************ Sermon on Belgic Confession Article 26 ************
Doctrine: The Intercession of Christ
By: Rev. Adrian Dieleman
This sermon was preached on December 6, 1998
B.C. 26
"Christ Intercedes For Us"
I We Need Communion With God
A
Topic: Providence
Subtopic: Divine
Index: 2905-2913
Date: 12/1997.2482
Title: The Environment for Life
Imagine you are on vacation. Sitting on the table in your room is a fish-bowl, and inside the bowl is a small goldfish. Each day you swim and sun-tan and enjoy the delights of being on beach. Before long, however, you begin to feel sorry for little Goldie who is all alone in his bowl while you go out and have fun in the sun. You decide that Goldie deserves some fun too.
The next day you take a washcloth, lift the fish from the bowl, place it in the cloth, wrap it up, and put the living bundle into your pocket before leaving for the beach.
As you reach the spot where you normally lay out, you can feel the sun's heat beating down upon your back. Excitedly you take your little companion from your pocket, lay out the washcloth on the sand and place the fish on the cloth. Now it too can enjoy the beach.
Can anything be more foolish or ridiculous? Being in the sun on the hot beach is no environment for a goldfish--or any fish! It will die there, not live. It was never intended to be in that environment.
People are like fish. If we are out of our environment we will die. What is that environment? The environment we were created to live in, the only environment we are meant for, is life with God. And apart from that environment we, like Goldie, can only die. We need God. We were created to live with God and to enjoy Him forever. God is our natural habitat, our natural environment.
Nowhere do we find this expressed as beautifully as in the psalms:
(Ps 63:1) O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water. (Cf Ps 16:2; 73:25)
Do you know what the psalmist is saying? He is saying that God is the environment, the only environment, in which we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).
Man, then, was made to commune with God, to fellowship with God, to enjoy God.
B A life of prayer is the way we experience communion and fellowship with God in this life and on this earth. And, because communion with God is what we were made for, this means God's people are a praying people. They cannot and will not live without prayer, because they cannot and dare not live without God. To Him they cry in their distress. Upon His name they call in the day of trouble. To Him they come with offerings of praise and thanks. To Him they lift up the needs of others. Only true believers understand the words prompted by a poet's soul:
Prayer is the soul's sincere desire,
Unuttered or expressed,
The motion of a hidden fire
That trembles in the breast.
My God, is any hour so sweet,
From blush of morn to evening star,
As that which calls me to Thy feet,
The hour of prayer?
C But there is a problem: sin. We are filled with sin. There is the sin we are born with – original sin – and there is the sin we commit – actual sin. We are sinners through and through. We are born into sin and remain that way for life. And God, our holy God, is so pure, so righteous, that He cannot have communion with anyone or anything that is stained with sin. Jesus says:
(1 Jn 1:5) This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.
God cannot and will not have fellowship with darkness.
How, then, can anyone have fellowship with God? How, then, can even the believer approach God? How, then, can we poor, sinful creatures dare to come to God in prayer? Are we to conclude that we, like the fish, are doomed to live and die out of the environment we were made and created for?
II The Roman Catholic Way
A The Roman Catholic Church thought it knew how sinners could fellowship with God: through Mary and the saints. Before we condemn this we must first praise this.
In the Roman Catholic Church at the time the Confession was written – and this is what I find to be praiseworthy – people had an overwhelming sense of the transcendent majesty and holiness of God. But it was not a balanced approach because they were scared to death of God. The Roman Catholic Church made God so holy and so awesome and so angry that men were terrified of Him. Even Jesus Christ was so unapproachable a figure that His very name filled men's hearts with fear. The pious Christians of the Middle Ages dreaded God. Their tendency, I would have to say, is just the opposite of what we see today. Instead of familiarity with or contempt for God, medieval Christians felt terror and smallness in God's presence. Even Jesus was too exalted to be approached by ordinary believers.
B Man needs fellowship with God. But God and Christ are seen as unapproachable. The Roman Catholic solution to this problem is to approach God through Mary and the saints. After all, they are completely human like us, are more than able to sympathize with us, and are a buffer between us and the unapproachable wrath and holiness of God. You pray to saints who, in turn, bring your petitions to God.
We are not completely sure when prayer to the saints started. But sometime after the apostles died the early church began to look for the help of those who had died in the Lord. First, it was especially martyrs who were mentioned as possible intercessors. Later, virgins, hermits, and all the heroes of the faith were believed to have intercessory power. By the time of the Reformation not even the official church knew the names of all the saints believed to have intercessory power.
Prayer to saints became so developed that each occupation and ailment had its own special saint. There were saints for holy days, city saints, national saints, and even occupation saints. Thus, the Irish pray to St. Patrick. Carpenters pray to St. Joseph, hunters could approach St. Hubert the Hunter, and physicians can ask St. Luke to intercede for them. Those who suffer from toothaches can plea with St. Appolonia for relief, for she had all her teeth extracted rather than deny Christ. St. Nicholas is looked to by single women looking for a husband. Shoemakers have St. Crispin. St. Anthony is the saint for mule drivers. If our custodian, Mrs. Van Til, would pray to a saint, she would pray to St. Ulrich who hears the prayers of those whose places are infested with rats and mice – because this past week she saw a mouse in the Fellowship Hall.
C The theology behind prayer to and of saints is wrong in terms of what it does with salvation. The saints were thought to have accumulated extra merits, extra points, because of the good they did. Sinful people here on earth can draw on the extra credits of these saints in order to remove their guilt and punishment. This, of course, is completely wrong. It denies our only Savior, Jesus Christ.
This teaching is right where it applies to the intercession of living saints. Roman Catholics and Protestants both agree that we have to pray for our fellow brothers and sisters in the Lord. "I will pray for you," or "Please pray for me," are statements to be heard throughout the universal church. It is based upon the example of Christ and the Biblical saints. For instance, John 17 is known as Christ's high-priestly prayer – a long prayer of intercession for Himself, the disciples, and all believers. And, the Apostle Paul can hardly write a letter to one of the churches without mentioning how he is praying for them.
The living praying for the living: no one, I am sure, has any problems with this. The Roman Catholic Church, however, extended this idea. If the saints on earth pray for each other, why suppose that they stop praying when they die? So for Roman Catholics it seemed only logical to assume that the saints continued to pray after they arrived in heaven.
III Christ, Our Only Access to God
A Article 26 of the Belgic Confession of Faith was written for the pious, scared, trembling, hesitant Christians of the 16th century. It was written to tell them not to be scared of Christ. It was written to tell them they could come to God through Christ. It was written to tell them that Christ is the only and the best possible Intercessor. It was written to tell them that they have only to look to Christ in times of trouble and distress:
We believe that we have no access to God except through the one and only Mediator and Intercessor: Jesus Christ the Righteous.
The Belgic Confession of Faith is upon solid Biblical grounds in saying Jesus is our only Access. I think of the words of Jesus Himself:
(Jn 10:9) I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture.
(Jn 14:6) Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
We need fellowship with God. We were created for fellowship with God. We are supposed to be a people who commune with God in prayer. This life of communion and fellowship and prayer is possible only in and through and because of Christ.
The message of the Confession: us poor, sinful, trembling creatures can come to God. Yes, we have to approach Him with reverence and awe yet, in Christ, He is approachable and, in Christ, we can have communion with Him and can talk to Him in prayer.
B Another message of the Confession: the only saint in heaven who prays for us is Christ. Again, the Confession is on solid Biblical grounds:
(Rom 8:34) Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died--more than that, who was raised to life--is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.
(Heb 7:25) Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.
The Confession uses a number of key words to describe this work of Christ. The first word is Intercessor. It comes from a Latin word which means "to go between, come between, or intervene." The idea of an intercessor is alien to most of the people in our culture. We believe, today, that anyone can go right to the top; that it is our inalienable right to talk to those in authority. People today don't want or even need an intercessor who acts or pleads for them.
When it comes to God this mindset is wrong. We can go straight to the top, to God, but only through Jesus. Jesus is our Intercessor before God. He represents our cause before God. Only through Him can we come to God.
The concept of intercessor finds its roots in the Old Testament where not only the priest but any leader can intercede for the people. More than once, for instance, Moses interceded for Israel before God. Coming down the mountain, God told Moses to stand aside so He could destroy the stubborn and rebellious people for making and worshiping the golden calf. Moses interceded with God on the people's behalf (Ex 32:9-14). When God announced His intention to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, it was Abraham who interceded for the righteous few in those cities (Gen 18). And, both Samuel and David interceded for Israel in times of trouble and calamity.
While we live here on earth we have an Intercessor in heaven – One Who pleads our cause before the Father. Jesus asks God to forgive us when we sin, to be patient with us when we waver, to answer our petitions when we pray, to preserve us in the faith when we face trial and temptation, to comfort us when we sorrow. When we need grace and mercy, when we are in trouble or in need, we have an Intercessor in heaven Who presents our case to the Father.
Another word used by the Confession is Access. Christ is our access:
(Eph 2:18) For through him (Jew and Gentile) both have access to the Father by one Spirit.
(Rom 5:2) through (Jesus) we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.
When you purchase a secluded piece of property one of the most important elements to consider is access routes. You have to arrange with the surrounding property owners an access route to the piece of land. When Ruth and I lived in Grand Rapids we had a house right behind ours. Our driveway was their access route. We soon noticed that most cars using the driveway were backing in; the driver would stay behind the wheel and a passenger would run into the house and come out with a paper bag. Our driveway was an access route for a drug dealer. When I was growing up we had a neighbor with a piece of land right against ours. To get to their piece of property the neighbor had to go down a gully, cross over a dam, and climb up the other side. When a big rain storm washed out the dam his only access route was a couple of miles out of the way by means of my dad's farm. When it comes to God our access is not by way of a road but by way of a person. Our Access, our right-of-way, to God is Jesus Christ. Says the Confession:
We believe that we have no access to God except through the one and only Mediator and Intercessor: Jesus Christ the Righteous.
Another word the Confession uses to describe the intercessory work of Christ is Mediator. Mediator is a general term for someone who stands between two sides and tries to bring them together. He is a negotiator, even an arbitrator. Jesus is the Mediator between us and God. He brings us together. But it is wrong to think of Him as a disinterested third party Who from without steps between God and us. You see, He is both parties in His own person: both true God and true man.
Jesus is our only Intercessor, Access, and Mediator. Therefore, says the Confession, we come to God "in Jesus' name," "for Jesus' sake," and "through Jesus Christ." Our communion with God is through Christ. And our prayers to God are through Christ.
C Jesus is our only Intercessor. And, praise God, He is also the best possible Intercessor, Access, and Mediator before the Father. The Confession tells us five reasons why this is the case.
First of all, there is no one "who loves us more than Jesus Christ does." Believers have no reason to fear the greatness, the majesty, and the glory of Christ. We don't have to be like the believers at the time the Confession was written who thought Christ was unapproachable. You see, out of His great love for us, Christ "emptied himself," taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of man. And, while we were still enemies, He died for us. The love He showed then He continues to show now as Intercessor.
Second, His is "prestige and power." He is seated "at the right hand of the Father." He has been given all power "in heaven and on earth." No saint has such power and majesty. What saint is able to do for us what Christ, with His majesty and power, is able to do? Christ is more than able to help us when we pray to Him.
Third, Christ is the Son of God. And, asks the Confession, when Christ intercedes for us "who will be heard more readily than God's own dearly beloved Son?" Like any father, God will sooner listen to His only begotten and beloved Son than to any other.
Fourth, Christ is a sympathetic High Priest. Since He suffered, since He was tempted, since He experienced first-hand the trials and travails of life, He has compassion on us in our weaknesses. His heart is more than able to go out to us in our troubles and heart-aches.
Fifth, because Jesus lives forever He is always able to intercede for us.
Conclusion
The gap between the holy, almighty Creator of heaven and earth and us frail, mortal, sinful creatures is so great that none of us can bridge this gap. But this gap is bridged by our Intercessor, our Access, our Mediator. No matter how deeply we sink into sin, no matter how far we feel ourselves removed from God, we have an Intercessor for all times Who allows us to do what we were created to do: to commune with God in this life by coming to Him in prayer.