The One Who Intercedes

The sin of a believer has been completely put away by the sacrifice of our great Substitute, the Lord Jesus Christ. The sin of a believer has been completely removed so that God says His elect are righteous. However, sin has not been removed from our bodies or from our experience. Even after the Lord saves us, all we do is still sin. So John writes to comfort the hearts of believers in I John 2:1, “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous”. What great comfort for the believer to know that the very One who suffered and died for our sin is the same One who sits enthroned in glory to make intercession for us! Christ will never forget His suffering for His people so He will never forget that justice has already been satisfied for them. Christ will never forget how He shed His blood in His dying agony, so He will never forget that the sin of His people has already been forgiven by His blood. How I hate my sin! But how I love the One who not only suffered and died for me, but also rose again and ascended to glory to forever make intercession for transgressors like me!

Only those who have experienced the miracle of the new birth know the difference between professing Christ and possessing Christ.

Pastor Gene Harmon

LED AND FED

“And he blessed Joseph, and said, God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this day” (Genesis 48:15)

The little word, “fed”, has a big meaning; it means the same thing as the word Shepherd means in Psalm 23, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’. What Jacob is saying to Joseph and his two grandsons is this; ‘God of my fathers has shepherded me all my life long. God Almighty, The God who is all sufficient has led me and fed me all my life, even before I knew Him.’ This is true of every one of the Lord’s sheep, ‘He has shepherded me.’ I pray that we will be able to leave such a testimony to our children and grandchildren.

John Chapman

Absolute Assurance

The believer in the Lord Jesus knows with absolute assurance that for him to have any hope of eternal life, the Father had to have chosen him in Christ before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4).

He’s absolutely sure that he is a sinner and that for his guilt to have truly been put away, his sin had to have been dealt with in Christ his Substitute (2 Cor. 5:21) and now, shall never be charged to him (Rom. 8:1).

He’s absolutely sure that the perfect life that Christ lived as his Representative and Surety is now and shall forever be his only righteousness before God (Romans 4:6-7).

And he’s absolutely sure, having come to Christ by faith, he shall forever be with the Lord (John 17:24).

Pastor Marvin Stalnaker

Sometimes the truth gets blurred, or even obscured, by the speaker’s need to be clever or interesting. May we speak the plain, unadorned truth, as it is in Jesus Christ. Nothing is more interesting and exciting to the believer, and nothing else will, by God’s grace and power, make a believer of an unbeliever.