The Saviour at Prayer No.3 Jesus and the World

Let's begin. The boy Samuel ministered before the Lord under Eli. In those days the word of the Lord was rare, there were not many visions.

One night Eli, whose eyes were becoming so weak that he could barely see, was lying down in his usual place. The lamp of God had not yet gone out. And Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was.

Then the Lord called Samuel. Samuel answered, Here I am. And he ran to Eli and said, Here I am, you called me.

But Eli said, I did not call. Go back and lie down. So he went back and lay down.

Again the Lord called Samuel. And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, Here I am, you called me. My son, Eli said, I did not call.

Go back and lie down. Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord. The word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.

The Lord called Samuel a third time. And Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, Here I am, you called me. Then Eli realised that the Lord was calling the boy.

So Eli told Samuel, Go and lie down. And if he calls you, say, Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

God brought children to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and to pray for them. But the disciples scolded the people. Jesus said, Let the children come to me, and do not stop them, because the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.

He placed his hands on them and then went away. This is a high priestly prayer here in John chapter 17, and we are going to read from verse 13 to the end. John 17 and verse 13.

I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one.

They are not of the world even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by thy truth. Your word is truth.

As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. My prayer is not for them alone.

I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me, and I am in you. May they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one, I in them and you in me.

May they be brought to complete unity, to let the world know that you sent me, and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me.

I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them, and that I myself may be in them. And I'd like you to open your Bibles at the 17th chapter of John's Gospel. I've entitled my address, Jesus and the World, though I'm not too sure that there weren't other competing titles that could perhaps have been more descriptive, in a summary fashion of all that's contained between the 13th and 19th verses of this most remarkable prayer.

In the Notes and News I quote one of the Reformers at the time of John Kelvin, and all that he had to say in regard to his utter astonishment as to the beauty that there is compressed within this particular piece of intercession which our Saviour used before the Father. Sometimes when we come around this table, and I trust you'll be with us unless there are really very valid and pressing reasons for you not to be taking bread and wine, sometimes when I or Brother Tim or one of my brother elders leads the memorial feast, we go back to the words of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians, For I have received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that in the same night in which our Lord Jesus was betrayed, he took bread. It seems to me that I can hear the Apostle Peter saying, I have received I Paul, but it wasn't just the night in which he was betrayed.

It's not just that we recall when we think of that remarkable evening. He not only took broken bread and offered it to us, but when he was through with that part of that lengthy evening, the hours of which are never fading from our minds in all that was done and said. He then went out with us from the upper room, down the stone steps, across the marble flagstones, and ultimately down to the brook Kidron, with only the light of the fires from the vines that were being burnt to illuminate the scene, and the rays from the full moon.

And do you know something Paul? All the time he was praying. He was praying for us. The night in which he was betrayed, he broke bread and he prayed.

And with a mind of the Middle Eastern man, far more trained in its retentive capacities than ours, those disciples absorbed the prayer of our Lord. You see, there was a sense in which he needed to pray to the Father, but he more particularly needed to pray to the Father in the hearing of his disciples. There were other occasions in the ministry of our Lord Jesus when he engaged in prayer and his eye was as much upon his disciples as what it was upon his Father.

For instance, in chapter 11, you discover our Saviour by the tomb of Lazarus. You remember the story so well, Martha and Mary are dismayed. Their brother whom they loved and the Lord Jesus loved had died and Jesus didn't respond immediately to the telegram that they sent.

And so now he's on the scene three days late and he stands by that sepulchre and they take away the stone, verse 41 of chapter 11. And then you hear the majestic Christ, Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.

Why did our Lord engage in this sublime high priestly prayer? For the benefit, I argue, of the disciples who were with him, as well as for the spiritual help that he would gain from his Father by engaging in prayer. I wonder if you ever speak your prayers out loud. I often find that audible praying is one of the most helpful means whereby concentration can be retained.

Now I realize that if you're going to pray audibly, by and large, unless it's in a church meeting like this, then you've got to be fairly private, or else they'll think you're talking to yourself. But does it really matter? As long as before the Father you express your prayers and occasionally if you find that mental praying is difficult because you don't engage in spoken words, from time to time becoming audible. Even the movement of the lips, like Hannah when she was praying for her child, you remember, or for a child to be born to her barren womb, and Eli the priest sees her moving the lips and wrongly concurs that she's drunken, but she's not, she's praying to the Lord.

Well here I say in these verses, our Lord Jesus is engaged in prayer on behalf of his disciples, and he prays so markedly for them, because you see he tells us in the thirteenth verse what we've already realized in our previous consideration in the eleventh verse, that the time is fast approaching when our Savior will no longer physically be on earth. I am coming to you now, but these disciples, they're not. They are not coming with me into the heavenly abode.

They are remaining on earth, and they are remaining on earth for a very specific function. You see in one sense, brothers and sisters, you and I together this morning are the body of Christ. Not in its complete manifestation around the world, you'd have to add up all brothers and sisters who confess Jesus as their Savior.

But in a very wonderful way, the ministry that our Lord Jesus came to perform is continued through those of us who name his name. And it seems to me that as you work your way through this prayer, what in effect you find is our Lord Jesus transferring his privileges and his responsibilities to these men who are embryonic of the church that he's yet to be. C.S. Lewis was daring, but he was also accurate when he refers to Christians as little Christs, little Christs.

What is the common denominator in this prayer between the disciples for whom Jesus prays and the Master himself? Well look at verse eight will you. He has given them the words that the Father gave him. Drop down to verse thirteen and you will discover him saying that he wants them to have the full measure of his joy.

Drop down to verse sixteen and you will discover that he identifies his isolation or his insularity from the world with what he perceives ultimately to be theirs. They are not of the world even as I am not of the world. In verse eighteen he recognizes his commissioning from the Father but also he identifies his disciples.

You sent me, I send them. Verse twenty-two makes reference to his glory and he says I have given them the glory that you gave me. Later on he speaks of his Father's love and he says that the love that the Father has shown towards him is exactly the same love as has now been shown to his disciples.

You see there is a transference, joy, glory, word, commissioning, love. So again to warm the heart of those who were from the Plymouth Brethren in this series, let me quote not Kelly but let me quote Jane Darby, the whole chapter is essentially putting the disciples into the place of the Lord Jesus. Now isn't that wonderful? But isn't it awesome? The purposes of God in sending the Lord Jesus into the world are now to be transferred to that bunch of eleven men.

So Jesus prays for them. He prays for them especially bearing in mind the world in which you will leave them, the problems that they will have as sheep sent out amongst wolves, the vulnerable sent out into the community of the invulnerable and they need his prayers and they're going to remember Peter, James, John, Thomas, the rest as you and I will remember that when the wind blows and the climate is cold, when we walk on troubled seas and find great difficulty in serving the Lord God that Jesus prayed for us. In the same night in which he was betrayed he took not only bread and wine, he took words and he poured the sincerity and the eloquence of his heart and language into the prayers that he offered and he handed them to the Father and he prayed for the continuation of his work for all the millions of little Christs that there were to be before the day dawns when the Father calls a halt to the human story.

I am coming to you but I am saying these things while I am still in the world so that they, my disciples, may have what? Now isn't it extraordinary my friends and I'm not breaking these verses into any little homiletical outline, I'll just try and run through them fairly rapidly as our portion is not massive this morning. Isn't it interesting that when our Lord Jesus in this holy act of intercession narrows down his prayers for his disciples as they face the hostile world that one of the first things he prays about is their joy. I pray that they may have the full measure of my joy.

I pray that they may have the full measure of my joy. He's very concerned about joy isn't he? Look at the eleventh verse will you of the fifteenth chapter when he says, I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. Drop down to the twenty-fourth verse of the next chapter, the sixteenth chapter, until now you have not asked for anything in my name ask and you will receive and your joy will be complete.

As our Lord's engaging in this prayer three times in the few hours that he's been in the company of the disciples and including this occasion he prays and the bottom line is this, that Christian people might be happy. Now men who are facing the gallows don't generally have the happiness of others in perspective but this of course is not an ordinary man, it's the God man, it's our Lord Jesus Christ praying for the disciples in this hostile world that their joy may be full. A book's come out on the life of Enoch Powell actually, I don't think it's been released but I've read the review of the book and the book is entitled The Lives of Enoch Powell and there was an article by the author actually in the Guardian of the Independent, I forget which, and he was congratulating Sue Lawley because although he'd lived four years with Enoch Powell she got a little more information from Enoch Powell on Desert Island Discs than he'd actually ascertained.

Sue Lawley asked him what he was known as at school, did he have a nickname and he honestly, I was going to say unblushingly but that would be pulpit exaggeration, it's radio not television, he said Scowley Powley and he went on to say that he was sorry about the sort of contours of his face that sometimes he seems to be very stern and doer man and actually his biographer says he's not like that at all. Our Lord Jesus prays that your joy and my joy might be full in a world which knows very little of that sort of joy. He prays because he wants them to be happy.

Somebody has quipped, a cheerful countenance has a lot of face value. I don't know if you've ever heard of a countenance they can name three or four people without thinking too hard who began to continue attending the tabernacle because when they looked round they saw, thank God they saw it, happiness on the faces of people. We have a right to be happy for our Lord has made it possible for that which would contribute towards our unhappiness, guilt and unforgiven sin to be taken away.

Our Lord then prays as he's coming to the father that these men who are with him may have the full measure of his joy and our saviour new joy at its height. He goes on to tell us I have given them or to say to the father I have given them your word and the world has hated them. What does our Lord Jesus mean by giving the disciples his word? Well day by day he's engaged in tuition has he not for some three years or so he's disclosed to them what he knows not just of Old Testament scripture though he obviously had a good understanding but what he has received from the father day by day.

You see our Lord's practice was early in the morning to go into some solitary place and there to bring the needs of the following 24 hours or so. And in the prophecy of Isaiah you get an insight into the prayer life of our saviour. Isaiah chapter 15 verse 4 tells us the sovereign Lord has given me an instructed tongue to know the word that sustains the weary.

He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being taught. The Lord the sovereign Lord has opened my ears. I've given them your word.

That's what he was doing day by day week by week throughout the whole three years course that they had so to speak in the seminary of which our Lord Jesus was the only professor and lecturer. I've given them your word. Now listen my dear Christian friend if it was necessary for our saviour to receive the word of the father day by day isn't it even more necessary for you and for me as the equivalence of his disciples yesteryear when this prayer was spoken.

Do you listen for his word? Do you read his word? I've given them your word and not only that but the consequence of this is that it has so begun to affect their lives that they are finding that the world which does not want my word actually is rejecting it the word and also them. I have given them your word and the world has hated them. You see in one sense if you're comfortable all the time that you make your way through your 60, 70 years or however long God has got for you.

If you're comfortable here in the world then it's some indication that the grace of God has not gone very deeply into your life. If you're comfortable there are occasions not so when we hate this world. I don't mean the world of nature.

I'm not referring to creation in terms of the sunset and the sunrise or the stupidity of a little kitten or the breeze blowing that makes all the flowers sway. There's much that is wonderful about our world but I'm talking about what sometimes we refer to as the scene of time, the way we treat, worldlings treat one another, the anguish of Lebanon, that which caused a little 13-year-old girl to write in her English book doing a piece of homework, if I were the sun and saw what man has done I'd eclipse myself. If I were the sun I'd eclipse myself forever.

There are times when you feel distinctly uncomfortable in this world. The apostle refers to it in Galatians chapter 1 as he caps the lesson that I'm trying to bring out. He refers to it as this present evil world, this present evil world.

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father to whom be glory forever and ever. There was hostility directed towards our Lord Jesus not because of who he was in as much as I'm just referring to him as a human being, an ordinary human being back in Nazareth as a carpenter. They could stomach that but when he comes and he talks about God and he analyzes the human condition and he exposes weakness and he shows up hypocrisy for what it is when he calls out the sham that there is within the character of many of the Pharisees then they hate him, they're hostile to him.

That same hostility Jesus said is beginning to show in the experience of the disciples because they have received his word and are living by his word. I've given them your word and the world has hated them but they're not of the world anymore that I am of the world. Now that doesn't give justification for monasticism, for a retreat away from ordinary humankind.

Jesus didn't want that. If he'd have wanted that then when he was ascended into heaven surely he'd have taken those early disciples with him. But no there's a ministry for them to continue in the world although they're not of the world.

But you say well how can you illustrate that? How can one go about that? You remember the first man on the moon Neil Armstrong? How did he survive? Well he had a capsule of earth with him did he not? I mean by that that he was wearing some dress and in that dress was pumped the very oxygen that he needed. He was in the moon or on the moon but not of the moon. So similarly ourselves having transferred our allegiance to the Lord Jesus not in an imitation of him but a very participation in his life.

So in the measure that he was not in the world we have to aim not to be in the world and yet still to remain in it as agencies for the spreading of the great and glorious message of our Lord Jesus. We're not of the world. In what sense? Well we're a new creation aren't we? If any man be in Christ says the Apostle Paul he is a new creation.

We have a new citizenship says Paul in Philippians 3.20. And the Apostle Peter goes on to tell us that we are destined 1 Peter 1.35 we are destined for a remarkable inheritance in eternity. I always smile at the advert I saw I think it was the back of the American magazine Christianity Today. A small church was trying to find a pastor and they couldn't pay very much and they said that the immediate pay was limited but the ultimate rewards were right out of this world.

And in one sense that's very very true isn't it in more than one sense in a very real fashion. We're in the world but not of the world as our Lord Jesus was. And so his prayer verse 15 my prayer is not that you take them out of the world.

Enoch was taken out of the world but he was an exception and he had a fairly long life in any case hadn't he? The thief on the cross he was taken out of the world Lord remember me when you come into your kingdom and Jesus granted that request but because of his circumstances he wouldn't know any further extension of life because he was in the process of being crucified when the request was made. Only three men in the Bible asked to be taken out of the world in the Old Testament and their prayers were not answered Moses, Elijah and Jonah. Thank God says Bishop Ryle well he may not have said thank God but at least he did say that their prayers were not answered.

You see we're not to ask the Lord to take us out of the world because well our responsibilities in this world are so great that we really want to cop out. Nor backtracking on what I said a moment or two ago are we thinking of founding an evangelical monastery on Cicero Hill although or Cicero Ring though I think it would be a nice place for such an institution if we were bound to found one. The apostle you see in Philippians he gives you the tensions and the way to cope.

You remember he's on trial for his life and he thinks there may be a death sentence and he says to his readers of his epistle look I'm in a straight betwixt two that's the authorised version I'm in a dilemma. I don't quite know what to do whether to ask that the death sentence may come for absent from the body is present with the Lord and to be with Christ is far better. Or maybe I should pray for an extension of my life because for my responsibilities here in this world are such that really I shouldn't go at this moment because I've got more help to be able to give you.

Those are the tensions you see. And our Lord Jesus he dovetails with what the apostle Paul says when he adds this point to his prayer. It's not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them.

Now previously he'd asked for God's protection hasn't he? Holy Father protect them by the power of your name. He says that in verse 11. But what do you want them to be protected from Lord Jesus? Well again verse 15 protect them from the evil one.

There's much evil in this world. The whole world says John lies in the hands of the evil one. Now it's very easy to poo the idea.

It's very difficult to explain some of the problems that there are in our society without positing the existence of the person of the devil. Have you noticed incidentally how this prayer as I indicated to you last week has certain resemblances, certain shadows if you like of the Lord's prayer. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.

Deliver them from evil. You see they are going to be vulnerable aren't they? Sheep amongst wolves, the vulnerable amongst the invulnerable. Do you not feel your own vulnerability? I've been a Christian since what I suppose my first consciousness of the Lord Jesus goes back to my age of four or five.

But I can't say that I feel less vulnerable now than I was then. In some way I feel even more vulnerable. But you see I can have this in mind that when temptations crowd in, when pressures come, when the devil in many disguises comes across my path I have this in mind that Jesus did pray for me.

Keep them from the evil one. There is therefore now no temptation which has taken you but is common to man. In other words the apostle Paul whom I'm quoting at this moment speaking about temptation and even the devil's power says that it's contained within the overarching power of God and he will never allow to come into your life that which you cannot withstand.

Jesus prayed that they would be kept from the power of the evil one, that the devil would not triumph over them. Not Peter, not John, not any of those eleven apostles or those who joined the ranks of the followers of Jesus in the first century. When the hostility of Nero burst upon them, when all the problems in the third century of Diocletian and those emperors, in the dark ages, in the persecutions that broke out amongst the church in the continent following the reformation, any time in history right down to the twentieth century, right to the 1980s, right to Worthing, right to your home, right to your heart.

Jesus says keep them from the evil one. And the prayers of our Lord Jesus are bound to be answered. Sanctify them, he says.

That word really is an ordination word. It's what you find in the Old Testament, Moses doing when he separates the sons of Aaron for the priesthood. The word in the Greek means to set apart for a special task.

It's also got a flip meaning, to equip a man with qualities of heart and mind to do the task. Here are the disciples. Sanctify them.

Equip them, Lord, for the task that I've given them to do. Old Matthew Henry is right because here he sees, you see, the ordination of the disciples. Sanctify them.

Make them special, Lord, so that they can perform the ministry that I have commenced. How are they to be set apart? Well, by the truth. You see, a man is what he thinks, not so? John Stott says the secret of clean living is clean thinking.

Sanctify them through the truth. Your word is truth. May they imbibe the truth of God's word.

May that so change their lifestyle continually that it shall be apparent to all who see them that they are different people. Sanctify them, Lord. He wants you and me to be sanctified.

Now the commissioning. As you sent me into the world, I've sent them. How, Lord Jesus, can we be so sanctified that we can take upon ourselves your ministry? Well, Jesus not only gives them a mission, I send them into the world.

He also gives them the means. For them I sanctify myself that they too may be truly sanctified. You say, what does that mean? I have just a minute to explain.

When our Lord Jesus died on Calvary's cross, what did he do? He didn't make himself holy. He was already holy. When our Lord Jesus died on Calvary's cross, he made the possibility of sins being atoned for.

I express that clumsily. Here's the Apostle Paul writing about it. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word and to present her to himself as a radiant church.

Father, sanctify them. I'm sending them out into the world. Now let's make it possible for them to do what I've been doing.

Father, sanctify me. Remember the original word, what it means? Set me apart. Set you apart for what? Well, Father, your final purpose for bringing me into the world.

Set me apart as a sacrificial lamb. Set me apart as a substitutionary sacrifice. Set me apart so that from my veins shall flow that blood that shall cleanse them from all sin, that through my death they shall have life, that through imputing their sin to me they shall receive my holiness.

Father, set me apart so that in the very setting apart of me they can be sanctified and continue the work that I have engaged in on this earth. Isn't it marvelous what our Lord Jesus has done for us? So concerned is the Savior. The same night which he broke bread, he prayed, prayed for his disciples that their joy might be complete, that they may be kept from the evil one, that they may be sanctified, set apart for a ministry.

And he would die to make it possible for them to continue in the role that he commenced, bringing the message of salvation to ordinary people. Jesus prayed for you and for me to do this. Let's thank him.

Let's thank him. Thank you.