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Scripture Reading: John 17
Good morning. Our reading today is John 17.
After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed, Father, the hour has come. Glorify your son, that your son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people, that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.
I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours, you gave them to me, and they have obeyed your word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. For I gave them the words you gave me, and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them.
I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction, so that scripture would be fulfilled. 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 the 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 the one as we are one, I in them and you in me, so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will 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.
This is the word of the lord.
Introduction and Prayer
All right. Thank you for that reading. The whole chapter. Appreciate that. It's a big one. It's lovely to be here. Thank you for having me. It was lovely to be asked a while ago to share from the front. When my family was recently new to the church, it's nicer to be asked back again. So thank you. And as I begin, how about we pray?
Father, thank you for these words that aren't just words. They are your life on a page. You lived and breathed and did so on our behalf. And I pray that by your Holy Spirit, we would be empowered to respond to you. God, lead us both in repentance and faith to trust you and walk in your ways. Grow us together as your people, I pray. Amen.
Jesus' Heart Revealed in Prayer
John 17 is a very interesting passage for a number of reasons. I mean, there's lots of things that I would love to say. You'll be thinking that I'm not saying all the things I would like to say. I'm trying to reduce it to what's important for us today, what I believe is important for us to hear today. Jesus is praying. We don't see this very often in Scripture. I mean, there's the Lord's Prayer, which is almost given as kind of like a teaching moment. But here we actually see a window into the life of Jesus, praying in a moment of grief but also of friendship at a very pivotal instant in his ministry. It's fascinating.
Last month, I kind of gave myself a question to meditate on as a way of preparing for this morning, which was, what does it mean that we overhear Jesus praying? If you can picture yourself in the room like one of the disciples, it's a great theme, by the way, from the upper room to the cross. They're still in the upper room at this stage when Jesus prays, and he's praying in a way that his disciples hear. What does it mean that you overhear the sent one praying? Interesting question.
I mean, how do you go when people hear you pray? Do you retreat a little bit? I know sometimes it can be nerve-wracking praying with people. I remember one time I was praying with someone, and I prayed a prayer I pray often, which is, Dear God, thank you that you are big and I'm not. Help me to trust you, right? And after the prayer, the person I was praying with said to me, Oh, that was lovely. It's nice to pray simple things sometimes, isn't it? To which I thought to myself, I didn't know I was doing that, but thank you for the feedback. I'll try to be more complicated next time.
It can be, like, think about it. When you pray to God in the quiet of your own space, is there a more intimate moment than that? I'm not sure that there is if you really reduce it and boil it down. And here we are reading through Jesus, a page of his prayer diary. What's even more interesting about it is what he's praying about. And the what is a who, it's us. It's for the disciples that were there and for those that he would believe. He begins by praying for himself, but largely, the focus of the prayer are the people sitting in this room right here today and all of the believers around the world since this moment, right?
Fascinating when you think about that. Read it. I pray for them, I'm not praying for the world, but for those you have given me because they are yours. I pray not only for these, but for those who believe in me through their word. What does it mean that Jesus prays for us? We can theologize and nitpick and analyze Jesus' prayer, but I think at the end of the day, at this point in time, as Jesus is heading toward the cross in a really intense buildup, and it's going to get more intense, I think the best way to say this is we're hearing Jesus' heart. Perhaps in the most raw, right? Amongst his friends, he just said, I don't call you servants, but you're my friends. Perhaps in the most raw, we hear Jesus' heart.
Representing Jesus to the World
And so that's the way I want to look at it this morning together is in Jesus' prayer, we see his heart revealed for us, right? There's three pieces that I want to point out of Jesus' heart for us. It's that he's heart for us to represent him to the world. He's heart for us to be unified, and he's heart for us to be with him. Okay? It's heart for us to represent him to the world, to be unified, and to be with him.
So the first point there is God's heart that we see in his prayer, I hope you felt it through the reading, is that he wants us to represent him. Verse 11 says, I'm no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I'm coming to you, Holy Father. Protect them by your name. So Jesus is saying, this is like the peace out moment. He's like, I'm here now, I'll be gone tomorrow, and then I'm out. And you guys, the disciples are going to stay, but I'm going to go. That's the moment in time. Like this right on the precipice of Jesus moving on.
And I don't know about you, but the scariest doctrine in all of Christianity to me is the doctrine of the ascension, where Jesus rises, you know, from the earth and goes to be with the Father in glory. Like that to me is the scariest. Not because I don't understand it. I'm completely fine with Jesus rising in the clouds. He can walk on water. He can rise and do anything. But the idea that he left us to do the work, he's leaving so that we would follow on. Now, if he stayed, surely that would be more effective. Surely he would get it done way better than we could get it done. And yet he doesn't. He says he's going to go. I'm going, they're staying. We need this prayer, by the way.
Verse 15, I'm not praying that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one. The context is clear. We are to represent Jesus to carry on his message in the world. All right? In the world. That's the context that we have. So we can just unpack a few things about this, just really briefly. What that means as far as the way that we relate to the world is that, firstly, we can't look down on it. We cannot look down and say, what awful sinners who don't know the good news. We can't do that. We can't be averse to it and carry around spiritual sanitizer. Every time we engage with the world, we scrub ourselves clean. We say, all right, back to my whole life. We can't do that. We also can't give into the world. Right?
In the same way, though, this is the depth that Jesus is calling us. The beginning, in John chapter 1, the beginning of this book, it says Jesus was not from here. He was with God in the beginning. And yet, what? He took on flesh and dwelled among us. And this is what's being passed down. This is it. This is it. I'm going. They're staying. And this is the reason why. They're going to carry on the message. This isn't new, by the way. This is like page one of the Bible. Since the beginning of time, God has rightly desired people to know him and know his goodness. The whole purpose of creating people who bear his image.
So the whole world would be filled with the glory of God. The image bearers would be everywhere and filling the earth with the glory, but they didn't do that. Instead, they rejected God to find satisfaction in other things. But graciously, God persisted, right? And he calls Abraham to be the father of many nations, that God would bless him to be a blessing and through him all the nations would be blessed. And God raised up Israel and makes a covenant with Israel that by living the law of God, they might become good news to the world around them, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. But Israel couldn't do that. They rejected God too. And when the world looked for God through the people of God, all they could see was a very broken image.
Until Jesus comes to save all of humanity by living the life we should live, dying the death that we deserve and being raised to a new life that's offered to us now. But God didn't just enter into cover for us, but to empower us to live in a way that honored him, right? And so as we've been reading John 14 to 16, as Jesus is preparing to leave his ministry here on earth, he promised he wouldn't leave us alone, but he would send a counselor, a Holy Spirit, an advocate, someone who would help us on his behalf, not just to feel spiritual, but to display the glory of God. That's it. This is the garden again. This is what Jesus is doing. These are my people, a renewed creation.
So we get to the end of Jesus' ministry and see him send out his church to make disciples of all nations, baptized into a new name. And because of this, he's sending, he's empowering us. He's able to say, and surely I will be with you always to the very end of the age. I think next week the passage is John 20, is that right? That's my favorite, like, sending passage. It's one of my favorite passages in scripture where Jesus says, as the Father sent me, so I send you. And then very importantly and very weirdly, he breathes on his disciples. And he says, what? Receive the Holy Spirit. In other words, this is what you need to be able to do what we're talking about. You need this. I'm empowering you. You have everything. Go do this massive task. I'm with you, right?
And then it happens. Oh wait, before we get there, we see it like another moment. Acts chapter 1, where Jesus, the resurrected Jesus, is with his followers again. And he reminds them, hey, go make disciples. Go into all the world, Judah, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Go, go, go. But wait here in Jerusalem until power comes upon you from on high, right? And then the next chapter is when it happens. The first church is sitting in a room. And the Spirit descends on them. And then like tongues of fire. And then what do they do? They run out into the streets and they preach the gospel unknowingly in all the languages of everyone who was around. Everyone heard the gospel preached. Do you see this? Like this is this journey from the moment of creation to the church beginning to Jesus praying for the people, Jesus praying for us.
Do you see how God clearly desires the world to know him? This is the story of God. The church doesn't have a mission. The mission of God happens to have a church. Do you see how God gives his Spirit to empower Christians to represent him? How are you feeling right now? Intimidated? Overwhelmed? Let me take it down a notch. Acts chapter 2, when the church is filled by the Spirit, look at the impact. See what happens next. They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching, the fellowship, breaking of bread. So they ate together. They hung out together. They read the Bible together. They sold their possessions and property. They shared their stuff. Every day they devoted to meeting together, broke bread, ate food with joyful sincere hearts, praising God, enjoying the favor of all the people. And the kicker, every day the Lord added to the number of those who are being saved, right?
So in Acts 2, we get to see this amazing expression of the gospel and community. This is what happens when Jesus' prayer is answered, that the people represent him in the world, right? This is it. And it's a beautiful, beautiful picture. The only way to understand this community is one that has been changed by the Holy Spirit and are now the empowered sent people of God. This is what God does. He sends and supernaturally powers people to represent him, and then he prays for them to do so. Can I just like help you out here? Look at how they're doing that. Look at how they're fulfilling that mission, the brief, the task. Look at it. Every day didn't look like Pentecost, where all of the followers went out and they said, all right, my target today is five new converts. I'm going to get there. I'm going to preach it. I figured out how to do it in this language. No, no, no. Every day didn't look like that.
No, it wasn't just full of great evangelists. There were some, but that wasn't it. They didn't all pack up their homes and move to a foreign country. Instead, this description, when you look at it, it's normal stuff. Being together, praying, eating, listening, and the people being saved were added to their number daily. Through that takes the, like, hardness out of it, doesn't it? Please don't make this about getting songs right on a Sunday or what's the mood that we're setting. Your life empowered by the Holy Spirit is so much bigger than that. It was more than an objective, however. It wasn't just Jesus saying and praying, go reach people for the world to know him. He said, I'm going to do more than just empower you. I'm going to sanctify you. That's what he says. I will sanctify myself for them so that they may be sanctified by the truth, which means it's not just you with an extra buzz. It's you are a changed person. Call to go and reach the people through normal everyday stuff.
I saw a great example of this. I used to lead a couple churches for the last 14 years or so. In one of those churches there was a life group that wanted to do more of this. Felt this strong urge and then said, how do we live like that? And so they began to think about how do we reach the community around us? What are the ways? What are the ways that we connect? What should we do, basically, as a group? And so one of them said, well, I connect with some of the guys in my street. They like to drink beer and so do I. And so that's how we hang out. And maybe we could all do that together. Can be careful how I talk about this. But what they decided to do there was one of them, that guy was actually really into beer to the point that he was a beer brewer, right? And so they said, why don't we all brew beer together? We'll invite everyone in and then we'll all do it together, which is a really clever idea because brewing beer has some different stages to it. You do the initial brew and then it takes a few weeks before you can then bottle it. And then after you bottle it, you open it. And what those guys did when they opened it was had a party. And so they had these touch points. They all celebrate, hang out together. They got to know each other and they were able to share the gospel through brewing beer with their neighbors and friends in their community. It was a beautiful picture.
My favorite part about that picture was the guy that led that community didn't drink beer. He didn't drink any alcohol, not for religious reasons. He just didn't like it. And so what was the most beautiful thing about that for me was here's a person, sanctified by God to say, well, now I am not just empowered. I don't need it to be about me. I want to go out and I want to reach. As a community, we're going to do this and they did. What an amazing thing. Sent, empowered, has changed people to reach the people around them. That's the first point is that God's heart is for us to represent him.
Unity in Christ
The second thing is that God's heart is for us to be unified. One, you might have picked that up. There's a lot of sort of repetition in Jesus's prayer. Take that as an encouragement. If you're not sure if you're praying the right way, sometimes you just saying the same thing. Well, I think Jesus did and it's emphasizing like this is his heart and all of that. But one of the things that comes through over and over again is that Jesus prays for us, his people, to be unified, right? Which isn't separate to represent him. It's to represent him as the unified people of God. Okay, it's not this and that. It's together. It's the unified people of God sent to represent him in the world.
In fact, the way he says it is in verse 23, particularly, I'm in them and you're in me to speak into God so that they may be made completely one, that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me. Wow, that's kind of breathtaking a little bit to think that the way that Christians can connect together has the power to display the gospel to the world around them. To be unified in such a way that it displays good news. I think that's amazing. May they be one so that the world believes you sent me.
Now, can I just also say something here? You might be thinking, so how unified do we need to be? What does that mean? I see some people and we high-five sometimes like, does it need to be more than that? Less than that? On a scale of 1 to 10, what's it going to look like, right? Well, you're about to be blown out of the water with that scale because what Jesus says the scale is, is the measure is his oneness with the Father. Just as I'm in them and you're in me, may they also be made completely one. The closeness that Jesus has in mind as he's praying this prayer for us to be unified is the closeness that he has with the Father. I might have just made it awkward in the room because the people sitting next to you, like there's this, this is big, right? Significant. Somehow this is the key to the world knowing the good news about Jesus.
Now, I am, I don't like to say I'm not a hugger. I don't mind hugging. Phil's picture a few weeks ago of the group hug, the Trinity, I was like, nope. You can keep that, I'm out. Some people, I mean, Tim Callas describes the Trinity as a dance. I'm like, yeah, you have that too. So I'm a little intimidated by that stuff. It doesn't mean I don't ever hug. It's just I'm not looking for it as an introductory sort of measure. The other thing that I'll tell you before I share this story is I'm wearing glasses today. This is new. I didn't grow up with glasses. It's something that's happened recently for me as I get older. And so you can imagine what it's like if you've never had your eyes tested before that you turn up to the optometrist and then they do the eye test. Those of you with glasses, you've been through this and you know what I'm talking about. They say come back to the back room.
Very well lit, come and sit down, in this contraption that is designed for another human being to get as close as they can to your face and stare into your soul, right? That's what's happening. For someone like me, I don't love the real close thing, just a bit of personal space. I had this other grown man position himself on a chair facing the chair that I was sitting in and press himself up against me as close as he could. It was not normal for me, right? He could tell you things about my eyeballs that no one else would know, and I could tell you what he had for lunch that day. It was a very intimate moment, which afterwards I had to take a breath and move on with my day. That's a normal thing people do, until two weeks later when I go back to pick up my glasses And who should be in the service area to greet me but this optometrist? And he says something completely shocking, he says, hello sir, can I help you with anything today? And I'm like, you forgot who I am? We just went through something together, man. We touched noses for 15 minutes, that's a big thing. This is a big deal, right? How could you not remember? And maybe that's the hallmark of a good optometrist, but it can't be the hallmark of a church that Jesus prays will be one. That guy knew my details, he knew my medical record, he knew my Medicare number, he knew stuff about me that most people don't, but he didn't know me. I know him, and yet there's a closeness here, and I wonder what we would say about what it means to know one another as God's people.
C.S. Lewis said something that always sticks with me, he said, the weight of glory, there are no ordinary people. You've never talked to a mere mortal, nations, cultures, arts, civilisations, these are mortal and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat, but it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit, immortal horrors or everlasting splendours, this does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn, we must play, but our merriment must be of that kind, and it is in fact of the merriest kind, which exists between people who have from the outset taken each other seriously, no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption, the thought that there is no one mortal here, only heightened beings, like significant value people. What that means is, it has to change, I'm sorry to make this real, but it has to change the way that we walk past one another in the foyer. We cannot walk past as though we are walking past a few mortals, right?
And this isn't even talking about what it means to be a Christian, the scriptures tell us we've been through something together, we've died with Christ and been raised to new life, that's a life and death experience that we've all shared in, there is nothing that could bond us closer than that, so yeah, it has to change the interactions, and maybe it's not just the how you're doing it, but I think it has to push something to an invitation into one another's life, it goes both ways, about inviting but also accepting. Sorry if this is your first Sunday here, but hopefully this is actually a good thing. Before we get too far, let me just be a little sort of precautionary and tell you that it's actually impossible, I think, to create this sort of community. I know I'm saying we should do it, but it's actually impossible.
Now if I was to say, alright guys, let's do this, you know, Acts 2, how powerful is that, let's all commit to Acts 2, sharing life together, eating, reading the Bible, let's all do that, and John 17, remember how Jesus prayed, let's really be motivated by that, and how about on Thursday this week we start, create this beautiful thing, Megan's in for Thursday, okay, it's a little bit like saying, okay, guys, ready, we're all going to paint a masterpiece, go, it's going to blow the world away with its beauty, go do it, ready, go, you can't do that, it doesn't work like that. I remember sitting in front of a Jackson Pollock painting, you know, the guy that does the drips, and I was sitting, I think, I'm just, if you don't know, that's the guy, right? I was sitting, and I unexpectedly was overcome with emotion. There was something about it, I can't explain it, but I was overcome with emotion. And the interesting thing about it is Jackson Pollock was actually driven to his death by the pressure to recreate the genius of his work again and again and again and again, because you can't do it, you can't just say, let's orchestrate joy in all.
Jonathan Edwards said, sometimes only mentioning the name of Christ or an attribute of God will cause my heart to burn within me, suddenly God appears glorious to me. It's lovely, but it's also very hard to play in. You can't create a community of missionaries by imposing your ideals on it. I love what Bonhoeffer said in his book, Life Together, innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian set down for the first time in a Christian community is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and try to realize it. But God's grace speedily shatters such dreams, that's the truth, just as surely God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great general disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and if we are fortunate with ourself.
Christian brotherhood is not an ideal which we must realize, it is rather a reality created by God in Christ in which we may participate. The more clearly we learn to recognize that the ground and strength and promise of all our fellowship is in Jesus Christ alone, the more serenely shall we think of our fellowship and pray and hope for it. I hope you pick up what he's putting down, I hope you can get a sense of what he's saying. Let me abbreviate for you, he's saying this, people are going to sin against you and you are going to sin against people. Someone will annoy you, someone will let you down, someone will borrow something and not return it, someone will say something they didn't mean or they'll say something they did mean and it'll sting, someone's kids will frustrate you and you'll think lesser of their parenting and them because of it, someone will be less committed than you are and vice versa by the way, to all of those things.
At that point, if our idea of Christian community is greater than your love for others, you'll either impose your expectations and demands and say that everyone needs to reach a higher standard or you'll give up and say, well nobody cares as much as me, why bother, right? It's really the only two options and the solution in your mind will be either they need to be more devoted or I do, but somebody's got to work harder and at the opposite end, some people will be happy to say, well I don't want to change my life, I'm pretty content with how it is, I can turn up and go when I please and that's good, being part of a community on mission, sharing life together sounds like extra stuff I can live without. In both of these groups, for both those people, the answer is the same and the answer is Jesus.
Look at how Jesus begins the prayer. He says to the father, the hour has come, glorify your son so that the son may glorify you, so that he may give eternal life to everyone you have given him. In other words, father, I'm ready to go to the cross for your glory and for their gain, right? This is a big moment, this is like, it doesn't get much bigger than this. I'm ready to go for your glory, for their gain, whoa, and that's what happens. Jesus gives himself up completely into God's hands in order to cover the cost of our sin and then the father raises him to new life that we get to share in for eternity. And so all this outworking of the church, how we should live, what we should do, where we should go, what we should be, all of those things is just a response to that. Everything that comes from the church is directly tied to this moment and Jesus' devotion to you, right? It's beautiful, really, when you think about it.
So the person who says, other people need to work harder if we're going to make this thing work, well, we need to see that Jesus has already done the work for them. To the person who says, I can do without it, well, I want you to see, look how much it matters to Jesus. There might be another group of people, by the way, who say, I've got a loophole. I can be devoted to Jesus without being devoted to anything else, can't I? And the answer is, yes, yes, yes, yes, you can, but the one you are devoted to is in such great pursuit and in such great love for his church that the more you devote yourself to him, the more your heart will long for the things that his heart longs for. So do it. Be devoted to that. You will come around if you are pursuing Jesus above yourself. This is a beautiful life we get to share in together.
Union with Christ
The final point makes it more beautiful. The point is that God's heart isn't just for us to represent him to the world or to be unified together in doing so, but it's actually to be with him. That's his heart, to be with him. Did you hear that? Jesus said it over and over, may they be with us, right? I could say, here's the top three tips to live life on mission in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, and they'll be good. I'll give you a couple of quick ones. I'll just gloss over it really quick. Be devoted to reading God's word together. The time spent on Maundy Thursday this week is going to be amazing for that. Be devoted in prayer for one another and for those God has sent us to reach together. How about this one? Position yourselves together amongst people who don't know the good news about Jesus yet. What would that look like? And to do that consistently, just place yourself, a group of people, just say, we're going to just go where people are who don't know Jesus and who's going to consistently be there. That's a great starting point.
But there is something that will determine all of these things and how you do it and if you do it. And it's Jesus' prayer to repeatedly for our union, not just with one another, but with him. It's all through the prayer, reciprocity, that whatever Jesus has from the Father is like a forerunner for what we would have in him.
Mine is you father in me and I'm in you. May they also be in us, so that the world may believe you sent me. Don't just go and do, be. Be the people of God who commune with God, who know God, who are drawn nearer and nearer to him. That's the greater invitation and it will push everything else out as a result. Don't miss what you're being truly invited to, it's union with Christ. He's made it available, oneness with God. And through that, we'll have oneness with one another and share the good news of the gospel to the world around us. Let's pray.
Father, may this be us. It's faithful responders of your word. Not even that, just not even to respond, just to receive it. May we receive it, Lord. By your grace, draw us together for your glory. Thank you so much, what you have given us. May we enjoy it more and more, amen.
