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May 15, 2016

Prayer 201-The REAL Lord's Prayer

Prayer 201-The REAL Lord

Passage: John 17:1-5

Preacher: John Repsold

Series: Master Class: Prayer

Category: Marriage

Keywords: holy, prayer, sovereignty

Summary:

Praying with Jesus requires that we have a high view of the sovereignty of God, especially at the most trying times of life. John 17 is Jesus' longest recorded prayer and it begins with a very high and lofty view of God just as Jesus is entering the most difficult 24 hours of his life. This passage calls us to focus on specific things about God and life before we start asking God for anything.

Detail:

Prayer 201: Sovereign Praying

The REAL Lord’s Prayer—John 17

May 15, 2016

For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been in a short series on PRAYER.  While Sam took us into one of Paul’s prayers in 2nd Thessalonians 2, for the rest of this series we’re diving into the prayers of Jesus.  Two weeks ago we looked at The Disciple’s Prayer in Matthew 6, what we commonly know as “The Lord’s Prayer.” 

            But this week we’re looking at what is truly “The REAL Lord’s Prayer.”  It’s found in John 17. Scottish minister John Brown (cited by A. W. Pink in Exposition of John) wrote:  “The seventeenth chapter of the Gospel of John, is, without doubt, the most remarkable portion of the most remarkable book in the world.”  I’d say that’s a pretty high recommendation for spending a couple of Sundays looking at this prayer! 

            If you were with us two weeks ago, you’ll remember that as we looked at the beginning of the “Our Father, who is in heaven” prayer, we were encouraged, before we do any asking or intercession in prayer, to focus upon the greatness of the God we are talking with in prayer.  While that prayer invites us to remember God’s holiness of character and majesty as God over heaven/the universe itself, this prayer modeled by Jesus brings us directly into one of the most comforting and perplexing of God’s qualities—His sovereignty.

            There is a lot of confusion about God’s sovereignty.  It’s not like the concept of “fate.”  Fate, at least in our English language, has the idea of some impersonal, immovable force that determines all of life’s events.  

            A simple definition of divine sovereignty might be that “God possesses supreme power and authority so that He is in complete control and can accomplish whatever He pleases anywhere and at all times.”

So let me give you 1 O.T. verse and 1 N.T. verse that verify the Bible’s teaching about this kind of sovereignty.

  • Daniel 4:34 & 35—Interestingly, this comes from a pagan king, King Nebuchadnezzar, after he went from eating caviar to munching crabgrass as God showed him who was God…and it wasn’t King Neb. Taking a man who thought himself god, and making him crazy for 7 years so that he lived like an animal in the field, was enough to teach him who was truly sovereign in the universe.  “At the end of that time, I, Nebuchadnezzar, raised my eyes toward heaven, and my sanity was restored.  Then I praised the Most High; I honored and glorified him who lives forever.  His dominion is an eternal dominion; his kingdom endures from generation to generation.  35) All the peoples of the earth are regarded as nothing.  He does as he pleases with the powers of heaven and the peoples of the earth.  No one can hold back his hand or say to him: “What have you done?”
  • Ephesians 1:11—“In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, 12)in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory.”

There are many more passages of Scripture that teach this same amazing concept of God’s sovereignty. 

            We’re usually fine with the truth of God’s sovereignty as long as life is going along like we want it to. The problem we have experientially with this truth is when the wheels start to come off of our lives—our health fails, a child dies, we lose our job, you are unemployed for way too long, we lose our home, get evicted from an apartment, have an accident that leaves us impaired, we experience a break-up in an important relationship. 

Rather than finding comfort in this doctrine, it seems to make us upset with God at just the times in life when we need his power and presence most in our lives.  If God can do whatever he pleases, why on earth would He allow this kind of pain, suffering and struggle in our lives? 

This is precisely where Jesus’ prayer in John 17 becomes so very powerful.  This prayer was given by Jesus during the worst 24 hour period of His life—the hours just before he was betrayed, beaten, whipped, scourged, humiliated, hated, spit on, slapped, punched, and subjected to the most horrifying death imaginable—crucifixion in the hot, Middle Eastern sun…and finally had the sin of the world and the wrath of the Father against that sin placed on Him.  Then something as mysterious as the incarnation itself happened:  God the Father somehow “forsook” God the Son ask He died for our sins.    

Jesus knew precisely what was coming.  He did have a choice.  He could have stopped the horror.  So could His Father whom He prayed to.  But instead, Jesus “just” PRAYED! 

            It is for that reason that this prayer has SO much to teach us about HOW and WHAT to pray…especially when life is dishing out what we may not deserve and definitely do not want.  This is the kind of praying we must do when life is the hardest to understand.  This is the kind of praying we must do when we are facing life’s greatest tests. So let’s see what “sovereign praying” looks and sounds like.

John 17:1—After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed:  “Father, the hour has come.”

  1. Praying with Jesus engages our body, soul and spirit with the greatness of God. What Jesus did with his head, his eyes, his whole body when he prayed this prayer was a conscious reminder of the greatness of God. “...He looked toward heaven and prayed….”  That’s one of the most frequent prayer positions of Jesus—looking up to the heavens.  He wasn’t even outdoors during this prayer.  He was in the Upper Room celebrating the Last Supper.  But he literally looked up… like a child looks up at a parent…like a servant looks up to the master…like a plaintiff looks up to the judge. 

            I think we may need to change the way we pray!  Bowing our heads also can remind us that we’re choosing to submit to God who is far greater in every conceivable way and more to us.  But sometimes maybe you should keep your eyes open and lift them up just to remind you that God is not only over your life but over the whole earth, the whole heaven and more than we can even imagine.  And if we’re outside, looking up into heaven, either into the blue sky of the day or the star-filled sky of the night, should remind us that we serve a very BIG, powerful, awesome and, yes, sovereign God. 

Men’s Connection yesterday:  great discussion about things we could change in the WAY we pray that could make our praying much more natural, relational, conversational and powerful.  As we prayed, I found it refreshing and re-focusing to be looking at the men I was actually praying about. 

APP:   How about trying praying this week with eyes uplifted or at least open as you would if you were sitting at the dinner table conversing with the family?

  1. Praying with Jesus recognizes the eternal God’s sovereignty over our fleeting TIME.

“Father, the hour has come.” 

Anybody here never had a problem with God’s timing?  I think Jesus must have been the only person to walk the earth who didn’t get frustrated with God’s timing.  He seemed to always be in touch with his Father’s schedule.  When he performed his first miracle of turning water into wine…lots of it…at the wedding in Cana, he told his mother that his “hour had not yet come” (Jn. 2:4).  From the very beginning of his ministry, he was submissive to God’s timing for even the shortness of his life (33 years)…and the shortness of His ministry.  3 ½ years?  Who would ever have said that was enough time, enough living, enough revealing of the Father? 

APP:  Ever have trouble with how short…or long…life can be?  What’s your “acceptable” lifespan for…your parents?  Your spouse?  Your best friend?  Your children?  Your grandchildren?  God’s “hour” for each of us usually doesn’t match our wishes or expectations. 

            As a pastor, I’ve done lots of hospital visits and funerals. I’ve been at lots of retirement homes and gravesides. It never ceases to amaze me how “God’s hour” for someone seems to be either early or late.  Life seems to be cut short or dragged out too long.  A teenager is taken…and we wrestle with God’s sovereign timing.  A retire gets dementia and lives another 20 years…and we wrestle with God’s sovereign timing. 

            If we want to pray with Jesus…like Jesus, we’ll need to come to grips with God’s timing about life and death…and a whole lot of other things.  Real belief in the sovereignty of God is at peace with God’s timing. 

APP:  Whose death do you need to let go of in order to fully embrace God? 

Whose impending or even possible death do you need to trust God’s loving, sovereign time with? 

APP:  If your “hour” is up sometime this week, are you ready for eternity?  Have you made peace with God the Father through God the Son, Jesus Christ?  Have you believed in Him and put your trust in Him? 

APP:  What event in your life are you having a hard time trusting God’s timing with presently?  Let’s tell Him about it…and turn it over to Him again.

  1. Praying with Jesus embraces the part of glorifying God that is hard and difficult—suffering.

In vs. 1 where Jesus speaks about his impending death as “the hour”, he clearly recognizes that his own death is something that will glorify God the Father. His was a “premature death,” certainly an unjust death and a death of horrible suffering.  Yet by humbling himself and embracing that suffering and that death, he led the way in modeling to us that any suffering can bring amazing glory to our God. 

If we had interviewed any of Jesus’ followers the day of his crucifixion, any of his close family, any of the people healed or raised from the dead by him and asked them how his suffering and death was bringing glory to God, I doubt a one of them would have been able to give us a single way they could tell Jesus’ death was bringing glory to God. 

But Jesus had the eternal perspective when he prayed.  He had his Father’s perspective when he embraced that suffering.  This kind of thinking runs 180 degrees counter to the way our world and our natural minds think.  That’s WHY we need to pray WHEN we’re facing suffering.  We need to call out to God to be glorified through and in our suffering. To a world that has no place for suffering let alone God in suffering, praying as Jesus did says, “No, Father, IN my suffering, please be glorified.” 

ILL:  Death of 5 missionaries (Nate Saint, Jim Elliot, Ed McCulley, Peter Flemming, Roger Youderian) in Ecuador in 1956 by the Auca Indians.

ILL:  Out of the horrors of WWII, God brought the greatest American missionary movement of all time as soldiers who had served in faraway places returned to bring the Gospel.

ILL:  Christian Church in China—after events like the Boxer Rebellion (early 1900s) killed 250 missionaries and over 20,000 Christians…after the Communist takeover in the early 1950s and the horrible suffering of Christians under the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s-70s, there are now around 70 million Chinese believers, up from just 2 million when missionaries were expelled in the mid-1950s.  China is set to become the largest Christian nation in the world by 2030 (14 years!).

APP:  What suffering are you are having a hard time believing God’s sovereignty would allow in your life or a loved one’s life?  Praying with and like Jesus calls us to pray that our sufferings will somehow “glorify” or “display” the greatness of our God.  We may recoil at the horror of suffering in the moment when we or others are passing through it.  But praying with real belief in our sovereign God will somehow enable us to see by faith that God can actually be glorified in our suffering. 

[PRAY]

  1. Praying with Jesus embraces God’s authority over everyone …especially when it comes to their salvation, their relationship with God.

Vs. 2—“For you [the Father] granted him [the Son] authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him.” 

Four more times in this chapter alone, Jesus says that He has been given authority to give eternal life to all whom the Father has given Him (2x in 17:6; once in 9 & 24).  This can be a very perplexing truth that I’m not going to go into at great lengths today.  Suffice it to say that Jesus is affirming that anyone’s embracing of eternal life by embracing God the Father and Son is the result of God’s sovereign authority over human beings. God’s authority over people includes the authority to bring people to salvation…to eternal life.  If it weren’t for that, people’s own decisions and freedom would be sovereign, not God, and people could frustrate God’s purposes in the most important aspect of life—namely their salvation. 

            As mysterious as this part of life might be, the truth of Jesus’ authority over salvation should infect our praying with a certainty in the authority of God in every area of life. God uses his supreme authority to bless the most unworthy beings (sinful humans/us) with the most astounding blessings (knowing Him experientially…forever!). 

There is no “higher power” you can communicate in this universe.  There is no other authority you need to check with, no other court you can appeal to above God.  When we pray, we’re talking with someone who makes the authority of our “Supreme Court” look very far from “supreme.”  We’re talking with someone whose authority makes any human authority look like a little nursery school bully on the playground of life. Human authorities may order us to pay taxes...or go to jail...or even be put to death.  But that authority is pathetic compared with God's authority to give eternal life to us and anyone on this planet!  It’s important to remember that when we’re praying in the face of what may seem to be a hopeless, out-of-control, desperate situation.  Our God IS THE Authority in this universe!

[PRAY for someone you know who needs Christ.]

Which leads to the next truth about sovereign praying.

  1. Praying with Jesus acknowledges that experiential knowledge of God IS the life our souls long for.

Vs. 3—“Now this is eternal life:  that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” 

The Greek word for “know” (ginosko) here is all about personal, experiential and even intimate knowledge of someone.  For example, 5 times in chapter 10 of the Gospel of John where Jesus is talking about being the Good Shepherd to all of us, he uses this word to talk about the kind of relational knowledge He has with his sheep.

  • John 10:14—I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me--
  • John 10:15—just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep.
  • John 10:27—My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.”

Jesus doesn’t just know about us.  He doesn’t just know facts like how many hairs there are on our head…or exactly how many breaths we will take in life.  He knows us personally and relationally.  He’s not a walking data center; He’s a living, loving people-Saver!

            This really gets to the heart of learning to pray like Jesus.  For Jesus, when he walked this earth, prayer was THE primary tool by which he experienced the Father.  It was THE most frequently used, most consistently used and most transformingly used mechanism for “knowing” the Father…for experiencing God the Father. It was God-conversation at its best.  It was as close as the Son could get to the Father while on earth.  And it unfolded every day, throughout the day, all day…and sometimes all night!

            Isn’t that why lovers are enthralled with each other?  They can’t believe they’ve found someone who is SO interesting they can talk with them by the hour…and SO interested in how interesting they are! J

            Isn’t that why times of sharing soul-to-soul with someone, whether a beloved family member or a really close friend, are so enriching to our lives? 

So how about we rediscover the experience that kept Jesus in touch with the heart, the mind, the voice the will of God the Father?  How about we take up this “sovereign praying” that was gifted to us so that we might actually “know” experientially “the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom [He has] sent”? 

ILL:  Don Moore reminding us yesterday that prayer should be more like a conversation we have around the dinner table than a Toastmaster’s event where one or two or three people speak and everyone else listens.  And it should probably even LOOK more like we’re having a conversation with each other and including God in it as if He were the most important person in the group.  Isn’t this precisely what John is describing to us in this chapter? 

APP:  Invite God to make prayer an experiential encounter with Him.

Which leads us to the last truth Jesus models here for us about sovereign praying.

  1. Praying with Jesus embraces the work God has given each of us to do.

Vs. 4—“I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do.” 

What was Jesus’ work that the Father had given him “to do”?  Had Jesus just finished some carpentry orders for God, a new table and chairs or bed frame?  Had Jesus cast out all the demons there were in Israel?  Healed all the sick?  Raised all the dead?  No.

            His work was to make it plain who God was.  His work was to show off the nature of God in human form and experience.  His work was to reconcile a sinful world to the Holy God.  His work was to bring honor and glory to His Father by laying down his perfect life for imperfect sinners. 

APP:  Our praying must keep God’s calling and the work He has commissioned us to do in mind and in view.  That work includes everything from the gifts God has sovereignly given to each of us to use to build up the people of God to the Gospel of Christ he has commissioned each of us to preach and share.  It includes the work of making disciples and of growing in holiness by His Spirit.  Our praying must be larger than our personal needs.  It must include praying about Kingdom business, kingdom work and, yes, our role in that. 

APP:  Pray asking God to clarify the WORK of the Kingdom He wants you to be involved in right now in your life…and then listen!