I want to declare, as we begin this morning, that we have an awesome God. I think sometimes, in the turmoil of life and in our everyday busyness, most of our lives tend to be more like Martha, who was busy about many things. I am certainly that way. But I cannot deny the glory of God manifested in His creation, as we see it even this morning.
I think it is well sometimes to be reminded that we need to notice things like that. As the worldly saying goes, sometimes we need to stop and smell the roses—which basically means, I think, that sometimes we need to behold the glory of the Lord in His creation.
You know, in Romans it says that man is without excuse. There is no excuse for man. You should be able to see His creation and be drawn beyond His creation to the Creator. But so often man has been confined to the level of God’s creation. They see its beauty, they take advantage of its beauty, they use its beauty, and sometimes even worship the creation and never get to the Creator. What a sad, sad story.
To me, it has always been helpful to see the Lord in His creation. I just thought about this morning: you get up and see the dew on the grass, and I could not help but think that it is the gentleness—the gentle way in which the Lord feeds our soul. He does that. It is like a morning dew.
And we see all the blossoms of life, and we say, “Lord, You did rise out of that grave, didn’t You?”
And, you know, I see a layer of pollen on my black truck, so there is no need to wash it every day, because it needs to be washed twice a day. I say, “What an aggravation this pollen is,” particularly when your throat starts closing up. But, you know, that is the way God chooses to spread life throughout this creation: pollen. It is actually the spreading of life.
As we took this table this morning, you took that little piece of bread, and all that is saying is, “I have distributed My life to this creation. I have distributed to this world, through My death on the cross, My life to you—to you, and to you individually.” And that life is to bring forth glory in all His vessels on this earth.
Oh, how we could see His glory in things. You know, the other night—we might get to the message this morning; I only have the time allotted—but the other night, early last week, I was really down. I was really depressed, and I am sure none of y’all ever get that way. I just could not seem to get out of it.
Our brother mentioned David encouraging himself in the Lord, and I tried it, and it was not working. But thankfully, my wife wanted me to take the garbage out. And so I did—I did. I took it out, and it happened to be about eight o’clock that night.
I went outside, and it was a moonless night, but the stars were absolutely brilliant. In fact, it really did look like diamonds hanging in the sky; it was so brilliant. If y’all heard the message on the watchman, I went out and saw the Big Dipper. I have never seen it look so brilliant and so bright.
I looked up there and said, “Yeah, sure enough, Lord, it is still pointing right to the North Star, around which all the celestial bodies, at least as we see them from this earth, rotate.” We see everything rotating around that North Star.
I said, “Lord, You are still on the throne, aren’t You? This earth has not moved. Everything is in its correct order. My life, as chaotic as it may seem, has reason and purpose behind it, and it is all because of You—because of the Creator.”
So may the Lord lift up our hearts. May He draw us closer, ever closer, to Him in these days.
I remember a number of weeks ago, I shared on being a watchman: “Watchman, what of the night?” I used the illustration of going out and looking at the Big Dipper and realizing that there is something this whole universe rotates around, and it is our Lord Jesus Christ.
But there is the need to be on watch—the need to be watching out for the interests of the Lord, His purpose, His heart, what is on His heart. We shared how He has His celestial watchers, the angels and the holy ones, spoken of in the book of Daniel, who came down and made a decree concerning King Nebuchadnezzar. It was a decree of the watchers and the holy ones.
And we, as His terrestrial watchers—ones on earth, His own—are called to watch and be on the watch. There is a companion verse to this, even though it is in quite a different place: Isaiah 59:16.
Let me read Isaiah 59:1 and then Isaiah 59:16. They really are connected.
Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save;
Neither is His ear heavy, that it cannot hear.
And He saw that there was no man,
And wondered that there was no intercessor.
He saw, and He looked, and there was no man. He wondered that there was no intercessor. I think that is a companion verse to, “Watchman, what of the night?” If we are watching, it should bring us into intercessory prayer, or into an intercessory ministry.
This is not just prayer about our own personal life, but prayer about the Lord’s interest and the Lord’s heart. Of course, He is interested in us personally. It says that a sparrow does not fall from the sky that He does not know about and take account of. There is not a hair that falls from your head that He is not aware of.
He knows us from the time we are in the womb. In fact, before we are in the womb, He says, “I have known you from the beginning.” So He has great concern for each one of us, knowing also that we, being sinners, would one day need a Savior. He offered Himself as such because He loved us so much.
But this matter of intercessory prayer, brothers and sisters, goes beyond the Lord’s personal love for each one of us. It goes into God’s heart, God’s purposes, and what God is doing. It is called intercessory prayer: to be an intercessor.
In the day we are reading about in the book of Isaiah, the nation of Israel’s heart had turned cold toward the Lord. They were getting cold toward the Lord, and it preceded the time in which Jerusalem would have to go into captivity for seventy years.
The Lord said that He looked at the condition of His people—this people that was to be a testimony, this one little nation, this one little country. He said, “You are going to be a testimony to all the rest of the nations of the earth.” That is what they were called to do, and they were failing at it. The testimony was not there.
So the Lord looked down. He looked among His people. He looked for a man. He looked for an intercessor. And He said, “I could find none.”
Oh, brothers and sisters, the watchman was asleep, and there was no intercessor there.
I think this little verse, this one little verse, really cries out to us today as we see that the Lord is soon to return. In 1 Peter 4:7, it says, “The end of all things is at hand. Watch and pray.” We are called into this matter of being watchmen and intercessors.
It is very critical—not so much for your own personal life, but for what the Lord is after. He is saying, “I have a great plan, and I want you to be a part of it. I want you not only to be a part of it, but I want you to be a part of bringing it about.”
Now, there is a sense in which the Lord can do without us. In fact, if you read the next Scripture, it says:
Therefore His arm brought salvation unto Him;
And His righteousness, it sustained Him.
In other words, there was no watchman, there was no intercessor, and the Lord used His mighty arm to bring about what He wanted in His sovereignty. But, brothers and sisters, the Lord can move sovereignly, and we thank God for that.
I think the sovereignty of God is our last bastion in our life with the Lord Jesus Christ. Sometimes we get so far away from Him, and our heart gets so distant from Him, that the Lord just sovereignly moves in our lives to bring us to a place where we might be drawn back to Him. Does He not do that?
It is His own arm. We are not really cooperating. We are not really in sync with the Lord. Yet He moves sovereignly, and He turns our hearts back to Him. But that is not the way, of course, that the Lord wants to operate. He wants us to be in cooperation with Him and in His purpose.
He says, to do that, you must be a watchman, and you must be an intercessor. So we are called to intercessory prayer.
In Hebrews 4:14, let me just read this, because time is indeed short.
We have a great high priest,
That is passed into the heavens.
Our Lord Jesus Christ—when He said, “It is finished” on the cross of Calvary, we think that it was finished. Indeed, the work of redemption was finished. But His work is not complete because, brothers and sisters, His bride is not yet ready. The house is not yet completed, and He is up there praying. He is the Intercessor.
He is the King-Priest. He is not only Lord, but He is also the great High Priest. He is ministering to His church all the time, and He is praying all the time. He is the High Priest. He is the great Intercessor.
Let us go to the book of Revelation. It seems like our brother was right about his observation concerning Richmond: we have difficulty sharing a message without reading out of the book of Revelation.
And in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto a son of man,
Clothed with a garment down to the foot,
And girt about at the breasts with a golden girdle.
This is speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ: the revelation to the Apostle John of the King-Priest.
And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as one dead.
And He laid His right hand upon me, saying, Fear not;
I am the first and the last,
And the Living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore,
And I have the keys of death and of Hades.
And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness,
The firstborn of the dead,
And the ruler of the kings of the earth.
Unto Him that loveth us,
And loosed us from our sins by His blood;
And He made us to be a kingdom, to be priests unto His God and Father;
To Him be the glory and the dominion for ever and ever. Amen.
In 1 Peter 4:7, it says, “The end of all things is at hand. Watch and pray.”
Brothers and sisters, I do not know how impressed you are about the end of all things being at hand, but I am greatly impressed with the fact that the end of all things is at hand.
Our Lord Jesus, when He was here two thousand years ago, and after He gave Himself on the cross, brought about the beginning of the last days. Our Lord declared that it was the last day two thousand years ago, and a lot has happened over these two thousand years.
But today, as we see what is happening in the Middle East, and how the nations are aligning themselves concerning this little nation that God had originally called to be His testimony on this earth—we know they failed at that testimony. But God has made a promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and He will fulfill it.
If our eyes are open just a little bit to see where we are in history according to the Word of God, we have to realize that we are very close to the end. We know that in the very last day there will be a tremendous war upon this earth. It will be called the Battle of Armageddon, and it will be in the Valley of Megiddo, right where they are today, where all this is being stirred up.
In this last hour, it says that when their hearts turn back to the Lord, the veil will be lifted. That little nation—there are not many who know the Lord, not many who recognize Him as the Messiah—but it says in that very last day their hearts will turn back to the Lord, probably due to all the pressure that comes upon them, which we see building even today.
It says the veil will be lifted. That is God’s heart—God’s purpose—to bring them to Himself.
Brothers and sisters, we see here in these Scriptures that Christ is standing in the midst of the candlesticks, do we not? It is interesting: in the very last book, that is where we see the Lord, the High Priest, with His priestly ministry among the church—His people.
That is where His heart is. I want you to know that. That is where His heart is. That is where His purpose is. That is the vessel through which He will glorify Himself, not only on this earth but in the heavens.
The failure of Israel to be that nation of testimony—but one day they will return to that—has brought in the church age, which was a mystery. It was a mystery, this age of grace.
If you read about the seventy sevens in the book of prophecy, you realize that there is a space in there that is not accounted for, and we are living in that space. Maybe that is why things seem so confusing to us. But we are in this age called grace, the church age, which the prophets did not quite see. The Lord held out the revelation of that.
But there was something precious on His heart. There would be a full revelation of His Son, Jesus Christ, and it would be manifested through the church.
Brothers and sisters, in this last hour, the Lord is among the candlesticks. He is looking. He looks at those candlesticks and says, “Here is an issue here. Here is an issue there.” He is measuring them all, and He is measuring them by His life and by His character: “How much is a part of My character here, and what is not?”
But He is still in the midst of it. He is still there. There are many problems, many issues. Even in Philadelphia, the church filled with love and brotherly love, He said there was a need to overcome there too.
It is because the Lord’s heart is so great there. The Lord is walking among the candlesticks, and He is the great High Priest. He is the One who is praying. He is the true Intercessor, yet He has called us to the same intercessory prayer. He has called us to that life of ministry.
Let me backtrack a little bit. The Apostle John loved the Lord, did he not? If you asked which one of the apostles loved the Lord most—I do not know that we can really judge this—you would almost have to come to the conclusion that it was probably John.
He was the one who said, “I leaned on the Lord’s breast.” He loved Him so much and wanted to be close to Him and near Him. So, at the Lord’s Supper, he was found leaning on His breast.
When we take the Lord’s Supper, we need to think about that. Are you leaning on the Lord’s breast at the Lord’s Supper? Or is He still very distant to you? Or is it a ritual? Oh, we should be found leaning there on Him. That is the way the Lord would have it.
John was the one disciple who went with the Lord and was with the Lord. Peter was also there when He went before Pilate and was accused. John was there. Then John was there at the cross and remained there.
John had a revelation of our Lord Jesus as the Lamb of God. He saw the Lord Jesus as the Lamb of God, and because of that revelation, he had a calling on his life to follow the Lamb.
Now, brothers and sisters, each one of us, if we are Christians, at some point in our lives the Lord revealed Himself to us as the Lamb of God, as the One sacrificed on our behalf for our sins. Whether you realize it or not, that constituted a calling upon your life.
That calling was to follow the Lamb whithersoever He goes—to be His disciple, to be under His lordship and His leadership.
Now, sometimes, when we accept the Lord, all we are really interested in is our ticket to heaven and out of hell. We approach the Lord on that basis. But that was never really the Lord’s heart.
His heart was to bring us to Himself, and sin was in the way. The only way to take care of it was His sacrifice: the Perfect One in our place on Calvary’s cross, for us, for each one of us. We are to see Him as the Lamb of God, One so worthy that we cannot help but follow Him.
Sometimes there is a process in our lives before we get to that point where we say, “Lord, just as I am, I come. You are the Lamb. I want to follow You wherever You lead and whatever the cost.”
It takes a crisis sometimes in our lives to bring us to that. But John had come to that crisis in his life. He had a revelation of the Lamb, and he followed the Lamb all of his life. He ministered to the churches, and now he finds himself on the Isle of Patmos as a prisoner there.
He said, “I was there because of the testimony of Jesus.” In other words, it was in the churches that he had been ministering—the testimony of Jesus on this earth. He said, “I was put in prison because of that, and I was there because of that.”
All of a sudden, the Lord appears to John. When He does, He is behind John. He speaks to John, and John has to turn around.
When he sees the Lord—not the Lamb, though of course He is still the Lamb—but when he sees this kingly One, in this long white flowing robe, girded about the breasts, with white hair like wool, a tongue that comes out as a sword, eyes as a flame of fire, and feet as brass, he sees the King-Priest.
What happens to John? It says he falls down as dead.
Now, we should, in a way, consider that a bit strange, because John had known the Lord Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God. He had served our Lord faithfully. He had not left our Lord when He was on the cross. He loved the Lord Jesus Christ and was following Him.
Yet here the Lord appears to him, and John falls down as dead. He sees the King-Priest. He sees the King over His house. He sees that the Lord Jesus is the One over His house, ministering as the Priest to His house; that the Lord’s heart is there; and that the Lord has given everything He has for the church.
In Ephesians, it says He gave His life for her. John sees this vision of Jesus Christ, and it is as if he says, “I am a man of unclean lips.”
It was as if all of his ministry were burned up in that moment. Brothers and sisters, I do not know if we have seen what the Lord is after yet, but I do know one thing: we need to know the Lamb of God. Absolutely essential.
We will know Him as the Lamb throughout eternity, and He wants us to follow Him faithfully. But that is mostly personal between you and the Lord. He has something else on His heart, and He says, “You need to enter into this ministry.”
Let me see if I can explain it this way. Bringing out Revelation 1:5–6 again:
Unto Him that loveth us,
And loosed us from our sins by His blood.
That is the Lamb. We have to know Him that way. But it goes on to say:
And He made us to be a kingdom,
To be priests unto His God and Father;
To Him be the glory and the dominion for ever and ever.
If His glory and dominion are to be manifested, it is necessary for us to be brought into a deeper life in the Lord Jesus Christ. We need to know Him as the Lamb every moment of our lives, and yet the Lord says, “If you follow Me, I am going to take you deeper. I am going to bring you into the ministry of kings and priests.”
Because that is where His heart is. His glory needs to be revealed throughout the universe, and dominion is going to be through a kingdom of priests.
If we see that vision, we are called, brothers and sisters, just as when we see Him as the Lamb, we are called. If we see Him as the King-Priest over His house, preparing His bride, it is a calling. It is a calling on our lives.
He has called us to reign and rule with Him. But it is about His heart and His interest, not about our heart and interest.
Seeing Him as the Lamb should bring us to great awe of Him and appreciation of Him, but it is in the context of our own salvation. The Lord says, “I have not saved you just to save you. Follow Me, and I will lead you deeper. I will lead you into My very heart and into My purpose.”
Knowing Him as the Lamb brings us into union life. I hope that is a term we understand. When we accept the Lord Jesus Christ, we receive the actual life of God into our spirit. That is a union of life.
The Bible describes it as being born again and becoming a new creation. That is union life: a life in union with our Lord. But the Lord wants to call us also to a life of union in purpose and in heart with Him.
That is why we need to see the King-Priest. That is why we need to enter into our priestly ministry before the Lord. I am thankful for our brother sharing this morning. As Murray shared, he was encouraging us all: whatever the Lord has, whatever the Lord gives, what the Lord does in your life needs to be shared with others. It can be shared in a thousand different ways to carry out our priestly ministry.
The Lord is among the candlesticks in His priestly ministry. It says that He is Lord over the house. In fact, in Ephesians, it says that He is Head of the assembly, and it goes on to say that the church is the fullness of Him that filleth all in all.
What a responsibility, brothers and sisters. Have we been the testimony, the fullness of Jesus Christ? I know we have failed in many areas, but that is our calling: to minister in such a way that the thing the Lord is after is able to share His glory with the universe.
He says, “It is in My heart that the church come into her fullness, that brothers and sisters be joined together.” We know in the Word of God how that is manifested: we are to be His house, to be His body, to be His bride.
I wanted to make clear, brothers and sisters, that sometimes we think all we need with the Lord is an individual life. Things are so confusing; things are so stressful in the assembly and in my personal life. I just need—and obviously we do need—a personal life with the Lord.
But, brothers and sisters, you can have the most personal and lovely life with the Lord, as the Apostle John did, and it does not satisfy the Lord’s heart. Now, I know that may sound strange to you.
That is only a part of what the Lord is doing. Of course, He loves you. But the Lord has something on His heart. He says, “It is not good enough for you to be an individual, no matter how glorious you may be, no matter how spiritual you may be, no matter how unspiritual you may be. That is not what I am after—to build individuals up. No, I am building a house.”
Let me explain it this way. Once there was a couple. As most wives do, you know, you are living in an apartment, and at some point you want a house. Now, a lot of single people are able to do that nowadays. I reckon they make more money than we used to.
But you get married, you are in an apartment, and you go through the whole routine: “I am paying out all this money, and there is nothing being gained on it. I really want a house.”
There is something about having your own home, is there not? It is just an inherent nature in all of us to have that piece of land, no matter how small it may be, and that house that we can call our own—that place where we can make a home with our family.
Now, us brothers tend to be the guys who say, “Yeah, man, I want to get into building this thing, because that is my thing.” The wife is more into, “I want a home for my family. I want to decorate it and show forth all that is in my heart.” That is what women do. They manifest themselves through how they decorate a house.
If you go to my house, you will see Ann Ammon all through it. Now, if you look on the outside, you will see a little bit of Jerry, because I was responsible for that part.
Say you are a couple, and your wife says, “Look, I have this great plan here. You see this plan?” “Yeah, I see the plan.” “And I want to build this house.” The husband says, “All right, all right. I think it is time too.”
So he goes down to this land that they bought, probably twenty or thirty miles away, and he disappears for a few weeks. He comes back and says, “Honey, I got this house. Man, it is just great.” He takes her up to the lot.
There on the lot is a stack of lumber. There are windows over here, bricks, some fixtures, some bathroom fixtures, floor tile over there, light fixtures over here, wiring over here, and a box of nails over there. He says, “Isn’t it marvelous, honey?”
“You know, I spent two days at Lowe’s picking out these two-by-fours. Every one of them is perfectly straight. I mean, this is going to be a house.”
She says, “I thought you were going to build me a house.”
He says, “But honey, it is. Look here. A house has two-by-fours in it. It has windows in it so the light can come through. Look, I even got plumbing. I got the kind of stuff we absolutely have to have. Look at this beautiful sink I bought.” I can relate to that, because I just had to redo our bathroom.
She says, “Look, the fixtures are very lovely and everything, but this certainly is not a house. Is this all you expected?”
He says, “Well, I love it. I have given my life to this. For two weeks, all I have done is go over to Lowe’s and look through everything and pick out everything just right, making sure there were no flaws in anything that I bought.”
She says, “Look, this certainly is not what I was expecting. It has got to be joined together.”
“Oh yeah, well, I get it. All right, all right.” So for about another week he disappears. He comes back and says, “Honey, I want you to come look at the house.”
She gets there and looks in this field, and there is this big pile. The lumber is there, and the bricks are all piled up, and the windows and everything are piled together. He says, “Honey, I got it all connected. It is all connected. Every piece is connected to something else.”
Now, I say this obviously, but is that the way we see the house of God? When we accept the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior, automatically we begin to love the saints. Even the difficult ones, we love. We want to be together. I think it is kind of natural.
But, you know, we can be together in that way, kind of just touching here and there, just being together. I want to tell you, that is not the house.
As she looked at that pile, she says, “You got it all connected, honey, but that certainly is not a house.”
He says, “Well, I do not understand. I thought you said all of it had to be connected. And I did. Look, there is not a piece of it that is not touching something else.”
She says, “Well, look, here is the plan. Does that look anything like the plan?” He says, “Well, no, it does not.” She says, “Have you considered getting a builder to put this thing together?”
He says, “Okay, I think I get it, honey. But you know what? You are going to break my heart. I am going to have to saw these two-by-fours up. I am going to have to drive nails into this lovely piece of wood here. Everything is so nice. I just hate to do all that.”
I mean, who would want to do that? That is almost what I am trying to describe, brothers and sisters.
He says, “I think I am beginning to see.” So he goes away. About two months later, he comes back and says, “Honey, I think I have got your house.”
She goes back, and the house has been put together. He has gotten a contractor, and he has put this house together. Everything is in its proper place. The studs are in their proper place, holding up the walls; the bricks, the windows—everything is perfect, just as she had wanted it.
She is thrilled. She has finally got her house, and it is just the way she wanted it too. It is not just that there is floor tile on the floor; it is the exact tile she had always wanted and always talked about whenever they went to a store and saw tiles.
And the sink and the faucets—you know, I am amazed at faucets nowadays. They cost hundreds of dollars. You used to get them for twenty bucks. We recently bought faucets. It cost me two hundred and seventy-five dollars. It cost me more than the sink. I could not believe it.
But you know what? The faucet is what makes that bathroom look good. I could not believe it. I said, “Yeah, it really does work, honey. It really makes it look nice.”
It is all those little things, those special little things. Of course, the wife is thrilled. Now she has the place she wanted. It represents them. They poured something of themselves into it, and it manifests who they are. It is their home, a place where they can go and be comfortable, and where they can share life together.
Now that, brothers and sisters, is why the Lord is in the midst of the candlesticks. He is going through them. He is saying, “That is okay. That is pretty good. You have done good here. But you have this, and it is not in agreement with My character and life. That has got to be removed.”
If you go through all seven churches, you will see what He is doing. He commends them for some of the things that they are, but throughout it all, He is really looking for His own self there. He is looking for His life there—His character.
Let me say it this way: He is looking for the house He has always wanted.
All the way back when He called Moses up on that mountain and gave him the Ten Commandments, He also gave many chapters devoted to the tabernacle. He described exactly the way He wanted it, and they built it that way. But, you know, that still was not what the Lord was after.
Later we see David coming to the Lord and saying, “Lord, I want to build You a house.” The Lord looked at David and said, “David, you have been a man of war. A house needs to be built in a time of peace. But I will let your son build it.”
“But I am going to do something, David. You want to build Me a house; I am going to build you a house. Your kingdom will be forever,” speaking of the lineage of our Lord Jesus Christ.
What a reward for one whose heart had come in line with the Lord. Even when Nathan came and said, “David wants to build Your house,” the Lord said, “Go back and tell him.” Then He spoke and said, “Nowhere have I ever said that I wanted a house.”
But David had it in his heart. He had it in his heart because, brothers and sisters, he followed the Lamb first. Somewhere in his life, the Lord revealed to him that He was after a house, exactly the way He wanted it.
I think it probably goes back to his mother. Somewhere in the book of Psalms he says, “The son of Thy handmaiden.” I really believe his mother must have been a very godly woman and led him to the Lord Himself.
But anyway, David saw the Lord’s heart, and he wanted to fulfill it. Now we come to the book of Revelation and find that the Lord is to have a bride—this New Jerusalem, as it is called. The bride looks like a city. Amazing bride.
But it is a place where the Lord can be at home. He is looking for that today among His people. Brothers and sisters, I say all that because this is on the Lord’s heart, His interest: to build a house—not just people connected, but built together.
That takes some sawing, some grinding, some nailing, some hammering. It takes a lot for Him to get there. But He says, “I will build My house, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.” He will have it.
So the Lord looks, and He says, “I looked. I am looking. I am looking for an intercessor.” We see the condition of the Lord’s house.
I was thinking the other day: like all of us, my house is now thirty years old. It has been tested by a few strong winds, and fortunately the most that has ever happened is a few shingles. But sometimes the house gets damaged much more than that when it is tested.
What do we do? We rebuild it, do we not? We get in there, and we repair what needs to be repaired. You know what usually happens, particularly when the wife gets involved? It comes out a lot better than it was before—a lot nicer.
But the Lord—it takes brothers and sisters. What I am saying today is that the Lord is looking for intercessors now.
The Lord’s heart is to bring many sons to glory. We have had ministries and brothers from Russia, the Philippines, Haiti, and China. Jonathan Pong will be here Wednesday night. These are ministries that we are connected to, and their heart is to bring many sons to glory.
Now, that does not mean just to get people saved, but for them to mature in Jesus Christ, to take up responsibility, and to enter into the ministry of the priesthood. It is all involved in that. We need to be intercessors.
The Lord is looking to build a house where He can have His home, and we are involved in that. That requires intercessory prayer. You see, it involves His eternal purpose, which is what the conference is about, and we need to be intercessors.
The Lord is about to consummate this age of grace. We need to know that. The age of grace is coming to an end soon, and the kingdom age will come in.
Today, we should be participating in our priestly ministries, particularly this area of being watchmen and intercessors, because in the kingdom age that is part of what we will be doing: still ministering, still watching, still praying with the Lord, administering the new kingdom for a thousand years.
Then we will pass on into eternity. I do not know what the Lord has in store—marvelous things, I am sure—but we are at the end of this age.
In 1 Peter 4:7, what does it say?
The end of all things is at hand:
Be ye therefore of sound mind, and be sober unto prayer.
The nations roar. The earth is in upheaval. As our brother Stephen once said, we have entered into the birth pains. We are going to leave one age and bring in another age. A new age is to come into being, called the kingdom age, and we need to be ready.
We need to follow the Lamb, and we need to take up our priestly ministry of watching and praying. There are other ministries as well, but the thing that is on my heart is intercessory prayer. We are called to be intercessors.
Now, that is my introduction, so I will finish the rest of the message some other time. We will see what the Lord has. But, brothers and sisters, we are called to be intercessors.
This is an age, an hour. Please do not let the hour in which we live pass us by, and all of a sudden it be upon us, because it is upon us. We should be aware of the hour in which we live. We need to be aware of what is on the Lord’s heart.
The Lord’s heart wants us to be a house together, built together, praying together as a prayer vessel. In Ephesians 6, which I have been sharing on for ages, prayer is a corporate prayer vessel. That is not just individuals.
That is why the Lord said, “Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven.” He was speaking of the church. So, brothers and sisters, we are to be a corporate prayer vessel.
The Lord is waiting for an intercessor. Think about that. The Lord is waiting for an intercessor.
I did not have time to go into Moses interceding for the people of God, or Jesus on the cross interceding for you. Where would you be without His intercessory prayer on the cross, when He said:
Father, forgive them;
For they know not what they do.
You know, that intercessory prayer goes for everyone in this room, does it not? I think the Father listens to it. That is why, when we call out to Jesus, the Father will bring salvation to us through His Son, because the Lord Himself has interceded for us.
“Forgive them, Father. They do not know what they are doing.” Intercessory prayer—the Lord always, before He moves, is looking for an intercessor.
Lord, we come back to Thee this morning. Lord, we are really unable to be an intercessor. Lord, we call upon the grace of God this morning.
Lord, really lift us out of ourselves. Lord, open our eyes to see Your heart. Open our eyes to see the hour in which we live, Lord Jesus.
Lord Jesus, that we too, as John, would see the King-Priest. Lord Jesus, in so doing, Lord, we would be transformed ourselves as John was that day on the Isle of Patmos.
Lord, You did have to bring John low, but You lifted him up.
Lord, meet us, I pray, in Jesus’ name.