You Have a Lawyer in Heaven’s Court
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:06.000 | John Piper preached a sermon in December of 1996 titled,
00:00:10.480 | "Jesus, from Melchizedek to Eternal Savior." In that sermon, John Piper explained the
00:00:16.560 | glorious ramifications of Hebrews chapter 7 verse 25, which reads this,
00:00:21.920 | "Consequently, he, Jesus, is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to
00:00:27.920 | God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them."
00:00:32.720 | Here's what John Piper said.
00:00:34.720 | Salvation is not static. As though I did something once to get saved, I believed.
00:00:47.360 | And God did something once to save me. He sent Jesus to die and rise from the dead.
00:00:53.360 | And that's all there is to it. Now, this verse is one screaming announcement.
00:01:00.000 | That is not all there is to it. And what I want to try to do in these last moments is take a
00:01:07.200 | Sunday school understanding that's true, that simple past, "I believed, he died, I'm saved,"
00:01:14.640 | period, and grow it into biblical proportions with a verse like Hebrews 7, 25.
00:01:23.360 | Because Hebrews 7, 25 says, "There is not only more that Jesus did,
00:01:31.280 | there is more that you do as well."
00:01:34.960 | What Jesus does is go on praying for you, interceding for you,
00:01:42.560 | coming between you and the Father and making a case for you and standing up for you.
00:01:49.840 | I'm going to stick in a parenthesis here to try to avoid a misunderstanding.
00:01:54.400 | Parenthesis. "Do not conclude from my first implication
00:02:02.320 | that Jesus loves me and God hates me."
00:02:07.440 | Okay, let's get this straight now. The reason that would be a false conclusion
00:02:16.000 | is because the priesthood is God's idea, not Jesus' idea.
00:02:22.720 | And Jesus accepted the Father's mandate to come save me from his wrath.
00:02:31.680 | You got that? The love of God for me, sinner,
00:02:39.040 | interposes his priestly son to save me from his wrath against me.
00:02:46.080 | You got to handle that or you can't make sense out of the Bible.
00:02:50.960 | The love of God for this worthless sinner interposes his most precious possession,
00:03:00.400 | his son whom he loves, in order that he might save me from his wrath against me.
00:03:09.040 | All the while vindicating his justice and upholding his glory in the cross.
00:03:17.040 | That's the beauty of the cross. It is the love of God rescuing sinners from the wrath of God
00:03:25.040 | by vindicating the justice of God and upholding the glory of God.
00:03:31.040 | You got to get that. Otherwise you will sentimentalize God.
00:03:36.080 | And people are sentimentalizing God everywhere because they say,
00:03:42.320 | "Oh, in order to have a God of love, you got to get rid of wrath."
00:03:44.960 | You don't. You don't have a God of love in biblical proportions
00:03:48.960 | if there's no wrath from which to save and no son to offer up to his wrath to show his love.
00:03:55.440 | Close parenthesis.
00:04:02.240 | The second implication that we're working on now is that salvation is not static.
00:04:10.480 | Don't just say, "I believed and I was saved."
00:04:14.640 | Say, "Also," that's true, "also Jesus is saving me. He's going to save me forever."
00:04:24.240 | First half of verse 25. I'm not making this up. It's there. Read it.
00:04:29.280 | "Jesus goes on saving me by going on praying for me."
00:04:35.040 | And what I do is don't just look back and say, "I believed. I believed.
00:04:40.800 | I remember. I walked the aisle or I signed the card or I knelt with my mother
00:04:44.160 | in Fort Lauderdale, Florida when I was six years old," which I did.
00:04:47.120 | You don't just say that. You say, "I today and for all of my life
00:04:54.800 | will draw near to God through Jesus," because that's the person and the only person
00:05:02.560 | for whom Jesus prays and whom he saves.
00:05:07.040 | If we are born of God, we will draw near to God through Jesus.
00:05:17.920 | This tense of this verb, "draw near to God," there is a tense in Greek for a single act,
00:05:27.200 | not repeated, and there is a tense for ongoing, repeated, continuous action.
00:05:33.840 | And that's what's here. Those who keep on drawing near to God are the ones that
00:05:43.360 | enjoy the priestly work of Jesus. You're going through Jesus, and as long as you're going
00:05:50.640 | through Jesus, he's praying for you. He's moving on the Father. He's your advocate.
00:05:57.360 | I write these things to you, little children, that you might not sin, but if you sin,
00:06:02.160 | you have a what with the Father? An advocate, an intercessor, a lawyer in the court
00:06:09.840 | who wins every case against you.
00:06:12.720 | 10
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00:06:14.320 | Amen. And how easily we forget this glorious soul-sustaining truth.
00:06:19.120 | Thank you to podcast listener Cody Hunter for the clip. It's taken from John Pepper's sermon
00:06:24.320 | titled "Jesus, From Melchizedek to Eternal Savior," preached on December 1st, 1996. It's
00:06:31.120 | available online to listen to in its entirety. Please send your clips to us via email at
00:06:36.720 | askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. Send us the name of the sermon and the timestamp of when and where
00:06:43.360 | the clip appears in the audio recording, and we will give you credit for the find, of course.
00:06:47.520 | Well, tomorrow, John Piper returns to talk about copyright and intellectual property rights,
00:06:52.800 | an important issue for artists and writers and creators of content.
00:06:56.960 | I'm your host, Tony Reinhke. We'll see you tomorrow.
00:07:00.880 | [BLANK_AUDIO]