Rainey, Ross: John 17-Oakwood Bible Chapel

It'll be a bit difficult to put the brakes on at the appointed time when I'm supposed to stop, but I do remember a formula of past years. In fact, I heard it from a college president, and that is a man who thinks by the inch and talks by the yard should be dealt with by the foot. We have a very serious subject, I think, that has been assigned to me for this afternoon, and I'd like to ask that you please turn in your Bibles to John seventeen, the Gospel of John, chapter seventeen. I'm going to take the time to read this chapter. It's a fairly long chapter, but even if I would stop and say nothing more after verse twenty six, what this passage says is far more important than anything any preacher or Bible teacher might say concerning it. I'm sure it's familiar to all of us, but let's read it with a view to the Spirit of God giving us freshness as we read. John seventeen. Of course, it's part of the Upper Room Discourse of our Lord Jesus Christ. That discourse comes from chapter thirteen and continues through chapter seventeen and concludes with this seventeenth chapter in the high priestly prayer of our Lord Jesus. It is truly the Lord's prayer. These words spoke Jesus and lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour is come, glorify thy son, that thy son also may glorify thee. As thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he may give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. I have glorified thee on the earth. I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world. Thine they were, and thou gavest them me, and they have kept thy word. Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me, and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me. I pray for them, I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me, for they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them. And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one as we are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name. Those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition, that the scripture might be fulfilled. And now come I to thee, and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them thy word, and the world hath hated them because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil. Sometimes that's rendered that thou shoulds keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them, that is, set them apart through thy truth. Thy word is truth. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. And for their sakes, I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word. That they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee. That they also may be one in us. That the world may believe that thou hast sent me, and the glory which thou gavest me I have given them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them as thou hast loved me. Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me, for thou lovest me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee, but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me. And I have declared unto them thy name and will declare it, that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them. If you're like I am, and I think you are, it would be most fitting, wouldn't it, just to be quiet, to meditate, and worship, in view of what we've read. But we have a subject to deal with, and I've been directed to this particular passage of scripture in relation to establishing spiritual priorities in a materialistic age. Suppose you and I knew that we would die within twenty four hours. I've asked myself this question, or these questions that I'm going to ask you. What effect would this have on your present priorities? Now, granted, the time would be limited, but what effect would this knowledge have on your present priorities? What would you do differently? What would you talk about with your close friends and loved ones? Facing death of a most horrible kind, the Lord Jesus Christ, in his high priestly prayer of John seventeen tells us what his priorities were. Now, it's not my purpose to try and consider every detail along this line. Some of you may say to me later, well, you didn't touch upon this, or you didn't touch upon that. This is an inexhaustible passage of scripture. But I do wish, with the help of our Lord, simply to emphasize those priorities from this passage that come from our Lord, that should be obvious to every reader of this tremendous prayer. Before we can show our priorities, we need to know what our priorities are. And those are the two things, as it were, the two pegs on which I wish to hang my thoughts. First of all, knowing our priorities, and secondly, showing our priorities. I'm going to spend most of my time on the first aspect of our consideration of this subject, knowing our priorities. And then perhaps the last ten or twelve minutes cover something of no- showing or manifesting, demonstrating our priorities. I believe that this is the greatest of all recorded prayers that we have in the Word of God, and it holds for us the secret as to what our basic priority should be in this world around us. Let's prayerfully then consider some of the things in this great chapter, in this great prayer, knowing our priorities. First, God's glory. Look, if you will, at verse one again. Father, the hour is come. Glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee. Again, verse four: I have glorified thee on the earth. I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. Verse five: and now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. And then at the end of the prayer, or toward the end of the prayer, verse twenty four, Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me, for thou lovest me before the foundation of the world. As we view the life and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, his greatest concern was that the Father be glorified. In one way or another, the word glory is used eight times in this prayer. In great measure, the Lord Jesus unveiled God's glory in his incarnation. John said, we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. John one fourteen. And then his miracles manifested the glory of our Lord, or of God the Father, as we realize from John two eleven. Even as our Lord's suffering was looked upon relative to God's glory. I won't turn to John twelve twenty three and twenty eight, but I would like you to keep your place here at John seventeen, but look at chapter thirteen, please, and notice verses thirty one and thirty two. Therefore, this is verse thirty one of chapter thirteen of John's gospel, when he was gone out, that is Judas Iscariot, Jesus said, now is the son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him. Tremendous words. Easy to read them, and to perhaps lose our train of thought, as we have emphasized by the Spirit of God through John, the word glory and glorify. But so important for us to meditate, to dig in, to consider the details. We live in a world that says, save yourself. That's the only way to be happy. But it was the Lord Jesus who said in John twelve twenty five, he that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. Tens of thousands of times we have had reiterated the words of Jim Elliot. He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. Remember the old catechism that reminds us, that tells us that we are to glorify the Lord and enjoy him forever. And Paul tells us in First Corinthians ten thirty one, whether ye eat or drink or whatever you do, and he's writing to believers in the Lord Jesus, do all to the glory of God. Therefore, as I come to the high priestly prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ, I see right at the very beginning of that prayer what was paramount in his mind as he faced death of that most horrible kind, crucifixion, it was the glory of his Father to finish the work that the Father had given him to do. This, beloved, should be a paramount priority in your life and mine. Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatever you do. Glorify God. You look as though you might need a little story, little illustration. Let me give you one from personal experience. It's the only experience I know, and I'm well aware of the fact that the scholar, the Baptist scholar A. T. Robertson, whose writings I respect and appreciate so much, said it's good for preachers to keep themselves out of their preaching. But when I was a little fellow, growing up in Flatbush, Brooklyn, New York, living together not only with my father and mother, but my maternal grandparents as well. One of my jobs, one of my little tasks as a boy, seven, eight years of age, was to empty waste baskets in the home, and it was a large home. One day, I guess inwardly, I was chafing at the bit just a little bit. I still take out the rubbish, by the way, most of the time, or a good bit of the time, so it's a lifelong habit that developed. But this one day, my father was coming from his study. As you know, I'm a PK, most of you know that, preacher's kid. And he was walking along the upper hallway there, and I was coming up the wide stairs, and I had a, an empty waste can in my hand, I was returning it. And I looked at my father as he came walking along, and I said, Dad, what am I here for anyway? And he looked at me as only my dad at times could look, and he had a firm voice, and his eyes pierced directly into mine and through me, and he said, Son, you are here to live to the glory of God. I never forgot that from a little boy. That has stuck with me through the years. Another priority is God's word. Look, if you will, at verse six. They have kept thy word. He's speaking, of course, of his own, his disciples. Verse eight: For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me, and they have received them and have surely known that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou did send me. Verse fourteen: I have given them thy word. Verse seventeen: Sanctify them through thy truth. Thy word is truth. And then verse nineteen: And for their sakes, I sanctify myself, that they might also be sanctified through the truth. Oh, I hope and pray that we each one are in God's word daily for ourselves, not depending on conferences, seminars, tapes, messages that we hear on the Lord's Day, good and profitable as all of these things are, but to be in this book daily as a habit that has been formed to read God's word, to hear his voice, and then to spend some time in fellowship, in prayerful communion with himself. A verse that I've taken as my life text from the Old Testament is Joshua one eight. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein, for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. And in the King James Version, from which I have read, only once, to my knowledge, do you have the word success. And interestingly enough, and I think instructively, it is bound up with the word of God. If we would be successful from God's point of view, from heaven's perspective, then we need to be in this book. I think of the psalmist in Psalm one, the opening of the Psalms, and I won't quote all that's there, but I think of that verse concerning the happy man, the happy woman of God, as we relate that passage to that particular individual, but his or her delight, as the case may be, is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night, and he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that bringeth forth his fruit in his season. His leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. Oh, the importance of the word of God in our lives. I've just finished through the scripture union in my own daily quiet time, going through Psalm one hundred nineteen. What a wonderful psalm. I remember Psalm one hundred nineteen for a number of reasons. One is that there's a very short psalm right close to it, Psalm one hundred seventeen. I remember when my dad used to read at the table. My older brother and I, we were always anxious to get out and play, and we'd virtually plead with my father, Dad, read Psalm one hundred seventeen, and please never at one sitting read Psalm one hundred nineteen. And yet, the word of God, how important it is. It's a priority and should have priority in our lives, along with this wonderful thing that we've considered at the very beginning of this prayer, the paramount importance of, in whatever we do, whatever we say, glorifying God. And then there's a third thing. God's keeping power. I don't know how anyone can really effectively, abundantly serve the Lord and live triumphantly in all the vicissitudes and trials, the things that come into our experience in life, apart from the assurance of the keeping power of the Lord. Assurance means that we are convinced that through faith in the Lord Jesus, we have as a present and eternal possession everlasting life. And notice what the Lord says here in verse eleven: Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one as we are one. The Lord Jesus set himself apart to go to Calvary, and then he has set himself apart as our great high priest to intercede for us. And I point out, among other things, to some of those that I meet, some of my fellow believers in Christ, not in our assemblies, but in other groups that I encounter through just getting to know different ones, meeting different ones that are from a particular denomination or group that do not have this confidence that they are eternally saved. And I love to point them to a passage like this, and the high priestly prayer of our Lord and the request here. I think this is one of the greatest texts for the assurance of every child of God that having been saved truly, made a new creation in Christ, that we are saved eternally because he is continually praying, Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me. Then again, verse twelve, while I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name. Those that thou gavest me, I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition, that the scripture might be fulfilled. Verse fifteen: I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil one. What a wonderful thing is God's keeping power. I cannot keep myself in this world. I'm glad I learned that a long time ago. Peter writes, and he speaks of believers, and he says in First Peter one five, who are kept. I'm being kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time. And then there's another priority here, the glory of God, the word of God, the keeping power of God, and the assurance that we have from the standpoint of his keeping power. It is an assurance that we don't work for, we work from it. We don't work for victory, we rest on the victory that's already been won, and we go forth in his name as more than conquerors through him that loved us. Well, now, a fourth thing here is obedience. Verse four: I have glorified thee on the earth. I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. Verse six: I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world. Verse eighteen: As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. We've been reminded today that to obey is better than sacrifice. And the Lord has a right to expect from us obedience. And I believe that we really and truly manifest and prove the measure of our love for our Lord in proportion as we obey his word. Just this past week, I was reading about C. T. Studd, the missionary pioneer, and he was found by a friend early one morning underlining words in his Bible. And this friend was a familiar friend and said to him, what are you doing, Charlie? Whereupon Stud answered, Jesus said, if you love me, keep my commandments. So I'm going through God's word to make sure I do not miss any of his commandments. It'd be good for us to do that, day by day, to take note of his commandments. Happy are ye if you do them, and if you love him, then you and I will do his commandments, keep his commandments. Obedience to his will, as it is revealed to us in the Holy Scriptures, and then obedience to his work, as he directs us, as he gives us that guidance that surely we pray for and look to him for. A contemporary writer has said, in fact, I'll give you his name, Warren W. Wiersbe. He has said this: Christ was obedient to the Father's will and accomplished his assigned work on earth. In spite of their failures, the disciples received Christ's word, kept it, and shared it with a lost world. We are enriched by the gospel today because other generations of believers were obedient to God's will. And then he has further stated, Jesus finished the work the Father gave him to do, but his church has not yet finished the work that the Savior gave us to do. Our priorities, he says, are confused. We waste our financial and human resources on grandiose schemes that have little or no relationship to the commission that God has given us. We are rearranging the furniture while the house is burning down. We are entertaining the saints when we ought to be evangelizing the sinners. And then he says, to paraphrase Mark Twain, lies, that is, untruths are running around while truth is still putting on her shoes. Obedience. We do not obey the Lord perfectly. None of us is perfect, we know that. None of us is sinless. But you see, as we get to know the Lord, as we keep in his word, as we seek by his grace and enablement to do his commandments, to carry out his will and the work that he's given us to do, we should sin less as we become more and more like the Lord Jesus. And oh, how important is this matter of obedience. Most of our problems, I believe, in relation to our assemblies today would be solved if there were obedience to the revealed will of God, and of course, love accompanying that obedience, and we'll come to that. The unity of the church is another priority. Now we know that the assembly, the body of Christ is one. As to position, that's settled. But to remember that Paul, in Ephesians chapter four tells us something that I dare say every day of our lives we should keep before us. At least I hope I'm trying to keep that before myself in relation to my brethren and the local assemblies wherein I have the privilege of ministering, Ephesians four verse two says, with all lowliness and meekness, with long suffering, forbearing one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. And notice what we have in this great prayer. Verse eleven, the Lord says, the Lord prays that they may be one as we are. There's the practical side of our manifesting that wonderful position of unity and oneness that we have in the Lord. But there's a practical side to it, and we need to keep that before us, I think, every day of our lives in fellowship with the Lord's people. Then again, verses twenty one through twenty three, you have the same truth underscored. I will not read these verses again. You can do that at your leisure. We have similar truth in Philippians chapter one verses fifteen and seventeen in relation to our being in harmony, in unity, one with another. However, we have things taking place in our assemblies in these days, and we've been reminded of that in relation to what our brother Wilson has said and what our brother Steve Holshiser has said. And there are divergences from God's truth. We're to endeavor to keep the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. But there are two things in scripture that I find, and they come to mind, so I will mention them to you. One is, as the servants of the Lord, as his people, we are to minister the truth in love. If I fail to do that, nothing is accomplished. We know that to be the case from First Corinthians thirteen. But by the same token, the very apostle of love, John, if you'll read his second and third letters in particular, he says he teaches us by the Spirit of God that we must never compromise the truth for love's sake. And I think today of the fact that we have some devious teaching among us, which I believe has departed from the word of God. I'm going to give you an example. I would not be happy with myself if I didn't mention this because I've just been before the Lord about it through many, many weeks and days anticipating this very great responsibility and privilege of ministering in this hour. But it's been on my heart a great deal, and I use this as an illustration of something that is causing a greater and greater dichotomy in our assemblies. It's bringing division, and I've just returned from three weeks ministry, almost a month's ministry in the East. Thankfully, many of God's people are concerned, but what I have reference to is this push that comes from the world around us and the spirit of the age in which we live. And it comes from women's lib also. That's part of the spirit of the age, and that is this pressure by many brethren to have women participating in the public meetings of the local assembly. I agree wholeheartedly with the late Martin Lloyd-Jones, who said, ladies first, except in public worship and public prayer. Where did he get it? From the word of God. And we've had nineteen years of, pardon me, nineteen hundred years of exegesis by godly men down through the centuries, and yet some seem to say that they've had a spurt of illumination and that we've been missing the boat all these centuries, and this is what we should do. I refuse to compromise my convictions from the Word of God and by the Spirit of God along that line. And I believe that the more this takes place in our assemblies, the greater confusion is going to come among us, because it's going to open the door not only to that error, but to a lot of other errors. Just read church history. Now, I'm your brother in the Lord. And by the time I finish, having said what I've just said, you can maybe strike the R, and perhaps I'm a bother in the Lord. I don't know. I didn't even hear anybody mumble amen, but that doesn't disturb me. I have bared my soul in relation to matters that we need to address, and we're not addressing them as we should. We seem to be wanting to walk on eggs and walking a fine tightrope and so forth without getting to the very issues that are affecting us deeply and affecting our unity and harmony as a movement. I'm just going to quickly go over the remaining priorities. Let me just give you this from Thomas Brooks under the unity of the church. Away with all discriminating names, he wrote. Thomas Brooks was a Puritan preacher. He said this, discord and division become no Christian. For wolves to worry the lambs is no wonder, but for one lamb to worry another, this is unnatural and monstrous. Another priority, holiness. Verse seventeen: Sanctify them, set them apart through thy truth, thy word is truth. Verse nineteen again. For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth. Let's go by the book. Remember the phone book a few years back, at least where we live in Michigan? Look in the book. That's what it had as a motto. And we need to be in this book. That is our authority, not what others think. Another priority is holiness. This is found again in this prayer, as we have said, verses seventeen and nineteen. I could go to Hebrews twelve one and three and verse fourteen and first Peter one sixteen. Become holy, for I am holy, saith the Lord. We have a song, you've heard it, I've heard it. Don't worry, be happy. Well, I agree with part of that. Don't worry. Worry is a sin. But the first thing of priority is be holy, become holy. And we're dealing now with the practical side of things. We are by position set apart. We are holy, but it's the practical side that is so significant, so needful in a day when so much of the world is coming into the church. So much in the way of compromise, so much in the way of losing the truths and the distinctives that have marked us through the years. And let me tell you, if we ever lose the Lord's Supper that upholds so many of our distinctives, the priesthood of all believers, worship, giving, the oneness of the body, we lose that, we've lost it all in our practice, in our demonstration to the world around us as to the testimony that we seek to bear for the glory of our Lord. Prayer. This is a prayer, and I won't take time to mention the verses other than to speak of verses nine, fifteen, seventeen, and twenty, all relating to the priority of prayer. One of the great sins of the church today, I believe, is prayerlessness. I'm so thankful for a workers conference like this and all the workers conferences that I've been to in the past, have such a good emphasis, and rightly so, on prayer. I remember as a student when Dr. Louis Gray Chafer told us, and he was a man of prayer, he said, men, prayer is hard work, and we are inherently lazy. A. W. Tozer said, prayer is not an easy way of getting what we want. It is the only way of becoming what God wants us to be. I recently finished a biography by Amy Carm- or of Amy- Amy Carmichael by Elizabeth Elliot. I purposely got the book because I had read a biography when I was in India early this year, but I wanted to read her larger biography of this dear woman of God. And one of the great things about that biography and about her life is that I was impressed with her prayer life. And she said this concerning her work: Prayer is the core of our day. And then, of course, there's the priority of love, verse twenty six: And I have declared unto them thy name and will declare it, that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them. John thirteen thirty five: by this shall all men know that you're my disciples, if you have love one for another. The commandment to love one another, beloved child of God, is repeated at least a dozen times in the New Testament. I wish I could go to all of them. I have them all marked down right here before me. As Amy Carmichael said, and we've had this implied today, we cannot love too much. There's always room for improvement in our love. And then, in all of these things, all of these priorities, glorifying God. Being in God's word. God's keeping power, his assurance to our hearts that we have, through faith in Christ, eternal life. Obedience to his will and to his work. The unity of the church, holiness, prayer, love. In all of these things, we need to remember, as John tells us in chapter fifteen verse five, without me you can do nothing. Showing our priorities. I think I can cover this in just a few moments. First, in order to demonstrate, in order to manifest our priorities, there has to be desire born of the Spirit of God in our hearts to carry out his will, to carry out his work. You are here, I am here at this workers' conference because I want to be. Someone might say, well, you were conscripted, you were assigned the subject, you have to be here. Well, I didn't have to take the subject. Don Norby is smiling back there. I'm here because I want to be, and I was so thankful when I learned that my schedule permitted me to be here for most of this conference between trips of ministry. Desire. And you'll remember in John's gospel, this comes to mind in chapter seven, verse seventeen. and we can put this to the test in all things, I believe. If any man or woman, as the case may be, willeth to do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself. There must be desire. Then, secondly, dedication. And we've already had read to us the words of Romans twelve one and two. Therefore, I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be not conformed to this world, don't be pressed into the mold of this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Desire and then dedication. And involved in that dedication is, first of all, presentation, verse one, separation from the world, first part of verse two, and transformation by the renewing of our minds through the Holy Spirit that comes by being in the word. And then there's discipline. I wish I could expand on this. It's a nasty word in some quarters. I think it's the one word that needs to be brought before young people today more than any other, but older ones too, all of us, we need to be reminded of this. Discipline is a word that has to do, of course, with our discipleship. It's part of it, and I'm reminded of Matthew sixteen and those words of our Lord where he said in verse twenty four unto his disciples, if any will come after me, they had come to him for salvation, now they were coming.