“Making Disciples” – Part II -Modeling– John 17

'Twas a sheep, not a lamb, that strayed away in the parable Jesus told.

A grown-up sheep that had gone astray from the ninety and nine in the fold.

Out on the hillside, out in the cold, 'twas a sheep the Good Shepherd sought;

And back to the flock, safe into the fold, 'twas a sheep the Good Shepherd brought.

And why for the sheep should we earnestly long and as earnestly hope and pray?

Because there is danger, if they go wrong, they will lead the lambs astray.

For the lambs will follow the sheep, you know, wherever the sheep may stray;

When the sheep go wrong, it will not be long till the lambs are as wrong as they.

And so with the sheep we earnestly plead, for the sake of the lambs today;

If the sheep are lost, what terrible cost some of the lambs will have to pay!

Source Unknown.

I don’t know who wrote that but it is a sobering reminder that we as sheep have a serious responsibility to model truth for our little lambs that are watching everything we do. You may think that nobody is watching and so a little bit of this or just a handful of that is not going to be a big deal. But there is something about little people that makes them want to act like big people and so children watch what adults say and do all the time.

I heard the story about a writer who was at home watching his little daughter play. She got his laptop and began just typing away on it. He watched for a minute and then asked what she was doing. “Writing a story” she said. “What’s it about?” She said, “I don’t know. I can’t read.”

Lambs want to be sheep so sheep have a huge responsibility to care for the lambs so that they grow up properly. But like with anything the responsibility of raising kids can also bring great joy. Proverbs 23:24 says, “The father of a righteous child has great joy; a man who fathers a wise son rejoices in him.” Children don’t get to be righteous or wise on accident though. That only happens when they have role models in their life that show them how to be righteous and wise.

Now, while righteous and wise children are a joy to everybody around them, nobody receives that full blessing like the one that did the modeling. Nobody has greater joy than the one who took the time to model righteousness and wisdom to them. The role model gets the greatest reward because that is what they are supposed to do and doing what you are called to do is the most rewarding position on earth. It brings more joy than anything else you can do.

When people think of Jesus they often think of “the Man of sorrows” or someone always in pain and agony. But while He most certainly did go through pain and sorrow, Jesus also talked a lot about His joy. He talked about His own joy and how others could have joy as well. In Hebrews 12:2 it says, “For the joy set before him he endured the cross.”

Hebrews 1:9 says about Jesus, “You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy." In our passage this morning Jesus is literally just hours away from dying a gruesome death on the cross for our sins. He knows what is about to happen to Him. He understands what is about to take place and how this is going to go down and yet in one of His last prayers before this happens, He prays that the disciples will have the full measure of His joy within them.

How can that be? Is He just faking it for the sake of His disciples who are listening to this prayer? Is He just trying to look on the bright side of things? Or does He really have joy in this, His darkest hour? I want us to read a long passage of scripture in the Gospel of John chapter 17. It is long and can be difficult to take it all in. There is a lot here literally and figuratively but if you will take the time to read along with me and not be worried about what you are going to eat or do later…then this passage becomes the living and powerful Word of God able to change your life and the way you choose discipleship. 

If you don’t hear a word I say, let Jesus speak to you from this passage. While we will in no way be able to do justice to this powerful passage of scripture, we will be able to see Jesus model what it looks like to be a disciple and to make disciples as He prays to the Father on behalf of Himself, His disciples and for all of us as well. He has been encouraging His disciples and now slips into the most powerful and beautiful prayer ever recorded.

John 17 says, “After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. ² For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. ³ Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. ⁴ I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. ⁵ And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began. ⁶ “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word.⁷ Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. ⁸ For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. ⁹ I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. ¹⁰ All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. ¹¹ I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. ¹² While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled. ¹³ “I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them. ¹⁴ I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. ¹⁵ My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. ¹⁶ They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. ¹⁷ Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. ¹⁸ As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. ¹⁹ For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. ²⁰ “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message,²¹ that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²² I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— ²³ I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. ²⁴ “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world. ²⁵ “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. ²⁶ I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

In the Great Commission Jesus told His disciples and all of us to go make more disciples. So we are looking at how to do just that, spending January looking at the lifestyle choice that is discipleship. What does it mean? What does it look like? How did Jesus do it and how can we at Christ Fellowship do it?

I told you last week that Jesus is our model and guide for doing this and I found four ways that He did it but that we can’t exactly duplicate what He did, nor should we try. We don’t need to go to Israel and try to do exactly what He did. Our job is to make disciples as we go through our lives where we are. Last week we saw that the first thing Jesus did was attract people to start the discipleship process. The next thing He did was to model exactly what a disciple looks like.

I had a hard time deciding which passage of scripture to use at first because all through John and all through all of the Gospels, Jesus models what it means to be a disciple. In Matthew He prays in the garden. In Mark He worships in the temple. In Luke He models faith by healing. But in this passage…in this passage we have all of that and more. (Write on board prayer, worship, faith.)

I’ll get to the “more” later but first let’s look at why prayer, worship and faith are important to discipleship. Do you remember what a disciple is? My definition for us today is a disciple is one who learns from Jesus and then teaches and encourages others with what they have learned. It is two-pronged. You learn and then you share what you have learned. If we never learn to pray or we never learn to worship or we never learn to have faith then we will never be true disciples. But all three have been misunderstood and all three have been done wrong so if we want to do it right then what better model for these than Jesus Himself?

This whole chapter is a prayer so it’s easy to see that but what exactly is prayer and why does a disciple do it? So, what is prayer? The easy answer is just that prayer is a conversation with God. Jesus models that thought here when He goes right from talking to the disciples to talking with the Father without missing a beat. It’s as if God the Father was right there with them and Jesus starts talking to Him just like He was to the disciples.

Just like last week we saw that Jesus attracted people so easily and yet it can be difficult for us, so it is with all 3 of these: prayer, worship and faith. But why is prayer, real prayer, so difficult? I believe there are any number of reasons why we all struggle to have a strong prayer life. There are libraries full of books that are written to help us with that. But I think one of the biggest problems we have to overcome is being distracted.

We have so much going on in our lives and all around us that we are doing good if we can concentrate long enough to give God a couple of minutes of our precious time in the morning, maybe a quick thanks at meal time and then a “Now I lay me down to sleep…”at the end of the day. But Jesus takes all the time in the world and has a casual conversation with the Father. It wasn’t a long prayer but very powerful.

While on his death bed, John Knox, the founder of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, called to his wife and said, "Read me that Scripture where I first cast my anchor." He was meaning where he first found faith. After he listened to the beautiful prayer of Jesus recorded in John 17, he seemed to forget his weakness. He began to pray, interceding earnestly for his fellowmen. He prayed for the ungodly who had thus far rejected the gospel. He pleaded in behalf of people who had been recently converted. And he requested protection for the Lord's servants, many of whom were facing persecution. As Knox prayed, his spirit went Home to be with the Lord. The man of whom Queen Mary had said, "I fear his prayers more than I do the armies of my enemies," ministered through prayer until the moment of his death. Our Daily Bread. April 11

In John 17, Jesus is hours away from being tortured and murdered on a cruel cross and we have the opportunity to listen in as He speaks to His Father in prayer.  You might think it would be filled with big, long words and “insider” speech that only they could understand but what we see hear is just a simple conversation.  So, what makes it so powerful and what makes it an “attractive” (point to board) (see last week’s sermon) prayer to model to His disciples?

Let’s think about this.  Where do we stand in the discipleship process?  We have attracted people into our lives, they see that we love them and want the best for them including the joy and peace that we have through Jesus.  Now, just as Jesus modeled this prayer to His disciples, we model prayer to those we are discipling.

Just like we might think that a prayer from God the Son to God the Father might be long, complicated and off-putting, so might people who have never prayed thought about prayer from us to Almighty God.  But when they see that, like Jesus, we can approach the throne room of the Creator of the universe with boldness and pour out our hearts in our own words without having to sound like a 17^th century Puritan clergyman with a lemon in his mouth, then they start to think, “You know, I think I can do that, too.”

Every step of the way, Jesus modeled discipleship to His disciples until one day they finally realized, “Hey, I can do that!”  It’s the same way with worship.  Do you see Jesus worshipping in this chapter?  Sure, Jesus went to the temple every Sabbath and He modeled the importance of being with other like-minded individuals in corporate worship but here Jesus worships in a room with just His friends.

What is worship?  Webster would say it is something along the lines of the expression of reverence and adoration for a deity.  Look at the very first verse of this passage again.  It says something about how Jesus prayed as well as His “expression of reverence” in worship that He starts off by asking a big thing – His own glory – but for the purpose of glorifying the Father.  He is not afraid to ask anything of God because of His reverence and adoration of God.  His goal is the furthering of God’s Kingdom, not just His own glory for the sake of glory.

 

All through here Jesus reveals His desire to first do what the Father has commanded and then His desire to be with the Father, to make the Father known and to be known by Him and to be unified with Him.  Look at verse 10 again.  Good grief, if we could manage to really grasp this, that we can worship and pray this same way, it would be life-changing for us and for other disciples.  He says to the Father, “All I have is Yours and all You have is mine.”

 

That sounds like a pretty good deal to me.  It makes me want to go to God in worship and prayer and say, “God, all I have is yours.  You can have my family, my job, my car, my dogs, my health, my whole pathetic life because I know you love me and I know that as your child, everything you have is mine.”  The worship of Jesus here makes me want to worship.  It makes me want to say in reverence and adoration as Jesus did in verse 17, “Sanctify me – set me apart – by the truth of Your Word”.  It makes me think, “I can do that.”  I can worship like that because I want that.

 

C.S. Lewis said, “To praise God fully we must suppose ourselves to be in perfect love with God, drowned in, dissolved by that delight which, far from remaining pent up within ourselves as incommunicable bliss, flows out from us incessantly again in effortless and perfect expression.”  That sounds like what Jesus modeled here and what we should model as well.

Do you see the faith in this prayer?  Faith is the very essence and foundation of prayer.  What is faith?  Let me give you an illustration by a woman named Edna Butterfield.

My husband, Ron, once taught a class of mentally impaired teenagers. Looking at his students' capabilities rather than their limitations, Ron got them to play chess, restore furniture and repair electrical appliances. Most important, he taught them to believe in themselves. Young Bobby soon proved how well he had learned that last lesson. One day he brought in a broken toaster to repair. He carried the toaster tucked under one arm, and a half-loaf of bread under the other.

That’s a good example of how someone with faith lives.  George Muller said, “Faith does not operate in the realm of the possible. There is no glory for God in that which is humanly possible. Faith begins where man's power ends.”  Jesus is not praying for anything here that is humanly possible.  In fact, Jesus prays as if it has already happened.  In verse 4, Jesus says He has finished the work the Father sent Him to do but we know it wasn’t until His death on the cross that it was really finished.  “Tetellestai!” Jesus cried from the cross, giving up His spirit.  “It is finished.”  And yet, here He is the day before, telling the Father it is all done.  It is literally as good as done.  That’s faith.  We should pray in such faith.  We should worship in such faith.  We should live our lives in such faith so that when the Bible says that Jesus is coming back, our lives model to others that we know…it is as good as done.

Our lives should model to others the undeniable fact that Ephesians 2:6 says, “And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus.”  It is as good as done because we live in faith.  Because we live in faith, our lives model the undeniable fact that Revelation chapter 19 at the very end of the Book says, “For the wedding of the Lamb has come, and his bride (that’s us – Todd’s words) has made herself ready.”  We should model that that prophecy is as good as done.

Faith doesn’t say, “I know God is going to answer my prayer the way I asked because I asked sincerely believing that He would.”  That’s not faith.  That’s telling God what He has to do.  Good luck with that.  Faith says, “I know He can and I know He will but even if He doesn’t, still I will praise Him!  Still I will pray to Him.  Still I will worship Him.  Still I will have faith in Him.”

And when that is your lifestyle – I’m not talking about a church program, I mean when you choose to be a disciple and learn from Jesus and then teach and encourage others with what you have learned – when that is your lifestyle you will attract others…just like Jesus did.

Maybe today that lifestyle looks pretty good to you because the way you have been doing it just doesn’t seem to be working out very well.  Everybody in here knows that feeling.  Everybody in here knows how it is to try to do it yourself, to go through life trying to get peace and joy, trying to be good enough to get to Heaven, trying to make peace with God.

But there is no peace with God outside of His Son Jesus.  Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.  No man comes to the Father but through Me.”  He is saying to be His disciple.  Learn from Him and then teach and encourage others as you go.

Invitation

I said at the beginning that we would see prayer, worship and faith and so much more.  Let me show what I meant by “so much more”.  I said that the role model gets the greatest reward because that is what they are supposed to do and doing what you are called to do is the most rewarding position on earth. It brings more joy than anything else you can do.

Do you see that is why Jesus was anointed with the oil of joy, why He had so much joy even right before His death?  He was doing what He was told to do by the Father.  All through the gospels, Jesus tells the Father that He is just doing what He is supposed to do, being obedient to the Father’s will, not His own.  What is God telling you to do?  How are you supposed to be modeling and attracting people, making disciples?

True joy only comes from being obedient.