THE SPIRIT OF GRACE AND OF SUPPLICATIONS
G John Richards
Zechariah 12: 10; 13: 6
Judges 21: 2-4
Revelation 22: 16-17
My desire, beloved, is to speak of a spirit of grace and supplication; but I would like to make two asides. The first would be to acknowledge that supplication is a form of prayer and that there are other ways in which prayer is described, and one of those is intercession. I will touch on that briefly by way of sharing some appreciation of it. I think it is true to say that the Lord Jesus is described at the present time as making intercession. In Romans 8 He is presented as at the right hand of God, and He also intercedes for us (v 34); also the Holy Spirit here below makes intercession for the saints according to God, v 26. I have not studied languages, but the word intercession begins with two syllables, ‘int-er’, and that seems to suggest what is in between. I hope that stands up to scrutiny.
Where I live, on a Monday evening you will generally find two sisters and one brother gathering in a house, and the brother might pray for ten minutes, and after a hymn the meeting ends and one sister goes home; the other sister lives in the house. The brother is quite limited in what he is able to express, so generally there is quite a short prayer - and in it he does not in any way cover all the interests of the Lord’s people - but one thing that we become very conscious of is being part of a system of intercession. At its simplest level, in other places - sometimes in meeting rooms, sometimes also in houses - there are others gathered with a similar motive; that is, they have the Lord’s interests in their hearts and they too engage in this service of intercession; and it is a very great comfort in such smallness. You will appreciate it is a very great comfort to know that what heaven sees and hears is not the feeble prayer of one man but part of a system of intercession. Before I close on that, I am interested in what is said as to the house of God. We had the reference to Bethel in the earlier meeting today, 2 Kings 2: 2. Bethel means, ‘the house of God’, first named by Jacob all those years ago, Gen 28: 19. Paul wrote to Timothy (1 Tim 1: 1) and set out certain things that should be found in the house of God. A leading feature is that “supplications, prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings be made for all men”, chap 2: 1.
Now I submit the thought that supplication is an upward view; I am situated here, and I am looking up: I am supplicating. I think intercession is broader than that because what we read about in 1 Timothy is that prayers and intercessions should be made for all men. So we think of the prayer meeting; I am not limiting the house of God to when we are together of course, but that scripture does refer primarily to when we are together because it is the men that pray only. Sisters have full liberty to pray, and that audibly if they wish, alone; but when it is a question of what is public it is men that pray. It is a plural word - not the man - but the men who pray. He says that prayer is to be for kings, those in authority, those in dignity. The thought of intercession relates especially to the prayer meeting, but not only then, for there are persons who are looking out on humanity and they are aware of kings and nations and all these things and they are looking out and are looking up: interceding, beseeching God on that account.
Now my main thought was to speak about supplication, but my second aside is in relation to this passage in Zechariah. I say to all of us, but especially to younger persons, that you will have noticed that generally, when the brethren read Old Testament scriptures, we make an application: we look for the Lord and the Spirit’s present voice in them, and that is right. First of all, in these Old Testament scriptures, we look for Christ and for His glories. But I want to commend this thought for our judgment, that when we have these prophetic scriptures of which I have read here - and today I do want to make an application - it is good to have an appreciation of the literality that is described; that is to say its primary interpretation. There are plenty of written helps available for us. It would be unusual for a reading meeting today to be wholly taken up with the literality of prophecy, but it is good - and I commend it to us all, especially younger persons - to have an understanding of the literality of these scriptures. And this is where I want to begin.
What we have read about will actually take place in persons of the Jewish tribes. I do not say Israel, I say Jewish, meaning Judah and Benjamin, because predominantly they were the tribes that were in the land when Christ was here. I know there are others, like Anna who we are told, came from the tribe of Asher (Luke 2: 36), and I recognise dear Barnabas was a Levite (Acts 4: 36), so that he was not a Jew in the sense I am using the word; that is, a Jew is, strictly speaking, of Judah and Benjamin. It was the Jews that rejected Christ, “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews”, Matt 27: 37. Those other ten tribes who were taken into captivity first are hard to find in the world. I am not an expert in these things and I know personally only one Jew. When we speak of the Jews, and there are lots of them in cities where some of you live and they are probably Judah and Benjamin, it is such who are addressed in this scripture here. You will notice the reference to David in verse 10, “And I will pour upon the house of David”, that is Judah, the house of David, and Jerusalem. And then it widens out because it speaks of the house of Levi, but primarily these two tribes are the Jews, and all these features that mark them at the present time of unbelief, hardness, pride, arrogance - all these things which are in my heart - these features, are going to melt away, for God is going to work in their hearts. A marvellous thing! And do you know what He is going to do? It says in this scripture, “I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplications”: a “spirit of grace and of supplications”.
My main interest in reading this is to show how precious it is when this spirit marks the Lord’s people at the present time, “a spirit of grace and of supplications”: that is what I like to trace through these scriptures. But apart from that, let us freshly appreciate that this is actually going to happen, and it may well be that there are young Jews today who are not actively rejectors of the gospel, not actively rejectors of Christ, who will actually experience this! What is the effect going to be when God so acts within them? They are going to mourn for Him.
Then we have this remarkable passage across the page, “And one shall say unto him, What are those wounds in thy hands?”. Now I am not expecting to see the Lord Jesus with wounds in His hands; I am expecting to see Him - we are all expecting to see Him - as the scripture indicates, in His body of glory; “we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is”, 1 John 3: 2. It is not as He was; I am not expecting to see Him like this, but I fully believe that He will appear to these repenting people and they will see Him in this way. “And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thy hands?”; they will ask, ‘What does it mean?’. Think of the genuineness of the enquiry! 'What do these mean?’ “And he will say, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends”. ‘Surely not your friends!’, they may say, ‘It must have been enemies!’ No! the “house of my friends”; “they shall look on me whom they pierced”. What a beautiful thing it is, the spirit of grace and supplication! Where are the excuses, where is the self-justification? They and it have melted away.
The next passage is in Judges, in one of the darkest sections of scripture, but it is part of the inspired word. The background is that there was a very low state in Israel: they were in the right place, (they were in the promised land), but there was a very, very, low state and the root of that low state was that there was idolatry - Jehovah their God was displaced in their hearts. It is not without reason that the apostle John closes one of His epistles with these words, “Children, keep yourselves from idols”, 1 John 5: 21. The Lord has had to show me certain things, very sober things as to that. What you would nurture as something very important to you I would not want, it would not interest me, but what might be overwhelmingly important to me would not interest you, but the root problem in Israel was that: idolatry. I am only sharing with you what the Lord has shown me as to myself. My father told me that an idol is ‘anything which comes between you and God’. I think another way of putting that is that it is ‘whatever, apart from Christ, commands the heart’, JBS vol 9, p312. What a blessed thing it is to have the Lord Jesus commanding the heart! You have no regrets on that road.
Idolatry, these things that can overwhelm us and pre-occupy us, they lead to poverty of soul and worse, and in Judges it was worse. There was one tribe who shielded someone who should not have been shielded, but that was the fruit of this root that I have spoken of, and a war took place; for what they had to address could not be overlooked. The result was that the Benjaminites were largely destroyed! And I repeat, it was not over nothing; it was over something important.
Now I would like to share this with us, “And the people came to Bethel, and abode there till even before God”. What a sobering matter that is, to come to a place and abide there, in the presence of God - in the light of His house. It is not only at the prayer meeting we are conscious of this - the thought of the house of God, and what is due to Him, what is due to His dwelling, is to be with us constantly. I emphasise this thought that they came there and spent time there. I have felt personally rebuked in the history of things, how I have lacked in this taking time. You might make a phone call to someone when you have got nothing else to do: well, the Lord’s things require something more deliberate than that. Here they are and they “came to Bethel, and abode there till even before God”. Everything is clear in His presence.
I was thinking of the Lord Jesus and His regard for the temple when He was here. It was Herod’s temple; yet having recognised it He said in one place, “make not my Father's house a house of merchandise”, (John 2: 16): He cleared it! Another time He sat down opposite the treasury and He watched the people, how they cast in. This illustrates the truth of the house of God to me: everything shows up in its true colour, and it says, “many rich cast in much”, and then the Lord identifies the poor widow, and He says, “This poor widow has cast in more than all”, Mark 12: 41-43.
Everything is clear in the house of God - in the presence of God. It was not just the place to which they came, but more than that, they abode there before God. Now what is their reaction? They “lifted up their voices and wept bitterly, and said, Jehovah, God of Israel, why is it come to pass in Israel, that there should be this day one tribe lacking in Israel?”. Was that weakness? It was not: that was power! We know something of this in our own day, ‘what is lacking’. Does time heal? In this, it does not. Do we get over it? Do we get up and move on? Not so! It is the spirit of grace and supplication in its essential character, poured out upon us even now at the present time. What do they do? The question is not answered, but it shows how they feel it; and we feel it. Well, I commend this to us; “it came to pass on the morrow, that the people rose early”: how deliberate this is! I love this thought of what is deliberate, time and deliberate measures taken. They “rose early, and built there an altar”; their thoughts are turning towards God.
I have often reflected in the simple truth that there are two ways of looking at everything: there is man’s view and there is God’s view. I first realised this when, in Malvern, we were occupied with Mark 8, where we read that Jesus “began to teach them that” He would “be killed, and after three days rise again”; then Peter “began to rebuke him”. The Lord replied, “thy mind is not on the things that are of God, but on the things that are of men”, v 31-33. At that moment Peter’s mind was not on his fishing: Peter had listened to what Jesus had said and applied a human view to it. Here we have the divine view. It says, “the people rose early, and built there an altar”, a deliberate matter involving approach to God. We can call upon God at any time, but there is such a thing as a deliberate approach, a recognition of what we are, (maybe it was an altar of earth, we are not told), but it is a recognition of what we are and then it goes on and says, “and offered up burnt-offerings and peace-offerings”. We might say this is a serious time they are in, so where is the sin-offering? Why not the sin-offering? Well, beloved, the eternal validity of the blood of Jesus remains! It never needs to be repeated, never will be repeated, never can be repeated. But they offer up burnt-offerings and peace-offerings. There is a certain substance, a certain fulness in this; it is not simply one offering, but it is plural.
Now I will commend to you what I read in Mr Coates: ‘If we are going on with God, it is on the value of the burnt offering’ (Outline of Joshua, Judges and Ruth p189); that is to say, the excellency of Christ ever before God in His devotion to His will; then, ‘We are with the brethren on the ground of the peace-offering’. I am limited in what I can say about this, but one thing I have come to appreciate as to what the peace-offering refers to (and remember it is nothing to do with making peace, surprisingly): it is the fellowship-offering or the thanksgiving-offering, it involves fellowship, and the outstanding thing about the peace-offering is the emphasis on the fat. The blood and the fat in the offerings were always for God, Lev 3. Sometimes the blood was carried in to the holy of holies, but it was always for God. Then the fat of the peace-offering: that really refers to the excellency of Christ in His intimate communion with the Father here. I will share something else; remember when the Lord was by the well of Sychar, it says the disciples had gone away into the city that they might buy provisions (John 4: 8), and I used to marvel that twelve men would go away to buy provisions! There is a higher level, for when they came back they “wondered that He spoke with the woman” and then it says “no one said, What seekest thou? or, Why speakest thou with her?”, v 27. They were not afraid of Jesus, but no one asked Him. I will tell you what I think of that: what had just happened while they were away was a transaction between the Father and the Son, the Father had given a soul to Christ and that moment on which they came back, they came back into a holy space, the place of that great transaction and they were aware of something holy: that was the peace-offering. That remained between the Father and the Son; I think that is the fat, and I commend these thoughts to us.
Now in Revelation, we certainly find a spirit of grace and supplication. Whilst what I have said is I believe broadly true, that intercession includes an outward look as well as an upward look; you look around and you see the need to pray for governments, and that has its outlet upwards. I think supplication is essentially upward, the spirit of grace is in our hearts, and what a lovely thing it is to see among the Lord’s people. I commend this thought to you that this is perhaps the highest thought in regard to supplication. It says of the Lord in Hebrews, “in the days of his flesh, having offered up both supplications and entreaties to him who was able to save him out of death” (chap 5: 7); I suppose that is especially what took place in Gethsemane. As far as we are concerned, this is perhaps the highest thought of supplication. Let us consider it freshly; we have often been occupied with it. First of all Jesus presents Himself by His personal name, “I Jesus”. Another aside: John’s gospel was probably written after the Revelation, but I think we can take the whole of John’s ministry as having special force now, written for the last days; I think that is sound teaching. It is perfectly true to say that the address to each of the seven assemblies probably addresses epochs in the church’s history that can be identified. All the history of failure is acknowledged in those addresses - so nothing, in that sense, has come as a surprise, certainly not to divine Persons, and all that being so, how precious to think that here at the end, this blessed Person is presenting Himself in this way, “I Jesus”.
Then He says, “I am the root and offspring of David”: David, a man after God’s own heart. All that David was morally in His greatness was derived from Christ, the root of David. The spirit of Christ of which we have been speaking was richly seen in David. Fine ministry has been given on that. But just think of this example: the present tendency with modern governments is to legislate, legislate, legislate. Remember David’s statute; he said, “For as his share is that goes down to the battle, so shall his share be that abides by the baggage: they shall share alike”; so “he made it a statute and an ordinance for Israel (1 Sam 30: 24, 25); I am not aware that he made any more. But what a spirit that man had; that is the spirit of Christ in David.
Jesus says, “I am the root and offspring of David, the bright and morning star”; that is how we know Him at the present time. “And the spirit and the bride say, Come”: that is upward. Is that the spirit of intercession? I think it is! Possibly at its highest, “the Spirit and the bride say, Come”. I shared this with a brother, who we have never broken bread with as we say, and that was over the phone, just last week; and he replied as to the Spirit saying, “Come”, ‘It has been happening a long time’. That is true. We have often noticed it does not say the Spirit and the Bride will say come; no, it is, “the Spirit and the bride say, Come”. That is intercession; we are saying, ‘Please, Lord Jesus, come’.
I commend this to us also. “The Spirit and the bride say Come”; that has often been taught, and rightly, embraces a unique concept, unison, a divine Person and a creature vessel speaking with one voice and they are saying, “Come” to Jesus. “And let him that hears say, Come”; who is that? That is an outward look. There is somebody out there: they perhaps did not even know that there is such a thing as the coming of the Lord, they perhaps did not even know that there was such a thing as the bride of Christ, and the spirit of grace and supplication is reaching them and they say, “Come”! And they join in this great cry, that is upward, the spirit of grace and supplication poured out.
And then the whole tone changes, the word “Come” then becomes an evangelical cry, so we shift from this sublime cry to Jesus, “Come”, and the invitation to any who will hear this, to join in that great cry to Jesus to come; and then it says, “let him that is athirst come”; that is the gospel. If someone ever says to you, ‘You have got to choose between gospel life and assembly life’, do not. They cannot be separated; the most sublime assembly truth is presented tight against, immediately followed by, “let him that is athirst come”. We can say that today; “him that is athirst”. Do you have a thirst in your soul, thirst after Christ? We can say, “Come”. More than that, if there is someone who does not even have a thirst after Christ, if you will, “come”; “he that will”! May the spirit of grace and supplication deepen with us.
For the Lord’s Name’s sake.
SUNBURY
1st October 2022