Serve The World

In this message from John 17:17–26, David Platt encourages us to look beyond the walls of the church to a world in great spiritual need. 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Framing Disciple Making
• 3:09 Reading John 17 On Mission
• 5:11 Sanctification As Purpose, Not Avoidance
• 9:15 Dedicated For Others’ Transformation
• 13:53 Dependent On Disciple Making To Grow
• 19:15 Sent Like Jesus: Identity And Power
• 24:13 Unity As A Byproduct Of Mission
• 27:31 Move From Addition To Multiplication
• 30:31 Discipling Or Disinfecting
• 36:05 Redefining Church Impact And Obedience
• 40:09 Saved For Christ’s Glory

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:55

You are listening to David Platt Messages, a weekly podcast with sermons and messages from pastor, author, and teacher David Platt.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08

As we dive into this chapter for the last time in this series on what it means to make disciples of all nations, I want us to start by reviewing and then do something a little different before we dive into the word. We've walked through up to this point three different components of disciple making. You've got in your notes and your celebration guide there the first three components of disciple making. Don't forget, that doesn't necessarily mean these are chronological, but the three components of disciple making that we have been looking at. First one is to share the word, second one is to show the word, and the third one is to teach the word, which we dove into last week. And the final component of disciple making that we're going to dive into this morning, after as we share the word, we show the word and we teach the word, we serve the world. What I want us to do before we read from John 17 is I want us to get a picture in our mind about how all of these connect together. We've been looking into each one of these facets of disciple making, and I hope, realizing that this is this is something that's intended to take place, carry out in our lives on a daily basis, in our everyday lives. We've been talking every week about the people God has entrusted to us to share his word with and to show his word to and to teach his word to, that God has given us people right here to do that with. Watch this with me. Praise the Lord. This is where it works. What we do here, what we do there, they come together and we're impacting the world for the glory of Christ. Maybe this mission is what we're supposed to give ourselves to. So let's dive in. I want us to see how these three components we've talked about, sharing the word, showing the word, teaching the word, relate to this final component, serving the world, come together in a picture, a process called disciple making. I want you to look with me at John chapter 17, and we're gonna we're gonna read uh starting in verse 17, and we're gonna go to the end of the chapter, and we're gonna see basically the conclusion of Jesus' prayer specifically for his disciples in verse 17, 18, and 19. And then we're gonna see how that prayer plays out in the lives of believers that would come, succeeding generation of disciples, including you and me. Look in verse 17. Jesus prays, Sanctify them by the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 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. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they made me one as we are one, I in them, and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity, to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you loved me. 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. Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. 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. Here's the climax Jesus and his disciples, what he has done in their life, now reproduced in the lives of others. And what I want you to notice is in those verses we read over and over again, you see, well, you see a couple different phrases repeated, but there's one word I want us to focus on, and it's the word world. When you look at this chapter as a whole, nearly 20 times Jesus mentions the world, almost 20 times. And even in the last part here, he mentions it over and over and over again. Look in verse 13, and you might circle or put a box or a triangle or something around these words, because we've been circling a lot of different words, so you might want to do it in a way that differentiates it from the others. But I want you to circle or make some kind of note every time you see the world mentioned. Look in verse 13. He says, I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I'm still in the what? In the world. Look in verse 14, three different times. 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. Then in verse 15, my prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them. You get down to verse 16. They are not of the world, even as not I am not of it. And that it at the end of verse 16 is the world in the original language of the New Testament, in the Greek, it's mentioned there. So you've got twice there in verse 16. And you get to 18, which was just read, as I have sent them into the world. As you have sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. And you get down to verse 21. It says, May they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. Verse 23, I and them, and you and me, may they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me. And then in verse 25, Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. Over and over and over again, we see the world emphasized in this prayer. Jesus had said earlier in the prayer, I'm not praying for the world, I'm praying for the disciples. But we know that he was praying for the disciples through which the world would come to know who he was, through which the world would come to know his father's love. And so obviously, there's an emphasis here on the end goal of disciple making, being the world knowing that God is good and gracious and merciful. And so, what I want us to do is I want us to unpack in this final component of disciple making the end goal, the ultimate purpose of disciple making, where it's all headed, and I want us to look at it on a few different levels. Understanding the goal of disciple making. Number one, we are sanctified. We are sanctified for each other's sake. We are sanctified for each other's sake. Now I want you to hear that in Jesus' words right at the end of his prayer, specifically for his disciples. Obviously, the context of mission is pretty strong. Jesus says, as you sent me into the world, Father, I am sending them into the world. So this is obviously a pretty missional picture. But don't miss it. Verse 18 is kind of sandwiched in between two verses talking about sanctification. It says in verse 17, sanctify them by the truth. Then he gives this incredibly missional statement in verse 18, and then in verse 19 it says, For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. So this idea of sanctification is sandwiched in between. Now, last week we talked about how the word was the means by which we're sanctified, but we said we're going to wait until this week to really dive into the meaning of sanctification. What is sanctification? And it's at this point we need to realize that the whole of Scripture basically shows us that to sanctify something means to set it apart for a special purpose, to fulfill a special calling, a special purpose, some kind of service. So something is set apart for that purpose. That is what sanctification is. You go back to the Old Testament, even the sacrificial system, and you have Exodus chapter 28 and 29 talking about how Aaron and his sons needed to be sanctified. A word it's sometimes used in the Old Testament is consecrated, set apart for exclusive service to God as priests. You see that over and over again. People are sanctified, set apart for exclusive service like that. Then you see things that are mentioned that are sanctified, they're set apart for exclusive service to accomplish some purpose. Now that's the meaning of sanctification we see over and over and over again in the Old Testament. And this is huge for us to get our arms around. Because sanctification or holiness is most often described in Scripture as being set apart for a specific purpose, set apart to do certain things. But the way we oftentimes view holiness and sanctification, we view it as we're set apart to avoid certain things. If you're holy, that means you don't do this and this and this and this. And we define holiness and we define sanctification by not doing wrong things. As long as you avoid these things that we would all consider would be major sins in our culture today, then you're holy. And at that point, I've got to wonder if we are the only organization in the world, in the church, that is defining success based on what we don't do instead of what we do do. Are we really a people that will only be known for what we abstain from? I don't think that's the biblical picture of sanctification here. Picture is not us, us living our lives to avoid all these things. That's nowhere in this prayer of Jesus. Yes, he said they are not of the world, but he said they are right in the middle of the world. And we are sanctified not to avoid certain things, we are sanctified in order to do certain things, to give ourselves an exclusive service to God. Exclusive service to his mission. That's what Jesus is saying right here. When Jesus says, I sanctify myself, it's not that Jesus is making himself more pure or more holy. That's not what he's saying. He was completely holy, the Son of God, no sin in him whatsoever. So how can he sanctify himself? What he's saying is he continually devoted himself to the mission that the Father had given to him. He was exclusively devoted to that mission. And so what I want us to think about when we think about sanctification is not avoiding wrong things, it's giving ourselves to something. What do we give ourselves to? Well, I'm glad you asked. When we are sanctified, we are dedicated, dedicated, consecrated. We are dedicated to the purpose of disciple making for others' transformation. Now that's a pretty loaded sentence, and I want us to think about it. We are dedicated. That's what it means to sanctify, set apart for a special purpose, dedicated to the purpose. What's our purpose? What we're seeing in the context of this whole chapter is our purpose is to make disciples of all nations. We see that in all of the Gospels. It infiltrates Scripture from cover to cover. We're supposed to make his glory known by reproducing the image of Christ that's been entrusted to us. That is the purpose, that is the will of God for all of our lives as believers. And so we are dedicated, set apart to that purpose. But listen to what Jesus says. He says in verse 19, he sanctifies himself for who? For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified. So Jesus says, I set myself apart in service to the mission of the Father so that they might be sanctified. He dedicates himself to the purpose of making these disciples so that they might be sanctified. The term right there in the very beginning of verse 19, for them, it's a term that is used in different parts of the Old Testament and the Greek translation there, when it's talking about sacrifices, like the atonement, Day of Atonement, when an animal was offered on a sacrifice for the people, on behalf of the people. That's what Jesus is saying. He's saying we give ourselves to the mission of the Father for the sake of others. And this is where we are reminded so clearly that the reason we make disciples, the reason this mission must be primary in our lives and in the local church, it's because of others' sake. And I'm convinced this is one of the reasons we have such a dangerous tendency to ignore disciple making, because somewhere along the way we've gotten the idea that the purpose of the church is to help us grow in Christ. And I don't think that's the purpose of the church. I don't believe the purpose of the church is to help us grow in Christ. The purpose of the church is to equip us to help others grow in Christ. Because if the purpose of the church is to help us grow in Christ, then what we do in here is for the sake of us in this room. But ladies and gentlemen, we are not living for ourselves. We are living for the sake of a lost and dying world outside these walls. And we live for them. We've got to get a hold of the fact that this whole Christian picture is not about you and me. It's about people whose lives are at stake for eternity based on what we do with the gospel that's been entrusted to us. We dedicate ourselves to the purpose of disciple making so that others might be transformed. But I want you to see this from another angle as well. Not only do we dedicate ourselves to this purpose so that others might be transformed, this is where it gets really good. And this is the crux of disciple making. We've got to get a hold of this. Second, we are dependent on this process called disciple making for our own transformation. We are dependent on the process of disciple making for our own transformation. And when you get to verse 19, what we've got is a picture of Jesus sanctifying himself as the disciples are being sanctified. It's the discipler and the disciple being sanctified at the same time. This is a picture in this process of disciple making. Jesus is sanctified. He sanctifies himself, and the disciples are truly sanctified. It goes together. Now we begin to realize that this whole process of disciple making, living for the sake of others, sharing the word, showing the word, teaching the word with others, actually is a part of the process of us becoming more holy and becoming more set apart to the service of God. Could it be that disciple making is the process that God wants to use in every single one of our lives to produce holiness in our Christianity? I am increasingly convinced, especially in the study we've been walking through over the last few weeks, I am increasingly convinced that we will be destined to live dull, complacent Christianity. As long as we live our lives apart from this command to make disciples. Because we will only go so far, I am convinced every single one of us will stall in our Christian lives until we begin to rise up and take responsibility for sharing the word and showing the word and teaching the word to others. I think the evidence is all across the pews of churches this morning. Because we ignore this mission, this responsibility. We don't have to know the gospel. We don't have to show the gospel. We don't have to teach the gospel. But when we give ourselves to this mission, it will radically change our walk with Christ. Had conversations with many of you, gotten emails as catching it. Okay, one email that sticks out to me from one person in this faith family who has been sharing the gospel over the last couple of weeks with a friend. And the email talked about how he was seeing his own faith grow leaps and bounds, how people around him were making remarks about his walk with Christ because he was now taking the responsibility to share Christ with this friend. And he was realizing I gotta get in the Word, I gotta know this and that in order to do this. He is going to new heights in his walk with Christ. Why? Because he's now living for the sake of others. We are dependent on the process of disciple making. That's why the worst thing we could say when we walk out of here after this series is to say, Well, once I get to a certain point in my Christianity, then I'll be ready to do what David is telling us to do from the Word. If we say that, we miss the whole point of making disciples. If we wait until we arrive at that point where we're now ready to make disciples, we'll never get there. We will stall down here for the rest of our Christianity. And it's possible, don't miss it. It is possible for us to coast out and successful, avoiding things for holiness, Christianity, and never give ourselves a dismission. However, when we rise up and we start to do this, not when we wait until we arrive at that point, we say, I want to get to that point. Could it be that God wants to use the process of disciple making to get you to that point that you're imagining? I read an article not too long ago from a prominent youth magazine, and it was talking about how we shouldn't tell students to make disciples. Because students aren't ready to make disciples. They're not at a point where they're they are able spiritually mature to do that. And I want you to know that we've got a group of students that is debunking this article completely with the way they're living their lives right now. Wish you could hear some of the stories that are coming out in these guys' lives. Here's the beauty of it. What the writer of that article or anybody along those lines thinks is what they're missing out on is the fact that it's when students begin to rise up and take responsibility for sharing the word in the school, in their schools, showing the word in their schools. Here's what the character of Christ looks like, teaching the word to their friends like they're doing on their ball teams and in their in their class with their classmates. When they start doing that, their Christianity is going to new heights, that it could never go apart from this mission. Now, if that's happening to them, what about us? We've got to get that picture. We're dependent on the process of disciple making for our own transformation. The beauty of it is, when we give away our life, we find life. Now that sounds New Testament, doesn't it? It makes sense. Philemon 1.6, this whole share the word thing, Philemon 1.6, I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith so that you might have a full understanding of every good thing you have in Christ Jesus. You won't have a full understanding of the gospel until you start to share the gospel, Philemon 1.6 says. Show the word, taking responsibility for showing his character, teaching the word. We talked about that last week. How the more we we have to teach the word, the more we have to learn the word. This goes together. We are sanctified for each other's sake. For them, I sanctify myself so that they may truly be sanctified. God help us to live our Christianity for the sake of those around us. We're sanctified for each other's sake. Second, we are servants. We are servants for the world's sake. We're servants for the world's sake. Now, I want you to see this unfold in the theme that we see all throughout this chapter about how Jesus had been sent from the Father. Obviously, it's the thrust of verse 18. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. But then you look down in verse 21. Jesus reiterates it again. Said, All of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also believe in us, so the world may believe that you have sent me. Then you get down to verse 23. He says it again. Verse 25, he says, Righteous Father, the world doesn't know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. This is a picture we see throughout the Gospel of John. That Jesus had been sent on a mission. For God so loved the world that he what? Gave his one and only son. He sent his one and only son. Very next verse, verse 17. God did not send the world and the son to condemn the world, but through the world that through him the world might be saved. That's why he sent. Jesus was sent with a commission to be the Savior of the world. He summarized it. Mark 10, 45. I came not to be served, but to do what? But to serve. I am sent to give my life as a ransom for many. Jesus was sent. This was his whole commission, sent from the Father to serve. And the disciples had seen that played out, even just a couple of chapters before. As Jesus knelt down and he washed their feet. And here the Savior of the world, their rabbi, the teacher, who is about to die on a cross, God Himself in the flesh, kneels down and he begins to wipe their dirty feet. And he'd seen it over and over and over again. The way he served the crowd, the way he gave his life, the way he held so loosely to the things that they thought were so important in this world. And the way he embraced poverty, the way he embraced spiritual things in a way that they had never seen before. That was his whole purpose. He was sent to be a servant. But here's where it gets really good. When you get to verse 18, and Jesus says, Just as the Father, you have sent me into the world, now I send them into the world. And now what Jesus is talking about and his mission sent from the Father relates to you and me. I want you to see how this unfolds. Number one, Jesus is identifying us here with his mission. Jesus is identifying us with his mission, just as you sent me into the world, so now I am sending them into the world. Over and over again in this chapter, he's identifying the disciples with him. Look back in verse 14. He said, I have given them your word, and the world has hated them, for they're not of the world any more than I am of the world. We're the same. You get to verse 16, he says, they're not of the world, even as I am not of it. We're on the same wavelength. You get over to verse 21 through 23, it's a whole picture of the comparison that we have with Christ. Him and us, and us and him. Everything that Christ received or was treated as in this world, we can expect the same. We are identified with his mission. Now, the neat thing, when you get to verse 18 there, as you sent me into the world, I've sent them into the world. That word is the word apostello, from which we get the word apostle. Literally means sent ones. Now in the New Testament, we see apostles referred to in different ways. Obviously, the primary terminology when we see an apostle referred to is those who are eyewitnesses of Jesus, 12 apostles. These are people who are eyewitnesses to Christ. However, it also is used in the New Testament to refer to how other believers are sent out. We are sent as representatives who identify with the mission of Christ. And this was at the thrust of these guys' entire process of discipleship. I want you to hold your place here, and I want you to turn me back to Mark chapter 3. Look at Mark chapter 3. I want to give you an opportunity maybe to circle a few different places where you see Jesus using the same term and his identification with the disciples. This is Mark chapter 3, the very beginning of Jesus' relationship with these guys. It's when he's appointing them. I want you to hear what he says to them in verse 14. Well, we'll start in verse 13, just to make sure we've got the context. Look at Mark chapter 3, verse 13. Jesus went up on a mountainside and called to him those he wanted, and they came to him. So this is this is the beginning here. And he appointed twelve, designating them what? Apostles, that they might be with him and that he might do what? Send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons. These are the twelve he appointed, and he gives their names. They were appointed for a purpose to be sent out. Now go over one book to the right, and you go to Luke chapter 9. Look at Luke chapter 9. I want you to see what Jesus does. He's walking around with these guys, he's showing them how this mission looks with the way he's living. Then you get to Luke chapter 9, verse 1 and 2. And listen to what Jesus does. He pulls them together and he says, Luke chapter 9, verse 1, when Jesus had called the 12 together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. Here he is, sending them out, just as he had said he was going to do. Then you come back to John chapter 17. Go to John 20. Look at John chapter 20. Why don't you look at verse 21? This is after Jesus has died on the cross. He rose from the grave. And he's speaking to his disciples. And what does he say? It says in John chapter 20, verse 21. He showed them his hands and his side. It says in verse 21, Jesus said, Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, I am sending you. So the picture is these disciples were identified with the exact same mission that Jesus had identified himself with. And that is an incredible thought. John 3.16 really comes alive at this point. God so loved the world that he sent his one and only Son. Could it be that God so loved the world that he sends you and me? We are identified with the very mission of Christ. We have an identical purpose as him. And this is a much greater purpose than living for the next dollar or living for the bigger house or the bigger car. This is a much greater purpose. This is a mission that Christ gave himself to, and we were identified with. Second, he empowers us for his mission. He empowers us for his mission. You saw it in all those verses. Luke chapter 9, when he's sending these guys out, he says, I give you authority to drive out demons. I give you the authority to drive out spirits. These guys do that in Luke chapter 10. You go and study that passage, and some of you will be doing that in the small groups that you're in. Luke chapter 10, they go out and they're they're seeing demons cast out of people, and they're seeing people healed, and they come back and they're like, Jesus, you were right. This is pretty cool. You have empowered us to do this. It wasn't just Jesus doing it anymore. They were getting a glimpse of what would happen when he ascended into heaven and the Holy Spirit would be on them and they would be empowered for this mission. He said, You've got my authority, my full sponsorship. We'll see that next week in the Great Commission, even deeper. Everything I have is yours to accomplish this mission. He empowers them to do mission. Not only did Jesus model for them how to do this mission, but he empowered them to do it. It was on-the-job training at its best. He empowered them. And third, Jesus unites us in his mission. The petition that dominates the last part of this prayer. May they be one as we are one. Now it's at this point that we could easily go off into a sermon on how the church needs to be unified. And here's what we need to do in order to be unified. But what we've got to realize in John chapter 17 is he is not praying for some contrived, manufactured unity that we can create. What he is saying is that when my people give themselves to the mission I am identified with them, then they will be unified. And this is good. Could it be that though we could do all kinds of things in a church like this to promote unity and to try to manufacture unity? Could it be that when we all as a faith family surrender our lives to the mission of making disciples, that we won't have time to fight with each other because we'll be fighting the needs in a lost and dying world with the gospel of Jesus Christ? Could it be that unity is compromised in the church only when mission is compromised in the church? And if we give ourselves to mission, the byproduct is unity. He unites us in his mission. This is what we do: Him in every single one of us accomplishing his purpose. Now, that's what Jesus does with his disciples. He identifies them with his mission, empowers them, and then he unites them. Now I want us to think about how that looks in the way we carry out this command to make disciples. This whole idea that we've been talking about, dedicated to the purpose of disciple making, dependent on this process for our own transformation. Could it be that God wants us, with the people God has entrusted to us, to serve the world with them? Could it be that what we're seeing in scripture here is that it's not just that we're supposed to serve the world, it's that we're supposed to equip others to serve the world with us. Because if it stops with us, then we've done addition as opposed to multiplication where it's spreading through us. We identify people, people that God has put in our our lives. How can we serve with them? Instead of just teaching them the word in a classroom, we take advantage of opportunities to go and serve with them. And we empower them to serve. We enable them to serve, we help them to serve. And in the process, we find ourselves in a unity, a community that nothing in this world can even begin to touch. I know in my own life, the picture that kept coming to my mind as I was reading this and praying and studying this, was, and you and you've heard me talk about French Quarter ministry. I want you to picture this. Going into the French Quarter in New Orleans and sharing the gospel and trying to be a part of making disciples. I remember when this first started to click with me, when I invited two guys to go along with me. And I walk away from the French Quarter, and these guys have caught it. They are zealous. Man, we need to be down here every day. I'm like, I can't do every day. They say, Well, we're gonna do Every day. And so they start to catch it. They start to see the need. And so I go down there with them and along the way pass on anything that I've learned over going down in the French quarter and the time I'd been down there. And then before long, I'm realizing that I've got to step it up in order to keep these guys going. Now this process is actually affecting my own transformation to the point where these guys are going to surpass me. It's just I'm doing the best I can, but they're going to surpass me. And the beauty of it is that they begin to take leadership in that ministry. They begin to pour their lives into these guys. And now I'm teaching a seminar on disciple making miles away. And one of the guys that I'd taken down to the French Quarter brings some of the homeless guys that he's investing his life into this disciple making seminar to learn disciple making. Now this picture's starting to multiply. And ladies and gentlemen, that guy, one of those guys that was going down with me and hear this. I messed up plenty of times along the way. It's the beauty of this process of disciple making. This guy is now organizing an entire home for homeless men and women to go from New Orleans to receive help that they need with all their addictions and all their struggles and gospel teaching. This thing works. God does have this thing rigged for us to depend on others for our own transformation and us to see his glory revealed in ways we never could have seen before. It's the beauty of how this works. We empower each other in mission. Now at that point, we're realizing that this can't take place in the walls of one building at one location in a couple hours during the week. That's not a full picture of discipline. We are seeing that, right? Then I want us to take a little pause. And I want to put before us a question that I think we need to ask in the church. And the question is this are we discipling or are we disinfecting? Are we discipling or are we disinfecting? Some of you're thinking, what do you mean? Well, glad you asked. Disinfecting. What I mean by that, disinfecting isolates a Christian in a spiritual safety deposit box called the church building and teaches him or her to be good. Disinfecting isolates a Christian in a spiritual safety deposit box called the church building and teaches him or her to be good. And when we do that, success is dependent on how big a building we can get to have as many people as we can come inside. So that I read another article this last week from a well-known church leader talking about how, as a pastor, Dave, you need to dream big. Picture the thousands of people that can come into your place and plan for that. So we we we put all our resources and energy into that kind of picture and we bring them in, and our goal is to help us be good. Let's avoid the things that the world has avoided or that the world needs to avoid. Let's be holy, separate, right? If that's the case, if that's what church is about, then we've got to realize what we were producing. The results are pretty clear. Number one, the results are decent church members with little world impact. Some of you think that might be a little too strong. But I believe the proof of the point is in the fact that the majority of the Christians in our culture have no more world impact today than they did the day before they were saved. We isolate ourselves in this quarantined building where the world is as big as our eyes can see around here, and all our energy is made to focus on what is going on in here. And as a result, we are insulated from the spiritual lostness of the world around us. And we have little to no impact on our community and the world with the gospel. Second, it gets deeper. Not only do we result in decent citizens with little world impact, but second, disobedience to God's command to reach the entire world with his gospel. And we sit in our walls with the Great Commission, celebrated, but completely ignored with the way we're living. And as a result, we're disobedient to his command to reach the world with his gospel. We are decent people with decent families and decent homes and decent jobs, decent citizens, but nowhere in Scripture is that what we are supposed to produce. We are supposed to produce disciples of Jesus Christ who were radically wholehearted, set apart for the purpose of God to make disciples of all nations. Maybe the most tragic result is not decent citizens with little world impact and disobedience to God's command, but I think the most tragic result may just be a wasted life. A picture where Christianity is all about self-absorption, where we focus on pastor dream big, bring thousands of people into your building while there's a billion people who haven't even heard his name. I think that misses the mark. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe that is a far cry from the discipling process of Jesus. What is discipling then? Well, instead of isolating a Christian in a spiritual safety deposit box called the church building, teaching him or her to be good, could it be the discipling propels a Christian into the world to risk his or her life for the sake of others? Now that's holiness. That's a picture of set apart for a purpose. And that is a radically different way to look at church because now church is not based on how many thousands come into the building, church is based on how many thousands are going out into the world with their disciples to impact nations for the glory of Christ. That's where success begins to take on a whole new shape. The results are number one, disciples of Christ with total world impact, where we realize that it's not going to happen in one location and one time during the week with one teacher letting us know how to do it. It's going to happen in multiple locations all throughout the week with gospel seed stowers going out into the world in this community, sharing the word, showing the word, teaching the word, and serving the world together. Confident, second, in obedience to God's command to reach the entire world that when we give ourselves to this plan, when we give ourselves to this command, he will bless it for his glory in all nations. He has promised, based on his very character, to bless this plan for his glory. What happens when we live our lives where if this word is not true, we fall flat on our face? I've got to believe God is honored in that kind of devotion. And he's promised to bless that obedience to God's command to reach the entire world and the result instead of a wasted life and abundant life. What happens? What happens when the local church is a community of believers united with the disciples of Christ around the world, partnering together, like you've seen in the picture in Indonesia, where these seminaries and the convention that he talked about is now using the curriculum that we are using. We are teaching week in and week out, Sunday morning in, Sunday morning out, that we're walking through with our small groups, they're now infusing that into their 600 churches that are spread throughout Indonesia, and now we're partnering together with others around the world to impact nations for the glory of Christ. It all comes together here. Could anything less than that be called a New Testament church? This is what it's all about. Are we discipling or disinfecting? Last facet I want us to sing. We're sanctified for each other's sake, and we are servants for the world's sake. Third, we are saved for Christ's sake. As you come to the conclusion of this prayer, this climax, this picture, Jesus begins to talk about how he desires his disciples to be with him. To see his glory and to know his glory. He says in verse 22, incredible statement, I have given them the glory that you gave me. Now, what do you mean we are saved for Christ's sake? I want you to think about it. First of all, we enjoy his glory. He has given us his glory. What's his glory? It's his character, it's his person, his power, his love. He talks later in this chapter about how the love that the Father has for the Son is the same love that is in us. Isn't that an incredible picture? The love that is experienced in the Trinity and the relationship between the Father and the Son is the same love that you and I know and experience and have in us, so we enjoy his glory. Second, we display his glory. The whole purpose of the unity of the Father and the Son and in us is so the world might know that he is good. Verse 20, the whole purpose is worldwide evangelization, so the world might know that the gospel, the truth. We magnify Christ, we display the glory of Christ by making disciples, so we enjoy his glory, we display his glory, and then third, we will see his glory. We will see his glory. He says, 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. Let me give you a little picture of where this whole sanctification thing is headed. Sanctification thing is headed not just to a time when we will be free from sin and free of all the wrong things, although that will be a very good thing. But the sanctification thing is all headed to the day when there will be a multitude that no one can count from every tribe, every nation, every people, and every language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb, wearing white robes and holding palm branches in their hands, crying out in a loud voice, Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne into the Lamb. The whole goal of sanctification is not our perfection and holiness. The goal is we are now bowing around the throne of Jesus Christ with multitudes that no one could count from Indonesia and East Timor and from right across the road who are worshiping Christ for the salvation He has given. That's where the whole picture is headed. We will see his glory. We will enjoy it forever. We will display it on our faces for all of eternity. That's where this whole thing is headed. The end of disciple making is the earth spread with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, just like the waters covered the sea. Impact in the world is the goal of this whole picture. And church at Brook Hills, we will not settle for any goal less than that. So what now? I believe it comes down to two thoughts that go together. First of all, my encouragement, my challenge for you is to let Jesus empower you to serve others. Let him empower you to serve others, to be sanctified for others' sake. But then don't let it stop there. Let your life empower others to serve the world. And together we're a part of this thing called Making Disciple. John 17's good. Incredible text, incredible picture.

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