Father Knows Best

It’s Father’s Day, and it is also Juneteenth. If you’re not familiar with the latter it is a federally recognized holiday commemorating the emancipation of enslaved Africa Americans. The date marks the anniversary of the announcement on June 19, 1865 proclaiming freedom for enslaved people in Texas. And this year it coincides with our celebration of Father’s Day.

As I was considering the message for today, I was gifted with a great springboard by our friend Steve Whitaker last week who spoke really well on the Trinity. As I prayed about it, I felt God’s Spirit prompting me to build on that a bit as it is Father’s Day, and Jesus and the Father are one as Jesus Himself describes several times in this passage.

Chapter 17 of the Gospel of John is known as the “High Priestly Prayer” where Jesus prays for his disciples. It is a beautiful prayer and powerful part of Scripture as we see a picture of not only God the Father’s love for those who seek Him, but also Jesus’ love for them. Jesus begins,

John 17:1 (ESV)

“Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you,...”

If one were to try and summarize Jesus’ purpose on earth it is right here in this verse, to bring glory to the Father. Indeed that is God’s ultimate goal, “to preserve and display His infinite and awesome greatness and worth,” (Piper - Desiring God p. 43). Now in our minds, that can feel so self serving, and we don’t like it when people we know are all about getting their own glory. The difference here is that God is God. God is perfect. It would go against a truly holy being’s nature to give glory to anything other than that which was worthy of such glory.

God, being holy can only give glory to that which is worthy of such praise and in the entire created universe there is only One worthy of such praise, that being God Himself. And so now, we see Jesus, God’s Son, seeking the same thing and emptying Himself in the process.

This is precisely what Jesus speaks of in verse 14,

John 17:14 ESV

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.

Keying in on that phrase “your word”, Jesus is not referring to the Old Testament scriptures, but Jesus’ own teachings, and more broadly, the whole of his life which is the revelation of Himself as the Word of God!

John 1:1 ESV

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

John 1:14 ESV

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Jesus is God’s Word.

Let’s skip down to verse 17 of our passage:

John 17:17 ESV

Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.

Jesus asks God to sanctify the followers in the truth of God’s word. Note, he did not say that God’s word was “true”, using the adjective form, but Jesus uses the noun form of the word saying that God’s word is “truth”. This implies that God’s Word does not simply conform to some other external standard of “truth”, but that it is truth itself; it embodies truth and it therefore is the standard of truth against which everything else must be tested and compared.

Jesus said,

John 14:6–7 (ESV)

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”

In this world, when we want to determine the goodness, truth, rightness of anything it can only be compared to the truth, to Jesus Himself. And what did Jesus do? He brought glory not unto himself, but unto the Father. And we should do likewise. Passing our faith and intent to glorify God from one generation onto the next.

John 17:20–21 ESV

“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.

Let’s unpack this statement a bit. Jesus is praying for his disciples, and now he adds not only his disciples who believe through His word, but now for those who will believe through the word of his disciples. Jesus prays that they may be united, one, just as God the Father is in Jesus and Jesus is in God the Father. Jesus prays that these new disciples who come through the disciples he is now praying for may be “IN” the Father and in Jesus, for the purpose of believing that God the Father had sent Jesus.

Why would it be important for the people to understand that God the Father and Jesus His Son were One?

Why would it be important that the people understood that God the Father had sent Jesus?

Why would it be important for people to understand that what Jesus had taught was what God the Father had taught?

One might consider that it all comes back to what may be considered the most famous verse in the Gospel of John. John 3:16

John 3:16 ESV

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

and the verse that follows:

John 3:17 ESV

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

God’s intent is not to punish, condemn, nor to destroy the world. God’s intent is that the world might have life and have it abundantly as only God can provide. That life is something that God formed in the beginning, and it is God who knows the way in which we are to live our life because it is God that created each and every life that lives.

The question has been asked,

“What is the chief end of man?”

To Glorify God and enjoy Him forever.

Again, it comes back to God the Father, to bringing glory to God the Father. Jesus continues:

John 17:22–23 ESV

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.

The truth of John 3:16 comes out again here, God has loved those that are and will be his disciples as He has loved His own Son, Jesus. And ultimately our lives will be joined with His eternally if indeed Jesus’ prayers are answered,

John 17:24 ESV

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.

Father’s watch their children grow, and they become their own person. Yet they carry within them the mark of their earthly father. Sometimes for the good, sometimes not.

It’s Father’s Day, and there are those who choose not to celebrate this day simply because they did not have a great relationship with their father, and some for whom their father was simply not a good person. Yet, all of us can choose to focus on what a Good Father should be because we have a Heavenly Father who is the perfect One and the one deserving of glory.

My challenge for us today is that we would all seek to give glory to our Heavenly Father, and on this day to celebrate those areas our earthly father’s reflect His glory. We need to do that in our relationship not only with God the father and Jesus our Lord, but with one another.

We live it out in the way we treat one another. We live it out in the way we express our opinions. We live it out in the streets and the way we live our lives with the hope of bringing others to God. “That the world may know that God sent Jesus and loves the world even as God loved Jesus.”

John 17:23 (ESV)

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.