Lecture 19.docx

Can I go straight to the comment to him? Yes. How Terry can interrupt. So Stott writes, the false witnesses at the trial of Jesus seeking to discredit him did not agree. The true witnesses, however, the spirit, the water, and the blood seeking to accredit him are in perfect agreement. Stott takes wa...

Can I go straight to the comment to him? Yes. How Terry can interrupt. So Stott writes, the false witnesses at the trial of Jesus seeking to discredit him did not agree. The true witnesses, however, the spirit, the water, and the blood seeking to accredit him are in perfect agreement. Stott takes water as referring to Jesus' baptism and blood as referring to Jesus' death on the cross. And the loo also leans toward the same understanding of water. Saying that the author was appealing to ideas that readers would recognize and affirm. Concerning agreement between the three elements, loo writes, each represents a separate and necessary aspect and yet they are not independent of one another, nor can one be affirmed without agreement. I agree with their interpretation since Jesus' baptism and crucifixion were both significant public events in history that were witnessed and remembered. In the baptism both the Father and the Spirit revealed their approval of Jesus, either audibly or visibly. The blood of Christ, still on Calvary, is the testimony that Jesus is the great high priest, the only mediator between God and man because of his sacrifice for our sins. These, along with the Spirit, testify that Jesus is both the Son of God and the Christ, the Messiah. Which were the two basic testimonies of 1 John, where John is saying that those who are born of God, those who believe, believe that Jesus is the Son of God and that Jesus is Christ. The final translation is the Spirit, the water, and the blood. So following from verse 7, these three testify, the Spirit, the water, and the blood. And these three are in agreement. Grounded insight, the internal ongoing testimony of the Spirit, and the historical testimony of Jesus, baptism and death, all converge to one, all converge to testify that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God. The believer's faith is birthed by the Spirit, but it is not therefore mystical, for the Father historically affirmed Jesus as his Son at Jesus' baptism, and Jesus' innocent blood shed for the sins of mankind validated him as the Christ, as the suffering servant in the Old Testament, who had to die, had to rise again. First John 9, numbers are 10, 1, 2, 1, 2, 5, 1, 2, 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, 3, 5, 1, 2, 1, 2, 10, 5, 9, 1, 2, 3. Robert, if the made zone is comparative, what's the absolute form? What's made zone from? Made glass. Everybody knows that. Thank you. Just checking to see if you were really here earlier in the week or if it was just your body. Cross reference. By the way, you're going right to your commentary and that's good, but we can all see with our own eyes this cross reference. So don't not read it. Read it, but we're skipping talking about it. A commentary on the grammatical objection. Stott writes that God is the subject and Christ is the object of the threefold testimony. It is God who testifies to his Son in history, in the water and the blood, and it is God who testifies to him today with his Spirit in our hearts. That's what Stott did. And Lou also agrees that God's testimony includes the blood, water, and the Spirit. She says it's not limited to those three. She points to the fact that God's testimony is described in the perfect tense while the threefold testimony is described in the present. God's testimony is the overall approval of his Son according to the beauty. God's testimony says it's given and it's irreversible and yet it also becomes actualized as it is applied. The perfect tense, however, can just be another way to state that the threefold testimony was given by God in history but is still effective and meaningful today. So I guess it doesn't seem to make that much of a difference whether God's testimony is referring specifically to those three things or those three things and the fullness of everything else. Final translation is, if we receive the testimony of men, the testimony of God is greater. For this is the testimony of God, that he testified concerning his Son. Crown of Insight. One may quibble with human testimony but the baptism, crucifixion, and the Holy Spirit are all testimonies of divine origin. The greater authority raises the stakes for anyone who would deny that Jesus is the Christ and the Son of God. Those who deny would not just be rejecting the testimony of men but the testimony of God. I wouldn't quibble with your translation. In your published version you're certainly on safe and solid ground in saying this is the testimony of God that he testified concerning his Son. Does the Trigellus, it does read the perfect, right? If you said either that he has testified, if that's any more emphatic that would be okay. But whatever your translation says, I would want to suggest that just in the flow of the discourse and then the perfect tense here, that the notion is he has testified once for all concerning his Son. He has testified decisively concerning his Son. I think the perfect tense is a marked tense here. So he's trying to bring out something about the comprehensive effect or the cumulative effect or the enduring definitive effect of this divine testimony. And all of this feeds into the Fides Quae. If all you do is think of the qua then you have the danger of just, yeah I agree with that. Whatever. Yes, I vote yes. But John keeps rubbing our noses in the details and the particularities and the divine affirmation of who we're talking about and what he has done. Because it's only if that really hits us that our darkness is going to be confronted. Again, that's why teaching is so important in the pastoral ministry and that's why teaching is the primary means of grace to sinners in the church. Because we're challenged by God, we're confronted by God. Faith comes by hearing. And here the metaphor is not a hearing metaphor, it's more of a seeing, witnessing. Let every fact, and there's nothing we haven't even gotten to, but how do we know what we know? In the epistemological system set up in the Bible, facts are established for God's people. I mean right down to capital cases. Should we kill somebody? Should we put them to death? When do we accept charges and what's the basis for establishing truth in the world? By the mouth of two or three witnesses. Let every fact be confirmed. And that gets carried right over into Matthew 18. You know when Jesus talks about take two or three people with you. And Paul, in a couple places, with the Corinthians once and with Timothy, you don't receive a charge against an elder except by two or three witnesses. So this whole idea of how is truth established in this world? I mean there are a lot of ways of validating lots of things. You know, moisture content of grass, can I bale it or not? Is this lumber cured or not? I mean there's a lot of ways of assessing truth in different domains. But in terms of the domain of knowing God and hearing from God, things from God, God said I'm going to validate things by human testimony. So check it out. And Jesus trafficked in this heavily in John 5 where he talks about all the things that testify to him. His miracles testify and the Father testifies and John the Baptist testifies and the scriptures testify. Because they're saying you're testifying to yourself. That doesn't count. They're thinking the law of Moses. The voice of one witness doesn't mean anything, especially if it's just you. You know, testifying about yourself, that doesn't count for anything. But Jesus actually, you know, you can multiply that by five or six. So this is, you know, for us, again, because of our setting, witness is a qua word. I want to hear your witness. I want to hear your testimony. Nobody ever says, I believe in God the Father, maker of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord. He is conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, 7-1-5. You know, when somebody gives their testimony, have you ever heard anybody say the Apostles Creed? Nobody associates a testimony with objective truth. Right? A testimony is not objective truth. A testimony in our definition is my subjective experience. But for John, testimony means exactly the opposite thing. It's not anybody's subjective experience. It's God's heavenly truth, performed in space, time, and matter, and witnessed by people whom God delegates the status of testifier to. And you know, we don't like this. We want God to testify to things to us. You always run into, I wish I had been there. If only I could see. And it's a merciful thing that God has done what he's done in other people's life. I would not want to go to Golgotha. And the more I study the Apostles, I'm glad that I can take their word for it. Because of what they went through, what they endured, in order to achieve the status that they had. So go ahead with the next verse. The first round. 5, 10. The numbers are 1, 6, 9, 1, 2, 1, 2, 5, 1, 2, 9, 3, 1, 11, 6. 6, 1, 2, 2, 5, 3, 10, 11, 5, 9, 1, 2, 3, 5, 1, 2, 9, 1, 2, 3. Commentary. It's a mirror image. Commentary. Stott explains that having the testimony within oneself means being given deeper assurance by the inward testimony of the Spirit that one was right to trust in Christ. He writes, so testimony is both the cause and the consequence of belief. And belief is a stepping stone between God's first and further testimony. This is speaking of the verse where the part of the verse where it says that the one who has faith in the Son of God has a testimony in himself. Both Stott and Lou also understand the major nature of accusing God of lying by rejecting God's testimony. Stott writes, unbelief is not a misfortune to be pitied. It is a sin to be deplored. Its simpleness lies in the fact that it contradicts the word of the one true God and thus attributes falsehood to him. Lou writes that rejecting God's son is a fundamental denial. The perfect tense has made. It's a fundamental denial of who God is and what God has done. Final translation is the one who has faith in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. By the way, you could also translate this testimony, referring back to the previous verse. Because if you just say the testimony, it may not be clear what particular testimony you're talking about. But I think here it's necessary that we think in terms of what he's just said in verse 9. And if you put the this, then it's clear that that marturion that we have in ourselves is the testimony that he has just laid out for us, that God has given concerning himself. You know about Wallace's grammar, right? If you look up Wallace and read on the article, you'll see that at times it's necessary that we understand the definite article as a possessive sometimes. Like Timothy, the child. Well, it may not have a move, but he's clearly saying my child. And here is an example where tain has to mean houtas, or the feminine form, haute, tautain, this testimony. So tain here equals tautain. And read Wallace, and you can get lots of examples where he shows you that this is the function of the definite article to be a near demonstrative or a remote demonstrative. The one who does not believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed the testimony that God has testified concerning his son. And again, that also could be this. It really nails down the validity of the qua. Because when you move to having the qua in yourself, now it becomes your own confession of faith. So it's very important that we see that the person who has the testimony is the person who affirms not just a testimony, like a new subject in that verse, but the testimony we just read about, and the person who denies is denying the testimony that John has broken down and said, this is what the testimony which God has given concerning himself. I hear the perfect answer. The past testified. And grounded inside, what one believes about Jesus necessarily will reflect what one believes about God the Father and his trustworthiness. One cannot choose to reject Jesus and still claim to trust God because the Father has testified decisively and clearly to the status of Jesus as his son and the messianic king. To reject Jesus is to slander the Father by calling him a liar. 1 John 5, 11, 10, 3, 5, 1, 2, 10, 2, 4, 5, 3, 1, 2, 10, 3, dash 4, 1, 2, 9, 1, 2, 3, 5. And you just have a three for Haltay. That's fine, but it is functioning here as a demonstrative adjective. So he just threw that in there. He wouldn't have to throw in the four. But if you do, that's OK. OK. Commentary interaction. Liu states that this is written for the believer's assurance because John is reciting a foregone reality. Possession of life has already marked believers, Liu said. She also explains possession of life is possible only through a relationship with the son. And it is implied that relationship presupposes acknowledgment of the son and of his true identity. Sott tries to answer the question, when did God give eternal life? By appealing to both sides of the debate. Some commentators refer to it, refer it to the historical career of Jesus and others to our conversion at which we personally were appropriated and received the life that is in Christ. He's talking about the part of the verse that says God gave eternal life to us. Perhaps both are true and both are part of the testimony, historical and experimental. I think I was trying to say experiential. No, that's the Brits especially. They use experimental in that sense. Historical and experimental, God has given concerning his son. While we can affirm that salvation was purchased fully out of the cross, it seems more grounded, in my opinion, to view the gift of eternal life as a gift bestowed at the point of faith, the point when we have passed out of death into life. It seems to me that this verse, when it says God gave eternal life, does refer to the personal moment of faith for us when God gave eternal life. The final translation is, and this is the testimony that God gave eternal life to us. And this life is in his Son. Remember that that also there could be because. Because. You would unpack them differently. I won't do that here, but keep your options open before you publish your translation. Actually, so the ground inside is based on translating the... Translating the God's back, the body of God. So what a glorious testimony. Believers can look back and marvel at the grace of God who has given them what they did not deserve and could not earn, eternal life. This life is possible because Christ died on the cross for sinners and because through faith, believers died to their old selves and are raised in newness of life in Christ. Believers have nothing to boast of in themselves because their salvation was secured fully by God. This life, the salvation that they have is in the Son. Again, as we get near the end of the week, people are starting to get off the syllabus. You're not supposed to preach in this. And there's nothing about boasting in that verse. There's nothing about a lot of that stuff. But we'll let you. It'll only be a few points off your template. Last verse. Last verse. Chapter five, verse 12. Numbers are one, six, one, two, five, one, two, one, two, five, one, two, one, two, one, two, 11, five. Yeah, we can see the cross references that this sort of black white status is repeated back in John three and it's also in second John nine. So commentary. Liu claims that the stark contrast between those who have life and those who don't seems quote, to offer little opportunity to those approaching from a agnostic or question perspective and little incentive to witness it to those outside. She claims this indeed is the position from which the author argues. This however is a faulty assumption. It is true that this epistle is not particularly evangelistic but understanding that everyone who does not have the Son will face eternal judgment is a clear motivation for witnessing to the lost. The overarching purpose of the book is that those who believe in Christ would know that they have eternal life. But from the beginning John announced his message in order that those listening would have fellowship with him and would confess their sins for forgiveness. So it seems like part of the purpose of the epistle itself is to confirm those who have true faith in God and to show those who don't that they believe in Christ. That's also the example of Jesus and it's also the commission Jesus gave to his followers. So this may be a case where when you lose sight of the fact that John is a commissioned follower of Jesus taking the gospel to the world, that it's easy not to see in his writings what Jesus said your main purpose is. But it's make disciples of the nations. What do you do? Does the ekon you have as a five, the six, may ekon be 11 and six? Yeah, ha, may ekon. Right in the middle, one, eight, or one, 11, six. You were running well, what hindered you? Yeah. Probably lack of sleep. Yeah. Somebody sent me something at 4.30 this morning, again, no doubt. Getting up very early for their prayers. Okay, final translation? Final translation. The one who has the Son has life. The one who does not have the Son of God does not have life. Okay. A stop notes, this gift, quote, this gift of eternal life in Christ is a present possession. Eternal destiny and eternal realities are affected, are partially experienced in the present. Those who have the Son can enjoy the assurance of eternal life and will be conformed more and more to the glorious image of Christ. Those who do not have the Son are under impending judgment. Their course is also set, unless they repent of their sins and embrace Christ. That's okay, thank you. Would you see, is there a possibility of a possessive article in this verse with the word life, telling the same given that it's referred to in the previous verse as well? That life? This life? Sure, yeah, this life or that life. Especially because it is articular. And if you just say the life, then you run into the danger of you know, the North American idiom, this is the life, this is living. Not a big danger probably for most Bible readers. But if you put that life or this life, it makes it crystal clear. It's talking about the life that he just described in the previous verse. And if you put that in both places, it gives a fitting emphasis that goes with the sort of declarative mode here. This is pretty ominous. Because I think this is, you know, it's a veiled eschatological warning. So we're on 513, the numbers read three, five, three, 10, five, 10, two, five, four, one, two, three, four, five, six, nine, one, two, one, two, one, two. Just notice the word order, zoen ekite eonion. We see that very seldom in John, which is all the more reason to think it's probably for emphasis, that he breaks up the adjective and its noun. And you can see nesi allat, they have a hard break there. You know, this is starting, you know, a last section. So this probably go, that's probably part of why you feel emphasis here. And that's that little thing. John is so flat in his diction. When he does do something fancy, then you're aware he's calling your attention to it. Just so you see the cross references, they're pretty straight across the board, saying very similar things. Moving on. Okay, stop with note for 513. See all of the different things. That while the Gospels were written for unbelievers so they might receive the testimony and eternal life, this epistle is written to believers to assure them that they have eternal life. Such assurance is needed because they have been unsettled by the false teachers and become unsure of their spiritual state. He considers this verse a fitting conclusion to the previous section. Now, Lew also notes or views the writer as assuming that the readers already possess eternal life, but unlike Stod, she sees no need to imply that their confidence has been shaken in any way. There's no suggestion that they do not already know this. Similarly, the Stod, she also sees this verse as completing the previous section, just goes back a little bit earlier to what that section may be. The interesting thing there is that while Lew comments on assurance with more force from the text itself, it cannot be said that Stod doesn't seem only for the reader's confidence. Rather, he situates the verse into a larger context of authorial purpose, giving a larger view on the whole issue, and that is to increase the assurance of their faith in the face of such diabolical forces which have sprung from within the congregation, the different heresies from the false teachers. Stod returns here to his test language, and we'll carry that through through the following verses. It should also be noted here that even though Lew sees the readers as totally confident, she does recognize that John's purpose must have been to remind them of this certainty of eternal life, and that it is always dependent on their faithful adherence to the one acknowledged as the Son of God, so she can't remove herself from what the bigger picture of what the text is actually pointing out. She can't escape this clear sense of authorial purpose, and that must aim to bring the readers into greater confidence. So on that point, she seems to equivocate a little bit. Flying. Move up your sheet, please. Oh, there you go, all right. And she equivocates to some degree, finding grammatical support for unwavering confidence, yet recognizing some need for ongoing confidence. She seems to downplay this tension, though, which is that she finds it difficult to place this verse into its larger framework within the epistle, and that is something we've seen from you before. All right, so the final translation. These things I wrote to you in order that you might know that you have eternal life, to the ones who believe in the being of the Son of God. Now, if you say I wrote, then it makes it sound a little more like it's something else that he wrote. If you say I have written, it makes it clearer that it's an epistolary aorist, and referring to what they're reading, or what they're hearing read. That doesn't make the reader in English think that he's using the perfect epistolary. I guess a lot of translation, they're gonna say I've written, so that it feels more like he's talking about 1 John. Very good. John writes with authority in order to confer authority. Eternal life belongs to those who believe in Jesus as the incarnate God, through whom they have been given the right to become God's children. The authority of the apostle is met with the kindness of a father who longs for his beloved children to rest assured of their eternal state. On the basis of the affirmations in the letter about Jesus and about those who inherit eternal life through his name, the writer will discuss the here and now certainties of his reader's life in Christ. There is life to be lived in Jesus, both in the future realm and right here, right now. And that's what we'll see in the next verses. Moving on to 514, we read the numbers 10, three, five, one, two, three, five, nine, three, 10, 10, three, five, nine, one, two, three, five, three. And you can double underline mentally his single underlining under the fives. I just don't want you to undo everything we've done this week by teaching people that those are subjects. I wouldn't want to be accused of being a false teacher. No. Okay, the cross-reference is, go there again. Again, keeping his commands is how we show that we abide. I like that the Nesli-alen goes right to John 15 and does it twice. Great passage for abiding and how that may work out. And that represents a greater lifestyle of prayer, which comes in at this verse. Stott sees that because the readers may be confident in their salvation, they may also necessarily be confident that their prayers are answered by God. He refers to this here and now confidence as a secondary conference, where the primary confidence is eternal life. Our prayer life today represents to a certain degree the future fellowship that we will enjoy for all of eternity with God and His presence. However, the secondary confidence only comes when our behavior in prayer is one of subordinating our will to His. It is by prayer that we seek God's will, embrace it, and align ourselves with it. This brings the concept of abiding in Christ into the lifestyle of Christian prayer. Lou fleshes out this assurance through prayer concept with a lengthier discussion, noting that making a request is, in and of itself, indicative of practical relationship. And for the Christian, quote, it is fundamental to the biblical tradition that those who call upon God will be heard. But we should be a little careful because yet not enough distinction is made between the prayers of those who abide in Christ and the prayers of the unregenerate who seek their own will in prayer. She also evidences the prayer views of pagan religions which would supplicate, sacrifice, and demand answers to their requests, but doesn't draw in supporting scripture that only the prayers of the Christian dividers, Christ dividers, can and will be answered. I don't doubt that she believes that, but it's not something that she draws out. Though she investigates God's will and defines it as God's total purposes, Lou fails to distinguish the answering of prayers as evidence of abiding faith in Jesus the Son of God. It's wise for us to include the simple prayer, in my view, and this is maybe a stretch for some, to heart vomit for this verse, but when we say in Jesus's name or something similar when we close in prayer or throughout our prayers, it seems that we can address some of the struggles that our congregants may have in actively submitting themselves to God's will in their lives. It's no doubt that our prayer lives, which may already struggle or suffer, are worse for the wearer when we do not reference our request to the divine will, even with a simple phrase like in Jesus's name. The implications are greater than just a weakened prayer life they may suggest a weakened spiritual life. Prayers intended by John to be our confidence in our secure relationship with the Father, but often prayer can be an indictment of our spiritual condition and a source of growing doubt as to our walk with God. If we find that we make strict demands, not requests, or hold expectations which go beyond God's purposes and go into the realm of fantasy, then over time we can expect to draw further away from the living God, and receive doubt as to his nature, character, and purposes for our lives. I don't think you gave us your translation actually. Oh, and this is the confidence. Maybe you're ashamed of it, I don't know. We'll find out. Okay, and this is the confidence which we have toward him. If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. Okay, so you took the hockey basically as a colon. I did. Okay. Okay, next verse. Five-fifteen has the following numbers. 10, 10, five, 10, five, three, three, 11, five. Five, 10, five, one, two, three, five, nine, three. Okay, and we can just go right on. Actually, a unique thing is that actually you may want to note that the Nizli Allon doesn't have any cross-reference for this, but it seems that the most obvious choice is actually one that I found cross-referenced in Stadt, which is marked 1124. Therefore, I say to you all, thanks for what you've created and asked. Believe that you've received that today will be granted. I just anticipate whatever your translation's gonna be. If you just move that down like a quarter of an inch so we can see your 11 there in the middle. If we know that he hears us, if I were you, I would have struggled with the rest, those next three words. And you don't get this a lot in Hellenistic Greek. I think I might have mentioned it once this week so far. There is something called the accusative of respect. And it causes accusatives to do things sometimes. We're not used to, we're usually just see a direct object. So the idea here is that he hears us with respect to whatever we request. So you can look up in Wallace, look up accusative of respect and see, it's not used a lot, but sometimes that's what an accusative is doing. And it serves as a direct object. Well, no it doesn't. He hears us, it's not a direct object. In a sense, you have a genitive direct object. Because he hears us, but hears us regarding, respecting, with respect to ha, that's what the ha's doing. Regarding, with respect to whatever we request. Anybody else struggle with that? Knowing how to describe what's happening. That's what's happening, it's an accusative of respect. Part of the struggle is not seeing punctuation that would help lead us to isolate those three words. That I noticed, just in Greek here, the editors didn't put any comma. But one question that comes up, you just talked about a genitive direct object. That, Hamon, why do we see so much that Hamon, as opposed to what we would expect, an accusative for a direct object? Hamon seems to leave it a little bit more open, that he hears our. Well, did anybody use Dana and Manti grammar? And anything in Dana and Manti may possibly go back to A.T. Robertson. There was a theory, and actually Dana and Manti have a section in which they propound this theory. And it's actually not true at all, but since it's there, people read it. And then they don't go beyond Dana and Manti. So they go through life thinking that there's a difference between hearing Hamon and hearing Hamas. Because a kuo sometimes takes an accusative direct object and sometimes takes a genitive direct object. Because it is a verb of sensation. And even in English, sometimes we'll say taste of something or hear of something. Sometimes this goes back to an earlier stage of English, but we used to say of more know of something. Now that means a little different than knowing something, know of something. But sometimes we would have a different construction in English. In Greek, you could use either the genitive or the accusative as the object of things heard. And where Dana and Manti go wrong is they try to say, it always, there's always a difference of meaning between those two. But if you do an inductive study of a kuo with a genitive and a kuo with the accusative, you'll see that that doesn't hold up. So it's more random. It's more at the discretion of the author. He could say either thing. Yes? When would the hymn would be like, I guess I'm thinking could the hymn would be the indirect object in the ha-e-an phrase be the direct object? Or is the indirect object in Greek always with the dative? I think indirect objects are going to tend to be dative. I wouldn't want to say always. But I mean, I can't think of an exception to that. Did you have a different translation? No, I mean, it's roughly the same thing. I'm just. Because I think if you're translating hears us regarding whatever we ask, then hey-moan is the genitive of the direct object, because he's hearing us. He's the subject. He's hearing us. And then that accusative elaborates on what we have. We have some requestor other. And he hears us with respect to whatever he's hearing from us. But for John, this is pretty complex and unusual. He's so straight, echo is for everything. He uses so few words. And we're thankful to God. Otherwise, the vocabulary test would have been much longer. But when he does do anything different, then it's kind of amazing. OK, so commentaries. Both the commentators Scott and Lew tend to package verses 14 and 15 together when they analyze these, not sharply distinguishing between the nature of the two phrases. Both contribute lexical insights, but have little to say about the structure, which may be because the two verses are so similar in content and in feel that forcing distinctions might prove somewhat counterproductive to the thrust of the argument. I would tend to disagree a little bit. I think that this builds on the last verse. And I think that that should have somehow been noted. But Scott does know something which is very helpful. It's this double certainty idea in the double use of oidomian in verse 15. So to say we know that he hears us then equilates with to say to know that we have what we asked of him. So our Christian confidence is built on that. And he's pointing that out by repeating that verb twice. Kind of a mathematical arrangement here. Lew would agree that for God to hear is for God to act. She notes that the perfect tense of the final hiteo reflects repeated requests and repeated responses. And that in and of itself signals a certain confidence in the relationship that's established where we can ask and receive multiple times just in the nature of the relationship. To translate with we have the request, just as a particular concern of mine, I would like the professor's input just down here at the bottom. When we look at we have the request, we kind of feel like why do we always translate we have the request as opposed to we have the solution to our request? What I wrote here in my little note, and it may just be a personal issue to me, it would seem that another choice would have been preferable to reflect the answer, solution, or result of the request that's been made. It almost seems like we're creating a cycle here. I ask for a request, I get a request. I want to know with more certainty in the translation that when I ask for a request, I get a solution. Well, I think one way to understand requests here is going back to whatever it is that we ask, we know that we have whatever it is that we have asked from him. So the request doesn't mean more requests, it means what you're saying. So maybe you want to translate it a little bit differently. We know that we have the things we have requested from him. That's certainly the understanding from the Greek. I've never run into a translation that doesn't just request. But before you leave that. And I did make that change to that accusative respect. Sure, with respect to whatever we ask. Lou says, for God to hear is for God to act. And well, I mean, God is always acting. But when you look at the flow of the discourse here, he's already said in verse 14, if we request according to his will, he hears us. I'm not sure where Lou is going with for God to hear is for God to act. It gives the impression that when we ask, God's going to do what we ask. And there's more to that. And in a sense, if we ask according to his will, OK, he's going to do what he's going to do. But what's going on in this particular verse, if we know that he hears us with respect to whatever we ask, we have things that we have asked from him. The point I want to make here, because I think it's going to come up again later, is there's an intent in our asking that's implied in all this. And it's explicit in the previous verse up there. The intent of our asking and prayer is always for God's will to be done. It's always for his kingdom to be furthered. And when we pray to God, we know that we have the requests which we've asked from him, because God forbid that we would be asking of him things that are outside of his will. And so I go into this in my commentary. I don't think many people really read this part, because we don't want to think of prayer this way. But the essence of prayer is communion with God. It's getting a hearing. It's getting an audience. It's God entering into a conversation with us. And let's face it, there are a lot of things that we pray for, and God doesn't do them. So what does that tell you about what you prayed for? It wasn't his will. Maybe most of the things you ask God to do, he doesn't do. But it's not a sin. It's not a sin for a child of God to give it the best shot he can, kind of like Abraham with Sodom and Gomorrah. Well, God, what if it's only 40? Well, how about that? Prayer is talking to God. Prayer is a negotiation. And through prayer, a lot of times we find out it's not going to happen. But that doesn't mean there's something wrong with the prayer or you should only pray the things that you're sure are God's will. The essence of prayer is that z-axis dynamic. In fact, that's one of the main indicators of the health of our z-axis. Do we pray to God? Do we have a fellowship with God in which we're just kind of promiscuously asking him things? God, would you do this? And then in the course of time, maybe it's clear that time's past now. You wanted something to happen at the Christmas service and it didn't happen. Those people didn't come. This person didn't convert. These people didn't rise to the occasion. Or it rained at the picnic. God, please. Now, I had a great answer to prayer this past week. I've been praying for several months that while I was here this week, there would not be a snow or an ice storm where I live. And we had snow and ice for two plus weeks right before I got here. And we live on a really remote, it's a half mile off the county road. It's not plowed. It's a very treacherous road. I've got a four-wheel drive utility truck, chains on all four wheels with a blade. And with that, and with some salt and other means, we can almost always get up and down the hill. But I got an 86-year-old stepfather, an 82-year-old mother, and my wife, and a useless dog. And they're all up on this hill. And if there's a lot of snow and ice, I don't know how they're going to get in and out. And it's very dangerous to go down that hill. I mean, nobody up there has business going down that hill if it's really snowy and icy except me. And even then, it's dangerous. I'll probably be driving the one with the chains on it, and I'll take my chances. And you know, it was still snowy and icy when I drove to the airport last Sunday. But by Sunday afternoon, all the snow and ice was gone. And then all week, it's been 50s and 60s, where the average high should be about 30. It's been unusually warm. And as I look at the forecast tonight, when I land about midnight, there's going to be snow and ice, an inch of sleet. I might not even get to land. But I didn't know what God's will was for the week. Maybe he wanted to test me and test my wife and parents. But I'm just so grateful that it was within God's will to do the thing that I asked him. But the real intent of my prayer should not have been, God, please do this. And if you don't, I'm going to be so ticked. Or I'm going to wonder, where is God? I mean, I'm going to the master's seminary. I mean, this is a holy calling and task for the sake of all of you. And I mean, can't you do something with the weather? I mean, the intent in our prayers is fellowship with God. It's not to getting to do what we want him to do. I mean, I think we all know that. But the default mode of prayer for most people is prayer. Yeah, yeah, of course, we confess and we supplicate. But the main thing in prayer and the main test of whether you prayed right and whether God is really true to his promises is whether you get the things you ask for. And if you want to read selectively in this chapter, there are great verses here that are, again, name it and claim it type verses. But if he ever says even once according to his will, that's the end of name it and claim it. But then if you combine according to his will with the z-axis, it changes your view of prayer. Our highest intent in prayer is communion with God. It's interpersonal communion and knowing that he hears us. And again, John speaks so flatly, you can just zip over that. But to know that God gives a fig about you and to know that he hears and to know all the things about God's love for us. Robert was preaching about it a minute ago to us. It revolutionizes prayer. Just as you might go to your wife with a sort of a proposal, you want to buy something or you want to move somewhere or you want to do a PhD or you want to do something. You want to become a missionary, whatever. And maybe in the long run, it's just not going to work. It's not going to fly. And maybe it's not her fault. But maybe from the time you scheme and you go to her and you share it with her, you pray about it and everything, she never says yes. And she never does say yes. And that thing never happens. That can be a bitter disappointment if your philosophy is either I'm the head and in the end she's got to do what I say. Or maybe you're a little more benevolent, but still you've got a strong conviction that I know the will of God and I'm entering into a campaign of either persuasion or coercion. I'm going to get her to see things my way. You can approach a negotiation with your wife that way. Or you really can say, you know, we're married. I am to love my wife. And I think this is where the Lord is leading us. But she's got to buy into that too. And I can't coerce her. God has to show her. And I'm going to give it my best shot of communicating with my wife where I think we should be heading and why. And I hope we come out in the same place on this. But if that doesn't happen, don't divorce her. Don't make a mess. You know, don't make a mark and say, well, you know, you're going to come to me someday. And you're going to be sorry that you didn't do what I wanted to do now. Because we're not going to do what you want to do later. Some people, I mean, they really do keep score. The goal of a request of our spouse is, and especially in the Lord, give me a hearing. You know? Let's think this thing through. And if you've been married very long, you know by now that sometimes your wife drags her feet and later on you say, thank God. Thank God I didn't buy the motorcycle or the timeshare or condo. There are things that we do that we really do benefit from our wives' wisdom in. And we make requests of them. But the core of petitioning our wives, it's part of the rhythm and the flow of our relationship with her. It's not to get our way from her. Now she's an object to the fulfillment of our will. And if we were God, that would be fine. But we're not God. And since we are in a covenantal union with our wives, we've got to work out the Lord's will for us with our bride and our sister in the Lord. And sometimes that sticks in our craw. It's stuck in my craw many a time. But that's reality. And I'm happy to say, I think many times God has moved my wife, even before me asking her. But after I felt compelled to really devote my life to spreading the gospel, whatever that was going to mean. I thought it was going to be bivocational logging and ministry at Trinity Baptist Church in Missoula, Montana. But I wrestled for a couple of years with a sense of God's leading in my life. Early 20s, going to my mid-20s. My wife kind of knew that, but she'd come from a Catholic background. And she'd been baptized fairly recently, a year or two before that. She's going to nursing school. And we're both active in the church. I'm more than she. But she's at nursing school and busy. And I came home from church one Sunday and threw the paper down on the kitchen table and got ready to read the paper. And she was in the kitchen getting lunch ready. But I've been really wrestling with God's leading. I mean, severe. Definitely foreboding, working outside in 20 below and it being kind of dark and cold and dreary like it is in Missoula and up in the mountains. And working alone and having near misses. And just like feeling the breath of the devil on my neck. Just feeling like something that God, I was like, I was sort of like Jonah, but I didn't know where I was running from or where I was supposed to be running to. And I came home from church and threw the paper down. And it was just like in an instant, I felt God asking me, will you devote your life to spreading the gospel, to serving me? It was like in an instant. And in that instant that I heard that question, I knew there was only one answer I could give. And it was yes. And so on a clock, I don't know how long this took. It wasn't a second. But my first thought, I mean, basically is my wife's going to kill me. My wife's going to kill me. Because I'm a bumbling Christian and she's a new Christian. And so I schemed and stared at the paper for a while. But finally I went into the kitchen. She's still making lunch. And in probably 10 seconds, 20 seconds, I kind of explained what I felt had happened. And I said, you know, I probably will need to go forward at church tonight and tell the congregation. That's what you do in a Baptist church, right? I mean, sometimes you come forward for salvation. But in a lot of little congregations, if God really moves and you're laughing, isn't that the way it is? If something big happens in your life, then you go forward, right? You share it. You go forward at the invitation. And everybody probably knows you're not going to ask for baptism again. But you're going to make some announcement. So I just was sick all afternoon because I felt this could. I mean, we didn't have very good communication skills as young marrieds, and especially, again, in the pits we were crawling out of. So I really dreaded church because I felt, on the one hand, God had sort of laid it out. But I also felt like it wasn't really fair to my wife because, you know, it's her life. And she didn't know anything about this when we got married. So I don't know what the sermon was about. I'm sure I was not even hearing it. But when he gave the invitation, probably you go to the first line and go to the second line. And I'm like bolted to the floor. But finally, I'm going, OK, I've got to be the man here, the man of God. So I stepped out. And I started walking down the aisle. And I looked up. And my wife was already shaking the pastor's hand. And she's like, where are you? And I mean, she hadn't said a word to me all afternoon. But except when I had told her what I was going to do, I mean, it wasn't like, oh, dear. You know, it was like just like the frying pan clanging or the rolling pan or something ominous in her hand. Like the next thing you see will be this coming at your head. And you know, later on she told me, she said, when we were in high school, because I knew we were in high school, she said, I was afraid that you were going to be a preacher. Now how she would ever think that, I can't imagine. I don't even know how she could have thought I was going to be a Christian. And she said, I made a deal with God that that would never happen. I mean, she wasn't even a baptized Christian. So I don't think there's probably a deal with God. But you know, that could explain some of the complications in our marriage, couldn't it? Once she was baptized, that was the worst time of our marriage. That next year, it was really, really rough, relationally. And there were some physiological reasons too. She was on a birth control pill that was way, way too strong. And she had a serious vitamin deficiency as a result. They didn't know much about birth control then. And so they dosed her like for a horse or something. And you know, looking back, she had clinical depression. We didn't know it. You know, they weren't big on diagnosing those things then. But she was suffering some things physically that I think helped explain what was happening to us relationally. But it was awful, you know, what we went through. But my point is that God had worked not only on that day, but he had undone something. This was 1975. She and I met in 70, roughly. So for five years, she'd been sitting on this silent plot and strategy to keep me from doing God's will if it's this. And it was this. And I mean, that was one of the biggest surprises of my whole life on Earth, was to hear my wife say, I thought you might be this. And I said, over my dead body. It's not going to happen. So you know, God was really overcoming a lot of things, wasn't he? Totally invisible to me. And I got the request, but I didn't. My request basically to her was, I'm going to go forward and don't kill me. I got much more than the request. But you know, well, I won't go beyond what I've just said. The essence of requesting something from another human being, if you're in a position where you've got to seek something together, is your negotiation with that person. And with God, the essence of our request is, God, thank you for hearing me. And we're always implying God, obviously, anything that I'm asking that's outside of your will, I don't want it. So do this, but don't take me to be saying something and pushing for something that I'm not asking for. If we know that he hears us with respect to whatever we ask, we know that we have the request which we have asked from him. To know that God hears us, and if we really understand the unlikeliness that the God of the universe would give a fig for us, if we know that he hears us, we've got the intent of whatever we ask. The intent of whatever we ask is for God's will to be done. So I'm taking this total. I could be wrong. But look, you signed up for the class, and I'm professor. So I could be wrong. I don't think there's a problem here with, well, what about when God doesn't answer our prayers? I don't think that's even on the table for John. Because I don't think he ever thought either that Jesus said, look, there's a will of God. But then there's also your will. And whatever you ask, God will do, plus his will. I think it was always understood among the apostolic band that the whatever was something in line with the will of the Father and with the redemptive work of Christ in the world who called them and who commissioned them and was sending them forth and said to them, whatever you guys ask, you being who you are with the directions you have in communion with the Father, God's going to do those things that you cry out to him to do. I will be with you always even to the end of the age. At that same church, and probably even before I received a call, that was my call to the ministry, by the way. And now I know it was a call to do what I do here. That was 1975. When I started to do what it ends up I was being called to do, even after I started doing it, I thought it was called to be a missionary. So I taught for two years before I realized, I guess I'm supposed to be doing this. But it was 10 years. It was 10 years from the time I got a call, a strong call, before I began to do what it was I was being called to that day. And I had no idea really what I was being called to. As we delight in his will, we receive that which we truly ask, because it is that which his purposes demand. We humbly ask first and foremost that God be glorified through whichever response he chooses to make.