Turn with me back in your Bibles
to John chapter 17. I have a simple task this morning. I want us to look at what it
is for the Lord Jesus Christ to declare the name of God the
Father, for Him to have declared it and for Him to declare it.
And then I want to look at what it is as a result of that declaration
that love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them and I
in them. We have here the heart of the
Lord Jesus Christ as he goes to the cross of Calvary exposed
before us. Hebrews 12 speaks of the fact
that he had joy, for the joy that was set before him. We lay aside every weight and
the sin which dost so easily beset us, and let us run with
patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus,
the author and finisher of faith, who for the joy that was set
before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set
down at the right hand of the throne of God. Isaiah 53 declares
that he will see the travail of his soul and be satisfied. Our God is a triumphant God,
and the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ is perfectly safe and
perfectly secure. And for all of the chosen children
of God, we are as secure in our salvation as our covenant head
is. And here we have our covenant
head praying to his father, praying for us. And he doesn't pray with
any doubt. Listen to what he says in verse
20. Neither pray I for these alone,
not just these apostles, these 11 here, but for them also which
shall believe on me through their word. Which is why we know that
this prayer is a prayer that's answered again and again. For
the last 2,000 years, this prayer has been answered again and again.
And this prayer will continue to be answered until the Lord
Jesus Christ returns. They'll believe, verse 21, that
they all may be made one. as thou, Father, art in me, and
I in thee, that they may be one in us, that the world may know
that thou may believe that thou hast sent me. And listen to what
he's doing. And the glory which thou gavest
me I have given them, that they may be one. The heart of all
of this is the union, the eternal covenant union between the Lord
Jesus Christ and all of his people. It's a union, a perfect union. It's an eternal union. It's a
union in love. It's a union in blood. It's a
union in promises. It's a union, an eternal union. It's a union that must last through
all of time and into that time when there is no time. I don't
know what heaven's like. There's only one thing that matters
about heaven, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's
what he says, isn't he? Listen to what he says. Father,
verse 24. Father, I will that those whom thou hast given me
be with me where I am. That's heaven. Heaven is person,
isn't it? 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. There's a union in love. The world has not known thee.
The world by wisdom knew not God. But I have known, and these
have known, they have known that you have sent me, that there
was an eternal covenant in love, in grace, in the blood of the
Lord Jesus Christ from before the foundation of the world,
and that's why he was sent. He wasn't sent in the hope that
something might happen. He was sent because of an eternal
covenant of promise in his blood that must happen. What we're
reading here are the shalls and wills of our great God and Sovereign. And I love what he says in verse
26, he begins by saying, I have declared unto them, I have made
known unto them thy name. Throughout his three and a half
years of earthly ministry, he made known to these apostles
The glory of God Almighty. The fulfilment of all of the
Old Testament scriptures. The scriptures must be fulfilled.
And the scriptures all speak of Him. And speak of Him in His
glory. And he's declared unto them,
he's declared unto them the name of God Almighty. He's made known. And of course, the great declaration
that he will do, I've declared unto them thy name and will declare
it. He will declare it. He's still
declaring his name. But obviously, in the context
of where we are in John chapter 17, the great declaration of
the name of God is in and on the cross of Calvary. That's
where God's name is revealed. That's where God's name is made
known. All of the attributes, all of
the character of God is revealed in the cross of Calvary. It's
so fundamental, isn't it? He says eternal life is knowing
Him, knowing the Father, and knowing Jesus Christ whom thou
hast sent. We cannot love a God we don't
know. We cannot live in saving faith
with a God that we do not know. We cannot have an anchor, our
hope as an anchor for the soul, if we don't know who God is. There are countless multitudes
who think they know God and think that they're in some sort of
extraordinary relationship with God. And yet the scriptures warn
again and again and again that many will turn up on that day.
And they will call him Lord, Lord, and they will say, look
what we've done, look what we've done in your name. And he'll
say, depart from me, I've never known you. To know him is to
know him in his true character, to know him, knowing him, Knowing Him involves trusting
Him, relying upon Him in the totality of His being as He declares
Himself in His Word to be. brings with it love and then
that love is a reciprocated love. We love him as he's declared
to be because he first loved us. That's why the Lord Jesus
Christ spoke so much about the name of the Father. Salvation is calling upon the
name of God Almighty. Your call on him is to cry out
So let's just quickly look down at what it is for this God, through
John chapter 17, to have this name. He has a name, he's a glorious
God, isn't he? In verse 1, he's a glorious God. In all of what glory means, he
is glorious. He is a God of power and authority
over everything that moves. Verse two, he's given power over
all flesh. He's a God who dwells in Trinity. in unity and in communion. Before the foundation of the
world, he had no needs, he had no unfulfilled desires. He lived in perfect union and
perfect communion with his son. In the beginning was the Word
and the Word was made flesh and the Word was with God and the
Word was God. They were in communion. There
was nothing lacking that caused him to create. And our God is
a God of sovereign purpose. He says in verse 4, I've finished
the work thou gavest me to do. God has a purpose. This universe,
this world and everything in it is not running as if God sort
of wound up a clock and left it run to itself. He works all
things according to the counsel of his own will and none can
say to him why you're doing what you're doing. He'll do as he
pleases in the armies of heaven and among the inhabitants of
the earth. He's working all things together for good. But our great,
the great incarnation, the great act of the Lord Jesus Christ
is to make manifest the name. Listen to what he says in verse
6. I have manifested thy name. He is the one who reveals who
God is. If you want to know who God is,
you have to look to the Lord Jesus Christ to see who God is.
If you've seen me, you've seen the Father, he says. And he is a great giver, isn't
he? He gives eternal life. He's given
a people. Listen to what he says in verse
eight. I have given them the words which thou gavest me. Our
God is a God who speaks, and speaks in words, and the words
have power, and the words describe and declare who he is. These
words are the words that create faith. I have given them the
words which thou gavest. They have received them. There
is no doubt about whether they have received them or not. They
have known surely that I came out from me, and they have believed
that thou didst send me. They've believed because they've
heard the words. But they haven't heard the words of a man, they've
heard the words of God Almighty. And that's exactly what saving
faith is. When you were first brought to
spiritual life, there were words that came and there were words
that had power beyond the imagining of any human being. And they're
words that are reflected again and again throughout the scriptures.
And our God declares faith's object, faith's source, and our
God is a God who prays. Don't you love the fact that
the Lord Jesus Christ is praying? And this prayer is a prayer that
continues to have that same power. I pray for them. He's not praying
for the world. He's not dying for the world.
He didn't love all the world. He loves those that were given
to him. Our God prays. In verse 12, our
God reveals the fact that we are so utterly and totally fallen
in Father Adam that we need to be kept. We need to be kept by
God the Father, and we need to be kept by the Son. He says,
I've kept them, I've guarded them, is what it says. He says,
I keep them. How God is a God whose name is
declared in the scriptures. Don't you love that? That the
scripture might be fulfilled. All of what we read here is going
to be fulfilled. It is being fulfilled. Even if
the world, as John 17, 14 says, even if the world hates them
because of the word they're given, they're not of the world, verse
16, their origin is not from here. The children of God have
an origin in heaven, in the eternal covenant and love and purposes
of God Almighty. They were given as a gift, as
a bride to the son in those extraordinary transactions that this prayer
is speaking about. They can't keep themselves. They
have to be kept all the time. All of our sanctification is
tied up in our union with Him, isn't it? I sanctify myself that
they might also be sanctified by the truth, through the truth. He's not talking about the possibility
that this might happen, he's talking about an absolute certainty
that he's going to say he'll make them holy through the truth. The truth of who God is, the
truth of what happened on the cross, the truth of God, the
truth of man, the truth of sin, the truth of Satan. We need to
be kept. And then as he comes to the close
of it, he wants us to be reminded again and again that there is
this eternal union between him and his father and him and us
and his father and us. And that's an eternal union.
It's a God-created union. It's a God-preserved and kept
union. It's a union in His glory, in
His truth. His prayer is that they may be
made perfect in one. All of our perfections, verse
23, are in Him. We are, according to Colossians
2.10, complete in Him. perfectly complete in him. And he's declared this name,
this name that we read here. He gives God three names in this
passage of scripture. In verse three he says he's the
only true God. He goes on to say in verse 11
that he's the Holy Father. But here the name that he is
declaring is Righteous Father, Righteous Father. Satan in the
garden. deceived, eaved and led Adam
into horrible sin by distorting the name of God Almighty. And that is exactly what Satan's
religion in this world is doing all the time. It's distorting
the very character of God Almighty. Religion distorts the name of
God. People read the word righteous
and they're horrified to think that God is a righteous judge
who's out to clobber them all the time and punish them for
sin and then they have to do penance or do something to make
up for the fact that they're not righteous and then somehow
they can do some righteousness of their own and somehow they
can balance the books by their own righteousness. Religion is
not declaring the ultimate righteousness of God Almighty. And religion distorts father. The religion of this world says
that God is a loving father who loves all of his creation and
loves all humanity. He's a doting father. He's a
weak father. He's a yearning father. He loves,
but he can't get his love to be reciprocated. Isn't it glorious that in the
mind of the child of God, by the declaration of God the Son
to them, that we have God who is both righteous and a Father. Righteous, perfectly right, perfectly
holy in everything that he does. Righteousness means that he is
perfectly true in all that he says and perfectly righteous
in all that he judges. To be righteous is to never let
sin go unpunished. So how do we put these two together? Righteous Father. Well, the Lord
Jesus Christ is going to live it out that next day on the cross
of Calvary. God is so, so righteous that
when he found sin, the sin of all of these people that he's
praying for here, all of these people that are in union with
him, all of these people that shall believe on him, all of
these people When God the Father found sin on the Lord Jesus Christ,
all of that sin, he was perfectly righteous in what he did in punishing
that sin with his holy wrath. To be righteous is to be in perfect
balance. There was a perfect balance between
the wrath that the Lord Jesus Christ bore in his own body for
all of those sins and the righteousness and holiness
of God. There is a perfect balance, which
is why the Lord Jesus Christ is praying here that we would
know what we declare again and again and again, that the Lord
Jesus Christ bore in His body the sins of all of His people,
and all of those sins were paid for and punished by a holy, righteous
God until those sins, the payment of the wrath of God upon those
sins is such that God declares in righteousness that they're
finished and they're gone. And they are gone. The Lord Jesus Christ bore the
sins of his people in his own body on the tree. To declare
that God is a righteous Father, to declare that name, is to declare
that God the Son bore those sins and those alone. To declare that
the Lord Jesus Christ suffered in any way for the sins of all
humanity is to declare that God is unrighteous. To declare that anyone that the
Lord Jesus Christ died for could ever suffer anything in hell
is to declare that God is unrighteous. to declare that God punished
his son and then must punish those sins again in any way whatsoever,
is to declare that God is unrighteous. We declare, and we have declared
to us by the Lord Jesus Christ, by the Spirit of God, that he's
a righteous father. A bloodless gospel is a lifeless
gospel and a dead gospel and it's a no gospel and God says
it's a damning gospel. The gospel of this world is a
damning gospel. He's a righteous father. He's righteous in all he does
and he's a father. To know God savingly is to know
and love a righteous father. That's the name he declares.
We rejoice in a holy gospel, in a true gospel. We rejoice
in a gospel that declares that mercy is perfectly consistent
with justice. He's a just God and a saviour. We declare, as the Lord Jesus
Christ prays here, we declare a covenant salvation, ordered
and sure and effectual, that God's law is perfectly honoured.
He's righteous. He's righteous in all that he
does. That justice is magnified. This
name is the name that wins the affection of believers. We call
on his name. We call on this name. We call
on him as a righteous and holy God. We call on him as holy and
true. We call on him as the one who
gives and the one who receives and gives glory. We call on him
as a sovereign. call on his name, Lord, be merciful
to me. You're a God of mercy and grace. You will. God's children will
call on the name of the Lord. As Moses declared in Exodus 33,
he says, Beseech me, I beseech thee, show
me thy glory. And he says, I will make all
my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name
of the Lord before thee, and will be gracious to whom I will
be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. I will save as I will save. And I love what he goes on to
say. Moses wanted to see his glory. He'd seen some most amazing
evidences of God, but he wanted to see God in his glory. And he says, Behold, there is
a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock, and it shall
come to pass that while my glory passes by, I will put thee in
the cleft of the rock and will cover thee with my hand while
I pass by. and I will take my hand away
and thou shalt see my back pass, but my face shall not be seen.'
The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord
God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and keeping mercy for thousands,
forgiving iniquity and transgression and sins, and will by no means
clear the guilty. That's righteousness. By no means
clear the guilty. And the only possible way we
can understand that is to go to the cross of Calvary, where
God by no means cleared the guilty. a righteous father. The world
has 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. I have declared unto them thy
name." And he will declare it. Our great Saviour is the preacher
of the Gospel. He makes His ministers preachers. But when true preaching happens
and the God comes in power, it is the Lord Jesus Christ who
speaks to His people. Listen to what He says. in Ephesians chapter 2 verse
13. But now in Christ Jesus you who
were sometimes far off are made nigh, made near by the blood
of Christ. This is this union he's talking
about. This is this righteous union. If he's drawn me close
to him and he's drawn you close to him by his blood, then we're
close to each other. We have fellowship with one another.
For, verse 14, he is our peace who has made both one, has broken
down the middle of wall of petition between us, having abolished
in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained
in ordinances, for to make in himself of twain one. to make two one. All of his people
are now perfectly united. In one new man, so making peace,
that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross,
having slain the enmity thereby. And listen to what he goes on
to say, verse 17, and came and preached peace. to you which
were far off. He's talking about the Ephesians,
isn't he? He's talking about the people
in Galatia. Who was the one that came and preached peace? If true
peace is preached and peace enters your heart and you call on this
name, he's the one who preaches. He preaches to you who are far
off and to them that were nigh. For through him We both have
access in one Spirit unto the Father. Now therefore you are
no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the
saints and of the household of God, and are built upon the foundation
of the apostles and the prophets. Jesus Christ himself being the
chief cornerstone, in whom all the building fitly framed together,
groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord, in whom ye also are
built together for an habitation of God through the Spirit. How can God live with us? You
must be as righteous as God is righteous. You must be as holy
as God is holy. You must be made perfect in one. And what's the end result of
this? Love. I'll have a break and we'll come
back and talk about it after. There are two responses. that
come to mind when I hear these words. When David was given these
exceedingly great promises by Nathan the prophet, you might
recall that David wanted to build a house in 2 Samuel chapter 7.
Nathan thinks well, says this is a good idea, David go for
your life. Then the Lord speaks to Nathan, he says David's not
going to build this house, But his son is going to build this
house and he makes these amazing promises, these amazing promises
similar to what we read here of him being a God and him being
with him, him having a family forever. And the first response
is David says, Lord, do as you've said. Isn't that a great response? You've made these promises, O
righteous Father. I'm declaring your name to them.
They're made perfect in one. They're going to believe. They're
going to come. They're going to be united to one another. They're
going to be united to me. Lord, do as you've said. Let
these promises be fulfilled in us and among us, that we might
just love and declare the name of God Almighty in this world. And the second response is, there
are people that shall believe. You made a promise that there
are believing people there. Lord, make me to believe. Lord,
I believe, help thou my unbelief. Lord save me, Lord come and reveal
your Father to me, Lord make that love that you have promised
to be in me. May you get all the Let's pray. Our Father, please
bless your words to our hearts and cause us to have these promises
written on our hearts and fulfilled in us and amongst us for the
glory of your dear and precious Son. We pray. Amen.