Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1883
“Now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep through Your own name those whom You have given Me that they may be one, as We are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in Your name: those whom You gave Me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the Scripture might be fulfilled.” John 17:11,12.
The Pastor’s Return. Three Specially- Selected Sermons to His Church, Congregation, Readers and Friends, Consisting Of
A RETROSPECT, A PROSPECT [No. 1883] AND AN EXHORTATION [No. 1884.]
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, in the text, the Father who gave, receives back from the Son, the Son praying to Him in these terms, “Holy Father, keep through Your own name those whom You have given Me.” We cannot doubt the personality of the Father and of the Son, nor their essential unity. There are not three Gods, but one God. The Father and the Son, though two in one sense, are one in another. I delight to see the traces of the Trinity in every act of Grace. From the first transactions of Covenant love, even to the ingathering of the whole election of Grace and the introduction of the chosen into Glory, we hear the sound of that voice which of old said, “Let Us make man.” The three Divine Persons work together in absolute union for the production of one grand result. “Glory be unto the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end! Amen.”
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 You have given Me.” “While I was with them in the world, I kept them.” Greatly do we need keeping. You have been redeemed, but you must still be kept. You have been regenerated, but you must be kept. You are pure in heart and hands, 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! Let all those unite in the song who are kept by the power of God! Here lies our topic and we will not wander far from it.
First, we will notice a choice pastorate which was enjoyed by some of God’s people. Secondly, we shall observe that this choice pastorate, was, after all, but a temporary privilege. And, thirdly, we shall see that those who enjoyed it were
brought, by-and-by, to the exact place where we must always be and, therefore, were made the objects of a blessed prayer, “Holy Father, keep through Your own name those whom You have given Me.”
I. First, here is A CHOICE PASTORATE. Our little children sing—
“I think when I read that sweet story of old, When Jesus was here among men, How He called little children like lambs to his fold. I should like to have been with them!” And so forth. Might not you and I well wish that we had been numbered with the 12, or that we had been among the Marys? It was certainly a choice privilege to be one of the Apostles who were the intimates of Christ, the bodyguard of Jesus. These men saw Him in His privacy, understood His dark sayings and read His heart. That privilege cannot be ours. Let us think of them without envy and learn something from them.
You notice what the Savior did for the 12 who were round about Him—“While I was with them in the world, I kept them.” This care was continuous. It looks as if He did this above everything else. He kept them. He was a guard to His people. He made this the chief employment of His life. 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. In this chapter you have “the ruling passion strong in death.” He has kept them in life and now He says, “I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to You.” And the one thought of His heart is, “What is to become of them? While I was with them, I kept them. What will they do, now, that I am taken from them? They will have nobody to resolve their doubts, nobody to abate their discords, no one to answer their adversaries, no one to cheer them into holy confidence. What will the poor babes do when their Nurse has gone? What will the half-instructed scholars do when their Teacher shall be taken up from among them?” He closes His life on earth by commending them to the keeping of His heavenly Father!