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JESUS PRAYS FOR HIS OWN (Part 1)

January 13, 2008

John 17:1-5 (TNIV)

Pastor Bob Sanders

John 17:1-5 (TNIV)

  1 After Jesus said this, he looked toward heaven and prayed:

    “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. 2 For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. 3 Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. 4 I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. 5 And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.”

I love the story about Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., the famous Supreme Court Justice of the early 1900s.  Holmes was a brilliant jurist but a bit forgetful of life’s details.  One day he was riding a train and the conductor came along collecting tickets.  Holmes had misplaced his ticket and became very upset.  The conductor knew who he was and assured him the railroad would be happy to cover his fare.  But Holmes replied, “That’s not the problem, young man.  The problem is that without that ticket I have no idea where I’m supposed to be going!”

Ever feel that way?  It happens frequently to churches and church leaders: we forget where we’re supposed to be going.  We lose our sense of direction.  Where do we turn to find our way?  Who has the ticket that tells us our route and destination?  Nowadays there are a lot of church consultants who say that’s the pastor’s job.  According to these so-called experts, the effective pastor is supposed to come up with his/her very own vision of where the church is going.  There’s quite an industry out there pumping out books and seminars for pastors, urging them “cast a vision” that propels the congregation into a successful future.

I have to confess the whole business makes me profoundly uncomfortable.  See, I always thought this was Jesus’ church, not mine.  I always thought the most important thing is not where I want the church to go, not what I want us to look like, but where Jesus wants it to go, what he wants us to look like.  And so, to me, the crucial question is not “What’s my vision?” or even “What’s your vision?”  The crucial question is “What’s his vision?”  What does Jesus want us to be about?

Where do we go to find that out?  How do we get in touch with Jesus’ vision for his church?  Well, just about any serious reading of the New Testament will do for starters, but there’s one chapter in particular that gives us a clear and compelling statement of what Jesus longs to see in his church, and that’s the seventeenth chapter of John’s Gospel.  It’s an amazing chapter in which we overhear Jesus the Son pouring out his heart to his heavenly Father.  It’s the longest recorded prayer of Jesus in the New Testament.  And what makes it so remarkable is the fact that Jesus prays it the night before he dies. 

As a pastor I’ve had the privilege of being with people in their final hours of life and at those times the conversation gets very focused.  When life is ending, you don’t talk about the weather.  You talk about what’s most important to you, what’s truly on your heart.  This past Thursday I got to be with Ollie Porter a few hours before he died.  He was struggling for breath, but he wanted to express what was on his heart – his trust in Christ and his love for Carol and his gratitude for life.  It was pure Ollie, the very essence of the man.  That’s what comes out in our final hours. 

And here on the night before his death we hear Jesus talking to his Father about the things on his heart.  There are three sections to this prayer and we’re going to spend three Sundays looking at it.  In this first section we hear Jesus praying for what’s most important of all.  He prays about his defining passion.  He prays about his great gift.  And he prays about his transforming friendship.  Let’s take a look at each of these.

His Defining Passion

First, his defining passion.  Look at verse 1: “Father, the hour has come.  Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.”  What is this “hour” he’s talking about?  Well, throughout John’s Gospel that phrase “the hour” refers to the cross, to Jesus’ suffering and death.  Again and again in the earlier chapters of John we hear Jesus say, “My hour has not yet come.”  But now it’s here.  The cross stands just before him.  And what does he ask for?  Does he pray for deliverance?  For a way out, an escape from the cross?  No.  He prays for God to be glorified through him, through what’s about to happen.  “Father, the hour has come.  Glorify your Son, so that your Son might glorify you.”

Most of my praying is to get God to conform to my agenda.  But Jesus prays his life will be conformed to God’s agenda.  Most of my praying is to get God to give me things.  Jesus prays to find God in things.  Even in his hour of suffering and death, Jesus wants to serve God and magnify God.  It’s his defining passion: that his heavenly Father be glorified in whatever happens.

That verb “to glorify” occurs five different times in the five verses of our text this morning.  What does it mean?  To glorify God doesn’t mean to make him glorious.  God already is a God of glory, and doesn’t need anything from us.  To glorify means to reveal that glory, to let it be seen, to put God’s character on clearest display.  To glorify means that we show forth God’s goodness, God’s beauty, God’s holiness, God’s mercy, God’s justice, God’s steadfast love and faithfulness.  In other words, Jesus prays that through him, even through his sufferings, God might be seen as God truly is.  God in HD, if you will: a “high definition” viewing of God.  That through what happens on the cross God’s wisdom and power might be displayed, might be revealed, might be made more visible.  “Father, be glorified – in my life and in my death.”  That’s what Jesus wants his church to be about.  Because that was, and is, and forever shall be our Lord’s defining passion: the glory of God.

His Great Gift

The second thing we see in Jesus’ prayer is his great gift.  In verse 2 he says to his Father, “You granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him.”  Look at this.  Jesus says the Father has given him authority, given him power, given him unique ability.  To do what?  To give this great gift: eternal life.  Only Jesus has this authority.  Acts 4:12 reminds us that “there is no other name given under heaven by which we must be saved.”  There is no power higher than Jesus.  No authority greater than his.  And he uses this God-given authority not to dominate but to serve.  Not to take but to give.  And what is his gift, his great gift?  Eternal life.

That’s the whole point of why he came – the reason for his incarnation and birth (which we’ve just celebrated), his miracles and teaching, his suffering and his death.  It wasn’t to set up a new religion, or to establish a new set of rules and ethics, or a plan of moral improvement.  It was all for this: to go to the cross for you and me, and to receive authority from God to give us a new life – a life free from the toxic penalty of sin, a life free from the fear of death.  Eternal life doesn’t just mean life that goes on forever in heaven.  It means a new life, a forgiven and redeemed life, that starts now and continues for the rest of eternity. 

This is the essence of what it means to be a Christian.  To receive this great gift – to have your sins forgiven, to be filled with the Holy Spirit, to know that you are a child of God now, and that when you die you’ll be with the Lord who has the power, the authority, to raise you from death to life.  It’s not something we can earn or claim to deserve.  It’s a gift, the great gift, and we can only receive it from him, from Jesus. 

His Transforming Friendship

So we see our Lord’s defining passion – the glory of God.  We see his great gift – eternal life that begins now.  And one thing more: we see his transforming friendship.  Look at verse 3:  “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”  What is eternal life all about?  Jesus says it’s all about knowing the one true God, and knowing Jesus Christ, whom God has sent.  Not just knowing about him.  Not just knowing some Bible verses or theological principles.  But knowing the real God in and through Jesus Christ.  In the Bible, “knowing” means a closeness, an intimacy, a deep friendship.  But this is a friendship like no other.  For in this friendship we are changed.  In this friendship we are reshaped over time and eternity, into the image of the one who’s praying here for us.  We become more and more like Jesus.  It’s a transforming friendship.

It’s a friendship where we can come into his presence and know we’re always welcome.  A friendship where we can pour out what’s on our hearts and know he cares.  But it’s also a friendship where, as we grow in it, we begin to sense what’s on our Lord’s heart, the kind of concerns he has for us and for our world.  It’s a friendship where we begin to share those concerns and where we find the power to act on those concerns – to feed the hungry and house the homeless and give clean water to the thirsty in Jesus’ name .

“This is eternal life,” says Jesus, “to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”  It’s a transforming friendship that begins now and deepens throughout our years on earth as we come to know him more and more, as we trust him more and more, as we follow him more and more.  And it becomes still more when we die, when we move on to what lies ahead – the distant shore where we shall see him face to face, the great Friend, and be changed into his likeness.  Thanks be to God!

All About God

What then is foremost on the heart of Jesus our Lord?  What comes first in his great prayer on his final night on earth?  It’s all about God.  Jesus wants God to be glorified in whatever happens.  Jesus wants to give us the great gift of eternal life.  And Jesus wants us to know the one true God in a transforming friendship.

It’s all about God.  And what does that say about his vision for the church?  What is to be foremost in all we say and do together?  Is it not, in the words of the Westminster Catechism, to “glorify God and enjoy him forever”?

That’s what Jesus wants – a church that worships and exalts God.  A church that lifts up Jesus Christ and him crucified.  A church that receives his gift of eternal life and offers it to others.  A church that lives to bring glory to God through Jesus his Son. 

But it’s so easy to lose sight of this priority.  It’s so easy to get caught up in other priorities and lose that defining passion, lose that sense of gratitude for the great gift, lose that desire to know the one true God.  It’s so easy for me to run around planning programs and chairing meetings and worrying about sermons and budgets and projects and forget that it’s all about the Lord Jesus Christ.  Forget to spend time with him.  Forget to seek him in all that’s happening.  I don’t want to be that kind of pastor.  I want to be part of a church whose defining passion is to bring glory to God.  A church where people talk about what God is doing in their lives.  A church where Jesus Christ is at the center.  Because unless that’s the case, unless Jesus is at the center of it all, whatever we do in services or programs, in mission or ministry will amount to nothing.  Unless the number one priority is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, we’re just playing church.

What does that mean for us?  Here are a couple practical implications.  First it means corporate worship is the center of our life together.  It means nothing is more important than gathering together as we do on Sundays to give God our praise and our prayers, to hear his Word and respond in obedience.  It doesn’t matter what style we use to worship – high or low, traditional or contemporary or emergent.  What matters is this: that we worship so as to give glory to God, to honor and adore him, to seek his face, to offer him our lives.  As I’ve told you before, when the service is over and you’re heading home, the question you should ask is not, “How was the preacher?” or “How was the choir?”  The question is, “How did I do?”  Did I actively worship God?  Did I truly praise him?  Did I confess my need for his forgiveness?  Did I listen for his word to me (no matter how tangled the sermon got)?  Did I pray for his world?  Did I offer my life to him? 

Did I bring him glory?

And the second implication is in our learning.  Jesus says eternal life is all about knowing the only true God.  How well do you know him?  Where do you go to deepen your knowledge of him?  Well, lots of places, I suppose.  But the most authoritative, reliable source of knowledge about God is here in the Scriptures.  We learn about God by studying the Word of God.  The sad thing is that so many Presbyterians today are biblically illiterate.  So, no, you’re not the only one who’s intimidated by this Book.  But you might want to get started in some kind of program that will help you grow in your knowledge of God through the Bible.  A class on Sunday morning or Wednesday evening.  How about a small group that digs into the Scripture?  Or you can meet with one of the pastors and we’ll help you get started on a personal reading program. 

What’s our vision as a church?  Where are we supposed to be going?  According to Jesus, it’s all about God – all about glorifying God and enjoying him forever.  I can’t speak for you, but I want to be part of a church like that.  And I hope you’ll join me in praying that this vision would be more and more true for us here at Lake Grove Presbyterian in the days to come. 

In my life, Lord, be glorified, be glorified,

In my life, Lord, be glorified today.

In our church, Lord, be glorified, be glorified,

In our church, Lord, be glorified today.

In Your world, Lord, be glorified, be glorified,

In Your world, Lord, be glorified today.