Going Boldly Before the Throne of Grace

As I mentioned, brethren, we are living in very unusual times. It's almost been six months since the pandemic started around the world. There are still a considerable number of cases. And we've been mostly confined to our homes. We miss so much being with the brethren, especially those infirm and elderly. I always enjoy being around them. And they are the most vulnerable with this COVID-19, so we recognize it's not prudent right now to be socializing with older people.

I miss freely moving about, shaking hands, giving hugs. Of course, the unemployment is still sky-high. The economies of the world have received the equivalent of a body blow. So we have still quite a bit to go before this is over.

But looking at it from a biblical point of view, this is still a minor trial. In comparison with real persecution and the captivity of the church has happened in the past. And so it behooves us to remember what it says in Jeremiah 12. Let's go there. Jeremiah 12, verse 5. Famous scripture.

Jeremiah thought things were tough in his days, and he didn't know how tough they were going to get. And so God answers Jeremiah, and he said, If you have run with the footmen, and they have wearied you, then how can you contend with horses? And if in the land of peace in which you trusted they wearied you, then how will you do in the floodplain of the Jordan? Of course, talking there symbolically of the flood of the soldiers that would come in Jeremiah's day would invade Judah, would invade Jerusalem, and take Israel in captivity for 70 long years. Notice what it says in Jeremiah 25, verse 11.

It says, Then it will come to pass, when 70 years are completed, that I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity, says the Lord, and I will make it a perpetual desolation. So I will bring on that land all my words, which I have pronounced against it, all that is written in this book, which Jeremiah has prophesied concerning all the nations. And so, it would be 70 long years that God would punish what was Judah at the time, and be taken into captivity.

That means they were made into slaves. It wasn't a vacation in Babylon. They were taken as slaves, lost their possessions, their rights. And for 70 long years, they would be in this very faraway land. We have one of the hymns called By the Waters of Babylon, when they got there, and how they missed everything they had had in Judah.

And so, it was a very difficult time. You would think, boy, they're not going to have feasts to be able to gather together. Of course, Babylonians were not going to allow. They were captives. They were going to work hard labor. They didn't have rights. They couldn't congregate on the Sabbath. They had to basically be confined to their homes. And you would think, after 70 long years, that was more than a generation. Almost two generations would be born in Babylon of the Jews.

Would they be absorbed by the Babylonian religion with all the people around them? The answer is no. The great majority of Israelites learned the lesson. They stayed close to God. They kept the Sabbath in their home. When it was all possible because they were slaves, they kept the feasts. Whatever way possible, they did not give up on their faith and beliefs. We have the example of Daniel, who was taken to Babylon.

He was there for 70 long years. Notice in Daniel 9. After the 70 years was over, we see Daniel was still very close to God. He had not adopted the Babylonian religion or practices. It says in verse 1, In the first year of Darius, the son of Ahasuerus, of the lineage of the Medes, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans, So here, prophecy was fulfilled. Just like God said, after 70 years, God would visit the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, and they would be severely punished.

And so it was the time of the Chaldeans to be defeated and go in captivity. It says, In the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood by the books the number of years specified by the word of the Lord through Jeremiah, the prophet, that he would accomplish 70 years in the desolations of Jerusalem. Then I set my face toward the Lord God to make requests by prayer and supplications with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes. So he realized, okay, the time is basically up, but he wanted to be close to God.

He recognized it wasn't God's fault. It was Judah's fault for having abandoned God, following false gods. And so in verse 4, he writes down this prayer, And I prayed to the Lord my God, and made confession, and said, O Lord, great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant and mercy with those who love him, and with those who keep his commandments. We have sinned and committed iniquity.

We have done wickedly and rebelled, even by departing from your precepts and your judgments. Neither have we heeded your servants, the prophets, who spoke in your name to our kings and our princes, to our fathers and all the people of the land. Talk about Judah. O Lord, righteousness belongs to you, but to us shame of face, as in this day, to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem and all Israel, those near and those far off in all the countries to which you have driven them, because of the unfaithfulness which they have committed against you.

O Lord, to us belong shame of face to our kings, our princes, and our fathers, because we have sinned against you. Notice it's not saying they did it. He includes himself. He was part of Judah. He had a wake-up call when he was taken into captivity as well.

Then he goes on to mention in verse 20, it says, Now while I was speaking, praying and confessing my sin and the sin of my people Israel, and presenting my supplication before the Lord, my God, for the holy mountain of my God, yes, while I was speaking in prayer, pleading with God, that they were ready to go back now to Jerusalem and to Judah. He says, The man Gabriel, whom I had seen in the vision at the beginning, being caused to fly swiftly, reached me about the time of the evening offering. And he informed me and talked with me and said, O Daniel, I have now come forth to give you skill to understand. At the beginning of your supplications, the command went out, and I have come to tell you, You are greatly beloved. Therefore, consider the matter and understand the vision. Seventy weeks are determined for your people and for your holy city to finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity, that would be through Jesus Christ, to bring in everlasting righteousness, also through Christ, setting up the kingdom, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy. And so, in the midst of this disaster for 70 years, now Daniel receives the vision and the revelation. And God has not forgotten his people. Everything is going to be carried out according to God's will, and that God is going to act. And so, he would use Daniel and others to establish people that would go back, and that the Messiah would come, and everything would work out in the end. And so, that was a real trial. Here we are, at least we can see each other through video. We can keep the Sabbath day. We're not in captivity. We're not going through some horrible persecution, getting shot at because of our beliefs. People have been going through over the ages. And so, we have to put things into perspective. And so, in Daniel's day, the temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed. There was no real priesthood operating. But you know what they had? They had earnest, humble, heartfelt prayer. And they stayed close to God. They had God's Word, the Bible, and they knew that God was with them. As it tells us in Psalm 141, Psalm 141, we have alluded to this. As Ray Roberts did, this very prayer that he mentioned, Psalm 141, verse 2, it says, Let my prayer be set before you as incense, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice. So, they couldn't have animal sacrifices. They couldn't have the priesthood, but they had their prayers. And this happened again with the destruction of Jerusalem a second time by the Romans. And the Jewish people continued and said, well, we don't have sacrifices, but our prayers are going to be a sacrifice before God. To this day, they have substituted sacrifices for prayers until they can set up in Jerusalem the sacrifices again. Notice in James 5, verse 16, talking about how important prayer is. James 5, verse 16, it says, And here the term has to do with a person, whether man or woman, avails much. It really does make a big difference. We should never forget that. We should never doubt that. It's part of God's Word. So the point is, in the midst of this pandemic, don't let your prayer life down. Don't let it slacken.

It is so vital.

And I would like to show in the message one way that our prayer life can be more effective. Despite sometimes not feeling adequate, maybe not feeling up to it, but how important it is to realize the privilege that we have to go before God and the way we can go before God. I'd like to bring this up, and I have here basically three major points, based on Hebrews 4, verses 14-16. Hebrews 4, verses 14-16. Let's take a closer look at this passage of Scripture. I'm going to read it. Hebrews 4, verses 14-16 says, "...seeing then that we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens..." Remember, there are three heavens mentioned in the Bible. The first heaven is our atmosphere. It's where the sky is, where birds fly. Then we have the second heaven, which is outer space. That extends out to the borders of our universe. And then we have the third heaven, which is beyond that, which is the place where God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the angels dwell. And so it says here that He has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God. Let us hold fast our confession. Confession has to do here with our beliefs. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. He never slipped. He never sinned. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

So this is the vision and the image that I would like to break down into different points. So let's focus on first the throne of grace that we're to come before.

Grace is defined scripturally as the undeserved favor and forgiveness upon confession and repentance. We do need confession and repentance because God's grace is not just going to whitewash our sins or give us a free pass at everything. No, we have to do our part, but yet it is God's free and it is our unmerited blessing to receive this from God. Notice about this throne of grace in Hebrews 9 and verse 21. Talking about that throne room of God up in the third heaven. It says verse 21, Then likewise he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry, talking about the earthly high priest. And according to the law almost all things are purified with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission or forgiveness. Therefore it was necessary that the copies of things in the heavens should be purified with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself now to appear in the presence of God for us, for our behalf. And so here it talks about that just like there was an earthly tabernacle and later an earthly temple where the priest would come in. So that is all modeled on a heavenly model of the throne room where God dwells, where Jesus Christ is sitting at the right hand. Now this is God's description in the Bible, and God cannot lie. So this idea, and in the past some have said that, well, God is this amorphous blob that really doesn't have shape, and that this is all more of a spiritual image that doesn't have any form. That's not what God describes here. He says He does have a place in heaven, and it is this throne room of grace, and that Jesus Christ is at the right hand. So if you didn't have a model of something in heaven, you couldn't have it here on earth to be a copy of that as well. Notice another scripture in chapter 9. Let's see. Yeah, let's go to chapter 8, verse 1. It says, Now this is the main point of the things we are saying. We have such a high priest who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens, a minister of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the Lord erected, and not man. So God erected it in heaven.

He was very instructed when He was about to make the tabernacle, for He said, See that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain. But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry inasmuch as He is also a mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises. So Jesus Christ is our high priest. He's there in the throne room of God, the Father. Every time we pray, He's there. He's alert. He listens. God the Father does too. And Jesus is there as our advocate. He's there on our behalf. He is there helping us.

And of course, He and the Father have that intimate relationship, and having someone like that gives us grace before God. The idea, though, is that we don't just passively go before this throne room of God and just say, Well, Jesus will do it all for me.

I just basically have to show up and He'll take care of everything. That's not the case. God wants us to be actively conversing with God, just like a son with a father. And have that relationship. We have to be careful, brethren, because out there, we always have to be very wary of this idea that, well, all we have to do is just rest on Jesus, and He'll do the rest for us.

This idea that once saved, always saved. We can go in, no matter what state we're in, just directly, and Jesus will do everything for us. No. God does not spoil people. He is not going to do that. We have a part to do. Notice in Jude verses 3 and 4, we have to always be reminded. We go before that throne room of God, but we go because we are walking in this faith.

Notice in Jude verses 3 and 4, it says, In the prophecy, there would be these weeds among the wheat. Ungodly men who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. So you can't turn grace into license. This is part of the Protestant idea begun with Luther and Calvin and others.

I'd like to quote from a letter written by Martin Luther in 1521 to his friend Melanchthon. He says, No sin will separate us from the Lamb, even though we commit fornication and murder a thousand times a day. So they think that no matter what, if you're saved, you can't be unsaved.

You automatically, no matter what you do, you're already saved in this condition. I see this constantly. You have to watch out for it. Some very fine writers in the Bible and many people that write dictionaries in the Bible dictionaries. You have to be careful because they will many times inject this wrong idea. And this has led to evangelicals and Protestants have this ambivalence toward God's law, which is a love-hate relationship. I call it a schizophrenia or a schizophrenic viewpoint that will dilute God's law.

And by the way, I have a definition here, dictionary. Schizophrenic means mentally or mentality or approach characterized by inconsistent or contradictory elements. So to have this schizophrenic point of view of things is that you have these ministers and they say, well, you don't need to follow God's law. You have Jesus Christ. And then somebody says, well, can I steal? Oh, no, you can't do that. But why can't I steal if you've already said it's not necessary?

Well, no, you need to be a good person, but none of those things will save you. Well, are they necessary or not, then? And then, see, they have this contradictory view of things. So they kick the law of God out the door and then through the back door, they try to introduce it again. So people do not become completely amoral and completely chaotic. But this you can even read in Martin Luther's writings, the same problem. They don't know what to do with God's law because they believe that, well, once you're saved and Christ has come in. See, he said, I can commit adultery thousands of times a day and God still has to forgive me because I'm saved. Well, that's a real contemptuous and contemptible idea.

We both have a part to do. The answer is that God saves us, but he expects us to do our part as well. Notice in Philippians 2, I want to dwell with this because it is so subtle. I've seen people get confused and leave the church, go the evangelical way. Many have done so. In Philippians 2, verse 12, Paul says to the brethren, Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. How can that be? I thought salvation was Jesus Christ going to do everything for us.

He says to work it out. You've got a part to do. You have to be active. You can lose your salvation. And that makes a big difference. In Catholicism, you can say prayers and you can have your sins absolved. That way, you can remove the guilt and sin according to them. That's wrong. But then you have the evangelical and Protestant solution. And that's also wrong because we do have a part to play.

It goes on to say, How is it that we're supposed to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling? For it is God who works in you. So God has a part in us, guiding us, inspiring us, both to will and to do for His good pleasure.

So again, it's not all by ourselves. We need to have God's Spirit in us, guiding us. But God's Spirit is not going to do it for us. It's so important to understand this. Notice another scripture, 1 John chapter 1 and verse 8.

And I'll tell you, Satan has used this trick time and time again, and he will use it more in the end time than ever before. That's why it's so important to drum this into a person's mind. These scriptures, 1 John chapter 1 verse 8. Luther said, well, you're a sinner. You can't help it. Christ will do it for you. You just have to accept Him as your Savior. Just follow Him, follow the Lutheran Church, and all will be fine. Notice what it says, 1 John chapter 1 and verse 8. It says, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So it takes confessing. It takes repenting to receive forgiveness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His Word is not in us.

God knows we need to do our part. So when we go before that throne of grace, we have Jesus Christ there. It's very encouraging. But we have to come with a proper attitude of humility, of confession, of repentance, of opening our hearts and minds before God. We are not trying to hide or try to justify that Christ will do everything for me, kind of like an absentee person that sends the lawyer. Jesus will do it for me, just like somebody that doesn't want to show up in a court case, doesn't want to face the music.

Well, the lawyer will deal with it. That's not the way it works. We're supposed to come with humility, meekness, and repentance. Notice one last scripture in this first point, Zechariah 14. Some people say, well, why is it so important to keep the Sabbath or the feast days? After all, if I've accepted Jesus Christ, that's not important under this new covenant that we have with God. Zechariah 14. Here we have a vision of the future, of what it's going to be like when Christ comes back.

And again, God looks in the future. He wrote this down. This is going to happen. Notice in Zechariah 14, verse 16, when Jesus Christ sets up His kingdom, it says, And it shall come to pass, that every one who is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem, at the time of Armageddon, shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, that's Jesus Christ, and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles.

I thought the law had been abolished. I didn't think it was so important anymore with Jesus there. You think Luther would have endorsed this? No, because they don't keep it. And so who is right? It's those that keep the Feast of Tabernacles that are right, according to God's word. And notice, verse 17, And it shall be that whichever of the families of the earth do not come up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of hosts. On them there will be no rain, there will be a drought, and that causes famine and hunger.

So it's not just some that will go. If the family, verse 18, of Egypt will not come up and enter in, they shall have no rain. They shall receive the plague with which the Lord strikes the nations who do not come up to keep the Feast of Tabernacles. This is Christ. This is the one that came, that taught us, that died for us, that's on the right hand of God the Father.

What's he doing? He's establishing the Feast of Tabernacles for the entire earth, and he means it. There are going to be people that are going to test Christ. They're going to say, Oh, my Christ, my Savior, my Lord. I don't need to keep a Feast of Tabernacles. That's in the Old Testament, Lord. I know how to worship you better than apparently you do. And Christ is going to say, No, sir, you are wrong. You're going to have to come and repent, and you're going to have to confess that you were wrong, that you need to be forgiven of this violation of God's law. He goes on to say, it's interesting that when it says a family of Egypt, at that time, the Egyptians, they worship their own gods.

But it's interesting that at Christ's time, when he returns, the Egyptians are not going to be part of followers of the Bible. They are followers of Mohammed. They are all Islamic. And they don't keep the Feast of Tabernacles. They keep Ramadan, which is a substitute feast. And so they're not going to want to do it. They think, well, Christ is all love, and he will forgive us, and we'll all get along fine.

No way! Boy, are they going to be shocked. In verse 19, and I'd like to read verse 19 from the Brenton translation. It says, This shall be the sin of Egypt, and the sin of all nations, whosoever shall not come up to keep the Feast of Tabernacles.

It is sin! It's the breaking of God's law. See, that's something Luther never really focused on. That sin is the transgression of God's law. 1 John 3, 4. But God's church always will exalt the law. It will always raise it up. We will never go against God's law. And part of it is keeping the Sabbath and keeping the Holy Days, like the Tabernacles. That's why we are going to keep Tabernacles in whatever way we can, but it shall be holy to us.

Let's go to the second point, which is Christ as the High Priest who works and serves on our behalf. So once we have clear the way we come before God with humility respecting His laws, in Hebrews 2, verse 14. Hebrews 2, verse 14-18. It says, Inasmuch then, as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, talking about Christ, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through His death He might destroy Him who had the power of death that is the devil, because Christ paid for the sins.

And the devil can't do anything about that. We can receive forgiveness through the sacrifice of Christ and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. They had the death sentence over their heads and subject to bondage, the world, and Satan.

For the sins of the people, for in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted. He knows the weaknesses being a human being, and He saw the weaknesses. And He can sympathize with us. In Hebrews 7, verse 22. Hebrews 7, verse 22. It says, By so much more, Jesus has become a surety of a better covenant. Surety means guarantee. Here in the New Living Version, it says, Because of this oath, Jesus is the one who guarantees this better covenant with God, which is the covenant we have. Also, there were many priests because they were prevented by death from continuing. But he, because he continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood. Therefore, he is also able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. So he never tires. It's like having the very best friend you could ever have who would give the shirt off his back. He would even die for you. And he's there. And he is talking to God the Father. And that's why we have such wonderful access and mercy and love. Verse 26, For such a high priest was fitting for us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens, who does not need daily as those high priests to offer up sacrifices, first for his own sins, and then for the peoples. For this he did once for all, when he offered up himself. For the law points as high priest men who have weakness, but the word of the oath, which came after the law, the word, you are a priest according to Melchizedek, that came from God the Father, appoints the Son, who has been perfected forever.

In Hebrews 10 verse 12, this is the final part of this point. It says, But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, from that time waiting till his enemies are made his footstool. For by one offering he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. So he just sacrificed himself once, and that extends out to a person. For those, notice, it's not who are sanctified in the sense that, oh, they're already been made holy, no? Those who are being sanctified in the process of doing so. And so, going to verse 19, it says, Again, our beliefs of our hope without wavering, for he who promises faithful, and let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another and so much more, as you see the day approaching. For if we sin willfully, after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins. So he's telling the brethren there, the Hebrew brethren, he said, don't go back to Judaism. You're going to lose everything. And some here don't go back to Protestantism or Catholicism or whatever. You're going to lose your reward if you do so. It is that important. Is this COVID-19 going to maintain us strong or is it going to be a time of weakness because we can't get together and fellowship and help each other? We have to be close to God like never before, which takes us to the last point. It says here about having boldness in Hebrews 10, 19. It tells us about boldness in Hebrews 4. When it says, let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace. That word boldness in the Greek is parousia with two R's. And from the daily word of the Scriptures, this is by Doc Watson. It says this word is used some 31 times in the New Testament and is used for the speech of Jesus, the apostles, and other believers. In each case, the basic idea was that the person had the right to speak and spoke the truth openly. In other words, we can come before our Father with total freedom of speech. Pour out our hearts and tell Him everything. What a blessed privilege God has granted us. It is because of Jesus Christ that we can speak to God without fear, and we may speak openly and candidly, remembering to come boldly. And what are the two results? If we do that, Hebrews 4, verse 14, it says, Come boldly, that's the term that I mentioned, parisia, come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy. That's forgiveness. That's help. And find grace, favor, to help in time of need. Our prayers should be confident. We should do it respectfully. We know we don't deserve it, but God is offering that access to Him. This is a time of need in the midst of a pandemic when we need to stay close to God through prayer, through Bible study, to find that needed favor and help from God, for He will supply it.