ENCOURAGEMENT FROM JOHN 17

Recently my Facebook devotions have been focusing on John 17. So, today I would like to encourage and exhort each of you from this powerful portion of our Lord’s High Priestly prayer to God the Father. On the eve of His crucifixion, He interceded on behalf of everyone who would ever be converted by the mighty demonstration of the power of the Gospel, “As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.” Our great Intercessor was praying that ‘all of those, whom He had selected out of the world, (through the birth from above)’, would then be propelled into the world, to carry out the Great Commission. Notice carefully, that the Lord was not only praying for us to enter into the blessed reality of eternal life, He was also praying for us to be sent into this wicked world for the purpose of declaring His glorious Gospel! Friend, if you have been called by a heavenly call of grace, then you have also been commissioned to be a caller to other needy sinners. In other words, if you have been reconciled to God, then the scriptures declare that you are a minister of reconciliation!

God the Father has sent His Son into the world, for the singular purpose of accomplishing His great salvation mission. Now, the Lord Jesus was sending these original eleven into the same hostile world, for the sacred purpose of effectuating their personal responsibilities in this majestic mission. Friends, this same mandate from the Master is assigned to all who have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. Every bonafide disciple has been ‘set apart to be sent’! Earlier on this very eve of the Cross, our Lord had issued an awesome promise, saying, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, … .” (John 15:8)

Brothers and sisters, we must remember that the ‘proclamation of the message of the Cross’ is an offense to all sinners, until they are born from above! For the Cross confronts men and women in their rebellious, guilty and condemned condition before the pristine holiness of God and His moral law. The message of the Cross is offensive to the ‘falsely imagined morality and superficial religiosity’ of the self-deceived church member. The message of the Cross is foolishness to the poisonous pride of every unconverted sinner. And yet, Paul could faithfully testify, “I am determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified”. Oh dear ones, may each of us demonstrate a stronger determination and a resolute devotion ‘to know nothing, but Jesus Christ and Him crucified, risen and ascended as our King of kings and Lord of lords!