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Apr 14, 2024

What Jesus Wants for Us, part 1

What Jesus Wants for Us, part 1

Passage: John 17:6-19

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: Practice the Presence - Prayer

Keywords: prayer, joy, one, kept

You can learn something about a person by what they want from you. Even more by what they want for you. For the next three weeks we will look at what is known as Jesus’s High Priestly Prayer, in which we will hear what he most wants for His own by what He prays for His own.

Readings & Scripture

PREPARATION: Psalm 121
LEADER: I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
My help comes from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.

ALL: He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.

LEADER: The LORD is your keeper;
the LORD is your shade on your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.

ALL: The LORD will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
The LORD will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and forevermore.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH/CREEDAL STATEMENT/SCRIPTURE READING: John 15:11-13; 1 John 2:15-17; 4:7
LEADER: These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. . . .Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. . . . Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

CENTRAL TEXT: John 17:6-19
John 17:6 “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. 7 Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. 8 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. 9 I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. 10 All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. 11 And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. 12 While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. 13 But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. 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. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.

BENEDICTION: Hebrews 7:23-25
LEADER: The former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office, but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues forever. Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.

RELATED SCRIPTURES:

  • Romans 12:1-3
  • Hebrews 7:25
  • James 1:1-3

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. Besides your parents (or maybe in spite of your parents), who has wanted the most for you? How did they express it? What measures might they have taken to see that come to fruition? How did that affect you?
  2. Refresh your memory about the thrust of the passage. The most common word to summarize what Jesus wants for them is “keep.” He wants His Father to keep them. Keep them “in” and “from” what?
  3. Is his prayer for them that they be kept from suffering? Why or why not? What if that’s not His prayer? How do you understand Him to be loving? 
  4. It is from this passage that you will hear the adage, “in but not of the world.” Do you find a basis for that distinction here? How does one know if they have slipped “out” of the world to an extent Jesus does not pray for? Conversely, how might one know if they have become too much “in” the world, again, outside what He wants for them? 
  5. Related to the preceding set of questions, claims of someone being too “worldly,” or conversely being “so spiritually minded that they are no worldly good,” are difficult to ascertain with precision or confidence. What constitutes true worldliness or being puritanical is often guilty of a certain subjectivity. How might this quote from C.S. Lewis’s  The Screwtape Letters help you discern whether one is unduly influenced by a world that is not his home?
    1. Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden.

ILLUSTRATIONS:  

QUOTES: 

 

  • This, then, is a story of Lincoln’s political genius revealed through his extraordinary array of personal qualities that enabled him to form friendships with men who had previously opposed him; to repair injured feelings that, left untended, might have escalated into permanent hostility; to assume responsibility for the failures of subordinates; to share credit with ease; and to learn from mistakes. He possessed an acute understanding of the sources of power inherent in the presidency, an unparalleled ability to keep his governing coalition intact, a tough-minded appreciation of the need to protect his presidential prerogatives, and a masterful sense of timing. Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals
  • Music and silence–how I detest them both!….[Hell] has been occupied by Noise–Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile–Noise which alone defends us from silly qualms, despairing scruples and impossible desires. We will make the whole universe a noise in the end….The melodies and silences of Heaven will be shouted down in the end. “Wormtongue” in C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters
  • Gratitude looks to the Past and love to the Present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead. “Wormtongue” in C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters
  • Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts. “Wormtongue” in C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters
  • **Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. “Wormtongue” in C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters
  • I still prefer to believe that sex is a substitute for religion and that the young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. Fr. Smith in Bruce Marshall’s The World, the Flesh and Father Smith 

 

BOOKS / DOCS

SERMONS

 “Jesus prays for His friends,” Rico Tice