The Gospel of John: Our Lord’s High Priestly Prayer (2)

Jude’s Warning Against False Teachers and Ungodly Intruders

But Vermont's not allowing any Massachusetts residents from Worcester County to travel up there so their family couldn't get away for the week. And so he's here to read the Epistle of Jude.

Jude, a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James. To those who are called, beloved in God the Father, and kept for Jesus Christ, may mercy, peace, and love be multiplied to you. Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only master and Lord, Jesus Christ.

Now I want to remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus who saved a people out of the land of Egypt afterwards destroyed those who did not believe. And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day.

Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise indulged in sexual immorality and pursued unnatural desire, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal life, of eternal fire.

Yet in a like manner, these people also, relying on their dreams, defile the flesh, reject authority and blaspheme the glorious ones. But when the archangel Michael contending with the devil was disputing about the body of Moses, he did not presume to pronounce a blasphemous judgment but said, the Lord rebuke you.

But these people blaspheme all that they do not understand and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively. Woe to them, for they walked in the way of Cain and abandoned themselves for the sake of gain to Balaam's error and perished in Korah's rebellion.

These are hidden reefs at your love feasts and they feast with you without fear, shepherds feeding themselves, waterless clouds swept along by winds, fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted, wild waves of the sea casting up the foam of their own shame wandering stars for whom the gloom of utter darkness has been reserved forever.

It was also about these that Enoch the seventh from Adam prophesied saying, behold, the Lord comes with 10 ,000 of his holy ones to execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him.

These are grumblers, malcontents, following their own sinful desires. They are loud mouth boasters showing favoritism to gain advantage. But you must remember, beloved, the predictions of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.

They said to you, in the last time there will be scoffers following their own ungodly passions. It is these who cause divisions, worldly people devoid of the spirit. But you beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life and have mercy on those who doubt, saving others by snatching them out of the fire, to others show mercy with fear, hating even the garments stained by the flesh.

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ, our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority before all time and now and forever, amen.

Prayer for Mercy, Holiness, and Perseverance

Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you so much for the work of Jesus Christ. We're thankful for his sacrifice. We're thankful for the fact that he is sitting on the throne, that he is over all things, that he is in control.

And Lord, we're thankful that we can trust in him because he is faithful, he is just. And Lord, we rejoice that we belong to him. And we thank you, Lord, for this passage that we read here. And we pray that you would have mercy on those who doubt.

We pray that you would have mercy on those who are without any fear of you. We pray, Lord, that you would grant them the repentance that leads to saving faith. We pray that you would use your church to accomplish this end as we proclaim the word of truth.

We pray, Lord, that we would not fall into the air of false doctrine. We pray that we would not fall into the air of sinful living. But we pray, Lord, that we would be holy and just in our behavior, in our thoughts, in our actions.

We pray, Lord, that you would purify us. We pray that we would live as Christ Jesus lived, that we would follow his pattern. And we pray that we would do all these things in the power of your spirit. So help us, Lord, walk in a manner that is worthy with our calling.

And help us now as we continue to study John 17. As we read about the prayer of the Lord Jesus Christ, we pray that our prayers would be consistent with his prayer. So, Lord, we pray that you would teach us and instruct us.

We pray that you would comfort us, encourage us. We pray that you would warm our hearts to the things eternal. Thank you, Lord, in Jesus' name, amen.

The High Priestly Prayer in John 17 and the Intercession of Christ

Well, let's turn in our Bibles to John 17, please. We lost to this world a great servant of Christ the other day, J .I. Packers, with the Lord now. He has written so many books over the years, knowing God, you know, as a classicist up there in the top 10, probably of most people's lists.

I was surprised to learn yesterday that, I believe it was a general editor of the Translation Committee for the English Standard Version, the ESV, that we just read. I didn't know that. And he regarded that ESV translation as really his greatest achievement or work in his very fruitful ministry.

Last Lord's Day, we began to consider this prayer of our Lord Jesus to his Father in Heaven. And here, of course, our Lord interceded on behalf of his people as a high priest, praying to his Father on our behalf.

He represented his people before his Father, those, again, who were chosen or elected by the Father in eternity. There's a great deal of information about the sovereignty of God in election in this passage.

And upon the Father choosing them before creation, he had given to Jesus Christ his people, his chosen people, with the assignment that he, the Son, would become incarnate and redeem us from our sin. And so this prayer, which encompasses all of John 17, as we pointed out last week, may be understood to have three major divisions.

First, Jesus prays for himself, verses one through five. And then the most lengthy portion of this prayer is Jesus prays for his apostles, verses six through 19. And then in the last seven verses, verses 20 through 26, Jesus prays for all true believers.

And last week, we cited a book of John Bunyan. They're all online, they're public domain. He wrote a book on the subject entitled The Intercession of Christ. And Jesus Christ serves his people before the presence of his Father, requesting four aspects of their salvation.

And so these include the following petitions that he offers to his Father on behalf of us, we who believe on him. First, he prays that all the elect may be brought home to him. That is to brought to salvation, brought to faith in Christ, involving repentance and faith.

Secondly, Jesus prays that their sins committed after conversion may be forgiven them, thankfully. We're here to confess our sins, and we cannot, of course, be damned for our sins, but we can suffer consequences for our sin, lose the joy of our salvation, lose a sense of fellowship with the Lord.

Well, the Lord prays that we're forgiven of our sins. Third, he prays that their graces, which they receive at conversion, may be maintained and supplied. And so that's a continual ongoing work of sanctification in the life of the believer.

And then fourth, he prays that their persons may be preserved to his heavenly kingdom, the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. It's because of the intercession of Jesus that he doesn't lose one of us.

Thank God for that. Well, we began to address the first five verses of this chapter last week, and today we'll complete our consideration of these five verses. We have to address verses three, four, and five in some detail before we move into the second division, which we'll probably only touch upon today, Lord willing.

And so I want us to read this entire second section, but I wanna do so in the context of verses one through five. And so we'll read John 17, one through 19. Jesus spoke these words, lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour has come.

Eternal Life as Knowing the Only True God and Jesus Christ

Glorify your son, that your son also may glorify you, as you have given him authority over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

I have glorified you on the earth. I have finished the work which you have given me to do. And now, oh Father, glorify me together with yourself, with the glory which I had with you before the world was.

I have manifested your name to the men whom you have given me out of the world.

They were yours.

You gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they have known that all things which you have given me are from you, for I have given to them the words which you have given me, and they have received them, and have known surely that I came forth from you, and they have believed that you sent me.

I pray for them. I do not pray for the world, but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. And all mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to you, Holy Father.

Keep to your name those whom you have given me, that they may be one as we are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in your name. Those whom you gave me, I have kept, and none of them is lost except the son of perdition that the scripture might be fulfilled.

But now I come to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

I do not pray that you should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them by your truth, your word is truth.

As you sent me into the world, I also have sent them into the world, and for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth. You can't help, but as you read over those verses, just all kinds of ideas and thoughts just flood your mind.

It may take us a while to get through this passage because there is much that's misunderstood, and there's much that is not understood that needs clarification about what our Lord prayed. So in verses one through five, we read our Lord Jesus had prayed first for himself before having prayed on behalf of his people.

That begins with verse six. And Jesus requested that his father would grant him sovereign authority over all humanity. He is Lord of Lords and King of Kings. He wanted this supreme, uncontested, undiminished authority over all humanity for two purposes that we addressed last week.

One, first of all, to glorify his father. That's why he wanted to be glorified, to glorify his father. And secondly, that he might bring salvation to his people, the ones that were chosen by the father and given to him as his possession.

And so before we move on to verses six and following where Jesus prayed for his apostles, we wanna consider more carefully, clearly our Lord's statement of verses three, four, and five. And so we addressed the first two verses in some detail last Lord's Day.

And today we wanna consider first verse three, how Jesus defined and described the true nature and essence of eternal life. Jesus had prayed, Father, the hour has come, glorify your son, that your son also may glorify you as you have given him authority over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as you have given him.

And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Eternal life is not merely a temporal matter, an unending existence. That's probably what we immediately think about when we speak about eternal life.

But eternal life is set forth in particularly in John's gospel as a quality of existence, rather than just an unending existence. And clearly that is stressed here in verse three. Eternal life is a quality of existence, one in which the people of God had come to know and enjoy fully the true nature and presence of God.

As one wrote, this was Donald Carson, otherwise put the glorification of the son entails the glorification of God, verse one. In other words, God is clothed in splendor in the eyes of those who perceive what has been achieved by God himself on the cross resurrection and exaltation of his son.

To see God's glory to be given eternal life, these are parallel. And lest the reader missed the point, the two themes are drawn together in verse three. Eternal life turns on nothing more, nothing less than knowledge of the true God.

Eternal life is not so much everlasting life as personal knowledge of the everlasting one. And so it's a quality of life is knowing God and knowing his son, Jesus Christ. And it's a sad thing that oftentimes salvation and a so-called gospel proclamation is set forth just as a means to escape hell and get to go to heaven and to be happy.

But really at the heart of eternal life is to know God, in him is life, and his son. We can only know God the father through his son. And so eternal life is a qualitative existence and experience. And it's an emphasis in John's gospel.

In the synoptics, that's Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the synoptic gospels, there's an emphasis on the unending blessed existence of eternal life. And so there it is speaking about quantity, everlasting life.

But in John's gospel, eternal life is experienced now. In the synoptic gospels, eternal life is most often presented as something that we are yet to inherit. We are traveling a narrow way that leads to life in the end.

And so eternal life in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, more often than not, is talking about an unending existence, but not in John's gospel. In John's gospel, there's the emphasis of the nature of that life, it's a quality of life.

And in John's gospel, in his epistles also, life is a present possession, not a future inheritance, but a present possession. He who has a son has life. And here Jesus is declaring the very essence or nature of eternal life.

And so Jesus declared the essence of eternal life was to know God. Now, when we were working through John 15, not long ago, we addressed what it is to come to know God and to be a friend of God. And it involves, this involves two arenas of knowledge, as well as a right response to that knowledge.

First, we may know God through understanding what he is like, you recall. And what we mean by that is a knowledge of his attributes set forth in the scriptures. This is what God is like. You know, he's all-knowing, he's omniscient, he's all-powerful, and he's infinite in being, his spirit, all of his attributes.

What he's like. But secondly, knowledge of God also includes an understanding of what God is doing through history. The history of redemption is recorded in the Bible. It's not enough just to know God's attributes.

To really know God and be a friend of God, you need to know what he's doing, what he's purposed to do, what he intends to do. But this knowledge, this knowledge that involves these two aspects of knowing God, must also be coupled with a resolve to obey God.

Or it's not true knowledge of God. And so, this knowledge of God must be coupled with a resolve to obey God, working together with him to advance his purposes in the world. And so we learn what he's like, we learn what he's doing in the world, and then as his disciples, disciples of Jesus Christ, we try and get involved and engage in furthering his purposes in history.

And that's what it is to be a friend of God. And every true Christian is a friend of God. Now we may not be as close of friends as, you know, as others in the Lord may be, but this is what it is to be a friend of God.

To know what, who God is, what he's like, what he's doing in the world, and then participating with him, working with him to further his cause, his purposes in the world. Granted, no one of us knows God fully in these arenas, but each one of us as Christian knows him in a measure.

And every one of us who is truly a Christian is committed to this great calling to know God and live for God. That's the very essence of eternal life. If you don't care about knowing God, and you go days without pondering him, thinking about him or desiring him, there's something seriously flawed or weak, maybe even missing.

Because the very essence of eternal life is a desire and delight in knowing God and knowing his son, Jesus Christ. And so our Lord here declared, this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God.

But again, our Lord added a second aspect of what it is to have eternal life. Jesus said, this is eternal life, that they may know you, Father, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

Coming to know God the Father is only possible through coming to know his son, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is not only the only mediator for us in order to bring us to God, but he's the only mediator and able to bring God to us.

It goes both ways. We can only know God the Father through his son, Jesus Christ. And any religion and any presentation of Christianity, so-called, that refuses or fails to mention Jesus Christ is not truly Christian, as the scriptures point out.

And even today, among Christian leaders, and I'm not questioning their salvation, but there is this tendency to speak about God in general terms in the public arena, but you never hear the name of Jesus mentioned, it would seem.

And there's something very defective and deficient about that message. Eternal life involves knowing God the Father and knowing his son, Jesus Christ. And you can't know God the Father without knowing Jesus Christ.

That is absolutely clear. And so, we need to know Jesus Christ, whom he has sent. And so, we can only know God the Father through God his son. As our Lord once declared, as recorded in Matthew's gospel, all things have been delivered to me by my father.

No one knows the son except the father, nor does anyone know the father except the son, and the one to whom the son wills to reveal him. If you know anything about God the Father, it's because God the son had purpose to reveal him to your soul, to your mind.

Here in verse three, Jesus Christ refers to God, to whom he has prayed, as the only true God. That's interesting. Those who claim to know God, but deny Jesus Christ as the second person of the Holy Trinity, in other words, the cults, Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, for example, they hop on this verse to say that Jesus himself declared the father was the only true God, as though he were not putting himself in that position.

This is error, of course. Matthew Poole, who was somewhat of a contemporary with Matthew Henry, whom we always quote, and I have two quotes of both these men here. Spurgeon highly recommended the three volumes of Matthew Poole's commentary.

Matthew Poole wrote, those who deny the divine nature of Christ think that they have a mighty argument from this text, where Christ, as they say, speaking to his father, calls him the only true God. But divines, that's an old term for ministers, answer that the term only or alone is not to be applied to thee, but to the term God.

And the sense is this, to know thee to be that God, which is the only true God, and this appeareth in 1 John 5 20, where Christ is said to be the true God, which he could not be if the father were the only true God, considered as another from the son.

You follow his reasoning there? Jesus says, you know, that God is the only true God, but John, the same one who wrote these verses, recorded these verses of Jesus, writes in 1 John, Jesus Christ is the true God.

And so clearly you cannot interpret this to only refer to God the Father as the true God. It's the triune God, the Trinity, who's the true God, is what the verse is declaring. And so what Jesus is contrasting is belief in the triune God as the only true God against idols who are not gods, false gods.

That's what he's advocating. And Matthew Henry suggests this, God is here called the only true God to distinguish him from the false gods of the heathen, which were counterfeits and pretenders, not from the person of the son, of whom it is expressly said that he is the true God in eternal life, 1 John 5 .20, and who in this text is proposed as the object of the same religious regard with the father.

It's certain there is but only one living and true God, and the God we adore is he. He is the true God, and not a mere name or notion, the only true God, and all that ever set up as rivals with him are vanity and a lie.

The service of him is the only true religion. And that's what Jesus was declaring. There's only one God, and he's the true God, only true God. Now, knowing Jesus Christ with respect to having eternal life involves knowing and believing some essential truths regarding Jesus Christ.

And this is suggested to us in the text by Jesus himself. Again, he declared eternal life as knowing the father and Jesus Christ, whom the father has sent. A relative clause there, whom the father had sent, is suggestive of knowledge that is essential, necessary in order to have eternal life through Jesus Christ.

It reveals that if we know Christ, it's because we understand and believe in the deity of Jesus Christ, whom the father has sent. That speaks of the deity of Christ, right? Before Bethlehem, God the father sent Jesus into the world.

It speaks of his pre-existence, right? And so one must believe in the deity of Jesus Christ. You cannot be a Christian. I had a professor of New Testament in seminary who educated in Europe and did his PhD.

Guy was brilliant, professor of Greek. He was my supervising professor in my PhD program. But you can be full of knowledge and be woefully spiritually ignorant. He spoke one day of Rudolf Bultmann. And he said, Rudolf Bultmann did not believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave.

But I understand, he was a very good pastor. I mean, absolute ignorance about spiritual truth. You can know a whole lot, but if you don't realize and believe in the deity of Christ and certainly bodily resurrection of Christ on that first Easter Sunday, you're still in your sin.

The father sent him into the world to become one of us and one with us in his incarnation. And this knowledge is essential to salvation. And this knowledge of our Lord Jesus also includes our understanding and measure of the purpose for which the father sent him.

The father sent him, for what purpose did he send him? The father sent him to be our savior, our Lord, the promised king. He would establish the promised kingdom of God in history, which would come into existence through his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension with his enthronement in heaven.

And of course, the one who believes on Jesus Christ understands the nature and purpose of his death on the cross. He died as a substitute for the sinner that believes on him. The one who believes on him solely and wholly is Lord and savior.

Eternal life belongs to those who know these essential truths about Jesus Christ and have embraced them as the once crucified, but now risen and enthroned Lord over all. As one wrote, knowing in this verse signifies not mere comprehending of God and Christ in men's notions.

In other words, in their, you know, in their reasoning or intellect, but the receiving Christ, believing in him, loving and obeying him. This is what knowing Jesus Christ involves. And John Gill expressed in this way, the nature of this knowledge of God and Jesus Christ.

This is to be understood of an evangelical knowledge of God as the God and father of Christ, as the God of all grace, pardoning iniquity, transgression and sin, and of Christ mediator, not a general notional speculative knowledge, but a practical and experimental one, a knowledge of approbation or approval and appropriation, a fiducial one whereby a soul believes in Christ, trust in his blood, righteousness and sacrifice for salvation, which though imperfect is progressive.

All of this is suggested by just a few words that our Lord Jesus expressed. This is eternal life, knowing you our father and knowing Jesus Christ whom you have sent. And so this knowledge of God, the father and knowledge of his son is the essence of eternal life.

Of course, it's not a matter that you and I can attain.

On our own.

It's not a result of one's intellect or even exposure to truth. It's not because we had a desire that other sinners don't have that weld up within our fallen hearts. The reason we have come to understand and believe these things is because God revealed them to us, didn't he?

Or we would have never known them. And so the saving knowledge of God and his son is not the result of personal pursuit and discovery. It's the result of divine grace and illumination and regeneration, the new birth of the spirit.

All set the matter straight in his appeal to the churches of Galatia, not to fall back into legalism, he wrote, but now that you have come to know God, but he in no way wanted people to think that the credit belongs to them for having come to know God, but he included the qualification or rather be known by God.

See, that's the issue, that you were known by God. That's the only reason that you came to know God. How can you turn back again? He says basically to legalism. And so knowledge of God begins with God knowing us.

And we know from the scriptures that God foreknew us from eternity. I came to know God savingly in the second week of January, 1972. God knew me from eternity. He foreknew me. And the passage speaks of this in 1 Peter 1.

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ to the strangers. These are exiles. I think he's talking about the elect. Scattered throughout, and this is the region of today in Northern Turkey. Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, that's Asia Minor, and Bithynia, elect according to the foreknowledge of God.

God knew us. Through sanctification of the spirit, unto obedience, sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, grace to you, peace, be multiplied. And so we read in the scriptures, we came to love God because he first loved us.

And we could say with equal conviction, we came to know God because he first had known us, and that from eternity. Saving knowledge of God is always a result of the grace of God operating within us. Or we would never know.

Christ Glorifying the Father by Finishing the Work He Was Sent to Do

But we next read in verses four and five of John 17, how Jesus appealed to his father to glorify him since he had completed the work the father sent him to perform. We read our Lord's words in verse four.

I have glorified you on the earth. He glorified the father on earth. All that our savior did while on earth was intended to bring glory to his father. And glory, of course, speaks about a true comprehension of the greatness of God.

There is a physical manifestation of glory, of course, in bright light, kind of glory in the Old Testament. The glory of God, Paul saw Jesus brighter than the sun at noonday on his road to Damascus. That is glory, but that whole visual glory, brighter than the sun, conveys the ideas that you're seeing God for who he is and the full weight and significance of his being, or at least in the measure that we can comprehend it, is revealed to us.

And so, as one wrote, Jesus is so clothed the father with splendor that many human beings, creatures of the earth, not of heaven, have come to praise him. After all, the incarnation itself is a display of glory.

Everything Jesus was and did and said was in order to manifest or reveal who the father was, the glory of the father. And here Jesus declared to the father, I've glorified you on earth. This was the sum of Jesus's life.

Everything Jesus did throughout his early earthly sojourn glorified his father, but what did this look like? How did Jesus glorify his father? Well, in everything that Jesus thought and did, he did nothing with view to promote the serving of himself, nothing, but all that he thought, all that he did was as his father would have him to do.

He lived a life of self-denial and humble submission to whatever the father brought before him. He always promoted the name and cause of his father. Never did he promote himself his own name. And so he'd allow himself to be, of course, abused and beaten, and he would never raise a hand in self-defense, but the other hand, you know, you disregard my father in the temple, he sat down, fashioned a whip and cleaned house because he was concerned about the glory of his father.

He wasn't concerned about himself. He was concerned, everything he thought, everything he did was in order to bring credit, bring glory to his father. And here in his declaration of his life well-lived, he did not complain of the hardship or the deprivation he experienced through life.

Though he was born into an impoverished family, though he suffered misunderstanding of his words, rejection of others, even those who were close to him, he thought not on these things, how he was treated.

Rather, he was very pleased that he had finished the work for which his father had sent him. He finished the work. That is, the finish of it was in sight. That is, the next day he would be crucified, of course.

And it was on the cross he declares, it's finished. He had accomplished the work. And as one wrote, well, it was Matthew Henry, it was a strange way for the son to glorify the father by embasing himself.

He always embased himself. And this looked more like to disparage him rather than glorify him. Yet it was contrived that so he should glorify him, that is the father. Amazing when you think about it. It's ironic.

Jesus said to his father, I have finished the work which you have given me to do. The father had sent his son into the world to do a work on his behalf. The father sent him on a mission to complete. He was to be one of us, a human being.

His human nature having been joined to his divine nature in his one person. And through his human nature, he accomplished the work to which the father had assigned him. And so as a young man, when he was 12 years of age, Jesus referred to this work to which the father had sent him.

You'll recall when Jesus remained in Jerusalem when his parents headed back toward Nazareth after the festival, they thought he was in another part of the caravan. He wasn't. The third day, they found him back in the temple engaged in answering and questioning the leaders of Israel about the things of God.

And of course, they were surprised to find him perhaps a little perturbed at him. And Jesus responded, why did you seek me? Did you not know I must be about my father's business? Didn't you know I'd be about doing my father's work?