“Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word,” John 17:20.
I want to follow on from our study last week in which we considered the desire of Christ for His people as set forth in verse 17.
This verse today tells us that many of you here are included in the Saviour’s prayers.
I. HE WAS PRAYING NOT ONLY FOR THOSE WHO LIVED IN THE TIME OF HIS EARTHLY MINISTRY
He is also praying “for them also which shall believe on me through their word.”
1. Here is how you get saved. “Believe”. Paul tells us that “by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God,” Ephesians 2:8.
2. Who we are to believe on. “on me”. That is, the Saviour Himself. Believing on Him brings salvation. “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved,” Acts 4:12.“Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath everlasting life. I am that bread of life.” John 6:47.
3. The Saviour ‘defines’ faith in that last verse we quoted. When you ‘believe’ on Christ, you ‘eat’ the ‘bread of life’! Faith is like ‘eating’. You take up in your hands what is set before you and put it in your mouth and swallow it. It becomes part of you!
By ‘faith’ we take Christ and He enters our very being. “That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith,” Ephesians 3:17. “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” 1 Corinthians 3:16. Is this not a most solemn truth!
II. AFTER THE LORD ASCENDED TO HEAVEN, SINNERS WERE SAVED BY BELIEVING THE TESTIMONY OF HIS APOSTLES
The Saviour is praying for those who would believe on Him “through their word”, that is the word of the apostles. Remember the task given them by the Saviour. “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved,” Mark 16:15-16.
1. The Bereans show us the way. They “were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so,” Acts 17:11.
2. To be saved today we must do the same. It is no longer the servants sent out by Christ BUT it is still their testimony and message. Paul said to Timothy. “And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also,” 2 Timothy 2:2. That is how the gospel witness has been passed down to us via the words of those early preachers.
III. THAT IS WHY THE DEVIL ATTACKS THE BIBLE
1. It is the ‘treasure chest of God’s truth to men’. If the devil can destroy it then we are lost with no way of learning the way to heaven. His attempts to destroy the Bible are seen in the criticism of its reliability and the multiplicity of versions.
All this is a suggesting that we don’t really have an accurate record of God’s Word.
2. I can be sure that the ‘Authorised Version’ is genuinely God’s Word for He has taken it up and used it! He would not have done that if it were not reliable!
The Greek text of the AV was that used by God in the Protestant Reformation and in every true revival since that time! God’s ‘finger prints’ are upon our Bible!