THE CHURCH’S ONE FOUNDATION (JOHN 17:1-26)
Several years ago Newsweek commissioned a survey of adults nationwide to examine people’s prayer beliefs and habits. 751 adults responded. Surprisingly, a high 87% of those surveyed believe that God answers prayers. 54% say they pray on a daily basis - 25% pray once a day and 29% more than once a day. Then it gets revealing when Newsweek asked them what they believe about prayer:
82% ask for health or success for child or a family member.
82% believe that God does not play favorites in answering prayers.
79% believe that God answers prayers for healing someone with an incurable disease.
75% ask for strength to overcome personal weaknesses.
72% think prayers for help in finding a job are answered.
54% say that when God doesn’t answer their prayers, it means it wasn’t God’s will to answer.
51% think that God doesn’t answer prayers to win sporting events.
36% never pray for financial or career success.
82% don’t turn away from God when prayers are not answered. (“Is God Listening?” 3/31/97)
Christianity is a praying faith because our Lord is a praying Lord. John 17 is the occasion of Jesus’ longest recorded prayer in the Bible. The prayer was recorded just before Judas betrayed him and he was arrested in John 18. The hour had come for Jesus’ glorification or his death (John 12:23-24).
What did Jesus pray for in his hour of crisis, at his last uninterrupted moment in prayer? Did he pray for his destiny, his deliverance and his dignity? Did he ask for relief and release from suffering, shame and scorn?
Pray for the Salvation of the Lost
17:1 After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed: “Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. 2 For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. 3 Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
An elderly man was crossing a road one day when a frog called out to him and said, “Old man, if you kiss me, I’ll turn into a beautiful princess.” He bent over, picked up the frog, put it in his pocket and continued walking.
The frog spoke up again and said, “If you kiss me and turn me back into a beautiful princess, I will stay with you for ONE WEEK.”
The old man took the frog out of his pocket, smiled at it and returned it to the pocket. The frog then cried out, “If you kiss me and turn me back into a princess, I’ll stay with you and do ANYTHING you want.”
Again the old man took the frog out, smiled at it and put it back into his pocket. Finally, the frog asked, “What’s the matter? I’ve told you I’m a beautiful princess, and that I’ll stay with you for a week and do anything you want. Why won’t you kiss me?” The old man said, “Look. I’m an old man and, at my age, I’d rather have a talking frog.”
Long life, personal safety and divine intervention were not high on Jesus’ prayer list when he knew he was about to leave the world and the disciples. Instead, he offered eternal life to sinners. Eternity is God’s most precious gift to man. The word “give” occurs seventeen times in this chapter, more than any one chapter in the Bible. Other words related to the word “eternal” give us a better picture of eternal life. These words include eternal glory (2 Tim 2:10, 1 Pet 5:10), eternal salvation (Heb 5:9), eternal redemption (Heb 9:12) and eternal inheritance (Heb 9:15). Opposite the words “eternal life” in the Bible are “eternal fire” (Mt 18:8, 19:16, 25:41), “eternal damnation” (Mark 3:29) and “eternal judgment” (Heb 6:2) – the lot of those who rejects Him.
We like the use the word “terror” today but the biggest terror and dread and pain in life is life without God. Life without God is a waste and a crisis. It is hollow, flat and bleak. Seven times in the Book of Ecclesiastes, the wise king Solomon said that life is “meaningless, a chasing after the wind” (Eccl 1:14, 2:11, 2:17, 2:26, 4:4, 4:6, 6:9).
Life on earth without God is unsatisfying, unbearable and unproductive. Shakespeare writes in Macbeth, “Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Life is an audition, a screening and a draft for the big stage in heaven. John Keats says, “Life is but a day; a fragile dew-drop on its perilous way from a tree’s summit.”
Hell is hard to imagine and hard to accept but it is harder to stomach and swallow. The Chinese believe hell is 18 levels of underground torture and the Westerners say it is six feel below.
Life without God is a colossal rollercoaster, a downward spiral and a futile exercise. Jesus has the authority (v 2). He says that all authority in heaven and on earth (Matt 28:18) and over all people or flesh (Jn 17;2), and the authority most recorded Jesus in the gospels is His power to forgive sins (Matt 9:6, Mk 2:10, Lk 5:24).
Pray for the Sanctification of the Saints
14 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. 15 My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. 17 Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. (John 17:14-17)
An old deacon used to pray every Wednesday night at prayer meeting for his wrongdoing and concluded his prayer the same way: “And, Lord, clean all the cobwebs out of my life – the things that are gathered there that ought not to have been there. O Lord, clean all the cobwebs out of my life.”
It got too much for one fellow in the prayer meeting after hearing the deacon one too often; so when the old deacon said the same prayer the next time, the fellow jumped to his feet and shouted: “Lord, Lord, don’t clan the cobwebs. Kill the spider, kill the spider.” (7,700 Illustrations # 5435)
While conversion is a one-time act and decision, sanctification (v 17) is a lifetime process and determination. E. Stanley Jones, the renowned Methodist missionary to India, said, “Conversion is the act of a moment and the work of a lifetime.”
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 Christians face.
Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) said, “Sin seems so shallow that I may wade through it dry – shod (free) from any guiltiness; but when I have committed it, it often seems so deep that I cannot escape without drowning.”
A friend quipped, “Casualty happens because people take sin too casually.”
Sanctification is not about avoiding or escaping the world but yielding and surrendering to God. The word “world” is very prominent in Jesus’ prayer. It occurs an astonishing 20 times in John 17. Our weapons against the world’s beliefs, values or attitudes are prayer for God’s intercession (v 9), obedience to God’s word (vv 6, 8, 14) and reliance on God’s name (v 11).
Being set apart does not mean we are stored away. God will allow you to be scraped and to be sore but not to be stabbed; to be hated and hurt but not harmed. The key word is the word “overcome,” which is a word from the last verse of the previous chapter – John 16:33. Jesus said, “I have overcome the world.” The word overcome in John 16:33 comes from the root word nike. Nike is Greek for the noun victory (1 Jn 5:4), nika is the verb he has overcome (1 Jn 5:4), and hupernikomen (Rom 8:37) is more than conquerors.
In Christ we are overcomers, conquerors and victorious.
Pray for the Solidarity of the Church.
20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 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. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: 23 I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. (John 17:20-23)
There was a story of some rescuers who found a man alone on a deserted island. But his rescuers were confused by something they saw. They saw three huts. So they asked the man about the three huts. He explained, “One was for me to live in. And I’m a religious man, so I built a church.”
The rescuers, who were still confused why there should be a third hut, then asked, “Well, what about the third hut?” The man replied, “Oh, there was a church spilt.”
Thomas Jefferson said, “An association of men who will not quarrel with one another is a thing which has never existed.”
William Wallace, the leading character in the Academy-award winning move “Braveheart,” chastised his fellow Scots for allowing minor issues, internal strife, and power struggles to stand in the way of their fight for independence from the English: “We have beaten the English but they’re back because you won’t stand together.”
The word “one” is another key word in John 17. It appears in verses 11, twice in verses 21 and 22, and 23. The unity of God’s church should reflect the unity of the Father and the Son. Verse 23 reveals to us the nature of this unity. The Son is obedient to the Father and the Father loves the Son (v 23). The Bible says believers are many members, but one body (Rom 12:4-5, Col 3:15).
Again, to be one is not the absence of opinions, but the absence of divisions; it is unity, not uniformity. The church’s greatest damage is the open sore that festers and swells and spreads after a disagreement or a misunderstanding. Disunity weakens, scatters and muffles the church.
The hymn “The Church’s One Foundation” aptly records the church’s struggles:
“Though with a scornful wonder
Men see her sore oppressed,
By schisms rent asunder,
By heresies distressed:
Yet saints their watch are keeping,
Their cry goes up, “How long?”
And soon the night of weeping
Shall be the morn of song!”
No bandage or tape or glue can piece together a divided church. Some churches are split into two, some members form little cliques and many members withdraw into their shell. People from both sides of an argument or an issue claim that they are in the right, that God is on their side and that the other group started it first. It’s been said that the many churches were planted not by design but by default through church divisions, church splits and church fights.
Conclusion: Do you know what today, tomorrow and eternity holds for you? Don’t put off or put down God’s offer of salvation on Jesus Christ. For believers. do your heart, mind and body belong to the Lord or to the world? Do you bring unity, harmony and reconciliation or disunity, disharmony and discord to church and fellowship?
Victor Yap
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