“Prayer and Intercession”

‘Godward-ness’! - Hezekiah, as we saw last week, was concerned with ‘Godward-ness’, the heart inclined toward the living God - a heart he showed when he sent the invitation to all the people to ‘yield to the Lord’ and come to His sanctuary - to the house now set in order - and - a heart he showed when he interceded for them.

Tonight - let us go over to the New Testament and relate this to a parable the Lord Jesus gave in Luke. 

Turn to Luke 18:11-12, if you would like to read along.

Luke 18:11-12: ‘The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. 
I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I possess...’.

And we go down to v 13: ‘And the publican standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.’

You know this story well, I am sure, but I quote only a section since it illustrates the matter of ‘Godward-ness’ that we saw last week.

Here are two different hearts coming to God in prayer: the Pharisee whose heart is described in v 9 as certain ones who ‘trusted in themselves that they were righteous’.

And of the publican’s prayer, people who were considered gross sinners in the eyes of these ‘righteous’.

The Pharisee followed the usual customs of his particular sect. 

Everything they did was designed to maintain a certain piety - just as all the Old Testament ceremonies were designed to do.

It was designed to stand in contrast to the pagan religions encroaching upon them.

And - he was doing right and doing good in following these customs. 

We cannot fault him for that.

The one matter that I want to glean from this for our deliberation tonight concerns the way he was going about his praying. 

Did you notice the phrase ‘with himself’ - he ‘stood and prayed thus with himself...’, in v 11.

He supposedly was addressing God, for he started with 
‘God, I thank thee, that I am not like other men...’.

Here - then - is a prayer (and I use that word loosely) being spoken that is far from an actual prayer reaching the heart of God - or a prayer in accordance with 
God’s mind.
 
Do you think for one moment that he was thinking about what he was doing or saying?

Jeremiah wrote: ‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? I the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind.’ (Jer 17:9-10)

Do you - for one moment - think that he even thought about the Lord looking at his heart as he stood before the Lord?

Could we say he was forgetting about the One he was addressing? 

Yes - he was praying to and by his own human nature.

This was not true prayer - we can all agree, I am sure.

But - is this not how we often pray ourselves?

Is this not the same as praying in order to impress others within listening distance about ourselves?

Is it not, sometimes, just to have an effect on those nearby us rather than approaching God with reverence and godly fear?

Nothing is quite so false and misleading as to think of sin in terms of actions, or lack of certain actions, alone. 

As long as we think of sin only in those terms, we are missing it.

The essence of the Biblical teaching of sin is that it is a disposition of the heart - a state of the heart - a state that rebels against God naturally - and, most of the time, without realizing it.

We can sum it up by defining it as self-worship, self-glorification - the approving of ourselves as worthy to 
be heard of God - worshipping ourselves. 

Listen - do not think that we are beyond being just like this Pharisee.

Stop to question yourself.

When we are praying, do we not find ourselves just talking words, while our minds are far from the Lord? 

Where is the ‘Godward-ness’ here that we saw in Hezekiah’s intercession for the people?

I have always felt, and probably more now than ever before, that prayer and intercssion is the most important ministry any person can aspire to.

When we are before God’s throne on behalf of others, we are giving our hearts to God’s continuous outreach to others.

We are being employed by Christ in His ministry of intercession.

But - do not be fooled - it is no easy place to be!  

It is in that very place that we find ourselves realizing how much of a grip self has, how it always wants to intrude, how we keep wanting to congratulate ourselves rather than concentrate on what we are doing. 

Now - let me suggest that this really, actually is the true picture of sin.  

This is when we get a genuine, eye-opening understanding of sin - when we find ourselves before the Lord God Almighty and we are thinking about ‘us’.

Is that not sheer audacity?

While we are standing in God’s very presence in prayer and intercession, we are not even thinking about Him, acknowledging Him?

How can that be?

This is the supreme incident that must make us see how much we need the power of the salvation of Christ, how much we need the new nature He has given, of seeing the absolute necessity of being born from above, born of the Spirit, in order to carry out ‘His mission of intercession’ - and I deliberately emphasize ‘His mission of intercession’.

If we have not been gripped with the ugliness of sin to its core before, we certainly ought to be when we move into the seriousness of prayer.

If the truth were known, do you suppose the Lord could be saying of us, ‘Here is a Pharisee standing and praying thus with himself...’?

Listen - if my interest is in myself when I am praying, I am in no better place than this Pharisee.

This is why I say that intercession is not a small thing - it is a hard calling where the temptation of sin always seeks to run interference, for there is a battle in the heavenlies taking place because of this work of intercession, you know.

The controlling principle is that the whole being of my praying should be intent upon the Lord, centered on Him alone, and I am to be oblivious to all other things.

Yes - intercession is to follow the pattern Hezekiah set - true, living, vital prayer - prayer prayed in ‘Godward-ness’.

Let me ask you - what is prayer really?

Simply put, is it not communication and fellowship with the Most High God?

Is it not to connect every thought of ours with the thought of God - ‘Godward-ness’, to submit every thought to Him, to look on everything as His work and by His appointment?

When we look on it this way, we find no need to concentrate on the form or the amount or time spent in prayer.

We just enter eternity - into the Lord’s presence - that is all!

And everything else fades out of the picture.

One dear, old preacher once said, and I agree with him:
‘Public prayer should be such that the people who are praying silently and the one who is uttering the words should be no longer conscious of each other, but should be carried on the wings of that prayer into the very presence of God.’

This is what the Lord Jesus meant when He gave the instruction about prayer in Mt 6:6-8: ‘Thou, when thou prayest, go into thy closet, and when thou prayest, shut the door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly...’.

The one thing that is important is that we always remember what we are doing - realize we have come into the Lord’s very presence.

And when we are, everything else is to be excluded - we enter into our ‘closets’: shut out ourselves, shut out the temptation to impress others, shut out everything - nothing and no one is to compete with the living God.

We can enter the ‘closet’ when we are in a crowd, fellowshipping with others, or when we are busy at work, or while driving the children to their soccer games - anywhere, anytime, any place - it is not limited to a place nor a time.

In fact, do you ever find yourself, when you are greeting one of your brethren, communing with the Lord, praying for that person even in the midst of a conversation with Him?

How I love to hug your little ones, and - as they are in my arms - just let my heart reach to the Lord in prayer for each one.

That is as it ought to be: praying one for another, ‘considering one another unto love and to good works.’ 
(Heb 10:24)

That is the ‘closet’ we enter when we are in communion with the Lord and no one else even knows or suspects, not even the one with whom we are talking.

When we stop to think about some of these things, it just seems so hopeless that we should ever be able to attain such a spiritual standard in prayer - does it not?

And - to make matters worse, we do not always know what to pray for - we are at a loss more often than not.

But - I bring you good news - news that Hezekiah and his people did not yet know about.

And this is the encouraging part for us who are born from above, born of His Spirit - here is the good news.

Thank God - I say with all my heart - thank God, thank God - He has given us Jesus Christ and the work of His Holy Spirit.

Thank God - He has already set His house in order. 

It is set in order by His ‘...Spirit who helps our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because He maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.’
(Rom 8:26-27)

And Heb 9:24: ‘For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us:...’.

It is He Who is ‘able also to save them to the uttermost that come to Him, seeing He ever liveth to make intercession for them. For such an High Priest became us, Who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens;...’. (Heb 7:25-26)

He covers us now as we are praying and interceding - is that not good news?

Oh, yes, it is! - For it is on that ground, we can follow the instructions Hezekiah gave - ‘yield to the Lord’ - ‘yield to Christ’. 

Yield that temptation to sin to Jesus Christ - walk away from it - let His cleansing blood cover temptations and cover us with His grace to cooperate with Him.

And come - come - for His house has been set in order - it is hallowed forever.

We stand clean before God because Jesus Christ is covering us with His cleansing blood!

‘He lives to make intercession for those who come to Him.’

We stand, by faith, on that ground - that is the ground that settles the battle going on in the heavenlies.

Now we have ‘...boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh; and having an High Priest over the House of God; let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.’ (Heb 10:19-22)

When we realize we are in the very presence of God, into an audience with Him before His throne, before that God, the Almighty, the Absolute, the Eternal, the great God with all His power and His might and His majesty, that God Who is a consuming fire, that God Who is Light and in Whom is no darkness at all, that Absolute, Utter, Holy God - when we realize Who He is, what He is, and our relationship to Him because of Christ - that is when we can have communication and fellowship.

Then, by His grace and mercy, we find ourselves excluding all else and standing before His awesome presence in prayer.

Now - this ought to be an encouragement to us all.

And it ought to make us see how Jesus Christ, and His present ministry through the Holy Spirit is so priceless - and so needful to us all.

What is it that the publican prayed: ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner.’

I think we have often sung the song - ‘I am Thine, 
O Lord.’  (by Fanny Crosby)

There are two verses in it that sum up the cry of this publican’s heart, a prayer of humble ‘Gordward-ness’ - let me just read them to you:

(1) Consecrate me now, to Thy service, Lord -
   By the power of grace divine;
   Let my soul look up with a steadfast hope
   And my will be lost in Thine.

(2) O the pure delight of a single hour
   That before Thy throne I spend,
   When I kneel in prayer, and with Thee, my God
   I commune as Friend with Friend.

Wholly lost in Christ - communing as ‘friend with friend’ - yielding to His interceding priestly work going on in us. 

I ask you - I ask you with my whole heart - how are our hearts responding to this tonight? - what are our hearts saying to all of this? - are they reaching forward to the message of Christ - to the message of His interceding ministry within as we are drawn into His interceding work through us for others?

My earnest prayer continues to be that the Lord will prepare our hearts more and more to engage in such consecrated ministry of intercession that God the Most High is well pleased - and is well served.

I close with this benediction tonight: ‘Now the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus Christ, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect to do His will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ; to Whom be glory for ever and ever.’ 

                              AMEN!