“Samuel: Intercession” (continued) - part 2

We saw last week that Samuel, as a child, was wondrously led by the Lord in such a way that he was in fellowship  and in communion with the Lord early in his young life.

The word of the Lord was the root and life of what he preached and uttered in prayer as he gave himself to keep that word, and to receive its fulfillment - not letting ‘...the Word fall to the ground’. (3:19)

And this is what the Lord desired for him to communicate to the people - the worth of Jehovah’s divine Word, a Word of might, a Word of divine power.

But, as we have seen over and over again, preaching alone did not make the difference.

It was prayer that was needed to go along with the need to prepare their hearts unto the Lord.

He understood the nation’s need to keep in constant communion with the Lord for His guidance in carrying out His plan for them.

It was when Samuel ‘judged Israel all his days’, laboring to keep alive and fresh before them the covenant law and its promises, that he returned to his home in Ramah and
‘...there built an altar to the Lord’. (7:15-17)

Ramah was his hometown where he sought to maintain a foundation for the endangered covenant bond by building the altar there where he, his family, and any others could gather for worship, prayer, and praise unto the Lord.

It was the place where God was acknowledged before his own family, a place that delineated his house and his hometown from all the surrounding worldly and idolatrous places. 

We are looking here at a man who was a ‘man of God’ through and through:  it was a secret to no one that he was a praying priest, a praying judge, a praying teacher, a praying preacher, and a praying family man, as well.

He was a man ‘on the alert’ for all the people of God.

And, this ongoing need of such ‘men of God, people of God’, has not changed, - even for today.

For the Church’s effectual ministry, this is where it all must begin - in a man’s heart, and then, in his home, where its effect is conspicious to his wife and family, first.

The Bible throughout - both in the Old Testament and the New - lays emphasis upon the right heart as essential to prayer - that open, blessed communion, fellowship, and relationship with God.

‘Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, or who shall stand in His Holy Place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart.’ 

And, Paul - as he pleads for unceasing universal prayer - adds the admonition regarding the spiritual condition of a man’s heart by saying, “I desire that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands, without anger or quarreling.’ 

Sowing such a seed of destruction naturally reaps the plant of ineffectiveness - in prayer.

He who ‘lifts holy hands’ abides in Christ, where effective, effectual intercessory prayer starts.

How fortunate Israel was to have a man in its midst who knew how to pray prayers that released upon the nation God’s power and intervention - to have a leader whose heart blended so with the living God that God gave him His own listening, consenting heart.

His was a truly ordained ministry - a judge, a priest, a prophet, an intercessor who ably gave the people God’s word in the light of their spiritual lack to unite them in worship.

The most effective thing the Lord’s people can do, which is what Samuel tried to impress upon the people, is to lift hearts together in prayer, in praise, in adoration to the Lord and delight together in Him.

We grow to new heights when we are refreshed as one in Christ and are so enriched through such fellowship with Him that we find ourselves equipped to go onward with Him and with each other.

It is then that our corresponding experiences bear witness that the Lord does new things through those of His who, in fellowship together, worship Him in the ministry of prayer.

Such was Samuel’s resolution: to reach the people of God, to uproot them from their wandering, wayward ways, to put away foreign gods, and to serve the Lord only.

‘Direct your heart to the Lord, and serve Him only,’ was his earnest plea to them in 7:3.

Oh - how he prayed for them. His heart must have often been torn in two as he so faithfully stood before the Lord on their behalf.

It was his praying influence that consummated a crisis in the history of the nation one day.

There came that time when Samuel was called upon to deal with their insisting on having an earthly king.

Gideon faced the same problem of the people wanting a similar choice in Judges 8:23.

When he was asked to become king after his victory over Midian, he refused, saying, ‘I will not rule over you, my sons will not rule over you; the Lord will rule over you.’

Serving a king was equated to serving other gods.

Back in 1 Sam 8:7-8, God interpreted their request for a king as being the same as Israel’s rebellion in idolatry.

The covenant relationship was to be understood as a special relationship with Jehovah Who had been made known to them through Moses’ leadership among them.

The understanding of God in this special relationship is what made them different from the world.

How could the uniqueness of their faith and the relationship to their God be sustained if the life of the nation became patterned more like the surrounding nations?

How could Israel have an earthly king without undermining the sovereignty and might of Jehovah?

But - insist they did!

Samuel disliked the idea, so he prayed unto the Lord. 

‘And the Lord said to Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee: they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them.’ 

What an insult to the Almighty God their choice was!

Even though Samuel tried to explain what was ahead of them under the rule of an earthly king, there was no way to convince them of their wrong doing so he carried out the Lord’s charge to give them a king.

They were bent on it: ‘...Nay, but we will have a king over us;...that we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.’

After hearing all the words of the people, Samuel once again went to the Lord and ‘rehearsed’ all their words ‘in the ears of the Lord.’

He ‘rehearsed’ all their words ‘in the ears of the Lord.’ 

Jehovah consented to the establishment of the kingship, but they were to know that He would still operate in men’s affairs and the affairs of their government. 

Could we think for one moment that the Lord would no longer direct the course of events now in His salvation purposes just as He deemed necessary?

Of course not! His ultimate purpose was not going to be held back.

He made this known when He chose David as the ‘man after his own heart’ to be king over them, later in chapter 13 verse four.

He will go on - move forward in His own purpose!

And - He will have His ‘Samuels’ as He did here, to whom He gave the authority to stand in intercessory prayer for the people, to release to the nation His divine providence over them, in spite of their sin against Him.

At a later time, to prove to them God’s continuing sovereignty, Samuel did something quite strange, something probably not too popular with the wheat farmers, when he said, ‘...Is this not wheat harvest today? I will call to the Lord and He will send rain and thunder...’. 

This was not a good time for rain - in fact, it was rare to have rain at this time of the year, during the harvest.

But this was the best time for the Lord to show them His Mind: ‘I will call unto the Lord and He shall send thunder and rain, that you may perceive and see that your wickedness is great, which you have done in the sight of the Lord, in asking you a king’, Samuel told them.

James 5:16 of ‘...The effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much’, comes to mind here.

So does ‘Whatsoever we ask, we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in His sight’, found in 1 John 3:22.  

God did exactly as Samuel prayed - thunderings, as you may well know, were considered as harbingers of divine judgment. God’s decisive answer verified the power that backed up Samuel’s intercessory prayer and established for them, the authority that God had given to Samuel. 

The new king had been ushered in by this time, but, he would not endure, for ‘not by might would he prevail.’

However, God would!  He would reign, and - He would be the true shaping form of their history.

There are other instances recorded of Samuel’s successful prayer ministry which you may want to read for yourself but do notice that he faithfully carried every case of theirs to God’s throne in intercessory prayer.

How the Lord would answer, what He would answer, why He would answer as He did was, of course, beyond Samuel’s control and beyond his understanding many times.

All prayer reaches up into the realm where human understanding fails.

Samuel, no doubt, felt an inadequacy often as he prayed for his countrymen.

But - three things are clear about his prayer ministry: first, his prayer had a far larger scope than any self-centered concerns of his own that may or could have plagued him.

His concern was for the Lord’s people, that they would really be the Lord’s people, - in heart, in mind, in devotion, and in love for Him.

And, second, his prayers were not complete without the element of intercession in which he gathered the people together to show them that they belonged to God alone - that false gods and deities were not acceptable before Him, those vain things that could not profit nor deliver.

And, then, third, - and this is probably the most important of the three as far as intercession goes, - his prayer ministry meant everything to him, for he said in 12:23: ‘Moreover, as for me, God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you...’.

‘God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in not praying for you!’

Is this, not a glorious example that Samuel set to all prayer ministry?

He was not going to be led astray nor off the straight path by their spiritual ineptitude to see what they really had in their Sovereign God.

He was not going to give up on account of their disinterest and inordinate attention upon other things, of their insistence on their own ways, of their obvious stubbornness and disobedience, - but, he promised to persevere all the more for them.

‘God forbid that I should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you.’ ‘far be it from me to go against the Lord and sin in this way!’

To Samuel, not standing before the Lord on their behalf was just as much sin unto the Lord, as their sin was sin unto the Lord.

Paul, in Col 1:9-10, added the reason for not ceasing to pray for fellow believers: ‘...we...do not cease to pray for you...that you might be filled with the full knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work (and this includes prayer), and increasing in the full knowledge of God.’

‘...we do not cease to pray for you...’

This was an important matter, a ministry that was not to be neglected or thought of as unimportant - it encompasses so much - so very, very much!

I wonder if the Church is able to see that intercession is the Church’s supreme activity in the living Body of Christ, that it is the very fabric of the lively hope in Christ.

If one were to make inquiries of the inner machinery that makes any group of the Lord’s people operate, one would probably be given the ins and outs of its operating structure, perhaps starting with the pastor and going on to others and the various programs that run it.

I dare say that very seldom for such an inquiry would one’s attention be drawn to the actual ‘life-blood’ of the Church.

Very seldom would one be introduced to the small, faithful, largely-unknown few who are constantly on the knees of their hearts before the Lord, praying, interceding, for that which is to be spiritually revealed.

This is really the ‘life-blood’ of the Church - that which makes the Church operate as the Church.

There is where the action of the Spirit in and through these souls is - in that self-laid-down group that is concerned only with the Lord’s purpose in all of this life, concerned with the needs and sufferings of others, with the urgencies of God’s intervention for salvation of those who are without Christ, with the building up of the saints, with the furthering of God’s Kingdom.

I repeat - this is where the power lies: it is where Christ’s victory is released to those standing in need - this is where the Church moves forward, first.

Samuel was a wise man to stand in the gap with prayer and intercession - to build an altar where the access to God was so readily available to those nearby and in his own family.

There would be no going on without coming to a place of change - a place of delight and joy in the living God Who had already done so much for them - and that could not come except through Samuel’s continuing effective ministry of prayer.

He could produce nothing of his own - he had nothing to produce.

We, the Church, cannot convince of sin, cannot convict of sin, cannot deliver from sin, cannot block the advances of the enemy nor break his hold any more than Samuel could do these things.

As godly a man as he was, even his sons proved that to him. They were never convinced of anything that he may have told them.

I would venture to say that he often ‘rehearsed their words in the ears of the Lord’. It could well be, knowing something of the Lord’s ways, that they were probably the ones who gave him plenty of practice for his prayer ministry to Israel!

He wrestled - not against flesh and blood - but against the powers that held them in its grip. 

He was left with nothing to do but pray - to exercise that God-given authority of an intercessory ministry on their behalf! 

We, too, have been given the authority to pray, to intercede and put into motion those influences that can, and do, release upon the earth the power and victory of Jesus Christ Who is the One Who can and does do those things.

His redeeming power that stoops to understand and save is the only kind of power that has nourished and transformed persons from the beginning of time.

His redeeming life, as the ultimate basis of hope, is the only constant influence that the Church is able to set into motion by intercessory prayer.

This is one ministry that we dare not neglect, even though it has that homely ‘beauty of the same old sameness’ stigma that we have given it - seems so unimportant at times.

Yet - this is exactly the one ministry the Lord desires to be maintained in His Church today.

When the Church is deeply moved toward this ministry for the Lord’s purpose to move forward, it will remember that ‘the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.’

It will remember that ‘we wrestle not against flesh and blood’, that our weapons are not carnal, as the Holy Spirit works mightily in searching the hearts as He knows the mind of God and prays accordingly.

It will remember that ‘whatsoever we ask, we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.’

When the Church remembers these things, its heart will be as Samuel’s heart, a heart that stands firm in the resolve that says: ‘God forbid that we should sin against the Lord in ceasing to pray for you.’ Amen!

I urge each of us to ponder these things before the Lord this week in the ‘Secret Place of our hearts’.  

Enjoy its healing balm - drink in deeply His perfect way. 

When each opportunity comes along in the course of each day, ‘...Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving.’ (Col 4:2)

May the Lord give you a week of blessed communion with and in Him! 

And, now, ‘...unto Him that is able to do exceeding 
          abundantly above all our highest prayers and
          thoughts through His power which is at work
          in us, unto Him be glory in the Church by 
          Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world 
          without end.’ (Eph 3:19-20)

                                      AMEN!