John chapter 16. Now we're about
to enter into one of the most special portions of Scripture
in all the Bible. Now all the Bible's special,
we know that. All the Bible is the Word of
God. But there is a real uniqueness about John chapter 17. Because we are enabled by the
Spirit of grace to eavesdrop, as it were, on our Savior's words
to the Father. He who poured out his heart to
God in prayer made certain that the Spirit of grace recorded
every bit of this prayer, and we have it for us here in John
chapter 17. It's the greatest prayer that
was ever prayed And we're absolutely sure about that. And I believe
it follows the greatest message that's ever been preached. Especially
the greatest message that's ever been preached to the Lord's people.
I know in John chapter 13, Judas was still with the disciples,
but as we've said several times, At the end of John chapter 13,
He left. And then our Lord is with His
special disciples, the men who loved Him, the men that He came
to redeem, the men He came to purchase with His own blood. And so He speaks to these men. It's the greatest message that
ever was preached. John chapters 14, 15, and 16. And we need to remember the one
who preached it was our Master, our marvelous Redeemer and Savior. He's the preacher. And then after
He preached the message, then He prayed the prayer. It is especially
to every man who is a preacher to think how our Lord Jesus was
a preacher. Matthew chapter 4 verse 17 says, Jesus began to preach. Jesus began to preach. You might
ask, from what time? When was it that He began to
preach? Well, it was after He had defeated
the serpent in the wilderness. He has effectually demonstrated
He had all authority over Satan. And after that has been established,
our Lord Jesus goes forth. He goes forth to preach. When
He goes into Galilee, He immediately begins to preach. And He says,
and it's recorded in Luke chapter 4, He quotes from Isaiah 61. He said, the spirit of the Lord
is upon me because he's anointing me to preach the gospel to the
poor. Our Lord Jesus was himself a
preacher. And the lengthiest message to
his people, to you and me, a message we feed on, a message we learn
from, a message that instructs our souls is here given to us
in John chapters 14, 15, and 16. Yes, our Lord was indeed
a preacher, and this message has been preserved by the Spirit
of God, because never a man spoke like this man. You remember at
the end of another message that he brought, the end of it is
in Matthew chapter 7, the people were astonished at his doctrine. Because they said, this man,
he speaks. He speaks with authority. He
didn't speak like the scribes. The scribes, they had to refer
to the old rabbinical leaders, and they had to go back to the
customs and traditions of the fathers. But he didn't speak
like that. His doctrine, it came from deep
within him. And they could perceive this. He speaks in a way that's different
from these other preachers. Now, we know that for most of
them, they didn't understand what he was saying. They didn't
understand the gospel that he was declaring. But they knew
this, he's a different kind of preacher. Nobody else is like
him. And we know that because this
one who speaks to us, he's the one who came from God. He's a
preacher come from God. He is the prince of preachers.
He always shall be. and he preached this message
to his disciples. Now, right toward the end of
this message, there is a verse, a verse in which our Lord makes
statements that Gib, well, kind of a, he kind of puts all of his ministry
together in just a very, very few words. He's come at the end of this
lengthy message. He's got a few other words he's
going to speak to the disciples, but that's in response to what
they said. Let me show you really the main
statement at the end. And as I was reading this over,
This just kind of jumped off the page to me. I always like
it. I'm always happy when the Spirit
of God deals with me on one verse of Scripture and makes it real
to me. It's like what I was trying to
say the other night, that if I say something to you, or another
preacher says something to you, or you read something out of
a book, that doesn't make the biggest impression upon you.
But when the Spirit of God shows you something, When He gives
you just like a little golden nugget, you've read the Word
of God, and you've read the Word of God, and you've read the Word
of God, and then all of a sudden it's like, There's some words
that kind of, they jump off the page at you. Have you ever had
that to happen to you? It's a very special time. And it's a very special portion
of Scripture that does that. And the Spirit of God, He sovereignly
works in all of our studies in revealing to us the things that
He wants to teach us. Here's the verse that I was greatly
impressed by. John 16, 28. These are majestic words right
at the end of our Lord's most lengthy message. John 16, 28. I came forth from the Father
and am come into the world. Again, I leave the world and
go to the Father. Now in this verse, nothing new
is stated, of course, But I'll tell you, here's what's new.
The brevity with which our Lord covers all of his ministry. He does it in just a very few
words. He covers the whole ground of
his ministry. Here's his identity, his work,
his being, and his glory. Now you'll notice the verse falls
into two halves. And each half consists of two
very brief statements. The first half describes our
Lord's descent. He descended to the world. It describes where he came from,
the Father. And it describes his destination,
the world. The second half describes his
ascent. First from descent, the second,
his ascent. His ascent to the Father. Where would he leave from? The
world. What is his destination? The
Father. So in each half of the verse,
two statements deal with the same facts, but considered in
reverse order. The first half deals with His
departure and His very position or point of arrival. He left the Father, He came to
the world. His departure was from heaven,
in other words. His departure was from the Father. His point of arrival was He says,
I came forth from the Father and am come into the world. His departure was from the Father.
His very point of arrival was the world. Now look at the second
half of the verse. I leave the world, I leave the
world and go to the Father. His departure was from the world. And his point of arrival was
with the Father. And as we get into this, and
as we study this, we find in the middle of this, He left the
Father, He came to the world, He left the world, He went back
to the Father. But right in the middle, we can
assume He did something. He did something. And He did
it so successfully that He went back to the Father. The Father
who Himself designed that He would come into the world, that
He would leave heaven's glories and come into the world, He did
something, He did a work that so honored God, it satisfied
God to this extent, that then the Lord Jesus left this world
to which He came, and His destination is to go back to the Father. And if we have an understanding
of this one verse of Scripture, then we will be able to identify
the Mediator and the Great High Priest of John chapter 17. Because you see, there isn't
any use really going into a study of John chapter 17 into a thorough
examination of this verse by verse. No use doing that if this
is merely the words of a religious leader who was somewhat popular. But if that's all he was, just
a religious leader, then reading and studying this prayer is not
going to help us. if He wasn't any different from us, if He
wasn't God manifest in the flesh, if He wasn't the One who came
from God to the world and did a work and then left this world
and went back to the Father, if this isn't the Lord Jesus,
our Savior, God's own Son, a study of this prayer of John 17 would
be virtually useless. And I would even suggest this
to you, that John chapter 17, and all 26 verses of it, which
is an accurate recording of our Lord's prayer, it is a sort of,
it is a, what would I call it, a commentary. That's what it
is, it is a commentary on John chapter 16 verse 28. If you want
to see John chapter 16 and verse 28 set forth in a lengthy way
and examined and laid out, you read John chapter 17. So I'm saying if we can grasp
this verse, then it will go a long ways toward us understanding
this, the Lord's Prayer. Let's just break it down here
just very briefly. He says, first of all, I came
forth from the Father. The three things are certainly
implied. Number one, if he came forth
from the Father, he must have existed before he came. He must have existed before he
came, before he was ever born in this world. See, you and I,
we had no existence before we were born. In fact, we had no voice in our
birth. We didn't choose to be born.
Our mother and father, they came together and God in His marvelous
providence, He created a life. But as far as that light that
was formed from the egg and the seed, We had no say-so of that. But our Lord Jesus did now. He had a say-so in this. Because
He existed before He ever came. Now He did not exist as to His
body. That's true. But He existed as
God. He's always been God. He's always
existed. You see, if He came out from
the Father, that's what it says, I came forth from the Father. If He came forth from the Father,
then He was with the Father before He ever came. And if He was with
the Father before He ever came, then He was with the Father forever. That makes Him God. You see,
the reason John chapter 17 is so vital is because the One who
is speaking, the One who lays out His very heart in prayer
to the Father, He came forth from the Father in His incarnation. John 1, 1 and 2, we know very
well. In the beginning was the Word.
The Word was with God. The Word was God. The same was
in the beginning with God. I like the interlinear Bible
on this. It reads this way. In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word. God was the Word. This quite
simply tells us that our Savior is the eternal God. Here's His
deity, Jesus of Nazareth. He is the Son of God. From everlasting
to everlasting, He's God. He says, I came, I came forth
from the Father. Now, here's the second thing
that this implies. If He came forth from the Father,
if He came out of the Father, then the Father must have had
some reason for sending Him into the world. In the Word of God, the Scriptures
are not vague in setting before us the reason the Lord Jesus
came into the world. Now, preachers may be vague,
and most of them are. Ministers may not know why Christ
came into the world, and they may not even say the reason why
He came into the world, but the Word of God, the Scriptures speak
very clearly to this subject. Thou shalt call His name Jesus,
for He shall save His people from their sins. In His incarnation,
in His life, and in His death, the Word of God declares to us
the reason that He came. He came to say, for God so loved
the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth
on Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God
sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world. He didn't
send Him to condemn the world, but that the world through Him
might be saved. Why did God send Him? Well, the
answer is easy. He sent Him to save. What does
it mean to save? It means to rescue. It means
to deliver. It means to make whole. We're
sick. We're diseased. We're spiritually
dead. We're cut off from God. We couldn't
do anything about our dilemma. And so God sent Him to save. He sent Him to rescue. He sent
Him to deliver us. To deliver us from all of our
enemies from which we couldn't deliver ourselves. We're like
the Israelites in Egypt. They had no power over Pharaoh
or the Egyptian armies. They couldn't deliver themselves.
They couldn't rescue themselves. They had no ability. They couldn't
raise up an army against Pharaoh. They couldn't do that. And there
they were in their awful situation of bondage. Servitude. But God did something. God did
something. And here we were in our blindness,
in our deadness, in our sinfulness. We couldn't do anything. We couldn't
do anything to help ourselves. You know, the old adage, God
helps those who help themselves. Not in salvation. Not in salvation,
because we can't help ourselves. We can't do anything to make
our situation better. But God did something. Well,
what did God do? He sent one down from above. And the Savior says, I came forth
from the Father. From the Father. And He came
forth from the Father to save. He sent him to rescue. Look over
in his high priestly prayer, John 17, look at verse eight. Our Lord says, for I have given
unto them the words which thou gavest me and they have received
them and have known, they have known surely that I came out
from thee. They know that of a surety. That's
what he's just said over here. He just taught them this. And now our Lord Jesus says,
they know this for sure now. I've taught them. They know I
came out from thee. I came out from thee and they
had believed that thou did, you sent me. Thou did send me. When the Savior came forth from
the Father, it's recorded in Hebrews chapter 10, and this
is a quotation out of Psalm 40. Lo, I come, and the volume of
the book it is written of me, to do thy will, O God. What will? His redemptive will. His saving
will. It's to fulfill his will of redemption. And then I'll tell you this,
here's the third thing, this statement shows His willingness
to come. I know the Father sent Him, no
question about that. But there was no reluctance on
the Savior's part. With us, when we as fathers send our children
to do something or send our grandchildren to do something, to do a job,
sometimes they don't really want to do it. And we have to kind
of say, hey, did you hear what I said? You do what I told you
to do. And we hope that'll take care
of it before we have to go to other means of enforcing the
command. It wasn't that way with the Son
of God. He came willingly. He came voluntarily. There was
no reluctance. No reluctance. In fact, it was written of the
death that He died, by which He washed our sins away. It was
written of that that He said, I delight to do Thy will, O God. That's what He said. I delight
to. I'm glad to do it. I'm thankful to do it. Of old
he was appointed to this position to be the Savior, but of old
he also volunteered to be the Savior. And when time came for
him to come, and the Father said, it's time for you now to descend
to the world and be born from the womb of a virgin, instantly
the Savior obeyed the Father's command. It shows His willingness. He must do this. He had to do
it. He had to do it because God ordained
it, but he also wanted to do it. We must never, in presenting
the gospel, we must never indicate any reluctance on either the
father's part or the son's part in the salvation of sinners.
God's willing to save. Listen, if He's more willing
to save than you are to be saved, did you know that? And if that
wasn't true, you wouldn't be saved. Because if He just left
it to your will, that'd be the end of it. But He was more willing,
more willing, got that? For you to be saved than you
were to be saved. He overcame your will. He puts
it this way in Psalm 110 verse three, thy people shall be willing
in the day of thy power. So, here's our savior. The work of God was of greatest
concern to him. Do you remember when our Lord
ministered to the woman, to the Samaritan woman there at the
well? And the disciples went into town to buy him some food
They came back and he just wasn't interested in eating. And they
thought, well, has somebody else brought him lunch? Somebody else
brought him something to eat? He said, I have meat to eat that
you know not of. He said, my meat is to do the
will of God, to do His work and finish it. That's what he thrived
on. I know they called him a gluttonous
man, but he wasn't a gluttonous man. There were times when he
didn't even eat. There was a motivation that was
deeper within him than the physical necessities of his body. And that was to do the Father's
will of reconciliation. He had a salvation work to carry
out. And he said, I've got to do it,
I want to do it, and he must do it. And he did do it. He did
do it. This was his immediate work that
he came to do. Well, then notice he says this,
I'm come into the world. And watch this, the Lord Jesus,
and he told the Pharisees this back in John 8. He said, I'm
not of the world. You're of the world, but he said,
I'm not of the world. He said, you're from beneath.
You're from beneath. I'm from above. And he came from
above to people who deserved to be beneath. He said, I'm from above. He said,
I'm not of this world. He was in the world, but He wasn't
of the world. The world didn't produce Him. The Jewish religion, with all
of their rituals, with all of their ceremonies, with all of
the things that they were still going through, they didn't send
for Him. And they didn't want Him. They
didn't want Him. He didn't conform to them. He said, I'm not of the world.
I didn't originate of the world. You do. You originated. You're of the world. And remember,
He even said this to His disciples. He said, if you are of the world,
which they were physically, but they weren't of the world spiritually.
They didn't conform to the world's religious standards. He said,
if you were of the world, the world would hate you or the world
would love you. But he said, you're not of the
world. That's why the world hates you. That's why the world hated
him. He wasn't of the world. He didn't fit their standards. He didn't fit their ideals. He
didn't fit their ideas. He just didn't conform. Well, you know, if he would have
conformed, he'd have got along with them. Well, in order to
do that, he'd have had to cease to be God, because theirs was
really a godless religion. It was a graceless religion.
It was a religion based upon man's duties. He said, I'm not
of the world. You're of the world, but I'm
not of the world, he said. He was in the world. Thank God
he was. He was in the world, but He wasn't
of the world. He came to save the chief of
sinners in the world. But He didn't belong to the world. He was separate from the world.
Separate from the world. Scripture says He came into His
own, His own received Him not. How did He come? Through a virgin's
womb. He came supernaturally. He said, I'm coming to the world.
Did He not say there in Luke chapter 19 when He was ministering
to Zacchaeus, the Son of Man is come? Why have you come? To seek and
to save that which was lost. We never had a loss as to the
reason for His coming. And like I said a while ago,
a lot of preachers are vague about this. And the reason they
don't come right out and say the reason He came is because
they don't know. They don't know. Or else they've
read it and they just lie about it. But the Scripture speaks
very forthrightly. He came to save. He came to seek. He's the shepherd come down here
to seek the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Our Lord is
very specific in giving the reasons why the Father sent Him. He said,
I'm coming to the world. And this is a faithful saying
and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners, of whom I'm cheap, Paul says. Now, if
he came into the world, we're then led to ask, what did he
do while he was in the world? Well, he put sin away. He brought
in everlasting righteousness. He reconciled us to God, and
he did it by his death, by his death and his resurrection. His
blood has washed away our sins. That's why he came. He came to
wash us. make us presentable to God. And
then here's the last thing. He said, again, I leave the world
and go to the Father. I leave the world. I leave the
world and the world is still like it was when he came. The
world still hated him. The world hated him when he came.
The world hated him when he left. But he didn't come to do something
for the world at large. He came to do something, number
one, for God. And number two, He came to do
something for His people. But He couldn't do anything for
His people. He couldn't deliver us. He couldn't
save us. He couldn't rescue us. He couldn't
make us whole unless He did something for God. Satisfies justice. Satisfies love. And He did that. So He said again, I leave the
world. You don't think he left with
work being left undone, do you? You don't think he departed with
work left undone? Well, no. And I know the work
was not left undone because when he got back to heaven, the Father
didn't send him back again and say, now wait a minute, you've
got to go back and finish the work. No, the Father said, sit
here on my right hand until I make you enemies of your footstool.
You know why the Father said that to him? Because he finished
the work that God gave him to do. He said, I'll leave the world. And He did. He left. Read Acts
chapter 1. He ascended right back to the
Father. Right back where He came from.
But things are different now. And they were when He came. When
He came, there was this issue of our sinfulness. Something
had to be done about it. But when He went back, something
had been done about it. And righteousness, it has been
brought in. So he goes back to the Father. And the Father honored him. He
honored him. See, the Savior had said it is
finished. And here in John 17, I'll give
you this and I'll quit. He says here, look at verse 4.
This is in his prayer. I have finished, I have glorified
thee on the earth. I finished the work which thou
gavest me to do." In anticipation of finishing that work, he makes
this statement. That's why he goes back to the
Father. That's why he leaves the world. That's why the Father
gives him the exalted position of sovereign king over all. Because
he finished that work that God gave him to do. There's no way
anybody could do justice to this verse, and certainly I haven't
tonight, though we could preach on this from now on. I'll read
it again. Christ said to his disciples, and essentially this
is the last word of the message, because you'll notice in verse
29, his disciples said unto him, and then they've got something
to say in verses 29 and 30, and then the Lord is, at the very
end, he's answering them. So actually verse number 28,
it's the last one of the sermon. I came forth from the Father.
Speaking of these 11 men, I came forth from the Father and am
come into the world. Again, I leave the world and
go to the Father. Delightful scripture. I hope
it blessed you as much as it blessed me. Well, let's get our
psalm books and turn to 143.