In Jesus' Name - Praying Through God the Son

We are continuing our series on the reasons we pray as Christians, which is an attempt to strip back all the reasons we may come to God in prayer, all the reasons we may ask God for things, and try to boil down to some of the basic principles of why we pray as Christians. So far, in this series, we've seen in the first week that God has revealed Himself to us as a personal God. That not only is He the creator of everything around us, but He invites us. He has chosen to make Himself known to us. That causes us to be able to relate to Him in some way, and fundamentally, we profess that that is through prayer.

Secondly, the following week after that, we saw that God has bound Himself to a specific people through something called the covenant. God has promised Himself. He has promised a relationship to a specific people, namely us, through this thing called the covenant, a solemn promise that He would be our God and we would be His people. Then last week, we saw that God has adopted this special people as a father adopts sons and daughters. So we relate through prayer to God the Father as a child does to their dad.

And today, we're going to look at the second person in the Trinity, God the Son, Jesus Christ, and His role as redeemer and mediator, and how it relates to prayer. Let's turn firstly to one of two passages we're going to really focus on this morning. Colossians 1:15-20. A very well known passage on the preeminence of Christ as the ESV titles it. Colossians 1:15.

Paul writes, He who is Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him, all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. With the thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him, all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church.

He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything He might be preeminent. For in Him, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him, to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross. So the first thing for us to recognise as we think about those first principles of prayer, why we pray, is to understand that when we pray, we approach God through Jesus Christ as our creator and redeemer. The son of God is our creator and redeemer. In verse 15 of Colossians 1, the Bible says that in Jesus Christ, God Himself has been shown to us.

So two weeks ago, we saw that God reveals Himself. Here and in many other parts in the New Testament, we are told that Jesus Christ is the most excellent presentation of God, revelation of God. He is the image of the invisible God. If you have ever wondered where is God, the answer is look to Jesus, and you will see Him.

There is no doubt that in this passage, Paul is stating the divine nature of Jesus. If a Jehovah's Witness comes to you to discuss the person of Jesus, bring them to this passage and show them that He is the image of the invisible God. But this passage does more than state that Jesus is God. It's also explaining that His role as the Son of God in the Godhead, what that role meant, what that role meant for us as God's people. Paul highlights Christ's divinity when He tells us in verses 16 and 17, Jesus has existed before all things and that in the Godhead or through the Godhead, He was the one who created all things.

All things in heaven and on earth, whether invisible or visible, whether thrones, powers, rulers, or authorities, God created all things through or by Jesus Christ. Now that is very significant because as Christians, if you've been a Christian for a long time, you will be very familiar with Jesus Christ as saviour. You may also believe that He is divine. But did you know that He was the creating power of creation itself? All things were made by Him and for Him.

And we know in other parts of the Bible that God the Father created the world, but we are to understand that the Father created the universe in the sense that He decided that the universe should exist. It was the Father's will for the world to exist, but it was God the Son who set about creating it. He is the power, in other words, behind the creation of the universe. But then not only was Jesus the creating power of creation, but verse 17 says that all things are said to be dependent on Him for their existence. In Him, all things hold together.

Like muscles in our body holding our skeleton upright, so Jesus holds the aspects of the universe together without it falling into a quivering mess. So here in Colossians 1, Paul is firstly making the point that Jesus, the second person in the Trinity, is the king of all creation. But then in the same breath, Paul moves on very quickly in verse 18 to say that He's also the king of salvation, king of creation and king of salvation. Verse 18 calls Him the firstborn from the dead. What is that referring to?

Well, this is talking about Jesus and His resurrection. When Jesus came back to life after His sacrifice on the cross, He showed us in that moment the reality of this afterlife. But not only are we shown that there's life after death, we are shown that physical death has also been conquered. So when Jesus says the night before He goes to the cross in John 14:19, because I live, you too will live. Jesus is assuring His disciples that when they see Him again as the resurrected Christ, they will know that this is true.

Death and sin has been conquered through His actions at the cross and the presentation of the empty tomb. It was in this death and this resurrection that the Trinity accomplished the great plan of God, which was the salvation of humanity. We heard a few weeks ago that because of our sin and our rebellion, we had a broken relationship with this triune God. But here in verses 19 to 20, it says that Jesus in the fullness of God, having the fullness of God pleased to dwell in Him, He was able to reconcile the world back to God. Listen to the far reaching language.

Through Christ, all things have been reconciled to God. Creation itself, creation itself, not just humanity, has been reconciled, brought back, redeemed to God. The same all things that God, through Christ, had created has now been redeemed by Christ through the shedding of His blood on the cross. And so that is the first point, that Jesus, as the Son of God, was both the power of creation and also the dying saviour that redeemed creation. But that's not where the role of who Jesus is ends.

Not only is Jesus our representative and the cause of our salvation through His death and resurrection, Jesus also ascended back to heaven so that He now stands in the presence of the triune God to be our representative there, which is our second great reason for prayer. The Son of God is a mediator and high priest. We're going to turn to our second main passage this morning, which is Hebrews chapter 2. The book of Hebrews chapter 2 verse 5. For it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come of which we are speaking.

It has been testified somewhere, what is man that You are mindful of him, or the son of man that You care for him? You made him for a little while lower than the angels. You have crowned him with glory and honour, putting everything in subjection under his feet. Now in putting everything in subjection to him, He left nothing outside His control. At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection to Him, but we see Him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honour because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God, He might taste death for everyone.

For it was fitting that He, for whom and by whom all things exist, that's the same language of Colossians, in bringing many sons to glory, that He should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why He is not ashamed to call them brothers saying, I will tell of Your name to my brothers in the midst of the congregation. I will sing Your praise. And again, I will put my trust in Him.

And again, behold, I and the children God has given me. Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death, He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely, it is not angels that He helps, but He helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore, He had to be made like His brothers in every respect so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because He Himself has suffered when tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted.

We looked last week at the first person in the Trinity, God the Father, and we said that one of the key understandings of prayer to understanding our relationship to God is to understand the father child dynamic of our faith, that we have been adopted into the family of God. So much so that we can claim that God is our Father. But if God the Father becomes our Father, what has that done to Jesus Christ, the Son of God? Well, the picture of Hebrews chapter 2 paints a picture of Christ as an older brother. In the book of Hebrews, in the passage we just read, we find all these Old Testament references, and all of them are pointing us to the idea of Jesus leading a congregation to praise God.

Verse 12 sums it up as Jesus coming to God the Father and saying, I will tell of Your name to my brothers in the midst of the congregation, I will sing Your praise. We see Jesus here as a family member of ours. He is like an older brother leading us back to God the Father. Verse 13, here I am, He says, with the children You asked me to bring back to You.

Not only does Jesus bring us back to the Father, but He is also bringing the Father closer to us. Jesus has become a high priest. In the ancient times, a priest was the representative between God and the people. A priest spoke on God's behalf, ministering His forgiveness on God's behalf. They reminded people of God's will.

And here in Hebrews 2, we see Jesus doing something similar. Many years ago, when I was studying Hebrew at Bible College, we had an excursion, which was quite rare for Bible College classes. We went to a Jewish synagogue in Brisbane, and we could witness, at least in the Gentile section, what was happening in the assembly and in the congregation there. One of the things that struck my mind is how the rabbi led the worship in the synagogue by singing the words of scripture to the people. Very rarely did he simply read.

He would have young boys come and read part of the Torah as part of their training, but he himself sang the words of scripture to the people. It was only the rabbi that was allowed to do that. And I suspect that it was a throwback to the days of temple worship where the priests would sing the words of God and mediate His promises to them. Here in the book of Hebrews, we are told that Jesus has become this mediator par excellence. Hebrews 8, a few chapters later, tells us that He is a high priest sitting at the right hand of God the Father, a minister in the holy places.

That word minister in the Greek is where we get the English word liturgy from. It means He is a leader of worship. Jesus is a minister in the holy places, and it means that Jesus, as our worship leader, enables us with one heart, one soul, one voice to bring our praises into the presence of the heavenly Father. And He, in turn, administers the promises of God back to us. We saw the priestly and brotherly heart of Jesus during His earthly ministry as well.

That is one of the great comforts of the gospels. We saw Him act as this priest in His life. Ed Clowney, in his little article, A Biblical Theology of Prayer writes this. At every crisis of His ministry, Jesus spent hours in prayer. He prayed as He was baptised.

He prayed before He chose the 12 disciples to be with Him. After He fed the 5,000, He sent away His disciples, dismissed the multitudes, and went up into a mountain to pray alone. The crowds would have marched Him to Jerusalem to crown Him as their political messiah, but He came to do His Father's will. He would go to Jerusalem not to wield the spear and bring the judgement, but to receive the spear thrust and bear the judgement. He knew the crowds would leave Him.

He was already praying for Peter that his faith would not fail. Before He elicited Peter's confession, Jesus prayed. He was in prayer on the mountain when He was transfigured. He prayed as He raised Lazarus from the dead. In the Garden of Gethsemane, He endured an agony of prayer, for there He took the cup of abandonment that He must drink in the place of those who deserve the wrath of God.

Before His death, He prayed to the Father for those the Father had given Him and for others who would believe through their word. On the cross where He cried in forsakenness, He committed His spirit to the Father in prayer. So even in the ministry of Jesus on earth, we see His high priestly ministry. Now we've seen over the past few weeks, the reason we pray is that God has shown Himself to be a personal God. He's a God who has chosen to reveal Himself to humanity.

He's chosen to commit Himself to a special people through the covenant. He hears their prayers based on the fact that they are His people. But today, we are shown how this covenant promise has been maintained, and that is through the faithful ministry of Jesus. That's why we find in verse 16 of the Hebrews 2 passage this reference to Abraham. Did you find it odd that it'd be there?

He helps the offspring of Abraham. Who is that? Why is that there? Well, Abraham represents the recipient of the covenant of grace. Jesus helps us as Abraham's offspring because He came and stood amongst us as our priest and perfect brother.

He intercedes our requests to God, and He has brought God's saving grace down to us. What this means for our prayer life is that we can pray to God the Father only through Jesus Christ the Son. So God has bound Himself to us in a promise, I will be your God, but the way He has become our God and us His people is through the work of Jesus Christ. We can know God the Father only because we have Jesus Christ the Son as our mediator and redeemer. He is the one that goes to the Father and says, these are Your people, Father.

They are my brothers and sisters. They are the ones that I have died for. Hear their prayers. It means, Christians, that we should never ever pray without acknowledging Jesus Christ. That's why we end our prayers in the name of Jesus.

And I want to encourage you, it's a very small little detail, but end it with Jesus' name, not your name or his name, the name of Jesus. It is through that powerful, great name that we pray and we are heard by the Father. There should be no confusion in our hearts or in the minds of our hearers who it is that has enabled us to pray. Jesus has done it all for us. Likewise, when we pray, we are allowed to pray to Christ Jesus Himself.

As our God and our older brother, He knows our weakness, Hebrews 2 tells us, because He was like one of us. He can sympathise with us in the brokenness of our circumstances. Desi and I had this conversation a few weeks ago, and we discussed this idea of being content with simply knowing that Jesus Christ is the all knowing sovereign God. Why should I know that He sympathises with me? Of course, He understands what I'm going through.

He knows everything. But for some of us, knowing that Jesus has suffered human pain like us, knowing that He grew tired like us. He felt loneliness like us. Being understood that deeply for some of us is a real comfort in those dark nights of the soul. Jesus Christ can truly sympathise with our every need.

And so in prayer, there's no reason to hide what we are feeling. Bring those deep needs to Him because He understands. In closing, we can pray and we should pray because Jesus has shown Himself to own us twice. He created us, and then He redeemed us. He bought us back from the dead.

But then secondly, He has interceded for us. He is interceding for us, mediating the great promise of our salvation. He became like us and suffered in our place, and He has been raised to an indestructible, incorruptible life, as Rick prayed, that we may receive that indestructible life one day. Since Jesus is the Son of God, since He is the one who created the world by His power, who became the firstborn from among the dead as our redeemer, and since He is our brother and mediator, Hebrews 7:25 concludes with this great verse. Jesus Christ is indeed able to save to the utmost those who draw near to God through Him.

Let's pray. Lord, help us in our understanding this morning that as we pray to our great and glorious God in heaven, we have a high priest at His right hand who speaks on our behalf. And He has spoken already and speaks now and will continue to speak. And we pray, Lord, that that may be our great comfort, that we have one who is ministering in the heavenly places, the one who stands between us and God, who brings us, ushers us into His presence. Help us to also realise that through our prayer, through our request, and our thanksgiving, You are busy saving us.

You are busy changing us, conforming us by drawing us near to God through Him. You are saving us to the uttermost in every aspect of our lives. So, God, through our prayer, save our minds and the anxieties and stresses that fill it. Save our hearts and the fears and the insecurities that it contains. Father, through Jesus Christ, save our souls, assuring us of our citizenship and our belonging in the city that is to come.

In every facet of our being, Lord Jesus, save us to the utmost. And help us, Lord, in our life of prayer to go to You outside the gate, to take on our hearts and on our minds the name of Jesus again and again as our saviour, as our great hope. So we may pray with confidence and boldness every time. In the name of Jesus, we pray this. Amen.