Truth For Life

Guest (Male): Often when people share prayer requests, we hear about the need for healing from illness or injury or success in various endeavors. And while it's not wrong to pray for these things, we don't find this in Jesus' high priestly prayer. So what was his focus in this sacred prayer? We'll find out today on Truth for Life. Alistair Begg is teaching from chapter 17 of John's Gospel.

Alistair Begg: The Father is personally distinct from the Son. Even as the Son and the Father are distinct from the Holy Spirit. So, we're confronted by the fact that from all of eternity within the Godhead, there was love and there was communication. Verse 24 reinforces this: "Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me." Listen: "Because you loved me before the foundation of the world."

It's a profound mystery; it's a profound truth. But we'll leave mystery and go on to security. To security. I just picked these; you could have chosen maybe another five words. But you'll notice how the disciples are described in verse 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."

Now hopefully there's at least one person who's saying to himself, "Well we dealt with that back in chapter 6." It's probably a lady; they usually pay more attention. But 6:37... this is 6:36: "But I said to you that you have seen me, and yet you do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day."

And after he had said these things in the hearing of the disciples who would remember that he had said this, he now says what he says in prayer to his Father. "I am praying for them," he says in verse 9. The security of the prayers of Jesus for his own. In verse 11: "I'm no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I'm coming to you, Holy Father. Keep them in your name."

By verse 14 he says they are hated. "The world has hated them because they're not of the world." But notice in verse 13: "I'm coming to you, and these things that I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves." Filled with the joy that comes by the means of the work of the Holy Spirit within the life of the child of God and at the same time hated by the world.

You shouldn't be surprised that people don't like you. You shouldn't be surprised when you say that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity. You shouldn't be surprised when in addressing your Muslim friends, you point out that this is a radically different perspective. That the idea that all roads lead to heaven like they lead to Timbuktu cannot be substantiated from the Bible.

And when that becomes the prevailing notion of a Western culture as it increasingly is, then the person who's prepared to stand out and say, "No, Jesus said 'I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through him,'" don't expect people to stand and applaud. They hate that. It challenges core convictions that have become increasingly embedded in our culture.

But blessed are you when you are persecuted for righteousness' sake. When people say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake, rejoice and be glad. A security that doesn't mean we are just navigating our way through the universe in a sort of tranquil state. No, we're involved in opposition to the things that we hold dear. Opposition to the one whom we hold dear, and yet our joy is fulfilled.

I've been reading through the Psalms for a while now, and back in Psalm 11, the Psalm begins about praising God. And the Psalmist says, "Why do you say to me, 'Flee like a bird to your mountain? Flee like a bird to your mountain'?" The Psalmist says, "If we could only get out of here." Which of course goes all the way back to the sixties and to Eric Burdon. "We gotta get out of this place if it's the last thing we ever do," right?

Now if I listen carefully to some of you speaking and you tell me you watch the news a great deal, I feel so bad for you as you fall asleep at night singing, "We gotta get out of this place if it's the last thing we ever do." But there's nowhere to go. "Why do you say, 'Flee like a bird to your mountain'?" Where would you go? Where would you ever want to go, save in the arms of Jesus? In the Lord I take refuge. Why do you say to me, "Flee like a bird to the mountain"?

Security. Thirdly, sanctity. Sanctity. Verse 17 can be our starting point here: "Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth." Preceded by verse 16: "They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world." Because once we are united to Christ, and Christ is not of the world, then we are not of the world.

If you're reading M'Cheyne, you're working your way through Deuteronomy as part of the readings, and this morning it was very, very clear. God is speaking to his people and he's saying to them, "I have chosen you as a people for my very own possession. You're not like anybody else. You're not like the surrounding nations. You are radically different." Now Jesus is making the same point. Sanctify them.

How then is sanctification to take place? Well he tells us the means of sanctification. How is a man or a woman separated from the sin that is so appealing to me? How is it that my life may become dedicated to righteousness, which often seems like the far harder way to go through your day? How does that happen? Well the answer is it happens by means of the word of God. "I have given them the words that you gave me. I have given them the words that you gave me."

Go all the way back through this Gospel and that's what he's referring to. John chapter 8, for example. Again Jesus spoke to them saying, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life." Notice that both our security and our sanctity are by means of the word of God. By means of the word of God.

That God's word is a lamp to our feet; it is a light to our path. It calls us up short. It stabilizes us when we're shaking. It encourages us when we're faltering. And all to the end that we might be seen to be the very children of God. I hope you read your Bible. I hope you read it. "Make the book live to me, O Lord." Morning prayer: "Show me yourself within your word. Show me myself. Show me my Savior. Make the book live to me."

Now I have to go to the office. Now I have to go to the school. Now I have to deal with her. Now I've got to deal with that. Your word. Sanctify them. Jesus prays to the Father for his followers that we might be what he desires for us to be, and the means for attaining to this is through the word of God.

I sat for a while and thought about a man that I only heard briefly when I came here in the early eighties. Some of you will have remembered him for longer. He was born in 1901 in the Carolinas, and he died on the 12th of August, 1986. I heard him in the three years that I had before he died. He was a wonderfully endearing teacher of the Bible, and he said memorable things.

The one I want to mention to you, I'll mention in a moment, but here is another one, and it fits. If you are a Christian, you're not a citizen of the world trying to get to heaven. You are a citizen of heaven making your way through the world. That's good. So in the morning, I say, "I am a citizen of heaven making my way through the world. This world is not my home, just passing through."

But here's the quote that I went looking for: "Sin will keep us from this book, or this book will keep us from sin." And it is not the word hidden in the head, but in the heart that keeps us from sin. You can have a head full of scripture and a heart full of sin. You can backslide with a Bible under your arm. I say that makes the point.

And to this end, notice in verse 19, and here is a mystery as well, Jesus says, "I consecrate myself. I consecrate myself to this end. For their sake I consecrate myself that they also may be sanctified in the truth." When Paul fastened on this, writing to the Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 5:15, he says, "And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for him who died for them and was raised again."

Mystery, security, sanctity, unity. Just briefly, our time passes, but it's only a trailer. Verse 11, what is he praying? "That they may be one even as we are one. That they all may be one." Notice verse 21: "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." 23: "I in them, you in me, that they may become perfectly one."

Now we'll come back to this in detail, obviously, as we work our way through the entire chapter. Just two things to point out. Number one: this unity is supernatural. It is supernatural. Jesus is not asking for us to create this. He's explaining that it is a supernatural reality. And that's why we can pray this morning in the awareness of the fact that the person who comes from South Africa, and our brothers and sisters in North Africa, and the folks that I left behind in the Balkan Peninsula two weeks ago, we are one in Christ Jesus.

It's a supernatural reality. You walk into a world that you've never known, meeting people that you've never seen, speaking a language that you don't understand, and you call them brother, you call them sister, and you mean it. It's not affectation. It's a reality. Something stirs in your heart. You're singing the same songs in Dutch and you're going, "This is true. This is absolutely true." What is this unity? Supernatural.

Secondly, evangelical. Evangelical. In other words, it is doctrinal. The reality of the unity about which Jesus speaks is not a structural thing. It is not an organizational thing. It is an evangelical reality. It is grounded in the truth. Sanctify them in the truth. What is the truth? It is the truth of who Jesus is, why Jesus came, what it means that Christ has dealt with sin and so on.

In other words, it's not a unity on the basis of the lowest common denominator, whereby we will sacrifice deep convictions in order to make it look like we all really like one another. I have, as you know, good Roman Catholic friends, and so do you. There are many things that we're agreed on. But at fundamental places, there are matters of great distinction.

No, this unity, of course, demands more of our attention and we will give it. But look at verse 8: "For I have given them the words that you gave me. I gave them the words you gave me. They have received them. They've come to know in truth that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me." And so the basis of our unity is the apostolic gospel. It is that which is laid out for us in the scriptures.

Last word: the word glory. Verse 24: "Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me." Now again, hopefully somebody says, "Well we dealt with that glory back in chapter 12." And you're absolutely right. It was in the context of one of our truly-trulys. 12:23: "And Jesus answered them, 'The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.'"

You'll notice incidentally that's exactly how chapter 17 begins. That's how the prayer begins. And after he had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and he said, "Father, the hour has come." The hour that we considered way back in chapter 2, in the miracle in Cana of Galilee, where Mary says to Jesus, "We don't have the wine," and Jesus enigmatically responds to her, "Mom, the hour has not yet come."

Now it's the hour when he will be glorified. How will he be glorified? He'll be glorified just in the way a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, but dies and bears much fruit. And I think perhaps here in verse 24 you have perhaps one of the sayings of Jesus that leads us farthest into the divine depths. "Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world."

"O Jesus, I have promised," says the hymn writer, "to serve thee to the end. O Jesus, you have promised to all who follow thee, that where thou art in glory, there shall your servant be." John's Gospel begins, John 1:14: "We have seen his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth in the person of Christ."

The Christian recognizes that we are being transformed from one degree of glory into another. But we recognize too that there is still a day to come when the glory which Christ had with the Father is going to be unveiled before our eyes. The revelation of the entirety of who and what God is, the immensity of his love and so on.

Samuel Rutherford, Scottish minister and theologian born in 1600, lived for 61 years, was one of the commissioners from Scotland at the Westminster Assembly where the Westminster Confession of Faith was written and placed before the United Kingdom Parliament for its understanding and ratification. What a very different world. Rutherford left behind, of course, many of his letters and many of his writings.

In them he writes to one of his friends, "Your errand in this life is to make sure an eternity of glory for you to see." That's your purpose. Of course, the Scottish Catechism gives us that: "What is the chief end of man? To glorify God and to enjoy him forever." There's nothing else that can satisfy. You may be here this morning and most of what I've said to you sounds like gobbledegook, but understand this.

You were made by God. By nature you turn away from God, we all do. But his love is so great that he pursues even the people that are not even looking for him. And why does he do so? For his own glory, in order that on that day, the glory might be seen to belong entirely to him. In the 19th century, a lady called Anne Cousins took some of Rutherford's writings and wrote a 19-verse poem.

And a few of those verses were then excerpted and turned into a hymn which some of you will have sung in your past. But it goes along these lines: "The sands of time are sinking," which is true, "The dawn of heaven breaks. The summer morn I've sighed for, the fair sweet morn awakes. Dark, dark has been the midnight, but dayspring is at hand, and glory, glory dwelleth in Immanuel's land."

I won't go through the whole hymn. "The King there in his beauty, without a veil is seen." It's a wonderful poem; it's not sentiment. "O Christ, he is the fountain, the deep sweet well of love." And then masterfully: "The bride eyes not her garment, but her dear bridegroom's face. I will not gaze at glory, but on my King of grace. Not on the crown he giveth, but on his pierced hands. Because the Lamb is all the glory in Immanuel's land."

"I pray, Father, that they may see my glory, the glory that I had with you in the pre-incarnate reality of eternity." Mystery, security, sanctity, unity, glory. Welcome to John 17. A brief prayer. And when I think that God his Son not sparing, sent him to die, I scarce can take it in. That on the cross my burden gladly bearing, he bled and died to take away my sin.

Then sings my soul. Lord, may it be out of the fullness of your gracious work in us, that we might live in the light of the truth that we discover in such a way that it brings glory to you, the only true and living God. And we pray in Christ's name. Amen.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. If you're enjoying this study of Jesus' high priestly prayer found in John's Gospel, Alistair's teaching on this series comes with a companion study guide, and you can download it for free at truthforlife.org/studyguides. And in addition to reflecting on Jesus' prayer as you prepare for Easter, you can sign up to receive Alistair's newly released seven-day reading plan titled "The King on the Cross."

Over the course of seven days, you'll receive a series of brief emails that trace the rise and fall of Israel's kings, all in anticipation of the perfect King who would sit on the throne forever. In this seven-day reading plan, Alistair unpacks the Old Testament expectation of a ruler who would come one day. It's an enriching way to center your thoughts on God's point for our salvation as we look forward to celebrating Resurrection Sunday. You can sign up for free; go to truthforlife.org/readingplans.

You know, we never know how God will use this program to change a life, but we trust that by the Spirit's empowering, God uses his word to save and transform lives. That's why our mission at Truth for Life is to teach the Bible clearly every day in such a way that you can apply it to your daily life. We're glad you studied along with us today. Tomorrow we'll consider how in God's economy, death on a cross became a symbol of power, triumph, and glory rather than the ultimate signal of defeat. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the learning is for living.