“I Am Praying for Them” (Part 1 of 2)

((music playing)) ((music playing)) ((music playing)) >> In Jesus' high priestly prayer in John 17, he wasn't praying for the whole world. He prayed specifically for his disciples. That includes his followers, both then and now. So, what distinguishes a disciple of Jesus from everyone else? Alistair Begg considers the answer today on Truth ((music playing)) for Life.

First John ((music playing)) 1 and verse 1. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life. The life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testified to it and proclaimed to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us.

That which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us. And indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that your joy may be complete. This is the message we have heard from Him and proclaim to you that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.

If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.

My little children, am I writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

And by this we know that we have come to know Him if we keep His commandments. Whoever says I know Him but does not keep His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, in him truly the love of God is perfected.

By this we may know that we are in Him. Whoever says he abides in Him ought to walk in the same way in which He walked. Amen. We thank God for His word and for the fact that we have it in our hands and we have the privilege to read it not only Sunday by Sunday, but day by day.

And now let me invite you to turn to the Gospel of John and to chapter 17. And let's just read from verse 6 to verse 11 or follow along as I read from there. Jesus is praying, has prayed for himself, we might say, and now in turn He's praying for His disciples, for those who follow Him and in turn who would follow Him.

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'm praying for them. I'm 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'm 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. Our Father, we thank You for the Bible. We thank You that as we turn to its pages, the work of the Spirit of God is to bring it home to our hearts.

So, give us ears to hear, we pray, and we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, during the week as I was thinking always of these verses to which we return in John chapter 17, um I don't any more than you do read the verses in a vacuum.

In In other words, everything else that is going on in life around us, that is coming to us, that is flowing from us, is all somehow or another part and parcel of the framework. And so as I was thinking, pondering the wonder of God's keeping, saving power, and of the very clear way in which Jesus speaks concerning His disciples and their ultimate security because of who they are, I was sent by one of my friends an article from USA Today of last Monday.

I I didn't see it until it was sent to me. And as I read this article through, I found myself saying, "How in the world do people ever end up in that kind of situation?" The article, and I don't think you should go looking for it. It won't edify you.

It might Hopefully, what I have to say to you now will more than settle your thinking as I've tried to settle my own thinking. But the article was written by one of their staff reporters concerning the millions who are leaving organized religion, and pointing out that the greatest decline and the largest exodus from the framework of religion in America has been from those who are in evangelical churches.

And the article then went on to give to us chapter and verse of a number of these situations. It's fairly extensive, and I want you just to get a flavor of it by mentioning perhaps two. I'm going to mention the names of these men. I don't think it's a good thing for them to be identified in this way, and I certainly wouldn't want to encourage them in what they're doing.

So, we'll call it Mr. X. Mr. X was described as stepping away from his church and from his faith to Jesus, and finding himself in an inclusive Sunday collective that describes itself not as a church, but as a home for the spiritually homeless, dedicated to pondering existential questions and living out shared values.

So, I said that's quite remarkable. The I don't I wonder how many people are going. I don't think there are too many, but nevertheless, that's it. Stepping away, if you like, from the revealed word of God and stepping into a world of speculation. Elsewhere, this is down in Florida, we can find an interfaith community which tells that they have great speakers, including Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist leaders, as well as representatives of various Christian denominations.

The Sunday gatherings and meditations are supplemented with Christian yoga or therapeutic sound healing sessions, as well as the pastor's own teachings, which incorporate Sufi, Hindu, or Zen Buddhist texts, or even psychology or science. Incidentally, the context that I have just described began as a church plant from the Southern Baptist Convention in 2015, where a young man, set apart in the way that we send our fellows to our church plants, presumably began with a conviction, some kind of conviction, but a waning conviction and a faltering hold on the Gospel itself.

So much so that that church is no more, and what is in its place is not remotely like what we are finding when Jesus prays for His disciples here. I remember when we studied in Jude, sometimes we felt, "Wow, maybe this is overstating things a little bit." But we remember how we considered the words, "Beloved, I find it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once delivered for the saints."

And we said on that occasion that the notion of the faith delivered to the saints is not some kind of smorgasbord that you can pick and choose from, but it is actually the very gospel of God as it is delineated for us in the scriptures from Genesis all the way to Revelation.

And as I finished reading that article, I immediately turned to 1 John. You say, "Well, don't go there again because you read it to us." No, no. I didn't read to you what I'm now about to read to you. I'm going to read to you now from 1 John and chapter 2.

And you may like to see what is there. I write to you children. This is about verse 14 or so. I write to you children because you know the Father. I write to you fathers because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you young men because you're strong and the word of God abides in you and you have overcome the evil one.

Then comes his exhortation. Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world.

And the world is passing away along with its desires. But whoever does the will of God abides forever. Children, it is the last hour. And as you have heard that Antichrist is coming, so now many Antichrists have come. Therefore, we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us.

For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out that it might be plain that they all are not of us. But you have been anointed by the Holy One and you all have knowledge. I write to you not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it and because no lie is of the truth.

Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the Antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you.

If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that he made to us, eternal life. So there you have it. The clear encouragement and exhortation of John, a reminder to us that as we make our journey, our pilgrimage through life, the scripture provides us uh with warnings that are to be heeded.

So for example, in Hebrews chapter 3, "See to it, brethren," he says. "See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has an unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But instead, make sure that you abide in the word and that you encourage one another to do the same.

So that the the the very uh singular notion of our being included in Christ, as we've tried to say always, is that it is communal. That it is in the safety of the company, first of the Holy Spirit and then of one another, that we are able to make progress.

The warnings are clear and the promises are equally clear. Remember Paul to the Philippians, Philippians 1:6. Uh "This is our confidence that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ." You see the tension? Make sure that you are abiding in the word.

As you abide in the word, you reveal the fact that you belong to Jesus. And make sure that you continue in this way. Now with all of that by a long introduction, let me come to the verses that are before us, which is 9, 10, and 11 and 17.

And let us just simply notice uh what the text is telling us here. First of all, we discover that Jesus is praying for his disciples. Actually, um he takes quite a while before he makes his first request. But in speaking to his Father, in addressing his Father, he is praying for them. "I am praying for them," he says again and again.

And at the risk of undue repetition, let us just remind ourselves of these disciples. What is true of them? Number one, they belong to God. A disciple belongs to God. Why? Because God gave that disciple to Jesus as a gift and Jesus in turn gave the gift of faith to the disciple. "You," he says, "yours they were."

Verse 6. Verse 6 again, "You gave them to me." He's speaking to his Father. They were yours. From when? From all of eternity. Uh does God then from all of eternity reach out into time, draw us to himself in order that we might then be lost, in order that we might end up in one of these situations here?

Not for a moment he doesn't. There is only two explanations of what is happening in the context that I've just described to you. One is that these individuals are wholesale turning their backs on God. They are backslidden to the nth degree and we pray that they might return or that they are apostate and since they have no interest whatsoever in returning again to God, to his word, to Jesus.

They're lost. That's what the Bible says. But not his disciples. They belong to God. Secondly, they have kept your name, he says, Father. They have kept your name. And we said last week that the name of God represents the totality of who he is, a loving, saving, keeping God.

And as you have kept them, they've kept your name. They're not doing things in their own name. They're not starting their own congregations. They're not devaluing that which is truth and supplementing it with ideas of their own. They're not doing that because they're your disciples. Thirdly, not only do they belong to God, they have kept your name, but they know the truth.

If your Bible is open, you can see it there in in verse 8. And they have come to know in truth that I came from you. They have come to know in truth that I came from you. The the uh link, which we referred to just in passing last time, between belief and knowledge is is a clear link.

Uh the words are different, but it's emphasized in the reality that is a shared reality. So for example, in John chapter 1 in the opening prologue of the gospel uh concerning how Jesus has come uh to his own and they haven't been received been receiving him, but he says, "But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God."

And that believing and receiving and knowing is part of our birthright as Christians. That we know. You see, we live in a world where now it is trendy to be spiritually searching. You can be searching. You just can't be finding. You can say you've got ideas. You can say you've got questions.

You can say you've got theories. You can say you've got doubts, but you can't say I know. In fact, in that article, one of the individuals, these uh church these non-church leaders, uh point out that the reason they walked away from their evangelical roots was because they didn't want to know.

They didn't want to be told that they knew what they knew. They wanted freedom to make it up as they went along. And so many of them stumbled over obvious things and others of them have stumbled over the pressing challenges of 21st century Western culture. But that's not true.

Remember chapter 6? You say, "Well, I know there is a chapter 6." But in John chapter 6 and again, here is Jesus. Jesus has been explaining that to ever um feeds on him has eternal life. And then in John chapter John chapter 6, when many of his disciples heard this, they said, "This is a hard saying.

Who can listen to it?" But Jesus knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, he said to them, "Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit who gives life.

The flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe." For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe and who it was who would betray him.

And he said, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father. After this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So, they had got caught up in the excitement. They've begun to follow along.

They are hearing what he's saying. It begins to dawn. They change their tune. So, as this crowd walks away, Jesus said to the 12, "Do you want to go away as well?" And Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."

Now, here's the juxtaposition between believed and know. "And we have believed and have come to know that you are the holy one of God." That is the testimony of a disciple of Jesus. The certainty that they express, that the disciples express, is no mere emotional fancy. The Bible is clear.

Jesus told the story. The word of God is sown and the response to the word of God is various. In some cases, it is instant bloom followed by instant fade. Then others, when they hear the word of God, they can't wait to get out at final hymn because there is a scratching at their ears and they fear it might be God himself calling them to himself.

And the devil says, "Get out while you can. Get out fast." Those are those amongst the stones where the seed fell. They had a little bit of a movement, but it was gone. And then the others who, along the journey of life, choked. Choked by riches and by selfish preoccupations and so on.

The Bible is very, very clear. Do you believe? Would you tell your friend at work that you have come to know that God is the living, loving, seeking, saving God? You see, if you're a disciple, you belong, you were chosen from eternity, you believe what the Bible says, and you behave in line with your believing.

That is why, you see, the lordship of Christ is stumbled over by many of these congregations in that article because what they decided was the influence of our culture in relationship, for example, to LGBTQ, they decided that they would succumb to that notion rather than believe the clarity of the word of Jesus.

That they would readjust their notions of marriage rather than believe what Jesus has said about marriage. And as soon as that is opened up as a point of departure, it's just a wholesale collapse from that point out. You're listening to Truth ((music playing)) for Life with Alistair Begg. We'll hear more about Jesus' prayer for his disciples tomorrow.

Now, if you have young children in your circle of family or friends, they may be looking forward to coloring Easter eggs or eating chocolate. These activities are fun, but of course, here at Truth for Life, our priority is to make sure children understand the true meaning of Easter.

And with that in mind, we've carefully selected a book titled Jesus' Easter Journey that does a great job of taking young children through the events of Holy Week and beyond, from Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem to his ascension and his promise to return. The book tells the complete story as recorded in scripture.

Together, you'll read about the Last Supper, about Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, his trials before Pilate and Herod, and his crucifixion, including the temple curtain being torn in two. And of course, the story doesn't end there. You'll read about Mary Magdalene's discovery of the empty tomb and Jesus' post-resurrection visits right up to his ascension.

Now, you might assume this is a lengthy book, but we love the fact that while it doesn't exclude the essentials, this book is brief enough to hold the attention of young children. And it's beautifully, colorfully illustrated with pictures that will enhance a child's understanding. You can purchase Jesus' Easter Journey at our cost of just $5 while supplies last.

Go to ((music playing)) truthforlife.org/store or call us at 888-588-7884. ((music playing)) We're glad you've joined us today. Tomorrow, ((music playing)) we'll find out why we don't have to be perfect to glorify God. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by ((music playing)) Truth for Life, >> ((music playing)) >> where the learning is for living.