Sunday January 2, 2022

New life always conquers death. (Dead leaves still on the tree in spring). They survived the winter with the strength to cling to the tree in their death, but they cannot withstand new life. Jesus was looking forward to the same. His resurrection would soon defeat death, because death could not withstand the power of life.

John 17:1–26 ESV

When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, 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. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you 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 loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I 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.”

Our focus this morning is on 1-19.

The glorification of Christ

The spiritual safety of the Apostles

The witness of the Apostles

The sanctification of the apostles

The Unity of the church

Todays focus: The first four

Big idea: In the moments approaching his greatest trial, Jesus concerns himself with his followers.

First focus: Christ’s glory

Jesus’ definition of eternal life: “That they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you sent.”

Know here is not merely know as in an acquaintance, The word that we see translated to know in the greek that it was originally written in means to “Know experientially” To “grasp intellectually” “To be known” “To perceive” “To Find out” “to learn” “to be known”. It is the same word we see used as a descriptor of the relationship of husband and wife, to know. It means a deep, intimate relationship that has ongoing learning involved and and understanding based upon experience, the mind’s understanding and intellect, and also an openness of self to the other knowing you, by which I mean knowing God, like knowing one’s spouse, is not a one-way street, but a two way street where each gets to know the other.

This is eternal life, that they know you (God the Father) and me (Jesus). Knowing God is the key to eternal life.

Hosea 6:3 ESV

Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.”

Hosea 4:6 ESV

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge; because you have rejected knowledge, I reject you from being a priest to me. And since you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.

So Jesus is praying for eternal life for all those who God the Father has given to him, and he defines this eternal life as a knowledge of God, a knowledge that Hosea encouraged those he preached to to press on towards, and a knowledge that, if it is lacking, brings destruction. If lack of knowledge brings destruction, then Jesus gives the opposite corollary, that knowledge of God brings life.

2 Corinthians 4:6 ESV

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Now Jesus asks the Father to glorify Him. Jesus has done the work the other sent him to do, and now he asks that the Other glorify him. This glory was not a promotion for Jesus, but rather a restoration of the glory he had with the father, a glory that Jesus had before the world existed, and as John’s gospel begins with that very idea, that Jesus existed eternally with the Father, it is important that we understand this, that Jesus has existed eternally with the Father, he is not a creation of the Father who came later, but instead He is the Word become flesh

John 1:1–3 ESV

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.

And Jesus nearly got stoned when he has said: John 8:58

John 8:58 ESV

Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”

So Jesus clearly spoke about his eternal existence. So he was not asking to be glorified as though this was a new thing to him, but rather anticipating his restoration to his heavenly position.

And this is a reminder to us of how low Jesus had to come to minister to humanity. If you ever go diving in most lakes or the ocean, as you get lower and lower, you are further from the light, you are often in murkier water, colder water. If you descend to the depths, you will find yourself among strange creatures. You may be fascinated with it for a while, but your nature as a human would eventually draw you to come back out of that water and get back to your own glorified position, that is, above the water.

And that illustration is but a sorry, and incomplete, and completely lacking illustration, because really, there is no grasping for us, of how Jesus was condescending to come down into our realm so that He could demonstrate God’s love towards us. It is completely understandable that he would seek to be restored then, to the glory he had with the father before the world existed.

Hebrews 1:3–4 ESV

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

After praying for his glorification, Jesus begins to pray for the apostles. He prays for their spiritual safety, although not for their physical safety. It is interesting that Jesus had used a metaphor in his ministry of being like a mother hen who wants to take care of her chicks. We see in our world today the enormous amount of precautions that are made to protect children. Many billions are spent each year by parents who are convinced that they must take every action possible to keep their kids safe, so the car seat industry, and the protective equipment for every activity, and the permission slips, and all of these ways that we concern ourselves with our children and their physical safety, it is to the point that many parents are obsessed with keeping their kids safe.

I’m sure I’m not the only adult here who has heard my parents talk of how we used to just lay in the back seat, or if we had baby carriers, they weren’t even belted in, and how we didn’t have bike helmets, and knee guards for roller skating, and shin guards for soccer, and all of those things. And it is fine to make some effort to keep kids safe, but as we discovered a few years ago, a fall off the ottoman onto a plush carpet can result in a broken arm. Others have discovered similar things, that you could lock down every dangerous substance in your house and the child will still find a way to consume poison. I have heard of parents who were so set on keeping their kids healthy that the did not let them have any sugar, and only fed them good healthy food, and still had a child develop cancer.

As much as we take all of those precautions to keep them physically safe, let us remember that Jesus was far less concerned about physical safety in his prayer and much more concerned with spiritual safety. In fact, he has made it clear that they most certainly would not be physically safe, but he wants them protected from the evil one.

We try to avoid any situation that could cause our children pain, and yet we cannot prevent them from experiencing pain. But Jesus prays that the father keep them in his name, he wants their joy fulfilled, and that joy is not the result of a pain free life but the very joy of Christ. He has given them the Word, which brings life, and in the world, the people of the word will be hated. Anytime someone is different, they will be hated, and particularly when that difference is a life that is attempting to please God, because it brings conviction to all those who witness it.

We raise our children differently than the world does. We, like Jesus, ought to be far more concerned with their spiritual well being than we are concerned with grades, and extracurricular activities, and how many friends we have. Those things have a time and place, but what are our priorities? Jesus prayed for the spiritual protection of the apostles, but he did not pray for their physical safety, and he also did not pray that they would avoid the world altogether. And this is linked to their witness to the world.

He said he did not pray that they be taken out of the world. IN other words, he did not want Christians to be so secluded in their holy huddle that they never interacted with the world around them, in fact it was quite the opposite. So here we have the tension of being a Christian in the world. We are not to be of the world, mimicking it so well that no-one could ever guess we are different, but at the same time we are not to be of the world, we are not to remove ourselves from it either.

And the why behind this is our mission as believers, if we never get out of our holy huddle and interact with the world around us, we will not have opportunities to share the gospel with them. So on the one hand, we are not to be of the world, that is, living like we have not experienced the resurrection of Christ through belief and baptism, which should result in a pursuit of holiness, and on the other hand, we are not to be so uninvolved in the world that we have not opportunity to share the good news.

How far do we go in either direction? We must seek a balance. On the one end of the pendulum, you have the Amish lifestyle, where there may be some protection from the evil in the world because of a tightly controlled community and way of life, and that can be good in some ways. But I would argue that the average Amish person does not have too many opportunities for evangelism. On the other hand, I know of Christians who do everything they can to make sure their church does not appear to be a church, and that they are so much like their neighbors that the neighbors would never guess they are people of faith.

These are churches who have wine tastings, and take the word church out of the name in order to appeal to the unsaved. They don’t want a building that looks like a church, they don’t want a Bible study that sounds like it is addressing sin. They seem to want to be of the world, and in it. But Jesus prayed that his disciples would not be of the world, and at the same time he did not pray for them to be removed from the world either.

The glorification of Christ

The spiritual safety of the Apostles

The witness of the Apostles

The sanctification of the apostles

Finally, Jesus prays that the apostles be sanctified in the truth, which is God’s word. He has sent them into the world, as the Father had sent him to the world. This sanctification is being set apart. In the old covenant with Israel, God had given many specific commands to the people of Israel, concerning worship, how they lived, what they would eat, even concerning their clothing. God has always wanted his people set apart.

Now, we don’t have quite the same specifics as far as what we can eat or wear, but we do have much direction given to us in scripture of how we ought to live. And if we work on following those, by learning what the Bible says about what God expects of us, then we will be set apart from the world. Sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth. God’s word is truth and gives us our marching orders on how we should live. Not specifics like whether you should have an iPhone or something inferior, but he lays out the moral code by which we should live.

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge, Hosea said, referring to knowledge of God’s word and his statutes. And God’s people are to be set apart, or sanctified, in His truth.

Hebrews 10:8–10 ESV

When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), then he added, “Behold, I have come to do your will.” He does away with the first in order to establish the second. And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

1 Corinthians 6:9–11 ESV

Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Titus 2:11–14 ESV

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.

The glorification of Christ

The spiritual safety of the Apostles

The witness of the Apostles

The sanctification of the apostles

The Unity of the church

Todays focus: The first four

Big idea: In the moments approaching his greatest trial, Jesus concerns himself with his followers.

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