Pious and elaborate treatise concerning prayer and the answer of prayer by John Brown of Wamfrey Chapter 16 What it is to ask in Christ's name Again John 14 13 and 14 whatsoever you 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 So we've talked for the last couple weeks about the right manner of prayer and we're going to talk specifically now about praying in the name of Christ and why. So we're going to be looking at that in terms of a series of reasons and the more, Brown's point here is the more you understand what is involved with the mediation of Christ as he really got into I think a bit last time and implications of that for when we're actually petitioning, not just last time we talked about praying in the name of Jesus or invoking the name of the Son of God in our praying, but when we're asking in terms of mediation, petitioning in terms of mediation, this has some additional implications and He wants you to understand what these things are. So we're going to be getting here at question 322. And that is the next thing to be cleared in the manner of prayer and why. The answer is he wants to clear what it is to ask in the name of Christ. In other words, last time we talked about praying in the name of Christ, but he wants to now get into what it is to pray in the name of Christ. And the reason why is, this is 322b, he wants us to understand the proper way of making use of the mediator Jesus Christ, the God-man in our address to God. So we've asserted that we ought to pray through a mediator, but what exactly does that mean? What is the point of all that? Not just why is it necessary, but what benefit accrues to us as a result of that. So we need to look at that question. So in order to answer the question, he wants us to take notice of several particular things as prerequisites to understanding the answer. things that we need to keep in mind if we would appreciate this whole matter of making use of a mediator in our praying, in making petition to God, petitioning God in prayer, using or invoking the name of Christ. So we already know that this is what we ought to do. And we've looked at some of the doctrinal aspects of that. The idea of the name in which we should pray. But there are particular things that should come to our mind As we think about the mediator, our need of the mediator, why God has appointed a mediator, why we can't simply ask God directly, you know, what there's this this idea of mediation is pointing to problem, and we've talked about this, but the first particular prerequisite, 323, to answer what it is to pray in Christ's name, is this. The praying person has to be convinced and persuaded of his sinfulness, vileness, and distance from God by reason of sin. And his point here is this, as long as you think at any point to any degree that somehow you apart from a mediator will be acceptable to God, to that degree that's going to work its way into your praying. Into the thinking behind your prey into the meditating over your prey As long as you don't fully Digest this point I'm a wicked vile sinner and in and of myself There's nothing but alienation and enmity and distance from God. There's nothing in me. There's no ability. There's no desire. There's nothing. I don't, you know, I don't even want to be saved, quite frankly. Right? If I'm honest, I mean, my flesh rejects this. I don't even like the idea. I like my sin. Right. That's and that's the natural man. And there's as long as there's some of that going on, you don't really fully you haven't fully incorporated what the Bible has said about you as a sinner, a sinful creature, into your deportment before God. But Brown is saying you need to do that, right? You're not really ever going to grasp fully or grasp with the appropriate appreciation, thanksgiving and so forth, the need for the mediator as long as you're somewhere swimming around in your mind, in your spirit, this idea that I'm really not that bad. You know, there's a lot of times people who have sinned great sins in their lives, And Jesus talks about this, you know, that the idea that the harlots and the publicans will go into the kingdom of God sooner. People who have crossed big moral lines a lot of times have an easier time understanding and really appropriating to themselves this kind of thinking, right, this kind of understanding that there is a vileness, an inherent vileness in ourselves. People who've been kept from outrageous, egregious, high-handed sin, a lot of times have a much tougher time thinking of themselves as really bad, vile people. And that's because, again, we tend to relativize. And there's a sense in which even people who've crossed the bigger lines, moral lines, there's a relativizing going on. And Brown is really saying, you know, you don't need to, you shouldn't relativize your relation to sin. You need to absolutize your your sense of sinfulness, right? So whether you have broken all of the commandments in the most high-handed manner with, you know, respect to you know, God himself, as if in the face of God himself. Or it's much more internalized and seemingly moderate. It hasn't, the plague, in other words, hasn't broken out. It's just seething within you. Brown is saying, look, you need to understand the plague is still in you. And the plague, whether it's in germ or in full manifestation, is still the plague. Still there's still original sin. There's still the guilt of that. There's still all of the Guilt has being owned by you simply by virtue of the fact that you don't You don't fully reject you don't fully Find abhorrent the things that God finds abhorrent nor do you love that which God loves, right, with a perfect love. I mean, if you're really going to assess yourself, you have to ask yourself, do I hate, absolutely hate what God hates with a perfect hatred? Do I love what God loves with perfect love? If I don't, the moral gulf between myself and my Creator is not incremental, it's infinite. So you need to think of yourself as a vile, vile sinner. Alright, there's a second particular prerequisite, 324, that needs to be answered, what it is to pray in Christ's name. And that is, the person who would ask in Christ's name has to have faith and knowledge of Christ as mediator. So what he means by this is, You have to have a sense of who Jesus is and what he's done. And here's where it gets tricky. You know, there are a lot of people who think that all that's required is faith in Jesus. Well, no, no, no, that's not what I'm getting at here. There's this idea that Jesus, as long as you believe in Jesus and can say, I believe in Jesus, that that's going to be enough to carry you through. But as early as the early church, we began to see this wasn't really as straightforward necessarily as it might have sounded at the first. Because there's this underlying question, and he's pointing at this here. Who is this Jesus, right? Do you know, do you understand that he alone is the appointed one? But we need to know who he is, right? There are false Christs that have gone out into the world. And if there are false Christs, certainly there are false ideas of Christ. And so having a correct understanding of who this Jesus is, is necessary to have a sound and solid faith in this Jesus. Right? To know him as mediator means to have some knowledge, to take some knowledge of what it is for him to occupy and to exercise the office of mediator. Why is that necessary? What is he doing? So these are all things that, and he says, we talked about a lot of this last time, and we did. Talked about the mediator, that he is both God and man. There are two natures. One person, that person is the divine and eternal son of God. So our faith is not in a man, but our faith is through the man, Christ Jesus, in the divine person who lived his life in the nature of man. Okay, so we are looking at him in terms of the condescension that God has appointed in the incarnation. But that's not to say it's not the same thing as to say that our faith is in man. Our faith is not in man, it's in God. All right. 325, there's a third particular prerequisite to answer what it is to pray in Christ's name. And that is we should know what Christ has done And I already began to allude to this, in order to make peace and open a door of access for him to the Father. What's the ground of our belief? What's the ground of the boldness and confidence with which we can approach a throne of grace? You know, what has Jesus really done? What has he accomplished? Why was it necessary? So again we have to have I think a pretty clear perception of The whole dark matter of sin You know if you don't really have a sense of sin a sense that there's something fundamentally wrong in the creation of Not just wrong in terms of the visible manifestations, but something morally wrong, something that's gone awry morally. If you don't have that, and you don't think that you in particular are also involved and culpable in this, The whole idea of redemption is not going to make sense anyway. So this is why, you know, in a different context here, but this is why we talk about the law and the work of the law, what the law is doing. The law is there to drive you to Christ. Because the law does a couple of things. It points out if you're honest, if you actually allow yourself to assess yourself according to the law, that's when you begin to perceive how far your idea of obedience is from what God is really requiring. When you come to that knowledge, the next thing, the next knowledge you need to take of yourself is that there is both a lack of desire and lack of ability for you to enter into that conformity. You don't have any natural desire and any natural ability. At that point, the idea of redemption is, I think, much more understandable. So as far as the door opening in which faith is going to be exercised, if God should grant it, that's really what people need. And that's exactly why You know, we live in a world now where people are constantly saying, you know, we don't like you being judgmental. Don't judge. Don't say these things. And they'll even quote Jesus, right? Judge not lest you be judged. But the point in the Bible is not that you shouldn't pass moral judgments or even speak moral judgments. The point of the Bible is your judgments ought to be righteous judgments, that they should be conformed to the judgments of Scripture. We're to pass those kinds of judgments. We're not to call evil good or good evil. We're not to confuse categories. Nor should we be encouraging others to be confused in that. But the world hates that. They don't like the work of the law. They don't like to be reminded that because you see unbelievers are continually trying to sear their consciences. They're continually in a state of trying to evade the force of the law and feeling the force of the law. So their consciences are constantly prodding them and troubling them and they enter into a series of actions designed to evade. Sometimes it's, you know, drug or alcohol use. Sometimes it's other, you know, sensual sins, right? But what they try to do is they try to overwhelm a sense of spiritual guilt with some kind of fleshly comfort, carnal comfort. And they try to replace that and squeeze that out because it does bother them. You know, they don't like to be alone, most people, because being alone or being quiet, you know, why do you think people like having televisions running all the time and radios going all the time? There's always something has to be going on. They don't like just sitting there in a place, in a point where they have to be still and think. Because when you have to be still and think, you start to have to confront yourself and where you really stand. They don't like that. And the more you know about the law, the more uncomfortable those quiet moments are. Alright, the fourth particular prerequisite to answer what it is to pray in Christ's name, And that is, it's necessary a person that would ask in the name of Christ be reconciled to God through him. That he's actually made use of him as mediator. And the reason is, we have to understand, and we should if we understand, the depth of our depravity. We will not, apart from making use of Christ as mediator, be accepted or acceptable before God. We cannot and will not be accepted by God outside of Christ. We have nothing to offer that will be acceptable. You know, what's expected of us outside of Christ is a total and complete, perfect I should say, keeping of the law. And that keeping of the law has to begin with being born in a state of innocence. Well, that's something we can't do because we're all conceived in sin and born onto iniquity. This is the problem of original sin. So we have to make use of him. It's not enough to know about Christ and what he's done. You know, there are people who have a theoretical knowledge of Christianity. sometimes some of these people actually are quite capable of telling you what, you know, what Christianity really believes, what it teaches, but they themselves don't actually believe it. And they certainly wouldn't teach it other than maybe as a college or some other type of course. So, there's a difference, and he's hinting at this now, there's a difference between knowing the truth and believing the truth. Well, the devils know, right? They have that kind of knowledge, and they have a certain belief that this knowledge is true, but what they don't have is a belief that can appropriate that knowledge to themselves in a positive way. That's what Christ is. He is... belief in him, trust in him is the point at which we are able to to appropriate what we otherwise would simply know theoretically. Okay, so to know that I have an inheritance, that's one thing, but to tap into that inheritance so that I can use it is something else altogether. Fifth, at 327, what's the fifth particular prerequisite to answer what it is to pray in Christ's name? And that is that the praying person should pray for nothing that's not agreeable to the mind of Christ, for which he has not warrant and allowance. And he brings up the idea of taking Christ's name in vain. When we pray for things contrary to the known will of God, when we pray for things that seem to have mark of the divine disapprobation. We're wandering into very dangerous territory. We need to... One reason we need to search the Scriptures is to make sure that we're praying according to the precepts and the promises and the general rules of the Word of God. So the more we search the Scriptures and find find ourselves able to maintain that track, that path, the less likely it's going to be that we're going to be praying for something not agreeable to the mind of Christ. After all, you know, the Bible is the expression of the mind of Christ. It's a revelation of the mind of Christ. All right, 328. What's the sixth particular prerequisite to answer? What it is to bring Christ's name. And then also we want to consider here, what does it mean that we should take this way in faith? So, the sixth thing is that in such asking the name of Christ are to believe that such is the way of their finding access to their prayers to make use of his name thereupon. In other words, that through his name that they're going to be accepted, that their prayers are going to find place before God. You really need to believe that. That's not only sort of that theory, but you really have to believe that that's the case. That apart from Jesus, I'm not going to be heard. So if you're praying and you don't really believe that, Brown is suggesting I think here that you're not really praying or writing. So always in your prayers, There needs to be a continual return in your thinking, the meditation that's behind your prayer, that this has to be offered up in and through Christ if it's going to be acceptable. So 328b, what does it mean that we should take this way in faith? It means that we should take this believing it's the way of God and that it is the way to come speedily and that if we follow this way rightly, we will come speedily to God. And he refers back reflexively at this point to that verse at the beginning of the book, which has really been the theme, right? If ye shall ask, whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, I will do it. So, you know, he's laying out parameters, but he's also telling you that The way to answer prayer, the way to avoid vain praying, is to keep yourself within these prerequisites. You need to pray in faith. It's not enough that you're simply You simply have that theoretical knowledge that Jesus is a mediator. You really, really need to believe that unless you pray in and through him, there's no hope of actually gaining your petitions. I think There's something There's something necessary to understand here, I just want to mention it aside before we go any further a Lot of times In talking to people, you know people who if you were to push them If you were to to quiz them, to expect them to give the answers that you have, for example, in the catechism regarding who Christ is or what the office of mediator entails. Those kinds of things, they'd have no idea whatsoever. And if you were to push a little harder, you will discover that they don't even really believe in the Jesus of the Bible, right? I mean, and I've mentioned this on different occasions, but today it's very, very common, you know, for people to assert that, oh, my God is okay with sodomy. My Jesus is okay with abortion. My God is okay with, you know, and just fill in the blank with some kind of moral depravity, some kind of civil atrocity. A lot of people think that, and the reason is because, you know, the fact is they're God, they're Jesus. There's no God, there's no Jesus. It's a false God, it's a false Jesus. And you can press people and find that they don't have a correct idea and yet they'll tell you that they've prayed and they've experienced the answer to prayer. And it may well be that they've had answers to prayer. But an answer to a prayer that's offered outside of Christ will never be improved to the glory of God and to your own salvation. In other words, an answer to a prayer outside of Christ is not really a blessing so much as it is a curse, because it tends to confirm people in their unbelief, in their wickedness, in whatever it is that they're doing. It feeds their delusion. What Brown is talking about here is praying in such a way that when you have these answers to prayer, they are all within a context confirming true and saving faith in Jesus. So that's, I think, an important thing to understand as to why, you know, if you wonder why does he keep going over this stuff? Why is he picking at this so much? You know, just be on about it. Let's just pray." Well, he would say, yes, pray. But, you know, pray or write. Ask for things which are warranted in and by the Word of God. Right? Make use of Christ. But again, you're not going to do that, are you, if you really don't think you're such a bad person after all. And if, you know, your standard of judgment is the person across the street, or the person that sat next to you in college, or the person that sat next to you on an airplane, or on a bus somewhere, or somebody in a restaurant where you're sitting and you look over, whatever. If that's your standard, you're always going to come out looking better than you really are before God. But when you consider the perfection demanded by the law, That's when you have to confess that you're an abject, utter, vile sinner before God. And if you can't do that, if you really can't admit that, the one thing I can tell you is you really don't understand the law of God. Anybody who thinks like that rich young ruler and anyone who thinks they can keep the law of God From their youth up. They've done a pretty good job and and so on Remember again, Jesus does exactly what? Paul does to himself and he takes him right to the Tenth Commandment thou shall not covet, you know go sell everything you have and follow me And as soon as that happens, then you have to begin to come to that realization that the law is not simply touching your outward comportment, your outward behavior, but it's demanding an inward comportment, an inward disposition toward God. All right, 329. What's the first thing we're asking in the name of Christ is consist and what should be thought though there are many infirmities in itself. This is moving beyond his prerequisites now. He's going to begin giving us the things that we should consider. wherein asking the name of Christ consists. So, 329a, the first thing wherein asking the name of Christ does consist, is it consists in drawing all of our encouragement to prayer from Christ alone and from what he has done in making access for us. And this is important. You know, this is that reformational point, Christ alone, right? The Reformation was all about the alone, scripture alone, Christ alone, grace alone, glory to God alone. That's... that's what is in view. So this praying, asking in the name of Christ, has to be, it has to be based upon and take encouragement from Christ alone, not anything in ourself, right? Not anything in our circumstance, not anything in our connections, Right? But all of it is in Christ alone. We're not looking for or expecting anything in our praying. In other words, we're not taking any encouragement from anything other than Jesus. Because if we are, then we're trying to make something of our own works, our own our own merit as the ground for gaining an answer to that prayer. So, of course, you know, when you hear that sort of thing, you say, well, that's not really possible. After all, I'm a sinner. At least you should be saying that. So that's 329, what should be thought, though there are many infirmities in us. And he says what we need to do is oppose Those Infirmities by considering Christ's office Christ's work That he's become man taking on us taking on himself our nature and Coming in the likeness of sinful flesh To the point that he actually can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. In other words, although there are infirmities still in us, we can very safely bring those to be offered to Christ as well in prayer. Rather than taking taking encouragement from our infirmities or taking discouragement for our infirmities, or whichever the case may be. And there are people who sometimes actually do both. The fact is, he says, what we should do instead is focus on the fact that Christ has taken upon himself our nature. And so he's touched through the feeling of our infirmities. Again, turn that into a ground for seeking encouragement in Christ. So let those infirmities drive you out of yourself and further into taking encouragement from Christ. He knows, he's experienced our infirmities. He was even tempted to sin. There's no sin in him. And so the temptation had no hook in him. But in all aspects of the human experience, in all the aspects of our human experience, which embrace expressions of our infirmity, in all aspects that are sinless, He has taken a complete knowledge by entering into our nature. All right, let's move on to the second thing we're asking in the name of Christ does consist. 330 and what should the ground of all this be? 330B. So the second thing where an asking in the name of Christ does consist is in drawing all the grounds of our confidence and boldness in prayer from Christ alone. So again, what is he trying to do? He's trying to drive you out of yourself. You might say, well, this seems to be somewhat redundant. And perhaps there is some overlap in what he's saying here. But the point, I think, to us is this is This is a problem, a sin, to which men, I think, naturally incline. We try to bring ourselves in, in some fashion. We try to find some place for our merit, some place for our acceptance, you know, that we have done something, that we haven't quite gone maybe as far down that road of breaking the law of God. There are all kinds of things that we try to bring in, but he's saying, no, all the ground of our confidence, all the boldness and prayer should be from Christ alone. And he says the ground of all of this should be ultimately Christ, his name, this is 330B, it should all be Christ, his name, his offices, and work. So, you know, if you wonder why did the church spend so much time in the early church debating and fighting over who Jesus is because we need to know who he is, what his name means, what his office has entailed, what his work has accomplished. The third thing we're asking in the name of Christ does consist, 3.31, The third thing is drawing of all of the hope of our being accepted of God in this piece of service, prayer. We should draw all of our hope in being accepted in prayer only from Christ. And he reminds us here that our persons must be accepted or our service will not be accepted. Now that's not... That second bit there, I think, is something that should not come as a surprise. It's not surprising that this would be the case. You know, the fact is that in life, Very often, in fact, given that we are imperfect creatures, we accept the service from one another in a very imperfect manner based upon, largely based upon, whether or not we accept the person offering the service. If we don't really accept the person offering the service, then the service is going to be objectionable. Because we can find objections with virtually everything. And by analogy, this applies with God. God accepts our service not because of who we are, what we've done, but because of who Christ is and what He's done. In other words, our service, which is very imperfect, our prayers, for example, very imperfect, but they're made acceptable in the Beloved, in Christ, because He is loved of God. As the Bible says love covers a multitude of sins. And that is the case. That's the case in our prayers. So it's important then to make use of this mediation because Christ is the one who's accepted of God. He's the one, after all, who kept the law perfectly, didn't he? He's the one who made atonement for our breach of the law, didn't he? And this is why the Reformed churches have generally settled upon and said both Christ's active obedience that is his active keeping of the law, and his passive obedience, that is his suffering and dying, all are necessary for our salvation. Because together, his active and passive obedience, are together the things which demonstrate acceptance before God. With their demonstration, he's accepted before God. God accepts of that. Right? He does not accept the service of those who broke in covenant, who are in a state of rebellion, and so on. So our service outside of Christ could never be acceptable. So I think that third thing is a very important point. And Brown doesn't get into that a lot, but I think that's an extremely important point that he's making there. Right, fourth. The fourth thing we're asking in the name of Christ is consistent. He says it consists in going about the duty of prayer in Christ and in his strength, not in our own. And what he means by this, again, when we offer up our prayers to God, we should be offering up our prayers to God not in a state of dependence upon ourselves. He's already said that. Not from our own in anything. that is our own strength. In fact, going back to the very first prerequisite, if you understand your vileness, your sinfulness before God, then there is nothing in you that's actually strong before God. You are not any sense a definition of strength, you are a definition of weakness. So there is nothing there. Instead what he's saying is we need to draw our petitions in him and by his spirit in us. In other words, we should be we should be courting the motions of the spirit in us. We when we pray and there's a certain deadness in our praying It's because the Spirit of God is not Moving in us when there's nothing going on You know the prayers those kinds of prayers are usually prayers really from the lips out But when you're actually engaged What he's telling you to do is to draw your petitions by the Spirit which is working in you. You know, again, the way to do this is, as you read the Word of God, you should be praying, continually praying, that you think this way, that you feel this way, that you're affected in that manner. As I noted the other night, while affections are a problem when they get ahead of your knowledge, your faith, Affections that are according to knowledge and in faith are actually, they actually strengthen that knowledge and faith, right? They actually are a help. So, you know, when your affections, when your emotions get before your thinking and your faith, your understanding and your faith, they're going to be a problem. And they're going to cause problems. But when your understanding and your faith are fired by affection, sanctified affection, that strengthens your understanding and your faith. And that's, in a sense, what's going on here. When the Spirit of God is working in you, you're going to be rightly affected toward these things that you come to know and believe. And there's a very similar thing he's talking about here with prayer, when you pray. When you pray, you should be first of all seeking the Spirit to move you to pray in In other words, if there's something, if there's an answer to prayer you really need, you really are seeking, and you really have every reason to think it's according to the will of God, you should be, if you're not rightly affected, you should first of all be praying that you would be rightly affected in praying for that. Because you don't want to go about the duty of prayer in your own strength. Remember, ultimately our end game here is to attain what the Puritans would call return of prayer. That is an answer. You want an answer. Because answered prayers are one of the best signs to confirm you continually in the faith. When you are told to make your calling and election sure, this is one great way of doing that. Because prayer has a way of joining the objective and the subjective in such a manner that the subjective Takes on an objective aspect so you can you can meditate upon that when you when a prayer is answered you can you can Continue and you'll see the people in the Bible do this They look back to God's answers a prayer and they give thanks for that. They reflect upon it. They they remember it And they use that as a ground for praying in the future to praying for things because if they have evidence that God has been gracious to them That evidence is strengthening them to be confident that God is, in fact, their God. And if He's once been gracious, that He is graciously disposed toward them. All right, 333, what's the fifth thing we're asking in the name of Christ does consist? And 333b, what should we expect? So, the fifth thing we're asking the name of Christ consists is laying all the weight of the ground of our acceptance in that duty of prayer only on Christ and his merits. Again, getting back to he's only, he alone is the mediator. And 333b, what should we expect then? We should expect an answer to that prayer only for His sake, only on account of His merit, only on account of His interaction with the Father, not for anything in ourselves. So this expectation is not in any way to be grounded in ourselves any more than the exercise of prayer itself. So the expectation of the answer to the prayer is outside of ourselves as well. All right, the sixth thing, 334. What's the sixth thing wherein asking in the name of Christ does consist? He says it consists in being quieted in our minds concerning the event when we've thus laid the stress of all on Christ and put our supplications in his hand. In other words, he's saying that When you're in this situation, when you're praying in faith, when you're doing all of these things that he said to do, when you're reflecting upon what's going on in prayer within this scope, where Christ is everything and you are nothing, what he's saying essentially is this, you can bring your petition before God. set it down and walk away, and you don't have to worry about it. And that's... He points here to 1st John 5, 13 and 14. This is a confidence we have in Him that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. Beyond that, I would say it is also in keeping with what Jesus says about casting our concerns upon Him. Casting all of our worries, all of our fears, all of our apprehensions, all of our needs, all of our wants, we can cast upon Him so that we can take them out of ourselves and place him at his feet and we don't need to worry. We don't need to get ourselves all worked up. The stress of all that is being contemplated in the prayer is given over to God. And, um, you know, his use of the word stress here is not simply, we, we tend to think of stress pure, almost purely, I think in a negative fashion, but he's not using the word in that way. He's really, uh, using it in, in a positive and as well as negative sense. It's just an encompassing, but you know, all of our, uh, all of those negative feelings, perhaps, as well as all the positive feelings. So don't just think it's the one, but the other as well. They're all being set aside. The reason I think this is important is, again, going back to what I said earlier, when your emotions get ahead of your understanding your faith, they're a problem. And confidence in prayer is one way that you can, in fact, in a sense, dissociate emotion in the first instance, right, so that you're going to force those emotions, whether they're positive or negative feelings, affections, you're going to force them under the consideration of faith. They're not going to be able to lead everything about, but they're going to be made subservient the way they ought to be. We're now to the last part of this chapter where he wants to give us a series of counsels that will help us address ourselves rightly to God in making proper use of Christ. 335, in order to address ourselves rightly to God, making proper use of Christ, what should we do? And you will notice we have ten points that are set out here. So the first thing that we should do is he says we should remember and carry constantly on us impression of what we are by nature. I've been stressing this I think a bit as we've been going through this chapter and this is again a very important point because all of the other things that he's talking about in this chapter are going to be virtually meaningless, I think, if you are not convinced of what you are by nature. And he says, namely, that you are a sinner, a worthless sinner, at a distance from God, having nothing to commend you to God except misery and poverty. As long as you think you have something to bring, you're simply not going to go about all of this in the right manner. Alright, the second thing that we should do to address ourselves rightly to God and making proper use of Christ is we We need to be clear that it's Christ's work in office to bring sinners into the Father and to make their persons accepted and ultimately to present their petitions. Again, if we're clear on that, we're going to be very much averse to trying to bring in anything of ourselves, of our own doing, of our own devising, of our own imagination, etc. Right, a third thing that we should do in order to address ourselves rightly to God, make proper use of Christ, 335c, Is be clear that Jesus Christ has a great delight and complacency In this being man and having the true and kindly affections of a man And while in his state of humiliation Being tempted experiencing himself in experiencing in himself the pain and pain and so on the infirmities we talked about. So we need to be clear that Jesus took delight and this is something I think a few weeks ago in this book we looked at this but you know the Bible says that Jesus did what he did for the joy set before him. And when it says that, it's talking about his incarnation, his humiliation, being made subject to the law, his passion, his death, all of that he undertook for the joy set before him. And the joy set before him has to do with becoming a man like with us. He took great pleasure in this. He takes great pleasure in assuming our nature. And that should actually be an encouragement. to us. It means God actually likes his people. Alright, the fourth thing we should do in order to address ourselves rightly to God, make proper use of Christ, D, 335D, is we should know that the father, having appointed him to this work to be high priest and intercessor, will certainly be pleased with him in the discharge of these offices. And again, I think we talked about this a little bit, Christ did not appoint himself to the office of Mediator. He's appointed Mediator by the Father, and the fact that he's appointed Mediator by the Father, and that he takes up that office as the Beloved of the Father, all of this should confirm to us that what he does will be accepted by the Father. And in terms of prayer, that means that all of the petitions which he presents will be heard in due time. So everything, you know, as long as you pray according to his will, in submission, in all the things we've talked about over the last few weeks, as long as you pray within the parameters of the Bible, what the Bible tells you to do, you have confidence that God will hear. That's why, again, going back to that verse he quotes from 1 John 5, this is the confidence we have in Him. We ask anything according to His will, He hears us. So you have confidence. All right, 335E. What should we do in order to address ourselves rightly to God? making proper use of Christ, he says, then therefore we should close with him as mediator. In other words, we should accept of him as sent, sealed, and offered of the Father on his own terms. In other words, if all of this is true, then we need to make use of him. That's the point. So maintaining knowledge that Christ is the Savior at arm's length is not going to help you. But you need to put your trust in Him and accept of Him as your Savior. All right. 335F, the sixth thing that we should do in order to address ourselves rightly to God and make proper use of Christ, is that we should eye him as a tender-hearted, compassionate, sympathizing high priest, touched with the feeling of our infirmities. Now he's saying, once you've taken hold of him, now he's saying, Knowing that he's touching with our infirmities that should actually excite our affections Toward him We should be rightly affected toward him Right seven or G 335 G. What should we do in order to address ourselves rightly to God making proper use of Christ and He says we should rest persuaded that Christ will not forget his offices and work whatever we are Whatever we be So he's what whatever However it goes with us He is there, as he says, he will cheerfully make us welcome, awaiting to receive our prayers, to put into a censer, and to be employed by us in these, his offices. In other words, he's not forgetting his offices, he's eager, as it were, to fulfill his offices toward all who put their trust in him. 335H, the eighth thing that we should do in order to address ourselves rightly to God, making proper use of Christ. He says we should have confidence and hope through him despite what appears from within or from without to discourage us or to make us faint. Again, the reason is our hopes and expectations are not dependent upon anything except him. And he is absolutely reliable. All right, 335I or 9. What we should do is we should wholly then acquiesce in his merits and rest upon his merits, expecting what we desire and seek only on his account. And he says that if you really grasp that, that should make us confident that we're going to receive a good answer when we pray. 335J, the tenth thing that we should do in order to address ourselves rightly to God. This is abstracting wholly from ourselves and laying our whole weight on Christ and on his merits. That we are to act in faith as to the particular that we're asking. He says we're to leave ourselves and our petitions holy on Christ. We're to put everything into His hand and wait, knowing that in God's good time, in and through Jesus, we will get an answer. Alright, so the last point then in this chapter, 336, what does all of this demonstrate to us? He says that this demonstrates to us that to ask in the name of Christ is therefore something very different than barely naming his name in prayer. And he gives an example of, you know, the kinds of things people say like, grant us Lord this or that for Christ's sake. He just says that. When you're not really asking in the name of Christ, that's just a bare mention. And that's not what this really entails. He's not saying, by the way, don't say in Jesus' name or anything like that. That's not his point. But his point is that in all of our praying, we should be joining to our petition these kinds of things so that we're actually making use of Christ in our praying. Chapter 17 is going to be dealing with how we often ask in prayer and not in the name of Christ. We're going to be looking at some of the mistakes and I've been alluding to a number of them, but we'll look at them because Brown really likes to turn this inside out and upside down so that you by the end of it all hopefully when you pray it will become a reflexive thing for you actually to pray in the name of Christ. Next time we'll look at what it is not to pray in the name of Christ.