Hello and welcome. Please allow me to ask you a question today. If Jesus were on the earth at this time—as He was in 33 A.D. and for a few years before that when the Lord Jesus entered into the world and took upon Himself a human nature and became man—if Christ were on the earth at this time in our day, would you stop whatever you were doing and go to Him for help in your infirmity?
The truth is that each one of us has a very great infirmity. Yes, there are many people who have physical infirmities. They are paralyzed or they are cancer-stricken or they are blind or deaf or dumb, as many people were in the days when Christ did walk on the earth in the first century A.D. Yet beyond this and more than this, the great infirmity of every person, of each human being, is our sin-sickness, which is that we are born into the world with a sin nature and we are dead in our sins and we are under the wrath of God because of our sins.
Now, if Jesus were in the world today—and, of course, this is just setting up a scenario that could never happen because God sent “the Son” in the fullness of time and at the proper time, but I am just using this idea to get us to think about prayer—the truth is that if Christ were in the world today, maybe even in our own city, such as Philadelphia or New York or Washington, D.C., or in any city, you and I and multitudes of people would travel, without hesitation, to Philadelphia or to New York to try to find Jesus. We would hop on transportation or drive our cars, just as many took shipping, to find where this miracle-working Prophet was in order to be touched by Him or to even just “touch the hem of his garment,” trusting that if we were able to touch Him, we would be healed. We do find instances of this in the Gospel accounts.
You know, we would go out of our way in order to go to Christ and to speak to Him personally, to see Him in a physical body and to hear the words from His mouth that our sins are forgiven, as He said to the paralyzed man, “Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.” After hearing Him say this, the Pharisees wondered, “Who can forgive sins but God only?” They missed the point. This was what Jesus was saying. He was “Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.” He was “God…in the flesh.”
Well, Jesus is not on earth at this time in the world and He has not been since 33 A.D. He has sent His Spirit into the world, but He is not in the world as He was then. However, the very same Jesus, the very same compassionate and merciful Saviour, “full of grace and truth,” full of goodness and kindness, this same God who heard the prayers and the beseechings of afflicted men in His day in this world, is seated upon “the throne.” He is at “the right hand of God” and “His throne” is a “throne of grace.”
As a matter of fact, it is true that Christ, as He is “in the heavenlies,” is far more accessible today to any person in the world than He was when He was “in the days of his flesh.” The reason is that it might be more convenient for you or for me to go to the nearest big city if Christ were there, but there is still a whole world out there that could never possibly reach Him. Yet God has made Himself so accessible that any individual in Russia or China or India or Africa or Australia or Japan or America, and even simultaneously, can simply close their eyes in prayer, no matter where they are. Instantaneously, they have access to the “throne of grace” that the Lord Jesus sits upon.
We can go to the very same Person, the very same Saviour who heard the pleas of the afflicted. He is the same God and He is as close to us as possible. Far more does the possibility exist for us to go to Him, for anyone to go to Him now, than ever before. You or I may speak to this same Saviour who heard the cries of the blind and the deaf and the dumb and the lame, the same One who, without fail, healed all of these people. Yet we should not think that this means that whatever we beseech Christ for, He must do. No, this is never to be our thought. But we can realize that God is showing us how compassionate He is and how He “is a merciful God,” abundantly “full of mercy” to those whom He draws to Himself and who, as a result, do come to Him. This same Jesus is accessible through prayer.
Why is it then that we do not, excitedly and diligently, drop everything that is going on in our lives and go to this Saviour for mercy? Why do we not take our great sin problem to the Lord Jesus Christ immediately, right now? If it is true that we would run to Him if He were physically on this earth, why do we not run to Him in prayer, which is actually an easier way of approaching Him?
What is the reason for this? Could it be that we desire the physical presence of Christ, because that takes no faith? Could it be because we could see a body and we could see the miracles being done as, right before their eyes, many people did in the first century A.D.? Is this the problem? Is it because we have no eyes of faith that we do not go to Him as He is seated “upon the throne”?
Jesus uses Thomas as an example of someone who would not believe it unless he saw it or he would not believe it unless he felt it. We find in John 20 the account where Jesus finally appears to Thomas. He says in John 20:27:
Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side: and be not faithless, but believing.
This was because Thomas had earlier said that unless he saw Him and touched Him and thrust his hand into His side where the spear had penetrated, he would not believe. Jesus, in great condescension, comes to Thomas and tells him to do these things that he had said, and then we read in John 20:28:
And Thomas answered and said unto him, My Lord and my God.
At this point, Thomas is convinced and sees the truth that Jesus is the Great Jehovah, the Saviour of “his people”; and in John 20:29, Jesus responds in a way that is for our benefit as well as for Thomas’:
Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.
We do not need to see Jesus to know that He is the Great God of the Bible. He is the Great “I AM,” the only Saviour. It is through Him and only through Him whereby we can enter into Heaven.
God has laid all of this out and He encourages us and implores us to go to Him, to His “throne of grace,” to see if He is not just as kind and gracious and merciful as He was “in the days of his flesh.” May we not be held back by the fact that Jesus is not in the world. Instead, may we see with eyes of faith. May God give us those eyes of faith and may the “faith of Christ” save us as we do go to Him.
Go to Him today as you would if you had heard that He was downtown. Go to Him with great excitement and great expectation, “casting all your care upon him,” and beseeching Him, “O Lord, it is not physical eyes that I desire nor physical hearing nor physical legs. My desire, O Lord, is for You to grant me spiritual eyes that I might see and spiritual ears that I might hear and spiritual legs that I might walk in Thy commandments and spiritual life that I might rise up from the dead.”