Hebrews 7:25, Part 2

Acknowledging the Need for the Holy Spirit and Assurance of Salvation

0:05 The following message was delivered on Sunday morning, November 13th, 1994, at the Trinity Baptist Church in Montville, New Jersey. Let us again unite our hearts in prayer and consciously, each one of us, acknowledge our need of the present aid of the Holy Spirit.

0:29 We are rightly to understand and rightly to respond to the word of God which is due to be on our behalf.

4:17 It will be ushered in the speakable, indescribable glow of heaven, the mysteries of certainty, and that the words of Jesus read through the summer months.

4:47 After a week, for conscience, the question under God with the true to consider whether or not your professed faith in Christ was indeed the right.

5:15 So the action of life from the many of you gave to the number of you have come to a renewed conclusion.

5:50 That you are indeed for real, that God has, and you have brought many of the words from the day on this day,

6:10 that it would be in the best interest of your ongoing spiritual stability and preservation, to focus your attention on some pivotal text of scripture that would encourage and strengthen you in the remainder of your earthly pilgrimage. Consider Philippians 1.6. Confident of this day, that he who has begun a good work in you will perfect until the day of Jesus.

Introducing Christ's Intercession and the Significance of 'Pros'

6:45 Philippians 1.7.24 Though he fall, speaking of, he shall not be utterly cast down for the Lord.

7:03 Philippians 1.8.23 and 24 We have the apostles there for the pheasants, that the God of peace sanctify them. Hope, body, soul, spirit be preserved.

7:20 Coming of our Lord Jesus, he who called into Hebrews 7. And verse 25, which declares people to say unto God through him, See, he ever lives.

8:03 Coming up of this text, for you want it in the way of assuring affirmation through him,

8:25 satisfying explanation, sticking to the opening of the language of the text. I did not address such questions as, what is the ground of the intercession, of that intercession? What is the position from which he intercedes, thereby securing our ultimate and our perfected salvation?

9:05 And the subject of the intercession of Christ, into which I led you last week by this text, fastened itself upon my own mind and spirit, that I cannot be true to what a man or a preacher, if I did not take this to amplify, which forms, the confidence that we shall be saved, the uttermost, that is, saved with the salvation in which all saving purposes of God,

9:48 the true people of God, for your fertilization in your walk, that restricted, pressured way,

11:14 would be men and women, boys and girls, sitting here, and inwardly, another ho-hum-hum-drum-hour, the preacher blabbed over something in me that wanted to pretend woman,

11:47 did I know that you would sit to another in the willful posse?

30:00 The beginning was the weed, the phrase,

30:30 the preposition, cross, isn't from the prepositions, an, or para, or soon, and is of the great root of his sanctified scholarship behind him. Robertson attempts to render its literal force by translating face-to-face with God. Robertson adds, the preposition cross is employed, quote, for living relationship, intimate converse, end quote, which well describes its use.

31:14 The idea is that of presence and communion with a strong of reciprocal interaction. The Logos, then, is not an attribute inhering in God, or a power emanating from Him, but a person in the presence of God, and turned, in loving, inseparable communion toward God, and God turned equally toward Him.

The Eternal and Incarnate Face-to-Face Communion with God

31:48 And other, and yet not other, than God. 17. With Thee, the uninterrupted, eternal, face-to-face communion within the triune Godhead, the whole thought of God creating a world and men, because, He was lonely,

32:30 and filled His own heart. God's mind can satisfy the mind of God. Only God's love can fully satisfy His own heart of love. And within the glorious mystery of the triune being of our one God, there was this reciprocal affection, this face-to-face communion became incarnate in Mary's womb.

33:08 Throughout all, and all of the development of mind and soul, for He grew in wisdom and knowledge, and in favor with God and man, He could say,

33:24 I do always the things that,

33:29 and knowing that everything He did pleased the Father, He lived in the conscious, constant consciousness that the Father's face was toward Him. With favor, with acceptance,

33:47 spoke out of heaven, said, My face is toward Him, this is my Son, my beloved one, in whom my soul,

33:58 with whom I am well pleased.

The Old Testament Concept of God's Countenance and Christ's Experience on the Cross

34:05 As He came to the graveside of Lazarus, I know that you heard me, because I know that you hear me. The face of the Son is toward Him, His face toward Him with pleasure and delight. Further to underscore that this is the significance, turn to one significant, Old Testament passage, Numbers chapter 6. Numbers chapter 6,

34:44 in the priestly benediction that was to be pronounced upon God's covenant people. Read in verse 22 of Numbers 6, the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying, Speak unto Aaron and his son, saying, Aaron being, of course, the head of the priestly caste.

35:10 Speak unto Aaron and his son, saying, On this wise you shall bless the children of Israel, you shall say unto them, The Lord bless you and keep you. Now notice the next two verses. The Lord make His countenance upon you, and be gracious unto you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace.

35:44 So shall they put My name upon the children of Israel, and I will bless them. Do you see? The dominant concept, in having the covenant favor, blessing, and goodwill of God towards His people, is this concept of the Lord's face shining upon His people. The Lord lifting up the light of His countenance upon His people.

36:11 Having established the significance then of the words, now to appear willingly, as the land before her shearers is dumb, and He opened not His mouth. The mockery on the thorns, the purple robe, the jeering,

36:54 the false accusations, which of those indignities brought was one, only one. Remember what it was? From the sixth hour, there was darkness over the whole land, and God shrouded the heavens in blackness,

37:36 and the sun was at its seat, toward the conclusion of those hours, and the sun was at its seat, toward the conclusion of those hours, and the sun was at its seat, toward the conclusion of those hours, and the sun was at its seat, toward the conclusion of those hours, the dark combs the Xianu. The Scripture says, that Jesus Cbuat the whole land dry. My God...

37:52 When my disciples

38:13 lifted your countenance upon me in favor and in good will, you had said, Behold, my servant whom I uphold. And when my own disciples forsook me, when my favored three slept and would not watch with me, Holy Father, I was consioust of being upheld by the beams of the favor that emanated from your countenance. And when the rabble crowd came and apprehended me in Gethsemane, and when they dragged me from the puppet court at the high priest, and then to Pilate, and on to Herod, and back to Pilate,

38:58 and when I was mocked and jeered and lied about, and the false witnesses came forward by the handfuls, and when I was crowned with this, and when there was mock worship and adulation, I was conscious of your promise being fulfilled. Behold my servant whom I, from your words, my son in whom I am well pleased, my own disciples in weakness forsaken me, the blind and apostate Jews who have handed me over to the Roman authorities, and all the indignities these I convey,

39:41 but your face is toward me.

39:47 Those hours he constituted sin in a unique and in an intensified way. When he was becoming the vicarious curse-bearer, when God was, as it were, narrowing the funnel of all of the ocean of his wrath against human sin and causing it to break upon the soul of his own,

40:16 there was nothing behind that. And then in a way that is not revealed, when the last drop of the cup had been drunk,

40:58 when the ocean of God's wrath against his people had been exhausted, he then has a felt sense of the restored favor of his Father, and it is now not the address, my God, into your hands, having given the shout of triumph at the last time. I see him again, in faith.

Christ's Exalted Position of Intercession Before God's Face

41:41 Now look at our text in Hebrews chapter 9, that having shed his own,

41:51 that all the realities of which the ancient temple and tabernacle and priestly rituals and sacrifices were but shadows, when the realities had been affected in the bloodletting of the Son of God, now we read, Christ entered not into a holy, holy place made with hands, but into heaven itself, now openly to appear before the face of God, the object of the Father.

42:33 Do you see the implications of this intercession? What is the place of this intercession? It is not only the position of power and might and authority of the priest-king at his right hand, but it is the position of acceptance, and of delight, as of God, his precious blood,

43:15 the position of his sacrifice, the Father's smile, the Father's acceptance, for what would power and authority be without the Father's face, and what would acceptance and goodwill be without the position of authority and power, the joy and authority and power, acceptance and goodwill. We have an intercessor, Jesus,

43:59 in the most enviable position imaginable by our poor human fact. God, no wonder the writer to Hebrews says, consider the high priest of our confession, Jesus, the Son of God. He is right now, at this moment, in the place of exaltation and power, the place of acceptance and favor, not for hymns, but for all, and from all other grounds of hope,

44:39 and from all things about nakedness and hell-deservingness. We have in the language of Hebrews 7.25, we have drawn near to this God, who is a consuming fire in himself, but we have drawn near to him, and in Christ we have seen the goodwill of God to sinners. In Christ we have seen the favor and love of God to sinners.

45:19 In Christ we have seen the wisdom of God, contriving away in the language of our scripture reading this morning, that God might maintain all the integrity of his justice, and still by hell-deserving sinners. He doesn't whitewash their condition. He doesn't in any way equivocate with regard to their hell-deservingness. But having transferred it to his only begotten and beloved Son, and having vented the full fury of his wrath against their sin, when it is vicariously borne by the Lord Jesus,

46:03 he has raised him from the dead, and to forever demonstrate that there is not one excepted. The back with unclothed and diluted he appears, touched on the ground of the foundation of his intercession, and I don't want to rush through these things for some of you I know they are new avenues of thought and as I was preparing I said in a real sense

The Certainty of Uttermost Salvation Through Christ's Intercession

46:48 what I'm doing is thinking out my own meditations in your hearing and it's right that at times should be that. The people of God, what consolation we should draw as we sit in this place this morning to know that amidst all the realities that we address throughout the summer that we must remain in that restricted way. That way in which we must constantly turn from every tendency to look to ourselves as the ground of our acceptance with God.

47:29 The way in which we must constantly battle with sin that seeks to regain its mastery and if it cannot do that, and it cannot in a true Christian, it seeks to win a battle here, and a battle there, and a skirmish here, and call this member and that member into its service and we seek by the grace of God not to present our members instruments of sin unto unrighteousness as we continue with that element in us that would still make us self-centered and self-serving, witching influence of the world.

48:11 What hope is there that we shall be saved to the uttermost, to the consummation of a salvation that will bring us all along the way, however long we must walk in it and upon it with whatever opposition we face in the course of it. What certain surety do we have? We shall be saved to the uttermost. Hebrews 7.25 says,

48:36 We shall be because He ever lives to make intercession for us. The certainty and the prevalency, conquering nature of His intercession rest, first of all, upon the position in which He is found. He intercedes. He intercedes as a messianic king, priest upon the throne.

49:04 He is at the right hand of God, there this morning, by His Spirit present here, yes, but in His glorified body there, as much in His heart there as here, and here as there. Who can understand the mystery of it? But faith can grasp it. It's reality.

49:26 We have a High Priest who does not intercede with the limitations, self-imposed limitations of what the Scripture calls the days of His flesh, but with all the unbounded liberty and freedom of One who has been seated at the right hand of the Majesty on high and who every time He turns is to the Father to request anything that any of His children need in order to get them safely along the way and eventually into His presence

50:08 so that He will be the firstborn among His many brethren who has brought His many sons in the language of Hebrews to have the confidence that everything He has is one who appears. And if I say in the days of His flesh He says you hear Me only, how much more now can He say you hear Me? And whatever He asks for us

50:51 He asks according to eternal covenantal engagements and commitments as I hope to demonstrate tonight God willing and in answer to those prayers of righteousness and holiness and faith until we are taken child of God do you treasure only was offerer and offering but as the person

Call to Treasure Christ and Flee to Him for Mercy

51:34 who now intercedes to marvelous and exalted glorified Christ seated at the right hand of the Father towards whom the Father's face is there do you have that confidence that He's there if He's not for you He's against you

52:18 this is why the call goes out from that very Psalm that we quoted earlier kiss the Son lest He be angry and you perish from the way He will no longer come into a state of weakness in that first coming yes, they could mock Him they could jeer Him they could treat His calls to come to Him with indifference and the Lord Jesus did not snap His fingers and call down thunderbolts from heaven and when His disciples on one occasion wanted to do it He said no, no in this My first coming I have not come to judge He came not to judge the world

53:01 not in His first coming but when He appears in the second time it will be in terms of the text that I read at the beginning of our message this morning to call you out of your grave to call you into His body and say why did you go on into the world and to self-centeredness and self and ease at the hog pens of carnal and fleshly desires and ambitions when I was set before My glory a high priest who died and bore the wrath of God

53:45 for sinners as a high priest who went back into heaven there to appear openly before the face of My Father for all who would entrust themselves to Me why did you covet this world of greater value than Myself and what are you going to tell Him young man, young woman old man, old woman what are you going to tell Him when you've treated Him and you've cherished

54:29 God willing when we gather tonight we'll take up the second head and the ground or the foundation of His intercession and attempt to show the intimate relationship between His sacrifice upon the cross and the intercession in heaven and perhaps begin to open up some of the aspects of the specific or the precise nature of His intercession but I trust that just the contemplation of the position the place of His intercession this morning will strengthen the faith of every weary pilgrim who is pressing on his or her way to that place where we shall see Him face to face

55:11 we never cease to marvel pains to which you have gone a righteous and a certain salvation for the likes of us God when we think of how lightly we've regarded You and how carelessly we've treated Your mercy and grace in Christ we marvel that knowing we would do this You nonetheless contrived

55:56 so glorious and of redemption and in Your love and mercy sent Your Son to effect all of these things for us that You would take Your word and apply it with power to every heart that moves who have been indifferent to Him may tremble and may flee to Him from mercy that we Your people may have our confidence and our courage increased as we behold Him who is at Your right hand

56:39 may His eyes of faith hold Him there for us securing seal then Your word to every heart we pray in Jesus name Amen