In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Isaiah’s vision of God sitting upon His heavenly throne from Isaiah chapter 6 is the perfect text for us to hear on the Feast of the Holy Trinity, because Isaiah’s vision reminds what God is like and this is the day in Church year when consider God’s properties and His essence. It’s the day when we Christians think more deeply about God Himself. 

The first thing that Isaiah’s vision reminds us of about God is that He is Triune. To be Triune means to be three in one. God is Three in One because even though there is only one God, the Bible teaches us that there are three distinct Persons in the Godhead. The Father is God. The Son is God. And the Holy Spirit is God. And yet, as we say in the Athanasian Creed, there are not three gods, but One God. When the angles sang to one another in Isaiah’s vision, they said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.” The angels called the One Lord, “holy,” three times over, because He is thrice holy. He is Three in One. 

Sometimes it’s suggested that the doctrine of the Trinity is not something that comes from the Bible but something that the Church just made up later on. But that’s not true at all. God has revealed Himself as Triune all throughout the Scriptures in both the Old and the New Testaments alike. In addition to what the angels sang in Isaiah vision, there is also, for example, the way that God spoke about Himself at the very beginning of creation. Right before God created Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter one, the Bible tells us that God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let him have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth. So, God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him.” Notice how in these verses God refers to Himself in both the singular and the plural. That’s because He is both of those things at the same time. He is Three in One. Likewise, we find another reference to the Trinity in the words of King David from Psalm 110. In fact, if you remember, this is the exact passage that Jesus once used to prove His divinity to the Pharisees. David says, in the Spirit, “The Lordsays to my Lord: ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.’” Here, again, we have a reference to all three Persons of the Holy Trinity. There is David speaking in the Spirit about God the Father talking with God the Son. And all of this comes from the same Old Testament that tells us plainly, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One.”

Besides the many references to the Trinity in the Old Testament, there are also, of course, an overwhelming number of passages about it in the New Testament. There’s Jesus’s Baptism where God the Father speaks from heaven to God the Son while God the Holy Spirit descends in the form of a dove. There are the words of Jesus from John 8 and John 14, where Christ tells us that He is the “I AM” and that whoever has “seen Him has seen the Father.” There’s the Great Commission, where Jesus commands His church to go and make disciples of all nations by baptizing them in God’s Name, the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And then there are the letters of Saint Paul in which almost every single one of them either begins or ends with an explicit reference to the Triune God. “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,” Paul says, “the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

The real reason why some people reject the doctrine of Trinity in not because it isn’t found in the Bible, but because it is hard for them to understand. In fact, it’s impossible for us to understand. How can God be Three in One? How can Jesus be God, and the Father be God, and the Holy Spirit be God, and there still only be One God? The answer is, only God knows. One of the things that makes God, God in the first place is the reality that He is beyond our understanding. God knows more than we do, and especially about Himself. If we can’t even understand things like gravity, or time and space, and get overwhelmed when we try think about how those things for too long, then why would we expect to have prefect understanding of the One who made all of those things to begin with? We shouldn’t. We should approach God with humility. We should listen to what God says about Himself in His Word and then we should simply say back to Him the same thing, even if it doesn’t always make perfect sense to us.

The doctrine of the Trinity is not a way to try and explain God, or make sense of God, it is the Biblical way to confess God. We confess God in the way that He tells us to confess Him, because every other thing that someone might say about Him is just another way to deny Him. Whenever a person denies the doctrine of the Trinity, or any other teaching from the Bible for that matter, because it’s beyond their reason, what they are really doing is denying God Himself. They’re putting themselves in the place of God, and worshiping their own brain instead of the One who gave it. They are turning their mind into an idol. But the problem with idols is that they can’t save us. Only God can save us. And as we are reminded from Isaiah’s vision, the real God is Triune. He is Three in One.

The second thing that Isaiah’s vision reminds us of about God is that He is Holy. Besides being Three in One, and each Person of the Trinity being perfectly united with one another other while at the same time perfectly distinct from each other, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are also altogether perfect in every way imaginable. Again, when the angels sang their song about God in Isaiah’s vision they said, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.” God is Holy in and of Himself because He is without the one thing that makes something unholy. God is without sin. As the Bible says elsewhere, “You are not a God who delights in wickedness; and evil may not dwell with you.” 

Yes, it’s true that when the prophet Isaiah got to look at God in all of His glory, it made him very afraid. But the reason why Isaiah was so terrified was not because there was something wrong with God, but because there was something wrong with him. Isaiah was a sinner.  As Isaiah himself said, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” All throughout the Scriptures, there are examples of sinners coming into contact with God and that encounter bringing them to their knees in humble repentance. What did Saint Peter do when he witnessed the miraculous catch of fish? The moment that Peter realized what had taken place, and who he was standing next to, he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet and said to Him, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man.”

God’s Word shows us repeatedly that it’s not safe for sinners to stand in the presence of God with their sin. And that’s not because God is not good. It is because His goodness is so good that it cannot tolerate any evil at all. Just like a police officer can be good and dangerous at the same time, because they’re dangerous to those who are breaking the law, that is how it is with God too. That is how it is with the Author of the Law. One of the things that His perfect holiness always does is expose our unholiness. It shows us just how bad our sin really is.

It's become very popular these day for churches to replace Biblical concepts like “sin” with words that don’t sound so accusatory like “brokenness.” Especially among the so-called Evangelicals, you will hear people go on and on about how broken they are or how broken the world is, but what you will rarely, if ever, hear them talk about is who did the breaking. But that is very far away from what Isaiah said about himself, and not nearly enough of what the Bible tells us about ourselves. Who did the breaking? Why is there so much suffering in the world? It is not because of God, and it is not only because of other people. It’s also because of us. And the problem with “brokenness theology” is that it shifts the blame away from us. It allows people not to take accountability for their own sin, which makes it impossible for them to receive forgiveness for it.

The first thing that we Lutherans do in our worship services is have confession and absolution. When we come into God’s House, and approach the throne of His holy altar, before we say anything else, the first thing that we say is that we don’t deserve to be there. The first thing that we do is acknowledge that if God did what was right, that is, if He did what He had every right to do, we wouldn’t be allowed to be there at all. We don’t shift the blame to somebody else. We don’t pretend that there is no one to blame at all. We take the blame ourselves. If we have sin in our lives, we confess it for what it is. If we’ve put things before God and His Word, if we’ve skipped church, been lazy in our prayers or devotional life, dishonored our parents, hurt our neighbor, polluted our bodies, lied, lusted, cheated, or stolen, we admit it. We own up to it and we repent of it. We ask God to take away our sins from us, because if He didn’t do that, then our sins without a doubt condemn us. If God didn’t remove our sins from us, then as Isaiah says, we would all be lost. And again, that is because God is holy.

But the last, and the most important thing, that Isaiah’s vision reminds us of about God, is that He is merciful. Not only is God Triune, and not only is He holy, but above all, He is forgiving. The perfect God wants to be with His imperfect creatures. And since, we cannot stand to be with Him because of our sins, He Himself does what we could never do and takes those sins away. After Isaiah cried out to God in repentance, after he admitted to God who he was, what he had done, and what he deserved to happen to him because he did it, what did God do for Isaiah? God sent one of the seraphim to him, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. Then the angel touched Isaiah’s mouth and said to him, “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”

When we confess our sins to God, God forgives them. He forgives them, because He has already atoned for them. His very own Son paid the price for them all. As we read in Revelation chapter 13, “the Lamb was slain from the creation of the world.” That doesn’t mean that Jesus died on the cross before God made the heavens and the earth, but it does mean that what He did in space and time, counts for everyone no matter what place and time they live in. Isaiah lived long before Jesus was ever born, and you live long after. But the atoning sacrifice of Christ is what makes it possible for us to stand in God’s presence. 

One of my favorite parts of the Lutheran Liturgy, besides the confession of sin, is what we sing right before the pastor says the Words of Institution and we take Communion. I don’t know if you’ve ever made this connection before, but we sing the song of the angles. We sing the same thing that the six-winged seraphim sang from our reading today: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of power and might; heaven and earth are full of His glory.” The reason why we sing that song when we do is because it reminds us of how the same thing that happened for Isaiah also happens for us. When Isaiah confessed His sins to God, and humbled himself before the Lord, God provided him with a pledge and promise of His forgivness. When Isaiah admitted that he was a man of unclean lips, who dwelled in the midst of a people of unclean lips too, God sent one of His messengers to take something off the altar and place it on his lips to cleanse him. And what happens for us when we take Holy Communion? God sends one of His messengers to His altar again, to place something on our lips that cleanse us too. He gives us a pastor to bring us the Body and Blood of Jesus, which though it can be like a burning coal for those who take it wrongly, is the assurance of forgivness, life, and salvation, for all those who receive it in faith.

The celebration of the Lord’s Supper is the high point of our worship service. It’s the greatest moment in our life, even though it can happen every week or multiple times a week, because it’s the moment that we come in contact with the Triune God who gives us healing. If you’re weak and ashamed, if you’re disgusted with yourself and your sins, if you’ve done things that make you feel gross, and you wish you’d never done them, but can’t take them back, God has given you a remedy for that. He’s given you the Blood of His Son. Remember what Saint John tells us about the Blood of Christ in 1 John chapter 1. The blood of Jesus His Son,” he says, “cleanses us for all sin.” All sin. The sins you know about. The sins you’ve forgotten. The sins that keep you up at night. And the sins that you just can’t seem to stop doing no matter how hard you try. Through the blood of Jesus, God takes them away. And when you eat His Body and drink His Blood, in faith God cleanses you from them, like He cleansed Isaiah. He makes you fit for His presence and His service, and equips you to live in your vocations with a clean conscience.

Isaiah’s vision of God from Isaiah chapter six reminds us what God is like. He is triune. He is holy. And He is merciful. That’s the way that God has revealed Himself to us in His Word, and so that’s the way that we confess Him before the world. That is what we say about Him even if it means saying things that other people don’t like to hear. The world doesn’t think that it’s very nice to tell the Mormons, the Muslims, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the Jews that they aren’t worshiping the true God because all of them deny the Trinity. But we say it anyway, because we know that it’s only the Triune God who can save us. It’s only Jesus who has the power to take away our sin. And He has. So let us worship Him in the Unity of the Divine Majesty, praising God together with the angels, and singing with them, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of Hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.” In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Forty days after Jesus rose from the dead, the Bible tells us that He ascended into heaven and took His seat at the right hand of God. This is definitely one of those events from the life of Christ that doesn’t get as much attention as it probably should. Either people don’t really think about it that much at all, at least not as much as they do about our Lord’s death and resurrection, or they think about it in a way that’s completely different than what the Bible actually says about it. For example, I think lots of people just assume that when Jesus ascended into heaven, it was more or less the same kind of thing as when our loved ones go to heaven after they die. Just like grandma or grandpa are in heaven now, that’s where Jesus is at too.

But that’s not actually what the ascension means. And that one misunderstanding can lead to other misunderstandings too. It can deprive of the real benefits of this event, which as we say in the Creed, Jesus did for us and for our salvation. So, in today’s sermon, I’m going to do two things. In the first half, I’m just going to walk through what the Bible says the ascension really means, and in the second half, I’m going to explain what it means for us, as in, what are the benefits of this event for our faith.

Again, when the Bible tells us that Jesus ascended into heaven, we should not think about that in the same way that we think about our loved ones who die and go to heaven. On the one hand, when that happens to our loved ones, it’s only their souls that go to heaven and not their bodies. We bury their bodies in the ground to wait for the resurrection of the dead. But Jesus ascended not just in His soul, but in His body too. As Saint Mark tells us in our Gospel lesson today, “So then the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sat down at the right hand of God.” And as Saint Luke reminds us in the book of Acts, the disciples literally saw it happen with their own eyes: “And when He had said these things, as they were looking on, He was lifted up, and a cloud took Him out of their sight." Do we normally get to see people’s souls visibly go to heaven after they die? Never. And yet, Jesus let His disciples see this.

Furthermore, the Bible teaches us that when the soul of a believer goes to be with Christ in heaven after they die, they’re not able to leave there. As we read in the account of the rich man and Lazarus, “A great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.” And yet, when it comes to the Jesus’ ascension, nowhere does God’s Word tell us that He was confined by it in any way at all. In fact, precisely the opposite is true. As Saint Paul tells us in Ephesians chapter 4, “He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.” And as Paul also says in Ephesians 2, [God the Father] raised [Jesus] from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority… and He put all things under His feet and gave Him as head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fulness of Him who fills all in all.” 

This is an amazing thing! The ascension of Jesus doesn’t mean that He’s trapped somewhere, it means that He can go anywhere. It means that He already is everywhere. And not just as God, which He always was, but now even as a man. Who is it that ascended far above the heavens and fills all things? It’s Jesus.

The interpretive key that unlocks the correct understanding of what happened at the ascension is this term from the Bible, “the right hand of God.” Again, Mark tells us that when Jesus ascended, He took His seat and God’s right hand. But in the Scriptures, the right hand of God is not a place. It’s a power. Just like we use our right hand to accomplish most of the things that we do, God’s right hand is a reference to His omnipotence and His omnipresence. As we read in Psalm 118, “Glad songs of salvation are in the tents of the righteous: ‘the right hand of the Lord does valiantly, the right hand of the Lord exalts.” And as it says in Psalm 139, “If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.” When the people of Israel were delivered from bondage to slavery in Egypt, and God led them through the waters of the Red Sea on dry ground, Moses tells us that God did it by His right hand. He means that He did it by His own strength and power and not that of anyone else’s. So, when the Bible says that Jesus ascended to the right hand of God, like we say in the Creed, it doesn’t mean that He went to some location far away from us. It means that He took up the fullness of His almighty power. Christ left His state of humiliation, where He didn’t always use His divine abilities completely, but limited Himself in certain ways, and now, He limits Himself no longer. He enters into the full state of His exultation, and communicates all of His divine attributes to His human nature. Not just as God, but also as a Man, Christ fills all things. Not just as God, but as a Man, He rules and reigns over everything in heaven and on earth. Jesus visibly went up into the clouds, not to show how He was going away, but to show how He lords over everything. He’s above it all.

And that’s where all the benefits come from for you and for me. Because Christ has ascended into heaven and taken His seat at the right hand of God, meaning, because He has taken up the fullness of His divine power even as a Man, that means so many comforting things for all of mankind.

First, it means that we have victory over our enemies. Listen to what Psalm 68 says about Jesus’ ascension, “You ascended on high leading a host of captives in your train.” The imagery here from the Psalmist is that of a Roman triumph. After the Romans conquered an enemy of theirs, they would have a great big parade to celebrate it. The victorious general would ride into the city first, standing in a chariot, and behind him, usually stripped naked and humiliated would be the leader of the enemy army that he had defeated. Christ defeated our enemies of sin, death, and the devil, through His death and resurrection. He stripped them naked, so to speak, and humiliated them, by taking away their power to condemn us. And in His ascension, Jesus reminds us of it. As Saint Paul says in Colossians 2, “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.”

Remember where it says that Jesus ascended from. It is was on the mount of Olives. That’s the place where the garden of Gethsemane is. Christ returned to the same location where some of the fiercest fighting for our salvation was done, the place where He literally sweat drops of blood just thinking about what He was going to endure, in order to proclaim His victory. And just like the angels came and ministered to Him after that battle was over, this time the angels stood by watching in wonder at the glory Jesus had brought to us men.

The ascension of Jesus also means, of course, that there is a place in heaven for all believers. Because Christ ascend into heaven, indeed, far above all the heavens, we can have confidence that through faith in Him, we will go to heaven someday too. In fact, the Bible tells us that our eternal life in Jesus is so secure for those who trust in Him that it’s as if we are already there. Here’s another passage from Saint Paul about the ascension, this time from Ephesians chapter 2, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

You and I, and every baptized child of God who trusts in Jesus for salvation, has been united to Him through faith. As the Bible says, He is the Head, and we are His body. So, if our Head has been glorified, we get the glory too. If our Head is in heaven, meaning eternally in the presence of God, we know that someday we’ll be there too. Didn’t that hymn that we sang at the beginning of the service, just hit the nail right on the head: “On Christ’s ascension I now build, the hope of my ascension; this hope alone has always stilled all doubt and apprehension; for where the Head is there as well I know His members are to dwell when Christ will come and call them.” Humanities place is with God. Jesus made that clear when He ascend into heaven as a Man. And He will return in the same way that His disciples saw Him go, to bring every man, woman, and child who believes in Him there enterally. As Christ said right before His ascension, “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.” 

And finally, the ascension of Jesus also means that we have access to Christ’s saving presence here and now in the means of grace, especially in Holy Communion. sometimes the ascension of Jesus has been used to try and denying the bodily presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar. If you know, this is the official position of Reformed churches, who follow in the theological tradition of John Calvin. They argue that when we take Communion, we can’t possibly be eating and drinking the real Body and Blood of Christ, because His Body is up in heaven. What they say is that through faith, our hearts ascend to heaven, where we feast upon Christ there spiritually. But Christianity is not about us going up to heaven to get Jesus. It is about Jesus coming down from heaven to get us. And the ascension doesn’t mean that Jesus can’t be with us bodily. It means the exact opposite! It assures us that every time we take the Lord’s Supper, we get the full Body and Blood of Jesus, even though He only has one Body. Unlike our bodies, His body can be in more than one place at the same time, because He no longer puts any limits on that body at all. Remember, Jesus “fills all things.”

When Christ our Lord said, “Take eat, this is my body,” He meant it. And when Jesus said “Behold I am with you always, to the end of the age,” He meant that too. Who is the One that promises to always be with us? It’s Jesus. And who is Jesus? Is Jesus just God? No, Jesus is also a Man. And the God man Jesus is with us whenever we men and women need Him. Chiefly, He is with us in His Body and Blood on the altar.

I heard a great story the other day from our district President, Pastor Saunders, at our circuit meeting. He told the story about one of his adult members who was handicapped. She was about fifty years old, but had the mind of 10-year-old instead. Apparently, she liked country music, and there’s some song about “where heaven is.” And when President Saunders asked her one time on a Communion visit, where is heaven, she pointed to the bread and wine on the table and said, “Right there, pastor.” That’s the faith of child. The kind of faith we need to take the Sacrament rightly. Heaven is where Jesus is. And Jesus is present where He’s promised to be. He’s present in His Body and Blood.

No, the ascension of our Lord doesn’t mean that Jesus is far away from us at all. It means that He is very close; closer than He could ever be. He draws so near to us poor sinners, that we are united with Him in the means of grace. Christ shares with us every heavenly blessing that He obtained through His life, death, and resurrection. Our sins are forgiven. We won’t go to hell. Our bodies will come back to life. And Jesus will never leave us or forsake us.

“He has raised our human nature

On the clouds to God’s right hand;

There we sit in heavenly places,

There with Him in glory stand.

Jesus reigns, adored by angels;

Man with God is on the throne.

By our mighty Lord’s ascension

We by faith behold our own.”

In Jesus’ Name. Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The main theme for the sixth Sunday of Easter, which is called “Rogate,” and that means “to ask,” is the theme of prayer. This is a very appropriate topic for us to discuss on Mother’s Day, not only because for many of us it was our moms who first showed us how to pray, but also because there are few people in this world that probably pray more than mothers do for their children. I can still remember how my mom told me once that she prayed every night before bed that her four boys would find good Christian women to marry and that when we got older, we wouldn’t wander away from the faith. I thank God for giving me a mom that prayed that for me, and now I pray it for my own kids too.

Prayer is a wonderful gift that comes from the Lord. Jesus even tells is in our Gospel lesson today from John chapter 16 that the reason why God gave it to us was so that we would have joy. As Christ says in verse 24 of our text “Ask and you will receive that your joy may be full.” Prayer isn’t supposed to be something that causesus anxiety, it’s supposed to be something that takes it away. And yet, in order for that to happen, we also need to understand how to do it in the right kind of way.

The right kind of way to pray, according to God’s Word, is in Jesus’ Name. Again, as Jesus says in our text today, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in My Name, He will give it to you.” But what exactly does it mean to pray in the Name of Jesus?

Certainly, praying in Jesus’ Name doesn’t just mean that you end your prayers with those exact words. If you notice not even the Lord’s Prayer includes the exact phrase “in Jesus’ Name.” But that, of course, doesn’t mean that it’s a bad prayer. In fact, the Lord’s prayer is the best prayer of all. It’s a perfect prayer, because it includes every possible thing that we could ever ask for from God and summarizes all of it for us succinctly. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we can have confidence that were praying correctly, because it’s literally the word of God. That’s how every good prayer starts. It doesn’t start with our own ideas or our own wisdom. It starts with the wisdom of God, which is given to us in His Holy Word.

Praying in Jesus’ Name also doesn’t mean using God’s Name as some kind of magic formula to get whatever you want. There was a very popular movement not too long ago in our country, called the “name it and claim it movement,” which taught this exact thing. Rich television personalities maintained that if you prayed in Jesus’ Name, and you believe in what you were praying about, you could get anything. If you wanted to be rich, God will bless you with lots of money. If you wanted to get cured of some disease, you could get that too. So long as you had enough faith, meaning so long as you wanted it bad enough, if you used Jesus’ Name, in just the right way, you could get it.

But that’s not what it means to pray in Jesus’ Name. We have all kinds of examples from the Bible of people trying to use Jesus’ Name for that purpose, but still not getting what they asked for. For example, in the book of James, James tells us in James chapter 4 that “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” We shouldn’t expect God to give us things that we want to use for sinful purposes. What kind of a good God would do that? Or what about the story of the sons of Sceva from Acts chapter 19? Do you remember that one? That’s when a couple of Jewish exorcists tried to use Jesus’ Name to cast out a demon, but because they didn’t actually believe in him, the demon jumped on top of them and overpowered them all. So, using Jesus’ Name to try and get things, or thinking that you can trick God into giving you stuff if you want it bad enough, isn’t what praying in the Name of Jesus is about. 

What it’s about is praying for things in faith. And praying is faith is not about getting God to do the things that you think are best, it’s about receiving whatever God gives knowing that His will is best. It’s about trusting in the fact that because God has already given you the forgivness of sins in Jesus, He will certainly give you whatever else you need too. You can be confident that God is never holding out on you, because He didn’t even hold back His own Son from you. As Paul says in Romans 8, “He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not with Him gracious give us all things.”

The people that give the impression that our praying or our believing by itself cause things to happen, have it exactly backwards. Faith doesn’t do. It receives. And prayer doesn’t do anything either, at least not in that sense. Good prayer recognizes that God is the One who does everything. That’s the reason why we’re praying! Because we can’t do anything without Him. “Apart from me,” Jesus says, “you can do nothing.” And that’s what praying in his Name is all about. 

Besides asking for things in faith, praying in Jesus’ Name also means praying according to God’s Word. True faith rest in the promises that God’s actually made, not in promises that He hasn’t. How would we even know what sort of things God wants us to have, if we didn’t have His Word? We don’t just look around and think about the things that we want. We have to look at the Scriptures. That’s where God speaks to us. That’s where the Holy Spirit guides us so that we don’t end up in the wrong place. When people try and look for signs in the world around them, and especially when they think about prayer as means to make those signs happen, they end up just interpreting them the way they want anyway. The use the façade of signs to legitimize whatever decision they’re making, even though it’s impossible to prove that the sign actually came from God. But our faith, and our prayers, aren’t supposed to be built on every changing signs. They’re supposed to be built upon the unchanging truth of God’s Word. Only then can we have confidence that we will receive the things for which we ask.

And just because it looks like we didn’t get the exact thing that we prayed for, that doesn’t mean that we didn’t. It certainly doesn’t mean that we didn’t have enough faith. Did Saint Paul not have faith in Jesus, when he pleaded with the Lord three times to remove the thorn that was in his flesh and God told him, “No.” Did King David not have faith in Jesus, when he prayed and fasted all night that his son wouldn’t die, and God did not let the baby get better? Did Moses not have faith in Jesus when He asked God to let him cross over into the promised land and instead the Lord only let him see it from a distance? And what about the prayer that Jesus Himself prayed in the garden of Gethsemane? In the mystery of His state of humiliation, our Lord prayed multiple times that if it were possible for the cup of His suffering to pass from Him, that God would take it away. Did that mean that Jesus did not have enough faith? Of course, it didn’t. Jesus had perfect faith. He completely trusted in the will of His Father at every single turn. And yet, Jesus still had to go to the cross and suffer for our sins.

Sometimes God answers our prayers in good ways that we can’t even see. Sometimes we ask for the wrong things without even knowing it and God gives us something better instead. Sometimes we are completely unaware until later on just how merciful and kind our Heavenly Father was to us when we came to Him asking for help. That’s because God always has the bigger picture in view. He sees every moment of our life at once, and He knows exactly what is best to actually bring us to our eternal home. Lots of times we think we know what is best, but we don’t. But God still does. He desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, and He works all things together for the good of those who love him. And when we pray for things with that perspective in mind, then it becomes easier to see how God actually does give us everything that we ask for in Jesus’ Name. 

Go back to those same examples. Yes, it's true that God did not take away the thorn from Saint Paul’s side, but He did give him something even better. God gave Paul the assurance of His grace. God reminded Paul how His power is made perfect in weakness so that Paul could continue to trust in the Lord and be saved. No, God did not let King David’s son get better from his sickness in this earthly life, but He did usher David’s son into everlasting life early. Remember what David said after the baby died, “He cannot come to me, but I will go to him.” It’s true, God did not let Moses go into the promised land, but He did take Moses directly to the promised land of heaven. Which is better, a piece of land in the Middle East that people are still fighting over or a place in our Father’s House where there are many rooms? And no, God did not take away the cup of His wrath from Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, but by letting His only begotten Son drink it, God satisfied His wrath over sins of the whole world and made it possible for everyone who believes in Him to be saved.

And just like God did those things for all of them, we know that He will do the same kinds things for us too. We know that not because we’re better than any of them, or because we deserve it more, but because just like them, we’re also God’s dear children. In the waters of our Baptism, God adopted us into His family, and poured His Spirit in our hearts crying “Abba, Father.” He made us part of His house, and gave us all the rights and privileges of true sons and daughters. As Jesus says elsewhere, “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg will instead give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”

God always answers the prayers that we pray in faith. Even when we don’t know what to pray for, and even when we unknowingly pray for things that could harm us, as it says in Romans chapter 8, the Holy Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. God takes our feeble and imperfect prayers and He polishes them up, and then He provides the perfect response to them. He does that not by giving us necessarily what we always expect, but by giving us exactly what we need the most in order to remain faithful to Him to the end.

Prayer is a good topic to talk about on any day, but it’s especially good for us to think about on Mother’s Day. Few people pray as much as moms do for their kids. They worry about them all the time. But Jesus tells us in our text today that when we pray to God in the right way it’s lead to our joy. When we pray in Jesus’ Name, meaning, when we pray in faith, trusting in God’s Word, then God uses our prayers to give us comfort. What could be more comforting to a mom who’s worried about her kids than the knowledge that Jesus died for them and God wants them to be saved? What could give her more peace of mind then knowing that we have a merciful God who proved that by offering up His own Son in our place? Moms, even if you can’t give certain things to your kids, God still can. And He loves them even more than you do. Remember that before you say your prayers at night. And remember that no matter what God gives, in the end, through faith Jesus, your joy will be complete.  In Jesus’ Name. Amen.