Shownotes
Discover the power of unity in the Church as Keith Cohl dives into Mark 9 and Acts 19, exploring the profound impact of love and discernment in faith.
About Springhouse
If you’re looking for a church in Smyrna, TN that is focused on Loving Big, Living Truth, and Healthy Family, we’d love to connect with you. We are home to a vibrant children’s ministry, powerful middle school and youth ministries, and incredible ministries for men and women of all ages. Our local and global outreaches include partnerships with missionaries in the US and abroad, Isaiah 117 House, local retirement communities, and more.
Additionally, we are home to Springhouse Theatre, an award-winning theatre in the Nashville area. Through the theatre, we serve both the greater Nashville theatre community, and thousands of patrons each year, and we are expanding our vision to impact the culture through the arts into additional mediums and through an expanding network of relationships.
We would love it if you would consider joining us in person for one of our Sunday gatherings.
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Gathering Times
- Sundays, 9:00 AM
- Sundays, 10:30 AM
Contact Info
Springhouse Church
14119 Old Nashville Highway
Smyrna TN 37167
Transcripts
>> Hey, can everybody hear me now?
Speaker:Good.
Speaker:Well, here we are under a tornado watch, and we're sitting in church.
Speaker:Great place to be.
Speaker:Thank you all for coming out.
Speaker:I know it's Memorial Day weekend, and a lot of people have plans.
Speaker:I'm grateful that you're here.
Speaker:Let me advance this.
Speaker:Today we're going to be discussing John chapter 17 verses 22 through 26.
Speaker:This is the ending, if you will, of Jesus' high priestly prayer.
Speaker:He's been praying for his disciples, praying for them for unity, praying for them for protection,
Speaker:praying that they would be one with him as he is one with the Father.
Speaker:We're going to touch a little bit on that today.
Speaker:Let's go ahead and read this.
Speaker:The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are
Speaker:one.
Speaker:I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one so that the world may know that
Speaker:you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.
Speaker:Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am to
Speaker:see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the
Speaker:world.
Speaker:O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know
Speaker:that you have sent me.
Speaker:I have made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known that the love
Speaker:with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.
Speaker:Father, I just ask right now that you would open up your word, Lord, that you would--Lord,
Speaker:if the words that I speak today are mine, all they're going to do is leave my mouth,
Speaker:reverberate off the walls, and die.
Speaker:They don't produce life.
Speaker:Father, I just ask that the Holy Spirit would speak through me today so that those words
Speaker:may have life.
Speaker:I just ask that you would be with us today and give me clarity of thought in Jesus' name.
Speaker:Amen.
Speaker:Okay, just for a brief little bit of history, this whole discourse basically was taking
Speaker:place between the site of the Last Supper and the Mount of Olives.
Speaker:The Last Supper took place somewhere in here in Jerusalem.
Speaker:This is Herod Antipas' palace.
Speaker:The house of Caiaphas, the high priest, is up here.
Speaker:So they walked down and out the gate over here and walked down across the Kidron Valley.
Speaker:So here's the upper room.
Speaker:They walked through the lower city or the cheap seats, walked out up the Kidron Valley.
Speaker:Here's the Kidron Valley here, and this is the Hinnom Valley.
Speaker:How many of you have heard the phrase Hinnom or Gehenim?
Speaker:Okay, in the Bible, there are two words that are translated hell.
Speaker:One is Gehenim, and the other is Hadas in Greek or Sheol, as we would pronounce it in
Speaker:English.
Speaker:We'll get more about what Sheol is.
Speaker:But Gehenim is what Jesus gave as his example of the lake of fire.
Speaker:The Jews used to sacrifice to foreign gods in this valley.
Speaker:And so one of the kings, and for right now his name escapes me.
Speaker:I didn't have this on my notes.
Speaker:This is a freebie.
Speaker:One of the kings, who was righteous, destroyed everything in that valley, and Jerusalem used
Speaker:to use it to burn their garbage.
Speaker:The fires were burning there day and night.
Speaker:That's the Hinnom Valley, Ben Hinnom, son of Hinnom.
Speaker:But this is the Kidron Valley, runs this way on the east side of Jerusalem.
Speaker:So they walked out, walked up here, and walked up to the Garden of Gethsemane.
Speaker:Having walked down from the Garden of Gethsemane and across the Kidron Valley and up into Jerusalem,
Speaker:those guys were horses.
Speaker:That is not an easy walk, especially the older you get.
Speaker:All right, let's go ahead and get into the scriptures.
Speaker:The first phrase here, "May be one, even as we are one."
Speaker:Albert Barnes says, "Not in nature or in the mode of existence, for this was not the subject
Speaker:of discourse and would be impossible."
Speaker:What he means by that is, Jesus is not saying, "Father, make them gods."
Speaker:He's saying something else.
Speaker:He's saying, "But in feeling, in principle, in purpose."
Speaker:Okay?
Speaker:Giving evidence as the Father and the Son has always done the same great aim and plan,
Speaker:not pursuing different interests or counteracting each other's purposes or forming parties.
Speaker:More on that in a minute.
Speaker:But seeking the same ends by the same means.
Speaker:This is a union between the Father and the Son.
Speaker:Always in the creation, preservation, and redemption of the world, the Father and the
Speaker:Son have sought the same object, and this is to be the model on which Christians should
Speaker:act.
Speaker:Last week, Brittany spoke about unity, and I want to expand just a little bit on that
Speaker:because the unity, our unity as Christians extends past these walls.
Speaker:We had a beautiful example.
Speaker:I thought it was great.
Speaker:Brittany talked about unity.
Speaker:I walked into the next room, and Father Cash gave the sermon, and I was so blessed by what
Speaker:the man had to say.
Speaker:You see, we have to get out of our denominational boundaries.
Speaker:We can't be trapped by our disagreements.
Speaker:We have to look to see what our agreements are.
Speaker:There's this quote by Chuck Smith that says, "I see the purpose of denominations.
Speaker:I have no problem with that.
Speaker:The only problem I have is when people get denominational, when they cannot see the whole
Speaker:church and the whole body of Christ, but they see their own little segment only and exclude
Speaker:the rest, that's contrary to the prayer of Christ."
Speaker:Okay?
Speaker:Let me give you a story.
Speaker:This is something that happened to me.
Speaker:It's a true story.
Speaker:My wife and I were at a Plymouth Brethren Church in California, and we had been there
Speaker:for many years, and we got an opportunity to be part of the worship team at a Baptist
Speaker:church.
Speaker:And we felt like the Lord was telling us, "Go ahead and go."
Speaker:So we did.
Speaker:I told the elders that we were leaving.
Speaker:Plymouth Brethren don't have a pastor.
Speaker:All they have is eldership.
Speaker:They don't believe in having one person paid over the top of everything.
Speaker:So we leave, and the very next Saturday, I'm at work.
Speaker:I used to work for a pig's graft and extortion, Pacific Gas and Electric.
Speaker:I used to work for them, and I was a system operator.
Speaker:I managed the distribution grid for Silicon Valley.
Speaker:And I was on shift on Saturday, and the gate buzzed.
Speaker:I pressed the buttons, asked, "Who is it?"
Speaker:And it was two of the elders from our church, from our previous church, from Hillview Bible
Speaker:Chapel.
Speaker:And so I invited them in.
Speaker:I knew who they were.
Speaker:I mean, they were friends of mine.
Speaker:One of them, I had worked with him on several projects, recording projects.
Speaker:And they came in, and they were asking me about why I was leaving and all these things.
Speaker:And then one of them, who I, up to this point, I had really respected, made this statement.
Speaker:He says, "Now, your girls are probably, I have three daughters, your girls are probably
Speaker:going to meet their husbands in church.
Speaker:Do you want them to marry Baptists?"
Speaker:Yeah, it took my breath away.
Speaker:We need to keep the main thing, the main thing.
Speaker:There's a lot of things that we could argue with our fellow brothers and sisters and the
Speaker:Lord.
Speaker:But the central theme of Christianity is this, "For by grace you've been saved through faith,
Speaker:not of yourselves.
Speaker:It's a gift of God, not of works, lest none should boast."
Speaker:Everything is central around what Christ did on the cross.
Speaker:For centuries, men and women who are way smarter than me, way, way smarter than me, have argued
Speaker:both sides of many of the issues that we hold as being a stumbling block between us and
Speaker:our other faiths.
Speaker:Baptism by sprinkling, baptism by immersion, many, many others.
Speaker:These people have argued them for years using the scriptures alone as their basis, and they
Speaker:haven't been able to come to an agreement.
Speaker:We need to keep the main thing, the main thing.
Speaker:We need to be acting as Christ would have us, have us act.
Speaker:The word of God by ruthless people can be manipulated.
Speaker:I can make it say just about anything I want to say.
Speaker:In Genesis it says, "Cain slew Abel."
Speaker:Jesus in the gospel says, "Go and do likewise."
Speaker:Now do those two things have anything at all in common?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:But I'm going to say this, unless you know the word of God, unless you have studied it,
Speaker:I don't just mean a cursory reading, you need to get into the word of God.
Speaker:You need to get under the hood of the Bible and let the Holy Spirit teach you.
Speaker:Unless you know those things, you can be taken.
Speaker:You can be taken by slick talking people.
Speaker:If anything, anyone says from here and there, anywhere out there, brings up a check in your
Speaker:heart, you're doing yourself a terrible disservice if you're not checking the book.
Speaker:You have to check the book.
Speaker:You have to know what it says.
Speaker:In Mark chapter 9 verses 38 through 40, John said to him, "Teacher, we saw someone casting
Speaker:out demons in your name and we tried to stop him because he was not following us."
Speaker:Sounds like a different denomination maybe.
Speaker:But Jesus said, "Do not stop him for no one who does a mighty work in my name will
Speaker:be able soon afterward to speak evil of me for the one who is not against us is for us."
Speaker:And this thing is just making me crazy.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:These people, whoever they were, the Bible really doesn't say who they were, but they
Speaker:would have to know who Jesus was and they had to have placed their faith in Jesus to
Speaker:be able to cast out demons.
Speaker:In Acts chapter 19, we're all familiar with the story of the seven sons of Sheba.
Speaker:And God was doing extraordinary miracles through the hands of Paul so that even handkerchiefs
Speaker:or aprons that had touched his skin were carried away to the sick and their diseases left them
Speaker:and the evil spirits came out of them.
Speaker:And some of the itinerate Jewish exorcists undertook to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus
Speaker:over those who had evil spirits saying, "I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims."
Speaker:Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this, "But the evil spirit answered
Speaker:them Jesus I know and Paul I recognize but who are you?"
Speaker:And as the story goes, we all know the spirit beat all seven of them to a pulp.
Speaker:So these people were following Jesus.
Speaker:They were doing what Jesus wanted, following Jesus' mission, following what Jesus was doing
Speaker:and were given power to do what they were doing by Jesus.
Speaker:But because they didn't walk with us, they didn't do what we do the way we do it.
Speaker:Uh oh, there's a problem.
Speaker:So what are the characteristics of believers as a whole?
Speaker:What's supposed to be our modus operandi?
Speaker:What do people, what are we supposed to do?
Speaker:What does the word say about it?
Speaker:In John 13 five says, "This is how everyone will recognize you are my disciples when they
Speaker:see the love you have for each other."
Speaker:That love crosses denominational boundaries.
Speaker:You see the church as the Bible refers to it is not Springhouse.
Speaker:There's a church universal or to use the proper term the church Catholic.
Speaker:Now I'm not saying the Roman Catholic Church.
Speaker:Catholic means universal.
Speaker:All of us, all who share in that main thing that salvation is by grace through faith through
Speaker:the finished work of Christ on the cross.
Speaker:All these other things are just other things.
Speaker:Galatians 6 two, "Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ."
Speaker:We're supposed to be bearing each other's burdens, not only among our own people here,
Speaker:which is a great thing.
Speaker:But if you have a neighbor who's a Presbyterian and they're going through some struggles,
Speaker:Galatians 6 two applies to that situation.
Speaker:James 2 15 and 16, "If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food
Speaker:and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, be warm to be filled without giving them the
Speaker:things needed for the body,' what good is that?"
Speaker:That's just a sin.
Speaker:That's saying to do it.
Speaker:If you do this unto these, the least of my brethren, you have done it unto me.
Speaker:So when we refuse to help, when we have the means and we have the prompting of the Holy
Speaker:Spirit, it's sin.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:John 17 23a.
Speaker:Now I've split verse 23 into a couple sections for a reason.
Speaker:I'll get there in just a second.
Speaker:"I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one so that the world may know that
Speaker:you sent me."
Speaker:I in them.
Speaker:Christ is in his saints, not as he is in all the world being the omnipresent God, or as
Speaker:he is in every man communicating the light of nature as creator, or as he is in the human
Speaker:nature which is united to his divine person or circumscriptively to the exclusion of him
Speaker:elsewhere.
Speaker:For he is in heaven, his blood is within the veil and his righteousness without us, outside
Speaker:of us."
Speaker:He's not saying in exclusion of us, it's outside of us.
Speaker:His righteousness exists outside of us.
Speaker:But he is in them in a gracious manner in regeneration.
Speaker:We get saved.
Speaker:When he is revealed to them, formed in them, enters into them, takes possession of them,
Speaker:communicates his grace, grants fellowship with himself and dwells in them, not only
Speaker:by his spirit and grace, but in person as the head of the members, as the master of
Speaker:the house and the king of them, which is an instance of condescending grace and is peculiar
Speaker:to God's elect.
Speaker:This in them, this Christ living in us and revealing himself to us and molding us, it's
Speaker:peculiar to believers.
Speaker:Non-believers are not indwelt by Christ.
Speaker:Hence all their holiness and fullness, fruitfulness, nor shall they ever perish.
Speaker:This is amazing.
Speaker:Nor shall they ever perish.
Speaker:Their bodies shall rise from the dead and being reunited to their souls, Christ will
Speaker:be in them in a glorious manner to all eternity.
Speaker:That's an amazing thing.
Speaker:And I in them and you in me that they may become perfectly one so that the world may
Speaker:know that you sent me.
Speaker:When you think about the early church, I'm talking right after the day of Pentecost and
Speaker:people were coming to the church by the thousands.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:Albeit they were risking their jobs, their families, their very lives because they could
Speaker:have been imprisoned and killed.
Speaker:There was a great persecution that happened, but yet they were coming in droves like a
Speaker:moth is drawn to a flame.
Speaker:I'm going to ask you guys a question.
Speaker:Why do you think that was?
Speaker:Anybody?
Speaker:Why do you think they were so drawn to the Christian message?
Speaker:Hmm?
Speaker:Unity.
Speaker:The unity of the brethren.
Speaker:They were drawn to this because they sensed reality.
Speaker:Remember what it says about Jesus.
Speaker:No one speaks as this man or this man speaks as authority, not as the scribes and Pharisees.
Speaker:There was truth to the message, universal truth, and they saw how it was affecting those
Speaker:who had come to believe that Jesus was the Messiah.
Speaker:Because remember, all the early converts for about the first 20 years were all Jews.
Speaker:Now, they didn't convert to what we call Christianity because what we call Christianity didn't exist.
Speaker:What they did was they acknowledged that Jesus or Yeshua was the Messiah.
Speaker:He was the fulfillment of Jewish prophecy and they welcomed him and they accepted him,
Speaker:but they remained Jewish.
Speaker:They still went to the temple.
Speaker:They still did a bunch of things.
Speaker:But now, of course, the sacrificial system, as we know, was no longer valid from the time
Speaker:of Christ.
Speaker:There's a tradition that states that during Yom Kippur, when they would kill the lamb
Speaker:or the goat, they would send one goat out and they would tie a scarlet cord around his
Speaker:horns and they would cut part of that cord off and tie it to the door of the temple.
Speaker:And when the goat was killed, tradition has it that that scarlet cord would turn white
Speaker:to indicate that the sins were forgiven.
Speaker:That stopped after Christ's crucifixion.
Speaker:The cord never changed color again.
Speaker:This is a Jewish tradition.
Speaker:Make it for what it's worth.
Speaker:People know that what Jesus has to say is true.
Speaker:We're supposed to be salt and light to the world.
Speaker:We're supposed to look different.
Speaker:And sometimes that difference is going to cause persecution.
Speaker:But we're still, we're supposed to do this.
Speaker:This is what Christ calls for.
Speaker:We're not to conform to the world or the way the world does things.
Speaker:At the risk of stepping on, I don't care, I'll step on toes.
Speaker:Listening to the same movies they watch, listening to the same music they listen to.
Speaker:If the music, with music, I don't like to refer to music as sacred and secular.
Speaker:I refer to music as good and bad because there are songs that are supposed, Christians that
Speaker:actually had, Christian songs that had bad theology in them.
Speaker:That differs from what the word says.
Speaker:So once again, you have to be discerning, but songs that have profanity in them, speak
Speaker:of illicit sex, children out of wedlock, all these things.
Speaker:If you're a believer and you're listening to that, I'm going to tell you right now,
Speaker:what you're doing is sinful and you need to stop.
Speaker:We need to start policing ourselves before God has to police us.
Speaker:Okay, the next half of the verse, "And love them even as you loved me."
Speaker:I'm going to do something right now that I don't normally ever do, especially not in
Speaker:public.
Speaker:I'm going to let you all in a little bit behind my mask, if you will.
Speaker:And Fred, this is where I said you might get an answer.
Speaker:I grew up having a hard time with understanding a father's love.
Speaker:My father was a career man in the Navy.
Speaker:To him, his job was everything.
Speaker:And to give you an example, there was an opportunity, his ship was overseas and was coming home
Speaker:-- well, he was going to be coming home, and there was an opportunity for boys 15 years
Speaker:and older to fly out to Pearl Harbor and meet the ship and ride it home with their dads.
Speaker:So I asked my dad, I said, "Hey, Dad, if I earn the money for my flight to Pearl Harbor,
Speaker:can I fly out, meet you, and ride the ship home?"
Speaker:And without hesitation, my dad looked at me and said, "What do I want you there for?
Speaker:I have work to do."
Speaker:To a 15-year-old, that was pretty crushing.
Speaker:And to couple that with my thought that the only time my father ever told me he loved
Speaker:me was when he was drunk.
Speaker:Now, years later, I realized that my father's trip from Pearl Harbor to San Francisco or
Speaker:Alameda was his busiest time on board ship.
Speaker:He was an aviation ordnanceman, so the bombs and rockets and everything else had to be
Speaker:offloaded from the ship.
Speaker:The planes had to be getting ready to fly off because they take them all off before
Speaker:they get back.
Speaker:And so, yeah, it was his busiest time, but he never bothered to explain any of that to
Speaker:me.
Speaker:And so when I read about how God, how much God loves us, God the Father loves us, for
Speaker:a long time, I had a very hard time with that.
Speaker:Now, the Holy Spirit's done a work in me, but that was an extremely, extremely hard
Speaker:thing for me to get past.
Speaker:And so if you know someone who's struggling with accepting the love of God, there may
Speaker:be a reason for it.
Speaker:Maybe some of you have similar reasons.
Speaker:I'm going to tell you that God really does love you.
Speaker:Let's look at this here.
Speaker:"Now God has loved his people as he has loved his Son.
Speaker:He loves them not merely as creatures, as the descendants of Adam, or as considered
Speaker:in themselves, but as in Christ.
Speaker:The instances of his love to them are his choosing them in Christ, making a covenant
Speaker:with them in him, the mission of him into this world to obtain salvation for them, the
Speaker:quickening and calling of them by his grace, the care he takes of them afterwards in supplying
Speaker:their wants, supporting them under temptations, delivering them out of afflictions and causing
Speaker:all things to work together for their good, to all which add the provisions he makes for
Speaker:them both for time and eternity.
Speaker:The nature of this love is such as that he bears to Christ, that the Father bears to
Speaker:Christ.
Speaker:It is from everlasting, a love of the utmost delight and pleasure.
Speaker:It is special and peculiar, unchangeable, and will continue forever."
Speaker:That's the love that God has for us.
Speaker:His love is demonstrated in the way he takes care of us, in the way he uses his Holy Spirit
Speaker:to guide us to where he would have us go, do the things that he would have us do, to
Speaker:give us the mind of Christ, to give us a mind that is no longer at odds with God, but is
Speaker:in harmony with God.
Speaker:Okay, verse 24.
Speaker:"Father, I will, that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am, that
Speaker:they may behold my glory which thou hast given me, for thou lovest me before the foundation
Speaker:of the world."
Speaker:I don't normally choose to put stuff up in the King James, because I don't speak like
Speaker:that at all.
Speaker:But this verse, the phrase "I will," I believe the King James captures the original language
Speaker:the best.
Speaker:So let's figure out what Jesus was saying when he said, "I will."
Speaker:The manner of the request, "Father, I will," here as before he addresses himself to God
Speaker:as a father, and therein we must do likewise.
Speaker:But when he says the Greek word is thelo, "I will," he speaks a language peculiar to
Speaker:himself, and such as does not become ordinary petitioners, that's us, but very well became
Speaker:him who paid for what he prayed for.
Speaker:This intimates the authority of his intercession in general.
Speaker:His word was with power in heaven as well as on earth.
Speaker:He entering with his own blood into the holy place, his intercession there has an uncontrollable
Speaker:efficacy which is the power to produce a desired result.
Speaker:He intercedes as a king, for he is a priest upon his throne like Melchizedek, a king priest.
Speaker:It intimates his particular authority in this matter.
Speaker:He had a power to give eternal life, and pursuant to that power, he says, "Father, I will."
Speaker:He didn't say like we would do, "Father, if it be your will."
Speaker:He says, "Father, I will."
Speaker:What did he base that on?
Speaker:What did he base his authority to say that?
Speaker:Well, obviously he knows that he has the power to give eternal life, that they also whom
Speaker:thou has given me may be where I am.
Speaker:My slides are out of order, that's okay, I'll go back to it.
Speaker:Basically he finishes off his statement, and we'll get into it again when I come up to
Speaker:the slide, but he says, "Because you loved me before the foundation of the world."
Speaker:That was his justification.
Speaker:Because you and I have loved each other since before all this began, I'm in this, you know
Speaker:I'm doing what I want.
Speaker:I want them with me, Father.
Speaker:I want them with me.
Speaker:I didn't mean to take them out of the world right away, we'll get to that.
Speaker:But it says that, okay, "There are varying opinions of where heaven will be, but here
Speaker:are three things that make heaven, well, heaven.
Speaker:First thing is to be where Christ is.
Speaker:Where I am in the paradise where Christ's soul went at death, in the third heavens where
Speaker:his soul and body went at his ascension, where I am or am to be shortly and to be eternally.
Speaker:In this world we are in transition, in our passage.
Speaker:There are truly, there, we truly are where we are to be forever.
Speaker:So Christ reckoned and so must we.
Speaker:So the first part that makes heaven heaven is being where Christ is.
Speaker:Now before I talked about Sheol, Sheol, that's where they get the term paradise.
Speaker:The best way to understand that is Jesus told a parable about Lazarus and the rich man.
Speaker:The rich man and Lazarus both died.
Speaker:The rich man went to a place of torment and Lazarus went to Abraham's bosom.
Speaker:The popular Jewish belief at the time of Christ in Sheol, Sheol means the unseen world of
Speaker:the dead.
Speaker:It's very much like the Greeks Tartarus and Elysium fields, very similar.
Speaker:There's a place of torment and a place of reward.
Speaker:Okay, so that's where we get that word paradise from.
Speaker:It's to be with him.
Speaker:It's to be with him where he is.
Speaker:This is not saying the same thing twice but in different words, but intimates that we
Speaker:shall not only be in the same happy place where Christ is, but that the happiness of
Speaker:the place will consist in his presence.
Speaker:There is the fullness of his joy.
Speaker:The very heaven of heaven is to be with Christ.
Speaker:They're in company with him and communion with him.
Speaker:The joy of heaven is not going to be in all the things we can do or all the stuff that
Speaker:we always wanted to know.
Speaker:It's going to be Christ.
Speaker:It's going to be beholding his glory.
Speaker:It's going to be being there with him and sharing in his happiness to which he invites
Speaker:us to join as believers.
Speaker:And lastly, to behold his glory.
Speaker:It is to behold his glory which the father has given him.
Speaker:There first the glory of the redeemer in the brightness of heaven.
Speaker:That glory before which angels cover their faces was his glory.
Speaker:The lamb is the light of the new Jerusalem.
Speaker:It says so in Revelation 21, 23.
Speaker:Christ will come in the glory of his father, for he is the brightness of his glory.
Speaker:God shows his glory there as he does his grace here through Christ.
Speaker:The father has given me this glory, though he was as yet in his low estate, but it was
Speaker:very true and very near.
Speaker:Secondly, the great happiness of the redeemed consists very much in the beholding of this
Speaker:glory.
Speaker:They will have the immediate view of his glorious person.
Speaker:I shall see God in my flesh, says Job.
Speaker:They will have a clear insight into his glorious undertaking as it will be then accomplished.
Speaker:They will see the final picture in total.
Speaker:They will see into into, sorry, sorry, my glasses are killing me.
Speaker:They will see into those springs of love from which flow all the streams of grace.
Speaker:I like that.
Speaker:They shall have an appropriating or to take something for one's own use.
Speaker:They will have an appropriating sight of Christ's glory.
Speaker:In Latin, there's a phrase, "uxor fulget radius mariti," the wife shines with the radiance
Speaker:of her husband.
Speaker:We're going to be the bride of Christ and we're going to shine with the radiance of
Speaker:our husband, our savior, Jesus.
Speaker:And in assimilating sight, they shall be changed into the same image from glory to glory.
Speaker:We're going to be in a position where we, some of the things that we don't understand
Speaker:about why God did what he did, sending Jesus, why Jesus had to die, the love that God has
Speaker:shown from Genesis all the way through Revelation and all the way into eternity.
Speaker:We're going to get a better picture of that love because we're going to see it fully.
Speaker:I love it when we said the pools of grace from which the, or pools of love from which
Speaker:the streams of grace flow, all the grace that he gives us flows out of his love.
Speaker:And we're going to see that from the beginning.
Speaker:Jesus then gives justification for his request, "Because you love me before the foundation
Speaker:of the world."
Speaker:Why do I want to do all these things?
Speaker:Because this was our plan from the beginning and you've loved me and I've completed the
Speaker:work that I've done.
Speaker:I have earned the right to make this request.
Speaker:All right.
Speaker:O righteous Father, even though the world does not know, and that word "know" is
Speaker:ginosko, which means to know fully, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and
Speaker:these know that you have sent me.
Speaker:I have made known to them your name and I will continue to make it known that the love
Speaker:with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.
Speaker:Okay, who is Jesus referring to when he says the world?
Speaker:Anybody have any ideas?
Speaker:It's on multi-level.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:The Greek word uses cosmos.
Speaker:It can mean the world in a wide or narrow sense, including its inhabitants.
Speaker:The disciples were about to go into the world to preach the gospel.
Speaker:Their master was going to be taken from them and assumed into heaven after rising from
Speaker:the dead.
Speaker:And they were going to be facing the world and they were going to be facing it in layers.
Speaker:First thing they were going to face, in a very real and present sense, he was referring to
Speaker:the Jewish leaders.
Speaker:Jesus already warned his disciples that they will put you out of the synagogues.
Speaker:Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God.
Speaker:Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death and you will be hated
Speaker:by all nations for my name's sake.
Speaker:Whenever you see the word nations in scripture, that's referring to Gentile nations.
Speaker:So basically he's saying the Jews are going to want to kill you because of me and the
Speaker:nations are going to hate you because of me.
Speaker:Why?
Speaker:Because who is the ruler of the cosmos?
Speaker:Who is not the ruler?
Speaker:Who is the one who is in the world that is our adversary?
Speaker:Satan.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:So Satan does not want to see his kingdom diminished, does not want to see us come to
Speaker:Christ, does not want us to be fruitful in Christ, to walk as Christ walked.
Speaker:He doesn't want any of that.
Speaker:He wants to kill and destroy.
Speaker:He wants to steal first.
Speaker:He wants to steal your effectiveness.
Speaker:He wants to steal your joy and he wants to kill your spirit and he wants to destroy your
Speaker:witness.
Speaker:And for those that don't know Jesus, he wants to see him destroyed in hell.
Speaker:Earlier Jesus prayed for their safety in the world in John 17, 15.
Speaker:He says, "I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from
Speaker:the evil one."
Speaker:We're in a war whether we want to believe it or not.
Speaker:And I'm going to guarantee you that if you want to raise up your head, you both were
Speaker:in the army.
Speaker:What happens if you're facing an enemy, you're hiding behind things and you stand up to take
Speaker:a shot?
Speaker:You're done, right?
Speaker:You now become the object of everyone that's on that side.
Speaker:The same thing happens with our walk in the Lord.
Speaker:When you put your head up and you start to try to live as Christ wants, the enemy is
Speaker:going to come against you.
Speaker:Now greater is he that's in you than he that's in the world.
Speaker:I'm not saying this to scare you, but to tell you, "Hey, guess what?
Speaker:This is exactly what Jesus is telling them.
Speaker:You're going to be my witnesses.
Speaker:You're going to go out there and talk about me."
Speaker:And as such, the world is going to hate you.
Speaker:And so many people today who claim the name of Christ are living a life of compromise
Speaker:so that they don't get hated.
Speaker:We may talk big when we're in church about the Lord, but then we go out in public where
Speaker:we think that, "Oh man, these people might ridicule me if I bring up Jesus or I talk
Speaker:about Jesus."
Speaker:And we don't?
Speaker:See, there's a problem.
Speaker:And I'm not trying to down everybody.
Speaker:I got three fingers pointing back at me and I only got one pointing out this way.
Speaker:I have been in those situations.
Speaker:I have a younger daughter who I love dearly and is not walking with the Lord, and she's
Speaker:incredibly smart, incredibly smart.
Speaker:I have to study to be able to try to talk about religious things with her.
Speaker:Because quite frankly, there are some things that have happened in the Bible that God put
Speaker:in there for our edification that we could—well, if you're not a believer, how do you rationalize
Speaker:these things?
Speaker:How do you rationalize, "Okay, Israel, you're going into your new promised land.
Speaker:You're going to go in, you're going to take Jericho.
Speaker:I want you to kill every man, woman, child, and animal."
Speaker:By today's standards, that would be considered genocide and God would be a war criminal.
Speaker:Now, it's easy for me as a believer to say, "Well, God is God.
Speaker:This was his power.
Speaker:He was trying to avoid all the entanglements that he knew that the children of Israel are
Speaker:going to have in the future with idols and all the worship of idols in the country surrounding
Speaker:them or the people in the lands that they were going to take."
Speaker:But try to tell that to someone in the world and they're going to throw it right back in
Speaker:your face.
Speaker:It's not a sufficient answer for them because they don't know the God that we know.
Speaker:Their eyes have not been opened.
Speaker:Their spirits have not been regenerated.
Speaker:That's why Christian apologetics is so important so that we can accurately share.
Speaker:Someone says to you, "Well, look at all the horrible things that have been done in the
Speaker:name of Christ."
Speaker:Well, you and I know that the horrible things like the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition
Speaker:and many other things where people were being put to death in the name of Christ.
Speaker:It wasn't Christ, and it wasn't based on what we know of his nature.
Speaker:It was humans acting out.
Speaker:And it'd be easy enough to say back to them, "This one thing, what about all the things
Speaker:that have been done in the name of atheism?
Speaker:Let's talk about Stalin.
Speaker:Let's talk about Hitler.
Speaker:Let's talk about Pol Pot.
Speaker:Let's talk about Mao Zedong."
Speaker:These did what they did in the name of atheism.
Speaker:So the scale is balanced as far as that, but we know that it wasn't Jesus saying, "Do this."
Speaker:It was humans.
Speaker:We need to be able to answer those questions because this world, the mentality of this
Speaker:world today, won't accept pat answers.
Speaker:Brittany touched on this last week about speaking Christianese.
Speaker:Forget it.
Speaker:The representable substitutionary death of Christ on the—no, no.
Speaker:I refer to it as a great exchange.
Speaker:I gave Jesus my filthy, horrible, rotten life, and he gave me his glorious one.
Speaker:In the story of the prodigal son, the father does three things for the son—actually,
Speaker:four.
Speaker:The first is, as he runs up to the son, he says, "Put the best robe on my son."
Speaker:Well, in that culture, who in that household would have the best robe?
Speaker:Who would own the best robe in the house?
Speaker:The father.
Speaker:So he's saying, "Wrap him in my robe.
Speaker:We come to know Christ.
Speaker:We are wrapped in Christ's righteousness."
Speaker:That's one.
Speaker:Second, he said, "Put sandals on his feet."
Speaker:He said, "Deal with shoes."
Speaker:Servants went barefoot.
Speaker:Sons wore sandals.
Speaker:He restored him to sonship.
Speaker:Third thing, he said, "Put a ring on his finger."
Speaker:It wasn't bling.
Speaker:In that culture, a man would wear a signet ring with his mark, and when he would do a
Speaker:contract, he would push that into the clay, and that became like going to a notary.
Speaker:It made the contract valid.
Speaker:So what he was doing in giving him the ring was authorizing him to transact business in
Speaker:the Father's name.
Speaker:Christ gives up us the Holy Spirit, which is our means of transacting business in the
Speaker:Father's name.
Speaker:And then he held a feast.
Speaker:And when we go, when this world ends, the resurrection happens, and the judgment seat's
Speaker:been done away with, and all the evil's been purged, we're going to sit down to a feast
Speaker:with our husband, which is a hard thing for a guy to get through.
Speaker:But we're going to sit down with our husband at the marriage supper.
Speaker:I have made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known that the love
Speaker:with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.
Speaker:The word name here includes the attributes of care of or character of God.
Speaker:Jesus had made known God's character, his law, his will, his plan of mercy.
Speaker:So often we think of when the Lord said, "Ask anything in my name," that just saying the
Speaker:name of Jesus in Jesus' name at the end is like a talisman.
Speaker:It gets us what we want.
Speaker:And that has nothing to do with it.
Speaker:When he says, "Ask things in my name," he's saying, "Ask it according to my character,
Speaker:my law, my will, my plan of mercy."
Speaker:It has to be in line with what Jesus wants for our lives to say, "I want a new, a Mercedes-Benz.
Speaker:Father, I just, in Jesus' name, I'm asking for a Mercedes-Benz."
Speaker:And then we wonder why God says no.
Speaker:See, God's not a cosmic sugar daddy.
Speaker:He's not someone you go to every day and just make your requests known.
Speaker:I've given my list of what I want you to do today.
Speaker:It goes back to where Jesus said, "I will."
Speaker:We say, "Father, if it's your will," because everything we ask is supposed to be in line
Speaker:with the Father's will.
Speaker:That's why we pray to not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing
Speaker:of our minds.
Speaker:So in our minds, we'll start to function as Christ would.
Speaker:We would have the same desires that He have, the same goals that He has, the same purpose
Speaker:that He has.
Speaker:"I may know to them your name, and I will continue to make it known."
Speaker:That line, "continue to make it known."
Speaker:Jesus did that in several ways.
Speaker:In Acts 1-3, He presented Himself alive to them after His suffering by many proofs, appearing
Speaker:to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God.
Speaker:So after He rose from the dead for 40 days, He taught them more.
Speaker:Luke 24, 44, and 45, "Then He said to them, 'These are My words that I spoke to you while
Speaker:I was still with you, that everything written about Me in the law of Moses and the prophets
Speaker:and the psalms must be fulfilled.'
Speaker:Then He opened their minds to understand the scriptures."
Speaker:The indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker:"When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth, for He will not speak
Speaker:on His own authority, but whatever He hears, He will speak, and He will declare to you
Speaker:the things that are to come."
Speaker:God gave us the most miraculous gift in that His Holy Spirit lives within us in a very
Speaker:real sense.
Speaker:And we need to listen to that Spirit.
Speaker:We need to train our ears.
Speaker:We need to—it's not only—it's not a novel thing.
Speaker:It's imperative if you want to walk the Christian walk.
Speaker:If you have the Holy Spirit tuned out, you're just doing your own thing, and you're trying
Speaker:to make God in your own image, basically.
Speaker:"Oh, I believe this is a good thing.
Speaker:Oh, I believe that's a good thing," when God says, "No, that's not a good thing."
Speaker:When we try to make God into our own image, what are we doing?
Speaker:What is it called?
Speaker:What's the very basic term for it?
Speaker:Idolatry.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:Many things can become idols, but if you're listening to the Holy Spirit, He's going to
Speaker:protect you from that because He's going to guide you away from it.
Speaker:Okay, I guess that's the end of it.
Speaker:I thought I had one more slide, but then again—so anyway, what I want you to take from all of
Speaker:this, in this whole high priestly prayer, Jesus was trying to prepare His apostles and
Speaker:also us because, remember, He changed it to talking not only to them but to those who
Speaker:will come to know me through their preaching.
Speaker:Okay, so it means that for us, we have Jesus who was willing to make a bold request to
Speaker:the Father.
Speaker:He wants us to be with Him after we leave this earth.
Speaker:He wants us to be with Him in person, with Him.
Speaker:This is an amazing thing for Jesus to pray for us that way.
Speaker:Okay, it shows the immense love that Christ has for us because He won't feel completed
Speaker:in His mission until we're with Him.
Speaker:So anybody have any questions?
Speaker:No?
Speaker:Oh, either I did really good explaining or—well, Father, pardon?
Speaker:Oh, Father, thank you so much for today.
Speaker:Thank you for what you had to say.
Speaker:I just ask that it would take root in our lives and cause people to think and to move
Speaker:more towards you.
Speaker:Open our ears, Lord, to hear your Spirit more completely, fully, and not only to hear it
Speaker:but to follow what we hear.
Speaker:I pray this all in Jesus' name.
Speaker:Amen.
