<p>11:42 <i>And I know you hear me always, but because of the crowd that stands around I said it, that they may believe you did send me</i>- Said what? The past tense suggests the reference is not to His word of command to Lazarus to &quot;come forth&quot;, for He had not yet spoken that. Was the reference therefore to His command &quot;Take away the stone&quot; (:39)? Was it to His &quot;groaning&quot;? But this was &quot;in the spirit... within Himself&quot;, not publicly stated. I suggest that the &quot;it&quot; which He &quot;said&quot; was in prayer to the Father. The Father always heard Him, He did not need to ask for specific things in order to get them, for the Spirit was given to Him without measure. Perhaps He is saying that in this case, He had specifically prayed to the Father, and received a positive response- in order that the crowd might realize that indeed He had been sent by the Father. But there is no record of any prayer prayed publicly by the Lord in front of the watching crowd. Maybe He meant that He had already said &quot;it&quot; in prayer to the Father and been answered, and He was now going to say publicly &quot;Lazarus, come forth&quot;; but that also is hardly a public prayer to the Father. The GNB tries to avoid the problem by offering a more vague interpretation of the tense: &quot;I <i>say this </i>for the sake of the people here&quot;. But this seems questionable in terms of the Greek grammar. My conclusion is therefore that the prayer to the Father was private, but the raising of Lazarus would have been seen by the thoughtful amongst the crowd as clearly an answer to the Lord's private prayer. Such resurrection could only come from God, and seeing it was done at the hands and word of Jesus, it followed that He had therefore prayed to the Father for it. In this way, the Lord demonstrated that the essence of prayer was within the heart of the believer, whereas at that time prayer was generally conceived as a matter of public activity, with words spoken out loud. It's the same lesson as taught by Hannah's silent prayer. This is why the Lord <i>says out loud</i> in the audience of the crowd that He &quot;said it&quot; for the sake of the crowd. John's Gospel draws a distinction between &quot;the crowd&quot; and &quot;the Jews&quot;, the Jewish leadership. The Lord's intention was that both groups would be converted (recall His desire that the cured leper made a witness to the priests), but the resurrection of Lazarus was aimed at converting the masses- &quot;because of the crowd I said it&quot;. The Jewish leadership were not likely to reflect upon what the Lord had said and done, because their hearts were hardened. But &quot;the crowd&quot; contained at least some open minds.</p><p>So it seems to me that Jesus had asked / commanded / said to the Father to resurrect Lazarus. Jesus believed that this had happened. And so, in utter faith, he thanks the Father for raising Lazarus- even though Lazarus was still silent in the grave and there was at that point no actual physical evidence Lazarus had come back to life. But then Jesus says, believing so firmly the prayer had already been answered 'OK Lazarus, well, come out and see us then' my paraphrase. The whole point was to demonstrate that &quot;I am the resurrection and the life&quot;, to confirm Martha's faith that indeed there would be a resurrection &quot;at the last day&quot; (Jn. 11:24,25). It wasn't to demonstrate that Jesus could reunite 'soul' and body- it was to prove a resurrection.</p><p><i>I know you hear me always</i>- Both David and Christ panicked when they felt their prayers weren't being answered; they felt that this meant they had sinned (Ps. 22:1-4; and consider too 17:15; 24:5; 27:4,8). Clearly they understood answered prayer as a sign of acceptability with God. the Lord knew that God <i>always</i> heard Him. When apparently God didn't hear His prayer for deliverance on the cross, He for a moment supposed that He'd sinned and therefore God had forsaken Him.</p><p>Lazarus had died, and the evident desire of Martha was to see her brother again, there and then. But she didn't go running to the Lord with this desire. She simply and briefly stated her faith in the Lord's limitless power to resurrect, and her knowledge that He could use the Father's power as He wished. He read her spirit, He saw her fervent desire. And He responded to this as if it had been a prayer. He groaned deeply within Himself, and wept- not the tears of grief, as the Jews mistakenly thought (note how throughout the record they misunderstand what is really going on), but the tears which go with the groaning of serious prayer (Jn. 11:33-39). Having done this, He comments: &quot;Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me <i>always</i>&quot;. Because His spirit, His mind, was in constant contact with the Father, His prayers / desires were always communicated to Him, and always being heard. &quot;Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me&quot; could almost imply that the Lord prayed for something, and then, after some interval, the answer came. We have an exquisite insight into the Lord's mind and the highly personal relationship between Father and Son in the words that follow: &quot;I knew (not 'I know') that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by I said it, that they may believe&quot;. This almost certainly was not spoken out loud; this is a very rare and privileged glimpse into the unspoken communication between the Son and Father. The Lord seems to be adding this almost in half apology, lest it should seem that He prayed for Lazarus' resurrection, the answer came, and He then thanked the Father for it. It seems that this would be too primitive a sequence of events. He says that He <i>knew</i> that His request had been granted, and His utterance of thanks for the answer was for the peoples' benefit: that <i>they</i> might perceive that whatever the Son asked for, He received from God. But in reality, the Lord's thoughts to the Father seem to suggest, it wasn't a question of His prayers being accepted and answered. His Spirit, His thoughts, were one with the Father, and therefore it was not that His thoughts were considered, accepted and then God granted the request. What He thought was the prayer and it was the answer all in one. His 'mediation' for us is in the sense that He is the Lord <i>the Spirit</i>. There is no barrier (and was not any) between His mind and that of the Father.</p>