Our text tonight is John chapter 17 from verses 6 to verse 19. So please turn there with me. That should be in page 1149 in your pew Bibles. John chapter 17. Continuing this series, this brief series, into this mighty prayer of Christ. John chapter 17 verse 6. This is Jesus speaking. 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've 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. 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 also may be sanctified in truth." Let's go to the Lord one more time and pray. Lord, we ask your blessing upon the word. May we all be fed by further revelation of Christ, this prayer, and how we ought to live in the wake of it. We pray this in Jesus' name. John Knox died well. John Knox, if you don't know who he was, was a Scottish minister in the 1500s and 1600s who flipped an entire nation upside down for Christ. He was peculiarly anointed of the Holy Spirit and God used him to bring the gospel to a barren land. and to see people come to Christ throughout. He was a tireless minister whose prayers made Queen Mary tremble, whose godly life was exemplary and ministry was used in an unusual way. Well, eventually John Knox lay dying. And as he lay dying, he'd make these wonderful exclamations on his deathbed. Stuff like this. He'd say, live in Christ and flesh need not fear death. where he'd say, Lord, grant true pastors to your church that purity of doctrine may be maintained. And a writer named F.W. Borham recounts John Knox saying this. He recounts it this way. He said, go, said the old reformer to his wife as he lay dying. And the words were his last. Go, read where I cast my first anchor. She needed no more explicit instructions, for he had told her the story again and again. Well, what was that text that John Knox had his wife running to go read to him on his deathbed? It was nothing more than John chapter 17. And just to buttress the point that we need to really study this scripture and get a hold of it, listen to what Philip Melanchthon says, another reformer. Listen to what he says about John 17. He says, quote, there is no voice which has ever been heard neither in heaven nor on earth more exalted, more holy, more fruitful, more sublime than the prayer offered up by the Son of God Himself." So friends, this text is worthy of our attention. Now tonight we're going to continue that three-part series that we started studying John chapter 17. Remember we started, this was some months ago, so we might not remember, but we started off with Jesus praying for Himself. Now we move on to Jesus praying for His disciples. Christian, here's my desire this sermon. Here's my desire as we look at this text. Number one, I want you to delight in Christ as the Savior, and the prayer of these profound and deep truths, that we'd be satisfied in Him more, satiated upon Him more, ravished by Him more as a church body, and that we'd imitate and seek to obey the truths that He's prayed. That's my first aim. But I want to do something further. On top of delighting in this prayer, I want us to go forth and imitate this prayer. I want you, Christian, you brother and sister, to go forth and pray like Jesus prayed in this chapter. I want you to go forth and plead with God the way He did. Level petitions to Him the way He did. We have all so much to learn from Christ concerning prayer. It's like you're a child and you go to a beach and you see this large footprint in the sand and you take your measly little foot and put it in the print just out of awe. That's this prayer. We don't match up. But by God's grace, through the Word being preached and through us reading the Word of God, may we attain more and more likeness to Christ in his prayers. So, that's how I'm going to divide this sermon up, basically. The first half is going to be us delighting in the Savior and his prayer, and the second half, and it's going to be a shorter half, is going to look at practical ways we can imitate the Savior in this prayer. So those are the two divisions. And the longest one is going to be delighting in the Savior and His prayer. So first, let's go to just delighting in the Savior and His prayer, that first half. Jesus is going to level certain petitions before God on behalf of the disciples. He's going to make certain requests before God, but before he does that, Jesus takes a bunch of truth, things that are true about the disciples, and he brings those things before God, true things about the disciples, and from those truths, the petitions come out. So Jesus is going to God about truth concerning the disciples who are about to be left. Remember, he's going to the cross, he's going to be resurrected and ascend, they're going to be here alone. He's leveling truths about them, and then from those truths, petitions are coming out, specific requests. Now, just at the beginning from verses six to 11, I see at least, there could be more, there's some debate, but I see at least five truths that Jesus levels up to God. And these are the truths as I see them, and we're gonna go through them one by one. Number one, Jesus says to the Father, we own them, we own the disciples, verses six to 10. Number two, I revealed you to them, verses six to eight. Third, they've kept your word and believe that you sent me. Verses 6, 8 to 12. Fourth, I'm praying specifically for them. And fifth, I'm leaving the world. So let's go to that first ground that Jesus gives that's going to lead to the petitions. The first one, we own them, verses 6 to 10, and I'll read them again. I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. And then verse 10, Jesus says, all mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I'm glorified in them. So brothers and sisters, there is a people that God gives Jesus out of the world for his own ownership. And Jesus is praying here, remember, not directly for us, he's praying directly about the disciples, and he's saying, God, you gave me these disciples from out of the world for my possession. But Christian, this is true of you and me. Christian, you are the Father's love gift to Jesus. I'll say it again, you, you sitting here, who've trusted in Christ, are the Father's love gift to Christ. Think about John, and you don't have to turn there, John chapter 10, verses 27 to 29. Jesus says, the good shepherd of the sheep says this, my sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, I give them eternal life. They will never perish, and no one will snatch them from my hand. Now here's the verse that links it with it. This is true view. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. So Christian, God takes sin-sick, condemned sinners like you and me, He takes them from eternity past and He gives them to Jesus Christ as a love gift to the Son. So that's the first grounds. The second grounds is connected to it, so we're gonna get some application out of it. Second, I revealed you to them. Again, verses six to eight. He's manifested God's name, who God is, to the disciples, and they've received it. We'll get to that later. Christian, is this not Christ's great ministry throughout the Gospel of John? Jesus is the one in the bosom of the Father who declares the Father and makes Him known. Jesus reveals God to those God has given Him from before the worlds began in eternity. Jesus comes and reveals who God is. And without that revealing work, dear Christian, you and I cannot know God. Think about Acts 16, 14, the Lord opens Lydia's heart to understand the things being preached. And if he hadn't done that, Lydia wouldn't have understood. So looking at this, dear Christian, that you were given to God, or rather God gave you to Christ from eternity past, and opened your eyes to understand the things of God, wherein is boasting? This is an absolutely humbling truth, Christian. We couldn't see of our own eyes. He draws us to himself, not because of our faith, not because of our goodness. Remember, the disciples stumbled like crazy, and so do you and I, but because of his great love, a love that knows no bottom and no end. And just comprehending this, if you're a Christian, you might find that the words to this hymn or the theme of your heart's praise to him. The hymn, How Sweet and Awful is the Place, listen to these words. The hymn goes, how sweet and awful is the place with Christ within the doors, while everlasting love displays the choicest of her stores, while all our hearts and all our songs join to admire the feast. Each of us cry with thankful tongues, Lord, why was I a guest? Why was I made to hear thy voice and enter while there's room, while thousands make a wretched choice and rather starve than come? Christian, if you're a true Christian indeed, you marvel at the fact that God has chosen you and given you eternal life out of free love. And if it wasn't for him, you would have stumbled in darkness, groping but not finding saving knowledge in Jesus Christ. There's no other way whatsoever. He's the one that reveals and he alone. So then that third ground that Christ gives to God in prayer, moving on. This is true of verses 6, 8, and 12. They kept your word and believed that you sent me. So we're talking a lot about the sovereignty of God, right? God giving the sheep to Jesus. But this is the other side of that. There is a sense, and it's true, that God gives Jesus Christ a certain people from eternity past to be saved. But on the other hand, those people are the people that receive what Christ has taught and believe on Him. And that has to be true of you. So if you're sitting here today and wondering, well, there's no way of me knowing whether I'm one of those sheep given to Christ by God, that's not for you to know. Your duty is to imitate the disciples here who received what Christ said and believed that God sent him. Believe in him yourself. Will you do this? Now the fourth ground. Jesus prays specifically for the disciples and not the world. And this might be the most startling of that list of truth that Christ gives. He says, I'm praying for them in verse 9. I'm not praying for the world, but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. So Jesus is specifically saying he is not praying for the world. Now what does John mean by the world? Does John mean this globe filled with people of different ethnicities, different cultures? I don't think that's what he means. John often refers to the world as the entire fallen, depraved, created order rebelling against God. And Jesus is saying he is not praying for the world, he's praying for those God has given him from eternity past, the elect. Now Jesus, as the good shepherd sent from God, as we read before, has a particular love for you, Christian, if you've trusted in Christ. He loves you and he has a love for you that's different from his love concerning the world. Does this not move you to your core? Jesus's love and concern for you, not in a general way, not in a general concern, but a specific particular love for you. But I don't want to dwell on that particularly. I want to dwell on those who may be here who possibly have not come to personally trust in Christ. Maybe you've been sitting here Sunday night and Sunday morning, after Sunday morning and Sunday night, but you've never personally come to saving trust, individual trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to speak to you specifically. If that's you, this is an absolutely terrifying verse for you. Jesus is not praying for you. Ask yourself if you're wondering if that's you. Has God done to you what God did to his disciples? Has God taken you out of the world and unto himself? Has God purchased you for his own possession? Have you come to God through Jesus Christ from the world or out of it? And if that's not true of you, or if at least you're not trusting in Christ today, like we've talked about in a previous sermon, you're not in that category in Christ, the righteous category. You're in a category of wickedness apart from Christ. Friends, all those in the world are categorized by the fruit of the world. They're categorized by idolatry. They're categorized by a life of habitual sexual immorality, of inward jealousy, of habitual gossip, and all of these kinds of things flowing out from them. You might think, well, the solution is to stop doing that, to hamper down, to start being good. Friend, you will not be damned for any one of those sins particularly, but for you not trusting in Christ yourself. The sin of all sins, as Jesus says in John 16, 9 is that they, the world, do not believe in Him. So what's the solution? What can be done for you if you find yourself in the world, apart from Christ, separated from Him and not being the object of His prayers? Friends, we've got great news for you, if that's you. Jesus Christ has come into that very world we talked about, the world. He came in and He did not come to condemn that world, but to save that world. That's John 3, 17. God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him. God so loved the world, that famous verse, John 3, 16. God so loved the world, those that He did not pray for, that He gave His only Son, that whoever out of that world believes in Him would not perish, but have eternal life. So friend, if you find yourself here outside of gospel comfort in Jesus Christ, we want to encourage you to look to a Savior who left glory and took on flesh, obeyed the law perfectly for sinners like you, was nailed to a cross, bore the sins of all who would trust in Him, bore the wrath of God for them, and was buried and then raised and ascended at the right hand of God. Friend, we encourage you to trust in that Christ. Believe on Him tonight. Let tonight be the night of salvation for you. And it can be if you will believe on Him. So close with Him. And if you do that, He'll own you. And you will have been purchased by His blood. And you'll be His. Very well, the fifth ground. He's leaving. And it's that first part of verse 11. I'm no longer in the world, but they are in the world. So, Jesus stacks up all this truth. You've given me these disciples. They've received your word. They've believed on me. They're gonna be in the midst of this world that hates them. He's gonna say that in 14 and 16. And they're gonna attack them. Now, Lord, I'm leaving. And what does that truth lead to? The first petition. And this is that first petition. It's found in the second half of verse 11. So this is the first concrete request that Christ brings before God. It's this. I'm 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. Now, I don't want to disappoint you, but we'll talk about this first petition more in depth, Lord willing, in that last part of the prayer, where Jesus is praying for you and me specifically. Christian, Jesus prays for us specifically later on, and he levels this request before God. So I don't want to spend too much time talking about this, but it's important to note that in the midst of hostility, Jesus' first prayer for the disciples is spiritual unity. And Christian, if you're regenerate, this is bred in you to some degree. You seek unity and fellowship with your other believers. But again, we'll talk about this at another time. So we'll leave that aside and go to verse 12 in between that petition for being kept, and read verse 12 with me, this truth in between petitions. Jesus says, while I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I've guarded them, and not one of them has been lost, except the son of destruction that the scripture might be fulfilled. So the disciples' continuance and continuing on in the faith is hinged upon one thing. Certainly not them, because they constantly stumble and don't quite understand what Christ is saying a lot of the time, but it's hinged upon Christ guarding them and keeping them while he was on earth. Not one of these disciples has been lost due to Christ's keeping them and guarding them from falling away. So we can say that all that God gives to Christ will be kept by Christ, except for one. It's Judas. He says, accept Judas. Judas falls away. And this is further proof that the eleven are kept, but Judas himself falls away. And it's proof that if Christ guards you, you will be kept till the end. If you think Christians can fall away, notice what that says about Christ. Christ is an unable, weak, and impotent guard. An impotent shepherd. It's that son of destruction that goes away and not the disciples because Christ is an able preserver. So Christian, concerning your preservation, it has absolutely nothing to do with you. You can't keep yourself hankered down and preserved. It's Christ or nothing. Either Christ keeps you or your fall. And if you're his, he'll keep you like he kept his very disciples at this time. So now we go to a wonderful, wonderful truth that leads to the next petition along with another one. And that's Jesus revealing, now pay attention to this Christian, the reason he speaks and prays this prayer out loud. He's letting the disciples into the reason why he's praying this out loud. And this is the reason. It's in verse 13. but now I am coming to you and these things I speak in the world that they, the disciples, may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. Jesus is leaving and the reason he's praying these things out loud in earshot of his disciples is that his joy would be complete in them. Jesus in a restatement of what he said in John 15 and John 16 wants his joy filled and fulfilled in his disciples. Now notice Jesus in the midst of his disciples being left alone is not caring about where they're going to stay, what they're going to eat, what their mental stability is going to be, or their physical safety necessarily. He's concerned with the internal, their joy, And Christian, we might say that this applies to us because of John 15 and 16. Christian, Jesus cares about your joy. Jesus cares about your happiness in Him. You're feeling the felt joys of Christianity. Notice. How is that joy communicated from John 17? Notice this. It's communicated through the things Jesus speaks. So friend, Jesus seeks to communicate this joy unspeakable to his disciples through truth, through spoken words. And those spoken words lead to the disciples having this joy unspeakable and full of glory. So what can we, brothers and sisters, deduce from this? What can we get from this? We can get from it this. Sheer knowledge is not Christ's goal concerning Christianity. Dour religion, in other words, downcast religion, bored religion, stale religion, is religion, but it's not Christianity. Jesus wants you, Christian, to experience His joy through the truth, through what He's spoken, and by the Holy Spirit applying that joy to you. It's felt joy. And brothers and sisters, I just want to say this with emphasis and with force. It is your duty and your privilege to honor Jesus's desire here. I'll ask you this question. Is Psalm 37, 4, delight yourself in the Lord, is that a commandment or a suggestion? Is Philippians 4, 4, rejoice in the Lord always, suggestion or a commandment. Does Jesus really want, command, and expect his disciples to do what the psalmist did in Psalm 36? Listen to this, to feast on the abundance of God's house and to drink from the rivers of his pleasures. Does God want that of you, or is that an extra add-on to Christianity? It's truth, and then if you're feeling joy, and maybe there's times of darkness, but you're seeking God for more of His presence and more joy from the Word, you're an A-plus Christian. But you know, all that's necessary is clinging to the truth, holding on for dear life, trying to be holy, I don't think that's the case. You read through the farewell discourse and you see Jesus' emphasis on the disciples being filled with joy, filled with Holy Spirit joy. So, Christian, let God, by the Spirit, fill you with the joys of notice. His Son, Jesus, wants to fill you with His joys, the joys of one perfectly loved by the Father, and loving and delighting in the Father perfectly, and having the joy of loving Him perfectly. He wants you to have that joy mediated through propositional truth. Brothers and sisters, My prayer for Christianity worldwide, for the sake of our testimony, and for this church, and for all of us, is that we would be a doctrinal people, but that we would be what the old saints called, it sounds weird, but an experimental people. A people with experiential knowledge of God, knowing and taking a hold of the inheritance God has given them in Christ. Knowing Him and drinking of Him and feeding on Him as our inheritance. So Christian, I have a question for you. Have the world's pleasures satisfied you this week? This month, this year, maybe joy in Christ from the Word of God and from prayer seems so far removed, so impossible. Think back to your moments of closest communion and joy and delight and rejoicing in Christ. How does your happiness or your pleasure in the world compare with those mountaintop and those daily experiences, eating and drinking from the Word of God? How do they compare? Now, if you are unhappy and sad in compromising with the pleasures of the world, and I want to be very careful, there are Christians here who are godly who are not walking in joy, and our duty is to seek God for more of his joy, more of his presence, a restoration of joy and fellowship with him in his word. But if you're here and you're compromising, and you have not felt those pleasures because of your sin, I don't think the Lord wants you to self-flagellate in agony. You guys know what self-flagellation is? The Catholics who used to whip themselves and think that God would hear the repentance because of that. But he wants you to trade your inferior happinesses and pleasures for greater ones. Listen to this quote from a Puritan named Thomas Manton. Just listen to this, it's wonderful. It will be sad for you, he says, if you love pleasures more than God and prefer these dreggy delights before those masculine joys which will accrue to you by communion with God. If we were all together to renounce delight, it would be more irksome. No, you're only called to exchange it. Surely one moment's communion with God is better than all the mirth we can get by the pastime of an age. Christian, if this is you, the thing to do tonight, before you leave here, is to repent before God and to ask Him to fill you with that Spirit talked about in the discourse, that farewell discourse, 14, 15, and 16, fill you with the Spirit who testifies and glorifies of Christ and begin to seek Him and to draw near to Him again. Friends, what better corrective is there against the temptation of sin? and it's wooing pleasures and being filled with the pleasures of Christ. All of the world's kinds of temptations and offerings, they pale in comparison. They shiver, they wallow away compared to those masculine joys Thomas Manton is talking about, found in Christ and found in communion with Him. We go to another grounds before that second petition, and that's found in verses 14 and 16. Jesus says of the disciples, they're not of the world. I'll read those verses to you. I've 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 don't ask you 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. So I read the petition in the middle there, but it's sandwiched between the fact that these disciples, Jesus is leaving them, they're in the midst of a hostile world. And what does Christ ask for? So you think, okay, tender shepherd, Christ cares for his sheep, Christ cares for the disciple. Surely, if they're left in this world that's hostile toward them, he'll pray for them to get out of there. You know, counterintuitively it seems, Jesus prays in verse 15, I don't ask that you take them out of the world. Jesus consciously asks the Father to keep the disciples in this hostile world. And it's for this reason. Notice you haven't been raptured or taken up since you've come to Christ. There's a reason for that and it's quite obvious, I think. Christ desires the witness of the disciples to this hostile world for them to be bright and shining lights before a dark world that hates God. And that robust witness will cause many out of the world to come out of the world and trust in Christ. And secondly, we might just say this about being left in the world. Christ doesn't want us to be removed from the world to make us fit for the next one. Do realize, Christian, that your trials and the things you go through here are causing you to be holier and more fit for heaven and for communion with God. So that's why he leaves us here, but he prays that the disciples be kept from the evil one. Jesus prays that their faith would not ultimately fail from Satan, from the devil, and that they would be preserved to the end. Now, you can be assured of this, Christian, that Jesus Christ is praying the same thing he prayed for Peter. Satan seeks to sift Peter, but Jesus prayed for him, that his faith may not fail. Christ is praying as our intercessor even now for that in us. We can be assured of that. Christian, will we allow that truth to propel us to fearless service for Christ? It ought to give us this kind of push to go out and to know, as George Whitefield once said, that we are immortal, we are without death until our life's work is over. So once God has determined our life's work is over, we're done declaring God's truth and calling people back home, God will call us back home. But till then, he preserves us. And that ought to give us some kind of holy boldness to go out and to preach and to be bold for the sake of Christ. So that's that second petition. And now that leads us to the last petition. And that's what Jesus says in verse 17, asks the father concerning the disciples, sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. So Jesus is seeing disciples in the midst of a hostile world, right? And he's seeing this world and the threats of the world and he's leaving them there for usefulness, for the sake of Christ. And in this text, in this verse, he's praying particularly for the set-apartness of his disciples. That his disciples would be holy in the midst of a dark and devilish world. How does that come to be? How are they set apart? How are they made holy? The very means by which the disciples would be made holy is the truth. There's a lot of debate about what this verse really means. Is it talking about being sanctified in Christ, who is the word of God, and who is the way, the truth, and the life? Is this talking about the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of truth? Or the Father who sends the Spirit of truth and the Son of truth, the way, the truth, and the life? I think it's safe to say, and I think a lot of people probably would agree, a lot of scholars would agree with this, That it's true of Christ, it's true of the Father, it's true of the Spirit, that they are true. But this Word is the very declaration, the words that proceed out of their mouth. And so to be in the Word that is true is to be in the Scriptures. So that which Christ was perfectly embodied as, communicating God's name and character and truth, is now given to us in this book to be inundated with and absorbed in. The very scriptures are the thing that Christ prays would be the means of the sanctification of his disciples. So Christian, would you be sanctified in any other way? Would you find another way to be sanctified apart from God's ordained means of making you, in the midst of a hostile world, set apart and holy? If you're a Christian, you desire greater conformity to Christ. I've got bad news for you if holiness pretty much means nothing to you. It means you're probably not a Christian. You could look at verses 18 and 19 of John 17, as you sent me into the world, so have I sent them and for their sake I consecrate myself that they also may be sanctified. That's Jesus saying, I'm setting myself apart as a sacrifice so that my disciples would be holy, would be set apart. So that's true of disciples of Christ in general. They want to be holy. But if you're a Christian, you desire holiness, you desire greater Christ conformity, greater likeness to the image of Jesus Christ. And friends, the path to greater set-apartness and usefulness in this world, remember, your holiness is intimately linked to your usefulness and your witness to a dying world is in this word, in this book. That's the path to holiness, to being set apart, to being useful for God's kingdom. This makes me think of two kinds of religions in the Middle East. Weird, weird religions. I'm not saying that as an insult. They're just different religions. There's two groups of people, I don't know if you guys have ever heard of these groups of people, but there's the Druze and the Alawite people. And these people center their entire faith around truth and knowledge being secret. In other words, there's this group of elders that know their text, they know the scriptures, they know the truth about God, but the rest of the people have this kind of hazy understanding of what the truth is. They don't really know it, but they're trusting in faith that these elders and their ethnicity is not leading them wrong. Somehow they know the truth and we're kind of just trusting in them. That's the absolute opposite of the way our God delights in self-disclosure, opening himself up to his people. The means, Christian, of sanctification are not hidden. There isn't some secret right or secret way to holiness. And if you hear someone tell you that you have to enter the second stage of Christianity or this second realm of you're here as a normal Christian and then you kind of get promoted through an experience, they're lying. God has ordained his clear and very, very accessible word as the means to our sanctification and the means for usefulness in the world. Thank God the word is accessible to all, and it's the means that God would have for gospel growth and gospel holiness. So what's the solution? How do we become further sanctified, further conformed to Christ, further sanctified by the truth of His Word? Well, you might have jumped ahead of me. The application is quite simple. It's getting in the Word on your own day after day. Do you have a daily devotional time of commuting and feeding on the Lord from the Word of God? Do you come to church deliberately to sit under this sanctified word preached to you with the hopes that it makes you godlier, set apart, and ready to do battle with Satan and to win lost souls to Christ? Friend, how much of our morning and evening attendance on Sundays is because it's the Lord's Day? We're coming here because it's Sunday, and that's what we're supposed to do, and I'm an obedient Christian, so I'm gonna sit under the Word. And how much of it is further desperation, holy desperation, strong desire to meet God Himself through the Word of God, be sanctified by the words proceeding out of His lips, and to be useful in that world? Friend, how else will you know how to identify the sins to be mortified. The sins in you that need to go, that need to be killed. There's literally no other way apart from deliberately sitting under the preaching of God's word, hearing it for the ends of being sanctified and being in the word of God yourself. And you have God's promise. His design is to use that word to set you apart, to sanctify you, to make you holy and separate through the truth for the sake of greater witness to the world. So that's us going through the prayer as fast as I could. That's us looking at the truths of the prayer, looking at the petitions of the prayer. But now I want to briefly just look at imitating that prayer. I don't just want to look at the prayer. I want to learn how to pray like Christ by looking at the different petitions and different aspects of that prayer and praying more like Him. These are four things that I see in this prayer for us to grab a hold of and to imitate. The first one is this, and it's found particularly in verse 11. It's the selflessness of Christ's prayer. His selflessness. Notice, Jesus is about to go to the Father. He's about to leave the world. He's about to go through the agonies of Calvary, so these unspeakable agonies of the wrath of God being poured out on him. He's going to leave and be reconciled with the Father in a new way and experience joy and communion with Him again. But where does his mind go? Verse 11, look at this. All mine are yours 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. Rather than being focused on himself, Jesus' heart is bent towards selflessness. Cross, glory, resurrection, ascension, reconciliation with the Father in a way. And what is he focusing on? What's the bent of his prayer? His disciples are going to be alone for the first time in years. My physical presence isn't going to be with them. Father, keep them. Father, keep them. Friends, how much more should you and I be absolutely selfless, absolutely, yes, nothing wrong with praying for ourselves, but once we've prayed for ourselves, letting the bent of our hearts turn towards petitioning for our brothers and sisters. May the bent of our heart and our prayers themselves be like that of our Savior, bent towards the spiritual good of others. I want to be selfless like Christ in prayer. Praying for myself, yes, but then bent towards my beloved brothers and sisters in Christ. If we would imitate the Savior's prayers aright, we'd be focused on the other, our brothers and sisters, as he was laser focused on his disciples and their needs. So that's the first one. The second one is the truthfulness of this prayer. It's filled with truth. Like I said before, Jesus is not just bringing petitions before God. He's not going before God and there's just three petitions before him. Keep them, one, keep them from the devil, and sanctify them, and then leaving. Jesus is taking relevant truth about the disciples, biblical truth, and praying it before God, and from those truths, he's getting petitions to petition God on their behalf. It's petition sandwiched in truth. So I'll give you an example. Jesus is using this as grounds. They've believed on your word. They are ours. They will be in the world. Petition, therefore, keep them. Grounds. They'll be in this world, and the world hates them. Petition, therefore, sanctify them by the truth. So Christian is our prayer life, your prayer life. like that, petition sandwiched by truth about who God is and about relevant truth for one another. It's a model for us. We could take, for instance, 1 Thessalonians 5.18. You think of a brother or a sister in Christ. Think about yourself even. You're struggling with sin. You bring before God reality, truth. 1 Thessalonians 5.18, Lord your will for me is sanctification. That's God's will for you. That's the grounds. Now the petition, make me holy based on that promise. Or how about this, Lord, my friend is struggling with sin. He's backslidden, he's compromised, but I have grounds to believe he's true. Lord, you've predestined all believers to be conformed to the image of Christ. So petition, therefore, conform him to the image of your son. You can pray for one another, Christians. If you go through, it's a super useful tool, that church directory app on the phone, you can go through families and pray for them. You go through the word, you could pray just like Jesus is praying. He prayed for those elect disciples based on their electness, and you could pray that too. Lord, these people are elect, therefore conform them to the image of your son. So you got the grounds and the petition. And friends, let's, like Christ, boldly take truth, pray it back to God, and see Him do things based on our prayer. The third one. I don't think this is a stretch. Jesus prayed vocally. Okay, it's not the intention of this text to say you should be in prayer meetings and you should do this and that, but Jesus Christ, according to verse 1 and according to verse 13, is saying these things, praying to God out loud for the sake of his brothers and sisters in Christ. Not sisters, brothers, disciples. He's saying this for them. He's praying vocally, out loud, for the sake of their edification and for the sake of their joy. And Christian, how true ought this to be of us? Do we end a phone call with a brother and sister by praying out loud with them and committing it to the Lord? Do we seek to pray together and to be identified the way the church was identified in Acts 2 42? The church was marked by the prayers of its people along with the preaching of the word, along with broken bread, fellowship, table fellowship. So we ought to edify one another, imitating Christ, by praying out loud with one another, together. And then the last kind of thing to imitate from this prayer of Christ is the sheer spirituality of this prayer. It's a spiritual prayer. The disciples, as I said before, they're about to be left by Christ. Jesus is not praying, as far as I can see, about their material possessions. He's not praying about their health. He's not praying about those things. He's focused on their spiritual needs. His prayers are marked by a real spirituality that is intimately connected with that first point of selflessness. I want to be very careful. There is absolutely nothing wrong with praying for healing. for brothers and sisters who are in pain, or alleviation from suffering for brothers and sisters who are in pain. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. In fact, we should pray that. But is, are even those prayers about the physical flavored and tempered by a spiritual savor and temper? Even our prayers for the sick, the physically ill, are they spiritual in essence? Thinking first and foremost for the spiritual good of our sick brothers and sisters. Think about the story of William Perkins. William Perkins was, they call him the first Puritan, and I'm closing here, but William Perkins was dying of kidney stone kind of stuff, gallstone kind of stuff. He had a very, very painful and excruciating death. And his friends were around him, and they saw him writhing in agony. And one friend began to pray for God to heal him. And as he began to pray for Perkins to be healed, Perkins shot out. I could even see him grabbing him or something like that, and told the friend, pray not for an ease of my torment. Perkins said that. Pray not for an ease of my torment but an increase of my patience. We need more of that spirit to see trials and physical sufferings as a means to greater conformity to Christ. And notice that spirituality of Christ concerned with the joy of the disciples, concerned with the sanctification of the disciples, concerned with their perseverance, their unity. Are we praying for unity, sanctification, growth in godliness, having Jesus' very joy before the Father fulfilled in our brothers and sisters in Christ? So to be spiritually minded in prayer. Let's go through the scriptures, let's meditate on the scriptures, and a practical way of starting to pray the truth back to God and to pray spiritually is to study the prayers of Paul. Look at those opening chapters of 1 Corinthians and Thessalonians and inundate yourself with those prayers. Study this prayer and start praying this prayer back to God in certain ways concerning your brothers and sisters in Christ. Take their language, pray it back to God for others to promote personal spirituality in prayer. So those are the practical implications. And that's it, delight in the Savior and imitate Him in His method of prayer. Let's pray now before Him. Lord, we thank You for the lesson of prayer. We thank You, Lord, that You are concerned with our joy, concerned with our unity, concerned with our perseverance. Oh God, would You fill us with Your joy Make us prayers like Jesus Christ. Have us pray like him. Have us seek you like he does. God, we pray for your way in us, in prayer. In Jesus' name, amen.