Question 3: What does it mean to pray in Jesus' name?

Greetings and welcome to the Faith Chapel podcast. My name is Jason and I am

the pastor of Faith Chapel.

In the podcast right now we are going through a sermon series from 2021 entitled Questions.

The congregation of Faith Chapel was asked to submit any questions they had

about Christianity or the Bible and the answer to those questions were given in the form of sermons.

Today, the question we answer is, what does it mean to pray in Jesus's name?

Thanks for joining us today.

When Christianity started out about 2,000 years ago, it was really dangerous

to be a follower of Jesus.

And so the Christians at that time devised certain symbols to really understand

who was a Christian and who was not,

because if they were to mention the name of Jesus to the wrong person,

they had the fear of being sentenced to death.

And so one of the symbols that they came up with is the ikthus. It is the fish.

It is the word fish in the Greek language, ikthus, and they used it as an acronym.

And the five letters of the word fish in Greek, they used as an acronym to mean

this, Jesus Christ, the son of God, savior.

And this symbol, this, not just the acronym, but the actual symbol of the fish,

as you can see on the screen, is a symbol that they use to help to understand

if other people were following Jesus.

And this is how they would use it. If they were in a place where they could

write in the dirt or in sand or something like that, one person,

one Christian would come and they would draw one of the swoops there.

So they would draw from the mouth of the fish all the way up to the tail.

And then if the other person bent down and did the other swoosh,

they knew that that person was safe to talk to about Jesus, that that was not

something that they had to worry about fear or anything like.

But sometimes they met in places where they couldn't draw. And so they came up with a hand signal.

And so what they would do is they would take their finger and the thumb in the shape of an L.

And unlike today, this isn't what we symbolize with this.

But they would hold this up like this and they would ask. Well,

they would just wait to see if the person responded.

And if they did, by also putting an L in their hand and then connecting them

and putting them over like this, you can see that they made the sign of the fish or the ichthus.

And this went on for years, even after Christianity became legalized in the Roman Empire.

And this symbol endured, this

way of announcing themselves as Christians endured throughout the ages.

When we come to about the 1300s and the 100-year war between England and France,

on the battlefield, the soldiers couldn't really do this symbol to really focus

on their prayers or to do anything like that.

And so that's what, in the 13th century, this Ichthy symbol became something of crossed fingers.

So they would take their middle finger and put it behind their index finger

and they would make this symbol.

And it really came out of that, the symbol of the icthus, because if you turn

it like this, it kind of, if you use your imagination, looks like an icthus.

But it also came to mean for them the cross because they're literally crossing their fingers.

And I read one story this week about how archers, before they would shoot arrows,

they would cross their fingers like this to really focus on God.

And then they would say a short prayer and then they would shoot their arrow.

It was a way for them to really focus on God for a moment, to take something

of them, a symbol or something they could do and focus on God and then go to God in prayer.

Today, though, this crossed fingers has nothing to do with Christianity.

Today, crossed fingers are wishful thinking. I'm sending, I'm crossing my fingers

for you means I wish you success. I wish you well.

Or maybe if you're like me as a little kid, you would cross your fingers and

put them behind your back and tell a little white lie to your parents.

Because if your fingers were crossed, it wasn't really a lie because you knew

that you were telling the, you were telling that you were lying by crossing your fingers.

And so the symbol which was created, which was invented to focus people on either

the cross of Jesus or on the ichthus, which means Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior,

has been transformed over time to mean something completely superstitious,

something completely non-religious.

And so with the question that we are asking today, the same principle holds in place.

It is a phrase that back in Jesus's day does not mean what it meant today.

The meaning has shifted.

It has changed. And the question we're going to answer today is why do we pray in Jesus's name?

Why in Philippians does Paul say that in the name of Jesus, every knee should

bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord?

Why when we cast out demons or we preach, we do it in Jesus's name?

What's so important about a name?

Or what does this phrase mean or represent?

And so that's what we're going to take a look at today as we dive into Scripture.

Before we get to Scripture, though, we're going to talk about what names mean

in the Bible, because it's different than what we have as names today.

You see, back in Genesis and in all the way up through Jesus' day,

names were very meaningful.

They meant a lot. So when Adam named Eve, he named her Eve because scripture

says she became the mother of all living things.

The name Eve means the giver of life. And it was very important to her because

that described her to a T.

She gave life to Cain, to Abel, to Seth, to all of her children.

We go a little bit further into the book of Genesis, and we meet a man by the name of Esau.

Now Esau has a name that I probably would not like.

His name literally means hairy, like the hair on your head, hairy.

And this is because when he was born, his mom saw him, and she was like,

that kid has a lot of hair.

A characteristic about him was why he was named what he was named.

Jacob, his brother, who was born

just minutes after Esau, he came out clutching the heel of his brother.

And so his name, Jacob, is heel.

It's a characteristic about the person that is the name of that person.

And it doesn't just have to be what your parents see or what your parents hope about you.

Because God renames people too. He renamed Heel, he renamed Jacob from that

to Israel, which means one who strives with God.

This was after God and Jacob wrestled all night long.

God renamed him the characteristic that he was, someone who strives with God.

In the same way, God changed Abram's name to Abraham. Abram means exalted father.

And this is something I'm sure his nephew Lot thought of Abraham.

He went with him when he left his home.

They split up because they were too big to really inhabit one area because of

all the flocks that they had.

And so they separated from one another.

And I'm sure that Lot thought of his uncle Abraham as a father and so exalted him.

And God changed his name from exalted father, which he already was,

to somebody by the name of Abraham, which means the father of multitudes,

which he was not at that time.

But he became the father of multitudes because of God's blessing to him.

And so God named him Abraham as a sign of his promise to Abraham that his descendants

would be as numerous as the stars of the sky.

And everywhere you look in the Bible, names matter.

They mean something about a person's character.

They mean something about the hopes that a parent has for that child.

They mean something about the physical appearance or what was going on in the

world around them at that time. It was a very meaningful moment.

Now, I'm not saying that names today don't have meaning. and I just look at

the baby that was born this week

with the name of Warner, obviously a very symbolic name in that family.

It has meaning, it has purpose, but the literal translation of that, heel, hairy.

The giver of life, that all meant a characteristic about that person.

And so when we get to the name Jesus, we have to understand what that name meant.

It comes to us from Matthew chapter 1, when in the dream, Jacob,

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

Joseph is told what to name the child that was growing in Mary's stomach.

And the Hebrew name, the name that Mary would have said, the name that Joseph

would have said, the name that all of his disciples would have said was the name Yeshua.

And Yeshua is Jesus's name. And it means Yahweh, the personal name of God, saves.

And obviously we can look to the cross of Jesus to say, yes,

that name fulfilled that.

And so this is the definition of what it means to have a biblical name,

to have something that the name means something important and significant.

It shows a characteristic about that person, et cetera.

But we need to look at the question and really the phrase of, in the name of Jesus.

And what does this mean, this name that has deep meaning?

What does this phrase really mean? But before we get to Scripture today, let me pray.

God, I pray that you will open up your word and teach us, draw us closer and

closer and closer to you.

We lay this at your feet. Amen.

Our scripture today is going to come from John chapter 14, and we're going to read 12 through 14.

John 14 · chapter mention

Starting in verse 12, it reads this, I tell you the truth, and this is Jesus

talking to his disciples at the Last Supper.

This is before they travel to the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus is going

to pray, where he is going to ask God three times to let this cup pass from him.

This is before that moment. This is while they're still in the upper room,

still taking part in the Last Supper.

I tell you the truth, Jesus says, Anyone who believes in me will do the same

works I have done and even greater works because I am going to be with the Father.

Now, this was a question that was posed to me about a week ago, last Saturday.

And the question is, what does this really mean when Jesus says we're going

to do greater works than he is?

Because I don't see myself doing something greater than raising someone from

the dead as Jesus did to Lazarus. I don't see myself doing something greater

than making two fish and five loaves of bread feed thousands of people.

Like that's pretty impressive stuff. And I don't see myself doing that.

So the question here is, what does this mean?

And the answer is that Jesus here is telling people, because he said,

because I am going with the Father, Jesus is leaving this planet, leaving this earth.

And he's not going to be here anymore. He had a ministry of about three and a half years.

And in those three and a half years, John said, if everything Jesus did or said

was written down, the whole world could not contain the books, the pages of the book.

Pretty impressive. Pretty impressive. But he spent three years here doing ministry

as we read through in the Gospels.

And so what Jesus is saying here, and I've had a hard time really trying to

put this into terms that aren't confusing, but what Jesus said here is that

the quality of the miracles that you do,

the raising of people from the dead, the feeding of the poor,

those sorts of things are going to be the same.

The quantity that you are going to do is going to be better, is going to be bigger.

And so what he means by that is not that you're going to take two fish and five

loaves of bread and feed millions of people, but you're going to go out and

you're going to feed people in Jesus's name in miraculous ways.

You're going to go out there and you're going to feed them, but you're going

to do it more times. Because as we live, as we grow up, as we become followers

of Jesus, we're going to have decades, hopefully, walking next to Jesus.

And not just us personally, but the whole collective Christian world from the

time of Pentecost all the way till now, and however far into the future it goes,

like we've had 2,000 years almost now of doing good works.

And so this collective idea of you and I, we're going to do greater things than

Jesus is all about the number of times we do them.

Not about the grandness of the miracles.

Not about feeding thousands of people with just a small boy's lunch.

Not about calling people out of a grave and instead of one person coming out

of the grave, of a whole graveyard is restored back to life.

What he's talking about is you're going to do it more times than I've done it

because I'm going to be with the father. I'm leaving this place.

And so he comes and we start our, really our talk on in Jesus's name,

what does that mean with this phrase?

Because it's really, really important that you and I are equipped by the Holy Spirit.

We have the Holy Spirit living inside of us, directing every step that we go

when we submit to him, and we are able to do amazing things for him.

But he continues in verse 13, along the same motif of miraculous things happening.

You can ask for anything in my name and I will do it so that the Son can bring glory to the Father.

Yes, ask me for anything in my name and I will do it.

Now, what Jesus is talking about here is not a collection of letters.

It's not about J-E-S-U-S and saying them in the right order and saying them

in the right intonation.

It's not about even going back to his Hebrew name and saying Yeshua when we

pray or when we cast out demons or when we preach.

What Jesus is saying here is you and I, we need to come under the authority

of Jesus. We need to display his characteristics.

Remember, that's what the name in the Bible means. It's about the characteristics.

It's about who the person is.

And it's about you and I really imitating him, doing what he did.

It's about us really going after and pursuing Jesus and showing him to this world.

And so when we pray in Jesus's name, and I was caught in a scenario this week

where I really had to process through if I was praying in Jesus's name or not.

There was a family situation that I was praying fervently for.

This is a family member who isn't that close to Jesus, who probably doesn't

even have a relationship with Jesus.

And it's somebody that I wanted Jesus to show himself up in providing what this

person was asking for. And so I was praying and I prayed frequently and I invoked Jesus's name in it.

But as I was processing through it, I'm saying, what am I doing this for?

Am I doing this so that I can brag about God? Or am I doing this so that somebody

can have restoration with something lost?

So that someone can have positive feelings. Did I want myself to feel better

that God was using me to go out there and impact this world for him and to have

this person come to know Jesus through this reconciliation?

Or was I doing it because this is really what Jesus wanted?

Am I doing it in his image, in his likeness? Am I doing it as he would do it?

And it was really something that I struggled with because God didn't answer

the prayer in the way that I wanted him to.

He eventually did answer the prayer, but it was after I realized,

all right, I'm not the Savior here.

It's not me. I'm not the Savior here. It's Jesus, and he is.

And so I, as I was praying that, I didn't come under his authority.

I didn't come under his image. I was doing it for my own good so that I could

feel good about myself, so that I could just have rest and reassurance that God was real in my life.

And when Jesus prays over and over and over again, he's always selfless in his prayers.

And so when he says, if you pray in my name, I will do anything that you ask.

He's really telling us, hey, pray in my likeness. Pray in my image.

Pray the things that I would pray. Conform your mind to mine and then let your prayers go.

We can easily pray to win the lottery. We can easily pray that somebody that

we hurt gets into a car accident.

We can easily pray for selfish, selfish things.

And when we pray for that, do we really expect this quote of Jesus to come to fruition?

Anything you ask, if you just tack my five-letter name onto the end of your

prayers, hey, everything's going to be taken care of.

Your enemies, they're going to be squashed. You're going to have plenty of wealth.

You're going to have plenty of success.

And that's not what he's saying here. Look at Jesus's life and how he lived

as an itinerant preacher, never having a same place to rest his head.

He wasn't about comfort. He wasn't about the pleasures of life.

He was fully about serving other people.

And when our prayers and when we really lay our hands on people,

when we come before Jesus and we're just saying, we want to reflect you in this

world, but it's really about people thinking highly of ourselves.

Like we're not coming in Jesus's name. We're coming in our own name.

I really love a quote from John the Baptist in John 3.30.

I twisted a little bit out of context, so I want you to know the context before I put my spin on it.

But what John is saying here is, I must decrease so that he can increase.

And this is when lots and lots of people are flocking to the Jordan River for John to baptize them.

And he's saying, it's not about me by saying this. It's about Jesus.

And so I have to go behind the curtain. I have to push Jesus forward and he

has to be the one that's important.

And so that's the context of this verse. I must decrease and he must increase.

But what it means to me is that I have to live not for me, not for my own wants,

not for my own desires, but purely for God.

It's not about me. And when we think that God is like a genie,

when we think that, all right, if we pray in Jesus's name, if we bring Jesus's

name into the fold, then everything I've ever wanted will happen for me.

We're making him something that is contained in a jar that we just rub and say,

hey, God, it's time for you to come out because I need something now.

But when we really submit to him in his name, that's according to his character,

according to his image, you and I, we are going to pray the way Jesus prayed.

And we find this concept all the way back in Genesis 1.

This idea that we need to represent God on this planet, that you and I,

yes, we have to walk. Yes, we have to talk.

Yes, we have to go out there and do good works in Jesus's name, but it's not about us.

It's not so that we can get more famous.

It's so that he can become more famous. In Genesis 1, we read these words,

Then God said, Let us make human beings in our image to be like us.

They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky,

the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that

scurry along the ground.

So God created human beings in his own image and the image of God.

He created them male and female. He created them.

Then God blessed them and said, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and

govern it, rain over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky,

and all the animals that scurry along the ground.

And God is saying here to Adam and Eve, the first humans, he's saying to them,

hey, you're in my place here. All throughout Genesis 1, God is ruling. God is reigning.

God is the one that is taking care of everything. But then he puts his image into you and into me.

And he says, now it's your turn. You're my representative here.

This is what it means to pray in the name of Jesus.

This is what it means that at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess.

It is to be his image bearer here on this planet.

It is to be just like him, glorifying him, putting yourself second,

putting him first and saying, God, I'm here. What do you want me to do?

I treated God like a genie when I was praying for that family member in the reconciliation.

I was like, God, if you just show this one time, like right as I pray,

then there's reconciliation that happens, man, they're gonna come to know you.

I was placing myself above God. Even though it sounded like a selfless prayer,

it was really selfish because I was dictating to God what he was going to do.

I needed to just take a step back, say, God, I want your will to be done in their life.

And whenever they come to faith in you, and I believe that they will,

whenever they come to faith in you, I will praise you. I will praise you.

We must decrease so that he can increase.

And that's what it means to be in the name of Jesus.

A representative of him who is all about him, running after him,

loving him, serving him.

Thank you again for joining us in our discussion of the meaning of praying in Jesus' name.

One teaching moment I would modify from this teaching is that we shouldn't wait to praise God.

If God has revealed to you He was going to answer a prayer in the future,

then praise Him immediately for it and continually praise Him until He answers.

Don't wait to praise God. Praise Him all the time.

These episodes are designed to promote questions in and amongst followers of Jesus.

It is good to ask questions. Questions show you want to learn.

Be curious and always ask questions in our next episode we will look at the

question are there different levels in heaven have a great week.