does not bring it into question.
If you'll open your Bibles now to John chapter 17. Now, Paul refers to the scriptures
as the holy scriptures. The holy scriptures. But just
as all the temple was considered holy, The Lord is in his holy
temple. Yet the outer court was considered
a certain amount holy. And then you had the holy place
inside the temple proper, as they called it. Then you had
the most holy place. And in the scriptures, we do
find portions of scripture which seem to, when we understand them,
have a holiness about them that makes us feel that spiritually
speaking, we do as Moses was commanded, take your shoes off,
for this is holy ground. Now, I'll be honest, I don't
know what the significance of taking shoes off. I imagine it
meant something back then. But this prayer of our Lord recorded
for us in John chapter 17. First of all, I would count it
among the most holy utterances ever recorded, because this is
the intimate conversation between God the Son and God the Father. It is the outpouring of the heart
from the only perfect man that ever lived, the God-man, as he
pours his soul out unto God in prayer. Now, there's nothing wrong with
confessions of faith, both the kind that's written and then
people just reciting the things they believe. That's all well
and good. But if you want to find out what's
on someone's heart, If you want to find out what really drives
them, if you can listen in to their private prayers, if you can listen in when they're
not reciting prayers that they've been taught, when they're not
just stringing together various acceptable prayer sentences,
but when they are truly and honestly seeking to commune with God,
and bear their souls to him." If you can find out what they're
saying then, you will find out what that person's about. That
our Lord was pleased to have John record this prayer is a
great blessing to us and shows us the level of intimacy that
he intends that we have with him. all the intimate conversations
our Lord might have had, this must be the most intimate. And he allows us to listen in. In this prayer, we find out that
which was the greatest concern of our Lord Jesus Christ, we discover his love for the
Father, and for all those the Father had given to him. And
in this chapter, or in this prayer, that primarily refers to the
disciples. Now, we don't have any problem
expanding that to include all the elect, but, and one reason
we don't have a problem A problem expanding it to all
the elect is the Lord himself sort of does that because he
says, I do not pray for them alone, but for all those who
will believe through their preaching. He demonstrates his love for
them. He prays for His people that
they would be sanctified through the truth. He prays that they
would be kept. He prays that we would not be
taken out of the world, but that we would be kept in the world. You know, our lives as believers,
we should not expect that God will exempt us from the normal
things that happen to people in this life. We should not expect that God,
I mean, we can pray for it, we're allowed to pray for anything.
But we have no promise that God is going to remove temptation
from us, We have no promise that he's going to make some kind
of magnificent, miraculous change in our flesh so that we no longer
desire the sinful things we desired before. I've heard preachers
say that once a man is saved, he doesn't want the things he
wanted before. Well, then I'm not saved. And
I haven't met anybody that is. The testimony I hear among Believers,
old believers, and I'll tell you a good, you know, if you
want to learn something about the gospel and faith, talk to
old believers. Believers who've got some miles,
so to speak, in walking what our Lord Jesus Christ called
the narrow or constricted way. Not constricted by God. It just
means it's a difficult passageway because we who Love God in this
world. We're foreigners here. Life in
this world brings with it special problems that the unbelieving
does not have. We're confronted daily, regularly,
with things that are contrary to our own desires. We are distracted. We are tempted. It is not an
easy path. The narrow way is not a good
place. for a stroll. It's hard walking. And we shouldn't expect that
it would be any other way. But we do know this, that in
the way we will be protected. Paul said, there's no temptation,
no testing, no trouble sent to you other than the things that
are common to man. You know, believers were persecuted
for their faith, but believers in the Lord Jesus Christ were
not the only ones that ever got persecuted for their faith, or
suffered the kind of pains that they suffered in their persecution. But the difference is this, is
that God will, with every temptation, every trial, every testing, provide
a way of escape. People say, well, God will never
tempt you above what you are able. Yes, he will. Because unless
it's above what you are able, it hardly qualifies a trial. Does not a good coach, as he's
training his athletes, does he not call upon them to do things
beyond their ability? If he didn't, they'd never progress. What God will never do is send
us a trial that He can't handle. And in the process of us maybe
falling under the weight of it, feeling the weight of feeling
ourselves crippled by it, we learn to trust Him and we find
the trial overcome not by the power that we might have, but
by a divine power. But in verse one of John chapter
17, we'll read the first two verses. After Jesus said this,
he looked toward heaven and prayed, Father, the time has come. Glorify your son that your son
may glorify you. For you granted him authority
over all people that he might give eternal life to all those
you have given him. We all love glory. We all love to be thought well
of. We all love to be praised for
those characteristics or abilities we have which may cause us to
stand out among others. We like to be glorified, we like
to do well, we like to get a trophy for it, or some kind of recognition. We would like to be able to walk
down the street and people say, oh, there's so-and-so, you know,
he or she, da-da-da-da-da, and they would talk about the wonderful
things we've done. We all want to be glorified. We all want others to speak well
of us. But we, when we seek our own
glory, we are seeking it for our own
sake. The Lord says here, glorify your
son, that is glorify me. But note what moves the Savior
to ask that the Father would glorify Him. Glorify your Son
that your Son may glorify you. Now, our Lord Jesus Christ, is
He not worthy of all glory? I mean, even as he was standing
here, even before he actually went to the cross and offered
up his soul unto death, offered himself without spot to God,
even before that, in every respect, he was good and righteous. He was perfect. He did no sin. He desired no sin. He says that
I do always those things which please my Father. He said it
is my very sustenance, my food, to do the will of Him who sent
me. No one exhibited what even humans
will acknowledge as virtuous characteristic. Nobody exhibited
them as our Lord did. One of the most difficult virtues
to exhibit is patience with people. We may learn patience, you know,
that kind of patience that says, okay, I don't have as much money
as I want to, but I'll keep working and I'll be patient until the
time I will have amassed what I look for. That's one kind of
patience. That's very easy compared to patience with people who cross
you. But think of our Lord Jesus Christ. He had enemies, sworn enemies, and they spoke abusively of him. and all the patience he exhibited
toward them. Yes, there was time that he dealt
with them. I don't even want to use the
word harshly, because harshly seems to have some negative connotations,
but he did deal with them strongly. He rebuked them for the things
they were saying. But he did so not because they
simply withstood him, but because they were withstanding the truth
and because they were making themselves to be a blockade between
sinners and the kingdom of God. And even in this, had those people
to whom he spoke, if they had simply believed him and simply
acknowledged the truth of what he was saying, There would have
never even been strong words from him. And think of his disciples. Imagine what patience he showed
them. And understand this, it's the
same patience he's showing you. Remember when Peter got out there
on the water? I don't know how long he walked
on the water. If he did it at all, I'm impressed. But he sank. And he said, Lord, save me. Now
there's faith, right? If Peter had had no faith, he
wouldn't have called on the Lord to save him. But when the whole story was
done, the Lord said, O ye of little faith, why did you doubt? Oh, we have such little faith
in light of the fact that we've had so many testimonies of His
faithfulness. And yet, our Lord is patient. He didn't say to those men in
the boat, well, if that's all the faith you can have, you just,
you're on your own. The waves are going to keep going.
You just row yourself to shore. I'm going to keep walking." No. Patience. Even in the last day
of his time on earth before he ascended on high, The disciples
gathered to him, and even though they had seen all that they had
seen and been taught all that he had taught them, you know
what their question was? Is it now that you will restore
the kingdom to Israel? Oh, what frustration that must
have been to the humanity of our Lord. Yet, no rebuke, no
scalding words. Oh, he was worthy of glory, but
he said to the Father, glorify me. Now, what is it to glorify
someone? Well, it could be to transform
them from an inglorious being into a glorious one. In Romans
chapter 8, it speaks of those that God called, he also justified,
and those he justified, he also glorified. And in Philippians
chapter three, beginning at verse 20, we read, but our citizenship
is in heaven, and we eagerly await a savior from there, the
Lord Jesus Christ, who by the power that enables him to bring
everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies
so that they will be like his glorious body. Now for every
believer, there is this blessed promise. We will not be the kind
of creature we are forever. God is going to change us. At
the present time, we have what our translation calls a lowly
body. The King James calls it a vile
body. I didn't look it up to see which
one was better, but I know this, our bodies, You know, we look
at babies and they're such precious, pretty things, you know, and
at least most of them are. And we see them growing up in
youth, you know, and about the time a person reaches 20 or so,
you know, they have reached the peak of what might be considered
human glory so far as their strength and their abilities and their
appearance, you know. And from then on, what happens
to them? Well, just look here. This is what happens to us. We
just get older and older and older and older until then what
happens? We die. Then what happens? This body for which we have cared
so much This body, which the world is almost intent on worshiping
with all of its fashion magazines and people parading around trying
to make themselves look glorious, that body becomes worm food and
returns to the dust. We bury it. I remember reading
about Abraham after his wife Sarah died. He didn't own any
land in the Promised Land. He was just a nomad going from
place to place. So he approached someone who
lived there and he said, I want to buy a piece of land for you
so that I can have a place to bury my people out of my sight. He didn't just say bury them,
he gave the reason he wanted to bury them. I don't want to
see them. Why? What they are or what they
are about to become. You don't want to look at that.
That's our natural estate. There's no glory in humanity.
But we will be transformed. We will be made glorious. We
will be made glorious like the Lord Jesus Christ. Another way
to glorify someone is to speak well of them, expressing how
glorious they are. So if I think highly of you,
and maybe I mention some characteristic you have, some talent you have,
or something, and I tell someone else about it to build you up,
that's one way you glorify a person. This happened when our Lord Jesus
Christ breathed his last And there was earthquakes and
all that kind of stuff. And it says in Luke 23, 47, the
centurion, seeing what had happened, praised God. And that word there
translated praised, it's the word glorified. He glorified
God saying, surely this was a righteous man. He spoke highly of God. And then the word glorify is
also used to describe living or dying in such a way that others
are moved to glorify God in their hearts and with their mouths.
In Matthew chapter five, verse 16, we read this. In the same
way, let your light shine before others that they may see your
good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. Now when he says,
let your light shine before others, the light is not the good deeds
they're doing. Their light was the light of
truth that had been given to them. And he says, you let your
light shine. You tell others the truth about
what man is by nature, what you are by nature, a sinner. You
tell them about the grace of God. You tell them how through
me, sinners are made righteous in the sight of God. You let
that light shine so that when people see your good deeds, they
don't glorify you, they glorify God. And with such testimony
of the gospel coupled with a life. And remember, good works are
not righteous works. Good works are helpful works.
Good works are useful works. And so it says, when they see
you busy helping others, when they see you doing unto others
as you would have them do unto you, because you have testified
of the gospel, to them, when they see you doing those things,
they're not going to glorify you. They'll glorify the Father. And sometimes men glorify God
in their death. In John chapter 21, verse 19,
the Lord had spoken to Peter and said that the time would
come when men would take him where he didn't want to go and
do to him what they didn't want done. And in verse 19, Jesus
said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would
glorify God. Now, it's quite obvious no one
can glorify God in the sense of making him a more glorious
being. Can't be done, can it? But we who have been made spiritually
alive by means of the new birth, we are able to express praise
to God, true and honest praise. We are able to speak of His glories. of His glorious nature and thereby
glorify Him. As Charles Wesley wrote in his
famous hymn, Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing, my great Redeemer's
praise, the glories of my God and King, the triumphs of His
grace. And then in our conduct, both
as we live and as we die. If we are believers in our Lord,
we may glorify our God as it moves others to glorify him in
words because of what they see. But here our Lord says to the
Father, glorify me. The father's work of glorifying
his son began with entrusting all things to him so that he
might give eternal life to all those whom the father had given
to him. Is that not what he said? Verse
two, for you granted him authority over all people that he might
give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now, once again, our Lord Jesus,
so far as his divine nature is concerned, you cannot increase
the glory of that at all. You cannot heap any more honor
upon it than what it already intrinsically has. But our Lord
is not just a God. That sounds kind of funny, you
know what I mean. He is a man. Brother Mahan used to say, he's
as much God as if he were not a man, and he was as much man
as if he were not God. You say, well, that doesn't make
any sense. Well, good. It shouldn't, because we're talking
about God. And whenever we talk about God,
we're not going to be able to fit the truth of him into our
minds in a way that our minds feel at ease with it. Our Lord Jesus, in his humanity, God glorified him by committing
all things into his hand. Now, if you have something precious
to you, and you committed into the care
of someone else, what have you done to that person? You've glorified
them, have you not? When my daughter got married,
you know, and I got down here, we're at the end of the pews
there, and Brother Chris Cunningham said, who gives this woman to
be married to this man? And I said, her mother and I. And when I said that, I glorified
my son-in-law. Why? Well, I wouldn't give her
to just anybody. I wouldn't entrust her care and
her well-being to just anybody. If I had an important work that
needed to be done, I wouldn't entrust that work to just anybody. 20 years ago we had a house fire
and I was, you know, looking for a builder to build a new
house. Well, I'd seen my neighbor build
his house and I'd seen him do some of the other projects around
here and they looked top notch. And so I went to him and I told
him that. I said, I'd like you to build
my house. I need you to get together an
idea of what it'll cost so we can talk to the insurance company.
And I told him, I said, the reason why I'm asking you to do this
is because I've seen the work you do. It's good. And therefore, I feel completely
safe. entrusting the work of building
my house to you. And the father had a job to be
done. There was a people he loved,
a people he loved from eternity, a people upon whom his grace
would be bestowed. But he's not just a gracious
and merciful and loving God, he's a just God. And seeing that
the people he chose were sinners deserving of everlasting torment,
He cannot show grace at the expense of His justice. Justice must
be satisfied. They must experience, they must
go through the judgment. They must pass through the fire. But how can that be done without
them being burnt up? One way. They go through it. in Christ Jesus. The Bible says
there's therefore now no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus.
You know why? You know why there's no condemnation? Because they've already gone
through condemnation. And condemnation doesn't happen
twice for the same sin. God's just. You know, Noah didn't
escape the flood. He went through it. He survived the flood, but he
didn't escape it. He went through it in the ark,
and we do not escape judgment. We survive it because we go through
the judgment in Christ and coming out the other side. All the sin, so to speak, has
been judged away. It's been burnt away. Well, you can imagine what it's
like to go through the judgment of God. We can only imagine it. Imagine going through the judgment
of God, bearing in yourself not only the sins of a single man,
but the sins of a countless multitude, and doing it in such a way that
the justice of God is satisfied And yet no harm comes to those
whom you represent and who are protected by you. God glorified Jesus Christ in
entrusting the salvation of his beloved people entirely to the
Lord Jesus Christ. We have sung that hymn, In Christ
Alone, a few times. It's a great hymn. And generally speaking, when
we think of Christ alone, we're thinking that our faith must
be in Christ alone, our reliance must be in Christ alone, and
that's absolutely true. But do you know why our faith
has to be in Christ alone? Because God's faith, so to speak,
is in Christ alone. He did not say, well, son, here's
my people. You take care of them. And when
the Lord turns out, you know, heads off to do his job, God
turns around and says, Gabriel, Michael, hey, look, you got to
get down there just in case. He needs a little backup. God had no backup plan, no plan
B. He didn't hedge his bets. He
trusted His people and their eternal welfare entirely to His
Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And when you and I believe the
Lord Jesus Christ, we are doing nothing other than what God did. We are entrusting our soul to
the care of God's Son. Oh, what glory the Father heaped
upon Jesus Christ in entrusting our care to Him. But the work of glorifying the
Son would not end there. But before the Son could be glorified
any further, he must be further un-glorified. It says, he who
being by very nature God, made himself of no reputation, he's
stepping down. He took on the form of a servant,
stepping down, and was found in the likeness of sinful flesh,
stepping down, less and less glorious, certainly in His appearance
and in the estimation of men. And as our Lord prayed this prayer,
all those things had already been done. He'd already become
a human. He had already taken on the form
and bearing of a servant, though He is Lord of all. He had already
appeared in the likeness of sinful flesh. He looked just like you
and me. And nobody who saw Him any more highly than they thought
of other people, except those few to whom he had spoken with
sufficient clarity. They understood he was more than
just a man. In Isaiah chapter 53, there is
no beauty, no majesty, no glory that when we shall see him, we shall desire him. They didn't. But that wasn't the last step
down. That wasn't the last bit of un-glorifying
our Lord. Oh, what glory. He keeps surrendering
glory after glory after glory. And it says that he submitted
himself to death, even the death of the cross. Our Lord here is
saying, glorify me. But he knows full well when he
says, glorify me, that he must undergo more unglorifying before
the Father can glorify him in the sense that our Lord Jesus
is speaking. The Old Testament and prophesying of Christ and his
sufferings puts these words in the mouth of the Lord. I am a
worm and not a man. Now we got to be very careful
when we try to enter into the heart and mind of our Lord as
he suffered for our sins. There are things going on there
we can't understand. And if we try to Describe them,
we usually mess things up so bad we confuse people. But the way that God inspired
the prophets to express the suffering of our Lord and what it did to
him, and how it made him perceive himself, and how it made him
be perceived in the eyes of others. Humiliation. Can you imagine being the son
of God and having a bunch of God-hating
rebels mock you and say, well, he said he's God's son. Let's
see if God will have him. Looks to me like the son got
kicked out of the house. He told that sweet story about
the prodigal son. Looks like this prodigal didn't
get to come home. Let's just see if God will have
him. You and I, we're ready to defend
ourselves against the least, least infringement on what we think
is our good character. Our Lord, they heaped insult
upon insult, disgrace upon disgrace on him. But more was to come. Man can
only do so much in unglorifying Christ. God poured
out or laid upon him the iniquity of all his wandering sheep. How
did that affect our Lord? How did it make Him feel? I don't
know. But I'm a sinful man. And just
the knowledge of a few of my sins makes me feel awful. Now,
if a sinful man like me can be made to feel awful when just
a few of his sins weigh upon his conscience, what must it
have been for the Son of God, who was perfect and had never
done anything wrong, suddenly to be made guilty in the sight
of God with all the sins of an innumerable host of people? I'm
not even going to try to describe it, but I'm a worm and not a
man. Doesn't that describe it? And there can be nothing more
inglorious than to die. Oh, we like to say, so and so
died gloriously. Well, I know what they mean.
A lot of times we've got to say things just to give us a way
to emotionally process things that are too difficult for us. To die is to experience the greatest
indignity. that can be heaped upon a creature
in this world. And our Lord died. He submitted
to death, even the ignominious death of the cross. Now then, God glorified him. God changed his body. His body
went into the grave. It went into the grave because
he died under sin. But the father doesn't leave
him there. The father brings him out. The father gives him
life. And he does not return him to the kind of life he had
before. A life that could die. A life that was subject to death.
He comes out immortal. Jesus Christ cannot die. Death
no longer has any dominion, any mastery over him. God begins
this glorification, you know. Next Sunday, I believe, is Easter,
and everybody, you know, they're celebrating the resurrection.
That's fine. If folks want to celebrate the resurrection, that's
as good a thing as anything else, you know, to celebrate. But do you realize the resurrection
is not an event in and of itself? It was the beginning of Christ's
glorification. He went down to the very depths
of what it means to be a human sinner. He was there in the tomb,
dead. He went as low as we go. And
then God raised Him up to His right hand. And the resurrection
was simply the first step along the way. And the only reason that we look
at that resurrection as an event in and of itself is because he
made a 40 day stop on the way back to the throne. He comes
out of the tomb. He could have, I mean, you know,
could have gone right on to glory, but instead he stays for 40 days
and gives final instructions to his disciples, shows himself
to them so that they might be eyewitnesses of his resurrection. But His resurrection's just the
beginning. God, it says, glorified Him to His right hand to be a
Prince and a Savior. Brother Mahan used to say, there's
a man in glory. And that gives hope to us men
and women that we can be in glory. There's a man in glory and not
just a man up there walking around. He is seated at the right hand
of God. God has set him forth as Lord
and Christ. God has said, this is the reason
for the universe. This is the reason for everything
that has ever happened. This is my beloved son. I'm well
pleased with him. I've always been well pleased
with him. And he has done a great work and deserves to be worshiped. honored by everybody. Glorify the Son. Nobody can glorify the Son like
the Father has. But then our Lord says, so that
the Son may glorify you. How does the Son glorify the
Father? Well, we could start back at the same place that we first
mentioned about the Father glorifying the Son. The Father glorified
the Son by committing the care of all his people into
the hand of the Son. And the son glorified the father
by accepting the work. He says, and I can't find the
exact verse in chapter 17 here, but he says, I have glorified
you by finishing the work you gave me to do. Now at this point,
he had not gotten to the it is finished on the cross. But that
work that his father had given him to do as the Messiah prophet,
he was coming to an end, he was winding it up. And he would go
on to complete the other works. that the Father gave Him to do.
His work as the priest on the cross, His work as the King,
right now at God's right hand. He finished, He's finishing all,
well He finished the cross work, it's done. and he will finish
up the king work, and he will bring all things into subjection
to himself. And it teaches us in 1 Corinthians
15, once all his enemies have been made a footstool for his
feet, which also implies that all of his friends are with him,
glorified to be like him. In other words, Looking at it
from the perspective of the book of Revelation, once he has unloosed
all the seven seals of that scroll of divine purpose and brought
everything to pass and the kingdom is complete, he will glorify
the Father by taking the kingdom and in submission to the Father
handing it all unto him that God may be all in all. Our Lord is worthy of every word
of praise that we can think of to utter, and we'll do the best we can
with it. Yes, we glorify God by the things we say, and we
glorify God and our Lord Jesus in the things that we do, but
none of us glorify God. None of us glorify the Father
like the Son glorified the Father. I'm reminded of one of the conferences
held at 13th Street Baptist Church, and there would be people coming
from churches all over the nation, and they would bring with them
some who had some talents, and they would provide special music.
I don't know the name of this guy, but he was what is referred
to as an Irish tenor. I don't know if he was actually
Irish, but he had that kind of high male voice that's often
referred to as an Irish tenor. And I believe he sang a version
of Amazing Grace to the tune of Oh Danny Boy. So good Irish
song, Irish tune. You know, and that's one of those
songs where a tenor can really shine. Get way up there high, and that
guy, he did, he belted it out. It was clear, it was on pitch,
and we all enjoyed it. And I remember afterwards, the
fellow that was leading the singing, he got up and said, well, turn
your hymn books to 227 and do the best you can. After you hear someone like that
sing, you think, well, I don't think maybe I ought to sing.
And when we see how the Son glorifies the Father in completing all
the work the Father gave Him to do completely with perfection,
and then we say, okay, I want to glorify God. Well, we stand
up and we do the best we can. We'll never be able to do it
like Him, but blessed be the name of our Father. He looks
at our pitiful efforts at glorifying His name. He looks on the heart. He sees what we wish we could
do. He's not listening to how well we sing songs. He's not
listening to how artfully we can put together words of praise. He's listening to our hearts,
and he is pleased with the praise.