In Pius XI, Treatise Concerning Prayer and the Answer of Prayer, by John Brown of Wemphrey, we're up to chapter 11, of the object of worship and prayer. Remember that the discussion, the whole discussion throughout the book, is in light of John 14, 13 and 14. Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son, If you shall ask anything in my name, I will do it. The object of prayer, we're going to discuss through the series of 12 points overall. We're gonna look at the question of the address, really it's the address of prayer. to whom or to what are we praying. And we're going to be talking quite a bit about the priority of the Father, in a sense, in prayer. And yet, Brown is very careful to make clear and wants you to understand that although there are certain matters of order or protocol that we tend to observe in prayer, that we should not at any point think that, for example, only the Father is worthy of prayer, or we can only pray unto the Father. That's why Augustine praises the Holy Spirit, right? There are times and places, there are certain that are directed to certain people in particular? Certain persons in the Trinity that may be more appropriate, right? If there's something that we know, for example, is more peculiar to the work, the distinct work of this or that person. But we're talking about the general address, for the most part, we're talking about the general address of God But again, remember the chapter is the object of worship and prayer. And the object of worship, regardless of the address that we're making, the object of worship has to be God. And when we talk about God, And we're not talking about God abstractly considered, but we're talking about God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. God in Trinity and Trinity. Right. And so we have to keep that in mind. We have to really have that at the forefront of our thinking in prayer, whether we're actually praying ourselves or in the public prayers of the church, or, you know, when you're praying with someone else, you're sort of following them, you need to be clear in your mind that the object of all of this praying has to be God, again, in Trinity, right, in the Trinitarian relation. And so Brown's going to point that out. He's going to point that out in a number of ways. And he's going to give us a number of verses to consider. And I think some of these verses are not just interesting, but instructive when we consider that in our praying we should pray using the examples and the patterns we find in Scripture. We should conform our prayer to the revelation that we have. So we're going to begin with question 236. Of whom does Christ speak in this prayer? And what's the end of Christ's answering prayer? So, the person of whom he speaks in the prayer, when he says, Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, the person is clearly the Father. The person to be prayed unto is God, but he's denominated here by the name of Father. And this has a lot to do, as you're going to see, with the fact that the Father is the first person. The Father is, as the church fathers would call him, the font or the root of divinity. that the Son and the Spirit come forth from the Father through an eternal begetting, an eternal proceeding. Nonetheless, the Father is unoriginate. And so, there's something peculiarly appropriate in making our normal address to God by invoking the name of the Father. The end of Christ's answering prayer is also to this point, this is 236b, and that is that the Father may be glorified in the Son. So we know that Christ prays to the Father, and He mentioned they're asking the Father in His name. Look at John 15, 16 to John 16, 24. John 15, verse 16. You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you and ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatsoever you shall ask of the Father in my name, He may give it you. John 16, 24. John 16, 24. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name. Ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. So the asking is clearly asking the Father in the name of Jesus, that is, through the mediator. And that too is important, and that actually is also part of, when we talk about the object of prayer, part of what we have to keep in mind. Why we're not, when we address the Father in prayer, we're not addressing only the Father, but we're addressing the Father as He's the Father of the Son, and we're doing that also with respect to the Spirit of God, who is, in one sense, He's the Spirit proceeding from the Father, but He's also the Spirit of the Son in the economy of grace. So we are praying with a bit of a sense of order, or generally we should be, but that is not to say that we think that the Son or the Spirit are less God. So we pray to the Father, but we pray knowing that the Father has given to the Son to give to us the blessings by His Spirit, correct? Yeah, and we know that the end of that is the Father will be glorified. So that, again, it all returns to the Father, or the glory that He had with the Son. And we'll see that more as we expand upon the points that Brown is making here. But this is an important thing to understand that There is an order, and we are, as I say, we'll come back to that and talk about that a little bit more in this chapter, but that order shouldn't cause us to lose sight of the unity of the Godhead. In fact, the reason for praying to the Father in most cases The reason for addressing the Father in this direct way is the Father is, in fact, the principle of unity in the Godhead. Because of His priority and relation to the other two Persons, He is the unifying point of reflection. So when we say that our object of prayer is God, by mentioning God denominated as a father, we are praying to God under the consideration of this doctrine of the Trinity. All right, so he goes on to say that in order to clear up this object of worship and prayer of the person in whom prayer is to be made, He wants to mention a few particulars, and that is the subject of question 237. What reasons are given for asserting, first, that God alone is to be the object of our worship. And by God, again, we we want to be clear that we are speaking about God in Trinity. But this God in Trinity is also a God in unity. And so as the object of our divine worship, the divine nature which is the object of our worship, we contemplate in three persons. So the first reason, 237a, first reason given is, so God alone has the divine attributes and excellencies which are requisite in the object of divine worship and he is really, because of this, he alone is adorable, that is, a proper subject of our adoration. And he really points to several verses, but the one I want to look at here is Psalm 95 verses 1 and 2. And then also verses 6 and 7. Psalm 95 verses 1 and 2. O come let us sing unto the Lord, let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving and make a joyful noise unto him with psalms. And verses 6 and 7. O come, let us worship, and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord our Maker, for He is our God, and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand, today if you will hear His voice. So, when the psalmist says He is the great God and the great King, He's above all gods, and so on. From that, the point is he infers that we should kneel before him. And Brown points out prayer is a piece of what we call natural worship. And I would just add to that that worship is a matter of declaring worth-ship the worthiness of something and really the only thing worthy of our adoration is the divine nature. The divine attributes and excellencies alone therefore contain that which is requisite to be the object of divine worship. To worship anything less than that is in fact to worship something less than God. So that's the first reason that God alone is the object of our worship. 237b, the second reason, is God alone knows all of our wants And God alone is privy to our hearts and inward motions and desires. And he points to Acts 124, that God knows the heart of all men. in Romans 8 27 that he searches the hearts and knows what is the mind of the Spirit and so on. Those verses are all getting to the same point. Why are we praying to God? Because again, God alone knows really what we want, what we really desire. He's not just, and this is why Although he doesn't bring it up here, but this is why we're not simply to be lip service to God. You can go through the motions. God knows whether or not what you're saying with your lips or what you're assenting to outwardly, if that's what you really desire. That's what you really want. All right, 237C. the third reason. And this is also important. God alone is all-sufficient and able to answer all our prayers and satisfy all our desires. Any desire that we have that is placed on something less than what is God is idolatry. Any desire that we have which is elevated to the object, which would be the only object of our adoration, God alone is able to fulfill. He alone meets the, not only the criteria of our praise, He has that ability both to answer the prayers that have been made to him, as well as to satisfy the desires. And that's important. The desires, when we're talking about desires, we're talking about the heart conformity. We have to remember, again, that when we pray to God, we have to pray in faith. And we have to pray with a desire to be heard. And that desire terminates rightfully only upon God. 237d, or the fourth reason. God alone is to be believed and confided in and rested upon. And he raises that question of the Apostle from Romans 10-14, how then shall they call on Him in whom they've not believed? In other words, if you don't believe in God, if you don't rest in Him, there is no confidence, there is no ground for praying unto Him. Or for praying at all, really. Any other kind of prayer is no more a prayer other than to the true God is really, at best, the expression of a more or less refined desire that that falls short of engaging the divinity. So it's a more or less refined form of idolatry, is what it really is. All right, the fifth reason, 237E, He alone is our Father in Christ. For to call to him only we can cry and call unto him Abba Father. Again, he refers to Paul's passages where he talks about our being brought into the adoption of sons. heirs together with Christ, joint heirs, so that we can address God as our Father in Christ. And again, that is not something which is proper to or possible with anything else other than God. The sixth reason is that He alone is the hearer of prayer and therefore to Him alone should all flesh come. I want to look at Psalm 65 verse 2. Psalm 65 verse 2. He's the hearer of our prayer. Psalm 65 verse 2, O thou that hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come. So, you know, we can talk about why He alone is the hearer of prayer. The short answer is, all of the gods of the heathen are idols. They're vanities. They're not really God. They're demons or they're even less than that a lot of times. They're just blocks of wood or pieces of stone. And they're not in a position to hear prayer. Because prayer, again, prayer is an offering up of our desires to God. But our desires to God have to be godly desires. And those are not the kinds of things that are going to be answered, let's say, by demons. Of course, when we're talking about pieces of wood or blocks of stone or what have you, there's simply no possibility. They're inanimate. But we're dealing with the living God who made heaven and earth. And we can discuss the difference, if you will, between belief and unbelief. A lot of the difference is one of perspective. Unbelievers, see everything as happenstance, fortuitous or not, matter of luck or chance, what have you. Believers are in a position to see things as demonstrating sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly. that there is a disintelligence that is standing behind the creation and engaged with the creation. And prayer is that point, and I've talked about this before, but prayer is that point where we're making direct appeals. And so we stand in the best position to understand and interpret providences as they fall out around us. And the more you take into your prayers, the more intelligible providence becomes, especially when you do this in light of the Word of God. All right, the seventh reason, this is 237G, is he alone can pardon sins, which is a main matter of prayer. And he says that based on Micah 7.18. So we'll look at Micah 7.18. Micah 7.18. And it's not that God does not chastise his people, but he deals with his people in a very different manner than he does with those who are not his people. In this life, very often, his people will seem to suffer disproportionately or find themselves disproportionately inconvenienced or made to feel the consequences of their sinful actions. That's not a mistake. There's a restitution that belongs to wrong action and unlike the reprobate who will spend eternity basically paying for their wages, for believers the account books in some respects need to be settled in this life. when it comes to the kinds of things that we're talking about that demand some sort of restitution. That's why the Bible wants us to confess our sins. If you hide or cover your sins, you're not going to prosper in them. Because it's not that you're going to get out from under it, that you're not going to evade it ultimately, The fact is that the consequences are of much less duration and much less severe when they're sort of faced head on in this life. As far as the guilt of sin and the condemnation that it would carry throughout eternity, of course that's been taken away in Christ, but there are there are consequences to our actions. Even though there's no longer the guilt of sin attached to them, there are still consequences. So these things roll back and forth. But in prayer, our main concern, or at least one of our main concerns, ought to be to seek pardon, to bring before God the things that we know are going to ripple down Providence in such a way it's going to cause us more immediate harm, even though, again, it's been forgiven. So we should seek pardon from sin, to be sure. And the Puritans were very clear about keeping a short account with God. And you don't want to let this go. And that's the kind of proposition that would be addressed maybe to the Father, correct? For the most part, you're going to be addressing your prayers to the Father. Most prayers formally are going to be addressed to the Father Again, because most prayers formally are best taken up under the consideration of the Father's principle of this unity of the Godhead. Now, that said, you know, he's going to emphasize in some of these coming points the Trinitarian concerns, that when we are focused on God, that we don't lose sight of, in focusing on this principle of unity, we don't lose sight of the other persons in the Trinity. All right, so moving on to the second thing noted about God as our object of prayer, 238, This divine worship is one and of one kind. So the object is supreme and the worship must be supreme and competent only to the supremacy and infinite majesty of the true God. There can't be any other object. because there can't be any other worship. And I've already kind of alluded to this in what I've said, that we can't have any other point of divergence from recognition of God as the supreme and proper object of our adoration. Because anything else, anything less than that, to focus our desire and the desire to adore, anything less than that is idolatry. 239 then, the third thing noted about God is our object in prayer. is he says, though God is one object of divine worship, essentially, yet he points out, and here's where we start to get into the Trinitarian considerations, the scripture holds for three distinct persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And with that, he really goes through a short confession of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. He says the Father is not the Son, nor is He the Holy Ghost. The Son is not the Father, nor the Holy Ghost. And the Holy Ghost isn't the Father or the Son. So they're distinguished by their personal peculiar properties. So the Son alone is begotten of the Father. The Father alone begat the Son. The Holy Ghost alone proceeds from the Father and through the Son. Again, though we're fixed upon one object of divine worship, the divinity that we call God, yet the unity of that Godhead, which shines forth to us with a certain priority in the person of the Father, that unity should not be such that we lose sight of the fact that that divinity does not pertain alone to the Father, but that the same divinity is distributed in the Son and the Spirit. So that brings us to the fourth thing, and that is getting to really drilling down on that point. Though these three persons are distinct as to their personal properties, yet all of them have the same infinite divine and indivisible essence, so that they're equal in power and glory and eternity. So again, I forget which church father it was now. It was probably Augustine, but it may have been one of the Cappadocian fathers. Sometimes it actually, these kinds of things appear in several of the fathers when they're contemplating things like the doctrine of the Trinity, but what the early fathers said in so many different ways is we should never contemplate the unity of the Godhead without allowing our minds to take up the three divine persons that are held in that unity. And when our thoughts then devolve, if you will, to these three persons, they must once again rise to consider the unity that exists in these three persons. So that we're never thinking of the three persons as three separate gods, though they're three distinct persons. We don't have three gods. We have one god, and this one god exists in three persons. And so that That point of unity to which we return is the point to which we return when we're made to consider that they do have the same infinite divinity, the same indivisible essence, the same power and glory and eternity. three different powers, or three different glories, or three different eternities, but there's only one. So that the glory of the Father ultimately is the glory of the Son and the Spirit. The power of the Father is the power of the Son and the Spirit. The eternity of the Father is the eternity of the Son and the Spirit. There's one divine nature, one divine essence. But it's not as though this essence is ever abstracted. A lot of times you see pictures, people try to depict the Trinity and they have like three different circles and they have lines drawn between them. that tends to make people think of God in terms that I would say are tri-theistic. There are other times when people, in a sense, they try to, they talk about the divinity abstract from Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, And people tend to think of that divinity as almost like a separate person, but not really a person, because that would make four persons in the Trinity. But the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are sort of dangling off of this like ornaments, and that's wrong as well. The reason for returning to the Father as a principle of unity is really to remind ourselves that we're never thinking about God abstractly. When we think of God as a father, necessarily we have to consider him as having a son. And he has that son through an eternal procession. Right? There's an eternal proceeding of that divinity to the Son. And that eternal procession itself is a person. And so, we shouldn't think of them as three ornaments, but they're in fact three persons, which the early church called a hupostasis. Three understandings. three concrete expressions of this one divine nature. All right, let's move on to the fifth thing noted about God as our object in prayer, 241. We have two things to look for here. The fifth thing noted about God as our object in prayer is that each of these three persons being essentially the one true and living God, each are to be worshipped with divine worship and invocated by prayer. So that as the Father is to be prayed to, so is the Son and the Holy Ghost. And to make that clear, we want to look at some verses here. We'll look at Matthew 28, 19. Acts 7.59, 2 Corinthians 13.14, and Revelation 1.14. So Matthew 28.19. Matthew 28.19, He will be there for you and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. In Acts 7.59, And they stand, Stephen, calling upon God and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. 2 Corinthians 13 verse 14. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all. Amen. So his point is, again, and I've already said this, but because each person is, in fact, God. Each one is worthy of the same praise and therefore each one is also a proper object in our prayer. But if we ask, you know, why how these three persons can each be a proper object, as it were. The answer is, this is 241b, they're not three distinct objects of divine worship. There's one object of worship. There's only one object of worship present in the three persons. So we contemplate as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in that order, correct? When you think of the Father, you think of the Son, the Spirit, then back to the Father, Son, Spirit, and back. Yeah, but the same, they each partake of the same essential divine attributes, eternity, infiniteness, immensity, omnipotence, and so on. So that the deity that is the Godhead which is the object of our adoration in each of the three persons, is the same object of adoration. But they're not three objects of adoration, but three different things that we have in view. But you could say that there's three persons that we adore, correct? There are three persons that we adore, but it's one God that is being adored, and that's his point. Okay, so whether we're praying and we invocate the Father or the Son or the Spirit, ultimately he's saying, you know, we're not praying to three different gods. We're praying to the same God. We're praising the same divinity. All right, 242a and b, What's the sixth thing noted about God as our object in prayer and why? He says, in order to make this clear, whoever the persons of the Trinity is named in prayer, the same one God is prayed unto. The reason is when all these three are mentioned, it's the same one deity that is worshipped. And what he says by way of explanation is this, we don't generally We don't generally, in our prayers, though we may make mention of this, we don't generally make it a point of worship apart from the other two persons. That is, the personal properties. God, you know, to speak to the Father, you know, unoriginate. That's not to worship Him as God alone. That's simply to recognize a distinction in His person from that of the Son or the Spirit. And the same can be said of the Son and the Spirit. We're not worshiping the distinctions. We're worshiping the deity in which these distinctions are subsisting. All right, 243, the seventh thing noted about God as our object in prayer is that Christ mediator is to be invocated. And he's to be invocated and prayed to because he is God. We saw that in Acts 7 and 59 when Stephen is being stoned, he calls upon God saying, Lord Jesus. And in fact, very often when prayers being made in the Old Testament, to the God who is with the patriarchs or the God who is with Israel. It's really Christ who's in view. And so there are good and proper reasons for invocating Christ. I'm a little off topic, but I remember reading somewhere that when the three angels met Abraham, some people, one commentator thought it was the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in dehuman form. But is that correct, or is that mainly just something that Christ himself does, and then the other two angels are just angels? You know, I think we know that the one is clearly Christ and the other two, I think, are probably just angels. That said, I believe Vitsios is one of those people who thinks that it's... Each person assumes that he looks like... The three persons, and I forget... John Gill may have similar views on that. But I think in terms of what we know and or expect, it may be that these angels are meant to represent the Trinity, but I'm not sure that they would particularly answer to the other two persons of the Trinity. But he says that Christ has the same divine essence with the Father, the same essential attributes of infiniteness and eternity, immensity, omnipotency, ubiquity, adorability, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Let's move on to the eighth reason, the eighth thing I should say noted about God as our object in prayer and why, 244. So the eighth thing noted about God as our object in prayer is that this invocating and worshiping of the Son, who is a mediator, is not altered by our considering of Him in our praying and approaching as a mediator or naming or mentioning him by titles agreeing to him only as mediator. And the reason why is that notwithstanding all these mediatorial titles, the fact is God is worshiped because the person of the mediator, is the eternal Son of God. So we may, his point is we may in praying speak about Christ in terms that are peculiar to his mediatorial character and not proper to his essential character as he is God. And yet Because the person himself is God in this character, the person we're addressing, he's saying, is God. Could you give me an example of that? Yeah, I would say when we talk about him redeeming us, he's doing that, that's really his mediatorial character. But it's the Son doing it. But it's the Son doing that. It is reflective of the divinity. It's the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus. But it shines in a peculiar way. Nonetheless, it's a way in which God has appointed to bring glory to himself. So we're not, you know, in doing this, his point is, in doing this, we're not traveling outside of what is allowed because in Christ, if you will, there is that condescension where God speaks to man in a way he can comprehend. And when we speak back to him in the way that we can comprehend with respect to Christ, he's saying, ultimately, our object, our object, at least, again, you have to remember, this is, when properly conceived, our object is the eternal Son of God. Our object is not, because there's not a human person there. Right? There's only the Divine Person. And we don't worship the human nature of Christ, correct? No, but we worship the Divine Person through His human nature. And that's appropriate. Right? Because that's mediated. So he's saying this is, and he actually has a relatively lengthy discussion of this in the book. I mean, I say relatively, relative to some of the other discussions he's had. But he points out, for example, his taking on of man's nature does not lessen his Godhead. Because even when man and the son of David, he is at the same time the only begotten of the Father and equal to him in power and glory. This is one of these things, the early church fathers would tell you, these are the kinds of things you should sit around and just think about sometimes. Just contemplate. Contemplate the doctrine of the person and deity of Christ. Contemplate the doctrine of the Trinity. Don't try to do anything other than just think about it. Just think about it. Just sort of let it fill your mind. Isn't that how some of them experience the beatific vision? There were people who had profound spiritual experiences simply from meditating on that sort of thing. You have to consider, when we see him, we're gonna be like him and we'll see him as he is. There's gonna be a vision at that last day when everything is changed. There'll be a vision, we'll see him in a way that we've been unable to. But some of the fathers would say if you meditate upon this, these kinds of doctrines, you will get sort of a foretaste of that. All right, let's move on to the ninth thing noted about God as our object in prayer, 245. He's going to nuance this a little bit more for us here, but he says the worshipping, this worshipping of the mediator with the same divine worship with which the fathers worshipped, he says it doesn't take away are making use of Christ as a way to the Father. He is the one through whom alone we have access to the Father. And again, the reason he gives as the why is that his mediatory reign is mediatorship, which is really he's taking on of the office of mediator in order to make way for us to God. That doesn't take away or diminish his Godhead. It doesn't make our contemplation, or shouldn't make our contemplation in any way lesser. So for example, he says, We pray then to the mediator who is God and is being God, and yet, with all, we approach to God through the mediator. And in explanation, he says, the person is both God and the mediator, yet when we pray to him as God, we make use of him as mediator and as the way to God. So we come to God through God, the mediator. Through him in the office of the mediator. Which is through his humanity, his assumed humanity. Because quite frankly, anytime we talk about him being mediator, we're talking about him assuming our nature. So the idea that He is the Mediator, He's the Christ, the Messiah, already implies that He has taken upon Himself our nature. And that goes back to the whole discussion of that gulf between God and man due to sin. Remember Job says, oh, that there was a kinsman, a redeemer, a mediator, someone who could lay his hand on both parties. And the problem, of course, this estrangement between God and man, the problem is man is not in a position to reach out to God. God reaches out to man by entering into his nature. and making that way, reopening the way to God. So this gets to, it's a different question, but ultimately, you'll see this in some Puritan works of theology, they'll talk about the fact that ultimately, there are really just two men, Adam and Christ, and everyone is hanging on the coattails of one or the other. We're either in old Adam or we're in the new Adam, Christ. We're in one or the other, ultimately. And that's when you are regenerate, when you're born again, you are moved positionally, there's a principle of life implanted so that you know, there's an old nature and a new nature now struggling within you. People who are an old Adam, they just have the old nature and that's been cut off from God, so it's just dying. People who have been born again have an old nature, which is dying, which is why we still die. And the body is sown in hope. But there's also a new nature. And that is growing and reaching out to God And that new nature will eventually, on Judgment Day, it will be the medium through which our bodies will be transformed. So that, in a sense, God is turning man inside out to recreate him. All right, let's move on to the tenth The tenth thing noted here about God is our object in prayer. And why? 2.46a and b. There's an order subsisting among the three persons of the deity among themselves and an order of operation in their works without and as to us. And he says that order is the father is the first person, the son is the second person, The Holy Ghost, the third person. So the object of worship is the same deity, common to all. It doesn't hinder, but we may in our approaching to this one God in three persons, that we may have suitable apprehensions of this order in their substance and operation. And the reason he says this is, in taking this into account, we may direct our prayers, this is a why, we may direct our prayers first to the Father as being first in order. Not excluding the Son or the Holy Ghost, but taking them in also in their order. Not conceiving the Father to be chief in honor and dignity above the other two, seeing that they're all equal as to essence and so on. And he points out that the father is frequently mentioned before the son, that there tends to be an order, they tend to be named in order. He points to the the Great Commission, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, baptizing in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. But he also points to 1 John 5-7, three to bear witness, the Father, the Word, and the Spirit, and that language. And then he points to a number of other verses where the Father is mentioned before the Spirit. We can look at a few of them. 1 Corinthians 1, 3. 2 Corinthians 1, 3. Galatians 1, 3. It gives a bunch more, but we'll just look at those three. 1 Corinthians 1, verse 3. Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. What was the next one? 2 Corinthians 1.3. 2 Corinthians 1.3. Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. Galatians 1.3. Galatians 1.3. Grace be to you and peace from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ. Yeah, but he points out that though that's usually the case, It's not always the case. So, for example, 2 Corinthians 13, 14. 2 Corinthians 13, 14. We're going to be looking and get ready for 1 Corinthians 12, 4-6 and Revelation 1, 4 and 5. 2 Corinthians 13, 14. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. So there we see that Christ and then the Father, there's a different order. And then these other two verses that I just mentioned, the Spirit is named before the Son in 1 Corinthians 12, 4-6, and Revelation 1, 4-5. 1 Corinthians 12, verses 4-6, Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which works all in all. Revelation 1, 4, and 5. Revelation 1, 4, and 5. John, the seven churches which are in Asia, grace be unto you and peace from him which is, and which was, and which is to come. and from the seven spirits which are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness and the first begotten of the dead and the prince of the kings of the earth, unto him that loved us and watched us from our sins in his own blood. Yeah, and I think there's actually been a little bit of thought that some people have put into this. There are almost certainly theological reasons for In particular, when these are in a different order than we would assume, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, there is something to that, theologically. Nonetheless, what it suggests to us is this. While it is the norm, I would say, to invocate God under the name of Father, there are occasions and there are reasons for preferring to make mention of either Christ or the Holy Spirit in the invocating prayer. And again, he's saying what this tells us is the ordering is not one of honor or dignity or as if there's some sort of inequality so that one person would be less worthy of our worship. We need to guard against thinking like that. And I know it probably feels like we've talked about that throughout this entire chapter. The reason is He wants you to contemplate this doctrine of the Trinity with respect to prayer. Because when we talk about God, we can't simply talk about God. God is not one person. God is three persons. And yet there's only one God. A lot of people are confused about that. God is not one person. When we talk about one person being God, we're usually talking about the Father. But that's not to exclude the other two persons who are also God. There may be people who do that. In fact, I suspect that there are a lot more people today who do that because of a lot of confusion in the churches. They don't really consider that. But John Brown wants you to think about that. He doesn't want to keep you from the doctrine of the Trinity. He wants you to start recognizing some of the practical implications of believing in the Trinity. What's the 11th thing noted about God as our object in prayer, 247? He says, as worshipping or praying to the Mediator, the second person in the Trinity, as to the Father, does not hinder our making use of faith of Christ's mediation in approaching to God, nor does our worshipping of the Holy Ghost, the third person, hinder us from making use of the Spirit in our approaching God. So let's look at a couple of verses here just to help make this point. Ephesians 2.18. Ephesians 2.18. For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father. That is, we have access by one Spirit to the Father, through Christ. And according as the blessings bestowed on us of the Father come to us through Christ and by the Spirit. Look at Ephesians 3, verse 16. Ephesians 3, verse 16. that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man. Right. So again, just as making use of Christ as mediator does not hinder us from worshiping Him as God, making use of the Spirit, giving us access, does not hinder us either. Notice in both cases, by the way, we're made aware of distinctions of persons primarily through their economy. We know that there are distinctions in persons because of what scripture says, but these distinctions are known to us more practically through the activity that surrounds the economy of grace. Now let's move to the last thing, the twelfth thing noted about God as our object in prayer. Why? 248 A and B. The person prayed to here and elsewhere, particularly in the pattern taught by our Lord, the Lord's Prayer, is styled Father. this is for the why, he says, this is not, should not be understood as if the Father alone were the only object of divine worship. And he says the reason is that the Father here is to be understood more so essentially than personally. And that's what should be, again, the contemplation of the three persons should move us to the unity of the Godhead, but that movement, that mental movement to the unity of the Godhead should, at the time that we move to think upon that, it should return our thoughts to the three persons. So, his point here, I think, is well taken, but I also think it could be liable to be misunderstood. He's not saying that we're not praying to the Father. He's saying that we're adoring the unity of essence in the Father, really. And from what we've gone through in this chapter, the implication is that we're going to move from that back to subsequent contemplation of God in Trinity. All right, so this chapter, as I mentioned, this chapter is a chapter that is concerned with making use of the Trinity in our praying in order that we might have better apprehensions of the divinity with which we have to do. That is, that divine nature is what we are lavishing with adoration. It's not to say that we shouldn't love God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. We know Him personally in and through these three Persons. These divine qualities, the divine nature, they're not mere abstractions. But they're also They're not something that we're adoring apart from these three persons, but we need to understand that it is as these three persons participate in this divinity that's precisely what makes them adorable and worthy of our worship. So next time, chapter 12, we're going to look at mistakes in the mind that need to be guarded against when we pray.