Truth For Life

Guest (Male): How is our invisible God made visible? Are you and your church doing your part? We'll find out how it's possible today on Truth for Life as Alistair Begg takes a closer look at how the glory of God is displayed in Christ and his followers. We're looking at John's gospel, focusing on chapter 17.

Alistair Begg: The man who is here praying in John 17 is the one who was once the child asleep on Mary's lap. One of the dangers of dealing with the church calendar as it were, in thinking in compartmentalized terms about what's going on and when it's going on, is the danger of actually considering, for example, the advent of Jesus separate from the death of Jesus.

And when we think about it, the reason Jesus was ever born was in order that he might die. And so when we listen to Jesus praying here for his disciples, it's from the lips of the same person who clung to Mary's breast as we just sung about it.

He who is lifting his eyes to heaven, which is the way the prayer begins at the beginning of the chapter, he who is lifting his eyes to heaven in prayer was once wrapped tight in a manger, wrapped up in the way that babies are, and then was on the receiving end of shepherds who came tumbling in upon the scene having been the recipients of a celestial encounter, an angelic message.

The Lord Jesus who is praying this prayer is the same one as created the universe. The creator of the universe is now within hours of his death and he's praying for his disciples. Now that is the great claim of Christianity. And John, when he begins his gospel, begins not with the manger scene, not with the flocks outside in the Bethlehem fields, but he begins before the creation of the world.

And that, of course, you discover when you read the beginning of his gospel. Before the world existed, in the beginning was the Word. That is the very self-expression of God. He was with God and he was God. And he became flesh. And in becoming flesh, God made himself finally and savingly known.

The writer to the Hebrews makes the same point when he says, "In the past God has spoken in many and various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son." And the great claim of Christianity is that God took on humanity without any loss of divinity.

The incarnation, which is the word that we give to it in theological terms, the incarnation is actually an unfathomable mystery. How can God be both God and man simultaneously? But if God is not God and man simultaneously, how do you make sense of the rest of the New Testament?

It is the reality of who Jesus is that makes sense of everything else in the New Testament. The hands that clung to Mary, that cleansed the leper, that washed the feet of his disciples, are about to be surrendered to the cruel nails of the Roman jurisdiction.

Jesus is praying within hours of that reality. And fascinatingly, he is praying for the people first of all, for the people who don't really get him. That he's already said to them, "I've got more to say to you than you can even understand right now."

He's praying for those who don't get him, and he's praying for those who are about to abandon him. What kind of love is this? We're routinely prepared to pray for people who are doing their best or our friends, but not Jesus, far more than that.

Now with all of that to get us to the 22nd verse, let's just look at it again. What is he praying? He's praying, "The glory that you have given me, I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one." Now this is not the easiest verse, I don't think.

And I was encouraged to discover that nobody that I read found it easy either. Don Carson says exactly what is meant here is much disputed. And Bishop Ryle said the questions surrounding this will probably never be settled.

So there's plenty of room for further investigation as you begin your reading through the Bible. You can perhaps stop here for a little while and fill in any of the blanks. But this is the way we're going to look at it.

First of all, let us consider the glory that God has given to Jesus, then the glory that Jesus says he has given to his disciples, and then consider the purpose in doing so. First of all then, the glory of God in the person of Christ.

Now those of us who have been around for the entire series in 17 know from the opening verses of the chapter that Jesus enjoyed a glory in the presence of the Father. "Father, the hour has come, glorify your Son"—this is verse one—"that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh to give eternal life" and so on.

So before the incarnation, in the presence of the Father and of the Holy Spirit, the Lord Jesus Christ enjoyed glory, a glory that he says at the beginning of the prayer he's going to take up again. "Father, I enjoyed the glory, I'm going here now on this mission and I will come again and I will enjoy that glory."

I don't think that is the glory of the 22nd verse, because that is a glory that is a shared glory, co-equal, co-eternal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But this glory, says Jesus, is a given glory. And that glory is different from the pre-existent glory in as far as it would seem that the Father has granted to Jesus a glory in the execution of the mission upon which he has been sent.

That he has been sent in order that he might be the very savior of the world, the one about whom the angels sang and the shepherds sought is this one. Now when Paul writes of this, he says, "The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners."

That he came into the world to save sinners, that the purpose of his coming was in order that men and women who by nature are rebellious, who by nature do our own thing, choose our own path, that we might be redeemed from that way of life.

And I found myself helped by considering, and it was helpful actually because even today in those of you who are doing your readings in John, will have found yourself exactly in this section because we read, I think, John chapter 12. And in John chapter 12, and in verse 20 or so, now among those who went up to worship at the feast were some Greeks.

So it's the feast of celebration. And these Greek people went to Philip—he was from Bethsaida in Galilee—and they said to him, "We would like to see Jesus." This is what Jesus says. And Jesus answered them, "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified."

But shouldn't that be the hour has come for the Son of Man to be crucified? Isn't it that to which Jesus is referring? Yes, of course it is. But he doesn't say the time has now come for the Son of Man to be crucified, but for the Son of Man to be glorified.

So what then is this glory that has been given by God? I take it that it is this: that the glory that God has given to Jesus is a glory that is seen supremely in the path of obedience. It is seen supremely in the expression of lowly service.

It is seen in a king who comes riding on a donkey. It is seen in the arrival of divinity in such an expression of apparent poverty, simplicity, and helplessness. "You have glorified me," a glory that culminates in the cross. That's as much as I can give you on that.

Let's go then to the glory of God in the followers of Christ. If there is any accuracy in my suggestion, namely that the glory that God has given to the Son is expressed along that pathway, that Jesus' perfect obedience to the will of God was his glory, well then it would seem to make perfect sense that we in Jesus who are made for God, who are made to live for his pleasure, not for our own pleasure, will discover that same glory as followers of Christ.

You see, again, if we go back to the very beginning of things, Adam did not believe this notion. Adam and Eve together believed that somehow or another God was depriving them of that which would make their lives really, really significant.

And God had essentially given them a multiple choice exam with one question and two possible answers. Question from God: Do you trust me? Either yes or no. Adam and Eve answer no, thinking that down that pathway there will be delight, only to discover that down that pathway is actual disaster and is death.

When we think in terms of the glory that is given to us as followers of Jesus, we have to compute it, if you like, in relationship to the pattern of Christ himself. And it is simply this: that the path to glory is a path of suffering.

The path to the crown is a cross. The cross is before the crown. When Jesus says if someone loves me, he will keep my commandments. If someone is interested in being my follower, he will take up his cross, she will take up her cross every day and she will follow me.

She will be prepared, he will be prepared to die to this in order to live to that. When we suffer, we are blessed and the spirit of glory rests upon us. It's very easy to get this upside down and we mustn't get it upside down. We should never think of being obedient to Jesus as it being a penalty, if you like. It's not a penalty, it's a glory.

If you think about it in terms of examination since we mentioned that, the harder the test we give to a student, the greater the glory for success. The more demanding the position entrusted to the surgeon at the clinic, the harder it is, the greater the glory attaches to it.

And so when we say to ourselves, "Well, this is going to be a hard road to follow Jesus, this is going to be a narrow path to follow Jesus," that's not a penalty. That's the pathway to glory. So the glory that you have given me, the glory that I have given them, and to what purpose?

What is the end of this? Well, it takes us back to where we were last time by way of repetition and by way of emphasis. "The glory that you have given me, I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one." So back again at this matter of unity.

This is not a unity that is, as we said last time, brought about by human ingenuity. But the quest is an understandable quest, isn't it? It would be a wonderful thing. I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony. I'd like to buy the world a Coke and keep everybody company. It would be fantastic, wouldn't it?

But you see the longing of the human heart is actually for human unity, it's not for isolation. But we can't create it. We can't create it. And here Jesus says, "You gave me glory, I've given them glory so that in my body, that's the body of Christ, so that in my body the world might get an opportunity to see what happens when people are united."

Not on the strength of a shared social media, not on the strength of a shared intellect, not on the basis of a delight in the same kind of things, but people from diverse backgrounds united not incidentally in a common cause, but caught up in a reality, the same reality, says Jesus, that exists between you, Father, and me, the Son.

It's immense. It is, in short order, in three words: Number one, supernatural. Supernatural. "That they may be one even as we are one." He's speaking to the Father, "I in them and you in me." That this unity, he says, "that they may be perfectly one."

That their unity might come to completion, that it might be a maturing unity, that as they grow up and as they live longer, they won't tolerate amongst themselves petty disagreements. And if we were to be in any doubt about the standard, it is stated plainly: "that they may be one even as we are one." It's supernatural.

Secondly, it is observable. Although the work of unifying the people of God is in one sense supernaturally invisible, it has to have expression somewhere. And that's why I read from 1 John 4. Because it seems to me that what John is saying there, he recorded the prayer in his gospel, but what he's actually saying there in 1 John 4:12 is this: "No one has ever seen God." Fact. "If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us."

See what Jesus is praying, "that they may be perfectly one." Now says John, here is how the invisible God becomes visible. The invisible God becomes visible when people who are by nature diverse—all kinds of ideas, notions, backgrounds, intellect, cash flow, all of the rest, race, background—put it all together.

When you bump up against these people and you find that they have discovered something in Jesus that unifies them and matters more to them than their school tie or whatever else it may be, then the world starts to say, "Maybe there is something in this. Maybe there is something in this."

How does the invisible God become visible in our community? This is how it becomes visible and observable. And the challenge, you see, is that the story that is proclaimed from a pulpit either is going to be confirmed and enhanced by the buzz in the pews, or is going to be contradicted and weakened by the buzz in the pews.

I'm responsible for the proclamation, but I'm also part of the buzz. Shame on me if the buzz you get from me doesn't tie in with the proclamation that you hear from me. It's supernatural, it's observable, and it's influential. It's influential.

In the sense or evangelical might be a better word, in the sense that "that the people might know, that people might know." Again, the poor poetry makes the point: "You're writing a gospel, a chapter each day, by the deeds that you do and the words that you say. And people read what you write, distorted or true. So what is the gospel according to you?"

Now I might as well just put that right up on my mirror as I get ready for the day and walk out into the day in the awareness of that fact. This is why Jesus prays. That they may be one, that the world might know, might know that God sent Jesus, that the God-man is present.

And lastly, not only that the world might know that you sent me, but also that you love them even as you loved me. Now that to me is the most staggering part of this whole thing. You know, you can say, "Well okay, the union of the Father and the Son in eternity makes sense and that's a perfect standard and an enabling factor so that we might go out and live in that way."

But the fact that people might know that God has loved his church even as God has loved his Son. Again, that's why we read from 1 John. "Beloved, if God so loved us—" How has he loved us? He's loved us to the extent that he loves Jesus.

It's a spectacularly extravagant notion. I'm not sure that we can fully plumb the depths of it, that in Jesus we have been caught up into the love of the Father and the Son. That whatever else we could say about ourselves in the whole world, we're able to say to ourselves on the basis of what the Bible teaches us is that God the Father loves me.

He loves me. What is the story of this great Christmas event? It is this: He loved me. He loved me. He stepped down onto the cross and he hugged me. He loves me. He loved me like the Rock of Ages. He loved me. That's the story. That's the message. That's the privilege we have to share.

Do you know the love of God like that? Do you know that the reason that you're still alive without ever having trusted him is because of his love? Because he's so patient to give you another day, another week, another Sunday, to hear again the immensity of his love?

Could I not convince you of that? Oh, you may say my father doesn't love me as he should or my brothers whatever. I get all that, we all live in a broken world. But God loves and his love is a perfect love. And if you doubt it, look at the cross. There's the glory. There's true joy. There's real peace.

Guest (Male): We are learning about Jesus' high priestly prayer on Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. This high priestly prayer we've been studying is considered one of the most sacred passages in all of the four Gospels and it's well worth studying in greater depth.

So our team has created a free study guide that goes along with Alistair's teaching through these messages. The study guide will help you meditate on Jesus' powerful words in this important section of Scripture and apply the lessons to your own life.

And if you're part of a Bible study group, this study guide offers many thought-provoking prompts to encourage rich discussions. You can download the study guide for free. Go to truthforlife.org/john17.

Now before we wrap up today's program, will you keep Alistair in your prayers? He is speaking at the 65th annual Iowa Prayer Breakfast. This is an event that's attended by community leaders and state legislators, as well as local folks and college students.

Pray that this will be a time of Kingdom-focused prayer and reflection for all in attendance. And if you'd like to view Alistair's speaking schedule and continue to pray for him as he travels, you can visit truthforlife.org, click on the events tab at the top.

We're glad you've joined us today. We're going to resume our study in Jesus' high priestly prayer on Monday, but tomorrow we'll be airing a special message for Good Friday. Why would an innocent man voluntarily take punishment for the wrongdoings of others? We'll explore the answer tomorrow.

The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the learning is for living.