Spurgeon on the Gospel of John
Daily Devotions
These devotional readings are largely taken from expository thoughts shared by Spurgeon at the end of his sermons. Going through a Bible passage verse by verse, he would make brief comments with his usual candour and practicality, applying the text directly to his hearers.
They have been collated from the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, and lightly edited for clarity and cohesion.
Day 1 . Tuesday
John chapter 16, verses 31–33
(Taken from a sermon preached 2nd March 1890 at the Metropolitan Tabernacle)
Verse 31-32. Jesus answered them, Do ye now believe? Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.
Christ loves faith wherever He sees it, it is to Him a precious thing. To you that believe, He is precious, He is an honor, and upon Him you who believe confer all the honor it is possible for you to confer. Your trust adorns Him with jewels, your confidence in Him puts the crown on His head. But our Lord is very discriminating, He distinguishes between faith and presumption, and between faith and our idea of faith.
These disciples said now that they were sure. “Yes! Yes!” the Savior seemed to say, “That is your measure of your own faith, but I do not measure it in the same way that you do.” Do not mistake your belief in your own faith for faith in Christ, for belief in your own faith may be only self-conceit, while faith in Christ gives glory to God, and brings salvation to the believer.
We have never any reason to boast of our faith, for we have been very long coming to it. We do trust Christ now, I hope that many of us can sincerely say that we lean all our weight on Him. We believe in God, we believe also in His Son, Jesus Christ, but it took months to drive us out of our self-confidence, it took years to lift us out of despair, it has taken all this time for the Lord, in the power of His own Spirit, to work out what little faith we have.
Verse 32. Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone.
Our Lord reminded them of another thing more humbling still, that as their faith was long in coming, it might be very quick in going. A little trouble arises, an unforeseen difficulty occurs, and where is your faith? A little persecution, the idle banter of an unbeliever, the sarcasm of an agnostic, and where is your faith?
Let the believer never vaunt his believing, lest he be reminded how long he was in coming to it, and how soon he may be parted from it. What others have done, however base and mean, we too are capable of doing. If we think we are not, it is our pride, and our pride alone, that makes us think so.
Let us learn the lesson of our frailty, and though we are honestly trusting in Christ, let each one cry, “Hold thou me up, and I shall be safe.” From the most experienced and best established of you, as well as from those who have but recently been brought to know the Lord, let each one cry, “Lord, keep me, for I cannot keep myself!”
Our Lord was left alone. These eleven apostles that are around Him, and to whom He is talking, surely they will not leave their Lord! They are so sure that they will stand any fire that may be directed against them, and yet not one of them will stand firm. They will all forsake Him and flee.
The sure ones left Him whom they so certainly believed, and they were honest men too, when they spoke so confidently. There was no hypocrisy about what they said, they meant it all, they did each one verily believe that he could go to prison and to death, and that he would do so rather than deny his Lord.
They also really loved Christ. They all loved their Lord, yet all of them left Him, and poor weak things that they were, they turned their backs in the day of battle.
It is a grief to our hearts to be forsaken of good friends and loving friends. Your very knowledge that they were true at heart, as true as such poor things could be, increases the bitterness that they should leave you. You need not think, when this occurs in your experience, that any strange thing has happened to you, for Christ was thus left alone.
Verse 32. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.
Christ’s confidence was confidence that the Father was with Him and this confidence kept Him to His purpose. See the disciples flee, they are all scattered, every man to his own. Has Christ gone? Not He. John, Peter, James, Thomas, and all the rest are gone. Has Christ gone? Not He. There He stands.
They have left Him alone, but there He is, still standing to His purpose. He has come to save, and He will save. He has come to redeem, and He will redeem. He has come to overcome the world, and He will overcome it. They have left Him alone, they have not taken Him away with them. From His purpose He does never fly, blessed be His name! He stood fast in that dread hour when all forsook Him and fled. This was because His confidence was in God.
Notice how it runs, “Ye shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone.” Christ does not say, “I shall not be alone.” That was true, but He said, “I am not alone.”
I love to read the experience of the child of God in the present tense, the gifts, and graces, and promises of God in the present tense, “I am not alone.” “The LORD is my Shepherd,” as well as “I shall not want.” “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, He leadeth me beside the still waters.” He is doing everything for me now.
Beloved, if everybody leaves you, and even God seems to leave you, still hold to your confidence in God. Do not believe that God can forsake His own, do not even dream it, it cannot be. He never did forsake His own, He never can, and He never will.
In the design and method of the atonement, the Father and the Son were together. “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,” but Jesus so loved the world that He gave Himself. The atonement was the gift of the Father, but it was the work of the Son. In all that He suffered He could say, “The Father is with Me in it.”
So far as earthly companions were concerned, the words written by Isaiah could be literally uttered by Christ, “I have trodden the winepress alone.” Every man was gone, but God was always with Him.
Verse 32. And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.
Learn fidelity when others fail. Are you a Christian? Do you trust Christ? Do you love Him? Then never desert Him. If God the Holy Ghost has taught you to trust in Christ, trust in Christ, whatever other people do.
When the many turn aside, stand the more boldly and the more confidently, for your confidence and boldness are all the more needed at such a time. Your Lord did not forsake His grand errand when all men forsook Him. Do not renounce your lifework and your faith, even though all others should renounce theirs.
With your Master, believe that God is all-sufficient. “Ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone: and yet I am not alone, because”—what? “Because there will be half-a-dozen of you faithful”? No. “Because three of you will cling to Me?” No. “Because the Father is with me.”
Oh, we do not count as we should. There is a million against you. Is God for you? Well then, you are in the majority. What is a million after all, but one and so many ciphers? Trust you in God and let the millions go their way. God is enough.
Rest in God, despite appearances. Are you very poor? Are you weak? Are you slandered? Are you scourged with God’s heaviest rod? Believe Him when you cannot see Him, believe Him when He smiles not, believe Him when He frowns, believe Him when He smites, believe Him when He slays, for that is the climax of it all, to say like Job, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.”
It is His to do what He likes, it is mine to trust Him, let Him do as He will. I throw my arms about my God and say, “My God, my God,” even when no sensible joys are felt, and I am obliged to walk by faith.
Struggling child of God, standing firm for the truth and the right, expect that your trouble will not last long. Did you notice how Christ puts it, “Behold, the hour cometh”? Only an hour.
It is the part of faith to shorten days to hours. It is your part to recollect that if you have to suffer, and to stand alone for Christ, it is but for an hour. Our trial is but for an hour.
So it shall seem in heaven as if we never had suffered anything for Christ. It is but an hour, and we shall meet before the golden throne, and stand upon the sea of glass, and sing forever, “Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood…to him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen.”
Day 2 – Wednesday
John chapter 16, verse 33
(Taken from a sermon preached on March 31st 1887 at the Metropolitan Tabernacle)
Verse 33. These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
In Jesus Himself there was ever present an abiding peace. He had peace. If He had not Himself possessed peace, we could not have had peace in Him. But what a holy calm there was upon the spirit of our divine Master!
Never man had more to disturb Him, but never man was less disturbed. He could not be turned aside from anything which He had resolved to do, for He set His face like a flint. Men might oppose Him, but He endured great contradiction of sinners against Himself with marvelous long-suffering. His soul abiding in God, giving glory to God, and resting in the eternal Power and Godhead which He knew to be always at His side.
The background of the life of Christ is the omnipresence of the Father. Wherever you see Him—if you see Him quite alone when every disciple has forsaken Him—you see this text expounded, “You will leave me alone, and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.”
This fact that He felt the presence of the Father, and did not occasionally speak to God, but dwelt with Him—that He did not resort to God as a make-shift in time of trouble, but abode with God at all times, and so kept His spirit above everything that would draw it down, this it was that filled Him with an unbroken peace. Even Gethsemane did not break that peace.
O friends, Christ has peace enough and to spare. He is Himself, personally, the deep well-spring of an endless peace, and therefore we can understand why we always find peace in Him. His infinite peace breathes peace into our vacillating spirits. We rest because we see how He rests.
Our Lord Jesus Christ delights to see His people firm, calm, happy. The Savior does not wish His disciples to go through the world as through a twilight of sadness, whispering in fear, because of judgments to come, and suppressing all joy because of the evils with which they are surrounded. No, brethren, Jesus wishes us all to be happy in Himself, with a quiet peacefulness like His own.
Oh, that we could learn from Christ the art of peace! We ought not to be movable as waves, but fixed as stars. We ought not to be as thistledown, the sport of every wind, but as yonder granite peak, which defies the storms of the ages.
The Savior told His disciples of the power of prayer. What a breath of peace cools the forehead of the man who remembers that he may pray, and that prayer is heard in heaven! There is a noise in the streets, there is a disturbance within doors, even your own heart is perturbed, what then? Let us pray. The known remedy for unknown evils is prayer.
Oh, the peace that comes from the mercy seat! You that are familiar with it will bear me witness that it is wonderful what storms it will quell, what cyclones it will quiet.
Our tender Lord let slip a precious word that ought to give peace to all our minds, “The Father himself loves you.” The love of God the Father is a treasure-house of peace. The Father Himself—not moved by the importunities of His pleading Son, but Himself, of His own accord, loves you. God loved His people, and, therefore He sent His Son to redeem them. Christ is not the cause of divine love, but the sweetest and best fruit of it. “The Father himself loves you.” Therefore, be of good cheer, and let your peace be like a river.
Remember, then, you may not expect to derive peace from yourselves. You will turn that dunghill over a long while before you find the jewel of peace in it. Peace of the deepest, truest, most constant, most emphatic kind is only found in Jesus. Peace in all seasons, and in all difficulties, peace forever, all this is in Him, and in Him only.
Outside of Him it is all tossing to and fro, and question, and fog, and haze, and fear, but in Him we dwell as in a sheepfold, where the sheep lie down and rest. In Him we are in a home where all is love and comfort.
Verse 33. In the world ye shall have tribulation.
You are in Christ, and the Savior saves you from your sins, but He has not promised that you shall have no sorrow. He has not promised to screen you from either poverty, or toil, or sickness, or slander, or any of the common ills of mankind. Some of the very best of His beloved have been enriched and indulged by being permitted to undergo much secret discipline of pain, and sorrow, and want.
Your Lord, among the treasures that He gives you, grants a cross. You start back, and say, “Not that, Lord,” but He answers, “Yes, this, My child. This and no other.” The cross is the best piece of furniture in your house, though you have sometimes wished it was not there. It shall always work your good—it does work it now.
Some of the comforts allotted to you in providence will be questionable in their effect upon you, by reason of your sinfulness and weakness, but the cross which the Lord appoints you has no result but your good. It is a bitter tree, apparently, but it is a healthful medicine. Take it, child of God—plant it, and let it grow, and its fruit shall be sweet. We are not guarded from tribulation, but we are promised it, and we are benefited by it.
You shall have tribulation, perhaps, where you least wish it or reckon on it. “Any cross but the one I have,” cried one. Surely it would not be a cross if you had the choosing of it, for it is of the essence of a cross that it should run counter to our liking. It must be something from which the flesh shrinks, which is not for the present joyous but grievous.
The Christian is not of the world, even as Christ is not of the world. He is out of his element. He is an alien. He is a pilgrim. Can he expect the comforts of home while he tarries here? It is a world uncongenial to his spiritual nature.
We are always trying to pluck handfuls of its flowers, and if its roses had no thorns we would bury ourselves in heaps of them! We would never quit the nest and learn to fly if the Lord did not stir up our nest even as does the eagle. Thanks be unto God for the tribulation which weans our thoughts from earth, and wins them for heaven.
Verse 33. But be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.
Our Lord was at that time still in the world. He was on the edge of Gethsemane. He was at the foot, so to speak, of Golgotha, where He was to die. He had not then borne the scourge and the cross. Yet He said, “I have overcome.”
Oh, but it was bravely spoken! The faith which abode in Him made Him say, “I have overcome.” On the verge of the fight He said, “I have overcome.” He took for granted that He would overcome the world, for the Father was with Him.
Its blandishments He had overcome. Its temptations He had overcome. Its terrors He had overcome. Its errors He had overcome. Everything in the world that had assailed Him He had put to the rout. He was tempted in all points like as we are, but He remained without sin. He had been victor at every point.
The cheer lies in this, that He is one with us, and we are one with Him. He does as good as say, “I have overcome the world, and you are in Me, your Head. My overcoming of the world belongs to you. I, your Leader, have overcome the world for you. I have led the way in this dread fight, and conquered the adversaries which you have now to fight with, and thus I have virtually won the battle before you begin it.”
You must fight your way through. You cannot quit this conflict. You have to cut your way through a solid wall of difficulties—there is no other course! But you are going to do it. You shall do it. Every battlefield to which God calls us is only another opportunity of victory, and, Christ being with us, another certainty of victory.
Let not the brightness of your armor be stained by the rust of fear. You shall overcome as surely as your Lord has overcome. If you commit yourself to His keeping, and abide in Him who is all-in-all to you, no defeat can possibly befall you.
Day 3 – Thursday
John chapter 17 verses 1-26
Verses 1–2. These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee: as thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.
Here the doctrines of a general and a particular redemption sweetly blend, “As thou hast given him power over all flesh,” they are all under Christ’s mediatorial government by virtue of His matchless sacrifice. But the object in view is specially the gift of everlasting life to the chosen people, “that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.”
Verse 3. And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
No man has life eternal, then, who is in ignorance of God and of His Son, Jesus Christ. But once to know God and to know Christ, is sure evidence that we possess a life that can never die, “This is life eternal.”
Verses 4–6. I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with the glory which I had with thee before the world was. I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.
Is not that sweetly put on the part of our divine Lord? These chosen men had been poor creatures at the very best, very forgetful and very erring, yet their Lord brings no charges against them but He says to His Father, “They have kept your word.”
Verse 7. Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee.
“They have learned to link the Father and the Son. They know that though I am the channel of all blessing, yet Thou, O My Father, are the fountain from which it flows.”
“Jesus, we bless Thy Father’s name!
Thy God and ours are both the same;
What heavenly blessings from His throne
Flow down to sinners through His Son!”
Verse 8. For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.
He is looking at them in contrast with the world which utterly rejected Him. In contrast with that world, the disciples had received and known Christ. Oh, what a blessed distinction does the grace of God make between men! We were all blind by nature, and now that we see, it is because the sacred finger of Christ has touched our eyes and opened them. Let Him have all the glory for it, yet let us note how well He speaks of His people. “For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.”
Verses 9–10. I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.
Oh, the blessed union of interests between Christ and the Father! How surely do we belong to the Father if we in very deed belong to Christ, and what a holy unity is thus established!
Verse 11. And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.
Here is a prayer, then, for the preservation and the unity of the people of God, two very necessary petitions. Would God that they might be fulfilled in us, that we might be kept, and kept even to the end and then kept in living union with all the people of God, and with the Father and with the Son!
Verses 12–13. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled. And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.
In this wondrous prayer, note the special design of the words of Christ, not only that we might have joy, but that we might have Christ’s joy, and not merely have a little of it, but might have it fulfilled in ourselves.
Verses 14–16. I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
Jesus puts twice over this most special and important fact, which we must never forget, “They are not of the world.” Let us never live as if we were of the world, but where such a vivid distinction has been made, God grant that there may be an equal distinction in our lives! Now comes the prayer for sanctification.
Verses 17–18. Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.
Christ was the great Missionary, the Messiah, the Sent One. We are the minor missionaries, sent out into the world to accomplish the Father’s will and purpose.
Verses 19–20. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;
That shows that Christ’s prayer embraces us also, who have been brought to believe on Him through the word which the apostles declared. Christ, with prescient eye, looked on every one of us who believe on Him, and prayed for each one of us as much as He did for John, and Peter, and James.
Verses 21–22. That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one:
Unity is the glory of the church of Christ. It shall be the very crown of the church of the living God and when she puts it on, then will the wondering world acknowledge and accept her Lord.
Verse 23. I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.
Wonderful words. How shall we dive into their depths? To think that the Father should have loved us even as He loved His only-begotten Son. Oh, the heights and depths of this wondrous love!
Verses 24–25. Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me.
Do you notice the division that there is here. There are two parties, there is the world and there is the church. What is it that divides them? Read these two clauses, “The world hath not known thee.” “These have known that thou hast sent me.” What stands between? “But I have known thee.” It is Christ Himself coming in between the two parties, like the cloudy-fiery pillar, black with darkness to the Egyptians, but bright with light to the Israelites. Oh, to have Christ between you and the world! It is the best form of separation, “I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me.”
Verse 26. And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it.
I read it to you as it stands. Our good translators were always afraid of using a word too often, for fear of falling into tautology. So, for what they considered the beauty of the language, they used the word, “declared,” instead of, “I made known.” But why should they have done so? Who were they that they should have wanted to improve on Christ’s words? It should be the same word right on, “The world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me. And I have made known unto them thy name, and will make it known.”
Verse 26. That the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.
Oh, that this love may be in us, for Christ’s sake! Amen.
Day 4 – Friday
John chapter 17 verse 1
Verse 1. “These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee.”
This was a prayer after a sermon. These words spake Jesus, and then He lifted up his eyes to heaven in supplication. No discourse should be unattended by prayer, for how can we expect a blessing on what we have heard or spoken unless we ask it of the Lord? The sower should water with many a supplication the seed that he has sown, and the hearer should diligently seek the favor of Him who gives bread to the eater as well as seed to the sower.
Notice the commencement of His prayer. He began by saying, “Father.” It shows His love to God, His confidence in God, His complete resignation to the divine will, and His sweet acquiescence in it. He is about to be broken in pieces with the iron rod of His Father’s vengeance, but He calls Him, “Father” still.
He is about to drink that cup of wormwood and gall, which would have been hell to us if He had not drained it dry, but He says, “Father” still. And herein He sets us an example—in all times of tribulation let us fall back upon our sonship, our adoption, and the fatherhood of our great God. To our Father let us go, for to whom else should a child so naturally fly?
Verse 1. “Father, the hour is come.”
The first sentence of His prayer reveals His foresight—“Father, the hour is come”—the hour ordained in the eternal purpose—the hour towards which all hours had pointed. The central hour—the hour up to which men dated, and from which they shall date again if they read time right. The hinge, pivot, and turning point of all human history. The dark, yet delivering hour. The hour of vengeance and of acceptance.
His expression is, however, very choice. “The hour is come.” His faith thinks it but an hour—the midnight of Gethsemane, the morning of the scourging, the day of the crucifixion—all are but an hour, a short space. Now is He in trouble, for His time of travail is come. But He counts it as an hour for joy of that which shall be born into the world by His grievous pangs. Thus His love and patience make Him despise the time of shame and reckon it but a brief interval.
The foresight of which we have spoken makes Him look beyond the hour. You and I look into the hour of darkness, as a frequent rule, and see no further, for our eyes are dim through unbelief. But He goes on beyond the hour, and His prayer is, “Glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee.” He fixes his eye upon the glory that was yet to be revealed, and for joy of that He counts even His death to be but an hour.
In all this, brethren, let us imitate our Lord and let us keep our eye, not on the present, but on the afterwards—not on this light affliction, which is but for a moment, but on the far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory which will come of it all. The best preparation for the worst hour is prayer. The best remedy for a depressed spirit is nearness to God.
Verse 1. Glorify thy Son.
The Son of God was glorified while He was dying, and it was one part of His glory that He should be able to bear the enormous load of human guilt. As a race we lay crushed beneath it. A thousand Samsons could not relieve us. Angels and archangels, cherubim and seraphim must have failed to lift the stupendous mass. But this one man alone, unhelped, in weakness of body, and in death pangs—bore away the enormous load of human guilt. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him—the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
What a load it was! And that He could bear it was indeed a display of His glory. The lost in hell cannot bear the wrath of God. An eternity of suffering will not have discharged the dreadful penalty, and yet He bore that burden in an hour.
He was glorified also in the manner in which He bore it, in that He sustained it without shrinking or starting back. There were no angry speeches when He was brow-beaten, and buffeted, and blindfolded, and spat upon. He displayed nothing but gentleness, even when His enemies had pierced His hands and His feet—nothing but triumphant pity and almighty love even when they mocked His agonies.
When you think of His physical agonies, of His mental torture, of His spiritual darkness—when you consider that all the powers of earth and hell were let loose upon Him, and when, worst of all, you recollect that the Father’s face was hidden from Him till He cried, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” and yet consider that our Champion, having begun the redeeming work, went through with it, and never drew back His hand from the covenant which He had made, nor flinched under the strokes He bore—I say He was glorious in His passion, and His prayer was heard.
God glorified His Son in His death, because in dying He saved His people. His great object was the redemption of His chosen—“Christ loved his church and gave himself for it.” When He died, He did not render the redemption of His people possible, but He ransomed them completely. By His agonies and death He did not merely give a bare hope of the pardon of sin, but He hurled the sin of all His elect into the depths of the sea in that selfsame moment.
Verse 1. That thy Son also may glorify thee.
In our blessed Lord there was no selfishness. He said, “I seek not mine own glory,” and even in this prayer that word of His is true, for He only seeks glory that He may glorify the Father.
In the death of Christ, above all things, God is glorified, for there all the attributes of God are seen. There was the power which sustained Christ beneath His more than Herculean task. The love which surrendered the darling of its bosom that He might die instead of traitors. The justice which would not, could not forgive sin without satisfaction. The truth which had threatened to punish, and did punish—which had promised to give a Savior, and did give Him. The faithfulness to the covenant, which kept that covenant at such a dread expense. The wisdom which planned the marvelous way of salvation by a substitute.
Nay, let me put it all together—the wholeness, the holiness of God. Yea, all His attributes are seen, each one equally magnified in the death of Jesus Christ. He is glorious, and the triune God is glorified in Him.
Christ’s motive should be ours. When you ask a blessing from God, ask it that you may glorify God by it. Do you pine to have your health back again? Be sure that you want to spend it for Him. Do you desire temporal advancement? Desire it that you may promote His glory. Do you even long for growth in grace? Ask it only that you may glorify Him.
If there be aught that you dare wish and pray for, put it so—“Father, bless Your child, that Your child may, in return, bless You and serve You.” God help you to do everything for His glory—to speak to His glory, to live to His glory, to die to His glory, and then you shall rise again, and live forever to His glory.
Day 5 – Saturday
John chapter 17 verses 6 – 10
Taken from a sermon preached 1st September 1889 at the Metropolitan Tabernacle
Verse 6–8. I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word. Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.
Our Lord Jesus pleads for His own people. When He puts on His priestly breastplate, it is for the tribes whose names are there. When He presents the atoning sacrifice, it is for Israel whom God has chosen.
The reason why Christ prays for His people is this: He puts it, “For they are thine,” as if they were all the dearer to Him because they were the Father’s. We might have half thought that Jesus would have said, “They are Mine, and therefore I pray for them.” It would have been true, but there would not have been the beauty of truth about it which we have here. He loves us all the better and He prays for us all the more fervently because we are the Father’s. Such is His love to His Father that our being the Father’s sheds upon us an extra halo of beauty.
Our Lord had undertaken suretyship engagements on account of His people. He undertook to preserve the Father’s gift: “Those that thou gavest me, I have kept, and none of them is lost.” He looked upon the sheep of His pasture as belonging to His Father, and the Father had put them into His charge.
Understand this twofold reason, then, for Christ’s pastoral prayer for His people. He first prays for them because they belong to the Father, and therefore have a peculiar value in His eyes; and next, because they belong to the Father, He is under suretyship engagements to deliver them all to the Father in that last great day when the sheep shall pass under the rod of Him that counts them.
Verse 9–10. I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.
There are certain persons so precious to Christ that they are marked all over with special tokens that they belong to Him, as I have known a man write his name in a book which he has greatly valued, and then he has turned over some pages, and he has written his name again.
So notice how the Lord seems to have the seal in His hand and He stamps it all over His peculiar possession: “They are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine.” It is all possessive pronouns, to show that God looks upon His people as His portion, His possession, His property.
These notes of possession occur in the private communion between the Father and the Son. It is in our Lord’s prayer, when He is in the inner sanctuary speaking with the Father, that we have these words, “All mine are thine, and thine are mine.”
What people talk about when they are alone lays bare their heart. Here is the Son speaking to the Father, not about thrones and royalties, nor cherubim and seraphim, but about poor men and women who believed on Him. They are talking about these people, and the Son is taking His own solace with the Father in their secret privacy by talking about these precious jewels, these dear ones that are their peculiar treasure.
You have not any notion how much God loves you. Dear brother, dear sister, you have never yet had half an idea, or the tithe of an idea, of how precious you are to Christ. You think, because you are so imperfect, and you fall so much below your own ideal, that therefore He does not love you much. Have you ever measured the depth of Christ’s agony in Gethsemane and of His death on Calvary? If you have tried to do so, you will be quite sure that, apart from anything in you or about you, He loves you with a love that passes knowledge. Believe it.
All that Jesus says is about all His people, for He says, “All mine are thine, and thine are mine.” These high, secret talks are not about some few saints who have reached a “higher life,” but about all of us who belong to Him. Jesus bears all of us on His heart and He speaks of us all to the Father.
Jesus loves us because we belong to the Father. “My Father has chosen them, My Father loves them. Therefore,” says Jesus, “I love them and I lay down My life for them, and I will take My life again for them, and live throughout eternity for them. They are dear to Me because they are dear to My Father.”
Now turn that thought round the other way: the Father loves us because we belong to Christ. He has given us over to Christ, and He takes delight in us. “They are My Son’s sheep,” He says, “He bought them with His blood.” Better still, “That is My Son’s spouse. That is My Son’s bride. I love her for His sake.”
Jesus loves us because we belong to the Father and the Father loves us because we belong to Jesus.
“All mine are thine.” All who are the Son’s are the Father’s. Do we belong to Jesus? Then we belong to the Father. Are you trusting in Christ? Then you are one of God’s elect. That high and deep mystery of predestination need trouble no man’s heart if he is a believer in Christ. If you believe in Christ, Christ has redeemed you and the Father chose you from before the foundation of the world. Rest you happy in that firm belief, “All mine are thine.”
But now look at the other part of it, “and thine are mine.” All who are the Father’s are the Son’s. If you belong to the Father, you belong to the Son. If you are elect, and so the Father’s, you are redeemed, and so the Son’s. If you are adopted, and so the Father’s, you are justified in Christ, and so you are the Son’s.
What a wonderful mixture all this is! The Father and the Son are one and we are one with the Father and with the Son. A mystic union is established between us and the Father by reason of our union with the Son and the Son’s union with the Father.
Verse 10. And I am glorified in them.
How can this be? Christ is glorified in His people in many ways. He is glorified by saving such sinners—taking these people, so sinful, so lost, so unworthy. When the Lord lays hold upon the far-off one, the abandoned, the fallen, and says, “These shall be Mine. I will wash these in My blood,” then He is glorified in them.
And Christ is glorified by the perseverance which He shows in their salvation. You would have broken loose long ago if your great Shepherd had not penned you up within the fold. Many of you would have started aside and have lost yourselves if it had not been for constraints of sovereign grace which have kept you to this day and will not let you go. Christ is glorified in you.
We actively glorify Christ when we display Christian graces. You who are loving, forgiving, tender-hearted, gentle, meek, self-sacrificing, you glorify Him. You who are upright and who will not be moved from your integrity, you who are bold and brave for Christ, you who can bear and suffer for His name’s sake—all your graces come from Him. As all the flowers are bred and begotten of the sun, so all that is in you that is good comes from Christ, the Sun of Righteousness.
When God’s people make Him the object of all their trust, they glorify Him. When they say, “Though I am the chief of sinners, yet, I trust Him. Though my mind is dark and though my temptations abound, I believe that He can save to the uttermost, I trust Him,” Christ is glorified.
Verse 11. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.
Is it not a most wonderful thing that the Lord Jesus should bear His people upon His heart before the Father? Christ will not lose a sheep of His flock. They are His, and they are the Father’s.
Come, empty pitcher, come and be filled. And when you are filled, pour all out at the dear feet of Him who filled you. Come, trembler, come and let Him touch you with His strengthening hand, and then go out and work, and use the strength which He has given you.
He glorifies Christ most who takes most from Him and who then gives most back to Him.
Day 6 – Sunday
John chapter 17 verses 11-12
Verse 11–12. And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name.
What a wonderful intercommunion and fellowship exists between the Father and the Son in the matter of redemption! It is the Father who gave the Son; it is the Son who gave Himself. It is the Father who gave us to the Son; it is the Son who has bought us with a price, and has kept us by His hand. Here, the Father who gave receives back from the Son, the Son praying to Him in these terms, “Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me.”
Observe that our text is all about keeping. Three or four times over we have some tense or other of the word “keep.” “Holy Father, keep those whom thou hast given me.” “While I was with them in the world, I kept them.”
Greatly we do need keeping. You have been redeemed, but you must still be kept. You have been regenerated, but you must be kept. You are quickened with the divine life, you have aspirations after the holiest things, your love to Christ is intense, but you must be kept. You have had a deep experience, and you know the temptations of the enemy, but still you must be kept. The sunlight of heaven rests upon your honored brow, you are near the gates of glory, but you must be kept.
The same hand that bought you must keep you, and the same Father, who has begotten you again unto a lively hope, must keep you to His eternal kingdom and glory. All glory be unto Him who is able to keep us from falling!
You notice what the Savior did for the twelve who were round about Him—“While I was with them in the world, I kept them.” This care was continuous. He was a guard to His people. While He went about doing good, and reclaiming the wandering, He never diverted His care from His people. Loving them as His own, He loved them to the end.
Surely, brethren, this teaches us that this care is ever needed. Sheep never outgrow the necessity for their being kept by the shepherd. If the eleven always required keeping, I am sure that you and I do. We are full of flaws and failures, are we not? We shall crumble to the dust if the Lord does not keep us. Is there one man among us that can live unless the eternal life shall continue to flow into him? I am sure there is not.
I bless His name that the eleven enjoyed a ministry so tenderly personal, “While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name.” He lays stress upon His personal care—“I kept them.” The Good Shepherd kept the sheep, not by proxy, but by His own hands. There is no nourishment for the child like that which comes from its own mother’s breast, and a child of God only thrives as he lives upon Christ Himself.
Our Lord’s care was most successful. Of the eleven not one was lost. They were very fickle at first, and extremely ignorant. And at the same time, they were strongly tempted. Influences which made some go back, and walk no more with Jesus, would naturally have had the same power over them if Jesus had not kept them, yet of those whom the Father gave Him not one of them was lost.
Verse 12. Those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.”
Our Saviour never meant us to understand that Judas was one of those whom the Father gave Him. Judas was numbered among the twelve apostles, and outwardly shared their ministry, but he was not one of those given to Christ to be eternally saved and kept. Very early our Lord had said, “I have chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil.”
Yet Judas shows us how far a man may go in the outward appearance of discipleship and still lack the essential matter. He cast out devils and in Christ’s name did many wonderful works. To human eyes it would have been impossible to distinguish him from the other apostles. There were fine qualities within him, but they were all leavened by that supreme covetousness which mastered him and made him the son of perdition.
As there is inexpressible sweetness in the doctrine of the final perseverance of the saints, so there is an unutterable horror in other doctrines which guard it. Final perseverance is a rose of heaven’s own garden, but it is set with thorns, and those thorns are such cases as those of Judas and of others that drew back unto perdition.
See then the great need there is of keeping. Let us pray for Him to keep us to the end.
Verse 11. Holy Father, keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one, as we are.
Beneath this divine petition we all find shelter. Notice how He begins—“Father.” Oh, yes, it is the Father who keeps us! Children of God, who can be a better keeper for you than your Father? To whom can you cry with such certainty of being heard as to your Father in heaven? Whose heart will so soon be moved, whose ears will be so quick to hear, and whose feet will be so swift to save as your Father’s?
And then He puts it, “Holy Father.” Why that? Just because the keeping means, keep us holy; and who can make us holy but the Holy God, and who can keep us holy but He who is Himself holy? Who will have such an intense interest in our growing holiness as One whose name is the Holy Father?
Beloved, I love well this title; it commends itself to my faith, and breeds assurance in my soul. If the blessed hand of Jesus has put me into the bosom of the Holy Father that I may be kept, why, the keeping is sure and certain!
We need keeping from discord. “Holy Father, keep them that they may be one.” We need keeping from error. The world swarms with false doctrines. It is a great mercy to be kept from the silly love of novelties, and to be helped to adhere to the old faith, to cling to the old cross. Happy is he who is determined to know nothing save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. “Holy Father, keep us.”
But it would not be enough for us to be kept united and firm in the truth; we need also to be kept from sin. Saints must be kept, or they will soon be sinners. You and I are so ready to be upset by a sudden squall of temptation that we have need to pray each one for himself, and then for all his brethren, “Holy Father, keep us: keep us from all evil.”
Nor would that be enough, for our hearts may gradually subside into spiritual death. O church of God, beware of accepting the semblance of life. God keep us that we never fall into the condition of spiritual decay!
Our Lord Jesus Christ asks that we may be kept through God’s own name. By the word “name” is sometimes meant the whole character of God, the whole royal power and prerogative of God. There is no keeping one of us, much less the whole ship’s company, except the sacred name of God shall exert all its power to keep off our foe.
The Father gave you to Jesus because He loved Jesus. He wanted Jesus to have that which would give Him most delight, and so He gave you to Him; and now that Jesus cannot be with you by His bodily presence, He gives you over to the great Father, from whose loving hands He first received you, and He says, “Holy Father, keep them.”
Do you think the Father will answer the Son’s request? I am sure that He will. I feel safe in that Almighty hand in which Jesus has placed me.
Day 7 – Monday
John chapter 17 verses 15-26
Verse 15. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.
Christ did not pray that His disciples should be taken out of the world. It is very seldom that we ought to present such a petition. If that had been a proper prayer for us to offer, it would have been authorized by the Master.
There are times when, in great pain of body, or in deep depression of spirit, the believer, like Elijah under the juniper tree, requests of himself that he may die. If you ever do pray such a prayer, utter it very softly, for the Master does not authorize it, and that is a matter that must be left to the Lord of life and death.
Jesus says here, “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.” Sin is the real evil of the world—the danger of our being entangled in worldly customs, or dropping into the evil ways of an ungodly generation. Christ does pray that we may be kept from the evil that is in the world, and we also may and must pray that the Lord will keep us from the evil by which we are surrounded, and especially from the evil one who seeks our destruction.
Verse 16. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
“They are of another race: they are swayed by other motives, they have another life, they have another destiny, ‘They are not of the world.’” Is that true of you dear hearer? We are reading out of God’s Book, remember. This is the description of Christ’s people; does it describe you? “They are not of the world,” they are not worldly, they are other-worldly, their thoughts and hearts are set upon the world to come.
Verse 17. Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.
What! Do they need to be sanctified? They are not of the world, and are kept from the evil in the world, do they need to be sanctified? Yes, we shall always need sanctifying until we reach our heavenly home, where sin cannot enter. Every day we need the sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit to lead us unto holiness.
“Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” It is only the truth of God that can beget holiness; false doctrine is never the medium of sanctification. You can tell which are false doctrines, and which are the true, by our Lord’s own test, “By their fruits ye shall know them.” The same men who reject the old-fashioned doctrines also rebel against the old-fashioned style of living; loose living generally goes with loose doctrine.
There never was an age in which the doctrines of grace were despised but, sooner or later, licentiousness prevailed. On the other hand, when we had Puritan teaching, we had also pure and holy living. This prayer is still needed for all Christ’s disciples, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.”
Verse 18. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.
This is the original Missionary Society, and the model for all others: Christ sent, missioned, of the Father, and every saint missioned of Christ. Are you carrying out your mission, O ye people of God? How dare you call yourselves by that name if you have no mission to anybody. If you are living here for yourself alone, how can you belong to Christ, who never lived a moment for Himself, but always lived wholly for others?
Verse 19. And for their sakes I sanctify myself,—
“I set myself apart, as one who is consecrated, dedicated, devoted to a grand design.”
Verse 19. That they also might be sanctified through the truth.
This is our Lord’s prayer for His disciples. In the ninth verse we read, “I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.”
Now our Lord Jesus prays for those who are to be His people. I wonder whether there are any of them reading this today.
Verse 20. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word;
There is a great company of people who are not at present believers, but who shall yet believe on Christ through the testimony of those who are already believers on Him. O God, call out many such through our word!
Verse 21. That they all may be one;
This is Christ’s prayer for all those who shall believe on Him, that they may be converted, and brought into the one church together with those who are already there, “that they all may be one.”
Verse 21. As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
Christ would have all His people joined in communion with Himself and with His Father, and when that is the case, then will men know that Christ came into the world for a definite purpose, “that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.”
Verses 22–23. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one;
Christ is the incarnation of God, and the church should be the incarnation of Christ. Oh, when shall this great prayer be answered?
Verses 23–26. And that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me. Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me. And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.
Day 8 – Tuesday
John chapter 17, verse 15
(Taken from a sermon preached 5th February 1888 at the Metropolitan Tabernacle)
Verse 15. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.
Notice in the prayer of our divine Lord what honour He always puts upon God the Father. He ascribes to God everything—the taking the disciples out of the world, or the keeping them from the evil in the world.
Our lives are entirely in the keeping of our loving Father. Jesus speaks of God as taking the beloved ones out of the world, and it is even so. This fact should make us cease to be anxious about when or how we shall die, and it should, at the same time, reconcile us to the time and the manner of the home-going of any whom we love most dearly. They were not snatched away by the robber Death; they were taken out of the world by our dear Father’s gracious hand.
See also how our Lord Jesus honours the Father by ascribing to Him the keeping of the saints from evil, for He says, “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from evil.” Beloved, our escape from evil, at the first, was by the Father’s grace. Our persevering in righteousness until now has been wrought in us by the Father’s hand, through the divine Spirit.
Observe, again, that God has us absolutely at His disposal. He can take us out of the world, or He can keep us in the world and preserve us from evil. We are glad to be at the disposal of our God; as His people, we would have no voice or choice in fixing our own position, but with the psalmist we would say, “He shall choose our inheritance for us.”
Whether we stay, or whether we go, depends entirely upon the Lord’s will.
Verse 15. “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world.”
At first sight, that seems almost unkind on our Saviour’s part. What could happen better than for those whom the world hated to be taken out of the world? Jesus Himself was going out of the world; what could He do that should have greater love in it than to pray that they might go with Him?
Yet the Saviour says, “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world.” I am sure, therefore, that it is a better thing for us to stop here till our appointed time than it is for us to be taken out of the world. It may not be better in all respects, but there are some points in which it is an advantage for believers to remain here. Our Saviour loves us so much that He would be certain to ask the very best thing for us.
Verse 18. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.
Does not the Lord wish the righteous to stay in the world a while that they may be the means of the salvation of others? How came Jesus here Himself? He came to seek and to save that which was lost, and when He went away, He did not take His disciples out of the world because their ministry was to be blessed to many of their fellow creatures. They, who might be safely housed in heaven, stay here that they may be the means of saving others.
Beloved Christian brothers and sisters, if the Lord is keeping any of us here with the object of using us in the salvation of others, let us take care that we answer the purpose of our continued existence on the earth. Let us be up and doing; let us be earnestly seeking the souls of our relatives; let us be zealously endeavouring to bring others to Christ.
I charge you, by Him who bought you by His blood, either go to heaven and glorify Christ there, or else, if you remain in the world, glorify Him here. But whether you live, or whether you die, do see to this matter, that you answer the divine purpose, which is that, being saved yourself, you may become the means of saving others.
The Lord also lets His people stay in the world that they may serve Him in the place where they sinned against Him. It seems to me that it is most gracious of the Lord to let us remain here to serve Him where we sinned against Him, and not to take us home as soon as we are converted. I think that we shall congratulate ourselves even in heaven that we had some opportunity of contending for the faith, or of bearing reproach for Christ’s sake, or of seeking to win souls for Him before we entered upon our everlasting rest.
The Lord keeps His people here also that He may exhibit in them the power of divine grace. He keeps us here to let the devil and all men know what His grace can do for His people, and also to let angels and principalities and powers in the heavenly places behold what saints God can make out of guilty sinners.
He takes those who had gone far away in sin and brings them near by the blood of Jesus. He fashions the rough, knotty timber that did not seem as if it could ever be shaped, and uses it in the building of His temple. He makes wonders of grace out of sinful men and women.
We cannot exhibit patience in heaven, so far as we now know anything about heaven; it does not seem possible that there will be any need of patience there. We cannot manifest strength of faith in heaven, for faith will be lost in sight. The Lord, therefore, bids us tarry here a while, that He may show what grace can do in sustaining us in suffering, upholding us under trial, and protecting us against temptation.
Verse 15. But that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.
What did Jesus pray for His disciples? That God would keep them from the evil. This is the right prayer for you to offer for yourself. Do not pray to get out of the battle; ask God that you may never be a coward, but that you may bravely play the man in the day of danger. Do not seek to be screened from affliction, but plead that you may never be driven to sin by your affliction.
You need not even pray that you may not have prosperity, but you may entreat the Lord that prosperity may not make you proud, or worldly. Let your condition be as God wills it, but let your great anxiety be that you may be kept from all sin in every condition.
We need to be kept from the evil of apostasy, the evil of worldliness, from the evil of unholiness, from the evil of getting to be as men of the world are; that is the main point. I do not think that it matters much what the condition of a man is so long as his heart is above his condition.
Pray not that you may be taken out of this or that, be it poverty or be it wealth, be it sickness or be it health, but pray that you may be kept from the evil of it, for there is an evil in every case. The great point is not where you are, not what you are as to circumstances, but that you may be kept by almighty power from the evil which might come out of any circumstances unless you were divinely preserved from the evil.
Do not let us be anxious to get to heaven just yet. Let us seek to fight our way there in valiant fashion. Do not let us be so earnest about the end as about the way, laying hold on Christ and uplifting His dear cross as our banner. We will bend our thoughts to this one point, and not think so much of going to heaven as of avoiding sin.
Lord, keep me out of evil! Then let me live or let me die, hold me up or press me down, let me dance with joy of heart, or let me lie and pine in an agony of pain; it shall be all the same to me, so long as nothing of the evil of surrounding circumstances enters into me. Do with me as You will, O my God!
Day 9 – Wednesday
John chapter 17, verse 16
(Taken from a sermon preached 22nd November 1855 at New Park Street Chapel)
Verse 16. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
Christ’s prayer was for a special people. He declared, “I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine.” Who are these favoured individuals who share a Saviour’s prayers, are recognised by a Saviour’s love, and have their characters and their circumstances mentioned by the lips of the High Priest before the throne on high?
The answer is supplied by these words: “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” The people for whom Christ prays are an unearthly people. They are a people somewhat above the world, distinguished altogether from it.
It is not so much that they are not of the world, as that they are “not of the world, even as Christ was not of the world.” This is an important distinction. This is the distinguishing mark—being different from the world in those respects in which Christ was different; not making ourselves singular in unimportant points, but being different from the world in those respects in which the Son of God and the Son of man, Jesus Christ, our glorious Exemplar, was distinguished from the rest of mankind.
Verse 16. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
Christ was not of the world in nature. What was there about Christ that was worldly? In one point of view His nature was divine, and as divine, it was perfect, pure, unsullied, spotless. In another sense He was human, and His human nature, which was born of the Virgin Mary, was begotten of the Holy Ghost, and therefore was so pure that in it rested nothing that was worldly.
His nature was not a worldly one. It was essentially different from that of everyone else, although He sat down and talked with them. He stood side by side with a Pharisee, but everyone could see He was not of the Pharisee’s world. He sat by a Samaritan woman, and though He conversed with her very freely, who is it that fails to see that He was not of that Samaritan woman’s world—not a sinner like her?
He mingled with the Publicans; nay, He sat down at the Publican’s feast, and ate with Publicans and sinners. But you could see by the holy actions and the peculiar gestures He there carried with Him, that He was not of the Publicans’ world, though He mixed with them.
Well, beloved, in some sense, the Christian is not of the world even in his nature. I do not mean in his corrupt and fallen nature, but in his new nature. There is something in a Christian that is utterly and entirely distinct from that of anybody else.
Many persons think that the difference between a Christian and a worldling consists in this: one goes to chapel twice on a Sabbath-day, another does not go but once, or perhaps not at all. One of them takes the sacrament, the other does not. One pays attention to holy things, the other pays very little attention to them.
But ah, beloved, that does not make a Christian. The distinction between a Christian and a worldling is not merely external, but internal. The difference is one of nature and not of act.
He is a twice-born man. In his veins run the blood of the royal family of the universe. He is a nobleman. He is a heaven-born child. He is begotten again unto a lively hope. He is not of the world by his nature. He is essentially and entirely different from the world.
Verse 18. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.
Christ was not of the world in His office. He had no aim which was in the least worldly. He did not seek His own applause, His own fame, His own honour. His very office was not of the world.
And O believer! What is your office? Have you none at all? Why, yes, man! you are a priest unto the Lord your God. Your office is to offer a sacrifice of prayer and praise each day. The office unto which you are called is to be the salt of the earth. You are a city set on a hill, a light that cannot be hid. That is your office. Your office is not a worldly one.
Verse 16. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
Again, you are not of the world in your character, for that is the chief point in which Christ was not of the world. Look at Jesus’ character, how different from every other man’s—pure, perfect, spotless; even such should be the life of the believer. I plead not for the possibility of sinless conduct in Christians, but I must hold that grace makes men to differ and that God’s people will be very different from other kinds of people.
A servant of God will be a God’s-man everywhere. To him it is nothing what is called “business”; it is what is called God’s law. He feels that he is not of the world; consequently, he goes against its fashions and its maxims.
A singular story is told of a certain Quaker. One day he was bathing in the Thames and a waterman called out to him, “Ha! There goes the Quaker.” “How do you know I’m a Quaker?” “Because you swim against the stream. It is the way the Quakers always do.”
That is the way Christians always ought to do—to swim against the stream. The Lord’s people should not go along with the rest in their worldliness. Their characters should be visibly different.
Verse 14. Because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
There are always certain testing moments when you can tell of what kind of stuff a man is made. One is when he gets into very deep trouble. When some creature comfort has been swept away, when some precious blessing has withered in our sight, like the fair lily snapped at the stalk, then it is that the Christian feels, “I am not of the world.”
You have had at times deep sorrows. Thank God for them! They are testing moments. When the furnace is hot, it is then that the gold is tried best.
But another testing moment is prosperity. There have been some of God’s people who have been more tried by prosperity than by adversity. Of the two trials, the trial of adversity is less severe to the spiritual man than that of prosperity. It is a terrible thing to be prosperous. You have need to pray to God, not only to help you in your troubles, but to help you in your blessings.
Did you ever feel, “These can never satisfy; give me Christ, or else I die”? Did you feel that these comforts were nothing but the leaves of the tree and not the fruit, and that you could not live upon mere leaves? If your spirit went up above your prosperity so that you still lived near to God, then you proved that you were a child of God, for you were not of the world.
Brother, have we not often been too much like the world? Do we not sometimes in our conversation talk too much like the world? Come, brother, let us confess our sins together. Have we not been too worldly? Ah! we have. O God! if we are not right, make us so. Where we are a little right, make us still more right, and where we are wrong, amend us!
And Christian, let me comfort you with this. You are not of the world, for your home is in heaven. Be content to be here a little, for you are not of the world and you shall go up to your own bright inheritance by and by.
This world is like an inn. You are only lodging here a little while. Put up with a little inconvenience, because you are not of the world, even as Christ is not of the world. And by and by, up yonder, you shall be gathered into your Father’s house.
Day 10 – Thursday
John chapter 17, verse 17
(Taken from a sermon preached 7th March 1886 at the MetropolitanTabernacle)
Verse 17. Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.
Our Lord’s desire for the sanctification of His people pervades the whole prayer, but it is gathered up, declared, and intensified in this one sentence, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” How invaluable must the blessing of sanctification be when our Lord, in the highest reach of His intercession, cries, “Sanctify them”!
Verse 17. Sanctify them through thy truth.
What is this inestimable blessing which our Saviour so earnestly requests at the Father’s hand? He first prays, “Holy Father, keep them,” and again, “Keep them from the evil”; but this negative blessing of preservation from evil is not enough. He seeks for them positive holiness, and therefore He cries, “Sanctify them.”
It means, first, dedicate them to Thy service, for such must be the meaning of the word further down, when we read, “For their sakes I sanctify myself.” In the Lord’s case it cannot mean purification from sin, because our Saviour was undefiled, His nature was unblemished by sin, and His actions were unspotted. Our Lord’s sanctification was His consecration to the fulfilment of the divine purpose, His absorption in the will of the Father. “Lo, I come to do thy will, O God.”
In this sense our interceding Lord asks that all His people may by the Father be ordained and consecrated unto holy service. The prayer means, “Father, consecrate them to Thy own Self, let them be temples for Thy indwelling, instruments for Thy use.”
We are not the world’s, else might we be ambitious; we are not Satan’s, else might we be covetous; we are not our own, else might we be selfish. We are bought with a price, and hence we are His by whom the price is paid. We belong to Jesus, and He presents us to His Father, and begs Him to accept us and sanctify us to His own purposes.
We are not now at our own disposal; neither can we hire ourselves out to inferior objects, mercenary aims, or selfish ambitions, for we are engaged by solemn contract to the service of our God. We seek no liberty to sin, nor licence for self; rather do we cry, “Bind the sacrifice with cords, even unto the horns of the altar. Sanctify us, O Lord. Let us know, and let all the world know, that we are thine, because we belong to Christ.”
Verse 16. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
The Lord would have those who are dedicated to Him to be separated from the rest of mankind. The church of Christ is to be a chaste virgin, wholly set apart for the Lord Christ. His own words concerning His people are these, “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.”
This separating work is carried on in what is commonly known as sanctification, whereby the man of God is removed farther and farther from all fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, and is changed from glory unto glory, into an ever-growing likeness of his Lord, who was “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners.”
There are some who think that the church cannot do better than to come down to the world to learn her ways, follow her maxims, and acquire her “culture.” In fact, the notion is that the world is to be conquered by our conforming to it. This is as contrary to Scripture as the light is to darkness. The more distinct the line is between him that fears God and him that fears Him not, the better all around.
Yet it is not all separation that is meant. It is one thing to separate from the world, and another thing to be separate from the church. We are to be faithful to the truth, but we are not to be of a contentious spirit, separating ourselves from those who are living members of the one and indivisible body of Christ.
Cultivate at once the love of the truth and the love of the brethren. The body of Christ will not be perfected by being torn. Truth should be the companion of love.
Verse 17. Sanctify them through thy truth.
At the same time, this word “sanctification” means what is commonly understood by it, namely, the making of the people of God holy. “Sanctify them,” that is, work in them a pure and holy character. “Lord, make thy people holy,” should be our daily prayer.
Sanctification is something more than mere morality and respectability. It is not only deliverance from the common sins of men, but also from the hardness, deadness, and carnality of nature; it is deliverance from that which is of the flesh at its very best, and admittance into that which is spiritual and divine.
This is our prayer: Lord, spiritualize us, elevate us, make us to dwell in communion with God, make us to know Him whom flesh and blood cannot reveal or discern. May the Spirit of the living God have full sovereignty over us and perfect in us the will of the Lord, for this is to be sanctified.
It is not sufficient to be negatively clean; we need to be adorned with all the virtues. Children of God should exhibit the love of God, they should be filled with zeal for His glory, they should live generous, unselfish lives, they should walk with God, and commune with the Most High.
Justification is perfect the moment it is received, but sanctification is a matter of growth. He that is justified is justified once for all by the perfect work of Jesus, but he that is sanctified by Christ Jesus must grow up in all things into Him who is the Head. To make us holy is a life work, and for it we should seek the divine operation every hour.
If we have done well, to God be the glory of it, but we might have done better. If we have loved much, to God’s grace be the praise, but we ought to have loved more. If we have believed, and believed steadfastly, we ought to have believed to a far higher degree in our Almighty Friend. O you sanctified ones, it is for you that Jesus prays that the Father may still sanctify you.
Verse 17. Thy word is truth.
No one can sanctify a soul but Almighty God, the great Father of spirits. He who made us must also make us holy, or we shall never attain that character.
Sanctification is as much the work of God as the making of the heavens and the earth. Who is sufficient for these things? We go not even a step in sanctification in our own strength. Real sanctification is entirely from first to last the work of the Spirit of the blessed God.
Yet the truth alone will not sanctify a man. We may maintain an orthodox creed, and it is highly important that we should do so, but if it does not touch our heart and influence our character, what is the value of our orthodoxy? It is not the doctrine which of itself sanctifies, but the Father sanctifies by means of the doctrine.
God has joined holiness and truth together. Christianity is a life which grows out of truth. Jesus Christ is the way and the truth as well as the life, and He is not properly received except He is accepted in that threefold character.
No holy life will be produced in us by the belief of falsehood. Good works are the fruit of true faith, and true faith is a sincere belief of the truth. The straight line of truth drawn on the heart will produce a direct course of gracious walking in the life.
And what is the truth? God’s Word to us is in Holy Scripture. All the truth that sanctifies men is in God’s Word. This Bible is enough if the Lord does but use it, and quicken it by His Spirit in our hearts. Truth is neither your opinion, nor mine; your message, nor mine. Jesus says, “Thy word is truth.”
We do not know the truth aright unless it makes us holy. We do not hold truth in a true way unless it leads us to a true life. The truth, when fully used, will daily destroy sin, nourish grace, suggest noble desires, and urge to holy acts.
This Bible is our treasure. We prize each leaf of it. Let us bind it in the best fashion, in the best morocco leather of a clear, intelligent faith; then let us put a golden clasp upon it, and gild its edges by a life of love, and truth, and purity, and zeal. Thus we shall commend the volume to those who have never looked within its pages.
Day 11 – Friday
John chapter 17, verse 18
(Taken from a sermon preached 11th May 1890 at the Metropolitan Tabernacle)
Verse 18. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.
As surely as Christ was sent into the world by the Father, so surely are the saints sent into the world by Christ. I mean not the apostles only, but all believers. Our Lord says to them all without exception, “As the Father has sent Me, even so I send you.”
This is no trifle, but a very solemn business. Our Lord pleads not only about our being saved, but about our being sent. There is something here which deserves our deepest thought.
Verse 17. Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.
You cannot serve God unless He preserves you. You will never keep the Lord’s flock unless He first shepherds you. The Lord of the vineyard must keep the keepers, or their vineyards will not be kept.
Neither can you go out into the world as the sent ones of Christ unless you are sanctified. God will use no unholy messenger; you must be consecrated and cleansed, devoted and dedicated to God alone, or else you will not have the first qualification for the divine mission.
The more separated we are, after our Master’s fashion, the more fit shall we be to do His bidding! Our Lord was evidently most careful as to our commission, which He bases upon His own commission, and declares to be as certain and real as His own sending by the Father.
Verse 18. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.
Our Lord’s mission involved complete subjection to the Father’s will. So long as He remained under His commission, He did not speak His own words, nor do His own deeds; but He listened to the Father’s will, and what the Father said to Him He both spoke and did.
That is exactly where you and I have to place ourselves now, deliberately and unreservedly. Our Lord sends us, and we are to be, in very deed, subordinate to His command in all things! We are no longer masters; we have become servants. Our will is lost in the will of our glorious Superior.
From now on we are to consider how we can answer the design of Him who has sent us. Our aim must be to do the utmost possible for our Lord. Bought with His precious blood, the vows of the Lord are upon us, and we renounce our natural love of ease, that we may please Him who has sent us.
Our Lord was not sent to the edge of the world to look over the fence and converse hopefully from a distance. He was sent right into the world! He took on human nature, and became bone of our bone.
In this way Jesus has sent you into families, into offices, into establishments, into places where you labour for daily bread among a company of ungodly men. Do not cry out because you have thus to mingle with them! Your Lord was sent into the world, and so are you sent, wisely sent, to tarry even among unconverted men, that you may do for Christ His great work, and make known His salvation!
In a word, your being sent of Christ involves unreserved dedication to His work. When Christ came into the world, He did nothing but what His Father sent Him to do. He had no secondary objective of any sort. From the reservoir of His being no little stream trickled away in waste; the whole of it went to turn the great mill-wheel of His life.
Now, as the Father sent Jesus, so has Jesus sent you, to be from now on by occupation a Christian. You are to be consecrated wholly and alone to the one objective for which Christ has set you apart. From now on you belong to Christ—body, soul and spirit—from the morning light to the evening shade, and through the night watches.
Verse 18. Even so have I also sent them into the world.
Our Lord came here with one design. He came to save from sin. He did not come even to be a politician, a reformer of governments, a rectifier of social economics. He kept to His one business, and we shall be wise to do the same.
If you can serve Christ and your fellow man in any way, do it; but never get away from your one aim and purpose. We cannot do everything: let us do that which we are sent to do. Oh, that every Christian would feel that whatever else he would like to be, his first business is to be a servant of Christ!
Notice, further, that our Lord was not sent to be ministered unto, but to minister. Beloved friend, you know that it is more blessed to give than to receive; therefore feel it to be your joy to live as one who is sent by Jesus to be the servant of the church, and the winner of souls!
Wherever Christ went, He was an instructor of the ignorant. He preached of the kingdom, and of faith, and of divine grace. We are to teach. As soon as ever you know the A B Cs of the Gospel, go and teach somebody that A B C. Learn first, but when you have learned, then let others learn from you! As your Master, be teaching the Gospel everywhere.
Forget not that He lived, and His living was teaching. His actions were so many heads of His life-sermon. He went about doing good; make your life tally with your teaching, and make your life to be a part of your teaching—no, make it the best part of your discourse.
You are sent to save men. It is true that you have not to redeem them by blood; that the Lord has done most effectually! You have not to suffer as a substitute, for His one sacrifice has sufficed. But you are sent to seek and to save that which was lost by proclaiming salvation by Christ Jesus.
Every man who is saved, himself, should feel that he is called at once to labour for the salvation of others! Your election is not only election to personal salvation, but to personal service. You are chosen that, through your being saved, others may be called into the like happiness.
Verse 18. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.
Our Lord came with alacrity. The work of our Redeemer was no forced work. He was sent, but He willingly came. You that are sent of Christ must always go gladly to your service. God does not delight in a slavish spirit. When our service is our pleasure, then we shall labour wisely, zealously, and acceptably.
Our Lord came with ability, too. What did His ability consist in? Mainly in this: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me.” This is also where your sufficiency must be found. God can speak by your stammering tongue, even as in the case of Moses. You shall do the Lord’s work, and do it well, if you are anointed of the Holy Spirit.
Our Lord came with abiding resolve to go through with His mission to the end. He never thought of going back. He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem. He pressed through shame and through death to accomplish our redemption. In these days we shall not do much unless we have a determination to persevere in the teeth of difficulties.
His prayers also always kept pace with His work. This is where most of us fail. When our Lord had a long day’s work, we find Him taking a long night’s prayer. When you have most to do, you have most need to pray. Prayer can never be in excess. You can salt meat too much, but you cannot salt your service too much with prayer!
We are sent; therefore we dare not run away. If Jesus bids us go forward, we must not retreat. We are sent; therefore we are sure to be helped. Our King never sends a servant on an errand at his own charges. Our own power fails us, but He never allows His power to fail us when engaged in His service. Those who are sent shall be sustained!
Beloved, do your Master’s work! Win souls! Preach Christ! Expound your Bibles! Pray men to be reconciled to God! Plead with men to come to Christ!
Day 12 – Saturday
John chapter 17, verses 22–23
(Taken from a sermon preached 4th May 1879 at the Metropolitan Tabernacle)
Verse 22-23 And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.
Our Lord tells us that a desirable end is to be brought about by a marvellous unity—a unity of men with Christ, a unity of these men in Christ with one another, and the unity of Christ Himself with the eternal Father. “I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one.”
Let us always keep in mind the drift, end, and object of it, namely, that the world may believe that God has sent the Lord Jesus.
Verse 22. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one.
Here our blessed Lord does not speak of what He will give to His disciples, though there is a glory which is laid up for them which the faithful shall receive at the last—but He mentions a glory which He has already given them.
It seems to me that a main part of the glory of our Lord when on earth lay in the moral and spiritual glory of His character. He was indeed glorious in holiness, and this is evidently the glory which He transfers to us.
The essence and cause of the glory which the Father gave the Son was, first of all, that He endowed Him with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Ghost descended upon our Lord in His baptism, and abode upon Him, so that in the power of the indwelling Spirit He lived, and spake, and acted, and in all that He did, the Spirit of God was manifest.
Now this glory our Lord Jesus has given to all His disciples. Upon each true disciple the Spirit of God rests according to his measure. My brethren, I would to God we realised this, that the glory of the Holy Ghost which was given to Christ is also given to us, so that it is ours to think, to feel, to speak, to act under His guiding influence and supernatural power.
What are we of ourselves apart from the Holy Spirit? How can we hope to convince even one man, much less the world, that God has sent His Son, apart from the Holy Spirit being with us? But if He will take possession of every faculty, and rule and reign in us in all the splendour of His holiness, then we shall indeed become a power for the conversion of mankind.
The church, like the moon, reflects the glory of the great Father of lights, and so is glorious with the borrowed splendour which her Lord puts upon her. It is the glory of the saints that they are the mirrors of the divine character, and when they wear the glory which Jesus has given them, they manifest the eternal name unto those whom the Lord has ordained to bless by their means.
Our Lord’s moral glory was great, for He was the pattern and paragon of everything that is lovely and of good repute—and He was wholly sanctified unto God. This is the glory which He gives to us. His prayer is, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” His disciples live unto holiness, and are known as a people zealous of good works.
So it is that those who have truly received Christ become a special, marked, and separated people. They live for God, they live unto God, and their whole being is subjected to the mind of God. This is a high state of grace, but nothing less than this ought to content any Christian man.
Verse 21. That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee.
Wherever this glory is seen, true unity is developed. Is it not the same life which dwells in all saintly bosoms, and the same love which prompts each holy deed? Holiness is everywhere most precious. Unselfishness is in any instance beyond all price. Love to God and love to men are everywhere alike, and reveal a oneness of inward life—in fact, oneness with Him who is the true life of men.
The people who are not one with each other are those who are not one with Christ. But once filled with His Spirit, we are one of necessity. You cannot help it; it is scarcely a matter of duty—it becomes a matter of necessity that you who have the love of Christ within you should love the brotherhood.
Spiritual men may wear different denominational names, and may differ in their conscientious convictions on some matters, but these things do not hinder union. If the glory which the Father gave to Christ is resting upon these, they have discerned the mystical unity which encompasses them all, and they are delighted to acknowledge it by deeds of brotherly love.
Beloved, those in whom Christ lives are not uniform, but one. Uniformity may be found in death, but this unity is life. Our children are not uniform, but they make one family. So it is with all believers—born of the same everlasting Father, they are one in spirit, one in character, one in object, one in aim—yea, one in the fullest sense.
Verse 2. I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one.
First, it is written, “I in them.” Christ lives in His people, and we are so to act, in the power of the Holy Ghost, that onlookers shall say, “Surely Christ lives again in that man, for he acts out the precepts of Jesus.”
Our first consideration should not be, “Now I am here, how can I be comfortable?” but, “I am here, how can I please others for their good? How can I relieve the distressed, help the weary, or cheer the sad?”
It is a grand thing to do good in little ways. It is a glory to be the sweetener of life at home, the self-forgetting friend of all around. The world ere long confesses that Christ is in such a man.
Is the love of Jesus, the generosity of Jesus, the zeal of Jesus, the gentleness of Jesus, the consecration of Jesus to be seen in us? For if so, the glory of Jesus rests on us, and if not, we have need to begin again and do our first works.
Being one with Christ, and Christ being one with the Father, the point is reached for which our Lord prayed. If you and I are one in Christ, and one with Christ, then we are one with God, seeing Christ is one with God—and thus not in some few characteristics are we alike and one in name, but in life, in aim, and in desire we are one.
Verse 23. That the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them, as thou hast loved me.
How will they know it? When they see men who are no longer selfish, hard, ungenerous—men no longer governed by their passions, men no longer earth-bound—when they see loving men, men who desire that which is holy, just, and good, men living to God—then the world will say, “Their Master must have been sent of God.”
Not only will their characters convince, but their unity will convince. Christian people have things to talk about which others do not understand, and they pursue one common object which others disregard. Whether they have little or much, they yield their all to one common cause and object. Whether possessed of little ability or great ability, they are alike consecrated. One spirit breathes in them.
If we would convince the world, it must be by the glory which God has given to His Son resting upon each and all of us, and so compacting us together, fusing us into one mass of living union. By the phalanx of unity in Christ the battle must be won.
Love conquers all. Love is the logic which convinces. “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” Therefore, let love abound. Let it be all the weapons of our war.
O for grace so to live unto God in Christ Jesus that the world shall never be able to answer the argument of our lives. Help us, O Spirit of the Lord.
Day 13 – Sunday
John chapter 17, verse 24
(Taken from a sermon preached 2nd September 1894 at the MetropolitanTabernacle)
Verse 24. Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.
We have here two prayers uttered by the same Person, yet there is the greatest possible contrast between them. Jesus was always essentially the same, “the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.” Still, His mood and state of mind varied from time to time.
He seemed calmly happy when He prayed with His disciples and said, “Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am”; but He was in an agony when, in Gethsemane, having withdrawn from His disciples and fallen on His face, He prayed, saying, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.”
Brother, you may be the same man and quite as good a man when you are groaning before God as when you are singing before Him. There may be more grace even in the submissive “Not as I will,” than in the triumphant “Father, I will.” Do not judge yourselves to have changed in your standing before God because you have undergone an alteration as to your feelings.
These two prayers were equally characteristic of Christ. Who but the eternal Son of God may dare to say, “Father, I will”? There speaks incarnate Deity; that is the sublime utterance of the well-beloved Son. And yet, who could say as He said it, “If it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt”?
The first prayer, “Father, I will,” is the prayer of our great High Priest. It is our great High Priest, in the glory of His majestic office and power, who says to God, “Father, I will.” The second Suppliant is not so much the Priest as the Victim. Our Lord is there seen bound to the altar, about to feel the sacrificial knife, about to be consumed with the sacrificial fire, and the utterance is, “Not as I will, but as thou wilt.”
Verse 24. Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am.
Jesus prayed in the power of His Sonship. Sons may say to a father what strangers may not dare to say, and such a Son as Jesus was—so near to His Father’s heart, one who could say, “The Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him”—well might He have power with God so as to be able to say, “Father, I will.”
Our Lord Jesus also based this prayer upon His finished work. He had said to His Father, “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.” Now He has actually finished it. He has been able, in the fullest sense, to say, “It is finished,” and He has gone up to take His place in glory at His Father’s side.
When the Father looks at Christ, He sees in Him atonement accomplished, satisfaction presented, sin annihilated, the elect redeemed, the covenant ratified, the everlasting purpose settled on eternal foundations. O beloved, since Christ has magnified God’s law and made it honourable, and since He has poured out His soul unto death, He may well possess the power to say, “Father, I will.”
Remember, too, that Jesus still possesses this power, and possesses it for you and for me. You may well go to Christ and accept Him as your Mediator and Intercessor, since all this power to say, “Father, I will,” is laid up in Him on purpose for poor believing sinners who come and take Him to be their Saviour!
You say that you cannot pray. Well, He can; ask Him to plead for you. What a blessing it is to think of Christ, clothed with divine authority and power, using it all for us!
That power of Christ will land every believer in heaven. Notice how Christ turns all His pleading with God that way: “Father, I will, that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory.” As He pleads that those whom the Father gave Him should be brought up to be with Him where He is, you may depend upon it that they will all arrive safely in heaven.
Matthew chapter 26, verse 39. O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.
This utterance, “Not as I will,” proved that the shrinkings of Christ’s nature from that dreadful cup were all overcome. I do not believe that Christ was afraid to die. Many of His servants have laughed at death; I am sure that He was not afraid to die.
What was it, then, that made that cup so awfully terrible? Jesus was to be made sin for us. He was to come under the curse for us. He was to feel the Father’s wrath on account of human guilt, and His whole nature, not only His flesh, but His whole being, shrank from that fearful ordeal.
After dwelling in the love of God from all eternity, He was in a few hours to bear the punishment of man’s sin; yet He must bear it, and therefore He said, “Not as I will, but as thou wilt.”
“Not as I will” is also an evidence of Christ’s complete submission to the will of His Father. There is no resistance, no struggling; He gives Himself up completely. There was on Christ’s part no reserve, no wish even to make any reserve. Jesus willed as God willed, and even prayed that the will of God, from which His human nature at first shrank, might be fulfilled. “Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.”
O brothers and sisters—for you both need this grace—pray God to help you to learn how to copy your Lord in total submission! Have you submitted to the Lord’s will? Are you submitting now?
Whatever you dread or expect, can you give yourself up wholly to God and say, “It is the LORD: let him do what seemeth him good”? Your Lord and Master did so. Oh, that He might teach you this divine art of absolute resignation to the purpose and ordinance of God till you also would be able to say, “Not as I will”!
Matthew chapter 26, verse 42. O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done.
If you learn to pray with Christ, with the holy boldness that almost says, “Father, I will,” you are the man who will know how to say, “Not as I will.” The man who can have his will with God is the very man who does not want his own way with God. He who may have what he likes is the man who wishes to have what God likes.
I think that is the best way to live—not to have any choice at all, but to ask the Lord to choose for you. You can always have your way when your way is God’s way. The sure way to carry out self-will is when self-will is nothing else but God’s will.
And until you can say, “Not as I will,” you never will be able to say, “Father, I will.” I believe that one reason why people cannot prevail in prayer is because they will not yield to God, and they cannot expect God to yield to them.
Jesus will help us in both. He gives Himself over to us to teach us the power of prevailing prayer, but He also gives Himself over to teach us the art of blessed submission in prayer, and it is His will that these two should not be separated. “Father, I will,” is Christ’s word on our behalf, and “Not as I will,” is equally Christ’s word on our behalf.
True sonship will embody both. It is the true child of God, who knows that he is his Father’s child, who says, “Father, I will.” There are certain liberties which God’s children may take with Him, which He counts no liberties at all, but He loves so to be treated by them.
Then mark you, you are not God’s child unless you can also say, “Father, not as I will.” The true child bends before his father’s will. The true child says, “Not as I will,” although, after his measure, he also says, “Father, I will.”
Day 14 – Monday
John chapter 17, verse 26
Verse 26. And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.
You will observe that the last word of our Lord’s prayer is concerning love. This is the last petition which He offers, “That the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.” He reaches no greater height than this, namely, that His people be filled with the Father’s love. How could He rise higher? For this is to be filled with all the fulness of God, since God is love and he that loveth dwelleth in God and God in him.
What importance ought you and I to attach to the grace of love! How highly we should esteem that which Jesus makes the crown jewel of all. Let us not be content until the love of Christ is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us.
Verse 26. And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it.
We cannot love a God whom we do not know. A measure of knowledge is necessary to affection. However lovely God may be, a man blind of soul cannot perceive Him, and therefore is not touched by His loveliness. Only when the eyes are opened to behold the loveliness of God will the heart go out towards God who is so desirable an object for the affections.
We must know in order to believe, we must know in order to hope, and we must especially know in order to love. You cannot reciprocate love which you have never known, even as a man cannot derive strength from food which he has not eaten. Therefore our Lord took care to feed His disciples’ hearts upon the Father’s name. He laboured to make the Father known to them.
Study much, then, the Word of God; be diligent in turning the pages of Scripture, that the flame of love within your hearts may be revived by the fuel of holy knowledge which you place upon it. Pile on the logs of sandal wood, and let the perfumed fires burn before the Lord. Heap on the handfuls of frankincense, and sweet odours of sacred knowledge, that on the altar of your heart there may always be burning the sacred flame of love to God in Christ Jesus.
The knowledge here spoken of is a knowledge which Jesus gave them. It is not knowledge that you and I pick up as a matter of book-learning that will ever bring out our love to the Father. It is knowledge given us by Christ through His Spirit. Jesus Christ alone can reveal the Father.
This knowledge comes to us gradually. “I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it.” As if, though they knew the Father, there was far more to know, and the Lord Jesus was resolved to teach them more. A look at Christ saves, but oh, it is the look into Christ that wins the heart’s love and holds it fast and binds us to Him as with fetters of gold.
Verse 25. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee.
The “name” here meant is especially the name used in the twenty-fifth verse, “O righteous Father.” Observe the singular combination here. Righteous, and yet a Father. “Righteous”—to us poor sinners that is a word of terror when we first hear it. “Father”—oh, how sweet! That is a word of good cheer even to us prodigals, but we are afraid to lay hold upon it, for our sins arise, and conscience protests that God must be righteous and punish sin.
Our joy begins when we see the two united, “Righteous Father”—a Father full of love to His people, and yet righteous as a Judge, as righteous as if He were not a Father.
I never did love God at all, nor could I embrace Him in my affections, till I understood how He could be just and yet the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus; how, in a word, He could be the “righteous Father.” That satisfied my conscience and my heart at the same time.
God has not put away sin without a sacrifice, and has not winked at sin nor waived His justice in order to indulge His mercy. He remains just as He ever was—the same thrice-holy God who will by no means spare the guilty. He has laid the punishment of our sins upon Christ. He has made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.
It is at the cross we understand this riddle. Here we see the righteous Father. Here righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Here we find rest in substitution, safety in the vindication of the law, and bliss in the glory of the divine character.
Verse 26. That the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them.
Notice that the prayer is not that the Father’s love may be set upon them, or moved towards them. God does not love us because we know Him, for He loved us before we knew Him. Christ did not die to make His Father loving, but because His Father is loving; the atoning blood is the outflow of the very heart of God toward us.
Our Lord speaks not of the divine love in itself, but in us. We are inwardly to feel the love which proceeds from the Father, and so to have it in us. We are to have the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given to us. It is to be recognised by us, felt in us, made the subject of inward joy.
And this love is of a very peculiar sort. It is God’s own love in us. The love of the Father towards Jesus springs up like a crystal fountain, and then the sparkling drops fall and overflow, and we are the cups into which this overflowing love of God towards Christ Jesus flows, and flows till we too are full.
Remember that you are to have in your heart a sense of the Father’s love to you, and to remember that it is precisely the same love with which He loves His Son. “That the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them.” Oh, wonder of wonders! The love wherewith He loved His Son—such is His love to all His chosen ones.
The Lord Jesus sank that we might swim; He sank that we might rise, and now we are borne onward for ever by the mighty sweep of infinite love into an everlasting blessedness which tongues and lips can never fully set forth.
And we are to give back a reflection of this love, and to love Jesus as the Father loves Him. This is true, not equally, but like. The Father is the sun and we are the moon, but the moonlight is the same light as the sunlight. The moon has not a ray of light but what came from the sun, and we have not a live coal of love to Christ but what came from the Father.
Let us give Him all of it. Let us always try to be as the full moon, and let us not dwindle down to a mere ring of love, or a crescent of affection. Let us render no half-moon love.
This love of the Father in us is to go beaming forth from us to all around. Your love is to go forth to all the sons of men, seeking their good for God’s glory, that they may be brought in to know the same Saviour in whom we rejoice. If the love of the Father to Christ once enters into a man’s soul, it will change him. It will cast out his selfishness, and it will change him into the image of Christ.
Verse 26. And I in them.
Here is “love” and “I”—love and Christ come together. Oh, blessed guests! Jesus is always at home where love is reigning. When love lives in His people’s hearts, Jesus lives there too.
You, beloved, need not go abroad to find the Lord Jesus Christ. Where does He live? He lives within you. “I in them.” As soon as ever you pray, you are sure He hears you, because He is within you. He is not knocking at your door; He has entered into you, and there He dwells, and will go no more out for ever.
What a blessed sense of power this gives to us. “I in them.” Then it is no more “I” in weakness, but, since Jesus dwells in me, “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”
Go home, and live in the power of this blessed text. Keep up unbroken joy in the Lord. It is not “I in them” for Sundays, and gone on Mondays; “I in them” when they sit in the Tabernacle, and out of them when they reach home. No, “I in them,” and that for ever and for ever.
Go and rejoice. Show this blind world that you have a happiness which as much outshines theirs as the sun outshines the sparks which fly from the chimney and expire.
Audio digitally generated, using the voice of Matthew Wainwright. All rights reserved.