God’s Mercy (1 Kings 8)
I consider it one of the greatest privileges in life to listen to other Christians pray. I love listening to the woman in her eighties at the church prayer meeting who fervently prays God’s word back to him. Or to the new believer in our home group, bold and tentative in equal measure as they dare to pray out loud. Every time I listen, I learn something new.
And here, at the end of chapter 8, we’re given a chance to listen to Solomon’s prayer, and marvel at what he teaches us in the process. For ultimately as we hear his words, we’re led towards the one he foreshadows, who ‘forever lives to intercede for [us].’
For, throughout the course of this prayer, Solomon’s one big aim is intercession. He’s mediating for his people. He’s pleading for mercy - to the God who knows every crevice of their hearts. With insistence, he pleads time and again for the Lord to ‘hear and forgive’, whenever they cry out to him. This is a king who knows his people’s hearts, and propensity to sin, and who knows that without the mercy of God, there is no hope. And so he prays, trusting in redemptive promises of old as he does so.
And as he does, we’re led to consider the one he points us towards. The King of Kings who ‘appears on our behalf, bears us on his shoulders, binds us on his breast and allows us to be heard in his person.’ (Calvin). What an astonishing reality that we can boldly approach the throne of grace with confidence, knowing that Christ appears on our behalf.
Do you believe this? Do you truly believe that you are able to freely confess your sin, knowing who advocates for you in the throne room of heaven? Dear sister, you don’t need to cower away in shame, however tempting it might feel. He knows your heart, and he implores you to come. He knows how prone your are to wander, and he tenderly beseeches you to come, with the assurance that ‘whoever comes to me, I will never drive away’.
“Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.”
