There is a chair somewhere this morning that used to be filled on Sunday morning.
Maybe it’s been empty for a year. Maybe longer. You remember the child who used to sit beside you in church. You remember the prayers you prayed over them when they were little. You remember teaching them Scripture, bringing them to church, watching them worship, watching them grow.
And now something has changed.Maybe they have walked away. Maybe they have become angry with God. Perhaps their faith has wavered. Maybe they have embraced a life that breaks your heart.And you cannot make them believe. You cannot force them to come back. You cannot make their heart turn toward God.But there is something you can still do.
You can pray.
Today’s sermon is called**”God Loves an Intercessor”**Opening Verse
1st Samuel 12:23 says, “Moreover as for me, God forbid that I should sin against the LORD in ceasing to pray for you: but I will teach you the good and the right way.
”There is something powerful about a person who refuses to stop praying for somebody else. We understand praying for ourselves. When we are sick, we pray. When we are afraid, we pray. When we need something, we pray. When we mess up, we pray. When our family is hurting, we pray. But there is another kind of prayer that reaches beyond our own needs. It is the prayer of an intercessor. An intercessor is somebody who stands in the gap. Somebody who looks at the condition of another person and says, “I am going to take this before God.” They may not be able to change the situation themselves. They may not be able to make the decision for that person. They may not even be able to reach that person anymore. But they can still pray.And I believe the Word of God shows us something beautiful: God loves an intercessor.
Throughout Scripture, we see men and women who stood before God on behalf of somebody else. They carried the burden of another person into the presence of God. They pleaded. They cried out. They asked God to have mercy. They refused to simply look at the condition of people and accept it as the final word.
*In Genesis 18, this doesn’t happen from a distance.** Three men appear at Abraham’s tent in the heat of the day. Abraham runs to meet them, brings them water so they can wash their feet, sets a meal before them. And one of them is the LORD Himself, standing there in human form. God did not send word to Abraham. God walked over.When the other two turn to leave, Abraham is left standing face to face with God, and he does not let the moment end. He knows the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah, but instead of turning his back and saying, “They deserve whatever happens to them,” Abraham steps closer and pleads with God. “Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?” And then he begins asking about fifty righteous people, then forty-five, then forty, then thirty, then twenty, and finally ten. Why was God even having this conversation with Abraham, if not to illustrate the purpose of intercession?There is something remarkable about that conversation. Abraham keeps coming back. He does not say, “God, I asked once. I guess that’s enough.” He keeps standing before God, arguing respectfully with God Almighty on behalf of people he will never meet.
Then look at Moses — not pleading from a tent, but from a mountain.** Israel had turned toward idolatry, and God’s judgment was hanging over them. God tells Moses, on Sinai, in His very presence, “Let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them.” That’s an invitation Moses could have taken. Nobody would have blamed him.Instead Moses refuses to move. In Exodus 32, he reminds God of His own covenant, and then he appeals to something even bigger than the covenant — God’s own name. “Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains?” Moses is saying: Lord, Your name is on the line. The nations are watching. If You destroy this people, the watching world will not conclude that You are holy — they will conclude that You are cruel. Moses goes further still. He says, “If not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book.” He offers his own name in exchange for theirs.
And then there is Samuel — a man interceding for the very people who rejected him.** Israel came to Samuel and said in effect, we don’t want a prophet leading us anymore, we want a king like the other nations. And it’s in that moment, after they’ve pushed him aside, that Samuel says the words in our opening verse. But notice what he says just one verse before it. 1st Samuel 12:22: “For the LORD will not forsake his people for his great name’s sake.” Samuel isn’t confident Israel deserves mercy. He’s confident God’s name does not change with Israel’s failure. That is why it would be sin for Samuel to stop praying — not because the people earned it, but because God’s own name was staked on it.What a picture of intercession. Sometimes we think that if we cannot fix something, there is nothing we can do. But the Bible tells us there is something we can always do: we can pray.
Job prays from a place none of the others occupy — the ashes.** Job’s friends had spoken wrongly about God. They had accused him, added grief to his grief, told him God was punishing him for secret sin, while he was still covered in sores, still grieving his children, still stripped of everything he owned.And when God finally speaks, He doesn’t tell Job to demand an apology. He tells Job to pray for them. Job 42:8 says, “My servant Job shall pray for you.” Job — still afflicted, still in the ashes — prays for the very men who just spent thirty chapters telling him God was against him. And verse 10 says something beautiful: “And the LORD turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends.” Restoration came *when* he prayed. Not before. When
Our church can become an intercessor. That’s something we can control. We can intercede on behalf of others instead of only our own houses. You can take their name before the throne of God again and again. You can pray when they don’t know you’re praying. You can pray when they don’t want you to talk about God. You can pray when you don’t see any evidence that anything is changing. Because your inability to change them does not mean that God has stopped working.PauseAbraham at the tent. Moses on the mountain. Samuel before the people he’d been rejected by. Job in the ashes. Every one of them was pleading, in the end, on the same ground — not the worthiness of the people they prayed for, but the character of the God they prayed to. They were appealing to His name.And every one of them — Abraham, Moses, Samuel, Job — could not save.
But there is One who can.
Jesus Christ is our Intercessor. The Bible says in Hebrews 7:25, “He ever liveth to make intercession for them.”Think about that.Jesus Christ is not merely someone who interceded for us once. He ever lives to make intercession for us. And here is what sets Him apart from every intercessor who came before Him. Abraham, Moses, Samuel, Job — they all pleaded God’s name from the outside. They stood before God and appealed to who He was. But Jesus does not plead from the outside. Philippians 2 says God has given Him “a name which is above every name.” When Jesus intercedes for you, He is not reminding the Father of a promise made long ago. He *is* the fulfillment of the promise, standing in the Father’s presence in His own name.
When you could not stand before God on your own, Jesus stood for you. When your sin condemned you, Jesus took your place. When you had no righteousness of your own, Jesus gave you His righteousness. When you could not reach God, God came to you in Christ.
At the cross,, Jesus became the intercession.
He stood between sinful humanity and a holy God. He took our sin upon Himself. He bore our judgment. He shed His blood.And when He rose again, He did not abandon His people. The risen Christ is at the right hand of the Father, and He intercedes for us.So when we pray for our children, we are not praying into an empty sky. We are praying to the Father through the Son who died for sinners, rose from the grave, and ever lives to intercede — in a name above every name.
Your child may be far from God, but your prayers are not beyond the reach of God.There is a quieter promise still.Romans 8 tells us that when we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.There are moments when you don’t have the words. There are moments when you sit down to pray for your child and all you can say is their name. “God, help my son.” “God, help my daughter.” “Lord, bring them back.” Sometimes you don’t even know what to ask anymore.But the Holy Spirit knows.The Son intercedes. The Spirit intercedes. And we are invited to intercede for one another. The Father has not left us alone.
So as I prepare to step away for a couple weeks for surgery, I don’t want this message to simply be about something we believe. I want it to be about something we do.
This week, I want us to pray for each other’s children. Not just our own. If you know somebody whose son or daughter has wandered from the faith, pray for them. If you know a mother who is carrying that burden, pray for her. If you know a father who doesn’t know what to do anymore, pray for him.
And if you are the parent whose child has walked away — don’t give up.Keep standing in the gap.I think again of that chair. Maybe it’s still empty tonight. Maybe it will be empty for a while yet. But the God who sees that empty chair is the same God who has never stopped listening to what you whisper over it.We were not the ones who saved them. We were not the ones who changed their heart.
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