Intercession - Chambers, Oswald

Chapter X
Genesis 18:23–33

And the lord went his way, . . . And Abraham returned unto his place. Genesis 18:33

The great difficulty in intercession is myself, nothing less or more. The first thing i have to do is to take myself to school. My first duty is not to assert freedom, but to find an absolute master. We think that to be without a master is the sign of a high type of life; insurgent, impertinent human beings have no master, noble beings have. I must learn not to take myself too seriously. Myself is apt to be my master, i pray to myself. We are all pharisees until we are willing to learn to intercede. We must go into heaven backwards, that phrase means we must grow into doing some definite thing by praying, not by seeing. To learn this lesson of handling a thing by prayer properly is to enter a very severe school. A Christians duty is not to himself or to others, but to Christ. We think of prayer as a preparation for work, or a calm after having done work, whereas prayer is the essential work. It is the supreme activity of everything that is noblest in our personality. We wont bring down to earth what we see in vision about our master, we moon around it in devotional speculations, but we wont bring it straight down to mother earth and work it out in actualities.

The strength and self-limitation of intercession

If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death.

There is a sin unto death: i do not say that he shall pray for it. (1 john 5:16)

How are we going to know when a man has sinned a sin unto death and when he has not? Only through intercession. If we make our own discernment the judge, we are wrong. We base it all on an abstract truth divorced from god, we pin our faith on what god has done and not on the god who did it, and when the case begins to go wrong again, we do not intercede, we begin to scold god. We get fanatical, we upset the court of heaven by saying, i must do this thing. That is not intercession, that is rushing in where angels fear to tread. It is fanatical frenzy, storming the throne of god and refusing to see his character while sticking true to our assertions of what he said he would do. Beware of making god run in the mould of his own precedent, that means, because he did a certain thing once, he is sure to do it again, which is so much of a truth that it becomes an imperceptible error when we subtly leave god himself out of it. Frenzyno strength and no self-limitation. We have taken ourselves so seriously that we cannot even see god, we are dictating to god. The redemption of our lord jesus christ mirrored in the atonement embraces everything. Sin, sickness, limitation and death are all done away with in redemption; but we have to remember the atone- ment works under gods dispensational sovereignty. It is not a question of whether god will sovereignly permit us to be delivered from sin in this dispensation, it is his distinct expressive will that we should be delivered. When it comes to the question of sickness and limitation, it is not a question of whether we will agree with gods will, but whether gods sovereignty is active that predi spensational efficacy of the atonement on our behalf just now. When people come to the atonement and say now i have deliverance in the atonement, therefore i have no business to be sick, they make a fundamental confusion, because there is no case of healing in the bible that did not come from a direct intervention of the sovereign touch of god. When it comes to deliverance from sin, it is not a question of going to god to ask him to deliver us from sin, it is a question of accept- ing his deliverance. If we forget that, we take the lord out of the atonement and make it an abstract statement and instantly do the pharisaic dodge of putting burdens on people that they cannot bear. Logically they are perfectly correct, it is all in the atonement, but if it is true that in the atonement there should be no sickness, it is also true that there should be no death, then we have no business to die! We have no business to have any human limitations, we should be in complete unbroken communion with god, and the people who teach the present resurrection are logically consistent with the folks who say the health of the body depends entirely on our acceptance of the atonement. To say we are in resurrection bodies now means a moral pig-sty, and makes a burlesque of the whole thing; the mistake is put- ting an abstract truth deduced from god in the place of god himself. Abraham had none of the fanatical in him, he did not stand true to what god said, but to god who said it. God said, offer up Isaac, and then god said, dont. A fanatic would have 628 if ye shall ask 8 chapter x intercession genesis 18:2333

Said, i will stick to what god has said, this other voice is of the devil. Watch when some providence of god is going against what we have asserted god will always do. One of the most significant lessons is to see the rod of rebuke come on the people who insist on asserting that they know the meaning of the providential working of christs atonement in the times in which we live. That god does give wonderful gifts of the atonement before their dispensation is clear, there are innumerable cases of healing, but if i make that the ground on which god must work, i intercede no longer, i cannot, i become a dictator to god. When anyone is sick, i do not pray, i say, they have no business to be sick, and that means i have destroyed altogether my contact with god.

The sagacity and submissiveness of intercession

be not ye therefore like unto them: for your father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. (matthew 6:8)

Our understanding of god is the answer to prayer; getting things from god is gods indulgence of us. When god stops giving us things, he brings us into the place where we can begin to understand him. As long as we get from god everything we ask for, we never get to know him, we look upon him as a blessing-machine, that has nothing to do with gods character or with our characters. Your father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him. Then why pray? To get to know your father. It is not sufficient for us to say, oh yes, god is love, we have to know he is love, we have to struggle through until we do see he is love and justice, then our prayer is answered. The nearer Abraham comes to god in his inter- cession, the more he recognises his entire unworthiness. There is a subtle thing that goes by the name of unworthiness which is petulant pride with god. When we are shy with other people it is because we believe we are superior to the average person and we wont talk until they realise our importance. Prayerlessness with god is the same thing, we are shy with god not because we are unworthy, but because we think god has not given enough consideration to our case, we have some peculiar elements he must be pleased to consider. We have to go to school in order to learn not to take ourselves seriously and to get the genuine unworthiness which no longer is shy before god. A child is never shy before its mother, and a child of god is not, it is conscious of its worthiness, i. E. , its entire dependence. And he said, oh, let not the lord be angry, and i will speak yet but this once: peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, i will not destroy it for tens sake (genesis 18:32). Abraham does the interceding while the angels go for the final test, after the final test, prayer is impossible. The way Abraham reached the stopping-point is indicated by the fact that he was in complete and entire communion with god through the progress of his intercession. When we come up against things in life, are we going to cave in and say we cannot understand them? We understand them by intercession, and by our intercession god does things he does not show us just now, although he reveals more and more of his character to us. He is working out his new creations (rv) in the world through his wonderful redemption and our intercession all the time, and we have to be sagacious, not impudent.

The shamelessness and strenuousness of intercession

 I say unto you, though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth. (luke 11:8)

Strenuousness means whipping ourselves up, and jeering at ourselves till we sit down no more. Never give yourself any encouragement, only encourage yourself in god. And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint (luke 18:1). It is a pleasant business to faint, everyone else has all the bother. God will give it to me in his good time. He cannot until we intercede. Be at the business, use some perspiration of soul, get at the thing, and all of a sudden you will come to the place where you will say, now i see, but i defy you to tell anyone what you saw until they come to where you are

Oh could I tell, ye surely would believe it!
Oh could I only say what I have seen!
How should I tell or how can ye receive it,
How, till He bringeth you where I have been?

The point is that we have come to understand god. It is never gods will for us to be dummies or babies spiritually, it is gods will for us to be sons and daughters of god, but he does not prevent us paying the price of being sons and daughters. He makes us sons and daughters potentially, and then sends us out to be sons and daughters actually. Are we prepared to go into the shameless business of prayer? That is, are we prepared to get to the right understanding of god in this matter? We can only get it by one way, not by disputing or controversy, but by prayer. Keep at it. We have no business to remain in the dark about the character of our father when he has made his character very clear to us. The sermon on the mount has more to do with prayer than anything else. It means an end of self-indulgence in the body, in the mind, in The spirit, self-indulgence in anything and everything and a strenuous determination to get to understand god in this matter.

The sacrament and substitution of intercession

And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto peter, what, could ye not watch with me one hour? (matthew 26:40)

It is a great thing to watch with god rather than put god to the trouble of watching me in case i burn myself. We tax the whole arrangement of heaven to watch us, while god wants us to come and watch with him, to be so identified with him that we are not causing him any trouble, but giving him perfect delight because he can use us now instead of taxing some other servants of heaven to look after us.

O Lord, my Lord, I come to Thee this morning
with a sense of spiritual failure. Cleanse me by
Thy grace and restore me to the heavenly places
in Christ Jesus. O that the sweet kindness of Jesus
were more and more manifest in me.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
O Lord, Thou knowest, in eager helpless trust I
look up. O that in power and peace and purity and
grace Thou wouldst shine forth in power, in grace
and glory this day.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
O Lord, the range of Thy power, the touch of Thy
grace, the breathing of Thy Spirit, how I long for
these to bring me face to face with Thee; Lord, by
Thy grace cause me to appear before Thee.