INTERCESSORY PRAYER

John 17:24 KJV 1900

24 Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.

IN His parting address, Jesus gives His disciples the full revelation of what the New Life was to be, when once the kingdom of God had come in power. In the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, in union with Him the heavenly Vine, in their going forth to witness and to suffer for Him, they were to find their calling and their blessedness. In between His setting forth of their future new life, the Lord had repeatedly given the most unlimited promises regarding their prayers’ power.

And now in closing, He proceeds to pray.

To let His disciples have the joy of knowing what His intercession for them in heaven as their High Priest will be, He gives this precious legacy of His prayer to the Father.

He does this at the same time because they, as priests, are to share in His work of intercession, that they and we might know how to perform this holy work. In the teaching of our Lord on this last night, we have learned to understand that these astonishing prayer promises have not been given in our own behalf. Still, in the interest of the Lord and His kingdom: it is from the Lord Himself alone that we can learn what the prayer in His Name is to be and to obtain. We have understood that to pray in His Name is to pray in perfect unity with Himself: the high-priestly prayer will teach all that the prayer in the Name of Jesus may ask and expect.

This prayer is ordinarily divided into three parts.

Our Lord first prays for Himself (v. 1-5),

then for His disciples (6-19),

and last for all the believing people through all ages (20-26).

The follower of Jesus, who gives himself to the work of intercession and would fain try how much of blessing he can pray down upon his circle in the Name of Jesus, will in all humility let himself be led of the Spirit to study this wonderful prayer as one of the most important lessons of the school of prayer.

First of all, Jesus prays for Himself,

for His being glorified so that He may glorify the Father! Glorify Thy Son. And now, Father, glorify me! And He brings forward the grounds on which He thus prays. A holy covenant had been concluded between the Father and the Son in heaven. The Father had promised Him power over all flesh as the reward of His work:

He had done the work and glorified the Father, and His one purpose is still further to worship Him. With the utmost boldness He asks that the Father may glorify Him, that He may now be and do for His people all He has undertaken.

Disciple of Jesus! here you have the first lesson in your work of priestly intercession, to be learned from the example of your great High Priest. To pray in the Name of Jesus is to pray in unity, in sympathy with Him. As the Son began His prayer by making clear His relation to the Father, pleading His work and obedience and His desire to see the Father glorified, do so too.

Draw near and appear before the Father in Christ. Plead His finished work. Say that you are one with it, trust it, live in it. Say that you too have given yourself to finish the work the Father has given you to do, and to live alone for His glory, And ask then confidently that the Son may be glorified in you; this is praying in the Name, in the very words, in the Spirit of Jesus, in union with Jesus Himself. Such prayer has power. If with Jesus you glorify the Father, the Father will glorify Jesus by doing what you ask in His Name, It is only when your relation on this point, like Christ's, is evident with God, When you are glorifying Him, and seeking all for His glory, that like Christ, you will have power to intercede for those around you,

Our Lord next prays for the circle of His disciples.

He speaks of them as those whom the Father has given Him. Their chief mack is that they have received Christ's word. He says He now sends them into the world in His place, just as the Father had sent Himself. And He asks two things for them: that the Father keep them from the evil one, and sanctify them through His Word, because He sanctifies Himself for them.

Like the Lord, each believing intercessor has his own immediate circle for whom he first prays. Parents have their children, teachers their pupils, pastors their flocks, all workers their special charge, and believers whose care lies upon their hearts. It is of great consequence that intercession should be personal, pointed, and definite. And then our first prayer must always be that they may receive the word. But this prayer will not avail unless with our Lord we say, I have given them Thy word: it is this gives us liberty and power in intercession for souls. Not only pray for them, but speak to them. And when they have received the word, let us pray much for their being kept from the evil one, for their being sanctified through that word. Instead of being hopeless or judging or giving up those who fall, let us pray for our circle, Father! Keep them in Thy Name; Sanctify them through Thy truth! Prayer in the Name of Jesus availeth much: What ye will shall be done unto you!'

And All Who Will Believe

And then follows our Lord's prayer for a still wider circle. I pray not only for these, but for them who through their word shall believe' His priestly heart enlarges itself to embrace all places and all time. He prays that all who belong to Him may everywhere be one, as God's proof to the world of the divinity of His mission, and then that they may ever be with Him in His glory. Until then, the love wherewith Thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.'

The disciple of Jesus, who has first in his own circle proved the power of prayer, cannot confine himself within its limits: he prays for the Church universal and its different branches. He prays specially for the unity of the Spirit and of love. He prays for its being one in Christ, as a witness to the world that Christ, who hath wrought such a wonder as to make love triumph over selfishness and separation, is indeed the Son of God sent from heaven. Every believer should pray that the unity of the Church, not in external organizations but in spirit and truth, may manifest.

So much for the matter of the prayer and the Father promise to him, act is finished work, He might do so.

Ask of me, and I will give Thee?

He simply availed Himself of the Father's promise; Jesus has given us a like promise: Whatsoever ye will be done unto you! He called me in His Name to say what I will.

Abiding in Him, in a living union with Him in which man is nothing and Christ all, the believer has the liberty to take up that word of His High Priest and, in answer to the question What wile thou? to any, FATHER I WILL all that Thou HAST promised! This is nothing but true faith, which is honoring God to be assured that such confidence in saying what I will be acceptable to Him. At first sight, our hear shrinks from the expression; we feel neither the liberty nor the power to speak thus, It is a word for which alone in the entire abnegation of our will grace will be given, but for which grace will most assuredly be given to each one who loses his will in his Lord's. He that loseth his will shall find is he that gives up his will entirely shall find it again renewed and strengthened with a Divine Strength. FATHER! I WILI.' this is the keynote of the everlasting, ever-active, all-prevailing intercession of our Lord in heaven. It is only in union with Him that our prayer avail; in union with HIM it avails much.

If we but abide in Him, living, and walking, and doing all things in His Names, if we but come and bring each separate petition, tested and touched by His Word and Spirit, and cast it into the mighty stream of intercession that goes up from HIM, to be borne upward and presented before the Father; -we shall have the full confidence that we receive the petitions we ask the Father! Will' will be breathed into us by the Spirit Himself. We shall lose ourselves in Him, and become nothing, to find that in our impotence we have power and prevail.

Disciples of Jesus! Called to be like your Lord in His priestly intercession, when, O when! Shall we awaken to the glory, passing all conception, of this our destiny to plead and prevail with God for perishing men? O when shall we shake off the sloth that clothes itself with the pretense of humility, and yield ourselves wholly to God's Spirit, that He may fill our wills with light and with power, to know, and to take, and to possess all that our God is waiting to give to a will that lays hold on Him.

Mark 14:26 KJV 1900

26 And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the mount of Olives.

Mark 14:36 KJV 1900

36 And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.

What a contrast within the space of a few hours! What a transition from that quiet elevation.

He lifted His eyes to heaven and said, FATHER, I WILL, to that falling on the ground and crying in agony. My Father! Not what I will.’

In the one, we see the High Priest within the veil in His all-prevailing intercession; in the other, the sacrifice on the altar opens the way through the rent veil. The high-priestly Father! I will, in order of time, precede the sacrificial Father! Not what I will, but this was only by anticipation to show what the intercession would be once the sacrifice was brought. In reality, it was that prayer at the altar, “Father! Not what I will," in which the prayer before the throne, Father! I will,' had its origin and its power. It is from the entire surrender of His will in Gethsemane that the High Priest on the throne has the power to ask what He will and has the right to make His people share in that power too and ask what they will.

For all who would learn to pray in the school of Jesus, this Gethsemane lesson is one of the most sacred and precious. It may take away the courage to pray in faith to a superficial scholar. If even the earnest supplication of the Son was not heard, if even the Beloved had to say, NOT WHAT I WILL!' how much more do we need to speak so? Thus, it appears impossible that the promises the Lord had given only a few hours previously, WHATSOEVER YE SHALL ASK, WHATSOEVER YE WILL, could have been meant literally.

A deeper insight into the meaning of Gethsemane would teach us that we have to hear the sure ground and the open way to the assurance of an answer to our prayer.

Let us draw nigh in reverent and adoring wonder, to gaze on this great sight - God’s Son, thus offering up prayer and supplications with strong crying and tears and not obtaining what He asks.

He is our Teacher and will open up to us the mystery of His holy sacrifice, as revealed in this wondrous prayer.

To understand the prayer, let us note the infinite difference between what our Lord prayed a little ago as a Royal High Priest and what He supplicates in His weakness. There it was for the glorifying of the Father He prayed and the glorifying of Himself and His people as the fulfillment of distinct promises that had been given Him. He asked what He knew to be according to the word and the will of the Father;

He might boldly say, FATHER! I will. Here, He prays for something regarding which the Father's will is not yet clear to Him. As far as He knows, it is the Father's will that He should drink the cup. He had told His disciples of the cup He must drink: a little later, He would again say, The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?' It was for this that He had come to this earth.

But when, in the unutterable agony of soul that burst upon him as the power of darkness came upon Him, and He began to taste the first drops of death as the wrath of God against sin, His human nature, as it shuddered in presence of the awful reality of being made a curse, gave utterance in this cry of anguish, to its desire that, if God's purpose could be accomplished without it, He might be spared the awful cup: Let this cup pass from me! That desire was the evidence of the intense reality of His humanity. The Not as I will' kept that desire from being sinful: as He pleadingly cries, All things are possible with Thee,' and returns to still more earnest prayer that the cup may be removed, it is His thrice-repeated ‘NOT WHAT I WIII' that constitutes the very essence and worth of His sacrifice.

He had asked for something He could not say: I know it is Thy will. He had pleaded God's power and love and had then withdrawn it in His final, THY WILL BE DONE! The prayer that the cup should pass away could not be answered; the prayer of submission that God's will be done was heard and gloriously answered in His victory, first over the fear and then over the power of death.

In this denial of His will, this complete surrender of His will to the will of the Father, Christ's obedience reached its highest perfection. The sacrifice of the will in Gethsemane derives its value from the sacrifice of the life on Calvary.

As Scripture saith, it is here that He learned obedience and became the author of everlasting salvation to all that obey Him. It was because He there, in that prayer, became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, that God highly exalted Him and gave Him the power to ask what He will.

It was in that Father! Not what I will, that He obtained the power for that other FATHER! I will' It was by Christ's submittal in Gethsemane to have not His will done, that He secured for His people the right to say to them, ‘Ask whatsoever ye will’.

Let me look at them again, the deep mysteries that Gethsemane offers to my view.

There is the first: the Father provides His Well-beloved the cup, the cup of wrath.

The second: the Son, always so obedient, shrinks back and implores that He may not have to drink it.

The third is that the Father does not grant the Son His request but still gives the cup.

And then the last is that the Son yields His will, is content that His will be not done, and goes out to Calvary to drink the cup.

O Gethsemane in thee, I see how my Lord could give me such unlimited assurance of an answer to my prayers. As my surety, He won it for me, with His consent, to have His petition unanswered.

This is in harmony with the whole scheme of redemption.

Our Lord always wins for us, the opposite of what He suffered.

He was bound so that we might go free.

He was made sin so that we might become God’s righteousness.

He died so that we might live.

He bore God’s curse so that God’s blessing might be ours.

He endured the not answering of His prayer so that our prayers might find an answer.

Yea, He spake, Not as I will; that He might say to us, If ye abide in me, ask what ye will; it shall be done unto you.

The Eternal Spirit, through which He offered Himself unto God, is the Spirit that dwells in me too and makes me partaker of the very same obedience and the sacrifice of the will unto God. That Spirit teaches me to yield my will entirely to the will of the Father, to give it up even unto the death, in Christ to be dead to it.

Whatever my mind, thoughts, and will, even though they are not directly sinful, He teaches me to fear and flee.

He opens my ear to wait in great gentleness and teachableness of soul for what the Father has day by day to speak and to teach.

He teaches me how union with God's will in the love of it is union with God Himself, how entire surrender to God's will is the Father's claim, the Son's example, and the true blessedness of the soul.

He leads my will into the fellowship of Christ's death and resurrection; my will dies in Him to be made alive again.

He breathes into it as a renewed and quickened will, a holy insight into God's perfect will, a holy joy in yielding itself to be an instrument of that will, a sacred liberty and power to lay hold of God's will to answer prayer.

With my whole will, I learn to live for the interests of God and His kingdom, to exercise the power of that will-crucified but risen again- in nature and in prayer, on earth and in heaven, with men and God. The more deeply I enter into the FATHERI NOT WHAT I WILL' of Gethsemane, and into Him who spake it, to abide in Him, the fuller is my spiritual access into the power of His FATHER WILL. And the soul experiences that it is the will, which has become nothing that God's will may be all, which now becomes inspired with a Divine strength to really will what God wills and to claim what has been promised it in the name of Christ.

O let us listen to Christ in Gethsemane, as He calls, If ye abide in me, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you!' Being of one mind and spirit with Him in His, giving up everything to God's will, living like Him in obedience, and surrendering to the Father are abiding in Him and the secret of power in prayer.