The Prayers of Christ

Where do you turn when life becomes most stressful?

What do your prayers look like when you are most stressed?

We are taking sometime away from our journey through the Book of Acts as we

We are looking at the Gospel of John, the whole of chapter 17.

We get to see the prayers of Christ when he is most stressed, and what a glorious prayer it is. We see the heart of Christ and his desires for those that he loved and indeed what he desired for them.

Tonight we will see and hopefully make a movement to understand the relationship of God the Father to God the Son, and how we relate to them.

This Chapter is deep in theology as given and taught by the greatest teacher: Jesus. We learn about the relation of God the Father and the Son to each other. We should not shrink away from theology, because we all develop a theology even if we deny it so. I will not quote any theology books or theologians, but only that which will help us understand the Bible which is God’s perfect word for us, which we will see tonight

As I was studying this chapter I was reminded of a quote by C.S. Lewis about Jesus as a good teacher.

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

This passage Jesus is cleary he is indeed divine, so if he were just a good teacher he indeed cannot be quoted as a morally good teacher.

Let open our Bibles to John, Chapter 17 and read for ourselves.

Jesus Prays for Himself

1. The hour (of the crucifixion) had arrived. (John 12:23, 13:1)

Not yet (John 2:4 , John 7:6)

2. Jesus asks for the Father to Glorify the Son, as this will glorify the Father. The glory is mutual, we see the close relation of the God the Father and God the Son. The glorification occurs through the crucifixion, through this event is when God will reveal Jesus’

(Why is the Father’s glory so important?) After all it is mentioned not less that 7 times.

The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. For this we were created, but Jeremy I am a free agent and to do that I have to deny who I am (In other words, I have to abandon who I think am and what I personally desire). I will state very emphatically, there will be changes that need to be made, but if you truly submit to His call on your life you will find a freedom and peace that surpass anything that you can imagine.

3. The Son’s authority comes from the God the Father

The Son now has the authority to give eternal life.

(What is eternal life?)

1. Know the only one true God. Deut 6:4

2. Know Jesus whom God has sent.

(What is it to know someone?)

That is to be in relationship with them, to know them personally and intimately.

4. Jesus glorified God on earth by completing the work he was sent to do and Jesus had glory with God before the world existed

Jesus Prays for His disciples

1. Jesus reveals the name of God. I don’t want us to miss this. In Jewish custom the name of someone was an essence of who they were. (John 14:8-11)

Think of children on a play ground from an early age as they taunt one another by changing the names of other children.

Biblical names have meaning, either as a something to achieve or as a reminder. (Jacob, “deceiver”, Benjamin “Son of my right hand”, Daniel “The Lord is my judge”) Even more so to know the name of God was to know Him on a personal level, that is why as you read through the OT you see so many different names for God. To call upon the name of God (YHWH) was to show an over familiarity with him. El shaddai “The Lord almighty”, “Jehovah-Jireh” “The Lord will provide”.

Yet here we see that the intention is that we are to call reverently upon his name, not merely as a cold and distant god that we merely attempt to placate with holy actions and holy living. Rather we can call upon him because he sent his son Jesus to enter into a relationship with us so that we are transformed and as a result our actions and our living are a holy reflection of the relationship that we have with him. We can this day with confidence call upon the name of Jesus Christ and approach the throne of God because he sent his son has revealed himself in Jesus.

Now when it was time for supper, the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas, Simon Iscariot’s son, to betray him.

Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Jn 13:2.

2. Jesus prays for his disciples not for the world. (Here we see an exclusivity and not a universality) This has ruffled feathers for over 2000 years and today it.

John 14:6 CSB

Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Jesus is praying for his disciples because they belong to God and were given to Christ. Jesus is leaving and they are to stay and are being sent into the world.

Jesus prays for two things specifically: Protection John 17:11 and Sanctification John 17:17

1. Protection (To guard, watch, and protect) _ Jesus is praying for their protection because he will be leaving them and cannot protect them with his presence.

A. That Jesus protected for the purpose of unity - (Why does protection help with unity?)

i. The world hates them because they are not part of the world - (We look different to the world around us, our marriages look different with respectfully submitted wives (not submissive doormats, but rather women who are biblically living the gifts given by God) and husbands that are tenderly loving and sacrificial to their wives and children, children submitted to their parents, and parents who don’t hold back discipline, but discipline with grace, we are good workers to those appointed over us, and living in community.)

John 13:35 CSB

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

“not as a conditional but as a conjunction, “because” you love one another”

The world knows us by the way that we love one another. We have not done this well in our American church, we are so divisive in the form and function of our faith that we are not unified on the foundation of Christ.

ii. Protection from the evil one - We have an enemy, we met him back in Genesis 3, he is a deceiver

2. Sanctification (To make holy)

A. We are sanctified by the the truth, which is the word. The very word of God makes us holy. This does not mean the mere possession of the word, but rather the intaking of the word. I have a buddy who I enjoy listening to his sermons, in one of his sermons he stated that we don’t need to tattoo Jesus on our bodies to let the world know who we are, but rather we need to put his word on our hearts, and the world will know that who we are and of whom we testify to.

Gods word when not only studied but lived out will have a profound effect.

We see this very thing that we are to do in our marriages and that Christ does with the Church, husbands Ephesians 5 states:

Ephesians 5:25–26 CSB

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her to make her holy, cleansing her with the washing of water by the word.

Ezekiel 11:19 CSB

I will give them integrity of heart and put a new spirit within them; I will remove their heart of stone from their bodies and give them a heart of flesh,

Ezekiel 36:26 CSB

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will remove your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

Jeremiah 31:33 CSB

“Instead, this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days”—the Lord’s declaration. “I will put my teaching within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

Paul quotes Jeremiah 31 in Hebrews 8:10

2. We are given God’s word to help us be holy, to be set apart by God for his purpose for which we are sent into the world. I want us to be cautious how we view the world and try to live in it and avoid withdrawing. We are each sent to testify to the truth, but that will look differently for each of us, but keep in mind that there will be an accountability in the end of days how faithful we were in this.

Jesus Prays for all believers

Jesus the prays for the future church, all of those that believe, as a result of the disciples that are being sent. Jesus’ desire is that all who believe are to be united, so that the world may believe in Jesus. Our unity should look like that of God the father and the son. As we are united in Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ is united in us. As we are sanctifies we do become completely one.

“To remain divided is sinful! Did not our Lord pray, that they may be one, even as we are one”? (John 17:22). A chorus of ecumenical voices keep harping the unity tune. What they are saying is, “Christians of all doctrinal shades and beliefs must come together in one visible organization, regardless… Unite, unite!”  Such teaching is false, reckless and dangerous. Truth alone must determine our alignments. Truth comes before unity.  Unity without truth is hazardous. Our Lord’s prayer in John 17 must be read in its full context. Look at verse 17: “Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth.” Only those sanctified through the Word can be one in Christ. To teach otherwise is to betray the Gospel. - C.H. Spurgeon (From The Essence of Separation)

We can indeed make unity an idol as uniformity and conformity. I appreciate that Spurgeon makes a huge distinction that only those only those sanctified through the Word can be one in Christ. We only unify to God through Christ, not man attempting to conform to God and not man or man’s ideas of how that should look. We all have different gift and backgrounds, though we are all different we are unified in the same purpose, though the mechanics of such may be a bit different.

The final part of this prayer is that, Jesus desires us to be with him, he desires us to be in a relationship with him and see him in his glory. This is the glory that Jesus had before very creation, it existed before Genesis.

I look forward to the day that I can see Jesus in his full glory with a unified church worshipping Him and glorifying him.

Our take away

We are to glorify God by knowing him, to have a relationship with Him, and believe in Jesus whom he sent and have a relationship with Jesus which will unify all who believe in him sending them into the world to share the good news in word and in life making God known through Jesus Christ.

We are indeed sent into the world to believe in Jesus and keep God’s word. As we are made holy do our unification will be evident as we live out our lives not just in the form and functioning of our worship, but the true adoration of the foundation of our worship, that is the person of Jesus Christ who is both our Lord and our Savior