Numbers 21:4-9; 1 Timothy 2:1-6; St John 16:23-30(31-33)
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Whatever you ask of the Father, in My name, He will give it to you. Whatever you ask. Well. What do you want? What do you lack that would make you happy? And if you had it, would it make you truly content? Whatever you ask, Jesus says. So, what do you want?
If we are honest with ourselves what we want is often very far removed from what we need. Earthly desires captivate our hearts. Our eyes are fixated on carnal things. Our anxious minds, our grumbling mouths, reveal our failure to fear, love, and trust the Lord our God above all things; to know that He will supply those things that are needful for us.
So it was with the children of Israel. They were discouraged. They complained. Its not as though they lacked any signs and promises from the Lord God. He spared their camp of the plagues; their water of blood, their children from the Angel of Death. He led them out of slavery by a pillar of cloud; brought them safely across the Red Sea by the strength of His arm, and defeated their wicked foe, Pharaoh and his army, by drowning them in the sea. Still, they complained. The flesh always does.
Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness. Our souls loathe this worthless bread! There it is. We loathe the bread from heaven, the manna of our Father, the divine sustenance He has provided for the journey. They did not trust in the Lord God and His promises, and so their hearts are greedy and their prayers have faltered. What about you? What do you want? How have your worship and prayers been?
Today we are exhorted to pray. Rogate. It simply means, “ask,” that is, “pray.” So when you hear Jesus say to His disciples, Whatever you ask, He means, whatever you pray. St Paul says, First of all then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions. The Apostle names the four types of prayer: supplications, that is, asking for ourselves; petitions, such as the Our Father, intercessions, which are prayers on behalf of others, and thanksgivings, giving thanks to God for His provision and daily bread. Elsewhere St Paul exhorts Christians to pray at all times and without ceasing (1 Thess 5:17). There is nothing more basic to the Christian faith and life than prayer.
But our thoughts and hearts and ideas betray us. They are soiled with sin. And we do not know what to pray for or how we ought to pray. How, then, shall we begin?
Our Lord Himself must teach us. Prayer in Jesus’s Name begins with God’s speaking and our listening. The Father addresses you and reveals Himself to you in the Person of the Word, His Son, our Lord, in whom and by whom you know and see the Father. This is not a figure of speech. You know God as Father only by way of His Son, in whom you have received adoption as sons by His grace. All other descriptions of the Kingdom of God are figures of speech. A vineyard. A field. A flock of sheep. The kingdom of God is like these things. But the Kingdom of God is instantiated in a Man, the God-Man, Jesus Christ, the only Son of the Father who has made Him known.
And it is the hour of His Cross and Passion in which He speaks plainly to you about the Father. He came from God and by way of His Cross, is lifted up from the world and going to the Father. For the Shepherd shall be struck and the sheep shall all be scattered, each to his own home. Abandoned by friends and disciples, true bothers and sisters, betrayed by a guileful friend who ate bread with Him. He will be left alone.
But He is not alone. Though He is forsaken by His God and Father, He will not abandon His faithful Word and promises. For the Father is revealed in the Son and the Son is one with the Father, together in the trinitarian fellowship with the Holy Spirit. He who commends His Spirit into the hands of His Father and thereby reveal the manner in which the Father loves you, that is, in sending His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for all of your sins, receives back again the self-same Spirit in His victorious resurrection from the dead, only to bestow Him upon the Church and His Apostles, in His preached Word.
Prayer, dear friends, begins here, with the inhalation of the Spirit in the Word, which you read, mark, learn and inwardly digest (to mix our metaphors), and then exhale in prayer; speaking back to the Father with your petitions, intercessions, and thanksgivings in the Son and by His Spirit. In Him you have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. For “as soon as God’s Word takes root and grows in you, the devil will harass you, and will make a real doctor (of theology) of you, and by assaults will teach you to seek and love God’s Word” (Luther).
Dr Luther taught that this is precisely how God makes theologians, which is to say, how He forms and fashions Christians - through meditation and study of God’s Word, prayer in Jesus’ name, and temptation and affliction by the devil. Your mettle is tested and your spiritual armor is strengthened. For you, dear Christian, you who care about the truth and purity of God’s Word and doctrine, about it rightly preached, faithfully practiced and boldly confessed, you are a theologian, a priest of our heavenly Father’s royal priesthood. Thus do you pray. From God’s Word and back to God’s Word when assaulted and assailed by the evil foe.
In this way prayer is as natural to the new man as breathing. It is fundamental. Necessary. Significant. Yet how often have you tried to establish some routine, some discipline of prayer and devotion either on your own or in your family, only to find that it becomes harder and harder to keep with it? The truth is that the actual practice of daily prayer does not come easily to us poor, miserable sinners. We are always making a beginning, never completing.
For you still have your flesh hanging about your neck, your sin clinging to your bones until you die. This vile, putrid stench of death lingering in our nostrils, which along with the devil and the world, would turn us from faithful prayer and do not want us to hallow God’s name or let His kingdom come.
That old Adam must be suppressed and mortified in you - daily drown in the baptismal waters - for you to pray. You are no different than the Israelites among whom our Lord sent fiery serpents. So does He send and allow fiery trials, tribulation of various kinds, to befall you. Of which there is no shortage in the world, as Jesus says. Temptation and persecution, some receive the gift of martyrdom, others are called upon to faithfully confess the truth of His Word in an increasingly hostile world; maybe at the cost of their livelihood. This is according to God’s good and gracious will.
Yet He does this not to punish you and drive you from Him in fear and hatred. Rather the opposite. For the Lord your God, your Father in heaven who loves you and disciplines you, desires you to be saved, along with all men. He uses such tribulation in order to strengthen your faith, to turn to Him in prayer, looking to Him alone for all good and every blessing. Take heart. He has overcome the world.
Therefore ask. For the Father loves you on account of Jesus Christ in whose name you pray. You have received the Spirit of adoptions as sons by whom you cry, Abba! Father! You are marked with the Baptismal Name of the Blessed Holy Trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - and therefore stand in Christ, as a member of the royal priesthood, approaching the throne of grace will all the boldness and confidence of a dear child.
Which is to say, it is okay to ask as children ask: for small things, for big things, personal things, seemingly outrageous things. Intercede as Moses did on behalf Israel or Queen Esther entering the throne room of the king to plead for her people. He delights in you. And it is good, right, and pleasing to God that you intercede that your boyfriend be converted, that you find a pious girlfriend, that your sons and daughters find godly spouses, that your children and grandchildren return to their baptismal faith. Its okay to pray that your wife control her temper, that your husband help out more, that your kids stop bickering. Pray not merely for kings, but those elected officials, even if you didn’t vote for them. It is okay to pray these and all sorts of other things, precisely because the Father loves you on account of Christ.
Above all, pray that His Kingdom come among you by His Word, through His Spirit, in faithful preaching and teaching. Pray that He bestow His righteousness upon you - the righteousness of Christ - through faith and that such faith produce in you fruits of love and good works. Pray that His will be done, here on earth among men, as it is by the angels in heaven. Pray according to the Ten Commandments, which are the good and gracious will of God for you, your children, and family. Pray the Psalms, for they are both God’s Word to you and your prayer to Him, inspired by the Holy Spirit and payed by and in Christ. Such prayers are pleasing to your Father in heaven who commanded you to pray, has promised to hear you, and even gives you the very words.
Take heart in your tribulation, dear children of our heavenly Father. For as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so has the Son of Man been lifted up in His death upon the Cross, which is the answer to all prayers, even before we asked. You may not always get what you want, but you always get what you need.
Laid before you this day is bread for the journey. It is not worthless, but is the very Manna of Life, the Body of Jesus Christ, given for you, together with His Blood poured out for the many for the forgiveness of sins. His Eucharist. His Thanksgiving offered to you, that you may eat and drink, believe and live. You are not alone, but dwell together with the whole Christian Church in heaven and on earth, which has fellowship in Jesus Christ with God the + Father and the Holy Spirit, to whom be glory, honor, prayer, praise and thanksgiving, now and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
Whatever you ask of the Father, in My name, He will give it to you. Whatever you ask. Well. What do you want? What do you lack that would make you happy? And if you had it, would it make you truly content? Whatever you ask, Jesus says. So, what do you want?
If we are honest with ourselves what we want is often very far removed from what we need. Earthly desires captivate our hearts. Our eyes are fixated on carnal things. Our anxious minds, our grumbling mouths, reveal our failure to fear, love, and trust the Lord our God above all things; to know that He will supply those things that are needful for us.
So it was with the children of Israel. They were discouraged. They complained. Its not as though they lacked any signs and promises from the Lord God. He spared their camp of the plagues; their water of blood, their children from the Angel of Death. He led them out of slavery by a pillar of cloud; brought them safely across the Red Sea by the strength of His arm, and defeated their wicked foe, Pharaoh and his army, by drowning them in the sea. Still, they complained. The flesh always does.
Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness. Our souls loathe this worthless bread! There it is. We loathe the bread from heaven, the manna of our Father, the divine sustenance He has provided for the journey. They did not trust in the Lord God and His promises, and so their hearts are greedy and their prayers have faltered. What about you? What do you want? How have your worship and prayers been?
Today we are exhorted to pray. Rogate. It simply means, “ask,” that is, “pray.” So when you hear Jesus say to His disciples, Whatever you ask, He means, whatever you pray. St Paul says, First of all then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions. The Apostle names the four types of prayer: supplications, that is, asking for ourselves; petitions, such as the Our Father, intercessions, which are prayers on behalf of others, and thanksgivings, giving thanks to God for His provision and daily bread. Elsewhere St Paul exhorts Christians to pray at all times and without ceasing (1 Thess 5:17). There is nothing more basic to the Christian faith and life than prayer.
But our thoughts and hearts and ideas betray us. They are soiled with sin. And we do not know what to pray for or how we ought to pray. How, then, shall we begin?
Our Lord Himself must teach us. Prayer in Jesus’s Name begins with God’s speaking and our listening. The Father addresses you and reveals Himself to you in the Person of the Word, His Son, our Lord, in whom and by whom you know and see the Father. This is not a figure of speech. You know God as Father only by way of His Son, in whom you have received adoption as sons by His grace. All other descriptions of the Kingdom of God are figures of speech. A vineyard. A field. A flock of sheep. The kingdom of God is like these things. But the Kingdom of God is instantiated in a Man, the God-Man, Jesus Christ, the only Son of the Father who has made Him known.
And it is the hour of His Cross and Passion in which He speaks plainly to you about the Father. He came from God and by way of His Cross, is lifted up from the world and going to the Father. For the Shepherd shall be struck and the sheep shall all be scattered, each to his own home. Abandoned by friends and disciples, true bothers and sisters, betrayed by a guileful friend who ate bread with Him. He will be left alone.
But He is not alone. Though He is forsaken by His God and Father, He will not abandon His faithful Word and promises. For the Father is revealed in the Son and the Son is one with the Father, together in the trinitarian fellowship with the Holy Spirit. He who commends His Spirit into the hands of His Father and thereby reveal the manner in which the Father loves you, that is, in sending His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for all of your sins, receives back again the self-same Spirit in His victorious resurrection from the dead, only to bestow Him upon the Church and His Apostles, in His preached Word.
Prayer, dear friends, begins here, with the inhalation of the Spirit in the Word, which you read, mark, learn and inwardly digest (to mix our metaphors), and then exhale in prayer; speaking back to the Father with your petitions, intercessions, and thanksgivings in the Son and by His Spirit. In Him you have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. For “as soon as God’s Word takes root and grows in you, the devil will harass you, and will make a real doctor (of theology) of you, and by assaults will teach you to seek and love God’s Word” (Luther).
Dr Luther taught that this is precisely how God makes theologians, which is to say, how He forms and fashions Christians - through meditation and study of God’s Word, prayer in Jesus’ name, and temptation and affliction by the devil. Your mettle is tested and your spiritual armor is strengthened. For you, dear Christian, you who care about the truth and purity of God’s Word and doctrine, about it rightly preached, faithfully practiced and boldly confessed, you are a theologian, a priest of our heavenly Father’s royal priesthood. Thus do you pray. From God’s Word and back to God’s Word when assaulted and assailed by the evil foe.
In this way prayer is as natural to the new man as breathing. It is fundamental. Necessary. Significant. Yet how often have you tried to establish some routine, some discipline of prayer and devotion either on your own or in your family, only to find that it becomes harder and harder to keep with it? The truth is that the actual practice of daily prayer does not come easily to us poor, miserable sinners. We are always making a beginning, never completing.
For you still have your flesh hanging about your neck, your sin clinging to your bones until you die. This vile, putrid stench of death lingering in our nostrils, which along with the devil and the world, would turn us from faithful prayer and do not want us to hallow God’s name or let His kingdom come.
That old Adam must be suppressed and mortified in you - daily drown in the baptismal waters - for you to pray. You are no different than the Israelites among whom our Lord sent fiery serpents. So does He send and allow fiery trials, tribulation of various kinds, to befall you. Of which there is no shortage in the world, as Jesus says. Temptation and persecution, some receive the gift of martyrdom, others are called upon to faithfully confess the truth of His Word in an increasingly hostile world; maybe at the cost of their livelihood. This is according to God’s good and gracious will.
Yet He does this not to punish you and drive you from Him in fear and hatred. Rather the opposite. For the Lord your God, your Father in heaven who loves you and disciplines you, desires you to be saved, along with all men. He uses such tribulation in order to strengthen your faith, to turn to Him in prayer, looking to Him alone for all good and every blessing. Take heart. He has overcome the world.
Therefore ask. For the Father loves you on account of Jesus Christ in whose name you pray. You have received the Spirit of adoptions as sons by whom you cry, Abba! Father! You are marked with the Baptismal Name of the Blessed Holy Trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - and therefore stand in Christ, as a member of the royal priesthood, approaching the throne of grace will all the boldness and confidence of a dear child.
Which is to say, it is okay to ask as children ask: for small things, for big things, personal things, seemingly outrageous things. Intercede as Moses did on behalf Israel or Queen Esther entering the throne room of the king to plead for her people. He delights in you. And it is good, right, and pleasing to God that you intercede that your boyfriend be converted, that you find a pious girlfriend, that your sons and daughters find godly spouses, that your children and grandchildren return to their baptismal faith. Its okay to pray that your wife control her temper, that your husband help out more, that your kids stop bickering. Pray not merely for kings, but those elected officials, even if you didn’t vote for them. It is okay to pray these and all sorts of other things, precisely because the Father loves you on account of Christ.
Above all, pray that His Kingdom come among you by His Word, through His Spirit, in faithful preaching and teaching. Pray that He bestow His righteousness upon you - the righteousness of Christ - through faith and that such faith produce in you fruits of love and good works. Pray that His will be done, here on earth among men, as it is by the angels in heaven. Pray according to the Ten Commandments, which are the good and gracious will of God for you, your children, and family. Pray the Psalms, for they are both God’s Word to you and your prayer to Him, inspired by the Holy Spirit and payed by and in Christ. Such prayers are pleasing to your Father in heaven who commanded you to pray, has promised to hear you, and even gives you the very words.
Take heart in your tribulation, dear children of our heavenly Father. For as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so has the Son of Man been lifted up in His death upon the Cross, which is the answer to all prayers, even before we asked. You may not always get what you want, but you always get what you need.
Laid before you this day is bread for the journey. It is not worthless, but is the very Manna of Life, the Body of Jesus Christ, given for you, together with His Blood poured out for the many for the forgiveness of sins. His Eucharist. His Thanksgiving offered to you, that you may eat and drink, believe and live. You are not alone, but dwell together with the whole Christian Church in heaven and on earth, which has fellowship in Jesus Christ with God the + Father and the Holy Spirit, to whom be glory, honor, prayer, praise and thanksgiving, now and unto the ages of ages. Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed! Alleluia!
RSS Feed