John 17: Protected In The World

Jesus’ prayer in John 17 shows us that we stay in a broken world for a reason, and we can face it without fear because he asks the Father to protect us from the evil one. We walk through what “the world” means in John, why unity matters, and how God’s truth steadies us when lies and temptation press in. 
• reviewing the petitions in Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer 
• reading John 17:11-17 and naming the second petition 
• picturing the Father sending the Son and Jesus sending us 
• defining “the world” as a broken system opposed to God 
• explaining why the world hates those connected to Jesus 
• rooting our purpose in unity and the Great Commission 
• reframing church as mission rather than entertainment 
• describing spiritual warfare as isolation, temptation, and lies 
• warning how culture can repeat lies until they feel normal 
• rejecting self-help as the foundation and clinging to God’s help 
• resting in confidence that Jesus prayed for our protection 

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Petitions Overview And Purpose

SPEAKER_00 0:23

John chapter 17. Last week we covered the first petition. This week we'll cover the second petition here in Jesus' prayer for us. It's called the Priestly Prayer, if you didn't know. For a review, I think the most structured way that we can work through this material is do it by petitions because it's basically an entire uh chapter, almost an entire chapter. Uh basically uh Jesus prays. If you ever feel bad about not being able to pray for a long, long time, Jesus took an entire chapter to pray. And uh I don't know. I don't know if I could take an entire chapter to pray. Maybe I could, I don't know. I uh that Holy Spirit song was eight minutes long, and it and I realized like, wow, eight minutes already passed. I'm only like to the fourth list on the prayer thing. I didn't, so maybe I could do that. I don't know. Uh let me read off the petitions here, just as review, and then we'll jump into uh our scripture reading. The first petition was this. Talked about it last week. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, right? The great I am, that's who Jesus is. And uh, that means something to us. Second petition, what we're talking about today is my prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one. And then next week we will have sanctify them by the truth, your word is truth. And we will end with may they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. This verses 11, 15, 17, and 23. Let's read a chunk of scripture, John chapter 17, 11 through 17. I'm no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I'm coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them but has

Reading John 17:11-17

SPEAKER_00 2:21

been lost except the Son of Destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I'm coming to you, and these things I speak in the world that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word, and your world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth. Petition two comes from verse 15. I I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. When I was studying this and reading this, I got to flash some imagery in my mind that is, I think, appropriate to this to help us understand what's happening here. It's the glimpse of emotion and imagery of a father or a mother parents sending their son or sending their child into a situation where everybody understands it might not be a good

A Parent’s Heart And The Mission

SPEAKER_00 3:24

situation, but they're going anyways. And of course, we we know the journey of Jesus. We know that that this is what God and Jesus have done, right? That's exactly what God the Father has done. He sent Jesus, his son, into a situation, and Jesus gladly went into that situation, knowing that crucifixion and pain were in store, knowing that there was going to be separation, knowing there's going to be fear and pain and death, that Jesus has no frame would have no frame of reference for up until this point. Right? So he comes into the world even though it's full of uh problems and pain. But he does it anyways. Jesus sends, or the father sends Jesus, Jesus goes, and there's unity in what they do. Jesus, in this scripture and in this prayer, in a way, is viewing the church and his disciples in the same way that he and the father have been doing business, anyways.

unknown 4:21

Right?

SPEAKER_00 4:21

And so I read this scripture with the heart of a parent because I put myself in the position of sending a son or a daughter into a difficult situation without quite knowing what was going to happen when they got there or what was going to happen at the end of all of this thing. Because I don't want to send my son or daughter into a bad situation. I don't want to send them into harm's way. I want them out of harm's way. And yet, the dynamic of God the Father and God the Son is that Jesus purposely goes into a bad situation, a painful situation, to rescue us. And here in the scripture, there's a sense in which the concern of Jesus for his disciples and for his followers and for the church is not that they should be removed from harm's way, not that they should depart from the world and thus be safe from the world that hates them, the scripture tells us. But that's not the point of this prayer. Right? The point of this prayer is that we have to be in the world. But the world's a very painful place. Jesus knows it's painful. He knows what we face, he knows what we go through, he knows we have issues to deal with. In John chapter 33, just a couple of verses before chapter 17, he says this I have said these things to you so that in me you may have peace, but take heart, right? I've overcome the world. And in there, I skipped a little verse. It says, In this world you will have tribulation or trouble. That's Jesus to his disciples. He is well aware of the harm that we are surrounded by. And yet, his prayer is not to take us out of the harm, his prayer is for protection while we're in the world. Jesus understands the mission. Just as he understood the mission for himself, and just as the Father understood the mission for Jesus and for us, so now Jesus to his church tells us about the mission, explains us the mission that we have to be here. We have to be here. And if we're gonna be here, he's gonna pray for our protection while we are here. That's what we're talking about today. We gotta be here. What exactly is the world? Why does it hate us? What are we supposed to be doing while we're here? Because if he's not praying for us to leave the world, right, it means that we are here for a reason. Why? And then what are some of the ways the enemy might be attacking us? He's praying for specific protection against the enemy. What exactly is the enemy doing? Throughout the book of John, from John chapter 1 all the way to the very end, Jesus and the scripture often refers to uh the world. The world. Now, a lot of times, whenever the world is mentioned in John, it means exactly what we think it probably should be, right? The place where we are. Pretty simple. It's not fancy,

What “The World” Really Means

SPEAKER_00 7:26

but sometimes uh that word world means something more than just the physical location. It's almost like the system, it's the order, it's the function of society, the function of how things work here on this world. But the world, the world, oftentimes when Jesus talks about the world, he's talking about a system that stands in contrast to who he is. It's a system that is ruined by sin. It's a system of greed, it's a system of perversion, it's a system of uh of powers and principalities that the devil has manipulated so that the world now functions in a way that tears people down and breaks people, that is, uh looks nothing like what God had intended it to look like. That's the world. That's the world that we live in. But we we are, it says we are in the world, but not what? Of the world. We're not in the world, but we're of the world. The order of the world's broken. And it works against God actively, and it works against us, which is why whenever we are connected to Jesus, the world hates us, because we are struggling against. We're struggling against structures that purposely want to drag people to hell, right? That's what's happening. That's why the world hates us. But we're not of that world, we are in that world, and it hates us. But our sins have been cleansed. Jesus has rescued us, he's redeemed us, we've been set free. We we are reattached to our Creator. In Jesus' grace and in his mercy and through the power of the Holy Spirit, we have a righteousness, we have a sanctification, we are different now. We are born again, as Jesus talks about earlier to Nicodemus in the Gospel of John. You are different now. You're here, but you're not of here. Different. And so Jesus doesn't pray for us to leave the world but to be protected while we're in it. So why do we have to be here? If the world's so bad, if the world's so harsh, if Jesus loves us so much, why is his prayer not for us to just to make it out of this place without issue and to be done with it? Because we have a mission. We have to be here. And I think it's fairly obvious, even in this very prayer, that Jesus points us to the reason why we got to be here. He points us to the fact that we need to be unified. And it's through our unity with one another, the unity that we have as a church, the unity that we have with Jesus, the unity that God shares with Jesus and we share with them, the unity of the Holy Spirit. It is through the active work of a unity that we often become examples and signs that who Jesus is is trustworthy. That's what this prayer says. Let them be unified, and out of that unification, let people understand and know that what I'm saying and what I'm preaching, the words I'm saying, is the truth. There's an authenticity to the gospel whenever we live unified in the world, despite the fact that the world hates us. It's a sign. The world produces brokenness, it doesn't produce unity. Christ produces a unity, and it's a sign that what he says is true. If you look at other scriptures in particular, Matthew chapter 28, the Great Commission, go therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded. That's the mission. That is why we are here. That's why his prayer is not for us to be taken away, because we are invited into the unity of the mission of the Trinity, essentially, so that we can get work done. I love the church. Always have. If the church doors were open, I was there. Now, partially it's because my mom wore to the church, right? And the school I went to for the first half of my life was at the church. So I was at church all the time. But even after all that had gone away, I guess my mom still works there. But even when I had a car and I had freedom and I had liberty to go do whatever I wanted to do, do you know

Why The Church Exists Here

SPEAKER_00 11:36

where I ended up? At church. At church, all the time. All the time. Now, was I annoyed at church sometimes? Was I annoyed by a particular pastor sometimes or by a worship leader or a staff member? Was I annoyed by the same song being sung 19 times in a row, sometimes all the normal stuff that we all get annoyed about at church? I was there. I get it. I was annoyed too. But I love church. Even before I felt called to ministry, I love church. You have community at church. You get friends at church. There's good things at church. There's there is uh you get plugged in. Hopefully, you've got good music, and the good music makes you feel good. Hopefully, you got good preaching, and the preaching makes you feel good. All of those things are good about church. That's why I love church. But let me go ahead and tell you, the church does not exist to make me feel good. That's not why church exists. The church doesn't exist to give me entertainment, it doesn't exist to give me friends, to give me socialization opportunities. Those are good byproducts of the reason why the church really exists. The church exists in the world so that we can break the bondage of the world, so that we can share the gospel, so that we can bring glory and honor to Jesus and who he is through the unity, so that lives can be transformed. That's why we're here. And in light of that, Jesus doesn't pray for us to leave, he prays for our protection so that we can do our job the right way.

unknown 13:06

Right?

SPEAKER_00 13:07

If you walk into a job site, a lot of times you'll have all these rules, OSHA, right? Right, and they can be annoying, but ultimately, if you do all the rules right, and if those things are sort of a natural part of what you do, and you have a level of protection and safety, it frees your mind to do your job better. Jesus prays for our protection. Not to escape the world, but to be protected in it, so that we can share the good news of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ without fear of the attacks of the enemy, because he will attack you. Two things can be true at once, even though it might seem like they don't really connect. The first thing is uh that is true that we need to know is that the enemy, Satan, the devil, and his minions, they want to destroy you. It is not inactive, it is an active process that they are seeking to destroy you. The second thing is

How The Enemy Attacks With Lies

SPEAKER_00 14:07

connected to it, but it might not seem like it. Sometimes the enemy, which is actually trying to destroy you, actually doesn't have to do a whole lot to destroy you because you do it yourself. Two truthful things connected, but it might not seem like they they are. Peter tells us that our adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he shall devour. Who is he going to devour? He roams around looking for opportunities, looking for the weakest in the herd, the children, the hurting, the broken. Right? That's what a lion, that's what lions do, by the way. If you ever watch, if you've ever spent any time Animal Planet watching anything, and you watch how lions operate, they try to separate individuals from the crowd. Or they go after the elderly, or they go after the sick, or they go after the babies. Why? Because they are the weakest. The enemy roams around doing the same thing, and that tells me something, maybe practically, and this is not in my notes, but that's why it's important to have community in a church. So that we can gather up our children, gather up our people, gather up our flock so that we are stronger together against the attacks of the enemy. Don't let people be isolated. Don't let the hurting and the broken hurt and be broken by themselves. Go to them, bring them back into the flock, even though maybe they don't want to be in the flock. Keep them from the prowling lion seeking to destroy them. But the devil's looking to hurt you. And he'll do all kinds of different things to make that happen. But here's the good news the devil has no real power. What the devil has is words. Words. Everybody say words. Words. The devil has words, and they're not truthful words. He cannot create, he can only manipulate. Which is good news. Which is good news because Jesus calls himself the truth. And if we are grounded in the truth, lives don't matter anymore. But he lies. He actively lies, he actively uses this or that. And everybody has their own struggles. Everybody has their own temptations that they face. We know that some people seemingly or biologically more inclined to be addiction-prone compared to others. Now, everybody can become an addict, but there are biological factors. Well, the devil, he might know that, he probably knows that. And so he's not going to waste time trying to tempt somebody with addiction who is not going to be bothered by it, but he is going to do that to someone who is. But the other person might have some other stuff. And so I'm not going to get the devil too much credit here, but he knows how to lie. He knows how to manipulate. He has some level of common sense, even though it is flawed. And so he he lies. He whispers this, he whispers that. He tempts you. He wants to keep you from good things. But sometimes, in order to keep you from the good thing, the devil might let you have all the good things you want. You realize that? We live in a society in the US where there is a group of Christians that really hold on to something often called the health, wealth, and prosperity gospel. Meaning that if you serve Jesus, there ain't a limit to all the blessings you're going to experience. And a part of that is true. I'm not one of those pastors that says that God does not want to bless you. He does. He does. But Satan is perfectly capable of letting you be blessed if it keeps you blind and stupid. How's that for health, wealth, and prosperity? You can be healthy, wealthy, and prosperous and go straight to hell. And the devil's completely okay with that. Meanwhile, the God who loves you eternally and perfectly might let you go through some painful situations to wake you up so that you get the ultimate good, the ultimate blessing. And let the health, wealth, and prosperity people be in shambles because of that. The devil lies. He whispers lies to you, to other people. Sometimes he doesn't even have to whisper, whisper a lie to you directly. He doesn't have to tempt you directly. There is something inside of you called sin, right? That makes you prone to doing things that you ought not to do. And so sometimes the devil doesn't have to be very active in your life to do something. Sometimes all the devil gotta do is get enough people saying the same lie over and over again, right? So that it becomes part of a culture, part of a society, right? Right, uh, you know, slavery was a thing in the South, in the U.S., slavery's been a thing all over the world. That's a whisper. That's a whisper of the enemy that has become a truth for many people groups throughout human history that slavery is an okay thing, right? And plenty of good people have fallen into the lie because what else are you gonna do? You're just gonna fit in. Sometimes the devil doesn't have to do anything. Sometimes you believe the lies of a culture, sometimes you you do this or do that all on your own. Both things are true. The devil is actively seeking to hurt you and harm you, and sometimes you don't need any help to harm yourself. To hurt yourself. So, what are we supposed to do? We're all we're all tempted. Jesus was tempted. He knew his disciples were gonna be tempted, he knew we were gonna be tempted. Matter of fact, Judas Iscariot failed, fall, like he succumbed to temptation. What do we do? What do we do? How can we spot the lies? How can we protect ourselves from things that we can't see or hear necessarily? We don't know what's happening around us. We we we don't know what's in store for us. How can I how can I survive my biological propensity to to sin this way or to sin that way? How how how can I how can I get rid of this this baggage that I've I grew up this way and and all of this kind of sin was normalized for me, and now I have such a hard time uh reaching back into my life and and getting rid of these things I know shouldn't be there. I'm having a hard time. Well, what how do we do this? How do I survive in this world that hates me with God's help? With God's help. We need God's help. I mean it's that simple.

unknown 20:43

Right?

SPEAKER_00 20:44

You go to Barnes and Noble, which I'm pretty sure still exists, even though everybody buys everything from Amazon now, and you will find a wall of self-help. And in that wall of self-help, you will have everything from Eastern religions, uh uh uh modern spirituality, uh, scientific-based stuff, discipline-based stuff, and

God’s Help Over Self-Help

SPEAKER_00 21:03

and and you have this entire wall, help me survive this broken world that hates me. Right? Burn it all. Burn it all up. It is useless if you don't start with the fact that your help comes from God alone. He knows exactly what you're going through, he knows exactly your struggle, he knows exactly how hard it is, he knows your biology, he knows your childhood, he knows he knows the society that you live in, he knows the culture around you, he knows your doubts, he knows your fears, he knows every little lie that has been whispered around you for all of humankind. He knows every everything that you're going through. Jesus saw it, Jesus experienced it, and Jesus prayed for your protection from it. And if Jesus prayed for me about something, which he did, that's what this prayer is, this chapter is. It's a prayer for us from Jesus. If he prayed for your protection, take it seriously. You're protected. You're protected. I'm not saying bad things aren't going to happen to you, but you do not have to succumb to every temptation. You do not have to live in fear of the enemy. You you don't have to walk around struggling. Every single day. There is liberty. There is hope. There is strength. There is goodness that you can hold on to that will radically change your life. You can walk out of here better than you walked in. You can grow closer to God every single day. He prayed for you. And he prayed for your protection from the enemy that wants to destroy you in a world that hates you. But I'm leaning on the prayer more than I'm leaning on my own understanding of everything around me. Hold on to the prayers of Jesus. Hold on to the fact that He prayed for your protection. Hold on to the fact that He is the great I am, like we talked about last week. Because every single thing He prays for matters today, 2,000 years later. I don't want you guys, I don't want anybody who watches this or hears this later to walk through this life in utter fear of the attacks of the enemy, whatever they are. Jesus prayed for you. Prayed for you. And because I'm protected, my mind is free and clear. Because I'm protected, I'm not worrying about my footing. I'm not worrying about every little detail. He prayed for me. I'm secure in his prayer for me. I'm secure in his grace for me, his mercy for me. And because of that, I can walk out into the world that hates me with a confidence to get the job done. I want to get the job done. I want to be unified so people can see Jesus in my relationship with my wife, with my children, with you guys. I want to be empowered by the Holy Spirit so that when their moment comes, I might not feel prepared, but I'm going to open my mouth and know the Holy Spirit is going to say something to that person that's going to pierce their heart and pierce their mind and break them down so that they see the grace of God for the first time. And whenever you're not burdened by worrying about all these little attacks of the enemy, because you're protected, it frees you up to have your mind on the right things. That's the kind of people I want you guys to be. That's the kind of church I want to be, want to be protected and focused. My mind is clear. Our minds are clear. There is a job. People are dying. Without ever hearing the gospel, people are dying, never having a serious conversation with anyone about God, about Jesus. I want to get out there and show them hey, there is hope. And I can do that because I'm not worrying about anything else. Jesus, pray for me. He prayed for us. Be encouraged this morning about that. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we love you. Jesus, thank you so much for your prayers. Thank you that you are the great I am. And in your sovereignty and your power and in your might, you looked at us 2,000 years ago and said, protect them.

Confidence, Unity, And Closing Prayer

SPEAKER_00 25:27

Protect them. Lord, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Help us, God. And not just so that we can, I don't know, be more comfortable in church, but so that we can be empowered outside the four walls of the church. Help us, Lord. God, I pray right now for anybody who might be struggling with anything. I pray that they would have faith and hope in the fact that you prayed for us. If anybody prayers matter, it's yours, Lord. And you prayed specifically for us, Lord. Help us. Guide us and lead us. Let us walk out of here blessed and ready to serve you in every way possible. In Jesus' name we pray. And we all said together Amen.