That They May Know You

Minneapolis School Shooting Before we dive into the word, a quick thought. I assume most have heard, but there was another school shooting in our world this past week. A few days ago, an individual opened fire on a catholic school, injuring 18 and killing 2. The deceased are an 8 year-old boy and a 10 year-old girl. It is a heavy time of grief and confusion for many families and I cannot even imagine the pain that they are feeling right now. And here in Jersey, there isn’t much more we can do than pray. Pray for comfort for these families. Pray that Christ might reveal the joy that will one day come out of this grief. Pray for ourselves that we might remember that God has everything in control even though we may not understand it.

Intro

There is something significant that Christ modeled for the disciples throughout His ministry on earth - prayer. Not just prayer like praying before a meal or before bed, but prayer in the sense of relying on God for strength to face the mission before us. Jesus modeled a life fully dependent on the power and grace of the Father and not on anything that He had within Himself. Even though He was and is fully God, as Philippians tells us, He did not “regard equality with God a thing t be grasped”, but He became dependent on His relationship with the Father to give Him what He needed to complete His work. Not that Jesus couldn’t rely on the power He had within Himself, but so that we could see ourselves in our significant comparative lack as being in even more need of the power of God to work in and through us, and to guide us in our lives. Any time something significant was about to happen, Jesus prayed. Before meals, Jesus gave thanks in prayer. He modeled it often and always for the disciples to emulate. He even taught them specifically how to prayer, as we see in what we call “The Lord’s Prayer”. What is interesting to think on, though, is that “The Lord’s Prayer” isn’t actually the Lord’s prayer, but this prayer that we see in John 17 is the real Lord’s Prayer. What we called the Lord’s prayer has content in it that would not and could not be prayed by Jesus. As we pray, “forgive us our debts/transgressions”, Jesus would have no need. His instruction in that prayer was for how WE should pray as we rely on God, not how He prayed as He relied on God. As we search Scripture for other prayers of Christ, what we see is great and lacking detail. In the garden at Gethsemane we see some content of His prayer, praying that the cup might pass from Him. But aside from that, we see no other real content to Jesus’ prayers. We see that He prays, but we don’t see what He prays. Until we come here to John chapter 17. Here in John 17 we get to peel back the curtain and look not only at the heart of Christ, but at the relationship between Christ and His Father, our Father. This is the true Lord’s prayer, the prayer that the Lord prayed as the hour had finally come, the hour He spoke of for the last three years of His life, the hour that the disciples would soon dread. And in these final moments before the hour begins, Jesus prays. He prays for Himself, He prays for His disciples, and He prays for us.

Now, we could spend several weeks on this prayer as other preachers have, but we won’t. We are already closing on a year since we started in the gospel of John and we still have a few chapters left to work through, so we will only look briefly at this prayer. My plan was originally to just focus on the first 12 verses, but we will do our best to cover it all today. With that said - do your own study. Dig deep, feast well on the truths of Scripture. We will not achieve great knowledge today in our time, but I hope that we will inspire great curiosity and joy that brings us deeper into our relationship with God. As this prayer has three focuses, we will split it into three parts. First, we will look at Jesus’ prayer for Himself.

For Himself

Let’s start off with verses 1 and 2 and then we will see that expand itself through to verse 6.

John 17:1–2 Jesus spoke these things; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You, even as You gave Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life.”

The Hour Has Come

Let’s divide this into three-ish parts. First, Jesus opens His prayer by making the statement that the hour has come. We may ask the question, of which hour is He speaking? And in our study, and also as we have discussed recently, we know the hour that He is speaking of.

In speaking to the disciples and others, Jesus has said repeatedly that an hour is coming. An hour is coming when the Son of Man will be lifted up, an hour is coming when you will no longer see Me, just last week He told the disciples that an hour is coming when they will be scattered. The hour is His death. The hour is the end of His earthly ministry. The hour is His punishment in our place. And for three years Jesus had warned that such an hour was coming, but now the language shifts because the hour is no longer coming but is now here. In chapter 17 Jesus prays, then in chapter 18 John records Judas’ betrayal and Jesus’ arrest.

The perspective and context of Jesus’ prayer is within the mindset of time being up. His ministry is done and it is now time to drink the cup of wrath reserved for you and me. So as He prays for Himself and for us in this prayer, it is prayed with the full knowledge that the hour has come and His time is up. A final breath of His ministry amongst His disciples.

Next Jesus says two statements that work together.

Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You.

The Mission of Christ

Here Jesus commits this hour of His death into God’s hands, with a supreme concern that His glorification in His death will result in bringing glory to the Father. Now, beginning with His prayer to be glorified Himself, this could mean two things: first, that the glory of his love and compassion for others might be revealed through his death, and second that following his death he would be reinstated to the glory he enjoy with the Father before the world began. But even still Jesus is not here to amass glory for Himself, though the glory that the Father receives is glory that Christ receives. Rather, His purpose in being glorified in His death and resurrection is, in His own words, so that He might glorify the Father.

And here Jesus says here in verse two how He might glorify the Father - by using the authority given to Him to give eternal life to those the Father has placed in His hand. You know what the purpose of Christ’s time on earth was? We could probably come up with a bit of a list, but the ultimate and truly single purpose of Christ’s life and ministry was to bring glory to God by making Him known to all people. We are recipients of the gift of grace because Christ is a messenger of the glory of God. We are recipients of the love of God through His Son because God saw fit to give His Son for His own glory.

If God was relying on us to be something or to do something for the sake of our salvation, He would never give it. He gives it because it is in His nature not only to love us, but chiefly to bring glory to Himself. And certainly as recipients of His grace and mercy we become mouths that proclaim the praise and glory of God to the nations. But it only happens because of who God is. This is why Warren Weirsbe writes;

Our safety depends on the nature of God, not our own character or conduct.

We are beneficiaries of God’s own glorification of Himself.

Let’s look at verses 3 through 6:

John 17:3–6 “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. I glorified You on the earth, having accomplished the work which You have given Me to do. Now, Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was.

This is eternal life, Jesus says, that they may know You, the only true God. Jesus says, “I have glorified You on earth”. In verse 6, which we will see in a minute, Jesus says, “I have manifested Your name”. All that Jesus did on earth was to serve this purpose - glorify God and bring those chosen into eternal life to know God forever. Yes, Jesus died for our sins, but more than that He died for the glory of God and to make Him known. Yes, Jesus rose again so that we might be raised to new life in Him, but more than that He rose to new life to bring glory to God. Yes, Jesus taught us a new a good way to live, but more than that He taught us how to bring glory to God with our lives. The entire purpose of Jesus’ ministry is simply wrapped up like this: He came to make God know and to bring God glory.

So as Jesus begins this prayer for Himself, that is His chief focus - that in all that has been, in all that is being and in all that will be, God is glorified. Before we spend too much time here and hangout until 2 o’clock, let’s look at the next part of Jesus’ prayer where He begins to pray for His disciples.

For Them

We won’t go through this part verse by verse, but I want to pick out three things that Jesus prays when considering His disciples. We should also recognize that, while in the immediate this portion of the prayer extends to His 11, it ultimately is also for us today as we are disciples of Christ. Once for all disciples. First He qualifies His disciples, then He prays for them.

Recipients of the Word

He makes clear that His disciples are not only recipients of the Word, but as we see here in verse 6, they are those who have kept the Word of God. Look at verse 6:

John 17:6 “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word.”

Jesus goes on down through verse 10 saying on this very thought, saying that it is those who have realized that what Jesus taught was not merely His own teaching, but it was the teaching that was given for Him to give. He says that His disciples are not only those who keep the Word of God, but also those who realized that when Jesus taught He was teaching them what was true about God, both of Himself and of the Father as they are One. Christ’s disciples come to know that everything Jesus did is from the Father, that the words He spoke were from the Father, and that Jesus Himself came from the Father to glorify His name and in glorifying the name of God He would make a way for the disciples to receive eternal life, the authority to give which was given to Him. The disciple of Christ keeps the Word of God, believes in Jesus as the Son of God, believes that Jesus came from God, and believes that all that Jesus did was for the glory of God. So now as He identifies His disciples, He prays for them. Two main prayers - keep them and sanctify them.

Keep Them

Let’s look at verses 11 and 12:

John 17:11–12 “I am no longer in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are. While I was with them, I was keeping them in Your name which You have given Me; and I guarded them and not one of them perished but the son of perdition, so that the Scripture would be fulfilled.”

His first prayer is simple - Lord, while I have been here I have been keeping good watch of my flock. I have been faithful to them as You have been to me. Now that I will no longer be with them, would You keep them as I have kept them - in Your name, the name You gave me, and keep them as one as We are one. Jesus did not lose one of them while He was here, and He certainly doesn’t want to lose one after He’s gone. Now, does this mean there is some doubt in Jesus’ mind about these men that were given to Him? Absolutely not. But He knows what is coming, and earlier He even warned the disciples about it; and now He’s no longer going to be with them in the same way to help them. So His request is simple - God, continue to keep them and they have so far been kept. They and we are kept securely in the name which Christ was given. As His prayer continues, look at verses 17-19.

Sanctify Them

John 17:17–19 “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.”

Just yesterday, we had some Jehovah’s Witnesses come to our door. Still to this day, I do not understand how people miss the giant baptist church sign on the property. I answered the door and they told me that they were going around house to house to encourage people with Scripture. So this one lady had her phone out and stumbled her way through 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, where Paul talks about God being the God of all comforts and how His comfort helps us to be a comfort to one another. Yes, that is true. The problem is, Jehovah’s Witnesses believe a lot that is not true, most significant being their view of Jesus. To them Jesus is merely a good example of how to live and is the literal son of God, but is not Himself God. A terrible and tragic misunderstanding of Scripture. And I answered them with such a response, offered hope that to them that they might continue to be comforted by God, but also told them that I hope that one day they will share in our right understanding of the person of Jesus Christ.

See, they know where to find truth. They’re going door to door and reading the truth of Scripture to people, but then they quickly turn it into a misunderstanding and often a misuse of truth. Jesus’ prayer isn’t simply that His disciples we know truth, though that is certainly a correct way to understand His prayer. His prayer isn’t that they would find “a” truth, because Jesus Himself is THE Truth. His prayer is that they would be sanctified in truth. Sanctification is the process by which the Holy Spirit works in the life of the believer to conform them to the image of Christ. So it isn’t just that the disciple would know truth, but that the knowledge of and obedience to the truth would transform the believer into the image of Christ.

We all know that robbing a bank is wrong, correct? And if you haven’t noticed, people that rob banks also know that it is wrong. Why else would they hide their faces or try to escape? Why would they try to hide after they got away? Because everyone knows the truth that it is wrong to rob a bank. And we do one of two things with that truth - it transforms us to do what is right, or it informs us on how to do what is wrong. The grace of Christ in me has transformed me to know that, no matter what happens in my life, robbing a bank would go against what is true and would be wrong for me to do. But for some, this is not the case. Their knowledge of truth leads them into figuring out how they can get away with something without being found out. Our response to the gospel may be the same at times.

We can have knowledge of truth all day long, but if it doesn’t transform us, then what is it doing? Those Jehovah’s Witnesses knew how to look up a Scripture verse in the book of truth, but that truth wasn’t transforming them. Disciples of Christ are transformed by truth, and the heart of Christ prays that such transformation would continue while He is away.

Now let’s look at His prayer for us.

For Us

One of the biggest problems facing the “big C” church today, and one problem plaguing many local churches today, is a constant inability to cultivate unity with one another. We like to disagree, we like to gossip, we like to spread rumors behind the back of another, we like to groan and moan about things we don’t like. Christians are professional complainers and as a result we forget often that it is the desire of Christ that His children be united under the banner of the gospel. We get angry because we forget the gospel. We hold grudges because we forget the gospel. We are led by fear of what someone might do or say because we forget the gospel. But when we remember the gospel, we remember that Christ calls us to something greater. Christ calls us to unity.

As Jesus transition in His prayer, He prays that His disciples, then and now, be one in three things: in glory, in Christ, and in love:

One in Glory

Look at verse 22:

John 17:22 “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one;”

The glory that has been given to Christ as He has glorified the Father is a glory that Christ has given to those that have believed in Him. As believers in Christ in are both one in glory with Christ and also one in glory with one another. This is what Paul writes in His letter to the church in Rome:

Romans 8:17 and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.

If we have believed in Christ then we are children of God and as children of God we are co-heirs with Christ and as co-heirs with Christ then we are inheritors of the glory of His kingdom. By all that Christ has prayed to this point, this will be the truth for the disciple, that we will be one in the glory of Christ. Jesus continues…

One in Christ

John 17:23 “I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.”

I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity. He continues in the next couple of chapters prayer that those given to Him would be with Him where He is, that they might see His glory. It is the desire of Christ out of His love for those given to Him that we be united with Him for all eternity.

As we become more like Christ, we become more in Christ and Christ becomes more in us, uniting us in perfect unity with Himself. Finally, verse 26.

One in Love

John 17:26 “and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”

So that the love with which You loved Me may be in them. Before creation, God was always existing in perfect unity with Himself, needing nothing outside of Himself, fully satisfied in His own love. Still to this day, this rings true. God doesn’t need us and He doesn’t need our love, but He made us out of His own love that we might glorify His name and by glorifying His name we might experience the fullness of His love. And here as Jesus prays, He prays that the very love, full and perfect as it is, that the Father has for the Son, that God has for Himself, might be within each of us for Him and for one another. Just imagine if the love of Christ was truly in each of us as it is in Himself and as it is in the Father for Him.

Conclusion

In Jesus’ final moments, He hits pause and He prays. What a beautiful example of what we should do, especially in life’s hardest moments. The craziest thing about all of this, is Jesus takes time out of His final moments to pray for us. He has put in all the work so that we may know God, and His prayer as He prepares to leave earth is that we might continue to know God through all that He has done. What a blessing that is, to be prayed for by the Son of God, God Himself. In chapter 16 Jesus warned the disciples and us about the trouble we would face in this world, but He told us to take courage because He has overcome the world. And here, knowing the trouble we would face, knowing that the true enemy would try everything that He could to lead us astray, Jesus prays for us, that we would be kept securely in the hand of the Father, kept soundly in truth, conformed daily to His image, and united with Him in glory and in love. He prayed for you and for me moments before His arrest. And after His arrest He went to the cross for the glory of God through His death as an atonement for our sin and a propitiation for the wrath of God. And after His death He was raised to new life so that we might be raised to new life with Him for the glory of God. And after He was raised to new life He ascended to the Father, sits and His right hand, and prepares a place for us to come and be with Him for all eternity. May His prayer not be made in vain. And we know that it isn’t. May we seek earnestly to obey the commands of Christ and be conformed into His image; one in Him and with Him, that we might know God.

.