I'm Praying for You

Seventh Sunday of Easter

June 1, 2014

John 17:9

I'm Praying for You

In the name of Jesus.

I.

“I'm praying for you.” When you encourage someone else with this promise, you're saying to them that you know they are hurting and you are going to ask Jesus to be merciful to them.

The amazing thing about Jesus' mercy is that it doesn't depend on how many trains or chains or circles are praying. Jesus isn't hard of hearing—He hears the prayer of just one small voice that trusts His promise to be merciful to His people.

Look at Abraham's prayer for Sodom. There must have been many prayers against Sodom demanding that that wicked city be destroyed. There had to be many prayers in Sodom demanding that they be allowed to continue in their own wickedness. But the prayer God heard was Abraham's prayer for mercy for God's righteous people.

The [two angels] turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord. Then Abraham approached Him and said: “Will You sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will You really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from You to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from You! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

The Lord said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.” (Genesis 16:22-26)

God doesn't act on the basis of the world's sense of its own rightness. The world around Sodom wanted the Sodomites dead—no more mercy. The Sodomites wanted to continue in their deadly perversion—no more truth.

Truthfully, our prayers often refuse to speak the truth in love.

They often veer into blasphemy. When we curse someone else to hell, wishing that God would damn them to hell, we are praying, but not according to His mercy.

When we pray for peace, love, and harmony for our lives and for our society, but refuse to confess our own sin and the sin around us, we aren't praying according to His mercy, either.

God doesn't act on the basis of the world's sense of its own rightness. Instead He acted according to His promises to be merciful. This mercy is shown to us by God acting through His Word to declare us right and good in His sight. And He has kept His promise.

II.

And this is the essence of every good prayer: holding God to His promises. Jesus Himself taught and catechesized us into this good way of prayer, as He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. Minutes before Judas betrayed Jesus to the Jewish mob, Jesus was insisting that His Father keep His promises.

Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You, even as You gave Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life. This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do. (John 17:1-4)

Jesus' Father in heaven would glorify Him by raising Him from the dead after He died on the cross. At the moment of His Son's death, the Father tore down the curtain in the Temple that had symbolized the apart-ness between God and man. And now that togetherness that we enjoy with God is mercy. Jesus prayed,

I ask on their behalf; I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom You have given Me; for they are Yours (John 17:9)

III.

Nowhere is this togetherness between God and man more enjoyed than in prayer. When we pray to each other, “The Lord be with you, and also with you,” we are recognizing the reality of our togetherness in Christ our Lord. That's why we say it twice during His Service to us. Since His presence among us in His Word and in His Supper is so easy to overlook, we joyfully pray and confess the truth in love by speaking His words to us again and again. We got back to the beginning of Easter, where Jesus Himself repeats His mercy to us.

On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord. Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.” (John 20:19-23)

In the name of the Father

and of the † Son

and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.