The breastplate of the Jewish high-priest is a beautiful type of intercession. When the high-priest appeared before God in his full sacerdotal attire, there would be the twelve names upon his heart, indicative of his love and care for the whole people of Israel. The names upon the breastplate betoken the individuality of Christ's intercession for His people. Every Christian ought to intercede, because he is in a certain important sense a priest, and intercession is one of the priestly functions.
I. Observe, first, the great importance attached to this duty in Scripture. In the Old Testament we find Abraham interceding for Sodom; in the New Testament we find the early Church winning the life of St. Peter by intercessory prayer. The Lord's Prayer is so constructed that it is impossible to use it without praying for all other Christians besides ourselves.
II. The duty of intercessory prayer is based upon the fact that men are one body and members one of another. Whether in nature or in grace, a man is essentially the member of a family. And if this be so, the weal and woe of other men, of other Christians, must be, to a certain extent, our weal and woe, cannot ultimately fail to reach us. We must bring our relations and sympathies with us when we appear before God.
III. Although both the duty of intercessory prayer and the grounds of it are clear, there is no part of devotion which Christians so much neglect. Some shrink from intercessory prayer under a feeling that, coming from them, it would be presumptuous. The real reason, however, of our reluctance to practise intercessory prayer, is a want of sympathy with others, a want of love. He who prays with the largest sympathy, he who embraces in. his prayer the widest circle of his fellow-creatures, is most in sympathy with the mind of God when he prays, has the key of God's heart, and therefore of God's treasury.
E. M. Goulburn, Thoughts on Personal Religion,p. 79.
Exodus 40 - Leviticus 1:1. J. Monro Gibson, The Mosaic Era,p. 133.