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What a fascinating
passage of scripture (John 16:16-33). But if you -- like me -- find some things about this
passage to be puzzling, isn’t it comforting to notice that the disciples also
appear to be confused? In verse 17, they say to each other, “What does
he mean?” (that is, “What does Jesus mean?”) And in verse 18, after
repeating that same question, they say quite explicitly, “We don’t
understand what he is saying.”
Isn’t it great that the
gospel writers aren’t at all shy about acknowledging when the disciples were
out of sync with Jesus? Of course, the good news is that in spite of their
inability to grasp what Jesus is saying, Jesus didn’t give up on them. So
whenever we struggle to understand something Jesus is saying to us,
whenever we struggle to be in harmony with him, we can be assured that
he is not about to give up on us, either….
But isn’t it also
interesting to notice that the things that confuse Jesus’ disciples aren’t the
same things that puzzle us? In verse 18, the disciples ask about this “little
while” business. But when Jesus says, “in a little while you will no longer
see me,” we now know that he could well have been speaking about his
approaching crucifixion and death -- it is, after all, something that he
predicted at least three times. And then when he adds, “and then after a
little while you will see me”? Well, we now know that Jesus would
also rise from the dead in great victory. And so we aren’t as puzzled today as
the disciples were when Jesus said these words. Having the death and
resurrection in mind also helps us understand verses 20-22:
20 Very truly I tell you, you will weep and
mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to
joy. 21 A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but
when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child
is born into the world. 22 So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will
see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.
Can you imagine being
one of those disciples between Jesus death on Good Friday and his resurrection
Easter Sunday morning? When their leader and friend was executed they very
likely did “weep and mourn” (as Jesus predicted). It would have appeared to
them that they had made a failed investment -- that they had “bet on the wrong
horse”.
Now that’s a
terrible feeling, isn’t it? You take a chance on someone or something, and it
fails, or -- even worse -- they fail you. And the more time or money or energy
you invested, the more it hurts. The disciples left everything to follow Jesus.
They had spent three years of their lives dedicated to him. So you can imagine
the disciples’ emotional turmoil during that longest and darkest of Saturdays.
But you can also imagine their exceeding joy the following day -- when the
reality of Jesus’ victory over death began to sink in. But here, in our text
this morning, we aren’t there yet. Neither the death or resurrection of Jesus
has happened. It is only with the benefit of hindsight that we can appreciate
what seems to have confused the disciples.
But now we come to the
most difficult portion of our text -- at least for us (there is no indication
that it was a concern for the disciples). Before we read it, I’d like to give
you a “heads-up:” We will be reading Jesus’ promise to his disciples -- his
promise to us, and one of the most significant promises in the Bible! But in
order to understand it better, it could help to consider an important question:
that is, what is the purpose of a promise?
If your child is
participating in a play at school, and you promise her that you will leave work
early in order to attend, well, there isn’t just one purpose of such a
promise. First, there is the immediate purpose -- that is, attending her
play. If you were to ask her, “why did your Daddy promise to leave work early?”
She might reply, “so he could see me!” And she would be right. But there can
also be an ultimate purpose. If someone asked you, “why did you
promise to leave work early?” you might reply, “to build a relationship with my
daughter!” And you would also be right, naturally.
The Bible is full of
promises. And while we might understandably be inclined to focus on the immediate
purpose of those promises (being human as we are), scripture make it clear
that there are also ultimate purposes, including nothing less that
re-making us in the image of our Lord and Savior -- grafting us into the True
Vine that Real spoke about last week, enabling us to abide with him, and he
with us. As Peter writes (2 Peter 1:4):
he has granted to us his precious and very great
promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature,
having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful
desire.
So now, as we turn to
Jesus’ amazing promise to us, let’s not focus entirely on the immediate
purpose, or we could easily lose sight of the ultimate purpose.
23 In that day you will no longer ask me anything.
Very truly I tell you, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. 24
Until now you have not asked for anything in my name. Ask and you will receive,
and your joy will be complete.
Now to us, hearing these
words almost two thousand years later, they sure sound like Jesus is writing a
blank cheque for us, don’t they? “My Father will give you whatever you ask…”
But I’m sure that I’m not the only one here who has prayed earnestly, prayed
fervently, prayed committedly, prayed faithfully, without receiving the
thing that was prayed for. So how do we deal with that? For starters, we must
not get hung up on the immediate purpose of this promise -- that is,
receiving whatever we ask for. We will only begin to begin to appreciate this
promise if we also consider its ultimate purpose.
There is, after all, a
whole lot riding on this promise. Because there is nothing like a broken
promise to rip your heart out; nothing like a broken promise to make other
promises seem worthless. After all, if we can’t take this promise
seriously, how can we take Jesus’ other promises seriously? When Jesus says:
And behold, I am with you always, to the end of
the age.
And when Jesus says,
Let not your heart be troubled; …. I go to
prepare a place for you.
We must be able
to trust him, and so we must also be willing to wrestle with -- perhaps
understand -- this promise. But more importantly, we need to experience
it.
The problem, of course,
is that this promise sometimes doesn’t seem to stand up to the tragedies we
face in life. Those heartbreaking prayer requests -- asking for the health of
someone we love -- or perhaps even more heartbreaking -- asking for the
salvation of someone we love -- they all too often go unfulfilled.
And it won’t do to say
that “well, God answered those prayers… he just chose to answer with a ‘no’.”
Have you ever heard that? Except that Jesus doesn’t just promise that the
Father will just hear, or even respond. No: he says: “my Father will give
you whatever you ask in my name.” And to lay it on even thicker, Jesus
doesn’t just give this promise once. We see it at least four times in
the gospel of John alone. In chapter 14, we read:
13 And whatever you ask in My name, that I will
do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask anything in My
name, I will do it.
And in chapter 15, we
read:
7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you,
ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 By this my Father is
glorified
And later:
16 You did not choose Me, but I chose you and
appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should
remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. 17 These
things I command you, so that you will love one another.
And the same promise
appears twice in the gospel of Matthew (7:7, 21:22), once in the gospel of Mark
(11:24), once in the gospel of Luke (11:9) as well as in the first letter of
John (5:14,15). This is some serious business. We can’t just brush it off. It
even appears that Jesus is insisting that we take him seriously here -- that
is, he is encouraging us to make a point of regularly coming to him with our
requests! Here is verse 24 again:
Until now you have not asked for anything in my
name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete.
At this point, let’s
agree that these nine passages are really nine different expressions of the
same promise. Let’s also notice that there are two types of details in some or
all of these passages. On the one hand, there are some we could call the “gate”
for this promise, and on the other hand, those we could call the “goal” for
this promise. These are the bookends, and between the gate and the goal is
where the game is played.
Suppose you participate
in a long distance run like the Boston Marathon. Going in, you’re told that
successful participants will receive a certificate indicating their completion
of that prestigious endeavor. But a few kilometers before the finish line, you
spy Rosie Ruiz ahead of you. She was the runner who, in 1980, “won” the race,
only to be stripped of the honor when it was found that she didn’t start with
the rest of the runners. She didn’t enter through the “gate”, so she couldn’t
claim the prize. Similarly, if a runner lost his way, and even ran the full
distance in record time without crossing the finish line, you’d feel very sorry
for him, but you wouldn’t give him the prize, either. He didn’t achieve the
“goal”. Between the gates and the goal is where the game is played.
In the slide, I’ve
colored the text. In green, you see the promise itself. In yellow, what we
could call the “gate”, and in red what we could call the “goal”.
In our text (at the top)
in order to receive what we ask, the “gate” is that the asking be done “in
Jesus name.” (as it is in John 14 and John 15:16) In Matthew and in Mark,
the gate is to ask “in faith.” In 1 John, the gate is to ask “according to
God’s will.” In John 15:7, the gate is to be “abiding in the True Vine (that
is, in Jesus, himself).” But “operating in Jesus name” just is “abiding
in Jesus” which just is “being aligned with the Father’s will” which
just is “living by faith in Him”. As Tom Short says, “Our faith activates the promises of God and makes them
real for us.” Those of the nine passages that have an explicit “gate”
are simply different expressions of the same “gate”.
But this “in my name”
business needs a bit more attention, especially given the common Christian
practice to simply tack on “in Jesus name” to the end of our prayers. There is
nothing wrong about doing that, of course. It usually expresses our intention
to pray in Jesus’ name. But to express an intention and to actually pray
in Jesus’ name are two quite different things. After all, Jesus makes it clear
that it doesn’t matter if we imagine that we are acting in his name; it
only matters if he considers what we do to be in his name. In the sermon
on the mount, Jesus tells the crowd (Matthew 7):
21 “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom
of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. 22 On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy
in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in
your name?’ 23 And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew
you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’
Jesus isn’t buying it
when these people think that they have done so much “in his name.” Instead, his
reply is the scariest sequence of words in all of scripture: “I never knew
you,” he says. Knowing him is important. Knowing him is
critical. Clearly, we can’t enter the Kingdom without knowing him. But at the
same time, it is also those that do the Father’s will who will enter the
Kingdom. Once again: doing God’s will and knowing Jesus and operating in his
name are aspects of one and the same thing.
When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, how did it go? After “our Father”, we are to pray, “Hallowed be your name.” That is, before we go any further, we must recognize the respect that is due to his name. We don’t treat it as a light thing. Instead, becoming a representative of his name is the goal of a lifetime. After that comes: “Your Kingdom come; your will be done -- on Earth (i.e., in my life) as it is in heaven.” That is, we can only begin to learn to pray if we start with acknowledging his purposes, and his goals. We need our heart’s desire to be in harmony and alignment with the Almighty.
“In Jesus’ name” is not
just something we tack on at the periphery of the Christian life. Rather, it
represents something fundamentally pivotal in our Christian experience. In
testimony to this fact, the expressions “in the name of Jesus”, “in Jesus”, “in
Jesus’ name” and “in Christ” appear over one hundred times in the New
Testament, where we also read:
And whatever you do, in word or
deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus (Colossians 3:17)
So that’s the “gate”: if
we are willing to get to know Jesus so deeply that we can represent him to the
lost world around us -- because that’s what it means to operate “in his name”
-- then we will fulfill the requirements for the promise.
But what about the
“goal?” Here, we consider the ultimate purpose of Jesus’ promise. In our
text, Jesus says that the goal is to make “our joy complete.” That
sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? But how about those other passages? In John 14
and 15:7, the goal of the promise is to glorify the Father. In John 15:16, the
goal is to have us bear much fruit and to love one another. As the Sunday
School memorably reminded us a few weeks ago, “love” and “joy” are the first
two of the fruit of the spirit. In John 15:8, Jesus indicates that our
demonstrating this fruit is the truest manner by which we glorify the Father:
By this my Father is glorified, that you bear
much fruit.
So, once again, when
these passage include a “goal” they are just different expressions of the same
goal. When we come to God with our requests, if our purpose is in harmony with
the purpose of the promise, then the promise is ours. As Samuel Gordon writes in Quiet talks on prayer “The roots of prayer lie in oneness of purpose” -- our purpose must become more aligned with His purpose.
But even with all that
I’ve said this morning, there is an uncomfortable reality in this promise that
can’t be avoided. That is, no matter how many times our prayers have been
answered, when the time comes that we ask and we don’t receive, then it
implies that we simply weren’t in harmony with Jesus in the first place. Either
we missed the gate or we missed the goal. “But I tried!” our heart cried out.
“I did all I could,” we say to ourselves. It sometimes feels like Jesus must
have been setting us up for heartbreak. What more can we do to be in harmony
with him? Now that’s the right question to ask!
But in response, let me
remind you that our text began with the disciples struggling with Jesus words
-- they weren’t in harmony with him at the time. And Jesus gave them
this promise in the context of their disharmony. Confusion on the part of the
disciples is also part of the context of the same promise in chapter 14. I
don’t think that is a coincidence.
Let me suggest that our
attempts to ask in Jesus name are the best possible remedy for being out
of harmony with him. That is, Jesus knows that our asking, expecting and hoping
to have our requests answered is actually an effective means of getting to know
him better and beginning to abide in him more!
This is how it works:
whenever we know an important rule in principle, but are unsure about
how that rule applies in practice, what do we do? We give it a try. When
it doesn’t appear that the rule “worked”, it simply means that we either missed
the gate or missed the goal. It isn’t fun when that happens, but we don’t give
up. After all, Jesus tells us that there is great joy and great reward in
discovering exactly how this rule “works”. So we must not give up. Will it mean
developing patience? Certainly (that’s the fourth fruit of the Spirit,
incidentally). Will it mean some heartbreak? Certainly. If we are in harmony
with Jesus, our hearts will break at the suffering in the world, even as his
does. But will it be worth it in the end? Absolutely.
In Luke 18, Jesus “told
[his disciples] a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not
lose heart.” Jesus knows that there is nothing able to align our hearts
with God more -- nothing that brings our hearts into harmony with him more --
than coming to Him again and again with our requests, carefully paying
particular attention to the requests that are granted, and adjusting ourselves
accordingly. As Andrew Murray wrote: "All this must be learned. It can only be learned in the school of much prayer, for practice makes perfect."
How does Paul put it?
in everything by prayer and
supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the
peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and
your minds in Christ Jesus. (Phil 4:6,7)
God
knows that our hearts can be slowly brought in harmony with his Son Jesus if we
follow this advice: in everything let your requests be made known to God.
If you, like the disciples, still aren’t sure, why not start small -- start
with the basics. Start with requests that scripture indicates are in God’s
will; start with requests that scripture indicates are “in his name”. What
would those things be? In 1 Thess 5, we read:
Rejoice always and pray
without ceasing and give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the
will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
Have
you ever prayed that God would help you to learn to pray? Have you ever prayed
that God would help you be thankful? Have you ever prayed for access to the joy
of the Spirit? Those are great places to start. But this morning we’ve
encountered a number of other things that God clearly wants for us. Have you
ever prayed to be more securely established in Jesus? Have you ever prayed to
be living according to his will? Have you ever prayed for more of the fruit of
the Spirit in your life? How about for more of the Holy Spirit in your life?
If we
remain faithful in those prayers, we will first begin to
experience the ultimate purpose of this promise. And then (and only
then) will we experience its immediate purpose, that is -- receiving
whatever we ask for in his name.
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