Truth and Scripture #1

We must be relying on Christ, relying on the indwelling Holy Spirit to help us, or all is vain, because only God can do the work through His word that is necessary to advance His kingdom in the hearts of men. Hello and welcome again to the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

I'm Bill Wright. Today, Don takes an in-depth look at how growth in the life of the believer can only come through the faithful study and reading of God's holy word. And Don's scripture really does have a sanctifying effect on those who embrace it. God's word brings growth.

Isn't that right? Well, Bill, the Bible talks about itself in those terms in relationship to true believers, that the word of God is essential for a true Christian to grow in grace. You know, my friend, it reminds me of what the apostle Peter said in his first letter, chapter 2.

He said that we need to be like newborn babies, longing for the pure milk of the word so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation. We need to turn from sin and set our hearts on God's word. That's what we're going to do today and every day that you listen to us here on the Truth Pulpit. Thank you, Don. And friend, let's join Don now as he continues teaching God's people God's word.

He has part one of a message called Truth and Scripture from the Truth Pulpit. What I want to do here as we start, and if you want to just make this the first point in your notes if you're a note taker, I simply want to look at the background of this text. The background of this text because it will help us understand and properly interpret the primary text that we are going to look at. This text that I just read is part of the high priestly prayer, what Jesus prayed on the eve of his crucifixion as he committed his disciples to God the Father and looking forward to the time where he would be absent from them after he departed from this world. And he also commits himself to the work of redemption that he is about to accomplish on the cross and he sets himself apart to what the Father appointed for him to do. It's a moment in time that is fraught with eternal implications and everything about the incarnation and all of the events of Jesus' life and his miraculous conception and the virgin birth and his perfect life and his life of ministry and miraculous works and powerful teaching. It was all moving to this culmination point and so this passage throbs with redemptive significance and the moment is just filled with such intensity that you remember that it was in this time that Jesus was praying with such fervency that drops of blood came from his forehead as we read elsewhere in Scripture. This is the moment which Jesus had been uniquely appointed for and what he is about to do and the work that he would do on the cross is to open up the way, to open the path, to clear the road for men to be able to have access to a holy God.

And that is the work that he is about to do but as he does this work the time has come where his disciples will have to face the world without his physical presence. And you read that and you see where that is in Jesus' mind in verse 11 here in chapter 17. Leading up into it we read on verse 9, Jesus praying for his disciples in a text that is fraught with significance for the doctrine of particular redemption. Jesus says in verse 9, I ask on their behalf, I do not ask on behalf of the world but of those whom you have given me. See he's not praying for the world in general, he's praying for the disciples that the Father had given to him. Those that were chosen before the foundation of the world and uniquely and particularly praying for that circle of disciples that were with him on the eve of his crucifixion. Now Jesus earnestly beseeching the Father, knowing the work that he is about to do and knowing the hard road and even the future martyrdom that lie ahead for 11 of those 12 apostles. Jesus says in verse 9, I ask on their behalf, I do not ask on behalf of the world but of those whom you have given me.

For they are yours and all things that are mine are yours and yours are mine and I have been glorified in them. Look at what he says in verse 11, he speaks as though, he uses the past tense to refer to the certainty of his coming departure. He says in verse 11, I am no longer in the world and yet they themselves are in the world and I come to you, holy Father keep them in your name.

The name which you have given me that they may be one even as we are. Jesus recognizes the key transition that is in place as he is praying. His time, the appointed time with his disciples has come to an end. His public ministry is over and now he will go to the cross, he will go to the tomb, he will be resurrected and shortly thereafter he will ascend into heaven.

What the disciples had known in the prior three years of his time with them, all of that day by day walking with him and interacting with him and traveling with him and even ministering with him, it's done. Now something different in the redemptive plan of God is coming to pass and so what Jesus is doing, recognizing that he will no longer physically be present to care for the disciples, what he is doing in this prayer is he is committing them into the omnipotent hands of God the Father to care for them, to keep them and to protect them as he departs. He asks God to keep them, in other words, Father I'm asking you to guard these, I'm asking you to guide them, to direct them and to have your hand upon them because Father they are in the midst of a hostile environment that will seek their destruction even as the world is now about to destroy me, Jesus says in essence. He says God protect these that you have given to me that they might be able to continue on and they need the protection of God himself.

They need supernatural protection in the hours that lie ahead because of the threats to their security. Look at verse 14 with me, remember this is the background to the text that we're looking at here today. Jesus says and we'll go back to verse 13, just the intimacy of this prayer, I want to just ask you to step back from a moment and just recognize that this is God the Son speaking to God the Father. We are on the holiest of ground in Scripture when we read this passage. This is the mind of God the Son communicating with the mind of God the Father. There is an intra Trinitarian communication taking place here of the holiest kind and I remember before I was a Christian, I remember specifically reading John 17 and not being able to understand it.

I read this and it made absolutely no sense to me whatsoever. Well no wonder how could the mind of a dead sinner read the communication between God the Father and God the Son and have any idea of what is being said. And so these are holy matters and if this does not make sense to you, it may well be because you're still dead in your trespasses and sins.

Jesus comes in verse 13, he says now I come to you speaking to the Father and these things I speak in the world so that they may have my joy made full in themselves. I have given them your word and the world has hated them because they are not of the world even as I am not of the world. I do not ask you to take them out of the world but to keep them from the evil one.

They are not of the world even as I am not of the world. Jesus speaking to his Father and rehearsing what the Father already knows is that the disciples are about to be sent out into a world environment that hates them and among unsaved men who will hate them just as they hated Christ. And as they speak for Christ, the hatred that the world has for Christ himself will be transferred to them. The anger against Christ, the rejection of Christ, the humiliation of Christ would be transferred to the disciples as well.

They would be imprisoned, they would one day be murdered for the sake of their faithfulness to Christ. And Jesus, and beyond that horizontal aspect of the world environment, you see Jesus saying in verse 15, keep them from the evil one. The world is being motivated and that horizontal affliction and opposition comes because there is a spiritual dynamic from the adversary to their souls.

They have a supernatural enemy in Satan, a supernatural enemy in the legion of demons that are under his command. And Jesus knowing all of this in ways that far transcend our ability to understand, mindful that Satan prowls about like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour and that he has strength that is too great for the disciples to resist as Peter would find out soon after this in his three denials with curses. Jesus, out of his love for his disciples, which by extension applies to those of us that are in Christ, you see the love and the genuine care and concern that Christ has for his disciples as he asks God, the omnipotent sovereign of the universe, he asks God the Father, exercise your care and protect them from that which they are being sent into because these invisible but very real spiritual forces will seek to destroy them and would destroy them apart from supernatural keeping. And so as Peter's denials would soon show, these men were not up to the task in their own strength. Peter was the head of the band. Peter was in a sense representative of the other disciples who all left Jesus and fled.

And so we see that for a time, for a moment, God allowed their sin and their fear to manifest themselves so that it could be shown that the strength of the power of their ministry and their fidelity to Christ did not come from human strength or from human ability. How foolish it is to uphold Peter as so-called the first pope and head of the church. Peter denied Christ with curses.

It could never be about the man Peter himself. And Peter was just the representative of the others who all, Scripture tells us elsewhere, fled. And so we see by the way that it played out in a few short hours after Jesus prayed this way that if there was going to be any advance in the kingdom of God, if these disciples were going to succeed in carrying out the great commission that Jesus would later give to them, if the keys of the kingdom were being given to them to proclaim them to men against hostile demonic forces, then they are going to need supernatural help in order to do it.

And beloved, it's the same for us today. There is no strength or power in a man who stands in a pulpit or in an evangelist who stands on the street corner. There is no power in you as you try to witness desperately to your families. We must understand that we need supernatural help for the advance of the gospel, for the advance of our evangelism or it will not happen at all. We will fall of our own accord and the forces against us would shred us to pieces. There are people who would like to have us gone and our voices silenced.

This is just the nature of the environment in which we live. And so as we see these words of Jesus in this background, we see that the disciples themselves had no ability to carry it out, and it should also be an admonishment to you and me in our love for Christ, our testimony for Christ, in the ministry of whatever the Lord has given to us, that we must be relying on Christ, relying on the indwelling Holy Spirit to help us, where all is vain. All the effort is wasted because only God can do the work through his word that is necessary to advance his kingdom in the hearts of men. And that's why Scripture calls on people to pray for their pastors and for their elders, and it calls on pastors and elders to pray for their people. So Jesus gives us, by his example and by his prayer here, we see Jesus interceding for them so that their faith would not fail.

Beloved, if ever for a moment God withdrew his sustaining hand from our souls, if ever for a moment, for a moment he withdrew his preserving power from your soul, you would fall, you would be lost forever. It's not just that we needed Christ to die for us at Calvary. It's not just that we needed the Spirit of God to work in our hearts and to give us new life at the moment of our conversion. We need the ongoing work of the triune God to preserve and keep us because we cannot keep ourselves. What a ridiculous thought to think that you're saved and then you keep yourself by works.

It's just a total absence of understanding in that mindset of the frailty of our flesh, the remnants of sinful disposition in our hearts, and the hostile forces that are arrayed against us, as Ephesians 6 so clearly says. And so Jesus intercedes for his disciples. And he goes on to say that in verse 20, but understand that when Jesus was praying for the disciples on the eve of his crucifixion, beloved, this is so powerfully encouraging and so greatly strengthening to us today to understand that Jesus had in mind all of his future disciples as well. He had us in mind as he was praying this way as well because he says in verse 20, I do not ask on behalf of these alone. In other words, I'm not only asking for this circle of eleven that is around me now that Judas has departed.

He says, but for. He says, I am also praying for those also who will believe in me through their word. In other words, Jesus says the apostles are going to lay the foundation for the church. And Father, as people over the centuries come into the kingdom of God, as they enter into the family of God through the word of the apostles, Father, I want you to understand I'm praying for them as well. He's praying for all the future church in this, not just corporately, but individually we are all the beneficiaries of what Christ has prayed here in verse 20.

It's amazing to think about. You get a sense of the selflessness, the love and the omniscient mind of our Lord. He is about to go to the cross and suffer eternal pains at the at the hands of the Father enduring the wrath of God against our sins against him. And in the midst of that, his mind is not on his own suffering, but his mind is on the well-being of those that God had given to him. What a wonderful savior. What a magnificent Lord. Not just that he accomplished redemption for us, but that this is his heart toward us.

This is no cold matter of mathematics and a mere rearrangement of people's eternal destinies. The heart of Christ is in this. The love of Christ is motivating this prayer as he prays, and not just in the circle of time in front of him, but, Lord, for the sake of all who would come one day to believe. If you're a Christian, beloved, understand you've come to believe through the word of the apostles. It's through the testimony of the New Testament writers that we know about Christ, and his work is rightly interpreted to us. And we see the accomplishment of redemption in the life and work of Christ, the person of Christ, and it was through the Scriptures that we saw the call in response to the Gospel to repent and to believe. And so we believe through that word.

And so we just see the eternal scope of what we are considering here today. And in our text, Jesus is asking the Father to use his word to set his disciples apart so that they might ultimately be with Christ in glory. Jesus loves his people. Jesus loves those for whom he died. And it is his desire, it is the will of the triune God, that the people for whom Christ died would all be with him one day in glory, because he loves us, and he's gone to prepare a place for us.

And if he's gone to prepare a place for us, Scripture says, he'll come back for us. And so this passage is just quivering and pulsating with the eternal purposes of God, which are nothing but good for his people, even as he leads us through the wicked world in which we live. And so with that background, let's look at our second point here, the prayer for sanctification. The prayer for sanctification, as we look at this key, key moment, look at how Jesus prays there in verse 17, where he says, sanctify them in the truth.

Your word is truth. He's asking God the Father to do something to the subjects of his prayer. Those for whom he is praying, he is asking God to do something to them on their behalf that they cannot do on their own. And the word that he uses is sanctify. Sanctify them. Not at this crucial moment, heal them of their physical afflictions.

It's far, far beyond that. He says to sanctify them. We often think of sanctification as the process by which we become more holy in our Christian lives. And that is a proper understanding of sanctification in the right context.

But that's not the context here. He's not asking God to make them more holy in what he is praying right here. Sanctification, that aspect, that progressive aspect of sanctification, is an important part of redemption. But in this context, it is not the primary focus that Jesus has in mind at all. The Greek verb that underlies this translation, hagiazzo, it means to set something apart for the realm of God.

In other words, set it apart for sacred use. Jesus is asking the Father to set his disciples apart for God and for the purposes of his kingdom. The idea of Jesus' prayer here is that God would produce a people that are devoted exclusively to loving him, to obeying him, and even to hating the things that God hates, as we have seen so often in the Psalms. You see, the fiery imprecations of the Psalms is because the psalmist is so devoted to the purposes of God that he hates what God hates. In our week of feminine age, so many people react against that and want nothing to do with that kind of militant attitude and militant praying. And everything wants to be neutered and castrated away from that kind of virility of faith. Well, beloved, if we're going to love God and we're going to be his emissaries, his ambassadors, then isn't it obvious that the one that is identified with God and is identified with his Son is going to have something of a love for what God loves and a hatred for what God hates? Jesus says, sanctify him and set him apart for your own purposes.

And as we said, they do not have the strength to do it on their own. And Jesus recognizes that the world and Satan conspire to thwart the noble plan of God. And so Jesus here, in verse 17, Jesus is securing their safety.

He is securing our safety with this appeal to his Father. In the context, it's easy to see that Jesus is not talking here about their progressive growth in obedience because as you read in the immediately following context, Jesus applies the verb sanctify to himself. Look at it here in verse 17 through 19 again. Jesus says, sanctify them in the truth.

Your word is truth. Now in verse 18, he says, as you sent me into the world, I have also sent them into the world. He's drawing an analogy between the disciples and Christ himself. God the Father, you sent me, Christ says, into the world. Now I am sending them into the world in like manner. And so what does he say there in verse 19?

He says, for their sakes, I sanctify myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth. Don Green, bringing our study today to a close. And friend, that's all the time we have for today here on The Truth Pulpit. Next time our teacher will bring us the second half of today's lesson. Meanwhile, if you'd like to hear this message again or share it with a friend or loved one, just go to thetruthpulpit.com. Once you're there, you'll find all of Don's teaching as well as other helpful resources and information about this Bible teaching ministry. Again, that's thetruthpulpit.com. I'm Bill Wright, inviting you to join us again next time when Don Green continues teaching God's people God's Word from The Truth Pulpit.