Let us continue to pray for our
brothers and sisters who are unable to be with us this morning,
and let us pray for our brothers and sisters who long to be here
but can't, and may the Lord's Word enrich us and equip us. If there is one doctrine from
Scripture that is often abused in the world and in history,
it is the love of God. When we think of love, and as
we saw years ago in John 3, we talk about, for God loved the
world this way, so loved that he gave in the giving. We talked about this, but now
we see Jesus in John 17 focusing on the unity of the saints, the
intimacy of the body. In that discussion, in that prayer
rather, Jesus unfolds a beautiful truth that a lot of us miss. Not because we're not bright
or intelligent, we just miss it. We look at it as a recapitulation. It's very easy to do of what
Jesus has already said and prayed and discussed. But the love of
God is revealed in a way here in this prayer that we've probably
never heard of. It's probably something here
as you'll see, and I'll go ahead and give you the application
for the sermon today. The application is this, is that
as Christ has promised you, his beloved, he will not orphan you.
That is a guarantee. As Christ has atoned for you,
your sins are forgiven, and that is a guarantee. And God's word
has taught you that God loves you. And this is a guarantee,
but there still is a misapplication of the love of God that you will
see today that clearly shows that God will love us as he loves
his son. Now for us to take hold of that,
we have to think holistically concerning this gospel. We may
even have to consider John's first epistle in that way, where
he begins to say that God is love and God loved us. We love
him because he first loved us and that in love, God gave his
son because of love. He gave his son. But we find
very strangely in our world, I know that there are a lot of
people who would or who have. in our reading of Romans and
our reading of Galatians that we've done over the last year
or so, and even in John's Gospel, they take offense at the teaching
of Scripture that shows that God's love, His effectual, gracious
love, is not universal. People take offense at the fact
that culture dictates from early evangelical roots, from the days
of post-Puritanism to the mid-19th century and beyond, people take
offense at the idea that Christ did not pay for the sins of all
humanity. They take offense at it. And from this misunderstanding
and misapplication of God himself, and the attribute of He being
love, we have created philosophically many different theological thoughts
and iterations or what we would call historically traditions
concerning God and His love. But in Jesus praying here, we
start to get a clearer picture of this. We know that God does
not have a universal love effectually in the sense of His salvific
grace to all people. And that God's salvation through
Jesus Christ is, as Paul would say, because of His great love
with which He loved us. And we know that that is not
something God feels. It is not a feeling that God
has. It is a divine, active prerogative through which God decrees and
acts and wills according to his own counsel. It is not the way
God feels. It is the way God is. You see
the difference? Now for us to unpack that and
say, Oh, we got the handle on how God is, would be foolish. But if we look clearly in John
17 at a few specific themes of this prayer, we find that the
love of the Father for the Son and the love of the Father for
the sheep are continually expressed in this prayer. Let's start reading in verse
20 and go to the end of the chapter. We will probably finish this
chapter today, Lord willing. He says in verse 20 of 17, I
do not ask for these alone, only, but also for those who will believe
in me through their word, that they may all be one. Now, keep this in mind. Just
as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that
they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you
have sent me." That's key. Verse 22, the glory that you
have given me, I have given to them. We talked about that over
the last few weeks. That they may be one in the same
way that we are one. I in them and you and me, that
they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that
you sent me. I see. So Jesus has repeated
himself there, right? And that the world may know you
have loved them, even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that they also
whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my
glory that you have given me because you love me before the
foundation of the world. Oh, righteous Father, even though
the world does not know you, I know you. And these know that
you have sent me. I have made known to them your
name, and I will continue to make it known that the love with
which you have loved me may be in them and I in them." So, when
we look at this prayer, we can see a sense of an argument, these
propositions that Jesus is asking and petitioning the Father to
do. We see some doctrine there in
his verbiage that is a little foreign to our ears. It doesn't
ring, does it? It doesn't cooperate with other
things that we hear throughout other places of scripture in
such a parallel way as to go, oh, this is coming to mind, this
is coming to mind, this is coming to mind. When we think about the idea
of salvation in verse 3 of this chapter, Jesus prays that this
is eternal life. That they know you, the only
true God, Jesus who you have sent. That they know you, that they
know the only true God, that they know Jesus, the one You
have sent. This is eternal life. Now, in
the latter part of this prayer, Jesus closes and he tells in
praying the Father that they know him. And that they know
the Son. And that they know that the Son
has come from him, that they know that Jesus is God, that
they know he is Messiah, that they have been granted this knowledge. Before the service, I read out
of Matthew's gospel the account of his trial before Caiaphas. And they brought people to accuse
Jesus, and you'll see that later in John's gospel, where he asks
questions over in chapter 18, verse 19. But as we see that
Caiaphas asks these questions, they bring people to try to bear
false witness about Jesus, and one of them says, he said he
would destroy the temple. and rebuild it. And others say,
wow, this man has claimed to be the son of God. And Coptis asks him, Are you
the son of the most high? Are you the Christ? Are you? Tell us plainly. And
Jesus says, You say so. You say so. And then they are
enraged once again and they say he must die because he has made
himself God. Now the irony here is that they
knew who he was. They weren't mentally challenged. They weren't misinterpreting
Jesus' language. They weren't ignorant of the
scriptures. And of the prophecies and of
the teachings of the prophets they knew Because of the Manifestation
of the words and the work of Christ in the earth that he indeed
was from God They confessed that in the early part of his ministry
through Nicodemus in John 3 we know that you are the one come
from God and Jesus says what to him I Tell you the truth I
tell you the truth, you cannot see the kingdom until you're
born of God. Until you're born again. So that the moniker of simple
evangelism ought to be, you must be born again. That's an evangelistic declaration. Here is all the details of Christ. How is this Christ work for me? How does this person, Jesus,
that what he offers, see, this is the way the world thinks,
what he is going to do, what he is providing, how is it going
to be mine? And man has never been without
an answer as to how to apply salvation to the human being. But yet, until God, in His work,
in His Spirit, divinely opens the eyes through the gift of
faith, which is repentance in the life of His people, they
cannot see and take hold of, by faith, the hope of Christ. To know that He is God, to know
that He is Messiah, to know that the fact is true, is not salvation. To know that you have him. To
know that he has you. To know that the Spirit of God
in you cries out in you, Oh, Papa. You've been adopted by Christ. This is a supernatural work that
cannot be laid out as a crisp, clean offer on a table for you
to pick up the right pieces and put them in order. The love of God for his elect is the reason he said, let there
be light. And that is why John one starts
the way it does. That is why this evangelist apostle
goes to great lengths to paste the reality of the creation of
the cosmos Before there was anything, there was God. I saw on a church website just
yesterday, someone asked me, is this a church that I should
attend? And I looked at their statement of faith and I quickly
said, no. Because they talked their anthropology,
their doctrine of humanity, with their doctrine of God, with their
doctrine of salvation, was so confusing. It's like, we're gonna
bake a cake, we're gonna have some lobster, we're gonna change
the motor oil, let's put it all in a blender and do it all at
one time. Drink and lube at the same time. It just makes no sense. And here's
one of the things that troubled me. God, and I'm gonna paraphrase
for simplicity, had such a desire to love something, he created
the world. I'm not kidding. And this is
a mainline denomination. He wanted to love something so
badly, he created the world that he could love it. And he wanted
genuine love toward himself, so he gave man freedom. And he
tries hard to show his love to them, but it's up to them to
be found in the love of God. And I have to say I respect that
church. Because at least they're saying
what they really believe. At least they're being honest
and they're not hiding behind some statement of faith that's
ambiguous or mixed or they're just flat out saying, we believe
in another God. Get used to it. Get used to it. Friends, if that is the love
of God, we are in deep, deep, deep trouble. The other side of that is that
sometimes people who have a high view of God's sovereignty, people
can have a high view of God's sovereignty but not be His. I believe the Jews of the first
century had a high view of God's sovereignty. But then when it
came down to the way they lived, acted, worked, and worshipped,
they were working synergistically with God to produce some type
of righteousness. Yet the prophets say that God
will justify His people. He will impute righteousness
to them. It never says He will make them
walk in a righteous way as to be righteous. And all of that is in this closing
part of this prayer, believe it or not. All of that is focused
here. What does the love of God really
mean for us? One of the things that I was just about to say
is that sometimes we get so self-deprecating. I am but a worm. Some good Puritan hymns manifest
that type of attitude. And in the reality of my flesh,
I am but a worm. I am yet but a vessel of mercy
could just as well been a vessel of dishonor, a poop pot. As it talks about in Romans 9. But God in his love for me created
me to be a vessel of mercy, an object of mercy. A manifestation
of his loving kindness. And he created me in Christ to
bear the work of God reflected for the sake of his glory. Ephesians
2.10. By grace, by mercy, by love. That is something. While we are
nothing and merit nothing and deserve nothing but justice,
God, before all things, has seen us and loved us and created us
for the purpose of redeeming us. And then He calls us His own. Then Christ dies for us. He exchanges Himself so that
we can be His righteousness. And the list goes on and on in
this gospel truths. So we are to see ourselves as
God sees us. I want them to be one, Jesus
says. We have conversations throughout
the years about ministry, don't we? I mean, how many of us have
said, I really want to serve the Lord? I want to serve the
Lord. I want to serve the Lord with
gladness. I want to serve the Lord. I want to give my life
to the service of God, to the Lord Jesus Christ. I mean, this
is so common in my ear that it almost doesn't even sound like
English. Let's talk to people year after
year after year. Every season of life, you've
always got that. And all of us have been there. And we've had
this zeal and this drive, I want to do it. And what have we always
come to find when we serve the Lord according to the culture's
blueprint? Disaster. Let's plant a church. Sounds
great to me. That's exciting. What happens? Man plants the
church according to man's traditions, according to man's focus, according
to man's mission and message. And we use the Bible to make
the recipe, but it's not the right recipe. And then one thing
leads to another, and before it's all said and done, man is
in charge. It's nothing but another tower of Babel, call it a church.
It's nothing but another, it's just another opportunity for
the world to try to stand in the presence of God and serve
Him. And beloved, that's how I felt for the most of my ministry.
What am I doing? I get here, I get called by this
church and I'm like, what are we doing? When is the Bible going
to become authoritative to what we do as a people? And I'm not
just talking about foolish things. And then ultimately it ends in
somebody getting hurt very badly, emotionally. and sometimes physically. And if that doesn't happen, it's
schism and scandal. Then it's pretending like it
doesn't happen, and then it's an assertion of authority, and
then it's megalomania. I'm the pastor around here, by
God. I mean, you know, that kind of stuff. You don't like it,
leave. And it's the pastor and the chairs the next week, that
kind of stuff. That's not what it means to serve
God. We've seen it over and over again. Jesus has prayed this
here. Why should we serve God anyway,
and what does it look like? That's not even the point of
the message here, but I want to get it to you so that you can put it in
the perspective of what Jesus is closing, how Jesus is closing
this prayer. Serving the Lord is to love Him with all of our
heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love each other as we
love ourselves. And He's already said that if
you love Me, you'll obey My commandment. And My commandment is that you
love one another. That's the point. If we are to
serve the Lord, the only way we can serve the Lord is to serve
God's people. And that can be setting this
table. That can be praying. That can
be rejoicing together or enjoying fellowship. That can be being
in unity. in the gospel. We all have gifts. Paul says to the Corinthian church
that God has determined how he wanted to set up the church for
its own benefit. So that everything the church
needs is right here. Everything you need in your life
for the sake of serving the Lord is right here. Look around. This
is it. We are serving the Lord when
we're together. considering one another, how
our gifts might be for the benefit of others. Do we have different
gifts? We all have different gifts.
We have different purposes in life and our and our mindset
of how we do certain things. Some of us are really good at
some things and other people are really bad at what we're
good at. Some of us have special attention
to be instruments of mercy and kindness. Some of us are able
to say, you know, here's some grocery. Some of us are able
to say, here's some money. Some of us are able to say, I'm
coming over to your house to clean. And those are all part of this
oneness. But these are the results of
things. These are the outcomes because
anybody can have that kind of unity, right? Anybody can have
that kind of service attitude. The cults, some of the cults
are so good at serving one another that it's very easy to say, oh,
look, they're Christians. But that's just the outcome.
And sometimes it works well, and sometimes it's a tangled
Christmas tree light. Or it's a big mess, or it's like
the backlash on an open-faced reeling rod. It just comes out,
and you just have to cut it all out and hope for the best. It
can become a tangled nightmare. But one thing that will never
be a mess is when we are in unity in the love of God. The glory you have given me,
I have given to them. Who I am and what I accomplished,
I gave it to them. He's talking about the disciples and he's talking about those
that will believe he will give to them. And the glory that you've given
me, I've given to them that they may be one as we are one. I and them and you and me, that
they may become perfectly one. What does it mean to become perfectly
one? We have to understand that it is because we are found in
the love of God. Paul says that very phrase to
the Thessalonians, doesn't he? He says, keep yourself in the
love of God. Keep yourself in the love of
God. How in the world do we do that? By trusting that God keeps us
in His love. We must know that we are found
in Christ. Christ is God. He came because
of His love for us, because of His love for the Father, and
because of the Father's love for us, so that the world, those
who are mine in the world, may know that you sent me. And they
may know that you have loved them even as you have loved me. Now I'm going to be honest with
you. Without this prayer, Specifically,
when we think of ourselves as vessels of mercy, deserving judgment,
we still we degrade the love of God in such a way to think
there is no way God the Father loves us as he loves his son. And we cannot parse out the idea
of what is the love of God for the Son, the Father for the Son,
eternally? What does it look like pre-incarnation?
What does it look like before the world began? We know the
benefits of it. We know the unity of God. When
Jesus says, it is my will, we know that it is the will of the
Father. When Jesus asks anything of the Father, it is because
it is the Father's desire to see it. It is the Father's decree
to cause it. Yet we still find ourselves puzzled
by that. And we found it. We find it sounding
a little blasphemous. Because we are not Jesus, we
are not divine. And what I want to do in that
is I'm going to go, OK, let's think of Jesus and his humanity,
and let's think of how God loves him in a human perspective. The
father loving this human. And he'll love us in the same
way, but that's not what Jesus says, is it? The glory that you gave me before
the world. My essence as God, as creator,
as Elohim, this is who we are together, Father. Now this is
who they must be in us. And I'll tell you, there are
some cults out there that think that we have divine attributes. I've heard people say, oh, we're
going to be like little Christs or we're going to be little gods
or sub gods. That's the whole Latter-day Saint
theology. And if we keep going, we can
be the God of our own universe one day. I'm not kidding. It's what they believe. But now he prays, look at verse
24 specifically, he prays. And you notice how none of that
stuff really resolves. It's a lot of assertion, a lot of inquiry,
a lot of things that we're to think about and they sort of
run around in our head like a BB in a jar. And we want to stop
and set it straight and put it all on a neat little chart. Don't
do that, beloved. Don't chart out this doctrine. Be in awe of it. Let God the
Spirit teach you in a way that you just sort of rest and you're
like, Your mouth is a gape in the sense of your soul and you
just soak it in. But he prays, I desire that they
also whom you have given me may be with me where I am. Now, where
is Jesus? Where is Jesus? He's there. He's
soon to die. But more importantly, he is in
the presence and in the love of God. He is not alone. They are not
alone. His love for them, His love for
the Father is fueling everything He's doing in His humanity to
substitute Himself for them. Also, and where He is presently,
though in a temporal sense He is yet to be restored to His
former glory, He is surely still the God of glory. So Jesus says,
I want them to be where I am. I want them to go where I'm going. I want them to be standing in
a place of righteousness. And you'll see that unfold in
a minute, verse 25. And I want them to be where I
am so they can see my glory that you have given me because you
loved me before the foundation of the world. There is an eternal
love that the Father has for the Son before the foundation
of the world. There is an eternal glory that the Son has before
the foundation of the world. And remember what John's gospel
teaches us concerning the glory of God. The glory of God is to
see him as he is. To see the revelation of God
by the illumination of the word through the Holy Spirit, we go,
wow. We behold him in all of his fullness. This is the glory of God, Jesus
Christ. We have seen his glory, glory
as the only son of the father, full of grace and truth. The
word became flesh. We have walked with God. I keep coming back to his crucifixion,
but I don't want to get ahead of myself, but those two murderers
that were crucified with him. And of course, Jesus substituted
himself for Barabbas because that was the custom and the law
of Rome. They crucified Christ because
it was the will of the father, because the father loved him,
because the father loved us. And Jesus' ministry is not a
potential ministry, it's a certain ministry. Jesus' death is not
a potential atoning sacrifice, it is a certain sacrifice. It
was an exchange, it paid for guilt. The atonement is effectual and
specifically effectual to a people, and those people will believe
in that effectuality, in that efficacy. Why? Because God loves you and
he will not leave you. He has given you to the Son and
he will cause you to believe. He will cause you to be born
again to a living hope. He will cause you to see the
glory who is God in the face of Christ. 2 Corinthians 4. God
has shown in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Christ. And you remember months ago where
we talked about seeing Jesus? And what it must be like for
the disciples to walk with God? And to theorize what it must, what
it's going to be like when we walk with God the Son, when we
see Him for who He is and we're forever learning the knowledge
of His grace and glory. We're forever beholding and looking
eternally into His presence. Not as worms, but as saints,
as His righteousness. Not cowering before Him, but
communing with Him as we do with one another in marriage. An intimacy that's beyond human
comprehension. Intimacy with our Creator because
of His love for us. The Father has loved Christ before
the world began. Christ is the fullness of God
before the world began. And now we are found in Him. Father, bring them through to
me till the end, that they are with me where I am and with me
where I am going. That's why Paul says this. We're
glorified. Now, we know we're not experientially
glorified. We are not standing in new bodies
apart from the consequences of the fall. We're not standing
in sinlessness. But we are just as good as sitting
there at the right hand of majesty as Christ is because we are in
Him. And though we wait Unbated breath that we wait with the
imagery of childbirth. We're in labor. We're waiting.
We're anxious We're longing for that day. We do so with a peace
knowing that God has loved us with a love that is ineffable
But visible and divinely given Verse 25 He calls God, oh, righteous father. And that's how we know what he's
about to say, look, oh, righteous father, even though the world
does not know you, I know you and these that you have sent
me. No, that you have been these know that you have sent me. Oh,
righteous father, what does it mean to be the righteous father
that has the language of justice? has the language of judgment,
has the language of wrath. For God to be the righteous Father,
He is judging the world and He is right in His judgment. All
that God does is right. So when God bestows His everlasting
love on the things that He created, He is righteous. And when God
judges the rest of the world as vessels of wrath, He is righteous. And He's made true judgments.
And as God sent His Son into the world, it is part of the
justice of God. It is part of the judgment of
God. It is the righteousness of God that the law is a shadow
of. And now we see it face to face,
Jesus Christ the Son. And in this perfect glory, that
God alone has allowed us to perceive. We find life. We find love. We find permanent intimacy. Stop thinking of the gospel as
this inter-world transaction. Look at it as God looks at it. Let there be and there was. And in the same way that we can
see time moving in the cosmos and we can see time moving in
history and we can see time moving in our spiritual lives as believers,
we know. That God sits apart from that. So the only thing that we need to trust in is this true
love that is ours in Christ and we have been snatched up into
the light of life. We have been put into the hand
of God. We have been given to the Son.
It is a true thing. We're not working to get there.
We're not waiting to understand it more so that we can have more
security. We are his. And God has made
this judgment. And Jesus has come into the world
and he told Nicodemus that this is the judgment. I have come
and revealed myself, but the world loves their works. Not mine. That's a paraphrase.
Because of this, they are dead, because they do not find themselves
in the love of the Father. They do not find themselves trusting
in the love of the Father to provide for them life. So God is righteously judging. And the world does not know you,
see. That's how we know this is not
only is the word righteousness dictate and mandate and a judicial
thought, but the world does not know you. Oh, righteous father.
Oh, judge of the world. Oh, judge of the living and the
dead. You are right. But I know you. I want you to
see this parallel here. I know you, father. I, Jesus says, am in your love.
I am the exact imprint of your nature, your visible image. All that you are and all that
you could ever be, I am. That's why they wanted to kill
Jesus. I mean, think about that. That's
what he said. All that God ever has been, is
or ever will be, I am. Making himself God. because there
is only one God and there is no other. And his name is Jesus
Christ. And the righteousness of God
is seen in the love of God to forgive his children and to justify
them through the death of Christ. And to share the glory of Christ
forever. The world does not know you,
but I know you, Father. If you were to judge me, Father,
I am your righteousness. And these know that you have
sent me. Isn't John 17 3 just explained
right there? That's John 17 3. How are we to know the father? By knowing the son. was sent
by the Father. Now, listen, unconverted people,
they don't roast in that. And converted people who are
too analytical get antsy. Any human being can say those
words. Any living thing with knowledge
in their brain of language, can hear that language and recite
it. But do you know it? See, now it sounds like 1980s
evangelism. Do you know him? Do you know
it? Do you know life? Do you know
that you know that you know that you have eternal life? This is
how you know. Because You know. You hold you've been given by
God a peace that surpasses all understanding, all logical argument. Oh, he's been too mystical, you
better believe I'm being mystical. The gospel is a divine work of
beyond and above man's comprehension. We can understand the logistics.
We can understand the justice. We can understand the exchange.
We can understand the prophecies. We can understand the fulfillment.
We can see it and put it on a timeline. But it doesn't save us. God saves
us by His mercy because of His love. And if we're found in Christ,
we are loved as God loves Him. Because it ultimately comes to
this, that the name of God is glorified. What's that mean?
It is seen as it truly is and God has chosen to reveal himself
fully in a redemptive way through his redemption of his people
through his son. Let me say that again. God has chosen to reveal Himself
redemptively through the redemption of His people through His Son.
This is good news. This is gospel. This is glorious. We see God for who He really
is now. And the only other way He will reveal Himself is through
His righteousness in wrath. And the choice is not yours. The choice is not yours. You
don't get to decide which side of the line you stand on. But when God in His infinite
love and mercy, because He has given you to the Son, proclaims
to your ears, your human mind, with a divine work of regeneration,
the gift of faith sets root. And all of a sudden you know
Him through Christ. What does it mean to know? Just
like Adam knew Eve and there was Cain. That's why marriage
has got to be held in high honor because it is a picture of the
work of Christ. It is a picture of God's everlasting
redemption for His people before He created them. We know. How do you describe
that bond? How do you describe that union?
How do you help other people experience the union of marital
intimacy with words that don't just turn to lust? And don't even get me started
with the idea that through that, even in the created order of
the world, life comes. What a picture of the love of
God in Christ for his people. Life comes through God's love. And you must know him that way. And you will know him that way.
I mean, what's the application
with that? How are we? What are we supposed to go there?
What do we what do we do with it? I'll say it again. This is
the second time I've said it today. We stand with the mouth
of our soul agape. We don't have to write it down
in a notebook as a field guide. Just sit there for a moment and
let that roast in your heart. Let that run through the river
of your mind and let that well, let that water well up to eternal
life and rejoice. Because the minute, as a shepherd
pastor, I start giving some instruction, now, what you need to do is,
I have usurped the glory of God, and I have deafened His beautiful
love proclaimed from your ears, and then your flesh wakes up,
and your flesh begins to think about these things that you can
do, or must do, or must procure for yourself, or must produce
in yourself. I must prepare for others. We just sit for a moment and
let God's love be effectual. Beloved, that's why you must
read the Word of God. You must be fed by the supernatural
work of God the Holy Spirit to hear His voice. And if you don't
have time, like if you work with your hands and you're on your
feet, you don't have time, put it in your ear. Download an app and listen to
the scripture. In 90 minutes you can hear the
Gospel of John read dramatically. In 15 minutes you can hear Colossians
read dramatically. And all of a sudden there will
be a sense in which you begin to to just stop and you can't
even think about what's now being said in the hearing of Scripture
because your heart is affixed on the truth of who Christ is
because God has brought you to the knowledge of Himself through
His Son. And the love that He has for
you, like illustrated in John 11, Jesus is praying for that
very thing that was illustrated in the resurrection of Lazarus
to be done for His people. That in John 11, when we see
Jesus getting the news of the one He loves, He said, This illness does not
lead to death, for it is for the glory of God, that the Son
of God may be glorified through it. So it is for the revelation
of God to His people that the Son may be revealed as God through
it. that I may be seen for who I
am and that the love of God may be manifested and revealed to
you, his people. And he goes on down and he says
he stays because he loves Lazarus. He stayed. Therefore, he stayed. So he stayed extra days so that
it would be certain that Lazarus would die and bury and start
to decompose. And you remember Martha coming
out, right? If you'd just been here, my brother would be alive.
See how focused we are on the temporalities of this world?
See how focused we are on just what we have here? We can feel
and touch and experience. Your brother will rise again.
I am the resurrection. I am the life. Whoever knows
that I am, whoever knows that I come from the Father to save
my people. Whoever knows, that is what it
means to believe. Though he die, he will live,
Jesus says. And everyone who lives and believes
in me shall never die. Do you believe this? Do you know
this? Do you know me, Martha? Yes, I know you. I know. You are the son of God, the Christ
who was coming into the world. I see you. I see you for who
you are. The world doesn't know you, Father,
back to 1725, but I know you and these that you have given
me know you because they know me. They know presently me. Because I have revealed my glory
to them and I have shown them that they will be where I am. I pray for them. Why were the
confusion in the hearts of the disciples? Why at the death of
Jesus was his brothers and mother weeping? Why was the Apostle
John there weeping? Because they couldn't fathom They could not fathom. They knew
that God would justify his people through Messiah, but they couldn't
fathom it would be by the cross. Had Jesus been stoned, it would
have been palatable for them. Maybe. But to die at the hand of Rome
as a murderer, I made known to them your name.
I've revealed to them the fullness of your glory. I have given them
faith to know you. I have revealed your power. I
have revealed your purpose. I have revealed to those you
gave me everything you are. I have shown them your redemption,
I have caused them to believe. And I will continue to make it
known. What is it? That the love with
which you have loved me may be in them and I in them. To know God. is to know His love for the Son
and His love for you. That is to know that the work
of Christ for His elect people is your righteousness. It's not in you, it's in Christ. We are found in Him. Visual aids don't work here. don't work here. But I've seen recently where
they've found mass graves in the European countrysides. And archaeologists and scientists,
they dig it up and they go, wow, we find a grave here, we've got
to stop, we've got to figure out what's going on. They find out why they died,
and the Black Plague was one of the causes of death in this particular
village, or it wasn't a village then. I mean, now it was then. And the closest thing I can think
about sometimes when I think about the world and where it's found,
it's found in the mix of a continual death, a grave. And when you find bones, they all look the same. You see
the illustration of the bones in Ezekiel? That vision that
God gave the prophet Ezekiel? There's the valley and look at
all these dead soldiers and they just died and now they're just
bleached bones. No identifier, no specific marker
to know who's who, no story, no anthologies, nothing, just
a big grave. And that's the essence of what
God's righteousness is in justice and wrath. But we're not found like that. We're found in Christ. When you
go to Christ's grave, He's not there. He blew the stone away
and He got Himself up out of there. He put His new body on
Himself. And He walked out and He ascended
to the Father. And He's bringing all of us with
Him. Because we're in Him. So the only way I can illustrate
that is that when you blow off the door of our graves, there's
nothing there. When you open up the book of
charges, there's nothing there. The sins of James. Volume 1, episode 6,332,014, page a jillion. Sorry, there's nothing
here. There's nothing here. It's just
a blank page. I thought about publishing a
study Bible. and putting a thousand pages in it, and it'd just be
lined paper. With my name on the cover. That'd
be funny. It's just an empty book. There's
no charge. Why? Because we're alive. We're found
in the love of God. We're found in the redemption
of Christ. We're found in the gospel. We're
found. We are in Him. There is no record
of our sin. There is no file sitting in the
courts of heaven that says acquitted. Because our righteousness is
the perfection of Christ and against which there is no law. There is no law against love. There is no law against Christ. There is no law of those who
are found in him. We are. As if we've never sinned. That's what it means to be found
in the love of God. What do we do with that? We rejoice. It makes a big difference, doesn't
it? How we approach the Lord's table today. Do we approach the
Lord's table as the disciples did? No, we approach the Lord's
table with a greater awakening. They didn't know the cross because
it was not yet shown. Now we see it. They didn't understand
that the resurrection of Christ was then. But then they saw it. Now we can look, we can worship
from a fuller experience of knowing the love of God in a greater
way. So we are walking in a greater season of life than the disciples
did. Rejoice. Christ has given himself
for you. He has bled and died that you
are free. Free. There's no recidivism in
the economy of grace. There's no hopelessness when
sin befalls you. Because you're even innocent
of that one. Your righteousness is His. And
that's the point of it all. So find yourself in that. And after Jesus gets through
with this prayer, He goes and prays again. And what we see
in the midst of all of this next two and a half, three days, is
failure after failure after failure of His people. But you never see Him fail. Because love, as Paul would say,
never does. Christ has purchased His people
with His blood. Rest in that, beloved. Let's
pray. Lord, Your Word is so perplexing when we try to
paint it to fit our own schemes. Father, it is purely simple,
and I know that the hearing of your Word is more powerful than
any sermon, or any commentary, or any book. And what we hope to do, Lord,
as we gather, is to hear and expose the truths of your Word. And Lord, the number of verses
and passages in my head concerning your love, They just, they never end and
we could continue to go over and over and over all sorts of
places, Lord, that would put me on a rabbit trail of sorts.
But I pray that when we see what's impossible to see without you,
Lord, that we can truly just rejoice. That you love us with
an everlasting love and that there is no place for worry and
fear and frustration and doubt. Because you have bought us with
the blood of your son and bought we are. And you love us in a way that
you've not truly helped us to grasp yet, except in how you've
revealed the gospel of grace through Jesus. And so help us
to take that small nugget and to experience it in a way that's
beyond measure and to experience it even in a small sense as we
take your table this very moment. So that we eat of the bread and
drink of the vine, that we are to be reminded that we are loved
like you loved Jesus, who loved us and gave himself for us. So we thank you for that revelation,
Father. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.