Jesus As Intercessor

“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.” – Hebrews 7:25

“The safest conception . . . that we can have of the intercession of Christ . . . is his continual appearance for us in the presence of God.” – John Owen

We often think of Jesus as the fulfillment of the Old Testament sacrifices through his death, and of the tabernacle and temple through his incarnation, but he also fulfills the Old Testament role of high priest—not simply the sacrifice, but the one who through his position offers that sacrifice in intercession. Making the sacrifice was not enough. Someone had to bring that blood into the holy presence of God, and once a year on the Day of Atonement, the high priest was the only one able to do this by entering the Holy of Holies to sprinkle blood on the altar.

The remarkable thing is that this role is ongoing. Jesus’ sacrifice was once-for-all, but his intercession continues forever, and that is part of how our salvation works. Don Carson writes, “the complete salvation of his people turns on the efficacy of his perpetual intercession, and the efficacy of his perpetual intercession turns on the once-for-all sacrifice he has offered, and on his own everlasting life.”

What exactly is this intercession? It is not the intercession of a pleading Son before a reluctant Father; our salvation is the will of Father, Son and Spirit. It is not intercession with any element of uncertainty, as we might pray. It is something far more complex and glorious. To paraphrase the answer to question 55 of the Westminster Larger Catechism, Christ’s intercession is his appearing in our nature continually before God in heaven, upon the merit of his own earthly obedience and sacrifice, through which he answers all accusations against us, quiets our conscience, and gives us continual access to grace. But it is more: Jesus also continually and actively prays for us. To paraphrase John Owen, Christ requests and offers to God his desires and will for us, with care, love, and compassion. 

Our salvation is not static. It does not end with some decision we made in the past. This very day, we are being saved by the eternal intercession of Jesus for us in heaven. Unlike the high priests of the Old Testament, he will never die. He will continue to do this work for us forever and ever.

Unmoored

“We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain.” – Hebrews 6:19

I wonder sometimes if there is such a thing as subconscious external points of reference we used in daily living. People we saw, social atmospheres we entered, collective routines we participated in, which gave us a sense of context and well-being. I wonder this because there is something about being at home every day that makes me feel unmoored. It’s more than just forgetting which day of the week it is. It’s a loss of the collective context, of external cues, of the points of reference I took for granted every day.

Being unmoored leaves me tossed by the waves. There are up days and down days. There are up weeks and down weeks. Some days I see glory and grace in some experience unique to this time; others I feel crushed by the smallest repetitive task. I may struggle to respond with equanimity to something I would usually have taken in stride. I may find myself combatting anxiety at unexpected moments. And I am probably not alone in this experience.

It is ironic that this period of apparent monotony has made me realize so acutely how much I am a victim of my circumstances. More than ever, I need to be anchored. Some of that involves intentionally rebuilding healthy rhythms and external cues however I can. But at heart, what I need is to be centered upon something sure and unchanging in a world that has gone askew. In the end, this only comes from entering the inner place of God’s presence, a God who is beyond all time, who guides all things for my eternal good. There I can find a peace that is never shaken, a hope that answers despair, and a “sure and steadfast anchor of the soul.”

Keep On Keeping On

“Many times he delivered them.” – Psalm 106:43

I have concluded that for our kids, entropy is the price of creativity. The more the imaginative play, the greater the resulting level of random disorder in the house. Someone once said that the more kids you have, either the messier or the tidier you become; for us, it’s the latter. Something about keeping our space neat helps me cope with the general chaos. But that means we end up doing a lot of repetitive tidying, cleaning up the same pillows, toys, and craft supplies all day long.

It reminds me of life in general nowadays, which can feel like nothing more glorious than doing again what has been done before. Waking up to days that are all the same versions of each other, with no end in sight. 

But there is something of God in choosing to do again what we’ve done before. That is the story of Psalm 106: “They did not remember… Yet he saved them… But they soon forgot… Many times he delivered them.” Again and again, the people forgot God, and again and again, God saved them. Doing again what he did before. This is what God does, and the daily, repetitive tasks we do live this out in the most granular of ways. 

I like to think about all the repetitive, ordinary tasks done in the Bible: David going through the same routines to tend his sheep, Ruth bending down time and again to glean wheat under the hot sun, Jesus familiar with the same chores in his father’s carpentry shop. God did not work despite these ordinary events, but through them, to achieve his purposes. In some small but important way, they declare the character of a God whose “steadfast love endures forever!” (Psalm 106:1) 

i thank You God for most this amazing

by e. e. cummings:

i thank You God for most this amazing

day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything

which is natural which is infinite which is yes

Rhythm

“So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.” – Hebrews 4:9

One way that Sabbaths differ from vacations is that they occur not as a bolus, but as a regular part of our lives. Wayne Muller writes, “When we live without listening to the timing of things, when we live and work in twenty-four-hour shifts without rest—we are on war time, mobilized for battle. Yes, we are strong and capable people, we can work without stopping, faster and faster, electric lights making artificial day so the whole machine can labor without ceasing. But remember: No living thing lives like this. There are greater rhythms, seasons and hormonal cycles and sunsets and moonrises and great movements of seas and stars. We are part of the creation story, subject to all its laws and rhythms.” 

Seeds are dormant before sprouting; animals hibernate; music consists as much of patterns of silence as of notes. There is a rhythm that our culture has lost, and Sabbath is the regaining of that “continually recurring interruption,” as Karl Barth puts it. Just as we tithe as regularly as we earn, we must tithe our time as regularly as we receive it, rest as regularly as we work. We have to regularly remember, because we continually forget. It is this rhythm that allows Sabbath to bleed through to the rest of our week. “Judaism tries to foster the vision of life as a pilgrimage to the seventh day; the longing for the Sabbath all days of the week which is a form of longing for the eternal Sabbath all the days of our lives,” writes Heschel. 

As we’re home more these days, there are more chances for refreshing rests throughout the day. There are more spontaneous conversation, board games, meals eaten together. Are these Sabbaths? They can be, but the question to ask is, do they occur in a perceivable pattern? Do they recur with some level of regularity or predictability? Are they something you can look forward to? 

Contemplate

“For whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.” – Hebrews 4:10

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” – Exodus 20:8

Sabbath is not merely about getting away from work, but drawing nearer to God. At its heart, to Sabbath is to contemplate God. We are entering into God’s rest. We are treading upon God’s time. It is holy ground. We cannot exist within such time without looking for and upon God.

Thomas Merton writes, “Life is this simple: we are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and the divine is shining through it all the time. This is not just a nice story or a fable; it is true.” Sabbath is a time when we look a bit more for the divine shining through. We notice the gifts and graces that we are usually too preoccupied to see. We appreciate not only their existence, but what they show us about the nature and character of God. We reflect upon how God has been working in our lives. We receive words he may have for us through community. We look for his glory all around. We contemplate his love.

To contemplate is simply to give God our attention. We give so many things our attention, but just as we would with a beloved, we need at intervals to gaze without distraction upon the one whom we love and who loves us. This is that time. Wendell Berry writes in one of his Sabbath poems, “I know that I have life only insofar as I have love. I have no love except it come from Thee. Help me, please, to carry this candle against the wind.”

Refresh

“So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.” – Hebrews 4:9

“It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.” – Exodus 31:17

In that verse in Exodus, the Hebrew word for “refreshed” is naphash, literally “to take a breath.” Walter Brueggemann points out that its most common use is as a noun meaning “self” or “soul”—here, it becomes a verb, re-nepheshed. Re-souled, refreshed, restored to one’s true self. Breathing is not a bad analogy: when we breathe, we take in oxygen to replenish our red blood cells and allow our body to metabolize, to move and grow, in the way it was designed to do. Without that breath, our self as we know it would die.

After we cease and enter, what do we actually do on a Sabbath? “The simple answer,” writes Ruth Haley Barton, “is whatever delights you and replenishes you.” What do you do that is refreshing, that restores your sense of self and joy for life? This is not an intuitive question. In our “work hard, play hard” culture, leisure for most of us comes in the form of entertainment or escapism. We can be as productive in our play as in our work, binge-watching shows or planning elaborate vacations. I don’t know about you, but I don’t generally finish a few episodes of a show feeling more energized than when I began. Sabbath is something different. It is doing what is life-giving, what gives us delight in ourselves and in God.

Perhaps what replenishes your body is a nap, a bike ride, walk, long bubble bath, favorite foods, lighting candles, listening to music, lovemaking. Perhaps what delights your soul is worship, quiet reflection, community, silence, prayer, a meditative walk, a book, journaling, sitting in nature. 

Discerning what restores and refreshes takes time and presence. Sometimes it is not even what we do as much as how we do it: with attentiveness and care. Barton writes, “There have to be times in your life when you move slow… times when you walk rather than run, allowing your body to settle into each step… times when you sit and gaze admiringly at loved ones, rather than racing through an agenda… times when you receive food and drink with gratitude and humility rather than gulping it down… times when hugs linger and kisses are real… times when you let yourself feel, let tears come rather than blinking them back because you don’t have time to cry… times to sit with your gratitude for the good gifts in your life that get forgotten in the rush.” 

Enter

“Let us therefore strive to enter that rest.” – Hebrews 4:11

“For we who have believed enter that rest.” – Hebrews 4:3

Sabbaths feel sometimes like fasting: the first thing you notice about stopping your work is how much you work, like how the first thing you notice about fasting is how much your life revolves around food. When we fast, we learn to hunger after God the way we hunger after food. When we Sabbath, we learn to receive meaning from God the way we receive meaning from work. The truth is, we have a distorted relationship with work. In southern Virginia, no one ever asked me about my work, but around here, the most common follow-up to an introduction is, “what do you do?” It is nearly impossible to not let our work come to define us, to be the central source of our identity, purpose and meaning.

When we stop from our work, we start to see all that. We see the work under the work, the “ceaseless striving” for meaning and credibility that drives so much of our working. Ceasing the act of work is not the same as entering rest. When Joshua led the Israelites into the promised land, they stopped working as slaves and wanderers; there was a kind of social and physical rest, but they had not yet obtained true, deep rest. Hebrews says, “For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on.” We can only enter the deeper rest we need by believing the gospel, by believing that all that we strive for is achieved for us already through God’s work. 

Richard Lovess writes, “If we start each day with our personal security not resting on the accepting love of God and the sacrifice of Christ, but on our present achievements, such arguments will not quiet the human conscience and we are inevitably moved either to discouragement and apathy, or to a self-righteousness or some form of idolatry that tries to falsify the record to achieve a sense of peace. But the Gospel faith that is able to warm itself at the fire of God’s love and what Jesus has done for us, instead of having to steal love and self-acceptance from all these other places, is the very root of peace.”

Cease

“… for whoever had entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.” – Hebrews 4:10

“And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all the work that he had done.” – Genesis 2:2

One of the greatest mysteries is that the culmination of creation is—rest. In Hebrew, the word is shabath, which literally means “to cease.” Each new creation is a step towards the completion that occurs on the Sabbath, the act of stopping. To us, to our society, this makes no sense. Why do it all just to stop? Why is stopping so important? Rabbi Elijah of Vilna said: God stopped to show us that what we create becomes meaningful to us only once we stop creating it and start to think about why we did so. As Judith Shulevitz puts it in a New York Times article, “We have to remember to stop because we have to stop to remember.” Sabbath at heart is not about leisure or socialization: it is theater, designed to convey a certain story about who we are. Stopping helps us remember how and why we work. It helps us remember how and why we exist, as image-bearers of God, people who are more than our work. 

But stopping does not come easily. Shulevitz writes, “Most people mistakenly believe that all you have to do to stop working is not work. The inventors of the Sabbath understood that it was a much more complicated undertaking. You cannot downshift casually and easily, the way you might slip into bed at the end of a long day… This is why the Puritan and Jewish Sabbaths were so exactingly intentional, requiring extensive advance preparation—at the very least a scrubbed house, a full larder and a bath. The rules did not exist to torture the faithful. They were meant to communicate the insight that interrupting the ceaseless round of striving requires a surprisingly strenuous act of will.”

Surprisingly strenuous, indeed, especially now, when work and home life blur together. To cease work nowadays may mean not going into your home office, not checking emails or doing work on the computer. It is good to practice stopping as a family, but those of us with kids at home may also be struggling with the perennial question: how does one stop when your work is being a parent? I’ve come to no brilliant answers other than advance planning and resource investment. As a mom, my Sabbaths occur when Dave or a sitter watches the kids and I can stop mothering for a bit: days at a retreat center a few times a year, monthly afternoons out alone. Ironically, the first step to Sabbath requires some work. Stopping requires preparation. But it is important. Before we can learn what it means to enter God’s rest, we have to learn how to cease from ours.

The Jealousy Of God

“Wrath is cruel, anger is overwhelming, but who can stand before jealousy?” – Proverbs 27:4

“And I will judge you as women who commit adultery and shed blood are judged, and bring upon you the blood of wrath and jealousy.” – Ezekiel 16:38

Ezekiel 16 tells the wrenching story of God’s jealousy. Jerusalem is depicted as a woman, one who started as an unwanted child, of foreign parentage, discarded after birth with not even the cord cut, unwashed and unswaddled, wallowing in blood on the ground. “I said to you in your blood, ‘Live!’” (verse 6). God made her flourish, then as she grew to be a woman, God covered her nakedness and made a covenant vow with her: “and you became mine” (verse 8). Again, he washed off her blood. He covers her nakedness and adorns her with jewelry. But the woman betrays him. She is unfaithful with passersby, even paying them for it. She makes the clothes, jewelry, and food she was given into idols. She burns their children as an offering to other gods.

This is the reality of what happens when we turn from loving God to other idols in our life, when our loves become disordered. We are the woman in this story, incurring not just detached wrath but personal jealousy. Jealousy is a word for lovers. But that is how it is between us and God, and change in how we handle sin and idolatry in our lives does not happen until we understand that on a deep level. The answer to temptation is not self-control but relationship. The law, what I “should” do, has no power to actually change my behavior. But realizing what my sin does to a God who loves me does. The degree to which I can fight temptation or see change is the degree to which I realize my place in this story, and cultivate my relationship with my lover-God.

The truly wrenching thing is realizing that all of God’s wrath, the consequences of his jealousy, fall upon Jesus. God says, because you rejected me when I washed your blood and covered your nakedness, you will now be stripped naked and made bloody in judgment. And that is exactly what happened to Jesus. People were gathered against him on every side as his nakedness was uncovered (verse 37). He shed the blood of God’s wrath (verse 38). There was a crowd there as he was cut with a sword (verse 40). “So will I satisfy my wrath on you, and my jealousy will depart from you”—and indeed, because of Jesus, it has. God looked upon Jesus in his blood and said again, “Live!” and that is why we can too.

Our True Home

by Walter Brueggemann

God before and God behind,

God for us and God for your own self,

   Maker of heaven and earth,

      creator of sea and sky,

      governor of day and night.

We give thanks for your ordered gift of life to us,

   for the rhythms that reassure,

   for the equilibriums that sustain,

   for the reliabilities that curb our anxieties.

      We treasure from you,

         days to work and nights to rest.

      We cherish from you,

         days to control and nights to yield.

      We savor from you,

         days to plan and nights to dream.

Be our day and our night,

   our heaven and our earth,

   our sea and our sky,

   and in the end our true home. Amen.