Dennis Tuuri

Even he could pray it only once in this most momentous crisis of history in full view of the approaching sacrifice for the sins of the world which occurred only once though its effect reverberates throughout the ages. It is not so much the petition of an inferior supplicant as the dialogue of an equal and a solemn declaration of his will and mission. He intercedes with the heavenly Father as the partner of his counsel.

As the executor of his will of saving mercy, he looks back on his pre-mundane glory with God and forward to the resumption of that glory and comprehends all his present and future disciples in unbroken succession as a holy and blessed brotherhood in vital union with himself and with the Father. Next week we will move to the concluding portion of this great holy prayer, the gate of heaven.

Schaeffer says, “We’ll consider Jesus’s prayer not just for his own disciples, but then for those who would believe through his word, in other words, for us.” And so Schaeffer says quite correctly, he sees all of his disciples in an unbroken chain and prays for them in the context of this, the concluding portion of the discourse and the thing by which it is all summed and brought before the heavenly Father.

We have seen that in the context of this prayer, Jesus repeats the basic themes of the Gospel of John as well as some of the themes of the upper room discourse. For instance, in the text just before us that we just read, their belief that Jesus came from God is made reference to as has been made reference to in the upper room discourse. The promise of complete joy. This has already been a theme resounded in the upper room discourse in Chapter 16, verse 24.

And his coming at the end of the world, talked about in Chapter 15, verse 18. There’s a sense in which this prayer is a summation of the discourse and a summation of the whole ministry of Jesus, particularly as represented in this Fourth Gospel, the Gospel written by John. You know, on our beginning of your outline I’ve got joy. You know, there are these useful activities we enter into in terms of prayer patterns: joy, Jesus, others, and you. That’s how you should pray. Acts: adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. There are different methods of prayer and I have nothing against methods of prayer unless they become somehow about what we’re thinking. We should always pray like that. And we’ve noticed, for instance, as we sing the Psalms, which are prayers to God ultimately, that there is not always adoration before confession and there’s not always confession or adoration before supplication. And so it’s good to use these formulas to remind us to adore God and to confess our sins, to give him thanks and also to make our requests be made known. But it’s important too to see that the prayers of the scriptures don’t fit these same models.

Jesus, others, and you. Well, Jesus does kind of the reverse order in a sense. He begins with himself, as we said last week. He prayed for glory, self-glorification for the purposes of the Father’s glorification, of course, but still he prays. He begins by praying a short prayer for himself, then he moves to his family, so to speak, that he’s having the Passover with his disciples, and then he moves to those that will believe upon his name, the whole church. So the text before us is very specifically ordained in the first context for his immediate disciples, although obviously all of these have application to us.

We said last week that this kind of mirrors the high priest’s work on the Day of Atonement in Leviticus where he makes atonement for himself and for his family and then for all of Israel. And Jesus’s prayer is seen in that same context. I’ve given you a little bit of a summation at the top of your outline about how Jesus prayed for himself.

I said last week that in terms of this gift of God of giving us glory, it is proper, I think, following the pattern of our Savior, to pray for our own glorification, but only in the context of how our Savior images this for us as Christians. Christ images this for us by praying that he might be glorified, that he might glorify the Father, that he might complete the work the Father had given him to do, and he pleased his past activity of glorifying the Father upon the earth. And so I try to give a little practical example here for children.

Now, the word glory—I’ve mentioned this before—but in the Old Testament, the Hebrew word that’s translated glory means weight, weightiness. It means physical weight. The word, the Greek word that’s translated glory in our text, doesn’t mean that. It means instead it has the idea of an opinion or a mental evaluation of someone, to give somebody high regard. And so that’s what glory means, the particular Greek word. But these things are basically two sides of the same coin, so to speak. This Greek word is used to translate that Hebrew word that means weight in the New Testament, and so it is directly connected to that, and so these things are brought together.

There’s a verse in 1 Corinthians 11:14 and 15 having to do with hair and this verse kind of helps us to understand this aspect of glory and its relationship to weight.

“Does not nature itself teach us that if a man has long hair, it is a shame unto him? But if a woman has long hair, it’s a glory to her, for her hair is given her for a covering. But if any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God.”

So he’s making a very simple point, but he says that if a woman has long hair that it is glory, that’s the same Greek word in our text. It means she’s esteemed highly. She’s thought well of—it is a glory for her. But it’s contrasted with the shame that the man with long hair has. The word for shame is one of these words. It’s not something. And the particular Greek word is “ta” or valuable thing or weight or money. And so it says that a man with long hair has shame. It says that he doesn’t have weight. He’s a light thing. And the woman has high estimation of her, not in the sense of weight, but in the sense of opinion. So you can see by this text really that glory has these two elements to it that can’t really be separated one from the other.

The first is glory: weight, brilliance. And the other is a way, the weight of opinion, or how we reverence somebody. But the illustration I use to get this concrete example of glory’s weight home is if a child comes to his father and requests money. “Dad, please give me the money that you desire to give to me.” Jesus says, “Please give me this weight, this glory,” knowing indeed that the Father desires to give it to him.

And it’s proper for children at certain times to go to their dad asking for money. And that’s an example of how we can remember how our Savior taught us to pray in this way. We’re to show visible respect when we make these kind of requests. Jesus’s posture changes as he comes before the Father in heaven. And so children, when you seek glory, whether it’s money, honor, respect, when you seek that, you should show respect, honor, and reverence to the one you’re seeking it from. And you bring honor to your parents when you obey them, when you treat them kindly, and when you are reverential in your respect and attitude toward them. You come before them in a proper way, seeking their attention, supplicating them in a proper submissive way.

And so Jesus does this. He comes before the Father of heaven and he changes his physical posture. What we do at worship, the way we comport ourselves in our bodies, how we dress, all of these things have a profound influence on what we’re doing inside. God changes us typically from the outside in. It’s not hypocrisy to change our external appearance when our desire is to have our inner man changed as well.

We don’t wait for a feeling of reverence for the Holy Father addressed in this text. And that’s the title Jesus uses in today’s text: Holy Father. We don’t wait for a sense of respect at all before we change our physical appearance or we before we change our posture as we come before him. Our physical appearance changes the way we act, or the way we feel rather, and what our internal state is. And so children, you should come before your fathers with visible respect.

You should say, “Dad, Father.” Remember, the relationship of Christ and the Father is ours. We come before a God who loves us. Jesus isn’t pleading because the Father is angry with us. Jesus has done his work once on the cross 2,000 years ago. And the Father, Jesus has just told him in the upper room discourse, loves them greatly. Children, you should come to your fathers, acknowledging that relationship, saying, “Dad, you should be submissive to his timing.” Jesus says, “The hour has come.” When we seek glorification from God, we do it reverentially and respectfully.

We do it knowing he loves us without fear of that. Then we do it on the basis of his timing. What we’re seeking is always yielded to the timing of his choosing. You should stress your desire to use the money to honor him and accomplish his plan for your life. You’re not going to use it for some improper purpose. Jesus doesn’t seek glorification to use for his own purposes. He seeks it to glorify the Father.

And children, you should be able to tell your father how you’re going to honor and glorify him and his will for your life by the use of your money. State your past efforts to fulfill his will. Jesus pleads his past activity. He does it here. He prays in today’s text for safety and security of the disciples. And he says he has guarded them while he was in the world. He pleads his past actions as well as his relationship to the Father.

And children, you should have built up a whole set of things that you’ve done to glorify your father in heaven and your fathers upon earth. Past efforts to fulfill his will. And you should be able to plead those when appropriate as you seek more blessing from your father. And then you should satisfy him that the money will be used to honor him in your relationship with him and others. Remember that self-glorification that Jesus prays for is in community with the Father. The glory he had with the Father.

When we seek glory from God, it’s to the end that we would use whatever he provides us in the context of community with him and with each other as well, with others. Not in isolation, not to get us independent of our need to rely upon others, but rather to be used in the context of community. So this is what Jesus’s first petition was in this prayer, and he’ll have two petitions in today’s text.

Before we turn there, I want to again point out this idea of the three gifts. One commentator in the introductory sentence of this prayer in verse three says that he announces the theme of glory, authority, and life eternal, in actually the first two verses: glory, authority, life eternal. These are the three gifts that God ministers to us in the context of worship. These are ultimately the three gifts that have been given definitively to us in the past by our Savior through his work on the cross.

He has restored glory to sinful man whose sin caused him to fall short of the glory of God. He has conveyed to us authority based upon his word and knowledge to wield authority correctly for him in the context of his preaching of his word to us. He gives us that gift and he gives us rejoicing life together as we move to that in the context of our worship services. This is why we have those headings in the order of worship to remind us of these basic elements that flow from the beginning to the end of the scriptures as one more kind of summation of what salvation in Christ is all about.

Now on the back side of the outlines, I’ve given you the entire text of this prayer of our Savior. And I’ve given it to you in a way that I think shows this three-fold movement of glory, knowledge, and life. And you’ll see that at the very top under John 17 and the Three Gifts, you see in bold type: glory, authority, eternal life. And then that’s summed up in knowing God the Father. To know God the Father is to have this glory, this sense of authority and knowledge of him, and then eternal life.

And then I’ve given you bracketing in from that the first petition in verse four—this glorification of Jesus that he asked for. That’s matched up with at the bottom of your tag of your summation of this—is matched up as Jesus prays that they might indeed have the love of him. Toward the conclusion of the text in verse 20, before that summation statement is made, you’ll see that bolded in that section. Beginning at verse 20, verse 22: “that they might have the glory which you gave me, I have given unto them.”

So he’s given us glory in the past. And then verse 24: “that they may behold the glory which you have given to me.” So bracketing in from these summary statements at beginning and end are these references of Christ requesting glory as a model for us to request glory and then a statement at the other end of the text that he has given us glory in the context of his ministry. So the definitive, once-for-all gift of glory through the ministry of Christ, and then ongoing prayers for self-glorification modeled for the church as well.

Moving in from the either end of that, then we have these prayers for knowledge or authority, and then we have at the center of that the gift of life. Verses six and following we’ll deal with today. We’ll talk about that. But see that he’s manifested both the name and the word of God. So he gives us the name and presence of God in the context of his ministry and they then are kept in the obedience to that word.

And then in verse 17, “sanctify them in truth. Your word is truth.” So again, a request that we receive more of the sanctification power of God’s word to us. So the gift of knowledge and authority based on the word of God, a reflection of his character, are the interior brackets to these brackets of glory. So we’ve got glory, authority/knowledge, and the word of God. And then at the center of this, we have life.

He prays, again, we’ll talk about this in more detail today, in verses 11, that we would be kept. He prays that this to the end that they might have unity and joy in verse 13. And then in verse 14 he goes back to this theme of keeping them from the evil one. So there’s a preservation in life, and that life is a joyful community together in unity with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and with one another.

That’s life. Life in the scriptures is preservation from that which would take life away, and it’s the presence of joy. So when we move to the communion table, the third gift, Jesus is preserving us that we might maintain our unity with him and he provides us joyful life. So this is another summation of the entire prayer. And today we want to deal specifically with those middle two gifts, the gifts of knowledge and authority and also the gift of joyful life.

And next week we’ll conclude with the third section of Jesus’s prayer when he prays in that last section for the entire church. All right. So let’s move now into a specific consideration of the text before us. There are two family petitions in the text before us: preservation and sanctification. And so I’ve broken it up in that way. These are the basic—there’s only two real petitions, specific requests that Jesus makes for his disciples, and that’s what they are.

But there is a great deal of context. Now the first idea of the context of this two family petitions in verses 6 to 11 are given first of all and the Father’s name or word has been given, kept, and received with resultant knowledge. Now if you look at this in verses six and seven: verse six: “I have manifested your name to the people you gave me out of the world. Yours they were and you gave them to me and they have kept your word.

Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. For I’ve given them—okay, for I’ve given where—now I have given them the words.” Okay, so first he says that he has manifested the name of God to a particular group of people, and then he says that they have kept this word—a relationship of name to word. And now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. So there’s this gift of the word or the name of God, a keeping of that word, a reception of it, and then a knowledge of what that word means.

This is repeated in verse 8:

“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.”

You see the parallelism there? He says he’s given them God’s name and then he says I’ve given them your word. Then he says they kept your word and then he says they’ve received your word. To keep it, in other words, is to receive it. And then in both verses six, seven, and eight, now they know this stuff. And then after they’ve received them, they have come to know in truth that I am from you and they have believed that you sent me.

You see there’s a parallelism here, and what’s being repeated is that Jesus has given us—he’s given his immediate disciples—revealed to them the name, the person, all of whom God is, and that seen in parallel fashion with the words of the Father. So the word of God reveals the character of God. Jesus, God incarnate, comes and he also reveals and executes the Father’s name, his person. And the response of these particular people is that they have received these words and they have kept these words. As a result of that, they’ve come to know certain things.

Now that sounds the reverse of what we normally think of it, doesn’t it? We normally think, “Okay, Jesus gives us his word, then we believe it, and then we keep it or do it.” But Jesus, twice—twice for emphasis here—tells us, “No, I gave you something. You obeyed it or kept it, and then you came to know the unity of the Father and Son, to know the divinity of Jesus Christ, to know the character or name of God.”

Now, this is a repeated theme that we’ve talked about for 20 years, but it’s a very important one. Jesus stresses here in this context for this first petition. He stresses the gift of his word. Remember, that’s what we’ve gone from the glory now to knowledge or the word of God. He has given us the word and the way we understand what that word means is to obey it. You see, we move from obedience to understanding. We don’t start with understanding and move to obedience.

Now, we have to understand what he—what we’re supposed to obey clearly. But the external obedience to the commands of God brings us into a further knowledge of who God is. It’s just like I said before about your clothing. You put on certain clothes and your attitude changes. No, not automatic. You could be a hypocrite. You see, God works that way. When we’re baptized, a Christian baptism, we don’t wait for something to happen inside. We impose something from outside upon our children, upon our babies. Jesus says that we’re supposed to keep the word of God open.

This same progression—we’re talking about this in our Proverbs class at the junior high kids. We move from being oxen in our early stage of life to becoming lions. We move from being priests who just hear the word of God, don’t really, you know, can’t meditate on a lot. We’re just supposed to follow instructions. That’s what they did in Leviticus. Follow those instructions detail. Don’t figure out how you’re supposed to cut that animal up. Here’s how you’re going to do it. But then we move from that law to maturation to wisdom.

Proverbs says, you know, you’ve learned a bunch of laws hopefully as children. But now you got to learn wisdom in the application of those laws. When children are in their pre-teen years, when they get to become teens, they’re oxen, they’re priests, they’re following orders. And if they do that, that prepares them to know the deeper things, to know what’s behind all of this, to be able to wisely apply the law of God in a particular context, to go forth conquering as lions, as kings. We move from priests to kings.

Jesus says here very importantly in this gift of knowledge to us, this gift of truth that he gives it to a particular people—those chosen by the Father—and the way that we go about understanding it is to obey it. So first, the Father’s name or word. Another thing the parallel verses here tell us is that name and word are correlated. Right? “I gave him your name. I gave him your word.” In other words, your name is your word. So the Father’s word is the revelation of his character just as the name is.

It doesn’t mean they knew his name in the sense of it is Yahweh or it is this. The name of God is the full transcription of his character. That’s what name means. It’s who he is. His very name Yahweh means there is really no name for God in the sense of one you can grab a hold of and get him. It is rather the revelation that he is who he is. And so Jesus has given this name or word to the disciples. They have kept and received them. And this has ended up with resultant knowledge in the life of the disciple.

Secondly, there’s a distinction made between the family and the world. Okay? “I’m praying for these guys here. I’m not praying for everybody else out there.” Remember, the world is characterized primarily in the upper room discourse as the unbelieving Jewish church. But they represent all the world. So we can think that way, too. But understand in its first application, it means those that would cast them out of synagogues. That’s what we said in the upper room discourse.

“But I’m not praying for the world. But for those whom you have given me.” Now, we know that he loves the world. So don’t think that this is just a remnant mentality and that’s all that’s ever going to happen. But he does make a distinction here between those that he’s praying for and those that he’s not. And those that he’s praying for are the ones who have kept his word and believed. But that’s not why he’s praying for him ultimately, because he has just said that the reason they do that is because you gave them to me. He’s praying for those who have been given him as a gift from the Father.

So the distinction made between the family and the world, and in his second petition, he’s going to ask for preservation from the world. But his second petition is sanctification. And so it’s very important that this is setting us up for that. There’s a separateness from the world that Jesus brings to bear on these two petitions.

Third, in the context of this first petition is the unity between the Father and the Son. You know, John 17 is a wonderful place that demonstrates the triune God at work, the equality of Father and Son. “They are yours. All mine are yours. All yours are mine. And I am glorified in them.” Right? So the absolute unity between the Son and the Father is given. And then this unity brings us into this family. “They are yours. All mine are yours. All yours are mine.” There’s a unity between the Son and his family. That’s stressed here.

Fourth, the Savior’s departure from and the family’s presence in the world. Verse 11: “And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world. And I am coming to you.” The reason why he’s asking the Father to preserve them is that he’s leaving. And he’ll say that he preserved them while he was there, but now he’s going away. So he’s asking the Father to keep us in his absence. So he’s going out of the world, but very specifically we’re not going out of the world. We’re being saved to work in the context of that world on mission from him, which we’ll see as the text continues.

So that’s the context. And then we have the first family petition here. Keep them, verses 11b to 16.

Holy Father. Verse 11: “Holy Father.” And before we get to the actual petition, I want to stress that one more time. The title Jesus uses here is Holy Father. Lest we forget all the great things we said last week about God being our Father and wanting to come before him and rest in him and know that he loves us and love him like we love our own fathers or better than that—much as we said that this is the Christian faith to know God the Father as Father, all that is true and we must remind ourselves of this over and over because our sin causes us to fear our Father in heaven. But that sin isn’t made atonement for from the Savior. And so now we want to run to Father’s arms.

But never forget this title. He is your Father, but he is Holy Father. Jesus is going to pray that we be holy. The sanctified means here—same word, same base word. But as we get to this, we know that as we come before the Father of all creation here, we come before not just our Father in heaven who loves us. We come before the creator of the universe, the Lord God Almighty. We come to give him worship and praise, certainly anxious for the gifts he’ll bestow upon us, certainly desirous of that, but never forgetting his holiness.

You see, there’s two ditches here. One is to get so afraid of the holiness of God and the holiness of Christ that we run to Mary to be our intercessor. That’s what the medieval church did. But the other offense, which is far more likely in our day and age, is to run to the arms of a loving Father and not consider him as Holy Lord God Almighty. Come before him casually in our dress, casually in our attitudes. There’s going to be no casualness in these kind of petitions and in the worship of God.

There’s a peace, there’s a belief that he loves us and accepts us, but we come before him as our Holy Father. We must never ever forget that. So he says, “Holy Father, keep them through your name.” Again, this is related to his petition. He’s going to pray for our sanctification. Part of our sanctification is this preservation from the impact of the world. “Keep them in your name or through your name.”

And here the translations are talked about. There’s a great deal of discussion over what’s the proper way to translate this particular word. Should it be “in”? Should it be “through”? And I think that what I’ve tried to do on your outline with both points A and D is to say that it is both through and in. Certainly there’s a preservation in God’s name. We want to keep in union with the character of God as revealed in his name. Right? There’s a preservation in unity with God the Father.

But the way that Jesus—the whole point of all this is that the way he’s guarded them is by giving us his words, revealing to us the name of the Father. So it is both the means of preservation as well as an aspect of what we’re being preserved in the context of. So we’re to be preserved by the name of God or through that name, but also we’re preserved in that name.

Now on the structure I’ve given you, verse 14 connects up with verse 11. If you look at the way the whole text is structured on the back part of your outline, verse 14 is the one that said, “I have given them your word. The world has hated them.” So “keep them through your name” and then in correlary fashion, “I have given them your word.” So again here, just as the first couple of verses showed, there’s a connection between name and word—both reveal the Father.

Okay. So Jesus says that he gives us God’s word as a means to preserve us, but he also gives us the transcription of God’s character, as it were, as what we’re in the context of, the relationship that is to be preserved. So he preserves us both in and through the name slash word of God. As one commentator said, “It’s only as the disciples are maintained in adherence to the revelation that they can be one as the Father and the Son are one,” which is the purpose of the petition.

“Keep them in your name.” Now, to keep us in the name of the Father keeps us away from something else. It keeps us away from an anthropocentric, a man-centered perspective on life. If we’re apart from communion, in communion with the Father’s name, then we think of ourselves and man as the center of the universe. Jesus, in asking that we be kept in the name of the Father, one of the implications is that we’re kept with a proper perspective of what reality is.

The word is the word of truth. God is the God of truth. He is reality. Outside of him there is no reality. And so we’re to be kept with a God-centered focus in the context of our lives through the word and in the word. This preservation is also from the evil one.

“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. I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world just as I am not of the world.”

So Jesus is saying that while we’re in this world, the world is going to hate us. And you know, it won’t hate you because you’re poor at witnessing or your life is inconsistent. They may say all those things, but Jesus is saying the reason for this fundamental hatred of the world for the Christian church is that you are not of them anymore. And if you simply live out your lives as obedient Christians, obedient followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, there is a conviction that happens to the world around you. And so they end up hating you.

Ann Rand—Roger sent me some quotes this week via an email distribution list called The Federalist. And there was a quote from Ann Rand. She says this in terms of Americans and they’re being charged with imperialism, etc. In her day and age, this is back in 1974. She said, “You’re being penalized for being the protectors of the United States. Those who seek to destroy this country seek to disarm it intellectually and physically. The motive of the destroyer is a hatred of America.” And there’s a lot of truth to what she wrote.

There continues to be a lot of truth to that. Now, there is a hatred for America that this world situation that’s going on, as a test and evaluating of many nations, is demonstrating a hatred for America. There’s a hatred for President Bush. It’s becoming quite virulent in some circles. Well, ultimately I think that hatred for America and the hatred for President Bush finds its origins in a hatred for God. It’s the same thing that Jesus is talking about here.

We don’t know, you know, George Bush is basically a public character. Public characters, you can’t really know a whole lot of what’s going on, but every report is that he prays daily, reads the scriptures daily, seeking guidance and wisdom for what he does in America. America has been perceived as a Christian nation. That’s certainly part of why the radical Islamist terrorists want to strike out at us. So we see being played out in the very newspapers of our city this hatred for Christians and for the name of God being manifested in the context of the world.

And Jesus prays that in spite of all of this opposition that we might be preserved by the Father. And then he says at the end, you know, the titular head of all this world antipathy to Christians is the evil one, Satan, the devil, our opponent, our adversary who goes about as a roaring lion. So Jesus prays that we might be protected from the evil one.

Now, we’re not just to be protected from something. We’re to be protected toward something. We’re to be protected toward unity and joy.

“Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that so the goal of this is that they may be one even as we are one.”

And then in verse 13:

“Now I’m coming to you. These things I speak in the world. That another, you know what’s going to happen? What’s the purpose? That they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.”

So the end result of this preservation that Jesus seeks from the Father is that we might have indeed unity and joy in life. So this is all a prayer that the word might be ministered, that we might have life, and that life is described as joy and joy in the context of unity.

It’s going to be absolutely vital that the disciples—that the 11 men and then 12, as one was added—remain united in what they do in their ministry, that the world might see demonstrated in them the truth of Jesus Christ and that they can fulfill their mission to bring the world to salvation. So Jesus prays for this unity and we’ll say more about that in a couple of minutes and more next week as well. This is central to the concluding petition of this prayer, the unity of the church.

So Jesus prays that we’re saved unto unity and joy. And then he has—as I said, he pleads his own actions done in the past.

Verse 12: “When I was with them, I kept them in your name which you have given me. I have guarded them. Not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction that the scriptures might be fulfilled.”

So Jesus says here again, he pleads his past actions. We have been guarded and preserved by the Savior, or the disciples had, and only one had been lost: the son of perdition, clearly here a reference to Judas, of course. I thought in a masterful understatement one commentator, Peter, uh, says here that he says “perish” refers to falling away from discipleship, not necessarily to eternal perdition, though Jesus’s characterization of Judas is not a hopeful one. That’s almost willful blindness, is it not? I mean, Jesus is saying the scriptures might be fulfilled, the son of perdition has been lost, he’s going to hell, and that is clearly stated.

It’s amazing. Uh, this commentator goes on to say that this Semitism, this phrase “son of perdition” literally means one destined for perdition or one destined for destruction. So our Savior, you know, notice here he doesn’t say that nobody was lost. You know, we can go too far this way and say, well, you know, Judas wasn’t really a disciple, but clearly Jesus is saying he was lost, right?

But his lostness is all under the sovereign control of a predestinating God. And this is a predestination to perdition or judgment, right? You know, it’s—you could look at this as double predestination, at least in the case of Judas. At least one person was specifically predestined for destruction. And so, you know, the two sides of this are to say, well, nobody can really ever be lost from being a disciple. Yeah, people can be lost, but ultimately it’s because in the eternal decree of God, Judas was never intended for discipleship in the context of its full playing out.

He was never part of the eschatological church, while he was part of the historical church. Okay. So Jesus prays for preservation.

Now the second petition he asks for is sanctification. Verses 17 to 19.

Verse 17: “Sanctify them in the truth. So see there? Just two things—big long prayer, two petitions. Keep them, sanctify them. And the sanctification is by or through the truth or word of God. Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth.”

You know, sanctification is not a result of some second blessing theology. You know, it’s not a result of other means by which the Spirit works in the lives of men. The sanctification, the consecration of his disciples occurs through the means of the word of God, the truth of God, his word, his scriptures that he has given to us. And Jesus prays that they would be sanctified by means of this church.

So here the holiness of the saints is talked about. Sanctification means to set apart, to consecrate, to move away from a profane state, so to speak, into a sacred movement. It means to be set apart from certain things but unto other things—sanctify, or to be made holy. And the means for this is through the word of God. Clear and simple.

And then the mission for this is given to us in verse 18:

“As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”

So here, you know, we’re not preserved or sanctified just so we can make it. We’re not in a defensive holding posture. The whole purpose of this defense of these disciples and then later of the church and their sanctification is that they can fulfill the mission that Jesus sends them out to. Our vision statement: “Loving this triune God portrayed before us in his wonderful prayer, transforming the fallen world,” and by having a sense of mission as we come out of this place.

Not just, you know, world missions or evangelism, but what you are—missionaries. The purpose for which you’ve been preserved and sanctified is that you are going to be sent ones. Remember the Pool of Siloam? Jesus was the sent one. Siloam means sent one. And the blind man or recovered sight was immediately a sent one into the synagogue to testify to the truth of Jesus Christ. And he sounds just like him. We’re the ones who have been sent forth on mission into the world.

This is the purpose of the preservation and sanctification. This is through the Savior’s consecration to death.

Verse 19: “For their sake I consecrate myself that they also may be sanctified in truth.”

So “sanctify them by your word, by truth, your word is truth.” So that they can go forth on this mission. And to this end I am going to sanctify myself that they may be sanctified. And what he’s praying for is his coming death upon the cross. And that is the method by which we are sent forth as missionaries for him, with mission into the world, through the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, his consecration to that task.

Okay, few comments, few brief applications, and then we’re done. First, we have very definitively portrayed for us in this text the absolute sovereignty of God. Now, we could look at this at some detail. We won’t, but notice, of course, the indication of the son of perdition being predestined for destruction.

But notice, as I said at the beginning of the analysis of the text, that Jesus prays for particular people who have been given to him by the Father. Let me read some a comment or two by John Calvin.

“Christ describes the cause for the election of God. He assumes no other differences as the reason why he manifested the name of the Father to some passing by others.”

So Calvin is going to describe what does Jesus tell us is the reason he passed by some and revealed it to others. He says he ascribes no condition but because they were given to him. The reason why Jesus manifested himself and the Father’s word and name to some was specifically given by our Savior here because the Father gave them to him. Those are the ones that Jesus manifests the name and words of God.

Calvin says, “Because they were given to him. Hence it follows that faith flows from the outward predestination of God and that therefore it is not given indiscriminately to all because all do not belong to Christ.”

He points out the eternity of election. The Father has given these to Christ in the eternity of election. And as a result of that, they were the Father’s, and now they’re given to the Son. The manner in which we ought to consider this is also given to us. Not only did the Father eternally elect us, but then the way we are brought to a reception of saving faith in Christ and manifestation of the Father’s word is because we are then given to the Son.

So the absolute sovereignty of God in manifesting through the Son himself to his particular people is very clearly and demonstrably articulated for us in the context of this text. These are the ones who keep the word of God. Remember, he manifests it and they keep it. He manifests it to the elect. His elect then keep that word. Calvin says this is the third step. The first is the election by free grace. The second is that gift that the Father gave us into the guardianship of Christ. And then third, as a result of this, the way it works out is we are the ones who then are given and receive the word of the Father.

The absolute sovereignty of God. Now when we come to discussion of these gifts, the John 17 picture of what we do in our worship service, and we God gives us glory. He gives us knowledge of the preaching of the word. He gives us rejoicing life. Preserves us in that at the table. Never forget that these are based in the text before us in the past actions of Christ. Right? “I have given them your words and name. I have given them glory. I have preserved them. I have given them life.”

So the definitive action of our salvation are these gifts that Jesus has already given to us 2,000 years ago in his ministry. Now we continue to receive those in the context of our worship, in the context of our life. But it’s the sovereign actions of God who has provided these gifts. That’s why we refer to them as gifts of the grace of God to his elect children. And they’re simply reminders, but not simply reminders, they are certainly reminders of the definitive giving of these gifts to us.

Glorification, sanctification, justification all have a past perspective to them. They have been accomplished by Jesus. They are now the present possessions of the church, but they all have a future manifestation as well. And that future manifestation is pictured as we continue to be ministered these gifts by God and then ultimately our sanctification, justification, and glorification are completed in the eschaton.

So first we have the absolute sovereignty of God portrayed for us. Secondly, there is a responsibility to us in spite of all of this. Again, we said this last week: Jesus was the victor, but he prays for victory. We are assured of God’s election of us and yet we’re admonished that we can be lost. Right? There’s a warning here that we can be lost. Some are lost. Jesus doesn’t pray to no effect. He prays that we might be preserved.

Now, there’s a great sense of assurance that comes from that. But it reminds us as well that we don’t want to be the son of perdition who looked just like everybody else for a while, but ultimately in the decree of God was not elected and in the context of the covenant relationships of the church was kicked out of the church, driven out.

So there is, as much as there’s an assertion of divine sovereignty in this text and a cause for rest for the believer in it, there is still a reminder that there were some that were of them but were not really of them ultimately and that are lost and we don’t want to be lost. So we want to maintain our obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ. And we do this by continually looking to him for these gracious gifts and seeking to use them for the purposes of his kingdom.

The third comment I want to make, and or again to reiterate having looked at these texts, is that we are sanctified for the purpose of mission and conquest. Again, here it’s very easy to walk away from a text like this and not understand all that our Savior is saying. He’s saying that he wants us to be preserved from the world but he also is praying that we might be sent into that world as ambassadors for him.

We are set apart from some things. We are sanctified or preserved from the evil effects of the world. But it also means that we are preserved to a particular function which is to go back into that world with the power of Christ’s word and save it. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.” So don’t misunderstand what Jesus is praying here. He’s not praying that the world will, you know, go downhill ultimately.

He’s praying that we might be preserved as mighty warriors for King Jesus who go forth with a sense of the mission to bring glory, knowledge, and life to the world round about us. And that’s going to be accomplished. Jesus goes out of the world, but very explicitly says that we stay in the world and we stay in it for the mission. “As I have been sent, I am sending them. I’m consecrating myself that they may be consecrated for the task,” for the mission of reaching this world.

We’re to be sanctified to the end of victory and engagement in the army of the Lord Jesus Christ. There’s a sense in which we could say that a loss of holiness is a loss of purpose or vision or mission for our lives. Sanctification is holiness. We’re to be holy people. And that holiness is not apart from something only. It’s a being set apart to a particular task.

There is no holiness truly for the person who simply keeps himself from doing, you know, “I don’t drink and I don’t chew and I don’t go with the girls that do,” or whatever it is. You know, to just not do those things is no holiness according to what Jesus says. To simply keep oneself away from the vile effects of the world is not enough. The whole purpose of your preservation is that you may remain strong in the mission and the holiness that Jesus sends you forth to conquer that world with.

“Greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world.” And so God wants us to have personal sanctification. This text very much says that. But the end result of that personal sanctification is that we may go forth on mission from the Lord Jesus Christ. As one commentator said, “He never prayed that they might find escape. He prayed that they might find victory. The kind of Christianity which buries itself in a monastery or a covenant or a convent rather would not have seemed Christianity to Jesus Christ at all.

Jesus doesn’t offer us release from our problems, but rather a way to solve our problems. It doesn’t offer us an easy peace, but a triumphant warfare. It’s not a gospel of escapism from the world. It’s a gospel of preservation from the world that we might conquer that same world.” And so we have been sent into the world as more than conquerors in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

The community takes over Jesus’s assault on the world. That’s what’s going on in John 17. The baton is being passed from Jesus to the disciples, and then in next week’s concluding section of this prayer to those who will believe based upon their word to you and I. The baton is passed to us today, of this mission into the world. And that this mission cannot be accomplished by conformity to the world, but neither can it be accomplished by complete withdrawal from the world. We are in the world but not of the world because we are to conquer that self-same world.

Couple of quotes again from the email that Rogers sent me: George Bernard Shaw, an unlikely source for wisdom, but God works through whoever he wants to work through, said, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” And we’re the unreasonable man. We don’t look around the world and conform ourselves to it. We’re transformed by the power of God’s word, Romans tells us, that we might transform the world and conform the world to ourselves as we are Christians seeking the glorification of Jesus Christ and the Father.

We would urge you today, and I urge myself and I urge you as we go forward tomorrow, let us go forward on mission. George Washington said this: “We have therefore to resolve to conquer or die. Our own country’s honor all call upon us for vigorous and manly exertion. And if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Must therefore rely upon the goodness of the cause and the aid of the supreme being in whose hands victory is to animate and encourage us to great and noble actions.”

Now he was talking about the Revolutionary War, and the point of this email is that this is the same kind of dedication and commitment that young men, young many Christian men, have gone off to Iraq to defend this country, and they must do so with the honor of the country at stake. They must engage in the battle victoriously: either conquer or die.

But the application to our text is quite obvious, is it not? We would ask that we summon up the energy, the exertions of the Holy Spirit, that we see that we as well must conquer or die. There’s no neutrality possible here. We will either be conquered or overcome by the world or we’ll conquer or overcome the world. And Jesus calls us to the last task of the presentation of the gospel through going to work faithfully through doing the small tasks faithfully of our lives.

Jesus says this is our mission and purpose in the world.

World implications here then for leaders. Jesus prays for his family here. Pastors are to pray as well for their families. It’s my obligation to pray for the family here at Reformation Covenant Church. That’s why I bug the prayer group leaders every month. “Get me those requests because I want to every month be faithful to the Lord Jesus Christ’s model of praying for his family,” so to speak.

The family of the pastors of this church regard you as part of the extended household. It is our responsibility to fulfill Jesus’s command that we pray for you. To that end, I need to know what you need prayer for. And I don’t need to, but it’s very helpful for me to fulfill that obligation.

Notice as well, though, that Jesus prays for his disciples that they be unified and united. The pastors of Oregon City met last Tuesday to pray together for one another. This is a commitment we have as a church to certainly see ourselves in relationship to the CRC, to other reformed churches in the area, to pray for them regularly. But never forget, the unity of the church is demonstrated at the city level, and as pastors come together at the city level, I believe God honors that attempt for unity. We’ll talk more about this next week again. Unity is the central theme there, but the pastors are to pray for the unity of their particular church but for the unity of the churches in the region in which God has set them.

Now, you know, Jesus—God says in his word when the men built the tower of Babel that when men are united together they are a powerful force. Specifically, Genesis 11:6 says, “The Lord said, ‘Behold, they are one people. They have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. Nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. How can we stop them?’”

God says, now that they’re united with one language, you understand the implications of that for the church of Jesus Christ. When the church of Jesus Christ in Oregon City has one language, one lip, one confession based upon this sovereign grace of God, one motivation to take our mission into the world, not to retreat, determined and wait for the rapture, but to go actively into this world seeking its conversion, when that unity happens, what can be withheld from the church? And in small ways, that unity is happening.

This last prayer meeting Tuesday morning, we got a report back from Tom Dressell. Tom is a member at OC, or the Evangelical Church. The first full year of the implementation of the community marriage policy for Clackamas County. Now, what is that? Well, that’s nearly every pastor, and all the evangelical pastors—95% of the pastors in Clackamas County—signed a document. It hangs on our wall in there, that we will not marry people unless we’ve had premarital counseling with them, marry them in the Lord, series of things that we’re committed to do before we marry people in our churches.

And what’s happened, as what happened then, is in the first year of the implementation of that this past year, the divorce rate declined nearly 21% in this county. Now, it had been going up for the last four years—small but incremental upward approach. Now we have a decline. Do I think that the immediate result, because I’m really stressing premarital counseling as well? Maybe not. But I see it as God honoring the unity of the church when they come together to affect a particular purpose, which is a reduction of divorce and an increase in Christian marriage. So God honors these things.

And in the providence of God, we have a new battle. We have a so-called adult book and toy store—I call it a juvenile book and toy store. There’s nothing felt about it—proposing to open six blocks from here. This is going to happen. Probably no way to stop it in the short term. But in the providence of God, when we talked about it at the pastor’s prayer meeting Tuesday morning, the pastors start to come together. They don’t like this. They want to work together.

I don’t care what their eschatology says. When the porn shop goes in next to their church or their community, they’re going to get motivated to do something about it. And I’m praying that this would be an opportunity, that this kind of informal prayer fellowship we have once a month might become a little more formal, we’d be able to move toward this model of the unity of Christ’s church he describes for us here, so that nothing can be withheld from us, that God will bless us here in the context of his church.

So there’s immediate application here, implications from this text for pastors, this relationship to that. Secondly, for fathers: do you pray and seek out the unity of your family? This is tough for me. My kids are growing up. Everybody’s going different ways, lots of activities, and it’s real easy at this point in time. In fact, I’d say it’s almost inevitable that unless you inject something into the system, the family will become a group of individuals.

Now, that’s because some of these kids are becoming, you know, lions instead of oxen, they’re becoming their own individual. But still, while we have our families, it’s such an important time to continue to minister to our children this unity of the family that Jesus prays for his family for here, right? Disciples are in the immediate context of his household, where the high priest was. He has Passover with his disciples.

Fathers, do you pray for your children regularly? Jesus prays for his disciples. I pray for all you men. I pray for all the people here. I get all these prayer sheets for every one of you. Do you pray consistently for your children? Now, if you just wait for it to happen, it’s not going to happen. I had to set up some routines in my life to pray for the church. You know, I had to start riding the bus from Camas. So I’d sit there with nothing to do for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, and I have those prayer sheets with me. It’s when I pray for you.

You see, I had to set up a routine. There’s other routines I could do. Fathers, I would urge you in response to today’s sermon, set up some sort of routine that you’re actively praying for each member of your household and that you’re praying that God would bring you together as a unity and also, of course, that you would fulfill your guarding responsibility. So you can see here at our Savior’s work, guarding his disciples and nurturing, sanctifying them in the truth.

And fathers, are you doing that with your households? Are you setting apart time in the word and then time as a family to minister the word of God in terms of unity and then again—I’ve stressed this before—to send our children out in mission? When you drop them off at the community college, they leave the door, “Bless you today, son. Do his work. Go on mission from him every day.” To send our children forth as missionaries in the image of our Savior’s prayer encourages us in this thing.

For employers: I mean, in the old world, Christian employers were seen as kind of householders of a group of people there as well. They had familial obligations for their employees—to pray for them, to bring the word of God to bear in, you know, maybe subtle ways, but good ways nonetheless.

Again, Steve has been a model of this by trying to figure out the Proverbs, getting books his employees can read. Howard’s having this Bible study once a month on Sundays, you know, to exhibit some sort of particularly, those that are employers, fatherly care—to bring the word of God to bear on your demeanor and composure, but also in relationship to your employees, to pray for them regularly, to guard them, you know, from the particular temptations that they may have, and to encourage them that their employment is a mission from God that he has given them to fulfill.

So there, I think obligations here for employers, opportunities at least. And then finally, for civil rulers: I believe, and I just praise God for aspects of this situation in Iraq. And I’ve lived 52 years and I’ve been politically really active for a long time, since I was a small child. I used to read the newspapers about the governor. So it’s kind of been my hobby for many years. And to have a politician give his word, say he was going to do something, with resolve, and to fulfill an obligation that he sees to guard his family, his country, from terrorism and from the effects of that, and then to actually do what he said.

I am telling you, this is a great delight for me. Politician after politician that I’ve known, mouth words. I, you know, we want to pray for the civil authorities here in Oregon City, but I do not sense some kind of fire in the belly from the politicians that I spoke to this week and the people. I’m sure they’re doing good work to try to do something about this sex shop opening up. “Oh, yeah, we agree with you. It shouldn’t open, but you know, what can we do?” With fire in the belly.

Praise God. He’s given us a president with fire in the belly to defend the country and perform his obligations. And that’s the way he sees it. Now, we may or may not agree with what that looks like, but God’s called him to that task. And he’s doing it as best he can. And he’s doing it by fulfilling his word. The word of the Father, the faithfulness of God is his word.

And we have a president today who sees importantly implications for his life to pray for this nation, which he does every day, and to fulfill his obligations to guard and protect. And may we pray for civil city magistrates here in Oregon City very specifically: five council people, city manager, Mr. Patterson. Pray for these men and women that they would see an obligation to protect the children of this city, to protect the men of this city.

We’ve got a divorce rate going down on one hand because of the actions of pastors, and now we’ve got a sex shop opening up with always disastrous implications for marriages. So, you know, pray that the city managers here in Oregon City would have a sense of their obligations to defend the citizens of Oregon City from evil because that’s what this pornography is.

Lord God has assured us. Jesus doesn’t ask for these things without the Father assuring us that he’s answered them. God assures us today that he has answered these prayers of the Savior. You are here today because God has preserved you. Think about this.

There are hundreds of thousands of Christians in Iraq. Now, many of them are Armenian Orthodox Christians. They’re there because they had to leave Turkey because of persecution. Now, Saddam Hussein is one very evil man, and I pray that the judgment of God will be evidently and manifestly brought forth upon his head. I pray that he’d convert. I pray that he repent of what he’s done. But the evil there has been played out in the last two weeks in the newspapers far and wide.

Hitler never did to his people, to the Germans at least, what Saddam Hussein is doing to many people in his own country.

But recognize this. For 20 years, God has answered this prayer of the Savior by preserving the church in Iraq by means of Saddam Hussein. There has been nowhere near the oppression of Christians in the context of Iraq as there has been in many Muslim states in the region. You understand that God has used an evil man against his own purposes to preserve the church of Jesus Christ for 20 years, to have freedom, basic freedom to worship, to grow, and even give refuge to a group of Armenian Christians who had to flee there because of persecution in other places.

This isn’t an argument against the war. We still want to see God’s justice wielded against those who would destroy us. We haven’t declared war. We’re responding to a declaration of war on us. But what I’m trying to get you to see is: think of the glory of God who uses the most evil of men that we know of today and still in the hand of him, he turns the heart of that man to preserve God’s people for 20 years in response to the prayers we can say of the Lord Jesus Christ.

God has surely sanctified and kept us. He surely equipped us for mission, and he wants us to reconsecrate ourselves now to follow the Lord Jesus Christ as we leave this place today and go to mission tomorrow.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your preservation of us. We thank you, Lord God, for sanctifying us. We pray that this would be a week in which we would reassert ourselves to mission for the Lord Jesus Christ by holiness, set apart from evil, consecrated to do what’s right.

I pray, Lord God, mostly for the fathers here today that they would see their families as important places to pray for, to minister the word to. Lord God, help us as fathers preserve the unity of our families by means of your word and prayer. In Christ’s name we ask. Amen.