Beloved, the Lord Christ has saved you from your enemies. He has trampled down sin, death, and the power of the devil. He has brought you out of Egypt. He has given you heavenly manna. He has given you of His Son to drink.
But Israel, this isn't good enough for you. The Lord gives you your daily bread, but He gives hunger too. The Lord give you Himself to drink, but you thirst for those things that hurt you. Jesus gives us everything, but we want something else.
We buy what is not bread. We toil for what does not satisfy. “What has a man from all the toil and striving of heart with which he toils under the sun? For all his days are full of sorrow, and his work is a vexation. Even in the night his heart does not rest.”
Shouldn't the life of the Christian be better? We sure think so. So we moan. We complain. We let our grievance rise to heaven and it pains God the Father to hear it. We grumble to heaven as if the Father does not care for us. We are ungrateful Israel. And we receive the death we labor for. We are they who journey from Mount Hor by the way of the sea and grumble to God because we don't like the gifts He has given.
We deserve to be slain by the fiery serpents. We deserve for God to take back His gifts, afflict us with pain, and let our bodies rot in the arid plains of Sinai.
But Moses prayed to the Lord to save His people. As their bodies died, the people of Israel knew their sin. They knew they had spoken evil against God and they asked Moses to pray. Surely God would listen to his chosen prophet. Surely God would have mercy. And they were not disappointed! God did have mercy, and just as a serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up!
Fear not, O Israel, for a new and greater Moses has prayed for you. As Jesus stood in Gethsemane, he prayed not for His own sake, but for yours. “Not my will, but thine be done.” On the night in which He was betrayed, Jesus took all the good gifts the Father has lavished upon Him and He delivered them to you in His Holy Supper. He wanted to receive from you what you have to give rather than give to you what you have earned. He took your sin, your death, your pain, your grumbling unbelief. He gives you life without ending. The answer to the prayer Jesus prayed for you is that He has fulfilled his Father's will by his suffering and death on the cross.
Moses was Israel's intercessor. He brought their request to God, and He heard it. But in His death and resurrection, Jesus has won all good things for you, and so He need pray for you no longer.
He is the mediator of a new and better covenant than the one Moses received. Jesus has won for you the promised inheritance, he has redeemed you by his death, and so Paul says in today's epistle, “There is one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom for all.”
This same Lord Jesus who has received the answer to His prayer for you in the cross, invites you to pray to his Father. Jesus says, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in My name He will give you. Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” But these are strange words.
Yes, they are the words of Jesus. We hear them again and again. Anything we ask in His Name, we will receive. That's the promise. But certainly that doesn't fit what we experience, does it.
We pray for healing, and we continue in sickness. We pray for our suffering to end, and a new kind of suffering comes in its place. We ask for all these things in Jesus' name, and the Father ignores us.
It doesn't seem like He's listening, but perhaps the reason is in us rather than in Him. If we pray in the Name of Jesus, we will pray the prayer He prayed. “Not my will, but thine be done.” If we pray in the Name of Jesus, we will pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” If we pray in the Name of Jesus, the Father will provide, according to His will, all that we truly need.
What is in the name of Jesus? In the Name of Jesus is the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. In the Name of Jesus is the cross. And so Christ says to us, “Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” Our joy is most full and our joy is most certain, when in the Name of Jesus we receive all that the Father desires to give.
And so, beloved. Pray. Pray without ceasing. Ask that the Father give all that He wants to give. In your baptism, you have received the name of Jesus, dear Christian, and all that is in that Name is yours.
He has brought you out of Egypt out of the land of slavery. He has delivered you from your enemies. He stands forever risen, beyond the reach of sin, death, and the power of the devil.
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed. Alleluia!
The Lord saves, and His name is Jesus.
Amen.
