“Out of This World” Gospel passage: John 17:6-19
Jesus came to the world from out of this world to teach people not of this world to go into all the world to preach the truth that he gave his life to save us out of this world.
The passage of scripture from John 17 today takes place in the final moments before Jesus is going to be arrested. He has tried to prepare his disciples for this event by telling them it will happen. But he knows the best way to prepare them for his abrupt and seemingly defeated departure is to pray for them.
Jesus prayed this prayer to the father out loud for them (and also for us).
The first thing he said was that he had revealed God.
We think of the revelation of Jesus Christ and Christ says he was revealing God.
I like the way The Message version of this passage says,
“I spelled out your character in detail…”
Jesus revealed God as FATHER.
The Hebrews had been afraid to speak or write the name of God, but Jesus had said, “He is your Father and my Father.” Call him “Abba”, “Daddy God.”
The title “god” is respected and perhaps feared in any culture or religion, but Jesus revealed the nature of God as love, and your relationship to him as his beloved child.
The people, who lived before Jesus came, knew only what the prophets had said about God and the stories of how God had acted in past events.
Now the voice of God became a visual of God.
Jesus says, “they’ve understood that everything I said came from you, and they believe you sent me.”
The disciples have accepted and believed the word of Christ as God’s word and have believed Jesus came from God and God sent him.
So far, so good…
V9-10> “I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. All I have is yours and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them.”
Jesus often spoke to multitudes and prayed for them too, but his main ministry and assignment was to spend three years in intensive teaching to just twelve.
This is clearly not a “general prayer” He is asking a special blessing just for his disciples.
It specifically commends these students of Jesus’ teaching as having “got it” and being a credit to him.
He is saying, “Look, Daddy, aren’t you proud of them?”
Jesus has successfully passed-on his message and ministry.
They attended to the words of Christ, apprehended the meaning of them and were affected by them.
They heard Christ’s commands, continued in them and were conformed by them.
They had been witnesses to his life and miracles.
They would later become publishers of the gospel and planters of the church.
They were the first monuments to his mercy.
Then Jesus says, “I pray for them…when I go away, out of this world, back to you…. protect them by the power of your name.”
Jesus knew that it would be a space of time now when the disciples would feel abandoned and afraid.
They had been used to the physical presence of Jesus with them. Now he was leaving them behind, returning to the safety of heaven.
He wanted God to protect them from falling away and being discouraged.
He wanted them to know they could call upon God as their heavenly Father in prayer this very same way he was praying now, and know that God heard them and would answer.
They would feel always connected to the heavenly father as Jesus did, with 24 hr access to the support line.
Thinking of God’s protection of his children brought this story to mind:
The early Native Indians had a unique practice of training young men.
On the night of a boy’s 13th 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 his family and 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 and trees and the outline of the path.
Then to his 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!
Your heavenly father is like that, he will never leave you!
Jesus wants the disciples to overhear this prayer and to pray like this for whatever they need and about whatever is on their heart.
He wants them to know he cares about them after he has left and that the heavenly father will be watching over them.
Why do they need protection?
Because the world hated and rejected Christ.
Jesus is saying. “They are no more popular here than I am because they go around saying and doing the same things I do.”
Now that they have the name and character and message of Christ, they will meet with rejection, hatred and “the evil one.”
Satan himself remains in the world in the hearts of evil men in opposition to the Spirit of Christ
But greater is he that is in me than he who is in the world.
God is glorified through victories won over opposition rather than through us standing on the promises while just sitting on the premises!
Knowing Jesus had prayed for their protection gave them the courage to proclaim the gospel in spite of a whole lot of political and religious pressure to stop them.
It is a sad fact that we are predisposed to reject people different from ourselves.
People with different skin color, different languages, or different political and religious views are hated for no other reason.
They may as well be an alien…you know….someone from out of this world.
Jesus continues praying….
V17> “Sanctify them by the truth, your word is truth.”
To sanctify means to set apart for a holy purpose or consecrated service.
Sanctified people are really different from the world.
Jesus is praying let what sets them apart be the fact that they know the truth of God.
God’s words are truly spirit and they are life.
God attends his word and it doesn’t return unto him void, but accomplishes the purpose for which it was sent: to convert the souls of men.
V18>”As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.”
He was sent as “the living word” from God and now they would be living to spread the word of God, too.
In the first reading this morning (Acts 1:15-26) the disciples needed to appoint someone to take Judas’s place in their group. They were careful to choose someone who knew the person of Jesus and had been an eyewitness along with them to everything he had taught.
They were literally writing the gospels as they went about repeating what they had seen and heard concerning Jesus.
In the second reading (I John 5:9-13) it says we know we have eternal life if we have the Son in us.
He is the way, the truth and the life.
You must know the truth to be able to impart the truth.
I love the way Jesus continued praying for those who would believe the message told through these first messengers.
He is praying that they will know the joy of a successful convert!
He wants them to expand the message all over the world that we get out of this world to live forever by believing in the one who came to this world from out of this world.
In John 17:21 Jesus prays, “…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.”
So God protects, Jesus prays, and we present the truth of the gospel.
We are people on a mission with a message.
We are sanctified and sent to do what?
To spell out God’s character in detail…..
So what is God’s character like?
God is truth, God is love, God is forgiveness, God is merciful and compassionate….are we?
If you are sent by the Savior there is to be a strong family resemblance.
The story is told of a young lad brought before Alexander the Great because he was caught stealing something. Alexander asked what his name was and the boy said his name was Alexander, too. In reply, Alexander the Great said, “Son you must either change your ways or change your name.”
You must not carry the name of Christ without the character of Christ.
Now, fast forward to after the resurrection and this week in the life of the disciples was a time when they had just witnessed the ascension of the Lord and were waiting for the promise of the Holy Spirit to come to them.
They had been in intensive personal training by Jesus for the past three years and now He was gone from them and they had nothing to lean on but a prayer and a promise.
But that was enough.
That is the same thing we are left with today.
We have the written word of God that tells us that Jesus prays for us and the promise that Jesus will return for us.
I don’t know about you, but I like living on a prayer and a promise from God.
It makes me feel out of this world!
Amen
