St. Paul's United Methodist Church
Key Words of the Christian
Faith: Intercession
Rev. Richard W. Gray
August 21, 2005
Hebrews 7:25
This summer we have been looking at key words of the Christian faith. We have looked at faith, grace, sanctification, justification, and regeneration or new birth and being born again. Today we will look at intercession.
I have a humorous story that I intend to send to Reader's Digest someday. Reader's Digest has a section to which people send in humorous things that happen at work. This is one of the stories the magazine published. A person confided in a co-worker about a problem in the office and her fear of losing her job. The co-worker said she was concerned and would pray for her. This woman of prayer kept a list of ten people she believed needed her prayers the most. So the lady who sent in the story asked her if she had room on her list for her to be added. The co-worker replied, "Oh, yes. Three of the people have died.”
When we want someone to intercede and pray for us, we want better results than that. The Bible tells us that we have the best intercessor there is, Jesus.
Hebrews 7:25 tells us where Jesus is and what He is doing right now. Hebrews 1:3 adds that Jesus is sitting at the right hand of God the Father. Sitting at His right hand does not mean that God the Father is superior to Jesus, that Jesus is under Him. To sit at the right hand was a figure of speech meaning to have power, glory, and authority. Jesus has the same power, glory, and authority as God the Father; they are equal
equal.
When Jesus came to this earth, He placed self-imposed restrictions on exercising His divine attributes. The self-imposed limitations of His humanity ceased when He went back to heaven and sat down at the right hand of God the Father. All power, glory, and authority are His.
Notice it says that Jesus is sitting. Why is this significant? Did you know that there were no chairs in the Tabernacle, the place in which the Jewish people worshiped God as they traveled in the wilderness? There were no chairs in the Temple, either. The priests could not sit down because their work was not finished.
Jesus went back to heaven and sat down. His work on earth was finished with His death on the cross for our sins and with His resurrection. He defeated sin and death, what He came to do.
So, what is Jesus doing in heaven? He told His disciples before He went back to heaven that He was going to go there to prepare a place for them (John 14:2). Jesus is preparing a place in heaven for His people. What a place that will be since Jesus is preparing it!
The Bible also tells us that Jesus is reigning in heaven over the universe. He has universal authority.
Hebrews 7:25 tells us that Jesus always lives to make intercession for us. He always lives. The Old Testament priests were not permanent. They would represent the people before God, but all of them died. Not Jesus, He forever lives to represent us before God the Father.
When the Old Testament priests made sin offerings to God, those sin offerings symbolized the removal of sin, and were only symbols of the one final sin offering to come…Jesus.
Hebrews 11:25 states of Jesus that He is able to save completely. No one else is able to do this. Many Christians are often criticized by people
people who do not understand or accept the Christian faith for claiming that Jesus is the only way to God. I have been criticized for this. But this is the truth and the heart of the Christian faith. Anything less than this is not Christian. This claim is made because this is what the Bible teaches. This is what Jesus taught. Jesus is able to save from sin's consequences. He is the only one who is. The ability to save is possessed by no one else.
He is able to save forever. That is known as eternal security.
Hebrews 7:25 states that Jesus is able to save those who come to God through Him. He is the one who gives us direct access to God the Father. The Bible states in 1 Timothy 2:5 that there is only one mediator between us and God the Father…Jesus. This is where we strongly differ from our Roman Catholic friends. Clear Bible teaching is we are not to pray to anyone else, not to the saints, not to Mary. It does not do any good. We have direct access to God the Father through Jesus. And how sad it is that there are several thousand people coming to New Hampshire to pray to a Hindu goddess that does not even exist.
Jesus is in heaven making intercession for us. The phrase “make intercession” means to approach, to meet, to appeal. Jesus approaches God the Father on our behalf. He meets God the Father on our behalf. He appeals to God the Father on our behalf. We do not need anyone else. No one else can do it any better than Jesus.
This does not mean that God the Father is so angry with us that Jesus has to step in and tell the Father not to judge us. Remember, the Bible tells us that the Father sent the Son, Jesus, to die for us because He loves us so much.
Jesus is not going to condemn us before the Father, nor will He allow anyone else to do this. I can picture Satan coming before God with a list
list of our sins to get the Father to condemn us. As He reads off the list of sins, Jesus says, “I died for that one. I died for that one, too. That one is covered, and so is that one.”
Jesus is our defense lawyer. “I paid for that one. I paid for that one, too.” He intercedes for us. Isaiah 53 tells what Jesus did on the cross. “He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:12).
Jesus is not our defense attorney who will only speak up for us if we are innocent. He knows we are guilty and He also knows we need mercy and forgiveness.
Jesus is our advocate, our defense attorney saying, “Their sins are all covered. I paid the penalty so they do not have to.”
There are some people who believe that a person can lose his or her salvation if they sin too much. When we read the Bible, we will see that there is no limit to God's grace; that is, there is no limit to His love and forgiveness.
What about people who seem to have fallen away from the faith? They once came into the church and professed Christ, but no longer do. They flagrantly live lives displeasing to God. They may even deny the faith. Have they lost their salvation? Listen to God's answer to this question in 1 John 2:19. “They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us, but their going showed none of them belonged to us.”
One of the signs of genuine faith is continuity of faith. When God gives genuine faith, it is not temporary faith. True believers persevere in faith. One has to question the genuineness of their faith when people come and then go out from us and the faith.
Perhaps their going away will only be temporary. We need to pray for them to come back and continue to love them.
If they never really had genuine faith, we need to pray for them to come to faith.
We need to quickly move on. Not only does Jesus act as our defender in heaven, interceding for us, but He also is interceding for us to remain strong in the faith, and to grow in the faith.
We have Jesus in heaven interceding for us, and we also have the Holy Spirit within us interceding for us.
The Holy Spirit dwells within every Christian (Romans 8:9). The Holy Spirit prays for us that we will not face anything too much for us to bear. He prays that God's will be done in our lives. He even helps us pray when we do not know what to pray for.
The Holy Spirit is not dwelling within us to spy on us and report back to God the bad things we do so God will condemn us. He indwells us to help us and empower us.
So, Jesus is interceding for us in heaven and the Holy Spirit is interceding here for us. They are occupied with our best interests.
One last thought about intercession. It is a form of prayer for all Christians to use. We are to be praying for others. We are to do as Jesus does and speak to God the Father for others. We are to be engaged in intercessory prayer.
When we have turned over control of our lives to God, we will pray for the things He wants us to pray for. We will pray for others to come to faith in Christ. We will pray for the emotional, physical, and spiritual well-being of others. We will pray for our church. We will pray for our leaders, national and local. We will pray for our loved ones. We will pray for people we read about in the newspaper and hear about on the news. We will pray for ourselves. We will pray for God's will to be done and for us to have a part in doing it. God has much He wants to accomplish as a result of prayer. We are all called
called to speak to God on behalf of others. This is called intercessory prayer.
St. Paul's United Methodist Church
335 Smyth Road
Manchester, NH 03104
Sunday School: 9:00 a.m.
Sunday Worship: 8:00 a.m. and 10:15 a.m.
www.stpaulsumc.homestead.com
603-647-7322