d be wrong. I’d go there. And so this caused some friction in our marriage, because a lot of us guys just won’t ask for directions, and it caused problems, until somebody came along and invented the GPS system, and now I just can type in the address or where I want to go, it talks back to me, tells me, now don’t now at the second light, turn right, and it takes and it guides me and directs me and leads me right to my destination. That’s what the Holy Spirit does in prayer. We don’t know the way. We don’t know which way to turn at the intersection. We don’t know how to pray as we should, but the Holy Spirit makes intercession with us, and he and he leads us, and He guides us, and He directs us until we come to the place where it says in verse 27 we begin to pray according to the will of God. So who the Holy Spirit? What he helps us, where, in our weaknesses? Why?
Because we don’t know what to pray for as we ought. And one final question, how, how does he do this? Look at the next phrase. He makes intercession within us. He intercedes with us before the fall with groanings, which cannot be uttered. I’ve heard some people say this is some kind of ecstatic language. No, this is non verbal. These can’t be uttered. He makes intercession with us, within us with groanings which can not be uttered, and he always intercedes according to the will of God. Do you know you have two intercessors right now, while you sit here, Hebrews seven, says that the Lord Jesus, at the right hand of the Father, ever lives. Verse 21 Hebrews seven. Hebrews seven, to make intercession for us. You say, I wonder what Jesus is doing right now, I want to tell you what he’s doing right. He’s praying for you. Did you know that you have an intercession of the Lord Jesus at the right hand of the Father in Hebrews 721, says, He ever lives to make intercession for you. And if you want to know what he’s doing right now, he’s praying for you, but you have another intercessor that’s inside you, the Holy Spirit. You have two, and he makes intercessions inside you, within you, and they come in perfect harmony with each other, with groanings which cannot be uttered.
This is nonverbal, and look what it says. He always prays according to the will of God. How are you going to find the will of God? John MacArthur, who was actually a personal friend of mine. I love John MacArthur died recently. I remember hearing John one time, talk about three things you ought to know. To know the will of God. If you want to know the will of God in your life, you need to know three things. One, know the Savior. How are you going to understand the will of God if you don’t know Christ, if you haven’t come to a personal faith in Jesus, Christ, and have him living in you, interceding in you with these groanings which can’t be held so first, know the Savior. Second, know the Scripture, know the Word of God, because he’s never going to lead you to do anything that’s contrary to what’s in the Word of God. So if you want to know the will of God in a matter, know the Scripture. And third, know the spirit. Know this Holy Spirit, your prayer partner, who abides in you, always praying according to the will of God in your life.
So you have a prayer partner. Maybe you didn’t know it, but right now, you do inside, interceding for you while the Lord Jesus is at the right hand of the Father, interceding for you. There the Holy Spirit is in your life, if you’re saved, and he is interceding for you always according to the Word of God and the will of God. And you know you’re going to learn in this school, if you haven’t already that when you take a text, you don’t just take a text out of context, because it’s often said a text without a context is a what a pretext. So you take it all in context. So this verse doesn’t stop, and this this thought doesn’t stop in verse 27 look out. Look how verse 28 begins with a conjunction. And so he said, all of this about you and the Holy Spirit. And he said, we know that all these things are working together for good to those who love God and are the called according to His purpose. You know that? Romans 828, many of us have climbed up on but you know, there are four things you ought to know about that.
Verse one, it’s confidential. For we know most people that quote Romans 828, they said, All things work together. No, for we know it’s confidential. It’s a family secret within the family of God. We know that lost world doesn’t know it. You think the lost world knows? Romans, 828, if you do go over here to John Peter Smith hospital Friday night, when people are coming in there with gunshot wounds and knifings and horrible things, and they’re in there hanging between life and death, their families in the waiting room, just go out there and sit down by one of their family members, put your arm around and say, Hey, listen, I just came by to tell you all these things are working together for good. You’ll be in the emergency room yourself in about five minutes, because the lost world doesn’t understand this. It’s confidential.
We know it’s in what it’s constructive. Things are working together for good. Things work together for good. There’s a synergy about it. It’s comprehensive, all things you know. It’d be more more easy to take if it said we know that some things, or it said if we know that many things, or we know that most things, no all things, everything that happens in our life, good, bad, ugly, God can take it all and work it together for good, and it’s conditional. It’s not for everybody. To those who what love the Lord and are called according to His purpose. So you have a prayer partner, the Holy Spirit in you, He shows up on the first page of the Bible, hovering over the face of the waters. And you know what? He’s all. He’s on every page of the Bible. And he said they’re on the last page of the Bible. Revelation, 2217 the Spirit and the bride say, Come, and whoever’s thirsty, let him come. And whosoever will, let him come and drink of the fountain of the water of life freely. The bride says, who’s the bride?
That’s the Church of Jesus Christ. And we say, come. We say, come. What makes Southwestern different. We heard Dr Dockery, we are a school that sends people out, branded with evangelism and missions, the Spirit and the bride say, Come is our message to a lost world today. Before chapel, I took my grandson, Jackson, who’s a first year student here in the MDiv program, and I walked him over there to methena Hall and walked him through tears as we stopped at martyrs walk Mavis Pate, 1972 killed in our hospital in Gaza, one after another after another. Southwesterners And I want to challenge every one of you in our student here to get over there and stop at that martyrs walk and see the price that Southwestern paid because they went out to share the gospel the Spirit and the bride say, Come. The bride says, come. That’s the church. We say, Come, come.
You blessed of my Father, inherit the king. We say it through preaching. We say it through giving the invitation. But the Spirit says, Come. How can two people sit on the same pew in the same service, hear the same sermon in the same anointing, and one fall under deep conviction of the Holy Spirit and the other walk out like they’ve been at a concert. They both heard the bride say, Come. One of them heard the Spirit say, come. The Holy Spirit to our hearts, the Spirit and the bride say, Come. So let me just remind you, while that phone is ringing, that you have a prayer partner. And whoever has that phone, would you turn it off just for a second? You have a prayer partner who the Holy Spirit, what he helps us, where in our weaknesses, why we don’t know what to pray for as we ought, how he makes intercession within us, with groanings which cannot be uttered. And as you go through life and as you go through this day, let it be a constant reminder to you that you’ve got two wonderful intercessors, one at the right hand of the father right now, who’s praying for you, and one in you, whoever lives to make intercession.
Father, seal these words in our hearts. We’ll praise You for it and give you glory in Jesus, precious name, we pray. Amen.
