I had never seen the connection between these verses until this previous week. It was interesting how it happened. I had read through the Bible earlier this year in order to note every verse I could find on prayer. I then put them all into my word processor and came up with about 75 pages of Bible passages on prayer. That was much too big for me to use so I narrowed that down to about 12 pages and continued to read through them to see which ones I would preach on. As I was reading through them this week I saw the passage on John 14 that said, “If you ask me anything in my name I will do it.” Then the very next line below that was the John 15 passage that said, “If you abide in Me and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” The very next line below that had the John 16 passage that declared, “ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be made full.” As I began to read through the passages I noticed a key word in each one that linked each passage to the next. I never would have noticed their connection had they not been isolated from the chapters as they were.
But what are these passages saying? Is Jesus saying that He gives us the opportunity to usurp God’s sovereignty and claim whatever we ask for from this promise? The key idea from this passage will become clearer as we look at its context but for know it is enough to know that this promise from Jesus is not a blank check to answer our every prayer but to answer our prayer that falls within the principles He lays out in these verses.
1. Three Prerequisites
First we must see that there are three prerequisites to this kind of answered prayer of which Jesus speaks in these passages.
A. Believe in Christ’s identity
The first prerequisite that Jesus lays down for this answered prayer is to believe in Christ’s identity. We can see the link between believing in who Christ is and this answered prayer Jesus notes in verse 13, “Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do.” Verses 1-14 make up one long paragraph in the original. And the connection between answered prayer and the paragraph deals with Jesus’ statements of who He is throughout it. So let’s look at what Jesus says concerning Himself that we must believe. But before we read these verses we have to understand what the word believe means. We tend to think that it has something to do with merely intellectual agreement. We say, “Yes, I believe that.” But beyond simply understanding a truth, biblical belief or faith has everything to do with trust. Belief means that we are willing to lean on that truth for our salvation not just know it in our head without any effect to our lives. So let’s look at these verses.
14:1 says, “You believe in God, believe also in Me.” Jesus is declaring that believing in God is not enough to have our prayers answered. We must believe also in Jesus Christ. Many times when I ask someone if they believe in Jesus Christ they will admit that they believe in God. They think that their concept of God is sufficient to have a relationship with Him. As if God will accept whatever they think about Him as acceptable. But Jesus says that you must believe in Him also. Not only are you to put your trust in the Father but also in Jesus Christ. The Scripture says that the demons believe in God and they tremble. It also says that Jesus is a stumbling block for those who will not submit to His authority. I’ve heard it so many times that we all serve the same God. This is simply not true. The Bible makes it clear again and again that you are either worshipping the God of the Bible or you are worshipping an idol. So Jesus says you must believe in Him along with the Father.
Next in verse 6 Jesus makes what we must believe a little narrower. Here He says, “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” Now what Jesus is declaring is that He is the only way to the Father. If I would have said it you could have accused me of intolerance but Jesus said it. As a matter of fact my natural tendency is to want to soften this and ease up on God’s requirement. But if we trust that He is our ultimate authority then we will have to admit that this is the standard by which He will judge the world.
If we think that our own worthiness or good works or church attendance will give us access to the Father then we are sadly mistaken. There is nothing that we can do by which we have our sins forgiven and have access to God and eternal life except to come to Christ and trust in Him. So we are to place our trust in Him, this one and only mediator, this go between, but who is He? Is He simply a good man? Is He merely a prophet? Jesus answers even this question in this passage to leave us without doubt.
Now in verses 7-11 He makes it even more clear who He is and what we must believe. “If you had known Me, you would have known my father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen him.” Philip said to Him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Jesus said to Him, “have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father he is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own initiative, but the Father abiding in me does his works. Believe me that I am the in the Father in the Father is in me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves.”
Here Jesus makes clear to us that He is declaring Himself to be equal with the Father. The Father is in Him and He is in the Father. They are one. Jesus is saying that He is God. What is it that we must believe about Jesus? He has as much claim to being God as the Father does. If you can’t believe Him for the power of the words that He speaks then believe Him because of the miracles that He performs. In other words if you want to see what God would look like, look at how Jesus speaks and acts. There is nothing in Jesus that would contradict His claim to be God.
Now we can see from the context of this paragraph part of what we need in receiving an answer to the prayer that Jesus tells us to pray. First, we need to put our trust in Jesus Christ as our only mediator, the One who gives us access to the Father. Then we need to believe that Jesus Christ is God. It is necessary that Jesus Christ was both human and divine that we might have someone who can intercede for us. It is this very truth that gives us access to God. Without coming to God apart from trust alone in Jesus Christ we have no guaranteed access to the Father.
B. Abide in Christ
The second prerequisite that Jesus lays down for this answered prayer is to abide in Christ. As we move to chapter 15 we see the second time that Jesus promises to answer our requests. In chapter 15:1-11, Jesus uses a metaphor to describe His relationship with believers. He says that He is a vine and we are His branches. The main point of this is that it is “fruitless” (literally) for us to try to live for Christ without seeking His life giving sustenance. Any branch that tries to do so is found useless and dries up.
What does it mean that we abide or remain in Christ? The imagery from Jesus’ metaphor is clear. To abide or remain in Christ means that we don’t (no pun intended) branch off on our own but that we continue to look for Christ to supply what is necessary to live for Him. When we abide in Christ and seek our nourishment from Him there is something else important that is going on. What is that? It is pruning. We find this in the second part of verse 2. Jesus says, “Every branch in me that bears fruit, He (that is my Father) prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. Pruning is the process by which the one who takes care of the vine causes the vine to produce more fruit. When a vinedresser prunes he looks for shoots on the vine that he sees will only deplete nourishment from the branch. If he doesn’t do this, the branch doesn’t bear fruit like it could.
If we want to abide in Christ, if we want to produce fruit for Him then we must expect and even ask God to prune us so that we will bear fruit for Him. We will discuss bearing fruit in more detail toward the end of the message but let it suffice for now. Spiritual pruning is the act by which God takes the believer and pinches and cuts out of the believer’s life anything that is minimizing their effectiveness for Christ.
If we are abiding in Christ, that is, if we are seeking to draw all our strength from Him then what is it that God needs to prune out of our lives? He needs to cut out self-sufficiency and self-reliance. We tend to go to God in the tough times and the hard problems but the rest we say let me handle it. He cuts away at that until we realize what Jesus said in verse 5, “Apart from me you can do nothing.” Oh we mouth those words with triteness but do we believe them. There was a pastor in Romania who upon de-training found out that he needed to leave immediately and leave his baggage in the open at the train station. If you’ve never been to Romania and met a gypsy you don’t realize how impossible it is to leave your bags alone for a moment. But he prayed, “Lord, I know that you can protect my bags while I must leave them alone and I entrust them to you.” When he returned a few hours later the bags were still there. Praying once again, he said, “Thank you Lord. I’ve got it now.” And before he was able to pick up his bags they were stolen from Him. We do the very same things. That which we think will take minutes, takes hours and we spin our wheels because we have not sought to rely on the Lord. Our lives are a mess for this very reason. We think we can handle it on our own and we are sorely mistaken.
He also needs to cut out self-protection. We want to live for God and obey Him but we put up our guard. God I’ve been hurt before and I won’t be hurt again. What if Christ had had that attitude? I won’t let those soldiers beat me; I won’t let them spit upon me; I’ll protect myself. If that had been the case we sure wouldn’t have had our forgiveness of sins through His blood. But we do this ourselves. And God has to prune it out of us. I won’t speak to her anymore because she hurt me. I won’t forgive that person because they’ll only do it again. I won’t use my resources to help that person because someone like that mistreated me.
Likewise, He needs to cut out self-elevation. Self wants to be exalted. What! Talk to my friends about Christ, but they’ll think I’m a fool. Pass up a job promotion because I’ll have less time to spend with my family and in His Word? I’ll never get the chance again. Self doesn’t want us to lower ourselves. Self doesn’t want us to walk a real walk for Christ.
There are other demonstrations of self in our lives. There is self-pleasing. There is self-pity and self-love both of which are really simply self-worship. Self-love flexes in the mirror (point with index finger) and says “You.” Self-pity flexes in the mirror and says, “Oooh.” And there is also self-deceit along with a million other manifestations of self. But self must be put on the cross.
Jesus lost most of His followers whenever He spoke about denying themselves and picking up their cross. You see the cross had the aroma of death to it. There was no middle ground for the cross bearer. Bearing the cross meant that you were going to die. And carrying the cross meant that you were going to be shamed.
As long as self doesn’t get thrown out on its ear its OK. That’s why self will say things like, “You can be a Christian but don’t have to go through the embarrassment of telling people about Jesus. You can be a Christian just don’t become too serious about it. Don’t start spending time each day reading the Scripture and praying. You can go to church but don’t take a stand for righteousness at work or worse among your family members.”
God needs to prune anything that smacks of self because it is the opposite of seeking only Christ to supply our life. Yes, self may promise all these good things, comfort, honor, worldly success. But the problem is that none of these things leads us to producing anything eternal.
So don’t back down when the pain comes. Don’t back down when Self says that it costs too much to progress in your relationship to Christ. Don’t back down as God works the pruning process in you. Self is only concerned about the temporary and what benefits you instead of what Christ wants. This is why we must let God prune us. Yes, we must ask God to prune us.
C. Ask the Father in the name of Christ
The third prerequisite that Jesus lays down for this answered prayer is to ask the Father in the name of Christ. We often end our prayers with the words, “In Jesus’ name” but do we know why we do it? Truly it is not the use of those words, like an incantation, that causes any kind of prayer machinery in heaven to begin to turn. Coming to the Father in Jesus’ name is recognizing the work of Christ that He would have us accomplish for Him. And so when we are asking our prayer in Jesus’ name we are asking the Father to act on our behalf to accomplish the work that Jesus would have accomplished had He still been on earth.
Jesus was about to leave earth to go to heaven, which He describes in the previous verses, and so He will not be doing any more work on earth in His physical body. But, as Jesus mentioned in 14:12, “the works that I do, [you] will do also; and greater works than these [you] will do; because I go to the Father.” So when we ask the Father for something in Jesus’ name we are asking for something to advance the work that Christ came to do, which was to bring people to faith in Himself.
2. Three Results
In these three passages Jesus gives us three results of this kind of prayer each marked by the words, “that” or “so that.” And as we look at these results I believe that it will help us to get a grasp on this kind of prayer that Jesus said He and the Father would answer. As we look at these results we will also now see how Jesus links each passage with the next by using the same words to show a progression from one passage to the other demonstrating that they are really one complete result that comes about from the answer to this prayer.
A. Bringing glory to the Father
The first result that we see is from chapter 14 and it is bringing glory to the Father. In verse 13, Jesus says, “Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” So the reason that Jesus said He would answer this prayer is so that Father would be glorified. What does it mean to glorify (or bring glory to) God? What does the term glory signify? The OT word for glory comes from the Hebrew that means “heavy.” The word was often used to describe things that were heavy literally. The word was also used more figuratively to describe anything substantial or impressive. The Bible says that Abram was heavy, but it had nothing to do with His waistline. It means that he was wealthy. “Abram had become very heavy in livestock and silver and gold” (Gen. 13:2).
Eventually the word came to mean anyone who was deserving of honor or recognition. We might call them, “the heavyweights.” This is what it means that God gains more glory. That people recognize how great He is. He is the biggest heavyweight of all. No one is more substantial, has more influence. No one has a higher position or a weightier reputation. No one is more deserving of honor, recognition or praise than God. (Ryken, Discovering God, p. 16).
And so when Jesus says that He will answer prayer that will result in His Father being glorified then He is saying that He will answer the kind of prayer that results in God getting the greatest honor.
So this gives us a starting point to begin how we should pray. Whatever we pray should seek as its ultimate goal to bring glory to God. Often we fool ourselves in our prayer life because what we pray for isn’t for God’s glory but simply to make our lives more comfortable. We pray that our son or daughter shouldn’t be stationed in Iraq. But is that really a prayer to bring glory to God? Wouldn’t a more God honoring prayer be, “God use them to shine your light wherever you send them” or God protect him in the midst of danger so that your greatness becomes evident to all around”?
B. Bearing fruit for the Father
The second result that we find is bearing fruit for the Father. We notice this in chapter 15. In verses 7 & 8 Jesus says, “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.”
Can you imagine with me, for a moment, that you are a branch? And as you are gathering around with other branches you begin to discuss what your purpose in life is. Some of you agree that it must be to gather together and talk about how great it is to be a branch. Some of you have branch conventions that discuss the importance of leaves in the life of a branch or how to survive the pain of pruning and coping with a deceased branch whom you loved. Other branches talk about how to overcome branch addictions.
But the point is that we do not abide in the vine and put up with the pruning simply to enjoy being a branch. We don’t sit around and celebrate our branchhood. God has given us a purpose as branches and that is to bear fruit. I believe bearing fruit doesn’t simply involve leading other people to faith in Christ though I think that this is a part of it. I think it also refers to the vitality and life of change brought about in the life of a person who knows Christ. Both of these are the production of Christ’s work in a person’s life.
If a person has no outward visible signs of spiritual life, if they are not rejoicing in God, if they are not in seeking to know Him in a greater way then they are not abiding in the vine. They are not in union with their Lord. If a branch is not producing fruit it is not in union with the vine. And when we bear fruit as an answer to our prayer (either spiritual growth or seeing people come to faith in Christ or seeing others growing spiritually because of our ministry to them) then Jesus says we are glorifying God (My Father is glorified by this that you bear much fruit). So what kind of prayer is this? This is a prayer that desires to glorify God by bearing fruit. And it is the kind of prayer that God loves to answer.
Do you see how verse 8 links the first result of prayer to this one? We need to pray that which glorifies God? And what glorifies God? It is when we bear much fruit. This brings honor to God.
Now bearing fruit for God ought not to be burdensome. Yet too often spiritual growth becomes burdensome because we are steeped in legalism. Legalism is our attempt to do what God wants in our strength instead of His strength. We focus on the wrong things. We ask the wrong questions. We focus on doing instead of being. We get into accountability groups instead of getting into union with Christ. We seek to surround ourselves with blockades from sin instead of crying out to Christ for the help we need. (There is nothing wrong with doing these other things – I set up accountability in my life, I avoid certain things to keep me from sinning – but these are not my salvation/these do not deliver me). We can break every blockade through the deceitfulness of our hearts. We can overcome every Internet filter with our own warped justifications. And this is why ultimately abiding in Christ, seeking Him and His strength is the only thing that will allow us to bear fruit without burdening our hearts.
Legalism will always crowd out any joy. Oh pride is there when we have victory in legalism and Self may revel in that for a while but that kind of victory is short-lived. Soon we still find the emptiness even though we’re overcoming sin, even though we are finding some measure of victory. This is because we are seeking to win in our own willpower instead of Christ. However, only as we continually go to Christ as the joy and rejoicing of our heart will we find real victory. If He is not our chief source of deliverance and salvation then He will not be our chief joy. I find myself going to Christ time and time again throughout my day saying, “Lord, I need you.”
C. Being given joy from the Father
What is the final result of our prayer that brings glory to the Father by bearing fruit for the Father? It is being given joy from the Father. In the second half of 16:24 we see the words of our Lord, “ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be made full.” The first thing that I want to do is to look back in chapter 15 so you can see the link between the prayer that glorifies God and brings forth fruit is the same prayer that brings us full joy. In verse 11 of chapter 15 Jesus, concluding the section about abiding in the vine and asking to bear fruit He says, “These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you and that your joy may be made full.” This full joy is the same joy of which Jesus speaks in chapter 16.
Think about it for a moment. When we are doing what we have been created to do we will experience ultimate joy. Doesn’t that make sense? A fish out of water isn’t too happy. It can’t do what it has been made to do – swim! When we are doing what God made us to do doesn’t it follow that we shall receive the greatest joy?
Anyone who has never experienced the joy of having a hand in someone getting saved has never known true joy. Someone who has never experienced Christ giving them victory over some sin has never known true joy. Someone who has never had the Holy Spirit reveal spiritual truth to them through the Bible hasn’t begun to really live. The joy to see God work in our lives is the most exciting thing that we can ever experience. I think it is because deep down inside we know that it isn’t us that is doing it. When we see someone come to faith in Christ who formerly hated Him and persecuted believers we are overjoyed because we know that God had to do it. When we see our lives change we marvel at God’s work. I can remember early in my Christian life, while still at college, I slammed my thumb in my dresser and I didn’t curse. I got so excited and thankful that I had to call my pastor and tell him. Why was I so excited because that wasn’t David the blasphemer, that was David the new creation in Christ. Christ’s power was manifesting itself in my life and I had full joy. So the end result of the right kind of prayer glorifies God by bearing fruit and it causes us to be filled with joy.
What I think we can conclude from this passage about prayer is perhaps not what we hoped for initially (A way to be able to determine how we can have everything we ask for). I don’t think this is what Jesus had in mind as He spoke these words. I think we can see that ultimately the kind of prayer that God answers here is what He wants to take place in our lives. And the progression that is going on in these passages shows us that if we are growing, if we are seeking God’s glory and seeking out Christ’s strength alone to live the Christian life our desires become His desires and so therefore our prayers become what God has desired and He answers them. And as we grow in the Christian life, through the pain that comes with pruning, we should be seeing the resulting increase in fruit that God desires for us and a growing satisfaction and an inexpressible joy in living for Jesus. When our goal of living becomes Christ and not self we will experience more and more of this God satisfied life. This satisfaction in God is not something that God plugs into our lives in an instant but it is a developing outgrowth of us pouring our lives into God.
And if we truly wish to endure the pain of denying self and embracing the cross we will find ourselves enjoying life in a way that we never could have dreamed if we had nourished self and denied Christ.