Jesus is Praying for you

Introduction/Prayer

I will not waste too much time with introductions this morning because we have a lot in front of us today and some of you will get to spend the next few hours with me.

I want to focus on John 17 this morning in our time, let’s turn there and pray.

I have been on a journey over the last years wrestling with God’s love for me. Let me explain… I am the oldest of three kids. I grew up in an environment that was mostly loving and nurturing. Good parents. Something developed almost by chance within me though to measure my value on achievements. Explain.

So I have had to come to grips with this journey that God truly loves me. In spite of my shortcomings but more importantly before anything I do for him and it isnt really affected or increased by the more that I do for him. That is even unsettling for my heart to name before you. But it has caused a radical shift for me.

NT Wright has this great passage about John 17, paraphrasing, he says by now in the gospel we have gotten a great tour of the house of God following Jesus. By the time we get to chapter 13, upper room discourse, we are invited further into the home. But then when we get to this prayer, we are led into the secret door, passageway, and find ourselves in the room which says, this is where this man, this Jesus, is truly himself. Spend time in this room and you will be able to find out everything about Jesus that you need to know.

Exegesis:

7 Fathers (with one implied)… petitions.

Two breaks signaled by the greek word, I Pray, which I believes shows us three movements.

The first section is a prayer that is really between Jesus and the Father but in display for us so that we can understand a reality: Jesus is King.

John 17:1–8 NIV

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.

The hour is here now.

And what is the hour? The hour is the achievement of the mission of God. Glory is eternal life and salvation for the world.

Secondly, Jesus is praying to return to the right hand. He is praying for the ascension. One of the most potent theological understandings of our faith is found here in the ascension, present in this prayer, but the church has largely neglected the power of this perspective. Jesus is praying that the Father would make him King, would establish the reign, would seat him on the throne that has been promised in Isaiah, Ezekiel, and with other prophets…the mission that was always planned and patiently unfolded is now before them near completion and victory.

Jesus is King.

Next the king prays for the disciples….

Jesus, the King, prays for the disciples

John 17:9–19 NIV

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.

First the prayer is for their preparation. They (and us) will face difficulty. Some of it is hostility and evil and brokenness. Some of it is callous apathy.

Verse 11 is important here:

John 17:11 NIV

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.

I think this is the equivalent of Jesus command in Luke’s gospel to go and wait for the power to come. Holy Spirit would make them one.

Secondly, it is fascinating that the prayer for protection is about joy. It is internal, not something external here. Your protection in hardship is primarily a function of intimacy with God and the implication is internal joy.

He then prays for their sanctification, their holiness.

This is the challenge to continue the pursuit of intimacy, not to earn anything but to live in the petition of Jesus. This means to take hold of what is already guaranteed because it exists in the desire of the second person of the trinity.

Jesus, the King, outlines the mission

John 17:10–25 NIV

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 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.

Our relationship is based in the power and intimacy of the trinitarian God AND it is with the trinitarian God as he prays that we would be one. Why is this distinction important? It is as if he says, “When the world sees the church in harmony with God and with each other, the point of Jesus petition may be realized, namely, that the world may believe you sent me.”

When we are one....then they believe in the sent one.

The church will be a witness in the world when the church is full of awakened disciples…thus this weekend. The church has not lived into this for a long time, thus the importance of this weekend.

Jesus is the King. Jesus is praying for you, Jesus is in charge of the mission he has invited you to.

Now there is much to take away from in this prayer. And these few minutes only scratch the surface. Allow me a brief story to frame what I believe the bottom line is.

Abby Thomas….

No, we cannot base our life on faith. Even the disciples do not live from their faith in that moment when they are battling anxiety and seasickness. They hardly remember that they are believers. There’s simply no time to think about it. That may be put very crudely, but that’s how it is nevertheless! At that moment the disciples do not live from the fact that God is in their thoughts (because he is not!), but they live because Jesus Christ is thinking of them, and the stillness that surrounds his conversation with the Father is filled with these thoughts about his own. Our faith’s grip on the Father may loosen. But he in whom we believe holds us fast in his grasp. Jesus’ high-priestly prayer does not stop even when we quit praying. Thus, there is really no such thing as “Psychology of Religion” because the decisive events between God and me do not happen in my psyche, my consciousness, at all; they occur in the heart of my Lord. Here (and only here) there is constancy and faithfulness; here there is a love that will not let me go, even though my fever chart fluctuates between faith and little faith, between trust and doubt, and no reliance can be placed on my defiant and despondent heart. I don’t need to tell you what a comfort it can be to know that, and how that knowledge can help me survive those times when my own faith is cold and empty and dead and a sealed heaven arches above me.”

Helmut Thielicke / Writings on John 17

Jesus is praying for you.