'Intercession' Under the Old and New Covenant
by Charles Capps

Under the Old Covenant, God dealt on a different level with His people. They did not have the Comforter or Intercessor as we have today. We see two levels of intercession in the Bible. Under the Old Covenant, before men were born again, it was done on a natural level. But in the New Testament it was done on a supernatural level. We see the natural level in Genesis 18 as Abraham interceded for Lot in Sodom: "And the Lord appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre; and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day; And he lift up his eyes and looked, and lo, three men stood by him; and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground". (Genesis 18:1-2) This was the Lord coming with two angels. Abraham had food prepared and set before them. They ate, then stood up to leave. "And the Lord said, shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and might nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed of him? For I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him. And the Lord said, Because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous; I will go down now, and see whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know. And the men turned their faces from thence, and went toward Sodom: but Abraham stood yet before the Lord. And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city; wilt thou also destroy and spare not the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked; and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right"? (Genesis 18:17-25) Notice Abraham’s question is also his answer. "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right"? He was pleading his case before God, interceding on behalf of his nephew in Sodom. "And the Lord said, If I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes. And Abraham answered and said, Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes: Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous; wilt thou destroy all the city for lack of five? And he said, If I find there forty and five, I will not destroy it. And he said, Oh let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once: Peradventure ten shall be found there. And he said, I will not destroy it for ten’s sake". (Genesis 18:26-28, 32) Abraham thought he was on safe ground if God would spare the city for ten righteous. But God sent two angels to Sodom, and they did not find ten righteous, and the cities were destroyed. Yet, God would have spared them for the sake of ten righteous people. There is something prophetic in that statement. There are many prophets of doom today who say God is going to destroy the United States of America because of the wickedness in this nation. There is much wickedness in this nation. But we now have a Man to stand in the gap and make up the hedge, One Who can intercede supernaturally through Spirit-filled believers. We have millions of born-again, Spirit-filled believers who pray in the Spirit. They are channels through which Jesus can intercede supernaturally for this nation in the manner that Paul refers to in Romans 8:26-28. There are many today who call themselves intercessors. But to be scriptural about it, Jesus is really the Intercessor ( Heb. 7:25). He uses the Holy Spirit to pray through them the way God would pray (Rom. 8:26-27). No, I don’t believe God will destroy the righteous with the wicked. He didn’t even do that under the Old Covenant, and He has provided better things for us under the New Covenant. Moses Intercedes for God’s People "And the Lord said unto Moses, I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people: Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them: and I will make of thee a great nation. And Moses besought the Lord his God, and said, Lord, why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people, which thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Wherefore should the Egyptians speak, and say, For mischief did he bring them out, to slay them in the mountains, and to consume them from the face of the earth? Turn from thy fierce wrath and repent of this evil against thy people. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants, to who thou swarest by thine own self, and saidst unto them, I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have spoken of will I give unto your seed, and they shall inherit it for ever. And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people". (Exodus 32:9-14) The way the Old Testament is written, it sometimes speaks of punishment as evil, because it was certainly not good news. Moses stood between God and Israel, interceding on behalf of the children of Israel and reminding God of what He had promised. "And the Lord said unto Moses, How long will this people provoke me? And how long will it be ere they believe me, for all the signs which I have shewed among them? I will smite them with the pestilence, and disinherit them, and will make of thee a greater nation and mightier than they. And Moses said unto the Lord, Then the Egyptians shall hear it, (for thou broughtest up this people in thy might from among them;) And they will tell it to the inhabitants of this land: for they have heard that thou Lord art among this people, that thou Lord art seen face to face, and that thy cloud standeth over them, and that thou goest before them, by daytime in a pillar of cloud, and in a pillar of fire by night. Now if thou shalt kill all this people as one man, then the nations which have heard the fame of thee will speak, saying, Because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land which he sware unto them, therefore he hath slain them in the wilderness. And now I beseech thee, let the power of my Lord be great, according as thou has spoken saying, The Lord is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. Pardon, I beseech thee, the iniquity of this people according unto the greatness of thy mercy, and as thou hast forgiven this people, from Egypt even until now. And the Lord said, I have pardoned according to thy word". (Numbers 14:11-20) Moses made intercession on a natural level, using only the knowledge he had learned from God and His Word. He pleaded Israel’s case before God and changed the course of events. How much more can we expect to change the course of events today by allowing Jesus to intercede through us supernaturally? But in contrast to the two covenants, let’s look again at what Solomon said: "So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun; and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter. Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive. Yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun". (Ecclesiastes 4:1-3) Now that is a bad situation anyway you look at it. Solomon is actually saying it would have been better not to have been born than to live in a situation where the oppressor had power, and you had no power and no comforter. To fully understand this, we must realize that in that day the people have a Intercessor or a Comforter; neither did they have the name of Jesus. This is why we should not expect to experience today what they experienced under the Old Covenant, for we have an Intercessor, a Comforter and the New Covenant, which is established on better promises. Let’s look again at what God had to say in the book of Ezekiel: "The people of the land have used oppression, and exercised robbery, and have vexed the poor and needy; yea, they have oppressed the stranger wrongfully. And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land, that I should not destroy it: but I found none". (Ezekiel 22:29-30) God sought for a man to stand in the gap and make up the hedge, so that He would not destroy the land, but He found none. "Therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them; I have consumed with the fire of my wrath: their own way have I recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord God". (Ezekiel 22:31) Notice God’s statement here their own way have I recompensed upon their heads. In other words, what happened to them was their choice. They spoke it and it came to pass. They prophesied their own defeat. (Prov. 18:21) This gives us some understanding of why things happened as they did under the Old Covenant. There was no man to stand in the gap and make up the hedge that would turn away God’s wrath. This is where so many who prophesy gloom and doom miss it; they say that God is going to destroy America because of the evil in this nation. Ask yourself, "Are there fifty righteous in this nation?" Yes, more like fifty million. I don’t believe God will bring judgment upon this nation until the righteous are raptured. Then to go further, we should not expect to experience under the New Covenant what they faced under the Old. Because under the New Covenant, God has a Man to stand in the gap and make up the hedge: His name is Jesus! He is our Intercessor, and He makes that intercession through us here on earth. The Body of Christ is praying the Word of God over this nation and the world, and things are being changed day by day. We’ve seen things happen in our day that no one expected to happen in our generation. The Berlin Wall has been brought down, Communism is dead in the water, and Russia is looking toward democracy. We have a born-again President heading this nation. Our prayers and faith in God’s Word is changing the world!  Back to Newsletter Index.