02: Community of Prayer

Today's reading is from John chapter 17 verses 6 through 10.

John 17:6–10

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 am praying for them.

I am 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 am glorified in them.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Okay, would you pray with me?

Father, we have such amazing news in your prayer for us.

Uh just the incredible understanding that you prayed for us.

Lord, as we move through the words of your prayer today, I pray that you would apply them to our hearts, that by our Spirit we might hear directly from you.

Lord, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So this Advent season, uh, we are looking forward to Jesus' first coming, which we celebrate at Christmas.

Uh, and it's also a time to look forward to the second coming, which is something that we look forward to in hope.

When Jesus returns and he makes all things new.

It's the ground for our hope as Christians.

And so uh during this Advent season, as we're kind of on the eve of our move as a church, it seemed appropriate to pray the prayer that Jesus prayed before he went on his journey to the cross.

And so we're moving through this series, which we're calling the prayer before the journey.

Uh, as I said last week, moving to Berkeley is in no way like uh the road to Calvary.

They are not to be confused with one another.

But it is still important and grounding for us to remember that when we go on mission together as a church into even just a new part of our city, that we go on mission because Jesus first went on mission for us.

That is the ground of all we do as a church.

It is this news that Jesus came to rescue us.

He left the throne room of God, dwelt as a human among us, so that we might be brought to God.

That is the news of the Advent season, and we hear those echoes of this throughout his prayer, the prayer that he makes for his disciples just before he moves on the road to Calvary.

So, as we're moving through this prayer, which is recorded in John 17, uh, we see that he prayers, he prays for himself, for his own glory, and then Jesus prays for his disciples, and then Jesus prays for those who would know him through his disciples.

And that's us.

You know, there's almost nothing that I think you can experience as a Christian or as a as a person that is as comforting to the soul as hearing a friend pray for you.

You know, I've had experiences in my life where somebody has put their hand on my shoulder and just prayed for me, and it's just meant the world.

I've uh uh I I tend to be a pretty anxious person, pretty prone to anxiety.

And so I've had uh like times where I'm coming in to preach and I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm so buzzy.

Uh and uh someone in our congregation, like Ed EB, if you guys get a chance to know him, he's really great at this, but he'll say, Hey James, can I pray for you for a sec?

And I'm like, Yes, please.

And just his praying for me is such a deep comfort.

And as we move through the holidays, this is a time of a lot of stress, and it brings up a lot of anxieties for many of us.

And I'm seeing it like crazy, it just happens all over the place.

Um and to hear through this season the words of Jesus praying for us is this incredible comfort to the soul.

It's this transformative experience.

So I want you to listen to his words through that lens of this is Jesus targeting his prayer for his people.

So, in the section of the prayer that we're moving into today, Jesus kind of tees up who he is going to pray for next, and that's the disciples.

So Jesus is praying specifically for the eleven people, because Judas is gone at this point, uh, that he has called out of the world to follow him most closely, and he prays particularly for them in this section of the prayer.

Now, in this section, he doesn't really start praying for them so much as he starts arguing for why he is praying for them.

In this section, he's establishing the target of his prayer, that the community that he is particularly praying for is the disciples.

And so we're going to look at this community of prayer that Jesus establishes.

Uh we'll see this more this morning, soon, soon.

We'll see this evening uh the distinction of this community, the response of the community, and the particularity of the community.

So the distinction, the response, and the particularity.

So let's go ahead and jump in.

This is John 17, 6.

Jesus prays, I've 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.

So we see he starts to draw the distinction around who he is praying for.

Firstly, these are the people that the Father has given to Jesus out of the world.

They were foreknown by the Father.

In eternity past, God knew it's these people that I'm going to draw out of the world and I will give them to Jesus.

So Jesus acknowledges that as a distinction for why he's praying, particularly for these eleven.

And then Jesus also names as this key distinction that it is these eleven in particular that Jesus has manifested the name of God to.

He has manifested the name of the Father.

So let's zero in on that a bit.

What does it mean that Jesus manifested the name of God to these particular people?

So, what is the name of God?

You know, I always just called him God.

Thanks, Catherine.

Like that one seems to always get through.

So that's my sister, by the way.

We get each other's jokes.

So uh we uh suddenly I'm alone up here.

So we manif what does so God, what is his name?

What does it mean?

Why does Jesus use that language that I manifested the name of God?

Well, the name of God is a very important theme throughout scripture.

This is the names of God or the way that God reveals the core aspects of his character to us humans in ways that we can begin to grasp and understand him.

And so Jesus is reaching back to this theme that's taken place through all of redemptive history.

And we can see the start of it in uh God's conversation with Moses at the burning bush.

And it this takes place in Exodus 3.14, where we get this first understanding of what God's name is.

Next is 3.14, God is talking with Moses at the burning bush.

He says, You're gonna go back, say, let my people go.

And Moses says, But who am I gonna say sent me?

A bush that was on fire.

So uh uh God says this to Moses in Exodus 3.14.

God said to Moses, I am who I am.

And he said, Say this to the people of Israel.

I am has sent me to you.

I am.

That is the first name that God uh provides for himself, the way that he is to be known by us.

I am, in the Hebrew it's Yahweh, Y H W H.

It's referred to as the tetragrammaton, which is a really cool way to say four letters.

And it it's such a holy phrase uh that it wasn't uttered by the Jewish people for centuries.

It was not spoken because this name of God is so utterly holy, it is so beyond us.

And in this name of God, he reveals himself as I am, I am the I am.

You know, he is showing his own character in this name, which is radically transcendent.

Oftentimes we'll have debates and we get drawn into debates of does God exist or not.

But when we take God at his name, that's a very strange question.

Because God is not describing himself as something that does exist, God is describing himself as existence.

He is being.

We be.

God is being.

It is not that God shines, God is light.

See, this is all tied up in this name of God that He is existence.

This radically transcends any other category.

It's a breakdown of categories for us.

Saying, you can only approach me on my terms because the very existence that you depend on to approach me, that is me, that is from me.

I am, that is my name.

So when we see that Jesus claims to have manifested the name of God, he's making this an unthinkably high claim that is in this person that was standing before the disciples praying on this night before he would be he would be murdered, this person, all of a sudden they find out, oh, this is not just someone who exists standing before me.

This is existence.

When he said he is the light of the world, he he really meant it.

He is light.

When he says he's the bread of life, he really meant it.

He is the thing that provides all nourishment to all people, that sustains all existence, that upholds the universe somehow in this person.

Eternity in time with us.

You see the mystery of Jesus?

Just the strangeness of what we're claiming Jesus is, of who he's claiming to be.

He's saying, these people are distinct because I have manifest the name of God to them.

How could eternity possibly be manifest to something like that?

In Christ, it could.

This is an incredible mystery.

That God is a man.

That life itself lived a life.

This is the mystery of Jesus Christ.

That's what it means for Jesus to have manifest the name of God.

But God continues, and he continues in his explanation of his name.

And in this, we start to see why Jesus prays in this way, why he prays, I manifest your name, and then he zeros in on his chosen people.

Because that's the pattern that God had worked in throughout all of redemptive history, and we see it here in the first revelation of God's name to Moses.

So God continues in his speaking to Moses, and he says, in Exodus 3:15, says, God also said to Moses, Say this to the people of Israel the Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has sent me to you.

Exodus 3:15

This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.

What is the next name that God provides for us to describe himself?

It is his identification with his chosen people.

How will you know it's me, existence itself, life itself, the transcendent God that upholds all things?

Because you know Abraham, that one guy, who had his son Isaac, who had his son Jacob.

Do you remember?

You know those people just in history?

I'm their God.

You see how in God's name, from the very beginning, he holds together these two unthinkable extremes.

That he is existence, he is life itself, existence itself.

And how do you know him?

Because he's the God of these three people who lived and then died.

God is always from the beginning identifying with his people.

But that identification, we see that uh sorry, I got ahead of myself.

God is accommodating to our understanding of him by identifying with his people.

You know, it's one thing for Moses to walk in and say, uh, you know who sent me?

Who said uh who said that you should follow me and we're all gonna flee from Pharaoh?

Uh existence itself sent me.

The I am sent me.

So that's one thing to hear.

But it's another thing for the Hebrew people to hear it.

It's the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Remember the one who said he'd be faithful to us?

He said he'd be faithful to them and were their offspring.

So now come with me.

See how God accommodates to our small frame so that we can know this eternity by his identification with us.

God is always creating a community in the way that he manifests his name.

That has been the plan from the beginning.

When God manifests his name, he's also establishing a community.

Leslie Nubigan, who I love, buy every one of his books and read them.

You don't have to listen to every part of it, but he's very good.

He's this great, uh, he was a missionary and an amazing theologian.

And I'm relying heavily on his commentary for this sermon series.

And he says this of uh this section in John 17, he says, the work of Jesus is the communication of the name of God to a community.

He does not bequeath to posterity a body of teaching preserved in a book like the Quran.

He does not leave behind an ideal or a program.

He leaves behind a community, the church.

You see, when you get what it means and what it has always meant for God to manifest his name and for Jesus to manifest his name, you see, well, of course, how could it be any other way?

God was always creating a community by manifesting his name.

The ones who are brought under the particular care of existence itself, of life itself, of the I am.

That is the community of God's people.

So here we see that in Jesus manifesting the name of God to these particular people, he makes them a distinct people.

This is the distinction of God's people.

Next, we see the response of this community.

So Jesus grounds his prayer not only in that uh he has made these people distinct by revealing himself to them, but also that they actually responded.

They responded to Jesus as he is.

And so we'll read John 17, 7 through 8.

Jesus continues praying.

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.

So remember what Jesus is doing is he's about to make a lot of requests on these people's behalf.

Before he does that, he's saying, here's why I'm praying particularly for these disciples.

And we see that he says, because he manifests himself to them and made them a distinct people.

But here, another reason that he provides is that they responded to Jesus.

They received him as one who came from the Father.

They received him as one who everything that he said, they were able to say, that's what God says.

The reason Jesus says that is because that's what the Father says, that's what existence itself says, that's truth itself in what Jesus is saying.

And so he acknowledges this reception as a ground, their responsiveness as a ground for the request that he's about to make, saying, see, you can tell they're distinct because they really responded.

And so there are these two qualities that he brings together.

One is the chosenness.

These people have been chosen by God.

They were from the Father, and the Father gave them to Jesus.

And then, along with the chosenness, is the responsiveness of the people.

They saw Jesus and really from them, they responded to who he was.

And they received this man, this life as life, this person moving through time at a steady rate of one minute per minute as eternity.

They received Jesus as from the Father.

This should be an incredibly encouraging thing.

For us to see that Jesus grounds his intercession for them in their response to him, in their receiving Jesus as who he says he is.

And it should be very encouraging because we know how the rest of the night unfolds.

These eleven disciples will all abandon Jesus.

And when Jesus is crucified, they will weep and mourn and wail because they don't think he's coming back.

They think that's the end of the story.

But it was just in their so we see that it wasn't in them understanding completely who Jesus is.

That Jesus is crediting to them.

You see, it's not that they understand, oh, this is eternity.

It's not that they understand, oh, this is God and man, and they're together as one in this perfect union.

You know, they haven't hashed out the complexities of the Trinity.

They don't get that when he's being crucified on the cross, that that means their victory and atonement for their sins.

They don't understand all of these things, and yet, just in their reception of Jesus, in the mystery that he was to them, that becomes the grounds for Jesus' prayer for them.

That's what Jesus credits to them as receiving who Jesus is.

Should be amazingly encouraging for us because he says that the most important thing about them in their reception is just that they received the mystery of Jesus.

Thomas Torrance, in his book, The Incarnation, speaks directly to this type of reception.

He says, both the sinner who is forgiven by Christ and the man or woman who has come to see the face of God in the face of Christ know that they can never master or dominate the mystery of Christ in their hearts, but can only acknowledge it gladly with wonder and thankfulness and seek to understand the mystery of Christ out of itself.

That is, seek to let it declare itself to them.

Seek to let themselves be told by the mystery what it is.

See what he's saying.

Jesus comes into the world.

He's born from a woman.

And he is eternity.

This is a great mystery.

This is not something that will be able to say, yes, I know what that is.

I know what that means.

I get the implications of that.

If you have any questions about what the incarnation means, let me just explain it to you because you obviously aren't enlightened enough.

No, that's not the way we receive the mystery of Jesus.

We receive the mystery of Jesus not by not by being able to particularize it or by being able to compare it to anything else.

There's nothing else like this in all of history.

It has no analogy.

There's nothing we can say, no, the incarnation is like this.

There's nothing like that.

It's totally its own thing.

That God became a man.

That is the mystery.

And so to come to Jesus is to sit before this mystery and say, look, I don't get how this is possible.

I don't understand how eternity could dwell in time.

I don't understand how that could be possible or what that could mean.

But because this happened in the world, I have to just receive it.

That's the type of reception that the disciples had.

That's the type of reception.

They let the mystery of Jesus become the main fact of their existence.

It was not a riddle to be solved.

It was not a physics problem to be figured out.

That is not what the incarnation meant to them.

It was a mystery that became true of their lives.

This type of faith.

This type of faith that looks at Jesus and says, Yeah, that was really God.

His atonement was really real for our sins.

This is the type of faith that we would require as a church.

This is what makes us distinct as a community.

Is we sit before the mystery of Christ, not as people who have cracked the riddle, not as the ones who get the mystery, but as ones who just look at the mystery and say, yes, it is completely mysterious and it is true.

God became a man to rescue us.

So Jesus' prayer continues.

And this is where he really aims his prayer in a way that can quite frankly be uncomfortable.

This is the particularity of the community.

In John 17, 9, Jesus continues and he says, I am praying for them.

I am not praying for the world, but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.

So Jesus targets his prayer completely at his disciples.

And we had glimmers of this same notion in the beginning, that the prayer was really targeted.

Because Jesus prays in the beginning, whoop, excuse me.

Jesus, whoop, excuse me.

Jesus prays in the beginning.

These are the ones that were chosen by the Father, and they were given to me.

So we see the target in the beginning.

And so Jesus here prays again, and he's like, look, in case you didn't hear it, I am praying for them.

This is not a blanket prayer for everyone.

I'm praying for the disciples.

I'm praying for these eleven here in front of me tonight, the ones that are hearing and then recording this prayer later, as the Holy Spirit brought it to their memory.

He's praying particularly for them.

So we see that there is this reality that this group of people belonged to the Father.

They were chosen out of the world.

They were predestined by God, these particular ones.

They could not point at something in themselves that made them special so that they were chosen.

They could only point to the mind of God in eternity past.

This is the radical transcendence of the I am.

And yet, we saw also that Jesus credited to them their reception of him, that they really did receive Jesus as Jesus.

That's something that really did come from them.

And so we're getting closer and closer to a question that we might as well just make explicit.

Which one is it?

Is it that God chose them in eternity past, or is it that they responded to him?

Is it predestination or is it free will?

Have any of you ever thought of that question before?

Can I see a show of hands?

Yeah, okay.

So that means we're probably hitting on something real.

So yeah, this one can be pretty personal, right?

Because on the one hand, we see, okay, God is sovereign, he's over all things.

That means I don't have any freedom.

Or we see, well, God values human free will so much that he just lets us choose.

And the question is, well, how about you value something else else other than free will so I don't spend eternity in hell?

We value, like, I don't know, cleanliness or something.

So we have this dilemma, this painful dilemma that we're pressed into in the very language of Jesus in his prayer.

So what's the answer to the question?

Which one is it?

Uh predestination or free will?

The Bible refuses to answer that question.

It will not play our either-or games.

And all of the best opportunities to answer this question, and it there's there's really two perfect opportunities for this question to be answered in scripture.

One is the book of Job, which you could think of as just a you know, 30 some odd chapter wrestling with this question.

And how does God answer it?

Is it uh freedom of the will or is it God's sovereign action?

God answers it by telling Job, I am God.

That's how the Bible answers the question.

Or in Romans, we could look in Romans in chapter nine, which is like if you if you just became a Calvinist, then you're like, oh, but just read Romans chapter nine and you think you get it, you don't get it.

Because in that perfect opportunity that Paul gives himself, where he says, so how can anyone be held accountable if God is the one that chooses everyone?

How can anyone be held accountable to heaven or hell?

If ultimately it's just God's decision.

And what does Paul say?

The clay can't speak back to the potter.

Well, that's not very satisfying.

See, when we're approaching the question as an either-or, what we're doing is we're reducing it to a physics problem or a riddle to be solved.

And what we're hoping is, okay, if we can just twist this, piece this together in some way, then I'll be able to get God off the hook and I'll still be able to rest in his control.

We're trying to hold these two things together that just can't be held together.

It's uh a deep mystery that the Bible pushes us into, which is which should be teaching us how to receive this truth that it is completely God's authority in eternity past.

He is the one who chooses us for our salvation, and our responsiveness matters.

It's a real thing.

How can it be both of them?

When God describes his name, he describes himself as one who is radically transcendent.

Radically transcendent.

And when we place him into this either-or question of is it my responsibility or is it your sovereign choice?

When we push him into that place, what we're doing is we're taking this radically transcendent being and we're wrestling him down into space and time, and we're saying, either you're free or I'm free.

Pick one.

But that's not the way we relate to God.

Imagine saying to God, either you exist or I exist.

Pick one.

And God would say, Exist, I am existence.

If you exist, it's only because I exist.

We say, well, God, which is it?

Freedom of the will, either I'm free or you're free.

And God would say, I am freedom.

If you have any will, it's because I am the basis of all of these things.

I radically transcend these categories that you're talking about.

So to hold these two together is to approach a deep mystery.

Something like the incarnation.

A mystery, how could eternity be moving through time?

How could eternity be up on a cross and die?

How could eternity have a beginning and an end?

This mystery is beyond us.

So then let's consider some alternatives.

Jesus is praying for his disciples, and instead of saying, for these, particularly for these, Lord, I'm not praying for the world, I'm praying for these 11 disciples to put ourselves in those disciples' shoes.

Instead of Jesus praying that, what if Jesus had said, Lord, these disciples are great?

It's, we've, these past three years, it's been a real gas.

But Lord, right now I'm going to pray for world peace.

Pray for world peace.

Lovely.

That's nice.

No one's hearts are changed.

It's not the types of creatures we are.

And I'm the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

So when Jesus says, when Jesus brings us to this spot where we have to receive the mystery as it is, let the mystery talk to us.

It becomes wildly important.

For us to hear God's calling as particular.

As one that's for us.

To hear him say your name.

That's what the disciples remembered.

In John 17, 10, he says, All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them.

You know, think of what it meant for those disciples to hear Jesus look at them and say, Mine.

Mine.

Change their hearts.

He didn't say world peace.

He looked at them and he said, You are mine.

That's what predestination means in the heart of a Christian.

That's why a Christian won't let this go away or won't let this become reduced to the problem of evil.

Give me a break.

Like we're gonna wrestle God down into such silly logic games.

This is the radically transcendent basis of all existence.

And he comes and he says, I chose you first.

That's what predestination means for the Christian.

I was trying to think of some analogy for this.

And the best I could come up with was uh Forrest Gump.

So uh when uh when Forrest goes back to the uh to meet the president of the United States again, after getting the Medal of Honor, uh he meets Jenny, who is on the Edward Sharp in the Magnetic Zeros tour bus, I think.

And she's about to go back to San Francisco.

Uh and Forrest gives her the Medal of Honor that he just won.

And uh she says, Why are you so good to me, Forrest?

And it's a really good question at that point in the movie.

Because I don't know if you've seen it recently.

Jenny, not good to Forrest.

All she does is just leave.

They're like peas and carrots until they're 12.

Then they're like totally separate side dishes that are rarely together.

So she says, Why are you so good to me, Forrest?

You know what Forrest says?

Because you're my girl.

Because you're my girl.

That's the answer.

That's, don't you see that's what predestination means in the heart of a Christian?

It's not a riddle, it's not a problem, it's not any more than the incarnation is.

It's to be received in the same way.

God, how could you rescue someone like me?

All I do is run from me.

And do you hear in his prayer you are my people?

This is the heart of God.

This is the depth of the gospel, it's in the incarnation, it's in the chosenness from eternity past.

It's why he prays for those eleven that we might know him through their work.

We're gonna sing, uh, we're gonna take communion, then we're going to sing one song, and then we're going to pray together.

And uh we're we're doing good.

And then when we uh uh after we're done praying together, then feel free to go grab your kids from downstairs, and then we're going to sing two more songs together up here.

Um, so we're going to take communion, sing, and then pray together, and then grab your kids.

Okay.

With that, let's go ahead and pray now.

Lord, how could you and your radical transcendence even hear us now?

And yet you do.

Lord, you promised of your your temple, a building made by human hands.

You promised that anyone who prayed at that temple, that your ear would never be turned off for them.

And then you call us in Christ your temple.

That means your ear is never closed off for us.

You always hear us, you see us, you tend to us, you care for us, you describe yourself as our shepherd.

The I am describes himself as our shepherd.

Lord, I pray as we move through this Advent season, as we remember Christmas, that the incarnation would become this mystery that we just can't stop gazing at, that fills us with this incredible hope, this unshakable, unsinkable hope.

Because you became a man that we might be rescued.

When we consider that salvation, Lord, let us just be drowned in your grace as we hear you say, Mine.

Father, I pray that you would do that in our hearts.

Lift us up in Jesus' name.

Amen.