And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because
he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God (Romans
8:27).
FOR OUR FOURTH POINT, let’s consider how “he maketh intercession for the saints
according to the will of God.”
As God’s dear children grow in grace, the greatest desire of the heart is for
the Spirit’s enlightening of the heart and mind to know the will of God.
We read in Hebrews 5 about babes in grace and that they desire the sincere milk
of the word. Then there are young men in grace, and then there are fathers in
grace, who have strong meat.
As we grow in grace, we grow smaller and smaller and smaller within ourselves.
We read in 1 Corinthians 13:11: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I
understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away
childish things.”
I want you to stop and picture something. A little child is always increasing.
She is 1, and then pretty soon she is a big girl now. She is 2. She keeps
growing and soon she says, I am going to go to school. Everything in the future
is big and increasing. I am going to college. I am going to be ... Everything
keeps gaining momentum.
When we become men, we put away childish things. John the Baptist said in John
3:30: “He must increase, but I must decrease.”
In Matthew 18:2-3, the Lord Jesus was speaking to His disciples as they asked
who was going to be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven: “And Jesus called a
little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, And said, Verily I say
unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not
enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
This means that except we become as a little child we cannot enter His service.
We cannot enter His kingdom. We cannot come under the kingship of Christ unless
we become as a little child.
So, when I became a man, I put away childish things, and I started to grow in
grace, and how did I grow? I grew smaller and smaller and smaller within myself.
I started to hunger and thirst after the knowledge of the will of God.
Now it is not such a big future anymore that I have all figured out for myself.
Now my future is: Lord, what is your will?
How often our heart has to go out to the Lord and say, Lord, give me the wisdom
to know your will, and the grace to do your will.
As we grow in grace, we have a longing desire to know the will of God. Why? We
hate evil. We love God. We become as a little child. A little child can sit at
the table with no concerns about who is going to pay the taxes or the light bill
or any of the expenses, or where the food comes from that is on the table. They
have a childlike faith, trusting that their father has put it there. It never
enters their minds where it comes from.
When you and I truly become as a little child and have childlike faith, then we
begin trusting the Lord, and we see that He makes provision for us. Then we do
not worry so much about the things of this life. Now we are maturing into a
full-grown father in grace, and that is called eating the meat. We come to the
point that we become as that little child.
In Psalm 143:10, I want you to take notice of the breathing of the heart of the
man of God: “Teach me to do thy will; for thou art my God: thy spirit is good;
lead me into the land of uprightness.”
How did he know that His Spirit is good? The Spirit teaches him the mind of God.
When the Holy Spirit begins to intercede in our hearts according to the will of
God, then the cry of our hearts becomes like we read from David in this psalm.
Verse 10 shows that childlike spirit wanting to be taught. He understood that
Spirit of God in the desire to do the will of God.
Now watch the next verse: “Quicken me, O LORD, for thy name’s sake: for thy
righteousness’ sake bring my soul out of trouble.”
Now he is starting to hunger and thirst after the knowledge of His will. That is
as we grow in grace. As we become more mature in grace that becomes our food by
night and day. Then it is our prayer constantly to seek the Lord’s will, not to
have Him snap to do our will.
He sometimes sends adversity, and we should pray, Lord, give me submission to
this, not deliver me from it. Give me to be able to glorify you in the fire. In
that tribulation, in that furnace of affliction, give me to be able to do what
is for your glory, not being concerned about ourselves. We ask, What is His
will?
David said in a prophetic way in Psalm 40:6: “Sacrifice and offering thou didst
not desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast
thou not required.”
He is maturing. He is becoming mature in Christianity, in godliness, in the fear
of the Lord.
Continuing in verses 7 and 8 we read: “Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of
the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law
is within my heart.”
He was prophesying of the Lord Jesus Christ. We now become conformed to the Lord
Jesus Christ.
That becomes the central desire of the heart. When the Holy Spirit intercedes
and comes with the word of sanctification in our heart, now it is a constant
desire to do the will of God. Then we say with the psalmist: Teach me your will.
Open my understanding to understand what would be your will. His law is written
in our hearts, not on tables of stone, but on the fleshly tables of our hearts.
It is our total desire to do what is pleasing to the Lord.
I am not primarily seeking heaven. I am not primarily trying to find a way to
escape hell. What I want to do is please the Lord. I want to do what He created
me for, and that is to live to His glory. That becomes my primary concern.
If you were one of my children, the fact that you are one of my children is what
makes it that you now dwell in my home. If we are one of God’s children, and if
we truly fear the Lord, then we will dwell with Him. That is how we go to
heaven.
It is that we have been adopted into the family of God. That adoption is through
the Lord Jesus Christ, primarily and first through His obedience. As Christ’s
obedience is imputed and imparted to us, we become conformed to the image of
Christ. We now have that same Christlike spirit.
That spirit, that mind of Christ, becomes our desire.
David’s ears were opened (verse 6) to hear the will of God, that he could
discern it. When his ears were opened to hear the will of God, his mouth was
opened to preach it. I want you to see this in verse 9: “I have preached
righteousness in the great congregation: lo, I have not refrained my lips, O
LORD, thou knowest.”
How do we preach the righteousness of God? Until we start preaching with our
heals, we do not have to start with our lips.
I visited with a brother the other night. I said: When a person comes to me and
wants to give me his testimony and a big profession of what a Christian he is, I
do not even want to hear it unless his life corresponds with it. If his life
does not correspond with it, it is mockery to make such a big profession. Until
our heart has been renewed, until we have a new desire, until it is our chief
and most longing desire to do the will of God, we do not have anything to talk
about. If we still cherish sin, if we still cherish the things of the flesh, we
have nothing to preach about.
The prophet Isaiah spoke of receiving the tongue of the learned after his ear
had been awakened to hear. I want you to see the chronology of this. We first
receive the ear to hear. In other words, we become teachable. We come to the
point where we have a new desire, and it is our desire to do the will of God
before we can teach it.
We read in Isaiah 50:4: “The Lord GOD hath given me the tongue of the learned,
that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: he
wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned.”
When He awakens our ears to hear, we are able to speak a word in season. Until I
have learned to listen, I do not have anything that I can tell that is to the
Lord’s glory.
As we see from our text, this principle applies to prayer as well. Notice Romans
8:27: “And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit,
because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.”
He searches the heart. That is first. Our minds have to be in conformity with
the mind of the Spirit. Now He gives us what to speak so we can enter into
prayer from the heart. It is not just reciting a prayer out of a prayer book. A
sigh, a groan. One or two words from the heart is more prayer than a whole hour
of reciting fluent words all from the head.
The more we have received of an ear to hear the will of God the more we will
receive of the tongue of the Spirit to intercede for us.
John 15:7 says: “If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what
ye will, and it shall be done unto you.” If we have learned to hear, and His
words abide in us, we will be able to use our tongues to bring forth a prayer, a
petition, that the Lord will be willing to hear. We have heard with a spiritual
ear. We have had that penetrate our hearts.
As our ear to hear God’s will grows into the exercise of saving faith by showing
love to our neighbor, in just that same proportion we receive the tongue of the
learned in prayer.
The Lord Jesus Christ says in Matthew 7:24: “Therefore whosoever heareth these
sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built
his house upon a rock.”
In verse 26, He says: “And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and
doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon
the sand.”
The hearing is the spiritual hearing. It is the ear of that intercessory prayer
of the Spirit, and now the words that come forth after we understand the will of
God are the words that are given us by the Spirit.
As our ear to hear grows into the exercise of saving faith, it is by showing
love to our neighbor. I can come before the Lord and ask Him to forgive me and
to show mercy, and the first thing that happens when the Holy Spirit really
comes to intercede is that He opens my understanding and brings me into the
court of my conscience.
You are asking for mercy. Have you shown mercy? I am going to give you the exact
same mercy you have shown. You are asking me to forgive you, but as the Lord’s
prayer says, He forgives as I forgive: “For if ye forgive men their trespasses,
your heavenly Father will also forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their
trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14-15).
We want to notice that hearing comes first. We have to learn to hear the will of
God.
I want you to see how this ties in with showing love to our neighbor. We receive
the tongue of the learned in prayer in the same proportion that we extend
ourselves to our neighbor.
We read about acceptable prayer and fasting in Isaiah 58:7-9: “Is it not to deal
thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy
house? when thou seest the naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not
thyself from thine own flesh? Then shall thy light break forth as the morning,
and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go
before thee; the glory of the LORD shall be thy rereward. Then shalt thou call,
and the LORD shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou
take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and
speaking vanity.”
See how this becomes effectual prayer—when our footsteps begin to correspond
with the will of God.
We read in Luke 11:1: “And it came to pass, that, as he was praying in a certain
place, when he ceased, one of his disciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to
pray, as John also taught his disciples.”
The prayers of the Lord Jesus Christ were effectual because He delighted in the
will of the Father. He said: I know that you hear me always. This was because He
was without sin. He never had sinned, and the Father heard Him always. When the
disciples heard Him pray, they asked Him: Lord, teach us to pray.
In the Lord’s prayer, Jesus taught us what our priorities must be in prayer,
that is, what we are to ask for ahead of any personal desires. When you and I
come to lay our petitions before the Lord, we must to it in the proper order,
with a proper set of priorities.
We read in Matthew 6:9-10: “After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father
which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in
earth, as it is in heaven.”
The Lord is telling them the manner of prayer. Our first desire is to hallow and
glorify the name of the Father. Then, we express that we want to come under His
kingship. We get back to the same prayer that David prayed: Teach me your will.
After we have petitioned for the knowledge of His will and that His kingdom
might come and that His will might be done in earth as it is in heaven, then we
may ask for our own needs. This shows us the priorities in prayer as the Lord
Jesus taught His disciples to pray.
We need to pray in a manner in which the glory of God is our first thought. The
second is that His will be made known.
When the Holy Spirit makes intercession in our hearts, our prayers will be in
the right priority. The first and uppermost thought in our hearts is to seek His
will.
As we become conformed to the image of Christ, our first priority is to honor
our heavenly Father by doing His will, and to do His will, our first petition
has to be: Lord, what is your will? He intercedes in our heart, giving us a
hunger and a desire after righteousness, after doing the will of God.
Watch what the Lord Jesus said in Matthew 26:42: “He went away again the second
time, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me,
except I drink it, thy will be done.”
Can we pray for His will to be done even if it means the crucifying of our
flesh? This is what we need to understand if we are going to have the Holy
Spirit interceding for us, giving us prayer that is acceptable before God.
When we have received the ear of the learned to hear the will of God, the Spirit
intercedes in our hearts to pray for wisdom to know the revealed will of God and
grace to do His will.
I want you to see something. There is a difference between the secret and the
revealed will of God.
We read in Deuteronomy 29:29: “The secret things belong unto the LORD our God:
but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever,
that we may do all the words of this law.”
We are not to pray that the Lord reveal His secret will to us. We want to know
His revealed will.
I heard this scripture recited a thousand times as a young man and never
realized the last part of that verse until I really started studying it in my
own Bible. It says: “That we may do all the words of this law.” The Lord reveals
His revealed will because that is what He wants us to do. We are not to meddle
with His secret will. I am not to sit back and say, Well, if the Lord loved me
from eternity, and if I am elect and I am going to be saved, then I am going to
sit here and wait until the Lord saves me. Then I am venturing into His secret
will.
His revealed will is “that we may do all the words of this law.” I must do that
even if I must spend eternity in hell. If His secret will is that He is going to
save me or if His secret will is that He is not going to save me is not what I
should be prying into. What I should be prying into is, Lord, what is your
revealed will, and His revealed will is “that we may do all the words of this
law.”
The Spirit never intercedes in our behalf to pry into the secret will of God.
The religion of many people I know of is wrapped around: if I am elect, and if,
if, if, prying into the secret will of God. You know, the Lord keeps it secret
because He has His revealed will that He wants us to obey.
If I knew the secret will of God, and I knew that God has foreordained that I am
going to spend eternity with Him in heaven, and I cherish sin, what is going to
pull me away from sin? However, if I do not know His secret will, and I am not
making that my main objective, I am looking at His revealed will. He says that I
should love my neighbor. He says that I should do these things that He has
revealed in His will, and now my prayer is Lord, what is your will, not what is
your secret will, but what is your revealed will? What will you have me to do?
I want you to see God’s revealed will for Nineveh. We see in the history of
Jonah and Nineveh a beautiful illustration of how displeasing it is to the Lord
and how wretchedly wicked it is to try to pry into and make our decisions on the
basis of God’s secret will. It is a horrible sin.
We read in Jonah 3:2: “Arise, go unto Nineveh, that great city, and preach unto
it the preaching that I bid thee.”
This was His revealed will.
We read in verses 3 and 4: “So Jonah arose, and went unto Nineveh, according to
the word of the LORD. Now Nineveh was an exceeding great city of three days’
journey. And Jonah began to enter into the city a day's journey, and he cried,
and said, Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.”
This was God’s revealed will for Nineveh. His secret will was that they were
going to repent, and He was going to save them, but He did not tell Jonah: You
run down the street and tell them that as soon as they repent, I will save them,
because I have already predetermined that they are going to repent, and I am
going to save them. They would never have repented.
The revealed will of God that Jonah had to bring forward was: “Yet forty days,
and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” Now, I want you to understand. He did not
preach the gospel to them. The doctrine of repentance was not preached to them.
They were not even told to repent, and I want to tell you why. The Lord Jesus
Christ uses that to illustrate the rebellion of the Christian nation. He says, A
greater than Jonah is here, and Nineveh repented at the preaching of Jonah. What
He is saying is: He did not even preach repentance. He just preached: “Yet forty
days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” That was His revealed will, and they
acted on it. They believed it.
It was through preaching God’s revealed will that His secret will was
accomplished. When Jonah preached: “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be
overthrown,” the people of Nineveh believed God and fasted as we see in Jonah
3:5-9: “So the people of Nineveh believed God, and proclaimed a fast, and put on
sackcloth, from the greatest of them even to the least of them. For word came
unto the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe
from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he caused it to
be proclaimed and published through Nineveh by the decree of the king and his
nobles, saying, Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste any thing: let
them not feed, nor drink water: But let man and beast be covered with sackcloth,
and cry mightily unto God: yea, let them turn every one from his evil way, and
from the violence that is in their hands. Who can tell if God will turn and
repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?”
If Jonah had preached the secret will of God that He was not going to destroy
Nineveh at the end of forty days, they would not have repented. So, the Lord
performed His secret will by the preaching of His revealed will.
It is a great sin to rebel against God’s revealed will through speculation of
His secret will. This is what Jonah did. He was speculating on the secret will
and acted on it instead of the revealed will. This is happening in many churches
today. They speculate on the secret will of God and therefore continue in sin
that grace may abound.
I want you to see in Jonah 4:1: “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was
very angry.”
He was displeased that they repented, and the Lord did not overthrow them. He
was displeased that what he preached did not happen.
We read in verses 2 and 3: “And he prayed unto the LORD, and said, I pray thee,
O LORD, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled
before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, and merciful,
slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil. Therefore
now, O LORD, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to
die than to live.”
Jonah speculated, and that is why he fled and did not go to do what he was told
to do. He speculated on the secret will of God.
So how are we to come to the knowledge of God’s revealed will? We are not to pry
into God’s secret will. We must act on His revealed will. Jesus said in John
5:39: “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and
they are they which testify of me.”
If we are to pray according to His will, the first thing I want to bring to our
attention according to the revealed will of God is: “Search the scriptures; for
in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me.”
I want to show you what happens. There are thousands of denominations, and they
each have their own interpretation of the Bible, and millions are being deceived
into hell with a Bible in their hands. This happens because they are not
searching the Scriptures for themselves, and they believe what someone told
them. They are listening to someone’s interpretation, and they are not searching
the Scriptures for the will of God.
I talked to a brother just the other evening. Yeah, you sure opened my eyes, he
said. That is something I never noticed. All you have to do is read the
Scriptures. It is there.
There is grave danger in relying on some powerful preacher, or church traditions
and doctrine, instead of searching the Scriptures.
I know of a young man who had his own mechanics shop, but he heard about some
powerful preacher in Texas, so he gave away everything, took all of his things
out of the house, disposed of them, got in a car, and headed for Texas. Had he
stopped to study the Word of God, he would not have had to run behind any
powerful preacher. It says, Search the Scriptures.
We have church traditions, and they are not the will of God. We need to search
the Word of God for His will.
I want you to see what it says in 2 Timothy 4:3-4: “For the time will come when
they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap
to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears
from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.”
The Holy Spirit gives you the ear to hear the truth, and where is it to be
found? In the Word of God. When we have some authority that is a higher
authority than the Word of God, then we have itching ears. They will not endure
sound doctrine. They do not want the truth.
They all claim to preach the Word of God. This one has this interpretation, and
that one has that interpretation. My Bible has never authorized one human being
on the face of the earth to ever interpret the Word of God. It says read the
Scriptures. It does not say interpret.
God’s Word declares that it is noble to confirm what is preached—even if it is
preached by one of Christ’s true apostles—by searching the Scriptures to see if
those things are so. If you take everything I tell you and never go back into
the Word of God to confirm whether it is the Word of God, you are not wise. I
try to just literally unfold the Word, but you are still not wise if you are
relying on a person instead of the Word. The Word is the authority. You must
never sit under the proclamation of any preacher without going back to confirm
that the Word says what he says.
You start searching the Scriptures and the will of God starts unfolding because
you will find verses before and after the ones I have cited that the Lord may
use to turn on the greatest light for you. No person can unfold the fullness of
the Word. It is not granted to human tongue to do that. These blessings are
conveyed in the searching of the Scriptures.
The Lord Jesus Christ had a reason for saying, Search the Scriptures. It is in
the Word of God that there is power.
I want you to see how that in the days of the apostles, the men of Berea were
noble. We read in Acts 17:10-12: “And the brethren immediately sent away Paul
and Silas by night unto Berea: who coming thither went into the synagogue of the
Jews. These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received
the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether
those things were so. Therefore many of them believed; also of honourable women
which were Greeks, and of men, not a few.”
They were under the preaching of one of the apostles of Jesus Christ, but they
did not just take it for granted. Well, after all, he is sent by the Lord, so
what he says is true. No, they searched the Scriptures to confirm it. The
connecting word therefore shows that because of this many of them believed. See
the blessedness that the Lord brought upon the church of Berea because those men
obeyed, and they searched the Scriptures and found that what was preached to
them was so. The Lord blessed it, and many believed.
It is because they searched the Scriptures and found that these things were so
that they had the ear of the learned to hear.
Those who have not received the ear of the learned to hear what the Spirit says
to the churches would not hear God’s precious will even if God would send one of
their loved ones from the pit of hell to testify of God’s will.
You might say that if a man I knew personally, and I saw him buried, and all of
a sudden that man came back to me and started saying, I came right out of the
pit of hell and I come to warn you: Be careful. That is real. It is genuine, you
would say, That would scare anyone straight, would it not? The Word of God says
no.
It says that if you will not hear my word, you would not hear that either. Why
would we believe a man had come out of hell and started preaching to us if we
will not hear: Thus saith the Lord?
I want to read that to you right out of Luke 16:27-29: “Then he said, I pray
thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house: For I
have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this
place of torment. Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let
them hear them.”
“Moses and the prophets” means they have the law of God, and they have the
inspired teachings of the gospel. That word prophets means all inspired
teaching. In other words, let them search the Scriptures, and if they refuse to
do that, and they refuse to hear me, they will not listen to you either.
Continuing in verses 30 and 31 we read: “And he said, Nay, father Abraham: but
if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If
they hear not Moses [that is, the revealed will of God] and the prophets [that
is, the inspired teaching of the gospel], neither will they be persuaded, though
one rose from the dead.”
Do you see why it is important for us to search the Scriptures? The Spirit gives
us the ear of the learned to know the will of God, and if that is not where our
hungering desire is, we would not hear if the Lord did send one out of the
grave.
Searching the Scriptures is more than a mere casual reading of it as a literal
book for our own interpretation.
In 2 Timothy 3:7 we read: “Ever learning, and never able to come to the
knowledge of the truth.”
We can read it as a literal book. We can read it with a closed mind, with a hard
heart.
Verse 8 says: “Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also
resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith.”
They resist the truth because they do not love the truth, so they start
interpreting the truth, and when they get done they can make 1 Timothy 2 tell
you they can put a lesbian in the pulpit. Yet, the Word clearly says no. They do
not love the truth, and therefore they withstand the truth even as those whom
the earth swallowed alive. They do not desire to know the truth. They hear what
they want to hear, and if it does not say that they will twist it until it does,
so they can say, This is what I believe.
Reprobatemeans devoid of sound judgment. The Lord has blinded their minds so
they do not understand because they did not desire to understand.
These who are never able to come to the knowledge of the truth are those who
never learned to love the truth. They never understood what it was to desire to
know.
We read in 2 Timothy 3:1-5: “This know also, that in the last days perilous
times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous,
boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,
Without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce,
despisers of those that are good, Traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of
pleasures more than lovers of God; Having a form of godliness, but denying the
power thereof: from such turn away.”
These are men of religion. They are religious people, and they do not have a
grain of religion that is pleasing to the Lord. They have every trait and every
element of violating the second table of the law, but they still have a form of
religion.
How are they denying the power of godliness? Godliness is to love God above all
with your heart, your soul and your mind. They are denying the power of it,
which would have a tendency to give you to love your neighbor as yourself. If
you really love God above all, you would automatically love your neighbor as
yourself because God has so commanded you. All these violations of the second
table of the law, and they still claim to be religious, but this is the perilous
time that shall come in the last days.
When the Holy Spirit intercedes to help us know the will of God, it becomes our
highest desire and our chiefest prayer, Lord, what is your will?
To thousands who think they are searching the Scriptures, it is but a sealed
book because their eye of faith is not fixed upon Christ. They are going to
become some authority in themselves, or they are searching the Scriptures with a
selfish motive. They are not searching the Scriptures to find out what is the
will of God, but they are searching the Scriptures to see how they can escape
the consequences of sin. That is the motive, but the motive must be searching to
find the will of God so we may do it.
In 2 Corinthians 3:12-14 we read: “Seeing then that we have such hope, we use
great plainness of speech: And not as Moses, which put a vail over his face,
that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which
is abolished: But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the
same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done
away in Christ.”
That veil which comes over the eyes, that form of religion that is only for the
sake of religion, is done away when the eyes are fixed on Christ. When Christ
becomes our pattern, when Christ becomes the object of our love, when Christ
becomes the object of our faith, then that veil is taken away. We begin to
realize that Christ is preached from Genesis 1 through Revelation 22, and if our
eyes are not fixed on Christ, then we have a veil over our eyes.
The Lord Jesus Christ came to do the will of God, and if we have our eyes fixed
on Christ, we start to understand what is said in John 14:6: “Jesus saith unto
him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but
by me.”
There is no way to the Lord outside of Christ. So, we have to search for Christ
in the reading of the Scriptures, and He is all the way through the Old
Testament as well as the New Testament. So we search the Scriptures because
“they are they which testify of me” (John 5:39), and He was talking about the
Old Testament. The New Testament was not yet written.
As the Holy Spirit begins to make intercession in our hearts “according to the
will of God,” we will learn the prayer of David in Psalm 119:18: “Open thou mine
eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law.”
The law of God, if we understand it properly, points us to Christ because Christ
came to fulfill the law. If we rightly see the law we have to see it as having
been fulfilled in Christ.
See the venting of the heart of the man after God’s own heart as the Holy Spirit
intercedes in prayer “according to the will of God.”
I want you to look at Psalm 119:142: “Thy righteousness is an everlasting
righteousness, and thy law is the truth.”
The Lord Jesus says: I am the truth. See where we find the Lord Jesus in the
law.
Verse 143 says: “Trouble and anguish have taken hold on me: yet thy commandments
are my delights.”
This is true even if it crucifies my flesh to keep His law.
We read in verses 144 to 146: “The righteousness of thy testimonies is
everlasting: give me understanding, and I shall live. I cried with my whole
heart; hear me, O LORD: I will keep thy statutes. I cried unto thee; save me,
and I shall keep thy testimonies.”
See how the breathings of the heart under trial is a longing desire: Lord, show
me your will. Help me to understand your will.
These prayers were the fruit of David having his eye of faith fixed upon his
blessed Redeemer’s reverence for His Father’s will. Christ is in this, and that
is what we must learn to see so it does not become a Pharisaical law religion.
It is the spirit of the law, a desire to do out of a motive of love, a desire to
do that which is pleasing unto the Lord.
I want you to see how these very prayers of David were prophetic in themselves.
These prayers were the fruit of having his eyes fixed on his blessed Redeemer
and His reverence for the Father’s will. In this longing desire to do the will
of the Father, he saw the Redeemer’s desire and how the Father would be so
glorified in Christ’s obedience.
I want you to see this in Hebrews 10:7-9: “Then said I, Lo, I come (in the
volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God. Above when he
said, Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou
wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure therein; which are offered by the law; Then
said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may
establish the second.”
This was the heart cry of David. In a prophetic way, in his meditations and his
prayers before the Lord, David cited those very same words. Now, in Hebrews, it
is written about Christ: “In the volume of the book it is written of me.” In
other words, it was prophesied of me.
We read from David in Psalm 40:6-9: “Sacrifice and offering thou didst not
desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burnt offering and sin offering hast thou
not required. Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written
of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart.”
When David vented that in his heart before the Lord, he did so with his eyes on
Christ. That is what we have to learn to understand as we search the Scriptures.
Our searching is to be with our eyes on Christ and to see how Christ is the
center of the Word, that Christ is the Word. That is what we read in John 1: And
the Word was made flesh, and the Word was God. Christ is the Word.
Our text says in Romans 8:27: “And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is
the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according
to the will of God.”
When the Holy Spirit instills spiritual prayer in our hearts, the words, the
longing desires, the prayer of the heart, centers in the will of God. That is
true intercession of the Spirit: when the will of God becomes our chiefest and
highest desire, anything that will honor and glorify God and that will
accomplish His will.
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