Twenty-Second Meeting
(February 18, 1964 P.M.)
Read:
John seventeen.
There is
another prayer in the New Testament which the Lord Jesus
gave to His disciples. That prayer is usually called the
Lord's prayer. You remember that prayer, that it begins:
"Our Father Which art in Heaven." But that
prayer was not the Lord's prayer. That prayer never could
be the Lord's prayer. He gave it to the disciples just to
indicate lines along which they could pray. It is a
mistake to call it the Lord's prayer. The Lord Jesus
could never say to the Father, "Forgive us our
trespasses." He never had to ask for forgiveness.
That would have made Him a sinner. And in Him, there was
no sin. The true Lord's Prayer is the one that we have
just read. John seventeen is truly the Lord's prayer.
Here, we can learn much from His prayer as to how we
should pray. So we will follow Him through this prayer.
I expect
most of you know that this prayer has been called 'the
high priestly prayer of the Lord Jesus.' And I think that
is the right name for it, because in this prayer the Lord
Jesus is following the course of the high priest of old.
The high priest of old prepared himself to pass through
into the most holy place, and there meet God. He took the
blood from the altar. He took the fire from the altar. He
took a censer and put the fire into it, and then he put
the sweet incense on the fire into the censer, and passed
from the outer court through the holy place and through
the veil into the most holy place. And there he swung his
censer before the mercy seat, having sprinkled the blood
upon the mercy seat, and there rose unto God a cloud of
sweet incense: - something acceptable and well pleasing
to God, a savor of Christ.
Now you
will see by the position of John seventeen, that Jesus is
just beginning that course. He is about to go to the
great Altar of sacrifice - the Cross. He is about to take
His Own blood from the Cross. He is about to take the
fire of judgment from the Cross. And He is about to pass
through the veil. We are told that the veil is His flesh.
His body is about to be rent from top to bottom like the
veil of the most holy place. And His body, having been
broken, He is about, in the spirit, to enter into the
Presence of the Father. HE IS NOW GOING THROUGH, IN
SPIRIT, TO THAT HEAVENLY HOLY OF HOLIES WHERE GOD IS. And
there in the Presence of God He will sprinkle the blood
of testimony. And in the Presence of God He will present
the sweet savor of a perfected work, well pleasing to
God. And all that is gathered into this prayer. As this
High Priest, our Lord Jesus is moving toward the heavenly
sanctuary, He is praying, and He is praying for the
people who are represented by Him. He is praying for the
family that He is leaving outside.
You
notice this is a family matter. He begins His prayer with
the word, "Father," and He ends the prayer with
"Thy name." They are the things which make the
family - The Father and His name. Now you notice how He
prays for the family. As He moves toward the Father, He
says, first of all, "For their sakes I sanctify
Myself," on their behalf "I sanctify
Myself." And if we want to know the meaning of the
word, "sanctification," it is the same word as
being made holy, same word as consecration. It just means
being wholly set apart for God. For their sakes I wholly
consecrate or set apart Myself unto God.
You must
realize that that is the first basis of effectual prayer.
If that is the basis of the prayer of the Lord Jesus, how
much more ought it to be our basis of prayer. If He said,
'For their sakes I consecrate over to God everything, I
Am wholly separated unto God. God has everything where I
Am concerned.' That is His basis of prayer, and that is
our basis of prayer. When we come to pray, or whenever we
go to the Lord in prayer, I think the Holy Spirit would
ask this question: Are you holding anything back? Are you
keeping something back for yourself? Have you any
personal interest? Or has the Lord got everything? Is it
as true of you, as it was of your Lord, that everything
is on the Altar? You have only one motive in life, and
that is to be wholly for the Lord, ourselves for the
Lord, our homes for the Lord, our business for the Lord,
everything in life for the Lord. That is what the Lord
Jesus meant when He said, "I consecrate
Myself." That is the essential basis of effectual
prayer. The Lord Jesus said this because He was setting
an example for the family.
There
are three directions and respects in this prayer in which
the Lord Jesus wanted the family to be consecrated or
separated. Firstly, what He meant by saying, "I
sanctify Myself - Myself. I separate Myself from My Own
will - separate from My Own interest." You see, the
Lord Jesus had a human nature as well as a Divine nature,
and all through that earthly life this question was
arising for Him. Could He be tempted to take the life of
His human nature, instead of the Divine. It was not a
sinful human nature, but it was a human nature. You see,
those temptations of the devil in the wilderness were
just the temptation to get Him to come down onto the
ordinary ground of human nature. And from the temptation
immediately after His baptism right up to the Cross, that
was the battle. In the garden of Gethsemane, the battle
was this: "Not My will, but Thy will." His was
not a sinful will, but it was a human will; and He had
the power to choose. It was within His power to say,
"No," and when it came to the Cross, that
choice was a great battle. It was a terrible battle in
the garden; between what He called, "My will, and
Thy will."
Now, if
that was true of the Lord Jesus, how much more true it is
of us. If it was true of One Who had no sinful will, how
much more true is it of us who have a sinful will. So He
said, 'I consecrate Myself. I step away from what I am in
My mere humanity over onto God's side. I leave My ground
for God's ground.' You know, that is a part of true
prayer. We shall never get through in prayer to God, if
we are standing on our own natural ground. We have got to
take God's ground, even if that means against ourselves
and our own wills. So, He said, 'I consecrate Myself, I
put My whole self onto this Altar of the Cross.' That is
the way He prayed as He moved up to the Father.
Do you
notice the second thing that consecration meant? Listen
to Him praying for the family. "They are not of the
world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that
Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but Thou
shouldest keep them." He knew that the world is one
of the greatest powers against consecration. What a big
force this world is to cause us to keep something back
from the Lord. In this prayer, the Lord Jesus makes it
perfectly clear that the world is an enemy to God. The
world is an enemy to the spiritual life of God's people.
The same man, John, who recorded this prayer, later on
recorded this: He that is a friend of the world is an
enemy of God. So that consecration is separation
spiritually from this world while we remain in it.
"They are not of the world, even as I am not of the
world!" So consecration for Him and for us
means that the world has no place in our hearts. And that
again is a great principle of true prayer. I think that
much prayer is defeated, and is a failure, because there
is so much of the world in our lives.
And then
the third thing that He said about consecration was this:
"I pray that Thou will keep them from the evil
one." That evil one is always very near, he is
always trying to do his evil work, he is always trying to
lead or to ensnare us into something that is of himself.
He is always trying to tempt us. Jesus says, "I
pray, Father, 'That Thou wilt keep them from the evil
one.'" You know, when the Apostle Paul wrote his
letter to the Ephesians, the final chapter of that great
letter brings us into this realm of conflict with the
evil one and the evil powers. And he says that conflict
is in prayer. He says, in effect, THAT THE GREATEST
BATTLE WITH THE FORCES OF EVIL IS THE PRAYER BATTLE. We
have got to get into a position of victory over the evil
one in order to pray effectively. So that is the Lord's
basis of prayer.
I have
said it in a very few words. It needs very much more, but
that is not the whole prayer. He breathes out His desire
to the Father about this family, and He makes two
requests of the Father: "I pray that where I Am,
there they may be." Where He is going, we shall
come. And where is He going? He said, I am going to the
Father, and I want My whole family to be there with Me.
And He has to pray that, because they will not be there
unless He does pray. Our coming to the Father so much
rests upon the prayer of our High Priest. That is one of
the great inheritances of the Lord's family.
I do not
know how it is with you, but very often I pour out my
heart to the Lord in prayer, and when I have prayed all
that I can pray, I have to add this: 'But Lord, it is
not, after all, my prayer; it is the prayer of Your Son
that is going to get me through.' He said to Peter,
"Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired to have you, that
he may sift thee as wheat: but I have prayed for
thee." And He believed so much in His prayers, that
He said, 'When you turn again, strengthen your brothers,
because I have prayed for you' (Luke 22:31-33). Peter,
you will come through it all. You will come out on the
other side. And that is how it is with us now. "This
High Priest ever liveth to make intercession for us"
(Heb. 7:25). And we owe far more to His prayers for us
than we realize.
And then
the second part of that petition was this: "That
they may behold My glory!" That is very beautiful.
They have beheld My humiliation. They have seen Me
despised and rejected of men. And they will share that
rejection themselves. They will know something of this
humiliation which I know now. But Father, I want them to
see the result of it all. I want them to see how all the
rejection and the humiliation and the suffering will turn
out in the end. I pray that they may behold My glory, and
when they behold My glory, they will say, 'It was all
worthwhile.' The suffering and the rejection were
worthwhile.
So His
prayer for us, done here, is going to have its glorious
end in our beholding His glory. Now, as I said at the
beginning, all this is a way of praying. I left a lot out
from this prayer. He prayed for the family THAT THEY
ALL MAY BE ONE. And surely that is something to pray
about, perhaps more than ever in history today we need to
pray about the Lord's people, THAT THEY ALL MAY BE
ONE. Well, I just leave that brief meditation with
you. Let us follow our High Priest through into the
Presence of the Father, praying as He prayed.
"That
they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in
Thee, that they also may be one in Us: that the world may
believe that Thou hast sent Me. And the glory which Thou
gavest Me I have given them; that they may be one, even
as We are one" (John 17:21, 22).