We'll take your Bibles, open up with me this morning to John chapter 14. We're looking at this morning, Praying in Jesus's Name, and we're gonna be referencing a little bit, just a few lines from Spurgeon, but most of this is coming from R.A. Torrey's How to Pray, chapter four, Praying in the Name of Christ and According to the Will of God. I wanna start this morning with our hymn for the week that is focused on prayer, and this is hymn number 897 in Gadsby's Hymns, written by John Berridge. Ye poor afflicted souls, give ear, who seek the Lord, but fear his frown. What things ye ask in fervent prayer, believing, Christ will send them down. If sin is loathsome to thy heart and shows a most ill-favored face, if guilt affords thee fearful smart, it flows from Jesus' love and grace. A feast is now prepared for thee in spite of all thy unbelief, a feast of mercy sweetly free for sinners and the sinner's chief. Take courage then, ask and believe, expecting mercy from the Lord. The promise runs, ask and receive, and Christ is faithful to his word. O Lord, increase my feeble faith and give my straightened bosom room to credit what thy promise saith, and wait till thy salvation come. Looking this morning at praying in Jesus name, coming and asking. And of course, the confusion about that phrase is that it really has become a thing where people will tell you that praying in Jesus name is not just saying a prayer and then saying before you say amen in Jesus name. Now, as that is the practice of many, and as we do want to pray in the name of Christ, we have to realize what it means to pray in Jesus name. Here in John 14, after Jesus is actually here in the upper room with the disciples, it was here that He washed their feet, it was here that He was preparing for the Passover before they left for the garden and for His trial and His crucifixion. And one of the last things He is teaching them here in John 14, verses 13 and 14, As He is teaching them about prayer and about communion as His disciples, He tells them, ask for things in my name. And of course, the purpose for this, the ultimate goal in our prayers is so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. We ask the Father in the Son's name, and because the Father is pleased with His Son, He is pleased to grant that request. This is what Torrey said, God is well pleased with his son, Jesus Christ. He hears him always. And he also hears always the prayer that is really in his name. There is a fragrance in the name of Christ that makes acceptable to God every prayer that bears it. But what is it to pray in the name of Christ? He goes on, he says, "...there is nothing mystical or mysterious about this expression. If one will go through the Bible and examine all the passages in which the expression in my name or in his name or synonymous expressions are used, he will find that it means just about what it does in modern usage." And he gives an illustration. He says, if I go to a bank and hand in a check with my name signed to it, I ask of that bank in my own name. If I have money deposited in that bank, the check will be cashed. If not, it will not be. If, however, I go to a bank with somebody else's name signed to the check, I'm asking in his name, and it does not matter whether I have money in that bank or any other. If the person whose name is signed to the check has money there, the check will be cashed. So it is when I go to the bank of heaven, when I go to God in prayer, I have nothing deposited there. I have absolutely no credit there. And if I go in my own name, I will get absolutely nothing. But Jesus Christ has unlimited credit in heaven, and he has granted to me the privilege of going to the bank with his name on my checks. And when I thus go, my prayers will be honored to any extent. Not to slide into any kind of a prosperity gospel, that's not what Torrey's talking about. It's just the reality that to do something in someone's name is to be representative of them and what is theirs. So, he says, to pray then in the name of Christ is to pray on the ground, not of my credit, but His, to renounce the thought that I have any claims on God, whatever, and approach Him on the ground of God's claims. Part of the focus in this chapter for Torrey is to focus on the promises of God, the promises that have been made to us. If God promises something to us, that's what He wants for us. And so as we pray according to what He has promised, this is coming to align our will with His, our wants with His, our desires with His. It is really to deny ourselves and to come and to pray in the name of Christ, knowing that if we come on our own, we can't get anything from God. We can't manipulate God. We can't earn anything from God. We can't pay for anything from God. On our own, we have nothing. No righteousness, no goodness, nothing. All that we have is Christ. But isn't that more than enough? To come and to have Christ and all that's His This is the basis of our relationship with God. Torrey says, praying in the name of Christ is not merely adding the phrase, I ask these things in Jesus's name to my prayer. I may put that phrase in my prayer and really be resting in my own merit all the time. But when I really do approach God, not on the ground of my merit, but on the ground of Christ's merit, not on the ground of my goodness, but on the ground of the atoning blood, God will hear me. Very much of our modern prayer is vain because men approach God imagining that they have some claim upon God, whereby he is under obligation to answer their prayers. He's mentioned that twice, that there is this idea that there are those who are coming and they're praying and thinking that God owes them. what does God owe us? Again, I've said it, don't ever go and demand of God what you think He owes you, because all He owes us is judgment. All He owes us, all we've earned, the wages of sin, is death. That's why we're glad for grace and mercy, because grace and mercy are not according to our works, but according to Christ's finished work done on our behalf. So we can't come and make a claim on God as if he owes us. And this, in a lot of the prosperity gospel, the word faith movement, there's this idea that we can make demands of God in prayer. Who are we to think that we can come and make demands of God? We come with requests. We don't come to tell God what to do. If you think that you can go tell God what to do, go spend some time in the book of Job. Just go read the book of Job. And what's interesting about the book of Job, by the way, I've never preached through Job. That might be fun. Because as you go through Job and you listen to his friends, a lot of the things that his friends say sound right. But the problem is they didn't understand what God was doing and they were speaking out of context so that what they were saying, while true, didn't apply to Job's case. And it's to the point that when you get to the end of the book of Job, God rebukes His friends. and says they should have just sat there and been quiet. Because even though what they were saying was technically truth, it wasn't rightly applied to the situation because they did not understand what God was doing behind the scenes. You understand Job didn't even know behind the scenes what God was doing. If he had, he probably would have gotten angry at God a little sooner than he did because it was God who brought Job to Satan's attention. The Lord said to Satan, have you considered my servant Job? But we understand in all of that that Satan couldn't do anything outside of what God allowed and what God was using for his purposes. And in the end of it, Job started out being faithful, but then finally he did sin. He questioned God and God answers and basically asks the question of Job, who do you think you are? And then we know who God is, and He explains who He is. And this is where Paul also tells us in the book of Romans, who are you to answer back? Who is the pot to talk back to the potter? He is God and we are not. So when we go to Him in prayer, we're not coming to lay claims on Him as if He owes us something. We are going, though, so that we might claim the promises that He's made for us. And in knowing those promises, we learn to understand what the will of God is. To pray in Jesus' name, this is to come to the Father through His Son. How did John 14 start? What's the first few verses there? We get down to verse 6 before we're down here to 13 and 14. And what does Jesus say? I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father except through me, or by me. There's only one way to the Father, and that is through His Son. And so that's what we have to be mindful of when we pray. We do come boldly before the throne of grace, and we've talked about that in this study. But to come boldly before the throne of grace can only be accomplished by coming through Christ. It's not coming on our own to make our own claims upon God. We come to the Father through the Son. This is to pray in accordance with God's nature, with His promises, and with His will for us. It's to align ourselves with Jesus so that we are asking what He would ask for us. This needs to be our goal in prayer. When we come to the Father, and we come especially with requests to the Father, we need to be asking ourselves, is this something that Jesus would pray for me? because He is praying for us. He ever lives to make intercession for us. And that kind of puts it in a perspective. Is this something Jesus would pray for me? Something He would want for me? At some point with some of the things that we're facing in life, that really does make it kind of clear. No, that's probably not something I should pursue or ask because we've been looking at it from what we want instead of what Christ wants as we're being conformed into His image. In order to pray according to God's will, we have to know His will. 1 John 5, 14 tells us, verses 14 and 15, and this is the confidence which we have before Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the request which we have asked from Him. We need to be seeking to walk in His will and to pray according to His will. And the question is, how can we know the will of God? How can we pray? according to what Jesus wants for us. How do we know what Christ wants for us? Torrey actually gives two answers to that question. First, we know what Jesus wants from us from the Word, by reading the Word of God. God has revealed His will in His Word. When anything is definitely promised in the Word of God, we know that it is His will to give that thing to us. If then, when I pray, I can find some definite promise of God's Word and lay that promise before God, I know that He hears me, and I know that if He hears me, I know that I have the petition that I have asked of Him. Certainly, it's our privilege to know. When we have a specific promise in the Word of God, if we doubt that it is God's will, or if we doubt that God will do the very thing we ask, we make God a liar. Here's this, this was something going through the study and reading this myself. It's just kind of like, there are times when we talk about things, we preach about things, but suddenly the light comes on and we see something we hadn't seen before. So often we treat the promises of God as a security blanket. Things go wrong, we get upset, we're afraid, we have doubts. We go find the promises of God. What does God promise us? And then we kinda, as we read the promises, if you've got one of those little books, The Promises of God, you can turn to the index, back in the back, and it tells you, if this is your problem, here's your promise. And gives you the verse, and so you can plug it in. Okay, this is the promise. And so we read the promise and then we sit back and we just hope and hope that God will do what He promised. God, why haven't you done what you promised yet? That's a cheap view of the promises of God. That's looking at the promises of God like a Band-Aid or like a spare tire, just to get us through until things smooth out. When God makes a promise to us, that is an expression of His will for us. That is God saying, this is what I want for you. Now, oftentimes we find those promises are conditional. They're conditioned upon faith. They're conditioned upon obedience. When He makes a promise, He tells us what we have to do to attain the promise. If He makes a promise, then that's His will for us. Then as we seek to find that promise fulfilled, it's not just so we get what we want, it's so that we now are living in accordance with the will of God. If we look at it and we have this cheap view of God's promises, then he says we do make God a liar. Here is one of the greatest secrets of prevailing prayer, Torrey writes, to study the Word to find what God's will is as revealed there in the promises, and then simply take these promises and spread them out before God in prayer with the absolutely unwavering expectation that He will do what He has promised in His Word. Now, why is it that we can trust that God is going to do what He says? Because God can't lie. If God says, this is what I want for you, guess what? That's what He wants for you. Oftentimes, He has to bring us to the end of ourselves before He can give us what He wants to give us, because we get in the way way too often. Secondly, Torrey says, there's still another way in which we may know the will of God, that is, by the teaching of His Holy Spirit. There are many things that we need from God, which are not covered by any specific promise, but we're not left in ignorance of the will of God even then. In Romans 8, 26 and 27, we're told, and in the same way, the Spirit also helps our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God." The Holy Spirit intercedes for us, praying for God's will for us, that the promises that are given would be fulfilled. And we've been sealed by the Spirit, who we're told in Ephesians, is the Spirit of promise. You realize the two greatest promises we have from God? Himself, Jesus, His Son, and the Holy Spirit. Actually, that's three, more than two. There's three promises. God gives us Himself, He's given us His Son, and He's given us His Spirit. Torrey says here, we're distinctly told that the Spirit of God prays in us. He draws out our prayer in the line of God's will. When we are thus led out by the Holy Spirit in any direction to pray for any given object, we may do it in all confidence that it is God's will and that we are to get the very thing we ask of Him, even though there is no specific promise to cover the case. Often God by His Spirit lays upon us a heavy burden of prayer for some given individual. We cannot rest. We pray for him with groanings which cannot be uttered. Perhaps the man is entirely beyond our reach, but God hears the prayer, and in many a case it is not long before we hear of his definite conversion." We need to pray. We need to pray with expectation. We need to pray with faith. And we need to pray in accordance with the promises of God. To pray in Jesus' name then also means that we pray and seek for answers. But all the while, we need to be willing to do the will of God. You see, it's not enough to know God's will. We have to do God's will. James 121 applies it to us. Therefore, laying aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness in gentleness, receive the implanted word which is able to save your souls, but become doers of the word and not merely hearers who delude themselves. We need to study and know what the will of God is, what Christ would be praying for us and wanting for us, so that then we might do what His will is. This also means that we follow Jesus' example in prayer. How did Jesus pray in the garden? Yet not as I will, but as you will. Pray with a willingness for our will to be changed to match the will of the Father for us. Spurgeon said there, when you can plead His promise, then your will is His will. To want what God promises us, is to pray in accordance with His will. Whatever God has promised us reveals what He wants for us. That is His will for us. So, we start with the promises. Now, we look at God's promises and we have to be careful how we handle God's promises because we need to be able to note three things about God's promises. First, what is the context of the promise? Because we know that you can take verses out of context. Secondly, we need to know if there are any conditions to the promise. Does the promise require something of us for the promise to be met? And third, we need to know what are the consequences of the promise. We start by asking the question, is this promise made to me? Secondly, is there something I must do to receive the promise? Does it require faith, expectation? Does it require belief, obedience? It at minimum requires asking, because if you don't ask, you're not going to receive. Now, here is another question. What will having this promise fulfilled mean for me in my life? What does that fulfilled promise look like in the way I live and walk with Him? Now, here's an example. one of the most misquoted verses. I shouldn't say misquoted. People quote it correctly, but they misapply it. One of the New Testament's most misapplied verses. 2 Peter 3.9, The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some consider slowness, but is patient toward you, not willing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance. Now, the way that's usually preached completely out of context, is that it's God's will for every single person on the planet to be saved. Now, if that is true, then every single person on the planet would be saved. If they are not, then there is either a problem with God's will, and usually the way this is assigned is people, they attack the sovereignty of God, and they say, yes, God is sovereign, but He's yielded that and given you your free will, and so now He's given you the power to choose and the power to control, and whatever you do, God has to abide by your choice. All right, shut up, pot. You're talking back to the potter there. Stop it. God is sovereign and He does not yield that sovereignty. If He could yield His sovereignty, He would not be sovereign. He is absolutely sovereign. So the question is, if everybody is not saved, then what does this verse mean? Well, let's ask the question, who is this promise made to? If we go back to the beginning of this letter to 2 Peter 1, verse 1, Simon Peter, a slave and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have received the same kind of faith as ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ. Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the full knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness through the full knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these he has granted to us his precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust." Who is Peter writing to? The saved. The church. When we get to chapter 3, verse 1, there is now beloved, this is now beloved, the second letter I'm writing to you, in which I am stirring up your sincere mind by way of a reminder. In verse 13, but according to His promise, we are looking for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. So this book is written to the elect, to the saved. So what does that mean? That means the Lord is not slow about His promise, as some consider slowness, but is patient towards you, not willing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance. That means if you came to repentance, that was God's will for you. And of all that He has called, all of them will come to repentance. This is not God promising to save everyone and wanting to save everyone and being unable to save everyone because of our interference. It is that this is written to the elect. Now, here's another. There is a promise. We're going to come to it eventually in our study through Jeremiah. In Jeremiah 29, verse 11, the most quoted promise from the book of Jeremiah, especially around graduation time every spring. For I know the plans I have for you, declares Yahweh, plans for peace and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope. All right, let's do it again. Who is this promise made to? Well, seniors. No, who is this promise made to? Let's go back, the verse just before, Jeremiah 29.10, For thus says Yahweh, When seventy years have been fulfilled for Babylon, I will visit you and establish My good word to you to return you to this place. For I know the plans that I have for you, declares Yahweh, plans for peace and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope. These promises were made to Judah, the remnant in exile. That's who this specific promise was made to. What are the consequences of this promise? In verse 13, but you will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares Yahweh, and I will return your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations, from all the places where I have banished you, declares Yahweh, and I will cause you to return to the place from where I sent you into exile. A promise made to the exiles about their return from exile, coming back into the land and being restored and being blessed. So, if every graduation card that has Jeremiah 29 11 on it was fulfilled, then all of our seniors would move to Jerusalem. It's a specific promise to a specific group of people in a specific time. Now, can we draw inferences from the promises that God made to His people? Yes, they show us His character, they show us His will, they show us how He works, but we've got to take His promises in context, see if there are conditions, and see what the consequences of those promises are. What we see from 1 Corinthians 1.20 is that it is Jesus, it is Christ who is the ultimate promise made to you by the Father. The ultimate consequence then of the promises of God is our sanctification and our glorification. This is why Christ is that ultimate promise. and the consequence of the promise made to us in Christ is our sanctification while we're here on the earth and eventually our glorification. 2 Corinthians 7.1, Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. His promise also, we see, ultimately, is a promise of eternal life. 1 John 2.25, this is the promise, which He Himself made to us, eternal life. This is when we need to have an eternal-mindedness. I believe it was Edwards, or it might have been somebody quoting Edwards, or around that time, that it was a prayer, God, stamp eternity on my eyeballs. Keep me mindful of eternity. This is Colossians chapter three, to set our mind on things above, not on things on the earth, to have an eternal mindedness, to know that we are laying up treasures in heaven, not here on earth. We are so consumed with what's here on earth. We forget that what we've been given in Christ is not the ability to cope and survive here. We've been given eternal life. And that is a, both a capacity for life and a length of life that he has given to us. If we're to define that then, the question is, what exactly is eternal life? It's not just living forever. There are some people who talk about heaven and eternal life and it really sounds quite boring. But can you imagine being there with Christ? And if that doesn't excite you, just being there with Jesus, then you need to repent and believe. You need to be saved. As we look for that eternal life, what is eternal life? Jesus defines it for us in John 17, 3, in the high priestly prayer, which is where we'll eventually end our study. This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you've sent. Through Christ, we know God. Knowing God is eternal life. Why? Because He is eternal and because He is life. There is no life outside of Him. So we need to understand that while we do come and express our needs and our frustrations and our desires, as we spend time communing with God and praying about the here and now, we need to do it with an eternal-mindedness. Knowing that, they say that this world is just the dress rehearsal. The real show is in eternity in the new heavens, the new earth. Somebody asked me not too long ago, what in the world does it mean? What are we practicing for? Because here we're fighting sin and doing all these things. And when we're in the new heavens and new earth, there is no sin. What are we practicing for? You know what we're practicing for? Loving Christ. Loving Christ. Through the midst of whatever. David applied it in the 23rd Psalm. Yea, though I walk through the valley of death. Where's the valley of death? Ta-da! Here we are. This is the valley of death. Another translation of that phrase is the veil of deep sorrows. Yea, though I walk through the veil of deep sorrows, you are with me, your rod and your staff, they comfort me. As you see, it's here as we fight against sin, as we depend upon God, as we surrender to the control of the Holy Spirit, as we learn more and more about God and His Word, we struggle against sin. The Spirit fights against the flesh. Imagine if we can be faithful. and overcome because of what the Spirit is doing through us here, imagine how great it will be to walk with Christ without a sinful flesh, without even a desire for sin, to be unhindered in our fellowship with Him. That is eternal life. That is what we should pray for and be mindful of as we pray. As we pray, we need to ask God through Christ with the help of the Spirit to give us those things that He wants for us, the things that He wills for us. And as we pray according to His will and His promises, we need to be willing to do what it is that He wants. That's what it means to pray in Jesus' name. It's to come through Christ with the help of the Spirit and to express to the Father that we want to be like Jesus, and to pray that He would make us like Jesus, knowing that He's promised to do that. He gives us that command in Ephesians 5. Therefore, be imitators of God as dear children, and walk in love, even as He has loved us and given Himself for us. Him. That needs to be the focus of our prayers. How can we be more like Christ? So pray the promises. Through the promises, discover the will of God for your life and pray in accordance with that will, willing to do what He wants. That's praying in Jesus' name. Next week, we're going to look at Ephesians 6.18 again and at Jude verse 20 at praying in the Spirit. As you pray this week, Pray in Jesus name. And I would challenge you to do it this way. This is as I'm teaching through this, my challenge now is as I pray and close the prayer in Jesus name, suddenly I have to stop and think, what do I mean by that? It's not just a phrase. It's my willingness to be conformed to his image and to want for me what he wants for me to pray according to his will. So let's pray together. Father, we do thank you for your Word and for our Savior and for the Spirit who guides us through the Word. We thank you for the eternal life that you've given to us, the promises throughout your Word that are made to us. We thank you that even if the promises aren't made to us, we see that when you make a promise, you keep it, you fulfill it. You cannot lie. Your promises are sure. And as we've read from your word this morning, they are plentiful and they are magnificent. We thank you that all of your promises culminate in the sending of your son to be our savior, to give to us eternal life so that we might know you through Him. I do pray that You would conform our prayers as You transform us by Your Spirit through Your Word. Help us to seek out what it is You want for us. And may we want what You want. May we put that into practice. May we have the faith to be obedient. to walk as we ought to walk, to pray as we ought to pray. And as we do claim your promises, we thank you that your promises are as sure as your name, that what you've told us you will do, you will do when we come to you, ask in faith and walk in obedience. We pray by your spirit, you would equip us to do that in this week to come. And we do ask these things in accordance with the name of Jesus, our Savior. Amen.