By Rev. Dr. Brent Russett – Asbury Free Methodist
John 17:6-8
It is the second Sunday of Lent, and we are just into our series on John 17 – the prayer Jesus prayed the night before he died.
You have heard the first part of the prayer read. Today I want to camp on verses 6-8
John 17:6–8 (NIV)
6 “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. 7 Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. 8 For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me.
A couple of weeks ago, as part of our Cuba Mission’s trip we went to the Free Methodist Church Pinar Del Rio where we met Pastor Hildaliza. The worship was great. At one point in the service a number of the men, including the pastors husband spontaneously went to the front of the church and as part of the congregational worshp – danced.
Now when I say they danced, I don’t mean my kind of dancing where you bop up and down and play a little air guitar. I mean they danced. They danced hard. They danced like I imagine David would have danced before the Lord.
After the service they fed us a simple but wonderful meal. We had the opportunity to ask Pastor Hildaliza how she came to know the Lord.
She said, through our interpreter, that my husband came to know the Lord first. He had been in an accident where a truck had rolled over his leg. He couldn’t bend his leg. Whenever he walk, he walked with a stiff leg.
He ran into a Christian who shared his faith and he gave his heart to the Lord. The next Sunday he went to this little Nazarene church where the pastor asked the church to kneel in prayer. Of course, he had a stiff leg so he couldn’t kneel.
He came home and told his wife. I am not going back to church because the Pastor asked us to kneel and I couldn’t kneel. Hildaliza told her husband – if you are going to be a religious man then you have to kneel. So, right there, he started to kneel – and God healed his leg. Well, when Hildaliza saw what God had done for her husband she gave her heart to the Lord.
I love to hear people’s stories of coming to faith. But when you hear a story of a person coming to the Lord – You only are hearing half the story. There is something profound going on in the spiritual realm that takes a person from where they are and makes them a disciple of Jesus. Jesus, in our passge today gives us a glimpse into that reality.
In these verse he is praying for his 12 discples, but he is also speaking about our reality.
John 17:6–8 (NIV)
6 “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. 7 Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. 8 For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me.
First of all, a disciple is someone the father gives to son.
John 17:6 (NIV)
6 “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word.
You have probably heard people say in reference to everyone in the world, “We’re all God’s children.” That is not quite true. All people belong to God because he created them, but those who receive Jesus, who put their faith in Jesus, are the ones who become children of God.
Jesus is praying here. These disciples of mine were yours because everyone and everything is yours. But before you gave them to me, they were in the world. Now they have come out of the world, and because you gave them to me, they are mine. “They were yours: you have them to me.”
The beginning of discipleship is this divine transfer. We are given by the father to the son out of the world.
The Apostle Paul puts it this way
Colossians 1:13–14 (NIV)
13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
Jesus uses the language of “they were given me out of the world.” When Jesus talks about his disciples coming out of the world – he is not saying they are leaving planet earth. The world, in this case, means a place that doesn’t know God and doesn’t really take note of God. They live as if God doesn’t exist. So, when they are taken out of the world, they go from a place where God is irrelevant to their lives to a place where their lives are centred on Jesus.
You can be very religious, like some of the disciples were, but you still need to come out of the world.
First of all a disciple is someone the Father gives the son. The other dynamic going on here is that Jesus reveals the Father.
John 17:6 (NIV)
6 “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word.
The Father gives us to the Son, and the Son reveals the father to us. Jesus shows us what God is like.
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When we are looking from our perspective, this looks like, “We wanted to know God, or we saw that we needed God. We felt this draw towards God. We came to believe that God loved us and that Jesus died for us. We put our faith in what the Bible says. We we receive Jesus into our lives. We believe the word of God when it says,
John 1:12–13 (NIV)
Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
There is this divine mystery. God chooses us and we choose God. God gives us to the son, and the son reveals the Father to us, but we need to receive the son.
John 17:6 (NIV)
6 “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word.
Now it is important we don’t get too theoretical here. Remember who Jesus is primarily talking about. He is talking about his disciples. You remember the guys, Peter and James and John, and Bartholomew and the rest of the twelve.
Father, these 12 guys were yours while they were in the world. You gave them to me. That process took them out of the world. I showed you to them, and they have become obedient to what you have said.
Now if I were Jesus, I would be saying, “Father, some present.” You gave me losers. I don’t want to be unkind about it, but for the most part, we are not talking about the most stellar individuals. One was a tax collector. Expertise – ripping people off. One was a zealot. Expertise – inciting riots. A couple were momma’s boys. Expertise – one-upmanship A couple were fishermen. Expertise – scratching out a living in any way possible. There were a few outstanding people amongst them. Nathaniel, in who there was no guile. And Andrew always seemed like a cool guy to me. But for the most part, these guys span the spectrum from the colourful to the mundane.
Yet Jesus says, “Father, you gave me these guys.”
Jesus was saying before I ever walked up to Matthew at his tax collector’s booth and told him to follow me, he was yours. Before I ever walked up to Peter while he was mending his fishing nets and said follow me. He was yours. And you gave them to me.
And people, before you ever made a move towards God, you too were in the hands of God. Whether you like it or not, whether you acknowledge it or not, you are God’s possession. The prostitute and the saint, the pusher and the priest, the pagan and the religious are all God’s possession.
That child that you have been praying about forever to come back to the Lord – they are God’s possession. That friend that you long to see come to know Jesus they are God’s possession. It may seem that they are far away from God. It may seem like they take no thought of God. But God knows who they are. Keep on praying that would see a revelatioin of the father.
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Jesus said, these 12 guys were yours, and you gave them to me from the world.
When we are given to Christ by the father, or when we receive God’s offer of salvation, whichever perspective you want to look at it from, God’s or ours, we are taken out of the world. Our perspective has changed. Our lives start to revolve around God.
John 17:6 (NIV)
6 “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word.
Now, look at the response of the disciples. “They have obeyed your word.” What have they done up until this time? They have responded to Jesus’ call to follow him. But a lot of the time, they got their theology wrong. Their behaviour was less than stellar. But even so, Jesus says, “they have obeyed your word.”
When Jesus says that, he doesn’t mean that they have become perfect. But they are, for the most part, living what they are learning. That is their choice and they are learning to follow up on what God has done in them.
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Out of the world; obedient to the word. You come out of the world to become Jesus’. He reveals the father to you. You become obedient to the word. You become obedient to what he shows you.
Why am I spending so much time on this? There is a temptation in every generation to make following Jesus something that it is not.
I went to see the movie “The Jesus Revolution” this past week. It is a dramatization of the Jesus movement in the 1960s. The movie portrays two types of disciples. One type wore suits, had short hair, was legalistic and set in their ways. The movie called them squares. The other type were hippies. The movie is about the acceptance and rejection of the one type of disciple from another type of disciple.
But here is the thing, our outward style does not define what kind of disciple we are. How we do church doesn’t define what kind of disciple we are.
Most churches sit in rows like we do here. Other churches meet around tables. Other churches meet under trees and sit on the ground. Other churches gather in a circle. How we do church doesn’t define what kind of disciple we are.
The type of music we sing, the kind of clothes we wear, and the kind of church we attend doesn’t define what kind of disciple we are. We are all prone to make a religion out of our style.
We can do church without taking much thought of God. We get focused on how we like or don’t like the songs. We get focused on how we like or don’t like the sermons. We get focused on things about God without focusing on God himself.
When this starts to happen, we make following Jesus into something that it is not. It becomes about style. It becomes about doing religious things, but God is kind of irrelevant to what we do.
John 17:6 (NIV)
6 “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word.
True discipleship has this supernature revelation of who God is. It has this divine transfer out of the world where we become Jesus’ very own. It comes with obedience to God’s word as revealed in Christ. There is a supernatural edge to all of this that permeates all of our lives.
Then Jesus goes on.
John 17:7 (NIV)
7 Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you.
There is this deep knowing about who Jesus is. It moves from a belief to a knowing that Jesus is the full revelation of God.
If we go back a few chapters, we find Philip struggling with this.
John 14:8–10 (NIV)
8 Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”
9 Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.
I am in the Father, and the Father is in me. If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.
Jesus now prays – Father, they are getting it.
John 17:7 (NIV)
7 Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you.
They have come to know who I am.
John 17:8 (NIV)
8 For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me.
They knew for certain that I came from you.
The first part of being a disciple is coming out of the world and being obedient to the word – as it is revealed in Christ. The second part of being a disciple is believing in Jesus. That he came from Father and that the words he spoke were from God. It’s about Jesus.
If you are going to be a disciple, you have to come to terms with who Jesus is.
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I know that seems really basic. It is really basic. But it if is so basic, how did Christianity become about politics? How did Christianity become about judging those in the world? How did Christianity become more about forms of church and styles of worship than it is about who Jesus is?
As I look back over how Christianity has evolved, I see this dynamic going on. In certain times and in certain places in history, there have been movements of God. Often, these times, the church as been called back to an authentic faith. Oftentimes, people are dramatically saved. They are called out of the world.
What do you do when God moves? My experience is that you want to stay in the presence of God. You want to put into practice what you know. So, you worship God. Often fresh expressions of worship come to the forefront.
Over church history, it has been anything from quiet prayer meetings to exuberant singing. In the old holiness movement, where the Free Methodist Church had some of its roots, if people got blessed, they would run around the church waving a white hanky. Oftentimes, in our tradition, connecting with God was done around the altar.
Other movements of God, like the one the Pentecostal church came out of, was marked by a display of the gifts of the Spirit. There was demonstrative worship. People would raise their hands and jump and sing. That was how the people of God responded when God moved.
But in every authentic move of God, Jesus is revealed. The focus in on Jesus. Often, forms of church are developed around that revelation.
If you track these moves of God, what happens is that they often change the lives of those who were involved in them. But then the next generation comes along. They experience the forms of worship that were developed out of the move of God without experiencing the move of God. What then sometimes happens is that we end up arguing about whose form of worship is right or better. But what is really need is a fresh revelation of Jesus.
We need to know him. We need him to reveal himself and the Father to us. Whenever this doesn’t happen – our faith becomes something it was never meant to be.
The question is, how does this happen?
I know that God loves you more than you could ever love him. I know that he wants you to know him in this deep, authentic way. I know that he wants to reveal himself to you. He wants you to know who Jesus is. He wants you to be obedient to his word and his call because he knows that it will be best for you.
The good news is that this is what the Father and son want for you. You don’t have to talk them into it. You don’t have to twist their arm. You don’t need to somehow convince them. They want you to have this revelation; they want you to have this deep knowing.
Here is God’s promise to you
Jeremiah 29:13 (NIV)
13 You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
In order for this to happen, you need to bring the real you before God. Don’t pretend to have it all together when you don’t. Don’t pretend to have no doubts when you doubt. Bring your fears, your concerns, your hopes and your dreams to God. Don’t hide.
Tell the Lord that you are not going to pretend. You are going to trust that he is going to break through with a revelation of who he is. When you see him, you will be obedient to what he shows you. If you seek him you will find him. If you seek him with your whole heart.
Jesus prayed this prayer on the night he was betrayed. He prayed it in the hearing of his disciples. He prayed it so they would have something profound to fall back on when he was crucified. The full impact of this prayer would not be fully felt until he rose again and they understood what his death would be all about.
For in the cross, the fulness of the Father’s love was revealed. In The cross, the power of God to forgive sin and break evil was seen. In the cross was this raw expression of God’s heart towards you.
Lent is a time when we look at our lives and make sure we are on track with what God wants to do in and through us.
Sermon Questions – John 17:6-8
Introduction
1. What are you giving thanks for this week?
2. What are you praying about this week?
Digging in.
3. Read John 17:1-8 (focusing on 6-8)
4. What does it mean that the Father gave the Son his disciples? – verse 6 (It’s a hard question, but grapple with it.) – reference Colossians 1:13-14.
5. What definition would you give to the word “world,” as Jesus uses it in Verse 6?
6. What is Jesus doing for the disciples in this verse? Explain it in your own words.
7. What does it mean that “they have obeyed your word?” Does that mean that they were perfect?
8. What has happened/ is happening to the disciples in verses 7-8?
Application
9. Explain in your own words the difference between religion and the kind of disciple that Jesus is talking about in these verses?
10. Read Jeremiah 19:13. What does this tell us that we need to do to remain on the course of true discipleship?