10-CHAPTER TEN: HIS TWOFOLD LOVE'S LABORS FOR US NOW
CHAPTER TEN: HIS TWOFOLD LOVE’S LABORS FOR US NOW HEAVEN-MAKER (John 14:3)-INTERCESSOR (Romans 8:34)
Now for more than nineteen hundred years, besides holding the worlds in His hands (and the scientists tell us there are billions of them), Christ has been doing two things for His people: building mansions and interceding-making a home for us and answering our prayers. He seems to tire of neither of these continuous acts of His love, based upon the great, climactic gift of His love, His death on the cross. He keeps on keeping on in the behalf of His disciples in both these vital matters. He is our Saviour, our Lord, our King, our Eternal Redeemer, our Friend, our Elder Brother.
- He can plead with the Father; with the nail-riven hands present to the Father our needs.
- He can say, “Here comes a petition from one of my blood-bought. Here are my hands to prove my love for him.”
And surely the Father will not withhold nor deny a petition with such a plea.
Let us look at some of the items in Christ’s spiritual architecture and construction of our heavenly home. He says, “I go to prepare a place for you.”
PRELIMINARY STEPS The building of the mansions in the heavenly home is but the climax and finishing of an age-old plan for God’s people. The preliminary steps were as expensive to God as the erection of the mansions in the heavenly home.
There is creation, our first home, its beauty, its food, its light, its clothing, its manifold comforts and sources of joy, the sun He gave us, the stars by night, the flowers strewn copiously along the way, the songs of birds to gladden us, the love of mother, the joy of children, and all the other manifold provisions He made for us. It cost God to make this old world, which sin has blighted and scarred and tried to ruin.
A preserving providence. He has not only given us a home but He has kept us while at home and kept our homes for us. He, through Christ, has given us all the other blessings of His providence and His love and care. It must be very expensive for God to hold the billions of worlds in sight of science’s glasses without conflicts, without wreck and ruin.
His springtime and fruit harvest times come in on regular schedule, and if we cooperate with Him He keeps us and loves us.
His providential evolution of an elect family was a gracious deed. Abraham, and on down the line through David to Jesus-what a wonderful channel of human blessings issuing in such a climax, in which He gave us the Saviour! Israel has cost God in patience, in forbearance, in love unrequited. We have trampled on His love and blood, and yet it did not deter Him from His great ultimate purpose of giving us a Redeemer.
He revealed to us His first will in the Old Testament and developed through the long ages of man’s rebellion and sin the history of His will in the first great testament of His love. The Bible is filled with God’s providences and mercies and unfolding will for us. Its light is a Shekinah light, an infilling light. How grateful we ought to be to God for the Old Testament and the messengers that have brought us the will of God!
How wonderful the mercy extended to men in Christ’s expensive efforts in the inauguration and development of His church and churches! It is said that He bought the church with His blood. So precious is it to Him that He makes it His eternal bride. Without the warming, cheering, enlisting, enlightening power, the gospel-bringing power of Christ’s churches, how poor indeed would we be!
These were preliminary steps looking toward a fulfilling of His will in His chief blessings. HIS UNSPEAKABLE GIFT Our Father packed into the thirty-three years of Christ’s earthly career the major, imperial gift of His love. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son.” Look at the steps in this expensive Christmas gift that He made us.
His supernatural incarnation. God took the best of earth in Mary and the climax of heaven in the Holy Spirit, and gave us one God in one man, one man in one God. How marvelous the miracle, how wonderful the output!
His sinless, triumphant life. What an example of living Jesus is-no sin in soul, none in mind, none in heart, none in head, none in hand, none in feet, sinless, perfect!
His atoning sacrifice. All values climaxed in Calvary. It is utterly unthinkable and unimaginable to estimate the cost of Christ’s death. The highest values we can even intimate, with the fartherest-reaching imagination, is the value of men’s souls.
It is triumphant resurrection. It costs to come out of the grave. It is expensive to conquer death. It is love not only in crucifixion but in triumphant resurrection. The joys of triumph over death are somewhat a compensation for the costs of crucifixion.
His power-endued church. God did not regard economy nor think of losses nor costs when He gave to the world His embryo church and set it to its main task, the winning of a lost world.
His victorious evangelism this side of Pentecost. Steadily through the years Christ’s vice-regent, the Holy Spirit has been promoting missions and evangelism. He has put His great power around our hearts and personalities, and pushed us forward and on until His evangelistic causes engirdle the world. Here is an expense account to God and man that is not often considered when we think of the values and the products of Christianity. It is a slow process, but a glorious, missionary conquest. When we value God’s unspeakable gift in Jesus, we must think of the costs in the products and remember that this big missionary movement has just begun and its prospect is as radiant as the promises of God.
Now, we must remember that Christ is in this home and will be forever with us when the home is completed and the mansions are furnished and inhabited in that land of eternal life and light. He is the architect, the contractor, and will be the supreme guest and host of these mansions, as we shall live with Him forever and ever. HIS VITAL, CONTINUOUS INTERCESSION
There is great joy in our hearts when we remember that we have a double intercessor in this matter of access to the Father. The Holy Spirit is here at our home end of the big problem of praying. He sifts our prayers. He indicates the direction of them and the purpose of them. He takes the dross from the gold, the chaff from the wheat, and with unutterable intercessions He sees that we are fairly represented to Christ in our prayers.
Then at the other end is Christ, “who liveth to make intercession for us.” Christ has throne rights with the Father. He is the Father’s Son. He is our substitute. It is in His name that we appeal. He bought these throne rights in His eternal essence, before incarnation, and by His voluntary unselfish sacrifice of Himself for us on the cross, and by the right of His dynamic power in resurrection.
He is our intercessor at the throne and the Holy Spirit is our intercessor at this end of the line, and they know how to follow up our prayers and bring them to a complete answer. Love is at work in our hearts here, and love is completing love’s task in the Savior’s interceding in heaven. If you count the items of value in His throne rights, you must count love-blood, crucified love, you must count the value of His name and all that it carries with it.
Surely, with this double intercession going on constantly, we have a great hope in prayer, confident assurance in our petitions, assurance that if He denies us it is best for us. If He gives us only part of what we ask, the other part, if granted, would injure us.
- He knows the schedule of answered prayer and the items of our needs. All He gives is in love.
- He knows what perils are along the way.
- He knows our enemies and our chief enemy.
- He knows the pitfalls to our falling feet and the dangers to our blinded eyes;
- He gauges the answer to our prayers in view of our needs and of the environment of our lives.
Someone has said that “God is too good to do wrong and too wise to make a mistake” and that “we are in His hands.” Our attitude should be that of complacent confidence, joyous assurance, buoyant hope, optimistic courage.
~ end of chapter 10 ~ <http://www.baptistbiblebelievers.com/>
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