Intercessory Prayer

There are a lot of reasons that we can find ourselves in intense prayer with God. I mean, intense prayer. Miss Stevens is example, and I know some of what they went through here. Just getting to the feast, there was a lot of intense prayer going on.

But when we have troubles in life, when we're worried about something, when we're sick, when a family member's sick, when we're out of a job, we can have very, very intense prayer. And suddenly, we're really serious about praying to God. Sometimes it's because we need forgiveness from a sin, and we go, and we're intensely asking God to forgive us. Sometimes it's because we're struggling with a sin, or struggling with a wrong attitude, and we have to go and struggle with God. And we're just praying so intently. I want to talk about a kind of prayer, an intense prayer, that we should have that many times we don't.

And it's the type of prayer we have when we intercede for someone else. You know, a lot of times we'll pray, oh, so and so is sick. Would you please intervene? Or we pray, and we mean it.

But we don't have the same intensity in those prayers sometimes as when we're sick. And so, what is intercessory prayer, where we actually go to God on behalf of another person? Does God want us to do that? What's the purpose of it? I mean, obviously, intercessory prayer isn't like, okay, let's all of us pray, and if we get enough numbers, God will do what we want. If we could just get 50 people to pray about this, or a hundred people, or a thousand people, then that's what God will do. Well, God isn't in a democratic system where you vote for what you want, right?

So, why is it that we are actually to have intercessory prayer, both in our relationships with each other and in our relationship with God? You know, we're told, Paul says, to bear each other's burdens, and one of the ways we do that is in prayer. He said, well, I can't help anybody else, and I have my own problems, but everybody can pray, and everybody can pray about others. There's an interesting man that's mentioned in the New Testament. Let's go to Colossians chapter 4. Colossians chapter 4, he's mentioned, I think, four times in the New Testament, and actually what it said about him, he was a very important man in the development of the New Testament church, and did some traveling with Paul.

Epaphras was his name. So, Epaphras here in verse 12 of chapter 4 says, Epaphras, who is one of you, in other words, he must have been from Colossae. So, Paul says to the church of Colossae, hey, you know Epaphras, he's one of you, he's a hometown guy, he's with me. He says, a bondservant of Christ greets you, always laboring fervently for you in prayers, that you may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God. Here's a man, he's traveling with Paul, and Paul writes back to his hometown, this man prays for all of you all the time.

He had seen him praying, maybe heard him praying, maybe he's talking to Paul about what he's praying, but in his prayers are his hometown people all the time. In fact, Paul says in verse 13, for I bear him witness. He says, I'm telling you, I've seen this, okay? I know this in the man, that he has a great zeal for you, and those who are in Laodicea and Heriopolis.

So he says, this is the region he came from, Colossae, Laodicea, Heriopolis, and he said, he knows you people in those three congregations, and this man prays about each of you all the time, and I've seen him do it. Now, isn't that amazing that this man, you know, he, Paul's of course, writing his personal letter here, but God chose to keep this in here.

That here's a man who is known because he prays, he intercedes for people in their troubles, in their what's happening, in their lives, their children's lives. He's praying for people all the time.

Now, Paul is quite famous for praying about the people that he would go and start churches or visit churches, but he tells us sometimes why. We'll just look at three instances here where he talks about his praying for people that he knew in different churches. Let's go to Romans 1. He just makes a simple statement here. Romans chapter 1. So these are prayers about other people, not just about himself. Now, Paul will see lots of prayers where he prayed about himself to God we're supposed to. And those tend to be our most intense prayers. Romans 1 verse 9. For God is my witness, whom I serve, with my spirit in the Gospel of his Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers.

Now, he tells those people at Rome, and Romans, you know, we've been going through this on our Wednesday night Bible studies, as you know, as we go through it, Paul can be, is very corrective in this book towards the church at Rome. They were dealing with a lot of different issues at the time, but he really wanted them to know that on a personal level, he prayed about them. Now, he doesn't mention maybe specific people, but the church itself, he prays about, he prays for, that God will be with that church and God will be involved in their lives. And it isn't just like, you know, you have a prayer and it's, okay, and I pray for the people of Nashville and all the problems they're having and all the all the people that are sick. And then you go on to the next part of the prayer. He says, without ceasing, I make mention of you. He says, this is what I do all the time.

Ephesians 1. Now, when we talk about intercessory prayer, we'll talk about this towards the end of the sermon. You know, Jesus Christ is called the intercessor. There's a difference between what Christ is doing and what we do in intercessory prayer. This is not the sort of Catholic idea of Catholicism that you somehow, in their case, you pray to saints and they intercede for you with God. Now, when we do intercede with people, that's not what we're doing. Jesus Christ intercedes for each one of us individually in terms of salvation and justification with God. It's a personal thing that only He does. So, when we're talking about intercessory prayer here, this is about your relationship with each other and it's about your collective relationship with God. We all have individual relationships with God, but we have a collective relationship with God, too. We're called His people. We're called His church, so it's a collective relationship. So, our relationship with each other can't be separated from our relationship with God.

The more is a group of people, the closer we are to God, the more we will interact to be with each other. It's just what happens because it's a collective relationship. So, we're talking here about our relationship with each other and how we individually relate to God as a group. So, we're not talking about intercession that Jesus is doing. He's sufficient for salvation. Okay, so we're not talking about that, but we are talking about going to God on the behalf of somebody else for some reason. Ephesians 1, verse 15. Paul says, therefore, I also, talking to the church here in Ephesus, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, do not cease to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers. Now, that's not the end of the sentence. The sentence goes on to the end of verse 23.

In my prayers, I'm praying about these things for you.

But once again, I'm always praying about you. Now, Paul knew these people. Paul had been in Ephesus for three years, over three years. Paul had really started the church there. Paul had taught there. Paul was there when they were in the synagogue and got kicked out of the synagogue. He was there when all these pagans came into the church. And all the churches through the New Testament, some of them were big, some of them were small, some of them had impact on their society around them, some didn't. The Ephesians had an enormous impact on their own society, a huge impact.

And Paul was there during that time. So Paul had a personal relationship with these people, and you see it in what he's saying. Do not cease to give thanks for you. Intercessory prayer is sometimes just thanking God for the people He's brought into your life.

I mean, probably not too many of us on a regular basis say, you know, and I thank you for all my brethren in Nashville. In fact, let me get out my list here, and I want to thank you for all these people personally. Of course, you go down and say, I don't even know about a third of these people.

And yet Paul said he thanked God for them personally. It meant that much to him. Do we mean that much to each other? That in our prayer to God, we go and we mention each other and we thank God for each other. The last place I'm going to look at as far as this what Paul says about his prayers is in Philippians 1. Verse 3, Philippi was a different church. It didn't seem to have a lot of problems like the other churches. So you don't see quite the correction in the book or the letter to the Philippians. But those what Paul says, I thank my God, verse 3 of chapter 1, I thank my God upon every remembrance of you. He says, I thank God every time I think of you.

Now, what he means is, you know, I could be traveling from one place to another, and I think about those people in Philippi and some of their names come to my mind. They see some of their faces and I say, thank you, God, for your people in Philippi. That's a prayer of relationship, that his relationship with God and his relationship with the other people of God was connected.

I mean, they are separate. I mean, there's the relationship we have with God with each other, but they're connected. And so he says, I thank you for that. Always in every prayer of mine, making requests for you with all joy. Now, I make requests, he says, of all you people in Philippi before God all the time, and I'm happy to do it. It makes me happy to do this. How many requests do we make for each other? You know, I had trouble putting this sermon together because I realized, man, I pray for all of you, but I don't pray enough.

I really don't. I didn't realize it. It was like, I pray for them. But do I pray for them enough? Have I thanked God today for my brother in Nashville or Murfreesboro or Jackson? Have I prayed for some of the widows I haven't seen in months and months and months because I've been running like a wild man? Have I prayed for them enough? I didn't get a chance to see them, but have I prayed for them enough? That's a good question. That's a hard question to ask yourself.

Paul, this was his lifestyle of praying for others and for others. And he was praying for others and about others to God.

Now notice what he says, because this is, once again, just like we looked at the other in Ephesians, we just didn't go through it. This is all one part of one long sentence about him praying. Because verse five says, for your fellowship in the gospel from the first day until now, now this is in how I thank God and I pray for you, being confident of this very thing that he who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ. Just as it is right for me to think this of all of you because I have you in my heart in as much as both in my chains and into defense and confirmation of the gospel, you're all partakers with me of grace. That's all one sentence with I think of you when I pray about you, because we're all together in this. Do you always think of Paul in terms of all this deep theology? But his letters have so much personal information in it. It is filled with personal information. And this is one of those passages. So Paul prayed always for the people of God. Are we praying enough for each other?

Are we thanking God enough for each other? I wonder what would happen if our 200 people in our three churches all started thanking God for each other a lot. I just wonder what would happen. I don't know. But something would. Something would. Because the interesting thing about intercessory prayer is that it changes you no matter what God's answer is. It changes us to participate in it. What area of intercessory prayer that we don't think about much, do we pray enough as parents for our children or as grandparents for our grandchildren? Do we pray enough for them? Are we reaching out to God for them? As husband and wives, are we praying for each other enough? He said, Oh no, I pray for my wife all the time. I say, God, correct her and make her submit to me.

Do we pray for our husband and wife, for God to help them and to help us do our part?

It's like children. Do we always pray that God correct our children?

Or do we thank God for our children and we ask God to help us understand them more and be better parents? Help us be what we're supposed to be so that this relationship works. Help me to bring my child as much as I can to you, because none of us can actually make our children go to God. But we are part of the vehicle that can get them there, both children and grandchildren.

Do we do that? I remember years ago you would know this person. To the truth, I don't even remember the name of the person. I wasn't her pastor. I just happened to visit this congregation many years ago. And a woman came up to me and we were having a conversation. And she said, Yeah, she said, I was thinking about divorcing my husband a couple years ago. She said, Oh, I went to God. And she said, I started praying that God would help my husband, love my husband, direct my husband, correct my husband. She said, but he wasn't in a church, but God would work with him. She said, and then suddenly over time, I began to appreciate a little bit. And I started praying, God, would you help me be a better help to my husband? And she said, I don't know what happened first, but I changed and he changed and her marriage is really good. She said, and it's all because I just stopped praying for God to correct him and ask God to help him and ask God to help me be what I'm supposed to be. And she found out she had a lot more power in the marriage than she thought she did. And God changed him, softened him along the way. I just remember that. And I've heard conversations like that for men and women many times over the years, but I just remember that one because she just walked up and told me out of nowhere because she was actually excited about it. That, you know, over a couple of years period, they had a different marriage. And it was because of this. She started praying for him in a positive sense. Now, sometimes it doesn't mean everybody's going to change, right? I can't make people change. God doesn't even make people change. I'm saying this is part of the way things can change for the positive. And if nothing else, you will change. When you pray for the well-being of someone else, you change.

Because you start to care about the well-being of the other person.

Just knowing someone is praying for you. Have you ever been really sick or having some problem when someone comes up and says, I've been praying for you and they mean it. I don't have any advice for you. I've just been praying for you. You know, I know you're having a hard time.

I got a phone call this week from someone who's I had done a family member's funeral a while back and they called me just to tell me how they were doing. It was a great conversation. Went on for over an hour. But when I hung up, you know what I thought, why haven't I called that person?

I sent them some emails, okay, to connect, but I didn't call them. And they needed a conversation. Why didn't I?

Maybe if I'd have been praying about that person more, I would have called them. I'd have been motivated to call them. I think I would have been. Why? Because this relationship between me and this person and God, God would have been involved more in the relationship. Because I've involved God in it. I've prayed about it. I've asked Him and He would have been involved in probably motivating me to call the person instead of just sending emails. This is what I mean is this is a relationship issue. And God is involved in we are too. Ephesians 6, Paul again. Ephesians 6 verse 17.

Paul's talking about, it's in the middle of him talking about the armor of God. Okay, so we always go through this passage and we pick out the armor of God. But I'm going to pick out another little phrase that's in here. So in the middle of this thought, verse 17, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being washable to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints.

He says, as you put on this armor of God, the rest of the thought is, and be sure and pray for each other, all the saints. Well, if all the saints are praying for all the saints, everybody's praying for each other. Be sure and pray for each other. Don't forget to mention each other by name in your prayers. And then verse 19, and for me, and for me, as you put on this armor of God, Paul says, and remember to pray for me that utterance may be given to me, that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel. Paul says, pray that God gives me direction and help as he traveled throughout the pagan world into different cultures, different places. How in the world was he supposed to talk to these people? He was talking to pagans much of the time, not Jews. And by this point, how do I talk to these people? How do I interact with these people? Ask God to help me. We need to be asking God to help us collectively and individually to say what needs to be said in the right time in the right place, that the gospel of Christ has continued to be spread. The gospel of the kingdom of God has continued to be spread. And he says, I'm asking you to pray for me. Do you think about Paul? Here's Paul, the man of such great faith, the man that seemed to face everything, and he's asking the members of the church, please pray for me because sometimes I don't know what to do. There's the personal parts of the Scripture we miss so much of the time. We just miss it that these real people are going through real things and we're not a whole lot different than them. We're really not. We're really not. One of the most funny situations of intercessory prayer is in the book of Acts. So let's go to Acts 12.

Acts 12. Now, the story and this whole chapter begins in verse one. Up to this point, the church had been doing pretty good in the Jerusalem area, Judea. Oh, there had been some troubles like Paul had gone around persecuting the Christians until he got converted, called and converted. Then that stopped. You know, we have Stephen martyred, but the church was also growing. That's the reason it's being persecuted. It's just growing and growing. 3000 people in one day. What's happening here in this first part of Acts never happened again as far as just sheer numbers that we know of in the whole rest of the New Testament. There was just this period of enormous growth. Well, a lot of it because those people had been directly taught by Jesus. And now there was just a script. But then there came the prosecution. chapter 12 verse one. Now at that time Herod, the king, stretched out his hand to harass some of the church. Then he killed James, the brother of John with the sword. So this is now, wow, we have one of the great leaders of the church killed. Because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to seize Peter also. Now it was during the days of 11 bread. So when he had arrested him, he put him in prison and delivered him to four squads of soldiers to keep him and tending to bring him before the people after Passover. So now the church is going through something it just wasn't prepared for. His leadership was being attacked, killed, put in prison. What do you do now? Well, verse five. Peter was therefore kept in prison, but constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church. Constant prayer.

That word constant in Greek has a lot of subtle different meanings. It's sort of hard to put exactly into English. Excuse me. Because what it means is stretched out, like it's like reaching out for something. It's an effort. There's this energy and this effort, this, you know, and you're not letting up. It's constant. That's why you see it translated a couple different ways.

There's this energy into the prayer by the church. Of course, they didn't even know if the church was going to survive what it was going through. Excuse me. So what happens is, if you read the rest of the chapter, we'll skip down a little bit here, but Peter is miraculously released from prison.

Some angels show up, the guards go to sleep, he thinks he's having a dream, and all the doors open up, and he sort of wakes up, and he's outside the prison, and he realizes, I'm awake. This actually happened. Now what do you do when Herod has all the troops out searching for you, when you are a marked man, and you suddenly get released from prison? I tell you what most would do, what I would have done, I would have run to the closest place I knew was a safe house where they couldn't find me. Right? That's what you do. Okay, I gotta go hide someplace. Maybe get down into catacombs. Well, there's no catacombs in Jerusalem, but I gotta get out of here. I gotta go someplace where I can hide out until this all blows over. That's not what he does. Verse 12. So when he had considered this, in other words, I am actually out of jail. I'm out of prison. I'm outside. I'm a free man in the middle of the night.

God has done this. So what did he do? He came to the house of Mary, the mother of John, whose surname was Mark, where many were gathered together praying. They're all offering prayer together because they're all in the same predicament here. They're all in the same difficulty. The church is in a difficulty, so they gather together and pray together.

And pray that God will protect them and pray that God will protect Peter and pray that God would, you know, what happened to all the miracles? They had miracles all over the place before this. John and Peter were healing people in the temple. Many of these people would have been there in Pentecost when the fire came down from heaven and they saw the tongues of fire and they got to speak in tongues. I mean, these were people had seen all kinds of things. These were people that many of them or some of them would have seen Jesus. And now all we can do is pray because sometimes that's all we can do is pray. And where does he go to where he knows his brethren are praying? He knows that they know only God can help us and I want to go there and that's where he goes. And that's where this real humorous thing happens where he knocks at the door and the girl named Rhoda. How would you like this is why you're in the Bible? Your name's in the Bible for this reason. Rhoda comes up, looks through the door and says, close it, runs off and says, Peter's out there. Everybody says, Peter's not out there. He's in prison. So the whole thing is her trying to convince everybody Peter's out there while he's knocking at the door and they won't let him in. And finally someone goes out in the door and sure enough, it's Peter.

And so we all know her name. Someday we'll all get to meet her and say, you're that Rhoda.

Probably after a million times it won't be funny. Okay, the first time, oh you're that Rhoda, but after a million people say to her, you're that Rhoda? It's not going to be funny. And so after he met with them and they prayed together and they were happy and joyful and he told them what God had done and they'd seen this miracle, then he goes someplace to hide out for a while to try to figure out what I'm going to do next. But that's not where he goes first.

He goes where he knows the people that he's connected with are praying.

Because God's going to be there.

Intercessory prayer is so important if we're not going to be just a congregation that has a certain amount of beliefs, that if we go beyond that to what these congregations were at this time, people who were so committed to God that they suffered persecution and stayed committed to God and stayed together. It just wasn't, yeah, it has to be a set of doctrines. They had a set of doctrines, but this was more than that. You know, some people keep prayer lists. I know people that keep long prayer lists. Some would show me a prayer list lately they had, and they had written so many things on it, I couldn't even make sense of it.

You know, because they were keeping notes on everybody they prayed. It was pages after pages.

Some people find that helpful. Some, like Paul, didn't seem to have a prayer list. He just said, every time I think of you, I pray about you. That doesn't mean he dropped to his knees. He's probably praying silently in his head as he's walking along someplace, praying about those people. Not just about himself. If anyone had the right to pray about himself all the time, it was Paul, when you consider everything he went through, and he does pray about himself. He wasn't being selfish. He was going to God with his issues in life like you and I should.

It was his also, though, his remarkable ability to step outside himself, look at those whom God has called and said, I want to pray with you and for you, because you and I are all part of the same people.

And I'm just telling you, as the world goes on, we had better learn to pray for each other.

And we had better learn to accept those prayers. A praying people that pray to God, but also pray for each other and intercede with each other.

Now, I mentioned that amazing thing about intercessory prayer as it changes us. It changes the people who's giving the prayer.

There's a couple other aspects, though, of intercessory prayer we don't think about. Now, we've talked about praying for each other, praying for husbands, praying for wives, praying for our children. And not always negative, but always looking for the pause of God, help this child. As my mother told me once, I keep praying, God, this man knows nothing about women. Please bring a woman into his life that you choose for him, or he's going to mess his life up. And now that I've lived life, my answer to my mom's prayer is, Amen. I look back and think, oh man, I'm going to mess my life up 15 different ways, and none of them were good, right?

But here's some other ways. Let's look at 1 Samuel. We're going to look at the Old Testament now. Now, what we're looking at here are people in the Old Testament, this is 1 Samuel 12, that were under the Old Covenant. And they actually had an interesting intercessory system. What I mean by that is they were a group of people that were a group, right? They were the people of Israel. If you came into Israel from outside of Israel, you had to become an Israelite and obey the law of God and worship the law of God, and now you were an Israelite. So when Ruth was, she became an Israelite. She wasn't Israelite at my birth, but she became an Israelite. So you came into the people and you became part of the people. And there was an intercessory system.

It had to do with the priesthood. To intercede between the people as a group and God, they would do sacrifices so that God would offer forgiveness to the group.

So the group could appear before God. Now they also had individual relationships with God, but there was a group intercessory system. Samuel was part of that because he was a priest. He gave sacrifices. Remember, Saul did a sacrifice that Samuel was supposed to do, and God rejected him for being king because of it. He said, no, no, no, no, no, no. You don't have the authority to do that. Only he has the authority. Only the priest has the authority to do that. You don't. Even though you're king, you don't have that authority. And when he took it upon himself, he rejected him as king. So you have this intercessory system on this religious level. I say that because Samuel now is approached by a large number of Israelites who've come to the conclusion that making a king was a bad idea.

We probably shouldn't have made a king, okay? You told us not to. Now we have a king. And so they come to him in verse 19, and all the people said to Samuel, pray for your servants to the Lord your God, that we may not die. For you have added to all of our sins the evil of asking for a king for ourselves. Now, why would he go say, you pray for us? There's this, once again, it's an intercessory system. I want to bring this out that our intercessory system today is not that you go to the prophet, or not that you go to the priest, or not that you go to the minister. I mean, you can't know. You should come and ask, can you pray for me? Yes. But we are not the system of in which we are. The intercessory takes place. We are in a relationship of intercessory. That's different. So if you come and say to the person sitting next to you, would you pray for me about this? They say, yes. That's fine. Now you're not asking them to forgive you for sins. This is a forgiving for sins issue, right? You can't come to me and say, would you forgive me for your sin? My sins, I'd say, only if you did it against me. So what did you do? Did you lie against me? Did you steal from me? No. Well, then I can't forgive you for anything. I have no power to forgive you for anything, right? We could all forgive each other for what we do forgets each other. We have no power to forgive people that God can only forgive. So this intercessory system is all different, but there are lessons here.

So they say, would you pray to God for us? Because how can we get to God? We've sinned. You have to do a sacrifice for us. And then Samuel said to the people, verse 20, do not fear. You have done all this wickedness, yet you do not turn aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart. He says, yeah, it was a bad idea, but at least you're still staying true to God now. So you have a King and God. Your life is going to be very complicated. You know, we're not going to go back and redo it now. What are you going to do? Assassinate the King?

Then Samuel said to the people, oh, I'm sorry, verse 21, and do not turn aside, for then you would go after the empty things which cannot profit or deliver, for they are nothing. For the Lord will not forsake his people for his great namesake, because it has pleased the Lord to make you his people. Moreover, as for me, far be it for me that I should sin against the Lord and ceasing to pray for you, but I will teach you the good and the right way. He says it would be a sin for me not to pray for you. Of course I will pray for you, and I will continue to teach you the right way. Now, if you read the rest of the chapter, he also says, and if you don't learn the right way, your problems between you and God, and I can't intercede on that, God's going to punish you. God will punish you if you don't, but right now I pray for you so that we can maintain this relationship as a group, relationship with God, and that I can teach you the right way. This is very fascinating. There are certain elements of this we still do, and there are certain elements that have been shifted in the New Testament. But there's a concept here that holds even to today, and your relationship with each other.

It is the idea that there are times God invites you to intercede for somebody. Now, I don't mean salvation-wise. You know, how you and I can say, oh no, God, please give this person salvation. Oh, God says, who are you to tell me to give? Only Jesus Christ can say, let's give salvation to this person. But we have a... He expects us to step up and intercede in the need with another person, between him and another person. Samuel understood that was his job. One of the most dramatic is mentioned in Psalms 106. I'm not going to read... It's actually from Exodus 32, but I'm going to read Psalm 106, where David talks about it.

Because in the middle of this song, he talks about how Israel came out of Egypt. They go to Mount Sinai, Mount Horeb, and there they are. And Moses goes to the top of the mountain, and there he is. And God gives him the 10 commandments, but he's up there for weeks.

The Israelites believe he's died. Now, I want you to remember something. God never left the top of the mountain. It's on fire. There's thunder. There's lightning. There's smoke. They know someone's up there, right? These are the people that just a few months later, watched the Red Sea open. These are the people that just a few months later, watched while God killed all the firstborn of Egypt, and theirs didn't die. These were the people a few months later who watched darkness come across the entire nation of Egypt, and frogs, and lice, and all the water turned to blood. These were the people who witnessed all that. And it wasn't a long time ago. It wasn't 30, 40 years ago. It was a series of months. He goes up there. They decide he's dead, and they decide the best way to handle this is get a good pagan god to lead them where they're supposed to go. So they make a golden calf, and they're basically having a drunken orgy before a golden calf. And God says, it's enough. It's enough. It's enough. And in his righteousness and in his justice, he's absolutely right.

Understand, he said, well, how cruel of God! No! After everything he had done, their actions were so appalling that God's goodness and justice is a simple conclusion. I must kill them all. But I can't kill them all because a descendant of Abraham has to be the Messiah. So he tells Moses, step aside. I'm going to kill all of them, and you are going to be, I'm going to take Moses or Abraham's line and go through you, and you'll become a great nation. It'll be the nation of Abraham and Moses. How's that? That's quite a thing to say to a person, right? I think there's a lot of people that have stepped inside. I'll kill them. I will go down in history and be Abraham and me? That's about as good as it gets, right? Of course, he did go down in history as Abraham and him. He's a list of great men before God. What happens here, though, is just fascinating. So verse 19, they made a calf and a horrib and worshipped the molded image. Thus they changed their glory into the image of an ox that eats grass. They forgot God, their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt, wondrous works in the land of Ham, awesome things by the Red Sea. Therefore he said that he would destroy them.

Had not Moses, his chosen one, stood before him in the breach to turn away his wrath lest he destroy them.

The imagery of the Hebrew word there in the breach is like a walled city that's being attacked. And if you ever broke down the walls in one place, the whole army would rush through there. And running into the breach or running into the gap was the bravest soldiers because they knew they may just get run over. But you have to fill the breach because if you don't, the city will fall.

And he says Moses stepped into the breach.

Now it's interesting. God isn't the enemy here. But Moses stepped into the breach because the people behind him, okay, using the imagery, are all worshipping golden calf, having a big orgy, getting drunk. I mean, they're absolutely spitting in the face of God. He steps into the breach and says, please don't. Remember Abraham. Remember Egypt, that those people, those people will say, well, that God, he failed it. He took all those people out there and killed him. He said, basically, let us try again. You go and read it. It's just, he's just very respectful.

Don't do this, please. Now, this isn't a case of God is just angry, out of control, just crazy. And old, calm Moses comes along and calms him down and sets him straight. That's not what's happening here. What's happening here is he has set him up as an intercessor. How are you going to intercede for these people? Because I have the right to kill them and I am good and righteous if I kill them. And Moses said, no, please don't do that. And he didn't. This is the whole point of interceding. God wants us to intercede in certain circumstances. It is his desire to learn how to intercede. You know what Moses did? God said, okay, I won't kill him. Moses went down. Saul was actually happening, said, who was on my side with God? The entire tribal Levi came over and he said, okay, get your swords and kill everybody that was, that made this thing happen. See, he killed 3,000 people. Moses went out and killed 3,000 people.

He realized you had to kill these people to stop this, which is what God was saying. But God let Moses do it. He interceded and all the Israelites didn't die, just 3,000. This is just a fascinating story because, once again, it's not about Moses teaching God righteousness. It's about God saying, I have the right to do this. Will you intercede with them or not? And he did. In Ezekiel, there's a fascinating scripture where God tells Ezekiel, I looked at the people of Israel and I said, I will punish you. And there wasn't one man who interceded for them, so I punished them. In other words, the evil was so bad there wasn't even one person that would stand up and say, I will punish you. And there wasn't one man who interceded for them, so I punished them. In other words, the evil was so bad there wasn't even one person that would stand up and say, Lord, please don't. Please, is there a way we can, is there another way to this? Not one, he said, so I punished them. In Isaiah, he says, that he was going to punish Judah and he said, and I looked and I tried to find one man who would stand in the breach. One man! He said, nobody. Not one man, it was good enough to do that. And he said, you know what, it's fascinating. It's, oh man, it's Isaiah 59. Yeah, let me make sure.

Sometimes I say these things off the top of my head. Isaiah 59, yes. Because he just, he says, just what he says here in verse, middle part of verse 15. Then the Lord saw it, because the whole thing is about how there's just no justice, there's no goodness in the land. And it displeased him, there was no justice. He saw that there was no man and wondered where, wondered that there was no intercessor. He said, there wasn't any, there wasn't one man who could stand up and say, let's talk, can we save these people? He wanted an intercessor, just like he told Ezekiel. I looked for one. I wanted a Moses to stand up. I wanted a Samuel and said, nope, I will pray for you because I have to pray for you. So the rest of this chapter is, he said, well, then I'm going to be the intercessor, as what God said. Okay, if I can't find a man to be the intercessor, I'll be the intercessor with me. And by verse 20, he's sending the Redeemer, who's going to set up a new covenant. Guess who that is?

Yeah, he's going to be the intercessor for those people. Here's talking about Israel, by sending the Messiah to die for them and intercede for them. Because there was nobody else to do it, but him. But that's the way it always is. Except for those few cases where you have a Samuel or you have a Moses or you have an Abraham. Now Abraham wasn't saving Israelites. There were no Israelites at the time. There was such thing as an Israelite.

And remember what he said, what God said, I'm going to punish Sodom and Gomorrah. But what if there's righteous people there? How can you God, the righteous God, the good God, the fair God, the God of justice, how could you kill 50 good men? And God said, I wouldn't.

Oh, what if there's... and the number gets smaller and smaller. And God doesn't get angry with him because this is the point. Intercede for them. You understand who I really am. And he's interceding not for the evil of Sodom and Gomorrah, but what if there's righteous people there? And he gets down to 10 and he says, if there's just 10 righteous men, would you wipe out all those cities? He says, I wouldn't kill anybody. If there's 10 righteous men, Sodom and Gomorrah will stay on the face of the earth. And then he walks away.

Chris, how many righteous men were there? One. And what did God do for him? He got him out.

He wasn't there when Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed. He cooked him and his family and said, you gotta go because you're the only one. You know what would have happened if there were 10? Now he knew there wasn't 10, but if there was 10, he wouldn't have destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah until there was one or whatever, two or whatever. Okay, you gotta get out of here because I'm destroying this. But that's what's so interesting. Abraham is interceding because what if there's righteous people? God, you just don't go around killing righteous people. And God says, I agree. No anger from God, no argument from God, and the banter goes back and forth and back and forth. And he's saying, good Abraham, you're an intercessor. You're thinking this through. No, we won't kill the good.

You have all these examples of the intercessor.

You and I intercede for each other sometimes when the other person is sitting, or sometimes when the other person isn't doing right, or sometimes when the other person has been mean to you. What? Intercede for that jerk?

Yeah. God, please help this person to change and repent because I know if you don't, there's going to be a catastrophe in their life, and I don't want to see that catastrophe happen. That's intercession. See, intercessory prayer just isn't when we're sick. It isn't just when we're trying to encourage someone else or pray for God's deliverance. Sometimes it's help the person here that's in real trouble, Father.

I've had times where I've gone to God and say, I can't help this person.

Please help this person.

And sometimes I watch, and God does. And it's like, He did it!

And the person changes, and their life turns around, and it's just like, it's like God did it.

We intercede for them.

We intercede for each other. And remember, here's why. Let's go to Hebrews 7. We'll wrap it up here with Hebrews 7. Boy, I tell you, this being like Christ stuff is not fun sometimes.

I'm going to intercede for my brothers and sisters even when they're wrong.

Yeah, that's what we're supposed to do. God, this person's wrong. This person shouldn't be doing it. This is a sin. Would you please bring them to repentance before they self-destruct?

Which is a whole lot different than, you know, that person's got this kind of sin.

You know, we need to just get rid of them and, like, God correct them, like, God punish them. Boy, I don't know. I've seen God punish people. We know sometimes people are turned over to God for punishment. I don't want anybody to have to go there. Sometimes they have to go there. And you don't want them to. I remember sitting down with a man one time and taking a Bible and put it out in front of him.

I said, what does that book say I have to do because of your continued behavior?

I've done this a couple of times. And this person said, you have to put me out of the church until I repent. I said, remember, I didn't say that. I didn't say that. I didn't say that. I didn't say that. I said, remember, I didn't say that. You said the Bible said that. Later in life, when he was back in church and life was good and he was obeying God and everything, he said to me, you know why I came back? He says, I was prepared to be mad at you and you made me condemn myself. He said, no, I didn't make you condemn yourself. I made you tell me what the Bible says and the Bible condemned you.

Yeah, he said it.

I couldn't run away from that one. Yeah, that's what God does. I could have said the same thing and it wouldn't be the same as him saying it. So I prayed, God, help him get it. And he did. That was 40 years ago.

But he did. He got it. There's other times people just don't get it.

And then you pray that God somehow brings them around before they self-destruct. Before, you know, there's no calling them back. They won't come back.

In Hebrews, chapter seven, it's all about the priesthood, the Old Testament priesthood and how they were intercessors. They took these, these lambs and these bulls and these goats and these doves and they sacrificed them to God. And it was just that, you know, it wasn't real. It was just something that symbolized what God was going to do.

That the shedding of blood so that we could receive forgiveness.

And so in the middle of this chapter, we get to verse 22, because he's talking about the priest. He says, by so much more, Jesus has become a surety of a better covenant. Okay, there's something better than the Levitical covenant and that, and that what that system was, because it wasn't real. It just symbolized something.

Also, there are many priests because they were prevented by death from continuing, right?

Hundreds of years, there was different priests because they just kept dying. They got old. But he, Christ, because he continues forever, has an unchangeable priesthood. Therefore is also able to save to the utmost those who come to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. In other words, this is his driving joy of life. This is his, this is what he sees as his present purpose, is his intercede for us, and eventually the whole world.

But if we're called from God, then his intercession is actually being applied to us right now. He is there before God interceding for us. And so I said there's a huge difference between what we do as interceding and what he's doing as interceding, because none of us can intercede for someone's eternity or salvation. He does. He does it all the time with you and me. He doesn't come up with that and say, oh yeah, I forgot about that person, right? I forgot about that person. Yeah, God, sorry. You know, that person hasn't heard what he... You haven't heard what he's first for a year because I just haven't interceded for him. That's not what happens. He intercedes for us constantly, continually, every day, every minute.

That is the example.

So he goes on and talks about how Jesus is the high priest, fulfilling that role in its reality, which only those priests could do, a deliverable priesthood as an act, as a play, not in reality.

You and I have to learn to carry each other's burdens, pray for each other in troubles and trials, be thankful for each other, and thank God for each other.

You have someone in this congregation that maybe gets on your nerves a little bit. Go thank God they're here. Thank God they're here. Where else do you want them to be?

Right?

Is there anybody we want to throw away?

No?

One of the most important aspects of of our lives is to be able to lose ourselves sometimes in service to others.

And you can really do that in prayer.

But you have to make the effort to think about it. You have to make the effort to make a list or just think about it or take time every day in your prayers to consciously pray for other people. And the best place you start is right here in Murfreesboro, Jackson.

Or our ability just even as a group called the United Church of God to preach the gospel. How do we do this? How do we reach people? Bless what we do. That's what Paul asked them to do.

Jesus Christ, of course, is our example of the great intercessor.

Look at the price he paid.

To intercede for you and me because we're bad.

Our price for interceding for each other is pretty small. It really is. His price for interceding for us is enormous.

It's comforting to know that we go before God. That intercession is taking place. And you know what? Is comforting to know that when you have a trial or a sickness or something in your life and someone says, I'll pray for you and you know they're going to do it?

I mean, I feel comforted every time an elder anoints me when I'm sick.

I'm covered by that. And I imagine most of you are too. And you know when Mr. Jones or myself or Mr. Frankie, when we anoint you, we're not healing you. We don't have that power. But what are we doing? We're interceding with God as a group together. We go as a group to God together. That's remarkable. I thank God for that all the time. What a remarkable thing to every time you anoint someone, you're simply a group of people going before God's throne together to intercede, to bring this before God. What a privilege! What a privilege! I have to honestly say, anointing every one of you to me is that. It's just that. It's a privilege. That's what it is. We have an intercessor before the throne of God. In a very limited way, he asks us, now you go and intercede for each other.