Sanctify Them By Thy Truth

That's about what I was thinking too. We're actually getting to the point where I think we might be getting back to the synoptics again someday. There's only so many verses in John chapter 17, so we can't be in here forever no matter how slowly I go.

So as long as we're making any progress at all, we will eventually finish John chapter 17. It's taken a while. We're in the middle of the chapter talking about the relationship of the disciples and the world.

Sanctification in the Truth and the Word of God

So we'll start reading at verse 16. John chapter 17. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.

For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth. I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, even as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me.

And so we had looked at the, of course it's the high priestly prayer of Christ in regards to his disciples. And we have discussed beforehand the reality of the fact that the initial application of these words is to the disciples themselves.

We see that very clearly in verse 20. I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in me through their word. So who are those who believe in me through their word? Those would be, well, everybody but the disciples as far as those who are believers in Christ.

And we also, by the way, just in passing, lest I forget, note something important. There are sometimes people today who would say, well, you know, the gospel writers didn't really see what was coming.

They didn't see the arising of the church, thought it was going to be a very short-term thing. And yet it seems rather clear that Jesus has in mind in verse 20, those later generations, those many other generations of those who would believe, notice through their word, through the testimony that they would give forth to the world.

So this is part and parcel of the initial apostolic teaching, that there would be a church and that that church would grow and it would be through the means of the testimony of these disciples that that would take place.

And then we emphasize, of course, the distinction that is made, the number of different ways in which the word world is used in the Gospel of John. They are not of the world, verse 16, even as I am not of the world.

Yet we had also seen that in verse 18, as you sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. And so you have all these different ways in which the term world is used by John. We are not of the world.

We do not find our source, our happiness, our fulfillment in that which the world can provide, just as Jesus did not. And in making that statement of the distinction of the disciples from the world, that we then had verse 17, Sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth.

And we discussed the fact that this refers to that setting apart, making holy, making different, the work of the truth in our life when we are seeking to apply it with regularity, when we are seeking to honor the truth, we want to know the truth.

Not just a basic truth, but we recognize once you understand what the Gospel is, it has ramifications for every aspect of our lives. In other words, we would call the construction and application of a Christian worldview that no Christian ever comes to the point where they've got everything figured out.

Every Christian is always in that, not only that battle against sin, but likewise that battle to live a consistent Christian life, to apply the entirety of the faith to all of life. And so that requires a knowledge of the truth.

This is why we value the truth. This is why we defend the truth, is because without truth there will be no sanctification. There will be no setting apart. We have no way of knowing what God's will is.

We need to know what the truth is, and we find that truth in God's word, in the various ways in which that is communicated to us. We see your word is truth. We know that the words of Christ are in perfect harmony with those of the Father.

So everything that the Father and the Son reveals to us, that is truth. It's the Spirit that allows us to understand these things. So it's a triune operation of the communication of truth to us. And, of course, then how do we know what Jesus says?

How do we know what the Father has said? God has preserved these things for us through the mechanism of Scripture. And so there is a number of different ways of describing the word of God in that way, but what is descriptive of the word of God in all of its forms is truth.

It is true. It's not surprising to me that we live in a day where people will deny that we can ever really know the truth. When you think about it, once man makes himself the center of all things, he destroys the only mechanism whereby we can truly say that we know truth.

We are insufficient to function as the ground. The fancy term is epistemology, the ground of how we know what we know. We're too small. We don't live long enough. We don't know enough. Once you put man in the center, the ability to know things with certainty, sufficiency, comes to an end.

And it was only when man really recognized that God is the one who defines all things. God is the one who reveals to us what truth is, and he is sufficient. His word is sufficient to function as the foundation for our knowledge of all things.

It's only within that context that we can have true knowledge. Man today has been left in a vacuum where it's one opinion versus another opinion. It's one feeling versus another feeling. And, really, the reality is you have to be able to claim to know everything to know anything at all anymore.

And, of course, secular man does not live consistently with that. Secular man does say there are certain things we know for certain. And, basically, it's his God science that we know for certain, even though they have to admit that the conclusions of their God science can change and do change with regularity and with frequency.

But that's just the character of that idol is that it changes its pronouncements with regularity. And woe be to us who would think that there is actually an objective truth that we can know it. Not that we're smarter than someone else.

We just happen to be willing to leave our eyes and ears open to listen rather than closing our eyes and ears to the very sources that God has given to us. And we must understand that the secular worldview closes the very mechanisms that God has given to us whereby we can truly know the world around us.

That is why secularism robs from mankind his highest aspirations and highest possibilities of accomplishment. That is why our young people are having stolen from them the true experience of happiness and fulfillment in the ways that God has provided for us.

In, for example, an understanding of how he has made us, our purpose in this world, gender, sexuality, marriage, family. It's all crumbling before our very eyes because the secular worldview has no foundation for maintaining these things.

And therefore, we are losing these things and we are called to be salt and light in the midst of this crooked and perverse generation. So, Jesus then says in verse 18, As you sent me into the world, I also sent them into the world.

We have the sending of the Son by the Father affirmed once again. And then on the basis of that authority, he then sends us into the world. So, in other words, as the Son had a prophetic role, he is prophet, priest, and king.

Likewise, we are sent into the world. There is a purpose for us. Again, Christian salvation is not just a personal thing where, Ah, you got saved now, so everything's good, nothing else really matters.

There is a reason, there is a purpose whereby we have been saved and we have been sent into the world for a purpose. And that purpose, of course, not only is personal in our own experience in that we are being conformed to the image of Christ, but likewise, he uses us as the mechanism and means by which he communicates the gospel message to the world.

Christ's Sanctifying Work and His Personal Sacrifice

Then we have this very important verse in verse 19, For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth. Now, I will suggest to you that the first portion of verse 19 is specifically in reference to what Christ is about to accomplish on the cross of Calvary.

That setting himself apart, notice what it says, In behalf of them I sanctify myself. And if we are correct, that that action in the Greek verb hagiadzo that is found there, I sanctify myself. It's followed by a reflexive pronoun.

And it just reminds me of how many times this happens in the New Testament in regards to Christ's role. He, for example, humbled himself. He made himself of no reputation in Philippians chapter 2. Jesus is not some passive agent being forced into a role by a power outside of himself.

Even though the Father is always seen as the source, the Son is likewise presented numerous times as actively involved in laying aside privileges. Here, sanctifying himself. Is the Father involved? Yes, the Father is involved.

Is the Holy Spirit involved? Yes. I mean, that's why I've emphasized so many times the gospel is triune. And when we allow the whole of the text to speak to us, we will see this. Because we will see the centrality of the Father as the one who is the one sending, the one who is the fountainhead of all this.

We'll see the centrality of the Son. And here he sanctifies himself. And how does he do this? Well, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the resurrection. The resurrection in different places in Acts and the epistles.

It's the Father who raises up the Son. And Jesus says, I take my life back. And then it's the Spirit who does it. It's the Spirit who raises it. You cannot look at the gospel without seeing the differing roles that the divine persons play in it.

And so it is, when we do not understand the Trinity, when we do not understand the triune nature of God, then of necessity our view of the gospel will have to be truncated. It will have to be simplified to a level beneath New Testament revelation.

And so if we really want to understand, and if we really want to enter into what the New Testament teaches, then we have to see that it is the work of the triune God. So here, for their sakes, in their behalf, for their sakes, I sanctify myself.

And so it is an amazing thing to recognize that while the Son does what the Father has determined that he is to do, he is fulfilling the Father's will. Not my will, but thine be done, right? And so there is clearly the obedience of the Son to the Father, but there is also, I think here, solid biblical ground for that beautiful hymn that talks about the fact that the Son, you know, my name is written on his hands.

My name is graven on his heart. In the work of the cross itself, that there was a, in other words, there is a personal, deeply, intensely personal aspect to the giving of the Son in behalf of his people upon the cross of Calvary.

This, again, I think is important in light of how many people want to turn the cross into a provision of a general amnesty, shall we say? A general atonement that creates a, in some systems, a pool of grace that then by the sacraments you get hold of that grace or something like that.

Or those that would say, well, the death of Christ makes salvation possible. It makes it possible for there to be an elect people, but we're the ones that by what we do, whether it's faith, faith repentance, faith repentance baptism, the list goes on and on.

We then fill up this nameless, faceless group called the elect. Whatever the synergistic system that's out there, it's impersonal. It has to be impersonal. And yet, this is a very, very personal statement.

In behalf of them, I sanctify myself. And so, if this is truly the setting of himself apart as not only high priest, but also as the offering, as we've seen in the book of Hebrews so many times, then this is very much a personal action.

It cannot be turned into some kind of impersonal, faceless, nameless group. And that is, unfortunately, I think the result that our synergistic friends have, whether they want to admit it or not, whether they want to recognize it or not, the intensely personal aspect of substitution, taking the place of the elect of God upon the cross of Calvary is lost.

And if you've lost it there, you're going to lose it every place else. You're going to lose it in every other aspect as well. Yes, ma 'am. Your church is longer, as in meeting? Oh, oh, okay. That's longer, yeah.

In this text or not as far as John chapter 17, verse 19. Yeah, that would definitely cause some confusion. Yeah, we're looking at. Oh, I fully understand. Yeah, John chapter 17, verse 19. For their sakes I sanctify myself, they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.

We're looking at Jesus' prayer. This is right before the cross. And so, yeah, I can understand that given that we've been in this study for a couple of months, it might be a little bit difficult to sort of pick up in the middle, but I think it is an important section and hopefully you'll be able to gain something from that.

And in the morning service, we're in the book of Romans. So, we normally work through books and that's what we've been doing and going verse by verse. So, you can sort of dive in anywhere, though there might be some things that I'll mention that definitely come from preceding studies, but hopefully we'll be able to make it understandable for everybody.

And so what Jesus is saying here is that he sanctifies himself on behalf of a specific people. This refers to his sacrifice upon the cross and that it has a purpose. What I love about the biblical teaching is its balance.

Notice that Jesus does this and then in the original language you have what's called a Hinnah clause. There's a purpose, there is a reason why Jesus does this. That they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.

Now, I've ever thought, believe me, when I was in seminary, there are a lot of people who thought this was a really cool thing to sort of play with these thought games. But I remember which class, oh yeah, I remember which class it was now.

I remember this one professor that thought it was really neat that in modern theology, there are people who had developed the idea that God was taking risks. That God is the risk-taking God and that these were real risks.

In other words, God could have failed. He could have failed in the mission of Jesus and that when Jesus gives himself, man, this is risky business because it might not have accomplished what God wanted.

I remember sitting there in class going, what book are you reading again? Where are you getting this from? Because it seems to me that, and of course, we understand how they came to this conclusion. We're talking about folks who don't really believe that the gospel of John is reflective of what Jesus actually taught or believed and things like that.

So they sort of take the Bible apart and they're picking and choosing. I know how they get to where they got to. But if you allow Jesus to speak for himself and the New Testament speak for itself, there is a direct relationship between the action of Christ in sanctifying himself and the result of that being that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.

Jesus is under no illusions that he's going to fail. He is under no illusions that his offering of himself is somehow not going to accomplish what the Father, Son, and Spirit intend that sacrifice to accomplish.

That they themselves also may be sanctified in truth means that Jesus recognizes that not only is he going to save all those that the Father has given to him. Remember John chapter 6, John chapter 8, John chapter 10?

This has been a theme we've seen all the way through the gospel of John. Not only is that salvation in the ultimate sense going to take place, but there is the reality that in this life they are going to be sanctified in truth.

There is going to be an accomplishment of the Father, Son, and Spirit's desire that the person who repents and believes in Christ will be conformed to his image, will be made to be like him. And what is the power through which this comes?

Only in and through the work of Jesus Christ. You've got to be very careful. When you think of the Spirit of God working in our lives today, just as the New Testament makes the connection between saying that the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead is operational in us, so putting that connection together for us that we should never go, well, that's how things were back then, but the Spirit's not quite as powerful now.

No, the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead is now operational within us. In the same way, what the Spirit is doing is not off on his own, doing his own thing. It is the continuation of and the application of that one perfect work of Christ that is the very source of how we are sanctified in the truth.

If Christ had not set himself apart, if he had not sanctified himself, there would be no mechanism for our sanctification. We couldn't ever do it on our own. And in our sanctification today, that is a part of the work of Christ.

You say, but it's the Spirit who's working within us. Yeah, but remember what Jesus has said in John chapter 14. I and my Father will come and make our abode with them. How? By the Holy Spirit. That was John chapter 14.

I believe it's off the top of my head. I think it's verse 23. You could say that, yeah. We don't go very fast. We're actually supposed to be studying Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Well, Matthew, Mark, and Luke together are called the Synoptic Gospels because they see things together.

We've actually been studying them, but I've just felt like I had to throw John in there as well. And so for quite some time, we've been doing John 14, 15, 16, and 17. Once we finish 17, then I'm going to go back to looking at Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Oh, okay. Thank you. Yeah. I normally teach the adult Sunday school class, but I also do a lot of traveling. And so we have other teachers that take my place and one of the elders. That's right. So I also preach.

I won't be preaching this morning, though. Yes, he is. Yes, he is. We believe in what's called a plurality of elders where you have more than one elder in the church. Yes. Yeah, more than one elder, right.

That's okay. That's all right. It would be difficult for me to explain why right now. It's just we believe that the New Testament very clearly teaches that when the apostles established the local churches, they didn't just put one man in charge of each one.

When you look, the term elder, pastors, bishops, I understand. I understand. So that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth. There's one other application that I want to make before we move to verse 20.

Because of the fact that immediately following this we have verse 20, which extends these promises to us, there's something that we need to see there. There are a lot of people in the church today, a lot of people in leadership in the church today, that have come to question whether we still can really know the truth.

I think there is a famine amongst ministers of the gospel, in what we would even identify as sound churches, in confidence that we still possess the Word of God. And if you don't have confidence that we possess the Word of God and can know the truth of God, you're not going to proclaim the truth with any level of confidence or power.

Now part of this is due to the fact that we live in a post-enlightenment age. And part of it is due to the way in which we do Christian education. We conservatives, and there's everything right in this to a point, we conservatives, when we study theology, we study what people say who don't believe like we do.

We study what people say who believe like we do too. But we don't just limit our exposure to just our little narrow tradition. We look at what other people say. Now it's interesting to me, the more liberal the seminar you go into, the less that's true.

I can guarantee you that in really liberal seminaries today, they don't give any time whatsoever to what we believe. They don't care. They don't think it has any meaning, doesn't have any worth. I ain't going to worry about it.

But in conservative seminaries, we want to know what the liberals are saying and why they're saying it. And so it's really a one-way street. The problem is that we've also adopted the thinking, and this is why I've said many times, the Christian bookstore can be one of the most dangerous places, spiritually, for a believer.

Why? Let me explain why. Because if you were to walk into a Christian bookstore today just looking for a commentary on the Gospel of John, for example, you could find some great commentaries. But you could also find, and would probably more likely find, a lot of really compromised commentaries that would raise all sorts of issues from a not really consistent biblical worldview.

And so I'm afraid we have fallen into a trap in a lot of even conservative, even amongst conservative publishing houses, that if you're going to address a text, you've got to tell everybody everything that there has been said about this text, even when it's not edifying or even useful.

The result of this is that a person who graduates from most seminaries today, I saw this happen, and I'll never forget this guy. I can still see his face to this day. I remember this fellow. We started seminary about the same time together, and he graduated just before I did, I think.

He graduated with a master's degree in Confusion. He really did. I mean, he came in pretty much knowing what to believe. He didn't graduate that way. And it was a sad thing to observe and to see. It really, really was.

And so for a lot of people today, for a commentary to be scholarly, it has to have 47 ,000 footnotes talking about every possible harebrained interpretation that's ever been offered out there. I try not to write that way.

It's great to learn from other people. It's great to know that there are other perspectives out there. But to spend so much of one's time cataloging all these different viewpoints and things like that, there's only so much time that we can spend really studying the Word anyways, and so it seems really like a waste of time to me.

The point being this. There's a promise here that the truth will continue to be available to all of those who follow after Christ. As long as the sun rises and sets, as long as Christ continues to build his church, God's truth will be available.

And you think about some of the situations that our brothers and sisters face in the world today. You think about the 30 ,000 people arrested in North Korea. There were 30 ,000 Christians in North Korea?

I mean, think about that. Somehow the truth even gets there, even in the darkest of places. And that's always the way it's going to be. And I have to keep this in mind because I see so much perversion of the truth.

I see so much heresy. I have to deal with it so often. What's the human tendency? It's all over with. It's over with. We've lost the young people or whatever else it might be. No. Christ will always be sanctifying his people in truth.

And no matter how wacky and weird and strange the teachings might get out there, Christ's sheep hear his voice. And that will always be the case. And we can have confidence that. That's not meant to make us complacent.

That's not meant to make us go, oh, well, everything is okay then. We want to be passionate in our defense of the truth, but not up to us. God's given us a promise, and he's going to follow through on that.

The Unity of the Church Through Truth

So, I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in me through their work. What is the purpose of the continuing ministry of the word of God to the church throughout the ages, but to bring people to believe, not in some nebulous God concept.

Once again, no matter how hard you try, you can't get around the fact that in these words, you do not have any kind of pluralism. Pluralism. The idea there are many ways to God. That that way is, you know, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism.

It almost seems, and I know he has his defenders, but it seems that the current Bishop of Rome might have some problems with this too. He's made some comments that I'm just wondering if sometime he's not just going to pop right out and say it because he's made some comments that have led a lot of rather intelligent people to conclude that what he's saying is, if you're a good atheist, you're still going to make it.

And you're left going, how does that work? You know, what's going on here? Whatever else we say, notice, for those also who what? Not just who believe. There is this little phrase, in me. It is belief in Christ.

And it is the purpose of those of us who are in those generations down the road who have believed through the word of that preceding generation and the preceding generation. And this is how the church is continued down through the ages.

Believe in me through their word. When our word no longer forcefully calls people to a unique faith in Jesus Christ, we're no longer recipients of these promises. There are a bunch of denominations today.

A bunch of denominations today. That because of societal pressure, because society says we don't want to hear that message, we've got, you know, you've got to accept this, this, and this, and we don't like this idea of an exclusive mechanism of salvation in Christ alone.

You know, if you don't want to believe in Jesus, that's fine for you. But for, you know, you can't say that's for everybody. That's the way our world speaks. That's the way our world thinks today. But as a result, there have been entire denominations who have decided that believe is enough.

Whatever that might be. Can't ask the question. Believe in me through their word. The testimony of the followers of Christ must always clearly point those who are listening to the true Jesus Christ, not just to some nebulous Christ concept or Christ consciousness or any of this other weird stuff that's out there.

It needs to be focused upon the Jesus of the Scriptures who made claims for himself that are very offensive to our society today. Very offensive. And there is a cost. There is, and it's going to get greater in the very near future to be faithful to these words and to not give in and to not compromise.

There is no question about it. But notice something. What's the big push? What's always, I get this all the time. If you emphasize truth, you're going to what? You're going to divide people. You people, you divide people.

You're so interested in doctrine. Doctrine just divides. I just want Jesus. How many times have you heard that? Yesterday, I did two quick videos, posted them, in response to an attack on John MacArthur.

MacArthur's ministry got a question in. He did a one minute and 52 second response, as I recall. And, of course, the Huffington Post went ballistic, as the Huffington Post does every day. And I did a couple seven or eight minute videos commenting on the attack upon him.

And they quoted this guy. He's got a new book coming out. They quoted this guy going after MacArthur. And basically, this whole thing was, you know, well, we just need to follow Jesus and not any of these other people, which I guess included Paul or something.

And, you know, this is how you have unity. Unity will only come when you're really just focused on Jesus. That sounds wonderful. It sounds so pious, doesn't it? What does that mean? How do you follow Jesus without following what the New Testament says?

How do you follow Jesus without following what Jesus himself said? And notice the very next phrase after believing in him through their word is verse 21, that they may all be one. What's the only way for true Christian unity to exist, but for it to exist in the fullness of the light of God's truth?

And yet, what's the emphasis amongst most people today? You create unity by coming up with the least amount of truth upon which we can possibly agree. Remember in math? Remember in math class? Remember fractions?

Some of you are going, oh, please, no, stop. And when you had to work with fractions, you had to get them all down. And what you used was the LCD, remember? The least common denominator. Am I making any of you twitch right now?

Yeah, I realize that some of you are twitching right now. But the least common denominator. And unfortunately, what we're hearing a lot of today is that that's the only kind of Christianity that will ever have unity is LCD Christianity.

The least common denominator Christianity where it's like, well, we believe in God and Jesus and the cross and resurrection. But please don't ask us anything more specifically than that, like what any of that really means, because then you're going to find out that we're not nearly as unified as we thought we were.

And so you've got LCD Christianity, which really can't answer any of the world's questions, cannot produce a Christian worldview, cannot have any compelling message, cannot offer solutions to anything.

But that's what we're told we need to be promoting is LCD Christianity. And if you don't, then you're a divider and you're just a big meanie. You're a meanie head. That's sort of how it's expressed on the Internet without saying meanie head.

But that's sort of the same level of maturity. It doesn't work. The only way to unity that Jesus is going to describe here is being sanctified by the truth. The only way. Only way. Unfortunately, with that, as the brother looked at his watch right as I was looking at him, was that a message to me?

No, no. It wasn't a message to me? Okay. All right. I do, but I'm not wearing my glasses, so it's not nearly as clear as it normally is. Let's close our time with a word of prayer. Father, we do thank you for the opportunity you've given to us once again to open your word.

As we go into worship now, we pray that you would indeed give us understanding of your truth, that our worship be pleasing to you, that you would open our hearts and our minds, and that you would be glorified in all that takes place.

We pray in Christ's name. Amen.