Calvary Road Baptist Church

“THE LORD JESUS CHRIST PRAYING FOR HIS REMAINING APOSTLES” Part 3

John 17.6-19 

My text for this message is John 17.8. Please locate that verse and stand for the reading of God’s Word: 

“For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.” 

As I have been saying for months and months, John 14–17 is a record of the greatest conversation found in the Bible. Why do I repeat myself so? Why do I say this again and again? I want you to go to your grave recognizing what treasure we have been given with these four chapters in John’s unique Gospel account.

John chapters 14–16 begins the record with the Lord Jesus Christ’s conversation with His eleven remaining apostles on their way to the Garden of Gethsemane, where the Savior prayed and encouraged His men to pray, and where Judas Iscariot brought the soldiers to arrest the Lord Jesus Christ to complete His treasonous betrayal for thirty pieces of silver.

John chapter 17 concludes this greatest of conversations. It is the longest recorded prayer of the Lord Jesus Christ in the Bible, though by no means the Lord’s longest prayer. He prayed through the night many times during His earthly ministry, but those prayers are not recorded for us. This prayer is referred to by most commentators as the Lord Jesus Christ’s high priestly intercessory prayer.

Matthew 6.9–13’s more familiar prayer begins with the words “After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven,” so often referred to as the Lord’s Prayer, is no such thing. On that occasion, the Lord provided something of a template for His disciples so they would better know how to pray. What we have here is something else entirely. Whenever you want to come close to hearing the Savior talking to the heavenly Father as possible this side of eternity, you will turn to this chapter to read.

In the first five verses of John 17, the Lord Jesus Christ prayed to His heavenly Father for Himself. Beginning with verse 6, He prayed for these eleven men. To help us with the context, let us read verses 6, 7, and 8 once more: 

6 I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.

7 Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee.

8 For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me. 

Remember that in verse six, the apostles overheard their Lord praying and may have been somewhat surprised to hear Him speaking about them, rehearsing to the Father what He knew of them. Verse seven is where they overheard the Lord Jesus speaking to the Father, the Savior telling Him what they knew of Him. Focusing our attention on verse 8 once more, in this portion of His prayer, the Lord Jesus Christ made mention of what He has done, then what the Father has done, and then three things His remaining apostles have done. Everything about verse 8 is a summation of events that have already occurred.

Verse 8 begins, “For I have given unto them the words.” The Lord Jesus Christ here summarized His 3½ years of earthly ministry instruction of them, to train them for ministry after His departure.  Dá½³dookan, have given, is a form of the Greek verb we have seen before, the word dá½·dwmi, which means to give. This form of the verb shows that the Lord has given God’s truth to those men.

Verse 8 continues, “the words which thou gavest me.” Using the same Greek word, dá½·doomi, the Lord Jesus Christ rehearsed to God the Father in His prayer that His gift to His men was what the Father had given Him. I previously mentioned that although the Lord Jesus Christ did not give everything the Father gave to Him to these men, everything they received from the Savior was originally given by the Father to His Son.

Recounting God’s blessings to Him in prayer, as the Lord Jesus Christ did here, is always a good thing. Thus, what the Lord Jesus Christ gave was what He had been given. That, too, is a good thing. Has God blessed you? He did that so you could, in turn, be a blessing to others. After all, nothing good that you could ever give to another did not first come to you from God. This is so characteristic of the Savior’s dealings with human beings, to so perfectly represent God the Father in His earthly ministry, by not only reflecting the spirit of the Father’s desires but also the content the Father wanted Him to communicate to those the Father had given Him.

After acknowledging the sources of the truths He imparted to those men, both the immediate source of truth (what He gave to them) and the ultimate source of truth (what the Father gave to Him), the Lord Jesus Christ reported to His heavenly Father what was already known. But in doing so He demonstrated a pattern of accountability that serves as a beautiful example for every follower of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Be mindful that the Savior displayed His accountability to the Father. The Apostle Paul shows, in First Corinthians 4.1-2, that it is a very poor Christian, indeed, who lives a life, and pretends to serve the Savior, without accountability: 

1 Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God.

2 Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful. 

Where did the evangelical Christian community of the 21st century come up with the notion that there is such a thing as unaccountable Christianity? You see no such thing with the Savior, or with the apostles, or with first-century Christians. Yet, the notion has spread far and wide in our day that no one is, or should be, accountable for their lives and lifestyles.

God’s plan is for children to be accountable to their parents, and when they are no longer accountable, they are no longer children. Adults who marry are to be accountable to their spouses. And Christians are to be accountable to their Churches, just as pastors are accountable to their congregations. If you know an employee who is not accountable to his boss, you know a job that won’t last for long because businesses that try to function that way go bankrupt. Accountability is reality.

After modeling His accountability to the Father in full view of His chosen men, the Lord Jesus Christ began His reportage to His Father concerning His men, not because the Father needed that information, but to serve as yet another model of accountability and reportage of His servants’ faithfulness. Notice the three areas of their faithfulness to their Savior, set forth for us in a logical sequence:

First, “and they have received them.” From the Greek word lambá½±noo, meaning to receive as true, this is the first responsibility for every human being, especially of a disciple of Christ.[1] We must receive the Word as being true. What a marvelous thing it is for the Savior to be able to say to His Father about them, “and they have received them.” Can that be said about you? Psalm 138.2 declares to us that God “hast magnified thy word above all thy name.” Therefore, how pleasing it must have been for God the Father to hear the report of God the Son that these eleven servants of God received the Word as true. How different those eleven men were from the majority of people of their day, who did not accept the words of Christ as true. Let us be careful to do likewise. The majority is almost always wrong about nearly everything.

Next, “and have known surely that I came out from thee.” Do you give much thought to your decision-making processes? By that, I am asking if you reflect upon the steps you take to gather information and evaluate that information to make a good decision? Recognize that most people do not do that and do not want to do that because it invariably leads to decisions that they have already decided they do not want to make, steps they do not want to take. Most people decide what they want and then seek to justify their conclusion with supporting evidence, having little regard for the fact that they have reversed the more wise approach to making important decisions.

However, most people don’t really care what the facts are because they have already decided what they want, consequences disregarded. Is this not the reason for the debacle that is taking place in Afghanistan, both how we came to be in that country and how we came to leave that country? This is also the process that leads up to most couples getting married, and (with few exceptions) most of the career choices made by young people after they complete high school. They pay no attention to the wise process that leads to good decision making, because they have decided ahead of time what they want to do, and avoid rational thought as a hindrance to getting what they want. Such people who approach life that way characteristically look down upon faith as it is described in the Bible as unreasonable and illogical.

How wrong they are. Faith is a right conclusion drawn from circumstantial evidence. But not just any circumstantial evidence, the utterly reliable circumstantial evidence of the Word of God. Once you decide where the information you will use to make your decision comes from you are almost at the correct decision already.

The third thing the Lord Jesus Christ informed the Father about concerning His eleven faithful apostles is their faith in Him, which is to say the right conclusion they had drawn about Him from the information they were willing to receive. They concluded the Lord Jesus Christ came from God the Father. Thus, though they did not know everything about the Lord Jesus Christ they would eventually come to understand, they did know enough. And do we not see in this first and second thing our Savior said the basis for the third thing, their faith?

Romans 10.17 declares that “faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.” The first thing the Lord Jesus Christ told us was that these men had heard the Word of God. The second thing the Lord Jesus Christ told us about these men is that they “have known surely that I came out from thee.” That sounds like an approach to truth that will lead to faith, does it not? It had with those men.

The verse concludes, “and they have believed that thou didst send me.” This exemplifies faith. The Lord Jesus Christ reports these eleven men to have drawn a right conclusion from circumstantial evidence, and the right conclusion they have drawn is about Him. They have concluded that the Lord Jesus Christ came from God the Father. But more than that, they have concluded that God the Father sent Him.

The Greek word translated “send” is á¼€postá½³lloo, from which we get the word apostle, meaning sent one. This is very appropriate since Hebrew 3.1 describes the Lord Jesus Christ as “the Apostle and High Priest of our profession.” The Lord Jesus Christ is the apostle of God the Father. Paul, Peter, John, Thomas, and the other familiar apostles are apostles of Jesus Christ. Then there are the apostles of the Churches, Second Corinthians 8.23, such as Garry Matheny, Chris Goodman, Taki Korianitis, Eugene Kozachenko, Samuel Rai, and others sent out by our Church and other Churches to establish Churches.

Notice, again, the final phrase of our text: “they have believed that thou didst send me.” Jesus Christ was sent by God the Father. Jesus Christ, in turn, sent forth His apostles to fulfill the Great Commission, “go ye.” They, in turn, established Churches that, in turn, sent forth missionaries. And while we send missionaries, we, too, are also sent.

This is where I want to take the time to arrange what we have learned in this verse according to an easy-to-remember sequence. Before doing that, however, I want to be very explicit about what we are given in this verse. We are given a true record about the transmission of truth, the passing along of facts and information. This is important because the Christian faith is the only belief system in existence that is based upon truths and an accurate account of reality.

Let me caution you that facts in themselves are not saving. An accurate record saves no one from their sins. However, real history, an accurate record of events, actual facts, genuine truths point to the only One who does save sinners from their sins. Only Jesus saves. Only Jesus bore our sins on the cross and died a sacrificial death, rising from the dead in victory three days later.

Please look at our text one more time, paying particular attention to the verbs, the action words, that the Lord Jesus Christ spoke: 

“For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.” 

You will notice that there are seven verbs in this verse, the words “have given,” “gavest,” “have received,” “have known,” “came,” “have believed,” and “send.” I will leave it to you to meditate on the reasons why we need not take the time in this message to deal with the verbs “came” and “send,” though they are important in their own right. For now, five verbs, five actions that bear directly on the apostle’s spiritual well-being. And, by extension, yours, as well.

Consider them one at a time with me, in their actual sequence: 

First, THE WORD “GAVEST.” 

Though the opening phrase reads, “For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me,” we recognize that the actual sequence of events is different than the order of the words uttered in the Savior’s prayer. One must possess what one then gives. Therefore, the sequence began with God the Father giving the words to the Lord Jesus Christ. The Father gave to the Son what the Son then gave to others.

The reason I specify that we are concerned with the sequence of events rather than the word order in this phrase is because the Father gave the words to His Son in eternity past, with the Son doing what He did with the words during His earthly ministry. Is it so important to point out that what the Father did He did in eternity past? It is important. We are not here considering an afterthought. This is not the outworking of some contingency on the basis of God recovering from a surprise.

The entirety of God’s Word shows our involvement in God’s unfolding drama of redemption, with Paul’s letter to the Ephesians being but one illustration. Pay attention to eternity as I read Ephesians 1.3-23 to you: 

(Before I begin, may I coach you parents about reading Scripture to your children? Two things to keep in mind when reading God’s Word aloud to them: First, read slowly and with good pronunciation to your children. Second, make sure you read smoothly, and without hesitations and missteps along the way. It is difficult to follow halting and mispronounced words. Tracking the words you read with your finger as you read can be immensely helpful.) 

3  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ:

4  According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:

5  Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will,

6  To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.

7  In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;

8  Wherein he hath abounded toward us in all wisdom and prudence;

9  Having made known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he hath purposed in himself:

10 That in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in him:

11 In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:

12 That we should be to the praise of his glory, who first trusted in Christ.

13 In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise,

14 Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.

15 Wherefore I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and love unto all the saints,

16 Cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers;

17 That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him:

18 The eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints,

19 And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power,

20 Which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places,

21 Far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come:

22 And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church,

23 Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all. 

Paul’s comments help us recognize that what we are seeing is part of God’s eternal plan. Notice that God bears no resemblance to the plans and actions of our nation’s current administration. 

Next, THE WORD “HAVE GIVEN.” 

What the Father did when He gave to His Son He did in eternity past. What the Lord Jesus Christ then passed on to His apostles He did over the course of three and one-half years of instructions, training, and rehearsal, which is to say, discipleship.

May I point out an important consideration that comes to us from Jude 3? 

“the faith which was once delivered unto the saints.” 

In this verse, Jude makes reference to a body of truth that was passed on to the apostles, which is the same issue that is before us in our text. But I want to emphasize to you the importance of the point the Savior makes, that He passed on what originated with the Father.

This is not to deny the central significance of the Savior’s crucifixion in God’s plan of the ages. It is to show that nothing the Father initiated or the Son fulfilled was not a part of God’s eternal decree. 

Turning From What He And The Father Have Done, The Savior Now Recounts That The Apostles “HAVE RECEIVED.” 

“and they have received them” 

Should it be a surprise to anyone to learn that the same Greek word used by the Lord Jesus Christ here was used by the apostle in John 1.12? 

“But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” 

How much difference can there be between receiving Christ and receiving the words of Christ? After all, is He not described in John 1.1 and John 1.14 as the Word? It is no surprise to the heartbroken Christian mom or dad that their child who is indifferent to God’s Word is indifferent to God’s Son, and the child who avoids God’s Word does so to avoid God’s Son.

These men, on the other hand, quite differently than Judas Iscariot, as they would discover for themselves in an hour or two following this prayer, are said by the Savior Himself to have received His words. And receiving His words is critical to receiving Him, as we shall see.

To recap, in eternity past, God the Father gave His words to His Son. His Son then came to this wicked world via the virgin birth, and, at the outset of His earthly ministry, He began to pass on those same words to chosen men, who received them. They decided to receive them and received them. 

Fourth, “HAVE KNOWN.” 

“and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee” 

This is the Greek word I have repeatedly rehearsed to you over the weeks, ginooskoo, referring to knowledge gained from instruction, from discovery, from experience. Is it any wonder that such knowledge would be the result of having received Christ’s words? One must receive the truth in order for one to then know the truth. Is it any wonder that those who stubbornly resist receiving Christ’s words will be correspondingly ignorant of Christ?

With respect to what is being advanced by the Savior here, to receive from Christ words that originally were given to Him by the Father, resulted in these men knowing by discovery, knowing by instruction, knowing by experience, that Jesus Christ truly came out from God the Father.

There are some truths that are unfathomable in and of themselves. One can figure out that two plus two equals four, and eventually you can figure out that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the two sides. But unless you submit to His instruction, unless you receive Christ’s words, that He received from His Father, you will never know Christ came from the Father. You will pay a very high price for refusing to receive the instruction of God’s Word. Those men received. The result was that they came to know. 

Finally, “HAVE BELIEVED.” 

“and they have believed that thou didst send me.” 

Do you see the progression? God gave His words to His Son. His Son gave His words to His apostles, who received them while others refused them. Having received them, the apostles acquired knowledge, the knowledge that Jesus truly came from the Father. That resulted in them then believing that Jesus was sent by the Father.

The progression in their lives from their exposure to God’s Word was initially reception, which resulted in knowledge, which concluded in believing an important truth. That profoundly important truth was that Jesus was sent by the Father. They believed that. Not in itself saving faith, understand, since saving faith is faith in Christ and not believing the Father sent Him. But believing the Father sent Him is the basis upon which saving faith is built! 

What we are given in this portion of our Lord’s prayer to the Father is the barest skeleton of how saving faith comes to be. I read again Paul’s comment about it in Romans 10.17, when he indicated, 

“So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” 

We recognize that no mention is made by the Savior in this prayer of the Holy Spirit’s role in saving faith, Him being the Spirit of Faith, Second Corinthians 4.13, or that faith is the gift of God, Ephesians 2.8. What we have here are the essentials of the means of grace that precede saving faith. God the Father gave His words to His Son in eternity past.

For three and one-half years those men received Christ’s words as He taught them, showed them, modeled them, and guided them. The result was that they came to know that He was sent by the Father, which then led to them believing that He was sent by the Father.

The source of truth is God the Father. The channel of truth to those men was the Son of God. But they received it, came to know it, and then believed it. Yet for all that it was not saving faith, was it? No. They believed truths to be true, which is important but not saving.

Salvation comes to those trusting the One the truths apply to, the facts relate to, the historical record attests to. Facts save no one. History saves no one. Only Jesus saves. Thus, once you receive God’s Word, and acquire knowledge of the truth from God’s Word, and faith that is built upon an acceptance of God’s Word, the decisive step, the saving step, the eternity-altering step, is to then come to Christ.

Only Jesus saves. Jesus personally saves. Therefore, trust this Savior, Who is Christ, the Lord.

__________

[1] Bauer, Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature, (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), page 584.

Would you like to contact Dr. Waldrip about this sermon? Please contact him by clicking on the link below. Please do not change the subject within your email message. Thank you.

Pastor@CalvaryRoadBaptist.Church