John chapter 17. I want to preach a message entitled,
The Lord's Great Concerns. And when I began to prepare this
message, I thought it would be a one Sunday message. I'm suspecting
it will go on for three Sundays. There's a lot here, and I don't
want to pass over any of it quickly, because this is a very rich text
of Scripture. Now in the world of religion,
if you want to know what a person's real concerns are, do not listen
so much to what they preach or claim to believe, listen to them
pray. And even then, pay little attention
to what such people pray when they're giving those, trying
to get this over here where it sounds better, pay little attention
to those prayers they give in public. Now why do I say this? Well, because all of us in religion
learn what we're supposed to say. We learn the things that
we're supposed to testify to or preach. We learn the things
that it's considered noble to pray for. All of us do that some. Some do it quite a bit. and what you hear them do in
public bears hardly any resemblance to what's in their heart. But if you can listen to them
pray when they are in the presence of only their close friends,
or if somehow you could gain access to them as they pray in
the way our Lord described, pray in their closet, that is, pray
in private. If you could know what they pray
then, you would find out what their great concerns really are. Of course, we do not need to
be so careful with our Lord. By that, I mean simply this,
whenever we hear him speak, in whatever context he speaks, whether
by preaching or praying, whether in the presence of a multitude
or a handful or by himself, our Lord is always delivering that
which is honestly upon his heart. We don't ever have to second
guess the Savior. We don't ever have to say, well,
now what did He really mean? Well, He really meant what He
really said, always. So it's not as though, like I
said, we have to be careful and say, okay, now we're gonna listen
to the Lord pray and we'll find out what He's really about. But when our Lord spoke, even
though He always spoke honestly, He did not always speak fully.
Nor did He always speak in such a way that He intended for His
audience to understand what He meant. Now this would be a surprising
thing to many. I've heard people say, Our Lord, he spoke in parables
so that even children could understand him. You know what the Lord says?
He says, I speak in parables so no one will understand until
I explain it to them. And he didn't explain it to everybody. He said to his disciples, the
secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to
those on the outside, everything is said in parables so that they
may be ever singing, but never perceiving, and ever hearing,
but never understanding. Otherwise, they might turn and
be forgiven. Now that's a quotation, I believe,
from Isaiah. And I imagine Well, I don't know
how many preachers of our day would handle a scripture like
that. And what do you say? Since popular
religion says Jesus is doing all he can to save everybody,
and here it tells us he says plainly that he spoke in such
a way that the general public wouldn't understand what he meant.
He said, otherwise they might turn. They might repent and be
forgiven. Now, I don't know if that's a
shock to anybody here. I don't know if it's a surprise. If it is, it's okay to be surprised. We ought to be surprised by God.
God doesn't do things the way we would do them. I listened
to a little bit of an atheist the other day, a famous atheist.
And he doesn't like the way God does
things, so he has condemned God to non-existence. And one of
the things he doesn't like about God is that God sends sinners
to hell. And that's just not right. He shouldn't do that.
I thought it kind of funny that he was doing to God the very
thing God does with sinners. He was condemning God to a sort
of hell because God didn't do what he wanted him to do. And
yet he's upset that God condemns people to the hell because they
do things he doesn't like. But God does whatever he wants,
however he wants to do it. And we don't try to describe
what God wants to do. I hear people say, you know,
God wants to. No, God doesn't want to. He doesn't want to do,
he just does. Always. God has never resisted
performing his own will And his performance of his own will has
never failed. He said, I am the Lord. I will
do all my pleasure. And so when we read the scriptures,
no matter what we might think of what is recorded there, The
words and deeds of God, especially God in the person of Christ Jesus,
as we read them, what we have to say is, this is what he wanted
to do, and whatever happened is what he wanted to accomplish
by what he did. It's always that way. But it's still the pattern today
that God, makes distinctions among people
when he speaks to them. He does not make distinctions
in terms of what he tells them. That is, he's not telling one
thing to some people and another thing to other people. But he makes a few distinctions
in this way. To some, he tells everything. that has been revealed so far.
And to others, he tells nothing. I would like you to think for
a minute how blessed you are that you have a Bible to read. You have a church to attend where
the truth is preached, at least as best as this preacher knows
how to preach it, and that God has spoken to your hearts through
this. There are billions who are born,
live their entire life, and die under God's wrath. never having
even once heard a single word of the truth. But there's more to it than this.
While God speaks to people through the preaching of His gospel in
different measures, He also speaks to them with this distinction.
He sends preachers like me all over the place, and we preach
to lots of people, But just because lots of people hear us preach,
it doesn't mean God's speaking to them. I'm speaking to you this morning. I pray that God is speaking to
you too. I pray that by His Spirit, God will take the truth which
is declared here and add His divine power to it and open our eyes and our ears
that we may hear and understand. Because if He doesn't, we have
met in vain. If He doesn't, I have prepared
in vain. I have spoken in vain. Our Lord did not speak with equal
clarity to the people of His day And he did not speak with
equal power to the people of his day. He would, to the general public,
tell them the cost of following him. He would tell them what
it meant to follow him, but it was only to specific individuals. He said, follow me. Follow me. And what's interesting is when
he said it, they left all and followed him. When he said, follow
me, they didn't say, let me think about it. Well, one did. One did. He said, let me go bury
my father. He said, you let the dead bury
the dead. You follow me. He said to a rich man, who claimed he'd done everything
required in the law, the Lord said, well, then you lack one
thing. Sell everything you have, give it to the poor, and follow
me. And he went away, sad, because
he was very rich. When was the last time you heard
that? That guy's really sad, because he's really rich. But
that's exactly what happened. But even then, we've got to realize
that when our Lord spoke to those people in that fashion, He was
only doing that to prove, to show the hardness of the human
heart. Because, for instance, this rich
man had said, what must I, or I want to follow you, what must
I do? And the Lord told him. That's
too high a price for me. I thought this was gonna be easy.
I thought it would just be something I could add to what I was already
doing. But our Lord did not say to him,
follow me, and say it with that divine power that works in the
hearts of people so that they hear his voice and obey him. And that's still going on today. I hope we hear from Him today.
Now John 17's an intimate look into the heart of our Lord Jesus. He's alone with those He had
chosen out of the world. Those the Father had given Him. He had chosen them to be heralds
of His Word. heralds of the good news concerning
him. He had already called Judas out
of the herd. He didn't pray this prayer until
they already told Judas, whatever you plan to do, get it done. Go do it quickly. I've always found that one of
the more astonishing things If I had planned on betraying someone,
and the very one I had betrayed said, what you've planned, get
busy with it. I think I was, this guy already
knows. He knows my heart. He knows the
plans that I have made. But not Judas. Maybe the only
time he actually obeyed the Lord. He went and did the evil he had
planned. The Lord sent him away and then
prayed this prayer. Our Lord is approaching the pivotal
point of the work that he was given to do. It is a work that
he wants to do, but he's horrified at the prospect of it. Horrified. about what lays ahead of him
in the next 16 or so hours. He has told his disciples of
his departure, and he's promised them that he would send another
comforter, another counseling guide to them. He would not leave
them as orphans. And then he begins to pray. And as we read what he prayed,
We feel as though we have entered the most holy place on earth.
God the Son, the Son of God, Christ Jesus, is speaking to
His Father. There is a one-to-one communication
between our Lord Jesus and God the Father that we have never known. Now,
we have access unto the throne of grace, but because we are
yet flesh, or yet have flesh, we can never perfectly enter
into that communion that our Lord Jesus had with His Father. He spoke with His Father as one
would speak to anyone else. I would have loved to have been
there. I'd love to have heard this prayer.
But I'm glad that the Holy Spirit saw fit to inspire John to write
it down for us. Our Lord's pouring out His heart
to the Father, asking Him for the things most dear to Him. This is not a time for trifles,
is it? This is not a time for our Lord
to concern Himself with what he's going to eat tomorrow. More important things are afoot. There are three basic requests
that he makes in this chapter-long prayer. Number one,
that he would be successful in the work that he was about to
undertake. Number two, he prayed for the
protection of his people. And then number three, he prayed
for the full salvation of his people. These three things occupy
our Lord's mind at this critical point. and they reveal to us
another aspect of the greatness of our Savior and provide us
with a pattern for our prayers. Now, there is nothing wrong when
we pray for the things concerning this life. He taught us to pray,
give us this day, our daily bread. Nothing wrong with praying for
that. Nothing wrong to pray that He would heal the sick, nothing
at all with praying that He would supply our needs. But if our
prayers are primarily made up of seeking the things that pertain
only to this life, what does it say about where our hearts
are? Now, if we pray like that, it
doesn't mean we're lost. After all, we don't get anything
right. But when we find that our prayers
are predominated by the concerns of our natural selves, then maybe
we need to learn to pray differently and to seek different things.
Our Lord Jesus said, seek ye first the kingdom of God. and
His righteousness, and everything else will be added to you. Well, let's take a few minutes
and we'll look at the first of these three requests. Beginning
in verse one, we read, 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. Now this is eternal life, that
they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you
have sent. I have brought you glory on earth
by completing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, Glorify
me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the
world began." Now you might be thinking, Joe, I think you missed
the point. Not once did the word success
appear. Not once did the Lord Jesus say,
Father, make me successful in the work that I'm about to What he prayed was, glorify me, glorify me. And there was no
way for the father to glorify the son other than by making
the son successful in the work he was about to undertake. If we, we won't take the time
to turn to it, but in John chapter 12, verses 23 and 24, our Lord
said this, the hour has come for the son of man to be glorified.
I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the
ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies,
it produces many seeds. Now, our Lord Jesus ties his
glorification to two things by that illustration. First of all,
his glorification is tied to him dying. Now, we normally do not associate
death with glory. Now, we might honor a man or
a woman who lays their life down for the benefit of others, who
bears the risk of war or disease in their work of trying to help
others. And if they die, we build monuments
to them. But we don't think of them being
made essentially glorious. by way of death. So we don't associate death with
being glorified. Death generally indicates some
sort of failure or defeat. But the death of the Lord Jesus
was not a defeat, it was an accomplishment. It is written that when our Lord
was transfigured there, Moses and Elijah, appeared and they
spoke with him of the death that he should accomplish at Jerusalem. And that word accomplish means
to fulfill. It's interesting that the word
fulfill is used there of death. That means that this death was
on purpose. It means that this death was planned. It was something
given to him to do and he was going to fulfill what was given
him to do. He was going to accomplish a
death in Jerusalem. There is no other human being
that has ever lived who has accomplished death. Hell goes on forever, near as
I can tell from the scriptures. Whatever hell is, it goes on
forever, and here's the reason. The people there are never finished
dying. They never accomplish death. It is written, if a man is dead,
he is justified from his sins. Seeing that those in hell are
never justified from their sins, it must be that they are never
truly dead. Instead, they are forever dying. Our Lord died unto sin once. In the space of a few hours,
he accomplished what sinners can never get done in an eternity. He fulfilled death. He drank
that cup of death given to him by the Father, and he drank it
down to the dregs. And when he was done, there wasn't
any left. One of my favorite hymn texts. I don't know if we've ever been
able to sing it, because I've never been able to find a tune to use it
with that isn't under copyright. But it speaks of our Lord taking
that cup of wrath, and it says, that bitter cup, love drank it
up. There's not one drop for me. If He does not accomplish my
death, it'll be given me to do. And I'll never get it done. He
accomplished death. Jesus is glorified in dying,
for He's not dying for His own sins, but for the sins of others.
Paul says Christ died for our sins. If a man is executed for
his crimes, no one pats him on the back for dying. No one says
to him, good job, good job, best death I've ever seen. But if someone were to substitute
himself in the place of a condemned man, now that might be a deed
worthy of glory, wouldn't it? In that very long novel, A Tale of Two
Cities, The story comes pretty much to a conclusion. You know,
it's about the French Revolution, and one man has been condemned
to die, and another man who looks very much like him is able to
sneak into that condemned man's cell, trade places with him. And as they put him on the guillotine,
and are ready to drop the blade, he says, there's a far, far better
thing I do than I have ever done. Yes, to give your life in behalf
of another, that brings glory. But you know, that character
in A Tale of Two Cities, he gave his life for another man, but
later on that man died too. He just didn't dive in. He died
later. Jesus Christ died for our sins
according to the scriptures and as he said, he that lives and
believes in me will never die. And if he does, what he means
by that is we all understand that there is a kind of death
to go through. If he believes in me, though
he were dead, yet shall he live. Maybe we ought to make a practice
that when our brothers and sisters die, as the world calls it, we put on their tombstone, born
such and such a day, He died, didn't. He just moved. He just departed. But dying is not the only thing
necessary for the glorification of our Lord Jesus, not even a
substitutionary death. In order for this death to glorify
Him, it must accomplish its purpose. He compares His death to planting
seeds. portion I read from John 12.
This being a farming community, an agricultural economy, we should
be able to identify the Lord's meaning here. He said unless
a seed dies, is planted and it dies, it won't produce any more
seeds. Now he uses the word die Every seed planted dies. But the ones that produce seeds,
they die in the sense that they cease to be a seed. The seed
you planted is gone. But some seeds die because they
simply rot. The seed's no good. and therefore its death accomplishes
nothing. Its death doesn't accomplish
anything. It doesn't even make anything possible. It just rots. No one praises a seed that does
not accomplish its purpose of producing more seeds. Instead,
when people plant seeds that simply die, that simply rot in
the ground, they complain about the seed's worthlessness. It's,
you know, I paid for this package of seeds and nothing came up. Yeah, the seed died. It's gone. And there's nothing in its place. But if a seed is planted and
the result is a healthy plant that produces many more seeds,
then it's regarded as good and commended for being good seed. Now, you know seed companies,
they want farmers to buy their seed. And how do they get them
to do that? What do they advertise? Do they
advertise that the seed dies? Do they speak of how well it
dies? They say, you plant this seed, I guarantee it's gonna
die. No, they entice farmers to buy their seed by the yield
it produces. Oh, you're gonna get 150 bushels
an acre out of this seed, or whatever. I don't know enough
about farming to know what's good. But whatever be good. And you
know what? If a guy buys that seed, and
plants it and nothing comes up, there's a seed salesman in real
trouble. In fact, if he's told 150 and the seed only produces
75 bushels, the seed man's in trouble. If that seed does not accomplish
what the salesman said it would, the seed will not be glorified
That farmer will tell other farmers, don't buy that. It won't do what
they say it'll do. Our Lord Jesus, in his death,
was like a seed planted in the ground. And he was planted with
expectation. And unless that expectation is
fully realized, he is not glorified. It is commonly believed that
Jesus Christ came into the world in an attempt to save every individual
in the world. It is said that the death that
he died was offered as a sacrifice for the sins of everyone in the
world. Now does that glorify him? If most of the world ends
up dying too? If most of the world ends up
in hell? If he died for everyone, if he
offered himself as a sacrifice for the sins of everyone, then
anything less than everybody being saved robs the Lord of
his glory because he didn't produce the seed that was promised. No, such a message disgraces
Christ because His yield falls far short of His promise. But
Christ is glorified by producing a full harvest. If you look back
at John 17, note what the Lord says here in verse 2. He says,
you, this is Christ praying to His Father, you granted Him,
that's a reference to Himself. You granted him authority over
all people that he might give eternal life to those you chose,
to those you have given him. Now, our Lord has authority over
everybody. He said, all authority in heaven
and earth has been given to me. Whether or not you ever acknowledge
it, he is your Lord. He's the king of the universe.
God granted him authority over all people. But to what end that
he would give life that he would give life to as many as the Father
gave him. Our Lord says to the Father, these were yours and you gave
them to me and I have not lost one. And our Lord is glorified as
the seed planted by producing a full crop. None, none for whom
he accomplished this death shall ever die. And even though this body shall
someday cease to work, that person shall go on experiencing that
eternal life which is defined like this, Verse three, now this
is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God,
and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. Why could our Lord say,
he that lives and believes in me will never die? Because he
that believes in Christ knows the Father and knows the Son,
And even though his body shall someday cease, he will keep knowing
the Father and the Son forever. And that is eternal life. That
life never dies. It has a beginning, but it has
no end. His authority was to give Eternal
life to those that the Father had given Him, and our Lord confesses
that His glory is dependent on Him accomplishing that, giving
life to all that the Father had given to Him. Now in verse 1,
let's look at just a couple of details and we'll be done. The
Lord says, Father, the hour has come. What hour is this? Well,
we read it back in John chapter 12, verse 23, Father, He said
that the hour has come for the son to be glorified there in
John 12. So this is the hour, the hour of our Lord's glorification. Often there is a reference in
the scriptures to the Lord's hour. It is said that some of
his enemies who wanted to kill him, it's that they couldn't
because his hour had not yet come. And in John chapter 12,
verse 27, the Lord is recorded as saying, Now my heart is troubled,
and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour?
No, it was for this very reason that I came to this hour. Now by speaking of a particular
hour, a particular time, We realize, you know, that this is something
that's been planned. This is something that's on a
schedule. This was marked on the calendar. Before God spoke the universe
into existence, this day was already ordained. Of course,
everything was already ordained, but this was the most monumental
thing that was ordained. This is the hour of hours. It had been spoken of thousands
of years before. And all those years passed by
without the promise being fulfilled. Why? Its fulfillment was scheduled
for this hour. It's not as though our Lord Jesus
Christ came to the world with one plan, but that got messed
up by the Jews' unbelief, and therefore He had to come up with
another plan. A plan B. a fallback position
which he really hadn't planned on when he got here. No, this
day's been planned from before there was a universe to carry
out the plan. These people who would in just
a little while lay hold of our Lord Jesus Christ and beat him
and abuse him and crucify him and put him to death. They were doing exactly what
God had ordained for them to do at exactly the time He ordained
for them to do it, to accomplish His purpose. They did it willingly,
they did it out of the wickedness of their own heart, but they
were right on schedule. The hour has come And he says, Father, glorify
your son. The glory that our Lord sought
was a glory which could be given to him only by his Father. Now, we speak of glorifying the
Lord Jesus Christ, and we mean that by that praising him. But our Lord meant something
else here when he says to the Father, glorify your son. Look at verse five. And now,
Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you
before the world began. So he's not speaking here of
the Father simply saying, good job, son. It's not simply God exalting
him to his right hand, though it would involve that. It's something
much more. It's him being returned to that
glorious state that he left behind in order to save such inglorious
sinners like you and me. Had our Lord come into the world
in the fullness of his glory, it would have killed everybody.
Moses said, show me your glory. The Lord said, no, I can't do
that, Moses. No man can see my face and live. And so when He comes, it says,
though He were equal with God, He made Himself of no reputation. He emptied Himself of His glory.
He gave it up. He surrendered His divine rights
and privileges and appeared in the very form of a servant. Why?
So we could look at Him and stay alive. He did not descend, you know,
like the kings or whatever, the uppity-ups of our day, if they
want to look good, you know, they'll go out among the poor.
But they don't look like the poor when they go out there. They'll go out there with their
parade of cars and they'll step out in their, you know, suits
that cost thousands of dollars and in a condescending way mix
with the poor and act like they actually like them. Our Lord
Jesus Christ didn't do that. He became what we are. And he was anxious to return
to what he had been. And there's nothing wrong with
that, especially when you consider that he realized the only way
he gets back is through the door of death. So when he says, Father,
Glorify me. He's saying, Father, let's get
this done. Let's get it done. I want to
come home. I want to be what I was. I have
finished the work you gave me to do. I've made your name known
to these that you gave me. There's this one last event we
got to do. I can come home. And would you want anything less for the Lord Jesus? Would you be upset that he wants
to leave here and return to his father and enjoy the glory that was
rightfully his? No. If He is your Savior, you'd
say, Father, glorify Him. Make Him glorious, and make His
glory known among the nations. He surrendered His glory, and
now He wants it back, and He's willing to die completely to
get it back. And he died. Died at the hands
of his father. Died at the hands of God the
judge. And when he did, a plant began to grow. And that plant will bear many
seeds. Every seed that was intended. And from the viewpoint of God,
it's already done. And the harvest is in. So he
said, son, you don't belong in the tomb anymore. Come on out.
And then after about 40 days, he says, son, that's long enough
down there. Come on up. I've got a place
prepared for you. I will re-institute your glory
in its fullness. And those fellows that I gave
you, I'm going to send them out in the power of my Spirit to
declare that glory. And I'm glad. I'm glad our Lord
prayed this. Because the Scriptures teach
us that because He's been glorified
so shall we. It says that we, when we see
Him, we're going to be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Oh, Father, glorify Your Son. And Heavenly Father, we thank
You that You have glorified Your sons, and You have glorified
all of us who are your sons in that Son. And we look for the
day when we'll experience that glory. Blessed be your name both
now and forevermore.