Sermon Tone Analysis

!!! *CHRIST PRAYS FOR YOU *

*by Ray C. Stedman*

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This is the great prayer Jesus prayed before he went to the Garden of Gethsemane.

Jesus is leaving these disciples by means of the garden, the betrayal, the judgment seat of Pilate, and the cross, and to them it appeared that he was abandoning them.

They felt frightened, helpless, alone, and unable to understand what was taking place.

They could not see that our Lord was merely introducing a higher and a better relationship to them.

Do we not feel this way?

God leads us to a place of change and we are frightened by it.

We wonder if we are not losing everything we held dear in the past.

We scarcely realize that God is but leading us to a higher, a newer, and greater relationship.

Like these disciples, we are frightened and fearful.

As we come to these words my concern is how to convey to your hearts something of the gripping reality of these requests of Jesus, something of the intense practicality of what he is saying.

I am so afraid that we will listen to these words, as to beautiful poetry or moving drama, and, entranced by their similarity and beauty, fail to realize that Jesus here is actually praying for us -- for what he prays for his disciples he prays for us.

I am afraid that we will fail to see behind the beauty of these words to the terrible and glorious realities.

This prayer ought to hit us like a punch in the jaw.

Or, perhaps, like a hand that grabs us as we are going down for the third time.

These words ought to both sober us and comfort us.

These are not soft, beautiful words, prayed in a great cathedral.

These are earthy, gutty words, uttered on a battlefield in which our Lord is coming to grips with life as it really is, and, as such, they ought to strike that note of reality with us.

The first thing that arrests us is the plea that Jesus utters for his disciples.

"Holy Father," he says, "Keep them," {John 17:11b RSV}.

Later he said, "I do not pray that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them," {John 17:15a RSV}.

This is the theme of his prayer: That they might be kept.

Why?

There are so many things that I would pray for if I were in his place (if any man could be in his place).

They are the usual things we pray for one another.

Why didn't Jesus pray, "Use them, or strengthen them, or teach them, or guide them?"

This is what we would pray for each other.

But when he comes to this place where he is leaving them and he wants to put into one brief phrase all that is his heart's urging and desire for them, he sums it up in those two little words: /keep them/.

As I thought this through, I found that this is what I pray when I am about to leave my family or am away from them.

When I am with my loved ones I can pray more specifically for them, but when I am away I find I am continually praying, "Lord, keep them, keep them."

All of this simply points up the fact, highlighted for us here in this prayer of Jesus, that relationship is the supreme thing.

Whom we are with is far more important than what we do.

And our Lord, aware of that, gathers all of these requests together in this one word, "Keep them, Father, keep them."

Whom you fellowship with determines what you are, so his prayer is that our relationship with the Father remain intact, for then all else he desires will come from that.

So he prays, "Keep them."

This is uttered in view of the peril which he sees, set forth for us briefly in Verses 14 and 15:

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*"I have given them thy word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

I do not pray that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil one."

{John 17:14-15 RSV}*

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Our Lord saw very clearly into the nature of life as it is, the nature of reality.

He realizes that Christians, believers, are facing a hostile world, behind which is a sinister being of incredible subtlety, whom we call the devil.

We do not see the devil, it would be helpful if we did.

He would be much more easily dealt with if he would become visible, but unfortunately he does not.

He keeps himself behind the scenes, and, as such, has created the myth that he does not even exist.

But in the eyes of Jesus who saw things as they really were, the devil was a very real being.

He realizes that, as human beings, we simply do not see the devil but what we see is the devil's front, which Jesus calls "the world."

Christians have struggled with this problem of "the world" all through the twenty centuries of this Christian age and wondered what this means.

* There are some who have made the mistake of thinking it is the world of nature and that Christians ought not to have anything to do with enjoyment of natural beauty, the glories of the mountains, and the sea, and the world of natural life.

This is certainly not true.

* Others have wondered if it means the world of natural relationships, our family life, the joys of family living, of friends, of home, of mothers and fathers and children and their relationship together.

No, this is not "the world" of which our Lord warns.

* The world, in the evil sense, in which this word is used here, is preeminently the basic assumptions that men and women make who live without God.

In other words, the underlying philosophy of life that men make as they face life, this is the world.

It is rather difficult to spell it out in specific terms.

Some time ago I received an invitation to subscribe to a new magazine that was, I felt, extremely worldly.

As I read the prospectus on it, it seemed to me that here would be a magazine that would speak forthrightly along the line of worldly philosophy.

I subscribed to it for that reason, and my anticipations were fulfilled completely.

(I am not going to give you the name of it as I do not want to increase its subscription list.)

As I read it I discovered that here was worldliness, blatantly, boldly set forth -- worldliness unmasked!

Actually the philosophies reflected in this publication are detectable in almost any popular magazine published today.

The same ideas underlie most television programs, radio broadcasts, and other media of communication, but they are seldom as boldly stated as they were in this particular sheet.

I read through two issues and jotted down a few statements to illustrate what I mean.

From one article these words were taken:

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It is the moralists who are responsible for our present level of sex crime and state of affairs revealed in the Kinsey Report.

The world is sick with morality.

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That is the problem: morality, moralists.

From another article, these words:

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The problems of poverty and racial injustice and political corruption and everything else are all branches of a single evil tree, and that tree is Authority.

Obedience to authority is the one single principle that explains every evil in human history.

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Here is another one:

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The Freudian concepts of sex-motivation can adequately explain all human phenomena.

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Organized religion is a tough old rooster which has traditionally been first in the American pecking-order.

The press can peck the government, the government can peck industry, industry can peck labor, and labor can peck all three of them back, but nobody can peck the rooster and the rooster can always peck anyone else at any time with impunity.

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The problem, they say, is the church.

I gathered these to document what Jesus says: that the world hates his disciples because they are not of the world.

The world in which we live is dominated by satanic philosophy, which is diametrically opposed to all that God stands for.

We make a very serious mistake when we forget that fact and try to settle down in this world and become comfortable in it, as though this were the proper place, the atmosphere, the climate in which we ought to feel at home.

Perhaps the most effective propaganda of the world is the satanic lie that we call /romanticism/.

There are millions fooled by it.

I am sure there are many among us today who are deeply affected by this, though it is nothing more than a lie.

Certainly many of our young people are profoundly influenced by this idea.

It is the illusion that life is intended to be all moonlight and roses, swashbuckling adventure or breathtaking journeys to faraway places.

Look over the nearest magazine stand and you will see what I mean.

Nearly all the magazines make their appeal along the lines of romance, of body building, adventure, and health, or of travel or excitement.

There is the world in all its silken delusion, luring, beckoning with soft music and dim lights and exotic names and places; that is the world.

It is rather easy to lose one's head and to sell out for "the good life," which unfortunately is never discovered.

It is a bitter irony of our day, perhaps more than in any other age, that by giving ourselves all that our dreams have envisaged, we find our lives are still empty and purposeless, without meaning.

It is because it is all a dream, a fantasy, a web of deceit, promising much but delivering nothing.

The Christian answer to romanticism is in Verse 13:

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*"I am coming to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves."

{John 17:13 RSV}*

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There is where joy lies, and fulfillment, and meaning, and purpose, and blessing; not in pursuing the will-o'-the-wisp of romantic adventure, or in seeking satisfaction in material things, but in a life and heart that is committed to Jesus Christ, which knows him and fellowships with him.

All who have tried have found it to be so and know there is an unexplainable joy that accompanies this that simply cannot be compared with anything else.

A man said recently, "I have had so much fun in my life I can hardly describe it.

Life to me has been a continually exciting thing."

Who was that?

Was it someone who has given himself to the search for adventure?

No.

That man was Dr. Frank Laubach who, as a Christian, has lost himself in the cause of trying to teach people all over the world how to read in order that they might be able to read the words of life and truth in the Scripture.