Our Lord’s High Priestly Prayer, Part V, John 17:17-22

We again join the disciples as they listen to their Lord and our Lord speak to His Father in the role of High Priest. 

We know from scripture that the duties of the priest were to represent the people before God and to offer various sacrifices prescribed in the law. 

Jesus Christ is the High Priest of all priests for he not only comes before the Father on behalf of the people but he himself is the sacrifice of sacrifices, the sacrifice to end all sacrifices.

At this time his prayer to His Father is for his disciples and those to follow to take up the mission that He had begun, the mission to seek and to save those who are lost. 

He will, after His resurrection, instruct His disciples to Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel.

Spreading the Good News of a Savior will be the task at hand and Jesus Christ prays not that his disciples be taken out of the world but that they should be kept from the evil. 

I remember early on in my Christian walk learning this saying of Dr. Bob Jones Sr.

Do not ask God to give you a light burden; ask Him to give you strong shoulders to carry a heavy burden. 

Parents it is your duty to prepare your children for a heavy burden if you desire they participate in the Gospel mission.

But Jesus Christ’s hour has come to return to the Father but he knows his children have a burden to carry and he asks the Father to provide and equip them to carry the load for the load will be great.

So He asks in John 17:17, Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.

Jesus Christ, after teaching his disciples for three years now sends them into the world, a world of evil, to occupy till he come.

He asks they be kept from the evil and he brings into light how the Father will do such a thing. 

For He brings to mind an act of God called sanctification which means the act of making one holy, or separated for God’s use, by the word of God.

In His prayer he brings to mind God's truth as the separating force.

God's word is the sanctifying force.

By his word he sets his own apart for himself and for his service.

He consecrates them for the task he entrusts to them. 

His word will provide the inward purification and will endow them with all the resources they need to carry out that task. 

The word of God is practical in that if it is obeyed its truths will keep you from the evil. 

Just look at the practical lessons from the book of Proverbs that make one wise and to be wise is to make right choices and those right choices will keep you from evil as you perform the will of God. 

The word of God is Light and light allows you to see the evil and depart from the evil.

By saying "Sanctify them through thy truth:" Jesus Christ is not performing some mystical activity, some instant magic, but he knows that the practical outworking of his word in the life of the believer will keep the believer from evil.

He also sets them apart for his blessing. 

All people of the world receive the blessings of God but the blessings that he gives only to those who are sanctified are spiritual blessings. 

The world cannot know spiritual blessings because they are spiritually discerned.

So the end of God's truth is holiness, sanctification, separation unto him and separation from the world. 

And the result of that sanctification is the keeping of his own from the evil one.

So far as the child of God walks according to God's word shall he be kept from evil.

God's Word sanctifies those who obey it. 

God's word is the believer’s only safety. 

There is nothing else given to cling to!

Stray from God's word and the believer is nearer the evil.

So God provides and equips those who are his to do his will regardless of the evil of this world.

Jesus continues to speak to his Father as his disciples intently listen for this is recorded in:

John 17:18, As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.

The Father had established the pattern of sending---and Jesus Christ in sending his own into the world was following that pattern.

If you are a believer you are a sent one in the same pattern that the Father established with his Son.

Even as the Lord Jesus Christ lived on earth to represent the Father, so we now live on earth to represent Christ.

Christ was sent to reveal the Father, to show forth his glory, and so believers are sent forth to show Christ's glory, which is the glory of the Father.

He was sent to seek and to save that which was lost. 

We are to join in that effort by pointing the lost to Jesus Christ.