For Mar 15

Sermon Notes: Jesus, Our Intercessor

Intro: On our journey of Lent, we’ve been preparing ourselves for Easter. It seems strange to say we’re preparing ourselves since we rely on the power of the Holy Spirit to prepare our souls. So perhaps it would be better to say we respond to the Holy Spirit’s nudging to acknowledge, or confess, our sins, and repent. Then, with that burden lifted from our souls, we’re in a better state to allow the Holy Spirit to help us fully appreciate  the joy of Easter. While Easter is the celebration of His rising from the dead following His Crucifixion, it’s the climax of all He did leading up to that miraculous event. It’s what we’ve been considering during our Lenten journey to Easter.

​

I. Our Continuing Journey

 A. On our journey so far, we’ve seen Jesus previewed as the Passover Lamb of God,  helping us understand Him actually being the Perfect Lamb of God as the Perfect Sacrifice for our sin, enabling us to be forgiven of our sins. He was sinless and Perfect in the eyes of His Father, who had sent Him to this world out of His great Love for His ‘lost in sin’ creation, to redeem it, which we defined as regaining possession of it in exchange for the payment of His blood. Jesus, as the Son, was one with the Father in His divine Nature, and therefore also loved their human creation. But, He had to leave His divine Nature to become human.

B. We saw His deep compassion as Healer of our physical bodies that would let Him to further heal the soul, His ultimate focus. The body would die, but the soul He truly healed of sin would have eternal life with Him. Last week, we additionally looked at lives that have been broken that He puts back together to meet His purposes.  

C. This morning we’re going to look at yet another of Jesus’ special means of grace, as our Intercessor, the One who intercedes for us before the Father. In the Catholic faith, a priest can be an intercessor. Hearing one’s confession, He can intercede for them, asking Jesus for forgiveness, even suggesting a remedy of penance. Prayers to particular saints, or Mother Mary, ask for special intercession before Jesus. In the Protestant faith, we rely solely on Jesus as our intercessor to the Father. Having redeemed us by His sinless life, He becomes our righteousness, enabling the Father to see us through His righteousness.

D. When I first got my license, I would ask Dad to borrow the car for a date. Back then, we only had THE family car, which Dad depended on to get to work. So, He was reluctant to trust me with it. But Mom was more sympathetic to my request, and would use her powers to get him to grant my request. Mom was my intercessor.

​

ii. John 17:13-24

 A. During His earthly ministry, Jesus prayed often, fervently, for the people He had come for to offer salvation. As human, He depended on His Father and the Holy Spirit for His powers, and therefore His prayers were intercessions. Our Gospel lesson is perhaps the most beautiful, but intense, picture in the Bible of Jesus praying to His Father, called theGreat Intercessory Prayer. Following the deeply personal Passover meal with His disciples, which we know as the Last Supper, Jesus went to the secluded olive grove, the Garden of Gethsemane, to pray to His father. Knowing it was the night He would be arrested by Temple soldiers, tried before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish religious council, and taken to Pilate, demanding He be crucified, we’d expect His prayer to be focused on what He would face. And it was, to some extent. He prayed to be spared the terror of Crucifixion, having to bear the Father’s wrath for sin on that Cross, even worse than the physical torture. He prayed so intensely that He sweat drops of blood. But what we might not have expected in His extreme duress, was His heartfelt intercessory prayer for others. His prayer is more extensive than what we read in our Lesson, but we’re going to focus on only a portion of it this morning to at least give us the essence of His prayer.

B. Jesus is praying as the human Jesus to His heavenly Father, and yet fully aware of His divine persona He had left behind to become fully human. In theology, that translates to: He was fully human, yet fully divine. He emphasizes His current presence in the world, which is significant because it underscores His incarnation—God becoming flesh. He had given His disciples His Father’s words, and therefore the sinful world, with its system of beliefs and values, hated them. They were no longer a part of the world, just as Jesus, aligned with the will of the Father, was not of the world. But, Jesus’ prayer was not for the Father to take them out of the world, but rather to protect them from Satan, the evil one. Although Jesus loved them deeply, and logically would have wanted to protect them by removing them from the world, He had taught them and prayed for them that their faith would empower them to proclaim His message to the world. Just as the Father had sent Jesus into the world to bring His word to the people, Jesus would be sending His disciples out into the world with His message of salvation, knowing the dangers they would face.

C. It’s important to recognize that, as John 3:17 states, Jesus had not come into the world to condemn the world. It was already condemned by its sin. He came to save it, show the lost world the way to the Father. If Jesus’ purpose was simply to pronounce God’s sentence on it, it would have been just a  last chance warning. There would have been no reason to explain scripture, or prepare His disciples to spread the Gospel to the world. If Jesus had only come to pronounce condemnation on the world, there would have been no reason for Him to take the sins of the world on Himself on the Cross. But He came to tell them the good news, “the cause for great joy for all the people,” as the angel announcing His birth had told the shepherds.

D. Jesus had developed a close relationship with His disciples. He even loved Judas, the one He knew would betray Him. So, we might have even expected Jesus would pray for them in this final prayer, as He did. Jesus asks His Father to sanctify them, set them apart for His holy purposes. “For them” he states, “I sanctify Myself”, speaking of His own dedication to the mission He was given by the Father. The disciples would therefore be sanctified as His essential messengers for that mission.

E. But then Jesus extends His intercessory prayer for all who would believe in Him, those in the future, us, through the disciples’ message. The limited number of people who heard Jesus personally might have believed in Him, perhaps even witnessed to their friends and family. But the much greater impact would have resulted from the witness of the disciples that took the Good News beyond Israel to the known world. Witnessing to Jews and Gentiles, establishing churches. His prayer for believers in the future would have included those hearing Paul, called later as an apostle. A few centuries later, the emperor Constantine would become a Christian. And 2000 years later, you and I here, the ones who would believe in the future, were also included in His powerful intercessory prayer.

F. In the final sentence of that prayer from our reading, Jesus prays that He wants those given to Him, and that still includes us, to be with Him where He is, and see His glory,  indicating a transformative relationship that affects our identity and purpose. Such a union with Him is both a present reality and a future hope, as believers grow in their relationship with Jesus, and seeing His glory. The concept of "glory" in biblical terms often refers to the manifestation of God's presence and majesty. In the OT, God's glory was revealed in His indwelling of the tabernacle and the Temple, but here, Jesus speaks of a spiritual glory, indicating the divine nature and mission He shares with His followers. His glory is not just a future promise but a present reality of the transformative power of Christ's presence in believers' lives.

G. But His prayer for the future believers is that ‘all of them may be one.”  Even then, Jesus was planning for His church to be one in close relationship with Him and with each other, just as Jesus was in the Father, and Father in Him. Complete unity. But, we haven’t done well with complete unity. In spite of our differing denominational understandings, we can still be united. United to work together in spite of those differences. But when we attack other Christians for their beliefs, or reject them out of prejudicial hatreds, we fall far short of Christ’s unifying Love. The world will not believe that the Father sent His Son with the Truth if it sees His followers not acting on His truth. Or believe that He loves them by what they see of His love in us.

H. So, in preparing during our Lenten journey, Jesus’ Intercessory prayer is a model of prayer for us. It’s more than a beautiful, historical prayer. It became very personal when He included us in that prayer. And praying it forward, it’s to include those who will yet believe in Him, and by that belief, become united in Him, with Him. Sharing in His glory.

I. Jesus prayed this intercessory prayer before He was crucified, Until then He bore a number of titles referring to His ministry. Messiah, Good Shepherd, Master, Rabbi, Teacher, Healer. But upon His Sacrificial death, He became our Great High Priest. We become familiar with the dark side of High Priest  through Caiaphas, the High Priest during Jesus ministry, who actively sought to have Jesus crucified. As the Jewish High Priest, he belonged to the aristocratic priestly class that managed the Temple, held majority seats in the Sanhedrin, and collaborated with Roman authorities to maintain power, rather than the more law-focused Pharisees. As a Sadducee, he didn’t believe in any life after death, so he would have opposed Jesus on political grounds of opposing Roman power, and theological grounds of a resurrection.  

​

III. Hebrews 4:14 -5:10 

A. But in our NT lesson, Hebrews describes the intended description of a high priest as being selected from among the people to represent the people in matters related to God, and offer sacrifices for sins. In the Temple, an immense Veil measuring approximately 60 feet high, 30 feet wide and 4 inches thick, separated the people from the Holy of Holies. Once a year, only the High Priest would be allowed to enter the Holy of Holies place to offer an annual sacrifice for Israel’s sins.

B. Under Moses, Aaron was appointed High Priest by God, and, thereafter could only be from tribe of Levi. But in Psalm 2:7,  David prophesies the Father’s decree for His Son as the high priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek,  In Genesis 14, Melchizedek, meaning "king of righteousness”, appears as the  "priest of God Most High", blessing Abraham and receiving a tithe from him. As the high priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek, Jesus was not required to be from the tribe of Levi, and therefore significant by being able to offer Himself as the sacrifice for the sins of the people. Jesus as our High Priest, would have then been authorized to enter the presence of the Holy of Holies for the sacrifice for sins. Upon Jesus’ death on the Cross, Matthew relates the Temple Veil was split from top to bottom, not possibly done by human hands, allowing us full access to the Holy of Holies. Our High Priest entered into the presence of the Most High God, offering Himself as the Perfect Sacrifice, once for all, by his own blood, opening the way to the Father for us, obtaining our eternal redemption for all who believe in Him. As our High Priest, He is our eternal intercessor to the Father.

C. Joshua, whose name means “deliverer”, delivered the people who had been under Moses, representing the Law, across the barrier of the Jordan River into the Promised Land. He was a preview of Jesus, the Messiah taking us across the barrier of sin, formerly separating us from God, into the Promised Land of Heaven  Jesus had fulfilled His ultimate Purpose as Messiah, even now preparing to fulfill all prophecy by His return.

​

Conclusion: So, on this fourth stop on our journey of Lent, we saw Jesus, interceding for us in prayer, before becoming our High Priest, having borne all our sins as the forever sacrifice for sin to the Father. What a Friend we have in Jesus!  Amen