His Deepest Desires Revealed

Just before He was arrested, Jesus prayed for His disciples.

I know, for the Bible tells me so. Today on Renewing Your Mind, we're going to consider one of the passages that highlights this wonderful truth, Jesus' high priestly prayer from John chapter 17. Jesus prays not only for His disciples, but for you and me.

Let's join Ligonier teaching fellow, Dr. Sinclair Ferguson. Now we're coming for our twelfth session, that is the last session in our five hours with the Master, our Lord Jesus Christ, which probably was about five hours from the time they gathered in the upper room, refused to wash one another's feet, had the supper together, the foot washing, the questions and answers, and then this marvelous prayer of our Lord Jesus with which this whole section in John's Gospel ends. I don't know about you, but when I come to the end of a series of studies like this, I feel two things and I've felt it frequently. The first is that we've really just been scraping the surface.

There is so much more here for us to study. And the other thing is that now we're just about ready to start all over again. And it's only when we're almost at the conclusion that we begin to understand what a marvelous section of biblical teaching a passage like John 13 through 17 actually is. And we've reached the point, you'll remember, when all the other disciples have become silent, Judas has left the room, Simon Peter is probably still deeply perturbed by the knowledge that Jesus has disclosed that he will actually deny the Lord Jesus before the dawn of the next day. And the room has become silent in order to listen to Jesus pray. And they've heard him pray as actually I suspect they had never heard him pray before. This was an occasion for Jesus to open his deepest desires to his Father. And his deepest desire is as we have seen that he might be glorified with his Father in order that in turn he might glorify his Father.

Do you remember we saw that when the high priest was getting ready for the great day of atonement, his prayer covered three concentric circles. He prayed for himself and for his ministry. He prayed for his family and for their consecration. And he prayed for all of the people of God that they would be blessed and pardoned through the sacrifice that he would bring.

And we see that this is exactly what Jesus does. He prays for his disciples then in verses 6 through 19, and he prays for his disciples now in verses 20 through 26. He makes it clear that there is a focus to his prayer. You'll notice, for example, in verse 9, I am praying for them, he says. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me. And so he's focusing his prayer now on those who have come to trust him and to love him.

And this prayer is dominated by several features. The chief one is the way in which Jesus gives a remarkable description of his disciples. Verse 6, for example, they are those to whom Jesus has revealed the Father. Verse 7, they are those who have believed Jesus' Word and believed in Jesus. Verse 10, an amazing statement, they are those who by the measure of their faithfulness have actually brought glory to Jesus. People have looked at the way in which they've left all to follow Jesus, and they've begun to see what a marvelous Lord and Master this Jesus must be. And again in verse 12, they are those who have been protected by Jesus. Now the interesting thing here is that Jesus' description of his disciples is much more complicated than his prayer for his disciples.

Did you notice that? His description of them is quite elaborate, but his prayer for them is actually very brief. What does he pray? He says, Father, keep them.

The question that arises in my mind here is this, why is Jesus' description of them so elaborate and his prayer for them so simple? Perhaps we can get a handle on this if we can imagine a young Christian man. Let's make this person a man because I think I can get inside the head of a young Christian man. He is a young student at college and for the first time in his life he has met a girl that he feels he is completely at home with. He feels this is somebody that I could share my life with and share my future with. And yet she has given him no indication whether these feelings are reciprocated towards him. And here he is. He is in his little study bedroom on his own and he is on his knees and he is praying about her. How would he pray? Well, he might be kind of inarticulate.

18-year-old boys in love tend to be a little inarticulate. Lord, she is so beautiful. Lord, I get on with her so well. Lord, there is just everything about her, even the aroma of her perfume.

Lord, she is just absolutely right, Father. And the friend she has, they think so much of her and she is so admired by all the other boys. He goes on and on describing her and then he says, please, Lord, is there some way she could take notice of me? His description of her is elaborate because he has fallen in love with her.

His petition about her is therefore very simple. And it is the same with Jesus. The elaborate nature of His description of them is an expression of the extent and intensity of His love for them. And it is almost as though He is saying, since they mean this much to me, Father, there is only one thing I want for them and that is that you will keep them for me, that you will keep them for me, that they may be sanctified, that they may be reserved.

At home, January is usually the time when the stores have sales and even though there seem to be pre-Christmas sales, the stores have post-Christmas sales, especially if the pre-Christmas sales have not done well. You see an advertisement for a new couch and you are needing a new couch and this couch is a third of the price and that is exactly the couch I need. You go into the store and there is the couch and you see it and then you come right up to the couch and there is a sign that has been placed on it, reserved for Mrs. Smith. And you know you cannot now purchase this couch.

This couch belongs to Mrs. Smith. Now that is the idea that is present here when Jesus prays for the preservation and the sanctification of His disciples. He is praying that we will be reserved for Him. He is praying that nobody else, no other power will be able to touch us and to spoil us. And you see the way in which He prays about this. He essentially prays that we will be kept from the damaging influences of the world.

In verse 11 He prays for His disciples, Holy Father keep them in your name because I am no longer in the world with them. He is wanting them to be preserved in the world. He is praying that they will be preserved from the flesh.

What the flesh does is it tends to cause disintegration in our relationships with one another. We see that in the family. We certainly see that in the church. And so He prays, Heavenly Father keep them together because they are mine and you have given them to me. And He prays, do you notice in verse 15 that they will also be kept from the evil one.

I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from the evil one. And so He is embracing these eleven men. I am sure they have never heard anyone pray like this for them. Yes, of course they had heard Jesus pray before.

And do you remember how they had gone to Jesus and said, Lord, teach us a prayer like John the Baptist taught his disciples a prayer and He had given them that framework of reference that we call the Lord's Prayer that in a sense is really the disciples' prayer, isn't it? But now they are hearing the Lord's Prayer. Now they are hearing the way in which He's opening His soul to His Heavenly Father. And I'm sure one of the impressions this must have left upon them, certainly the impression it leaves on me as I think about them is this, I never knew He loved me this much until I heard Him pray for me. Think about the way in which the letter to the Hebrews, which is so much about the High Priestly Ministry of Jesus, takes this up and says, this was Jesus' intercession for His disciples while He was on earth.

But now He lives in heaven forever to make intercession for His people. It's a glorious picture, not only of how Jesus prayed for them during His ministry, but it must have been a wonderful indication to them when Jesus had returned to heaven that the Master would continue to intercede for them in such a way that they would be kept for Jesus by the power of God. But then this prayer moves to the third of these concentric circles. He prays for Himself, He prays for these contemporary disciples.

And you'll notice that throughout this whole section there is a little expression that He keeps on using about them. It's almost as though this is Jesus' favorite way of thinking about His disciples. And now as we transition to the part of the prayer in which He prays for us as His disciples, what do you think is Jesus' favorite way of thinking about you? Well, He's praying, isn't He? For those His Father has given to Him. My friend, I wonder if you've ever thought about yourself that way as a Christian. I am somebody the Father has placed His hand on and said to His Son, my son, I want you to have her.

I want you to have Him. Some of us perhaps have keepsakes of people who have loved us. Perhaps some of you have medals from your grandfather or something that belonged to your mother. And you hold on to these things because of who gave it to you. And that's what Jesus is saying here. He's saying, Father, I love these my disciples.

I've been with them for three years. I've led them, taught them, served them for three years. I'm going to save them. But you know what makes them most valuable to me is that they're your love gift to me, and I want to make sure that your love gift to me is kept by your grace so that I can bring them back to you and say, Father, here are the loved ones you gave me, and now I'm bringing them back to you, and I want you to show the marvel of your love also for them. And it's this that spills over into Jesus' prayer for us. Notice how this begins in verse 20. I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.

These are the ones you have given me in your love for me before the creation of the world. Now what does Jesus want for us? First of all, He prays for our unity. You see that in verses 20 through 23, 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. So common now, but 50 years ago it was commonly thought that what Jesus was praying about here was the organizational unity of the church. I suspect that was very far from His mind. What He's praying here is for the spiritual unity and fellowship of believers, and for their love for one another so to make an impact on the world that people would say as they came among Christian people, there's only one conceivable explanation for this kind of love.

This is not resourced on earth. Jesus is the only explanation for this kind of love. It's one of the reasons, I think, why we need to understand that it's what we are as church fellowships that is the single most important element in our evangelistic witness to the world. Because it's what we become in our relationships with one another that when those who are not believers are drawn in, they say, I didn't know church was like this. I didn't realize there was this kind of fellowship, this kind of mutual esteem.

I remember listening to a young woman speak about the fact that she hated everything that evangelical churches stood for until she found herself being drawn into an evangelical church and was pressed to ask and answer the question, how is it that these people stand for everything I hate, yet these people have the very thing for which I long and which I lack? And this is Jesus' prayer, that they may be one as we are one in order that the world may believe that you sent me to be its Savior. So he prays for our unity. And then there is a second thing for which he prays, and this is particularly to be found in verse 24, and perhaps the most moving statement of all. Father, he says, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, and remember he's now speaking about us, who have come to believe in him through the teaching of the apostles, 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.

Now there are a couple of things here that I want you to notice if you will. The first is the way in which Jesus expresses his prayer. Father, he says, I want, I desire. Notice how different this is from the prayer that he will make within a couple of hours in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Father, he says, if there is any possible way for me to escape drinking this cup, will you find that way for me? It's a completely different kind of prayer. There he says, not my will be done, but your will be done. Here he comes to his Father and says, Father, this is my will.

Let my will be done. And what grounds can he pray that? Well, of course, the reason he's able to pray this prayer is because he's going to pray that prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. This prayer that he makes before the prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane is about what will take place because of the prayer he makes in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Because he prays, Father, your will be done. I'll go to the cross. I'm willing to die for their sins.

I'm going to sacrifice myself for them. Father, I tremble at the thought, but your will, not my will be done. And because the Father has heard that prayer, the Father then says to his Son, as you remember the second Psalm tells us, my Son, ask of me and I will give you the nations for your inheritance. There's another thing I want you to notice because Jesus is here telling his Father what he most wants for himself. And curiously, what he most wants for himself involves us. It's almost as though he's saying, Father, I don't want these things for myself unless I can have them with these disciples you've given me and whom I love. And what is it he wants?

He says, I want them to see me in my glory. I can't remember the year this first happened. Perhaps some of you were watching on television. It was the Wimbledon men's final many years ago. Now, the Wimbledon tennis tournament has a kind of aura of upper-classishness about it. Apparently, they are the most expensive strawberries in the world if you have strawberries and cream at the Wimbledon tennis championships. And there is the decorum about it, isn't there?

You don't get people shouting and yelling and interviewers. You do now coming on and asking people how they feel about losing. After the year, I think it was the Australian tennis player Pat Cash won the Wimbledon men's championship as soon as he had won. I wonder if any of you saw this. Instead of keeping in with the etiquette, he did something that many now do. He started clambering over all the spectators until he got to the competitors' box where his coach and his family and those who were his chief supporters and he went round embracing them all. I noticed last year I didn't watch it but I heard Andy Murray, the Scotsman who won Wimbledon, did the same thing and forgot to hug his mother in the process and had to go back to hug his mother. As I saw this, first of all, I thought, why is he doing this?

I think the answer is very simple, isn't it? These were the people who had stood with him in the toughest times. These were the people who had seen him in times of injury. These were the people who had watched him in times of defeat and they had still stood by him and he wanted to express to them what it meant for him now to have entered into the glory of becoming the men's champion and I think there's something of that in the Lord Jesus. Father, these are the ones who have seen me in my temptations.

These are the ones who have been with me when I've been demeaned. These are the ones who are in a few hours actually going to gather round the margins of the cross and watch me being humiliated, exposed, made naked, lifted up on the cross, crucified. These are the ones who are going to ponder the meaning of my cry, Father, why have you forsaken me on the cross? And he wants them who have been with him in his days of humiliation to see him in his regal splendor and glory. And that's something Jesus prayed for us as well as for them because in a different way we have seen the Lord Jesus demeaned. We hear the Lord Jesus despised. We sometimes feel the pain of being his disciples and being his followers.

We find ourselves at times overwhelmed by the mystery of the situation of belonging to the church in a world like this. But here is our encouragement and our future benediction that this prayer will be answered, Father, I desire that those you have given me should be with me where I am to see my glory, the glory that you gave me because you loved me before the creation of the world. And on that day, in a fresh way, we will be singing to the Lamb of God who is the Lion King of the tribe of Judah and think of him as these ones would think of him and say, in my place, condemned he stood, for my blessing did he pray. Hallelujah! What a Savior! We said at the beginning of these studies that it's so important for Jesus to stand at the center and at the end of the studies we feel we want him not only to be at the center, but we want him to be our all in all.

And he has prayed that it will be true for you because his Father gave you to him before the foundation of the world in his love for him and for you. What a Savior indeed! That's Dr. Sinclair Ferguson and the final lesson in his series, Lessons from the Upper Room.

We're glad you could be with us today for Renewing Your Mind. Dr. Ferguson also wrote a book by the same title, and we're offering both resources today for a donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries. We'll send you the book in paperback and in e-book form as well as the digital download of the video series. And by the way, there's plenty of additional content in Dr. Ferguson's book. So just ask for Lessons from the Upper Room when you call us at 800-435-4343.

You can also make your request online at renewingyourmind.org. This is a theologically rich and heartwarming study of Jesus' final moments with the disciples before he was arrested. You'll learn how you can be of good cheer despite the trials that you may face and how the Holy Spirit guides you. So we hope you'll contact us and request Lessons from the Upper Room by Dr. Sinclair Ferguson. Our phone number again is 800-435-4343. Scripture confronts us with the reality that being born again is the necessary gateway to the kingdom of God. I hope you'll join us next week for the opening lesson from Dr. Stephen Lawson's series, The New Birth. That's Monday, here on Renewing Your Mind. Thank you.