Are you open to the Word?

“I am praying for them...”
Part 3: “Sanctify them in the truth.”
(John 17:16-23, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, March 28, 2010)

16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. 20 I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.

Not of the world (16)
Josiah was the last great king of Judah before the exile to Babylon in the sixth century before Christ. During the generations before his reign, the people seem to have lost all sense of the written Word of God. It was during a temple renovation that a biblical scroll was rediscovered. It must have been hidden in a wall when it had become unsafe to publicly read the Scriptures. It is amazing to think about a Word from heaven, which is what that scroll was, inspired by the Holy Spirit for God's people, becoming so despised that someone felt that they had to hide it in the temple wall for safe keeping for a better day when it might be found.

Not everyone wants to hear a Word from God. None of us are perfectly receptive to the Bible. As Jesus prays this prayer in the hearing of His church, He is praying for those who should want to hear that Word, since heaven is their home. It is easy to think that this world is all the home we have since it is the only home we have ever seen, but Jesus says of His disciples that “they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.” There is one major difference between Jesus and His disciples on this question of home. Though heaven is our home, and heaven is His home, He has seen it, and we have not. He came down from heaven.

Your Word (17)
As significant as that difference is, there is a big difference between what Jesus calls here “the world” and those He calls His disciples. This prayer is not for the world. Jesus could pray many wonderful things for the world; that God would continue to provide food, shelter, families, good government; that He would restrain sin, and that there would be peace on earth so that the message of heaven could be fairly considered. All of these things are good, and they are part of the will of God. But here Jesus prays for the church; that they would be kept in God's Name, that they would be kept from the evil one, and that God would sanctify them in the truth.

This word, “sanctify” is about being different from the world. Things that are sanctified are holy, separated from common use, set apart for some special purpose. Jesus is asking the Father that the church would be set apart from the world, not in ways that they would come up with, but according to the truth of the Word of God. If we have the Bible hidden away in some “wall” for safe keeping, that wall needs to come down, and we need to come to the King of kings and tell Him that we just found this book, and ask Him what He wants us to do with it. We know what He would say because we have His prayer here. He would say, “That's what I was talking to my Father about before I went to the cross. I asked Him to use that Word to set you apart from a world that does not know about the hope of heaven.”

Into the world (18)
Since heaven is our home, should we just hide from the world? I need to remind you again of something we saw on an earlier occasion as we looked at this prayer. You can see it very plainly in verse 18. The Father sent the Son into the world, and the Son is sending His disciples into the world. The world is the environment within which God's grace is known and lived out. God has sent you not just to the world in general, but especially to the particular time and place where you live. He does not want you to run away from that world, but to engage in it.

If you are at a later stage in your life as I am right now, you already should have a pretty good sense as to what that engagement in the world looks like. If you are younger and have options in front of you that will require further opportunities to arise and more decisions to be made, you can trust the Lord that He knows why He has made you for here and now. Engagement with the world for these eleven disciples was not an option, but a commandment. That is also true for you. When I first came to Exeter one of the senior ministers in town asked me, “Why are you here?” I was somewhat surprised but what I perceived to be the tone of the question, but I have come to see it as not only a fair question, but a very important one. You should seek God on this, and trust Him that He knows the answer, and that He will be happy to lead you into the calling that is your life.

When you consider the prayer of Jesus, “Sanctify them in the truth, Your word is truth,” remember this: Whatever that calling and life may be that God has for you, and those answers will be different for each of you, God intends to use the truth of His Word to set you apart from the world, and to inform the delight of your specific engagement with the world. God's Word can do this for you, but will you allow that? Will you order your life for continuous solemn engagement with the Word of God in worship. (Example of my listening to a sermon that I did not think was exceptional on Romans 8.)

I consecrate Myself (19)
Jesus set himself apart from the world, He sanctified Himself, He consecrated Himself to do what only He could do. He came at just the right place and time for His life, and you have as well. He allowed Himself to be perfectly formed through experiences with the Word of God. He saw who He was, and what He had to do. For example: He knew from the Word, from Isaiah 53, that the title, “Man of Sorrrows,” was His title, and He consecrated Himself for the cross.

The Word touches us on this same point. We have been touched by sorrow, not as profound as His, but still real, and somehow according to God's inscrutable decree. You are a follower of a Man of Sorrows, and all of us who follow Him are told that we also have a cross. What a thing! What does it mean? We find out in the Word. Some of it is that we live by faith in God through times where we cannot see what is coming next. But it also means that we comfort others with the comfort that we ourselves have received, and more generally that we are willing to let our desire to always have our way be tempered by real empathy, sympathy, love, and good works.

That the world may believe (20-23)
This is the good life that God has for you. You don't have to know all of what that good life will be in order to live today's portion of it with a sense of confident expectation. It is in that life where you can know oneness with God. It is in that life where the world will come to know something about the Lord just by the way that you have been sanctified by the Word and touched by the Spirit. This is how we will be one. And this is the normal way that the world will come to believe that the Father has sent the Son, and that the Father loves us as He loves Jesus.

1. This is Jesus' prayer for the church. What would Jesus pray for the world?
2. How does God's Word set us apart from the world and send us into the world?
3. What does Jesus mean when He says, “I consecrate myself?”
4. What is this glorious oneness that we have in Jesus Christ?

What me worry?

“I am praying for them...”
Part 2: “Keep them from the evil one.”
(John 17:12-15, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, March 21, 2010)

John 17:12-15 12 While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. 13 But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.

Q: What is the first petition in Jesus’ prayer to the Father?
A: "Glorify your Son." (John 17:1)
Q: What is the second petition in Jesus’ prayer to the Father?
A: "Keep them in your name." (John 17:11)
Q: What is the third petition in Jesus’ prayer to the Father?
A: "Keep them from the evil one." (John 17:15)

While I was with them... (12)
Even though our Lord lived on this earth for about thirty-three years, we know very little about the first thirty years of his life. His public ministry was limited to those final three years that are described for us in the four gospels. Here Jesus tells us something of what He has been doing over these three years. One way of looking at that time is from the viewpoint of Jesus' relationship with the Father. He was obeying His Father. He was receiving direction from His Father and perfectly accomplishing everything that was necessary for God's glory and our salvation. But there is a second way of looking at those three years that is more directly connected to the viewpoint that we have, the viewpoint not from heaven, but from the church on earth. While He was with His disciples, Jesus was keeping them in the Name...

When sin entered the world, it became a very dangerous place to be. Some of that we can see and measure, but some of it we cannot understand through our senses. We cannot see into spiritual realms of danger, and we are not told to make that the focus of our lives. We are told that the danger in those realms is real, and that it touches into the realm where we can sense things. We are also told that God rules over all of it. We are also aware of the miracles of Jesus that show that He is wrestling somehow with powers in those realms, and it is evident that He can make them flee with a simple Word. What is beyond our ability to even see, Jesus can see perfectly, and He has absolute authority over all of this.

This is why it is so significant when Jesus recounts in the hearing of His disciples that while He was in the world, He guarded them, and that is the only reason that not one of them was lost except Judas, who he calls the son of destruction. His fall was a matter of fulfilling the Scriptures. So this is part of what Jesus was doing during those years. He had called a small group of disciples together. He was teaching them about the kingdom, and he was guarding them from forces of evil that they could not really see, not only demons, over which He gave those disciples some measure of heavenly authority, but also that evil that wells up within the hearts of people, not only those who are not disciples, but the evil that is within us. Jesus was able to keep them during that three years, despite the power of the devil, the world, and their own flesh. These three worked together to try to sink men like Peter and John, but Jesus kept them.

But now I am coming to you... (13-14)
But now there would appear to be a very significant problem. Suddenly something will be very different. Jesus is going back to heaven. How will the disciples face the dangers that are so very significant, dangers from which they were kept while our Lord was with them? Not only do they have the devil and all his allies; they must also deal with their own weakness and the tremendous outside opposition that makes the story of the rest of the New Testament so engaging. These men will bring the message of God's dying love to Jews and Gentiles everywhere, and everywhere they go, people will want to kill them for it.

Jesus says very plainly in this prayer that these disciples are not of the world, just as He is not of the world. He has been very frank about the fact that the world has hated them. So they have a problem with evil within them. They also have a problem with evil that they can see and hear around them from Jews and Gentiles who do not believe in the power of the death of Christ to save and who do not believe in the resurrection. They have a further problem from that being that told Eve that it was a good idea to eat the forbidden fruit. He told King David that it was good idea to number the armies of Israel against the instruction of the Lord. He was able to take away all that Job had including his family and his health. What, me worry?

And yet Jesus says that He is praying this all aloud in front of them, speaking it in the world, so that the disciples might be full of joy. How is this going to work? They have the word of God, but Jesus is leaving, and they are left with the Scriptures, surrounded by trouble, some of which they cannot see, and some of which is within them. This is a great time to pray. Only God...

I do not ask that you take them out of the world (15)
Only God can win in this kind of situation. Things look so desperate that we might be tempted to think that retreat is the only answer. Jesus is going to the Father, He is going to heaven. “Take me out of this war zone. Take me to heaven.” If that is your battle cry, I fully understand the sentiment, and we should all long for the fulfillment of the Lord's plans in the world of resurrection. Yet we are told here very explicitly that abandonment of the world is not the solution. Jesus says, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world.” We have work here...

But that you keep them from the evil one (15)
What does He ask the Father to do? “Keep them from the evil one.” The evil one, Satan, the accuser of the brethren, the father of lies, the one who comes to steal, to kill, and to destroy, he is our adversary and the adversary of God. He would magnify your weakness and sin through his continual prosecution of the case against you. He is looking for people to devour. He cannot separate us from the love of God, but he can ruin our lives. He desires to sift us until there is nothing left of us. He would tell you that you are nothing but a worm, and that God could not possibly be concerned with someone like you.

Yet the father is able and willing to keep you from being eternally destroyed by this enemy. He has given you weapons for the warfare, and chief among them is this truth: Jesus has already fully died for your sins. The cross shines a bright light on the lies of the devil. Does he claim that God could not possibly care about a human being? Look to the cross, and you will find a sinless human being there who is the eternal Son of God. God became a human being to save human beings. Does he claim that no man could ever be right before God? See the cross again, and remember that Jesus, the righteous One, gave you His righteousness when He took your sin. Because of the fact of the cross, you are now counted as righteous before God, simply through looking to the cross, and calling on the Name of the Lord.

Yes, God will keep you from the evil one, and if the devil seems to work his miseries, there is a whole world reserved for us on high beyond the reach of evil. (See 2 Corinthians 5:1-5)

1. What does Jesus speak about here concerning His ministry on earth?
2. How will things be different now that Jesus is going back to the Father?
3. Why does Jesus intend for the church to be in the world?
4. What does it mean for us to be kept from the evil one?

God will keep us in His Name

“I am praying for them...”
Part 1: “Keep them in your name.”
(John 17:6-11, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, March 14, 2010)

John 17:6-11 6 "I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. 8 For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. 9 I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. 10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. 11 And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.

Q: What is the first petition in Jesus’ prayer to the Father?
A: "Glorify your Son." (John 17:1)
Q: What is the second petition in Jesus’ prayer to the Father?
A: "Keep them in your name." (John 17:11)

They have kept your word (6)
Jesus has been praying to the Father in the hearing of His disciples just before His arrest. As we continue to consider this important prayer, we will be especially focusing on the things that He asks for. In the first five verses, there was essentially one request: Glorify Your Son. This is of first importance, the glory of Jesus in both His shocking suffering and especially in His return to His Father in heaven. It reminds us of the first petition of the Lord's prayer, which starts us with the wonder of God, “Hallowed be Thy Name,” and then moves on to God's kingdom coming, and God's will being accomplished, and only then to the question of what we need.

Jesus first seeks His own glory as the Son of God, the eternal glory that He had with the Father before the world existed. This is right and good, since Jesus is God. But now it is time for Him to ask the Father for other things. He speaks in the remainder of the chapter about His disciples, first the eleven who have been with Him over these three years, but then also those who will hear about Jesus and the kingdom from their word, all the way down to us today. We are interested to see what Jesus is asking the Father for, especially when He is praying for us. Not only that, we are more generally interested in what Jesus says to the Father about us. Perhaps after following the story of the eleven remaining disciples we may be surprised that Jesus says this about them in His prayer: “They have kept your Word.”

At the end of John 16, it was the disciples who were insisting that they were now finally understanding Jesus' words, but it was the Lord who immediately pointed out to them that they would all soon be scattered, fleeing to their homes and abandoning Him. They do not seem to be people of victorious faith, who have believed and obeyed the Word of God, and yet Jesus says here that they have kept the Father's Word. This perplexing comment is not just about the original disciples. We marvel when we are told that God will evaluate our lives and will be able to give this kind of glowing assessment: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant,” and “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat,” without any mention at all of our doubts and our sin. Somehow in our union with Christ, God is able to look at all His disciples as faithful servants, pointing to our deeds of mercy as if they were all we ever did, and speaking of us as those who have kept the Word of God. That is amazing grace! We were chosen by God, given to the Son of God, and now together with all who are in Jesus we are judged as keepers of God's Word.

From you (7-8)
This Word that those disciples of Jesus are keeping came from the Father to the the Son, and then was given from the Son to His disciples. This is the way that truth from heaven comes into the world, through Jesus, who is the Word of God. Jesus has come from the Father, and He has given Himself to us. Believing in Him is trusting that He is heaven's gift, that He came from the Father. The disciples were so weak, and we are so weak, yet there is within the beloved of God that gift of faith, that spark of life, and we do know that grace has come to us from God, truth has come to us from God, life has come to us from God, and all through Jesus, sent from the Father.

Not for the world (9-10)
I say that we are weak, and we are. I say that our faith may feel so weak and so small, and yet we are not permitted in this prayer to blur the distinction between the disciples, who through Christ are counted as keepers of the Word, and others who are not disciples of Jesus. We are not permitted to pretend that we are all entirely the same, because Jesus says here that He is not praying for everyone. He knows those who are His. Their sins are about to be put upon His sinless person. He will suffer and die for them. The Father has given them to Jesus. All of the disciples belong to the Father, all who belong to the Father belong to the Son, and Jesus will be glorified in the lives of this group. He is praying for them. He is not praying for the world.

They are in the world (11)
Jesus came from heaven, and He spent a little over thirty years in this world. Particularly the last three years have been His public years. Now He is leaving this world and returning to the Father in heaven, and His disciples will remain in the world. What does He ask for us: “Keep them in Your Name.” God loves His Name. It is a temple of pure worship. It is His presence, His being, and our salvation (Read Exodus 3: 13-15). His Son is somehow the visible temple of God, the visible presence of God, the visible being and Name of God. When Jesus asks that His disciples will be kept in the Father's Name, He is asking that they would be kept in Himself.

In Jesus, in Christ, in God, in His Name, this is the only place where we can be one. In Jesus we have unity with one another, and unity with God the Father and God the Son. We need to be kept in the Name, because not everyone in the world is in the Name right now. Jesus is asking for this. It shall be given to Him. He will be glorified, and we will be kept in the Name of God.

Our salvation and our security has never been in ourselves. Look frankly at Peter and the rest (Read Luke 22:31-34). Look at the church throughout the centuries. And yet we are those who Jesus says have kept God's Word. We have fed the hungry. We have clothed the naked. We have visited the lonely and the sick. We have loved the brethren, associating with the despised and the persecuted. We have filled out the sufferings of the cross with our love. This kind of startlingly positive assessment of our lives can only have come from God Himself. Because of Jesus, because of His life and death, and because of His prayers, we shall be kept in God, in His Word and His Name. Promise. There is no power that will ever be able to separate us from Him.

God will keep you in His Name. If you remember this prayer of Jesus as a promise of God, it will help you to abandon doubt as a lifestyle. Doubt is a fact of life in this age. When doubt is embraced as a friend, it can make a very unhealthy, greedy, and unhappy visitor. If you are a disciple of Jesus doubt may drop by, but you need not make a room for it in your soul where faith is. Have mercy on one another when doubt comes by, but look for faith to abide and live.

1. How can Jesus say that His disciples have kept the Word of God?
2. Where does the Word come from, and how is it given to us?
3. Why does Jesus say here that He is not praying for the world?
4. How does this second petition provide needed guidance for the Lord's church?

Listening happily to a very old god

“Father, Glorify Your Son…” Part 5
(John 17:5, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, March 7, 2010)

John 17:1-5 … "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, 2 since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 4 I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

Q: What is the first petition in Jesus’ prayer to the Father?
A: "Glorify your Son." (John 17:1)
Q: Father, what have you given Your Son concerning humanity?
A: "You have given Him authority over all flesh." (John 17:2)
Q: Heavenly Father, what is eternal life?
A: "That they know you.” (John 17:3)
Q: How did Jesus speak of His glorifying the Father on earth?
A: “I accomplished the work that you gave me to do.” (John 17:4)
Q: What did Jesus ask for concerning His future glory?
A: “Now, Father, glorify me in your own presence.” (John 17:5)

Glorify me in your own presence
There is a glory to the cross, but it is a hidden glory, in a way. On the surface, it does not appear glorious in the least. On the cross an innocent man is suffering death and extreme public humiliation. He faces the worst kind of end. The glory of the cross becomes visible in the resurrection, especially when we know what that death accomplished, the vindication of Jesus as the Christ, and the salvation and blessed resurrection of all those given to the Son by the Father.

Jesus knows that the hidden glory of the cross is the pathway to a future glory that is not at all hidden. This future glory will be seen by humanity. It will be clear to all that Jesus is who He said He was, the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Anointed Savior. When He comes again in all His glory, we are told by the Apostle Paul that every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, Yahweh the Son, to the glory of God the Father.

When Jesus said in the beginning of this prayer, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you,” He was speaking first of the hidden glory of the cross. But now in the fifth verse, it is very clear that He asks for that future glory to be His: “Father, glorify me in your own presence.” The Father is in the highest heaven. Psalm 115 says, “Our God is in heaven. He does all that pleases Him.” The future glory of the Son is to have the light of heaven exposing the greatness of the Son of God in a way that is so different from His exposure on the cross. Jesus is glorified in the presence of the Father. This glory comes after His suffering, after His death, after His burial, after His resurrection, and after His ascension to heaven, when Jesus is at the right hand of the Father.

With the glory I had with you
When He asks the Father for this future glory, He is not asking Him for anything that is not rightly His already. He makes this clear in His prayer, because He specifies that the glory that He asks for is only that glory that He had with the Father prior to coming to earth to live and die for us. Jesus is not a stranger to glory. What has been strange is His humiliation. What is remarkably strange is His wretched death.

If He already knew the experience of that great glory with the Father in the highest heavens, why did He subject Himself to this horrific indignity of coming here? When we come to the root of this important question we find some disarmingly simple answers: 1. The Father asked Him to do this. 2. He said that He would and so He did. 3. He knew that it was for the best. But these simple answers bring us to deeper questions. The Father asked Him, but why did the Father ask His beloved Son to do this? Jesus said He would do it, but why did He every agree to this? He knew it was for the best, but how could something like the cross be for the best? Even Jesus said in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me.” Of course He also said, “Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” What is the deep root of all this necessary pain? We find at the core of this quandary, a most simple and beautifully profound answer for us: God loves us. He has determined that His glory will not only be in the purity of His wrath, but also in the wonder of His matchless love. The hymn writer says, “He left His Father's throne above, so free, so infinite His grace, humbled Himself, so great His love, and bled for all His chosen race. 'Tis mercy all! immense and free, for O my God, it found out me. Amazing love! How can it be that Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?”

Before the world existed
We are told in another place in the Bible that it was for the joy that was set before Him, the joy of this future glory, that our Savior endured the cross. Yet Jesus says in this prayer that this future glory for which He asks, is somehow also a past glory, an eternally old glory, from the everlasting past, before the world existed. In that time before time, Jesus had all His glory, and this must mean that the glory of the cross, the glory of the love and mercy of God, and the glory of the justice and holy wrath of God was all entirely settled before the world existed, since before the world existed Jesus had this glory with the Father.

Jesus was God with God before the first word of creation was spoken. Proverbs 8 speaks of this glorious love and joy within the Godhead (See Proverbs 8:27-31). O the glory of God in His eternal Son! How horrifying is the cross! How devastating and beautiful and costly is the love of God that has touched your soul, this dying love of Jesus. He deserves all that future glory!

Lessons learned over a long life
I would like to talk to my father today. He lived into his 80s. I would very much like to talk to his father, my grandfather, who died in his 90s. When we were kids we thought he talked too much. I would love to hear his stories now, and to ask him questions. I would like to listen to him. His father, my great-grandfather, fought at Gettysburg. People learn many things over the course of a long life. There is really so much to learn from them, if we would listen

Learning from our eternal God about life
Jesus, in His divine nature, is very old, as old as the Ancient of Days. I would like to listen to Him, to hear Him talk about the old days with His Father and the Spirit. I want to hear Him speak about that great eternal glory, if He would be willing to talk about it. What was creation like after Day 1, when He said, “Let there be light,” and light became light?

There is so much I would like to learn from Jesus. What was it like to be Immanuel, God with us, and to grow in wisdom and stature in His human nature? How is it that the Son of God, with all His great eternal glory, could fit all His divine nature in the one person of Jesus? Most of all I would like to know more about the depths of His love, and about His willingness to become man in order to save us. I would enjoy, not only knowing about that love, but having more of the love and joy of Jesus in me, in you, in our lives together. That would be heaven, would it not?

1.How does the story of heaven and earth enter into the Son's prayer?
2.Why does the Son desire to be in the presence of the Father?
3.What is the history of the relationship between the Father and the Son?
4.What can we learn from the Ancient of Days and the Son of Man?