Truth For Life

Guest (Male): If you're a believer in Christ, do you realize God had your salvation planned even before the world existed? We'll learn why that's true today on Truth For Life, and we'll hear how each person of the Trinity—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit—is involved in the process. Alistair Begg is teaching from chapter 17 in the Gospel of John.

Alistair Begg: What we've done so far, or tried to do so far, in the first five verses is pay attention to the timeline in relationship to what Jesus says as He begins His prayer: "the hour has come." So we've thought about it, if you like, within the framework of time. But here in verses 4 and 5, we actually move beyond that. And so we consider verses 4 and 5, the words that He addresses to His Father in light of eternity.

We have this amazing phrase that closes verse 5: "before the world existed." This comes back again in the 24th verse when He says, "Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, may be with Me where I am, to see My glory that You have given Me because You loved Me before the foundation of the world." I want to make two observations from this this morning. First of all, observe the report that Jesus gives in verse 4, to which we'll come, and the request which Jesus makes in verse 5, which is where we'll begin.

His request there of the Father is clear: "And now, Father, glorify Me in Your own presence with the glory I had with You before the world existed." With these words, Jesus takes us beyond the realm of time and takes us across all the years that ever existed. Before there was time, before there was anything, there was God. The created world was brought into existence by God. There is God, who is the ultimate reality, and then there is everyone and everything else.

It is very important that we understand the way in which the Bible makes this perfectly clear: God, the Creator, and then everyone and everything else, the created. God is in charge of it all. In fact, here God creates, God sustains, God orders, God directs the entire cosmos at the macro level and at the micro level. That is why it is such a staggering thing that we read in verse 3: "And this is eternal life, that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent." And in verse 2, "And You have given Him authority over all flesh."

This may sound very theoretical, very theological, and very far out. It is a stretcher, that's for sure. But let me just remind you of how vastly different the things that we are affirming to begin this morning are from the common mentality in relationship to our world and the things that people say about God. David Wells, in one of his books, addresses this in just a sentence or two, where he says contemporary spiritualities—and he says, for example, of many different forms, Hinduism, New Age things, or Kabbalah, radical environmentalism—all of these are self-made spiritualities.

What they have in common is a view of reality that is pantheistic. In other words, it is completely antithetical to what we have just said: There is God, and then there is everyone and everything else. From a pantheistic point of view, all of them assume in one way or another that nature encloses and contains God. The assumption is that the way we make contact with God is by finding Him within nature or within ourselves. To declare, however, one's belief in the Christian God is at one and the same time to reject this cultural spirituality. God is indeed one in His being, but He is not one with nature.

Jesus' request here takes us into the very heart not only of the immensity of God, but it takes us into the heart of the Bible's teaching of the Trinity, or the doctrine of the Trinity. When we read our Bibles, we immediately are made aware of the fact that there is only one true God. "I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me," He says through the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 46. Paul, who grew up as a monotheistic Jew, by the time he is writing to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 8, says to them that though there may be many so-called gods in heaven or on earth, there is one God, the Father, from whom all things are and for whom we exist.

The one true and living God exists eternally in Trinity: God in three persons, blessed Trinity. So the one true and living God is in three persons. The Father is not the Son, nor is the Father the Holy Spirit, nor is the Son the Holy Spirit. Each person in the Godhead is distinct from the other persons, but not separable because they are interwoven with one another in essence. No person in the Godhead, no person in the Trinity, exists without the presence of the others.

At best, when we consider the doctrine of the Trinity, we don't go to our Bibles and find an explanation. There is no paragraph, and there is no consecutive teaching on this subject. We do not have, ultimately, an explanation, but we have a formulation as we consider the way that the progressive story, the unfolding story of the Bible, is given to us. We acknowledge the fact that the Trinity is a mystery. John begins way back: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with Him in the beginning."

In John chapter 14, it comes across the whole idea of them being in the presence of one another. Jesus says to His disciples, "I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees Him nor knows Him." You say to your friends at work, "There is only one true and living God." That will get you off to a good start. When you have tried to push your way through that, let them know that this one God exists in three persons, that He is one in essence and in substance, and that every part of the Trinity is distinct from one another.

God exists eternally as a Trinity, and that mystery is actually fully understandable by God. God understands everything. God is the ultimate reality, God is the ultimate beauty, God is the ultimate truth, God is the ultimate justice, and everything else is derived from God Himself. So when you remove yourself in your mind from the realm of God's jurisdiction, you end up with the chaos that is represented in our world, whether it is in Eastern mysticism or contemporary expressions that are part and parcel of our Western culture.

In Romans chapter 1, the second half of Romans chapter 1, we considered the fact that God's Word says that He has given enough of Himself in the disclosure of His world to render us accountable. But He has not provided enough in nature for us to know Him savingly. He has given us not only the external reality of nature, but He has given us also the internal reality of our conscience. Our consciences are distorted by our rebellion against God. Which is why in 600 BC, God speaks through the prophet Isaiah and pronounces woe on the people: "Woe upon those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who are wise in their own eyes and shrewd in their own sight."

The Bible's explanation of our world, which starts with God and goes from there through our rebellion, you may not like, but it certainly coheres. Jesus is, in that context, asking His Father, "I want You, Father, to glorify Me again in Your presence with the glory that I had with You before the world existed." This is the glory of the co-equal, undivided Godhead. The Trinity enjoys one another. God created the world, but He didn't have to create it. He did not create the world because He needed a world. God created the world out of the depth of His own being. In the reality of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—they live within the mutuality of perfect love.

Everything else is an extrapolation from that. In the incarnation, it involved in some measure Jesus laying aside that shared glory of eternity. And so Jesus now says, "Father, I'm looking forward to the glory. I'm looking forward to being back with You." If Jesus were a mere man, this is ludicrous. If Jesus is a Galilean carpenter and somehow or another the world has hung on to His recollection—and some crazy people throughout the world still revere His memory—if that is all we're dealing with, it is actually a measure of the incapacity of our minds to worship, to follow, and to obey Him.

If a person is going to come to know God, they're not going to know Him as a result of rationalism, nor are they going to come to know God as a result of a kind of irrational mysticism. It is as we consider the words and the works of the one who is here praying to His Father that we then are made to understand that God has made Himself known finally, unmistakably, and savingly in a real, historical man. Not in a mantra, not in a philosophy, not in a scheme, but in a man. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us—tired, hungry, sad, and joyful.

And we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Only those who have faith see the glory of God in His Word and in His works. If you do not see something of the glory of God, if you do not marvel at the wonder of all that He has given you, if you do not give thanks for your food from a genuine sense of the awareness of His provision, if you do not see God's glory, the chances are it is because you are unconverted. You might be interested, engaged from time to time, and emotionally stirred, but unconverted.

The second observation concerns verse 4, and that is from the request that He makes to the report that He gives: "I glorified You on earth, having accomplished the work that You gave Me to do." It's as though He is returning to headquarters, having completed the assignment that He's been given, and He is reporting once again to the Father. The work that the Father has planned, He, the Son, has now procured, and it will be the work of the Holy Spirit then to apply the reality of that to all who believe. It's as though God had said from eternity to His Son, "Go and accomplish the work of salvation."

When we read the Bible, we realize that it is out of love for the world that the Father sends the Son, and it is out of love for the world that the Son lays down His life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish—which is our eternal destiny as sinners—should not perish but have eternal life. That's John 3. 1 John chapter 4, verse 10, drives it home: "In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." He provided a sacrifice that bears the wrath of God, turning it to the favor of God in the lives of those who believe.

Surely it is the preacher's responsibility and the preacher's privilege to persuade men and women of that love of God. Persuade men and women that God loves them. And that He loves you so much that He has taken this action in order that, despite us having turned our backs upon Him, He is the one who pursues us. Did you ever write a love letter to somebody and they never even replied? Unrequited love at a far deeper level is a painful reality. The supreme love of God for sinners, in many cases, remains unrequited.

This is not sentimentalism, incidentally. This is not "I love you just the way you are." As soon as somebody starts talking about the love of God, people think, "Oh well, I'm glad of that; He loves me just the way I am." No, He doesn't. He loves me despite the way I am. That's the difference. Not because I'm an attractive proposition, but because I'm a sinner in need of a Savior. Jesus was unreservedly committed to doing what the Father had given Him to do.

Jesus is speaking here as if this event has already happened. "I glorified You on earth, having accomplished the work that You gave Me to do." But this is in prospect of the cross. He is actually speaking proleptically. He is speaking of an event that as yet has not taken place as if it was already accomplished. His death and His resurrection and His ascension are so about to happen that there's no question that they won't happen. In other words, consider it done. Mission accomplished.

What a contrast to mission impossible. Mission impossible is the attempt to save ourselves. It is an impossible task. When we turn away from the true God, we don't go for nothing; we go for invented gods. We go for little idols of our own invention, exchanging the glory of an immortal God for things that creep and crawl and fly. Isaiah gives us a picture of overburdened people, people overburdened by the idols that they've invented. There is only one word that sounds out from the dumb mouths of these crazy inventions of our own: defeat, defeat, defeat.

That doesn't mean that we don't make it through our lives, but it does mean that if we're going to be able to stand before God and face the bar of His judgment, it will not be on the basis of our own attempted cleanups or endeavors. It will only be on the strength of He who completed the work that His Father gave Him to do. Only in Jesus is there that triumph. Facing all the challenges of the day, all the pieces of our lives, Jesus does actually make a huge difference. And I commend Christ to you today.

Bob Lepine: You're listening to Truth For Life with Alistair Begg. If you would like to commend Christ to others like Alistair just did, we have recently released a short evangelism book to help you talk to others about Jesus and what He accomplished on the cross. The book is called *The Man on the Middle Cross*, and we're offering it today as a three-book bundle when you support the ministry with a donation. In this short booklet, Alistair tells three powerful stories about individuals who had life-changing encounters with Jesus, and then he asks the reader to consider the all-important question: Are you going to heaven?

Easter is the perfect opportunity to give away *The Man on the Middle Cross* booklets as a way of starting a gospel conversation. Give a copy to a friend, a neighbor, or a colleague, and invite them to your church's Easter Sunday service, or meet them for coffee and a follow-up conversation. We hope you'll keep copies of this compelling evangelism tool on hand to use during the Easter season and throughout the year. Ask for your copy of *The Man on the Middle Cross* booklet today when you donate to Truth For Life online at truthforlife.org/donate or call us at 888-588-7884.

I'm Bob Lepine. Does your faith feel weak and faltering? Do you struggle to understand the Bible's teaching? Do you fear this means your salvation is shaky? Join us Monday for an encouraging message. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth For Life, where the learning is for living.