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The following message is preached by Reverend Dr. Bruce W. Thielman. His sermon is entitled, "Not What, But Who You Know." The scripture reading of the morning is the first letter of Peter, chapter 1. I begin the reading at the verse number 3. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. By his

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great mercy we have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and to an inheritance which is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you

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rejoice, though now for a little while you may have to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold, which though perishable is tested by fire, may redound to praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Without having seen him, you love him. Though you

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do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with unutterable and exalted joy. As the outcome of your faith, you obtain the salvation of your souls." And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

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Amen. The scene is a college chapel. The pews are filled with young intellectual cannibals and they're unhappy about being there because their attendance is required. The speaker realizes this and so he tries to come up with a theme which he thinks will capture the attention of his captive congregation. He

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chooses to speak on ambition and success. And as he comes to the conclusion of his message, there pops into his mind the sign which he had seen on the outside of the door to the chapel as he had entered it earlier that morning. The sign read, "Push." And he thought to himself, "This is a wonderful way in which to conclude the

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message." So allowing his voice to rise in power and gesticulating with some vigor, he said, "What you need to get ahead, what you need to succeed, is announced by those doors." And all the students turned and looked at the doors. But of course the students were not outside coming in. They were inside looking out. So the doors

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announced not "Push," but "Pull." What do you need to get ahead? Pull. What do you need to succeed? Pull. It's not what you know, it's who you know. Now that's an unusual message for a college pulpit, or for any pulpit for that matter. Yet that's the message that I want to bring to this sacred desk today. The way to success

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might be the way of "Push," but the way to joy is the way of "Pull." When it comes to joy, it's not what you know, it's who you know. Now we have been talking in this Advent season about the joy-filled life, and we've likened it to a star, a five-pointed star. The first point on the star is to have the presence of God

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in you which lights your path and brings pleasure to your spirit. The second point on the star is that the God-occupied life is a life which automatically extends itself in service, and this service brings with it a sense of fulfillment, an experience of Christ now in the person of the needy, the applause

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of the saints and the angels, and also the opportunity to do something eternal, for only that which is done to another life can be eternal, since only life itself is eternal. And there's a very special joy in all of this. This morning we come to the third point on the joy star, and the message of this point is

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that joy is a gift, that it's not what we know but who we know, and this message is made evident to us by the gift of prayer. Let me suggest to you two propositions and then we are done. The first proposition is this. We are prayed for by Jesus. Now let that thought roll around in your mind for a moment, and as it

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rolls, let me add to it three strands of biblical thought. In the letter of Peter, a portion of which I just read in your hearing, we are told that Christians are new people, verse 3, that they are guarded by Christ in heaven, verse 5, and that they are protected by him through his intercession. There are trials in this

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life, but ultimate victory is assured, verse 6. Now add to this strand from 1st Peter the thought of the author of Hebrews. He teaches us that Jesus is our high priest. Now the high priest is the one who intercedes between the created and the creator. In other words, the high priest is one who prays for, who guards

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and protects the flock by lifting them to God in his prayers and in his intercessions. And in Hebrews, we're taught that Jesus not only does this with his words but with the very offering of his life. Now to this second strand, let's add a third. Paul calls Jesus our propitiation. Now the word

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"propitiation" simply means "priest," but it means more than that. It also means the place where God and man meet and where the sacrifice of love is worked out. Now if you put these three strands or these three cords together, you get a wonderfully harmonious sound. Our text this morning is from Jeremiah, and

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Jeremiah says when we receive the words of God, they bring delight and joy to the heart, and that is certainly true with these words. For what we're being told here is that Jesus is not only our Bethlehem and our Calvary and our Jerusalem, but that he is also our Christmas and our Good Friday and our

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Easter. That he is the one in whom God and man meet for love's sake. That he is the one who intercedes and prays for us, who guards us, and who protects us. That's an incredibly beautiful thought, to recognize that Jesus, through his prayers for us, is guarding us and protecting us every day. Ponder that for a moment. Our

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very best friends will sometimes become angry with us. There are some times that they will become disgusted with us. There are moments when they will be frustrated by us. There will be times when they are not able to help us because they are so exhausted with other concerns. But this is never so with Jesus. God's Son regularly

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protects, uplifts, prays for his people. Jesus is always Jesus. Some of you have no doubt heard of Hugh Redwood, who was a noted English journalist and who was well known for his anti-religious thoughts. He was a rather aggressive agnostic. And one night Hugh Redwood was coming home from his office on Fleet

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Street and he happened to walk past a little Salvation Army band. And one of the Salvationists was singing a song. And the song went, "I have a Savior who is pleading in glory, a dear loving Savior, though Earth's friends be few. And now he is watching in tenderness o'er me, and oh that my Savior were your Savior too." And

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Hugh Redwood stopped dead in his tracks. Not because he was captured by the music of the band or the loveliness of the voice of the lassie who was singing, and not because of the bit of pious dogger-roll which was the verse of the song, but because of what it announced. That someone was praying for him. That

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Jesus himself was interceding for him, reaching out for him, protecting him, keeping alive in him whatever little flickering flame of faith might have been there. And in the recognition of that, Hugh Redwood was overcome with the sense of the presence and the protecting grace of God. And he became a Christian

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and went on to write marvelously in behalf of the faith. The fact that Jesus is praying for us means that we can trust him utterly, that we can trust him now, and that we can trust him always. And that brings with it, when it is confronted, a tremendous joy. It's not what we know, it's who we know, and the

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fact that he knows us. Now add to this first proposition my second proposition, and that is that Jesus not only prays for us, but that he gives us permission to pray in his name. Now Jesus does not do that in some cheap and promiscuous way. As a matter of fact, he discusses it at only one point in the Scriptures, John

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14, 15, and 16. And New Testament Christians understood this to be such a privilege, that there is only one place in all of the New Testament when you hear of prayers being offered in the name of Jesus, and that's in Ephesians chapter 5. This is a very precious privilege. You don't readily and easily

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give someone the right to use your name, but Jesus does exactly that for all of us. Unfortunately, there are some people who see using the name of Jesus as if it were some kind of magic charm. They tack those words in Jesus' name on the end of a prayer as if it was something to absolutely ensure success, like the

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number that the bank gives you to authenticate the fact that you're a customer before the machine rolls out the money. And more serious than that, there are some people who claim that the very syllables of Jesus' name when spoken have some kind of tremendous power that drives evil forces away, though there's

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no evidence of that in Scripture, and in fact in Acts chapter 19 we are told that that is specifically not so. So what does Jesus mean when he says, "You may pray in my name"? What does that phrase "in his name" mean? Well, you have to look at three different places in John's Gospel to understand the tremendous content of

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these words. Jesus does say in John 16, "Whatever you ask in my name, I will do for you," but he qualifies that. He explains at another place, John 15, "If you abide in me and my words abide in you, then you may ask whatever you will in my name, and it will be done for you." Now what does it mean to abide in him and

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to have his words abiding in us? Well, that's explained in John chapter 3. It says there, "Those who keep his commandments abide in him." So you see, when Jesus is saying to us that we may pray in his name, what he is saying is, "I will promise that I will answer prayers that are prayed in my name, as long as

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those who pray those prayers are abiding in me and my words abide in them." In other words, as long as those who are praying are in obedience to me, those who pray prayers that I myself would pray, those prayers will be answered. And again, we go back to that word from Jeremiah, which is our text. Jeremiah says that when

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we receive the words of God into us, our hearts are filled with joy and delight. And here's another implication of that, you see. As Christ's words take up residence in us and become the substance of the prayers we pray, our prayers will be answered. And there's tremendous joy and victory in that. Again, it's not what

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we know. It's who we know, and that we can use his name. But how do we know when we are praying in Jesus' name? How do we understand to do that properly? Well, let me suggest three guidelines that you might use in your own prayer life. The first one is this. Prayers offered in Jesus' name are prayers which must bring

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glory to God. The primary concern of Jesus in all of his life was to honor his Father. His thoughts, his words, his deeds, all were to honor his Father. How did he teach us to pray? After this manner he said, "Pray, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done." The focus, you see, always on the Father.

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That means that in our prayer life we must offer prayers that glorify God. Do you remember from Greek mythology when Hercules is battling the giant Antaeus and he repeatedly manages to throw Antaeus to the ground? But every time he does, no matter how hard he hurls him down, Antaeus jumps up stronger than he

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was before. And Hercules cannot understand this until he learns that Antaeus is the son of Gaea, and Gaea is the earth. So every time Hercules is throwing Antaeus onto the ground, he is, as it were, throwing Antaeus onto the bosom of his mother, and Antaeus rises with greater strength than he had before.

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So in order to defeat Antaeus, Hercules lifts him up into the air, won't let him touch the earth, and in that way he manages to subdue him. Well, that's a parable for us. If our prayers are earthbound, if they are expressions only of that which will bring glory to us or to some other earthly thing with which

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we wish to be associated, that kind of praying, that kind of earthbound focus leads to pride. What we're to do is to lift everything heavenward so that what we pray, we pray for to glorify God. When you pray like that, the giants begin to fall and the power of God is made evident in the prayer. So that's the

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first guideline. The second guideline is this. Prayer in Jesus' name must root in Christ's merit and not in our own. Paul says to the Ephesians in chapter 3, "In Christ and through faith in Christ we may approach God with freedom and confidence." Not through our own selves, but through him. You know, when you look

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at some people and their devotional lives, they may be likened to individuals who are jumping up and down, trying to jump toward heaven, and they work very hard at it. They're very earnest and they're very serious and they try to jump higher and higher, hoping, I suppose, that eventually they will come in such

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touch with heaven that they will never have to be concerned with earth again. But the fact of the matter is, we have no vertical power. We cannot reach heaven of ourselves. Only Christ can lift us there. Now that does not mean that when we pray through the merit of Christ that we are altogether passive in the praying

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experience. This last Friday night, I and about maybe 300 other people were down at Heinz Hall for the symphony concert. They were playing two special works of music that are very, very great favorites of mine. And I sat there very still throughout the whole concert as any properly behaving music attender

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would do. You don't want to disturb others, you're very, very quiet. One might say, looking at me, that I was passive. Yet when the concert was over, I was very tired. I was sensitive to the fact that I had expended a lot of energy. Why? Because I was focusing on that music. I was concentrating on that music. I was

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putting myself into the music. I wasn't making the music, but I was allowing that music to move through me and I was seeking to express myself in my feelings through it. Well, in just the same way, we can approach God only through the Lord Jesus Christ. But that's not a passive thing. We are to focus on Christ in our

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prayers. We are to think about Christ in our prayers. We are to measure our prayers by the standards of our Lord Jesus Christ. Some of you, in your devotional life, practice the discipline of contemplation. And you know that in order to contemplate, you must concentrate. And concentration is not an

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easy thing. So for our prayers to be lifted in the merit, in the name of Christ, if we're going to pray them out of our abiding in Christ, that means we have to give all that we have to offer to him, understanding that he will then take that and through his own grace and glory lift our prayers to God. And the

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third guideline for praying in Jesus' name is this. Our prayers must be the prayers that Jesus himself would pray. You know, many folks try to mold Jesus to fit their own ideas. Harriet Beecher Stowe tried to make Jesus into a feminist. Wesley Johnson, that great preacher during the Second World War in

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New York City, described Jesus as the greatest fighting soldier of them all. Albert Cleage, the black activist from the West Coast during the Civil Rights days of the 1960s, described Jesus as a black Messiah, a zealot, and a revolutionary for black people everywhere. Andrew Lloyd Webber made

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Jesus into Jesus Christ's superstar. Martin Scorsese, in his film of a year ago, The Last Temptation of Christ, made Jesus into a kind of wimpy schizophrenic. Pro-life people make Jesus pro-life. Pro-choice people make Jesus pro-choice. Republicans see Christ as a Republican. Democrats see him as a

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Democrat. Socialists see him as a socialist. Temperance people see temperance as his major concern. The fact of the matter is, of course, that we are not to transform Christ into our image. We are instead to be transformed into his. We are not to get Christ to pray our prayers. We are to be sensitive to him so

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that our prayers become his prayers. I hear people complain sometimes, "My prayers are not being answered." There's no place in Scripture where it's promises that my prayers will be answered. The only promise which Jesus makes is this, "What you pray in my name, that is when you are abiding in me, when

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you are obedient to me. The prayers that you pray that echo me, these are the prayers, and these are the only prayers that will be answered." And it shouldn't be any other way, for what child of God who is serious about her faith would want to ask anything of her heavenly Father of which the heavenly Father did

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not approve. See, it's not what we know, it's who we know. To go back to Jeremiah, Jeremiah says, "When God's Word is in us, when we consume it, when we ingest it, it becomes joy and delight in the heart." And that's absolutely true, for Christ's words are words of prayer for us. He is interceding for us, and when you

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understand that, that brings joy to your heart. And Christ gives us permission to pray in his name, abiding in him. Our prayers are to be his words moving through of us, and this brings great joy to the heart. When you pray like this, you become part of the dream which Christ himself is dreaming. Speaking of dreams,

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this last Friday, when it was snowing so heavily, we let our secretaries leave early. It was easier to do that than to put up with the arguments. And my two colleagues were in their offices busily at work, and for the first time I was without interruption that day. And I was working on this message, and I had come

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to the place where we are right now. And I sat there looking out through the casement window at that swirling snow that was all about. And it was as if in the purity of that snow, I saw the purity of the kingdom of heaven. And I felt very cold because I understood myself in the light of that purity to be naked, to be

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wrapped only in the robes and the rags of my own self-righteousness. And as I stood there, I found that the ground was very slippery under me, icy if you will. Before me, a great set of scales. And onto one side of these scales were settling all these flakes falling from that gray and leaden sky. Thousands and tens of

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thousands of them. And they mounted up, and they were my sins. They were my lack of discipline and my unapproachableness and my pride and my gluttony and my short temper and my indifference and my many weaknesses. And they stacked up on that scale. And on the other side of the scale, there were a few good deeds done

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by the grace of God moving through me. And I could see that scale inexorably tilting, tilting away from heaven. And there was nothing that I knew to do about it. Everywhere I looked, there was nothing that I could see to do. But there was someone on whom I could call. And so in my mind, thinking about working with

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all of these words that I've shared with you now and thinking about our sharing this morning, in my mind I cried out, "Oh Jesus, pray for me. I can pray that prayer in your name because I know that you came in order to save sinners. So I am praying in your name and your spirit. Oh Jesus, pray for us."

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This message continues on side two. Please turn this cassette over now. And there was a kind of soft light, not the kind of light that frightens but the kind of light that warms, and transfigured so that he was whiter than the snow. I saw in my mind's eye the person of the Prince of Peace. And he

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stepped forward and as he did, his lips were moving. He was praying. I could not hear the words. And he approached that scale so heavily weighted down with error on one side, so pitifully weighted with goodness on this. And he held out his right hand over this end of the scale and he dropped into the scale

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three wisps of straw from a manger floor and then three, three nails and the balance tilted toward glory. He prays for us. He saves us. He protects us. He guards us. He allows us to pray in his name. That's the reason prayer is part of the Joy Star. Because it's not

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what we know, it's who we know. Jeremiah was right. "Receive the Word of God into you and it delights and rejoices the heart." The psalmist was right. The words of God are sweeter than honey, even than the honeycomb. The writer of Proverbs was right. His words are like apples of silver in pictures of gold. And Peter was

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right when he concluded the passage before us today with these words, "We believe in him and rejoice with unutterable and exalted joy." It's not what we know, it's who we know and that he knows us. Let us pray.

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Oh God, Oh Son of God, Oh Spirit of God, triune God our maker, our sustainer, our redeemer. Oh God, fill us with the beauty of thy prayers. Fill us with the beauty of obedience that our prayers might be offered in your name and fill us,

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because these things are true, with an exceeding great joy. And this we pray in his name, amen. [ Silence ]