Clough John Lesson 62

Christ’s Prayer (continued)– John 17:20-26

 

John 17 is known as the high priestly prayer of Christ.  It’s one of those rare glimpses in the history of revelation when men get a chance to peak at the Trinity because you have one person of the person talking to another person of the Trinity.  And not only do we get a chance to peak in on the conversation but we also have an opportunity to peak in on a conversation that is directed in our direction, it’s about us.  So far we have studied down to the end of verse 19 and tonight we’re going to finish the high priestly prayer of Christ as He concludes by praying about us.  In verses 1-5 He prayed about Himself; in verses 6-19 He prayed about the founders of the Church, the first generation of believers.  Now He prays about all believers who have believed second-hand, that is, they have believed by the relaying and transmission of the Word of God through that founding generation.  So it is directed particularly toward us.

 

And it’s rather awesome what He prays for us.   If we are understanding what it is that we are praying for in our behalf we will understand why the Holy Spirit does the Holy Spirit the things the Holy Spirit does in our lives in the role of sanctification.  In other words, if you have someone to blame for why you’re getting heat spiritually in the Christian life, blame the Lord Jesus Christ for praying these six verses about you because here’s where it all started.  Here’s where God’s plan directed in your area, here’s where it all started out as our high priest made this petition.  It’s He that made the petition and since His petition perfectly coincides with the Father’s will it means that His petition will certainly come to pass, and because of the certainty of this petition coming to pass that puts the spiritual pressure on every member of the body of Christ.  That means that you are not free, I am not free to live our lives as we wish, we are only free to respond to the direction in which He is leading us. 

 

So beginning in John 17:20, He says, “Neither pray I for these alone,” that is the apostles, the founding generation of believers; “Neither I pray for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Me through their word.”  Now in the Greek  this is a present participle; it literally reads, “those who are believing,” “are already,” but it’s the kind of present tense that conveys what’s inside the Lord’s head when He makes that prayer.  In other words, the present tense shows you that in His mind we are already believing and therefore a perhaps more accurate way of translating this present participle in this particular context should be, “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also who shall certainly believe on Me through their word.”  He has us fixed in His mind; looking over the corridors of time, century piled upon century, believer after believer, hundreds of them, thousands of them, millions of believers, all the believers in the Church Age, Christ gathers into His vision at this point in His petition and looking at us all together, those who have believed tomorrow, those who have believed over the past 1900 years, all of us collectively He says I pray for them who certainly will believe on Me through their word. 

 

There’s immediate application to this little twist to the present participle here; a great spiritual lesson for us all to encourage us, that’s this: Until the rapture occurs evangelism will always be successful, that is, putting forth the Word of God clearly and distinctively as best as we know how, will always reap the reward because Christ has it in His mind those in Lubbock, those in other cities, those in other lands and other nations, He has in mind those who are certainly going to believe.  There’s no threat that the source of new believers is suddenly going to dry up, that the Church is going to stop all of a sudden, it’s gear jammed and its unable to grow any more.  It’ll never come to pass.  Christ, speaking the way He does here, negates that idea, He totally dismisses it; He knows, it’s as certain as His omniscience that there are people who will yet believe in the Gospel of Christ.  And you can, therefore, take your time and train yourself to be as clear a communicator of the Word of God as you know how through life and through lip and with that hope and that confidence and that encouragement that no matter what you do, there are going to be people that are going to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. 

 

Now further in this verse He says the means of this belief.  And the means of this belief is that they will “believe on Me through their logos,” through their word.  The word logos refers to the verbal message and that has to be stressed in our day; it has to be stressed over and over and over and the longer we exist in the 20th century and the more the pressure gets on us the more we have to stress this.  We are often accused around town and other places of being a church that doesn’t evangelize; that’s kind of interesting because this very passage is the response to that kind of thing.  You can’t evangelize if you cannot speak clearly the message to the person you are trying to evangelize, and it’s my position that many, many Christians do not understand the gospel enough to open their mouth intelligently.  All they put forward is Jesus words and God words.

 

This week a girl came in the office and was sharing with me some of her experiences in trying to witness to a friend of hers.  She expressed deep frustration at how can I communicate, every time I go to communicate the gospel something happens and it gets slurped up in this kind of amoeba like mentality.  And that’s what happens; why is it?  What am I doing wrong?  And it turned out that this particular individual to whom she was witnessing was a member of one of the oriental type of religions; those of you who have tried to witness know exactly what I’m talking about and there’s not one of you who would give me an argument that you’ve got to think and prepare and train yourself before you even open your mouth in that kind of a situation and even after you’ve trained yourself it’s extremely difficult to communicate the gospel to that kind of person.  You certainly are not going to communicate the gospel to that kind of person with a few little Jesus, Jesus, Jesus things.  That isn’t going to swing it because these kinds of people are so out of it in their human viewpoint that you can take word after word after word after word and you send it forth like a missile and they turn it right around and deflect it.  And you shoot another one off and it deflects.  Why is it that all of your missiles miss the target.  It’s because they have crushed the very concept of verbal communication; it’s because they’ve done what the charismatics basically have done; they said that the highest experience that you can have is a non-verbal experience; the highest experience you can have is an emotional experience of the heart.  That’s where the real experience is, that’s where you feel truth.  That’s their basic axiom and presupposition.  Now once you’ve granted that you’re shot, you can yak, yak, yak, yak words all you want to and it doesn’t communicate until you challenge that basic assumption they’re making. 

 

And when Jesus Christ here stands and He prays to His Father He doesn’t say Father, what a nice feeling I’ve got; I know I’m going to go to the cross, I’m going to be arrested shortly, 15 to 20 minutes, but nevertheless I have this deep feeling and it’s such an inspiration to me as I look up in the olive trees around the Garden of Gethsemane, I’m touched.  Jesus isn’t corresponding with His Father, communicating this way.  Jesus is communicating verbally with His Father and if you trace this prayer of Jesus verse by verse by verse, as you trace this thing, you notice something?  It’s deep theology.  So with effort in your mind there has to be brain cells operating with energy consumption to track what Jesus is saying to His Father.  This isn’t the kind of sweet thing that you crank out and then say “praise the Lord” sixty times afterwards to make you feel good about it.  This isn’t that kind of thing at all, this is work and it demands patience and understanding, just what is it Lord that you’re saying to the Father. 

 

Now Jesus Christ in His humanity gives us a model of prayer and the model of prayer that He gives us is not some emotional hullabaloo that goes on.  Now this is what is wrong with the charismatic movement, it’s what is wrong with a lot of movements and to show you that I am not just getting here on my own private hobby horse, that I just invented a year or so ago, I read you a footnote in Frances Schaeffer’s book, The Church Before the Watching World, page 68.  He goes back to describe how hard it is that our generation... now the people that lived in fundamental circles in the 30s, lived in fundamental circles in the 40s, didn’t have this problem and this is why many do not understand why we’re doing what we’re doing.  They think we’re all wet. We have reasons for doing what we’re doing. 


Here’s what Frances Schaeffer says: “According to Marshall McLuhan” who is one of the great media people, “in his theory of communication, hot communication is communication that has content, that appeals to men and moves men through the mind on the basis of that content; cool communication is a kind of personal first order experience wherein one is moved but without any content passing through his mind or his reason.  It is a manipulation based upon electronics.”  Marshall McLuhan’s famous book is Understanding Media and so on, and in this book he points out there are two kinds of communication, the hot and the cool, and the hot communication is this kind of communication—Scripture, the thing that you have to read, the only way it’s communi­cating to you is through your eyes, through your mind, you have to think as you read it.  Cool communication is all types of communication, such as you get on TV.  And he points out that as TV increases as a media you have a cooling off of the communication, that is more and more emphasis on electronic effect, less and less emphasis on the verbal content.  This is one reason why you can have such a thing as too much audio-visual in your education. 

 

Therefore McCluhan developed this theory and Schaeffer goes on, “it is a manipulation based upon electronics.  Father John Culkin, director of communications at Fordham University, a follower of Marshall McLuhan said this,” and this is an extremely important statement.  Listen to it carefully, (quote), “Gutenberg came and the Reformation came;” now Gutenberg is the man who invented the printing press, and it’s very smart, “Gutenberg came and the Reformation came,” what does he mean by that?  He means that Gutenberg came along with the printing press and what did the printing press do for the Reformation?  Gave everybody the Bible, people could read it, people absorb the Word of God, hot communication, content emphasis.  “Gutenberg came and the Reformation came,” here’s his second statement, “Electronics comes and the ecumenical movement comes.”  “Electronics comes and the ecumenical movement comes.  He means that the ecumenical movement,” and this is the movement of everyone getting together under one roof, and so on, “He means that the ecumenical movement is rooted for its unity in the midst of a content-less situation, a situation that is completely cool and has nothing to do with objective doctrinal truth, and I feel he is right.  I do not believe that the modern ecumenical movement could have been built even in the day of the old liberals.  The ecumenical movement, I believe, an organizational oneness on the basis of a lack of content.  Equally the new existential theologians in our churches live only in the area of cool communication.  They have denied content, content is not important to them.  An existential upper story experience has separated from all reason and from all that is open, either to verification or falsification.  T. H. Huxman in 1890 saw that the day would come when theology would be separated from everything that had anything to do with fact and as such would never be open to challenge.  But of course, that kind of theology doesn’t mean anything either.  If a thing has no point for possible verification or falsification it’s without meaning.”  Then he goes on and describes his point. 

 

But what is he saying here?  What are we going to do in our fundamental circles to guard and protect ourselves as we look in on Jesus’ prayer and he tells us that the way people are going to believe down through to the end of history will be by means of your verbal message.  Therefore what do we have to do then, what is the spiritual thing to do? What is the thing that is most biblical, the most God-honoring thing to do for the Church today?  It is to emphasize content; it is to deliberately cut against the area that is surging in from the East, the Oriental religions; it’s to cut against the emphasis in Christian circles on feelings and emotions; it is to cut against what we’re taking up in intellectual circles in this same area so that we have to consciously emphasize more than we used to doctrine; not less, more!  And this is why we have done it at LBC and are doing it and will continue to do it because we are acting in deliberate separation from the spirit of this age. 

 

In this particular part of the country we have an additional problem because in this part of the country historically where was the gospel first preached and how?  It was largely preached by the circuit riders on the frontier, just a generation or so ago.  And therefore in this part of the country it’s become part of the tradition not to emphasize the doctrine and the content of faith; that’s just tradition.  So in addition to the normal problems of getting a hit from the Orient, getting hit from the charismatic circles, getting hit from the west, in addition to all these three enemies intruding upon us we’ve got a latency right here.  We can show this because most people in the city of Lubbock who are knowledgeable Christians, who are interested in Bible doctrine, always seem, the majority of them if you’ll check their background, do not come from Lubbock, they are all outsiders.  And it’s a very remarkable observation and again it shows you the influence; this is not always the case, there are many fine exceptions. 

 

But what I’m saying is notice the trend, this is the real situation.  Most people having been raised in this kind of a situation, do not understand and see no need for any doctrine, for any content, and therefore those people, sadly, sadly I might add, those people are the most susceptible to the whims and the spiritual evil that is creeping through the doors and the windows from the east and from the west; very susceptible because it’s the weakest part of their culture and I believe this is why Satan wants to attack the Bible belt the way he has.  The Bible belt is the only place left in the United States where there’s some orthodoxy, where there’s some conservatism.  It’s good always to come back to Texas after having gone to either California, New York or New England.  You breathe fresh air here and I mean spiritual fresh air here.  There’s a remarkable difference.  The pseudo-suavity of the New Yorker, the person who lives in the big city where the whole universe rotates around 5th Avenue, where it is considered smart to show how many people you can quote in five minutes, knowing nothing of course of what they really mean by their quotes but it sounds good to be able to quote lots of people, it sounds sophisticated and in New York this is the way you must sound, that kind of thing.  And it’s good to out where people frankly don’t give a damn because at least you don’t pick up all this “sophisticated” human viewpoint. 

But think, all this has a way of picking out our central weakness and then driving right toward it to kill us, and where he’s driving deeply into the Bible belt is in its weakest point which is always at the emphasis on doctrine.  So where does he hit?  Strengthen the charismatic movement by the ton, it sounds good, Jesus words are used, but just very subtly you get people’s emphasis off content, you don’t want too much doctrine, you might get spiritually fat.  We don’t bother with this, and by the way, in our evangelism, don’t sit down and discuss it through with the individual to make sure he really understands what’s going on, just kind of hurry him into a quickie so he can sign the card and hand it by 9:05 because at 9:10 we collect all the cards, that kind of thing; the evangelistic methodology and when one doesn’t go along with the idea of a quickie and signing the card at 9:05 then apparently by definition of these people one is no longer concerned with evangelism. Now be careful of this.  I’m speaking mostly to those of you who are new attendees at LBC, you’ll be assaulted with this kind of thing.  Know how to respond to it; we’re not against evangelism; we’re for it, we’re for real evangelism instead of the sloppy kind.  That’s the answer to that question.

 

Now Jesus, at the end of verse 20 says they are going to believe through the verbal message.   Now that verbal message is the only way that these people are going to believe can believe.  Notice that He doesn’t say in verse 20 they are going to believe on the basis of My message; the message has to be communicated by the present existing generation of Christians.  All down through history Christians have given forth the Word.  We’ll call the Church that group that exists from Pentecost to 1976; out of that group of believers there have been books written; out of that group of believers there have been Bible translations; out of that group of believers in our own generation there are witnessing people in our present situation.  That’s the only way an unbeliever can come to Christ; there’s no other way.  Jesus doesn’t mention anything about these people who are believing because angels talked to them at night; there’s no special flying saucer from Mars that brings the gospel.  It is only by believers who open their mouth with skill and are able to articulate the gospel.  So let’s see what that gospel is, to review for a moment. 

 

Four points on the gospel that have to be covered; you can cover lots more but at least you want to cover these, and you do it in your own words, use your own verses, but do think how you would do this and if you haven’t thought through this, may I suggest that what you can do is sit down with a piece of paper and write out what you would say to someone if that someone was a non-Christian, picture a friend of yours that you’re relatively familiar with and start thinking in the depth of your mind how you’d do it if you had to do it.  The very process of thinking how to do it will prime you so that when the situation comes you’ll do it.  And you won’t do it consciously, let’s see, I’ve got my notes in my pocket here; no, it’ll all come out very naturally if you’ve thought about it ahead of time.  So prime yourself by thinking this through.  The first thing that you must clarify with people, as I say from my experience, that you’re going to find yourself increasingly spending 95% of your time on the first point.  If you can get this first point across points 2, 3, 4 come very quickly; but it’s getting this first point across that it’s just like pulling hen’s teeth for some people. What you have got to do at the first point of gospel presentation is get across what you mean by G-o-d, and I’m not being facetious.  Just because a person uses God back to you doesn’t mean a thing; learn that.  The person can talk God, God, God, God, God, all he wants to and absolutely have no idea in his head what you’re talking about when you use the word God because he thinks of some processed god, some old man sitting in a rocking chair god, or some Krishna cult god, something but not the God of Scripture so you have got to go in and do something to challenge his idea of what God is like or you are not giving the message that Jesus is praying about here. 

 

What are some ways you can do it?  You’ve got to emphasize somewhere the fact that God is the Creator; He is not to be identified with the universe, He is not part of some physics equation, He is not energy, energy is itself a creation.  Don’t confuse it; some mystical physicists get all excited about E=MC2 and God is energy.  That is wrong, that is creation energy; God is not that kind of energy; God isn’t energy in that sense of the word.  God is the Creator; He is the one who created all things including matter and energy, and scientific law, and if you have to say it that way then say it.  The God I’m talking about is the God who set up the equation; the God I’m talking about is the God who generated right and wrong, the moral ideas.  He’s the one that generated every standard there is; now we can’t even carry on this conversation without every moment of our conversation relying upon that God because that is the God of truth and so on.  And perhaps illustrating this with your Framework, pull out the divine viewpoint framework and pick up some illustrations, use the Creation event if you have to, use some miraculous event that you’ve studied.  Use some historic pictures of the Creator God; use some pictures of the Lord Jesus Christ making wine out of water, use the picture of Jesus Christ on the Sea of Galilee calming the sea with His words, this kind of thing.  It depends, you just have to know the person you’re talking to. 

 

Sometimes you don’t know the person you’re talking to, you try this and you fail.  Don’t worry about the fact you fail, we all fail.  Most of the time we fail, particularly in evangelism, it takes a long time to develop skill in that so don’t worry about it.  You try the best you can and then trust the Spirit with the rest of it and the next time try to learn a little bit, what did I do wrong there, what are the 1508 different things that I goofed on that time.  So pick up 2 or 3 and work on them so next time it’s 1505, but at least there’s some improvement. Don’t get discouraged if you drop the ball repeatedly, just keep on.  The Lord will honor that attitude of just keeping on and improving just a little bit each time.  You’ve got to clarify who He is and what He is; you may have to go into some of His attributes to make sure that the person understands.  This is a God who speaks… a God who speaks, a God who gets angry, take them to the Psalms, God is angry, that’s the kind of God the Bible is talking about.  He’s very personal but He is infinite. 

 

Then the second point that you have to deal with is the problem of what sin is and there you’re going to be hassled because 9 times out of 10 the problem is misdefining what sin is, either you get some legalist that thinks that sin is some moral thing or you get something else and they miss the whole point.  Sin is moral rebellion, whether it’s thought, word or deed, it doesn’t make any difference.  And if you don’t get this straight you cannot win the person to Christ; if you do it’s sheer grace, an accident.  But you cannot go any further in the presentation if you do not… ask questions back and forth to make sure that they understand what you’re talking about with sin, make sure they do not think that you’re telling them psychological unrest.  Now that’s an effect of sin but that itself isn’t sin.  Physical death is an effect of sin too but that isn’t sin either.  Sin is the moral rebellion against God.  Don’t confuse the cause with the effect; don’t let them say oh yeah, I know what you mean, the feeling of depression I have.  No, that’s not what I mean.  That’s the result, that’s the effect of it, I’m talking about the cause of it.  And then you have to go back to some of the verses that would say if you want pictures of how to identify sin, take them through some areas of the Law that God gave on Mount Sinai, go through the Sermon on the Mount, you’ve got two pictures there of God giving the Word of God at a very deep sin-convicting level, and use those pictures to convey the fact that God takes the sin all the way back to the mental attitude.  Let me show you what happens when you don’t do this. 

 

Let’s pretend we’ve been sloppy at point 2 and we didn’t know this, we’re just talking to this person and they use the word sin and we kind of go on, well I guess they’ve got the point and we start rolling but unknown to us they didn’t get the point.  What they got from what we said was that sin was the bad things that people disapprove of.  They never got the point that it was mental attitude in its origin.  And so therefore they think in those acts.  We go, we start talking about redemption.  Now if they’ve got the idea that these are just bad things that you do and that’s their concept of sin, now when you get to the third point you’re going to be hurting because now when you start talking about salvation they’re going to think of Christ touching their life, maybe at this point, this point and over here.  There’ll be vast areas of their soul for which the redemption of Christ on the cross had no significance whatsoever because there’s no sin there, by their definition of sin.  They only think of maybe four things in their lives that they might have done that they’re convicted about as (quote) “sin.”  Oh, Christ will cover that, and He’ll cover that, and now what an anemic redemption you’ve got. 

 

What an emaciated version of the gospel and then this person is supposedly converted and signs a card or joins the church and gets baptized and nothing ever happens, and you wonder what’s going on with this person, I thought he was supposed to be indwelt by the Holy Spirit but I don’t see any change, I don’t see any interest in the Word, he just kind of rocks along like he always did. What’s the matter?  What happened?  Because they were all fouled up at step two.  They never got a deep enough concept of sin to be propelled into despair to the third point.  And that’s why sometimes if it will take you five weeks to cover point one, take five weeks to cover point one; don’t buy this American businessman approach to the gospel that says you can just rip it off in a quick three.  Now sometimes under unusual conditions you can.  I’m not denying that, but I’m saying the longer we live in the 20th century the more impossible, the more statistically improbable that becomes.  More and more the people you talk to will have no idea what you’re talking about so it requires great patience on your part, you’ve got to kind of bite your tongue and just hold off getting into those other steps until you work this one over real good.  And then when you begin to sense they’re getting kind of antsy about well, I’m beginning to see what the big picture is now, now what’s this about redemption.  Then you kind of intuitive, now’s the time to go into the third step and then you begin to discuss the judgment of Jesus Christ on the cross.

 

That’s the time you bring the cross in.  And for pictures on redemption you can use your divine viewpoint framework, take some pieces out of it, the thread narrative, the Exodus narrative, if you want to get across what the cross means go to the Exodus, that’s a good way of doing it.  Do you know why?  Because what does the cross mean to the average Joe.  You can get yourself a cross and wear it around, that’s a good piece of jewelry; the cross doesn’t mean anything, the cross is pretty, people wear it to decorate their bodies with.  But you know, the first century people didn’t decorate their bodies with a cross.  The cross was an awful thing in the first century, it was a tool of execution by capital punishment by the government.  You didn’t wear it around your neck for beauty.  So because the cross has gotten zapped out by our fogging the issue and making it pretty, therefore we’ve got to back up and say whoa, before I get dealing with the cross I’d better go back and make sure they really know what I’m talking about; I mean a bloody gory sacrifice where blood was spilt, where a life was given.  And that had to be, there can’t be any of this “maybe it could have been another way,” where God kind of accommodated Himself to the Jewish tradition at that point in history, He couldn’t do it any other way, but if Christ had come in 1976 he’d have gone to Freud’s couch or something and that would have been the way. There can’t be any thought like that, it has to be the though that there’s only one way of salvation ever and that is by the loss of a life for a life.  There has got to be that point. 

 

Do you see now why in fundamental circles people like myself keep hitting this concept of justice, eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, and people think oh, you’re an Neanderthal politically, what’s wrong with you people.  Why are you so gory about things; there’s a reason, well thought out theological philosophic reason that we do that; we calculatingly do that because it is to challenge the concept of justice in society.  Christ did not come on the cross to rehabilitate; Christ came on the cross under the eye for an eye principle, life for a life principle.  And if that’s not  your idea of justice I do not know how you ever hope to understand the cross.  So when we lash out with a crude form of (quote) primitive Neanderthal justice it is a deliberate attempt to sow the seed to understand the cross of Christ. See, there are reasons for doing things and that’s the reason; it’s not just doing whatever comes conveniently.

 

And then the fourth step that we have to do; we have to point out to them that no one was ever saved apart from exercise of faith; no one, you can use your illustration of Noah and the ark and use the illustration of the Exodus event, people had to put blood on the door and so on; use anything you want but show them what faith is, that faith isn’t saying I believe, I believe, I believe, I believe in a closet; that’s not biblical faith.  Faith is acting in response to what you know is true and you have that confidence that God is pleased for this matter, that God is pleased with you when you respond to that and if the person has saving faith the saving faith will show itself.  Now you have to be cautious about this; later on it may be that that person can say I was sitting in the pew of Lubbock Bible Church and I trusted in Christ; that may be but if you’re outside of that persons soul you may be sitting two feet, four feet down the pew from them, you won’t be able to tell they’ve believed until you begin to see fruits of the saving faith in their life, such as an attraction to the Word of God, such as an interest, when they are knowledgeable, in being baptized, such as an interest in things of applying the Word of God in various areas of their life.  Those interests should develop if there is indeed saving faith present.  And it takes time to develop that so you be very cautious about saying somebody trusted in Christ last night; maybe they did and later on that may be confirmed and later on they may be able to give a testimony and say yes, one Sunday night, I distinctly remember it, I trusted in Jesus Christ and that made a complete change right there.  Yes, that may be possible but don’t you push them into that kind of a testimony.  Don’t you cramp their style and force them into some sort of a mold like that; you let the Holy Spirit work it out with them and He has a lot more experience than we do so that’s the way to handle it.

 

That’s the gospel and that’s what Christ is talking about in verse 20, that people who are going to believe will believe when they understand your verbal message and they aren’t going to believe if they don’t understand it.  And people don’t understand what Jesus means; oh trust in Jesus! What’s that?  A new brand of aspirin?  What is Jesus, what does that mean?  I head that phrase many times as a non-Christian, it didn’t impress me in the least.  It was on billboards, Jesus saves.  Jesus saves what?  And I wasn’t being facetious, I really did not know what that meant, Jesus saves; I had no idea it had any pertinence to me; none whatsoever.  It was just words; it wasn’t until I had time to think it through, then all of a sudden it clicked but if somebody had come up and said “Jesus saves,” oh yeah, that’s nice to know.  So let’s go on with this prayer.

 

John 17:21, “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me.” Notice in verse 21, we’ll cover these three things in a moment but look at the big picture.  In verse 21 He’s praying to the Father; who’s praying to the Father?  The Son is praying to the Father.  The Son is praying to the Father three things; “that they may be one, as You, Father, art in Me and I in thee,” “that they may be one is us,” the third point, as a result of all that, “that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me.”  Three things.

 

John 17:22-23 repeat the same three things, this time the Son is not asking the Father for it, this time the Son is just talking to the Father and telling Him I’m going to do it.  See, here’s the Trinity doctrine operating.  In verse 21 you’ve got the Son asking the first member of the Trinity to do these three things but in verses 22-23 you’ve got the Second Person of the Trinity doing the three things.  Notice, “And the glory which Thou gave Me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one: [23] I in them, and Thou in me, that they may be made mature [perfect] in one; and that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me, and hast loved them, as Thou hast loved Me.”  So there are two parts here; one, a petition that the Father do these three things and then in verse 22 a statement that He is doing.  Now here’s one of those verses you’d better hang on and prepare yourself for shock some day because if you haven’t had the delightful experience of messing around with somebody who’s all gooed up with this oriental stuff they’ll this verse; oh but yes, why that’s what Buddha taught, that we may be all one.   

 

I was sitting in Dallas airport and looked down and somebody dropped a magazine and went on, Back to Godhead, the magazine of the Hare Krishna movement.  And it’s a rip off on American students who don’t know any better.  Anybody who knows history knows the problem here.  But watch the smooth artistry and the rip off of this thing.  It has a cover celebrating the bicentennial, some character singing in front of the flag, 1976, declaring our dependence upon God.  It sounds good, all American, something about God we trust somewhere, and in a bicentennial year that’s kind of good to talk about; only one problem.  The word “God” in this magazine means a totally different thing than what you think it means; they shift the rules on you; you came out to play baseball, they’re playing football with you.  And you don’t know it and there you are with your bat trying to hit a football.  So you open the page and you see what they say.  First of all you note that this comes from “The International Society for Krishna Consciousness, the eternal science of loving service to god.  The society was founded in 1966 by his divine grace” and it goes on with some unpronounceable Hindu name, “a pure devotee of god, representing an unbroken chain of spiritual masses originating with lord Krishna himself.” And then it describes the following principles.  Now remember that this whole religious movement was loving service to God. 

 

Now listen to their creed, we won’t go through all of it but I want you to see the language and warning bells should go on if you know doctrine; warning bells because this stuff is going to be more and more prevalent, it’s just leaking into this area but it’s been in other parts of the country for years and you’ve got to not be deceived by this.  Here’s their second point in their platform.  “We are not bodies but eternal spirit souls, part and parcel with god himself.”  Ah, now that’s a little different than what we’re talking about in Scripture; that’s pantheism, that’s the belief that the whole universe is God.  Remember what I said, back I when I said when you explain the gospel, what did I say about the first thing you wanted to mention, 95% of your time? Be careful that G-o-d is used to refer to the Creator of all things.  It’s not this thing that we’re part and parcels of God.  Now you can see if some kid gets hold of this and doesn’t know any better, ah, part and parcels of God, well, gee, in John 17 see what it says, “that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee.”  Now you see what they could do with verse 21; there’s your amoeba thing, it just slurps it up.  And it completely absorbs it and you just sit there stunned that anybody possibly could take that interpretation of verse 21.  It’s very easy to take that interpretation of verse 21 and very difficult…very difficult to correct somebody that’s in this thing because you see, John 17 comes some 2000 years after Moses coined Genesis and therefore John 17 presupposes that you understand Genesis, the creation story, you understand the Exodus, you understand the fall, all of that’s presupposed.  John 17:21 was addressed to monotheistic Jews, not some unpronounceable character from India.  See why God had to have a divine viewpoint counter culture for 14 centuries in the Old Testament?  To purge away all this pagan pantheism. 

 

Here’s some more that goes on.  And by the way, this is another little dishonest deal, what they’ve done, they’ve phrased this creed so it sounds very Christian, and a person who’s studied oriental religions knows that this is almost overt deception.  Here’s a statement: “Krishna is the eternal, all-knowing, omnipresent, all powerful, all attractive personality of godhead.”  Now that’s subterfuge, because ultimately in pantheism you do not have a personal God.  But what they’ve done here is they’ve used the word that looks like that’s what they’ve said but that’s not what they said.  Let me read it again: “Krishna is the eternal, all-knowing, omnipresent, all powerful, all attractive personality of godhead.”  In other words, he’s kind of a mask that pops off the computer down the last row of lights.  The computer itself isn’t a personal God, it’s just there, but it has a mask it wears down to one side and that’s where Krishna, Krishna is the personal oozing out of the computer but the computer itself isn’t a person.  Now there’s all the distinction in the world between that kind of a concept of God and the biblical concept of God and if a person isn’t clear on that, forget the cross.  Forget it because they’re never even going to get to that point.  Don’t even bother to invite them to believe in Jesus because you’ve got a bucket of worms here that you’ve got to clear out with this problem of they don’t know God, and if it takes you five years to do it you’d better take five years to do.  Well, I’ve got another principle here, with sin, and we want to get on with redemption, and I want to sign the card; so you intimidate and bully and put social pressure on this guy and he cranks something out, hands you the card and it’s all over… conversion, send it in to headquarters. 

 

Now we’re not for that kind of evangelism and that’s what’s going on, I know because I’ve talked with people who’ve been the route and know darned well what’s going on.   Note what they say here; “the absolute truth is contained in all the great Scriptures of the world.”  I know the force this had,  the reason I’m kind of hostile t this kind of thing is because before I became a Christian I was into this kind of operation, not this particular group but the same idea.  See, it’s very appealing, “the absolute truth is contained in all the great Scriptures of the world,” think of that, we could do away with all the religious controversy, you wouldn’t have to decide whether you’re going to be a Jew, Christian, Buddhist, Confucianist, or something else because after all, they’re all saying the same thing so why not come to this club and we can all hold hands.  After having gone through this creed we come to this final admonition. Remember I said this movement was dedicated to the service of God; here’s the service of God, here’s how they define service for God.  “The recommended means for achieving the mature stage of love of God in this stage of [not sure of word, sounds like: pal ee] or quarrel is to chant the holy names of the Lord.  The easiest method for most people is to chant the Hare Krishna mantra; Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare, Hare, Hare, Raman, Raman, Howie Raman, Ramah, Raman, Raman, Hare, Hare, Hare.  The special design of the Hare Krishna chant makes it easy to repeat and pleasant to hear; spoken or sung by yourself or in a group, Hare Krishna invariably produces a joyful state of spiritual awareness.”

 

The pathetic thing is that people are buying this and do you know the strange analogies with certain things that go on in Christian groups.  Is there really any difference to Hare Krishna, Raman, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and what goes on in many Christian groups?  Is there any real difference.  All you’ve done is substitute Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus for Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, haven’t you?  Don’t kid yourself, Christians are doing the same thing.  Then they come out with this statement, again thinking in terms of what they think of God.  “God has an unlimited variety of names, some of them Jehovah, Adonai, Buddha and Allah are familiar to us while the names of Krishna and Raman may be less so.  However, whatever name of God we may accept, all Scriptures enjoin us to Chance.”  Then it goes on.  But this is the kind of stuff. 

 

This is NOT what Jesus is talking about in John 17.  Let’s go back to what Jesus said and look at it in biblical terms.  Those of you who don’t appreciate this I covet that you have the experience of running into a Hare Krishna some place and then I think you’ll understand what a difficult thing it really is, very difficult, you feel totally hopeless the first time, just like hitting a cement wall, except it’s really not, it’s more like going through cotton candy; you think you’ve got something there and you go grab it and what happens?  That’s exactly the way you feel with this kind of thing; you’re all set up to handle this person, you’ve got it all pegged out and there’s nothing there, you just kind of go through it like a shadow and that’s the frustration you have and you know after it’s all over you haven’t touched it.  At least when you hit a wall you know you’ve touched something.  Maybe you caved in your head but at least you knocked a few grains of sand loose from the concrete.  But when you go through this experience you never have the assurance that you did anything worthwhile when it’s all over.


Now Jesus in John 17:21 is not talking about they’re all one with God and everybody else.  We’re not part and parcels of the great God, the personality of the Godhead.  That’s not the point at all.  In verse 21, “that they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee,” if you know the doctrine of the Trinity you know that the Father and the Son are distinct persons.  And therefore this is not talking about some sort of mitosis in reverse, two cells kind of go oop together, that’s not what it’s talking about. What it’s talking about is moral conformity.  Throughout the Gospel of John how has Jesus repeatedly said that the Father is in Him?  What has Jesus said?  I do the Father’s words and I do the Father’s works; that’s why the Father is in Me, says Jesus.  So in John’s terms in Jewish monotheistic terms, not in Indian terms, this oneness is a moral oneness and that’s what he’s praying for that we would line up our sights on God’s sights and we would agree to the thing that Jesus had to agree to in a few minutes after He finished praying this prayer, “not My will, Father, but Thine be done.”  It’s a moral submission, it’s a unity of the wills, not a unity of the existences. 

 

John 17:22, “And the glory which You gave Me I have given them,” notice that’s past; He’s already given the glory to us.  Now what’s that talking about?  Turn back to John 1:14. The word “glory” used in the three synoptic Gospels refers to spectacular things, the Mount of Transfiguration, all of a sudden it lights up, Peter is there, he sees the whole thing, wants to immediately start a real estate project to build a memorial to the thing.  That’s glory from the synoptic point of view.  John the Apostle, when he talks of glory he’s not talking about physical light at all. 

 

John 1:14, “The word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld His glory,” now he explains it, “the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth.”  So how does John define His glory here?  John talks about glory in the sense of Jesus Christ’s manifestation of grace and truth.  That is impossible apart from the indwelling Holy Spirit working in your life.  We, all of us, seesaw back and forth, we get so oozy on grace that we compromise a principle; we get so hardnosed on a principle we forget that people are fallen, they’re going to come short of that principle, so you’ve got to make allowances.  So we’re always dropping back and forth; now what John is saying, the glory that Christ had was the perfect balance of the two.  He had grace and He knew that we were fallen creatures and therefore He didn’t damn us because we came 100th of an inch too short of His goal but on the other hand, Jesus never compromised His principles; He carried the two, that was Jesus’ glory.  That was what John’s talking about, the moral character of God shown in His life; that, a moral glory, not a physical glory.

 

All right now, in John 17 then, “the glory” which the Father gave Christ that He in turn passed on to us is the high calling to reproduce His balance of grace and truth in our life.  The glory that He has given us is an obligation.  It’s like you have a very, very, say a delicate operation needed.  Suppose you’ve been diagnosed with having cancer of the brain, horrible kind of cancer and the tumor entwines itself around the various sensitive parts of the brain and there’s only one neuro­surgeon in the city that’s capable of operating and saving you and cutting this thing out from your brain; only one guy knows how to do this.  And so you go and put yourself under his practice and under his disposition.  You could say that at that point you’ve given him a glory; that’s the way John’s thinking of it.  In other words, you’ve given him a calling, a most difficult job on earth to do, but the very fact that you went to that doctor and not another doctor shows you that you know and you have trust that he can do it. 

 

Now that’s all that’s involved in what Jesus says here when he says “I have given them the glory that You gave Me.”  This is why this prayer is so awesome, if you think about it.  That means that Jesus Christ looks down at you, at me, and He says I assign them to reproduce My life in their lives; My balance of grace and truth, I want that glory in their life.  Here we are down here on the receiving end, what was that again Lord, You wanted Your glory in us; that’s right; are You sure; that’s right, how’s that going to happen?  Well, this is where the high calling of the Christian is impossible apart from this enabling grace that is given to us moment by moment.  So this is a tremendously awesome challenge that the same glory that the Father gave to His own Son who was sinless, Christ just kind of takes up the mantle as though we were a coat, picks it up off His shoulders and drops it on us, and says I’ve given them the glory. 

 

And then He goes on to say, verse 23, “I in them, and Thou in Me,” there’s the moral unity, there’s the perfect sanctification, “that they may become maturely sanctified,” that’s the point, “that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me, and hast loved them, as Thou hast loved Me.”  Now in verse 21 and 23 each of those sets of three petitions ends in the world; the world believing.  Notice it does not say that the entire world becomes Christian.  All it says is that the world is aware of revelation occurring; that’s all that’s meant there. See, all the world is not going to believe because in verse 20 He prays only for those who believe, a limited number of people are going to believe in history.  Well, this is talking about all people, “the world” in verse 21 and 23, but He’s not saying that that world is going to believe in the sense they’re going to be saved.  It’s not like in verse 20, they’re going to believe on Me.  That’s not the point.  The world is going to be aware that salvation is occurring, that redemption is occurring. Said another way: when Jesus Christ comes back, suppose He came back tonight and all the unbelievers of the world were gathered before His throne and Christ said I am going to judge you on the basis of your response to the revelation that has been occurring over the last 1970 years.  What this is saying is that where the Christians have been very powerful there’s going to be no non-Christian that’s going to say oh well, huh, what?  They’re going to be aware of this and they’re going to be convicted that they knew of it and turned their back on it.  That’s what He is talking about; He is not talking about worldwide conversion here. 

 

John 17:24, “Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me,” and this is another petition that is mind-boggling, not only for its eternal implications but for its immediate implications.  When we begin with John 18:1 it’s quick, He’s going to be arrested, He’s going to be crucified, this prayer is the last kind of slow passage we’ve got.  “Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am; that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me: for Thou loved Me before the foundation of the world.”  Now it’s true that in verse 24 He is looking forward into eternity and He’s praying that we might be forever with Him; we might be in heaven with Him and when He comes back to judge the earth we would come back to judge the earth with Him.  That’s true.  But there’s a little suspicious use of language here, one of John the Apostle’s little surprises that he sort of gives to us every once in a while, and the key to a little mind-blowing application of this is the last phrase, because “You have loved Me before the foundation of the world.”  Now that, of course, refers to the pre-creation…pre-creation relationship of the Trinity.  But if you look at that expression, if you’ll turn to 1 Peter 1 you’ll see that there was a reason that the Father loved Jesus in eternity. 

 

1 Peter 1:20, it wasn’t just love for the sake of love, it was something definitely in mind before the creation.  It’s talking about Jesus Christ [19] “as of a lamb without blemish and without spot,” he’s talking about His death on the cross for our sins, [20] “Who verily was foreknown [foreordained] before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.”  Now, what part about the Son is in focus in this passage?  Is it just His bare essence?  Not at all; what is in focus in this passage?  What particular thing about the Son is the Father zeroing in on?  The Son’s submission all the way to die on the cross; that’s what occupies the center of the Father’s love for His Son.  The Son is going to die inside history, so all in eternity before the universe was created the Father looked at His Son and knew, and loved the Son because the Son was going to die for everyone’s sins. 

 

Now let’s go back to the passage and see what this adds to it.  See, Jesus is talking about His glory, He wants us to see His glory and so definitely He’s praying that we be with Him in the ascent into heaven, that we be with Him so when we die we go to be with Him, but there’s a more immediate application.  We’re coming in just a few verses onto the crucifixion narrative.  And in verse 24 when He says, “Father, I will that they also, whom Thou hast given Me, be with Me where I am,” He is also talking, Father, let the believers be with Me and understand the cross; let them see the horror of the cross and let them at least know as much as they can about the cross.  That’s what in focus here, as well as, of course, the eternal accompaniment.  And the irony of this is that the disciples are sleeping while He’s praying and they’re not going to be with Him in that sense, but yet again they will be because He’s going to tell them later on what the cross is like.  This is why He winds up the prayer the way He does in verse 25-26. 

 

John 17:25, “O righteous Father, the world has not known Thee: but I have known Thee, and these have known that Thou hast sent Me. [26] And I have declared unto them Thy name,” past tense, “I have declared Thy name, and” future tense, “will declare Thy name.”  So He admits that there is revelation yet to come to these apostles and the revelation has to do with one subject, and that’s the conclusion of verse 26, and that ties it very firmly to the cross, “that the love wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”  In other words, John concludes this great chapter by emphasizing Christ’s love, emphasizing the Father’s love to Christ and therefore the Father who loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.  And so the prayer winds up, Father, let the believers understand, really understand the cross, not wear it… and it’s all right to wear it, don’t take your crosses off in jewelry, it’s not wrong but what I’m just saying is that that’s the trivial level. What He wants us as believers to do is meditate and understand His death.  That’s why in the family training we’re going to understand the death of Christ, what was it all about?  And He says He wants… it’s apparently so important that the last thing He prays for for the Church is that the Church would understand what happened on the cross.  So it’s a challenge to prepare ourselves for the end of John and this crucifixion detail because we’re going to have to study the end of that cross. 

 

Next week we will begin the lead up to His death.