Title: He Always Lives To Intercede
Text: Hebrews 7:25
7:22 This makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant. 23 The former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office, 24 but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. 25 Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.
Highlights of 6 minute video [bracketed statements are mine, as is underscoring]:
- Christ stands between us and Holy God the Father; via His intercession, He directs the Father’s eyes to His righteousness and away from our sin
- Many Christians believe that they must clean themselves up before they come to God
- When a Christian has struggled sufficiently in his endeavors to clean himself up, and comes to the realization that it is impossible, he becomes open to trusting in Christ for His imputed righteousness
- After this discovery, we will pray, ‘You save me and I will be saved’ [such statements are throughout the Psalms]
- At our conversion, we trusted in Christ; but afterwards, at times of falling into sin, it is easy to fall into the aforementioned mindset – at such times, today’s text might enable more accurate thinking about our situation
- Mayfield provided an example of a congregant struggling to attend church regularly, he stated the typical perspective we have in such struggles, and the healthier, more appropriate one based on the above truth
- Christ continues to intercede on our behalf because we continue to fall into sin
- For example, even if we fail to pray for ourselves, Christ is praying for us
- [Although Dr. Mayfield did not articulate it in this message, he has elsewhere: Christ’s Spirit is working in us to enable us to love Christ more than we love our sin and to forsake our sin; In posts on Jonathan Edwards, he emphasizes that at times of sin we trace our failings back to the motives we had to engage in sin; understanding those, and seeing the foolishness of our rationale for such behavior; and praying for help to love Christ more than our self, selfish desires, seem to be necessary for us to arrive at a place of loving Christ more]
- [During Dr. Mayfield’s discussion, I realized that his words agreed with a process that Jonathan Edwards discovered as he studied the difference between true and false conversions after the Great Awakening, to learn more about that see link under video; also, inherent in Mayfield’s discussion was the biblical concept of poverty of spirit and mourning sin as found in the beatitudes. I linked posts about those below also.]
***To learn more about Jonathan Edwards struggle of faith, a process he discovered as he examined conversion experiences after the Great Awakening, he was trying to understand why some turned away from Christ and some remained. The post was about the sinner’s prayer, but that is the most important part of the post, as it shows the unbiblical nature of that prayer:
***As I listened to Dr. Mayfield’s above discussion, I realized that the ideas of poverty of spirit (knowing one’s own spiritual bankruptcy), and mourning sin are actually being described. I previously blogged two mini-series on the beatitudes, one uses video excerpts from pastors and one is in narrative form. If you want to view either of those, click the following links:
Beatitudes posted via mp4 / video: https://sheeplywolves.com/beatitude-poverty-of-spirit/
Beatitude posted in narrative form: https://sheeplywolves.com/the-beatitude-life/
***The following link is to the next post in Dr. Mayfield’s series for those who might like to listen and to explore his site; I highly recommend subscribing:
Christ Our Advocate–from Gentle Lowly by Dane Ortlund
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgBrwlLJJ-o&list=LL&index=2
***For other posts by Dr. Mayfield in this blog, see CATEGORIES: Jonathan Edwards; John Owen; and Calvin’s Institutes.
***Link to Hebrews 7, Bible Hub: https://biblehub.com/esv/hebrews/7.htm