August 20, 2017 Pastor Ken Hepner John s Gospel, Jesus Is the Son of God: 70. Jesus Prayed for You and Me John 17:20 23 Introduction: We are studying John s Gospel. We have been learning that John wrote this incredible testimony to the Life, Teachings, and Work of Jesus Christ the Son of God on the Cross because the Spirit of God prompted him to write it. Remember John wrote his Gospel many years after Matthew, Mark, and Luke had written theirs. He writes with full knowledge of what they had written. John isn t trying to retell the story those men told. John is writing to give us information about who Jesus is and what He came into this world to do that the other writers had not included. John writes to show us who Jesus really is: The Son of Man born of the Virgin Mary and Son of God Almighty, the eternal Son of God who became a human being. Jesus is divine life living in the human arena, showing us what a life that knows and loves God looks like. When Jesus the eternal Son of God stepped out of heaven and came to the earth, He inaugurated a kingdom that has its origins in heaven, and is a demonstration of the Values, the Desires, and the Ethics of heaven here on earth! The kingdom of God on earth is founded on holy, self-emptying, other-oriented love dwelling in human lives. These lives have been invaded by the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit. He empowers this love to be lived in the midst of a world system that is hostile to it! This is the last night of Jesus life on earth. As He walked along with His followers, heading for the Garden of Gethsemane, He gave them an ongoing teaching session. Jesus is painting the stark contrast between the people who live the Values of this World System of things and we who Walk in the Spirit s power to transform our values and desires! Because John wrote these words of Jesus for us, we get to listen in on their conversation Permit me to remind you what we have been learning about the world system of things: It is a Pattern of Thinking, a way to see and understand all of life. A pattern is something molten steel is poured into so that when the metal cools and the pattern is knocked off the steel looks like the pattern. The world system of things is a spirit that represents itself as an ideology, a philosophy that seeks to squeeze all of us into its pattern of thinking! For the past weeks we ve heard messages calling us to see the world system for what it is; a Spiritual and External Enemy of the followers of Jesus. If you carefully read this prayer of Jesus you will find the word world in it sixteen times. Jesus told His followers the world hates Him and be default, if we love and seek to honor Jesus in our lives the world will also hate us! The reason Jesus says the world system is hostile to you and me is that it 1
was created by Satan whom Jesus calls the prince of this world, in John 12:31, 14:30, and 16:11. Set in diametric contrast to the world system of things is the life that Jesus has redeemed, cleansed by His precious blood, a life that has been touched and Made Alive by the Spirit is being Transformed by the indwelling Spirit of God. When information, liquid metal, comes into a life that is being changed by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, when the metal cools it doesn t look like the pattern of this world, it is transformed by the life and love of Jesus! II Corinthians 3:17, 18 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. We are studying Jesus awesome prayer for us. Jesus prayed for each one of us to be invaded by the coming Holy Spirit, who would come to live in all of us who have believed in and receive Jesus provisions for our salvation. Jesus says the Holy Spirit will dwell in our hearts and lives, bringing with Him the values and ethics of heaven, and leading us to live what Jesus came to make available to us all! This Living Out what Jesus has done and is doing in our hearts is the basis for Testimony and Witness to those in our sphere of influence who do not yet know Him! When the Holy Spirit of God invades a life the world system is Displaced from our Hearts. The world system becomes alien to us as we are alien to the world He has chosen us out of the world. There can be no compromise with something that is dead set against, in radical opposition to Jesus and everything that Jesus represents, holy love, holy truth, and a life that is being transformed in desires. John 15:18 21 If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember the words I spoke to you: No servant is greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obey my teaching, they will obey yours also. They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the One who sent me. I John 3:13, 14 Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. The spirit of the world system is pervasive, insidious, and strong. It does not like being displaced from our heart s desires, our thinking, and our decision-making. The spirit of the world will bargain with us: just reform yourself a little bit but not so much as to alienate your friends in this world. It will accept if we play at religion. It will accept reading the Bible and knowing what it says. It will accept going to church, but let a person feel remorse over sin, deeply repent, invite the Spirit of Jesus to live in us, and passionately choose the Lordship of Jesus and the hatred and animosity is on! 2
As we think together about what Jesus is praying in John 17, He begins with His own heart and life as He faced the Cross the next morning. Then He prays for His apostles and His closest followers to bear witness to the world. He prays they will be united in relational unity, kept by God s power, and they will bear witness to Him in their spheres of influence. In the text we study today Jesus is praying for believers in distant lands and distant eras of time: You and me! I. The Way to Jesus Glorification is the Cross! John 17:22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one. Jesus is reintroducing a theme he has shared with the reader earlier, John 12:23 27 The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me. And the text we looked at just a few weeks ago in the opening verses of this prayer: John 17:1b 2 Father the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Jesus did not speak of being Crucified, He spoke of being Glorified. The Cross of Jesus is His entrance into glory with the Father because He reveals His heart of love for us all on the Cross. It is His glorification because the Cross serves as a timeless picture of that incredible love of God burning in a human heart that says No! to its own fleshly desires and comforts in order to serve the greater good of others! The Cross stands as the eternal symbol of Obedience motivated by Agape; the holy, selfemptying, other-oriented Love of God. On the Cross Jesus says to all of humanity: There is no limit to what the love of God was prepared to do and to suffer for human beings to be able to know and walk with God the Father deeply and personally! The Cross is the glory of Jesus and the glory of the Father God because on the Cross Jesus carried to absolute completion the will of the Father that there would be a Redeemer! It is the holy love of heaven burning in the heart and mind of Jesus that motivated Him to come into the world to Completely Obey the Will of the Father for His life. It is love that motivated Jesus to obey the will of the Father with every fiber of His being. From the beginning of this Gospel of John, John has been telling us this truth: Jesus came into this world to complete the will of the Father. On the Cross Jesus takes away from us the sin that separates us from being able to relate to the Father God personally. Jesus enters into His glory on the Cross, and when the Father God placed His seal of approval on His actions by raising Him from the dead, Jesus was victorious Lord over sin, death, and Hell for all who believe in Him and receive Him as Savior and Lord. The Cross is our vehicle of glory because on the Cross Jesus took away 3
our offenses to God the Father and made it possible for simple and ordinary people like you and me to know and walk with God in Spiritual Adoption as His children, sons and daughters of the Most High God! What was true of Jesus is also true of us. The Way of the Cross is the way to a life that honors and glorifies our Abba Father God! a. The way of the Cross in your heart and mine is the way of Loving Obedience to the will of the Father God as He reveals it to us! It is to choose a lifestyle that has a deeply settled yes to the will of the Father. It is a lifestyle based on the decision of the heart to live the Lordship of Jesus, not merely say the words. Where Jesus is Lord He takes the initiative and calls us to follow Him. b. The way of the Cross is the way of Denying my Self; self-crucifixion. The self-life is eerily similar to the way of the world system of things. It sneaks into our hearts as self-pity, self-importance, self-seeking, and self-defense. This self-life must die. It can t be reasoned with or bargained with. It is opposed to Jesus being Lord of all of me! If we are following the example of Jesus we will not talk about our painful life of selfcrucifixion. We will instead focus on the truth that as long as my self is controlling me, I am not in control of myself, because I cannot go on living a life that brings honor and glory to Jesus! II. Living in Relational Unity: John 17:20, 21 My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. Jesus is praying with the Father God in such a powerful and loving way. It is so important that we remember what He is facing in just a few hours: The horror of Death on the Cross bearing the sin of all humankind! Given His full knowledge of the horrific suffering that awaits Him, Jesus is not focused on Himself but is praying in full confidence and love for His followers then and now! Let s read together what Jesus has just prayed for His followers, then make an observation about what the Spirit of Jesus was doing then, has been doing since, and is about to do through you and me as we represent Him in Juniata County. Let s read together John 17:14 19: I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself that they too may be truly sanctified. 4
Read John 17:20 with me: My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, Please notice with me the wonderful progression of thought as Jesus reveals the Father God to His followers then and now. Notice with me the words of Jesus calling all of His followers to Engage with the living Word of the living God: To Hear the Word of God, Receive the Word of God, and then Speak the Word of God in the context of human relationships! This revelation of the voice of truth in and through us is in the heart of Jesus as He prayed for them and us! It begins with Jesus hearing and speaking the Father s Word to His followers. John 17:14 I have given them your word and in John 17:6b they have obeyed your word. Then in John 17:8 Jesus prays about having spoken to them the word of the Father; I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. Then moves from the Father through the Son and through those first century disciples verse 20: I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message. The progression of engagement with the Word of God now rests in you and me for the people we love and among whom we presently live, go to school, or with whom we work. From the Father to the Son. From the Son to the first century followers. From those early followers to you and me. From you and me to whom? But the flow of the Word of God into the world that is so hostile to it is not to be done cold turkey, that is with nothing happening from heaven to Validate and Confirm the Word of God in the followers of Jesus. Look at the powerful truth of verse 21 with me. The Word of God is to be spoken from life to life in the world by people who are captured by the love of God that moves us to genuinely care for our church family, to genuinely love with the love of heaven burning in our hearts for each other creating among us God-Bestowed Unity! Jesus prayed that our unity as a church family at Cedar Grove and our unity as the body of Christ in Juniata County, would be the same kind of unity that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit enjoy: Organic, relational unity of love! The fact of loving one another in the body of Christ is to be The Witness the World Sees, love validating the message because it makes us one with one another in active and relational unity. John 13:34, 35 A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you so you must love one another. By this all men will know you are my disciples, if you love one another. It is the nature of human relationships to disengage from one another and to be divided. It is more human for relationships to fall apart than it is for a group of people to walk together in loving unity! It is so easy to look at the faults, the differing opinions, even the different beliefs we see in someone else, and use those faults, opinions, and beliefs as validation to separate from them. Friendships have been broken and whole Churches have divided and split over focusing on and accentuating what we see in others that we don t like. 5
And the truth is all of the work of the church of Jesus, no matter how hard we try to work at it, can never create any unity that lasts between us. The unity Jesus is praying about here is not a humanly inspired unity that looks for the areas of agreement to create unity, or that reduces things to the lowest common denominator so the views we hold offend no one. The unity Jesus describes isn t organizational at all! Here Jesus is praying that the Holy Spirit will do something in all of our hearts that is powerful and transformational as He invades us. Jesus is praying that the Holy Spirit s nature of holy, self-emptying, other-oriented love will cause us to see our need of love and unity with one another that is supernatural in nature, something that only God can do. That is why Paul told the Ephesian Church to Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. III. The Result of God-Bestowed Christian Unity: John 17:21b that all of them may be one Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world will believe that you have sent me. John 17:23 I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me. We have just made the observation that the Church of Jesus Christ in this world will never be able to reach unity on how churches are to be organized. We will never be able to reach unity based on how we worship God. We won t be able to unite around common beliefs because we do not all believe the same things. But the unity for which Jesus is praying here transcends anything human. It is Unity that is based on Relational Love for God, for one other, and for those who do not yet believe. The unity created by the Holy Spirit living in our hearts and lives is founded on the love of God shed abroad in and flowing from heart to heart. Jesus is praying such a simple and yet profound thing as His disciples listen to Him praying to the Father regarding the Witness loving unity Can and Will Create on earth. When people who are invested thoroughly in the world s values see supernatural love burning in our hearts causing us to love each other deeply, uniting us deeply around a common love and a common cause, their attention will be grabbed. When they see simple, ordinary people like you and me endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, they can hear the Gospel message because they are seeing something that human beings cannot do no matter how hard we strive to create unity. Nothing we human beings can do for each other will create the desire to love one another selflessly, bear with each other when we say and do dumb things, to forgive offenses before they become bitterness, and to bear each other s burdens in love! The world will take notice and be able to hear the Message of the Gospel of the Power of Jesus to Change a Life, when they see life-transforming love lived out among us! Human 6
beings are not naturally selflessly loving. When a group of God s people in Christ Jesus exhibit love, mercy, grace, and forgiveness, and decide to work together in selfless love, it is a witness to the power of God to transform us! The Spirit of Jesus bids you and me to come and follow Jesus in the way of the Cross. He calls us to a life of loving surrender to the will of the Father. The Spirit of Jesus must do a work in us all if we are to live like that. He must bid us to the way of self-crucifixion, the death of the selfish life in all of its expressions. He must do a work of grace in us that fills us with His holy, self-emptying, other-oriented love, our own transformation because we have been with Jesus! 7
August 20, 2017 John s Gospel, Jesus Is the Son of God: 70. Jesus Prayed for You and Me John 17:20 23 Introduction: John wrote this Gospel testimony to the L, T, and W of Jesus on the Cross as he was prompted by the Spirit. John wrote with a full understanding of what the other Gospel writers had written. He writes to give us information they did not include. He writes to show us Jesus is the S of G and the S of M. When Jesus stepped out of heaven He inaugurated a kingdom on earth, living in human hearts that is a demonstration of the V, D and E of heaven here on earth. Jesus paints a stark contrast between those who live the values of this W and we who W in the Spirit s power to transform our desires. We have noted the world system is a P of T. It s a spiritual E E of Jesus and His followers. Set in diametric contrast to the world system is the life Jesus redeemed, that has been M A to God and T by the indwelling Spirit of God. 2 Corinthians 3:17 18 In Jesus prayer for His followers we learn the Holy Spirit will live in us causing us to L lives demonstrating what Jesus has done and is doing in us. This is the basis of our T to others. When the Holy Spirit invades a human life the world system is D from our H. Jesus has chosen us out of the world. We can t compromise with something hating Jesus and us: John 15:18 21; 1 John 3:13 14. Today we study the third area Jesus focused on in His great prayer I. The Way to Jesus Glorification Is the Cross: John 17:22; 12:23 27; 17:1b 2 Jesus did not speak of being C. He spoke of being G. The Cross is the way Jesus will enter into His glory, to dwell in the glory of the Godhead He has enjoyed from eternity. 8
The Cross of Jesus stands as the eternal symbol of O motivated by agape the L originating in the nature of God. It is the holy love of heaven burning in His heart motivating Jesus to C obey the W of the Father for His life. On the Cross Jesus bore for us all what separates us from a relationship with the Father, makes available to us: S A. The W of the Cross is L O and the choice of D my S. II. Living in Relational Unity: John 17:20 21 Jesus is praying for others while facing, in a few hours, the horror of His D on the C. Look at what He prays about in John 17:14 20 The words of Jesus call His followers to E with the Word, to H it, R it, and S it to others. The progression from the Father to Jesus, from Jesus to His followers, from His followers to us, and from us to Jesus doesn t call us to do this speaking without His Word being V and C. It is to be spoken by people who are full of love, given G - B U. The fact of our deep love for one another, self-emptying, and serving love for others is to be T W the world sees! John 13:34 35 III. The Result of God-Bestowed Unity: John 17:21b 23 Jesus prays for unity transcending anything humans can do or create. It is unity based on R L! Jesus is praying about the W loving unity can and will C on earth. As people who are invested in the world see supernatural love of God burning in human hearts, it grabs their attention! The world will take notice and be able to hear the M of the Gospel, the P of Jesus to C a L when they see the transforming love of God lived out in you and me. The Spirit of Jesus bids you and me to the way of the Cross 9
Discussion Starter Questions for Home Groups 1. John invests six chapters of his Gospel, chapters 13 19, on the last 24 hours of Jesus life on earth. Why did he focus on that time period? 2. John records 23 statements by Jesus about Him choosing to do the Father s will. What motivated Jesus to completely fulfill the will of the Father God, including the Cross? Why is that important for us to know? 3. If you described to a new Christian what the world system is and how the world feels about Jesus and His people, what would you tell them? 4. Why do you think the Cross of Jesus is a focal point for the Christian life? What does Jesus refer to the Cross as entering into His glory? 5. How would you describe to someone, who has no understanding of the Christian life, what it means to live the way of the Cross in life? 6. The New Testament teaches us the Lord has given the body of Christ two gifts from His heart to ours, two things validating and confirming the Gospel. What are they? Why are they so important to the body of Christ? 7. What is the result of Jesus moving in a group of people and giving them the gift of Godbestowed love and unity? 8. Read together aloud Ephesians 4:1 16. Share insights you have about what Godbestowed unity is and does in a local church. 9. Read together aloud Romans 12:1 21. Share insights you have about the work of the Holy Spirit giving unity to a local body of believers. 10. What are some ways the Holy Spirit has been working in your life, in your church family, to promote love and unity among believers? What role does your spiritual walk with the Spirit of Jesus play in the unity we have as a local church? 10