Glorify God

The text this morning is from the Gospel of John. John chapter 17, verses one to five. This is part of what many people call a high priestly prayer, which, I suppose you could say, has three parts. The Jesus prays for Himself, so to speak, then for His disciples at the time, and then wider, including us. We pick it up at verse one of John 17.

Now after Jesus had said this, He looked toward heaven and prayed, "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. Now this is eternal life: that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. I have brought You glory on earth by completing the work You gave me to do."

"And now, Father, glorify me in Your presence with the glory I had with You before the world began." When I started working on this text, it impacted me in a sort of a strange way, I guess you could say. Those of you who know me know that I'm quite an emotional type of person. And as I was reading this text and looking at it and contemplating it, it was almost as though God was drawing aside a curtain, and here in this prayer, we see the intimacy of the Father and the Son. At certain times as I looked at this text, I almost felt that I should take my shoes off, that I was standing on holy ground.

This prayer, as recorded by John, is unique in the New Testament, and it is considered by many to be one of the finest revelations of the inter-trinitarian relationship. One of the good things about John's Gospel, and when we seek to understand it, of course, is that he told us why he wrote it. In verse 31 of the twentieth chapter, he says, "These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name." That's why he wrote, so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and by believing, you may have life in His name.

You will recall how he began his Gospel. John chapter one, verse one, reflecting all the way back to the beginning of Genesis. He said, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning." And then further down in verse 14, he said, "The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us, and we have seen His glory."

The glory of the One and Only who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. If you could see my notes here, you would see that I had another verse from John chapter three. When you read or hear verse 14 of the first chapter of John, "We have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." And as I bring this message this morning, I'm very mindful of my own personal frailty, in that we are going to be struck this morning by the glory of God, and how much I need to be reminded of that every day again. Because I don't think I'm unique.

Well, in some ways you might hope that I am, but I'm not unique in that we all struggle one way or another. Life presses in upon us, and it is easy to lose our focus on the personal work of our Lord Jesus, God's highest self-revelation. Now this John 17 passage is set in that last week, the passion week, people call it, beginning from chapter 13 through to where we are at 17. Jesus has celebrated the Passover with His disciples. We can read of that in chapter 13, and then there's teaching.

And then here on this last night, the night before He is betrayed, or the night on which He's betrayed, and the night before He goes to the cross, this is the prayer He prays. You couldn't really get a more pressing and intimate scene before Him. And we could put it in this way, in a sort of summary: "Father, glorify Your Son so that Your Son may glorify You." And the majesty of this text is that that truth happens as Christ Jesus completes the eternal plan of redemption of God's people.

And He says to the Father, and this is just my words, I don't mean to be untoward in it, but He's saying, "Father, reinstate me to my pre-incarnate glory." So in the first place, then, I want to look at this phrase, "Father, the time has come," or "the hour has come." You'll be aware, as you've read the New Testament, that at different times this phrase came up, and many times Jesus said, "My hour has not yet come." I mean, you think of, say, the wedding at Cana of Galilee, and His hour hasn't come.

I've always sort of wondered a bit about that. I wonder a bit about a lot of things really. But Jesus said, "My time has not yet come," and yet, though, He goes and bang, He does it. He does the water into wine. And part of me says, more or less, I used to think, "Well, why did You do the miracle if Your time's not yet come?" And of course, the time, my hour has not yet come—He was speaking of His crucifixion. And the water into wine was a sign to the people of His divinity.

So the time has come. The unfolding of God's redemption plan that we first read of after the fall: Genesis 3:15. God is addressing the evil one, and He said, "He will crush your head, and you will bruise His heel." When you go back to the Hebrew, "crush his head, bruise his heel"—it's exactly the same word.

Exactly the same word. And yet, we translate "bruising" what happens to the Christ, and "Satan is crushed." And I think the translators do this so that we can understand—yes, it was costly to the Christ. There was a cost. But it wasn't the eternal cost that, on the defeat of Satan, it was indeed the bruising of His heel, so to speak. And so the unfolding of God's redemption plan—the hour has come. The time has arrived.

In John chapter 12, verses 27 and 28, Jesus says this in part. He says, "John 12:27, 'Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour? No. It was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify Your name.'"

That's reminiscent of Gethsemane, isn't it? With His prayer and drops of blood. And so, my heart is troubled. "Father, will I pray that You save me from this hour? No. It is why I came."

This is why I came. And so in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His perfect life, in His perfect sacrifice, He is doing the Father's will. And everything from Genesis 3:15 onwards, but all the way back—now we'll do it this way: Genesis, way back there, the fall back there, all those prophecies of the Christ to come—the hour is here. All of those Old Testament sacrifices, all pointing forward to that once-for-all sacrifice of Christ on the cross of Calvary.

So get the, please, can you get the sense of this? This time now, as Jesus is betrayed, as He is falsely accused and abandoned, all of those things—this is God's eternal plan. That the Father and the Son and the Spirit conceived in eternity. Oh, that raises really big theological questions. Brothers, feel free to answer them over coffee.

We are dealing here with eternal things. I can't understand all of that. It's the clear teaching of Holy Scripture, so we accept it. But it is majestic, is it not? That there from the fall of man, and before in eternity if we do the timeline, through to the coming of the Christ, through to the return of the Christ, God is working His purposes out.

Oh, take comfort from that. When your life goes pear-shaped, and our lives do from time to time, remember the One who is sovereign and in control. The second word I'd like us to look at is this word: glory. Glory. Now, glory can have a range of meanings: to praise, to extol, to magnify, to celebrate.

It can mean to honour. It can mean to make glorious and clothe with splendour. It can even mean to cause the dignity and work of someone to become manifest, really clear and acknowledged. And so the word itself has this sense of exaltation and praise and worship and lifting up and acknowledging the greatness of God. And how does God show that?

He sends His own dear Son. The time has come. "Glorify Your Son that Your Son may glorify You." God's victory, God's glorification, as it were, is magnified through the humiliation and the suffering of Him who was and is the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. We see again God's brilliance, don't we?

I mean, we would never come up with this. Never. Not in a million years. And yet, here it is: that God is glorified. He is glorified in the crucifixion of Messiah.

If we just get back to John 13:31 and 32. Incidentally, I'm not your pastor anymore, but if I were, I would be giving you homework this week to read the Gospel of John, and go through it, and just have your eyes open to how often the word "glory" and associated words are read. It's sensational. It's amazing. I hear the words of my wife now.

She's saying, "Bob, don't do one of your asides. Just focus on the text, because we've all got the time. Your choice." Back in John 13, Judas is gone. "What you're about to do, do quickly," Jesus said. So here again, nothing happened that Jesus wasn't across.

He knew that He was going to be betrayed. He knew it was Judas. Judas leaves the Passover room and so on, and he goes. And then the text in verse 31 says, "When he was gone, that is Judas, Jesus said, 'Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God is glorified in Him, God will glorify the Son in Himself and will glorify Him at once.'"

That's a challenging text. It's just so full. But notice, please notice, we live in a world where the work of man's hands and all that sort of stuff is elevated, and you know, it's a whole lot of different things, and the way of the world is just so different to God's way. So different. Through the crucifixion of His Son, He gives life eternal.

That atonement that He made on the cross of Calvary, the greatest event, I think we can say, ever in the history of humanity. Then I just want to jump and say, and if this is His resurrection, and this is His ascension, and this is the sending of the Spirit at Pentecost, and if His returning on the clouds of glory—it's all part of one part of God's plan. And here in this discussion, this intimate, beautiful speaking together of the Father and the Son, we see this interplay between them. It's an intimacy of being, of divine being.

It's an intimacy of purpose. It's an intimacy of submission: the Son to the Father. And from this Trinitarian relationship, from that Trinitarian being and plans, salvation flows. I used to have a mate who spent a fair bit of time, and he had a similar background to myself.

You know, we were both born into the Presbyterian church, and so on, and all that. So he went the same sort of Sunday school stuff as I did: PFR, you know, Presbyterian Fellowship, all that sort of stuff. And he was. It was back in the days when I used to ride a motorcycle. And we were out in the bush one day, and he said to me, "You, you, you seem to have a bit of a strange view about God." I sort of thought, maybe a personal heresy is about to be revealed. But do you know what he said?

It was tragic. "Don't talk to me about substitutionary atonement. If you don't have substitutionary atonement, you're nothing. Nothing. If you don't have Christ crucified in your place, you have nothing."

So this morning, part of the way the Father is speaking to us is putting the challenge of faith in Christ before each one of us. See, Christ has been granted authority over all people—that includes you and me—so that He might give eternal life to all those You have given Him. Can I just pause there? Just whip back quickly to John chapter 6, verses 37 to 40. Just want to read.

Jesus says, "All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me, I will never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to do my will, but to do the will of Him who sent me. And this is the will of Him who sent me: that I shall lose none of all that He's given me, but raise them up on the last day. For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in Him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day." You are never ever going to lock eyes with another human being who does not need Jesus, whether it's my motorcycling mate or not.

Want to argue about theology? These days, I'm getting more of a cranky old man. Bring it on. But the argument is not about theology. It's about Jesus.

Who is He to you? Who is He to me? I've got a brilliant sentence written here. Not saying that just because I wrote it, but the doing and the dying of the Christ, the person and work of our Lord Jesus, will resound through all eternity. I got another mate.

He's reckoning he can't wait to get to heaven so he can box on with the apostle Paul, because he wrote Romans 9 to 11. I'm suggesting that in the new heavens and the new earth, all our theological foibles, but of course, being Reformed people, we know that we're right. But oh, this is being broadcast, isn't it? Anyhow, when we get to glory, when we do whatever that may be, we're not going to be arguing about this or that.

We're going to be falling on our face before the Saviour. And the sovereign arms of electing love, the Father's arms, will embrace us and draw us unto Himself in most glorious, majestic, and intimate ways. We don't have to wait till then. I spoke to an aunt of mine this week. She's my mum's sister.

They're both in their nineties, which seems to give them a certain liberty to say whatever they like. But nevertheless, this aunt of mine is in hospital. She's going into respite tomorrow, and from all human perspective, she won't come home. She won't. Now, my aunt has been a lady who's had troubles.

She's never felt good enough for God. You know, I put my hand up for that. But it's not about that, is it? And so through her life, my aunt has wanted to, you know, do a profession of faith again in terms of us, or be baptised again, or go to another conference again, or whatever it might be. And it's been a bit hard to watch because she sort of tortured herself.

Personally, I think because of her poor theology. But nevertheless, she has. And this week, as she is lying in the hospital in excruciating pain that they just cannot even begin to try and get on top of, she tells me, "Bob, nothing, nothing in all creation can separate me from the love of God in Christ. Nothing." I don't know when she will pass into glory. But when she does, all the doubts and the problems and the questions will be swept away.

She will be carried in the arms of the Father. Is that your confidence? Is that mine? Is that mine? Because that's what's on offer. That's what's on offer.

Free, unmerited, glorious, brilliant, intimate grace of the Father. Wonderful. I should end there, but there's one more thing in the text that really intrigues me. It's verse 4. He says, Jesus says, "I have brought You glory on earth by completing the work You gave me to do."

Oh, hang on. He's not yet crucified. But he is so sure and so certain what Christ will achieve, what the Father has sent Him to do, that he can speak here as if—hesitate to use the term—but it's a done deal. "Father, we planned this from eternity."

"Father, I am here doing Your will. Father, glorify me in Your presence with the glory I had with You before the world began." There's a beauty in this text, isn't there? The way it's wrapped up so wonderfully for us: God at work through the person and work of His own dear Son.

So there is our comfort. There is our assurance. And because my lovely wife isn't here—she's actually home sick in bed—but just as an aside, when you talk and think about the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus, a lot of the times, we seem to talk about the nails in His hands, in His feet, and the crown of thorns and all the physical sort of stuff. Now, I don't mean to diminish that, but that's nothing. Nothing.

I mean, there was a bloke either side got exactly pretty well the same deal. The suffering of Christ is carrying your sin and mine. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God. Hallelujah. The Westminster Shorter Catechism—oh, I could ask, I could ask, I could ask you this.

Good night, Kim. He's shaking his head. I'm not ever going to get this opportunity again, bro. No. I won't ask you because you know the answer anyway.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism asks, "What is the chief end or the chief purpose of man?" Hey, look at all the Presbyterians here. They're all, "No, no, we know." To glorify God and enjoy Him forever. How good is that?

Glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Now, I want to suggest to you that forever begins today. Do you enjoy God? I put my hand up far too often. I haven't exactly consciously hidden from Him, but I didn't go out of my way to be present with Him.

And what does it mean to enjoy God here and now? You glorify Him through faith and living out that faith that you read in Philippians chapter 2. Let's pray. Father, we thank You.

We praise You. We worship and adore You. You are the God of all glory and all majesty, all honour, and all power, and all authority. And You have given unto Your Son a people that He has redeemed. He has done it. The work of redemption is complete.

No more sacrifice to be made. And Father, we pray, then, that You will teach us time and time again what it means to glorify You and to enjoy You forever. We thank You that in the time of the Reformation, there was another document that asked the question, "What is your only comfort in life and in death?" And the answer, Lord, we know, is that I am not my own, but I belong to my faithful Saviour, Jesus Christ, who has fully paid for all my sin and set me free from the tyranny of the devil. Oh, Lord, drive Your Gospel truth deep within our hearts, transform our minds by the truths of Your Word, and enable us to live in such a way that we are an attractive aroma to those around us.

We commit ourselves to that process in Jesus' name. Amen.