I pray...

“Unity in Prayer”

(John 17:25-26, January 6, 2008)

²⁵ O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. ²⁶ I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them."

Introduction – How do leaders lead?

The Jesus who commands us to follow Him is going to the cross, so He prays. His prayer in John 17 is a roadmap for the life of the New Testament Church. It is very clear from this prayer that God has no intention of sending us off into seclusion as contemplative monks, nor is He calling us to an engagement in cultural warfare using the world’s weapons. He does care about what we will do as we serve Him. And He does have a plan. The Jesus who commands us to follow Him is going to the cross, so He prays.

He is going to the cross, and we are to follow Him. How do people lead their comrades into suffering? Some do it with force. I was recently watching a war film involving three deserters. You may have some understanding of what happens to deserters in an army if they are captured. In this case the three men that ran away from battle were shot. That kind of sanction must be important when you are ordering men to go forward in a charge where so many will lose their lives. They need to know that desertion is not an easy way out, but has serious and very likely consequences. Yet even in an army, the threat of punishment cannot accomplish everything. There are many other good and significant factors for success: an appreciation for your fellow soldiers, the good habits of disciplined training, and especially a fierce admiration for your commanding officer. The memory of an inspiring leader can do much to encourage bravery in battle even after the man in charge may have given his life for the cause.

We could certainly learn something from the great leaders of history about how to lead people in difficult missions, but is there something more for us here than what we can learn from observing people? We understand the power of the fear of punishment. We understand the strength of love for comrades. We understand the benefit of training for a life of discipline. But is there something more here, something that really only works in the world of faith? How does Jesus lead His New Testament church? We are united to Him in a cause that demands sacrifice. How does our Captain lead the way for us in John 17? Jesus is on the way to the cross and He is leading His disciples in prayer.HH

A righteous Father and a righteous Son

Every Kingdom-of-Heaven victory must come from our Father in heaven. Of course this means that we should be praying to God. Our Lord addressed God here as His “righteous Father.” Jesus is the perfectly righteous Son of a perfectly righteous Father. You and I are not perfectly righteous. That much is perfectly obvious. We have violated God’s Law in so many ways, including His command that we pray. How can we even speak to God? We’re guilty.

Unrighteousness in prayer can show up in a variety of ways. We allow our priorities to squeeze out the obvious commandment to pray. When we do pray, it is often superficial and perfunctory, so that we can move on to important things. We think that we should wait for delight in God to spring up in us before we give ourselves over to the duty of prayer. We organize our lives around other priorities, rather than asking God to lead us in glorifying and enjoying Him as our chief end. Even if we recognize these failings and sinful patterns, and even if we confess these to the Lord, we do not undertake any system of discipline that would lead to the habit of the best soul-engaged prayer, and we do not seek accountability for growth in prayer. Again, our failure is obvious. How can we even speak to God? We’re so guilty… But then we remember that there is an answer for guilt, a good substitute for us.

Our comfort is that Jesus prayed, and that even now, He is addressing His righteous Father for us. He does everything well. With that confidence, we have been freed up for prayer. And so we must pray, and we will pray.

What the world knows about God

There is work to be done in the Lord’s Kingdom, and God has ordered this work so that it will not be accomplished without a dedicated and unified life of prayer within the church. We are here to know God’s glory, and to make God known and more visible to others. Habakkuk 2:14 tells us that one day “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.” It will happen. Ultimately God will accomplish this perfectly, but we have a task to perform in God’s plan right now. “The world does not know” God as Savior.

The world does know God in a way – enough to be without excuse. Everyone should seek Him and find Him, but it is only through the preaching of the cross that people can know Him in a saving way. This preaching has been entrusted to the church. Romans 1:21 tells us that the world already knows God. Through the things that He has made, God has revealed His eternal power and divine nature. Also God has made man in His own image, and has written His moral law upon his heart, giving each man the gift of a conscience. We know that we have sinned against God. There is only one way out. We who have embraced the Christ of the Bible know this One Way.

What the followers of Jesus know about God

There is a knowledge that the world does not have; a knowledge that Jesus has; a knowledge that He has determined to grant to His followers. What is this knowledge that we have as followers of the Son of God?

The followers of Jesus know that the Father sent Jesus. This is a foundation for all of our saving knowledge of the Father, since we know the Father through the Son. If Jesus was not sent by the Father, then He was an imposter, and we have no way of knowing any blessed communion with the Father. But Jesus was no false messiah. What He won for us came at the cost of His life. He was sent to do something and He did it. Anyone else who would claim to be the source of peace for us is a cruel and wicked imposter, deceived and deceiving, leading us away from the only source of hope that God has given to us. Jesus was sent by the Father. We have come to believe this based on His words and His works, and especially based on His death and His resurrection. With the full assurance that Jesus was sent by the Father, we have come to know two wonderful things. In the words of our text…

1. Through Jesus, His followers have come to know the “name” of the Father. To truly know the name of the Father is to know God. We cannot examine God in the way that we dissect a creature. Nor can we know God through cross-examination, as if He were on trial. The Father is. We have come to know Him through Jesus, His Son. Jesus showed us what the Father is like by being with us. Through the life of Jesus recorded for our careful consideration in the Bible, and made alive to us by the Spirit of God, we can know the being and character of the Father. This is how we have come to know the name of the Father. Infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth; this is the Father, and we know His name through knowing Jesus.

2. Through Jesus, His followers have also come to know the love of the Father. God’s love to us is gigantic. In a way, it extends to the entire world through the preaching of the word of hope. It also overflows to all of creation in countless great works of beauty, order, and goodness. Though the love of God extends to the world through preaching and through all that we see, the greatest display of God’s love is for His bride, the church, those who receive the Lord Jesus Christ, those who believe in His name, and who are called sons of God in Him. We have come to know the love of the Father in a very personal way, because the love with which the Father has loved the only-begotten Son is in us, and especially Jesus Himself is in us. That is what Jesus is praying for in the last words of John 17, and that is what we have now as our possession as the sons of God.

If you want to really know Jesus, His church should be able to help you. God wants His church to be willing to suffer to bring these great truths to the world near and far, so that many others would know that the Father sent the Son, and in knowing Jesus, that they would know the name of the Father and the love of the Father. This will not happen without suffering, and we will not be willing to suffer without serious, united, heartfelt, Christian prayer.

Why is Jesus praying?

The Jesus who commands us to follow Him is going to the cross, so He prays. Jesus prays in the hearing of His disciples as He is about to be betrayed and arrested. The cross is not far away, and our Jesus is praying. This is our leader. We must not miss the obvious here; that those who would lead us as Christ leads will have to lead in prayer. There are many lessons that we can learn about sacrificial leadership from great men who have led others in battle and who have inspired the loyalty of thousands in great enterprises that required unusual suffering, but it is only among the sons of God who are believers in Jesus Christ that we will learn first the duty of prayer, and then the discipline of prayer, and finally the delight of prayer. Anything less than prayer is to rely on our own strength.

It is imperative that every church have leaders who do what Jesus did in praying with people. My single goal as a leader in the church this year is to foster unity in Christ through prayer. For this to take place, the church must see that this is something that Christ wants, not just for leaders, but for us all. We need to see this as our duty, and be willing to take disciplined steps of life that will result in the goal of a more unified life together as a church that prays. We don’t do this right. Christ has done it perfectly for us. May God continually set before us our crucified and risen Savior as the model of warfare through prayer. By the strength that He supplies, let us grow together in the delight of our Father, so that His people would not only ask, but that according to His will, we would also believe, and if it His good pleasure, that we would even receive.

Questions for meditation and discussion:

1. How does Jesus characterize His Father in verse 25? Consider the difficulty this presents for us.

2. How does Jesus characterize Himself in these two verses, and how is this our hope?

3. How does Christ give us knowledge of God and make known to us the love of God?

4. What is the ultimate hope of this prayer?