John 17:14-16 (A Prayer For The Church Left In The World)

Thank you for subscribing to the Shepherds Church podcast. This is our Lord's Day Sermon. We pray that as we declare the

Word of God that you would be encouraged, strengthened in your faith, and that you would catch a greater vision of who

Christ is. May you be blessed in the hearing of God's Word, and may the Lord be with you.

Today I want to begin by sharing a story. A story that, frankly, most of us cannot even imagine.

There's a story of a man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer. If you're of German descent, you would say

Bonhoeffer, which is a fun fact. It's a name you might know. He was

German -born during World War II, during one of the darkest moments in modern history, where the

Nazis were starting to rise to power at the time that Dietrich Bonhoeffer comes to America.

He comes to America in the 30s, and I think it's 38 or 39, and he comes here to escape sort of the rising tensions and challenges that are happening there.

And also, while he's here, he gets a job at Union Theological Seminary. At that point, back in the 30s, it was still a faithful institution.

Now, it is not. There was an ad, or there was an article a couple years ago, where they had a

Worship the Plants Day, because they're God's creatures, too. But back in the 30s, it was a faithful institution.

Bonhoeffer was a professor there at Union Theological Seminary, and in 39, something powerful, a conviction, hit

Bonhoeffer, to where he said, I have to go back. Now, this was insane, actually, at the time.

Many of his colleagues were trying to convince him, do not do that, because Germany, at this point, was really getting a stranglehold on the country.

A man like Bonhoeffer, who was not a compromiser, like most of the German churches at the time, who were just kind of going along with what

Hitler wanted, Bonhoeffer was not that. It was safe for him to remain in America, and yet he could not.

He said that he had to go back, because how could he live in comfort when his fellow brothers and sisters were living in such awful conditions?

He said, I have to go back and suffer with them. I have to go back in spite of the risks.

So it was with that, in 1939, that Bonhoeffer went back, and this marks a pivotal moment in his life. If you'll remember the story,

Bonhoeffer eventually was arrested after a failed assassination attempt on Hitler.

He was a part of that, which is a fascinating story in and of itself, that we don't have time to get into this morning.

He sat in a, basically, in a jail cell in one of the concentration camps, and moments before the

Nazis were completely overran and conquered, they killed him just to get rid of him.

He was an hour or two away from freedom when they killed him.

Inside that jail cell, he wrote many songs and hymns, and he wrote books while he was in that jail cell, but he returned not because he loved suffering.

He's a man, just like us men and women in this room. We are not people who love to suffer, but he went back because he felt that it was his duty, that it was his calling, and that this demonstrates to us how he was a person who was in the world, but was not of the world.

He was in the world, living in the midst of all of the evil, and all of the pain, and all of the brokenness, but yet he was a man who stood against it.

He was a man who held fast to the truth, even in the midst of an awful, horrible situation.

And this reminds me a lot of what we see in our passage today in John 17, 14 through 16, where Jesus has saved his people, but he's not called us out of the world.

He's called us to live in the midst of it, in the pain of it, in the brokenness of it, and to stand for the truth of the gospel, even if it costs us our life.

And to the first century disciples, that was their reality. Jesus knew that the world he was calling his disciples to was hostile and dangerous, and that most of the disciples would lose their life.

John was one of the ones that lived until he died a natural death, but there's historical accounts that they tried to burn him in oil before he died, so maybe his flesh was was quite mangled even in his old age.

Jesus did not take his disciples out of the world. That is important for us to know. He did not call them out of the darkness.

He made them as lights to shine in it. And that is what we're going to be looking at today. In the same way that Bonhoeffer saw it his duty not to be removed from the evil of the world, but to fight against it,

Jesus has called us to that work. And again, we're not living in Nazi Germany today, praise the

Lord for that. But we are living in a world that's hostile to God. We are living in a world where you will be maligned and made fun of for your faith.

I worked in a jail for seven and a half years. I worked in a jail for seven and a half years, and there were three or four times

I was called into the chief's office because I was praying on duty with inmates.

They asked me to pray for them, and I prayed with them. And I thought at one point I was going to lose my job. The point that I learned in that moment is that I have to bring

Christ into my everything. I can't let anyone tell me that Christ is not welcome here, and He will take care of us.

That's what Jesus has called us to. Now if you remember, we're in Jesus's great high priestly prayer.

The great prayer, the greatest prayer that's ever been prayed, the only prayer that is recorded on the lips of Jesus.

You'll remember the Lord's Prayer. Our Father who art in heaven, we'll pray that prayer in a moment. It's not a prayer Jesus himself prayed, but it's how he taught us to pray.

So this in John 17 is the only recorded prayer that we have from Christ, and it is the glorious high priestly prayer.

We've talked about it in the weeks before, that this prayer stretches the theological imagination, that it tests the depths of human language.

It is a prayer that no human on earth could have ever prayed. It's the mark of divinity all over it, and we've been talking about it now for five weeks.

We started back in November and December. We took a break for Christmas. Now we're back in week one.

We saw how Jesus was the model for our prayer, that he lived a prayer saturated life, that everything that Jesus did in his ministry was about prayer, and we today must not neglect this incredibly essential discipline of being men and women of prayer.

In week two, we learned how Jesus prayed for our eternal life, that we would know the

Father, and that we would have true freedom and eternal joy in relationship with him.

Week three, we learned about his lordship, and lordship is an incredible word that I wish that the modern church would learn.

Lordship means that you're not in charge, that he is. That he is

Lord over your mind, your body, your thoughts, your convictions, your opinions, your heart, your emotions, your feelings, your affections, your bodies, your physical actions, your directions, your vocation, your vacations, everything.

Week four, we talked about a prayer that Jesus prayed for our unity, that we the church would be a shining example of unity in the world, that the world would look at us and the world would say, it's incredible, they don't fight, they don't argue, they love each other.

It's recorded that as they were feeding Christians to the lions that some of the Romans were saying, dear God, look at how they love one another.

Look at how they're in unity with one another. Our unity as a church is an example of the gospel's power in the world, and how we saw several weeks ago that we fail at that in the modern church so much with so many fissures and divisions and so many, while the

Reformed Baptists can't worship with the Presbyterians and the seeker sensitives can't worship with, you know, the stuffy,

I don't know, but we have, we've basically fractured the church into a thousand different micro churches, and that's not the vision that Jesus gave us.

He did give us a vision of theological purity, but he also gave us a vision of unity. We are to divide when it comes to error in the gospel.

We are to divide with smiling toothy preachers who say that everyone's going to go to heaven.

That is from hell. That is not a biblical doctrine. But at the same time, we must divide with wisdom, and we must divide with care, and we must divide carefully.

We must not be quick to divide. We must not be the kind of polemical people who divide over everything, because your view of the end times isn't exactly the same as mine.

We can't be in communion with one another. That is stupid and foolish. Because you don't agree that somebody says, you know, we don't baptize infants.

Some says that we do. We shouldn't divide over that. This church is one of the only churches that I've ever been a part of where we say welcome to both the ones who believe in a

Baptist view of baptism and those who believe in a Reformed and Presbyterian view of baptism, because why would we divide over that?

There's things we should divide over, but not those things. It's enough diatribe for now.

Last week, we saw how Jesus prayed for our joy. And one of the coolest parts about that prayer is that he said that that their joy would be complete.

And we know that when Jesus is praying that prayer, he's getting ready to be arrested. He's getting ready to be tried.

He's getting ready to be murdered on the cross, and he's telling us to have complete and full joy. The book of Hebrews says that for the joy set before him, he endured the cross.

So Jesus can endure the cross with joy. And if we're called to imitate him, then there's not a single aspect of our life that we cannot have joy in.

There is no one in this room who's died for the sins of the world. And if you haven't done that, then you can have joy in everything you go through.

He prayed for our joy. He prayed that our joy would be complete. We have to remind ourselves every day.

Do not let the enemy, do not let my flesh, do not let the world steal my joy.

Jesus prayed my joy would be complete. Now today, we're gonna continue on in his high priestly prayer, and we're gonna see three things.

We're gonna see number one, who is the world? Who are they? We're gonna define that.

Number two, we're gonna see what is it that the world actually hates? And then as we close, we're gonna see what it means for us as Christians to be in this world, but not of this world.

So if you will, turn with me to John 17, 14 through 16, as we continue on in Jesus's high priestly prayer together.

John 17, 14 through 16. This is what it says. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but you keep them from the evil one.

They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Let us pray. Lord Jesus, six times in this passage, you use the word world.

You tell us that we are not of the world, that our origin, our station, our origination is not worldly, it's heavenly.

Lord, help us to understand what that means. Help us as believers in Christ to understand what it means to live in the world, but not be of it, and Lord, help us as Christians to be the kind of people who magnify your gospel all our days, because you left us here for a purpose.

Lord, help us as we live here, as we remain here, as we wait on that glorious day when you return to do the work you've called us to do while we are still here.

It's in Christ's name we pray, amen. What is the world? Well, there's a variety of different answers to that question.

It's like some words in English, like the word fly. What is the word fly? I can go fly -fishing.

It can get drafty when my fly is down. You can use it that way. I can fly to another country.

There can be a fly that lands on my nose, and all of that can happen in the same sentence. While I was fly -fishing, my fly was down, but I had to fly to my car so that I could get on a plane, so I could fly to California, and you wouldn't believe it, in the plane there was a pesky fly.

And you understood that whole sentence, even though the word is the same in every single context.

This is sort of like the word cosmos, which is the word for world. Depending on the context of the passage is how the word is used, and what it means.

And John brings a lot of very interesting facets to this word, world.

Now, the most common understanding of the word world in the Bible, generally speaking, is that it just means the planet

Earth, the place where humans dwell. It could also mean the universe, because the ancients didn't view the world and the universe as separate things.

They were part of the entire system. So world, cosmos, universe, it could all mean sort of the same thing.

And one of the ways that the word world is used in our passage is that. This word is used three times just in verse 15 alone, or 14 alone, and two of them have to do with the physical world.

John 17 15 says, I do not ask you to take them out of the world. God, I'm, this is

Jesus praying, God the Father, I'm not asking you to remove them from the planet. That's what he's saying.

Jesus prays that we would remain physically present on earth. Now, let's admit something real quick.

When Jesus died on the cross, rose from the dead, he finished the work, spiritually speaking, and he could have finished the work physically speaking.

Jesus could have done everything he wanted to do. He could have looked down through the corridors of time.

He already knew every single person who was called according to the Father's purposes. He could have saved everyone even before they were born, and he could have just teleported them to heaven.

So we all woke up there and said, what happened? Well, I died on the cross for your sins. How did we get here?

Well, I chose for you to be here. He could have done that. He could have finished the work on his own. And think about it like this.

Why would he ask us to do the work? That would be like me hiring a group of toddlers to build a chimney.

Asking us to try to do the work that God has called us to do. Jesus could have done it better than us, right?

He certainly wouldn't have taken 2 ,000 years, and we're not even close to being finished. He could have done the work on his own, but he didn't.

He left us here. To do his work, he left us here for a purpose, and our mission is not over until that work is finished.

Jesus is not going to return to this earth until the work is finished.

There's a lot of systems of thinking in Christianity that believe that Jesus is imminently going to return, but the work's not finished.

He said every tribe, tongue, and nation will call out upon the name of the Lord. He said every family on earth will be blessed.

He said Jesus' government would advance to the ends of the earth. That Jesus' reign of peace would cover the entire world.

That God's glory would cover the earth as the water covers the sea. Brothers and sisters, there's a lot of work left to do.

He's left us here for a purpose that we would be engaged in that work. He did not leave us here to do our work.

Our work can be a part of his work, but ultimately speaking, he left us here to do his work. That's what we talked about with lordship.

If Jesus is Lord of your life, you stopped being in charge the moment that you were saved.

Now, he is in charge. He's the one who tells you his plans, and you execute his plans, and his plans are that you would work for and build his kingdom.

Now, he does pray in this passage that we'd be protected from the evil one. Praise God for that prayer. He does tell us that he's going to send us support, the

Holy Spirit earlier in the passage. Praise God for that. But he tells us that he has left us here for a purpose, and we are here to build his kingdom.

And that kingdom is a physical kingdom, and it's going to have physical benefits to the world, and it's going to cover the world.

And I believe that we are there as his ambassadors to build that kingdom until he returns.

Now, that's one way the word world is used. It's the planet. He left us here to work and to do his bidding here.

Another way that the world is used is it's the people, the system of people, the group of people who are in rebellion against God, the world.

When we say that the world hates God, we are not talking about the planet Earth. And if you look at it from the moon's vantage point, that the

Earth has its little arms crossed and saying, I hate God. That's not what we're talking about.

We're not talking about the planet. We're talking about a group of people who are in rebellion against God. The Launida, I think

I'm pronouncing that right, lexicon. Lexicon is just a fancy word for an English dictionary of ancient Greek terms.

The Launida defines cosmos this way in this context. It is the system of practices and standards that are associated with a secular society that is without reference to any demands or requirements of God.

It's a worldly system with its own godless standards. It is the entirety of humanity that is still in rebellion against God.

That is what the word world means in that context. And John uses that definition of world way more than he uses the definition of planet.

Or universe. John is, of the gospel writers, always talking about the world, the system, the group of people who are against Christ.

Talks about it all over the place. There's 50, 60 verses we could go through this morning. It'd be beneficial if you wanted.

But let me just give you a couple examples. John 7, 7. Jesus says, the world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify of it, that its deeds are evil.

He's not talking about the planet. He's talking about those who are opposed to God. They hate God. And because they hate

God, they hate God's people. Because they hate Christ, they hate all those who are in union with Christ.

John 8, 23 is another example where Jesus calls the Pharisees children of the devil.

Probably upset them when they heard that. And Jesus was saying to them, you are from below and I am from above.

You are not of this world or you are of this world. I am not of this world.

Now, Jesus is not come in or is not condemning them because of their geography. He's not saying that I get my postcards in heaven and therefore

I'm better than you. That's not what he's saying. Jesus is saying that they are worldly.

He is exposing their hypocrisy. He is saying that you think you're so righteous because you stand in your synagogues and you pray your long prayers and you look down your theological snobbery nose and you look down at the sinners and you say,

I'm better than you. You think you're so great. You are just like the ones you hate.

You are like the Gentiles. You are like the tax collectors. You are from the devil.

You are worldly. You hate God even as you think you're trying to serve him.

This shows that there's two kinds of people on earth. There's the kind who are two kinds of sinners at least.

There's the kind who are worldly and rank sin, sexual sin, murder, violence, all those things.

And then there's the kind of sinner who is a do -gooder and who lives in smugness.

The self -righteous, the one who like the Pharisees thinks that they're so good.

And because they're addicted to their own goodness, they miss the goodness of God and they too are lost.

This divides the entire world into two basic groups of people. Those who belong to Jesus, those who are of heavenly origin, and those who belong to the devil and who are from below.

There's only two races of people, those who are lost forever and those who are found.

Your address does not determine where you're from. You ask me where I'm from, I might say

North Carolina. Or if I'm feeling especially in love with my region,

I'll say I'm from Lowell. I'm not from Lowell. I'm not from North Carolina either.

I was born in North Carolina, but that doesn't determine my origin. There are two kinds of people in this world.

Those who are from Christ, who belong to Christ, and those who belong to the world.

We read earlier in Ephesians, before the foundation of the world,

God chose for himself a people. Before I was born in a little town called

Salisbury, North Carolina, in a podunk redneck hospital that really should not exist.

Before that happened, God had already chosen me. Before you were born, if you were a

Christian, God had already chosen you. Your foundation is from eternity, brothers and sisters.

It is not dependent upon your geography. There are people who live in the greatest geographical places on earth, people who live in Beverly Hills, who live on Beacon Hill, and who live in the most exclusive places on earth who are from below.

And there are people who live in the back alleys, and there are people who live in poverty -stricken nations, and there are people who live in Lowell, and there are people who live in Wilmington and everywhere else who are from above.

Not because you chose it. You had no control over this because God chose to give you birth from above.

What unites us together is not where we were born, whether you were born on the West Coast or the Best Coast, whether you were born in the

North or whether you're a country boy from the South, that doesn't matter. What matters is are you elect?

Did God regenerate you by His power? Did He breathe His life into you? Did He give you birth from above?

Another way to say it is there's two kinds of people on earth, those who were born once and those who were born twice. If you're not born twice, you will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Our origin is not determined by our mailbox. It is determined by the predestinating power of Almighty God.

John 1 .10 is another example of the word world used in this way. It says, Jesus, He was in the world, that's the planet, and the world was made through Him, that's the planet, and the world did not know

Him. That's the group of people who are opposed and angry and hate God. See how in one verse, the word is used in two different ways.

He was in the world, He made the world, and the world hated Him because they've always hated

Him since Adam sinned. There's been two races of people from the beginning, children of the serpent and children of God.

This is the most common of all of John's meaning of the word world. It's used in a variety of different ways.

It's those who are addicted to darkness, John 3 .19, those who refuse to be nourished by Jesus, John 6 .33

and 6 .51, those who are under the judgment of God, John 9 .39, those who are incapable of receiving the spirit of truth,

John 14 .17, those who are incapable of seeing Jesus, John 14 .19,

those who are unable to love God's people, John 15 .18, the ones who are conceived or convicted enemies of God, John 16 .8,

those who are incapable of defeating Jesus who's already overcome the world, John 16 .33, incapable of keeping

Jesus from claiming His own, that's you if you're in Christ, John 17 .6, and it's the one that Jesus refused to pray for.

Isn't that a fascinating point? We talked about that in John 17 .9. He said, I pray for my own, but I do not pray for the world.

One of the reasons why this church believes in the sovereignty of God over salvation, that salvation is not up for grabs, is because Christ did not pray for the world.

He prayed for His people, and He already knew His people before the foundation of the world.

If you love Jesus today, it is not because you are spiritual. If you love

Jesus today, it is not because you're smarter than every other human. If you love Jesus today, it is a gift of the grace of God, and all you have left, brother and sister, is not to say,

I have decided to follow Jesus. All you have left is, thank you, God. I was dead, and you made me alive.

I was blind, and you made me see. I was in darkness, and you gave me light.

You and I had nothing to do with our salvation, except as Jonathan Edwards said, except contributing the sin that made it necessary.

John 17 .9, I ask on their behalf, he's talking about believers, I do not ask on behalf of the world, but those whom

God has given me. For they are yours. So Jesus prays for His people.

He doesn't pray for the world. That's the two kinds of ways that this word is used mostly in John, as the planet, and as the system of people who hate

God, and Jesus does not pray for them. Now let's transition to our next point.

That is who the world is. The world is the meanest, most wicked despots, and the softest, most cuddly grannies who hate

God, those who do not submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, those who are going to die and go to hell because of their rank evil, and those who are going to die and going to hell in their self -righteous goodness, and everyone in between.

That's the world. Now there's things that the world hates.

We know that they hate God. Let's look at a couple other things that the world hates. It says, I have given them your word.

It's verse 14. Jesus says, I have given them, that's you and I, His word.

And the world has hated them because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

The first thing that we see is the world hates Christians. And that's easy to discern. It's always been true.

It's always been true. You can look at a modern example of this. There is a religion that's caused more violence than any other on earth today.

It's Islam. And yet, watch the liberals parade in the streets for Hamas.

Watch the liberals in Michigan kowtow and say, we need Islam and this and this and that.

But you have a Christian politician who quotes the Bible and watch them go crazy.

They've always hated Christ. And the world will always hate

Christ because His name is noxious to them. And they will hate those who belong to Christ because you're affiliated with Him.

They hate us because we're not like them. They hate us that what is inside us is different than them.

They hate us because you and I once lived in darkness with them, but now we live in the light of Christ.

I remember this is a silly example. I lost weight five, six years ago, and I was eating broccoli, which is so cliche.

And there were so many people who were like, why don't you have this jelly -filled donut or this?

Oh, no, no, no, no, I'm eating broccoli. And they'd get mad at me, like I was judging them. And I was like, that's crazy.

I lost a little bit of weight, and then everyone around me felt uncomfortable. Wonder why that is. And that's a silly example to point to the fact that when you become a

Christian, those around you no longer feel welcomed by you because the Spirit of God in you now is a threat to their carnality.

When they see you, they see Christ. And when they see Christ, it enrages their flesh.

Because darkness hates the light. Because light exposes the darkness. And because when darkness is exposed, those that live in the darkness shriek like demons.

John 15, 18 through 19 is an example of how the world hates Christians. Jesus says, if the world hates you, you know that it has hated me before it hated you.

If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. But because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this, the world hates you.

Do you hear what he said? You didn't choose me, I chose you. Because I chose you, they hate you. 1

John 3, 10 through 15, by this, the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious.

Do you see there's two races of people? Children of God, children of the devil. By this, the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious.

Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother, not from God.

For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain, who was of the evil one and slew his brother.

And for what reason did he slay him? Because his deeds were evil and his brothers were righteous.

Do not be surprised, brethren, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death and into life.

And because we love the brethren, he who does not love abides in death.

Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer. And you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

John is saying from the very beginning that the righteousness of Abel was egregious to Cain.

That the faithfulness of Abel irritated the soul of Cain, propelling him to murder his brother,

Abel. Brothers and sisters, the more you live for Christ, the more your life will be a stench in the nostrils of the world.

And this teaches us that something I think is really important for us to understand. The world is not going to love you.

The world is not going to love you. Don't play footsie with the world and try to get them to think that you're reasonable and you're this and you're that.

I see too many Christians doing that today. Jesus said, friendship with the world is enmity with God.

Jesus did not give us a category where the world would love us. They don't. If they love you, then that's a problem because they don't see

Christ in you. If you're doing that, you're attempting the impossible.

Our only goal is to spread the gospel far and wide. And it is the gospel that is foolishness to the world.

And it's offense to the world. We preach

Christ because he told us to. We don't preach Christ to purposely inflame the world.

We're not pugnacious like that. But we preach Christ and we accept the consequences. That's a faithful posture.

Again, we do not try to play footsie with the world. And this bothers me because Christianity today, that Stallworth magazine that has now fallen into this sort of sin, the gospel coalition.

I used to love the gospel coalition. I used to love reading their articles. And now they're more addicted to being looked favorably upon the world.

Writing articles about Taylor Swift and how her life is some sort of parallel to the gospel. It's ridiculous.

We are not to play footsie with the world in order to be viewed as reasonable. They look at us as foolish.

That's what the Bible says. The gospel is foolish. You and I preach the gospel not to the world. You and I are not omniscient.

We don't know who is saved and who is not. We preach the gospel to everybody knowing that it will awaken the ones that God intended for it to awaken.

We preach the gospel far and wide. And if they kill us, so be it. And if they ruin our character, so be it.

If they cancel us, so be it. We preach not so that the goat will become sheep.

That's not biblical. We preach so that lost sheep will be found and the gospel will awaken them.

For it is the power of God unto salvation for all who believe. The gospel, not our

Christian niceness and winsomeness is the power of God. The church ought to stop worrying about being looked as favorable and nice.

And the church ought to get back to being salt and light. I don't care personally if the world hates this church.

I don't care if the world hates me. And I don't care if the world hates you. Because Jesus said that it would happen.

I care that this church is seeing lost sheep found. I pray that this church has found sheep being discipled.

I pray that this church has mature sheep getting married. I pray that those married sheep will start multiplying like rabbits.

And I pray that those multiplied families would take dominion of this earth, like Christ said.

I don't have time in my life to worry about what pagans think of us. I don't have time in my life nor emotional capacity to worry if they think that we're too tart.

We will preach the gospel here if we are protested. We will preach the gospel here if worldly Christians think that we're too much and we're a little extra.

I don't care. You and I will not frolic in the goat pen in order to make worldly pagan

Christians happy. You and I will be at work to see the kingdom of God built because He left us here for a purpose and it's not to play footsie with the world.

The world hates us because we are not like them. That's the first point. The second point is the world hates us because we have

His word. They hate the word of Christ. Look at what he says. There's a cause and effect relationship here.

I have given them your word and the world has hated them. Because Jesus gave us the word of God, the world hates us because the word of God does not allow them to.

The church alone is the only institution on earth that has the word and the truth of God and the world hates us for that.

I thought about it as an example. There's one person that I don't want to see in this building and it's a building inspector.

You know, you've dealt with building inspectors. They're like, oh, this outlet is one inch too close to that outlet and that light bulb is this and they're obnoxious people.

But I'm jealous of them because they know that everybody hates them and they still do their job and they do it with vigor.

I've never met a people more passionate about what they're doing, more unrelenting about what they're doing than building inspectors.

Brothers and sisters, the church could learn from that ilk. We know the world's going to hate us.

And unlike a building inspector who has tedious little rules that only benefit an overblown bureaucracy, we have the words of life.

Why don't we share them? Why aren't we so passionate about sharing the truth no matter what it costs?

Like Bonhoeffer, no matter if it costs us everything. How will they hear if we don't share it?

How will they know if we don't say it? It's going to produce one of two outcomes.

The world is going to hear your message and they're going to hate you. Embrace that. Jesus said they hated him.

The apostles said they were counted worthy to suffer for the name of Christ. It is a gift.

Philippians 1 .29 says it's God's gracious gift that you would suffer for Jesus. Embrace that.

The other outcome is that lost sheep will be found. And listen, if everyone, if every

Christian on earth stopped preaching the gospel, Jesus would still save his elect. The stones would cry out the gospel and people would get saved.

He has counted it a privilege for you to join him in his work. Don't you want that?

Don't you want to join Jesus in his work and seeing the gospel go forth to all the nations? Declare it.

Don't be afraid. Don't be scared of what people think of you. Embrace the fact that they killed your

Lord and they're going to hate you too. But those who know Christ, those who are called according to his purpose, they're going to respond to the message that you preach and they're going to come to faith.

And you and I are going to see the world come to Christ little bit by little bit. We're going to die and the work's going to continue.

And our grandkids are going to continue. And one day when Jesus brings us back to this world, when the glory of God covers this earth, as the water covers the sea, we are going to rejoice that he counted us to be a part of his great mission.

Again, they may hate you, but keep speaking. This leads us to our final point.

Jesus concludes this passage by saying, I do not ask you, Father, to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil one.

They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Why are we here? We're not here for our job.

We're not here for our money, our possessions. We're not here to live it up and enjoy things while we're here.

We're not here for our vacations. We're not here for our entertainment. We're not even here for our families. We're not here for ourself and we're not here for our children.

Those are good things, but ultimately, they're not why we're here. We've been left here to serve

Jesus Christ. The reason Jesus did not zap you out of here is that he's called you to be his priest in his kingdom and for you to serve him all your days.

And he has great plans for you. He prays that we would stay in the world and that we would be protected by the evil one.

Why would he pray that? Because the greatest attack that the enemy can have for you, your flesh can have for you, is to get you distracted.

He can't take you out of the hand of Christ. It says all who come to Jesus will be held in his firm grasp.

You can't lose what you didn't pay for. So the worst thing he can do to you is get you distracted and get you out of focus and get you forgetting what your mission is.

To get you more focused on your work and trying to get promoted and build your 401k or enjoy yourself while you're here or whatever, whatever idol it is that you get focused on, the best thing that Satan can do is to get you distracted.

Now, let me clarify something here. I'm not saying that having a job is bad. You need a job.

Men, if you don't have a job, you're worse than an unbeliever if you don't provide for your family. So it's kind of a big deal. And I think you should work hard.

And I think you should work hard so that you actually do make money, a good amount of money to care for your family, to leave an inheritance for your children.

So I'm not saying that work is bad. I'm saying, what do you work for? You don't work for the work.

You work for Christ. The reason you're the best employee at your job is because you've been saved by Jesus.

Martin Luther, I've told this story before, a new believer came up to him and said, Martin, what do I do with my life?

And he said, well, what do you do right now? And he said, I make shoes. Martin Luther said, well, go make a good shoe.

Jesus in you should make you the best worker at your job. Jesus in you should make you the most dependable, the most trustworthy worker at your job.

And you can tell the story of the gospel at work. Do it.

I'm not saying that families are a bad thing. I said earlier that you don't live for your family. You don't ultimately. Everything you do is for Christ.

And your family will be blessed if you take your focus off of them and put it onto him. They're not your

God. Worship your God. Jesus said, they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

The gospel is that Jesus himself, when you and I were sinners, when you and I belong to the world, he marched the hill of Calvary.

He took our sin. He died for us. He justified us, sanctified us, awakened us, regenerated us so that he could take us out of the camps of the world and into his kingdom.

Brothers and sisters, do not live for the world. Do not live as someone who is of this world.

Live for Christ while you're in the world. Amen. Let's pray. Lord, help us to our goal to be serve you faithfully everywhere we go.

Lord, I pray like Saint Patrick prayed that Christ in me, Christ around me,

Christ before me, Christ in my eating, Christ in my drinking, Christ in my living, Christ in my sleeping,

Christ in my working. Lord, would you help us to take all of Christ in all of life for all the world?

Lord, would you let those who are called according to your name and your purpose be called out of the world as a result of the ministry of this church and as a result of the ministries of the families who come here?

Lord, I pray that you would answer our brother Greg's prayer that revival would break out in this region.

And Lord, I pray that you would use churches like the Shepherd's Church, Merrimack Valley, Presbyterian, to declare the gospel to those who are awakened.

Lord, I pray that you would cause us to be a people who are focused on you and your work. Lord, I pray that as we looked in Leviticus earlier, that the world would see that there is a separateness to us, a holiness to us, that we don't look like them or think like them or talk like them.

Some will consider that foolish and some will say, tell me about this

God. Lord, help us as your people to be holy as you are holy.