Well, we are going to our main
sermon now, so if you will turn with me please in your Bible
to John chapter 17. John chapter 17. And I'm going to take a few minutes
to read the whole chapter. We're going to be spending a
few weeks on this chapter. I won't necessarily read it every
week. We'll see how that unfolds. But
we will have a few verses as we go through that we'll concentrate
on. But for today, I want to read the whole chapter and just
get a feeling for this prayer, because it was prayed as a prayer
by the Lord. from beginning to end as a single
prayer and that's what we are going to do now. So from beginning
to end John chapter 17 and reading from verse 1. John chapter 17 and verse 1. These words spake Jesus, and
lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is
come. Glorify thy son, that thy son
also may glorify thee. As thou hast given him power
over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many
as thou hast given him. And this is life eternal, that
they might know Thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom
Thou hast sent. I have glorified Thee on the
earth. I have finished the work which
Thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Thou
me with Thine own self, with the glory which I had with Thee
before the world was. I have manifested thy name unto
the men which thou gavest me out of the world. Thine they
were, and thou gavest them me, and they have kept thy word.
Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given
me are of thee. For I have given unto them the
words which thou gavest me, and they have received them, and
have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have
believed that thou didst send me. I pray for them. I pray not
for the world, but for them which thou hast given me, for they
are thine, and all mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am
glorified in them. And now I am no more in the world,
but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father,
keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that
they may be one as we are. While I was with them in the
world, I kept them in thy name. Those that thou gavest me I have
kept, and none of them is lost but the son of perdition that
the scripture might be fulfilled. And now I come to thee, and these
things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled
in themselves. I have given them thy word, and
the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even
as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldst
take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them
from the evil. They are not of the world, even
as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through thy truth.
Thy word is truth. As thou hast sent me into the
world, even so have I also sent them into the world. And for
their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified
through the truth. Neither pray I for these alone,
but for them also which shall believe on them through their
word, that they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and
I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world
may believe that thou hast sent me. and the glory which thou gavest
me, I have given them, that they may be one even as we are one,
I in them and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one,
and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved
them as thou hast loved me. Father, I will that they also
whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may
behold my glory which thou hast given me, for thou lovest me
before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the
world hath not known thee, but I have known thee, and these
have known that thou hast sent me, and I have declared unto
them thy name, and will declare it, that the love wherewith thou
hast loved me may be in them and I in them. Amen. May the Lord bless to us this
reading from his word. Let me, in beginning, repeat
what I said in the opening of our sermon note yesterday. In John chapter 17, we are embarking
upon one of the most remarkable and profound passages in the
whole of Scripture. Every believer reading this chapter
must surely feel that they are standing on holy ground. If for nothing else, for the
majesty of the speaker, Jesus Christ. This is Christ's prayer. For the divine nature of the
matters discussed, these are discussions about the everlasting
covenant of God's grace, the eternal counsels of the Godhead. for the blessedness of those
things asked for from God by our Saviour. Here we have God speaking to
God concerning our eternal well-being and illuminating the terms of
the everlasting covenant and confirming the benefits and the
settlements that accrue to us, the church, the chosen, the elect
of God from Christ's accomplishment of its terms and fulfillment
of its demands. So that as we enter this chapter,
let us do so both with a sense of anticipation and excitement
but also with a degree of humility, because we are entering here
into deep and profound and precious truths. And what I'm able to
say, well, the Lord will provide, I trust. But I hope that in the
coming weeks, we will all learn something precious, both you
and me, from our dwelling upon this wonderful and amazing chapter. Let us note also, by way of introduction,
this fact, which I again mentioned yesterday. There never was, because
this chapter is full of requests that the Lord makes on behalf
of His people. There was never a request made
by the Son of God to His Father that was not abundantly granted
by His Father. There never has been a request
made by the Son of God that was not abundantly granted by His
loving Father. And we shall return to this point
frequently in the coming weeks, I believe, to emphasize and restate
the confidence and assurance that we have in our salvation,
having had it worked by the Lord Jesus Christ. We have confidence,
brothers and sisters, in the promises of God. We have assurance
in the eternal blessedness of heaven with God. founded not
only upon His everlasting love, though it is, founded not only
upon His grace and mercy, attributes and characteristics of His nature,
which it is, but here, emphasized for us in John chapter 17, also
founded upon the satisfaction made by the Lord Jesus Christ
when he died for us on the cross. In this chapter, the Lord Jesus
will be making several direct requests of his Father on behalf
of his people. And we can have this confident
assurance, Christ's requests will be granted because he has
satisfied all the demands required of him in the covenant of grace
by which the love, mercy and grace of God is free to flow
to his elect and all his goodness come to us as is his will. So let us begin today where the
Lord begins his prayer with this little phrase, the hour is come. I gave it the title of this sermon,
but I want us just to think about this little phrase, the hour
is come, because I think it's one of these pregnant phrases,
these phrases that are full of meaning if we just take a moment
or two to dwell beside it as we pass by. For several weeks
now we have been thinking about how close we are to the death
of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord is going out from making
this prayer to the garden of Gethsemane where he will be arrested,
where he will be taken back to Jerusalem, first to the high
priest Sanhedrin, then to Pilate, then to Herod, then back to Pilate,
and then to the cross. This is happening imminently. And we've been thinking in recent
weeks how close we are to the Lord's death, to the day and
the hour of the Lord's death. And the Lord, both at this time
and throughout His ministry, had often fondly spoken and eagerly
anticipated this hour to which now he had come. And let it be
recognized that the Lord Jesus was not ever a reluctant offering
for sin, but a willing sacrifice because he had in view his beloved
bride. He had in view the people and
knew that his dying for them and the suffering that he would
endure would win him the prize of his people, you and me who
trust and believe in him. And now the hour was come. Now the hour had arrived, the
hour to suffer and to die for his people, which was agreed
upon between Christ and the Father from all eternity. This moment
in time when the God-man would become a propitiation for sin
had been fixed upon in eternity before time began, this hour. The hour when iniquity would
be removed and sin would be carried away and the guilt of sin would
no longer stain the beauty of Christ's church. This was the
hour. in which Christ would depart
out of the world and return to his father in heaven. This was
the hour when he would enter into the holy of holies, into
the holy presence of God with his own blood, pleading the merits
of his blood for the cleansing of his people's sin. This was
the hour when he would tear the veil of the temple from the top
to the bottom, that all for whom he died might enter freely into
the holy presence of God. Hawker once again has a poetry
in his words that one can only aspire to. Hawker says, this
was the hour for which the numbering of hours became important, to
which every preceding hour from the fall in the time state of
the church ministered. Let me read it again. Hawker
says, this was the hour for which the numbering of hours became
important. This is the reason why we have
time. This is the reason why we have time. Years and seasons, days and weeks
and months, hours and minutes and seconds. This is the reason.
This was the hour for which the numbering of hours became important,
to which every preceding hour from the fall in the time state
of the church ministered. The hour of Christ's suffering
and death was determined in the counsel of God. And often, beforehand,
Christ said, my hour is not yet come. But now it was come, and
he knew it. I said earlier when we were speaking
to the young people that we do not know when we shall die. But the Son of Man knew, the
Son of Man knew when his hour would come and he looked forward
to it all the years of his life and especially all the years
of his ministry. He calls it this hour, he calls
it the hour, the hour. For the hour of our Redeemer's
death was the most important and significant hour since time
was set in motion. It was an hour of battle and
an hour of victory. An hour for drinking and draining
the cup of God's wrath. It was the hour of being submerged
under the weight of sin and judgment, and of rising again, having overcome
every foe, and leading captivity captive. Never was there such
an hour as this, up to or since that time. In these verses that we have
before us in John chapter 17, I just want to give us a brief
overview here. In these verses of Holy Scripture,
we have what is called the high priestly prayer of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And he is our high priest. That's
a name that he is given in the book of Hebrews. It's a name
that every believer delights in when we understand the priestly
office of the Lord Jesus Christ. Ordinarily, the priests would
go in and offer the blood of bulls and rams and doves, and
they would offer blood. Christ, in his priesthood, was
both the offerer and that which was offered. And this is what
makes his priesthood like none other. And he is our high priest. Hebrews has much to say about
the priestly office of the Lord Jesus Christ. But the Lord prayed
these words as an intercessor. I'll come to that in a moment.
On the eve of his crucifixion, as he was about to enter into
his father's presence in heaven, which he did. And Hebrews tells
us that he did so with his own blood to obtain eternal redemption
for his people. And by praying this prayer publicly
before his disciples in this way, our Saviour left us his
full prayer. Again, I mentioned yesterday,
we don't have full prayers of the Lord in this sense. Here
is a full prayer and it was purposefully left, recorded in its entirety
and left because not only Is it showing us what the Lord said
in that moment and in anticipation of this hour in which He would
enter with His blood for the redemption of our sins? But it
gives us also a pattern of what He currently is continuing to
do now. In this prayer, Jesus Christ,
our God-man mediator, is interceding for us to His Father. and we would be wrong to think
of this as a single one-off act of intercession. It is rather
the way in which the Lord teaches us of his ongoing and continuing
representation in heaven on behalf of his church. Intercession and
representation which even now Right now He carries on for us
at the Father's right hand. The scripture says that when
the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross and was buried and
raised again and ascended to heaven, He sat down at the right
hand of the Father to intercede for us. And again, it's Hebrews
that tells us in this context that he entered into heaven itself
now to appear in the presence of God for us. So this is an
ongoing work of Christ, the intercessory work of Christ. So here is a
prayer prayed by the Lord to teach his disciples and us. what
Christ would do and continue to do as well as provide us with
such meaningful content as to the mechanics, if you like, of
the way of salvation and the eternal purposes of God. Intercession
means speaking to one person on behalf of another. Speaking
to one person on behalf of another and Christ speaks or advocates,
that's another way of putting it, he advocates on our behalf
with his father. And he does so upon the basis
of his sacrifice and his sin-cleansing blood. Paul tells us in Romans,
there is no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus. Why? Because Christ the mediator between
God and man is even now at the right hand of God making intercession
for us upon the basis of the fact that he carried our sins
away in his own blood at his death on the cross. So that having finished his sermon
in the previous chapter, the Lord here moves from ministry
to prayer. And it's interesting to note
that this prayer is what the Lord frequently did. He frequently
prayed to his Father, both for help for himself and for his
people. Let me just have a little aside
here, if I may. The fact that Christ prayed as
he did ought to encourage us to pray as well, to emulate,
to copy, to follow the pattern of our Lord Jesus. Our prayers,
some people wonder, why is prayer necessary? What does prayer do?
I'm no expert on prayer by any means. Prayer doesn't change
the will of God. But it does help us to discover
the will of God. And it teaches us to bow before
the will of God. And it teaches us to accept the
will of God. It softens our hearts towards
God. And ultimately, prayer brings
God's people to rejoice in the will of God, whatever that will
may be. We've already established on
the basis of the preceding Sermon of the Lord that there will be
persecution and tribulation in this world for the Lord's people.
But prayer changes us to know and to follow the will of God
gladly and peacefully. Christ had ministered to his
disciples by explaining to them why he had come from his father
and how that soon, having accomplished all righteousness, he would be
returning to his father. And he had assured them of his
success. And he encouraged them to trust
him as they waited for the coming of the Holy Spirit of promise.
He said, be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. Now the Lord told them that,
but in the coming days, the Lord's disciples would be shocked and
paralyzed by the arrest and crucifixion of their master. Much of the Lord's sermon, previous
words, had been designed to alleviate the disciples' fear. But as we
have seen so often, they continued to struggle to understand the
bigger picture of Christ's spiritual and eternal kingdom. They were
still preoccupied with an earthly kingdom. And what seemed to them
as defeat had yet to be understood as victory. Our Saviour was not bearing the
anger of the Jews when he died, but the rod and anger of God's
wrath against the sin of his elect. Christ was not battling
against Pilate and the Roman soldiers, but against Satan and
the hordes of hell. He was not carrying the weight
of the cross, but the weight of our sin on his shoulders. And our Saviour willingly and
successfully went to the cross to atone for the sins of God's
elect. Our sin was laid on Him. He bore
our grief and He carried our sorrows. He bare our sins in
His own body on the tree. He died in our place. Despite
his personal purity and having no sin of his own, he became
sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. This is called substitutionary
atonement. This is us being made at one,
being reconciled. To God, atonement means at one,
meant to be at one. That's what happened when Christ
died for us. He died as our substitute, he
died in our place, and he reconciled us to God. And I've mentioned already, several
times probably, that this entire chapter has come to be known
as Christ's High Priestly Prayer. And in it, the Lord is interceding
for his apostles and then for his whole church. First, he introduces
these petitions by looking forward to his own glorious entrance
into the Father's presence. He speaks to his father about
receiving and repossessing his own glory. The glory which I
had with thee before the world was. And this points us to the
fact that it's the covenant of grace, it's the plan of salvation,
the plan of redemption, the counsel of God that is here in view. The covenant of grace and peace,
which the Lord Jesus had come to fulfill, and by which achievement
his glorious return to heaven was assured, and the prize and
reward of accomplishment would be granted. Now, on the basis
of his atoning sacrifice, the saviour now prays to his father
for the preservation of the apostles in the world, for the salvation
of his redeemed people yet to be born, that's us, you and me,
and the effectual gathering of his church together in heaven. He prays that all whom thou hast
given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory. Our Saviour's prayer is exactly
and exclusively for God's elect, all those the Father committed
into Christ's care, all for whom his blood was shed and all upon
whom the Holy Spirit bestows the gift of faith and calls and
power and saves by his sovereign grace. And in this chapter, our
high priest makes four requests to his father. He expresses four
desires, which the father cannot and will not deny. The reward, he asks for the reward. for overcoming the world, for
satisfying God's righteous demands, and for fulfilling the terms
of the everlasting covenant of peace. And Christ's intercession
is founded upon the entitlements gained by completing the work
his father had given him to do. His work as the God-man mediator,
his office work of coming and representing and substituting
as the Lamb of God for the people of God's choice. Christ's request
for his church is sought on the basis of his finished work on
the cross and his precious blood that had been shed. And these
requests will not and cannot be denied. Let me just briefly
give you a couple of breakdowns in this chapter. In the first
few verses, the Lord Jesus requests, verses 1 to 5, Christ requests
that the Lord would glorify him. And now, O Father, glorify Thou
me with Thine own self, with the glory which I had with Thee
before the world was. This request is not about ambition
or personal exaltation. It's a prayer for help, for power,
for strength, for dominion as a man for the salvation of the
chosen people. And the basis of the request
is his fulfillment of all the stipulations and conditions of
the covenant of grace by him. Christ was praying as a mediator. He was praying as a man. He is praying that God the Father
would uphold him and sustain him in the work that he was about
to do and accomplish on the cross. In Christ's success, the Father's
own glorious attributes, His love, His mercy, His wisdom,
His power, His glory, would all be revealed for all to see. So in obtaining this glory, the
Lord Jesus Christ would ensure our glory and would manifest
the Father's glory. Another thing that is asked for
in verses six to 19 is that the Father would keep Christ's people. The Saviour makes this request
for his people. And now I am no more in the world,
but these are in the world, and I come to thee, Holy Father.
Keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that
they may be one as we are. His prayer is this, Father, preserve
and keep my believing people. Look after them in their weakness. Uphold them in their temptation. Correct and recover them in their
sin. Christ had previously spoken
about the expediency of him going away, that the Holy Spirit should
come and fulfil his comforting ministry upon the apostles and
amongst the elect. His ministry of comforting the
Lord's people by reproving the world of sin and of righteousness
and of judgment. And here the Lord Jesus Christ
commits this request which cannot be denied to His Father, that
His Father would in turn send the Holy Spirit to fulfil the
keeping and preserving of those for whom Christ died. So the
Lord asked for this glory by which he would fulfil the covenant
of grace. He asked that the people for
whom he died would be kept. He asks also in verses 20 to
23 that the redeemed of the Lord would in time be saved. And in this, the Lord is turning
his attention specifically to us, his people yet to be born,
his people yet to be saved. His prayer is this, Father, save
my sheep, save my purchased possession, save the redeemed ones for whom
my soul has travailed in death. He says, neither pray I, for
these alone, that is the apostles, but for them also which shall
believe on me through their word, that they may be one as thou,
Father, art, that they all may be one as thou, Father, art in
me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world
may believe that thou hast sent me. Here the Saviour is not asking
for something impossible. He's not seeking mercy without
justice, which is impossible for a holy God. But our loving
God has found a way to be both holy and merciful. To show grace without compromising
his own purity. To be just and the justifier
of the guilty. And this is what God, Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit accomplished in the covenant of grace and
peace for which Christ as the God-man was now putting into
effect that redemptive element. God had sent forth Christ to
be a propitiation through faith in his blood to declare his righteousness
for the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance
of God. To declare, I say, at this time
his righteousness that he might be just and the justifier of
him which believeth in Jesus. And then finally, and with this
I'm done, In verses 24 and 26, the Lord asks, Father, give me
the reward of my labour. I will that they also whom thou
hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my
glory which thou hast given me, for thou lovest me before the
foundation of the world. Brothers and sisters, soon our
Saviour's prayer on this aspect will be answered. He will have
all His people with Him in glory. In this time-bound world, some
go to heaven before others, but soon we shall all be gathered
together with Christ in eternity. Together with those who have
gone before, We shall be with them in heavenly glory. And we
shall have his joy fulfilled in us. In that great day, our
sorrow shall be turned to joy and our joy shall be full and
everlasting. We read these verses earlier
today and it just shows the way that these truths blend together
and knit together. Here's what Revelation 21 says.
And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the
tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them,
and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with
them and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears
from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow
nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former
things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne
said, Behold, I make all things new. This is the Alpha and the Omega,
the beginning and the end. He says, I will give unto him
that is a thirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.
He that overcometh shall inherit all things, and I will be his
God, and he shall be my son. These four requests of our Lord,
which take up the bulk of this beautiful 17th chapter of John's
Gospel, have been and will yet be seen to be granted. Christ
has his glory. His people are safe and preserved. His church shall be gathered
through the preaching of the Gospel and the quickening of
the Holy Spirit in time, and Christ shall have his reward. This chapter opens to us an eternal
perspective from the founding of the covenant of grace in the
eternal councils of God to the gathering of the church with
Christ in glory. The head and body together in
perfect union and bliss. If the Lord will, we shall spend
some more time in the coming weeks looking more closely at
some of the themes and consequences of this precious prayer of our
Lord Jesus Christ. But in the meantime, may he bless
these thoughts to us. Amen.