Kids could head to Children's Church, and the rest of us will turn to John 17. Thank you. Thank you, Praise Team, for leading us in worship this morning and turning our hearts to where they need to be. John 17 is where we're going to be this morning. And as you're turning there, let me ask you a question, just for fun question. If you had a time machine, and you could go back to any story, any moment in the Bible, what would it be? You know what, let me narrow it down. All right, stop. If you could go back in time to any moment in Jesus' life, what would it be? First of all, how cool would that be? To go back and just to be able to see see Christ and just see. What would be, if you had to pick one, what would be a moment? And so, that's not rhetorical. Greg, what would you do? Okay, when he first interacted with the disciples. Jeremy? The crucifixion. Feeding the 5,000, Ed. Taking up to heaven. Don. When he was teaching to hear him, yeah, that'd be fascinating. Ellie. Yeah. When he calmed the storm or walking on the water or all the above. Yeah. Yeah. Jeannie? Yeah, the post-resurrection buzz. Yeah, that would have been pretty cool to be around for that. So the ones I wrote down, I think you said them all, walking on water. I thought about that would be just cool to be in the boat and just watch that happen, feeding the 5,000. The raising of Lazarus would have been a pretty cool thing to go back and see. Here's one, I wrote this and I never thought about this before, but Bethlehem, wouldn't that, you know, we have all these nativity images on what, but just to see really what that looked like and probably a cave and just the whole Bethlehem story, that would have been pretty cool. And then on my top, top of my list for a long time has been the road to Emmaus as Jesus walked along and he taught about himself beginning with the prophets and the law and to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus. So that would have been pretty cool just to be an eavesdropper on that discussion, on that teaching. But after I was working on this, we're going to have like a little three-week series here on what's known as the High Priestly Prayer in John 17. This might be near the top of my list now, to have heard Jesus pray. Jesus prayed a lot during his ministry. The Gospels tell us there's a lot of, and not all of them were very long, but he prayed a lot. But to hear Jesus pray, and just that alone, with the Trinity, the Father talking to the Son, and just that whole, Well, it's just been really cool to hear Jesus praying and talking to the Father. But like I said, Jesus did pray a lot throughout his ministry years. Here's just a few of the times. He prayed at his baptism in Luke 3. He prayed kind of like during his, in Luke 5, Luke 5.15, it says that he's kind of like on our preaching tour, if you will, a ministry tour. And it said he often withdrew to lonely places to pray. And whatever that was, whatever that sounded like, he was intentional about getting away and praying. Before feeding the 5,000, after feeding the 5,000 at the Transfiguration, right before he raised Lazarus, he prayed, at the Last Supper he prayed, and it was on and on. Jesus prayed a lot. But the prayer here in John 17, what's known again as the High Priestly Prayer, which I think is probably misnamed, the High Priestly Prayer is really the Lord's Prayer. What we would probably more accurately say is the Lord's Prayer. The Lord's Prayer, our Father who art in heaven, is probably more accurately the disciples' prayer. He's teaching the disciples how to pray. And we just kind of named it that because Jesus is the one teaching there. But this is really technically the Lord's Prayer. What we're going to study today and the next couple Sundays, it's the prayer that Jesus Christ prayed. And even though he prayed a lot throughout his ministry, this one's a little different and this one's a little special. And so there's a commentator, his name's Oliver Green, and he wrote a book called The Gospel According to John and his commentary on the book of John. And he says this about Lord's Prayer in John 17. He says, this chapter embraces the longest recorded prayer of the Lord while he was on earth. No doubt he prayed other prayers as lengthy as this, for we know he spent much time in prayer and communion with the Heavenly Father. But God did not see fit to give us those prayers. as the Holy Ghost spoke to holy men and inspired them to write. We have many of the sermons of Jesus and many of his parables, but we only have this one lengthy prayer. So this prayer stands alone out of all the other prayers Jesus prayed. It's the longest recorded prayer that we have of Christ. And so if you look at your Bibles, John 17, you'll see the breakdown if you have I don't know. Your Bible might have it broken down into how we're going to break it down in the weeks ahead, today and the next two Sundays. There's three sections to this prayer that we're going to study. So this week we're going to study verses 1 through 5, and this is where Jesus prays for himself to be glorified. The first five verses of his prayer It's interesting, he's praying for himself to be glorified, which is interesting that Jesus would pray that way, but he did. Verses six through 19, Jesus prays for his disciples to be sanctified. So first, he'll be glorified. Six through 19 is the disciples to be sanctified. And 20 through 26, Jesus prays for us, disciples who would believe later on that we would be unified. So that's kind of the outline of this prayer. So we'll spend three weeks unpacking this beautiful prayer. It's a perfect prayer prayed by a perfect person, a perfect man, Jesus Christ. as he was hours from the cross. This is Thursday night, he's praying this and he's approaching Calvary and he prays this prayer and the Holy Spirit inspired John to record what he heard, this longest prayer recorded in scripture. And so here's the setting, you know me, I like setting the scene of what's going on in the narrative here. So we've been in John a long time, so let me catch you up on what just happened and what's about to happen. They had had the Last Supper Thursday night up in the upper room, the original communion service, and Judas had left, and Jesus had continued teaching the disciples. And it seems like from the narrative that they began to walk and talk. So it's almost like I can hear, the text doesn't say this, but you can hear Jesus say, hey, he knows he needs to get to Gethsemane. So he says, hey, let's walk and talk. Walk with me. And he continued teaching them. And we studied a lot about that. Jesus gives them a heads up. Hey, there's going to be persecution, and there's going to be hard things. But he gives them all these comforts. within that teaching of there's going to be hard things. All that, that walking and talking and all that is what scholars refer to as the farewell discourse. So the farewell discourse now has come to an end. This is the last, what we just studied is the last teaching that Jesus does with his disciples before the cross. the teaching has come to an end. And the final, if you look at verse 33 of chapter 16, the final statement of this farewell discourse, the final thing that he says is, in this world you're gonna have trouble, but take heart, I have overcome the world. So this is a powerful scene to me, so you're gonna have to hang with me on my sanctified imagination here. It's probably, scholars think it's about midnight right now, on Thursday night before Good Friday. It's pitch black. They're walking, they probably have a torch or something to kind of like guide their footsteps as they're walking to Gethsemane. And they get probably to the edge of the garden. It's dark, it's quiet. Jesus has been talking, he's been teaching, and then he says that last thing, in this world you're going to have trouble. But take heart, I have overcome the world. I picture he lets that hang in the air. It's midnight, it's quiet, it's spring, so maybe there's the noises that would be around a garden in spring, crickets, and maybe there's a little flutter from the flame of the torch. But it's quiet. And he lets that hang. And they're probably looking up at the stars. The disciples are like trying to process everything that Jesus had taught, that he's gonna be leaving them, he's gonna send a comforter, and just everything that he had just taught them in that farewell discourse is just running through their brains. And they can hear the crickets. Sitting around a campfire, you know that nobody's talking, it's just quiet, and you can kind of hear the flame. And I think that might have been what was going on here. And then maybe after that long pause, with his teaching all done, after he was finished addressing the men that were with him, He turns his eyes and his attention to heaven, and he starts talking to his heavenly Father. And this is where we pick up the story in verse 1. After Jesus had said that, he looked toward heaven and he prayed, Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people, that he might give eternal life to those who you've given him. Now this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I've brought you glory on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began. And so Jesus begins this high priestly prayer, we're calling it, with an interesting way in praying for himself. Praying for himself that he would be glorified, and as he was glorified, that he would be able then to glorify the Father. at this point was really the culmination of his mission, the culmination of why he came to earth. And so let's unpack, you have a page for some notes in your bulletin if you wanna follow along, but let's unpack these five verses as we begin our study of this prayer that Jesus prayed, this holy moment. And the title of this series is Listening to Jesus Pray, and I think it's kind of a sacred, holy, It's like we're eavesdropping on the Son of God talking to God the Father. And because of the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and using John to record this prayer, we get to kind of like listen in. to this special holy prayer that Jesus, the Son of God, prays to the Father. It's just such a cool thing. So it begins with verse one in your notes there, it's time. The moment has arrived. He says, Father, the hour has come. Over and over, if you recall, as we've been studying John for a while, over and over during his ministry, Jesus or the New Testament writers would say, it's not yet the hour, it's not yet time. The first time was in John 2, 4, if you remember all the way back at the wedding feast in Cana. And his mom wants him to like, hey, I kind of know who you are, and you can kind of like fix this problem. They ran out of wine. And Jesus says, my hour has not yet come. Jesus knew that would be kind of like, he knew God had a time schedule. He knew that the plan of God needed to work out. So he said, my hour's not yet come. And then later in John 8, John records this. Jesus is speaking words while he was teaching. This is John 8, 20. Teaching in the temple courts near the place where the offerings were put. But no one sees him because his hour had not yet come. So this is kind of a theme over and over. It's like it wasn't time yet. The hour had not yet arrived. But now the hour had arrived. It was the God-ordained hour of the cross. The whole reason why Jesus came in the first place. By the way, and this is an important point for our discussion this morning, that was planned by God. The cross was not a bad guys got control and in the end Jesus triumphed. The whole thing was a sovereign plan of God for the salvation of sinners. A little bit later, the Church Age began the First Sermon, Peter preached the First Sermon in the Church Age, and the verses will be up on the screen. But Acts 2, 22, and 23 that truth is confirmed or affirmed by Peter as he's preaching the First Sermon about Jesus in the Church Age. He says, fellow Israelites listen to this, Jesus of Nazareth was the man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs, which God did among you through Him as you yourselves know. This man was handed over to you. You didn't take him. He was handed over to you by God's deliberate plan and foreknowledge. And you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. The plan of redemption was the plan all along. That's the hour. That's the definition of this hour. It's the culmination of the whole redemption story. I have in my notes here, this moment was and is the apex of human history. It's not World War whatever. This is the point of human history, right? What's about to happen in our text here, Jesus going to the cross. This hour is why Jesus came. It was the moment that Jesus was sent for. 41 times in the Gospel of John, John uses that terminology, this is what he was sent for. This is what he was sent for. being sent by the Father for the purpose of our salvation. Jesus even mentioned it in the prayer that we just read. You look back at verses 3 and 4, now this is eternal life that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you sent. I brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do, by doing what you sent me to do. So Jesus begins this prayer praying that He would be glorified in this hour that had finally arrived. And so we ask ourselves the question, how, He's Jesus, He's the Son of God, how can He be glorified? He's already glorified. And so the prayer kind of kind of pulls back the curtain for us and lets us see how this is to be that Jesus is glorified in this hour that's about to happen. So number one in your notes is glorification in the cross. Is glorification in the cross. Look at verses 1 and then look at 1 and 4. Glorify your son that your son may glorify you. and I've brought you glory on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. Again, the work that he was given to do was the cross. Because the cross, remember Jesus prays here, I wanna be glorified so I can glorify you. So the plan here all along was that in the work on the cross of redemption and the gospel and all that would bring glory to the Father. That's what Jesus prays here. Because the cross was going to be the supreme revelation of God's nature and God's purpose. The cross was going to be the ultimate, I don't know if you could say every, but almost every attribute of God, the glory of God was going to be displayed on the cross of Jesus Christ. like no other time, again, the apex of history. It's gonna be where God is most revealed, most glorified. We see God in full glory's attributes on the cross like no other place, no other time in history. We see the holiness of God and the wrath of God towards sin. We see the refusal of God to negotiate on sin. He doesn't negotiate it down like, okay, now there's a penalty to be paid. for sin that had to be punished. We see His love for justice and the condemnation of sin, and we see His love and the price that He was willing to pay to rescue us from our condemnation that we are under for our redemption. And if you think about it, if Jesus had stopped short of the cross, And that would have taught us that there's a limit to God's love. There's a degree that he's not willing to go to. If Jesus hadn't gone all the way to the cross and paid that ultimate price, the humiliation of the cross and separation from the Father for the first time in eternity, just how, like Jeremy mentioned, going back, I don't think I could go back to the cross. I have a hard time watching the passion of the Christ. Like, I don't know. But all that took place on the cross was the love of the Father for us and what he was willing to put his Son through on our behalf. And if Jesus had stopped short of that, then that would have taught us that there's a place that the love of God ends. The cross proves that God's love has no limit. And so Jesus' glory was to glorify the Father and show the limitless love of God for us. Kent Hughes in his commentary says, we would have not known without the cross. God who created the universe saw his son hanging on the tree of Golgotha, covered with the spittle of those he came to save, gasping his final breaths while the sins of the world showered upon his pure heart. Jesus is indeed the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The cross was the only way that we could see the infinite lengths of God's love for us. This is the hour. This is the hour, and the cross shows us the limitless depths of God's love for us. Friends, if you're a Christian, know this morning you can't out-sin the love of God. The cross shows us that there's not a limit to that. There's not the 1,000th and one time that you've sinned and God says, okay, that was the number, that was the limit. The cross shows us that there's no limit to that, to the love of God, the grace of God, the mercy of God. So it's glorification in the cross and the glorification of the Father through the cross. Secondly, it's glorification in heaven. Jesus prays in verse five, and now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began. Jesus was about to resume the glories of heaven that he left to come to earth for us before he humbled himself for our sake and took on flesh and human nature minus the sin part. Philippians 2.7 tells us, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. Now, Scripture doesn't tell us very much about Jesus pre-Bethlehem. In the words of Jesus, the glory he had before the world began. We do know from scripture, John 1, 3 and 10, that he was the creator of the universe. So before the world began, Jesus, scripture tells us, he's the one who created things. Through him, all things were made. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. The vastness, what the spoken word The reason I'm talking about this, this gives us a little glimpse into before the world began Jesus. By the way, he wasn't called Jesus until Bethlehem, but the Son of God in eternity past. gives us a little glimpse of the glories of heaven that he was a part of. And so with the spoken word, he created the universe. If you're in school and somebody tells you that over about a billion years evolution turned a tadpole into you, that's not true. Jesus, the Son of God, spoke everything into existence in six days, and he rested on the seventh. Scientists tell us that if we could move at the speed of light, which is 186,000 miles per second, I think, it would take 46 billion years to travel across the known universe. Son of God spoke that into existence instantaneously. The glories of heaven. And also he was in perfect unity and intimacy with the members of the Godhead, the Trinity, eternity past. But beyond a few details, we don't really know a lot of the glories of heaven that Jesus is referring to here. We'll just have to wait and find out for ourselves, right? And Jesus was, he prays for the glorification of heaven. He said, now glorify me in your presence. I'm returning to where you sent me from, or where I came from when I came to earth. I kind of picture it like this, that Jesus was a knight who left the king's court to go perform a heroic deed. And he accomplished his task, and he was returning as a victor. He was resuming his place, taking his place that he had left, putting back on his royal robe that he wore in the glories of heaven, returning to his glory. So he prays for that. He prays, this is about to happen. The hour is here. Eventually I'm gonna return to the glories of heaven that I left for the people that I love. And then thirdly, his glorification, and this is the one that kind of rubber meets the road for us, his glorification in the church. And there's kind of like three points here that we're gonna look at, verse two, verse three, and verse 10. But this is, again, this is kind of like, okay, we get heaven and someday we'll see that, and we get the cross, we understand that, but this is now, this is the here and now. And so Jesus is praying that he would be glorified in us. in this local church called Grace Church. Part of the glorification of Jesus Christ going forward for the church age is that he would be glorified in local assemblies like ours. And so the who, if you will, of this prayer is, in verse two, is Christians. Verse two says, for you granted him authority over all people, talking about himself. So Jesus just doesn't have authority over Christians. He's got authority. He's the king of the universe. He's literally the king of the world. You granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to those that you gave him. So the who of the church, the authority over the ones that God gave to the Son are those who are chosen by the Father. eternal life. This is other places in Scripture this is the doctrine of predestination. This is the doctrine of election. That there are chosen out of all the people in the world there are chosen these are the ones that the Father have given to the Son. That's the who, those who have eternal life. So, when we speak about Jesus being glorified in the church we're talking about those who are the elect, those who the Father chose. And just not to get into the weeds on election but You weren't elect, I wasn't elect because I brought so much to the party, or you have that much to offer to the kingdom of God. It was just the goodwill of the father. We don't know, we don't know, he just, he chose who he chose to save. So the who, those were given to Christ. The how, in verse 3, now this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. The how is a relationship that we have with God the Father through the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. And so the word know, the word know there, that know you and they know Jesus Christ, is not head knowledge, it's not collecting, it's not I know about, it's I know. It's the same word used in scripture for intimacy between a husband and wife. Even it's the same euphemism used for sexual relationships in a marriage. There's an intimate knowledge. And so it's not just, I know God, well, the demons know God. I know Jesus, well, the demons know Jesus, but I know I have a relationship with them. And so the how is being relationship, intimate relationship with God the Father because of Christ. And this is who makes up the church. From Acts 2, Pentecost until the rapture, this is the how people are saved. is accepting Christ as Savior. And then the why, verse 10 is the why. Jesus says, all I have is yours, and all you have is mine, and glory has come to me through them. And we can paraphrase that this morning, and glory has come to me through us. them are those who believe in Christ. And that's us this morning. So the why is for His glory. The glory is coming to Christ through us in some way. And just think about what an honor that is, what a privilege that is, that as the Church of Jesus Christ, we exist to bring glory to Christ. That's the why of all this, is to bring glory to our Savior, Jesus Christ. The why we get together, the why we gather together, the why we do life together as a church, the why we sing and we worship is to bring glory to Christ. The why to Grace Church is to bring glory to God. That's our mission statement, we'll bring glory to God by making and maturing disciples of Jesus Christ. The whole thing is to bring glory to the Lord. So as Jesus was looking at the culmination of redemption's plan, he was seeing his glory. The reason he came was glory. And so I think if there's an application to these opening lines to this perfect prayer, prayed by a perfect man, it's this. Our job, our reason for existence as Christians is to bring glory to Christ. And so And so I think an application is this, as we go through, you know, think about Jesus' life and the things that we mentioned, the walking on the water and the 5,000 and the crucifixion, all this stuff. As we go through the, if I can use this as a metaphor, as we go through the walking on the water seasons in our life and everything is just going great, The reason for all that is to glorify Christ. As we go through the Golgotha seasons and the Valley of the Shadow of Death seasons, the reason for that is to bring glory to Christ. Everything about the Christian life, everything about us, the reason that we were saved is to bring glory to Christ. It's all meant to glorify Christ. And so our desire should be that, as we go through our days, is God, use this to bring glory to my Savior. God, use this to bring glory to yourself. Whatever that looks like, whatever that... Remember what Jesus was facing here in a few short hours, the trials and the torture and unspeakable everything he was looking at, this is gonna bring me glory. And that's a good prayer for us as we go through our junk and our stuff. God, I don't know how you can do this, but bring yourself glory. Sidney and I have been praying for the last week, only God can make something good out of all this. God, bring yourself glory through this. That's why we're here. That's why we're saved, is to glorify our Savior. And so, as we and the disciples are kind of eavesdropping on this prayer, Jesus begins, and I think this is important, because he knew that they were listening. They obviously were, because John heard it to write it down. He starts with his glory. And I think we have a hard time in life when we forget, when we take our eyes off Christ and the glory that's His, and we start looking inward at us. And they were doing that, and we do that. We start looking around, like, well, He's gonna be leaving us, and He's gonna, and He's been our guy, and He's been protecting us, kinda, and all these thoughts, and they started taking their eyes off Christ. And I think a good lesson for us as we go through our days is these first five verses to remember not to take our eyes off the glories of our Savior. Or to use another story, not to start looking at the waves and the storms around us, but keep our eyes on Christ. And we start sinking in life when we do that, don't we? We take our eyes off our Savior. And so I guess a simple application for these first five verses is to pray this for ourselves as we go through our days and through life and hard and easy, whatever life looks like for you right now. God, I want you to get glory out of this. You wake up in the morning, God, I want you to get glory out of whatever's gonna happen today. Help me to keep my eyes fixed on you. Somebody told me one time, Nobody's ever complained yet for getting out of church early. So we're going to a little bit this morning. But let me encourage you as we sing a song and we kind of wrap things up here to just to take this focus with you into your day as we leave. Don't forget the focus of keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. And remember, it's all for his glory, it is all for His glory. If we would, let's stand and we'll sing this song together.