John 17:6-8

It has been a couple months since I last spoke from here. And I’m glad to have had a chance again to meditate on this chapter from John this past week. I will tell you that unlike other times writing this sermon did not run like clockwork. Meaning, I actually did spend more time meditating than writing. A lot more. Every time is different. So the text has been working on me this week already, and I hope I convey something that God can use in you too.

So, in the last couple times I’ve talked I pointed out that this chapter, John 17, is a gift to us, because in it we have recorded a complete prayer of Jesus. It is really one of a kind in the Bible. And I have been approaching the prayer as an example, a reminder. We believe that Jesus is right now in the presence of God advocating for His people. And I am grateful for this chapter so that I, and we, can know in what way he is advocating for us now.

In my last two sermons, I covered versus 1-5 in which Jesus opens his prayer with a petition for himself. He asked that God would glorify Him.

Today we will look at verses 6, 7, and 8. This is where He begins to pray for His disciples. If we titled sermons here, I would title this one “Prayer for His own.”

Let’s pray and then I will read verses 1 to 10 so we get a little context before we dive into our three verses for today.

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Today we get to start with what is often called the high priestly prayer. Here Jesus begins to pray for the disciples that He is walking amidst as He prays.

How does He begin? He summarizes His ministry to the 12 disciples.

I have manifested Your name…

Isn’t that interesting that pointing, highlighting, illuminating the name of God is the thing He decides to mention. Not “I taught…?” Not “I healed the sick and gave sight to the blind…?” Not “I showed those Pharisees where they are wrong?” Those things also happened. But Jesus summarizes with “I have manifested Your name…”

I think we can’t go any further without grappling with that phrase, first.

What is the significance of a name?

Can we actually know a person … and not know their name? “I really feel like I got a handle on him. I just had a great heart to heart talk with … what’s his name again?”

Knowing a person’s name is fundamental to knowing a person. And sometimes a person doesn’t just have one name. Often families have a different name for a person. And you will be instantly on the in if you use that name. Sometimes friends will call people by nicknames. My mom had a good proper southern name “Audrey Lee Chandler.” That is how she was known at school and work. But to her family she was “Suzy.” I don’t know why, other than that is just what her dad called her and the whole family used the name for her also.

Our names for people are often just names that run in families or a name from the BIble. “Matthew” There might not be much connection between our name and our character.

But we often see names from the old and new testament that have more connection to who the person is than that. Particularly, when God, as he had a habit of doing, changed a person’s name after some encounter with Him.

In Genesis 17, when Abram was 99 years old, God reiterated His covenant with Abram and in the process He changed his name to Abraham. His name changed from Abram (exalted father) to Abraham (father of many nations). That is a significant change.

And later in Genesis 32, Jacob, a rascal from birth (Remember he was the second born twin who was born grabbing onto his brother’s heel. And later he tricked his father into giving him, the second son, his brother’s birthright.) ends up alone by a river and wrestles all night with a foe. Then as morning came we find that the foe was a servant of God, maybe even Jesus, and Jacob asks him for a blessing. And the foe gave him a new name, Israel. Jacob (May God protect, but also a wordplay for “heel” as in “He cheats”) became Israel (God strives, or maybe “Prince of God”).

So it is important that Jesus manifested God’s name, because it is a starting point to knowing God. But it isn’t just a starting point.

In Exodus 33 and 34 we have the story of Moses asking to see the face of God. We probably all know the story. Moses asks to see the face of God, and God says, Um, no. If you see my face you would die. Instead God says he will hide Moses in a cleft of the mountain and that He would pass by and Moses would get to see God’s back. Hmm. That is a common telling of the story, but what is actually in the text. Exodus 34:5,6,7.

5 The LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD. 6 The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

Did you catch that? Verse 5 says God proclaimed the name of the LORD Verse 6 and 7 repeat that by filling in the name of the LORD. And what a name?!

So, what I’m trying to get across is that I think Jesus is saying just how important actually knowing who God is, was so important that he spent His time with His disciples highlighting who God is. Illuminating the name of God.

One more thing before we move on. What is one other name of God that we know. From Exodus 3 when Moses meets God in the wilderness when he was drawn by the bush that was burning, but did not burn up. Moses asked how to answer if he was asked “What is his name?” and God answered “I am who I am” followed by a paragraph of his “name” like later in Exodus 34.

Jesus used this name for Himself. He went out of his way to use it. Seven times in the gospel of John he used the language in seven “I am” statements.

  • I am the bread of life.
  • I am the light of the world.
  • I am the door.
  • I am the good shepherd.
  • I am the resurrection and the life.
  • I am the way the truth and the life.
  • I am the vine.

And once more in the next chapter. The soldiers come to the garden to arrest Jesus. Jesus asks, “Whom do you seek?” and they answered, “Jesus the Nazarene” and He said to them “I am He”. And when he said “I am He” they (the soldiers) drew back and fell to the ground. Why? I don’t know, but here is what I believe. Because when he used the name of God for himself, there was a peek (a small explosion) of his true divine nature that showed through. That is a way to think of miracles. John the author called them signs. They were explosions of God’s name being manifested to the world. God is all about the world coming to know Him. Are there miracles today? Why would he stop letting his nature show through? It is what he wants.

But it still is hidden most of the time. Jesus held it in, because if it truly came out the whole world would draw back and fall to the ground. He wants our worship and our fear, but he also wants us to draw near to Him. So he hides His nature from the world like he did from Moses and Jesus did in His time so that we can stand and come closer, so that when the day does come we will be able to stand before Him. It is a grace to us.

So that finishes up my first point.

1 Manifested name

Now we move to:

2 An out of the world people

I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me…

The twelve men that Jesus is talking about here were given to Him by God the Father. You cannot give something away if it does not belong to you. So the first thing we take away from this is that the twelve belonged to God. Let’s look at four ways that they belonged to God.

First, God created them. God created them in His own image. He created all people in His own image both male and female. So they (all humans) belong to God. We are owned by Him. He can do anything he wants with what He owns and for the twelve he decided to give them to Jesus. And we have His image. One way to read that is that we have His name on us. Maybe something like in Toy Story where the toys had Andy’s name written on the soles of their feet. Something to ponder if we had time.

Second, they were His by covenant. They were all Jews, they had the mark of circumcision. The mark that was instituted in Genesis 17 in the same institution of the covenant that resulted in Abram’s name being changed. They were part of the covenant people who God created to have a specific purpose. To be a blessing to the nations.

Third, they were His by condemnation. They were all sinners. Their lives were all forfeit to God because of their sin. Like prisoners, they could not decide for themselves where they would go, or where they would sleep, or when they would stand or when they would eat. Their lives were not their own.

Fourth, they were His by choice. The first three seem to conflict with this, but Judas Iscariot is a counter example of this. He was created. He was a Jew, He was a sinner. He was one of the twelve men given to Jesus. And yet in the end He chose to not be included. Just as many who were created. Just as many Jews. Just as many sinners. It didn’t make any of what I said any less true, but for him and the others who would not choose to be with Jesus being owned was all negative. Being owned was a curse to him. But to the eleven, being owned was positive. Being owned for the eleven was life. As I hope it is for us.

The second thing to notice here is “the men whom You gave Me out of the world.” Out of the world. They were separated out of the world. The world being not just just the physical universe, but the rebellious, sinful creation. All those who were created, and jew, and sinners.

There was a separation. This is one of the things we mean when we talk of sanctification. God has separated one thing from another. But it isn’t just separating from, but separating for.

The Old Testament talks about the vessels and implements used in the temple. These were objects made of gold and silver and brass, that were used only in the service of the temple. The Old Testament says they are holy. They would not be used for any common thing. They were sanctified in a service by Moses and Aaron the priest. And after that they were separated from most of the people of Israel and they were separated from common uses.

Jesus says that the disciples were separated from the world and given to Him. He then owned them and they were now separated to do whatever Jesus decided upon.

Now we use the word sanctification as something that follows justification. When the holy spirit enables us to believe we are counted righteous in the sight of God. As if we had never sinned. And the Spirit then works in our hearts and in our minds and in our lives to enable us to know and walk in the ways of Jesus. So that we can become more like Jesus. And this is a progressive thing that happens throughout our lives and is finally complete after our death when we are separated from this world into glory.

But there is also a sense that we are sanctified in that we are taken out of the world and we become the people of God here - now. Something that happens now, because when we are brought to saving faith we are given a new mind. We become new creatures in Christ Jesus. We should think differently. The Spirit refines our thinking. We should have different values. Not the values of the world, but the values of heaven. Paul in Romans 12 says that we should not be conformed to the world, but transformed by the renewing of your minds. And in Philippians he says that we are no longer citizens of this world but are sojourners, passing through. Our citizenship is in heaven.

As I said about the temple vessels. There are two parts to this. We are separated from the world. But we are also separated to citizenship in heaven. That is a wonderful thing isn’t it.

We sang Psalm 27, or at least the first few verses, this morning. Remember verse 4?

One thing I have asked from the LORD, that I shall seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the LORD
And to meditate in His temple.

Isn’t that the opposite of grimness? To behold the beauty of the LORD. That is a wonderful thing. And we are able to do that because we have been separated from the world and given to Jesus just as the disciples were. AND Jesus has manifested the name of God to us, too.

Don’t make that into drudgery. It isn’t. At all!

I’m in danger of taking us well into the afternoon so I better get on to my third and final point.

3 Keepers of His Word

I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. Now they have come to know that everything You have given Me is from You; for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me.

Oh, there is so much there. I’m going to leave so much on the table this morning. I’m sorry.

Let me just quickly point out that there are five things that the disciples do in these verses. 1. They kept God’s word, (we will work on that in a sec.) 2. They came to know that everything God gave Jesus was from God. 3. They received the words which Jesus gave them that came first from God. 4. They truly understood that Jesus came forth from God. And 5. They believed that God sent Jesus.

  • They kept
  • They knew
  • They received
  • They understood
  • They believed

That list is not passive. Not in the least. The disciples didn’t just let this come at them. They were active participants in what was happening. I mean if Jesus has summarized that he was a teacher, well I can’t think of a more glowing report that could be given in a parent/teacher conference.

But wait a minute. Are these the same disciples we read about in the gospel accounts. I mean really. I have trouble matching up that glowing report and what we read in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And even Acts. Those guys were constantly arguing about stuff that was from the world’s way of thinking. Talking when they hadn’t engaged their brains. Just plain not understood what Jesus said and generally being dull and dumb. What is Jesus talking about? (Of course, all of what I just said could be said about me, sometimes. OK OK, often.)

What is going on here? Might I suggest that this is an example of exactly what we hope for. Jesus advocating for the disciples with the Father. He isn’t lying (God forbid the thought). He isn’t hiding their sin. He is justifying them by His own sacrifice on the cross. This comes before the cross, but the cross is a done deal in Jesus’s mind. He knows he is going to take all that stuff on.

When Jesus is advocating for us right now with God. He is not remembering all the sin. He is not making excuses for us. He is speaking about us as we are after he has taken our stain, our sin, on himself. Praise Jesus! He is showing that it isn’t a dream that we hope for, but the is showing what he has done for us.

OK, I want to at least cover one of those five things a little more or I feel like I’ve cheated you.

they have kept Your word.

What sort of things do we keep? We keep things that are valuable to us. We keep things that are important to us. We keep things that delight us. Keeping God’s word is all about wanting it so much that we don’t let it go.

Let’s quickly turn back to John 14:15.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

That is an interesting way to phrase that isn’t it? I think it is intentional. In John 15:14 it isn’t phrased like that.

You are my friends if you do what I command you.

Jesus phrased it both ways in the course of a handful of paragraphs. That makes me think that He meant both. But isn’t it interesting that it looks like Jesus thought that the commandments were something that we could view as so precious that we would want to keep them. To hold onto them. To not discard them. To not forget them. To not try to weasel our way out of keeping them because they make us stand out in a world of sin.

What about the opening verses of the Psalter. Psalm 1:1,2

Blessed is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
but his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

Why? Why should we delight in law? Why should we keep Jesus’s commandments?

Because they are precious. Because they are wonderful. Because they manifest the name of God.

There is nothing inviting about a bunch of grim people making sure they don’t anger God. The Greeks did that. The Romans did that. Americans do that to avoid the wrath of those around them.

Don’t be like that. See God’s word as something to treasure. And joyfully walk in His ways. Strive to become more like Jesus not (only) because you fear God, but because you love Him.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

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.

Amen.

Preached at Holiness Fellowship on June 27, 2021.