Truth For Life

Bob Lepine: Most of us have experienced times when our faith falters or feels weak. We have doubts, or we struggle to understand what the Bible is saying. Does that mean our salvation is shaky? We're going to hear an encouraging message today from Alistair Begg on Truth For Life as he examines Jesus' response to similar weaknesses within His inner circle. We're continuing a study of Jesus' High Priestly Prayer. You'll find that in chapter 17 of John's Gospel.

Alistair Begg: When you watch somebody, for example, paint, and sometimes when they do that outdoors and you come alongside them, if you're to stand behind them and see what they're doing, you may catch something of their imagination or certainly of their ability to take what they see and translate it onto a canvas. To hear somebody play a musical instrument provides us with an opportunity, perhaps, to be stirred in a way that doesn't happen on any other occasion. But to listen in as somebody prays is to be made privy to the very essential longings of the human heart.

Spurgeon, when he was teaching his students in this respect, said to them, "When you are a pastor in a church, you can invite someone else to preach for you, but don't invite anybody else to do your pastoral prayer." What he meant by that, of course, was your awareness of your congregation and their awareness of you will come out clearly in prayer. Now, I say all of that by way of introduction because here we are, joining the disciples as they are given the opportunity to listen to the Lord Jesus as He prays.

They are within the threshold hours away from all the agony of Calvary, and they doubtless put their hands over their mouths as they heard Jesus begin to pray, first of all, for Himself and then, quite remarkably, to begin to pray for them. "I have manifested Your name to the people whom You gave Me out of the world." He's referring to His disciples, to His eleven disciples. Jesus came into the world in order to call them out of the world.

It is this small group of individuals who are able to listen in on Jesus as He prays, these eleven who have enjoyed the privilege of spending three years in the company of Jesus. Most recently, they've listened to Jesus as He has been preparing them for His departure. They've been struggling to imagine how they will possibly manage without the physical presence of Jesus. He has, as He's taught them, assured them that they will not be left as orphans, but the Holy Spirit will come.

Indeed, He goes on to tell them that it is actually, while they may not feel this, it is to their advantage that He goes away because the Holy Spirit will come and bear witness about Jesus. He says too, "And you also will bear witness because you have been with Me from the beginning." The Holy Spirit will bear witness to Me, and you in turn will do the same. They must have wondered how that was going to be because, let's be honest, they weren't exactly what you would call straight-A students, were they? They had wrong ideas, strange thoughts, and a lot of preoccupation.

They were students in the school of Christ, and the Lord Jesus is aware of the fact that they are about to be scattered. They're all about to go to their own homes. They will move away from Him like frightened sheep, and they will leave Him alone. They're about to forsake and deny their Master. Frankly, if you think about it, the harvest of Jesus' ministry as He comes to the end of three years doesn't look particularly strong, does it? Who does He have? He has eleven Galilean artisans as a result of three years of labor.

For these individuals, now He bows before His Father and He prays. In due course, they're going to be sent out. "As the Father sent Me, so I send you," He's going to say to them. As a result of them being sent out, they're going to become the seed of a great worldwide harvest. These individuals, this eleven, so that this morning when we pray for the work of the gospel throughout the world, the reason the gospel is throughout the world is because of the immediate work of those for whom Jesus prays.

But let's not miss this. They are actually a sorry picture. They're unstable. They're shaky at best. But notice, they are those whom the Father has given to Jesus out of the world. As a result of that divine decree by the Father in eternity to provide to His Son those whom He has given Him, they are secure in Christ. What I want us to understand this morning from this is just three things. Let's consider, first of all, the Father's gift to His Son. Then let's consider the work of Jesus in relationship to that, and then let's consider the response of the disciples themselves.

Verse 6, let's just make sure we understand it. "I have manifested Your name to the people whom You gave Me out of the world." Jesus is speaking to the Father. "Yours they were, and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word." It is the matter of the doctrine of election, that God from all of eternity has purposed to have a people that are His very own, and that He has elected them to salvation, and He has given this company to His Son. That's what Jesus is referring to here.

The doctrine is in the Bible, not so that we would be confused by the fact that we find it difficult to put these two elements together, the divine sovereignty of God and human responsibility, spending all our time trying to reconcile what need not be reconciled. Both truths sit side by side in Scripture. Now, when we go on in a moment or two and we see the response of the disciples, the sovereign purpose of God does not run counter to the response of the individual. You know that to be true.

Perhaps someone led you to Christ, and you were together over a period of time talking and reading and thinking, and eventually the day came where you bowed down your knee, as it were, and you gave up the arms of your rebellion and you trusted in Jesus. You walked away from the coffee shop or from the Bible study, wherever it might be, a different person. But so many years have elapsed since then, and in the ensuing period, you've begun to track back down through the line.

You've gone way beyond the book that you were given. You've gone way beyond the conversations that you had. You've gone back behind that and back behind that, and you say to yourself, "I think this must have begun in eternity." And you would be absolutely right. So the Father has given them, and the Son, in turn, you will notice still in verse 6, has manifested God's name. What does that mean? I have manifested Your name. Well, He has revealed the Father.

Right at the very beginning of John's Gospel, we find that this comes across with clarity. "For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father's side, He has made Him known." By the time you get to the end of the Gospel of John, you find the same thing. This is what it says, John 21: "After this Jesus revealed or manifested Himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias, and He revealed or manifested Himself in this way."

That was the part that Jesus played, making the Father known. Remember He says memorably, "When you have seen Me, you have seen the Father." But it doesn't just say that. It says, "I have manifested Your name." Your name. Now, what Jesus is pointing out here is this: that to believe in God is to believe in Him as He is. It is to believe in God as God has revealed Himself in the word and in the works of Jesus, primarily.

That's why, again at the beginning of John's Gospel, when he's describing the way in which Jesus has come into the world and His own people have not received Him, it says that He came to them, they did not receive Him, but to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become the children of God. Now, this is very important. So, declaring the name of God is directly related to declaring the word of God.

The word of God has been given to Jesus in order that He might speak it. This is important too because Jesus doesn't say, "Father, I've shared a few ideas with them," or, "Father, I've conveyed our philosophy to them," or, "Father, I've set an example for them." You will find when you talk to people that there are many people who think that that is all that Jesus came to do. He came to give some general principles to be considered, came to provide an example so that people could try their best to be like Him.

Jesus does provide an example. Jesus does provide principles. That's not why He came. Jesus says, "I have given them Your words, the words that You gave to Me." So this is actually theological. In fact, the scribes back in John chapter 7, they had occasion to say to one another, "How is it that this Jesus of Nazareth, how is it that this man is able to teach like this, and yet he has never studied?"

What they're saying is, he didn't go to our proper rabbinical schools. He hasn't graduated from the place that you're supposed to graduate from. Jesus says to them, "My teaching is not My own. I'm simply teaching He who gave Me what to teach." Now, let Me just reinforce this because this is of vital importance. Jesus is saying, "Father, I have manifested Your name to them, and Father, I have given them the words that You gave Me."

John chapter 12 and 44: "And Jesus cried out and said, 'Whoever believes in Me, believes not in Me but in Him who sent Me. And whoever sees Me sees Him who sent Me. I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in Me may not remain in darkness. If anyone hears My words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world.'"

"The one who rejects Me and does not receive My words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. For I have not spoken on My own authority, but the Father who sent Me has Himself given Me a commandment what to say and what to speak. And I know that His commandment is eternal life. What I say therefore, I say as the Father has told Me." And you find that repeated again and again.

It's not the Bible that saves us when we talk about the importance of the Bible and the word of God. No, we're saved by the one to whom we're introduced in the Bible. The Bible is a book about Jesus all the way from the beginning to the end, pointing to Him, referring to Him because He is the Savior. If it was just simply a knowledge of ancient texts, then we would simply be in the position of the scribes and Pharisees in Jesus' day when Jesus looks at them and He says, "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have life; yet you refuse to come to Me."

You can read all you like, but until the light shines into your heart and shows you who Jesus is, how He has come, why He has come, then the Scriptures will be just a closed book to you. So the gift of the Father is the gift of the disciples to the Son. The work of the Son is then to manifest God's name and to declare God's words. What then of the response of the disciples? "Now they know that everything You have given Me is from You. 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."

In other words, what He's saying is these disciples that You have given Me have kept Your word. Now, I think "now" is probably temporal, now in this moment. "Now they know that everything You have given Me is from You." Their certainty about these things has come about how? Well, it's come about by actually hearing the words that Jesus spoke and taking Him at His word. Pretty good, isn't it? Notice what it says; the verbs are important. Verse 8: "They have received them" or embraced them or accepted the truth that Jesus brought from the Father.

Remember again in John 1: "But as many as received Him, believed in His name." They have received. Secondly, they have come to know. Read verse 7 carefully. Jesus doesn't say in verse 7 of the disciples, "Now they know everything." He says, "Now they know that everything that You have given Me is from You." Because the fact of the matter is there is much that they still do not know. In the previous chapter, in chapter 16, He says to these disciples, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now."

This is an ongoing process. "But when the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth." That's not a promise for us; that's a promise for the apostles, so that they, having been guided into all truth, will then write the truth. The truth will be recorded so that we might have then in our Bibles the very truth of the words that God spoke through His Son, the Lord Jesus. As Jesus speaks to them even now, they still don't have a clear grasp of what it's going to mean for Him to die and certainly to be resurrected.

They don't have an understanding of how it is that in Jesus all these Old Testament pictures of prophet, priest, and king, and suffering servant find their fulfillment in Jesus. They don't know all of that as yet. But they do know, they do believe, "that You have sent Me." You see, we often say, don't we, that you don't have to take your brain out to become a Christian, which is a silly picture in many ways. But when the Bible speaks of knowledge in this way, the knowledge is not abstract. It's KAT: knowledge, assent, and trust.

Now let me end by this. I want to speak first of all to the person who's saying, "Hang on, wait a minute," and then to the rest. You might be saying to yourself, "This is all very well, I hear what you're saying, I'm not sure I accept it, and frankly, from where I'm standing, I don't even see it." Good. There is a church building in Edinburgh at the West End of Princes Street. It has the most magnificent stained-glass windows. But when you stand outside on the average rainy Wednesday and look at this building, the stonework combines with the windows to look just gloomy as can be.

You have to step inside the building for the light to shine through and declare the magnificence of the window. On the outside, it will mean relatively little to you. On the inside, you will say, "I see it." If you're standing on the outside, of course you can't see it. I'd never have known how beautiful the windows were had I not gone inside. I'd never have known what a wonderful Savior Jesus is until I heard Him say, "Come to Me," and I came.

Final word of encouragement to those of us who are not wondering about this, but we are seeking to follow Jesus. Like the disciples, we're not all straight-A students in this venture. Jesus had plenty of reasons for saying to His Father something along the lines of, "Father, I can't believe these guys You've given Me. They don't understand this, they haven't a clue about that, they ask dumb questions regularly." He says nothing about their faltering, stumbling, disobedient. He doesn't mention their fits and their starts, their stumbles and their falls.

He doesn't mention ours either because their acceptance with the Father is on the strength of what Christ is about to accomplish as He steps out of that garden and into that scene on Calvary. Our acceptance with the Father this morning is on the strength of the self-same thing, that the Father looks upon us and sees us as united to His Son. His obedience is a perfect obedience. His sacrifice for sin is the only sacrifice for sin.

And so here you are this morning, and you're saying, "I have had a not my best week, that's for sure." In fact, when people ask you what you know, you say, "Well, I don't know a lot, but I know one thing, like the man who was healed from his blindness." Remember, they kept asking him, "Who did this to you? How did it happen?" Eventually, he got fed up with them and he says, "Look, go ask the guy who did it for me. He'll tell you the answer. One thing I know: once I was blind, but now I can see."

Once I was outside, but now by grace I am inside. I was once there; I am now here. How this happened, I know not how the Spirit moves, convincing me of sin, revealing Jesus through the word and creating faith in Him, but I know whom I have believed. Listen, weak faith is still faith. Your faith is weak? Welcome to the club. Jesus, what a strength in weakness. Let me hide myself in Him. Tempted, tried, and sometimes failing, He my strength, my victory wins. Hallelujah! What a Savior, what a friend. Saving, helping, keeping, loving, He's with me to the end.

Bob Lepine: That is welcome assurance from Bible teacher Alistair Begg on Truth For Life. As we've learned today, you can tell a lot about someone's heart by the way that person prays. As we continue our study of Jesus' High Priestly Prayer, you may find yourself wishing you could pray with greater depth and passion as Jesus did. Perhaps, like many of us, you've struggled with what to say, or maybe your prayers have become dry and repetitive.

One way to enjoy a more meaningful prayer life is to pray the very words of God given to us in the Bible, and that's the topic of the book we're recommending today called *Praying the Bible*. For example, you'll learn how to make Psalm 23, which begins, "The Lord is my shepherd," an intimate conversation between you and God. You'll learn how to use all of the Psalms and other portions of Scripture as your personal prayer book.

Ask for your copy of the book *Praying the Bible* today when you donate to support the ministry of Truth For Life. You can give a gift online at truthforlife.org/donate or call us at 888-588-7884. I'm Bob Lepine. Thanks for listening today. In Jesus' High Priestly Prayer, He prayed specifically for His disciples. So what distinguishes a disciple from everyone else? That's our focus tomorrow. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth For Life, where the learning is for living.