Sermon Tone Analysis

Follow Me

Good morning.

If you have your Bibles and I hope you do, I invite you to open with me to John 17.

As we study this chapter for the last time in this series on what it means to make disciples of all nations, I want us to start by reviewing before we study the Word.

We have walked through, up to this point, three different components of disciple-making.

You have in your notes the first three components of disciple-making.

Don’t forget that doesn’t necessarily mean these are chronological.

The first one is to share the Word.

Share the Word

The second one is show the Word.

Show the Word

The third one is to teach the Word, which we dove into last week.

The final component of disciple-making that we are going to dive into this morning is we serve the World.

Serve the World

What I want us to do, before we read from John 17, is I want us to get a picture in our mind about how all of these connect together.

We have been looking into each one of these facets of disciple-making and I hope we realizing that this is something that is intended to take place and carry out in our lives on a daily basis, in our everyday lives.

We have been talking every week about the people God has entrusted to us to share His Word with and to show His Word to and to teach His Word to.

God has given us people right here to do that with.

Disciple-making happens in our everyday lives right here.

You don’t have to cross an ocean to make disciples.

So, let’s dive in.

I want us to see how these three components we have talked about—sharing the word, showing the word, teaching the word—relate to this final component, serving the world, as they come together in a process called disciple-making.

I want you to look with me at John 17.

We are going to read starting in verse 17 and we are going to go to the end of the chapter, and we are going to see the conclusion of Jesus’ prayer specifically for His disciples in verses 17, 18 and 19.

Then we are going to see how that prayer plays out in the lives of believers that would come in succeeding generations of disciples, including you and me.

Look in verse 17.

Jesus prays:

Here is the climax.

Jesus in His disciples and what He has done in their live now reproduced in the lives of others.

What I want you to notice is that in those verses we read over and over again, you see a couple of different phrases repeated, but there is one word I want us to focus on.

It is the word world.

When you look at this chapter as a whole, nearly 20 times Jesus mentions the world.

Even in the last part here, He mentions it over and over and over and over again.

Look in verse 13 and you might circle or put a box or a triangle or something around these words because we have been circling a lot of different words.

You might want to do it in a way that differentiates it from the others.

I want you to circle or make some kind of note every time you see the world mentioned.

Look in verse 13.

It says, “I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world” (John 17:13).

Look in verse 14, three different times, “I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world” (John 17:14).

Then in verse 15, “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them” (John 17:15).

You get down to verse 16, “They are not of the world, even as I am not of it” (John 17:16).

That “it” at the end of verse 16 is the world in the original language of the New Testament, in the Greek it is mentioned there.

So you have got it twice there in verse 16.

When you get to 18, which we have just read is, “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world” (John 17:18).

Then you get down to verse 21.

It says, “May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me” (John 17:21).

Verse 23, “I in them and you in me.

May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me” (John 17:23).

Then in verse 25, “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me” (John 17:25).

Over and over and over again we see the world emphasized in this prayer.

Jesus had said earlier in the prayer, “I am not praying for the world, I am praying for the disciples.”

But we know that He was praying for the disciples through which the world would come to know who He was, through which the world would come to know His Father’s love.

So, obviously, there is an emphasis here on the end goal of disciple-making being the world knowing that God is good and gracious and merciful.

What I want is to do is I want us to unpack in this final component of disciple-making the end goal, the ultimate purpose of disciple-making, where it is all heading and I want us to look at it on a few different levels.

We are sanctified for each others' sake

I want you to hear that in Jesus’ words right at the end of this prayer, specifically for his disciples.

Obviously, the context of mission is pretty strong.

Jesus says, “As you sent me into the world, Father, I am sending them into the world.”

This is obviously a pretty missional picture, but don’t miss it!

Verse 18 is kind of sandwiched in between two verses talking about sanctification.

It says in verse 17, “Sanctify them by the truth” (John 17:17).

Then He gives this incredibly missional statement in verse 18, and then in verse 19 it says, “For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified” (John 17:19).

So this idea of sanctification is sandwiched in between.

Now, last week we talked about how the Word was the means by which we are sanctified but we said we were going to wait until this week to really dive into the meaning of sanctification and what is sanctification.

It is at this point that we need to realize that the Holy Scripture basically shows us that to sanctify something means to set it apart for a special purpose, to fulfill a special calling, a special purpose, some kind of service.

So if something is set apart for that purpose that is what sanctification is.

You go back to the Old Testament, even the sacrificial system and you have Exodus 28 and 29 talking about how Aaron and his sons needed to be sanctified.

The word that is used sometimes in the Old Testament is consecrated, set apart for exclusive service to God as priests.

You see that over and over again.

People are sanctified, set apart for exclusive service like that.

Then you see things that are mentioned that are sanctified, that are set apart for exclusive service to accomplish some purpose.

Now that is the meaning of sanctification we see over and over and over again in the Old Testament, and this is huge for us to get our arms around.

Sanctification or holiness is most often described in Scripture as being set apart for a specific purpose, set apart to do certain things.

But, the way we often times view holiness and sanctification, we view it, in that, it is that we are set apart to avoid certain things.

If you are holy that means you don’t do this and this and this and this and we define holiness and we define sanctification by not doing wrong things.

As long as you avoid these things that we would all consider would be major sins in our culture today, then you are holy.

At that point I have got to wonder if we are the only organization in the world, in the church that is defining success based on what we don’t do instead of what we do.

Are we really a people that want to be known for what we abstain from?

I don’t think that is the biblical picture of sanctification here.

The picture is not us living our lives to avoid all these things.

We will avoid sin simply because that's who we are in Christ.

But focusing on what we don't do is nowhere in this prayer of Jesus.

Yes, He said, they are not of the world but He said they are right in the middle of the world and we are sanctified not to avoid certain things.

We are sanctified in order to do certain things, to give ourselves in exclusive service to God, exclusive service to His mission.

That is what Jesus is saying right here when Jesus says, “I sanctify myself.”

It is not that Jesus is making Himself more pure or more holy.

That is not what He is saying.

He was completely holy, the Son of God, no sin in Him whatsoever.

So how can he sanctify Himself?

What He is saying is He continually devoted Himself to the mission that the Father had given to Him.

He was exclusively devoted to that mission.

What I want us to think about when we think about sanctification is not avoiding the wrong things—it is giving ourselves to something.

What do we give ourselves to?

We are dedicated to the purpose of disciple-making for others' transformation

Now that is a pretty loaded sentence and I want us to think about it.

We are dedicated.

That is what it means to sanctify, set apart for a special purpose, dedicated to the purpose.

What is our purpose?

What we are seeing in the context of this whole chapter is our purpose is to make disciples of all nations.

We see that in all of the Gospels.