Hey, everybody. Thanks for joining us.
I appreciate you being with us.
Move into the 17th chapter
of the Gospel of John and,
What do you say about this chapter, Michael?
It it is
it's unique.
In it, we have the longest
sustained prayer that Jesus gives.
There's really correct me if I'm wrong.
There's no equivalent of this chapter in the other gospels.
Right?
This is something that is only found in John.
There are
it functions both as a prayer of Jesus
and I think in some ways for John, a summary.
And, and we'll see today where John is hitting some of the highlight reel,
in the prayer already.
But we, we really are
here covering some material that is only found really here.
There's just nothing else like this.
It's not the easiest chapter, probably in some ways, but it is fascinating.
So let me jump in here. 17 verse one.
Read through verse ten or so.
We'll come back and talk it through.
After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up at heaven
and he said, father, the hour has come.
Glorify your son, that the son may glorify you, since you have given him authority
over all people to give eternal life to all whom 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 glorified you on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do.
So now, father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory
that I had in your presence before the world existed.
I've made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world.
They were yours, and you gave them to me.
And they have kept your word.
Now they know that everything you have given me is from you.
For the words that you gave me, I have given to them,
and they have received them, and know in truth that I came from you,
and that they have believed that you sent me.
I'm asking on their behalf.
I'm not asking on behalf of the world, but behalf of those whom you gave me,
because they are yours.
All mine are yours, and all yours are mine.
And I have been glorified in them.
So we have been
talking, throughout this gospel, John has made reference
to the idea of the hour, the time of Jesus.
And that is for John, just a way of saying the cross.
And Jesus now begins this section.
The hour has come and and this for
John, is the kind of no turning back moment.
This is the line that has now been crossed.
So sure is
Jesus of what he's going to do and of John that Jesus is going to do it,
that the timeline here gets fluid.
Jesus can speak of things that haven't happened
yet, as if they already have, because it is.
It is a foregone conclusion that they will.
So the hour has come, which means the cross
which hasn't come yet but is coming and there's no way around it,
nor would Jesus try to get around it.
In the Gospel of John and so that I think Michael,
right off the right off the jump here, we get
this idea of,
finality is too strong of a word, but but a conclusion of some sort.
This this for John, I think, functions to move us
toward understanding what the end is.
And, and he unpacks that in many ways.
You gave them to me. I gave them your word.
We see a lot of that here.
But I think that's a pretty consistent theme as, as at least as I read it.
So I do think that there is a way that this is something what we've seen before.
But I think to understand
that, let's make sure that we are all on the same page as to
what makes John the gospel distinctive from some of the other gospels.
And Clint, you may push back on me here, but I think John is chiefly interested in
peeling away who Jesus is behind the scenes,
and that is especially who Jesus is spiritually.
Another way of saying that is theologically the other gospels
care about that too.
Certainly Matthew cares about the prophecies.
And, certainly we see, you know, in Mark that Jesus is the the supernatural worker.
But so much of their account of Jesus's life is related to the story
of what Jesus did and the narrative of where he went and who he talked to.
All of these things, I think, really sit at the center
of of pinning together the the timeline of Jesus's life in John.
This prayer, as it seems to me, is a transition moment
that is going to stand in between the teachings
and revelation of Jesus Christ, the witness that he gives.
It's a transition moment that is turning the whole equation
into the narrative of what we know is going to happen.
If, following this prayer, we're going to move directly
into the thing that Jesus already knows is coming.
And by the way,
I think John assumes that we, the reader, is knows what's coming as well.
Yeah.
I think what's happening here is we're moving from the behind the scenes.
This is who Jesus is as the revealer of God.
And we're we are seeing Jesus some all of this together
as he now is in many ways committing himself to God,
committing himself to these disciples, and committing the disciples
who are not even yet disciples to God, which we're going to see later
in this chapter.
So there's a kind of turning that's going to happen in the story.
Then the narrative is going to kick off the things that you and I take
for granted that we know we're going to happen.
And John is in this moment.
Then I think, helping us see that all of this is connected
and by design, that there's no accident here.
The narrative to come is not and somehow different
from the spiritual reality of who Jesus is. It.
It's a hard chapter to read because I think it is John doing what
John does in part in other places, and John's just allowing it to happen
without any real restraint here, just the words that flow upon words,
the ideas that connect to ideas and, and it can be very hard
to follow a particular through line through the text.
And I just think your idea of, of summation
gets to that, the idea that there's so many things we've seen before
that are all getting compounded in this very, very dense way.
And I do think it makes this, this passage important, but may be difficult to read.
Yeah, I don't think that John is necessarily giving us acts here
like a play, but there is also a sense
in which I think this 17th chapter is very much
a conventional chapter,
a summary chapter in some way of what has already been said,
and therefore sets the stage for the drama of what comes next.
And we can we can speak a little more to some of what this means, Michael,
but just in terms of these ties, look here,
to give the authority to
give eternal life to those you have given him.
What did we read in John 316?
And, and John, you know, probably didn't know he was writing
the verse that would become the beloved
standard and be shown at hockey games and Super Bowls.
But he knows what he said.
And so what does this have to do with?
This is the one who gives eternal life
and eternal life is that they may know you.
And what have we already read?
That Jesus came, that those who believe in
him would have eternal life?
So John is making some connections here.
I think this is also Michael.
Check me here.
I think this may be the only place
that I'm aware of that Jesus refers to himself as the Christ.
You know, it reads as if it's a third person,
probably a better way for us to read it in English would be and Jesus the Christ,
because Christ is the title, Jesus is the name, and Christ is Messiah.
And so Jesus here is not
speaking of himself necessarily in third person.
He's he's making a theological statement.
And Jesus, who is the Christ whom you've sent,
this is probably the boldest proclamation or one of the boldest proclamations.
Jesus makes about himself.
And then if if we could, Michael, jump down to,
verse five here,
glorify me in your presence with the glory
I had in your presence before the world existed.
So how did we start this gospel?
In the beginning was the word,
and the word was with God.
And so even here we have a connection with the very opening words of this gospel.
We move into verse six.
I've made your name known to those
who gave me, those who you've given me.
And what did John tell us in the opening chapter?
He came to his own, and his own people did not know him.
And so he now has made himself known.
And he, in doing so, has made God known as well.
And so I think it's really fascinating, Michael, the way that John
has sort of reached back in to his own narrative,
his own story, and pulled some of these themes here.
Again, not to kind of close this section.
John doesn't work like that.
But I do think to get us ready
to encounter and and maybe more so to get us ready to understand
and the next phase of the story that we are about to enter
as we move to chapter 18.
There is a amazing image of Christ here, though, Clint,
that I think we might miss if we don't slow down to see it.
Verse four I glorified you on earth
by finishing the work that you gave me to do.
That's strong language, right?
The other gospels are all built on the cross is the defining moment in Mark.
The work that reveals who Jesus is, is the moment
in which he dies on the cross, that it all pivots around that.
And and here in John, Jesus Christ is the Savior
from the beginning of time.
That reference from the first chapter in the beginning was the word that John
has presented, this gospel of who Jesus is, the testimony of who Jesus is,
that Jesus is and has been fully the revealed work of God,
the Son of God for all time, including the moment he was born,
every teaching he gave, every miracle that he did everything was the summation.
So that Jesus can come to this prayer,
glorified you on earth, finish the work that you gave me to do.
When Jesus talks in this language, it is abundantly clear to us.
It is made explicitly clear to us that that Jesus is beyond anything
that we could have imagined, that Jesus is the fullness, he's the completion.
He's the perfection, and and John, as a gospel, emphasizes
this in a way that the others have, but it's not nearly as robust or,
I think, as I've single focused in the way that it's presented.
And so you see how theologically important this gospel is to our understanding
of who Jesus is, that the entire church owes a debt to John
because of this idea that Jesus is the Anointed One, the Messiah.
He he explicitly names himself as such.
He's the one who fulfills God's expectation.
He's the one who literally makes known God to the world.
He's the revealer, the witness. He's the first.
And that every disciple follows him. The
these are just ways in which
John is continuing to have the same focus John's had all along.
What I do think is different is I think that John here is making
all of this happen through Jesus's red letter words and prayer in a way
that in some other places in the gospel, it's been seen in his action or it's bent.
He said it to another person.
In this case, it is just a us hearing a conversation between Jesus
and the father and all of these things being laid out sequentially
and explicitly as to what Jesus is doing, what he has done.
Again, just to remember, there's you know, there really is nothing.
There is no equivalent of this in the other gospels.
There are moments Jesus prays,
some recorded,
some simply note that he was praying.
But to to be able to listen in on an extended prayer
in which Jesus is specifically praying
for God's glory and tomorrow and the days that come, we'll see
for the the work of the disciples and their safety.
And one of the things I think is interesting about this section
in the way it might have landed on its readers, might go, if you look here,
verse nine, I'm asking on their behalf.
I'm not asking on behalf of the world,
but on the behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours.
And it may seem strange that Jesus is making a distinction of praying
specifically for believers and not for everyone.
Keep in mind that the Gospel of John, we believe
comes to a church is written in a time that reflects a church
that is very much at odds with the world being persecuted.
And and they may have been asking the question,
why doesn't everyone accept this?
Why are we being
singled out?
Why are we suffering?
And here they have the
they have the reassurance
that Jesus not only is praying for them,
but understands that not all the world is going to listen.
Not all the world is going to respond.
Now the church is taken that some interesting places.
But I think underneath all of that is,
word of compassion
to a church in a time of struggle
and a reminder for that
to pursue the faith is to invite some unhappiness
from the world around you, particularly, especially in the Gospel of John.
And we're not done with that theme.
But I think in this last on this last couple of weeks, we've leaned into it
pretty hard. Now, I don't know if you'd agree with this.
I would argue that this prayer lands in three major movements
and we cover the first today. Yeah.
Where Jesus begins with the relation ship that he has with God the Father
and the work that comes as a result of that relationship,
that Jesus is the ultimate revelation of who God is, that the prayer
is going to move on and it's going to address
directly the disciples and the believers as you speak about it.
And then that there's a section in which Jesus is going to pray specifically
for the disciples, of the disciples, for the people who will come, even
because of the testimony of those that Jesus is praying for.
In part two.
And if you'll allow me that part one, two, and three,
what makes part one so important is the finality of it,
that Jesus is saying all of this in past tense,
though the glorification is not yet complete because his death,
resurrection, and ascension has not yet happened, Jesus is praying
with such concluding type language because at the end of the day, it is done.
Jesus has chosen it.
He has lived it out faithfully to this point, and he's committed to the end.
There's nothing that can stand
between the Christ, the Anointed One, the Messiah, and the mission
that's been given him, and the authority and the power that Jesus has been given.
At the end of the day,
Jesus has set himself to this task.
It's his compassion that he has for those that will follow him,
whose story is now or yet to be lived out completely.
That, I think, is important because this becomes the foundation
upon which the prayer he's going to pray for those disciples who receive this book.
And we're struggling in lots of different ways.
And when you build a house, it's always wise to build that house upon something
solid and firm, not something that's going to blow away in the night.
And your Jesus's relationship with God is set down.
It is confidently located. It is firm.
You can trust that Jesus Christ is who he reveals himself to be.
And the first part of the prayer, I think, establishes that reality.
And then the rest of the prayer, to be honest, is a it reveals
the heart of what I think is the heart of even the first part of this prayer.
And that is as a pastoral prayer.
It's a it's a caring prayer.
He's loving on the people who God has given him to reveal this truth to.
And and this prayer is building towards that end.
I think
maybe this will be easier
when we summarize after having gotten
to the end of the chapter, but the beauty of the beginning of this
prayer is to note that Jesus seeks to glorify God,
to thank God, to recognize those
who have come to him, and then he will go on to pray for them.
And it's a it's a it.
You're right. It's wordy.
It may feel difficult to access,
but it's a beautiful beginning to a prayer.
I glorify you, I give you thanks.
I know that you are with me.
I know that you are with them.
And where that goes will only, I think, continue to build on that.
You know that this is one of my favorite books in the Bible.
I've got to confess to you, this is not my favorite chapter in that book.
Unless I remember
that this is Jesus the Christ, the Son of God.
Praying not just to the father
that we get to here, which is a unique treasure unto itself,
but also that he's praying for us and we're not there yet.
Tune in next time so you can be part of that conversation.
And we'd love to continue on as we make our way through this book.
If you've made it this far in the study, Thank you.
I give this video, like, helps others find it
while they're trying to study their way through John. Just like this.
And a note for all of you friends who are with us live for this.
We will not be here tomorrow, but we'll be back next week on Monday.
So, we'll.
Yeah. That's right.
Sorry my days were mixed up. Yep.
Michael's right. We'll see you then.