“CHRIST IN INTERCESSION” (continued) - part 8.

We saw last week the great concern of the heart of Christ that is centered in His Church, that spiritual community that would become one and be one with the Divine Person - His heart that looked forward to its future continuing after His ascension.

It would be dependent on His divine care and keeping in working His works, as it would follow through in His Eternal Plan. 

Tonight, once again, let us start in John 17, and look at it in regard to the faithfulness of service unto Christ that will accomplish His purpose on earth.

It has been truly remarkable that He alone - of all those who have ever been born upon earth and ever will be - that He alone is the only One Who could literally say, ‘I have finished the work Thou gavest Me to do,’ (v 4) as He communed with His Father that night.

Let it be carefully noted that His redeeming work was work which His Father gave Him to do, a work that was commissioned to Him in the Eternal Counsel. 

All that was required of Him, He did perfectly. 

He went right through to the very last drop of breath and blood, bent on every ounce of His being to glorify His Father and to finish the work given Him by the Father.

We, even though we are ‘born again’, can never match the perfection of His work.

Yet, the Church is called to share in the magnitude of the work Christ has done in His earthly ministry.

‘The harvest truly is plenteous...pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth laborers...’, was the Lord’s summons to the Church. (Luke 10:2)

As imperfect as the Church’s work may often be, God’s ordained and appointed work for it will continue to be done and will get done.

And - no matter how big or how small, how supposedly great according to the world’s standard of greatness or how small the work may seem, each part or section of it is significant to the overall work of Christ’s Plan.

Let us - just for a moment - look at the disciples and see how Jesus spoke to His Father about those who received, believed, and served Christ.

You will notice, in vs 6, that Jesus said that they kept or  
observed or attended to His Word - everything He made known to them they received from Christ and kept it.

They had the necessary hearing ears and attentive hearts for spiritual ongoing and, we can say, they diligently kept His Word, albeit, many times, imperfectly and clumsily.

And - in so doing - ultimately - they did prove their genuine discipleship to Him.

They willingly received and embraced His divine words, had known and acknowledged that Christ came from God the Father, believed and were persuaded that the Father sent Him to be the Messiah.

And all this had taken place when the vast majority of their countrymen neither acknowledged nor believed anything of the sort.

When we think of the tremendously difficult place they were in - of the opposition that they had to face all of the time from the Scribes and the Pharisees as they were walking with Jesus each day He was with them, we are left to just marvel.

This was no small matter for them - they endured and suffered much.

Yet, they stayed the course in their belief of Him as the Son of God and in their service unto Him.

Yes - they had a confused view of Christ, knew so little about Him, were filled with thoughts of His setting up an earthly kingdom as Messiah.

Neither did they understand very much about His Mission, nor could they grasp the course of that Mission.
 
What was yet to happen to Him was a fact they just could not seem to catch. 

But - this they did know: they knew He was divine.

They did not look upon Him as a mere man!

They just saw their need of simply following Him, doing as He had ordained and commanded - whether great or small, much or little - and knew their need of being diligent and faithful in service unto Him.

And - remember - this was all before Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension.

They had nothing to go on, so to speak, except what they were receiving from Jesus Himself.

But - in spite of their many defects - there was not a word of any of this when Jesus represented them to His Father this night before His death.

He told all the good He could about them and covered their failings.

He did not degrade them, blame them for their moments of unbelief, for their weaknesses, for their various failures - but, rather honored them for the reality of their faith in Him.

Look at what He went on to say, in John 17:8, ‘For I have given unto them the words which Thou gavest Me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from Thee, and they have believed that Thou didst send Me.’

The meaning seems to be: ‘They have now attained such a degree of knowledge and maturity, that they know that the words they have heard and the works they have seen from Me, have caused them to know that You sent Me to be the Messiah and You commissioned Me to speak and act as I have done.’

Their later history was full of proofs that they knew Christ’s claim to be true, to be valid, a fact that caused them to be faithful in service unto Him.

Look at Peter in John 21:21-22. 

This was directly after our Lord’s charge to Peter in verses 15-18.

‘Peter seeing him [John] said to Jesus, ‘Lord, and what shall this man do?...’, 

Sharply, Jesus told Peter, ‘... if I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou Me.’

Peter was rebuked for that evil that lurked within himself for being so troubled about John’s place of service.

Some time later, we see Peter shut up in prison.

At the very last moment, when hope is almost gone, he was miraculously delivered.

The second time around, however, when he was in prison again, he was not delivered.

But - as we look at his epistle, we notice how well established Peter was by then.

For Peter, no matter what happened to the physical body, it changed nothing of his view of Jesus Christ.

In fact, what happened to him along life’s course only served to strengthen, confirm, and authenticate his stand about Christ more deeply. 

And, his work is continuing to make its mark in the Church today.

Look at 1.Peter 2:6: ‘Wherefore also it is contained in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on Him shall not be confounded.’

And at 1.Pet.1:3-4: ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you.’

And, in 2.Pet.1:19: ‘We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto you do well that you take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts.’

It was Peter who wrote to the brethren in 2.Pet.1:10: ‘...give diligence to make your calling and election sure:...’

I ask you: does his written testimony as he faithfully and confidently worked in the Name of our Lord change anything at all in his belief in the living, resurrected Christ or in his faithful service unto Him?

Look at John, Peter’s good friend, who was thrust into exile, quite a different circumstance from what the Lord had set for Peter’s life.

Yet, he waited it all out patiently with his heart stayed on the Lord’s will for his life.

To Peter, he probably could have been labeled as a shirker of his Christian duty, or an idler.

But, out of John’s experience, there came forth his God-ordained work which has become part of the Scriptures, as well.
Our society is quick to ask us to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of anything we do today.

The good and the bad of our present Christianity conspire to make people think that those who are not ‘at work’ in some external form of Christian service, for the sake of Christ and His people, are necessarily idlers.

There may be many who are idlers and of little or no good to Christ and His heavenly ministry, but certainly, not all who seem like idlers are unoccupied.

There are those called to intercession that may seem like idleness to outsiders.

But, let me remind you, that the work of intercession has no calculus by which it can measure success.

It can only offer a deepening relationship with Christ, a relationship measured only by His calculations.

As in all service, true spiritual service, the God-ordained and the God-initiated ministry of intercession and prayer must be the understructure that is to complete Christ’s work.

For the sake of Jesus Christ, for the sake of His ministry in and to His present Church, for the sake of the establishment of His adorned Church upon the earth, there must be a Spirit-created and Spirit-led foundation first.

And - presently - the Church, in general, is in great, great need for this special moving of the Holy Spirit toward intercession.  

Several weeks ago, we noted some of the obvious signs of deviations plaguing the Church - that of unrighteousness within its very walls and innumerable temptations from without.

You may already be aware of this, but - just in case you are not - I do feel that I must point this out since it seriously will call for the church’s quiet, unobserved, and, mostly, unknown intercession ministry.

There is a battering - which will intensify - of the Church’s very foundation taking place in the current idea that Jesus was simply a mere man and not as One Who existed with the Father and shared the same glory as God the Father.

The current push, by a group of scholars, is trying to establish a ‘Christianity’ without Jesus Christ.

Can you possibly imagine such a thing?

The historic portrait that is being painted by this group states that Jesus (quote) ‘...was not born by immaculate conception, that He did not physically rise from the dead, that He was an ‘incredible man, but not necessarily the Son of God.’ (end of quote)     

This seminar is a ‘twice-a-year conference where scholars debate and discuss faith based on the premise that much of what is written in the New Testament is a metaphorical, not historical, fact.’

One of its speakers stated (and I quote again), ‘...the Biblical version of God as a supernatural being Who can reach down and alter human history is obsolete.’

He referred to the belief that Jesus Christ shedding His blood in a sacrifice for humanity is barbaric.

The newspaper reports go on to say that this group is hoping to push their largely academic program further into the spotlight by taking the historical Jesus directly to the people ... tailoring the message to the everyday needs of Christians ...,’ presenting the ‘portrait of Jesus as man, not Messiah.’

And it will be done by a concerted movement, of ‘on the road tours and programs’, of ‘talking to university students’, of reaching ‘out more with programs aimed at church groups’, of ‘exploring the internet outreach’, and ‘of broadening the movement’’; in general, in order ‘to spread the word’. 

And, quoting further, “One scholar predicted changes are coming so quickly that some of today’s red hot controversies over the historical Jesus will be readily accepted within five to 10 years.”
  
I wonder about Paul, the man who was known as ‘a teacher of the true faith to the Gentiles’ in 1.Tim.2:7, who was a ‘Hebrew of the Hebrews’ (Phil.3:5) as one who was well-versed in the Scriptures and a strict Pharisee, who was born in Tarsus, one of the three main centers of learning (after Athens and Alexandria).

Here was a highly educated believer, a scholar, and what was his main emphasis in his service unto the Lord?.

It was he who ‘preached Christ crucified...Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God.’ (1.Cor.1:23-24). 

And it was Paul who boldly identified himself with Christ in Gal.2:20 by saying: ‘I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, Who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me.’ 

And, who also said, ‘...for I know Whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.’ (2.Tim.1:12)

I wonder how he would fit into the scheme of this current thought.

Our answer, of course to that, is found in his Galatian and Colossian letters.

So, we know that, actually, this is nothing new in Christianity. 

It is only magnified today to tremendous proportions because of our vast technologies.

The point I am making is that, here and now, - taking place within earshot and eyeview, is the ‘subtle’ (and I place subtle in quotes) - ‘subtle’ attempt of the evil one to destroy the credibility of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

And - it is aimed at young, and/or unestablished believers who will be prone to accept these intellectual misconceptions.

I do think that this is to be one of the main courses of deception that is to take place in the very midst of the Church.

The five to ten year prediction of this seminar makes the Church’s ministry all the more urgent.

And, for this reason, our hearts reach out to young believers who are seeing that ‘Christ is cool’.
And, - I hope you will agree with me - that there must be many, many - countless number - of them who have been chosen in the Eternal Counsel and who will have need for the intercession ministry of preservation and establishment, - that continuation of Christ’s heart’s desire. 

For, the deceptions of what is truly born of God and of His Holy Spirit continues to be confused with that which is not of Him and is causing so many who call themselves Christians to be deceived and deluded.

You have also heard, no doubt, about the tens of thousands of people who are traveling from all over the world to view and experience situations of oil drippings, of weepings, of bleeding from painting such as the Last Supper, of bleeding communion wafers, of statutes moving about by themselves, and of so many other claims that go along with various episodes.

And - perhaps a reminder is here needful.     

Just remember that the Scripture tells us of these signs and wonders in the last days in 2.Thessalonians 2:9. 

‘Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders,...’. 

And Rev.13:13-14: ‘And he does great wonders, so that he makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men, and deceives them that dwell on the earth, by the means of those miracles which he had power to do...’.   

And, with all that is taking place in the technological arena today, it would not be one bit surprising to learn that some of these ‘lying wonders’ are done through modern technologies, out from minds that are evil and are ‘playing God’.

But - whether it be deception, delusion, trickery, or the negation of the truth of Jesus Christ - in any event - the Church is on the alert.

With its work of intercession, Christ is placing it on the front line of battle against these forces in order to keep the Church on its course straight toward its righteous adornment of ‘the Church coming down from God out of heaven’, as we saw last week.

Paul had a message for Timothy to pass on to the Church in 1.Tim.2 that started in verse one with, ‘I urge, ...that       requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone ...’.

And, then, in verse 8, he continued to express his heart in saying, ‘I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer...’.

‘Lift up holy hands in prayer’, ‘holy hands in prayer’, hands that show that earnest desire that is devout, pure, consecrated, that desire to please God.

‘Nevertheless, when the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on earth?’, Jesus asked one day.   

The Church answers that question in its faithful ministry of prayer.

What a calling to His service we have in our present age!

We shall continue next week, Lord willing!