Alright, if you have your Bible with you, it's open to John chapter 17. We're going to be continuing in the High Priestly Prayer. I want to read verse 6 again. Verse 6 is the beginning of Jesus' prayers for his disciples. He says, 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. So we see right from the start in this section where Jesus is praying for his disciples, right from the start we see Jesus saying, I have manifested your name. Jesus has manifested God's name. He's manifested His Father's name. What that means is that Jesus has shown God to these people. He's shown who God is to these disciples. He's shown who God is through His attributes, by God's attributes. That's what it means to show God's name. God's name carries the full weight of His attributes. Attributes like Love, kindness, grace, even justice, right? Jesus is just. He doesn't pray for Judas who has betrayed Him. He doesn't pray for repentance for Judas. He's just. But mainly He's loving, right? Mainly Jesus is loving. He manifests God's love to these people and really to everyone. In his death, he manifested God's love. He died for our sins and took the punishment that we owe. In his life, he loved these guys. He protected them. He loved the sinners that were around him. Verse 11, Jesus prays now. Holy Father, keep them in your name. So we see God's name again in verse 11. Keep them in your name. What is he praying for? He's praying that we would be kept in this love. The love that he manifested, he's praying that we would be kept in God. And now, it's our job to manifest God's name. It's our job to show people who God is. by keeping his word and keeping his name. Verse 12, he says, I have kept them. Father, I have kept them, and now it's your turn to keep them. So now it's our turn to show God's love. It's our turn to show God's love to the world. Matthew 5, verse 43, we read, you have heard it said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven. We're supposed to show God's love to the world, even to our enemies. The world would teach you that you're supposed to hate your enemies. But Jesus taught us that we're supposed to love as He loved. We're supposed to love each other. Verse 11, again we see, Jesus is praying for our unity, He's praying for our love for each other. And the nature of this unity is, in fact, love. The nature of this love and this unity is self-sacrifice. That's what it means to love others, is to sacrifice your own way, to give up your desires for their sake. That's not what the world would teach us unity is. The world teaches us that unity is agreeing with me, right? Everyone says, let's have unity, but let's have unity under my idea. Godly unity is love in spite of disagreements, in spite of enmity. John 13, 34 is Jesus giving us a new commandment. He says, a new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you. As I have loved you. How did Jesus love? Jesus loved self-sacrificially. He gave himself up for us, Ephesians tells us. He gave himself up. We see this kind of an example of unity in a in a human relationship, right, on earth. We see this in marriage. The two shall become one flesh. They're supposed to unify. They're supposed to become one. And just take marriage, for example. It has to be self-sacrificial love. It has to be. Have you ever seen a marriage where one or both parties are not self-sacrificial? They're both selfish? And even one party in the marriage can be selfish, and it ruins the whole marriage. When you look at a marriage like that, do you think, wow, they're really good for each other? Right? No, they're both being selfish. The marriage is ruined. And this is how the world looks at us and our unity. This is how the world looks at Christians and their love for each other. If there's fighting amongst Christians, if there's backstabbing amongst Christians, there's arguing on social media, there's arguing in real life, does the world look at us and say, wow, these guys really manifested the love of God? No, of course not. They look at us and they say, these guys are hypocrites. That's their favorite word to use is hypocrites. And they're right. So we're supposed to love self-sacrificially. We're supposed to give ourselves up for each other as Christ gave himself up for us. But this is the overarching prayer that Jesus has in this section. Verses 6-19. The overarching prayer, his main push in this section is Preservation of the Saints or Perseverance of the Saints. I've mentioned a few different times the five points of Calvinism, right? Tulip. And the P is Perseverance of the Saints, historically. Perseverance of the Saints. That's ill-named, of course, because it's not the Christian who perseveres through their life, it's God who preserves. And that's what this prayer is about, that God would preserve the saints. That God would keep them. Preservation of the Saints, that theological term, teaches us that you can't lose your salvation. You cannot lose your salvation. Because Jesus has sealed us in the New Covenant. He certified us in His blood. And this is His prayer. This is His overarching prayer that you would not lose your salvation. So the question today that I'd like to pose is if Jesus' desire is for us to be preserved, to glorification, to be kept in the name of God all the way to glorification, why are we not just taken out of the world? Because wouldn't that be the best way to preserve the saints? As soon as someone's saved, to just take them out and put them in heaven. Then they can never lose their salvation. There's no chance of them ever falling away. When they're saved, they die and they go to heaven. Wouldn't that be the best way? And sometimes as Christians, we desire that, right? You kind of want that. You kind of want to die and just go in heaven so you don't have to worry about your sin, you don't have to worry about your friends or your family or anything, you just get to go see your Lord. So why are we not just taken? Just taken out of the world? So that's the question that I want us to kind of have in the back of our minds today. Let's pray and then we'll read the verses that we'll talk about. Father, I thank you for This passage, I thank you for these verses. I ask that you would be with me, that you would help me as I try to talk about you. And pray, Lord, that you would glorify yourself in my words. And I pray that you would send your spirit to us, that we can grow closer to you. I pray this in Jesus' name, amen. So verses 13 through 19, we'll read it now. These are our verses today. John chapter 17 verse 13. But now I am coming to you, Jesus is speaking to his father saying, I am coming to you and these things I speak to the world that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word and the world has hated them because they are not of the world just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake, I consecrate myself that they also may be sanctified in the truth. 1 John 4.8, we read simply the simple statement. I've quoted it many times and I'll probably continue to quote it because I love it so much. John tells us simply that God is love. That God is love. And I spoke last week extensively about this, but this is his greatest attribute. This is God's greatest attribute, in my opinion. It's his most important. Really, all of the other attributes, many of his other attributes, flow out of this love that he has. It's the most obvious attribute in history. You see it all throughout the Old Testament, even, that God is merciful to the Israelites. He's kind to them. Time and time again, it's most obvious in Christ. 1 John 4, 7, the verse before John telling us God is love, he says, So you have to be born of God to understand this love. You have to know God to know love. The opposite is true of that as well, that if you do not know God, you do not know true love. The only way you can know true love is from the true God. And the world, the world does not know God. And so the world does not know true love. True love only comes from God. The world, as we're told, only knows hate. They only know hate. I love how this prayer in chapter 17 comes right after the upper room because we kind of have a reference. All the things that Jesus prays about in chapter 17 is stuff that he already talked about in the upper room. We see this in John chapter 15, just two chapters before in the upper room when he's talking to his disciples. Chapter 15 verse 18, Jesus tells us, he's coming off the greatest, really the greatest teaching about love. He says, if you obey me, I will love you and my father will love you. So he's coming off this teaching about love, and he mentions in verse 18, the first time he says the word hate in the upper room. He says, if the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you. But because you are not of the world, I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Because you are not of the world, the world hates you. But we have to remember, we're not the first to be hated by the world. Jesus was hated primarily by the world. He was hated. Why was he hated? Because he wasn't of the world. And we are not of the world because he chose us out of the world. Now why does that upset the world? Why does that upset them? That we are not of them. It's because we are an indictment on them. We are the guilty conscience of the world. Christ was the guilty conscience of the world. You can see this in pure pressure, right, in high school or middle school or whatever. You see pure pressure. All your friends are doing something, they're drinking, and they want you to drink with them. Why do they want you to drink with them? Because if you don't, their guilty conscience pricks them. And they hate that. You don't participate with them. And us, as Christians, don't participate with the world and so they hate us. Because we prick their conscience. John 15 verse 22 tells us, If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin. But now they have no excuse for sin. What is he saying? What is Jesus saying? If I didn't come and tell them about their sin, they wouldn't know that they have sinned and so they wouldn't hate me. But I came and I told them about their sin. I came and I told them that they are guilty of sin. And now they have no excuse. Now they hate me. And now, verse 21, all these things they will do to you on account of my name. And now we're hated because we are under the name of Christ. It says, they will hate you on account of my name because they do not know Him who sent me. They don't know God. And so they don't know love. They only know hatred for sinners. Back to John 17, our verses today, verse 14. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world." Jesus tells his Father that the world hates them, and the world will continue to hate them. This is a fact of Christian life. This is a part of Christian life, is persecution and hatred from the world. And maybe it's not obvious that they're coming after us with swords, It's there. Family members betray us and friends don't want to talk to us, but the world will hate us. So if we're surrounded by all this hatred in the world, why? Why are we not taken up? Why are we not taken out of the world? If there's only evil in the world for us, there's only hatred in the world for us, why would Jesus not pray? Take them, Father. Verse 15. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. I want us to stop and notice something really quick. That Jesus doesn't pray. He doesn't say this. I pray that you keep them in the world. I pray that you do not take them out of the world. So that they can have prosperity. So that they can have a pleasant life living for you. So that they can have comfort and money. Jesus doesn't pray that. Some people preach that. Some people teach that. Jesus wants you to be on earth. He doesn't take you up into heaven because he wants you to have a nice pleasant life where you have a lot of money and you have a lot of comfort. We see this all over the place on bumper stickers and t-shirts that God has a plan for your life. Right? God has a plan for your life. And that's true because God is sovereign and he does have a plan for everybody's lives, but not in the way that they mean it. When people say God has a plan for your life, what they're saying is God has blessings for you. Financial blessings. And you can have a nice family, and you can have nice kids, and you can have a nice life. God wants that for you. I must have missed that chapter in the Bible because it's not taught here. Joel Osteen, He's really one of the big guys that teaches this prosperity gospel, as it's called. He actually wrote a book called Best Life Now. Live Your Best Life Now, something like that. He teaches that this is what life is about, is this life. There's a quote, I don't know if it's from this book, but I read this quote from Joel Osteen. He said, Is this what Jesus prays for? Is this what we see Jesus praying for? That we would prosper financially? Stay in the world. Father, keep them in the world so they can have a nice, comfortable life. No, that's not what the Bible teaches. In fact, the Bible tells us that we're supposed to pick up our cross, that we're supposed to deny ourselves, that we're supposed to love our enemies. Does that sound like an easy, comfortable life? Does that sound like a prosperous life, giving yourself up for other people all the time? We're told to give money to the Lord. We're supposed to give our hearts, our minds, our souls to the Lord. Matthew 16, we're told, what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, the whole world, and forfeits his soul? What shall a man give in return for his soul? Does that sound like an easy life? Giving up the whole world. As Christians, we're not supposed to think that our life is about this life. We're supposed to think that our life is about the next life. We're living for something else, not what we see today. See, Jesus had a perfect opportunity right here. He's praying, there's a nice lengthy prayer. He had the perfect opportunity to pray for our prosperity. He had the perfect opportunity to pray that we would be comfortable in our lives. That we would be financially stable. But he doesn't. He doesn't. And he doesn't on purpose. Paul, in 2 Corinthians 12, verse 7 says, To keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that He should leave me, that it should leave me. But He said to me, My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness, therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses. See, Paul was given a thorn in his side. He's given a difficulty. He's given a trial. And he prays, Lord, take this from me. Three times he prays that the Lord would take it from him. And what is the Lord's response? My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness, and so I will boast of my weakness. Because God's power is in my weakness. What's God's goal in this? What's God's goal in not taking away the hardships? Not taking away the trials? His goal is sanctification. So that the power of Christ can rest upon Paul. Why was he given the thorn? He was given the thorn so that he doesn't become conceited. That's sanctification. That's being made closer to God. This This is Jesus' purpose in praying that we would not be taken out of the world. John 17, back to John 17, verse 15. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in truth. Your word is truth. See, this is what Christ prays for. This is what Jesus prays for, not ease, not comfort in this life, but that we would be kept from the evil one, that we would be kept from the lies, kept from the deceit. We all know someone who is owned by the evil one. We all know someone who is not in Christ, who belongs to this world, and you can talk to them, you can preach at them, you can tell them the full gospel time and time again, and yet there's no response. How is that possible? It's because they belong to the evil one. They believe the lies and they do not believe the truth, and Jesus does not pray that for his disciples. He prays in verse 17 that we would be sanctified in the truth. He prays that we would be sanctified in the truth. This is the first answer to the question. There's two answers to this question. The first answer to this question is, the question is why are we not taken out of the world? The first answer is so that we can be sanctified. That's the first answer. so that we can actually obtain the love and the unity. You can't obtain the love and the unity and the joy that Jesus desires for us. You can't obtain that if you're taken out of the world. You can only obtain that if you are kept in the world. These things that Christians are supposed to become, these people that Christians are supposed to become, only come through sanctification. Verse 13, the first verse that I read today, but now I am coming to you and these things I speak in the world that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. Jesus wants us to have joy. Joy. The first time he talked about this was in the upper room, chapter 15, verse 10. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full." See, this is not just joy. This is not just an arbitrary happiness. This is Jesus' joy. This is what He grants to us, His joy. And this joy only comes by being sanctified in the truth. This is why we're left on earth. This is one of the reasons we're left on earth. That in spite of an evil world, in spite of the hatred that we face, that we can have joy. That we can have joy even in the world. And we can take heart. John 16, 33, the last sentence that Jesus says in the upper room, I have said these things to you that in me you may have peace, in the world you will have tribulation, but take heart, I have overcome the world. Take heart. You're in this world where evil evil persists and evil rules and you can see it especially as Christians sometimes you walk out the door and it's it's almost you can almost taste the evil it's so saturated in everything and yet we can take heart because Jesus has overcome the world and so Jesus wants us to have joy in this world love in this world He wants us to manifest the Father's name to people. He wants us to show people who God is. And Christ gave himself for this. We read that in verse 19. And for their sake I consecrate myself that they may be sanctified in truth. I consecrate myself. Christ gave himself. To consecrate yourself means to give yourself to something. To fully dedicate your whole life something. Christ says, I have given everything that they can be sanctified. Romans 8 16 we read, the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God and if children then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ provided we suffer with him in order that we We may also be glorified with Him. We suffer with Christ. As He was consecrated, we are to be consecrated. As He was sanctified, we are to be sanctified. This is why He prays that we stay on earth, that the Father does not take us, that we can be sanctified. The second answer to this question, why are we not taken out of the world? And perhaps the more important reason is in verse 18, John chapter 17, verse 18. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. As you sent me into the world. Now why was Jesus sent into the world? Because if we need to understand why we're sent into the world, we need to understand why Jesus was sent into the world. Lucky for us, we have 1 Timothy 1.15 that's told specifically. We read, simply and elegantly, Christ came into the world to save sinners. That's why Christ came, to save sinners. This is why he was sent. And this is why we are sent. This is our goal. This is why we are in the world. To preach the same gospel that Christ preached. To the same people that he taught. To love the same way that Christ loved. We read elsewhere that the sinful mind is at enmity with God. The sinful mind is at war with God. The world is battling with God in their conscience and in their minds. The world is really our enemies. And yet we're called even to love them. To love our enemies. Now tell me, what's the best way to love someone? Someone who you know is in a burning building. Someone who you know is dying and headed to hell. What's the best way to love that person? The best way to love that person is to save them. To tell them that there is hope. tell them that they are heading to hell. Luke 24, the last chapter in Luke, Jesus speaking to his disciples and this is one of the last things he said to them. He says, Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead. and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things, and behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you." Christ suffered and died. It is written that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise. Christ suffered and died. Why? Why did he do that? So that the repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed to the whole world. And then he says, you are witnesses. This is why we are in the world. This is why. Because we are witnesses of these things. Because we have seen things that the world cannot see. And we're supposed to show these things to the world. We're supposed to tell people that Christ came to save. We are in the world to save sinners, as Christ was in the world to save sinners. So we have to go. We have to go and we have to tell people. We have to be the witness that Jesus wants us to be. It's not enough to sit around being sanctified. That's a good reason. that we're in the world. That's a good thing, to be sanctified in the world, to strive to be closer to Christ, to strive to be more like Christ. But it's not enough to sit around learning about God all day. You have to go and you have to be a witness of the things that you have seen. All the theology in the world and all the doctrine in the world, even if it's perfect, is useless. It's useless without action. It means nothing unless you go. So this is why we are here. This is why we are here to save sinners. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for these verses. I thank you for this charge to go and to seek the lost and to plead with them to ask for forgiveness and ask for salvation. I pray that we would go and we would seek out the sinners. Lord, I pray that there would be fruit for our labor. In Jesus' name, Amen.