The Hour of Glory (John 17:1–5) | Eyes to Heaven (Part 1)

Transcript

MO 30
Eyes to Heaven: The Hour of Glory
John 17:1-5
Michael Otazu


Well, good morning, Church. It's a joy to worship musically with you all and it's also a joy to worship by studying His Word carefully and responsibly and applicationally with you all. That's what I intend to do this morning. You have already heard mentioned a few times that we're starting a new series this morning called Eyes to Heaven. Eyes to Heaven is the name of our series that we'll be in for the next three weeks and it's going to take us through some really profound truths related to the relationship of the Father and the Son in particular. In the evenings Pastor Andrew and Pastor Aaron and Pastor Austin will preach on various other texts and topics that are intended to complement what we'll be studying here in the mornings. When Pastor Jesse first sat me down and asked me to preach these dates, immediately my mind began running to all the various short series ideas that I have had and jotted down on a paper somewhere, series ideas that would be easy to jump in and jump out of without too much heavy lifting. But then he told me that he already had a passage picked. If you've read John 17 you know that it is no easy or simple text, it's one of the highest mountain peaks on the landscape of the Bible and it has challenged many pastors and theologians over the centuries. So, with a little fear and trepidation I took my assignment and I began to study. What I found was that yes, this is a pretty hard chapter, but it's as rewarding as it is difficult. It's not easy but it's really, really good and I'm excited for us to get into it together here over the next three Sunday mornings as we work through this masterful, majestic chapter of Scripture found in John 17. I'm sure that we will be rewarded for our hard work so buckle up, put on your hard hats and let's go to work here.

If you have your copy of God's Word open it up with me if you haven't already to John 17. Perhaps you recall being a young child, filled with excitement about some family plans which were soon to be revealed to you and your siblings. You might have heard the voices of your parents murmuring in their room as they might have discussed the details of what was to come, and so you did as all children are tempted to do. Right? You crept down the hallway to try to get a clearer listen of what they were saying to each other as they planned out how they were going to maximize the fun on the coming trip or the coming party or the coming whatever it was that you were excited about. As you snuck a little closer to their voices and as you strained your ears to try to hear every word they said, their words meant everything to you in that moment because all of your childlike hopes and dreams were at stake. The most important parts of your future were being discussed in that room and so you strained your ears to pick up as much of the conversation as you possibly could.

This morning, we have a similar situation on our hands. The illustration, of course, breaks down because the idea of children listening in to their parents' discussion is almost too silly in comparison to what's happening here in our text, but as we approach this passage, we are cracking open the door to an intratrinitarian conversation, a revelation of a divine relationship discussing strategic plans for all of creation. The text which we are going to consider here in this series is a text which reveals truths so immense that our human brains can hardly grasp the beginnings of them. What we see here in this prayer from the Son to the Father is a prayer which reveals heavenly truths about concepts which we can barely even imagine. This chapter pulls back the curtain on some of the most divine glories and puts on display some truths about the inner workings of the trinity which take us to the heights of theology and doctrine. So, our task in this series is to scale this mountain of lofty doctrine, and I've been tasked with being our guide as we make our push for the summit.

I think the best way to introduce this passage to our minds this morning is actually just to read it in its entirety all at once. So, let's read it together and let these words of John 17, the words of the prayer from the Son to the Father just wash over our minds, and then we'll take it back over to the top and we'll break it out and I'll show you how I plan to tackle this. Let's just read the chapter together here. “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. And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ Whom You've sent. I glorified You on earth, having finished 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. I've manifested Your name to the men who You gave Me out of the world, they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. Now they've come to know that everything You have given Me is from You, for the words which You gave Me I have given to them, and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You and they believe that You sent Me. I ask on their behalf, I do not ask on behalf of the world but of those whom You have given Me for they are Yours, and all things that are Mine are Yours and Yours are Mine and I have been glorified in them. And 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 Scriptures would be fulfilled. But now I come to You and these things I speak in the world so that they may have joy made full in themselves. I have given them Your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world even as I am not out of the world. I do not ask You to take them out of the world but to keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them by the truth, Your Word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also sent them into the world. For their sake I sanctify Myself that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth. I do not ask on behalf of these alone but also for those who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they may also be in Us so that the world may believe that You sent Me. The glory which You have given Me I have given to them that they may be one just as we are one. 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. Father, I desire that they also whom you have given Me be with Me where I am so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world. Oh, righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You and they have known that You sent Me, and I have made Your name known to them. And I will make it known so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them and I in them.”

This prayer breaks down into three neat parts—Jesus's prayer for Himself, Jesus's prayer for His disciples and Jesus's prayer for the church. My plan is to spend this week and the next two weeks working through these three parts of the prayer. We'll get into Jesus's prayer for the disciples next week, so this week we'll focus on just the first five verses here of chapter 17 and we'll see all about the Son's relationship to the Father. At the beginning here in verse 1 we're faced with the fact that this is, indeed, a prayer uttered by Jesus Himself. This is the first piece of information with which we are confronted as we peer into this divine relationship. The first phrase of the chapter reads like this, “Jesus spoke these things and lifting up His eyes to heaven.” If you have one of those red-letter Bibles, this is the only phrase that is not red because it's the only phrase of the chapter that is not spoken by Jesus Himself. The human writer, the Apostle John in this case, simply by including this quoted prayer in this account, is indicating that he thinks it's important for us to know. I think it should be noted that this prayer from Jesus is recorded nowhere else in the Bible and none of the other Gospel writers included it in their accounts for one reason or another, but John wanted it recorded. Why? Well, because it is extremely important for theology. Besides the doctrine that it teaches, it shows us a model of prayerfulness that I think is often overlooked when it comes to studying this passage.

Have you ever just slowed down when you enter into this chapter here and read that first phrase on its own here in John 17:1? Have you ever just asked yourself, why did Jesus even pray? These are the questions that keep me up. Why did Jesus even pray? Why did God the Son who is in communion with God the Father pray? What's more, why did He pray within earshot of His disciples so that His prayer could be recorded? Well, the answer, I think, is that Jesus wanted to teach us a profound lesson about prayer. He wanted us to understand that prayer to the Father isn't just something we do because we don't have access to His secret will, there is something deeper to prayer than just mere temporal communication with God. Just think about it for a second. Jesus is God. Right? He is fully God and therefore has no limit to His access to the will of God because He is God. This is what we call the ontological unity between the Father and the Son. The Bible teaches that in their very essence and in their very nature the persons of the trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, are perfectly equal and unified. That which the Father wills in His very nature is that which the Son wills in His very nature, and that which the Son wills in His very nature is that which the Father wills in His very nature, and of course the Holy Spirit is included in this in the exact same way. To suggest that there is disunity in the ontological will of the triune Godhead is ultimately to wade into tri-theism, believing that there are three Gods. In this case, in the case of John 17 here, to allow for there to be any sort of disagreement between the will of God the Father and the will of God the Son in their very essence is a slip into trinitarian heresy.

If I'm losing you with these big words then just focus in and get this here, because this is where the rubber meets the road. Jesus's prayer here in John 17 shows us that our prayer lives matter, and they matter not because we pray just to gain some sort of access to the Father's will for our lives, we don't just pray to tell God about our hopes and our desires as though He might not know them unless we told Him them, rather there is some deeper value to prayer. Jesus here in John 17 demonstrates this simply by praying. Remember, ontologically speaking, there is no difference between the Father's will and the Son's will. As Jesus here is praying out His will according to His divine nature, He is not informing the Father about or asking the Father for anything that the Father has not already planned to do. They are in perfect harmony. And so the bit of application that I want us to pick up here from this first phrase before we actually get into the prayer itself is that if Jesus prayed to the Father with Whom He has enjoyed perfect ontological unity into eternity past, then we should pray all the more fervently as created beings who long to look into this secret will, this perfect will. If Jesus was committed to prayer though He is divine and ontologically unified and equal with the Father, how much more ought we to pray as imperfect, finite subjects of the Father. There is no amount of Biblical knowledge that you could gain in a seminary class or in a Bible class or in a Sunday School class; or no matter how many books you read you never graduate from the school of prayer. You never graduate from the need to bend your knees and lift your eyes to heaven. Jesus in all of His glory and perfection and unity with the Father here never graduated from the need to pray to Him and I think neither should we.

All right, that's just the first phrase of the first verse and there is a lot more gold here for us to mine. Feel free to consider the introduction to this whole prayer here in this series. Now as we look at the actual words that Jesus uttered in prayer to the Father, I want to pull out some profound truths. There are a number of various ways to outline any given passage of the Bible, especially these five verses, and most of them are probably fine. But the way that I would like for us to work through these verses is to actually identify four aspects of salvation. The thread which runs through verses 1-5 is the doctrine of salvation, and Jesus's words to His Father here reveal to us four aspects of it. So, if you are the type that benefits from taking notes then feel free to jot down the four points as we work through them. They are a bit longer, they are not cute and they are not alliterated, and I couldn't simplify them any further, so they are each a whole sentence by themselves. I'm just going to get to them as we get to them, I'm not going to give them to you all up front. I'll call them out as we get there, feel free to jot them down if you are into that sort of thing.

We see the first aspect of salvation here in the first phrase of the prayer or the second phrase of verse 1 and it is this—salvation glorifies the Father and the Son. That's point #1, the first truth, the first aspect of salvation. Salvation glorifies the Father and the Son. Look with me again at verse 1. “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.” There are many themes in the Bible, as you know. If you have read through the whole Bible, a few times you have probably picked up on a few threads of thought that run all the way through the 66 books of Scripture. There is actually a lot of debate among theologians as to which of the major themes of the Bible is the most dominant. It is a really important theological question because what we believe is the dominant theme of the whole of Scripture is going to color how we engage the various parts of Scripture. If you believe, for example, that Jesus Christ is the dominant theme of Scripture, then you'll end up looking for Christ in parts of Scripture that actually have little to nothing to do with Christ. Charles Spurgeon is one of my heroes of the faith and a man to whom I look up in many respects, but if you've read pretty much any of his sermons on the Psalms you'll find that He found Christ in every nook and cranny of the Psalms, even to the degree that he missed many of the main points of the psalms because he was preoccupied with his Christological manhunt. This is how all literary interpretation works. Whatever the overarching theme is at a broad level is what ends up driving your interpretation of the literature at a narrow level. You've probably heard of the idea of whoever wins the battle of the definition is the one who wins the battle for the argument. Well, when it comes to the Bible, whoever wins the battle for the major theme of Scripture is the one who wins the battle at all levels of theology.

I'm bringing this up because I want to make this point. What we see here as we begin our study of this prayer, which is the highest peak of doctrine in the whole Bible, we're encountering what I would argue is the dominant theme of Scripture. That theme is the Glory of God. Just look at our text here, the first five verses of the chapter, and just see how much it is mentioned. Highlight for yourself how central the theme of glory is here in this opening part of the prayer. Jesus 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. And 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 finished 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.” If you continue reading through the rest of the prayer, you'll see that the theme of glory dominates the entire thing. God's glory, in other words, is central. I would argue that it is not just central to Jesus's high priestly prayer here in John 17, but this theme of glory is the dominant theme in all of Scripture. It's the dominant theme of the universe even; both in special revelation, the Bible here, and general revelation too. In Psalm 19:1, “The heavens are telling of the glory of God, and the expanse is declaring the work of His hands.” God's glory, in other words, is the whole point of it all, the whole point of everything. If you need to boil it down to one thing it is that God would be glorified.

It's probably worth our while at the outset of this study to make sure that we nail this down. We'll pick up the speed after we make this point, but I really want to slow down and make sure we get this right so that we can get everything else that follows right as well. What do we mean when we refer to the Glory of God? Sometimes it's just sort of ethereal or theological and we don't often attribute any real tangible understanding to it. But really, it's a term which we often throw around in conversations and prayers, don't we. We say things like: “Well you know that God will get the glory for it, or God will be glorified in what we do today, or God be glorified by the music we sing or the songs that we sing.” But what does it actually mean? To get a more practical answer to this question you should really come back tonight because Pastor Andrew will be preaching on this very subject of glorifying God through worship and the various ways on a practical level. But for our purposes this morning we need to just know what it means for God to be glorified. What's the whole concept about?

Well for starters we see the specific word glory in the Bible about 400 places. It is a really dominant theme throughout Scripture as I've already said. In the Old Testament in the Hebrew the word is kavod and in the New Testament the Greek word is doxa. In both languages the words communicate the idea of glory or honor, and sometimes we translate it splendor or wealth and really it conveys this broad concept of beauty and value and a sense of robust weightiness. Occasionally it is used to refer to some measure of wealth or beauty possessed by a human, like Joseph's great wealth in Egypt after he rose to power and place of honor in the Egyptian government, or King Xerxes's vast riches displayed in his outlandish parties in Esther 1. But in the vast majority of instances glory, kavod, doxa is used with reference to God. It's even in many places used in God's titles. In I Corinthians the Lord of glory, in Psalm 24 the King of glory, in I Peter 4 the Spirit of glory, and in II Peter 1 the majestic glory. We also find it in many of the New Testament epistolary doxologies, those little pithy statements of praise that we find all over the letters of the New Testament, these little points of worshipfulness that just outburst from the letter of the author who is writing them. We have doxologies like Romans 11, “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to Him be the glory forever.” In the final verses of Paul's letter to the Romans, “Now to Him who is able to strengthen you according to my Gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept in secret for long ages past, to the only wise God through Jesus Christ be glory forever.” Ephesians 3 gives us another good one, this is one of my favorites. “Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly above all that we ask or understand, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever.” Another one in I Timothy 1, “Now to the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God be honor and glory forever and ever.” In Jude, this is a really good one, “Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior through Jesus Christ our Lord be glory, majesty, might and authority before all time and now forever. Amen.”

I could go on and on, I had to cut myself off there. Just reading all of the doxologies of the Bible, all of these moments in which the authors of Scripture just exuded kavod and doxa to the Lord, just wanted to give Him glory. The point is that God's glory is His most earnest interest. He put these here, He laced the Bible filled with pointers to His glory, demands that He get glory. He wrote Scripture to highlight His glory, He created the universe to highlight His glory, He made man to highlight His glory, He allowed man to sin in order to eventually highlight His glory, He sent His Son to earth as a human to die an atoning death for the propitiation of the sins of the world and the efficacious redemption of the chosen ones to highlight His glory. So, if you are in Sunday School class and the question is, why did God do that? The answer is always, “for His glory.”

This last one here that I just mentioned that's in view in John 17:1. The first phrase on the highest peak of the doctrine in all of Scripture is a phrase that highlights for us the central point of everything, that God has planned and designed and arranged and strategized and orchestrated all things such that He would be glorified to the maximum degree possible. In our text we see that it all comes down to this point in His master plan for eternity. Jesus prayed here in verse 1, “Father, the hour has come, glorify Your Son that the Son may glorify You.” The focal point of glory, the central event which served to give God glory, the pinnacle of God's plan to redeem His chosen ones, the hour has come, the Son says. It's time for the cross, it's time for the sacrifice of the Son of the Father, it's time for the bloodletting of the Lamb of God. Jesus knows it is time; He knows that the hour has come for Him to experience the most excruciating death possible. Not because it was particularly physically painful, although of course it was, but because of the fact that it was a divine and innocent Lamb who bore upon His shoulders the sins of the entire world and was forsaken by the Father in that hour of death upon the cross. Just let these words of Isaiah 53 wash over you and sink in. “Surely our griefs He Himself bore and our sorrows He carried, yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening for our peace fell upon Him and by His wounds we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way but Yahweh has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. But Yahweh was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief. If He would place His soul as a guilt offering, He will see His seed, He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of Yahweh will succeed in His hand.” If you are willing to believe it, that crushing that you just heard Isaiah describe is exactly what Jesus is asking for in John 17. “Father, the hour has come, glorify Your Son that the Son may glorify You.”

It might sound like an overstatement from an overly passionate pastor who is just really excited about the text he is preaching right now but I'll stand by it. What we are encountering here in John 17:1 is the most profound sentence ever uttered by a human being. “Father, the hour has come, glorify Your Son that the Son may glorify You.” The plan which led up to this hour was not a surprise to Jesus. Jesus was there when the Father along with the Holy Spirit and along with Himself planned out the entirety of time and all the details therein down to the number of days of each of our lives and the number of hairs on each of our heads. The plan for God's glory was an intratrinitarian plan which involved all three persons of the triune Godhead. So, Jesus, knowing full well the coming agony wrapped up in His request here, asks for the Father to just bring it on. Wait no longer, Father, this is the moment to which We have looked since We made this plan together. Wait no longer, Father, this is the hour in which the world will be redeemed by My blood. Wait no longer, Father, I want this to happen because I want You, I want Us to be glorified. Wait no longer, Father, I desire nothing more than to die as We planned so that You and I may be glorified. “Father, the hour has come, glorify Your Son so that the Son may glorify You.”

Do you understand what we are reading here? We're peering into the very mind of God, we're looking into the mind of God and we're seeing how He has planned to save us from the punishment of eternal suffering which we deserve as a result of our sin. This is the plan that brings glory to both the Father and the Son. This is a magnificent plan which should cause us to marvel at our God as we lift our eyes to heaven.

As we drop our eyes down to verse 2 we see this plan for the Glory of God through the death of the Son come into even sharper clarity. Look at it there with me, if you would. Jesus prays, “Even as You gave Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom You have given Him He may give eternal life.” We'll get a point out of this verse, but this truth that I want to pull out here in verse 2 is a truth that you can put down in your notes as point #2. Salvation was initiated by the Father and secured by the Son. That's how I would summarize the doctrine held in verse 2. Salvation was initiated by the Father and secured by the Son. He prays here in the third person, referring to Himself as Him. He says, “Even as You gave Him,” Himself, the Son, “authority over all flesh that all whom You,” the Father, “have given Him,” the Son, “He,” the Son, “may give eternal life.” Do you see the order of operations here? It's an important truth when it comes to how we understand salvation. God the Father initiated the whole thing. It says here that He was the One who gave the Son not simply authority over all flesh, which He did, but He actually gave Him individual souls for some special purpose. Don't shrink away from that truth, it is stated plainly right there before you. God the Father took from His abundant wealth, His ownership of all things for all time in all the universe and He specifically gave some individuals to the Son so that the Son may give them eternal life.

This is a doctrine that is taught throughout the New Testament, but it comes into really clear focus, especially in Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus. Join me over in Ephesians 1, it's articulated extremely clearly here and in perfect agreement with Jesus's words in John 17. Ephesians 1, zero in on verses 3-4 with me. Paul writes, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world.” This choosing is a big deal and the original word which Paul used here for chose is the Greek word eklegomai, and in its root form it carries the concept of choosing or picking something for oneself, causing some things, or in this case some people to be chosen for a particular predetermined purpose. Paul uses this word here to describe God's setting aside of those whom He would give the ultimate blessing of salvation. The chosen means for this blessing of salvation runs right through His Son. He chose them and then He gave them to His Son.

We get another glimpse of this choosing, this picking, of the individuals for salvation over in II Thessalonians 2:13-14, I'll read it to you here. This is where Paul describes, he writes to the believers in Thessalonica that God has “chosen them as the first fruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit in the faith and truth.” He says that it was “for this He called you through our gospel that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Then in I Peter 1:2 Peter emphasizes the fact that this choosing took place completely before time as we know it even came into existence. He's not choosing individuals in time; He chose them outside of time. He writes to the reader there in I Peter 1:2 that they were “chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.” The chosen, those who have been foreordained by the Father as individuals picked out and selected for salvation, these are the people about whom Paul is writing here in Ephesians 1:4. He says He chose who? “Us,” those who are believers, “in Him before the foundation of the world.” This choosing wasn't just a haphazard or random decision. God picked us out, He picked us out before the foundation of the world in a premeditated, intentional deliberate sort of way. This premeditated choosing of those whom He saves is all part of His big plan for history. It's His master design for bringing more glory to Himself. Why did God do it? The answer of course is to bring Himself more glory. II Timothy 1:9 says that “He saved us and called us with a holy calling not according to our works but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus from all eternity.” This choosing is just one part of a much bigger picture, it's just one component of God's grand program which He is developing in time and history, and we are seeing it unfold in real time. Just soak up the largeness of what Paul is talking about here in this passage here in Ephesians 1:4. “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we would be holy and blameless before Him in love, by predestining us to the adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace which He graciously bestowed on us in the beloved.”

God's macro narrative for all of history is designed to bring Himself the most glory possible and His choosing of some for special undeserved saving fits right into that foundational narrative. Figure it this way, if we were the ones who had the ultimate freedom to choose or not to choose salvation, would He have as much glory? If we were the ones who initiated salvation, would God get as much glory? If out of the darkness which is the muck and mire of our sinfulness in this world, the first light which shone was the light of our own decision to choose God, would God get as much glory? Or would we then deserve some of that glory since it would have been us who did the choosing? It's God who does it all. It's God who chose us and He did it before time just to display that He is in control of everything and that His plan isn't even subject to the restraints of time. They are separate. The Father's elective power is completely unhindered by anything. “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world,” not even during the foundation of the world. Before the foundation of the world.

You can turn back to our text in John 17. Take all of that Pauline clarity that we just pulled out of Ephesians 1 and look with fresh eyes with me, if you will, at Jesus's words here in John 17. He prays, “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.” Do you see it? Isn't it glorious? The Father is the One who initiates salvation. He chooses them independent of their own merits, as if there were any. He chooses them at a point that is outside of time altogether and then what does He do? He gives them to the Son so that the Son can enter the timeline in human history, die on a cross, effectually atone for the sins of those whom God has chosen and given to Him, and then bring them into the fold as ones who have been saved from the wrath that they deserve. That's a glorious plan. The only entity that can get glory from it is God.

Now it is usually at this point in discussing this doctrine of salvation when the elephant in the room begins to get a little bit bigger and more unavoidable and encroach on our seating arrangements. Whenever we talk about God's sovereignty over salvation and then when we simultaneously think about man's responsibility for his own sins, our feeble, finite minds tend to work themselves into knots, don't they. Our sense of fairness begins to bare its teeth, and we roll up our intellectual sleeves, and we prepare ourselves to call out the logical contradiction in the Bible's explanation of salvation. Let me just do you a favor and give you the remedy to all of the objections brewing in your heart. It's not fair. Salvation is not fair. No one ever said it would be. Salvation is completely unfair, actually. It would be fair if God were to simply send all of us sinners to hell and be done with us. It would be fair if He saw our sins and gave us the punishment that we deserve for them. It's not fair. But it's just. And do you know why it is just? You know how God is able to insert Himself into the darkness of humanity's sinfulness and pluck out a select few to enjoy salvation with Him and still maintain His attribute of justness? Well, He does it by first choosing us, then giving us to the Son so that the Son can take on flesh, die a sacrificial death as a perfect man who bore the sins on Himself and then take that payment and apply it to the sin tab of the chosen ones. That's how it is just. Fair? Not by our definition of fair. But just? Absolutely. And all the more glorious, I might add.

If you are here this morning and you have not experienced the glorious transformation that comes along with being a recipient of this phenomenon being played out in real time and real life, not in the theological ether somewhere; then allow me to invite you to repent and believe. You don't need to reconcile the theological tension between God's sovereignty and man's responsibility in salvation, you don't need to have all your questions answered. That can wait. In fact, the heady stuff that I'm rambling about is more easily understood if you have the Holy Spirit living within you anyway. All you need to do is just give up the fight. Acknowledge to your Creator that you can't live without Him, you can't do this on your own and you need Him, that you need Him to step in and take control of your life and remove your sins as far from you as the east is from the west. Repent, turn away from your love for the sins to which you are naturally enslaved and believe that God has sent His Son to die for you and that He was raised from death three days later to declare to all of history that God is in control of death and therefore also in control of true life as well. Romans 10:9 is the only verse you need to know: “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”

The next logical question here is what is salvation like? What even is eternal life? Well, I'm glad you asked. If you look back with me at our text here the answer comes in the next verse. We've already seen in verse 1 that salvation glorifies the Father and the Son, and we've seen in verse 2 that salvation was initiated by the Father and secured by the Son, and now as we look at verse 3, we see that salvation results in the knowledge of God. Salvation results in the knowledge of God. Look with me at verse 3, if you would. Jesus defines eternal life here. “And this is eternal life, that they may know You the only true God and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” You know, I find it interesting that Jesus defines eternal life not by its duration. Ever thought about this? It kind of struck me while I was studying this. I always thought of eternal life as being eternal because it is eternal, it goes on and on and on. It's the duration that makes it interesting and unique and exciting and attractive. But Jesus doesn't do that, He defines it as something of quality. Eternal life is eternal in that it never ends and that's what is initially attractive about it to us. Everybody wants to live forever. But the real value of eternal life isn't found in its duration because really a bad life that never ends is no life we should want. The value of eternal life here and what we should really be attracted to in it is its quality, its substance. What makes eternal life great is that it is directly connected to what? How does Jesus define it for you here? Knowing God. Jesus says here that it is defined by knowing the Father, “the only true God and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”

Salvation isn't merely positional. This is the truth that we ought to get out of this. Salvation isn't merely forensic; it's not just propitiation and justification and sanctification. It's about an intimate relational knowledge of God. But when we are saved, we are pulled into a personal relationship with God the Father and God the Son, and we have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. From the doctrinal emphasis of this passage and this sermon it might sound like the life of a Christian is one of abstract theology and big words and complicated doctrines. But in reality, it is all about an experiential life-altering obsession with knowing our God. You don't need to know the big words; they matter not in the grand scheme of things as long as you know God and are passionately absorbed with seeking to know Him more.

This knowing of God is not an intellectual thing. Actually, in the sense that it is being used here and in many places throughout the Bible to know something isn't as much of a descriptor of gaining understanding about something as it is an indicator of intimacy in relationship. In Jeremiah 31:33-34 God describes His future plans to save the people of Israel by describing the same concept here of knowledge. He declares this. “I will put My law within them and on their heart, I will write it. I will be their God, and they shall be My people. And they will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother saying, ‘Know Yahweh,’ for they will all know Me from the least of them to the greatest of them, declares Yahweh. For I will forgive their iniquity and their sin I will remember no more.” That is eternal life. We're not Israel and in our context it's different, but that's essentially the life of a believer for all time—to know Yahweh. Some of you might be thinking, I don't know Yahweh, I know the Lord. You can pry my NASB out of my cold, dead hands. Fine, you can call Him Lord if you want, but the point stays the same, doesn't it. To know God is to be in close relationship with Him; to have eternal life is to know Him, to be in an intimate relationship.

So that's our third point from this text. Now, as we look at the last two verses of this passage, we'll pull out one final point. Verses 4-5 we see that salvation's provision precedes the Son's ultimate glorification. I never said they would be short, cool points, I’m not very good at that, but these are descriptive and accurate. The fourth point here that we get out of verses 4-5 is that salvation's provision precedes the Son's ultimate glorification. Jesus rounds out this first section of His prayer by bringing us back to the theme of glory. He prays here in verses 4-5 about the glory of the cross and then the ultimate glory which was restored to Him after His work on the cross. Look at it there with me, the last two verses of our section that we're going to look at this morning. “I glorified You on earth,” Jesus says, “having finished 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 sermon's title is The Hour of Glory; you can see it there if you grab one of those discussions and note sheets. It's that title because this is the hour which Jesus says up in verse 1 “has come.” And as we saw it's a reference to the cross. So here in verses 4-5 we see that Jesus is pointing to this painful yet glorious hour that was still coming from the perspective of Him as He was uttering this prayer. You see the Son when He condescended to take on flesh and walk the earth with sinners like you and I and die for sinners like you and I, when He did that, He gave up some aspect of the glory which He had beforehand. This is an important doctrine to cut straight. He did give up some aspect of the glory which He had when He was with the Father in heaven. He indicates here that He yearns for that again. II Corinthians 8-9 is a good cross reference to jot down if you want to do this studying a little bit more. Paul makes the point well there, he says, “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though being rich yet for your sake He became poor so that through His poverty you might become rich.”

In a sense that is so ironic, really, that it can only come from God who is the king of irony, we get to partake in the glory of God because the Son lay aside some of His glory to come down here and make it possible for us to partake in this glory. Isn't that amazing? He gave up some of His majesty and His royal splendor which He enjoyed in heaven to come to this armpit of the universe where sin runs rampant among us so that those whom the Father has given to Him, He might eventually give a taste of glory to them. Hebrews 2:9 adds to the picture, “But we do see Him who was made for a little while lower than the angels, Jesus, because of the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone.” So, the Son of God who is God Himself, of course, relinquished some of the “splendor of His glory which He had from the Father before the world was.” He came to earth less glorious. Still glorious in the sense that He perfectly represented the Father's gloriousness in displaying His perfect attributes of glory and especially obedience on the cross, but nonetheless the Son did give up some of His former glory and He longed to have that glory back. There is no other way to read this. He prayed here with that in mind. In verse 4 He prayed that the Father would now accept His sacrificial death which was the work He had given Him to do, and then in verse 5 Jesus asked to be restored to the ultimate glory which He had in the beginning.

That glory is unimaginable to our minds. Just listen to how it is described in Hebrews 1:3. Speaking of the Son, he says that “He who is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature upholds all things by the word of His power who, having accomplished cleansing for sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.” I can't even flex my brain to begin to understand the gloriousness of that. Just think back to when Pastor Jesse took us through the throne room scene in Revelation 5, and if you haven't heard that sermon skip your nap this afternoon and listen to Revelation 5 from just a few months ago from Pastor Jesse in the evenings. Just the section in Revelation 5:12-13 says this, “Saying with a loud voice, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing. And every created thing which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and on the sea and all things in them I heard saying, To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be the blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever.” Here in John 17:5 Jesus is yearning for that glory again. He is requesting that it be restored to Him.

Verse 5 He says, “Now Father, glorify Me together with Yourself with the glory which I had with You before the world was.” This here is what I believe is an intentional connection back to the first chapter of the book of John. I think what is happening here is John in chapter 1 wrote with this prayer quoted from Jesus in mind. In fact, let's go back to John 1 and we'll end here. John 1 is where we'll close our time together, I think it's an appropriate and fitting end to our consideration of John 17:1-5 because it encapsulates this gloriousness that the Son had with the Father before time and will have with the Father and does have with the Father even now that He has done His work on earth. This is a description of the glory which was shared perfectly between the Father and the Son and it's a description of the glory to which Jesus has gone back and in which we will all see Him some day if we are believers.

Let us close with this and then we'll pray. John 1, “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 came into being through Him and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overtake it.”

Let's pray. Oh, heavenly Father, You are glory hungry and You desire to be fed glory, You deserve to be fed glory, You deserve every ounce of it in the universe. Lord, You will get it. Lord, our hearts, our sinful hearts are also glory hungry. In our flesh we desire to steal some of it from you, even as we encounter the clear doctrines of Your Word and the fact that we contribute nothing to our salvation. Lord, we bristle at that because we want some of the glory. Lord, we want to be praised like You ought to be, we want to be credited like You deserve to be. Lord please forgive us from this sinfulness. Lord, help us to see Your glory as the most prime important element in the entire universe, the commodity which You own and will call back to Yourself in the end. God, may we be excited, may we yearn to view that glory. Thank You for giving us a glimpse of it here in this wonderful passage. Thank You for sending Your Son in Your glorious plan to come and live with us, show us what perfection looks like, die on the cross as a perfect Lamb to atone for the sins of the world, to call those whom You have chosen and given to Him unto salvation. God, I pray that any of us here who are unbelieving, who have not partaken in this glorious transaction of salvation, God, I pray that You would insert Yourself into the lives of those in this room. Pray that You would call them to Yourself effectually, bring them to Yourself. Bend their knees, break them if you must, Lord. Cause us to be a people who are consumed and obsessed and passionate with worshiping You. Lord may all of these things be done for Your honor and Your glory. Amen.