Sermon Tone Analysis

I’ve had the opportunity to spend a fare bit of time in the Rocky Mountains.

Mandee was raised in Colorado and I worked as a youth pastor back about 12 years ago.

Over the years I’ve camped, hiked, hunted, driven through and flown over the mountains.

in fact, a couple years ago I knocked something off my bucket list.

I’ve always wanted to ride my dirt bike through the mountains, and in 2020 we went camping and we were able to ride hundreds of miles of trails in the mountains.

It was absolutely amazing!

The Rocky Mountains are just beautiful… no matter which way you see them...

Hiking through the Rocky mountains

Riding dirt bikes

Driving Through on i70

Flying over the Rocky mountains

Each perspective has a unique and stunning beauty.

The beauty of the Rocky Mountains is analogous to John’s gospel

The Gospel of John is a beautiful masterpiece of literature and theology.

Its a gospel full of mystery and intrigue.

From the very beginning we see John weaving together a paragon of story and symbol.

John has woven together the story of creation, the temple, the Exodus, the story of exile and return.

He has bent our ears to the reverberating echos of the prophets and has opened our eyes to see the christoform structure of the the Old Testament.

residing in the background of nearly every section of Johns gospel are images and shadows of creation and the temple.

Over the last couple years we have explored the beauty of the gospel from different angles and perspectives.

We have zoomed in and looked at the details of some of the stories - like hiking

We have seen the beauty of Johns gospel from the midlevel perspective - like driving through the mountains

And we have seen some of passages from a 30k foot vantage point.

But now, as we come to John 17, we face a dilemma…

We could hike through this passage and spend roughly 26 weeks on the High Priestly Prayer, a week per verse… and thats not at all an exaggeration.

We could take a drive through this passage and get a sense of its beauty over the course of about three weeks.

The high priestly prayer is divided into three sections where:

Jesus prays for glorification

Jesus prays for his disciples

Jesus prays for the future church

We could spend a week on each one of these sections… which i did a few years ago (Available on the website)

Or we could look at it from a high vantage, and see the unique beauty of this chapter from 30k feet.

And thats what we are going to do this morning with the High Priestly Prayer.

As we turn our attentions to John 17, we should understand that this chapter is indeed hallowed ground,

Here in chapter 17, John brings into the presence of Christ as he is praying to the Father.

We have a couple prayers of Jesus throughout the gospel, but typically they are no more than a few sentences.

But here in John 17 we have a 26 verse prayer of Jesus, the longest in all the bible.

This prayer has three movements, and the first comes in verses 1-8 where Jesus prays for glorification

The second movement is when Jesus prays for his disciples

And the third movement is when he prays for the future church.

So look at the first part of this prayer we see Jesus praying for glorification

Jesus Prays For Glorification

Jesus begins his prayer with a celebration and a request.

And the two are closely linked

The request comes in verse 1.

The celebration comes in verse 4.

And we will start with the celebration:

Jesus is celebrating the fact that he has accomplished the work the Father gave him to do.

The final step is the cross, and that awaits him the next day.

But he has completed the deeds and words which the father gave him to do in his life.

He has laid before his disciples all that the father has given to him.

He has spoken the words of the Father

He has fulfilled all righteousness

He has established his kingdom

he has presented himself as the true Priest, King and Prophet

He has shown himself to be the true fulfillment, the telos, of all the promises and covenants given to Israel.

Christ’s obedience is the reason for the celebration, and also the grounds for the request in verse 1.

The Request: “glorify you Son that the Son my glorify you”

This is the request, to be exalted, to be lifted up to that position alongside the Father where he is glorified as the true King over all the earth.

The glory the son asks for is the glory promised to the Messiah in Psalm 72:8

Its the glory and dominion promised to the Son of Man in Daniel 7:14

This is the glory the Son is requesting from the Father

And he request this glory so that he might glorify the Father.

The son glorifies the Father, not in the sense that the father was lacking glory, but rather he glorifies the Father in the sense that when the Son is enthroned in glory, from that throne he will spread the glory of the Father from sea to sea, from the river to the ends of the earth.

The Father was glorified in Judea and the surrounding areas in Christ’s earthly life, but when Christ is exalted, the glory of God will extend to the nations… to the ends of earth

And not only that... to the end of time.

The son glorifies the father by giving eternal life to all those the father has given him.

And what exactly is eternal life?

We often think of eternal life as life after death

As going to heaven

As the reality that our souls will not cease to exist, but that we live forever spiritually.

However, What does Jesus say eternal life is?

Eternal life is not just a future reality

Its not just that we will live forever with God in the new heavens and the new earth.

Eternal life starts the moment you know God!

Eternal life is knowing the Father and knowing Christ.

Eternal life is here and now, its the new covenant, its the new age, its the new day that Christ brings.

Its life lived in union with Jesus.

And Jesus has given this life, this union, this covenant, this knowing of the triune God to all that the Father has given to Christ.

One of the beautiful truths we see in Jesus’ prayer here in John 17, is the truth that we, the church, the bride of Christ, are in fact a gift from the Father to the Son.

The Father chose us, before the foundations of the world, to be a bride for his Son.

He gave the bride to his son,

yet for the Son to receive the bride he had to, like Adam, die for her first.

He had to fight for her, he had to teach her, he had to protect her, he had to prepare her and bring her into union with himself.

Jesus mentions the church as a gift from the Father again in vv 6-8

So after praying for glorification, Jesus prays for his those whom the father has given.

He starts with his disciples, and then moves on to pray for us, those who would believe from the testimony of the disciples.

Jesus Prays for His Disciples

What Jesus prays in verses 9-19 grows out of the fact that he is going away.

He has been preparing his disciples for his departure for he knows that they will be tested, they will be hated, they will persecuted and face tribulation.

Part of the way Jesus prepares his disciples is that he prays for them.

We prepare our children not only by teaching them, training them, equipping them to live faithfully and virtuously in this world, but we also prepare them by praying for them.

And that is what Jesus is doing in vv.9-19

He prays for his disciples entrusting them to the father.

He is very much aware that the disciples are at risk.

The world, which hates them as it hated Jesus, will threaten and abuse them.

They don’t belong to it, but they are to be sent into it, and they need protecting.

That’s what this next part of the prayer is about.

So Jesus prays entrusting his disciples to the Father.

And there are two main ways he asks for the Father to keep the disciples: