I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them me which thou hast given; for they are thine.  And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.  John 17:9-10 

.....He first prays for them because they belong to the Father, and therefore have a peculiar value in his eye; and next, because they belong to the Father, he is under suretyship engagements to deliver them all to the Father in that last great day when the sheep shall pass under the rod of him that telleth them.  Now you see where I am bringing you to-night.  I am not going to preach at this time to the world any more than Christ upon this occasion prayed for the world; but I am going to preach to his own people as he in this intercessory prayer pleaded for them.....
     I.  In calling your attention to my text, I want you to notice, first, THE INTENSITY OF THE SENSE OF PROPERTY WHICH CHRIST HAS IN HIS PEOPLE.
     Here are six words setting forth Christ's property in those who are saved:  ''Them which thou hast given me"—(that is one); ''for they are thine.  And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them."  There are certain persons so precious to Christ that they are marked all over with special tokens that they belong to him; as I have known a man write his name in a book which he has greatly valued, and then he has turned over some pages, and he has written his name again; and as we have sometimes known persons, when they have highly valued a thing, to put their mark, their seal, their stamp, here, there, and almost everywhere upon it.  So, notice in my text how the Lord seems to have the seal in his hand, and he stamps it all over his peculiar possession:  "They are thine.  And all mine are thine, and thine are mine."  It is all possessive pronouns, to show that God looks upon his people as his portion, his possession, his property.  "They shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels."  Every man has something or other which he values above the rest of his estate; and here the Lord, by so often reiterating the words which signify possession, proves that he values his people above everything.  Let us show that we appreciate this privilege of being set apart unto God....
     I call your attention, next, to the fact that, while there are these six expressions here, they are all applied to the Lord's own people.  "Mine" (that is, the saints) "are thine" (that is, the saints); "and thine" (that is, the saints) "are mine" (that is, the saints).  These broad arrows of the King of kings are all stamped upon his people.  While the marks of possession are numerous, they are all set upon one object.  What, doth not
God care for anything else?  I answer, No; as compared with his own people, he cares for nothing else.  "The Lord's portion is his people:  Jacob is the lot of his inheritance."  Has not God other things?  Ah, what is there that he has not?  The silver and the gold are his, and the cattle on a thousand hills.  All things are of God; of him, and by him, and through him, and to him are all things; yet he reckons them not in comparison with his people.  You know how you, dearly beloved, value your children much more than you do anything else.  If there were a fire in your house tonight, and you could only carry one thing out of it, mother, would you hesitate a moment as to what that one thing should be?  You would carry your babe, and let everything else be consumed in the flames; and it is so with God.  He cares for his people beyond everything else.  He is the Lord God of Israel, and in Israel he hath set his name, and there he takes his delight.  There doth he rest in his love, and over her doth he rejoice with singing.
.....I want you to remark yet further, concerning these notes of possession, that they occur in the private intercourse between the Father and the Son.  It is in our Lord's prayer, when he is in the inner sanctuary speaking with the Father, that we have these words, "All mine are thine, and thine are mine."  It is not to you and to me that he is talking now; the Son of God is speaking with the Father when they are in very near communion one with the other.  Now, what does this say to me but that the Father and the Son greatly value believers?  What people talk about when they are alone, not what they say in the market, not what they talk of in the midst of the confused mob, but what they say when they are in private, that lays bare their heart.  Here is the Son speaking to the Father, not about thrones and royalties, nor cherubim and seraphim, but about poor men and women, in those days mostly fishermen and peasant folk, who believed on him.  They are talking about these people, and the Son is taking his own solace with the Father in their secret privacy by talking about these precious jewels, these dear ones that are their peculiar treasure.  You have not any notion how much God loves you.  Dear brother, dear sister, you have never yet had half an idea, or the tithe of an idea, of how precious you are to Christ.  You think, because you are so imperfect, and you fall so much below your own ideal, that, therefore, he does not love you much; you think that he cannot do so.  Have you ever measured the depth of Christ's agony in Gethsemane, and of his death on Calvary?  If you have tried to do so, you will be quite sure that, apart from anything in you or about you, he loves you with a love that passeth knowledge.  Believe it.  "But I do not love him as I should," I think I hear you say.  No, and you never will unless you first know his love to you.  Believe it; believe it to the highest degree, that he so loves you that, when there is no one who can commune with him but the Father, even then their converse is about their mutual estimate of you, how much they love you:  "All mine are thine, and thine are mine.".....
     II.  The next head of my discourse is, THE INTENSITY OF UNITED INTEREST BETWEEN THE FATHER AND THE SON CONCERNING BELIEVERS.
....."I love them, and I lay down my life for them, and I will take my life again for them, and live throughout eternity for them.  They are dear to me because they are dear to my Father."  Have you not often loved another person for the sake of a third one upon whom all your heart was set?  There is an old proverb, and I cannot help quoting it just now; it is, "Love me, love my dog."  It is as if the Lord Jesus so loved the Father that even such poor dogs as we are get loved by him for his Father's sake.  To the eyes of Jesus we are radiant with beauty because God hath loved us.
     Now turn that thought round the other way, the Father loves us because we belong to Christ....."They are my Son's sheep," says he; "he bought them with his blood."  Better still, "That is my Son's spouse," says he, "that is my Son's bride.  I love her for his sake."  There was that first love which came fresh from the Father's heart, but now, through this one channel of love to Jesus, the Father pours a double flood of love on us for his dear Son's sake.  He sees the blood of Jesus sprinkled on us; he remembers the token, and for the sake of his beloved Son he prizes us beyond all price.  Jesus loves us because we belong to the Father, and the Father loves us because we belong to Jesus.
     Now come closer still to the central thought of the text, "All mine are thine."  All who are the Son's are the Father's.  Do we belong to Jesus?  Then we belong to the Father.  Have I been washed in the precious blood?.....Then, by redemption I belong to Christ; but at the same time I may be sure that I belong to the Father:  "All mine are thine."  Are you trusting in Christ?.....
.....We, even we, who are but dust and ashes at our very best, are favoured as angels never were; therefore let all praise be ascribed to sovereign grace!.....
                                                                                                                                     C. H. Spurgeon