Line by Line with Albert Mohler

Third Avenue Baptist Church
Louisville, KY
Leviticus 1:3-17 — Leviticus Series
August 29, 2021

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Louisville, KY
Leviticus 1:1-2 — Leviticus Series
August 15, 2021
Well, what an honor to study God's Word together for the time we have this morning. We are going to begin in the book of Leviticus and a study that will take us some weeks, many weeks, and with so much for God to teach us, let's begin with prayer. Our Father, we come before you, just in all the fact, you allow us to study your word. The word that you by your grace spoke to us. Spoke first to Moses for Israel, and by your word, through Moses, to Israel, to us ever living, ever fresh. Father, we pray that we will be faithful students of your perfect word. May you bring yourself glory and faithfulness to your church by this study, we pray in Christ's name, Amen. 
The reality is that most Christians never hear any kind of study of the book of Leviticus. Most have not heard certainly any sermon series or expository series in the book of Leviticus. Most preachers, at least in Christian history, would've been quite scared of Leviticus. Evidently they are because they stay away from it. And it is because Leviticus will take a lot from us in terms of study. It will require a lot of us.  This is foreign territory, in sense, for us as Christians, we are entering into the very heart of the cult. That is the worship, the sacrificial system of the Jewish people. A world because of Christ so different than our own. But the book of Leviticus is one of the most cited books from the Old Testament in the New Testament, because the very purpose of the mission of Christ was to fulfill what was in part in Leviticus and in full in himself. 
By the time you get to the book of Hebrews, you'll be looking backwards again and again to the book of Leviticus because it will be this, that Christ is now fulfilling. For even as in the book of Hebrews tells us it is impossible for the blood of goats and bulls to take away sin. That is exactly what Christ has done for us forever in his atonement. The book of Leviticus is of course, in the Torah, the Pentateuch in the first five books of the Bible, these are the books of Moses. And by that we mean they are the books of Moses, because one of the things we shall see is that the role of Moses is in the book. And we're going to see that in the text of the book, we're going to see it affirmed not only by other writers of the Old Testament, but we're going to see affirmed by Jesus himself as well as by the apostles. 
In other words, when you have Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, they're not just the books of Moses. You will have others in the Old Testament, you will have Jesus and the apostles in the New Testament. And you have the faithful church say, as God said to Moses, as Moses said, the book of Leviticus is the third in the Pentateuch, the five books, the Torah, and that puts it right at the center. And there's a reason for that. You really cannot proceed to Numbers and Deuteronomy without Leviticus. The theme of Leviticus is actually found in Leviticus chapter 19, verse two, “you shall be holy, even as the Lord, your God is holy.” How may a holy God have a holy people? What would that holy people look like? What would they do? What would make them holy? What would keep them holy? It's a huge question. 
It's a question that we have to follow in its context with only two books before Leviticus. The first of course is Genesis. Genesis tells us of the perfection of God's creation. Genesis tells us of the fall of humanity into sin. Genesis tells us of the covenant that God made with Abraham. The book of Genesis tells us of the promise that God gave that through Abraham and his seed, all the nations of the world would be blessed. In the Old Testament, there are sacrifices that we're not sure exactly how they were to work. In the Old Testament, there was a priest, Melchizedek and there were other priestly figures who appear in the text. In the book of Exodus, the children of Israel, having grown numerous but having fled to Egypt in a time of famine are now growing too numerous in Egypt for Pharaoh. Pharaoh believes that they will then be soon as an internal threat, able to threaten his own rule, the rule of the Egyptians. 
And so you have Pharaoh's oppression of the children of Israel. And then at one point, even Pharaoh attempting to put an end to the future generations of the children of Israel, but they're God's covenant people and you know that they will not find the end of their story in some kind of extinguishment in Exodus, but rather God will do this miraculous work of rescuing his people. And he rescues the people, not just because he had chosen them, but he rescues them because they are his covenant people. He made covenant with them. And because of his faithfulness to the covenant, Israel will survive. 
It is an Exodus that Israel having been rescued by God's outstretched arm and mighty hand, rescued from Pharaoh in Egypt, in the wilderness, receives the law, but receives the law through Moses. God does not merely give Israel the law. There are not two stones that are as tablets given to Israel. They're given to Moses for Israel. Israel is the one who receives only after Moses goes up into the mountain. It is Moses who is then a model intercessor. And of course the very existence of Israel after the great disobedience is possible because Moses pled with God to allow him to intercede for them and elsewhere and Exodus, the people will plead with God from their side to accept Moses, to intercede for them. Moses plays a mediatorial role. In some sense it is he who receives God's judgment for them. 
It is two Moses that God will speak and will reveal himself. It is not a mediatorship like with the AFLCIO and management. It is a mediator between a sovereign and his people, not two equal parties with a mediatorship. And thus you see pictures of course, of the mediatorship of Christ that will come as not only a mediator, but the mediator. Intercessor. Priest. Prophet. In some sense, Moses has to be all of this. He's not a part of the Levitical priesthood, but he is himself priesting on behalf of the entire nation. 
When you look at Leviticus and you look at verse one in verse one, we read, “the Lord called Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting, saying, speak to the people of Israel and say to them when any one of you brings an offering to the Lord, you shall bring your offering of the livestock from the herd or from the flock.” Now, the first thing you might notice is just how quickly we are immediately into the details of the law that will be given for offerings. This where it begins, but of course, this is the beginning of a conversation between God and Israel through Moses. This is the continuation of that revelation but notice the first words. “The Lord called Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting.” A couple of interesting things there that we ought to notice. The Lord summons Moses and Moses having been summoned goes. Where? To the mountain? No, to the tent of meeting, but between then and now God has by his own sovereign plan devised this tent of meeting, which is where in the tabernacle he will meet with his people. 
And that's where mediation intercession will be done. It's kind of a prototype in some sense. It’s a pre-figuration of the temple that will come. There is no temple, but there is this tent of meeting and the Lord called Moses into the tent of meeting. And in an interesting expression, spoke to him out of the tent of meeting. 
Now, how do we think of the speech here? That is what do we refer to? Well, numerous points in the book of Leviticus, including the very first verse as we see, and the very last verse, as we shall see, we're told that God spoke to Moses, God commanded Moses, God instructed Moses. And so, this is going to come up again and again and again. So, there's direct speech from God here, basically all of it. We don't have Moses speaking back to God. It's God's direct speech to Moses, but it is through Moses and perhaps to an extent that we're really not accustomed to thinking about. So, if we're reading from say, Romans chapter eight, well, who wrote Romans chapter eight? Well, Paul, but the Holy Spirit. And so, it's the Holy Spirit says through Paul. But it's not wrong to say, as Paul says if we're preaching or doing Bible study, and we're comparing what James says in his epistle to what Paul says. It's not wrong to say James and Paul. We speak of Paul the Apostle with great reverence and appreciation, not to mention authority. 
So, when we say Paul, that’s saying something. It's a greater sense of authority in the church. Interestingly enough, given our Catholic neighbors than if one was to say, Peter said, now the Lord spoke through Peter in two epistles, Peter appears in the book of Acts etcetera, the Holy Spirit used Peter. Peter also comes as apostolic authority, but it's Paul that has so much in the New Testament. God has spoken so much in the New Testament, through Paul, that liberals who blame Paul for so much in the New Testament, rightly so, say that it was a mistake of the early church to stake so much on Paul. As if it was your church's plan. 
But in the Old Testament, everything's really staked on Moses. Everything's staked on Moses. It begins even here in this third book with Moses being summoned to the tent of meeting. Second Chronicles, chapter 23, verse four, you find the expression “as written in the law of Moses” reference here to Leviticus. So it’s the law of Moses. Now, Israel didn't believe it was the law of Moses as if it belonged to Moses, but rather Moses is so much the mediator of this law. He’s the one to whom God gave it for Israel that is referred to as the law of Moses. Jesus himself will tell the leper once he has been healed to go and present himself to the priest in order, those things may be done. Those things, which Moses commanded that's in Mark nine. Pretty amazing. 
Here's Jesus, this is very significant, you’re talking about covenant history, here's Jesus telling the man he has just healed. Now he healed. So, this is God and incarnate. He's healed the man. And he tells him to go to the priest to fulfill the law of Moses. Of course, it's a tiny picture of the fact that Christ himself perfectly fulfills the law of Moses, but it's just a reaffirmation of the fact that the law and in specific the law as revealed in Leviticus, but the totality of the law is referred to as the law of Moses, not just in Old Testament habit. The prophet is Ezekiel will refer back to the law of Moses repeatedly. Ezekiel 10. Ezekiel 22. Ezekiel 18. Ezekiel 20. It's going back and back continuously, even as the prophet centuries later saying, this is the law of Moses, the law of Moses. In Romans chapter 10, Paul will write, “for Moses writes about the righteousness, which is of the laws,” contrasting that with the righteousness of Christ, that is a greater righteousness than the righteousness of the law. 
But again, the righteousness of the law, the old covenant is here, basically summarized as Moses wrote. It's called the book of Leviticus in our English translations because of its content. That is the instructions for the Levitical priesthood. And so thus Leviticus is coming from the Latinized reference to the Levitical priesthood. And there it is. In the Hebrew Torah, it's just like every other book in that pattern. The name of the book is the Hebrew word that begins the book. And so in the Hebrew mind, this book is not called Leviticus, the book is called “and God called Moses” because that's exactly how it begins. “And God called Moses.” So in the Jewish tradition, this third book of the Torah is not called Leviticus. They of course know the Levitical Priesthood is what's in it, but they just begin as the book of Genesis does with the “in the beginning.” And this is just “and God called Moses. “
When we speak of Moses, in this sense, we've talked about his mediatorial role. Israel's disobedience repeatedly puts Moses in the position of interceding before God that he not destroy the very people he has brought out of Israel. Brought out of Egypt, established as Israel, his chosen people. In Exodus chapter 20 verse 19 it’s made very clear that Moses is functioning as a prophet. And of course, in Deuteronomy 34:10, we are told that a greater than Moses, a prophet like Moses, but greater than Moses is coming. In Hebrews chapter three, we hold that Jesus as prophet has more glory than Moses. Is worthy of a greater glory than Moses. You know, we read that, and we go, well, of course, but understand what that means in light of well, the first audience of the book of Hebrews. Hellenized Jews who come to Christ. This biblical theology that is the book of Hebrews, they are told “Do you wanna understand Christ, just understand this. In times past God spoken many in various ways, but in these days he has spoken in his son. And his son is not only the radiance of his glory and the exact representation of his nature, but he's a glory greater than Moses.” 
I brought Moses to church one day. Put him up on the pulpit. Pope Julian's grave, Moses, the famous Michelangelo Moses. Moses with horns. If you've seen him as one of the most famous statues in Christian history, and Moses is sitting on a throne and he is got horns. And it is because the artist misunderstood the rays of light and put horns on Moses, supposed to be the radiance of his glory. Some horns don't exactly communicate that to me. But the point is glory. Moses had glory as represented in the scripture is having a glory and not the Shekinah glory of God, but he came down, bearing it. Remember he and his body bore the Shekinah glory of God for a time after he had been with God on the mountain. Jesus is the ever infinitely eternally glorious one. 
As we look at the book of Leviticus and again, we recognize it in the heart of the Pentateuch. We recognize it as the necessary link between Genesis and Exodus and what will come is Numbers and Deuteronomy. We recognize that we're going to be confronting a lot of laws. And when I say a lot of laws, I mean a lot of laws and it is going to sound just like a law book. It's going to be just like a lawyer in one sense, taking a law book off the shelf, because you look up and say, under this circumstance, what sacrifices needed and how exactly must it be done. The next time we're together, we will be right into sacrifices for sin. And we will look right the fact that for this, it has to be that, for the other sin, it has to be something else, for the people it is this, for an individual it is something else. 
The sacrificial system was so precise. The Levitical priesthood was called to a precision priesthood because their priesting was necessary for the survival of Israel. And this is one of the great themes of biblical theology we are going to be looking at, because even as we're together this first day, looking Leviticus, we say, where is the gospel in this? What's it pointing to? How do we, as Christians read this? We understand how the Jewish people read Leviticus, the Levitical priesthood. We understand how they would read, how do we read it? 
As it has already been said, the scripture is clear that the blood of goats and of bulls cannot be taken away, they cannot take away sin. Sin cannot be fully atoned for by the blood of an animal, but the blood of an animal is what is constant in Leviticus, the blood of this animal or another animal? What does that mean? One of the things we're going to see is that the atonement that comes up again and again, through the sacrificial system in the Old Testament made so complete and clear in the details of Leviticus is a covering for sin. It's important to think it's a covering for sin. There's something very different about a total erasure of sin and a covering for sin. In Romans chapter three, that pivotal text, that really is in many ways, the fulcrum of Protestantism that we, we would say, it's the fulcrum of the gospel. Roman chapter 3:21 and following about justification by faith alone. But you'll recall Paul speaks of the previous times as God passing over sin. Just to look specifically at the text, Romans chapter three, the passage says it only makes sense because of Leviticus. 
Let's just read the whole text because it's just so important to have it as a whole thought. Verse 21. “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law through the law and the prophets, that is although the law and the prophet bear witness to it, the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, for all who believe. For there is no distinction for all of sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ, Jesus, whom God put forward as a perpetuation by his blood.” You'll notice as we go through Leviticus, this is kind of Levitical language. This is familiar language. Paul knows exactly what he's doing here. 
Verse 25. “Whom God put forward as a perpetuation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just, and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” God is demonstrating that Christ is both just, and the justifier because it is the Father who is just, and the justifier. And putting Christ forward as the perpetuation sacrifice for sin, God, the Father is showing himself to be both just in requiring the sacrifice because of sin and then the justifier by forgiving sinners because of this sacrifice of his Son. But what about all those sacrifices that had taken place before? The writer of the book of Hebrews will come back to this. What did that mean? And it's actually impossible to imagine the quantity, the number of animals who were sacrificed through centuries, as we shall see, many of these were daily sacrifices. Daily. There are a lot of days. 
Some of these were massive sacrifices where just about every household had to make a sacrifice. There were a lot of sheep, there were a lot of bulls. There were a lot of goats. There were a lot of animals that were sacrificed, a lot of birds. What did that amount to? Well, Paul says in his forbearance, God passed over. Notice the specific language here, “he had passed over former sins.” Well, he didn't pass over by saying, I'm not goanna worry about that. No, all those sacrifices in the Levitical system, all those Old Testament sacrifices held back God's wrath that was eventually poured out on Christ. 
They did not fully atone for sin. And we don't have to make that by inference. That is the book of Hebrew's very emphatic statement. Only the blood of Christ can wash away sin, but the blood of all these animals held back the wrath of God. It was a blood sacrifice. And we'll be seeing this the next time we're together. What's the nature of a blood sacrifice? It was a graphic demonstration of the horrible nature of sin and of the children of Israel's inability to remove that stain themselves. It would have to be done by another, that's a key point. It would just have to be done by another. And that other would be an animal, but only as something of a down payment only to hold back, God's wrath a time 
We're in the center of the Pentateuch. Christ is very much at the center of Leviticus. When we speak of Christology and relate it to the Old Testament, I think of Genesis where in the prologue to the gospel of John, John tells us that Jesus was the Word through whom the world was made. So, “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” it's parallel by “in the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God.” Christ is right there in the very first sentence of the Bible. Christ is there in theophanies in the Old Testament. Christ is there in the covenant that God made with Abraham that threw Abraham and his seed, all the nations of the earth would be blessed. That can only happen through Christ. And it's Abraham is pointing to Christ, not Christ who's pointing to Abraham. In Exodus, of course, the great picture of our salvation, where there is a rescue, and even as it becomes the great Old Testament picture of the New Testament of our salvation, Exodus becomes the great historical sign that God will accomplish his covenant. He will save his people. He will not leave Israel in captivity to Pharaoh. He will not leave us in captivity to sin. 
And it's right after Exodus. It's just right after Exodus that we're at Leviticus and it's detail. It's kind of like that for the Christian Church, right? Study the scriptures. You got to get this right. We are a biblical people. We are a scriptural people. We're a people of the book. Israel was a people of the book because it had to be a people of the book. You can't pass down Leviticus by oral tradition. You can't trust that. What if you get that little sacrificial point wrong? What if it's supposed to be a, this rather than a, that, what if you're supposed to do it this often, rather than that often, how do you do this? As we shall see, all kinds of technical, personal issues, when someone does this and what do you do when this violation of the covenant takes place, what do you do? We're also going to see that the holiness of God has made very, very clear in every single word, because the background to the holiness that is Israel's call is the fact that they have been created by called by made covenant with redeemed by preserved by a holy God. Therefore they must be holy. This is where we must end for this morning. As Leviticus begins, God summons Moses to the tent of meeting 
And in a very real sense, we're now summoned through the book of Leviticus. I promise you, it is going to be an adventure. We are together going to learn things we would never know if we did not study this book. What most Christians have been raw robbed of for two millennia. we will not allow ourselves to be robbed of, by God's grace, now. So I look forward week by week to going through Leviticus with you. It will be as if we are going into the tent of meeting with Moses by God's grace. What an adventure that will be. Let's pray. Father, we're just so thankful for all you've given us in your word. Thank you. Thank you for every word of scripture. Thank you for the Pentateuch. Thank you for the Torah. We too are those who look and must look continuously to the books of Moses to understand the book of Christ. Father, open our eyes that we may see. Open our hearts to find joy in this and deepen our understanding of Christ. It will be to your glory. We pray in the name of Christ. Amen.

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
June 6, 2021

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For more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.
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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
May 16, 2021

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For more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.
For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.

Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
May 9, 2021

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For more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.
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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
May 2, 2021

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For more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.
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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
April 18, 2021
 
 
Now we have seen that this is the high priestly prayer of Jesus. The word priest is a perplexity to some people because this is the most intimate prayer of Jesus. It's this long prayer. Jesus is praying to his father, of course the word priest doesn't appear in it. Why do we call this the high priestly prayer of Jesus? As we shall see, in its quintessence this morning in this text, this is a reminder of one of the three offices of Christ. Thinking about the doctrine of the person and work of Christ, we think historically of how the Bible has identified Christ to hold three offices. He is prophet and priest and king. Now, of course, if you look to the Old Testament, you see all three of those roles, those roles are not held by one person. The king cannot be a priest, the priest cannot be a king, and neither the king nor the priest is a prophet. But Jesus, as God in human flesh, and as the fulfillment of all the scriptures, and as the agent of our redemption, is infinitely prophet and priest and king, every single moment of our lives, not just at different aspects of our own experience of salvation—at every moment of our lives, we live only because he is prophet and priest and king as king. As king, he rules overall, and his kingdom shall know no end. It is as citizens of his kingdom that we have our ultimate identity, as we are United to him. His role as prophet is underlined by the fact that he is the teacher, and thus he came not only to die on the cross and to be raised on the third day; he came in order to teach. He came and ordered to instruct he left his, his church with his words. And as we saw in the gospel of John in our earlier study, he said, if you believe me, if you follow me, if you love me, keep my commandments.
He is the continuing prophet of the church through the preaching of the word of God. Christ continues to instruct his church. The priestly role is Christ’s mediatorial role. That is the role of priest. And again, a lot of people, even who have been Christians for a long time, they think of a priest as someone who fulfills ministrations and has a sacred role when sacred right. Yet people fail to understand that the priest--in essence--is a mediator. The priest is a representative. The priest goes before God on behalf of the people. Now let's back up a minute. That's why we do not have I have one. That’s why we do not employ one. This church has no priest, we refer to no one as father, and we understand no priestly or sacred total ministry. We believe that such a ministry is unnecessary, and, if unnecessary, then Fundamentally wrong—misleading—because Christ is our priest. He's the only priest that we need. We need no other intercessor. Christ’s mediatorial role is now fulfilled in his session. That's a Latin word for seeding. You say a session of the legislature, that’s when they sit down and get to work. Christ is seated at the right hand of God, the father almighty right now, and he ever intercedes for us, says scripture.
So we have a priest, and that is Jesus. But Jesus was priest even when he was with the disciples on earth. Jesus was to use a term that is archaic, but it was a real term. Jesus was “priest-ing” in the entirety of his earthly ministry. He was representing us before the father and representing the father to us in the entirety of his ministry, and he now does that. He does so from heaven, and he does so infinitely. If he did not do so, we would be destroyed, because he, even now, intercedes for us.
So today, we arrive in the last few verses of John 17 in the high priestly prayer. In particular, we're looking at verses 20 and following. Jesus prays this: “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 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 see that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me, I have given to them that they may be one, even as we are one. I in them and you in me, that they may be perfectly one so the world may know that you sent me and loved them, even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me may be with me—to see my glory that you have given me, because you love me before the foundation of the world. Oh, righteous father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I've made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved may be in them, and I in them.”
Now, remember that the last verses that we considered found their greatest thrust in verses 17-19, when Christ prayed, “sanctify them in truth—your word is truth. As you sent me into the world. So I have sent them into the world, and for their sake I consecrate myself, that they may also be sanctified in truth.” The hinge that comes in verse 20 is after Jesus has prayed that his church would be united and it would be consecrated in truth, that we will be bound together in truth—sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth. Again, it is a reminder of the fact that our unity is in Christ, and that unity operates through a scriptural unity. We are United in the truth. This is not a false unity. It's not an institutional unity. It's not an ecumenical unity. It's not some kind of lowest common denominator, theological unity. We are unified in the fullness of the faith once for all delivered to the saints. We are sanctified in the truth.
But Jesus, at this point is very clearly just as we think about the proximate picture. He's praying. He's about to be arrested. The sequence of the events that lead to his crucifixion are about to happen. So when Jesus prays for his own, who have they been? They were his own. They were his disciples, and the larger band of those who believed in him. He described them as his flock. He is the good shepherd. But the great change that comes—and this is something so important to us, brothers and sisters. This is where we find ourselves in this passage. We look at verse 20, and Jesus then makes clear to the father: “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.” So Jesus is praying this high priestly prayer for all of those who will be his. We're right here in this prayer in this agonizing prayer, and the intimacy of this prayer of the father, Jesus is not just praying for his disciples and followers as he knew them then. He is praying for us, and that's just astoundingly good news. Have you thought about the fact that Jesus, as he is here betrayed and about to be handed over to the authorities, as Jesus is soon to be crucified, that as he prayed for his own, he was praying for us. And just as much as he knew those disciples, then he knew us. He knew we were coming.
Now, it's important that you recognize that he has told this before. He's spoken this way before. Look at John chapter 10. In chapter 10, Jesus described himself as the good shepherd. And you remember he said that my sheep hear my voice. They know me and they follow me. They obey me. But look at verse 16. “And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.” So now we can look in retrospect and understand what John what Jesus was talking about here in John chapter 10:16. Even as Jesus was describing himself as the good shepherd, it was describing his own as his flock. He said, there are others in my flock who aren’t here yet, and I will gather them all together. They're not going to be able to different flock. They're going to get the same flock. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. Now, as we have been thinking about John chapter 17, the issue of the unity of the church comes, up and it will come up again even before we conclude this passage this morning. The unity of the church here is affirmed once again, as a spiritual unity in Christ. It's a true unity in Christ, and there's one shepherd—that's it. There's just one shepherd, and there's just one flock. Now, no matter how many different labels may be put on, no matter how many different languages, how many different countries, no matter how many different centuries and generations, it doesn't matter. Christ’s church is one. If it's true—if we’re really brought into Christ—we belonged to his church, and there is only one flock.
Well, this is a great reassurance, because we understand that the ultimate fulfillment of that one flock is eschatological. We’re all going to be before the thrown together. Just to speak of the current picture that people wonder about, all who are truly United in Christ will be there in that one flock. There won't be Methodists, and Presbyterians, and Baptists; there will just be Christ, but it's also through time.
When I wrote a book on the Apostle’s Creed, there are some who will get thrown off when first confronted with be this historic creed, the, the most universal of all Christian creeds. And they get to that, that phrase, “I believe in the holy catholic church.” And I do believe in the holy catholic church, this is one Southern Baptist who emphatically believes in the holy Catholic church. And I'm not going to give the church that calls itself Catholic, the use of the word catholic. it's a “little c”, but it's a very important word. The word catholic means universal. And, and people say that that's affirming the fact that there's one church, and wherever it's found, any true church, all true Christians are a part of that true church. It’s everywhere. But the word catholic is very important in this sense, and the word Catholic—capital C—church. It understands this claim. It is not only across space, but it's across time. So it's one church made up of all those who've ever become one with Christ from the beginning of his ministry until now and will be the ultimate eschatological fulfillment. But I love the language of John chapter 10, Jesus describing himself as the good shepherd, and the fact that there are sheep that belong to him, but he doesn't have them yet in the fold. Some of them haven't been born yet. Some of them haven't heard the gospel yet. And just as a shepherd goes and gathers a sheep, as we see in the famous cycle of parables in Luke chapter 15—the shepherd has 100, but he's lost one of them. What does he do? He goes and searches until he finds it. When he finds it, he celebrates. In that same sense, Jesus is not going to rest until all of his sheep are his and are a part of one flock and one shepherd.
Look at chapter 11, verse 52, just one chapter over. In verse 51, we're told “he did not say this of his own accord, but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation. And not for the nation only, but also to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad. So from that day on, they made plans to put him to death.” Notice what's going on here. This is when the plot to kill Jesus is just beginning. And, and as you understand, the Jewish authorities were deciding that Jesus was going to have to go. But the problem was that even as they were in the cycle of the old Testament text, the old Testament text was speaking of the fact that there will be an in-gathering from the nations. And Jesus was clearly speaking of himself as the one who was going to do that, The agent of bringing all of God's people—the elect—together, not only for the nation, but also for the world.
Well, you'll notice that language. And you'll notice in this case that it's actually coming from those who are the enemies of Jesus. And that's the context of John chapter 11. It's desperation on the part of the Jewish leaders. Why was Jesus being adored by so many? Why was Jesus being followed by the disciples, this, this Jesus who could even raise people from the dead? But now we're in John chapter 17, and now in these final verses of the high priestly prayer, Jesus, having already spoken of this mission that would unite all of us, people in one sheep with one shepherd, he now is praying. In his mediatorial priestly work, he makes very clear that all who will ever be his are included in this prayer. That is just phenomenally helpful. It's it should be of enormous unspeakable assurance. When we think about Christ for us, we're thinking about Christ for us as prophet, priest, and king, and here is Christ for us as priest. Years ago, I was a doing an installation of a service of a church in Georgia. This is when I was editor of the Christian index, and the actual preacher of the session with Dr. W.A. Criswell who was pastor of the first Baptist church of Dallas and Titanic figure in Baptist life. And I had another role in the service, and there was a giant choir. By giant choir, I mean the way Southern Baptist used to do giant choirs; it was about 300 people, full orchestra. It was big, it was glorious, it was loud, and they sang a song I had not heard before.
I'm just curious, how many of you know, the name Stamps Baxter? … Well, this is fewer than I thought. Mary knows the name Stamps Baxter. Obviously, we're going to have to work at this convection. In the history of evangelical music with the rise of the Bible conference movement in the late 19th and early 20th century, you'd have these mass gatherings. And of course you think of Billy Graham coming much later, but think about the rise of these mass gatherings and evangelist efforts, some of them came out of the second great awakening, and some of them just came out of the evangelical revivals of the 19th and early 20th centuries. And out of that came what was known as gospel music and the original gospel music. In church, they were called Sunday school songs. Now, it's very interesting that in our morning worship here at Third Avenue Baptist church, we sing songs that we call hymns, yet some of them actually aren't hymns. I don't let you know, it's a dirty secret. I know it's horrible. Uh, but some of those are not. I say that because the musicologists among us would point out that a hymn has a particular metric structure. Most of the songs we sing and call hymns are actually hymns. You see them in stanzas, and there's a certain metrical structure. Okay, that's a hymn. Now your conscience is settled, but there are some other songs we sing that are wonderful Christian songs. But back in older evangelical eras, there was a distinction between hymns and then Sunday school songs, and Sunday school songs with Sunday school being largely and evangelistic assembly in the early years, Sunday school songs didn't have to have the metric structure of the hymns. And so some of the songs we sing aren’t that good.
As a matter of fact, a song like “in the garden, I come to the garden alone while the dew is still on the roses” is not a great hymn. It's not actually even a hymn. It doesn't have the metric structure. It's just a Sunday school song. There, there are a lot of books in the hymnal. We don't use that either, but there are a lot of books in the hymnal that are those old Sunday school songs. Well, Stamps Baxter wrote a lot of those old Sunday school songs. And it would they would be sometimes a little more upbeat than hymns. They sometimes be a little more maudlin than hymns, or they tended to be testimony songs about Jesus as our friend, about how I came to know Jesus, like the song, “oh, how I love Jesus.” That's the Sunday school song. Not a hymn. “There is a name I love to hear.” … Okay, if you don't know that song, I excommunicate you.
But nonetheless, that was a Sunday school song, just to give an example. So Stamps Baxter wrote lots on Sundays school songs, and he taught people how to sing them with the stamps Baxter quartet. A lot of our gospel music as we know it came out of that, but the choir sang at this the service at Anthem that was made out of a stamps Baxter song, and that stamps Baxter song was both entitled and took as it’s major theme these words: “when he was on the cross, I was on his mind.”
Now I have to tell you that, as young man, when I heard that song the first time, I thought, “I don't think we should sing it that way.” It’s a long debate in worship language. I was wrong in thinking that. That’s actually one of the most precious truths. I know that when he was on the cross, I was on his mind. The “I” is not so much important. We were on his mind. That's a better way to put it. When he was on the cross, we were on his mind. He knew us. And matter of fact, one line in that song is “he knew me, yet he loved me.” And expanding that from just the singular—he knew us, yet he loved us when he was on the cross. Let's just say we were on his mind. That's exactly what we have here in Christ’s Priestley mediatorial role. He already was thinking of us. We were included in this.
Even without this text, maybe we would have been assured we're included in this because of the totality of the New Testament revelation, but how precious is it to be told right here that we were on his mind? “I do not ask for these visible only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.” Through whose word? The disciples will preach, and people will hear, and in a succession of preaching and hearing, there'll be many who believe, and, believing, they will be saved. They will be united to Christ. They will be his. This is how the sheep hear his voice. This is beautiful, isn't it? So how do the sheep hear Jesus’s voice? It's through the preaching of the word of God, the taking of the gospel. Every time the word of God is preached, the sheep, hear his voice. And hearing his voice, we are drawn into this one flock of the one shepherd. So it’s not just, “I'm thinking now of all those who will believe in me, but believe in me through the disciples’ word, 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.” Now, this is unity language that only makes sense because of the opening of the high priestly prayer. Just to remember going back to how Jesus opened the prayer, When he said in verse four, “I glorified you on earth. Having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” And again, before the world existed comes up again in this last climactic section of the high priestly prayer.
This is a prayer for unity. This is the true unity. And you'll notice it's not institutional. It's not the modern ecumenical movement, a lowest common denominator. It's not non-theological. It's inherently theological. It's essentially theological, and it's in the truth that we may be one, but notice the intimacy here: “just as you, father, are in me, and I in you.” “that day,” meaning, all those past present and future who are Christ. “That they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” So our identity is now as believers in Christ, and Christ’s identity is in the father. And so you understand what it means for Christ to be the door, for Christ to be our priest and intercessor, for Christ to be the first born of many brethren, for us to be joint heirs with Christ as Paul will tell us. It means that the unity, the Trinitarian, the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit is extended to include us. “As we are united to Christ” does not mean we're in the Godhead. It doesn’t mean we're in the Trinity. It means that by the miracle of the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ, we share in the Trinitarian unity and in the Trinitarian love of the one, true God. And if that doesn't blow your intellectual fuses, what would? How dare we think that it might be possible that we would be partakers of the Trinitarian love of God? but that's exactly what Jesus is declaring here and is praying for us.
He continues in verse 22, “the glory that you have given me, I have given to them, that they may be one, even as we are one. The glory that you gave me, I've given to them.” Well, where is it? What is that glory? Well, this is a transformation of values. It's a redefinition of terms. Martin Luther would speak of this. When he warned of a theology of visible glory, visible glory is what we want. We're glory-mongers. We want to see visible glory. We love spectacle. We love for our eyes to see glory, and sometimes we see glimpses of glory. You think of the realities of heaven, and a new Jerusalem, and a new earth. And then you see a spectacular sunrise or sunset. Do you see a vision of just how glorious such a thing may be? Trying to recreate that glory, or trying to imagine and speculate that glory, and trying to make that the context of Christian worship turns out to go badly.
And again, I'm turning back to the reformation, and it has everything to do with what we're looking at here. Jesus said that the glory of the father had given him, he's given to his church… and I was looking at you guys this morning. You don't look too glorious. No insult intended, but I look at you, I just don't see a lot of glory. We don't look a whole lot more glorious, and this building, you know, I’m thankful for it, but it’s not exactly glorious. What am I contrasting it to? There are buildings that declared glory, and I love to go in them, by the way. In church history, I love to step into those spaces and know also other things they represent, but in so far as they try to impress you with glory, that's the problem. Luther reminds us that the church is a Mouth-house, not an eye-house. “Moot house,” as Luther said. In other words, the church is a building, but it is a building where the word can be preached, and Christ’s people can worship and sing together. It's all about mouths. It's not mostly about eyes. For 500th anniversary of the reformation, I had the honor of preaching from the high pulpit in Wittenberg where he preached, and that building is pretty glorious to a Southern Baptist. It looks stunningly glorious. The parish church where Luther preached thousands of times is pretty glorious in contrast with third avenue Baptist church. But in contrast with the Roman Catholic church, it was very clearly a preaching place. The center was the pulpit, and the acoustics of the building were either built for or changed for the hearing of the spoken word. And by the way, that was a big thing, because a lot of these churches were made for the mass, and the acoustics were not made for people to hear the preaching of the words. And a lot of these churches’ acoustics had to be changed so that the preaching of the word could, could happen.
When I take people to a city like London, and we're just trying to see the history of the Christian Church, I'll take them to, a church like a fairly small Christopher Wren church off Piccadilly circus. It's been there for centuries, and when you walk in, the sanctuary is very stunning. It’s beautiful, but the most amazing thing about it is that it has these very tall, clear windows, and it's filled with light. And this is one of the churches that Wren built on the ruins of a former church burned in the great fire of London. So it's after the reformation. And I said, “you'll notice they built the church back pretty much like it would have been except for one thing, these giant windows, why these giant windows? well it's because the church has become a mouth-house. It's become a place for the study and declaration of the preaching of the word. And people come with a Bible now. And so they need to be able to read it. And the, the old dark churches of times past where the priests were up there doing the mass people didn't need to see anything only the priest needed to see, but now people have the word and with the word you need windows and you need light. It's a sign. The reformation has come.”
All that to say, there’s an infinite glory in this building, because Christ’s people are in it. There is an infinite glory in the preaching of the word. This is what we're doing right now and studying God's word. There's will be an infinite glory when we gather for formal worship in just a short amount of time. That's Jesus's point—the glory was there with the disciples because they were his, he glory is there because they have the gospel. And this gets back to what you see in the opening to the gospel of John. I think it will be the most famous verse in John chapter one as John, 1:14, “we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the father, full of grace and truth.” But remember, you're talking about the glory that was of an infant. That was a hidden glory. Those who knew who he was saw the glory. If he didn't know who he was, you didn't see the glory. Unlike Renaissance art, he didn't glow in the dark. He was a baby. So here's another just wonderful reminder to us that we're surrounded by glory. CS Lewis famously said, you'll never meet a mere mortal. That's true, because every single human being is made in the image of God. You'll never go to an ordinary worship service. Now I know even the reformers called it ordinary worship, which meant not a festival day. Again, background of need for reformation, not a festival day, not a feast day. It's an ordinary worship. I remember when I was a kid, seeing the top of it, it said “the service of ordinary worship.” I was thinking, “well, Hey, let's set our let's set our standards low,” but the surface of ordinary worship meant this is Christian worship. And, uh, there are some prayer books that were called the ordinary. In other words, it's not that it's just, it's just non festival. This is just the way the Christian Church praise. But the glory that Christ has given us is the glory that the father gave
him. And that means it's the glory of the gospel. It’s the glory of the truth. It's the glory of salvation. It's a hidden glory. Let's look at it. It makes you look better this morning. It makes me feel better about myself this morning. I don't have to look glorious to be glorious in light of the gospel of Jesus Christ for God's people. -- than the plural. We're experiencing glory together. There's glory given to us, the father gave Christ this glory, and he has given his church this glory. Now, hold on, just to remember that in the Ordo Salutis, the order of salvation, we shall be glorified. There is something yet to come. Christ’s church will be glorified. An infinite, visible glory is coming, but it's in the fullness of the kingdom, which is not yet. So after verse 22, you'll see, again, as that verse ends, it comes back to unity “that they may be one, even as we are one.” And then in verse 23, that unity is further explained in the Trinitarian reality. “I am them and you and me, that they may become perfectly one so that the world may know you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.” This is, this is a further exploration exposition. Now the unity has made very clear, the trinitarian reality, I in them and you and me, but that's the unity that they may become perfectly one. So, you know what, here's the other good thing about the unity of the church? Number one, it isn't institutional. It isn't thus ecumenical. It isn't a human invention. The lowest common denominator of theology we can put together to call people. A unity of the church is already accomplished in the truest sense because it is, we are unity in Christ and Christ is in the father. And so in that sense, the disunity of the church becomes impossible. That is to say, there will never be eschatologically churches, but only Christ’s church. In this, in this age, we need to do lean into the visibility of the unity of the church that Christ talks about, but there's going to be a limited visibility. I mean, we know we're in communion with so many other congregations are preaching the gospel and loving God's word. We helped to plant some of those churches. We encourage those churches. We were in fellowship with thousands of churches through the Southern Baptist convention that is a further sign of our unity together. And we believe that all those who are true evangelicals, even if they're in wrongly ordered belief nonetheless, if they believe the gospel and preach the gospel, they are a part of Christ’s church. And even though we're not the same congregation with them over that issue, we still believe we're in the same church with them. And again, it's historical past, present and future. That means we're in the same church with Charles and John Wesley. I means we're in the, we're in the same church with Jonathan Edwards and we're in the same church with people. My great grandfathers were in the same church with, I pray, my great, great grandchildren. I pray they come to know Christ, and that that's a great reassurance, but the unity is not even just the unity of those who believe in Christ.
Once we've been united to Christ, it is Christ in the Father, the Father in the son, the demonstration of this is before the world is something we need not just to skip over that. The world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. So, in so far as we show our unity in Christ, we're showing the world the unity of Christ with the father, and the fact that the father sent the son. Verse 24. “Father, 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 love me before the foundation of the world.” Now, just to remember again, go back to verse five. “and now, father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world started.” So when Jesus says where I am, he is speaking of himself with the father, he is speaking of his completed work on earth. He's speaking of himself, present with the father. And as we shall know, seated at the right hand of God, the father almighty, and he's already prayed for the restoration of the glory that he had with the father before the world was created. So before the first spec of cosmic dust, when he was with the father in their shared glory, he's returning to that. Then this is a part of his condescension and coming here as a part of the incarnation.
This is a part of what the apostle Paul is talking about in Philippians chapter two—he thought it not robbery. He humbled himself well, even as he's humbling himself now in extreme as even to the cross, he is looking to the other side of his obedience when he is now with the father again. And he is praying for his, for the day when we in him with him will see the glory that he had with the father before the foundation of the world. How was that is what Christ desires for us. What Christ will make certain for us is that we will know him. But when we see him, we will see him not as the disciples saw him in the incarnation. We will not see him as he was visible in the incarnation would be the same body and a resurrection body. It's a continuity. The point is that when we see him, we will see him in the glory that he had with the father before the creation of the world.
Now, when people talk about yearning for heaven, I think often we have people yearning for heaven that they I'd want to be free of these pains and cares. I want to be in a place of God's perfect reign. I want to be in that place where every eye is dry and every tear is wiped away. I want to be in that place that reflects God's perfect righteousness, justice, holiness, peace, but actually we should long to be in that place where we behold the glory of the son of God and the glory that he had with the father before the creation of the world. And Christ is longing for that for his own people. You’ll notice the love. It's not just the glory that he had is the glory that you have given me, because you loved me before the foundation of the world, the inner Trinitarian love, which is perhaps the sweetest reality, human ears can never hear.
Verse 25, “Oh righteous Father, even though the world does not know you. I know you and these that you have sent me, these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known that the love with which you have loved me may be in them. And I am them.” So it's interesting in verse 25, when he prays to the father, in this case, he says, oh, righteous father. Now think of the background to that. Oh, righteous father. Why would righteous become so crucial? His prayer is coming to an end. What's happening right after this? It is betrayal and the arrest of Jesus. Now, in some sense, the betrayal is already underway because Jesus told Judas to go away. And what he must do, do quickly, but the manifestation of that betrayal is coming right away. And then, then the arrest and all the events will lead up to his crucifixion and the horror of his substitutionary atonement. Why now at this point, does Jesus say, oh, righteous father? It is because what is about to take place is going to be the demonstration of the righteousness of God. Paul makes that clear in a passage, such as Romans three, verses 21. And following what is all this about? It is about demonstrating the righteousness of the father. And so as Jesus prays to him, even right now, he praised him, oh, righteous father. I'm just going to turn to that text.
Romans chapter 3:21, “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law though the law, and the prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God, through faith in Jesus Christ, for all who believe. For there's no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forth as a propitiation by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just, and the justified of the one who has faith in Jesus.”
And this gets back to the evangelicals, Sunday school songs, and stamps Baxter, whom you did not know. If you think about so much evangelicalism, sentimentality, it's not wrong when we say that the cross reveals the love of God. And again, that's a part of the apostolic preaching, but it's a minor key in the apistolic preaching. In the apostolic preaching, we are told more than anything else that what the cross of Christ shows us is the righteousness of God. Now, you don't say one at the expense of the other, because the new Testament it's rich with descriptions of the cross is love. “Greater love has no man than he laid down his life for his friends.” “And this is love.” “For God So loved the world.” And that's in the apostolic preaching as well. But just notice that when the cross is raised in this context such as Romans chapter three, what we are told is that, and in that passage five times that the cross reveals the righteousness of God. And as the prayer comes to a conclusion, Jesus refers to his own father as the righteous father, even though the world does not know you. And again, that is very similar to refrain of
John chapter one in the very opening about Christ himself. He came into his own, and his own believed him not. There are those who just deny all the evidence of the existence, even of a creator God.
“But even though the world doesn't know you, I know you, and I know you have sent me. I made known to them your name.” And again, there's more here than just a name. This is the truth about the father. “And I’ll continue to make it known that the love with which you love me may be in them.
And I in them.” And the prayer concludes. But notice how the prayer concludes that those who are his, will be known by the love with which the father loved the son, that that love may be in them. And I in them. I'm not a big country music fan. I recognize the historical importance of country music and supposedly operatic qualities of country music. I also understand the honesty of country music. Johnny Cash, years ago sang a song, “your own personal Jesus.” I've never known exactly what to do with it. When it appeared that at least implicit in the song is the understanding that something's wrong with the spirituality in which we have our own personal Jesus. We have a personal relationship with Christ, but you'll notice that what we see here is that it is true. If anything of the gospel is true, it is that Christ is in us. It's not that we have our own personal Jesus. It’s that Jesus has his own personal disciples and that's who we are.
And what more powerful demonstration of the love of God could there be? It's been a privilege to look through this prayer together with you. Ever since we began our study, I've been looking forward to John chapter 17, and here we are. I just want to leave us with one thought. And that is the thought that verse 24 is itself just a perfect illustration, not only of the gospel, but of the entirety of God's redemptive purpose. “Father, 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.” This explains all of biblical theology, everything from Genesis one until the end of the book of Revelation. It is about God redeeming a people through the blood of his son who will know his glory and who will exalt in that glory everlastingly. And so that there will be no explanation for why any creature knows that glory, but for Christ and what he did in obedience to the father. And that's just about the perfect summary, not only of the gospel, but of the Bible
Father, We're thankful for this time together. We pray that you will use this time and you will use this word to conform us to the image of Christ. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
March 28, 2021
Let's pray. Our Father, we are just so thankful that you have given us every word of Scripture, which begins with, “in the beginning, you created the heavens of the earth” and goes all the way to the end with, “even so Lord come quickly.” Father, we pray that you will bless our study of your word every time we open it. May your word, this living word, take hold of us, guide us, illuminate us, and help us to see what it would be to be faithful to you in this life as we await the life to come. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. 
So in this priestly prayer of Jesus, this high priestly prayer, as it is often referred to, Jesus is acting–as he acts now–as our intercessor and great high priest. This is the Son praying on behalf of us. And, even as the prayer begins with Jesus talking about the glory that he had with the Father before the creation of the world, the entire purpose of the prayer is that he's praying for his people. Just the existence of the prayer gives us the great, good news that our Savior cares for us, loves us, and prays for us. There's also this incredible distinction, and it's a very clear distinction, between the church and the world. And so Jesus actually speaks to the Father explicitly saying, “I am praying for those you have given me–I'm not praying for the world.”  And the phrase “those you have given me” comes up repeatedly. 
We see this incredible testimony to the sovereignty of God. To not only the doctrine of election, but also to the doctrine of perseverance and assurance. Because we have been given to the Son by the Father, no one can separate us. That, again, is just wonderful assurance and encouragement to us because if we have given ourselves to the Son, we can fail. But if we are given to the Son by the Father, then we actually are secure. But as we have been making our way through this prayer,  we look at the verses, in which we see in verse 10, Jesus says, “all mine are yours and your are mine. And I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world and I am coming to you, Holy father. Keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you and these things I speak in the world that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word and the world has hated them because they are not of this world just as I am not of this world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world, sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake, I consecrate myself that they may also be sanctified in truth.” 
Now, sometimes in this prayer, as in other passages of scripture, we make our way word by word, phrase by phrase. And yet when we think we see a phrase and understand its placement, we get a little further in the passage and understand, okay, that phrase has come up again. Or, that phrase has now been addressed from a different angle or aspect. Then we realize we need to go back and understand what's really going on here. That’s why we went back to verse 10 and began reading from there. Because again, we have this incredible emphasis from Jesus that he is going to the Father, but he is leaving his children in this world, in the world. 
Well, this turns out to be a bigger theme in this prayer than we might fully have recognized. So remember that Jesus was saying that he is anticipating after the cross and resurrection returning to be with the Father and receiving again, knowing again, the glory that he had with the Father before the creation of the world. Then he makes this statement just as he made to the disciples. But now he's speaking to the Father. He says, “I am no longer in the world” because he's looking in anticipation to that moment. But his believers will be left in the world. 
Now, remember the very last verse of chapter 16, what Jesus said. Jesus said, “I have said these things to you, that in me, you may have peace in the world. You will have tribulation, but take heart. I have overcome the world in the world.” In the world you will have tribulation. And some of you remember translations such as “in the world, you will have trouble.” And that is certainly true in the world. You will have trouble. So why are we in the world? Well, I guess you could state just a matter of fact, which is that if Jesus had taken the disciples out of the world then the end of the age would have been immediately inaugurated; we would not be here, and we would not be anywhere. 
One of the questions is why Christ has left his people in the world. Jesus says the world's full of trouble. And by the way, that's why he is praying for us. We're no match for the world. To be honest, we aren't in ourselves. We're no match for the world at all. The world will not only give us trouble, the world will smash us and arrest us and persecute us and scatter us and silence us. The world is so powerful, in the grip of sin, that it would extinguish the gospel except for the fact that Christ will not let it be so. And so when Christ said “upon this rock, I will build my church and gates of hell shall not prevail against it” he didn't say “you look really strong to me.” He just said, “I'm not going to let you perish.” Of course, it has an ultimate sense. He's not going to let the gospel be extinguished. He's not going to let the church itself be destroyed or extinguished. But then again, if this is such a difficult place, why are we here? 
Well, one thing to understand is that we're here because we are the witness. We are the light of the gospel in the world as the body of Christ. We are left in the world. There is work for the church to do. And that's a very important thing to recognize. We are not here merely to wait. There is a waiting, but we are not here merely to wait. As you look at the New Testament, there's much assigned to us. We have the Great Commission. And Jesus himself will make reference in this passage to what he has given the disciples to do. First of all, this is the theme of the New Testament, in the sense of the gospels and the assignment to the apostles. But you have the Great Commission as you find it, at the end of the gospel of Matthew, and you have the Great Commission as we will find it in Acts chapter one, “you will be my witnesses first in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and then the uttermost parts of the world.” There is witnessing for us to do, there's work for us to do. 
You come to the book of James written to the early church and you'll remember that we are told that true religion is to take care of widows and orphans. There’s work for us to do. There is work being salt and light. You take the letters of Peter in the New Testament, assignments to represent Christ, to live peaceably, or at least to seek to live peaceably among all. But very clearly by our conduct in the world, bear testimony to the gospel of Jesus Christ. And you have the apostle Paul, you have an explicit missionary mandate: How shall they hear unless they have a preacher? And blessed are the feet of those who take the gospel. 
And so you put together the New Testament and there's a theology of suffering. We are in the world. And part of our assignment is to suffer. And from time to time, the church has suffered horribly beyond our imagination. That too is witness, which is why the word martyrdom is actually taken from the same word as witness. That's what martyrdom is. It is the ultimate witness. But when you think about Jesus here, speaking of his own in the world, there's a remarkable statement. And we saw it before, but I wanna go back to it for a moment. 
“All mine are yours and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world but they are in the world.” Jesus says that in verse 10 and 11. So you'll notice when you look at verse 15, Jesus says, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.” Now that's a pretty astounding sentence and we're gonna encounter it again. Jesus says, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world.” So we are not left here by the Father's purpose. We are actually left here by the Father's purpose and the assignment of the Son. It's just one of those phrases where you think again how we have this intimate gift of a conversation, a prayer between the Son and the Father, and this most urgent of moments in the life and ministry of Jesus. 
And he makes clear what he is asked the Father to do, but he also makes clear what he's not asking the Father to do. He's not asking Him to take us out of the world. Now, as you think about that, I want you to think about another text and that will be I Corinthians 5; I Corinthians 5:9-10.  Now in I Corinthians 5, what's going on? Well, Paul was writing to the church, admonishing the church at Corinth in which horrible sin had been found in the church. And that sin was hindering the gospel witness of the church. Things are found amongst you, he said, that aren't even found amongst the Gentiles. He mentioned quite specifically some sexual sin. 
He goes on to say that in the church, we are to have nothing to do with a Christian who acts in such a way. We're not to extend a hand to fellowship. We are not to allow them in our homes. And again, the key is that he's speaking about someone who had been in the church who had been identified in the church. And he said you cannot act as if they are Christians. That's the whole point. You can't treat someone who is living in renunciation of the faith as if he is a Christian. You can't give him the fellowship you'd extend to a Christian. But you really can't have anything to do with him. But here's what's fascinating in verse 9 and 10. This is Paul. Paul said, “I wrote to you in my letter, not to associate with sexually imoral people, not at all, meaning the sexually imoral of this world or the greedy and swindelors or idolators since then you would need to go out of the world.” 
So there you have Paul echoing Jesus. Are we in the world? Yes. We are in the world by assignment. And does Jesus pray that we be taken out of the world? No, he doesn't. He explicitly does not pray that we would be taken out of the world, but that we be left in the world. The apostle Paul, speaking of the church having to deal excruciatingly with sin in its midst, says, “Look, I'm telling you, you can't have fellowship with someone who claims to be a believer and acts in this way. But I'm not telling you to have nothing to do with sinners out in the world. Because if I told you that, you just have to leave the world.”
I find that very, very interesting. To be in the world is to be in contact with those who are worldly. To be in the world means we're living in a world in which yes, all around us there are adulterers and the immoral and cheaters and backbiters and all the rest. That's pretty much what the world is like. If you can't handle that world, you gotta leave it. But we're not allowed to leave it. We've got to bear witness to the gospel and be salt and light in the midst of a world that is marked by all these things. This is not an accident; we weren't left behind. We are here for a purpose and that purpose is work. That purpose is to be a witness. That purpose is to glorify God in this age until such time that it is right, according to the Father, that this age should end and the kingdom of Christ should begin in fullness. 
I think we need to admit there are times in which we're ready to be taken out of the world. A part of this is the struggle of the church, understanding our own responsibility for holiness. And so just as you think about the church and the world, we're in the world, but we're not the world. I used to hear it said, “we're in the world, we're not of the world.” And that's actually a summary of the high priestly prayer and its logic. That language, “being in the world, but not of the world” is a summary of the very prayer that we are reading. But it's not just that we are not of the world. It's that we are not the world. So there's a distinction in identity between the church and the world. 
You also have in this passage the theme of unity, and we've arrived at that theme. And this is a precious thing. That theme is the fact that the distinction between the church and the world is to be one of holiness. Yet the church is to be marked by a unity. So he prays that we'll be one, even as he and the Father are one, and it comes fairly early in the prayer as a theme, but it becomes very clear in the passages, the verses that we just read. He prays that we will be one. He also prays that we will be consecrated in the truth. What does it mean that Christ prays that we will be one? What kind of one are we to be? When you think of unity in the church there have been several attempts to try to create an institutional unity. There are actually several different models of unity in the church. The first most obvious model in church history would be Catholicism. By that I don't yet even mean a capital C. The C becomes a capital C. But as you look at the early centuries of the church, the unity was institutional. 
And very quickly that unity took the shape of bishops. And the bishops were under the unity of the prime Bishop, who was the Bishop of Rome. So over time, this became more and more institutionalized, and so much so that in the early centuries of the church, the church was defined not by the presence of Christians, but by the presence of the Bishop. Where the Bishop is, there is the church. So you have this institutional unity. And of course that becomes absolutely crucial. And is unquestioned through, let's just say, a millennium. Now let's just kind of fast forward to the fifth century and then take it to the 15th century. For that millennium of time, the church is considered to be one thing. Now that gets a little complicated when in 1050 and the 11th century, there's a breach between the East and the West. 
So, Catholic means universal. It means everywhere. And so that institutional unity is fractured when you have the Eastern church, it goes off under the patriarch. But still in the West, in Western civilization, and Western Europe, that is Europe, primarily as it is culturally defined, the church is just one thing. Rome is the headquarters of the church. And so now we have Catholicism with the capital C. And of course then comes the Reformation in the 16th century. In terms of the history of the West, it's hard to come up with a more decisive event than that. Because up until that time, it was not just the unity of the church that was absolute and structural, it was the union of crown and altar. 
So it was not just the unity of the church, it was the union to the church and the monarchy in whatever respective realm. And so they were increasingly seen as sharing a common authority. The reformation breaks all of that. The reformation broke the structural unity of the church. And now you have church in plural, and that was unthinkable. As a matter of fact, even for quite a long time after the Reformation on various sides, you did not have any recognition of churches, it's still just church. There's not time to trace all of this, but very early in most of Europe, given the conflict that included the 30 Years War, which just minute for minute was probably the deadliest war ever fought on European territory, the basic concept came down to the fact that the religion of the state is the religion of the ruler. 
So if you had a Catholic prince you had Catholic church. If you had a Lutheran prince, you had a Lutheran church. This was not acceptable to Baptists because that doesn't even work, it's historically anachronistic. It wouldn't have worked to have a Baptist king (there weren't any really) andthen to have a Baptist church in the realm. It took centuries after that for the idea, and Robert Wilkin, I had the privilege of doing a Thinking in Public program with him. He said the language change came much later when people would speak of one realm with a plural word churches. A place to look for that, by the way, would be someplace like Prussia, where you had a very strong Catholic presence, very strong Lutheran presence, and very strong Reform presence. Eventually just to keep peace and to have a national identity larger than what would've been a Catholic state or a Lutheran state, or a Reform state, you end up with speaking of the churches.
Institutional unity doesn't work. Let me just put it that way. It doesn't work. And even as you look at Catholicism, I mean, right now in Catholicism, you have the German bishops at war theologically with the Vatican. The German bishops are going ahead with plans to have a sacrament, or a form of blessing, for same-sex unions. The German bishops are moving in radically liberal directions. So they're looking at schism in the Roman Catholic church because the German bishops, even this week said, we're not turning back. And the Vatican said a definitive, “No.” So it's going to be interesting to watch those developments in the Roman Catholic church. 
So even the Roman Catholic church, as it exists now, is not unified except supposedly organizationally under the Pope. Well, on the other side of the Reformation, there have been efforts to create something of an ecumenical church. And so the ecumenical movement, and the economy of pulling everybody together, in this common and unity in one. The ecumenical movement especially took root in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And in the late 19th century, you had communications, you had transportation, you have trains, and you've got all kinds of things developing to the extent that you've got people moving all over the place, and you have to realize that's a part of what really came out of all this. You have people moving all over the place. So you used to have Catholic communities, Catholics live there. And you had Lutheran communities, Lutherans live there. But once you got people moving all over the place, well, then you got all kinds of people everywhere. 
By the way, you look at a map of the United States, you’ve got Scandinavian churches all over the great lakes; and you've got Congregationalists and Anglicans  in the Northeast; you have patterns of Catholic immigration that come into cities like Boston and New York and then later cities like Chicago. And so you've got Polish and Lithuanian and Irish, big Irish immigration, and a lot of German immigration. The city of Louisville is very interesting. You have the patterns of both early Irish and then later German Catholic immigration moving here, which even explains some of our neighborhoods and explains two Catholic boys schools. So it's not as unified as it looks. But once you have all these, these churches in a city like Louisville, I don’t know how many there are, but the claim was, we just need to create out of this one church. 
And so originally that was basically just a Protestant issue and the Catholics were watching with interest. So let's just get the Protestant churches together. We're supposed to be one. Okay. But the quick thing to speak of here is the fact that number one, not everybody bought into the ecumenical idea in the first place. The Baptists at the top of that list were Congregationalists. Furthermore, we're not joiners, Baptists are horrible joiners for this kind of thing, for theological reasons. But the reason, first of all, that this won't work is that the only way to make this happen is with some kind of “lowest common denominator” theology. So the ecumenical movement quickly moved into theological liberalism. Every time it started. Every major effort towards an ecumenical unity led to theological liberalism to a theological minimalism. 
They just kept dumping doctrines overboard, because we are going to stand in common, and we’re going to have a common statement. And so you have the World Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches of Christ, as it was known in the United States. And Southern Baptists, we theologically could have nothing to do with that. By the way, you hear almost nothing of that now, because the churches that did become a part of the World Council, those churches are now so weak and empty, hardly anyone even thinks of them or speaks of them. So it turns out that an institutional unity really doesn't work. It turns out that an ecumenical experiment really doesn't work. But the church of Christ is to be one. So, in what sense are we one? Well, this is where Baptists would argue, and this is really a traditional evangelical argument, that it's in doctrine and it is in spirit. 
It is a spiritual unity, and it's a doctrinal unity. Let me go back just a minute, by the way, and say one other model of unity that some have tried is liturgical unity, where people have argued that the actual center of unity in the church is the fact that we have, for instance, the Lord’s Supper. But then again, just ask the churches to describe the word “Supper.”  And then you understand that doesn't work either. Is it a mass? Is it a Eucharist? Is it a sacrament? Is it an ordinance? So the liturgical unity was an early effort. And people thought, well, you know, if it's a liturgical unity, it might be that the Eastern Orthodox could join in, if not the Roman Catholics. Well, I'm not gonna go further there. I'm going to say where unity is. The unity is spiritual and it is doctrinal. 
So let's take doctrinal first. So the evidence of that unity Jesus gets right here in John 17:17. Jesus says, “sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. And for their sake, I consecrated myself that they also may be sanctified in truth”  So it is sanctification in the truth, sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. So it turns out that our unity is in truth. And that is what doctrine is. Doctrine is what the church believes, confesses, and teaches on the basis of the word of GoD. That definition comes from Jaroslav Pelikan, a great historian of doctrine who taught at Yale for many years. And it's worth it just to be able to say his name, Jaroslav Pelikan. He was a titanic scholar and one of the greatest historians of history and one of the most important historians of theology and doctrine and dogma. 
He actually was a historian of the history of theology, but nonetheless, he defined doctrine in the beginning of his great five volume history in the history of doctrine as what the church believes, confesses and teaches on the basis of the word of God. Why three words: Believes, confesses and teaches? 
Belief is what actually resides as the conceptual convictional belief of the church. And as Pelikan understood, that's found in theology books, and that's found in creeds. It’s very importantly found in hymn books and it's apparent in prayer. And so if you want to know what the church believes–in fact, Roger Scruton, the late British philosopher, great loss to us when he died last year, Roger Scruton said, “if you want to know what people believe, do not ask them doctrinal questions, but rather listen to them, pray.” It's a keen insight. He was at that point, an unbelieving philosopher. That’s what the church believes. 
Then what the church confesses. And yes, that is the creeds and confessions. So where the church says, this is what we believe. Well, okay, listen to the church. It's telling you what the church believes. So whether it's the Apostles Creed, or  our Baptist Faith and Message, or when we, as a congregation, have a members' meeting and we say the covenant together, we're saying, this is what we believe. So Pelikan would say, listen to them, they're telling you what they believe. What the church believes, confesses, and teaches. Where do we teach? Well, that's the preaching. What's actually preached. 
I was reading a great scholar of the Reformation just a few days ago and he said, if you had just known nothing of Luther and you'd known nothing of Calvin, and you'd known nothing of any kind of theological controversy, if you went out of Germany in say 1520, and came back in 1570, you would be hearing preaching so different you would know something had happened. The preaching makes a difference. Luther was turning out preachers and having turned out all these preachers they went into the pulpit. They were preaching the word. It was a completely different event. The church in Germany, under the power of the Reformation, had been turned from, as Luther said, an “eye house into a mouth house.” You no longer come to see things. You come in to hear things. You no longer come into the church to watch priests, even behind a screen, performing a mass. 
No you're not there to watch anymore, you're there to hear. It's a “moot” house. It's a mouth house. So we look to what the church believes, confesses, and teaches on the basis of the word of God. 
But the word there becomes so important because actually that's what Jesus says. Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. Now is he referring to Scripture here? The answer is yes. Clearly he's referring to Scripture here because Scripture is included in God's word. But when Jesus speaks of sanctifying believers in the truth, “your word is truth,” that includes by his own designation, everything that he has said, and that's also been in this prayer. I gave them your “word,” or just earlier, just verses earlier, I gave them your “word.” It's one of the great identifying marks of the church. Where's the church? Well, it is where Christ is. 
Where's the church? Well, it is where is the word now? Now, remember in the institutional unity model. Where's the church? It is where the Bishop is. That's not the way we answer the question. Where's the church? Well, number one, where are the Christians? Where's the gospel? Where's the word? This is also why the Reformers in talking about the marks of the church identified the first two marks in this summary, often attributed to Luther: It's where the Word of the God is rightly preached and the sacraments, that is the ordinances, are rightly administered. 
The first thing is where the Word is rightly preached. And as Luther said, if the word is not rightly preached there, “I don't care what it calls itself. I don't care about its architecture. I don't care if it has a Bishop. (If it has a Bishop, it becomes less likely). I care about what's preached.” And so that's the unity of the church. That's the truth. That is the deposit at the center of the church. And here's the thing, Jesus, doesn't just say, “teach them thy word is truth.” He says, “sanctify them.” 
So here's the other revolutionary reality that jumps out at us from this prayer: Doctrine is sanctifying. God's truth is sanctifying. The Scripture is sanctifying. That's an amazing thing. We are to be holy, as God himself said: “As I am Holy, you be holy.” It's picked up by Peter in the New Testament. We're to be holy. We're to be the holy ones. We're to be Christ’s holy people. We're to be holy in a sinful world. How are we going to be holy? How are we made holy? Well, the answer according to Scripture is by the indwelling spirit and by the power of the Word, that's how we are made holy. There are disciplines of holiness, yes, but the source of holiness is truth. 
And so, by the way, this means something. It means that holiness has to begin in truth. And as truth works its way out, gospel truth, Christ’s truth, as the truth works its way out in our lives it produces holiness. This is a warning to us unless we try to find some other means of holiness. That's also been a temptation throughout the history of the church. We want some kind of instantaneous holiness. We want some kind of declaration of holiness.
By the way, there is an instantaneous declaration of holiness, which is once we are united with Christ, we are his and Christ is not united to sin. In other words, our eternal holiness is guaranteed and secure because we are united to Christ. But there is nonetheless, in this life, and certainly is revealed in Scripture, a continuous testimony to the need for us to reveal holiness, to display holiness, to be holy, to grow in holiness. And that's going to come only by the Word. Your word is truth. Sanctify them in the truth. There are no other means of holiness. 
Now this leads us to some interesting observations. So, for instance, one of the issues that puzzled Christians, and I would say they were Christians evidently who have easily puzzled, one of the issues that confused many Christians was with the encounter of world religions in the 19th century in particular.  It came even earlier in terms of exploration, but primarily the 19th century is when people were thinking about this, there was even a parliament of world religions held in Chicago in the 1890s. It was kind of like, you know, here's one of those, here's one of those, here's one of those, here's one of those, etc. But what confused many confuseable Christians, let me put it that way, what confused many Christians were the holy men of other religions. 
I was just going through life yesterday and happened to see a news story where there was someone talking about having met with the Daaii Lama. And the Dalai Lama right now is, whether you recognize it or not, at the white hot center of international geopolitics. I don't know that he really meant to be there, but he is there because the official, and I can't go into this as much as I would like as fascinating as it is, but the Communist Party in China, which of course, has cracked down on Nepal and upon the followers of the Dalia Lama and is officially atheistic. I mean absolutely officially atheistic and nonetheless claims now to be in control of the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama. So you have an atheist regime, explicitly declaring legal rights to control the reincarnation of a priesthood. 
And if you're a communist, you gotta control everything. Even the things you don't think exist evidently. It is because it's very political, as you can imagine, and all the rest. But you know, why am I raising this now? It is because Westerners have no idea what to do with the Dalai Lama. He's a very holy man, according to worldly definitions of holiness. He's an ascetic. He is deeply meditative. And he's called holy because after all he is the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, according to tradition. I'm saying all this because I can understand why the particular Buddhism that he represents would consider him holy. But let me put it this way: This is the kind of holiness that Hollywood types are looking for. He looks the part. 
And so whether you're the British Royal family, or American politicians of a certain stripe, or Hollywood celebrities, you want to go and seek an audience with the Dalai Lama. Or, to bring it closer to us: The Pope, one of his titles is “Your Holiness.” This leads to all kinds of issues for Protestants when we are in a Catholic territory. It's because people just don't know what to say to us. You know? Basically there's not much you can say. You can't say “your imminence.” You can't say  to a Bishop, “your excellency.” You can't say “your holiness.” All you can say is “you,” and that's where we are. 
But people look at the Pope and they want to just touch him. You know, if you can just touch him, holiness will come to them. He's the most holy of all–that's even his title. And so, you know, if we can just get an audience with the Pope, if we can just go to a mass where the Pope is presiding, then holiness will come. And by the way he acts as if he is holy,  of course, with indulgences and all the rest of that system, it is still very much alive; the Roman Catholic church and all the rest. You look at that, and we go, “that's a model of visible holiness.” Visible holiness, in that sense, it isn't a holiness at all, according to Scripture. And this is where these issues get so confused. And I think even in many muddled minds of evangelicals, all of this is confusing. This is why I have evangelicals who will ask me, well, how do you explain someone like the Dalai Lama, who is so holy? 
Well, let’s back up for a moment and say, we only have one definition of holiness. And that is corresponding to the one true and living God. So are we clear about that? We're not talking about asceticism. We're not talking about meditative capacity. We're not talking about sitting on top of a stone or a column in the middle of the desert. We're talking about what holiness is, which is really clarifying and simplifying for Christians. All holiness means is corresponding to the attribute of the one and only holy God. And how do we do that? Only by His truth. That's the only way we can do it. So here's the radical statement. We actually believe there are nice people apart from the gospel. There are no holy people apart from the gospel. I know that sounds radical, but here we are in John 17, and here we are in John 17:17, and as we look at this passage, there are no holy ones. Apart from God, there are creatures, human creatures made in God's image who reflect His glory. 
And some of them are very nice. I'd rather be around the nice ones. Some of them are very peaceable. I'd rather be around the peaceable ones. Some of the people in the world are very honest. I'd rather be around the honest ones. But holiness pertains to God alone and to that which He makes holy. Look at the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, even in the tabernacle, and later in the temple, instruments, vessels were to be made and what happened? They were made and after they were made, God sanctified them. He's the only one who can sanctify them. And that meant not only making holy but reserving unto Himself for His own purposes. And that's the other meaning by the way, that applies to us as the saints, those who belong to God, we're made holy by Him. And we are His instruments. We are like the vessels in the temple, in that sense, we are now His. And because He's holy, we're to be holy. 
The point here is that there is no holiness apart from the one true and living God. There is no way to the one true and living God, but through Jesus Christ, whom He has sent. And there is no means of holiness other than Scripture. So that clarifies things enormously. Where do you find holy people? Those who belong to God through Christ made holy by the word of God. That's it. That's church, by the way, that's what we're here for. We're here to be made holy.. That's kind of a tough promise because you guys don't look a whole lot holier than you did last Sunday. I look in the mirror. I don't think I look a whole lot holier than I did last Sunday, and this is God's work. 
And we have to pray that over time, we do see that. We have to pray that over time, God sees that. But we understand that we're not talking about a class of people. We don't reserve the balcony for the most holy.. Those of us who sit up there like altitude, not holiness. We don't have any special category. We don't have orders of holiness. We're stuck together. We have the body of Christ. That by the way, goes back to our church covenant. When a church covenant says we are covenanting to live together and to worship together in such a way that we encourage one another unto holiness and seek to grow holy together. And that takes time. By the way, we won’t be finished in this life. 
And all this, just in what? 17 verses of this prayer. Already just this morning, we've looked at Christ speaking of the unity of the church, and we've asked the question, how in the world does that unity exist? And what kind of unity should we look for? And we're looking for a theological unity. We're looking for a spiritual unity. And that spiritual unity means that wherever we find those who are united to Christ, there is unity with them. 
So that means every true believer in the Lord Jesus Christ is our brother or sister. But we're not members of the same congregation. Some of my best friends in the world are Presbyterian and we can preach the gospel together, but we can't do congregation together. Just on the issue of baptism. Just take one issue. And so if we were forced at the point of a gun to some kind of unity, what would it be? Believers baptism by immersion, or would it be the baptism of infants as covenant children by sprinkling? What would it be? Well, unless you're convinced together by the word of one thing, then that would be a false unity. We're just put in the same room and be “baptitarian?” That just doesn't work. By the way, I was asked by a high school student at an event this week as to whether or not the existence of denominations is a scandal to the unity of the body of Christ? 
I said, well, in some sense, yes, but the scandal is not the existence of the denominations, but the existence of the disagreement, that's the scandal. The scandal is that Presbyterians are wrong. Don't even talk about the Methodist. Seriously, yes, there is an embarrassment before the world. There's an embarrassment before the world that we haven't figured everything out to absolute unity among gospel Christians. And I'm just saying among gospel Christians, we haven't figured everything out. I often quote Sidney Mead, the American church historian, because he wrote this in a paragraph and it made more sense to me as a seminary student forty plus years ago. It's just one paragraph. And he said, look, it's basically a mathematical formula: Religious liberty plus doctrinal conviction equals denomination. That's it. If you have doctrinal religious disagreeance and you have religious Liberty, then you start churches that fit your convictions. 
Without religious Liberty, it might be very different, but since you have religious, you can do it. And I thought, well, that's it. It is a mathematical equation. It doesn't matter which one you put first. A difference in doctrine plus religious liberty equals denomination. So is that a scandal? Well, it's an embarrassment. I'll admit. A little bit of an embarrassment before the world. When I go on the television or I'm talking to the press and they say, well, what about the other? And the other? It gets complicated. I'd rather it be simple. And that simple would mean everybody's a Baptist. But it's not gonna happen apparently. So is that an embarrassment? 
Let me tell you what would be a greater embarrassment: We deny the truth in order to act like we agree. That'd be a far greater embarrassment. Or we create some kind of artificial unity that we know isn't real. That's more of an embarrassment. 
But coming to where we end this part of the prayer, and we'll have an interruption, I believe, with the resurrection Sunday coming, But as we look to this section of the prayer and where we end, the two words that are put together are two words that Christians need to increasingly and urgently to put together: Sanctify. Truth. Why? Because his word is truth. Let's pray. 
Father you've given us such glorious wealth, just in these verses and Father, I  am struck by how much we would lose in necessary knowledge for our existence as Christians if we did not have this prayer. Father, thank you for sharing it with us. And there's more yet to share. And in anticipation of that, we pray that the Holy Spirit will apply what we now know and have read and have studied to our hearts, to conform us to the image of Christ. And if you give us breath and life, we shall pray for yet more. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
March 21, 2021
We are continuing our study in John 17. As we continue our study throughout the Gospel of John, and at this point we are looking at the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus. The High Priestly prayer because that is how he is functioning. He is "priesting" for his people. When we come to the end of this passage, we are going to remind ourselves of the comprehensive office of Mediator that Christ holds.
To give us a summary, we often as Evangelicals have said, "We do not need a priest." You understand the Protestant impulse to say, "We do not need a priest." The person who gets up and presides over our service is not a priest. The reality is, we desperately need a priest. Without a priest, there is no mediation between us and the Father. Without a priest, there is no intercessor for us. 
Indeed, as the book of Hebrews tells us, we have a Great High Priest. The Great High Priest. Jesus Christ our Lord. He 'priests' for us. He is doing so even before his ascension in this prayer. In a sense, his entire incarnation is part of his priesthood. In particular, upon his ascension, when he is now seated at the right hand of God the Father, Almighty, and Jesus ever makes intercession for us, that is when Jesus Christ is functioning as the Great High Priest. 
We have had two sessions together looking at the High Priestly prayer, taking about five verses at a time. We are going to begin today right after verse 11. In order to gain the context, let us just remember the first verses. 
John tells us" When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world."
We are going to pause there for a moment. One of the most interesting lessons we learn is what we learn by being asked questions, rather than asking questions. We had a major youth event for High School students on Thursday night by virtual means. I was speaking to 1200 teenagers, and at the end of the night, we had an Ask Anything session. These young people from churches in Canada, to both coasts and in between, were sending in questions.
 It tells you something about the faithfulness of the churches where these students are being taught that their questions were so good. I was surprised that two of the questions had to do with the inter-trinitarian mystery. You had teenagers asking, "How is the Father related to the Son? How is it the Son did not know the time or the hour? Yet, he is fully God." You could see these young people trying to think through the mystery of the trinity. Jesus Christ is truly God, truly man. He has all the attributes of deity. And yet, he says that not even he knows the hour of his coming.
Then another question was directed towards the trinitarian mystery. An extremely smart question. I was able to refer to this very text because this passage really helps to explain the incarnation as a trinitarian experience. That is to say, what was the meaning of the incarnation, inside the relationship of the trinity? Obviously, we are dealing with what Calvin would call an analogical knowledge. These are words used to describe that which is beyond words, but they are true words. This is true knowledge. This is what human beings can handle.
Notice what Jesus says in verse 5, "Now Father, Glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world existed." Now remember the Prologue of the Gospel of John tells us that Jesus is the very agent of creation. Before the world was created, and before the incarnation, he knew a glory with the Father that he accepted to be diminished during the time of his incarnation. He is now looking to the cross. Looking to the empty tomb. Looking to his ascension, and praying to the Father, looking with anticipation to the restoration of the glory he had with the Father before the Creation of the world.
What does that tell us? It tells us something that Jesus experienced, and thus was the trinitarian experience, on behalf of the Son in the incarnation. He forfeited some of his glory to be among us. Not all of his glory. John tells us, "We beheld his glory, glory as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." We could not have survived His full glory.
Even as I said, Calvin reminds us of the analogical nature of language. We also need to recognize that had Jesus presented himself to us, without hiding some of his glory, we would have been destroyed. We are not able to handle the presence. How do we know that? Because God told Moses that. We don't have any other text. God told Moses, "You want to behold my glory? You cannot handle my glory. My glory would destroy you. But I will pass by as you are hidden in the cleft of a rock."
Similarly, in Philippians chapter 2, where we are told about the incarnation, we have the very same logic in slightly different language. This is often called "The Kenosis" because of one Greek word. It’s a dangerous category because there are some who are tempted to push it far beyond its biblical bounds. Nonetheless, what we read in Philippians chapter 2, "Have this mind among yourselves" this is verse 5 "which is yours in Christ Jesus. Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped? But emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being found in the likeness of men, and being found in human form. He humbled himself, by becoming obedient to the point of death. Even death on the cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on Him the name that is above every name. So that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth, and under the earth. And every tongue confesses that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Now that tells us something else. Even as, in the incarnation, Christ in obedience accepted a reduction of his glory—certainly his invisible glory—and there was more to it than that. Again, the question is, how did the Son not know the hour of his return?
Paul tells us that the glory Christ prays to the father about in John 17, the glory he had with the Father before the foundation of the world, turns out to be an even greater glory. The obedience of the Son is rewarded by the Father, even with the title "Lord." The fact that every knee shall bow and tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
One of the things we need to note is the timeline of biblical history. This is probably intuitive to you. It should be intuitive to Christians. The timeline of biblical history eternity, eternity, You cannot say eternity to eternity, but we do not have any category other than that. We do not have a category of timelessness or everlastingness. We know intellectually it is true, but we cannot really experience it. We merely declare it.
The timeline of biblical History is eternity, and then the creation of time as God created the world. He created the world as objects in movement. Objects in movement define time. You might not have thought about that, but that’s actually what defines time, until you have objects in movement. The Biblical creation account tells us exactly how it happens, and then you have time. The time only lasts as long as the objects are in movement. If the objects stop time stops. All kinds of issues and witnesses can be brought here from physics. But when you look to the other side of time, eternity. What you have in the timeline of Scripture here, you have human history interrupted by the incarnation, which changes all time going forward.
Everything forward is incarnational time. Messiah time. That's why for instance, in accordance with the Christian understanding of time, you have the dates "BC" and "AD." It is not before Christ and after Chris. It is before Christ, yes, that's BC, but Anno Domini, or "The year of our Lord." That is where the letters 'AD' come from. It is also interesting if you follow this, and you know how you are supposed to do it—if its BC, say 646 BC, then you put 646 B period, C period, capital b, capital c. If it is AD, the AD comes before the year. 
So, if you look at classical history, written until the recent development, classical history was written such that this empire lasted from 646 BC to AD 45. The year of our Lord, 45. The AD comes before the year because Anno Domini. It announced, this is the year of our Lord. History split in two. Jesus is here, praying this prayer at the end of his incarnation, but the age is not coming to an end. That is what's really important. There is no incarnational age that comes to an end. The incarnation comes to an end on earth, but remember, Christ is incarnate now
He is incarnate in his resurrected body. Here is Paul, 1 Corinthians 15, He has a resurrection body, he is the first fruits of those who will follow in him. We too will have a resurrection body in heaven. We will not have a disembodied experience, but a resurrection body.
A little footnote here for political correctness, those who are trying to secularize BC and AD. It is just your typical kind of nonsense. I was in a public setting where I was able to puncture holes in it. I'll admit, it was probably an unhealthy delight. They say, "No you cannot say BC and AD. You cannot have secular people or people in the public schools going 'AD 45'. Then you have these little kids say, 'in the year of our lord' and you have the union of church and state. That's theocracy breaking out in American Schools."
They adopted the new language of BCE and CE. You cannot talk about Christ, so CE is our common era. Of course, why would we have this common era before the common era? Well, we won't talk about that because that would take us right back to AD. You have BCE meaning before the common era.
I was in a context, on a secular university campus, where I was chastised because I refused to go with BCE and CE. Know the current historical lingo has cut and removed the Christian references. I said, "Well how in the world did you do that?" "Well we took BC, and made it BCE. We took AD and made it CE." I said, "Yes, but how did you come up with the numbers? What has been split in two? I mean, everything goes down from here, and everything goes up from there. You think you can just rename what you're calling it as if someone just tripped over a rock in Spain and said, 'Let's just start counting all over again'?" No, sorry. It’s the centrality of the incarnation of the Lord, Jesus Christ.
Beginning in verse 6, "I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you, for I have given them the words you gave me. They have received them, and have come to know in truth that I came from you and they have believed that you sent me. I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those whom you have given me. For they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine. I am glorified in them and I am no longer in the world, but you are in the world. And I am coming to you holy Father. Keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one. Even as we are one."
So, in the intimacy of the relationship between the Father and the Son, even as Jesus is praying, he says that he has accomplished what the Father sent him to do. He manifested and made real, visible, and he announced the Father's name to the people. Then the giving. This is what we spent our time last week on. It's this giving, not just of salvation to sinners, not just giving the world the Savior. It's this incomprehensible, except, comprehensible because it's made simple to us. We do not understand everything about it because it is one of the greatest mysteries of the Christian life.
The Father, giving the redeemed to the Son, as gifts. We have the Son, effectively giving the redeemed back to the Father, as gifts. The Son and the Father enjoying the redeemed as a gift.
So even as we think about the gift that has been given to us, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whosoever believes in Him, might not perish but have everlasting life." He has given us the gift of everlasting life. In reality, the redeemed, known before the foundation of the world, given by the Father to the Son before the world was created. There is the gift. The gift from the Father to the Son. Christ is, in effect, sharing the gift with the Father.
He goes on and says again, they are in me, they are in you. You gave them to me out of the world. Remember, that comes right after verse 5. "And now Father, glorify me in your presence, with the glory I had with you before the world existed." But not only is history split in two, humanity is split in two. It's so clear in this text. Between those who are in Christ, those who are his because they were given to him by the Father. You have history divided. You have humanity divided. This division of humanity is such that, as we have seen testified in John 6, the ones who belong to the Son can never be taken from him because they were given to the Son by the Father. That is really important! 
How is it that we came to be in Christ? The answer is, "Because the Father gave us to the Son." All the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me, I will by no means cast out. Of all that the Father gives me, the Son will lose none of them. That's very good news. Jesus is praying for some of his own here? No, he is praying for all of his own.
The astounding thing is the division in humanity that Jesus mentioned in verse 9. "I am praying for them," that is his own, who are in him, "I am not praying for the World, but for those you have given me, for they are yours." That is, as we saw last week, one of the most striking verses in all of Scripture. The distinction between those who are in and those who are in the world so much so, and here's what's so important for us to see: Christ is not a priest to the world, he's a priest to the church.
That is an astounding change as we think about biblical theology, because as we begin in the book of Genesis, God is Lord. Over the entire universe. He made everything, that is, he reigns over everything. Jesus reigns with him as the logos of the universe over the entire world. But he is priest mediator intercessor for his own. That clarity is a necessary clarity. The church is always gravely endangered when it loses the understanding of the distinction between the church and the world. That understanding of the church and the world that distinction can be falsely defined as something special about us. Once we do that, then we understand why the specialness of the distinction between the church and the world dissipates. Because if it's something special about us, all we have to do is spend some time looking in the mirror and experiencing life together to recognize we're not as special as we thought we were.
So the distinction between the church and the world, if dependent on the observation of us any given day, might be quite frustrating. But the point is that the distinction between the church and the world is Christ and those who are in Christ. That's the big distinction. Similarly, as you're thinking about the great distinction here is between those who are in Christ and those who are just in the world. It's the same thing when we talk about the fatherhood of God. This is a hard thing to talk about, when people talk about the fatherhood of God. So let's just talk about the, the first person of the Trinity for a moment, the fatherhood, it of God, and, or does God love the world? Is it fair to say, God loves the world? And, and if so, how does God love the world?
This is a footnote here, but it might be helpful just to kind of remind us that there are several aspects of God's love for his creature. So first of all, if God made it, he loves it in some sense, if he didn't love it, he wouldn't have made it. Every day of creation, he declares it's good. Of course, when he gets to human beings, made in his image, it's very good. Nonetheless, everything that he makes by the fact that he made it, it is the recipient of his love in some dimension. The first dimension we, which is common to all creation, is benevolence. So, when we talk about benevolence, that's a word for love. Benevolence means as the Bible says, he makes it rain on the, just, and the unjust.
God's benevolence towards all humanity means that we enjoy the sun and the rain. We enjoy the gift of life. Even unbelievers love their children. There are many good gifts that are given to us: what we eat and what we enjoy; the air we breathe; this cosmically anthropically designed planet in which life is habitable. God's benevolence is to all, to save time, even though there are different dimensions will reduce it to two elements of benevolence.  
Second is his mercy, his, his, his redeeming mercy is towards those who are in Christ. That's a different kind of love. The Baptist faith and message, which is our official confession of faith, says it this way— I think this is actually just incredibly right— It says, God is fatherly to all creation, but he is Father to those who are in his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, that's right. He's fatherly to all, but he's Father to those who are in Christ.
Well, you see that reflected in Jesus' prayer. But if I were a believer reading this, I would be more offended by this verse than anything else in the gospel of John. This to me, just to a secular reader would be the most shocking text because here we are told Jesus himself—just think of what the modern cultural conception of Jesus is a moral teacher, a remarkable example of righteousness, certainly he must be an exemplar non-discrimination and inclusivity. Well, actually reading the gospels you find many texts in which that's not true. Here you find that as he's facing the cross, Jesus doesn't pray for the world. That requires the Bible's world picture to be reminded to us again, that world picture.
When we speak of, Jesus, loving the world, what you see as the text to John begins, which is astounding. It's the only gospel who begins here begins in creation. All things are made by him and without him was not thing made that was made. He's the instrument of creation, but his love is for those the Father gave him before the creation of the world. For them, he now prays.
By the way, just another little footnote. There are certain parallel arguments that you find in scripture, the more you study. Some of those parallel arguments are between Old Testament and New Testament texts. You realize, this is a continuation and argument. This is the fulfillment of a promise. But inside the New Testament, there are also some lines of argument in which you all of a sudden recognize, "Well, here's this, and it's picked up over here."
One example is you’re reading the gospel of Matthew, Then you have two people studying different texts. Let's say one of them is reading Matthew, one of them is reading the book of Hebrews. Then all of a sudden you recognize, "Now, wait, just a minute. There's some incredible parallels here!" Another set of parallels, that is very easy to see, is between the gospel of John and Paul's letter to the Ephesians. 
So, throughout church history, sometimes the gospel of John has been referred to as the Ephesian gospel. Now that doesn't mean it was written to the Ephesians. What it means is that the similar laser focus on the sovereignty of God comes in lines of argument that are just incredibly parallel between John and Ephesians. As you look at John 17, we are going to look even this morning at Ephesians 1, in order to understand a bit more of what it means for the church to be in Christ. Let's turn right now to Ephesians chapter 1.
Now, remember we're doing this because we want to understand the church given to Christ. The church being described as "in him." Those who are mine. You see this in a verse like we read in verse 10, "All mine are yours and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them." But the bigger issue is that we are in Christ because the Father gave us to the Son, look at Ephesians 1. Begin reading in verse three:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
Now, this is not a prayer. This is a didactic passage. This is a passage from the apostle Paul who is writing to the Ephesians. Certainly you must sense the incredible weight of, of commonality here between John 17 and Ephesians 1. As a matter of fact, Ephesians 1 helps us to understand how it is that we came to be given to Christ before the foundation of the world. Which is also the timeline of Ephesians 1. Before the foundation of the world. We were predestined to see him. Now, Ephesians 1 is the great theater of the display of one of the biblical doctrines. Most Evangelicals failed to understand. Failing to understand the grand flow of biblical history and the heart of biblical theology is largely missing. They remain shallow, and this is the doctrine of union with Christ.
Once again, this is a characteristic emphasis of Reformed Christianity because it is Reformed Christianity that seeks above all others to understand the very text we're –reading John 17 in Ephesians 1--- how is it that these things reflect God's will and purpose, and heart. The answer is because what we are given in Ephesians chapter 1 is the reality that to be redeemed, to belong to Christ, is to be united to him in such a way we can never be severed from him. Which is what we had Jesus say consistently in the gospel of John. And the question becomes, how did that happen? In other words, when were we united with Christ?
Well, the apostle will help us to understand, and the New Testament will display that we were united with Christ, by faith- and justified by faith—when we came in the operations of our heart by the ministry, the holy spirit convicting us of sin. We came to be made alive. We responded to the gospel.  We believed. We trusted. We rested in Christ and thus, we became his. Wait, just a minute, we became his, but we were his specifically, You know, it's, it's not like if you could resist read John 17 and let's say,
"Oh, John's all you have, John, Seventeen's all you have." And we hear the Son praying to the Father about those you've given me and making the distinction between those and, and the world.
Well, I guess it's possible. You might say, "Okay, all right. Maybe Jesus came. So those the Father gave him were those who just decided to believe in him." Well, here's the truth. No one is his, who does not believe in him. That is absolutely true, but Ephesians makes very clear speaking of not only believers in toto, but of every believer, that we were predestined. That's a hard doctrine, but there it is. By the way, it's no harder than what you see in John 17.
The older I come to be, and the more I teach theology, the more I think that the great scandal of Christianity—it comes to the exclusivity, the gospel and, and the, the purity, the church, and all kinds of things, and it's very clear in Israel, too. The great scandal is us and them. You know, we're living in an age in which we're told, "It's just wrong to say us and them." So we 'us' will tell 'them' it's wrong to say us and them. It's inevitable, by the way.  Even in the most liberal college campuses where you say you don't have us and them, You now have all kinds of identity politics, which is US with a capital, set of letters and THEM with a capital set of letters.
But the interesting thing is this comes up again. And what you see in Ephesians is this symphonic explanation of the fact that we are united to Christ as believers. This union with Christ means we are in him. So as I look at the passage, just follow with me very quickly, Beginning with verse four, it tells us, even as he chose us in him, that's in Christ. So, we were chosen by the Father in Christ. Then just follow him. It says before him in love, he predestined us according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the redeemed. Then verse seven, "In him, we have redemption through his blood," and we continue on down.
This is the purpose which you set forth in Christ. Verse 11, "In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined, according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the council of his will." Verse 13, "In him, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation believed in him were sealed." There, it is, "Sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantor, guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory."
There is no escape from the logic here. There is no escape from the logic of John 17. There's no escape from the logic of Ephesians 1. When you put John 17 and Ephesians 1 together, you have a comprehensive and glorious understanding of how it came to pass. The Father before the creation of the, a world predestined, chosen, gifted, gave –all these verbs are there. All these words are there. The redeem to the So. Those he's given to the Son can never be taken from him.
That becomes crucial as we continue on. So, we're back now, in John 17. We concluded with verse 11, "And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled."
So what we have here is a second acknowledgement, as we had in John chapter 6, that of those, the Father has given to the Son, Judas is not one. That Judas is not amongst those who was given before the foundation of the world to Jesus Christ. As a gift from the Father to the Son to be then presented by the Son of the Father and the reciprocity of inter Trinitarian love, no. Judas wasn't there. Judas just appeared to be there. Jesus knew this. He says this in John chapter 6, because some of the larger group of disciples no longer followed him. Jesus turned to the disciples and said,  "Do you also want to go away?" You'll recall in, in John chapter 6, and Peter says," Lord, to whom will we go? You have the words of, of eternal life, and besides that, we've come to know that you are Christ, the holy one of God."
But we were told then that Jesus knew, in himself,  the thoughts of all men. He knew in himself that Judas would betray him. So again, that was, that was told to us. And then in John chapter 13, there is a reference, as is in the background here, to Psalm 41 9. In Psalm 41:9, David speaks of the one who has betrayed him. The one who was so close to him, but has betrayed him. That's the text that is in the background of the statement about Judas in John chapter 13. It's in the background here. So, you have Psalm 41, John 6, John 13 in the background to this statement.
It's just a reminder to us that no one, that as Jesus and the Father, are not surprised by Judas. Judas is not an interruption in plan. Judas is not a disappointment in the sense that it didn't turn out like the Father and the Son had intended with Judas. No, it's a part of the divinely ordained plan of salvation, but Jesus is emphatically not praying for him. That's an astounding thing.
You think about doors of judgment, you know, an eternal door of judgment closing. Just imagine this: Jesus Christ does not pray for you. Jesus speaks of his flock, recognizing his voice and of himself as the good shepherd tending his flock. To be outside that flock is horror. To be outside that door is horror. To be un-prayed for by Jesus is the eternal slamming of a door. You see that right here in John 17.
"While I was with them," Jesus said in verse 12, "I kept them in your name." That's what's so sweet. Jesus having been given the people, those who would be in him, redeemed by the Father, Jesus kept them which is really sweet. He kept us. Imagine all the time the disciples were with him. Even as Jesus was sleeping, he was keeping them. He keeps us, though we can't keep ourselves. All we like sheep have gone astray. We can't keep ourselves in any sense, internally or externally. But Jesus says, while he was here, he kept us. He didn't lose any.
"I kept them in your name, which you have given me that they may be one, even as we are one, I have guarded them and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction that the scripture might be fulfilled." We know who he was. And he wasn't really lost because he was never a part of us in the beginning. But he was among us. In verse 13, Jesus says, "But now I am coming to you and these things I speak in the world that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves."
So once again, there's something astounding here that jumps out at us. Of course, it's following the flow of the prayer. We've been guarded by Christ. Not one has been lost, but again, Jesus says, as he said verses earlier, "But now I am coming to you." S0o he's praying about the church when he is absent as the incarnate Lord on earth. This is the purpose of the prayer. This is the main purpose of the prayer. Jesus' concern for us without him incarnate on earth. When he was here, he guarded us. He kept us. He's praying for us now. But notice what he prays in verse 13. "But now I am coming to you." He's already said that. And he repeats it. "And these things that I speak in the world that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves."
This is something we really need to know. The joy that Jesus knows as the Son with the Father is the joy in its own dimensionality that Jesus wants us to have. He wants us to share in that joy. However, you define the love of God toward the objects of his love—the Son is the object of his love—and we are in the Son or the objects of his love. Christ says, "When I am absent from them, I want them to know jo." That's really good news.
But the joy has a specific shape. It has a specific substance. It's not merely a mood. Look at what he says. It's the most amazing testimony to the Word of God. "But now I'm coming to you and these things that I speak about in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word and the world has hated them because they are not of this world. And the world has hated them because they are not of this world just as I am not of this world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world, sanctify them in the truth. Your word is the truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world and for their sake, I consecrate myself that they also may be sanctified in truth."
I think just about everyone thinking about John 17 knows of Jesus' prayer for the unity of the church. "May they be one as we are one." Even the larger ecumenical movement has claimed this, that we may all be one, let's just have one church. Let's just have a visible unity.
Here's the problem revealed in church history. Church history tells us about the problems. Here's one of the problems, every effort to try to come up with the lowest common denominator Christianity and say, "There is the unity of the church." It fails because we need to remember that the unity of the church is not institutional. That's a very important new Testament teaching. It's a very important understanding for us. I mean that we are, we are Baptist. If anybody on planet earth understands that the unity of the church is real, but not institutional it's Baptist.
We believe that unity of the church is seen, first of all, right here in the unity of this local church. This is a church where we're unified in our faith, in our confession, in our service, in our ministry, in our worship, in our covenant. This is why when we have a members meeting, we read the covenant so there's unity. We belong to one Lord, one faith, one baptism. We know there are other faithful Christians outside of Third Avenue Baptist church, just to remind ourselves of that. They're wonderful gospel Christians outside of third avenue, Baptist church, right down the street from us. And, thanks be to God.
We believe that there are Christians in churches that are labeled differently. The key issue for us is not the name of the church, but whether or not the Bible is preached as the word of God. That the gospel is preached in its clarity and purity producing a gospel people. But there's a reason why, and part of this is in the mystery of God's on, omniscience. There's a reason why we're not all the Christians in Louisville. We aren't meeting in one room this morning. That reason is not COVID by the way. There is a theological reason why we're not meeting. It is because we have congregations by conviction that are established and we can know one another and we can experience unity together. This is so much more than the world's idea of unity. They say put everyone in Madison Square Gardens and look at all the people you see. But of course, what you're looking at is a multitude. There is actually no unity, just proximity.
Ecclesiology is based upon unity in Christ, but there's more to it than that. As you look at this, you recognize that the unity is theological and the unity is in the scriptures! "I have given them your word". He said that earlier, but now the context is very tight. "I've given them your word and the world has hated them because they're not of the world just as I am out of the world." So, at least a part of having the word means that the world hates us. Well, that's something helpful to know.
"I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one." Very good. Very good. This helps us. In other words, one of the questions in the flow of biblical history is why are we here right now? Why is there time between the Ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ and his coming? What is the purpose of all this time? We're waiting, crying out loud. Jesus answered it. When in the book of Acts, he says, "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the world." He is Christ, showing his glory in the world, but in the world, he shows his glory is in the church and through the preaching of the gospel. This is, this is the gospel preaching age. There's no other reason for this age. There is no other act of salvation history that remains to take place before the coming of Christ which will consummate all things. We're not waiting for Christ to do anything. When he said it is finish, it is finished.
No, we have a job to do and we'll do it until Jesus comes. But while we're in the world, in the dangers of the world, Jesus prays for the unity of his church. The unity is in truth. This is one the issues of singular importance for us to understand. True Christian unity is unity is always in truth. It's never a unity at the expense of truth. It's never trying to find a lowest common denominator. It's always leaning into the truth together. Now this again, doesn't mean that we believe we're the only Christians. Thanks be to God. It does mean that where there is no obedience to scripture, there is no true Christianity. As we shall see, when we gather together again in verse 17, Jesus actually says, "Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth."
Now we find out that it's by the preaching of the word of God. Now, when we say here, "Your word." We'll speak very clearly Jesus means your revelation. So, it means the entirety of revelation included in that is the word of the gospel. Included in that is the Old Testament included in that is all that God has spoken. Most importantly, what is accessible to us and given to us as the Holy Scripture. So that is what we're looking at here. "Your word is truth." By the word that we're sanctified. Sanctify them. Make the church, those you've given me, before the foundation of the world, wholly in your truth.
That's where we're going to have to end today, but it does point out something else. Why do we study the scripture? Why do Christ's people study the scripture? Why are we drawn to come back to the scripture again? And again and again? Because we love the Bible? Yes. Because God speaks, and how dare we not want to hear what he says? Yes, of course.
But you also have to understand that this is Christ's priestly ministry to his own, through the preaching of the word, to make his people holy. You can put it another way. There is no holiness apart from the word of God. In the knowledge of the word, the constraining power of the word, the indwelling presence, the Holy Spirit confirming the word and applying the word without, without the word of God, there's no holiness.
We need all the holiness we can get, which means we need all the Bible we can get. Those who belong to Christ are those who gather together for the preaching and teaching of the word of God, whose instincts are to turn to God's word. Jesus will say much more in the context of this unprecedented prayer to follow. It has been such a privilege today just to look, not only to this text, but to Ephesians 1 and come to understand the common witness of scripture. We come to the end and we pray with the words of Jesus. "Father sanctify us in the truth for your word is truth." Let's pray, Father, thank you for everything you've given to us. Every syllable of this text and Father, we pray that even now you'll be sanctifying your people. These people, we who are studying your word here at this church. We pray that you will sanctify us and sanctify your entire church in the truth. Your word is, truth to the everlasting glory of your name in Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.

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Third Avenue Baptist Church
Sunday School — The Gospel of John Series
March 14, 2021
We're continuing our study in the High Priestly Prayer. And we began with the first five verses when we were together last week. We've seen the Farewell Discourse, as Jesus speaks to his disciples, come to an end. And now we're reaching what, in many ways as the climax of the gospel of John, and what I want us to see is that it's like the final movement of a symphony. It begins to bring in all the previous movements, all the previous musical strains, all the previous theological affirmations in such a way that there's a richness to this,  and a beauty to this that is such that this text is singular in the entire canon of scripture. In the entire New Testament, there's nothing like this. There is no lengthy prayer between the Son and the Father in which we see the intimacy, but what we also share in the exchange of  both love and truth, that gives us so much of our knowledge of the Christian faith. So as we begin, let's ask the Lord's blessing. 
Father, we do pray that you would open our eyes and open our hearts, that we would receive everything you would have for us from just a few verses today in the high priestly prayer of Jesus. And Father, perhaps never having articulated this gratitude in such words, Father, we thank you that you and your Son have shared the intimacy of this prayer with us. Father, thank you for allowing us to hear it, that we may learn from it and never learn all of it. And we pray all of this in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, amen.
That latter part of my prayer was dependent upon the fact that we are dealing here with a God who's infinite in his perfections as the Father and of the Son. And so there's a sense in which we will never understand this prayer in the way that Jesus and the father understand it, and it's in its infinite truth. But on the other hand, God condescends to us in scripture, and He knows what we need. As Calvin said, it is as if in Scripture, a parent–in this case, God, our  heavenly parent–leans down to us softly and speaks kindly, lest we be destroyed. Even in this text, God is bending over graciously, and he's speaking kindly in order that we can understand what He wants us to see here. When we looked at the first verses of the high priestly prayer, we saw this incredible introduction to the inner reality of the Trinity.
Let's just remind ourselves of the words we studied last and verse one, “when Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.” So here in the opening to this prayer, Jesus speaks about having been with the Father before the world existed and sharing a glory. And this is what’s so important for us to recognize–it was a glory that to some degree He as left, as he obeyed the will of the Father in the incarnation. Paul will speak of this in Philippians 2, where we come to understand that Christ emptied himself–in this sense, that doesn't mean empting himself of deity, but He did empty himself of some glory in order to assume human flesh. 
This was indeed a gift of incredible divine love, unspeakable divine love. He speaks of the glory that he had with you with the father before the world existed, and then he spoke with this reciprocity of glory. “I go glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.” Then he prays to the Father, “Now glorify me with that glory, which we shared before the creation of the world.” This resets all of history. It's very interesting, and this tells you a great deal about human beings. Even as Christians think of history, we look at Before Christ and After Christ. Of course there's some sense we look at before creation and after creation, but the problem is we know nothing of before creation, and of course, God is eternal, so the timeline is of his own construction. It's not something in which he himself is trapped, but we can't get out of the conception of time, so we'll just allow ourselves to imagine what eternity must be. Not an endless time, but in the realm beyond time in the before and the after. Our permission for doing that is Jesus himself. He speaks of this and then dates it, saying “before the world was created.”  But then you look at where we go from here.
In verse six, Christ says, “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours, they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know everything that you have given me is from you, for I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. I am praying for them. I'm not praying for the world, but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.” In so many ways, it's not that all of a sudden we found a hidden key for understanding the gospel of John, which is the hidden key for understanding the New Testament, which is the key for understanding the entirety of scripture. It's not that, but it almost feels like that, because what we have here are statements made in the intimacy of the relationship between the Father and the Son. We are overhearing this, and here at the bottom line, nowhere else in scripture do we know these truths in this clarity. This is not contrary to what we know from other passages of scripture. It's not contrary to what we know from the gospel of John. As a matter of fact, it's like an explosion of truth, amplifying and illuminating what we've already known for the gospel of John, as we shall see about the Son manifesting the Father. But we do have declarative statements here, and it's repetitive. These statements are not isolated. The fact that there are those given by the Father to the Son–again, that's not new in the gospel of John, but it takes on a completely new significance, so much so that Jesus says “I'm not praying for the world. I'm praying for the one you gave me.” Now that's a radical statement. That's a statement that the average Christian, I think, hasn't ever thought about. “Well, in what sense does Jesus pray? Well, he prays for all the world.” And, this incredible night, which is now the hour that has come, and his crucifixion is nigh, Jesus doesn't pray for everybody in the world? He said he prays for those who the Father has given him? 
Well, let's look at the words carefully. Verse six, “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world.” Before we get the, “to whom,” let's just think about what he said he did. He said he has manifested the father. Now, in one sense, that's a short, wonderful, almost comprehensive definition of the incarnation. What was the incarnation? It was the Son manifesting the Father. But what does it mean to manifest? You know, we use that word. We hear that word. There was a Communist Manifesto. American history–Manifest Destiny. What is manifest? What's a manifestation? Well, what Jesus is saying here is that he has shown us the Father. It's really “to show.” He has shown us the Father, he’s made the Father tangible. “You want to see God, look to me.” But you think about this for a moment, and you recognize, “well, were there manifestations of God prior to the incarnation of Christ?” And the answer is yes, but they were all foreshadowings of what would would come in Jesus. Everything that happened before, from Moses being hidden in the cleft of the rock, to Israel hearing the voice of God speaking, from Moses himself hearing the voice of God speaking from the Bush that was burning, yet not consumed. God spoke through the prophets, and God spoke “through many in various ways,” as the writer of the book of Hebrew says in the introduction to that work, “But in these last days, he has spoken to us in his Son.” This is the consummate manifestation. This is not a manifestation, This is the manifestation. This is the absolute culmination. But this is something that John has helped us to understand all throughout his gospel. There are three passages in particular to which I want to look. We'll look backwards here for just a moment. Jesus says, “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world.” Look back to John chapter one, back to the prologue itself. The very first chapte–John 1:18.
John tells us in verse 1:18, “no one has ever seen God. The only God, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known.” So there's the manifestation in the very prologue, explaining the incarnation. As John is introducing us to Jesus and is telling us who he is, the incarnate Logos through whom the world was created, we are told that no one has seen the Father. No one has seen God in this sense, but here it is the Son, it's the Logos who makes him known. Now if you think of the most incredible development in all human history, it would have to be for God to be made known and to be shown.
This is not just a voice. This is not just a word. This is not just a scripture. This is not just a prophet. This is not just a priest. This is not just a miracle. This is not just a burning bush that is not consumed. This is the incarnate Son. This is God's own son who manifests–He shows the father. And one of the things we see in the logic of the gospel of John is that no one can manifest the Father But the son. That turns out to be the key to New Testament theology. There is no manifestation of the Father without the Son. in the inter- trinitarian life of the Father, of the Son, and the Holy Spirit, it is the Father's good will that he be manifested by the Son. Jesus will, in his own comments, make this over and over again. Why has he come? He's come to show us the Father. Does this mean we look to Jesus, we're seeing the father? Well, in, in essence, yes. In other words, you're seeing God. He has made the Father known. And that's just in the prologue, reminding us that many other refrains of the prologue come up here in John chapter 17 in high priestly, prayer, including the issue of truth, as we shall see in just a moment.
That’s John 1:18, let’s look at John 12:45. Beginning, verse 44, we read “and Jesus cried out and said, ‘whoever believes in me believes not in me, but in him who sent me.’” So that's a helpful way to introduce this issue. And in verse 45, “‘and whoever sees me sees him who sent me. I've come into the world as light so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.’” The key there is verse 45, “whoever sees me, sees him who sent me.” So Jesus says this in chapter 12, it was said of him in chapter one. There have been other verses such as in chapter eight, where there are similar kinds of revelations concerning Christ and how he manifests the Father. No one can see the Father, but we can see the Son. No one can show the Father other than the Son, as the Son can, and the Son does, and the Son has. But then look at chapter 14, beginning in verse nine.
Now, when we were just a few weeks ago in John chapter 14, we looked at this passage, but now looking backwards, it takes on an entirely new significance. “Philip said to him, ‘Lord, show us the father, and it is enough for us.’” Verse nine, “Jesus said to him, ‘have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father? And the Father is in me, the words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me, that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.’” The point here is that this far into the ministry of Jesus–and this is rather astounding–it's another indication by the way of the truthfulness of the gospels.  
CS Lewis, responding to the theological liberalism and high supernaturalism of the early 20th century was responding in the British intellectual life to the fact that there were so many people who were borrowing German higher criticism to come back and say, “well, you know, the new Testament is mythological. The gospels are written as legends.” Lewis, who was a specialist, of course, in legends, he came back and said, “I spent my entire life studying legend. This isn't legend. Legend tells you things about people to pull out a completely orbed, developed character.” And he points out that that's not what the gospels do. The gospels do amazing things. One of the things that CS Lewis noted is that–and again, just thinking of him as a scholar of legend and myth–that’s what he did, especially ancient, medieval English literature.  He says, “I know legends. In a legend, you would not have Jesus write in the sand, for instance, in the story of the women caught in adultery. You wouldn't have Jesus with his finger right in the sand and leave it there. If it's legend, it's going to tell you what he wrote in the sand.” This is instead like a frustrating eyewitness account if you're looking at it for legend, because it's frustrating in the sense of what we're not told. We're not told a lot about Jesus. It's the most selective presentation of Jesus. 
But Lewis said, “There’s another fact that if you are looking at legend, legend doesn't include corrections. It does include someone in the inner circle being corrected legend. Instead shows this constant growth and awareness, kind of agnostic development.” And here you have of all things in the very passage that we're looking at here, Philip at this point says, “just show us the father,” which is the most astounding thing. Now let's not be haughty, we might not even have been as sharp as Philip. But the point is, this is one of the proofs of the fact that we are actually tracking here in the life and ministry of Jesus, so, honestly, as Lewis said, “I know legend, this isn't legend.” So honestly, that we have Philip revealed this late in the gospel of John to have missed the whole point of the incarnation. Jesus, by the way, doesn't kick him out. But he does speak clearly, “Philip, how can you, how can you say to me, ‘show me the Father?’ If you see me, you see the Father.”
So if you take those passages together from chapter 1, chapter 12 and chapter 14, you come to understand what Jesus has already said to us, but now he's speaking to the Father. He has said to us–and John has helped us to understand by speaking to us–that the Son has shown the Father, that to see the Son is to see the Father. Now, just remember that this is so astounding that we can't let this pass without reflecting on the fact that if you look through the Old Testament, Israel's singularity as God's covenant purpose was repeatedly defined as the fact that they heard God, but did not see him. The great contrast between the reality of the one true and living God and the idols of all the people around Israel is that the idols are mute. The idols don't speak. That's the sign of their futility. But God speaks in a passage like Deuteronomy 30.  Israel will be reminded of the time when they stood with their children there at the foot of the mountain, and they heard God's voice speak. And then Moses asked the question, “has any other people heard the voice of the Lord and survived?” Fascinating question. But God's grace and mercy to Israel was to allow Israel to hear him, but not to see him. 
Even when you think of Moses asking to see God–and of course, Moses was hidden in the cleft of the rock, and God simply passed by, His spirit passed by. That's quite different than the incarnation. The incarnation is flesh and blood. The incarnation is baby in Bethlehem. The incarnation is boy in Nazareth. The incarnation is Jesus in Galilee, Jesus in Juda, Jesus in Jerusalem–this is incarnation. This is different. This is God showing himself, which is the one thing that in this sense, God did not and would not do except by Jesus. The arrogance of people to say, “God, if you will just show yourself to us.” And it's the arrogance in one sense, and the embarrassing nature of Philip’s question, but how many people around us are saying, “I’d believe in God, if I could just see him?”  How many people are actually operating out of the intellectual conceit? “You know, if God's real, then he would show himself to me. And I would believe Philip, ‘it will be enough for us. Lord, if you show us the Father.’”  “If I show you the Father? To see me is to see the Father.” But going back to John 17, the high priestly prayer is just an amazing little phrase in which Jesus says, “Mission accomplished. I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world.” Now that's something else.
When we speak of the gospel, and we speak of the exclusivity of the gospel, it's an absolutely crucial, biblical New Testament teaching. There's only one way to the Father, and that's by the Son. Only one way by the Son, and that is by the knowledge of him. We would define that as saving faith, but there's also only one people redeemed. Now this is humbling. Maybe for us, it's a bit embarrassing, but it's not just that there's one savior. It's just that there's one church. There's one people. That becomes absolutely crucial in the I priestly prayer–so crucial that what shocks us is not that the text says that Jesus will speak of the church “saying these are mine,” but he makes the distinction himself. “If you're not one of these, you're not mine.” It's hard heard to talk after that. Actually, if all of human history is divided by the incarnation, then all of humanity is actually most fundamentally divided by those who belong to Christ And those who do not. 
So the exclusivity of the gospel necessarily comes with the exclusivity of ecclesia. So when you see the ancient principle, “Outside the church, there's no salvation,” well, that's absolutely true, but outside the church, there's no Jesus. I don't think a lot of American evangelicals either know this or want to know this, and that's a shame. That's a weakness. It's an evasiveness on the part of many, because you say, “Well, what about all of humanity? Does God love all of humanity?” Well, in some sense he does, yes. God's benevolence is to all, he causes it to rain on the just and the unjust, and to all to whom he's given the gift of life, there is love that he shows even allowing that gift and in giving the good things of life and the habitation of planet earth, and even the common grace goods of family and marriage, and even the opportunity to work and to be a part of taking dominion. 
The one who is not in Christ still receives God's benevolence, but God's redemptive love is demonstrated only to those who are Christ’s. And that's tough. So tough that throughout the recent centuries, groups of historic Christianity have been unable to hold it. Epecially in the 19th 20th centuries with the routine discovery of others–that is those who are other than us who believe differently than we do–a bit of intellectual hesitation came among some Christians to say, “well, how can we say, we're the only people of God? Look at these other people. They have their gods. Surely God must love them too. There must be some sense in which they're included in what the Roman Catholic church would call the ‘economy of salvation.’ Surely they must be included in some way.” And by the way, those, those questions are directly answered in scripture–directly answered. It's not so much that there's only one way. There is only one way, but it is that there is a way. From the Bible's perspective, you don't begin with all these groups who are at different points in a continuum on the race to get to salvation, it's that there is only actually one, one way of salvation. This is the oneness of the incarnation, the oneness of God saving purpose, the oneness of God's will, and there is nothing salvific outside  of that will, period, but there has been a compromise, a loss, a theological abdication. In the Protestant world, the Protestant liberalism came along and said, “well, we need to…” and by the way, this will show you how, if you're going to create a theology anything other than biblical, you're gonna make it in your own image. And, The people who are shaping that theology of Protestant liberalism were primarily Europeans and north Americans who said, “It’s a matter of greater and lesser lights.”
Well, of course, they're not going to say Christianity is the lesser light, Christianity is the greater light. “And all these people that we meet with all their belief systems, they still have some light.  There may be salvation in that light, but it's not so likely as what will happen in Christianity.” And of course, this is the same time the history of religion school is developing in, in the German universities. It just says, “we're going to look at religion as a phenomena, phenomenology. We're going to say all religion is a thing. It's a human thing, different humans do religion differently. We're going tolook at it and say, ‘well, look at the commonalities.’” 
Here's the problem: the closer you look, the fewer commonalities you find, and yet does God love all? well, yes. In some sense, benevolent, yes.  But his redemptive love, his mercy, his agape is towards those who are in Christ.  But how did we end up in Christ? That’s the other thing, how there's a bluntness and a concision to the way the gospel is defined right here in the high priesty prayer. And again, Jesus and the Father don't have to explain things to one another. Jesus is saying to the father, “Hey, explain this gospel to me once again.” Instead, there's merely affirmation,  and what what's called summative affirmation, that is to say is just a summary. This is just Jesus summarizing in his prayer to the Father affirmations that we desperately need to know. “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world.” 
So how do we become Christ’s? This is of course the doctrine of election. You can see that immediately. It is that the Father has given a people to the Son. And when did this happen? Well it happened before the incarnation. As a matter of fact, given the timeline of what Jesus is saying here, it happened before the creation of the world. Before the creation of the world, God had already given. It's not just determined. It's not just what you rightly call election. God had given to the Son people who did not yet exist, a people who did not yet exist and, and notice exactly how Jesus speaks here in verse six, “I manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world.” Well, this is before the world exists. So there's already an “in the world and an out of the world” before there is a world. That is so helpful, and it reminds us of the fact that God's sovereign purpose in salvation, his sovereign purpose in the entire order of all things visible and invisible, is completely consistent.
So who are those who belong to Christ? The ones that father given to him.How do you know who's been given to the Son? By the Father, because they're Christ people. It’s an unbroken form of reasoning here that Jesus simply articulates with the Father, but you'll also notice something else. It says “whom you gave me out of the world.” And again, that's where the world exists, but it makes this clear distinction between the church and the world. This too is something that causes us awkwardness: the fact that there's such a distinction between the church and the world–and that distinction is never more radical than in this prayer. It helps us to understand all the rest of scripture. It helps us to understand the gospel. But this is so radical as to say that the entire purpose for which the cosmos was created was for the gospel of redemption to take place and be accomplished cosmos in a universe, on a planet where God would, in the Son, bring glory to himself, through the redemption of sinners who belong to him because of the Father's grace.
“And they are distinct from the world.” We are distinct from the world. We are out of the world. It doesn't feel like it's helpful for us. It doesn't feel like we're out of the world, but we actually are out of the world. By the way, one of the ways that this prayer helps us to affirm that we're out of the world and what that means is that out of the world, we're completely safe in Jesus. This explains so many of the hymns that we sing, so many of the glad affirmations that we share with one another. Nothing the world can do to us can separate us from the love of Christ. This gets back to the gift to the Son by the Father of his people, and notice what he says in the next phrase. “Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.”
My goodness. So they belonged to the father, but the father gives this people to the Son, and the characteristic that is most important of them is, “and they have kept your word,” which means more than anything else believing it. So this gets back to the manifesting. Jesus says to the father, “I have manifested your name to them.” And now he says of those to whom he manifested, “they've kept your word.” So here's another thing about the people who are redeemed because they belong to the Father, and the Father has given us to the Son: we can't be separated from him, and we will keep the faith.
This is true. So true, that it means anyonewho  does not keep the faith is not one of those given by the Father to the Son, because the distinctive of the ones given by the Father to the Son is that they keep the faith. They keep the word. “If you love me, keep my commandments.” And so at any point in human history, our eyes may deceive us as to who is in this people and who is in the world, but there's no confusion to the Father or the Son. There's even more in this particular verse. “Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you." So that now is very interesting. Now at the very end of his ministry as he's coming right up to the accomplishment of atonement by crucifixion to offer himself a sacrific, as a substitute for us.
And speaking of us, he says, “now they know that you have given all this to me.” So the father gives, there's a lot of giving here. The father gives to the son the people. The father, having given the son to his people, the people having received the ministry of the son now come to know that all that they were given in the son is given by the father. Now, you say, “well, I get that. That's good theological logic. It's essential. And thank you that, that's helpful. We appreciate this text that helps to clarify things,” but just remember something else. This is in the context of old Testament expectation. It's in the context of Jewish understanding. And so now we are told that the only way to know the father is the son. And again, all of a sudden incidents from the gospel of John become very clear to us when there's Jewish opposition to Jesus and, and they claim to be the children of Moses. What does Jesus say? Jesus says, “Abraham knew me and believed.” So that means that there are people that belong to the father. The father is given to the son who have been long dead. The book of Hebrews helps to explain this. The book of Romans helps to explain this, just think about Abraham and in Romans chapter four. And we have to come back to this time and time again–we're told that Abraham believed, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. “Justification by faith,” Paul says, “is not a new concept. That’s Genesis. You should have seen it.”
Hebrews 11 helps us to understand that they believed in Christ, but we often say that they had not seen him. But Jesus said Abraham did know him and believed. He made similar statements about Moses. But when you get to this point, you understand  just how tight the definitions are now coming. There are no redeemed people outside the people that the father has given to the son. These are redeemed people are identified first of all by how they came to be, and that's by the father's will, but also by what they see. They see the truth and believe. In verse eight–”for I've given them the words that you gave me and they have received them. And they have come to know in truth that I came from you and they believe that you sent me.” So the teaching ministry of Jesus becomes very clear in Jesus's revelation. It's not just in his body. It's not just on the cross. It's not just in the miracles, but it's in the words, these are the words Jesus gave. But how many times did we see in the gospel of John already, where Jesus said, “pay attention to my words. If you love me, then you will receive words. You'll believe my words. You will keep my commandments.” So the son here makes very clear that the words that he has given us are words he receives from the father.
There's nothing else that we would come to understand out of this, the indivisibility the relationship between the father in the son. There’s not a crack in this invisibility. Again, those who are the redeemed people are evident because we believe that the father sent the son. And then in verse nine, this is the verse that is shocking and offensive to so many people. Jesus says, “I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.” Jesus says, “I'm not praying for the world.”
I think that's the way we would have assumed this would go. Jesus, on the brink of the beginning moments of his hour, which includes his crucifixion and what he's doing on behalf of sinful humanity– this is where the average evangelical, I think looking at this would say, “well, Jesus would just pray the world, and say ‘I hope as many of them as possible come to faith in me. I hope that now, finally, they understand why I've come,’” but he doesn't even say that he doesn't even pray for them. Here's where we have to understand something that is absolutely essential to our identity in Christ, and that is that we are only redeemed because Christ is right now, our high priest, we are only redeemed because Christ perfectly fulfills three offices of prophet, and priest, and king. And you often hear many evangelicals say, “I don't need a priest.” Well, yes, you do. We are doomed and lost. We could never begin the Christian life, much less in the Christian life without a priest. There is no Christianity without the priest. There is no gospel without the priest. There is no salvation without the priest. Jesus is our priest. And what does Jesus do as our priest? He pray for us.
He, right now in his session, the Latin word for sitting, where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God, the father almighty–in his session, he prays for us. He ever intercedes for us. And so even as he prays for us here in John chapter 17, he prays for us right now. We're only alive because Jesus Christ is our high priest. Right now, we're only able to do what we're doing because Jesus is now and forevermore our high priest, our identity in Christ, and our peace with the father is only possible, not only because of what Christ did for us on the cross and what God did and raising him from the dead, but it's only possible because right now we have prophet, priest, and king. We have a great high priest who sympathizes with us, the Scripture says. He prays for us, and the very first time we see that happen is right here in John chapter 17, on the brink of his consummate work of atonement, Jesus says to the father, “I am praying not for the world, but for those you've given me.”
Now that raises another issue. That takes us back to where we were talking about the exclusivity of the gospel and the exclusivity of the church–does the coming of Jesus mean anything good for those who are not in him? Did any good thing come to the world by the incarnation of Christ? And the answer to that is yes. Yes. And  the most obvious “yes” is one we don't often think about. And that is the fact that history did not end when the earthly ministry of Jesus ended.
So the very continuation of history and the outworking of God's plan means that there will be billions of people who will have life, who otherwise would never have had life. Does Jesus give anything to the world beyond salvation? And the answer is yes, there are people who have been greatly encouraged, illuminated by Jesus, but the confusion in all of that is that in sinfulness–Jesus is cut down to size. His person and his work are redefined. It is not the worship of Jesus in truth, because that comes only from the inside.
The distinction between the world and the church is never more apparent in answering the question for whom does Christ pray? Period. To whom is Christ priest? Period. It's deeply, deeply humbling. The mercy of God is so clear here. Jesus says, “I'm not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours,” There's the “yours” again. “All mine are yours, and yours are mine. And I am glorified in them. I'm no longer in the world, but they are in the world.” What's going to happen in this shift that's coming in this next portion of the high priestly prayer is that Jesus is going to start praying for us concretely. He's going to be praying for us, who we are left in the world. He is not going to be in the world, but we are going to be in the world,  and he leaving us recognizes that we we would be like sheep without a shepherd. But actually we were like sheep without a shepherd before Jesus came. And after Jesus came, we're never in the risk of being sheep without a shepherd. Because number one, he is our good shepherd always. But then also, as he said, and he made this very clear just as we were walking up to the high priestly prayer, Jesus actually told his disciples, “it will be better for you when I am not with you, for I will send the Holy Spirit.” And the Holy Spirit, as we saw, will do a work which is absolutely essential for the church.
So we're not being abandoned, but we are being left in the world. And Jesus understood the world. Of course, Jesus understood the world. The world's about to crucify him. “He came into his own,” as we know, from the prologue, “and his own received him not.” There's never more graphic a moment when his own received him not as in when his own demanded, “give us Barabbas,” and cried out, “crucify him,” which they did. Jesus is praying here, first in the intimacy of his relationship with the father, sharing truth about that relationship and about even the entirety of salvation, the otherwise wouldn't know. But Jesus is also here going to be praying for his disciples. And that is where we will turn when we're together again in the next Lord's day. But look at the transition, look at how it happened. “I'm praying for them. I'm not praying for the world, but for those whom you've given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I'm glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world.”
Now, what he says in the next few words of verse 11 is, “and I am coming to you. Holy father, keep them in your name, which you've given me that they may be one, even as we are one.” Now it's to that passage that we will turn next week, but you'll notice how this transition comes. Jesus, as he's praying to the father, is no longer praying about the accomplishment of salvation, but the plight of his people left in the world, left in a world of hostility. Jesus said, “if they hated me, they'll hate you. Why do you think that a servant will be greater than his master? They're gonna drive you out of the synagogues. They're gonna hunt you down and they're going to kill you. You'd be safe, but nonetheless the antipathy of the world is real. “ This also reminds us, there's a world. If we're living in a context in which there is no antipathy from the world, there may be a lack of clarity on our part about Christ.
I want to say as we're closing here this morning, all around us in the city of Louisville, people are doing what they do. As we come in this morning, we see people walking dogs and people doing the things many of them are doing on Sunday morning. They saw us come in here and they probably thought, “well, that's what those people do. Religious people going into the church. That's what religious people do.” Yet if they heard what we've just been talking about, they'd be horribly offended. I don't just mean a little bit offended. I mean horribly offended, because we just made the statement that the distinction is between those who are in Christ and those who are in the world. If you're not in Christ, then you are lost. Not only that Christ doesn't even pray for you. We just said it because the word just taught it.
This really is dangerous. It's really true that if we teach the gospel with sufficient clarity, yes, there'll be people who will hear and believe that's the good news, but there's going to be a world that's going to hear us and say, “wait, just a minute. Anyone who will believe such a thing has no place in a democratic free society.” This wasn't an egalitarian, libertarian, personal autonomy inclusivist text. Jesus would say his ministry was none of those things. This gives the church absolutely no justification for pride. For one thing, it's going to be made very clear that we are so weak, that we would be prophetically destroyed by the world, but for the fact that we're protected by Christ, and that no one’s going to be able to take from the son those the father has given him. There's no ground for pride here. It reminds us of the fact that even as the entry into the gospel is personal faith, and even as we tell people about Jesus, knowing that if they believe they will be saved, the reality is that just back before the creation of the world, the identity of that people both in terms of the individuals, but the identity that people together was already established. That's humbling. 
So what did you and I contribute to this? Nothing. Does that make our relationship with Christ any less real? No. Does it make it all the more gracious? Yes. Let's pray. Father, we come before you astounded by the fact that even as we are in the name of Christ, praying to you, Christ is always, evermore, everlastingly, without ceasing praying for us. Father, thank you. How we know we need Christ. How we know we need the prayer of Christ before you. We need a priest, father, and you've given us all the priests we need in the son, father. Thank you for allowing us entry into your relationship with the son and the son's love for you in these verses. As we continue, may you open our eyes as that we might see, and father, even as we will never be able to exhaust this text, we dare to pray that we would gain from our reading and knowledge and study this text, everything needful for us, for our sanctification and our salvation until you make us whole in Christ on that day. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

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