Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals

Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, Inc.: Welcome to Hear the Word of God, the online and broadcast teaching ministry of the Reverend Eric Alexander.

Reverend Eric Alexander: We've come this evening to the second section of Jesus' great prayer in John chapter 17, what's often called his great High Priestly Prayer because Jesus is here coming like the High Priest came in the Old Testament with the needs and names of his people, as it were, engraved upon his heart and he brings them into the presence of God. And this is the sense in which Jesus is here bringing the needs of his own to his Father in these last few hours of his earthly life.

Now, the first five verses of John 17 are concerned with Jesus' more personal prayer about the longing in his heart for the glory that he shared with the Father before the foundation of the world to be restored to him. Verse 5, for example: "Now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began." An altogether amazing thing that Jesus prays for, that the same glory that he shared with the Father before the creation of the world might be restored to him again as he returns to the Father in his resurrection and ascension.

But from verse 6 of chapter 17 through to verse 19, he is praying more specifically for his disciples. You notice this in verse 9, for instance: "I pray for them," that is for the disciples. "I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours." And you can see how Jesus is focusing his intercession. He is not saying, of course, that he has no care for the world, but that at this point his concentration as he brings the needs of others to the Father is upon his own disciples.

And although undoubtedly he is praying and thinking specifically about these eleven men who were on his heart in a special way, what he is praying for them is equally relevant to us in 1990, for the simple reason that we are designed to learn from this chapter something of the present ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ in glory at the right hand of the Father. What he is engaged in doing now is interceding for us, his people.

And that is why the epistle to the Hebrews says, "He is able to save to the uttermost all those who come to God by him, because he ever lives to make intercession for them." So there is a sense in which this prayer that we read in John 17 is a sample for us of the sort of thing that the Lord Jesus Christ is doing now for us. And it is knit into the whole question of how we persevere to glory through this world. His ministry is not only something that belongs to the past, when he died for us on the cross, and to the future, when he will return for us in glory, but to the present where at the right hand of God, he makes intercession for us.

Now, it's particularly significant, as I mentioned briefly last Sunday evening, that Jesus not only prays for his disciples, but he lets them overhear his praying. That obviously is why we have John 17. It was possible for them to overhear Jesus pleading with his Father on their behalf. And it's of great significance, I think, that he intends them to overhear so as to assure them that he is indeed praying for them.

I think, for example, this is the significance of verse 13 of the passage we read: "I am coming to you now, but I say these things," and scholars think that "these things" refer to the words of his prayer, "while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them." Now, do you see how the disciples' joy is related to this assurance that Jesus is praying for them and they know what it is that he is asking on their behalf?

Now, that would not be unusual, of course, because Jesus did say to Simon Peter that Satan had desired to have him, that he might sift him like wheat. "But," he says, and here he tells him, he doesn't just pray for him, he tells him, "I have prayed for you," and he tells him what he has prayed for. "I have prayed for you that your faith will not fail." Now, that's something of significance throughout John's Gospel. For example, back in chapter 11 and in verse 41 and 42, Jesus has been praying and says in verse 41, "Then Jesus looked up and said, 'Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of those standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.'"

Now, you see the point. Jesus is saying he had prayed in such a way that his praying might be an encouragement to those who had heard him. Now, the reason, of course, for this is that our Lord is not just concerned for our security. You grasp this? If he were simply concerned for our security, it would be enough that he prayed for us and bore our needs up before his Father. But he is also concerned for our serenity. And because he is concerned for that, he tells them that he is praying for them.

Now, these are two concerns that God's people should share in their caring for one another. That we not only are concerned for the security of one another in Christ and therefore we pray for one another, we should also be concerned for the serenity of one another. And that would make us more frequently say to other people, "I am praying for you," if it really is true. And it's something that perhaps we don't do nearly often enough. Are you concerned not just for the spiritual security of your brothers and sisters in Christ, but for their spiritual serenity, for their peace of mind and heart?

So Jesus allows them to overhear his praying. Now, the whole of the middle section of Jesus' prayer from verse 6 to verse 19 is concerned basically with two things. And they're very simple and very obvious. There is, first of all, a description of the disciples which gives us some insight into how Jesus is thinking of them, and therefore of us. And the other part of the passage, of course, is taken up with the petition for the disciples which Jesus presents to the Father. And that gives us some idea of the things that lie closest to the heart of the Lord Jesus for such as ourselves. What burdens his heart as he brings our needs to the Father.

And I want us to look for the rest of our time at these two things in this passage: the description of the disciples which we find here and the petition that Jesus brings to his Father on their behalf. You notice this remarkable series of descriptions that are here, the way that Jesus thinks of his own as he prays for them and brings them to God. It really is, when you think of it, an amazing privilege that we have. You just stop to wonder and be amazed at this, that the Lord Jesus Christ allows us to overhear him in this most intimate relationship and conversation which he has with his Father on behalf of his own.

But when he speaks of them and describes them, you notice the very first thing that he says about them in verse 6 is that they are the Father's possession. He repeats that again in verse 9. In verse 6: "I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours. You gave them to me." And again in verse 9: "I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours."

So the first way in which Jesus thinks of disciples and therefore of us, is that long before the creation of the world, long before the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world, believers belonged to God the Father. They were his because he had set his heart upon them before they were born and had chosen them as his people, as he says again and again throughout the scripture. They were his because he had created them and formed them and made them and given them life.

And now they are his because he has redeemed them in Jesus Christ. And Jesus says the deepest, truest, first thing that can be said about these disciples is "They are yours." They belong to you. They are the Father's possession. Now, that's a glorious thing which scripture expands and applies in various ways for us, pressing upon us that this is one of the reasons that we are not our own. We do not belong to ourselves. It's one of the things that distinguishes the child of God from everybody else in the world.

The common attitude to my life in the experience of people without Christ is "My life is my own. My time's my own. My future's my own. My plans are my own. Everything is mine." But Jesus says to the Father, "They are distinguished in this: that they are yours by sovereign choice, by initial creation, and by costly redemption. They belong to you."

But then he goes on to an extraordinary second description of the disciples. Here is how he thinks of them. They are not only the Father's possession. They are also, do you notice four times over in Jesus' prayer, described as the Father's gift to the Son? He repeats this concept in verse 2, for example: "You granted him," that is the Son, "authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him."

Then again in verse 6: "I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours and you gave them to me." Then in verse 9: "I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours." And again in verse 24: "Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am and to see my glory."

Now, that's a description that Jesus gives to us of the disciples. It's a description of ourselves. We are not only the Father's possession. We are the Father's gift to the Son. Now, there's a great emphasis in John's Gospel, as you will know, in God's giving. But we usually think of it as God's giving to the world or to us. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. And that is the giving of God to the world.

But here, do you see, is a giving within the Godhead. It's a most profound and remarkable and glorious thing that within the Godhead, the people who were the Father's own children, he has given, as it were, as a love gift to Christ. Now, that means if you're a true believer this evening and God the Father has saved you and given you new birth in Christ and drawn you to himself and adopted you into his family, he has come to the Lord Jesus and he has said of you, "Here is my love gift to you, my well-beloved Son."

And this, if you think about it, is how the Lord Jesus gains his bride. Have you thought about that? You know that lovely thing that happens in an Anglican wedding service? Well, the first part of it happens in most wedding services: that the father brings his daughter down the aisle and does so, of course, as a kind of symbol of the fact that at the beginning of Genesis, when God was instituting marriage, he brought the woman whom he had made to the man and as it were, as his love gift, he presented her to him.

Now, a father does that when he brings his bride down and presents her to the bridegroom. But in the Anglican service, the person who is conducting the service says, "Who gives this woman to be married to this man?" And the father says, with varying degrees of reluctance, "I do," he says. And he takes her hand and hands her over to the bridegroom. Now, my dear friends, in the marriage of our souls with the Lord Jesus Christ, this is what God the Father does.

Jesus is speaking about it here. It is peculiarly precious to him because he speaks of it four times over, or even five, in this passage. He says God the Father takes his child by the right hand and he brings him to the Lord Jesus and he says, "Here is the gift of my love to you." And in his mercy, the Lord Jesus embraces us and this is how he gains his bride. "Who gives this sinner to be married to this Savior?" And God the Father says, "I do."

Now, there is something surpassingly wonderful about this. But you will notice the other dimension in this giving. There is a description here of the disciple as belonging to God the Father, given to God the Son, and then receiving from the Lord Jesus Christ a dowry of gifts. Notice what the Son gives to the disciple. Do you see it in verse 2?

He gives them, first of all, eternal life. "You granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him." So do you see what is happening? God the Father gives the disciple to the Lord Jesus Christ and he gives them eternal life. Verse 6, he gives them a revelation of the Father. "I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world." So he shows the Father to him. Do you imagine what this is saying? It is something altogether glorious, you know, that the Lord Jesus takes his church which is his bride, his disciples who are given to them and says, "Come, there are a number of things that I want to show you."

It's the sort of thing that young men will be inclined to do, you know, when they take a bride into an area of the country perhaps which is the one that they peculiarly belong to, some area that their bride has never seen before. And he will say to her, "Come till I show you this," or some family treasure or some richness, or to meet his father. And the Lord Jesus says, "Come till I show you my Father." He says, "I have revealed you, Father, to those you gave me out of the world."

And then in verse 8, he has given them the words "you gave me and they accepted them." Oh, what a glorious panoply of giving that there is here. God the Father gives us to God the Son. God the Son gives to his children eternal life, a revelation of the Father, the word of the Father. Do you see how precious that is to him, by the way? What a glorious thing.

Here is God the Son and he says, "Of all the glorious gifts I have to give to them, Father, this is what I have done. I've given them eternal life. And that eternal life is that they might know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. So I've given them that. I've given them also a revelation of your glory. And I've given them your word." Oh, we need to think about that, don't we? If the Lord Jesus has given his word as such a priceless thing to us, how we need to take it from him as precisely that.

So he describes the disciples in relation to the Father. But you'll notice that Jesus is not finished with that. He also describes them in relation to the world. He is thinking of them with a great and immeasurable care and affection. I think sometimes we don't begin to imagine the affection of the Lord Jesus for his own people, you know. That's one of the things he means when he says that "I am praying now not for the world, but for them whom you have given to me."

Of course, the heart of Jesus Christ cries out and bleeds for the world. Later on in verse 25, he says, "Righteous Father, the world does not know you." But there is a special sense in which he has an affection and a care for his own. That, of course, is reflected and mirrored in the natural world. It would be a very strange thing if we all cared equally for everybody around us in the world. But you are not going to tell me that there isn't some special love, some place of an affection for those who belong to your own family that burns with a brighter flame in your soul? You care for them in a special way. And many of us here this evening would say, "I would lay down my life for them." And Jesus has that special affection for his own children.

We really need sometimes to bathe our souls in that truth, you know. Some of us who have been through the mill, some of us who have been going through dark and difficult days that nobody else knows much about, we need to bathe our souls in this gracious, warm affection of the Lord Jesus for his own. He looks at them there. He is leaving them in the world, you see. And he says, "Now, Father, as I come to you, I pray not that you will take them out of the world, but since they're in the world, I want to pray for them."

And he begins to describe their relationship to the world as he has just described their relationship to the Father. And you will notice how he does it. First of all, he tells us that the world is a foreign field for the believer. He says, "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world." That is, they do not belong there. And "now I am leaving the world, but they are in the world, but they don't belong to it."

Verse 14: "I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world anymore than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you will take them out of the world, but that you will protect them from the evil one." So he describes them as those for whom the world is a foreign field. And that is the situation of the disciple, of course. The world is a realm in which standards and values and priorities are different for the disciple from what they are in the world.

And it is therefore a foreign field for him. He is a stranger and a pilgrim. That's the New Testament's expression for the child of God in the world: a stranger and a pilgrim. He is passing through this world. It is not his home. He confesses a citizenship in the world to come. He looks for a city that has foundations whose builder and maker is God. And he finds himself in some real sense homeless in this world. It is a foreign field.

You notice in verse 14 that it is also a battlefield for the believer. "I have given them your word and the world has hated them." You notice in chapter 16 and verse 33: "I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble, but take heart. I have overcome the world." So the world is a foreign field and it is a battlefield.

You notice in verse 18 that it is a mission field. "As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world." Now, there is a whole sermon in that alone of truth about the mission field into which God sends us in the world in the same way that he sent Jesus into the world. But this is the disciple's description. The world through which he is passing is a foreign field for him and he will ultimately not find himself in the deepest sense at home in it. There will be something that is seeking another realm.

The second thing is this world is going to be a battlefield. The evil one is the ultimate adversary. Jesus says, "I do not pray that you will take them out of the world," verse 15, "but protect them from the evil one." But above all, the world is a mission field because Jesus says, "As you sent me into the world, I have sent them that they might serve you in the world."

Now, that brings us to the petition that Jesus prays for them because, of course, the reason that he cries to the Father on their behalf is that they're going to be left in the world. They're going to experience what it is to be bereft of his physical presence. And so he prays for them in this hostile world that the Father may provide for them.

Now, what are the two things that he prays that the Father may provide for them? First of all, he prays for their perseverance, or as the NIV puts it, for their protection. You notice how he does this. In verse 11, for example, he says, "I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name that you gave me."

And again in verse 12: "While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me." Then in verse 15: "My prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them." Now, what he is concerned about, you see, is that as they are left in this strange and hostile environment, and as they are now his missionaries whom he is sending out into the world, his cry to the Father is that you will keep them. That's the Authorized Version translation, and it's probably the best. Because the grave danger is that in all their weakness these men might be kept against the danger of falling away. And one of the great secrets of their perseverance is that the Lord Jesus is praying for them.

Now, let me just mention one or two important things about that before we come to the second thing and the last that he is saying. If this is the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ for his own, then I would suggest to you that it needs to be our ministry for men and women around us for whom we have learned by God's grace to care. It is this care in the heart of Jesus, you see, for his own that ought to be mirrored in our lives. If the living Christ is really at work in us, my beloved, this is the thing that ought to appear in us.

Where do people find the care of the Lord Jesus? Not in some disembodied, ghostly fashion. They find the care of the Lord Jesus in flesh and blood through you and me. And the great question is: do they really experience it? And where is that care proved and tested most? You know, I've lost count of the number of people who say to me, "I feel so helpless. There is so little that I can do for so and so. All I can do, ultimately, is to pray for them." And I regularly say to them, "There is nothing in the whole of God's universe that is one fraction so important as that."

This is Jesus' answer to his disciples going through the world in all the perils that were surrounding them. He says, "Father, I pray that you will protect them, that they may know what it is for the name of the Lord to surround them." That simply means the character of God. He says he is praying that God himself may act as a shield and a protection for them.

And you know, when there are people who do stumble and fall, what I sometimes wonder is: did we really pray enough for them? I'll always remember, I told some of you once a long time ago, I think, about a young man who went out to the mission field many, many years ago. He had many natural weaknesses, but he had great spiritual grace. And the missionary society sent him out to a far-distant country.

And everybody as he went away said to him, "Brother, we really will pray for you." They stood up in church, not this one, I may say, but they stood up in church and said, "We really covenant ourselves to pray for you. We'll see you through. We'll stand behind you. We'll be with you."

About a year later, he came back home from the mission field a broken man, trailing his failure behind him. Some people were greatly offended by him, and certainly the name of the Lord was in some sense stained. But you know, I remember one godly man who sat beside me as we were summoned together to hear this news, and he whispered to me, "God forgive us who have not prayed enough for that lad."

Now, I know there are many other things, but I'm deeply impressed by the fact that when Jesus sees his weak and poor disciples in the world, the one thing he wants to do is to get into the presence of his Father and plead for them. "Father," he says, "protect them."

But you know, there's another thing here and it's much more wonderful. It is that tonight now, at the right hand of God, when you're going through days of darkness, when you are under pressure from the world and the flesh and the devil, if you are God's child this evening, what is happening at the throne of God's grace is that the ascended Savior is looking down upon your need and is petitioning the Father and saying, "Father, keep him. There he is going through days that could so easily lead to peril or disaster. Father, keep him now. Keep her in this moment. Father, protect her by your name."

And you know what the book of Proverbs says? "The name of the Lord is a strong tower. The righteous runneth into it and is safe." That's what he's doing now. No wonder John Calvin says, "Blessed ministry for weak believers is this. Blessed ministry."

So he prays for their perseverance or their protection. You know the secret of Christian perseverance, that we will go on through thick and thin through this world until we see him face to face, is not one iota of anything in us. It is that the name of the Lord is sufficient for his people.

Remember Simon Peter said to Jesus when he was talking about many of them turning away. He said to him, "Lord, they are all turning away and it's a great pity. Disturbs people like me and undoubtedly it disturbs you too, but Lord, I will never turn back. You can always count on me," he said. Now, when somebody's confidence is there, they're heading for disaster. But when their confidence is where Jesus revealed his to be, then we may say, "A sovereign protector I have and nothing shall separate me from his love."

Finally, the last look at the last verse but one of the passage, verse 17: "Sanctify them through the truth. Your word is truth." His great longing and cry to the Father is that they might be sanctified, set apart, that is, for the glory of God, for his usefulness in the world. And you notice how that's tied in verse 18 to their being sent into the world. Sanctification and a missionary calling are held closely together, do you notice?

He says, "Sanctify them. Set them apart for yourself." It's a word that means separated, cut off, reserved. You know the kind of thing that you get in a store if you see something that's been at the sales—I'm a bit of an addict of sales myself—and when you go to a sale and see something that's been cut in price and then there's a notice on it that says "Reserved for somebody. It's not for you, that is, it's reserved for them." That's the idea. It's not available for anyone else. It's reserved for him.

And Jesus says, "Lord, Father, sanctify them. And the way that we are set apart for him: sanctify them through your truth. Your word is truth." So Jesus says the way that people become holy, the way they become like Jesus, is very simple. It's through the word. And just in case they overheard him praying and they didn't understand what he was meaning when he said, "Sanctify them through the truth," he says, "Your word is truth." And there is no other way to become like Jesus than that. That is why the private reading and the public ministry of the word of God is so absolutely central in our lives if we're growing to be more like Christ. "Your word," he says, "is the truth."

We bless God this evening for such a Savior who at the right hand of the Father pleads our cause and brings our needs to him. And in his great mercy, he will keep us until that day when we see him face to face.

Mark Daniels: You're listening to Hear the Word of God with the Reverend Eric Alexander, a minister in the Church of Scotland for over 50 years. To access more Bible teaching from Reverend Alexander, visit hearthewordofgod.org where your generous contribution will help us sustain and grow this ministry. That's hearthewordofgod.org. You could choose instead to mail a check to this address: 600 Eden Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 17601. Or call 1-800-488-1888. This program is a presentation of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. I'm Mark Daniels. Thank you for listening. Please join us again next time for Eric Alexander and Hear the Word of God.