WWUTT 981 I Have Manifested Your Name?

Jesus Christ shows us the Father. He shows us the Father through the words that the Father gave to Him to speak to us. And it's through Christ that we get to know the glory of God when we understand the text.

The Purpose of the Program and the Daily Study of God's Word

This is When We.

Understand the Text, a daily study of God's Word that we may be filled with the knowledge of His will. For questions and comments send us an email to whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com. Here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe.

Thank you,.

Becky. John 17 is where we are today. We started a little bit of this last week on Wednesday. Jesus' high priestly prayer closing out the upper room discourse with His disciples. I'm gonna go ahead and start in verse 1 and read through about verse 12.

When Jesus had spoken these words, He lifted up His eyes to heaven and said, Glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world.

Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you, for I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them, and have come to know in truth that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me.

I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you.

Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost, except the son of destruction, that the scripture might be fulfilled.

We'll stop right there, because we probably will only get that far today. So we looked at the first five verses of this particular prayer. That's what we looked at on Wednesday, concluding with verse 5, with Jesus saying, and now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

God's Timeless Existence Before Creation

I remember when I first became the senior pastor at my church. I started out as the associate pastor for a couple of years before I became the head teaching pastor. And one of the first questions I remember being asked as a brand-new pastor was, what was God doing before he created us?

Was he just kind of floating around in some sort of ethereal existence and got to a certain spot and decided, hey, I'm gonna make something here. I don't know if you know of a children's book called Herald in the Purple Crayon.

It was one of my favorites when I was a kid. It's about this boy who wakes up in the middle of the night and decides to go on a journey, and he draws his way along this journey, and then he even gets lost and manages to draw his way back home.

But sometimes whenever I hear some teachers say something like, God was bored and so he created us, or God was lonely and he created mankind so that he could love us and have company and friendship with us, and those kinds of things.

Whenever somebody teaches something like that, I think of it as Herald in the Purple Crayon theology. Just this idea you have of God just floating around in some sort of empty nothingness and deciding one day that he was going to create something.

And this picture of God actually binds him to the laws of time. He just exists on a timeline with no beginning and no end, but he's kind of floating around out there, and one day, you know, whatever a day would be to God, he just decides, I'm kind of bored, maybe I'll start something, maybe I'll create something.

And this has also led to theories that some people have that there was a world that existed before ours, you know, some other dimension, God's done this before, we're not the first beings ever created, etc.

And this is all, it's Herald in the Purple Crayon theology. It is ascribing a dimension of time to God that he's therefore bound to, but God lives in a timeless existence. He is spirit and is without form, which means he doesn't have matter or any sort of, you know, material dimension.

And since he is not matter, he is not bound by time. Augustine even wrote of this, when God created matter, he created time, because you're creating a solid physical existence that therefore has a presence in time to decay or fall apart or change form or whatever else.

So all of this is happening in time with the creation of matter was the creation of time. But God exists outside of time, he is not bound by the same laws. And that is, that is almost impossible for us to fathom, like we can conceptualize it to a certain degree.

Even the book of Ecclesiastes says that God has placed eternity in the hearts of men, but we cannot fathom what he has done from beginning to end. So there's some understanding of eternity there, but we can we can barely grasp it.

Since all we know is time, we have a finite existence, we live moment by moment. And the moment that you just had, you're never going to get back. And this is all that we know. So therefore, it's impossible for us to understand a timeless existence.

Now there will be a time for all of us who are in Christ where we will enter into that timeless existence with God. And we will understand it. Because as it says in first john three, two, we will see him as he is because we will be made to be like him.

Eternity for us living with God is not like living on earth. But it's just with no ending. That's not what heaven is. Heaven is described to us in ways that we can understand it, but we can't grasp it.

We can't fathom that kind of existence with our natural minds. And when the Corinthians tried to do that, Paul actually rebuked them for it. First Corinthians 15, where he said, what we are now is not what we will be.

And what is sown is perishable, but what is raised is imperishable. Now in order for us to be raised imperishable, incorruptible means that we will not have the same material matter that we are made up of.

Now we will be transformed. Our lowly bodies, as Paul says in Philippians three, will be transformed to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him to subject all things to himself. Therefore, in the existence that we have now we have but glimpses of understanding what eternity is, we will not be able to conceptualize this or fathom it until we enter into that existence.

But for now, all we have are these little bits and pieces that God has so graciously revealed to us in his word. And this is one of those occasions, John 17, five, what was God doing before he created us?

Simple answer to that question is he was glorifying himself. And that was not a boring existence. As a matter of fact, it's the most incredible existence there is in all of existence. And we are privileged to be promised that in Christ Jesus, we will become part of that.

And we see that all the way through the book of Revelation, that those whom Christ has redeemed to himself and has given a place for us in his kingdom, we will be part of that glory. We will be glorifying him forever in the same glory that God had with himself before the ages began.

John 17, five, with Jesus praying, and now Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. Jesus, the son, they didn't have the name Jesus at that time.

That's his incarnate name, but the Son of God, and the Father God, and the Holy Spirit, the triune God, glorifying one another for all eternity. And nothing was lacking. There wasn't anything that God did not have that he therefore needed.

As we read in Psalm 90, from everlasting to everlasting, he is God. And we know from the book of Hebrews that he is the same yesterday, today and forever. In Romans chapter 11, it says that no one can give something to God, that therefore God now owes us something who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid.

So God is not lacking anything that we then give to God and somehow obligate God to have to pay us back for anything. God owes us nothing. God does not need us, but he has chosen to create us and share with us in this glorious existence that he has had with himself for all eternity.

That is just the blessing and the grace and the wonderful gift of God that he has extended to us. That we might have this wonderful privilege of being able to be with him in that eternal place, glorifying God forever.

And we're going to enter into what God has been doing for all of eternity, glorifying in himself, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. One God, not three gods, not three gods glorifying themselves, but one God in three persons.

And once again, this is part of just kind of the eternal mystery of God. It is also impossible for us to fathom the whole concept, the nature of the economy of the Trinity. God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but he's still one God?

Yeah. It's hard for us to grasp that. We have, again, glimpses of it all the way through scripture. God, through the revealing of his will, through the prophets and the apostles, has shown us bits of himself.

But for us in our finite minds, in our individual personhoods, to try to grasp the three personhood of the one God, it's impossible for us to do that. And that's why we so easily fall into heretical descriptions of the Trinity, is because we're trying to describe something that in our material ways we simply cannot do.

That's one of the reasons why whenever I get to talking about the Trinity, I just try to stay with scripture and the confessions of the historic church, those Orthodox confessions, because anything else beyond that I try to do on my own and I'm gonna fall flat on my face.

It terrifies me, the idea of thinking that I could describe God in some heretical or vain way. So I want to describe him the way that he has described himself, according to the scriptures. And here, once again, we have that glimpse of the relationship between the Father and the Son, and this relationship that he had with himself before even the ages began.

I think one of the things that really strikes me here about this particular passage is also what Jesus gave up and did this for our sake. He left his throne in heaven and took on flesh and became a man, God incarnate, and being found in human form, he became obedient unto God even to the point of death, according to the hymn of Christ that Paul shares in Philippians chapter 2.

Therefore God has highly exalted him and given him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Jesus did all things, again, to the glory of his Father, even here where he says, I glorified you on earth, John 17 4. I glorified you on earth having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. Jesus did all things to the glory of the Father, and so in imitating our Lord Christ we are to do the same.

Whatever you are up to today, you are to do it to the glory of God the Father, giving all things to—giving God glory for all things, for everything that you have as a blessing from God. Even the suffering that you might endure today is something that God has put into your life to shape you and mold you more into the image of his Son.

Jesus experienced hardship and loss and mourning and even temptation, but resisted. So when you are tempted to do evil and you resist, you share in the sufferings of Christ. If you are tempted to do evil and you do evil, well, you've actually partnered in the work of Satan.

Fortunately, God is gracious, and as we read in 1 John 1 9, if we are faithful to ask forgiveness for our sins, he is faithful and just to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, just because the price has been paid by Christ on the cross on our behalf for our sins.

Jesus entered into our existence. He went from being God from eternity past, glorifying in himself to God in human flesh, and entered into time and was made like his brothers, was found to be like his brothers in every respect, as it says in the book of Hebrews, so that he might become our great high priest.

So God, who lived in a timeless existence, entered into time in the form of Christ and did the will of his Father to the glory of the Father, being obedient unto all things. And God has given him a name that is above every name, and we get to inherit the kingdom of God with him, all those who are in Christ Jesus.

That doesn't mean, and in no way would I ever mean to communicate, that we will get the place of Christ. That doesn't mean that. And when I talk about God sharing his glory with us, of course, I know in the book of Isaiah, God says that he will share his glory with no one, meaning that he is not going to make us gods, but we will be privileged to become part of that glory that he has shared with himself from before the ages began, and we will get to glorify him as he has always glorified himself.

That's what God has been doing since before we were created, and it's not, it wasn't boring. Again, it's the most incredible existence, and we're privileged to be promised to receive it by faith in Jesus Christ.

The Father Gives the Son His People

Jesus goes on, as we will continue part of this, of this prayer here, we've still just been focusing on verse 5 today, Jesus said, I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world.

Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now, there is an immediate context here, referring specifically to the disciples whom Jesus had called to himself, those 12 that he's with there in the upper room, well, the 11 now that Judas Iscariot has gone out.

So, it certainly applies to those 11, but it also applies to us, we who are disciples of Jesus Christ now, because Jesus did indeed say earlier in John 10 that the Father would give to him those who would be his sheep, and no one will snatch them out of his hand, and the Father who gives them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand.

I and the Father are one. That's in John chapter 10, verses 28 and 29. Let me go ahead and read that again. So, starting in verse 28, I give them eternal life. Well, I'll go back to verse 25, Jesus answered them, I told you and you do not believe.

The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me. And remember Jesus in John 17 saying, I glorified you on earth having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. So, the works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me, but you do not believe because you are not among my sheep.

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of my Father's hand.

I and the Father are one. And Jesus had previously said in verse 16, I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice, so there will be one flock, one shepherd.

And that of course is talking about every disciple who will ever hear the gospel and become a follower of Jesus, having repented of their sin and believed in Christ. So therefore, when when Jesus says here in John 17 6, I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world, that's not just talking about the 11 disciples who were there in the upper room, although that certainly would be the immediate context, but that's also a reference to us, because according to John 10, we have been called out of the world through the preaching of the gospel and given by the Father to Jesus Christ that that we would be his possession.

We are his inheritance. Titus 2 14, Jesus Christ gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. And it is the Father who has given us to the Son.

Jesus says, I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you, for I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me.

1 John 2 22, who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ. This is the Antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.

Remember we read back in John 14 6, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but by me. We get to see the glory of God through his word, through Jesus Christ, who shows us the Father.

And it is through faith in Christ that we will get to the Father one day. We can pray to the Father now through Christ, just as Jesus has said over again, over and over again to his disciples, whatever you ask the Father in my name, this he will give to you.

And so we have access to the Father now, but we will also be in the presence of the Father forever because of the faith that we had in Christ. And that Christ has purchased our forgiveness by his blood, has cleansed us from all unrighteousness, and made us worthy to come into the presence of God and dwell with him forever.

And it's in that place that we will see the way God had been glorifying himself for all eternity, even before the world began. We'll pick up here in John 17 tomorrow. Let's conclude with prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the giving of your Son, for our redemption, for the forgiveness of sins, and the words that were given to the Son by the Father that he might reveal the Father to us, and we would know who you are through this word that we have read.

Jesus prayed that eternal life is knowing the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Jesus said, I glorified you on earth having accomplished the work that you gave me to do, and then saying, and now Father glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

And so what we as your children ask of you, Father, is that you would bring us into that glory, that you deliver us from sin and this present evil age. May we not be tempted or led astray by any of the schemes of Satan or the philosophies of this world, but we hold fast to the gospel that we heard and the Christ whom we know through that gospel who will deliver us out of sin and death and the destruction that is going to come upon this wilting world and will bring us into an imperishable kingdom where we will dwell with you forever.

Deliver us from evil into your place with you that we might glorify you forever in Jesus name. Amen.

Thank you for listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website www .utt .com and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page.

Join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study When We Understand the Text.