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The passage that we have before us today is what's been referred to as the High Priestly Prayer in John 17. And it's the passage wherein Jesus prays to his father, the disciples hear this, and he's just been told, they've just been told to expect persecution, trouble, to be hated, maybe even killed. Chapter 16 ends with, I have said these things to you that in me you may have peace, in the world you will have tribulation, but take heart. I have overcome the world. When Jesus begins to pray and they've heard him pray before but not like this, maybe you've experienced this. There are times when someone prays and it seems as though the veil is pulled back and you are in the presence of God. I always loved when Michael Ramsey prayed. Especially when he prayed during worship. I felt lifted up. It's hard to explain, maybe it's because he is my friend. I'm sure some of it was his Irish lilt. But it seemed like when he prayed, this man knows the God to whom he's praying. And it felt like that for me when Michael prayed. Now multiply that times a hundred or a thousand or even more for the disciples to hear Jesus who had just called him friends pray like this. I'm going to read the entire prayer. This is God's word. When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come. Glorify your son that the son may glorify you. That you have given him all authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life. That they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave to me. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. I've manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world, yours they were and you gave them to me and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. For I have given them the words that you gave me and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you. And they believed that you sent me. I am praying for them. I'm not praying for the world, but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, all yours are mine and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name which you have given me, that they may be one even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name which you have given me. I have guarded them and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction that says scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you and these things I speak in the world that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word and the world has hated them because they are not of the world just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in truth, your word is truth. You sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I concentrate, I consecrate myself that they also may be sanctified in truth. I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word that they all may be one just as you, Father, are in me and I in you. That they may also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them that they may be one even as we are one. I in them and you in me that they may become perfectly one so that the world may know that you sent me and love them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory that you have given me because you have loved me from before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you and these know you that you have sent me. I made known to you their name and I will continue to make it known that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them. Father, I add to your reading please the blessing of your Holy Spirit in Jesus' name. Amen. Now we're not going to be able to look at every verse today. Maybe some this week, some next Sunday. But Jesus begins by saying, Father, the hour has come. If you remember from previous chapters in this Gospel and others that the hour refers to the hour of his death. As far back as chapter 2, when Mary tells Jesus that the wedding couple is out of wine, she comes to him and says they have no more wine. Now why Jesus would do his first miracle at the wedding of a young couple by turning water into wine, he says, my hour has not yet come. He's thinking of the hour of his death and what it's going to take to make us his bride. Here in John 7 verse 30, the Pharisees were seeking to arrest him but no one laid a hand on him because his hour had not yet come. In John 8.20, these words he spoke in the treasury as he taught in the temple. Then he was infuriating the Jewish leaders but no one arrested him because his hour had not yet come. And then in chapter 12, once he's in the upper room with his disciples, he says, now is my soul troubled and what shall I say, Father, save me from this hour for this purpose. I have come to this hour. And then finally in 13.1, now before the Passover feast, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. And then Jesus begins his prayer. Where the hour has come. He knows the time for his death has arrived and he prays that the Father will glorify him so he may be glorifying the Father. This is amazing. Jesus knows that he's going to die a horrible, painful, torturous death of crucifixion. There may have been no worse prospect, especially for a Jew who would remember from the Old Testament that cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. That he's going to go through mocking and beatings. And his father will turn his back on him and he'll say, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And still, still, he knows all this is coming and still he says that through his death he will be glorified and the Father will be glorified and each will be glorifying the other. The word glorify is doxazo in the original and it means to extol or to magnify or to invest with dignity and majesty. How will this glorify the Father and the Son? How will Jesus departing in this horrible manner glorify the Father and the Son? The Father will be glorified by giving his Son for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. And how does the Son glorify the Father? Verse 1 continues, glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you since you have given him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. The word sense is important there. Glorify the Son that he may glorify you since because you have given him authority over all flesh, over all humanity to give eternal life to those that you have given to him. The Son has the authority to give eternal life. This is different from every other world religion. Every other religion there is something that the worshiper must do, must do in order to be deemed worthy of paradise or nirvana or heaven, whatever name it is given. Every other religion in the world, the afterlife is earned. Unfortunately a lot of Christians mistakenly believe this, that we have to earn our way to heaven. I mentioned this before but even in our Sunday school songs, not here hopefully but in a lot of Christendom, even the songs we teach our children, we're teaching them that they have to earn their way. Remember the song we are climbing climbing climbing Jacob's ladder. The problem is in the genesis where Jacob's ladder comes down, it's God the Son who comes down to Jacob who's asleep using a rock for a pillow. There's no climbing by Jacob. There's no climbing by us. There's no attempt to reach God through climbing because we cannot get there. So you can't earn your way but the word says that eternal life is given. The Greek word is didimai and there are three didimai's in this verse. First the Father has given authority to the Son. Then the Son has the authority to give eternal life. And to whom does the Son give eternal life? To all that the Father has given him. Now this sounds familiar it should because when we study John chapter 6 there was a passage that talked about this. Beginning in verse 35, I'm the bread of life whoever comes to me will not hunger, whoever believes in me shall never thirst, but I said to you that you have seen me and yet you do not believe. Then he says all that the Father gives to me will come to me and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me that I lose nothing of all he has given me but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life and I will raise him up on the last day. So Jesus is glorifying the Father by giving eternal life. And once it is given it won't be rescinded. So everybody that teaches that once you are a Christian, once you have been saved by the grace and mercy of God that you can do something somehow to lose it is mistaken because you can't lose something you didn't earn. It's been given to you. It's been given. This is eternal life that you may know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. John repeats this in 1 John chapter 5. This is the testimony that God has given us. Eternal life. That this life is in the Son. Whoever has the Son has the life. Whoever does not have the Son of God does not have the life. So how do you know you're a Christian? Because you have eternal life. If you have the life you know you're a Christian. If you're not a Christian you don't have the life. And how do you know you have eternal life? Because you have the Son. Then how do you know you have the Son? We'll back up again in John chapter 3 where it says, no one is descended into heaven except him who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. He's referring to Jacob's ladder. And as Moses lifted up a serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. Now if you are a reader of the Bible, which everybody should be, that you've probably read the passage in Numbers 21 that Jesus is referring to here. Because when Moses was leading the people out of Egypt to the Promised Land, it says they went out by the Red Sea to go around the land of Edom and the people became impatient. And the people spoke against God and Moses. Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness where there is no food and no water and we loathe this worthless food? So what's happened is God has rescued them. They have crossed the Red Sea by a miracle. God parted the sea. They walked in between the waves. And once they got across, the sea engulfed the Egyptians that were following them. And now they're on their way. And God provides for them food from heaven every day in a double portion on Friday so they don't have to gather on the Sabbath. Every day they're provided with food. They've been rescued from slavery. And what do they say? We loathe this worthless food. Then it says, then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people so that many people of Israel died. Many people of Israel died because of their rebellion against God. The fiery serpents are meant, they were real, but they are also a metaphor for us that sin is our fiery serpent. And the people came to Moses that we have sinned, we have spoken against the Lord, prayed to the Lord that he may take away the serpents from us. So Moses prayed for the people and he's a type of Christ interceding for the people on behalf, praying to God on behalf of the people. And the Lord said to Moses, make a fiery serpent, set it on a pole and everyone who is bitten when he sees it shall live. So Moses made a bronze serpent, set it on a pole and if the serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live. That seemed strange to us. But what was God saying? He was saying, if you just look with faith at this serpent, you will be saved. And that's what Jesus is saying, I must be lifted up as the serpent was lifted up. And if you look to me for salvation, you will be saved. Good old Beakey explains it this way. He says in verse 15 of John chapter 3, the way is open for whoever believes. Yes, even for the chiefest sinner, all can be healed and given an eye to behold him. Whoever means there's room for the heavy laden. No matter who you are, a boy or girl, a teenager, a parent, a senior, no heart is too hard for him to reach. None has sinned too much. In Christ the Gospel always declares, whoever you are, there's still room for you. Believe whoever believes, it means to trust, to lean on, to surrender. Our Lord equates believing and beholding. Now Joel Beakey explains there are different degrees of beholding for a Christian. Nevertheless, all the children of God have three things in common when they behold the bronze serpent. First, all children of God are saved by the same faith. The object of faith is never different. A man in prison sees the same sun through his cell window as a man standing in an open field. One is free and one is bound, but it's the same sun. So some trembling believers may feel like they behold Christ from afar, as it were. While in prison and semi-darkness they battle unbelief, seeing only glimpses through their own prison bars. Yet their expectation lies in the same saving vision of Christ. Second, there is always life in the sight of Christ. Just as those who look to the bronze servant and were saved, verse 15 of John chapter 3 says, those who look to Christ will not perish. By nature we're subjected to perishing. We hasten to eternal destruction, but not so if we get a sight of Christ by faith. Then not only do we not perish, but we get eternal life. Third, faith has looking highlights the fact that it's Jesus who saves us through faith. So why do people refuse to look at Christ? What about you? Have you looked to Jesus? It's so simple. Yet by nature we refuse the sight. Why? First, the bitterness of sin isn't revealed to you, isn't real to you yet. You deny being truly bitten. If there's no feeling or sense of sin, what is there for Christ to you? Only the sick, not the healthy, need a physician as Jesus said in the Gospel. What Israelite would trouble his thoughts about a raised bronze serpent if he had not been bitten. The same is true of us spiritually. A true looking to Christ is motivated by a mourning for sin and a realization that our case is fatal. The second reason that we don't look to Christ is we're busy trying other physicians. We're looking for conditions within ourselves to merit our salvation. We glance the way of salvation by Christ alone, but then we still try to use our own prayers and repentance to serve as a partial remedy for getting that Christ insists on being our total righteousness before God. And the third reason is we can look more to the results of our sin than to the righteousness of Christ. There's no doubt that many in the camp of Moses, once they were bitten, said, what use is it to look at the servant? I'm already bitten. The poison is already coursing through me. I'm going to die. Why should I look? Spiritually we're often busier looking at the sores of our sin than looking outside of ourselves to God's bronze serpent. If we do that, we undervalue the power of God and the power of Christ's blood. Martin Luther once said, one crop of Christ's blood is sufficient to redeem a thousand worlds. Finally the reason that we don't look to Christ is we think the medicine is foolish. That's more prevalent today here in Canada, United States, Western Europe than it's ever been. We think why wouldn't the Lord simply prevent the disease in the first place? But we who've looked to Christ rest assured that the Lord has his own righteous reasons. His ways are not ours. His thoughts are far higher than our thoughts. God will glorify his justice and magnify his grace. We may not understand him, but we must bow before him. If you are truly bitten, if you know that there's nowhere else to go, if you've been truly bitten by your sin, let Christ no longer be foolishness and a stumbling block to you, but let him be the power of God to salvation. Look to him and him alone for your salvation. Now I know all of you have been coming to church, many of you for most of your life, but that doesn't mean that you've always looked to Christ for your salvation. It could be that you've mistakenly thought that you had to somehow earn it through your ministry, through your giving, through your attendance. All of those things are important. I'm not saying that, but those do not earn your salvation. The only thing, the only person that can save you is Jesus Christ and him alone. One more thing I want to talk about briefly. At the beginning of this prayer in verse 5, Jesus says, Now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. Why is that important? It's important because Jesus here is claiming to be God. We may not see it right away, but Isaiah 42.8, God says, Jesus is saying, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. And he's claiming that he existed prior to the creation. He's claiming that he had the glory with the Father, the same glory, before creation. He's saying he's eternal. And that speaks to the extent of his sacrifice. Just think about the love that God the Father had for us by sending his own Son, and the love that Jesus had for us by sacrificing himself the way he did. You see, love always requires sacrifice and is often given without being too concerned about it. It's given willingly. Parents for their children will sacrifice and do so willingly, sometimes to their own harm, to their own harm physically, to their own harm financially, the sacrifice for their children. This is a small thing, but I used to be a good golfer. I have not golfed one time since I moved here. Why? I mean, I was pretty good. Because once my kids got to a certain age, their activities took up my time that I used to use playing golf. That I want to play golf? Yes. But I love my children more. And it was more important that I be at their baseball games, or their hockey games, or their choir concerts, or their recitals than it was to play golf. It's a little thing. Parents sacrifice all the time for their children, but it's not just parents. Children sacrifice for their parents. Some sacrifice for their siblings and their friends. When their brother or sister gets sick, they're with them and they stay with them. In the military, fellow sailors and soldiers and airmen sacrifice for each other. When one gets in trouble, the other will rush in to help, even though they're putting their own life at risk. Love equals sacrifice. When Glenn prayed before the Gospel reading, he prayed that we would have the bravery to talk to other people about Christ. What will motivate us to do that? What will motivate us to come out of our shell, to come out of our comfort, and to talk to somebody about the Gospel of Jesus Christ? What will motivate us? The thing that will motivate us the most is love for another person because of the love that we have been given in Christ. Love equals sacrifice. And there's no greater sacrifice than God for us in giving His Son and Jesus giving Himself. Jesus said, I've glorified you on earth having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. What is the work that He gave Him to do? He gave Him the work of being the replacement for Adam. Adam sinned in the garden and thrust all mankind into bondage of sin. So Jesus came as the second Adam to live a perfect sinless life in our place. And then He died the death that we deserve to die in our place. It's a sacrifice beyond comprehension. One more thing. You're glorifying me in your own presence with the glory I had with you before the world existed. We've been looking at something in men's Bible study about the relation of time to God. We think of something like, we'll say, eternity past. I don't think there's such a thing as eternity past because God created time. God is always present. He's ever present. God exists in the eternal now. That's why a thousand days is, or a thousand years is like a day and a day is like a thousand years. There will be an eternity future because God has become a man. When Jesus said, glorify me in your own presence the glory I had before you, before the world existed, He's speaking so that we will understand the extent of His great sacrifice, His love for us. Let's pray. Father, thank You for the Word. Thank You for the Gospel. We pray as we sing the final hymn, all hail the power of Jesus' name, that the words of the Scripture, the words of the hymn will penetrate our hearts and souls. Jesus' name, Amen.