God's Great Desire
God’s Great Desire
In the seventh chapter, we see how the God of perfection has a great desire to bring us into His perfection by the intercessory ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who is our everlasting and faithful High Priest (Heb. 7:11,25),
All of us try to overcome our trials and temptations in our own strength. Then we realise how weak and feeble we are. To be able to overcome trials and temptations we have to appropriate the intercessory ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ on our behalf. He is our unchangeable, everlasting High Priest. “For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law” ( Heb. 7:12 ). That means He is constantly interceding on our behalf knowing our weaknesses, trials and failures. But unless we take His ministry by faith it has no value for us. For example, just by saying that the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross, we do not receive salvation. When we say by faith that He died on the cross even for me; He took my place; He bore my punishment and my judgment, then His sacrifice becomes effective in our lives. In the same way, we have to believe that He is our everlasting, unchangeable High Priest, Who lives forever to intercede on our behalf. If we appropriate by faith His death, burial and resurrection as our death, burial and resurrection and also His High Priestly ministry, we shall be helped. The very second we are defiled, we call upon and claim His intercessory ministry by faith.
In I John 2:1,2 we read that He is cur Advocate, Who is always ready to intercede on our behalf. Also we read in Jer. 50:34, “Their Redeemer is strong: the LORD of hosts is his name: he shall thoroughly plead their cause, that he may give rest to the land.” The children of Israel were taken captive by their enemies, but God allowed it. Their enemies persecuted them, and would not set them free. But God intervened on their behalf and by His mighty power brought them out of captivity. In the same way, when we fail into some sin or temptation, the enemy refuses to release us. We think by our cleverness and Bible knowledge we can overcome but we fail. We must ask, “Lord, this is my weakness and failure. Kindly intercede on my behalf and deliver me from Satan’s hands.” By faith we have to claim constantly the high priestly ministry of our Lord on our behalf. The Lord Jesus Christ who lives forever pleads for us and delivers us from our failures. We have to recognise that without Him we can do nothing. We have to depend upon His intercessory ministry till we come to His perfection. For that purpose He gave all that He had, and bought us with His precious blood. In 1 Peter 1: 16 He says, “Be ye holy; for I ~ am holy” so, to be brought to His perfection we need His ' intercessory ministry.
In the old Testament period, thousands of sacrifices were offered by the priests. But no one could obtain perfection through their service or ministry (Heb. 7:19). They were only a shadow of the perfect sacrifice of the Lord Jesus (Heb. 8:5). Melchizedek as a priest of the most high God appeared to Abraham and brought heavenly food for him which strengthened him in the hour of temptation. But he. could not help Abraham to come to perfection, By giving His whole body to be broken and having conquered death on our behalf, the Lord Jesus Christ has now become our heavenly High Priest, through whom we attain perfection (Heb. 7:24.25). By His one perfect sacrifice He makes us perfect through His own perfection. Every time we fall, we can go to Him with all humility and brokenness. He will lift us up by His high priestly ministry. This does not mean that we can go on sinning, but we need to recognise our human limitation and depend upon His ministry.
May our Lord teach us to appropriate His intercessory ministry and lead us on to perfection.