Psalm 130:1-8 (NIV)  

¹ Out of the depths I cry to you, Lord; ² Lord, hear my voice.  Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.

³ If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand?  ⁴ But with you there is forgiveness, so that we can, with reverence, serve you.

⁵ I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope.  ⁶ I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.

⁷ Israel, put your hope in the Lord, for with the Lord is unfailing love and with him is full redemption.  ⁸ He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins.

Today’s sermon is from the passage when Jesus was praying to His Heavenly Father.  Jesus is praying in a real sense that He knows there is trouble in the coming days.

John 17:1-20 (NIV)

¹ After Jesus said this, he looked toward Heaven and prayed:

“Father, the time has come.  Glorify your Son, so that your Son may glorify you.  ² For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him.  ³ Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.  ⁴ I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.  ⁵ And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.

⁶ “I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world.  They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word.  ⁷ Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you.  ⁸ For I gave them the words you gave me and they have accepted them.  They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me.  ⁹ I pray for them.  I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours.  ¹⁰ All I have is yours, and all you have is mine.  And glory has come to me through them.  ¹¹ I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you.  Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name–the name you gave me–so that they may be one as we are one.  ¹² While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name that you gave me.  None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled.

¹³ “I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.  ¹⁴ I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world.  ¹⁵ My prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one.  ¹⁶ They are not of the world even as I am not of it.  ¹⁷ Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth.  ¹⁸ As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.  ¹⁹ For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.

²⁰ My prayer is not for them alone.  I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message…

When people are facing death, they are most real, no pretense, they are who they are.  Jesus shares what is on His mind and His concerns for humanity.  Jesus was praying for all of us.

Jesus will pray for four specific areas of the disciples of Christ lives.  1) He prays for holiness, 2) He prays for truth, 3) He prays for unity and love, 4) He prays for mission.

We will begin with Jesus praying for our holiness.

No one really knows what following Christ is about until we understand what is so important about holiness, that Jesus went to the cross to die in order for us to have it.  What does it mean to be holy?  Why does Jesus want holiness for us?

The Battle Hymn of the Republic 5^th verse will get us thinking about Christ, ourselves, and how they are intermingled with holiness.

“In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
 While God is marching on”

Jesus is saying He is willing to die so that people might become holy.

When Jesus begins praying, He addresses the Father, “Holy Father”.  When Jesus thinks about the God the Father, He is thinking of holiness.

What does “holy” mean?  It actually means to be separated, or to be separate.

1 Samuel 2:2  There is none holy as the Lord: for there is none beside thee: neither is there any rock like our God.

Isaiah 40:25  “To whom will you compare me?  Or who is my equal?” says the Holy One.

To understand God as holy, we have to see Him as totally exalted, infinitely transcendent over us.

In our Christian lives we haven’t really been in the presence of the absolutely holy until we’ve felt that we are absolutely not holy.

The holiness of God exposes people’s flaws, weak and small.

Isaiah 6:1-5  ¹ In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple.  ² Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying.  ³ And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”  ⁴ At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.  ⁵ “Woe to me!” I cried.  “I am ruined!  For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”

When someone experiences the holiness of God, they begin to see God’s uniqueness, His transcendence, their only one God, and it isn’t us.  God is holy, His forgiveness is holy forgiveness, and His wisdom is holy wisdom, and His mercy is holy and that impacts our lives.

Why do we worry?  The One we affirm is in charge of history, in charge of the universe, we’ve worried in our care God gets things wrong.

Let God be God, stop worrying and trust God.

It is one thing to acknowledge God is wise, but another to remember God is holy in His wisdom.

“I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world.  They were yours; you gave them to me, and they have obeyed your word.  Are you kidding me those disciples were obtuse, lazy, selfish you name it, they made mistakes all day long.”

Jesus knows what will happen and yet offer no criticism of the disciples.  God knows what will happen quite soon as well, they’re covering for the flaws.  God is affirming the best of the disciples, and down-plays their disobedience, lack of faith.  This is what a good family looks like.

Three characteristics of what it means to be a holy family.

1)      People who know they are children of a holy, perfect father don’t have critical irritability.  “If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?  But with You there is forgiveness.”  Therefore, You are feared.  We stand in God’s love, cannot ream in critical of others.

2)      People who know that their Holy Father loves them and are not defensive.  Are we full of excuses or sorrow?  If we are defensive, we may know in our heads we have a holy Father, but we don’t know His holy love, and we are reacting to the situation of our own sense of self, or worth in the events in this world.  We are totally loved by God; He wants the best for us.

3)      People who are sure they have a heavenly Father who loves them won’t be full of self-pity.  When life was going sideways before Pilate, what did Jesus say?

You have no power, except that which was given by my Father, Jesus is anxious, knowing what is coming, but isn’t destroyed because He trusts God.

Nothing happens outside of God’s knowledge, and we are to trust that God has all things well in hand.

God is our Father, our Holy Father, perfect, exalted, more powerful than we can imagine.  And until we seem like that, until we know that He loves us and is incomparable we’re going to be critical, defensive and full of self-pity.

Why do we obey Father, Holy Father?  We obey Him because we don’t want to disappoint Him, we want to make God smile with our love.

When we stop listening to God our Father it is because we are listening to the world, people not our Heavenly Father.

Those of us who have come to faith through the testimony, the words of the disciples, their gifts that Jesus prayed for us.  We’ve heard and believed it’s been tough.  At this, we believe and other times we believe and I know the doctrine.

John 1:12  While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name that you gave me.  None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled.

Jesus wants us to believe His name for all we need, we are part of His family, Christ died for all of us, so we could be part of the Family head by our Holy God.

This week, read John 17:1-20 and dwell on the Holiness and attributes of our Heavenly Father and ask for understanding of what has been done for us.  God bless, call me if you have questions about your faith walk and we can figure it out together.