Take your Bibles open with me back up to John 17 this morning. I had originally planned to cover verses six through 19. I think we'll get through verse 10 this morning. So that just means we'll get a couple of extra lessons out of John 17 before we're done with this series on prayer. But we're looking this morning at verses six through 10. Before we get to that though, I want to share with you a hymn for this week that is relevant to what we're gonna be studying. The title of this hymn is Spirit of Truth Come Down, written by Charles Wesley. Spirit of truth, come down, reveal the things of God and make to us the Godhead known and witness with the blood. No man can truly say that Jesus is the Lord unless thou take the veil away and breathe the living word. Then only then we feel our interest in his blood and cry with joy unspeakable, thou art my Lord, my God. Oh, that the world might know the all atoning lamb, spirit of faith descend and show the virtue of his name. Inspire the living faith, which whosoever receives the witness in himself he hath and joyfully believes. Looking at this morning at what Christ prays, why Christ prays for the disciples. In the first five verses of John 17, of course, he prayed for himself and his chief concern in this prayer before his crucifixion, praying that the hour has come now. Glorify your son that the son may glorify you. Jesus' chief concern is the glory of the father. In verses six through 19, he then prays for the disciples who are there with him in the garden. in verses six through 10 that we're looking at this morning, he prays and in the prayer, we understand why he is praying for them. And then in the verses that follow, we're going to see next week what he prays for them. But this morning we're dealing with the motives behind his prayer. Again, he's expressed it in the first five verses, as he prays for himself, he is praying that he would be glorified so that in him being glorified, he might be able to glorify the father. He says then in verses six through 10, 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. I ask on their behalf, I do not ask on behalf of the world but of those whom you have given me for they are yours and all things that are mine are yours and yours are mine and I have been glorified in them. When he says, and he starts here, 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. Jesus is praying for those that the father has given him. So these are specific men. And he will identify that in the prayer, speaking specifically of the disciples, minus one, the son of perdition, who is Judas, who we'll see next week, was given to him, but was lost all along as the son of perdition. John 6, 37, Jesus said, all that the father gives me will come to me and the one who comes to me, I will never cast out. I love that Spurgeon preached this because in preaching, From a perspective of the doctrine of election and predestination and God's sovereignty, Spurgeon was asked, as many Calvinists are asked, what about those who come to Christ? Do they all have to be the chosen? The point is, if they're chosen, they're going to be drawn and they're going to come because that is the specific group of people that the father has given to the son. Spurgeon was asked, well, what if somebody comes and isn't elect? And Spurgeon says, anybody who comes has proven their election because they came. And if they come, they will not be cast out or left or lost. All that the father gives me will come to me. And the one who comes to me, I will never cast out. We see then first here that the disciples who he is praying for, they were the fathers. One commentator said, and James Boyce said, we have to understand they belonged to the father to do with as he pleases. They were his. And this is one of the motivations behind Jesus's prayer for them. He is about to be crucified. He is about to be forsaken by the father on the cross, bearing up under the wrath of God as a propitiation for our sins. And his concern is for the disciples that the father has given to him because they are the fathers. so they belong to him. This of course does refer to God's foreknowledge and to the doctrine of election. I actually love it every once in a while you'll hear a preacher who will tell you that they don't believe in the doctrine of election but then they preach the Bible and lo and behold the doctrine of election is right there in the Bible. One of my favorite non-reformed preachers is Chuck Swindoll, Insight for Living. I've probably been listening to him about as long as I've been listening to John MacArthur since I was a teenager. And I loved it that one series that Swindoll was preaching, he was preaching through Romans. And he got to chapter nine and he started the sermon. And he said, now I know many of you don't like the doctrine of election. He said, I can't help you with that, but I have to preach it because it's here in the Bible. And I thought it actually quite honest of him to say, I've got to preach what is in the scripture, whether we understand this or grasp this or not. I've reported it before that in a Bible study with a bunch of teenagers while I was in Bible college, I just read Romans chapter nine as part of a devotional. We each had a chapter of Romans to read, and lo and behold, by God's providence, I was given Romans chapter nine, and I just stood up and read it. and people got upset. How dare you bring that Calvinism stuff up? All I did was read the words on the page. This is just what the Bible says. Jesus is praying for these disciples because they were the fathers. and the father gave them to the son. God chose these men. He chose them to give them to Christ. They were predestined to be conformed to his image. Ephesians 1 explains it. That's another one, by the way, that they, if you've heard of it, if you go to Walgreens or Walmart, you can buy an Armenian highlighter. It's called a sharpie, and Armenians like to go through and you know, Matthew chapter seven says, judge not, and they highlight the rest of the passage so you can't see any of those words, because you're just not supposed to judge. And they come to Ephesians, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. that we should be holy and blameless before him in love by predestining us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he graciously bestowed on us in the beloved. The father has chosen these disciples as any of the disciples of Christ have been chosen. They've been drawn by the word, by the spirit to come to Christ. To these disciples then Jesus says, I have manifested your name. That is Jesus has revealed God's name to them. Now that doesn't just mean that Jesus said, hey, do you know the father's name? I know the father's name. No, this to reveal, to manifest his name is to demonstrate to them and to show them and to reveal to them who God is. The son made the father known to them. His name, as it's used here, is all-inclusive of His being, His character, and His attributes. This is wrapped up in what we studied last week in the desire of the Son to glorify the Father, that is to make His character and attributes, to make Him known. Jesus showed the disciples who God is. Exodus 3.13, then Moses said to God, behold, I'm about to come to the sons of Israel and I will say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you and they will say to me, what is his name? What shall I say to them? God said to Moses, I am who I am. Basically God's name is simply this, I am. That is, I exist. He said, thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, I am, has sent me to you. And God furthermore said to Moses, thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob has sent me to you. This is my name forever. And this is my memorial name from generation to generation. In Isaiah 52, six, we read, therefore, my people shall know my name. Therefore, in that day, I am the one who is speaking. Here I am. We have the power then of Christ in the New Testament saying multiple times, I am. Whether it's describing himself, I am the good shepherd, I am the door, I am the living water, I am the bread of life. At one point, he just simply says when they ask if he is the Messiah, he simply replies, I am. Knocked him back with the glory of the statement of that fact of the name of God. God's self-revelation of himself is that he is, and everything else is because he is, and without him, there is nothing else. Jesus, then we see, is God's word incarnate. He is God's self-expression. the living word that is giving to us the written word, the spoken word through the disciples, through the apostles and the prophets, Christ himself being the cornerstone. By the way, if somebody ever tells you that the only words Jesus speaks are the words in red, they've missed the point. The whole word of God is the word of God. As if God was sitting here speaking to us himself because he is. You understand that's the power in preaching. The power in preaching is not the excitement or even the anointing of the preacher. It is that these are the words of God to us. John 1, 1, John starts, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. In verse 14, the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld his glory. Glory is of the only begotten from the father, full of grace and truth. We see here that he says, I have manifested, I've made your name known to the ones that you gave me out of the world. They were yours and you gave them to me and they kept your word. The disciples here were the ones who were kept by God and the ones who kept his word. That is, they received it, but even more than just receiving it, they obeyed it. This is, they took what Christ said and they were doing what he said. Now, were the disciples perfect? No, they weren't. They are now. They weren't. They were men of little faith, Jesus said, quite often. And that means we are people of even less faith. They were there with him, they saw him, they walked with him, they heard him, and they still struggled to obey his word. And yet Jesus said, they kept my word, they obeyed it. This of course refers to begin with, with their conversion, their obedience to follow him. When he came to each of the disciples, what was the first thing he said to them? Follow me. And they did, they obeyed. And as they followed him, they came to see and to understand and to believe who he was. Proof of the new spiritual life in them is their acceptance of and obedience to the Word of God. The same is true of us. Proof of life, when we talk about the new birth, is accepting the Word of God and obeying it. Somebody who fights and struggles against the Word of God, who has no desire to read the Word of God, who hates the Word of God, who disagrees constantly with the Word of God, they're giving evidence that they have not been born of the Spirit. because the spirit that has inspired this word drives us to hunger and thirst for it because in the word, we find the living word, we find Christ. We also see then Jesus started by keeping God's word. In John 8, 55, he says, I do know him, speaking of the father, and keep his word. This is Jesus' testimony of himself. I keep his word. He keeps God's commandments in John 15, 10. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. It's funny to me and interesting to me that there are some today in the free grace side of things that say we are under grace, not under the law. And they say that as a result, the law of God does not apply to the believer, that there's no room for the law in the life of the believer and that we just need grace. Now you understand that the law drives us to grace because the law shows us that we're condemned. And it's in grace that we find the power to keep the law. We're not saved by keeping the law, we keep the law because we're saved. And if we hate God's law, frankly, if you hate God's law, you hate him because his law is a revelation of who he is. His law is built on his character. Jesus says, I keep his word, I keep his commandments. And then he tells his followers to observe his word. Several phrases that he uses in the gospel of John. He talks about the word singular, meaning the whole counsel of the word of God. He says words plural, meaning the many things that he has to teach his disciples, the words given to him from the father. And he uses the word commands. Now, it's funny to me that most of the people who argue against the law, they love God's word, they say, but they don't like the fact that God gives us commands. But he does. Why? Because he's our master. Because he's bought us with the blood of his son. John 8, 51 and 52, Jesus says, truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death ever. The Jews said to him, now we know that you have a demon. Abraham died and the prophets also. And you say, if anyone keeps my word, he will never taste death ever. But Jesus, what did he say at the tomb of Lazarus before he raised him? I'm the resurrection and the life. If you believe in me, even if you die, you're still going to live. MacArthur has said that we have to realize that death for the believer is just a transition into the presence of God face to face. John 14, 15, Jesus says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. John 14, 21, he who has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my father and I will love him and will disclose myself to him. And in verse 23, Jesus answered and said to him, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word. And my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. He who does not love me does not keep my words, and the word which you hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me." That's what he tells us now in verses 7 and 8 of John 17. 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. Back in John six and verses 68, 69, we read Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life. And we have believed and have come to know that you are the holy one of God. The disciples asked the question, if you're giving us the words of life, the words the father has given you to give us, we have nowhere else to go. We can't go to anyone else because you are the ones, you are the one with the words of eternal life. The son says here that the father has given him the words to say. And by the way, I don't know if you've watched the TV show, The Chosen, I hope not. The show is full of blasphemy and idolatry and spiritual unfaithfulness and wickedness. They have the disciples saying things they never said. They have Jesus saying things he never said. That show, I'll be honest with you, it presents another Jesus. And I know some have said, well, we hope people watch it because then maybe they'll look into it and study to find the real Jesus. You don't lead people to Christ by preaching a false Christ. There's enough here in John 17 to completely eradicate the premise of that show. In the very first season of that show, Jesus comes to Matthew and says, as he's rehearsing the Sermon on the Mount, and Jesus tells him, I don't know what to say, help me edit this. Jesus knew exactly what to say. because the Father told him what to say. And he prays it here. 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. There was no confusion when it came to what Christ had come to do or to say. The son said what the father gave him to say, nothing more and nothing less. Jesus, fully God and fully man, demonstrates for us full dependence upon his father. Do you realize, and this is the conviction just of this whole series, do you realize the amount of time that we're told in the scripture that Jesus spent in prayer? If He, fully God and fully man, had to spend that much time in prayer with the Father, how much more do we? Well, we have the answer. Do you know how much time we need to be spending in prayer? All of it without ceasing. when he gave them these words, when he told them what the father had given him to say, the disciples received those words. This is different than the word received before. In verse six, the word for received was kept, was to obey. This word to receive means they accepted it as the word of God. They believed what Jesus was telling them was from the Father. And their acceptance of that word was proven by their obedience. There are a lot of people who claim to believe the Bible and they don't do what the Bible says. If you claim to believe the Bible and you're not doing what it says, there better be a struggle in there somewhere. Because if we know that it's the word of God, we have to be striving to keep the word of God. So we see here first, they heard the word. Romans 10, 17, Paul reminds us, faith comes from hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. Secondly, they received the word. This was their acceptance and their assent. They accepted it as the word of God and agreed with it. Third, it says, they understood the word. That is not just knowledge, not just the facts of hearing the words that he said, but this is knowledge added to wisdom. That equals understanding. What is wisdom? Wisdom is the skill to apply God's word to our daily life. That's a gift from God and it's something that we need to be asking for. And as we lack wisdom, we ask it, James says, and God will give it liberally. So it's not enough just to have the facts of the word of God. There are people out there and preachers out there who can tell you what God's word says. But it's another step to approach God's word with wisdom. to understand then how to make application of that word to our daily life. It's not enough just to know it. This honestly, this is the danger of sound preaching. If you are taught the facts and the truth of the word of God, but you don't do it, you are going to be held to a higher standard of judgment because you've heard it. That's just the truth. If you've heard the word, you're responsible to strive to understand it and to put it into practice by application. So they heard the word, they received the word, they understood the word, and the result at the end of the verse there is they believed the word. Now that is proven because belief affects behavior. If you claim to believe something and you don't act on it, you don't really believe it. This is Spurgeon's example. If somebody wakes you up in the middle of the night, banging on your door, telling you that your house is on fire and you thank them for the warning and then go back to bed and pull the covers over your head, you don't really believe your house is on fire. If you believe your house is on fire, you're going to immediately figure out who and what is in the house that needs to get out of the house. Belief affects behavior. This is why Jesus says we can judge a teacher by the fruit that is born. Not just the fruit in their lives, by the way, it's the fruit in the lives of their hearers also. Sometimes we hear preachers and we can't quite tell, it's something just, maybe their sound, but something just sounds a little, if you want the proof, look at the life of their followers. How is what they're teaching being applied? How is it being lived out or is it even being lived out? If you hear the word, you receive the word, you understand the word, you believe the word, that affects behavior. This is the parable of the soils, isn't it? In Matthew 13, hear then the parable of the sower. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is the one on whom seed was sown beside the road, the one on whom seed was sown in the rocky places. This is the man who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy. Yet he has no root in himself, but is only temporary. And when affliction or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he falls away. And the one on whom the seed was sown among the thorns, this is the one who hears the word and the worry of the world and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word and it becomes unfruitful. And the one on whom the seed was sown on the good soil, this is the man who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and brings forth some a hundredfold, some 60 and some 30. We see the same progression in the parable of the soils as we see in Jesus' high priestly prayer. For the word to bear fruit, it first has to be heard and received and understood and believed. If you don't understand it, it won't bear fruit. If you receive it, but you don't understand it, it'll have no root and it'll dry up in the heat of persecution. If you receive it and even understand it, but it's choked out by the cares of this world, that is the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, the pride of life, it will not bear fruit. but when it is received, accepted, understood, and believed, the proof is that it bears fruit. Not all abundant fruit, some a hundredfold, some 60, some 30, but there will be fruit of the Spirit. In verse nine, he goes on and he says, I ask on their behalf. I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom you have given me, for they are yours. Verse 10 continues, and all things that are mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them. You understand that Jesus believed in a particular redemption. People don't like the term limited atonement, and I will admit that in my journey to the doctrines of grace, it first came by understanding election and predestination, but it really took root when I understood total depravity. that there is nothing I can do in and of myself to be pleasing to God. And again, total depravity doesn't mean that we are as bad as we could be, but we're bad enough, aren't we? It means we're incapable of fixing the situation. And I struggled with that L in tulip. I just had a tulip for a long time. And I thought, who could limit the atonement? And then reading Spurgeon on this, The reality, and you know, it surprises me still, the number of Baptists who are not reformed in their understanding, who love Spurgeon until they find out he was one of them Calvinists. But Spurgeon said that all of us, in some regard, on either side of that argument, limit the atonement. We either limit it to God's sovereign will, good pleasure and choice, or we limit it to the free will of man. And Spurgeon said that means that there can't be any limit if we limit it to the free will of man. because left on our own in our freedom of choice, we would never ever choose to come to Christ. We simply wouldn't. This is from Jonathan Edwards, from Martin Luther, Edwards, The Bondage of the Will, or Luther wrote The Bondage of the Will, Jonathan Edwards wrote The Freedom of the Will. I'd encourage you to read both because they expose the truth of the reality that nobody, has absolute free will. You understand not even God has free will. Every creature that has a will, that will is bound by their being. That means God's will is bound by his attributes, by who he is. If God had absolute free will, he could lie. But what does he say? It's impossible for God to lie. Why? Because in his very attributes, he is the truth. So there are things he cannot do. It's impossible for God to sin. It's impossible for God to lie. Jesus here believes in a particular redemption. He had come to accomplish the salvation of those whom God had given him. And we're gonna see in this prayer who that is. First, it is these disciples, the 11 who are with him in the garden. And then as he finishes the prayer, it's those who will believe because of their testimony in the future from when he's praying this. But he says, I ask on their behalf. I don't ask on behalf of the world. Jesus prayed for the disciples. He didn't pray for the world. In fact, you know that there is actually only one time in the scripture that we have evidence of Jesus praying for the world. And even then there's an argument to be made that they weren't of the world permanently because he prayed while they were crucifying him. Father, forgive them because they don't know what they're doing. And you know what the response to that prayer was from the father? The centurion's confession of faith, surely this was the son of God. God answered the prayer of Christ. And those who were crucifying him believed on him. Jesus intercedes not for the world, but for his people. Hebrews 7.25 says, therefore, he is able also to save forever those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. What we find in this prayer of Jesus, in the motive for why he prayed, it's because these for whom he was praying belonged to the Father. And he had come to accomplish their salvation, to reconcile them to the Father. And his desire was for the glory of God in their salvation through his sacrifice. D.A. Carson says, however wide is the love of God, John 3, 16, for God so loved the world, however salvific the stance of Jesus toward the world, where we're told that Jesus is the savior of the world, there is a peculiar relationship of love, intimacy, disclosure, obedience, faith, dependence, joy, peace, eschatological blessing, and fruitfulness that binds the disciples together and with the Godhead. Whatever love God has for the world, he has an even greater love for his people. His love and a general sense of compassion, of it raining on the just and the unjust, of God providing food and sunshine and rain. Yes, there is a love for his creation, but there's a covenant love for his people, a covenant devotion to those he came to save. And that is why he is praying as he is in this prayer. Boyce answers the question, why does Jesus pray for his disciples in this prayer? First, because they were the father's. His concern is for what belongs to the father. We also see that all that the father has also belongs to Jesus as the father has given him all things. It wasn't that Jesus just said, these belong to the father, so I'm praying for them. It's that these belong to the father and the father has given them to me, so they belong to me. So I'm interceding for them to the father whose they are. What security we have in the intercessory ministry of Christ. that we are the father's, he has given us to his son as a love gift, MacArthur says. You realize the exchange that's happening at the cross? The father is giving people to the son and the son in saving them is giving them to the father so that the father can give them back to the son to keep for the glory of the father. How secure are we? Jesus sums it up. I have you and the father has me. We can't get out of those hands. There are times we try. We wiggle and squirm, try to jump, scream, kick, fight. He's not letting go. The Bible tells us we're engraved on the palm of his hands. The picture there, not that God has hands and wear tattoos. No, the picture there, he can't wash us off. He can't shake us off. He can't drop us. We're his. He's given us to the Son. The Son has given us back to the Father so that we might glorify the Son so that the Son might glorify the Father. We're right back to verse one. Glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you. That's the end of verse 10. I have been glorified in them. How was he glorified in them? James Boyce goes on and he gives us five ways. He says, first, God is glorified in saving them by sending Christ to be the savior and in their confession that he was the son of God. He's glorified by their trusting Him, by their faith in Him. He's glorified the degree that they lived a holy life of obedience to Him. He's glorified by their confession of Him before the world. And He's glorified by their good works. Matthew 5, 16 tells us, let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. That means that if we look at the reason, the motive behind him praying for the disciples given to us in these first few verses of his prayer, we find a constant theme. He comes to the father and asks the father to glorify himself in the son. And he prays for the disciples who are the fathers, who have been given to the son, who have heard, understood, received, and believed his word. And in doing that, then they have glorified him, which means that he can further glorify the father. To sum that up then, we learn that Jesus prays for his disciples because before they were his disciples, they belonged to the father. They were given as a gift by the Father to the Son, and by sovereign grace, the Son was given to them and was given for them. In all these things, the disciples have glorified the Son, and thereby the Son has been able to glorify the Father. And as we remember the definition of glorifying God from last week, that is to make his name and attributes known in the world. This is our chief calling. What is the chief end of man? to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Our purpose for existing is that God might be glorified, that His name might be made known. We're gonna look at verses 11 through 16. Next time, we're going to look beyond why Jesus prayed. We're gonna look at what Jesus prayed for the disciples. But in this week to come, in your prayer life, Remember, Jesus is praying for you, interceding for you constantly, and he's doing that because as you hear and receive and understand and believe his word, you will live in such a way that God is glorified. Our task this week, in whatever circumstance we face, is to make God's name known. to make it known, to give him the glory. Let's pray together. Father, we do thank you for your word for this prayer, for the son expressing that he is coming to you because all of this is yours. You've given him the words to say, the works to do, the disciples to redeem. You've given him this ministry of salvation, of redemption, of coming to be a ransom for us. We thank you that he came and joyfully finished that work and that he continues to intercede for us before your throne. Remind us the security we have because of your will, because of your word, because of your son who's been given to us and who has been given for us. We pray these things then for the glory of your name in Jesus name, amen.