Amen, Amen :: John 16:23
Amen, Amen, whatever you ask the Father, he will give it to you in my name.
Let us pray: Open my heart, O Lord, to the joy and worship of your house. Attend your people as they rejoice in your presence around Word and Sacrament. Hear me, O Lord and Savior, because of your grace and in your name. Amen.
I wonder how many people have given up on prayer. A growing number of people think prayer is a waste of time. They say every hour spent in prayer is an hour that could have been spent reading, or visiting friends and family, or going out into the world to help people. They say they have more important things to do than to pray.
Are you one of those people?
Would you even admit it?
There are people who think that ... since God’s will is always done, even without our prayer ... there is no point in praying. So they give up. Or they say, I don’t need to pray because the Holy Spirit will do it for me. ... I don’t need to say the Lord’s prayer, even if Jesus taught me to pray that way. Next thing you know, they don’t even thank God for their day, for their meal; they don’t pay any attention to the prayers of the church.
Can you believe there are people who think that rattling off an increasingly longer list of names in prayer is a waste of time? What’s the point doing that ... they say ... every week? Didn’t we pray for them last week? What if they got better?
Many, many more neglect prayer altogether, except for a couple times on Sundays ... if that. They behave like children who seldom speak to their father.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, before I say another word, let us pray that we hear the word of Christ our Lord again today. Let us pray to put to rest any doubts that may have arisen in your heart about praying ... or your prayer life, however strong or weak it may be. Let us pray that ... Amen, Amen, whatever you ask the Father, he will give it to you in the name of Christ.
LET US NEVER STOP COMING CONFIDENTLY TO OUR HEAVENLY FATHER, KNOWING THAT HE WILL GIVE YOU THE RICHES OF HIS KINGDOM.
I pray you aren’t one of those I described at the beginning of this sermon. I pray you haven’t given up on prayer. I pray that you long to let us pray.
1. A Christian not only needs prayer ... WE ... can’t live without it!
As Luther said in a sermon on this text in 1534, next to preaching the Word, the greatest devotion Christians can render God is to pray. You don’t need long prayers. You don’t need peace and solitude to pray. You don’t need to deem yourself worthy to pray. You don’t need to do it only in this place. You don’t even need your right mind.
Instead ... Let us pray Amen, Amen.
The key to understanding this passage is often thought to be the words in my name, as if you must evoke the name of Jesus in order to pray. They will then say that if you do that, then all is good: the Father will give whatever your heart desires ... and if he doesn’t, it must mean your faith in Jesus isn’t strong enough ... or that he isn’t listening ... so you must pray longer and harder. What a terrible curse our sinful, unbelieving world places on prayer!
Asking in the name of Christ isn’t a magic formula. What these words really mean is that you recognize your reliance on Christ ... in Christ, who is our righteousness. Amen. He enables our prayer. And through him, the Father hears your prayer. That’s His promise to you.
You are a Christian because you are baptized into Christ. Therefore, when you pray, you are praying in the name of Christ. Praying is the work of Christians alone, because ... before we were Christians, before we discovered we had faith in Christ ... we knew neither of the things for which we pray nor have we deserved them. But you are in Christ. He knows what you need. He knows your hunger, and thirst. He has walked with you and for you. He promises to hear your prayer through Christ.
To be sure, people around the world try to pray. They evoke “god” in prayer. But apart from Christ, when a man prays most devoutly, his prayer is simply this: Dear god, look at me. Dear god, look at how well I live! Dear god, do you see what I want? Dear god, look at how much I suffer! Look at how pious I am! Look at how often I come to church! Look at me! Don’t you see me in my need? Hear me now. And fulfill my heart’s desire! See, I am naming it and claiming it!
This is not a prayer in faith, and it certainly isn’t in the name of Christ.
When Christians pray in the name of Jesus, they acknowledge that they fix their eyes on Christ. We know they are poor, miserable sinners who have no merit or worthiness within them. We recognize Christ as the only savior. We know the Father hears prayer in the name of Christ, because the Father and the Son are one, and Jesus is praying that we are one with them.
Amen, Amen, whatever you ask the Father, he will give it to you in my name.
These two Aramaic words Amen, Amen are most certainly translated correctly as Truly, Truly. Or yes, yes, it shall be so. At the heart of the meaning is certainty and faith. It always is used with the sense of the strong arms of a parent holding a helpless infant.
Knowing this, we then understand that a truly Christian prayer begins and ends here. Here, Jesus leads us in faith to believe that, yes, our prayer is true; that yes, God the Father truly hears it; that yes, he longs to give you what you that which proceeds from the Spirit of Grace, the Comforter, Advocate, Encourager ... the Holy Spirit ... whom God pours out on us generously to intercede for us when our words fail.
Christians do not base their prayer on themselves. They base it purely and wholly in the name of Jesus, the name that is above every name in heaven on earth, the only name by which men are saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. Praying in the name of Jesus therefore is pleasing to God precisely because he has taught us to do this and he has promised to hear us in the name of the Righteous One who teaches us to say Amen, Amen, it shall be so.
2. The real key to unlocking these promises is to hear the words of Christ ... Amen, Amen. These are great promise words.
Sometime ago, while studying the Gospel of John, I discovered that when Jesus uses the words Amen, Amen he most often is speaking about the last things ... the things that are to come. Today is certainly no exception.
The last things are the entire reason Jesus came from heaven to earth, to be God with us and for us, to fulfill his word to us. The last things deliver the great promises of God in Christ, the promises that give us faith. This Gospel of Christ ... Amen, Amen ... reminds you that you will see heaven opened (1:51), that you will have eternal life (5:25), that you will keep his word (8:51) because you love God and your brother; that you will do the works of God. Therefore, Amen, Amen, I tell you the truth, you will rejoice (16:23) because the father and son are one, we are one with Christ, and with each other.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, even when you forget these promises, even when you fail to lean on them, even when you turn away from them, you can know for certain that Jesus won’t. Amen, Amen means we can be sure and certain that our petitions are pleasing to our Father in heaven, and are heard by him; for he himself has commanded us to pray in this way and has promised to hear us.
It is God’s Service to us. I don’t know if you ever noticed this, but this has been our prayer all morning. At every point of our worship, Jesus has led us in prayer, beginning with our hymn of invocation. He led us in prayer through confession and absolution, our Introit, our collect of the day. We heard more prayer in our readings, and the Hymn of the Day. And we have more prayer to come in the Offertory and the prayers of the church. If we were to have the Lord’s supper, we would pray even more.
Let us, therefore, pray all the more for one another, to give thanks to God for all he has done for us in Christ that we may lead peaceful and quiet lives, godly and dignified in every way (1 Tim 2:2). Let us be bold and persistent in our prayer that the name of our God in heaven be hallowed, his kingdom come, his will be done.
Let us encourage one another in prayer. Let us make prayer unceasingly, singing his song back to him, thanking him for all that he has done for us in Christ, who lived for you, died for you, overcame death for you and is preparing a place for you with him. He will hear you. Amen, Amen, he has promised. He hears our prayers on account of Christ. Amen, Amen, our Lord Jesus is in constant prayer. And in him, so too are we. Thank God, He hears our prayers on account of Christ, on account of his name, on account of who we are in Christ.
May God our Father grant us his Holy Spirit, our Advocate, that in all our trials and temptations, we bring our petitions before him and thus be freed forever and ever ... He will do it. In Jesus’ name. Amen.