Intercession That Vanquish Demons Who Stir Up War

Lesson Transcript

Well, last week, if we remember, Brother Lin shared with us a message about prayer and some basic aspects about prayer. He told us a little bit about what prayer is and gave us some examples from the Old Testament and New Testament, and talked about some different aspects about prayer and what it means to us and others. And I thought that would make a good springboard for the message I wanted to share.

The name of my message was called "Intercessory Prayer: How We Can Love God, Love Our Neighbor, and Love Our Community." First, I'd like to define intercessory prayer. William Law defines intercessory prayer as, "By intercession is meant at praying to God and interceding with Him for our fellow creatures." In the book Kneeling Christian, it defines intercessory prayer as this, and I like this definition: "The spirit of prayer is essentially the spirit of love.

Intercession is simply love at prayer." And I really like that definition, that it's love at prayer. It also says, "He prayeth best who loveth best, all things both great and small. The great God who loveth us, He made and loveth all." I wanted to look at one example, actually many examples in the New Testament of intercession as I kind of just expand a little bit, but the first one I wanted to look at was Christ. I think He's the ultimate example of intercession and love for all mankind.

There's several verses that talk about how Christ makes intercession for us constantly. The first one is Romans 8:34. It says, "Who is He who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us." Then the next one is Hebrews 7:25.

"Therefore He is able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them." Then we also have again in Romans 8, this is talking about the Holy Spirit. It says, "Likewise the Spirit also helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God." And one last verse, but I think there's several others. This is from Isaiah 53:12. It's found in the Masoretic text. I compared the Septuagint and the Masoretic, and there's a different word in the Masoretic, so I used it, but it reads very similar.

It says, "Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul unto death, and he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors." I thought those were a good example of how Christ makes intercession for us, which relates to when He said He gave us a new commandment about love. We remember that. That's found in John 13:34 and 35.

"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you, that you also love one another. For this all will know that you are my disciples if you have loved one another." And now, not all this is original with me. A lot of it is, but I also have been inspired by the book Kneeling Christian, again by the book series called The Devout and Holy Life. But as it points out that Christ gave, when He talks about that, He gave Himself as the example of what love is.

It shows He loved His neighbor, He loved His enemy, He loved all humanity by giving Himself as a sacrifice to redeem us. And that's, I think, our prime example of what it means to love each other. Now, as I said, we talked about Christ a little bit as His example of intercession, but let's look at a few verses in the New Testament about intercession. As I shared earlier, we know the early disciples prayed for each other, and they also prayed for the apostles, and the apostles prayed for the churches.

I did not realize how many times Paul prays for the churches. Virtually in all the epistles, he makes a comment about that. And I'm going to just share with you. To the church in Philippi, this is Philippians, "I thank my God upon every remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine making request for you with all joy." To the church in Rome, this is Romans, "First I thank my God through Jesus Christ for you all, that your faith is spoken of throughout the whole world.

For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit and the gospel of His Son, that without ceasing I make mention of you always in my prayers, making request if by some means now at last I may find a way in the will of God to come to you." To the church in Thessalonica, this is 1 Thessalonians, "We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering without ceasing your work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus in the sight of our God and Father." To

the church in Colossae, which is Colossians, "For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will and all wisdom and spiritual understanding." As I say, that's four churches.

I think it's about virtually all the books that he wrote to individual churches. We also have an example of Paul praying for an individual. This is found in 2 Timothy, "I thank God whom I serve with a pure conscience as my forefathers did, as without ceasing I remember you in my prayers night and day." Obviously, I think he prayed for other individuals, but we have a reference there in the book of Timothy. Now, I think there's more, but there are two references I found of the church praying for the apostles.

The first one was 2 Corinthians, 1:10 and 11. It says, "Who delivered us from so great a death and does deliver us, and whom we trust that He will still deliver us, you also helping together in prayer for us, that thanks may be given by many persons on our behalf for the gift granted to us through many." I thought that was very telling. And another example that I think we're all familiar with, but I know there's others. The church, when King Herod arrested Peter the apostle, that's found in Acts 12:1-9.

It says, "Now about that time, Herod the king stretched out his hand to harass some from the church, that he killed James, the brother of John, with the sword. And because he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to seize Peter also. Now it was during the days of unleavened bread. So when he had him arrested, he put him in prison and delivered him to four squads of soldiers to keep him, intending to bring him before the people after the Passover.

Peter was therefore kept in prison, but constant." I'm not sure exactly, but constant prayer was offered to God for him by the church. "And when Herod was about to bring him out, that night Peter was sleeping, bound with two chains between two soldiers, and the guards before the door were keeping the prison.

Then it said, 'Now behold, an angel of the Lord stood by him and a light shone in the prison, and he struck Peter on the side and raised him, saying, 'Quickly, arise.' And his chains fell off." And we know the rest of the story that Peter escaped from jail. And again, it says they prayed for the apostles. I found a verse about each other, we praying for each other. This is found in Ephesians 6.

It says, "Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints." The early Christians had some quotes about praying for each other, and I wanted to share one, actually two, they're very related by Cyprian. It said, "Let us each one of us pray to God, not only to himself, but also for the brethren. For this is the Lord taught us to pray.

For He directed us when we pray to pray for everyone in a common prayer and joint supplication. Let us beseech the Lord in simplicity and unanimity. Let us ask without ceasing with full faith that we will receive. We shouldn't treat not only with groaning, but with tears. With mutual prayers, let us by turns cherish, guard, and arm one another. Let us pray for the lapsed that they may be raised up. Let us pray for those who stand that they may not be tempted to a such degree as to be destroyed.

And let us pray that those who are said to have fallen may acknowledge the greatness of their sin." Thought about the significance of this intercession that the early disciples and the apostles had for each other, the early Christians.

William Law says, "This was the ancient friendship of Christians, uniting and submitting their hearts not only by worldly considerations or human passion, but by the mutual communication of spiritual blessings, by prayers and thanksgivings to God for each other." It was this holy intercession that raised Christians to such a state of mutual love as far exceeded all that had been praised and admired in human friendship.

And when this same spirit of intercession is again in the world, when Christianity has the same power over the hearts of the people that it then had, this holy friendship will again be in fashion, and Christians will be again the wonder of the world for that exceeding love which they bear to one another. And if I remember right, the early Christians, early disciples, were known by the world for their love for each other.

And I think that is, as William Law said, that is one of the reasons they had such mutual prayers, intercession, interceding for each other constantly. Let me look at a couple of other thoughts on intercession. Elizabeth and I talked about this many times this week, the last couple of weeks as I've been studying this. And none of these, I'm going to, let's look at a couple of ideas. There's not necessarily a specific order, but there's different ideas I thought about intercession.

The first one is, can we honestly intercede for someone and at the same time hate that person in our heart because they wronged us, or we have resent towards them, or they dismissed whatever we want to say? Can we do the same? I thought about, in reality, that's an absurdity to think we can pray and have ill will towards somebody.

Jesus said in Matthew 5:23-24, "Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar and therefore remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go your way. First, be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift." In a similar verse there in Mark 11:25, it says, "Whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive your trespasses." I thought about when it says the gift.

Jesus said, "You give your gift at the altar. If you have someone against you, you need to make it right." And I think gift can obviously be referred to anything, but I think it's not an illogical thing saying our gift could be a prayer. And if we have someone against somebody, we need to make it right before we offer a prayer. John Chrysostom says this, "Even the unbaptized offer a gift and sacrifice." I mean praying and almsgiving.

That this is a sacrifice, here the prophet says, "A sacrifice of praise will glorify me, and a sacrifice to God, a sacrifice of praise." And again, the lifting of my hands is an evening sacrifice. So that if it is only a prayer that you're offering in such a frame of mind, it would be better to leave your prayer, become reconciled to your brother, and then offer your prayer. And I just thought about myself in my own life.

When I was working on this message this week, I had a horrendous evening on Wednesday, and I just thought about myself. I got very frustrated about something with the children, my own reaction, but I just thought about, I can't pray to God and have that ill feelings towards myself or towards other people. William Law made this comment about intercession about a brother who may have wronged us.

He said, "When therefore you have once habituated your heart to a serious performance of this holy intercession, you have done a great deal to render it incapable of spite and envy, and to make it naturally the light and the happiness of all mankind." Which relates to, I think, two verses here. It says, "If we remember, the greatest command is to love our God with all our strength, mind, soul, and to love our neighbor as ourself." Which I think if we truly do that, will help us in intercession.

And if we remember, 1 John says, "You can't love God and hate your brother." They don't go together. It says, "If anyone says I love God and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? And this commandment we have for him, that he who loves God must love his brother also." This last little thing I just had stalled from William Law that I thought was extremely insightful on this idea of the two being opposite.

He says, "Lastly, if all people, when they feel the first approach of resentment, envy, contempt towards others, or if in all little disagreements and misunderstandings, whatever they should, instead of indulging their minds with low reflection, have recourse at such a time to a more particular and extraordinary intercession with God for such a person who has raised their envy, resentment, or discontent, that this would be a certain way to prevent the growth of such uncharitable temper.

If you were also to form your prayer or intercession at that time to the greatest degree of contrariety to that temper which you were then in, it would be an excellent means of raising your heart to the greatest state of perfection. For such devotion must necessarily destroy your tempers or be itself destroyed by them. You cannot possibly have any ill temper or show any unkind behavior to a man for whose welfare you are so concerned as to be his advocate with God in private." I really thought how true that was.

Either we're going to love that person and we're going to pray for him in genuine love, or we can't do it. They don't go together. If we truly hate somebody, that God's not going to hear that type of prayer. Going to another part about intercession, I think this might hit a little bit more home. When we intercede for our family, which can be if we're single, we're going to pray for our family. If we're a married family, we're going to pray for our spouse and our children.

But I just thought about, we have an example of this in both the New and Old Testament. If we remember Job, it said, "So it was when the days of feasting had run their course that Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them, all. For Job said, 'It may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.'" Thus did Job, did this regularly. I was thinking about this this week when I got very flustered there on Wednesday.

It says, "Stop and think about the prayer for your family or your children. Do you pray for your children to be patient, to be kind, to get along with their brothers and sisters, to have a sweet temper, to share, to be diligent in their work, to read their Bible?" And then the list can go on. I'm assuming that's what you're praying for for your children or your family. But is that the type of person you are? Are you patient? Do you show love for others? Are you kind? Do you have a sweet temper?

Do you share or are you a miser? Do you read your Bible? Do you work hard? Are you diligent? I was just thought about that. If we're that type of person and we pray that for our children or our brothers or sisters or our parents, those don't go together. If we have these not good character qualities and we're praying that for our children, there's some incongruity there.

I thought about if that's what we want for our children or for someone else, we need to pray to God to help us have that in our own self, because we want God to be able to intercede. That by praying for our children, it actually will help us to grow in our own spiritual walk and our own character qualities because we want our children to be able to grow. Some other things about intercession. Brother Dan a couple of weeks shared with us about giving thanks in our prayers.

So I'm not going to go a lot on that, but it is something that can hinder our prayers if we have an unthankful heart. There's two verses. There's many of them that talk about giving God thanks. This is the first one is Psalm 100:4. It says, "Enter into his gates with thanksgiving and to his courts with praise. Be thankful to him and bless his name." And another one is 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18.

"Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." As I was thinking about this intercession, I think if we all are honest, we want God to hear our intercessions for others. And I thought about that. There's several things, but one of the things that's going to hint besides that unthankfulness is, are we harboring sin in our life?

It could be a major sin, it could be a minor sin, but are we harboring sin or bad feelings or something in my life about myself, about others? There's just a couple of verses that talk about that, and obviously there's many, but there's a couple I found. 1 Peter 3:7. It says, "Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding.

Give honor to the wife as to the weaker vessel and being heirs together of the grace of life that your prayers may not be hindered." And we're, I think, all familiar with this one in James 5:13-16. "Is anyone among you suffering, let him pray. Is anyone cheerful, let him sing psalms. Is anyone among you sick, let him call for the elders of the church. And let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And if prayer or faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up.

And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven. Confess your trespasses to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much." Which I think the converse would be true also. I do know that we do know that God more or less says in the Bible, not more or less, does say in the Bible that he does not normally hear the prayer of the unrighteous.

It says in Proverbs, "The Lord is far from the wicked, but he hears the prayers of the righteous." And again in 1 Peter 3, it says, "For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayer. But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil." And one last one, this is Psalm 66:18.

"If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear." I know in my life, and I think all of us, we want God to hear our prayers for our families, for each other in the church, for neighbors, for friends. So I think at least this challenged me that I would like to want to make sure I live my life in a way that God will hear my prayers and that they will be open to him. There's a few other thoughts I thought I had on intercession.

One brother Dan shared this morning, and I was going to share again in 1 Timothy 2:1-4. It says, "Therefore, exhort first of all that supplication, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made to all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceful life in all godliness and reverence.

For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." I think we are familiar with this commandment, and I'm very thankful that we as a church remember this. And I know I try to remember this in my own personal prayers, but I think this commandment is much more significant than we think it is. It carries much more weight.

The early Christians said this about this commandment, and my dad helped me find this, and so I thank you there. It says, "To those enemies of our faith, who would require us to bear arms for the empire and to slay men, we reply, do not the priests who attend your gods keep their hands free from blood, so that they may offer the appointed sacrifice to your gods with hands unstained and free from human blood. Even when war is upon you, you never enlist your priests in the army.

If then, that is a praiseworthy custom, how much more so that while others are engaged in battle, we Christians too should engage as priests and ministers of God, keeping our hands pure. By our prayer," this is the, I think, the key. "By our prayer, we vanquish all demons who stir up war. In this way, we are more helpful to the kings than those who go into the field to fight for them. And none fight better for the king than we do.

Indeed, we refuse to fight under him, even if he demands it, but we do fight on his behalf, forming a special army, an army of righteousness by offering our prayers to God." I thought about how significant that quote is, that the prayers of the Christians kept the demons and the forces of darkness from stirring up strife in the time of the Roman Empire, which history does show that as a whole, from approximately 150 years, the Roman Empire had relative peace.

They had a few uprootings, but no major invasions, and that's when the Christians practiced this. When the Christians quit practicing this after the time of Constantine, not too, I think, less than 100 years after him, the Roman Empire was invaded, the Christians went to war and killed each other. And I thought how significant that quote is about that our prayers actually can hold back, God can answer our prayers and hold back the forces of darkness. I had just a couple of other observations on intercession.

This one kind of ties in with William Law when he said about intercession can be used by us to be able to bless that person who did us wrong and to help us grow as a person. I know some of us, I'm not saying that this is necessarily easy, but I think it is true. That's what the scripture says, that we are to love our neighbors, love our enemies, do kind, bless them. And I'm going to give a true example.

I think you've all probably remembered this example, but I'm going to give this example again for those who don't remember it. It happened on November 8th, 1987, in Inklin, Northern Ireland. The IRA had left a bomb at the monument downtown Inklin, and it went off and 13 people were died. And one of the men whose daughter died was named George Wilson. And this is what he said in an interview that day. He said, "He repeated his 20-year-old daughter's final words to him as they both lay in the rubble of the bombing.

'Daddy, I love you.'" These were the exact words spoke to me. Those were the last words I heard her say. Gordon Wilson was speaking shortly after the death of his daughter, Marie, who was killed by the provisional IRA bomb at the Synatok in Inklin on Sunday, November 8th, 1987. These words were given by George Wilson in an interview broadcast the following day. "I have lost my daughter. We shall miss her," he said, "but I bear no ill will. I bear no grudge. Dirty sort of talk is not going to bring her back to life.

She was a great wee lassie. She loved her profession. She was a pet. She's dead. She's in heaven. We won't meet her again." Later that day, after his daughter had died in the rubble holding his hand, he recorded an interview with the BBC Northern Ireland news crew. He was a Christian man, and he said he would pray for the bombers who had murdered his daughter. And what he said had a huge impact on the Civil War in Northern Ireland.

If you don't know, they had a bad Civil War, and unfortunately, there's still tension. But if the IRA did something, the IRA were mostly Roman Catholics in name only, the Protestants in name only would do something in revenge. And because of his words, the Protestants did very little revenge because of that IRA bombing. And his words and stuff helped bring the Northern Ireland conflict to an end. I just thought about there is a true life example. I know Jesus was, like I said, the ultimate example.

He said, "Love your enemies," but this is a true life example of someone who lost his daughter, and he was able to pray for his enemies there and love his enemies, and it had a very positive effect. It helped bring that conflict and bloodshed to an end. I hope I've challenged all of you here, and this is the thought of intercession. I know this has been a very challenging thing to me as these last couple of weeks, and it's my own life as I just thought about my attitudes, my actions, how they affect my prayer.

What I want my children to grow up to be. Am I a good example for them, or do they see me with bad temper? So they just thought that's the way they act and undo my prayers. I will leave you this last quote from William Law. It says, "For there is nothing that makes a man so loved another as praying for him. And when you can do this sincerely for any man, you have fitted your soul for the performance of everything that is kind and civil towards him."