Kept by God
Rev. Res Spears
The High Priest’s Prayer • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Let me start things off this morning by telling you a little secret that I learned during my newspaper career. Here it is: Anybody can be a newspaper reporter.
Now, I don’t mean that being a newspaper reporter is so easy that anybody can do it. In fact, it’s a hard job, and it requires at least a little bit of talent and a lot of hard work to do it right.
What I mean is that anybody can CLAIM to be a newspaper reporter and even be engaged in the work that newspaper reporters do.
I realized this about 25 years ago when I started a new job as a reporter at The Tidewater News in Franklin. I’d taken a break from journalism for a few years to work for the family’s construction company.
But after my father died and we eventually closed that company, I needed to find work. And, as it turns out, I don’t really have many marketable skills, which, of course, made journalism the perfect choice for me.
The thing about working at a small newspaper like The Tidewater News is that there’s often not a lot of attention paid to making sure the reporters have all the tools they need to do their jobs.
And when I started working there, one of the tools we were NOT provided was press passes or even business cards. And that was fine, for the most part.
If you show up at an event with a camera and a notepad, claiming to be with the newspaper, 90 percent of people will take you at your word, at least as long as you’re not trying to get into a paid event.
So, I never gave much thought to needing a press pass. After all, I’d never needed one before.
But then, one day, I was covering an car accident on Route 58 near Courtland, and I came across a deputy I’d never met before.
I showed him my camera and notepad and said I was from the paper and needed to get some photos.
The deputy was busy trying to keep the scene safe while he waited for the rescue squad. He just shrugged and said to stay on the side of the road while he and the other first responders dealt with the accident in the median.
The problem for me was that I needed better photos than I could get from the side of the road. So, when the deputy was turned away from me, I crossed the road into the median and started shooting my photos.
And suddenly, that deputy was right behind me. He grabbed my wrist and twisted my arm up and behind me and said, “I told you to stay on THAT side of the road. If you come back across, I’m going to arrest you.”
Having learned an important lesson about complying with the instructions of law enforcement officers, I moved back across the road, took my photos and went back to the office.
Clearly, I’d been wrong to disobey the officer’s instructions, But I also realized then and there that I needed credentials that identified me as a member of the press, which has special access to accident scenes under Virginia law.
So, I went right back to the office and made press passes for myself and the rest of the news staff. I wanted to make sure that, in the future, we’d be recognizable as someone with the state’s authority to be on the scene of an accident.
I wanted to be sure that whenever someone saw me on assignment for the paper they saw this badge that bore both my name and the name of the newspaper I represented. I wanted to be sure I’d be quickly identified as someone who had a right to be there.
Today, as we continue our look in John, chapter 17, at what’s often called the High Priestly Prayer, we’re going to see some of the benefits of being identified with God in Christ.
Let’s read the passage together. We’re going to be looking at verses 6 through 12 of chapter 17.
6 “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. 7 “Now they have come to know that everything You have given Me is from You; 8 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. 9 “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; 10 and all things that are Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine; and I have been glorified in them. 11 “I am no longer in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are. 12 “While I was with them, I was keeping them in Your name which You have given Me; and I guarded them and not one of them perished but the son of perdition, so that the Scripture would be fulfilled.
You might recall that I told you last week that in this prayer, Jesus prayed for Himself, for His disciples, and for us, the church, consisting of all true believers from all times and all places.
Last week, we looked at what Jesus prayed for Himself, that He’d be glorified in the crucifixion and resurrection to come. He prayed that the glory He received by giving His life as an atoning sacrifice for the sins of mankind would then serve to glorify God.
Today, we’re going to look at the first part of Jesus’ prayer for His disciples. And it’s significant that Jesus begins this part of His prayer by giving the reasons He’s praying for them.
And as we look at the reasons He gives, we should remember that, although He was praying TO God, Jesus prayed this prayer out loud. And he prayed aloud here so that His disciples would be encouraged.
He wanted them to know that their status as disciples belonging to God in Christ Jesus depended solely on the character of God and not on what they would do.
And that would be important in just a few hours, as the disciples scattered and even denied Jesus after His arrest.
They had kept God’s word as given to them by Jesus. In other words, they had placed their faith in Him, even though they still didn’t understand everything He’d taught.
And because of their faith in Him, Jesus had kept the disciples throughout his ministry. In other words, He’d guarded them spiritually, not allowing Satan to derail their faith.
Now, knowing He would soon die, rise again, and then ascend back into heaven, Jesus prayed that His Father would carry on the work of keeping and guarding them.
Clearly, God didn’t need to hear Jesus ask for this. It’s not as if Jesus needed to negotiate with God on behalf of the disciples.
Instead, I think this part of the prayer was Jesus’ way of telling the disciples, “Hey, I’ll be leaving soon, but don’t worry, because you’ll be in God’s hands then, and that’s the best and safest place for any believer to be.”
Indeed, as terrifying as it will be for sinners to find themselves in the hands of a justly angry God, it should be just as much of a comfort to believers to find themselves in the hands of the gracious and compassionate God who has forgiven them in Christ.
And that’s because, as I suggested earlier, our ultimate fate as believers isn’t a function of our own righteousness. Rather, it’s a function of GOD’S righteousness, a function of the righteousness of Jesus, a function of the very character of God and of His perfect Son.
Jesus points to this fact in his use of the word “name” throughout this portion of the prayer. The Greek word is onoma, and it bookends this passage, appearing in verse 6 and then again in verses 11 and 12.
In verse 6, Jesus says He has manifested God’s name to the disciples. In verse 12, He says He has kept them in God’s name. And in verse 11, He asks that God keep them in His name.
Now, you need to understand that names among the Hebrew people were significant. They pointed to some trait or characteristic that the parents either had noted about the child or that they hoped would come to describe the child.
So, Abraham’s name, for example, means “father of a multitude,” which is the promise God had made to Abram when He gave him his new name.
Isaac’s name means “laughter,” signifying both the joy he brought Abraham and Sarah when he was born and their response when God had told them they’d have a son.
And so, when Jesus says He’s manifested God’s name to His disciples, it means that He has shown them the very character of God in both His actions and His words.
He had taught them what the Father is like through His parables and sermons. And He had SHOWN them what the Father is like in His sinless life of perfect obedience and faith. He had KEPT them in God’s name, guarded by God’s grace.
They had belonged to God, as all people do, by virtue of having been created by Him. And they had belonged to God by virtue of their heritage as Jews, God’s chosen people.
But what we see in verse 6 is that there is a special sense in which 11 of the 12 disciples had been given to Jesus by His Father.
God had chosen the 11 to be the conduits through which the gospel would be proclaimed after Jesus had returned to heaven.
Indeed, what we see in verses 7 and 10 is Jesus’ affirmation that everything He’d been given during His time on earth had come from God, including the very words of His preaching.
This part isn’t really surprising. We see James, the half-brother of Jesus, making this point in his New Testament letter.
17 Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.
What’s surprising is the second part of verse 10, where Jesus says not just that everything He has belongs to God, but also that everything GOD has belongs to Him.
This is a powerful statement that only someone who is equal to God could make. And it would have been a powerful encouragement to the disciples in that this mutual ownership by Father and Son guaranteed they’d be able to do the work Jesus was going to leave them to do.
Notice in verse 9 that Jesus frankly says He isn’t praying for the world, but for the disciples whom the Father has given Him.
These 11 who remained after Judas had left the room had a special relationship with God, because they had a special relationship with Jesus. And the relationship they had with Jesus was a function of their response to His words. Look at verse 8.
The 11 disciples had received Jesus words about God. They’d truly understood that He had come as God’s representative. And they’d believed that God had sent Jesus.
These are the same disciples Jesus had chastised for their “little faith” and their misplaced ambition not all that long before this night.
They’d not had an epiphany about Jesus in the meantime. Surely, there had been a growing sense of understanding about Him and about His mission on earth during their years with Him.
But they still didn’t understand all that would become clear to them about Him after He’d returned to heaven and the Holy Spirit had entered them.
What they seemed to understand was that Jesus is the Son of God, equal to God Himself in all things; that He’d been sent to establish the kingdom of God here on earth; and that salvation — and citizenship in the kingdom — is available ONLY through Him.
Significantly, these are the things about Jesus that the Pharisees and many of the people of Jesus’ time refused to believe. They also seem to be the things Judas refused to believe.
We had an interesting conversation about Judas during the men’s Bible study a couple of weeks ago. The question that came up was whether Judas was saved, either before or after he betrayed Jesus into the hands of the mob that would demand His murder.
Matthew records that Judas returned the 30 pieces of silver he’d earned from his betrayal and that he said, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.”
That sounds a lot like repentance. But Jesus said in Mark, chapter 1, that the proper response to the fact that the kingdom of God is at hand is to repent AND BELIEVE.
And in referring to Judas in verse 12 of today’s passage as “the son of perdition (or destruction)” who would perish, Jesus seems to make it clear that Judas, despite his remorse for what he’d done, had refused to believe the truth about who Jesus is.
But I want to talk about Judas for a bit longer this morning, because there are some lessons from his life that are important for us.
And the first thing I want you to note about Judas was that, right up until after Jesus had washed the disciples’ feet, Judas seemed like a card-carrying believer.
He did the things the disciples did. He followed Jesus and listened to His teaching. He went out with the disciples when Jesus sent them to spread the word about the kingdom of God. He probably rejoiced with the others when they saw Jesus performing miracles.
He had an important position within the group as its treasurer. He was identified as a disciple by those who saw Jesus with the disciples.
From every worldly perspective — and even from the perspective of the other disciples — Judas seemed like a believer.
But Jesus knew his heart. And Jesus knew that none of those things would bring Judas salvation.
This is important to us today, because the way Christianity has developed, especially in the West, has sometimes morphed the message of the gospel in such a way as to convince people they’re saved because they go to church.
Or because they read the Bible. Or because they contribute to the ministry. Or because they have “important” positions in the church.
But none of that is “repent and believe.”
And it should break our hearts that there are some “faithful” churchgoers who will stand before the Great White Throne of judgment in heaven and hear Jesus say, “Depart from me; I never knew you.”
The glory they will bring to Jesus is in their just punishment for the sins they’ve committed. He will be glorified in His perfect justice.
And that part’s not really surprising. God is perfectly righteous and perfectly just. And perfect justice requires that someone pay the penalty for unrighteousness, for rebelling against a righteous God.
What’s surprising is that in verse 10, Jesus says He’s been glorified by the faith of the 11. They were no less sinners than Judas was, so it wasn’t their righteousness that glorified Jesus. It was their faith in who He is and what He would do.
So, their faith HAD glorified Jesus, and their WORKS would glorify Him after He’d returned to heaven.
In fact, Jesus was so certain about the events to come — His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension to heaven — that He describes Himself in verse 11 as no longer being in the world.
The endgame for His earthly ministry had already begun, and all that was left was for the events He knew were on the horizon to unfold.
And then, suddenly, the disciples would be left without the physical presence of their Savior to give them comfort and guidance.
And so, remembering that a major purpose of this prayer was to encourage the disciples, we hear Jesus asking the Father to “keep them in [His] name.” In other words, keep them loyal to you.
They had the press pass. They had the badge. In repenting of their sins and putting their faith in Jesus, they’d received the credentials that identified them as belonging to God in Christ.
And so, they could be confident that they would be kept by God, that they’d be protected from slipping away, that they’d be kept loyal to God.
This would have been a great encouragement to the 11 reclining around the table night. And it should be an encouragement to you if you’ve repented of your sins and turned to Jesus in true faith.
You can’t lose your salvation if you’re following Jesus in true faith, because GOD is the one doing the keeping. It’s GOD who keeps you loyal to Jesus and loyal to Himself.
It’s in His very character to keep those who belong to Him, and He can’t act against His own character.
But if you’ve never repented and truly placed your faith in Jesus, it doesn’t matter how often you’re in church. Or how much you give. Or what position you hold.
If you’ve never repented and believed, then you’re like a person claiming to be a newspaper reporter without a press pass.
You might fool some folks with your religious talk and good deeds. But without the credentials that come from receiving the words of God, truly understanding that Jesus came from God, and believing that God sent Him to be mankind’s ONLY means of salvation — Without those credentials, you’re just like Judas.
And that sounds harsh until we recognize that, but for the grace of God, none of us is any better than Judas. Your sins and mine sent Jesus to the cross just as surely as did Judas’ betrayal.
But God IS gracious, and God loves sinners. So much that He sent Jesus to live a sinless life and then give Himself as a sacrifice at the cross — taking upon Himself our sins and their just punishment — so that all who repent and turn to Him in faith can be saved.
Anybody can ACT like a follower of Jesus. But only those with the right credentials will be KEPT by God. Only those with the right credentials are part of the kingdom of God.
Only those with the right credentials will experience everlasting life the way it was always meant to be, in fellowship with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Do you have those credentials? You don’t have to understand everything about Jesus now. The disciples didn’t. I certainly don’t. What you DO need is to understand and believe in who He is, in what He has done, and in what He has promised.
Some of you have been part of this fellowship for decades. And some of you have been joining us for only a few weeks. Whichever group you fall into, I want to appeal to you this morning to take stock of your relationship to JESUS, and not to this church.
And if you conclude that there IS no relationship because you’ve never really repented or truly believed, then let me implore you to come this morning and give your life to Him.
There is no shame in turning to Jesus, no matter how long you’ve been part of the church. And as long as you’re alive, it’s not too late to do so. Won’t you do it today?