JESUS PRAYS FOR US

Introduction

-Many of us have had people in our lives who were our prayer warriors—they prayed for us, constantly interceding before the throne on our behalf, and God has probably answered their prayers more than we could ever know. What an encouragement to have such people in our lives, who take the time to wrestle in prayer on our behalf.

-But what if I told you that if you are believer in Jesus Christ, you have the greatest prayer warrior constantly praying and interceding for you.

~Jesus Christ ever lives to intercede for us. But before He was crucified and resurrected, Jesus gave one final prayer for us all so that we would be able to endure through all the hardships and tribulations and persecutions of the world in order to minister in His name and be used for His kingdom purposes.

-After the Last Supper and the washing of the disciples’ feet, Jesus gave a final discourse—some final instructions and teachings before He fulfilled His Father’s plans on the cross. He ends that time of discourse with a prayer.

~We normally refer to the prayer that begins OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN… as the Lord’s prayer, but it is really a model prayer for us disciples—so it’s really the disciple’s prayer

~This is the real Lord’s Prayer because it is the Lord actually praying to the Father for us and our ministry in His name,

-What this prayer demonstrates is that we can confidently minister in a hostile world because Jesus intercedes for us. So, may we leave here today having the courage to minister for Jesus while we are on this earth.

-Let’s look at 4 parts found in this prayer:

1) Jesus prays for His glory (vv. 1-8)

John 17:1–8 ESV

1 When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, 2 since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 4 I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. 6 “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. 7 Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. 8 For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.

-Jesus first prays that the Father is glorified through the work of Jesus on the cross. Jesus glorified the Father through His perfect life, and now Jesus is going to glorify the Father in His death. And in return for His obedience, the Father would glorify the Son with the glory that Jesus had before He was incarnated on the earth.

-Now, the word glory is used in several different ways that we might do well to pause and gain some understanding.

~First, there is the verb TO GLORIFY someone. Jesus says He glorified the Father by completing the work, and then the Father would glorify Him.

~To glorify or to give glory means to honor someone and acknowledge someone’s value through word and action because of who a person is and because of what that person accomplished. Because God the Father is of eternal value, He is glorified by the Son; and because the Son accomplished God’s redemptive purposes God glorifies the Son in the presence of creation.

-And now, we then glorify both Father and Son because they saved us, but also because they have glory within themselves.

-Now, when we talk about the glory of God (as a noun—an attribute of God), we are talking about the beauty and majesty of His being & character. When we refer to God’s glory, we reference the splendor of His very essence.

~This is the reality of God’s existence—within Himself God has majesty and power and splendor. God is glorious. And this was Jesus’ existence for all of eternity, and He veiled that glory within His humanity, but some of it displayed itself on the Mount of Transfiguration.

-So, we notice that it is something that is inherent within God Himself. It is just part of who He is. It’s unlike the glory we might give to humanity.

~Sometimes we might talk of the glory of a king, and it is a reference to his royal robes, and his royal scepter, and his royal throne, and his royal crown. But all of those are external to the man.

-God the Father and God the Son have this majesty that is just part of their being. It’s who they are. This makes them worthy to be glorified.

-And you notice that this is what Jesus begins with in His prayer because this is the most important part of everything. God’s glory is the central theme of everything that God has done, and it is the central theme of what we are to do.

-Jesus is praying for His disciples, but He begins with the Father being glorified and the Son being glorified because that is our reason for existence and that is the reason we are saved.

~And so, us disciples go out into the world and minister to the world as our means of glorifying Father and Son, and we share the gospel and lead others to eternal life so they can join in on this.

-We want the rest of the world joining us in glorifying God because He is filled with glory, and we exist to recognize this.

2) Jesus prays for our protection (vv. 9-15)

John 17:9–15 ESV

9 I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. 10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. 11 And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. 13 But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.

-Jesus asks that God keep/guard us while we are in this world because we are not part of this world. Earlier Jesus says the world hates us because it hates Him and will persecute us just as it persecuted Him. Jesus prays that after He ascends into heaven that the Father would keep and guard the believers left on the earth.

-This is not a prayer for protection against bad things happening to us in this world, be they physical or emotional. It’s not even a prayer to protect our physical life.

-Jesus prays for our spiritual protection, that God would guard us against anything that would do us spiritual harm.

~This includes a prayer that we would rest in the security that we have of our salvation. Jesus says that not one of His disciples will ever be lost. Judas was lost, but He was never a true disciple. He never truly believed that Jesus was the Messiah and Savior and Lord—instead, he was a son of destruction.

-But Jesus will never lose those who are His. And because we have that security, we are able to minister on his behalf without fear.

-Author and speaker Juan Ortiz spoke of a conversation he had with a circus trapeze artist. The performer admitted that the net underneath was there to keep them from breaking their necks, but he also added,

The net also keeps us from falling. Imagine there is no net. We would be so nervous that we would be more likely to miss and fall. If there wasn’t a net, we would not dare to do some of the things we do. But because there’s a net, we dare to make two turns, and once I made three turns thanks to the net.

Ortiz, then, makes this observation,

We have security in God. When we are sure in His arms, we dare to attempt big things for God. We dare to be holy. We dare to be obedient. We dare, because we know the eternal arms of God will hold us whenever we fall.

-Jesus prays that we realize this security we have. As another author put it, it’s not so much the perseverance of the saints as it is the perseverance of the Savior.

-But our protection is also that we would not allow Satan and the world to so beat us down that we lose heart and give up. Satan wants to neutralize our effectiveness for the Kingdom. He may distract us with the world. He may discourage us through the world. But, one way or another, he wants to make us ineffective in our ministry for Jesus.

-As one author explained:

The prayer of Jesus was not for God to send something like “rescue planes” to evacuate the disciples from their hostile setting in the world. Such a plan would destroy God’s mission through them. Nor was it to wrap them in some plastic, danger-free safety casing where they would never encounter evil. But the prayer of Jesus was to protect them from succumbing to the onslaught of evil or the evil one.

-While you may be going through a tough time in this world, just know that Jesus prayed for you 2000 years ago that you would not lose faith—He prayed that God would protect you through the onslaught. And you can confidently weather the storm.

3) Jesus prays for our holiness (vv. 16-19)

John 17:16–19 ESV

16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.

-Jesus prays that we would be sanctified, which means to be made holy—and holiness means separation. And we look at separation in two ways.

-First, it means to be separated from the world and its propensity to sin. Jesus has repeated throughout this gospel that we are not of the world. The world system is antithetical to God and His ways, and we are not to follow in its footsteps.

~This in no way means that we are sinless on this earth. But that doesn’t mean that we run headlong into sin, or that we tolerate the sin that we have in our lives or excuse our sin.

-And Jesus tells us how this holiness, this sanctification, takes place. Jesus prays that God would sanctify us by truth and proclaims that God’s Word is truth.

~When we saturate ourselves in the Word of God, the Holy Spirit will use that in our lives to form us more like Christ. Or, as Paul says it in Romans, the Holy Spirit will use the Word so that we do not conform into the mold that this world would have us become, but instead we would be transformed by the renewing of our minds by the Word of God.

-This is a much-needed prayer for today, because Christians aren’t looking much different than the rest of the world. Christians watch much of the same filth, use much of the same language, and cling to many of the same worldviews that unbelievers cling to. If we are not different from the world, how can we say we have been separated?

-And it’s not just the black and white issues of such blatant sins like murder or lying or gossip. It is also reflected in the choices that we make that may not be wrong in themselves but might take us away from our separated status with God and instead cleave us to the world.

~The Bible says we are to approve only that which is excellent, and we are not to be mastered by anything. The Bible says that even if something is lawful for us that doesn’t mean that it’s profitable or edifying. Even if it’s lawful, if it doesn’t glorify God or it entangles us in worldliness, it’s not something we ought to do.

-But sanctification is not only our separation from sin and the world, it also means that we are set apart for a purpose. We are set apart for ministry. All disciples are ministers, and Jesus says throughout this passage that just as He was sent by the Father to accomplish the Father’s work, now we are sent to declare that work so others may believe in Jesus and receive eternal life.

-We are not only separated from something, we are separated to something. But we will only be effective in the ministry that we are separated to when we are holy and separated from the world and its ways.

~And that is Jesus’ prayer—personal holiness for a purified ministry.

4) Jesus prays for our unity (vv. 20-26)

John 17:20–26 ESV

20 “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 21 that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, 23 I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. 24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. 25 O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. 26 I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

-Jesus prays that all believers would be one just as He and the Father are one, and He prays at the end that the love that the Father has for us through Christ would be the love that we have for one another.

-In no way does this mean that everyone agrees on every little detail about everything. That will never happen on this earth. But it does mean that our hearts and minds and lives are so conjoined together toward one purpose and one goal—being sent into the world to make Jesus known.

-The whole idea that the church exists for me and mine has to be set aside. That is where much disunity comes from. I want this and I want that and if the church doesn’t give me what I want or do what I want then I’m going to cause a ruckus.

-But Jesus prayed that we would be one—one in purpose, one in goal, one in spirit. And that the love of God would flow through us unto others.

-And that might be the important distinction, because our own love is too weak to love other people. Jesus says this love and unity is predicated on the fact that the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father and they are in us through the Holy Spirit as individuals, and the Holy Spirit is among us as a church body.

-This is so important because we now live in what is deemed a CANCEL CULTURE. That means if someone doesn’t agree with you about every little thing that you say or post or believe, then you just delete them (or cancel them) out of your life. You block their social media; you block their phone numbers. You just get rid of them.

~And, unfortunately, it is prevalent among Christians doing it to other Christians. The culture is that if you don’t agree with me 100% on everything, you’re out of my life.

-Imagine if you only went to a church that agreed with you 100% of the time on every single issue. You know how many people would be in that church? ONE!

-We are called to love one another in spite of our differences and disagreements and be united in purpose for the mission of telling others that the Father sent the Son to give them eternal life.

-When we are in tune with the God within us, we will be in tune with those around us. Herman Edwards, former coach of the Kansas City Chiefs said this about unity, “The players that play on this football team will play for the name on the side of the helmet and not the name on the back of the jersey.”

-The less concerned we are about ourselves and the more we are about our God and His mission the more unity there is going to be, and that would be an answer to prayer.

Conclusion

-Jesus prayed for us, but I wonder if we are in tune with that prayer. As much as it is up to God to answer prayers, we can also make ourselves an answer to Jesus’ prayer for us. Is the center of our life revolved around ourselves or the glory of God? Are we living in light of the eternal, spiritual protection we have in Christ? Are we pursuing holiness? Are we doing everything possible on our end to be united with others?

~Christian, consider this prayer and consider your life, and join Jesus in praying this that it may be true for you as well as for all of the church universal.

-But some of you cannot receive this prayer of Jesus because you have never received Him, for He alone is the giver of eternal life. To as many as do receive Jesus, who believe in His name, they are given the right to be called children of God…