Jesus Prayed For You

John 17:1-26

Remember the scene in the movie The Lion King when the Rafiki the baboon told Simba the lion that his father was alive and he would take samba to him? Simba didn’t believe him.  As a cub Simba saw his father fall into the gorge.  He touched his lifeless body. Simba knew that he wasn’t alive. But the baboon’s words were so enticing.  He said “I will show him to you.” 

The baboon took the lion on a chase through the thick foliage, constantly pushing and prodding the lion to move faster. There were many confusing turns and frustrating obstacles.  Those were of no concern to the baboon; he just kept guiding the lion with his voice.  Disoriented and exhausted they came to a clearing near a pool of water.  The baboon hushed the lion and told him to look beyond the tall grass growing alongside the water. 

When Simba looked he saw only a reflection of himself and was disappointed. Rafiki told him to look harder.  He looked again and the image shifted and he clearly saw an image of his father.

It’s been 17 years since my grandpa’s journey ended on this earth, yet I see him frequently.  I see him in my mother; I seem him in by brother and in my sisters; I see him in myself.  Traits and characteristics are passed on.  Stories of success are blown up and become almost family legends. 

We pass things on to our children.  When they have success where we had similar success there is a feeling of pride.  The “chip off the ol’ block” thing. Where our kids have success where we had failures come a real sense of pride.  And when they have failures we want nothing more than to be there to guide them through it and realize their own potential. 

I love it when a movie can capture a truth about life.  Art imitates life, they say.  The thing is life, as we understand it, is actually a mere shadow of reality.  The life we live; the relationships we have, is a glimpse of the heavenly realm.  We cannot see clearly everything that God can see.  We cannot think God’s thoughts.  There is a more perfect way waiting for us to experience it. 

My children do not all share the same genetics but they are
brothers and sisters just the same. Their lives intertwine and affect
each other. When we are in Christ we belong to the family of God that
transforms the world while transforms ourselves.  

We may have the traits and characteristics of family members that went before us but within two or three generations, our names become items on a list.   The stories we lived and the impact we had will be forgotten.  But that is just a shadow of the reality that Jesus invites us to.  Just as my siblings, my uncles, my mother and I all have a common identity in Glenn Brown, each one of us who has faith in Jesus Christ have our identity in Him.

Each one of us who believe that Jesus was raised from the dead and confess with our mouth that he is Lord will find eternal life in him.  When we have faith in Jesus Christ the Holy Spirit resides in us. 

The message to Simba from Rafiki was “He lives in you.”

We believe that God lives in you when you come to believe and confess.  And when the Holy Spirit lives in you, you start to take on new traits.  You start to become stronger in the Lord.  You happiness and security come not from the earthly things but from heavenly things.  Your priorities change.  What was important before may start to fall away. 

God originally made us in his image.  We fell away.  The image was distorted. Now God wants to live in us and restore that image.  You ever hear someone say, “I don’t even know who you are anymore”? When someone has gone so far astray that they have betrayed even their own nature.  That’s where humanity found itself, which is where each of us finds ourselves before we come to know Christ.

God has something better for us.  But we will have to look beyond ourselves as we see our reflection in the mirror this morning and try to see what God sees.  Try to see what God intended for us.

It starts with Jesus.  In verse 10 of our scripture this morning Jesus says, “All mine (those that believe and confess) are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.  Jesus is glorified in those who are his.  With his own words Jesus says that we glorify him.  What does it mean to glorify? It means to give honor and praise.  It means to elevate, and to lift up.  It means to set higher than all other things. Those who belong to Jesus glorify him.  The fact that we belong to him glorifies him, and, in addition, all our words, thoughts and deeds should all be directed at glorifying him. 

We come to this place not primarily for fellowship or for service to others but first to Glorify and worship Jesus Christ our Lord.  We worship him for who he is and what he has done.  We bow down to him because he is a good God.  We praise him for his act of salvation.  We thank him for his great mercy.  It all starts with Jesus Christ and ends with Jesus and the whole time Jesus is our centerpiece.  Jesus is our standard, our focus, our goal.  Jesus is our all in all. 

But Jesus didn’t come for the adulation.  Jesus came to restore thing to the way they were designed to be.  Jesus came to fix some things.  Jesus came to change some things.  Remember the passage from the Gospel of Luke when Jesus was teaching in the synagogue?  The scroll of Isaiah the prophet was handed to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where this was written:

¹⁸ “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released,
    that the blind will see,
that the oppressed will be set free,
¹⁹     and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come.

God the Father sent his son Jesus into the world to redeem it. Jesus didn’t come as a motivational speaker or a self-help guru.  Jesus came to restore the world to the way God designed it to be. 

God Sent Jesus and Jesus sends us to do the same.  In verse 18 of the Gospel lesson Jesus says, “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. An essential part of what it means to glorify Jesus is by doing the work he sent us to do.

What were the things that Jesus listed?

Bring good news to the poor

Proclaim that the captives will be released that the blind will see and that the oppressed will be set free.

Our job is to ever point to Jesus as the lord of our lives while doing the work that he is sending us to do.

So we are doing the work Jesus sent us to do.  We are baptizing, we are teaching, we are bringing the Good news to the poor, we are caring for the widows, the orphans and the prisoners.  We are feeding the hungry, giving the water to the thirsty and clothing the naked.  We are doing all that, to what end?

Jesus said in his prayer to the Father for us in verse 26, “I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

It’s all about God’s love. It’s about receiving God’s love; It’s about demonstrating God’s love.  It’s about God’s love being in us, transforming us, making us better than we have ever been before. It was that radical, unconditional love of God that compelled Jesus to go to the cross and give up his own life for all of us

So, how is it with you today?   Will the same love that compelled Jesus to the cross move us to greater version of what God is doing in our lives?