Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2144
“As You have sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world.” John 17:18.
HERE is a great fact mentioned, namely, that the Father sent the Son into the world. Our Lord’s disciples believed this. Jesus says Himself, “They have believed that You did send me.” It is one of the first essentials of saving faith to believe in Christ as the Sent One of God. They had proved, in their own experience, that Jesus was sent of God, for they had found Him to be sent to them. Especially they knew this because they had found in Him eternal life. To them it had been eternal life “to know the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom He had sent.”
They had entered into the possession of a new and heavenly life and they rejoiced in it so that to them the fact that God had sent His Son into the world was indisputable. It was a fact upon which they based their salvation! It was their hope, their joy, their theme of thought and subject of conversation. They declared it with the accent of assurance. Our Lord based upon that fact another. He says to His Father, “As You have 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.
Note well that I say, “the saints”—I mean not the Apostles only—but all Believers. I dare not limit the reference to what are called ordained ministers or Apostles, for I believe it includes all the chosen of God. Was the prayer, contained in this 17th chapter of John, for the Apostles only? I think not! Surely our Lord prayed for all whom the Father had given to Him and not for ministers only. Beyond question, our great Intercessor pleaded for all those whom the Father gave to Him and therefore it is of all these that He speaks in the words of our text. He mentions not only the officers, but the rank and file of the chosen host who have been called by Divine Grace to know Him as sent of God. He says to them all without exception, “As the Father has sent Me, even so I send you.”
I do not for a moment dispute the need of a special call to the office of pastor or elder in the Church of God. Nor do I question that there are officers in the Church of God upon whom peculiar responsibility rests—but no class of men may be exalted into a caste of Brahmins who are, alone, sent into the world by the great Head of the Church. We who spend our lives in teaching are your servants for Christ’s sake and we rejoice that you, also, have a high calling of God in Christ Jesus. If we have more knowledge of Scripture or larger gifts of utterance, accept us as your fellow servants whose talents are cheerfully employed for your sakes! But if you have not these same talents, you have others and you are equally given to Christ, to be by Him sent into the world.
This is no trifle, but a very solemn business. To our Lord it was a special matter of prayer. It is here in that prayer which always seemed to me to be the core of the whole Bible. Our Lord pleads not only about our being saved, but about our being sent. There is something here which deserves our deepest thought. There are two petitions in our Lord’s prayer which bear upon this. First comes the petition—“Holy Father, keep them.” 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.
The other prayer immediately precedes the text—“Sanctify them.” You cannot 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. Christ’s prayer is, “Sanctify them through Your Truth.” The more Truth of God you believe, the more sanctified you will be. The operation of the Truth of God upon the mind is to separate a man from the world unto the service of God. Just in proportion as Truth is given up, worldliness and frivolity are sure to prevail.
A Church which grows so enlightened as to neglect the Doctrines of Grace also falls in love with the vain amusements of the world. It has been so in all past ages and it is sadly so today. But a Church which, in a living way, holds fast the Truth once and for all delivered to the saints will also separate itself from the ways of the world—in fact, the world and the worldly Church will shun it—and push it into the place of separation. 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.
He so values this that He prays, “Father, keep them,” and, “Father, sanctify them.” May those two prayers be heard for us and then we shall stand with our loins girt, our shoes on our feet, our lamps trimmed and our lights burning— ready to go forth at the command of the Most High to the very ends of the earth. Our mission by Jesus grows out of His mission by the Father—and we may learn much about it by considering how the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.