Sermon Tone Analysis

*Jesus’ Prayer For Us* by Derek Melanson \\ \\ John 17:1-17:26 \\ \\ “Jesus’ Prayer for Us” \\ John 17 \\ \\ Introduction \\ \\ 1.

One of the most encouraging experiences as a Christian is to be prayed for by someone else – and not only prayed for but prayed with.

When someone prays for you in your presence, something special happens in your heart: you feel warmed and encouraged.

There’s a sense of intimacy, both between you and the other person and between you and God.

It’s like you’re knocking on heaven’s doors together.

It is one of the best ways to build relationships between Christians and one of the surest ways of ensuring unity in the church.

It’s pretty hard for division to exist and take hold when people are praying together.

Have you had that experience?

While we do have to pray for one another, I believe firmly that we ought to pray with one another more.

\\ \\ 2. It is one thing for us to pray for and with one another – to bring our brothers and sisters in Christ before the Lord in prayer – but it is quite another to realize that in Jesus we have someone interceding on our behalf.

Do you know that Jesus prays for you?

Do you know that he goes to the Father on your behalf and on our behalf?

Listen to these words from Hebrews 7: 25: “Consequently he is able for all time to save those who approach God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.”

Romans 8: 34 says something very similar: “It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.”

\\ \\ 3. Robert McCheyne once said this: “If I could hear Christ praying for me in the next room, I would not fear a million enemies.

Yet distance makes no difference.

He is praying for me.”

If you have had the experience of someone praying with you – of having someone right next to you, sitting beside you, bringing your concerns and needs before God, I invite you now to imagine Jesus doing exactly that.

I want you to close your eyes and to picture yourself sitting with Jesus.

I want to you picture him praying for you.

As you picture Jesus praying for you, eyes closed, I’m going to read our Scripture passage.

Listen to Jesus, as he prays these words.

Read John 17. \\ \\ 4. In this passage, which is Jesus’ final moments with his disciples before being arrested, Jesus prays for his disciples.

Knowing that he will be leaving them, praying for them is the best way to prepare them.

Jesus prays for three things on our behalf: protection, sanctification, and oneness.

\\ \\ Jesus’ Prayer for Protection \\ \\ 1.

The early Native Indians had a unique practice of training young men.

On the night of a boy’s thirteenth birthday, after learning hunting, scouting, and fishing skills, he was put to one final test.

He was placed in a dense forest to spend the entire night alone.

Until then, he had never been away from the security of the family and the tribe.

But on this night, he was blindfolded and taken several miles away.

When he took off the blindfold, he was in the middle of a thick woods and he was terrified!

Every time a twig snapped, he visualized a wild animal ready to pounce.

After what seemed like an eternity, dawn broke and the first rays of sunlight entered the interior of the forest.

Looking around, the boy saw flowers, trees, and the outline of the path.

Then, to his utter astonishment, he beheld the figure of a man standing just a few feet away, armed with a bow and arrow.

It was his father.

He had been there all night long.

\\ \\ 2. Jesus’ first prayer for us is a prayer for protection.

Of course, unlike that young boy, we have the benefit of knowing in advance that our Father is there to protect us; although just like the young boy, we don’t always see our Father guarding us.

Jesus asks the Father to “protect” us.

He prays, “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

A little later he prays, “I ask you to protect them from the evil one.”

Eugene Peterson translates the word “protect” as “guard,” and this is a helpful way of seeing it, especially when we think of that father watching over his son while the son was in the woods and thought he was alone.

\\ \\ 3. Against what are we being protected?

Jesus asks that we receive protection from the evil one, that we would be protected when faced with temptation, opposition, persecution, etc.

He takes as inevitable that we will face such things.

\\ \\ 4. But he doesn’t ask that we be removed from these things.

As Jesus says, “I do not ask you to take them out of the world.”

But while we are in the world, he wants us to be protected and guarded.

Now the word that we translate here as “protect” or “guard” is tereo, which can also mean “to preserve.”

Jesus wants us to be preserved while we are in the world.

Jesus’ prayer for protection is a prayer that the disciples would remain in – and be shaped by – the revelation of God that they have received through Jesus once Jesus is no longer physically present.

Jesus says, “Protect them in your name that you have given me.”

This is the same as saying “Father, help them to remain true to what they have received from me.

No matter what they face in this world, no matter how the evil one attacks them, help them to remain in me.

Preserve them, protect them, and guard them.”

\\ \\ 5.

The purpose of this request is also to ensure the unity of the faith community, which mirrors the unity of Father and Son.

As Jesus also prays, “Protect them in your name . . .

so that they may be one, as we are one.”

“It is for the preservation of this unity in the face of the cosmic power of evil that Jesus seeks God’s help.”

The church’s life is therefore entrusted to God. “What God is committed to do,” someone says, “is to preserve the oneness relationship that exists between the believer and Jesus.

Nothing on earth can tear us away from our Lord.”

\\ \\ Jesus’ Prayer for Sanctification \\ \\ 1. Jesus’ second prayer for us is a prayer for sanctification.

Sanctification here means “to be made holy,” and being made holy means being set apart.

Jesus wants us “to be consecrated” for service.

It has to do with being set apart for the purposes of God.

Jesus is praying that we would be set apart by the truth of who he is for the purpose of being sent into the world.

We are in the world, but we do not, as Jesus says, “belong to the world.”

Being holy, sanctified, and consecrated means that we belong to God and that He has set us apart for a purpose.

\\ \\ 2. Having been raised Roman Catholic I am familiar with the practices surrounding the Eucharist.

One aspect of the Eucharist is the consecrating of the dishes – the chalice that holds the wine, for example – that are used in Communion.

These items have been set apart for a specific purpose; they have been consecrated and sanctified.

Jesus is asking his Father to set us apart, to consecrate us for the purpose that He has for us.

\\ \\ 3.

This mirrors what Christ has done.

“Jesus is asking God to do for the disciples what he has already done for him: set them apart for God’s work in the world.”

Just as God set apart His Son for a mission in the world, so Jesus is asking that the Father would set apart his disciples for God’s work in the world.

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

\\ \\ 4. “Sanctification is not about living a clean or perfect life, but an obedient life.

The attraction of the world, the weakness of the flesh, and the onslaught of the devil are daily battles.

It involves a purifying of the whole life of that person or thing to the service of God.

In the Old Testament it usually conveyed the idea of making something sacred, usually by the burning of the sacrifice.

It does not mean to purify as to purify from sin.

Jesus purified Himself even though He had no sin by setting Himself apart as the sacrificial offering to God so that we His followers might also be pure and holy.

\\ Sanctification is not about avoiding or escaping the world but yielding and surrendering to God.

Being set apart does not mean we are stored away.”

\\ \\ Jesus’ Prayer for Unity \\ \\ 1. Jesus’ third prayer for us is a prayer for unity.

In a Peanuts cartoon Lucy demands that Linus change TV channels, threatening him with her fist if he didn’t.

“What makes you think you can walk right in here and take over?” asks Linus.

“These five fingers,” says Lucy, “Individually they’re nothing but when I curl them together like this into a single unit, they form a weapon that is terrible to behold.”

“Which channel do you want?” asks Linus.

Turning away, he looks at his fingers and says, “Why can’t you guys get organized like that?” \\ \\ 2. What does it mean to have unity here?

It doesn’t mean that we agree on every single point of doctrine.

It doesn’t mean that there is only one denomination.

But it does mean that we are united in confessing that Jesus is the Son of God.

It means that we confess in a united way that the Father and the Son are one and that the Father sent the Son into the world and reveals who the Father is.

\\ \\ 3. The importance of oneness and unity is emphasized over and over again in our passage: “Protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one (v.

11).”

“I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one (v.

20).” “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one (v.

22, 23).” \\ \\ 4.

This is not a unity we can achieve by our own efforts.