[0:01] Well, we'll turn back then to the passage we read from, and I want to draw attention particularly to the verse marked 22, John 17, and verse 22.
[0:19] We read there Jesus' words, and the glory which you gave me I have given them, that they may be one just as we are one.
[0:38] Now, one of the things I want to say just before we get into this is that you may have noticed, or you may know it already, which is better, that the Saviour himself talks in this high priestly prayer.
[0:57] He talks as if things were already settled then, and that's because in his mind's eye they were settled, they would happen.
[1:09] A good example is that I have finished the work you gave me to do. That's the way back at the start of the passage, you see. And it occurs a few times, and it occurs here in our text, which is important to notice.
[1:32] He is speaking, viewing the ages ahead, and he's viewing these things in the context of it being settled in the counsel of God.
[1:49] And that's important to us, and that's important to us that we notice that, I think, because in the passage we're going to look at here, and the glory which you gave me I have given them, that they may be one just as we are one.
[2:06] So, as we notice, the question is, what is the glory given by Christ to his people?
[2:18] You already mentioned that it is regarded as his great high priestly prayer, and we think about that because it is evident that he's seeing things that will be accomplished both on the cross, because he was not only our high priest, he was our sacrifice to which he offered himself on Calvary.
[2:47] But what's interesting about this passage is that Jesus is not preoccupied with himself.
[2:58] He's not agitated over himself. He's thinking about his disciples. This is what his primary concern is, his disciples.
[3:11] He could have easily been occupied by the difficulties that he's confronting. But no, he's thinking about his disciples.
[3:24] You could say that the treachery of Judas was occupying his mind. He knew about the injustice of human courts, both religious, the Sanhedrin, and secular.
[3:40] A pilot. He knew these things. He, the judge, was being judged. He could have said, these things would occupy any mind and be troubling.
[3:56] But Jesus has it in mind to think about his own. And we find it here in verse 22.
[4:06] He's thinking about, and he's saying to his father, And the glory which you, father, gave me, I have given them, that they may be one in us, just as we are.
[4:20] Now here's another little point we might notice before we get into this a bit further. There's glory and glory. Glory is used in different ways in this very chapter.
[4:33] And we need to be careful. For example, it's used of Jesus anticipating when he will return as the incarnate Lord, as the one who took true human nature, sinless human nature, to himself forever.
[4:51] And he's anticipating going back and going into the glory which was veiled here on earth. To the glory which I had with you, father, before the world existed.
[5:07] So that's one way of using glory. And there are other ways of using it. So we need to pay attention to that as we move on. So let's ponder a little.
[5:17] Now, by the way, this is not intended to come over as exhaustive. It's intended to look at aspects. And I hope will benefit us.
[5:30] First of all, when we think about the glory he tells us, I have given to them. Notice that, I have given it to them. We need to clarify what he's not saying.
[5:46] The glory he's passing on and gave to them and gave to every true believer ever since is not as essential glory as the eternal sin.
[5:59] That cannot be communicated to any rational creature. It can't be communicated to anything. It belongs to the triune God.
[6:11] Or if you prefer it, the tri-personal God. It belongs to him. It cannot be, I will not share it with anyone. Belongs to him.
[6:24] And the son is therefore not referring to this glory at all. And yet he's referring to glory. As long as we understand that it is to be a must of distinction, if you like.
[6:43] I can't give you that glory. That which makes God God cannot be communicated.
[6:55] Not even to the redeemed of the Lord. And yet he's saying, Father, the glory you gave me, I give them. So it's important for us initially to notice that this, this glory is not that which belongs to God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
[7:16] It's something else. Because that glory can never be given. We read in Paul's letter to Timothy, 1 Timothy 6, 13.
[7:31] Concerning Christ. He's thinking about the way he is as a divine son who became man.
[7:53] He can never give that. You remember in the letter to Hebrews, the very opening section in chapter 1. The Son of God is called the effulgence, the outshining of the Father's glory.
[8:08] My picture, although we're not going to be sin worshippers, is the sin gives us a picture. What we see as the ball, what we see as the effulgence, what we see as the rays.
[8:29] If you manage it properly, it's a helpful illustration of God's tripersonalness.
[8:40] And the rays are as much part of the sun as the effulgence and as the core, if you like. So that glory that is essentially God's is not communicated.
[8:55] So, let's think secondly then about Christ's glory which is given. Father, the glory you gave me, and that's a clue.
[9:08] Father, the glory you gave to me I have given to them. It's good to remind ourselves that Jesus is talking about himself here.
[9:22] And he's talking about himself as the incarnate Lord, as man. And in coming into this world, he was given glory.
[9:37] Now bear with me. Don't jump to conclusions. He's coming, he's talking about himself as the mediator of the covenant, of the new covenant.
[9:48] We say the alone head of the body, his church. Now that glory he was given, that, if you like, equipment from the Father to do what he had to do as man in this world, was glory given to him.
[10:10] And the glory, Father, which you gave to me, I have given to them. Notice the words. Don't just take my word for it. And so, what we're saying here is that all the equipment he needed for his ministry on earth was glory given.
[10:33] Not, I'm not going to suggest, and that glory which you gave me, I have given to them, was equal.
[10:44] It's not like a sin. That equals that. No. But there was glory given nonetheless. Real, true glory. Imparted to the Lord's people.
[10:56] In other words, what the head has, that's Jesus. The body has too.
[11:08] Now the head has obviously more. There's more in the head than the body, we might say. So, what we're saying here is that this is real glory given.
[11:20] This is not the glory that's referred to a little further on in the passage. You see, verse 24. If you're looking at this carefully, you're saying, wait a minute.
[11:34] Father, I desire that they also whom you gave me may be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory. And you can say, that's what's been talked about.
[11:46] No. He is returning to the glory. I read that to you from the beginning. He's returning to the glory he had with his father before the worlds existed.
[12:02] That glory is referred to in verse 24. Not the glory given to us. What is important is we see clearly it's nothing to do with its essential glory.
[12:19] And yet it is through glory imparted, given to the Lord's people in all the ages. To you if you're a Christian. I remember once there was a preacher.
[12:33] He served his time in my home county of Sutherland. He was a Lewis man and he was giving a lecture to us students.
[12:43] And one student said, now, what about those who are not born again Christians? And he was a very short man and he said, are there any other kind of Christians?
[13:02] Except a person be born again. They can't experience the kingdom of heaven. That may set you thinking.
[13:16] And so, we're trying to, as it were, clear the ground and then just consider three aspects of the glory given. Nothing to do with his essential glory as eternal.
[13:28] He looks forward to the return to that when he ascends up on high. Perhaps I may interject here that a little glimpse of that was given to Peter, James and John on the Mount of Transfiguration.
[13:51] And perhaps it was given to the Apostle Paul. We're told the sun, it was brighter than the sun at noonday. Anyway, I'll throw that out.
[14:05] Leave you to think about it. What we want to do now is to remind ourselves that it is real glory.
[14:16] It is really given. It's given to his people. And I just want to look at three aspects of that glory. And this is important to us because it's not like a shining light.
[14:29] It's not like dazzling splendor. But it's real and practical and true. The first of these aspects is we have perfect acceptance with the Father.
[14:41] No one comes to the Father, said Jesus, except through me. And if you are in him today, you have perfect acceptance with the Father.
[14:59] That, my friends, is glorious. Isn't it? It's glorious. It's staggering. If you're interested in looking at the research that's going on in the universe, and we're privileged, whatever some professors of the subject may be in their philosophical view, we can see it with eyes that have been enlightened by Christ.
[15:27] We can look at the vastness of the universe. And we could say we are like, Scripture says like grasshoppers, we probably are like the wee end of one of these sewing pins, ladies, the little ball on the top.
[15:44] And yet, and yet, we have perfect acceptance with the great God of heaven, our heavenly Father. And we have it because we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous.
[16:02] Actually, the word advocate there is the same word as we get. It's paracletos. A helper. One who stands beside us.
[16:12] I like the one who stands beside us. It's not a lawyer. It's the one who stands beside us, and we are in him. Accepted.
[16:27] And then, we have him, of course, as our substitute, and he's there in heaven as our substitute. He doesn't need to be praying the Father for this and that for us.
[16:39] Our heavenly Father knows the things we have need of. He still wants us to pray, mind. But he is there, and he embodies finished work.
[16:54] Why do you think he kept the nail prints in his hands, in his resurrection glory? Why do you think he kept the mark on his side? Didn't he not show it to Thomas?
[17:07] And he cried out, my Lord and my God. But he's our great high priest.
[17:18] That's why we read the passage. Wonderful passage. Who cannot do anything other. Who cannot do anything other than sympathize with us in our weaknesses.
[17:31] And boy, we have them. And if you don't think you have them, you're in trouble. We have them, and yet we have him. My son David's not able to be here today because last week was the week that Lena passed from grace to glory, and he's been pretty upset.
[17:54] And he'd be too jimpy. But one of his favorites is what a friend we have in Jesus. And that's glory.
[18:11] To have such acceptance in heaven. The second part of this, second aspect, is we have free access to God.
[18:24] We don't need some super religious person regarded as very reverent or doing a priestly ministry or anything of the kind.
[18:37] We have access. We have direct access. We have a high priest. We don't need another priest. I remember once, and let's watch my time here.
[18:50] I remember once when Drum Chapel Three Church was on the go, there was a cluster of boys came to the door of the church.
[19:03] They had to be watched because they were naughty. Anyway, one of them came to me and he said, Mister, are you the priest? I'll not do the Glasgow.
[19:14] Mister, are you the priest? I said to him, no. But I'll tell you what, we have a great high priest whose name is Jesus.
[19:26] And he listened. And that's glory, you see. The glory, Father, which you gave me, I have given them. That which you equipped me with in its own part was to give to them.
[19:43] If you're like me, you're a little bit suspicious. Sorry if there's any business people, not meaning to offend you, but isn't it true they'll tell you you have free access to this or that.
[20:00] Glad to get a nod from you, Hannah there. They'll tell you it's a cinch. Oh, that's now a name for a firm, isn't it? They'll tell you it's a cinch.
[20:11] Just go this way and you'll have free access to this, that and the next thing. Ah, but you didn't take time to study the small print and you discovered it comes at a price.
[20:25] But the glory of what the Savior has given us is free access to God. In fact, in Ephesians 2.18, Paul tells us through him we have access to the Father.
[20:45] And the word prosagogi is an interesting word. It is, we're carried right into his presence. Isn't that wonderful? That we don't need to take out a card to show we have free access or go to this superior or that superior.
[21:06] We go directly to him. We have free access. In Jesus, we have also the right to be heard.
[21:18] In him, we have the right to be heard. And that is glory too. When we come to prayer and we pray to our Heavenly Father, it's good to remind ourselves we have the right to be heard.
[21:35] The right to be heard comes from him, the Lord Jesus. That's glory given. And lastly, the Spirit's ministry.
[21:49] That's indispensable. You remember Jesus quoted in the synagogue in Nazareth. He read, they asked him to come up to the Bema and read the scroll for the day.
[22:05] And he said, it was open, it was open actually, at the page where it read Isaiah 61, the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor and so on.
[22:25] And Jesus made it clear that the Spirit of the Lord God is indispensable in bringing us to Christ.
[22:40] Like John McSween, that was the preacher's name, just remembered it for the Lewis folk. That's why there's really no other, properly speaking, exactly speaking, there's no other Christian but that they're born again.
[23:00] The word, of course, anosa, you may know, is translated born from above. Born of God. And that's what we want if we're not there yet.
[23:15] I remember doing my utmost to keep away from it because I knew it was about my will and not his.
[23:28] But, you know, he can change that. He can show you the futility of going your own way and doing your own thing. That's what the Spirit does. He persuades us and he enables us, doesn't he?
[23:43] And, boy, we need persuading. But when he brings us, it's glorious. because Jesus promised that the Spirit would come in the Pentecostal outpouring and things would change dramatically, including the ministry of the Spirit, the Spirit's role in the life of the church.
[24:09] That's why you can account for why the sheepish disciples were bold as lions after the Pentecostal outpouring.
[24:23] That ministry takes us in, closes us with Christ, enables us to say, although I must walk by faith alone, I love thee, dearest Lord, unseen, but yet know.
[24:46] We know him. That's why we love him, if we're his. And the Spirit has brought us to that place. We love him, though we see him not, but we do know him.
[25:04] And by the Spirit we can exercise, and those of us who can say it, thank God, we can exercise faith, we can exercise perseverance, patience, which we need buckets of.
[25:20] It's the Spirit of God who gives us that. And it's the Spirit of God who enables us to become more and more like Jesus.
[25:31] Classic passage, surely, and we must leave it then, 2 Corinthians chapter 3 18, we are, we undergo a spiritual metamorphosis by the work of the Spirit from one degree of, what's the word, glory to another.
[25:57] You see that? From glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord. And that same Spirit will enable us to do what maybe hitherto we can't do, and that is to be bold in the Lord, in a day when, in our own country, certainly, Christianity is pretty much despised.
[26:24] Well, may the Lord bless to us the points we've tried to make from the passage we've looked at. Amen.