Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2355
“I pray not that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from evil.” John 17:15.
NOTICE, in the prayer of our Divine Lord, what honor 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. Let us never neglect to look for God’s hand in all that happens to the saints and let us not fall into the error of those who deny the Great First Cause and are always dealing with appearances, forgetting the Mighty God who shapes our ends and rules our destinies. If we die, it is not by chance, but because God takes us out of the world. Believers fall asleep in Jesus, neither before nor after the predestined time. No disease or accident can cut short their lives and it would not be possible to prolong their existence beyond the time appointed by the Lord. I like to believe—whatever it may be to some of you, to me it is very sweet to believe that—
“All must come, and last, and end, As shall please my heavenly Friend. Plagues and deaths around me fly, Till He bids, I cannot die! Not a single shaft can hit Till the God of Love thinks fit.” Our lives are entirely in the keeping of our loving Father. You can see that Truth of God in the text. 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 going Home 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! Let us say concerning them what Job said of his loved ones, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
See, also, how our Lord Jesus honors the Father by ascribing to Him the keeping of the saints from evil, for He says, “I pray not that You should take them out of the world, but that You should 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 worked in us by the Father’s hand, through the Divine Spirit and, this day, if we have not apostatized—if we have not denied the faith and proved traitors to Christ—we must ascribe it entirely to the Grace of God! As the Psalmist says, “It is He that has made us, and not we, ourselves,” and it is He who keeps us, and not we, ourselves, for, again quoting the 100th Psalm, “We are His people, and the sheep of His pasture.”
I want you, as far as you possibly can, to be constantly recognizing God’s overruling hand—God, in our death, taking us out of the world, and God, in our life, keeping us from evil, and upholding us in our integrity. When you get thus near to God and realize that God is always present with you, you are in the right frame of mind for prayer. You are also in the state and condition of heart which will give you courage in time of danger—you are, indeed, ready for anything and for everything, whatever may come to you, when God is thus consciously overshadowing your spirit. This much, I think, the prayer of our Lord plainly suggests.
Observe, again, that God has us absolutely at His disposal. Let us always remember that great Truth. The prayer of Jesus recognizes His Father’s Sovereignty, but, we, ourselves, must also recognize that we are entirely in God’s hands. 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 and Christ, in His prayer, recognizes that it is so. He would not pray for a matter which was not in the hands of Him to whom He prayed. He felt that His people were absolutely at His Father’s disposal and, therefore, He presented the prayer which is to be the subject of our meditation tonight.
Now, in this petition, there are two things. There is, first, the negative prayer— “I pray not that You should take them out of the world.” And then, secondly, there is the positive prayer— “But that You should keep them from evil.” I. There is here, first, THE NEGATIVE PRAYER—“I pray not that you should take them out of the world.” At first sight, that seems almost unkind on our Savior’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? I have often felt as Thomas did when he said, “Let us, also, go, that we may die with Him.” Has Jesus gone? Why should we tarry here? Has Jesus entered Glory? Let us be with Him where He is, that we may behold His Glory. There is nothing left to detain us below since He has ascended to His Father’s right hand—but there is everything to attract us upward since He is there who is our heart’s Lord, our All in All! Have you not often felt inclined to pray for yourself that the Lord would take you out of the world? I mean, not merely in times of depression, when, like Elijah, who never died, you are ready to pray, “Now, O Lord, take away my life,” but in times of exultation, when you have been near to the gates of Heaven in ecstatic joy and holy gladness—have you not wished to slip in? “Lord, it is good for us to be here: if You will, let us make here three tabernacles.” Have you not said so in your heart, if not with your voice? No, have you not wished, not to stay on the Mount of Transfiguration, but from that point to take your heavenward flight and land yourself in the New Jerusalem, to go no more out forever? I know that, sometimes, on a Sabbath, when we have been singing, to the tune Prospect—