This remarkable model prayer contains none of the things that take up so much room in our prayers.
Boston newspaper reported on a prayer given by a noted clergyman:
“one of the most eloquent prayers ever delivered to a Boston audience.”
Lyndon Johnson’s press secretary, Bill Moyers, was saying grace at a staff lunch, and the President shouted, “Speak up, Bill. I can’t hear a thing!”
Moyers quietly replied, “I wasn’t addressing you, Mr. President.”
Remind ourselves when we pray, we talk to God.
I have always been irritated by such forms of prayer for it appears they were not intended for God at all. Having said this, I must recognize that some of the prayers of our Lord were addressed to the Father, but were intended to be overheard. Among other examples I would include the prayer of Jesus for the raising of Lazarus (John 11:41-42) and this prayer in John chapter 17.
The high priestly prayer of Jesus serves as a fitting conclusion to the upper room discourse of chapters 14-16. In verse one of chapter 17 John informs us that this prayer is to be understood as a kind of conclusion to the Lord’s teaching in chapters 14-16. “These things Jesus spoke; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, he said …” (John 17:1a). It is my personal opinion that this prayer, the longest of Jesus’ recorded prayers, was intended to be overheard by His disciples. One purpose of this prayer was to bring comfort and hope to the troubled hearts of the disciples. It may have been more effective at the moment than all the teaching of chapters 14-16. . . . This prayer must have done much to calm the troubled hearts of the eleven. —Robert Deffinbaugh
“We have before us one of the most intimate glimpses anywhere in Scripture of the mind and heart of the Lord as He led in prayer.” —J. Dwight Pentecost
I. Jesus Prayer for Himself, 1-5
Christ prayed to be glorified.
1 ¶ These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee:
conversational
“Father,” the address
there is a clear link between the Upper Room Discourse and this prayer.
2 As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.
By His upcoming resurrection He would prove that He could give eternal life to those who believed on Him.
Romans 1:4, “ 4 And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead:”
Curtis Hutson illustration:
3 And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
This is not so much a definition of eternal life as a statement of the reason why Christ impart that life—so that we may know His Father, the only true God, as Christ knows him.
Christ was praying here concerning His resurrection. The Resurrection was to be God’s final and complete vindication of the person of Jesus Christ (Rom 1:4).When the Father thus vindicated, or glorified, His Son, the Son would glorify the Father. All that the Son had revealed of the Father would be proven true.
The second thing Christ asked for Himself was regarding His glorification, 4&5.
4 I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.
5 And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.
“So far this world has seen me only as the incarnate Son; now let the world see me as the infinite one.”
II. His Prayer for His Disciples, 6-19.
6 ¶ I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.
7 Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee.
8 For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.
Christ prayed for two things,
1. He prayed for their preservation (9-15)
A. because they belonged to the Father, (9)
B. because He was soon to depart, (11)
9 I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.
Universalism: Universalism may be described in simple terms as the idea that everyone will at last be saved. restoring all to a level of love and light.
The late Nels Ferré was warmly welcomed in American Baptist circles, teaching in one of their most liberal schools and, through his numerous books, exercising a wide influence. His liberalism, too, was accompanied by pronounced statements of universalism. He said, “There are no incorrigible sinners: God has no permanent problem children. Heaven, to those who truly love all, can be heaven only when it has emptied hell.... Without the salvation ‘unto this last’, God cannot be sovereign love.” Again, “Without the ultimate salvation of all creatures...it is easy to see that there can be no full solution of the problem of evil.... If hell were eternal, heaven would be an eternal place of mourning.... Heaven can be heaven only when it has emptied hell.”
The cozy conviction that all faiths lead to the same happy end is not what it appears to be. Seeming to be a positive appraisal of all religions, it is actually a denial of all religions.
If you claim that hypocrites, unbelievers, and insincere believers can attain the rewards of a particular religion, then there is really no need at all for the convoluted doctrines, mysterious rituals, and stringent practices of any religion. If all religions are ultimately unnecessary to securing anything for their followers—if salvation is automatic—then the original proposition is not an affirmation of that religion but is instead its denial.
If non-Christians arrive someday, their beliefs are as good as ours.
10 And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.
11 ¶ And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.
They would not be able to withstand the persecution alone, and so Christ committed them to the Father’s protective care.
12 While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.
Christ had protected them and kept them safe while He was with them.
Now He asked the Father to exercise the same care over them that He had exercised while He was with them.
∙ The proof of the sufficiency of His care was that He had not lost any of those who had believed on Him.
13 And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.
14 I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
∙ 15-17, Purity
15 I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.
Christ did not pray that these would be removed from the world but that they be protected from the evil one. Let’s not give Satan to much power. Yes, he is a “lion going about seeking whom he may devour”, but nothing compared with the “Lion of the Tribe of Judah”, and certainly, “a lion on a leash”, and God holds the leash!
Before Satan could do anything to Job or Peter he had to go through God. In Job’s case God set the limits and in Peter’s case Christ prayed for him and later confronted him.
Although Peter denied Christ and gave Satan a temporary victory, let me remind you that following a confrontation with Jesus on the sea shore Peter preached at Pentecost. Who in your mind won the war?
After praying for their preservation, Christ made a request for their sanctification (John 14:16-19).
The word “sanctify” means to set apart or to consecrate.
16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
Our Alien Status
17 ¶ Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.
18 As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.
Verse 18 could be paraphrased, “For the same purpose that you sent Me into the world, I now have sent them into the world.”
Christ had been sent into the world to reveal the Father, and He had completed that revelation (17:4; 1:18).
Christ had set Himself apart for the ministry of revealing the Father, and consequently He had come into the world. Now Christ prayed that the Father would set them apart so that they might make Him known (v. 19).
19 And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth. {sanctified...: or, truly sanctified}
III. His Prayer for the Family of Believers (20-26).
20 ¶ Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;
The prayer is expanded to believers who will believe through their message.
He prays for their unification.
21 That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
Christian unity is what causes the world to know we are connected to Christ and He to God.
“Like a mighty army moves the church of God” may be on blueprint in a song, but it has not progressed beyond that stage. In fact, someone has written a parody of “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” and it runs like this:
Like a halting caravan
Moves the church of Christ;
We are feebly faltering
Toward our timid tryst.
We are all divided,
Many bodies we,
Kept apart by doctrine
And lack of charity.
Careful, Christian pilgrims!
Walk in doubt and fear,
With the cross of Jesus
Bringing up the rear.
— J. Vernon McGee
I’ve never lifted a barn, but Herman Ostry, a farmer in Bruno, Nebraska has. Shortly after buying a piece of land and a barn, a nearby creek rose, and the barn was under twenty nine inches of water. He half-jokingly said to his family, ‘I bet if we had enough people, we could pick up that barn and carry it to higher ground.’ To his surprise, one of his sons, Mike, started thinking about it, and by counting the number of boards, timbers, and nails, he estimated that the barn weighed about 19,000 pounds. Mike figured that three hundred forty four people would only have to lift about fifty-five pounds to carry the barn to higher ground.
But how do that many people get a grip on the barn in order to lift it? Mike ingeniously designed a grid of steel tubing and attached it to the inside and outside of the barn. This provided handles for the ‘barn raisers.’ As the town of Bruno was planning its centennial activities, Herman suggested a ‘barn raising’ as part of the celebration. As the centennial approached word of the ‘barn raising’ spread far beyond Bruno. On the morning of the lift, July 30,1988, nearly four hundred thousand people from eleven states were there. When everything was ready, Herman counted, ‘one, two,three.’ The 344 people lifted the barn, and it rose like nothing at all. The crowd cheered and applauded as they carried that 9 ton barn fifty yards up a hill in just three minutes.
How’d they do it? They got enough people to work towards a common goal, spreading the load evenly and equally, and at the same time, with one heart, one mind, one purpose, one direction and two hands they were able to accomplish the impossible.
George MacDonald once noted that one draft horse can move two tons of weight. Two draft horses in harness, working together, can move twenty-three tons of weight. MacDonald put his finger on the strength of the church. When we work together, we can perform miracles.
He prays for their perfection.
22 And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:
23 I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.
The world is waiting to see divine love in action. This is the most distinctive thing about Christ and Christians.
A world characterized by selfishness, greed, strife, and division needed to have evidence that believers were rightly related to the Father and the Son by the unity they displayed in their relationships with each other. Christ wanted the pattern of His relationship with the Father to be the pattern of the oneness existing between believers “that they may be one, even as we are one” (cf. John 13:35).
This unity would show that He shared His love with people so that they might love one another.
Christ next made a request for glorification (v. 24). (John 14:3)
24 ¶ Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.
Heaven is incomplete for Him without us.
Christ closed His prayer by covenanting with the Father to continue His work of revealing Him to people.
25 O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me.
The blind majority, “the world hath not known thee.”
The believing minority, “these have known that thou hast sent me.”
26 And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.
Expanding knowledge brings more intimate fellowship.
After the Crusades, Western Europe received a number of supposed holy relics, including a tooth of Goliath, a tip of the devil’s tail, and a bottle that held the breath of Christ. Of course, no one today takes such relics seriously. If we did have the breath of Christ in a bottle, what would it mean? Nothing. It is the spiritual presence of Christ in the life of a believer that counts.
—Robert C. Shannon, 1000 Windows, (Cincinnati, Ohio: Standard Publishing Company, 1997).
Conclusion: Our unity and love set us apart from the world and glorify God.
Linked Together
A few years ago at the Seattle Special Olympics, nine contestants, all physically or mentally disabled, assembled at the starting line for the 100-yard dash. At the gun, they all started out, not exactly in a dash, but with a relish to run the race to the finish and win.
All, that is, except one boy who stumbled on the asphalt, tumbled over a couple of times and began to cry. The other eight heard the boy cry. They slowed down and looked back. Then they all turned around and went back. Every one of them. One girl with Down’ syndrome bent down and kissed him and said, “This will make it better.” then all nine linked arms and walked together to the finish line.
Everyone in the stadium stood, and the cheering went on for several minutes. People who were there are still telling the story.
Why?
Because deep down we know this one thing: What matters in this life is more than winning for ourselves. What truly matters in this life is helping others win, even if it means slowing down and changing our course.
“Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” (Gal 6:1, 2)—Pulpit Helps, 4/95
