Praying According To God's Will

Yeah, we press forward as best we can on the few Sundays that I'm here. Next Sunday, I know I'm preaching and then it's pretty much gone here, preach gone here. It's just all the way to August. It's just the way it is going to be.

So doing a lot of a lot of traveling. So we'll just stay here in John for a while. We'll get there eventually. John chapter 14, we are in verse 13. Having looked at verse 12 last time, whatever you ask in my name, that will I do.

So the father may be glorified in the son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. If you love me, you will keep my commandments and I will ask the father and he will give you another helper that he may be with you forever.

That is the spirit of truth in the world cannot receive because it does not see him or know him. But you know him because he abides with you and will be in you. Now, a number of different topics raised here, but all within the same context.

The Last Farewell Discourse and the Promise of the Spirit

Once again, if you have not been with us or if you're a normal human being and have slept since the last time we studied this section, we are looking at that last portion of Jesus' ministry to his disciples.

And it is, I think, important to keep in mind these are the things that the Lord teaches his disciples pretty much in the last few hours of his time with them. And I have often said that if you know you only have X amount of time left in this world, what you say and do during that time is probably going to be pretty important.

And certainly that is the case here. And the world is not listening in, quote unquote, at this point in the sense that there is not a audience outside of the disciples themselves, so it's much more of an intimate situation than what you would have otherwise.

And Jesus is talking about the time when he is going to be going away. He has talked about the fact that he is the perfect revelation of the Father. And now he's basically saying that though the nature of the relationship that the disciples have with him is going to change in the sense that he will no longer physically in the incarnate state as the Messiah living on earth be with them, he is still going to be with them in very important ways.

And as we will see, beginning of verse 16, we start into the discussion of the promise of the parakletos, the paraclete, the comforter, the helper in the coming of the Holy Spirit. Before we get there, we have a couple of important things to look at here.

We saw last week the doing of works which we understood to be in light of the proclamation of the gospel, the seeing of people coming to the state of regeneration, being raised from spiritual death to spiritual life, and that this is going to spread all over the world.

It's going to be seen in far greater ways than during the ministry of Christ himself because it involves the spread of the church, which in God's providence takes place after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, not during the days of his life.

I mean, when he goes to Jerusalem that last time, he has a very small cadre of followers, all of whom abandon him when things get tough. Certainly, we would know that there would be people whose hearts were being prepared by the ministry of Christ elsewhere.

We can assume that as the gospel went out in those places where Jesus administered, like in Capernaum and Galilee and things like that, that there were many who had heard him preach who were saved at that point in time.

But this was still a very small group at that particular point in time. And so Jesus is addressing that time that is to come after he has left the disciples. And before getting to the promise of the Spirit, we have this section.

Prayer in Jesus’ Name and Prayer According to God’s Will

And he says, whatever you ask in my name, verse 13, that will I do so the Father may be glorified in the Son. Now, it is important to recognize that the cast of the text here is future. Why do I mention that?

Well, because you have in verse 14, if you ask, and again, this is future, if you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. So he's not talking about over the next couple of days, and then this promise is no longer good after my death.

Clearly, he's talking about the time after his resurrection when he's gone back into the presence of the Father. And so how would you ask Jesus anything in his name, whatever you ask in my name? Now, verse 13 simply says, whatever you ask in my name, that will I do.

The direct object of to whom the request is being directed is not stated in verse 13, though I think it's fairly clear, it is stated in verse 14. However, I said I would mention this to you last time, we need to note something.

I would assume that probably, I did not look, but I'm pretty certain that the New King James Version would have a note in verse 14. Am I correct in that? Okay, without having looked, my assumption is the New King James Version note will say, and you text reads me, if you ask me, correct?

Okay, are there any other translations that have any notes there? ESV has it. Does NIV have it in Codex Ricatonius? No, there's no specific note there, no textual note, okay. Any others? I don't know if there's a Holman Christian Study Bible hiding out there, or even NASB, I don't think.

That's because the New King James says, if you ask anything in my name, and the ESV says, if you ask me anything. So the ESV is including the word me, the New King James does not have the word me. The reason I mention this, it's not actually a major textual variant in the sense that there's really much doubt that it is there.

When you look at the textual evidence itself, let me pull it up here, got to tap on the right thing. By the way, did you recover your unit there, is it working? Good, I was worried about that, I hate to see the death of a fellow iPad out there.

But yeah, the term me in verse 14 is extremely well testified in the textual tradition. It just happens that the manuscript, or scripts, I'm not sure how many manuscripts of John Erasmus had. Again, I've explained this in the past, I'll be brief, but I don't want to lose anybody either.

The King James and the New King James are based upon what is called the Textus Receptus. The Textus Receptus is a Latin phrase for the received text. There are actually some people who think that means that the church actually received this text.

Actually, that was an advertisement in 1633 from the Elsevier brothers. Yes, they actually advertised in Latin in those days, which says something about the educational system of our day versus that day.

But anyway, it basically is a minority stream of the majority of manuscripts which are called Byzantine manuscripts. If you were to look at the distribution of manuscripts over the centuries, the vast majority, obviously, are written from the 10th century on, because that makes sense.

They were no longer in the West, they weren't any longer using Greek, they were using Latin. About the only place left that was producing Greek manuscripts was the area around Byzantium, around modern day Istanbul or Constantinople in the ancient world, which, of course, fell in the middle of the 15th century to the Seleucid Turks.

The majority of handwritten manuscripts we have come from that later time period and hence have the same kind of textual history behind them. The Textus Receptus does not contain the word, me, there. The vast majority of the earlier manuscripts does contain the word, me.

Your modern translations, obviously, the New King James is a modern translation, but it is the only modern translation based upon the Textus Receptus, which was first collated and put together by the Dutch humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus in 1516.

It went through five editions, the last in 1535. That then became the standard Greek text, but it was based on less than a dozen manuscripts. We have around 5 ,700 Greek manuscripts today. That obviously does not mean that every one of them is a full manuscript of the entire New Testament from Matthew to Revelation.

Many are, but those would be the later ones. The earlier ones, especially, would be more fragmentary because, well, they're older. There are lots of things that can destroy old books. Fire and flood and bugs and mold and all sorts of things like that.

The very fact that we have almost any manuscripts at all from nearly 2 ,000 years ago is rather an amazing thing when you actually think about it. The modern translations outside of the New King James are all based upon what the New King James calls the NU, the Nazi All-United Bible Society's text.

A brand new edition of the Nazi All-United Bible Society's text just came out a few months ago called the Nazi All-United Bible Society's 28th. A new edition of the United Bible Society's text, UBS 5th, is going to be coming out fairly soon as well.

I sort of mark my advancement in age by the fact that I studied... My dad had a Nazi All-United Bible Society's 23rd edition, which I have now. I think the 26th edition had just come out when I started studying Greek, along with the UBS 3rd edition corrected.

Now that we're going to UBS 5 and Nazi All-United Bible Society's 28th, 29th is right around the corner. It's sort of a way that you can see yourself getting old. Anyway, the modern translations, Numeric and Standard, NIV, ESV, Holman, everybody, all of those, are based upon the Nazi All-United Bible Society UBS, which contains the word, me.

Now I mentioned that this was the one verse that has gotten me physically accosted. This is the one verse. I was out in Mesa somewhere. I remember it was Mesa, maybe East Mesa. I've forgotten the name of the Christian gentleman.

If he were to mention it to me, I would remember it. That's how my memory is starting to work now. It's sort of like an old 8088. The seek time is real long. When someone says, don't you remember? About ten minutes later, oh yeah.

It actually comes back really clearly, but it's just how it works. Anyway, I was out in Mesa and I was meeting at someone's home with an elderly pair of Jehovah's Witnesses. Interestingly enough, and this is somewhat unusual, but interestingly enough, in this pair, the woman spoke more than the guy.

That's not normally how it works. Normally the man, because they were a married couple, but she was the more outspoken of the two. It didn't take long before we were talking about the deity of Christ and things like that.

I illustrated the deity of Christ in reference to prayer being offered to Christ. She, of course, disputed that. I said, well, one of the reasons I went here is because it also gave me the opportunity.

You're trying to think ahead and you're only going to have this amount of time to try to plant some seeds here, so you want to plant as many as you can in as many areas as you can. I wanted to be able to demonstrate some of the bias and errors of their Bible translation, which they use, which is called the New World Translation of Jehovah's Witnesses.

I knew that John 14, 14 would allow me to do both at the same time. I said, well, unfortunately one of the examples of prayer to Christ might not be noticeable to you given the fact that the New World Translation mistranslates it.

They're like, what? Yeah. I said, do you have the Kingdom Interlinear with you? The Kingdom Interlinear is a Greek-English interlinear that is published by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society. Initially it was purple.

We called it the Purple People Eater. It is now blue. We have not come up with anything overly imaginative for the color blue. Don't even try. After this thing, you're on the outs for the rest of it. I had mine with me, which always freaks them out that I have their scriptures and I've had my name embossed on them.

They find that to be very, very strange. I got out my Kingdom Interlinear and they got out their Kingdom Interlinear and I said, look at John 14, 14. They read John 14, 14 from the New World Translation, which reads like the New King James.

If you ask anything in my name, I will do it. I said, now look over at the Greek because it's got the Greek and then it's got the English translation underneath it. I said, notice if you just read the English under the Greek, it says, if you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.

She just looked confused. She wasn't even sure what she was looking at. I go over, I get up and I go across the room and I kneel down next to her and I point to her in the text. Here it says, if you ask me.

See, the word me isn't in the New World Translation. It's there in the Greek, but they skipped it. I'm just sort of looking at her and she looks at me and she just takes the back of her hand and smacks me right into the middle of the room.

Just, you know, did not see that coming at all. Okay, and, you know, so I land on my back in the middle of the room and I, obviously she's a little old lady, so it's just because I was kneeling down and hence was imbalanced in the first place.

I just sort of, with as much dignity as you can muster, get back up and sit down and it's just silence, obviously, in the room. And I just remember very distinctly looking over at the husband and the look on his face is like, you have no idea.

Been there, done that, got the t-shirt, you know, the whole nine yards. All of a sudden I had this deep empathy for this poor old Jehovah's Witness fellow. And our conversation sort of came to a screeching halt after that for some odd reason.

They had other appointments to get to or something, I don't know, but that was the only time. And, I mean, I've had some guys, you know, we had, remember the shirtless insane man in Salt Lake, Rich? We had this, yeah, okay, which of the many are you talking about?

Well, we had a, I just remember this shirtless insane man in Salt Lake City that was, you know, in my face and talking about, you know, cutting my heart out and stuff like that. But, you know, you're watching his hands because you really wonder if he's going to try to do that.

But the only time I've actually been, you know, I've had some people, you know, doing this number, but the only time I've actually been hit was by a little Jehovah's Witness lady. So, I'd like to keep it that way.

It's a good story to tell and if I get hit by other people, then it's not, you know, it's not the only one. So, it's not really as good as it used to be. But, so now you know how John 1414 got me hit once a number of years ago.

So, anyhow, it also explains what I think is important here. Is that this requires us to see that since this is after Jesus' departure, his going back to the Father, and he's going to tell us in verse 28, which is the Jehovah's Witness' favorite verse in all the Bible, John 1428, the Father is greater than I am, but that's not what all of John 1428 says.

Most of them don't know the actual whole verse, but they know just that part. The point is that there is going to be a radical transition in where Jesus is, in the sense that right now he's with the disciples, he's going to be in the presence of the Father.

He's going back to heaven from whence he came. And so, the only way that you can ask him anything in his name is in prayer. And it's interesting that Paul in 1 Corinthians will identify Christians as those individuals who are known for calling upon the name of the Lord.

And the Greek term that is used there is epikaleo, which in the Koine period is found in many inscriptions in regards to calling upon a deity. And so, you'll find a number of inscriptions in ancient Greek where such and such a person has donated a portion of this temple or a portion of the cost of this, and they are known as those who would epikaleo, call upon the name of Apollo or something like that.

And it was in reference to prayer. And Paul identifies Christians as people who call upon the name of the Kourios. And the term Kourios is almost always used of Jesus, the Son. It is the name, that singular anima that we suffer for, and the name that is used especially in the book of Acts.

We suffer for the name. And so, here you have, I think, one of those places where you have a reference to prayer to Christ. Now, what does it mean when it says, whatever you ask in my name? I think that we really need to put some thought into this because if you've been raised in a Christian context, you are accustomed to hearing Christian prayer.

And in Christian prayer, you hear people say, in the name of Jesus, Amen. And it's almost like it's a formula that you attach that, and it makes it, you know, it's like a stamp of authority. This prayer is valid, you know, versus one that isn't.

The Meaning of Praying in Jesus’ Name

Now, before I expand upon that, let me just mention in passing, just in a sort of pastoral, elder exhortation. When we pray, we need to be focused upon who we are praying to. And I think God is honored when we are accurate in our praying.

What do I mean by that? Well, I do a lot of traveling, as you all know, and that means I get to hear, to be in fellowships that are different than ours in various ways, obviously within the realm of orthodoxy.

But I hear prayers a lot, and it is always jarring to me when I hear, especially Christian leaders, but really anyone, confusing the Father, the Son, and the Spirit in prayer. Oh, dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for dying for us.

The Father didn't die for us. The Son did. And Lord, you know, we... And then it switches over to the Spirit, and then back to... It's one thing to purposefully, as Pastor Fry will do once in a while, as I will do once in a while, pray in such a way that I address the Father, and then I address the Son, and address the Holy Spirit.

That's one thing. But when there is this clear lack of clarity as to who we're even seeking to communicate with, you know, it's sort of like being on the... You know, well, you know, some are in Comintern or in Georgia now, you know, so we're on the phone, or we're on FaceTime or something like that.

I try to distinguish between who I'm talking to, you know? It sort of helps with communication. It sort of helps show some respect to whom you're talking to. You know, I'm not going to be talking to Summer.

Oh, you're a good old girl. She's, you know, in her mid-twenties, and it's probably not best to do that. And yet, so many Christians just start praying, and just mixing up the Father and the Son and the Spirit, and hopefully in a way they wouldn't do if they were, like, reading the Bible or something, but it makes you wonder.

And it just emphasizes the fact that I've said many times that if you would take a... If you do a quiz of most evangelicals today, after the Sunday morning service, and ask them a series of ten questions about the doctrine of the Trinity, I doubt the vast majority of evangelicals would pass the quiz.

I think they would fall into the trap of identifying the Father as the Son, as the Spirit, go here to John chapter 14 or John chapter 10, and, well, yeah, the Father is the Son, because He's in the Son, and the Son is in Him, and that means they're one person, and all the rest of this stuff, and just not showing a real familiarity with the doctrine of the Trinity.

And that concerns me, because in our worship, we should be worshiping according to truth and knowledge, not according to something else. And so it's just something that I certainly notice, especially when traveling, but would exhort us to be...

You know, when you think about it, if you're called into your boss's office, you concentrate. You pick up the game a little bit, in the sense that you are not just letting your mind wander, you're just not...

If you want to keep your job, that is. If you don't want to keep your job, then you just treat them like anybody else. And no matter what you think about our political leaders, if you were asked to go to a senator's office or something like that, or if you were talking to the President of the United States, you'd probably be pretty much present in your mind.

You wouldn't be like, hey, dude, you know, that type of thing. And yet when it comes to prayer, very often that's how we are. It's just sort of like, rather than really showing a recognition that we're entering into the presence of God.

And so when we go back to the text here, in my name is not just some sort of a formulary, where you tack on the name of Jesus at the end, and ding-ding, that makes this one better, than if you don't do that.

We don't live in a culture any longer, where names have much of a connection to the individual that they represent. There's no connection, I hope, between my name and my character, because Jacob is pretty much a supplanter, a devious person.

So I hope that's not representative of me. But no one knows what James means anymore. They don't trace it back to Jacob or anything like that. In Semitic languages, it's just, I like that name. That's how we do names.

I mean, that's got to be how Banquiqui got Banquiqui. This has got to be. Either that or the drugs hadn't worn off after the delivery. One of the two, I'm not sure. I like Banquiqui, by the way. I think it's a cute little name for a baby.

I wouldn't want to saddle the poor kid with that after about age two. But that wasn't the case, obviously, in the ancient context. So to ask in Jesus' name is to ask in light of his character, his person, the totality of what that name represents.

And so when we talk about asking God for something in the name of Christ, we're not saying, well, because I'm a Christian, this somehow gives me an inside track on getting that new house. I mean, that is one of the great abuses of this concept.

Because Jesus says, whatever you ask in my name, that will I do. I mean, that's what he says. And yet we know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that they are hucksters and false teachers who are teaching people.

You see, when you ask for that new car, the only reason you're not getting it is because you don't really believe enough. If you really believed enough, then Jesus is saying, if you really believe, then man, you ask for it.

It's the name-it-and-claim-it garbage that is all over the world today. And we just know, not only experientially, but we know from the biblical testimony that that is not how things are to work. So we still have to understand what in the world this is saying, though.

Whatever you ask in my name, that will I do. What does it mean to ask in Jesus' name? Well, I think, and we don't have time to develop it in ten minutes as fully as it would be appropriate to develop it.

But we know that another way of expressing this, because we know that there is another attachment to this promise expressed elsewhere in Scripture. And that is in accordance with God's will. Praying in accordance with God's will.

So is praying in accordance with God's will and paying in Jesus' name the same thing? Well, in the sense that Jesus is the perfect representation of the Father, that if you've seen Him, you've seen the Father, there would be that very intimate connection at that point that would be, yeah, that obviously means we're in the same realm.

But I think that if you pray in Christ's name, then you're looking at Christ's life, how He prayed, how He lived, and how He obeyed the Father. And when we see that, we see a life of absolute submission to the Father.

Unquestioned, perfect obedience. So if we are going to use the name of Christ, then we have to use the name of Christ in light of the character of Christ, the life of Christ. We are praying as Christ would pray.

And so what it's really saying is when you ask in accordance with the life that Christ lived, when you ask anything of Christ Himself as a person who has surrendered to the will of God in your life, and you are seeking to be obedient to His will, that is when this promise is an absolute promise.

I mean, a person who truly prays to be conformed to the image of Christ will be conformed to the image of Christ. God is not going to allow that person to just go through life without experiencing those things that are going to conform them to the image of Christ.

But we all know what things conform to the image of Christ. And they are not fountains of physical, material blessings riding along on a cloud and never experiencing difficulty or pain or suffering or anything else.

And so where people just completely miss the promise of Scripture in regards to prayer is that they start on the wrong end of the equation which is easily understandable in light of the man-centeredness of the vast majority of Christian theology today as it's expressed in the United States.

Let me put all the caveats on this so we're clear since you may know what I'm talking about but we do record these things and other people listen as well for some odd reason. And that is, if you have been brought into the Christian faith on the idea that God was trying His best to get you but there was nothing He could do until you cooperated and now that He's got you He's just so happy to have you and it's just so fortunate that you have blessed Him with your presence and so on and so forth that that kind of person is going to look at this and the emphasis is going to be on whatever I ask in other words, whatever I desire but if we're looking at it appropriately and that is from a God-centered perspective then it actually makes sense, especially when you include the last part of the line which is almost never included in the misuse of this text so the Father may be glorified in the Son.

How is the Father glorified in the Son? By you getting a new Camaro? By you getting miraculously white teeth? I mean, again I mentioned last week, or not last week, or whatever it was I was here last, when you listen to a lot of what's out there the biggest physical plague in mankind that needs to be healed is having one leg shorter than another.

And exactly how is the Father glorified in the Son by someone on TV that no one ever sees? They've been healed of this! Send in your $162 and so on and so forth. There's something about the Father being glorified in the Son here and how is the Father glorified in the Son?

By creating the body of Christ, by conforming us to the image of Christ. That's the greatest way in which the Father is glorified in the Son is that the Son is bringing this people that are united to Him into glory itself.

And so whatever verse 13 is talking about, it's talking about what we call sanctification, it's talking about our being made like Christ. And when we pray to be made like Christ, we pray Lord remove from me my selfishness remove from me my anger, remove from me my lust and we do so in the name of Christ, in the sense that we are in Him and in accordance with His character, I want to be obedient, I want to be submitted to You.

Well, that is what the Son will do. And to apply this to anything else that turns us into little sovereigns who somehow have the capacity through the enunciation of Jesus' name to command God and change the future based upon my desires is just utterly bogus and yet how many times is that exactly the way it's presented?

And so if you ask me anything in my name, I will do it all this wrapped around, it's almost like so the Father may be glorified in the Son is the middle and now you've got the beginning whatever you ask in my name, that will I do and then you've got the end.

If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it all of it wrapped around this concept that the issue of prayer is wrapped up in the Father's purpose.

Not mine. The issue of prayer.

Is wrapped up in the Father's purpose, which is His own self-glorification. It's not wrapped up in my purpose which is normally my own glorification. The Father's purpose coincide because it's my desire to be conformed to the image of Christ.

Voila! The prayers of a righteous man avail much. Why? Because his prayers are in accordance with the will of God. And this touches on the whole thing that people struggle with Why bother praying if there's a sovereign God?

Because prayer isn't about trying to convince God to be a better guy. That's why. I mean seriously, isn't that how most people look at it? You're trying to convince God to be better than He is. You ain't trying hard enough God.

I need to convince you to save this person over here. You're only giving a 95 effort. I want a 105 effort. You need to do better. Is that really what people are thinking? And yet when you really think about it, the prayer of a righteous man avails much because the righteous man is only praying that God's kingdom will come.

He's not praying to build my kingdom. The reason for the power of the prayer is the unity that exists between the will of the man and of God. Because his will has been changed and he has been conformed to the image of Christ.

We hear so much of the opposite of that that I think it impacts all of us. And we struggle to be able to explain to folks because it's so easy to come to these great promises from the wrong direction and try to fulfill them in the wrong way.

And if we would just approach it from a God-centered perspective and recognize that God is about accomplishing His purpose in this world and if we want to be people always talk about being in the center of God's power.

I want to experience God's power. We want to experience God's power, get in the center of His will. And stop thinking about yourself and say, I am willing to be spent in your service. Anything I've got take it from me if it will but advance your kingdom.

That kind of prayer is going to get answered. That's why a lot of people don't pray that way because that's not really what we want. We've got our comfort zone and well, I'll give you a little over here but don't put me in a position of really losing anything because then I'll be uncomfortable and I might start whining.

You wonder why sometimes prayers are passionate or powerful. It's because we're really not willing to jump into the river in essence. We're on the stream watching it all go by going, oh, that's interesting.

So, aside from it being an evidence of the deity of Christ unity of the Father and the Son I mean, because if you take verse 13 as just a general whatever you ask prayer then verse 14 refers it to Jesus.

So, you have prayer, no matter what, to Christ extremely important, evidence of the deity of Christ something you might want to be careful about when you show little Jehovah's Witness ladies in their kingdom in there and then hopefully some thoughts on what it means to ask in the name of Christ as well.

So, the next one a verse that's not very popular amongst many people today but need to know it verse 15, if you love me you will keep my commandments is where we will pick up next time. Let's close the word of prayer.

Closing Prayer

Our gracious Heavenly Father, we do thank you for this opportunity once again to open your word and we do ask that you would help us to understand that when we pray to you we do so as an act of worship, we do so as your servants we do not do so to try to make you a better God but we do so laying our hearts open before you and desiring that you would change us, that you would conform us to your image that you would conform us to your will so that our desires would be your desires and that therefore we would see our prayers answered because we are walking in accordance with your will.

We ask that you would be with us even now during this coming worship service that we might be conformed and transformed by the ministry of your spirit and your word amongst us we pray in Christ's name.

Amen.