Let's turn together to the gospel of John. All passages of Scripture are exciting, but this one, this morning I believe has a relevance to all of us. That is if you are a Christian, then you pray. The heartbeat of a Christian is prayer. But is there anything perhaps with the exception of the work and the ministry and the operation of the Holy Spirit in the life of the church? That is more misunderstood than the prayer life of a Christian. How do we know what's misunderstood? Well, if you go to any bookstore, secular, or Christian, you'll find on the shelves books relating how to pray, why to pray, there'll be patterns of prayer. There's books to teach you to pray at X number of days. There are prescriptions for prayer. Then there are testimonies of the power of prayer to accomplish this or to accomplish that. You can pray using the names of God, which is certainly commendable, or you can pray entering into transcendental meditative states, which is not so commendable. There is ample instruction on prayer, but Jesus Himself has given us instruction on prayer. We abide by that instruction and praying together the Lord's prayer just a few moments ago. And here He tells us how we conclude our prayer, or shall we say more appropriately, how to seal our prayers. Let's read together John 14, verse 13 and 14 this morning.
Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do. That the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. May the Lord bless the reading of His Word to the hearing of His people. James Montgomery boy, so a commentator that I'm quite drawn to and enjoy reading, said the doctrine of prayer, according to the Bible, is that there are certain people who can pray in a certain way and who will get not merely a good thing or something just as good as what they ask, or something even better than what they ask, but they will get the very thing that they ask for. What a comfort that we would actually receive what we ask for, but is it just by prescribing to a certain formula of prayer, if we utter Jesus's name, is that all that we need to do, is that the function of prayer to get that which we are looking for, or that which we want. Christians are not the only ones interested in prayer, you know. Secular minds have adopted the whole idea of prayer as an existentially healthy experience, one Dr. Barbara Joseph in her book, My Healing from Breast Cancer, wrote this. If we allow ourselves the belief in the healing power of prayer and pray for our highest good in the way that comes most naturally to us, and with the utmost compassion for ourselves, we can support our healing. Well, I don't want to doubt the healing effect of meditation, for example, and the way that it works with the body to lower your blood pressure and to decrease your stress, which in fact does help the body recuperate and stay healthy. But I do question the adoption of the word prayer, why use the word prayer to describe meditation in the same way that I object to same-sex unions adopting the word marriage, which is clearly defined by scripture. Same-sex unions as a topic of another discussion, but to rip a word from the Christian faith and the Christian scripture and apply it to a secular involvement or a secular activity, or even one that has some biomedical benefits, such as meditation, which may be commendable for the healing of the body, and yet why call it prayer? Prayer has a certain direction, doesn't it? We speak towards a living person in the Lord Jesus Christ. But regrettably, it's not only the secular mind that's confused, and if you were to go to a website for 102.5 FM and Madison, Wisconsin, you would find there a list of 12 positive effects of prayer. Encourage others is one reason for prayer, to remind you of your spiritual values, to give you hope, to help you feel better, to allow you to let go of situations, to provide you comfort, to relax your mind and relieve anxiety, to build your faith, to deepen your character, to broaden your perspective, to bring you closer to God, and then ultimately, number 12, it works. Well, certainly we can't go into anything more profound than that, it works. But this verse that we have read today, asks anything in my name, and I will do it. If you yoke that verse with a couple of other verses that you can pluck out of scripture, for example, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, or perhaps in 1 Corinthians 13, if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, and that's all that usually is read, as people will say you have to have the faith to move mountains. If you yoke these passages together, and try to create a theology of prayer from them, and twisting them around, you'll end up with a prescription for a right formula that causes your faith to be some sort of a force to accomplish your will. So, should we insist on prayer in Jesus' name? For others, besides those we've mentioned, prayer becomes a ceremonial or a pleasant sort of way to end a meditation or a saying or a greeting that is often at the beginning of some ceremony. Still others think that a prayer has some metaphysical power of connecting us with other realities spiritual or otherwise. Some see prayer as an act of personal piety because good people and good Christians are just supposed to pray, or a way of sealing a group to a common purpose. We're doing this often in different chaplain ministries of all sorts, where a group will gather together and they'll use prayer to sort of seal the purpose of the group or to unify the group through the meditations of one who would offer a word in the name of God. There's still another misunderstanding of a closing of prayer in Jesus' name, isn't it? That closing of a prayer seals a group, unity within the group, but what if you have a group of believers and unbelievers? Is there really unity in that group? Shouldn't be the goal of prayer, should it? To unify believers with unbelievers, an argument can be used to many to exclude Jesus' name because it unnecessarily drives a wedge of division between people. They say, well, if you pray in Jesus' name, it is the nature of Christianity, though, isn't it, to divide? Aren't we reading in the scriptures of in a single home, a mother will be against a daughter and a father against a son because of the gospel? Don't we read in the scriptures that the gospel of Jesus Christ is foolishness to Gentiles and a stumbling block to the Jews? It seems that bringing believers together using Jesus' name would be a right use of unity, not to unify a believer with an unbeliever through the exclusion of Jesus' name. So what prayer then would Jesus approve of? What prayer, how should we pray? Is there a prescribed formula for prayer? Is there a necessity to end the prayer in Jesus' name? Or is this a principle that we should follow in general? Is this only meant for Christian gatherings or is it that every prayer we utter should be concluded in Jesus' name? Let me point out to you in context of our passage. If we look back at verse 13, we will read there whatever, I'm sorry, verse 12, here Jesus is telling the disciples that they will be doing greater works than he has done. We explored that a bit last week but I want to focus on the end of that verse because I am going to the Father. Because I am going to the Father is a link between the verse we have read and the words of comfort that Jesus has been giving before. But there is a link also that follows in verse 15. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And so we have between these two truths that because Jesus is going to the Father, therefore we pray in His name, and in praying in His name, we also must keep His commandments. Let's see how these work together. The prayer that Jesus approved. Up until this time Jesus had been praying in front of the disciples. There were great Jewish prayers that had been drawn from the scriptures. They were accustomed to prayer. They understood prayer. Many of them were drawn from the Psalms, such as Psalm 6.9. The Lord has heard my supplication and He has received my prayers. These were prayers that the Jews knew many of them by heart. There were prayers by Abraham in the scripture by Moses. There were prayers by the judges, by David and many others that they had for them in the scriptures that they could memorize or that they could use as a pattern for their own prayers. These prayers could be adapted in whole or in part by any Jew in prayer. But earlier on the disciples had already discerned in Christ an intimacy in His prayer that they did not understand and that they did not enjoy. And eventually that caused them to become dissatisfied with the older forms of prayer as evidence and their approach to Jesus. When they said, Lord, teach us to pray. There was something about the prayers of Christ that were causing their own prayers to ring somewhat hollow. Jesus in Luke 11 instructed them to pray as He gave to them the Lord's prayer. He concludes His formal instruction here by stressing their union with Him in the shaping of their will and their dependence on Him as the advocate and mediator. That's the importance of the links which I was showing you. Because I go to the Father, He is our advocate, He is the intercessor for His people, He is the mediator between God and man. There is no other. And also, in my name, stressing here the union that we have with Him, He's not saying don't bother praying, I'll do it all for you. He is telling and commanding them to pray but to do so in His name, connecting His own name with their prayers, sealing their prayers with His name. We can understand also, verse 13 and 14, that there is no limit that is put upon prayer. He says whatever you ask, He says anything you ask. Our prayers and the response of God is limited only by the power of God. The power of God is without limit. Therefore there is no limit placed upon God's answer to our prayer. It could both theoretically and really be anything and yet there is a condition that is placed, isn't there? He says everything you ask, ask me anything but do it in my name because we are identified with the name of Christ. The prayer Jesus hears is a Christian's prayer. The prayer Jesus hears is the Christian's prayer, whatever you do. He's already defined the group that He's talking to, isn't He speaking to those who are His followers? The works that you do, you ask me in His name. Whatever you ask me in my name, I will do. He's speaking here specifically, He's not saying all who utter a prayer, He's not saying whoever utters a prayer, He's saying whatever you ask me in my name, I will do. You is qualified in verse 12 because it is He who believes in me. In my name establishes Jesus right to make requests of the Father and it shows our dependence upon Him. We have no personal standing to make requests of God on our own, do we? Are we able to approach God on our own and our own righteousness and simply ask of God anything we choose. I know where is this way more clear I think in story form anyway than in the book of Job. Job is provoked by his friends till he finally defends his own innocence and he wonders aloud at God's injustice. The Lord comes to Job and He says, well the fault finder contend with the Almighty and Job in chapter 42-6 responds, I retract and I repent in dust and ashes. In our depraved and our fallen state, we must have a perfect priest who will make intercession on our behalf. I love how John Calvin explains it. All see and feel that they are unworthy to approach God and yet the greater part of men burst forward as if they were out of their senses and rashly and haughtily address God. If you take some time to read the reformers you will find that they have a good bit of humor actually in their writing. A lot of it may seem dry but as you get in there and you begin to listen to them, he meant this to be a sarcastic statement. He is saying that we all know that we are unworthy to approach God but most men burst forward into God as if they are completely out of their minds. Rushing haughtily with an address to God, you get the picture here of God on his throne and people rushing in there screaming with their arms waving as if it is a press corps wanting to ask the president a question. On the other hand, Calvin continues, when God invites us to himself he holds out to us one mediator only by whom he is willing to be appeased and reconciled but men have a poor and slender perception of the power and goodness of God in Christ. To this is added a second error that we do not consider that we are justly excluded from approaching God until he calls us and that we are called only in the Son. Another great reformer contemporary to Calvin was Luther who also contemplated prayer, remember where they are coming from at that time the priest prayed for you. At that time an individual believer wasn't necessarily encouraged to have such a devout prayer life and they weren't encouraged that that would be anything that God would hear and also they were encouraged to pray to different saints, not to Christ. And so the whole idea of mediation and of Christ alone being the intercessor was something the reformers had to clear up. To pray in Jesus name is as Martin Luther put it, a prayer that says, I have lived my best therefore I implore thee not to regard my life in conduct. This reflects our reading in Micah, doesn't it? When God told the people bring out your strongest army and defend against the siege but they will fail and your king will be slapped on the cheek. Here Luther is saying that when we pray we are essentially saying Lord God I have given my absolute best, please don't even look at it. Don't even look at it because it is not worthy of your sight. I implore you he says not to regard my life in conduct but your mercy and compassion promised me in Christ and because of this to grant me the fulfillment of my prayer. That's what we say when we say in Jesus name I pray. We are saying Lord God not on account of my own righteousness but only on account of the righteousness of Christ hear my prayer. He brews 724 he abides forever and holds his priesthood permanently and he is able to say forever those who draw near to God through him since he always lives to make intercession for them. This is the work of Christ to make intercession for us continual intercession. Jesus repeats this command in verse 13 and 14. He says it twice, doesn't he? He says it twice in my name, in my name. He says it twice and yet we continue to seek other intercessors. We may not choose to pray through saints per se because that belongs to the Roman church but oftentimes we will take the avenue of either an unnamed God or a generic version of God. Isn't that what Paul encountered on Mars Hill when he came and there were all of the temples and there was one to the God because that was unknown because they didn't want to miss the true God. So they simply prayed in a generic name and worshiped a generic God but that was not the God of the Scriptures who has revealed himself through the incarnation of his son Jesus Christ and has made himself known fully to people through Christ Jesus. To pray in Jesus name is one to come as a believer, a Christian with faith in Christ. To come in humility, recognizing we have no rights before God but that every right through our union with Christ, that we call on Him as our high priest to be our mediator and to be our intercessor before God. The grace of salvation then is received through Christ. The grace to live out our salvation continues in Christ, not by the merit of our own works. What that means is that we have any prayer at all. If we have any requests of God for any operation of the Holy Spirit or for any work of his hand of providence, it is through Christ. Not because I'm now worthy because I'm a profession of faith but it continues through Christ. Christ isn't just the entryway to God. He sustains us in heaven before God. God in the Scriptures is plainly taught that Jesus is the Lamb of God who has borne our sins and that those who believe in Him have forgiveness solely through His name, that there is no other name under heaven by which we can be saved and that God's children will have His own name written on their foreheads. Often as I minister to people who are drawing near to the end of life, the name of Christ becomes more and more precious to them. As they began to see eternity drawing closer in their view, they learned to cling to those things that give them the greatest assurance. I'll never ever forget as long as I have mine to remember. Visiting a relative of someone who was a member of the church who was deathly ill through a progressive sickness, being fed through the stomach with a stomach tube and could barely speak because lost most muscular control of the mouth. As we began to talk a little bit, I didn't know his background. I come to find out he was retired colonel in06 who had commanded an artillery battery during the Cold War. He was very proud of his service and as we spoke, it was ironic that he was now curled nearly in a fetal position being fed by a nurse through a feeding tube in his stomach. He could hardly speak and yet this man commanded enough power in those artillery batteries to where he could have laid waste more than one city at one point in his life. But now as he was on the bed there was only one thing that he wanted to talk about and that was Jesus. Jesus. I left the room and as I often do at hospitals, paused outside the door to pray and he began to sing and it was the most clearly I had heard him the whole time I had been there. It was a gaiter him. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. There is no other name by which salvation can be found. Jesus promises that he will answer a prayer which has been sealed with his name, but which prayers? All prayers? Is it anything that we want? He says whatever you ask, I will do it. But how do we know what we ought to ask? By praying in his name, we are refuting those who would deny his definite divinity. Isn't it interesting that he says whatever you ask of the Father, I will accomplish. Jesus is interestingly enough using language and using Senate structure to proclaim his own divinity. He says you ask of the Father and I will answer and you ask of the Father but you do it in my name. The denial of Christ divinity is what we are denying when we refuse his name. Because he says if you pray to God am I not one with God and yet you would exclude me from your prayer. Whatever you ask, I will do. It is certainly a claim to be God and so when we seal our prayer with the name of Christ we are proclaiming Christ divinity. Perhaps the question is not do we have to put it on the prayer, perhaps the real question is can we dare to leave it off? It's not so much that it's a magical formula when it's injected in but it certainly is a profession of our view of Christ when we leave it off. Here's the reason that disciples will do great things because it has got himself doing the work. Whatever you ask, God will do. It is the Lord Himself who is doing the work. The contrast in works between the Lord's work and their work which will be greater is not a contrast between the disciples work and the work of Christ. It is the work of Christ incarnate compared to the work of Christ resurrected. Jesus is no longer limited to the finite nature of flesh and he will work through the disciples to glorify the Father from the arrival of the kingdom and his person through the expansion of the kingdom to the whole world through his spirit. And so a prayer that is in Jesus name has God's glory as the object. There there is the key to answered prayer. There is the key to what makes a valid prayer which is in Jesus name. A Christian praying to God based on the merit and righteousness of Christ will have God's glory as their objective. This is having the mind of Christ. Jesus' words this in a way that He makes a distinction between Him and the Father and yet He also is making a unity between Him and the Father and saying that if God's glory is your intent then you have the same intent that I have had. As I was living among you on the earth we so often think of prayer in terms of asking for our own happiness perhaps for wealth for opportunity at least a break. Perhaps we are looking for justice maybe we just want a good night's sleep perhaps we're jobless and we won't work and so we're asking for work or most anything else but we don't think of prayer as the very means by which we glorify God. God in Christ but what if that's the whole objective of prayer to glorify God in Christ the mind of the Christian is to be so shaped by the word of God and we are to be so indwelling and full of the spirit of Christ that our lives and our minds and our thoughts and our desires become patterned after and mimic His. Colossians 2, 1 through 3. Since then you have been raised with Christ set your hearts on the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above and not on earthly things for you died and your life is now hidden with Christ another verse whether you eat or drink or whatever you do do all things to the glory of God. This concept of prayer will be revolutionary for many people because they have seen prayer is their pipeline to getting a blessing from God but prayer is the vehicle by which we attain God's will to accomplish His purpose and it is He who accomplishes that purpose. So the first purpose of prayer is not to have our material and earthly requests fulfilled but to glorify God. This is why we're mystified often in prayer but even this has been addressed in the scripture James 4-3 when you ask you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives that you may spend what you get on your own pleasures you adulterous people don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God even a prayer of that nature. A prayer that loans for and wants to either be established in the world or to protect the fruits of the vine of this world is a prayer even if it is rendered in Jesus name it is a mockery of the name because it is seeking after the things that God tells us not to seek after and so it is not a prayer sealed with Christ name it is a prayer mocking Christ name because it is saying I'm going to ask God the father that he would provide for me the very things which he's told me he will not because it is God who accomplishes his will through prayer requests are fulfilled to the glory of God how does he do it John 17-4 which we study later I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do these are the words of Jesus how is it that we are to seek to glorify God in our prayer by completing the work that he has given us to do let me begin summing up praying in Jesus name is number one simple obedience to an imperative given by Christ he says pray in my name if you are a reformed Christian our documents west minister confession of faith commands that when we pray it is to be in Jesus name so we have an imperative we as a simple act of obedience we render prayer in Jesus name second one is its testimony to our belief that Jesus is in fact God thirdly it's an acknowledgement of our need for a mediator in an intercessor that we do not storm into the throne room of God and simply throw out prayers as if we are the paparazzi chasing after a movie star we render our prayers to the glory of God through our mediator the one our high priest who makes continual intercession the Lord Jesus Christ fourthly we glorify God by declaring that he is merciful that he is compassionate to forgive us in the atoning work of Christ and that our life and work remain dependent on his grace which is renewed to us daily is that your prayer are you in your prayer testifying that you recognize that you are saved by the mercy and the grace of God in the atoning work of Jesus Christ and you give thanks that the Lord Jesus Christ is your priest making intercession for you before God for the Christian God is glorified in the blessings he gives to his children in Christ we might say well what's in it for me is it all just about proclaiming the glory of God for the Christian that ought to be sufficient but then we would say then how is it that we are to pray for those things that are all in life how is it that we are to render under God all of the cares and concerns of our world as he tells us to all those things which distress us in life we are supposed to cast all our burdens upon him in prayer well it is God's glory to answer to the needs of his children our first name of course is God's glory and our confidence is that he will be glorified in showing his love and his mercy and his provision for his people so the Christian is one with privilege and one with hope privilege to pray because Jesus himself will accomplish these things that glorify God we know that in praying for the glory of God Jesus will accomplish that he has accomplished it he continues to accomplish it but also knowing that is through God's care for us that his name is glorified it is testimony to a wonderful God when his people praying a rightly are cared for by their God and give all praise and glory to God who cares for them we have that kind of confidence and expectation that a prayer so sealed in Jesus name will accomplish all that he is will to accomplish in his people and for his glory