Not For The World

Our Bible passage, introduction to Sunday 15th June service and hymns are below.

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Our principal verses are:

Jhn 17:6  I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.

Jhn 17:7  Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee.

Jhn 17:8  For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.

Jhn 17:9  I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.

 Not For The World

Many reasons render this prayer of the Lord Jesus precious to His people. Foremost among them is the frequency with which our Saviour differentiates between His Church and the ungodly in the world. Let there be no confusion in the minds of God’s people. The Lord God distinguishes absolutely between those who are His own by everlasting love and those who are not; those set apart in the covenant of grace and those who are not; those redeemed by the blood of Christ and those who are not. 

A people given by God

The blessed Son of God came into the world to save His own people from their sins. What made them His own people is revealed here. Speaking to His Father, Jesus says, ‘I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me’. Certainly the Lord is speaking about His own disciples here, the twelve, or rather the eleven, Judas now being gone. Yet, Christ’s words cannot be restricted to the disciples alone but include all those given into His hand, set apart in the covenant of peace and ordained to eternal life.

The revelation of grace

Christ’s obligation to represent and deliver these people was predetermined in the eternal council of the Godhead where their names were recorded in the Lamb’s Book of Life. They belonged to the Father by electing love and were given to the Son as God-man to redeem. It is to these the Saviour reveals His Father’s saving purpose in the gospel. God’s name, spoken of here, is not a mysterious title or any particular one of the many names taken by Jehovah to reveal His nature. God’s name is His person and encapsulates all the revealed attributes of His being and nature such as holiness and love, mercy and grace, power and knowledge.

A prayer for us

This passage of holy scripture is called Christ’s intercessory prayer because in it the Lord Jesus prays to His Father on behalf of His people. He intercedes for His own. He is explicit. He emphasises He is not praying for the world ‘but for them which thou hast given me’, His immediate disciples and those who would follow them and like them, believe in Him. Those false teachers today who insist Christ died for the whole world without exception need to explain to us how it is Jesus would die for the world but would not pray for the world.

Received and believed

To comfort and encourage us all the Lord Jesus uses every opportunity to recommend these men to His Father. Despite their many limitations, and ours, the Saviour never once mentions their shortcomings nor hints at their unworthiness. He does not refer to their sin because in the Father’s eyes they are clean. Here we see the Lord’s great love and tender care. Because we are His, everything is an endorsement. ‘They have kept thy word.’ They have known Thy name. They have received Thy word. They believe all the Father has communicated by God the Son. They believe the gospel of God as revealed by the Son, not merely in their head but in their heart.

‘The fulness of the Godhead’

Our Lord Jesus is Himself the Revelation of God the Father. We cannot know the Father except He be revealed to us by the Son. When a sinner hears the gospel and is given faith to believe and know the purpose of God in salvation Christ also reveals all the gracious blessings of which believers are heirs and joint heirs with Him. We hear and discover that ‘all things whatsoever thou hast given me’, belong also to us in Him. We trust and have faith that nothing will be withheld from those that are His. God is our Father, Christ is our Brother, the Spirit is our Comforter and heaven is our home.

‘I have given’

These blessings belong to all God’s people because the Lord Jesus has given them to us. Our status as ‘heir of all things’ in Christ is a free gift from God. It is not an offer to be accepted or a proposal to be considered. It is bestowed grace: beautiful, powerful and enabling. Every spiritual blessing is freely given to God’s elect in and by our Lord Jesus Christ. He stands for us as our Surety and represents us as our Substitute. He has taken all our sin and guilt and given us all His goodness and love. He takes our transgressions and gives us His righteousness. He washes us in His blood and makes us holy and pure.

Amen

Hymn 20

Deity and Humanity of Christ. Col. 1. 16; 1 Tim. 3. 16

I. Watts                                      L.M.

1
Ere the blue heavens were stretched abroad,
From everlasting was the Word;
With God he was; the Word was God;
And must divinely be adored.

2
By his own power were all things made;
By him supported all things stand;
He is the whole creation’s Head,
And angels fly at his command.

3
Ere sin was born, or Satan fell,
He led the host of morning stars;
(Thy generation who can tell,
Or count the number of thy years?)

4
But lo! he leaves those heavenly forms;
The Word descends and dwells in clay,
That he may hold converse with worms,
Dressed in such feeble flesh as they.

5
Mortals with joy behold his face,
The eternal Father’s only Son;
How full of truth! how full of grace!
When through his eyes the Godhead shone.

6
Blest angels leave their high abode,
To learn new mysteries here, and tell
The loves of our descending God,
The glories of Immanuel.

Hymn 16

Holiness. Lev. 19. 2; 1 Sam. 2. 2; Heb. 12. 14

R. Burnham                                C.M.

1
The Father is a holy God;
His holy Son he gave;
Who freely shed atoning blood,
A guilty world to save.

2
The Spirit brings the chosen race,
A holy Christ to view;
And while by faith they see his face,
Their souls grow holy too.

3
In holiness the saints delight,
While here on earth they dwell;
By faith they wrestle day and night,
More holiness to feel

4
The Holy Spirit leads them on,
His holy truth to know;
Inscribes his laws in every son,
And works obedience too.

5
He makes them feel the cleansing grace,
That flows through Jesus’ blood;
Unites in love the holy race –
The new-born sons of God.

The Lord Jesus Christ did not come into the world to save the world. He came to save His people and that is what He successfully accomplished. Here He tells His Father that He does not even pray for the world but for those who were given to Him in the covenant of grace to safeguard, protect and deliver from their sins,