2019.06.28 Hopewell @Home ▫ John 14:8-14

Read John 14:8-14

Questions for Littles: Who speaks in John 14:8? What does he ask Jesus to show them? What is the first question that Jesus asks in response (John 14:9)? What is the second? What is the third (John 14:10a)? What is Jesus saying about Himself in all these questions? What does Jesus say about His words? What does He say about His works? What does Jesus command them to believe in John 14:11? What have demonstrated this truth? What does Jesus say will be done by those who believe in Him (John 14:12)? Why will they be able to do this? Whom will they ask in Whose Name (John 14:13-14)? Who will answer this request (verses 13 and 14)? Why will He answer (verse 13)?

Jesus is the full revelation of God. There’s nothing more of God to see than can be seen in Jesus. That’s the point that He makes to Philip.

But it’s not just His words to Philip. Jesus says that His being in the Father and the Father’s being in Him has been the point of all of His words (John 14:10a). He has never spoken anything by Himself. And Jesus’s identity with the Father has also been the point of all of His works (John 14:10b through John 14:11).

Jesus is in the Father, and the Father is in Jesus. One of the great points of the gospel has been the revelation of the Trinity.

This is also the point of prayer. We ask God for things in prayer. And Jesus makes it clear in John 14:13 and John 14:14 that we are to ask in His Name. What does this mean?

Well, in the first place, it means that we prioritize Jesus’s priorities. John 14:12 tells us that this means to do greater works than He did in His earthly ministry. But this comes in the context of John 14:10-11, doesn’t it? What was the point of the works? To show that Jesus is in the Father, and the Father is in Jesus! The truth of the matter is that by the end of Jesus’s ministry, very few understood or believed that about Him. But through the ministry of the weak apostles, an innumerable multitude would in fact come to understand Jesus that way and believe in Him as God!

The second thing that it means to ask in Jesus’s Name is to believe that Jesus Himself is the One who answers. “I will do it,” Jesus says in John 14:13. Again in John 14:14, Jesus says, “I will do it.” When we ask God in Jesus’s Name, we are expecting that Jesus is the God who answers! This is the ultimate exercise of faith in Jesus as the One who is one with the Father.

Whom do you hope will come to know Jesus as God? How does that shape your praying “in His Name”? Whom are you expecting to answer those prayers?

Suggested songs: ARP110B “The Lord Has Spoken to My Lord” or TPH270 “At the Name of Jesus”