Dennis Tuuri

# John 17:1-5 Sermon Transcript

Today’s sermon text is found in John 17:1-5. John 17:1-5. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. John chapter 17, beginning at verse one.

“When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, ‘Father, the hour has come. Glorify your son that the son may glorify you since you have given him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life that they know you, the only true God in Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.’”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this text you place before us in your providence. We marvel in awe at the words of our savior as he prepares himself for the cross. We thank you for this extended prayer in John chapter 17, the great truths of John’s gospel that it sums up for us, encapsulates as he goes to you in prayer in preparation for his death on the cross and his resurrection.

Help us, Father, to ponder this prayer over the next three weeks. Help us to think about it, to read it, to be in awe of it, to deal with it carefully, and yet deal with it we must. We pray for the power of your Holy Spirit to understand this chapter, to marvel in awe at it, to have our lives transformed by it, and particularly how we pray to you. We thank you, Father, and pray that your spirit would do his work now to enlighten our hearts with an understanding of this text and that we be transformed by the power of it in Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

Last week we talked about the last words—the final discourse at the end of chapter 16. The upper room discourse can be seen as the last words of our savior as he prepares to depart. And frequently a man leaving for a trip may talk to his family and give them final instructions. Particularly, I’m sure that many of the soldiers in Iraq did this with their families. They gave them final instructions in case they didn’t come back.

And if they’re Christian men and were prayed up, so to speak—using a line from a father of a man who was killed in the last few days in Iraq—he reminded his son to be prayed up. His son said he was. Particularly if we’re praying men and women, Christians, before we depart, not only do we speak last words to our family, but we’ll also have a prayer with them as we depart into a mission that could—in Jesus’ case—he knew would be brought to death.

So our savior here, after the last words of the last discourse, has the closing prayer of this discourse and it is an astonishing prayer. Remember that what we’re preparing for here is the death of Jesus Christ. And as Jesus speaks to his disciples in the last words of the last discourse, he says, “I’ve overcome the world.” And then in the tenor of this prayer, we do not have a savior who finds himself in the midst of events that he is not in control of.

We don’t see him uttering words in a prayer that we would expect from him facing the cross. It’s the confident prayer of someone who has indeed overcome the world. It’s the prayer of the victor, praying for those that he will leave in his train, that the victory might be theirs as well.

Now, this is in contrast to the synoptic gospels. Remember that John’s gospel is different from the other three. The other three have the prayer in Gethsemane—a prayer of agony of our savior. And this is really the only prayer we see from Jesus before his crucifixion in those accounts.

So as we’ve read through the gospels in preparation for reading John’s gospel, we’ve read these prayers in Gethsemane. And now John puts a different cast on the prayers of our savior as he moves to the cross by filling out what we read in the synoptic accounts in Gethsemane with the other side of the story, so to speak—the confidence, the assurance of Jesus, as opposed to his agony in preparing for his death.

So there’s a bit of a contrast here between this and the synoptics.

Another bit of contrast is that in John’s gospel, we have no ascension scene proper, right? We don’t have Matthew 28 where he goes up and he says, “I’m going to go away,” and he ascends up. And this prayer has been called by some people the ascension scene of the Savior. You know, Jesus is speaking about what’s going to happen in the past tense. “I have overcome the world,” and then he’s finished the work. He tells us in today’s text.

Well, he really hasn’t yet, but it is so sure that he speaks about it definitively. And so it’s an accomplished event. And so there’s a sense in which this prayer of our savior is the ascension of Jesus to heaven by way of prayer, interceding for his disciples.

And so there’s this wonderful picture of the savior—prayer of course the longest recorded prayer in the gospels of our savior—and so very much to be thought about, meditated on and learned from. And there’s a sense in which this prayer gathers together all the themes of the upper room discourse, but more than that also gathers together really the main themes of John’s gospel. And as we move through it, we’ll see that we have, for instance, one of the main themes of Jesus coming as the revelation of who the Father is.

We’ll see that pictured here. We see Jesus selecting out a group of people. There’s two kinds of people in the world: those that are elect and those that aren’t. Those that believe in the Son of Man and those that don’t. And here he speaks of those that have been elected out of the world. His sovereignty over all flesh is proclaimed in these verses. And yet the selection of a few, or a subset of all flesh, to receive life eternal is talked about.

So all the major themes of God’s John’s gospel and of the upper room discourse are compacted right here. Commentators have gone verse by verse through this prayer and drawn back correlaries to the rest of the upper room discourse, for instance. And as time permits over the next few weeks, we may look at some of those specifics.

So this prayer is really the summing up of all of John’s gospel and certainly of the upper room discourse.

This has been called by some the “Lord’s Prayer.” You know, the thing we normally call the Lord’s Prayer is really the disciples’ prayer, right? He’s telling them how to pray, and he doesn’t say to pray in his name because, remember, we talked about last week or the last two weeks—that when he does finish his work and is raised to the Father, then we pray in the Son’s name by his authority. So that’s why that’s not in the disciples’ prayer.

But this is really the Lord’s prayer. This is the Lord at prayer, and this is really probably better designated as the Lord’s Prayer, with the other one being the disciples’ prayer.

This is a text that, as I said, sums up all the major themes of the gospel. D.A. Carson, commenting on this, said that its themes include Jesus’s obedience to the Father, the glorification of the Father through the death and exaltation of the Son, the revelation of God to the world and to his people through Jesus Christ, the choosing of the disciples from out of the world, the mission of the gospel still to come, and others still to be brought to faith in Christ, and the final destiny of believers to behold the glory of God and to share fellowship with the Father and the Son in heaven.

All these themes have run throughout the Gospel of John. And now they’re all summed up in our savior’s prayer.

This particular chapter of the Bible—John Knox said—was the chapter that brought him to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. This was what God used in his providence to bring John Knox to the faith. On his deathbed, this was the text that he wanted his wife to read to him. And what he said was, “Go read where I cast my first anchor”—John 17.

And so there is this wonderful devotional use of this particular chapter throughout the history of the church. It is seen as this summation, this brilliant jewel set toward the end of John’s gospel, by which everything else in it can be interpreted.

Now, there’s different perspectives on where this fits in the context of John’s gospel. We spoke early on in this series of sermons going through the Gospel of John—not just generally—that this gospel portrays a new creation. But we said the gospel can really be divided up by looking at it in terms of the seven days of creation, then the eighth day of the resurrection.

And so there’s a sense in which we’ve gone through a recreation week. The first part of the gospel—the light of Jesus is declared in chapter 1. Second part of the gospel—like the second day of creation—the firmament makes a distinction between peoples. And early in this gospel, there’s this distinction made between those that would come to believe and those that wouldn’t.

The third part, third day of creation—the first fruits come up: grass, plants, fruit plants. Kind of a picture of bread and wine, not all vegetation, but those specifically. And as we move through the gospel, we saw Jesus moving away from the water imagery of the firmament (the second day) and the division between the two peoples, to then the food imagery where he is the bread of life, and then the reference to the ordeal of jealousy, etc. Food imagery began to take place.

And then as we moved into the last chapters of the first part of the book, we saw references to Jesus declaring himself to be the light of the world. And so there were light references.

The fourth day is the creation of sun, moon, and stars—reflective lights on earth. Now when Jesus goes to the cross, clearly we can connect that to the sixth day where he makes atonement for the sins of his people, and then the seventh day he spends in the grave. And the eighth day of the week—literally then—is the day of the new creation.

So John’s gospel tracks the creation week in the way it is written and given to us. And in that sort of view, what we’re looking at here is this gathering scene that we can correlate to the fifth day. The fifth day are the teeming fish and birds that team, and it’s the day of the first commandment by God to his created order. He commands the teeming things to multiply. So there’s a command given in these sort of structures. We look for groups of things being gathered together and then commands given as fifth day elements.

And here we have that in 13-17. The disciples are gathered together with Jesus. He gives them the new command—Monday Thursday—a new command to love one another. He gives them these commandments and he also prays for them.

And in the structure of this gospel, we’ve said that here in 17, we come to the golden altar of incense. Incense teams, as it were, above the altar. And so Jesus’s prayer is part of this fifth day picture as the movement of the new creation tracks through the gospel of John.

And so we’re now at this golden altar. Some people have referred to this prayer as entering into the holy of holies because it’s this tremendously intimate glimpse of the savior at prayer, speaking with his Father. We’re ushered into this communication between Father and Son, of glory being shared amongst one another. And that’s good imagery, but remember we’re sort of saying that eventually the blood will be applied to the holy of holies through his death, and then the resurrection. But for now we’re sort of at the golden altar of incense with the prayers ascending. In John 17, the way that the incense ascends to heaven as well.

Another thing I’ve reminded you of on the outline—in addition to the eight days of creation—is that this correlates back to the gathering scene when he brought the disciples together and washed their feet. And in the structure of this gospel, in this section rather, 13-17, those sections match up.

Additionally, we can look at this—as I mentioned last week—in terms of Leviticus 16. Verse 17 of Leviticus 16 says this (and of course Leviticus 16 is the description of the Day of Atonement):

“No one may be in the tent of meeting from the time he enters—that is, the high priest—to make atonement in the holy place until he comes out and has made atonement for himself and for his house and for all the assembly of Israel.”

This prayer has been referred to as the high priestly prayer of the savior since the 16th century. First designated by a Lutheran minister, although as early as the fifth century, Cyril of Alexandria referred to Jesus as the high priest in this prayer—but he didn’t actually call it the high priestly prayer. That would be for this Lutheran pastor in the 16th century.

And since then, commentators have seen this relationship to the structure of this prayer where Jesus will pray first for himself, then for his immediate family (the disciples), and then for those who will believe on Christ through the word of his immediate family. And we’ll use that as our outline for this week and the following two weeks.

Today, we’ll talk about Jesus’s prayer for himself. And then we’ll move into his prayer for his immediate family next week. And then two weeks out, the balance of the prayer, which is for those that would believe—for the rest of the church, in other words.

So we have here this high priestly prayer of our savior, and we can follow it that way.

One other element I want to point out—before we get into this opening section, which is only five verses—is the relationship of this prayer to the worship of the church that we’ve spoken about for many years now. And that is: God’s divine service is God serving his people—certainly us serving God by worship, but him serving us—and specifically giving us three gifts: glory, knowledge, and life.

And I preached on this particular text—all of chapter 17—three years ago, I believe it was, after I came back from Poland and spoke about it there. Now on the back of your outline there’s another outline from that sermon in May, I believe, of 2000 or 2001 or something. And we’re not going to go through all of that now. But again, as I said last week with the back handout (the overview of John’s gospel), this would be a good page for you to take out of the order of worship at some point before you leave and leave in your papers by which you’re doing your own personal study in the scriptures and looking at what the scriptures mean.

This is a summation of one of the most important themes in the scriptures: that God, through the saving work of Jesus Christ, has given us back, so to speak, glory, true knowledge, and life. And these are the gifts of God that are ministered to us.

Now in chapter 17, commentators have seen in verses one and two an introduction to the whole prayer:

“Father, the hour has come. Glorify your son that the son may glorify you since you have given him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.”

So we have this summary prayer that will be unpacked as we go through this chapter. And what Jesus prays in terms of is glory—and that’s the main focus of what we’ll talk about today. But it’s also this authority, which then becomes linked to his word in the rest of this prayer. And then the third theme that’s sounded in this introductory phrase is life. And Jesus will pray for life for his disciples.

These are the three gifts. And so I think from one perspective, our savior in his high priestly prayer is asking specifically that God would minister to us the gifts of glory, knowledge, and life. And so this prayer in 17 can appropriately be outlined in that same way.

And I’ve given you this structure on this back page of the handout where we have the summary statement, and then glory is stressed in verses 4 and 5 (which we’ll talk about today). Knowledge in verses 6 to 10 when he—the emphasis is on his words, which is the basis for authority and life.

Then in verses 11 and 12, Jesus prays that the Father might keep them, might guard them, and give them life. And then a summary statement in the middle of this prayer can be seen at verse 13 as a prayer for joy. So the end result of these three gifts—the end result of your worship here today and receiving these gifts of God and being assured of these gifts—should be joy. We should leave this place joyous.

And then we go back to life in verses 14 to 16, keep them again, and verses 17-19, back to words and truth, and so knowledge is the gift there that he prays for.

And as we move to the end—verses 20 to 24—is glory in unity. And we’ll see today that the glory that Jesus asks for is self-glorification in community. And that is how the theme is sounded again at the end of the prayer when Jesus prays for all his church, including us, that we would have glory in unity. Glory in community.

See, we all want glory. You know, you came here today and you all want glory. You want people to treat you as somebody important. There’s nothing wrong with that. The problem is we talk about getting glory in a sinful way as opposed to getting it mediated to us through the work of Jesus.

We’ll see in today’s prayer that Jesus starts his prayer by praying for glory. And if this prayer, which is written out for our instruction, can be seen as a model for what we’re to pray—and I believe it can, and most commentators agree with that—that it means that the first application for us is to pray that God might actually give us glory, that we’d be something substantial, weighty, shiny, with a luster.

You know, I dressed with a glorious tie today. Why do you dress yourself? And of course, it’s not just to cover your nakedness. You don’t just put on something that you don’t care about. You dress primarily, probably, for glory. You put a lot more attention and money into dressing gloriously than you do in just covering your nakedness, which would be quite easy and inexpensive.

See, we want glory. That’s good. God wants us to want glory. And particularly when we come before the king—I think that particularly here in this worship service, we should dress in a glorious fashion.

You know, I counsel people all the time, and in some cases, it’s been quite obvious when the person walks into my office that one of the most important things they need restored to them through the counseling process is glory, because they come in dressed and in a posture that is one of shame because of their sin. And my job then is to assure them of the forgiveness of their sins and to minister glory to them.

I can tell in the way they comport themselves frequently and in the clothes they wear how they’re feeling about themselves. Do they feel glorious? And should they dress gloriously or not?

Now there’s a prideful seeking after glory in our clothes which is inappropriate. But as long as we understand that this is a gift of God—one of these three gifts that God gives us—it’s very important to understand that it’s proper to be glorious in our clothing. And particularly when we enter into the glory of God’s throne room in Lord’s day worship, we should be glorious in our clothing. So it’s an example.

We all want glory. And I think that this prayer is really the ministration of glory to us. And then the summary at the end is the love of God. So all this concludes—there’s a—if we see these kind of structures, it helps us to focus on the content: glory, knowledge, and life being ministered to us. But it also brings us to a climax at the end. The result is joy. And another climax at the end where the result is love.

Love and joy flow out of a proper reception and understanding of God giving us these gifts of glory, knowledge, and life. And so I think that’s a very valuable perspective on the Lord’s prayer here.

And I would encourage you as you read through John 17 in preparation for the next two Lord’s Days and ultimately for preparation for our Easter service—when we celebrate that indeed the work has been finished and accomplished and the new creation has been ushered in—as you read through it, think about these themes: glory, knowledge, and life. I believe it’s right there for us.

Now, we want to turn specifically then to this prayer. And I want to—it’s kind of a 16-part outline, not really. We’re going to look first at the setting for the prayer. The first petition doesn’t start until a couple of introductories have happened. And we want to talk about four things first that are the context for the actual first petition of the savior.

Having done that, then we’ll look at the first petition itself in its context: what he prays for, what’s the context for that prayer. And then when we’ve gone through that, then we’ll go back over these same eight items and talk about ourselves.

This is a prayer that’s recorded for us. Remember earlier when he prayed at the death of Lazarus? It says specifically that he prayed this stuff for those that were listening to him so that they could hear and understand. You hear people talk about, “Well, the pastor’s just praying so that people can hear him. He’s preaching a sermon in his prayer.” Well, you know, sometimes that’s not so bad. Our savior doesn’t—it’s not hypocritical. He is praying, but he expects his disciples to hear it and transform their lives by it. And he expects us to read it and say, “Oh, so this is how the Christian Jesus Christ prayed. It probably has something to do with how I should pray.”

Okay, so that’s what we’re going to look at. And we’ll go back over the context of his prayer and the specific petition as it relates to us.

Okay, first, his context is his words. The text tells us in verse one, “Jesus had spoken these words.” So it wants to tie it back to the words just spoken. It wants us to remember that he has said he’s conquered the world.

And what Jesus sets up—at least for a preacher here, for a father doing family worship, or a mother conducting family worship—is that Jesus has a sermon that he’s given to them in the upper room discourse. But that’s not enough. He attaches the power of the Spirit of God to that sermon.

Okay? So it’s not enough for preachers to speak the word. It must be followed by a prayer that God would take that word and drive it home in its application to us. Our savior sets that up for us.

When we read the word at home, we should read it first. You know, pray first that God would give us insight. Pray after the word is read and whatever speaking you do on it, because that’s the model of our savior. He gave a sermon, then he prayed.

When we get to the table, we’ll see that one of the ways the early church used this prayer—and the church for 2,000 years has—is in conjunction with the Lord’s Supper. Because the upper room discourse is not just sermon. What happens at the upper room discourse is sacrament as well: sacrament and sermon. It’s the worship service that we have every Lord’s day. They had the last supper there. And after the last supper, in the context of the last supper, he prays and he consecrates or sanctifies himself. We’ll talk about that when we get to the table.

So prayer is added to sacrament and sermon by our savior. We must seek, as he did, the power of the Holy Spirit to minister these words home to us.

Now, on your outline, I’ve got some comments here: “Victory, prayer, and the full bucket problem.” And I wasn’t sure where to put this in, but we’ll just talk about it now a little bit.

There’s a paradox, an apparent contradiction. Our savior says, “I have conquered the world.” And then he prays for stuff. Well, why? He said, “It’s a done deal. I’ve won. They’re defeated. It’s over.” And then he prays to the Father for that very thing.

Now, as Christians, we know that’s what we do. You see, but it seems apparently contradictory to people. “Why do you pray if God is sovereign and he’s going to accomplish what he will in your life? How important are our actions?” And I think that sometimes that kind of thinking of the world seeps into our lives and is one reason why we don’t pray much.

But Jesus gives us the example that, in spite of his words and his deeds to come, he must needs pray in the context of those things. You see? And so it tells us that there is this relationship between our words, our deeds, and our prayers—that they’re not contradictory. God does hear prayer. He wants us to pray, and he changes things on the basis of our prayers.

And that seems impossible to us. And it’s related to this full bucket problem. As we’ll see here in a moment, what Jesus prays is that the Father might glorify himself, that he might glorify the Son, that the Son might glorify the Father. And then he says, “I’ve glorified you on earth.”

Now get the picture here. You’re a dad, and you know, you’re a dad and you want to be glorious. And you want the world to perceive you as glorious, properly so. And the Proverbs tell us that one of the ways you achieve glory is for your children to praise you, to obey you, to be respectful to you.

Children, you know, today here at church. If you’re respectful to your father in front of people, people are going to think higher of your father. He’s going to have more glory, more weight, more brilliance, more substance in their eyes, right? Conversely, if you speak improperly to your father and disrespectfully, it’ll be putting shame upon him. He’ll become less glorious.

Okay? That’s kind of the concept here. Jesus is praying that the Father might glorify him, that he might glorify the Father. And he says, “I’ve already brought you glory in what I’ve done. Now, how can this be? How can this Father in heaven—who is unlike us—how can he become more glorious? How can the actions of the Son bring him glory, add to his weight? And that’s what the original word “glory” means: weightiness.

How can Jesus add to his glory? This is what Van Til referred to as the full bucket dilemma. In other words, God is a full bucket. He has no need for the created order. He doesn’t create because he has a need. He doesn’t need more glory. He has all glory. The Father is all glorious, unlike us earthly fathers. He doesn’t walk around partly shamed and partly glorious, depending on what happens. He’s all glorious.

And yet Jesus says that his actions have brought more glory to the Father. You see? And made him more glorious. How can it be? Well, we don’t know how it can be. You know, there’s lots of things in Scripture. This is a creaturely understanding we have that we must accept. This is the word of God.

The word of God says that God is all glorious, and yet somehow Jesus adds to his glory. And the word of God says that God is sovereign. We see it again in this text. You know, it’s funny how people try to rip the gospel apart and rearrange its contents and stuff to get rid of the clear message of the gospel of John. But, you know, verse after verse is about sovereignty, right? God sovereignly. The whole point here is: he’s not going to the cross as one who doesn’t. You know, this isn’t part of the Father’s plan. The Father’s foreordained decrees for this to happen.

All the authority—not just of the church, but all flesh—Jesus says in this prayer has been given to him. So the sovereign, absolute sovereignty of God is declared here, and yet he gives man human responsibility. We have wills that we can exercise, and he—there’s this—there’s an apparent contradiction to us. But as Christians, we say this is who God is, and we submit ourselves to that, and we don’t worry about it.

And this prayer doesn’t explain it to you, but it declares to you that the Father is all glorious. And yet the actions of the Son, and I might say as well the actions of you and the church, can somehow redound and be and create—from a perspective—more glory in the Godhead. That’s just what this prayer says.

And the prayer simply states that it’s an accomplished fact that he’s going to be victorious. And yet he prays. And it simply tells us that our job is to believe that God will accomplish what he will in our lives despite of us, and yet at the same time to pray and work toward the end, the goal that God intends to accomplish in us.

This is the relationship between the full bucket dilemma and the verses before us.

Now, R.C. Sproul, commenting on this, says that what some scholars do to explain this—and it’s not a bad explanation—is to kick the bucket over. To explain that God is so full of glory, he’s not like a bucket held upside down, away from his creation. He’s like a bucket out of which glory flows, and it’s an endless source of glory. You see, it remains a full bucket, but it continues to flow.

That God created the world not because he needed more of something, but because he is so much of something. See? And so this glory redounds to him. The heavens declare the glory of God. He is so glorious, it overflows. And that’s another nice perspective as we think about these things.

But that’s the context. Jesus has spoken his words. Now he adds his prayers.

Second part of the context is his posture. He lifted up his eyes to heaven and spoke. See, Jesus changed his posture. And you know, it seems like, “Well, so what?” Well, the point is posture is important to Jesus. And we’ve seen this before in the gospels. We’ve seen this throughout the Scriptures.

You know, some men in the Scriptures would raise up their hands to God to pray. Daniel gets down on his knees before God. David sometimes gets up, sometimes gets down, but they change their posture as they go into these particularly important and focused prayers. Our Lord changed his posture. That’s part of the context of the prayer.

Our Lord was human, and he recognized—like so many of us don’t—that the body is important and what we do with our body is significant in terms of how we pray.

Third, his address was the Father. So he finishes his talk, and then he lifts up his eyes to heaven and he speaks, and the first word out of his mouth is “Father.” Father is used a number of times throughout this prayer. We’ve seen this throughout the gospel: that he comes to exhibit the Father to us. And the heart really of this gospel is that the Son is the reflection of the Father. It’s the transmission, the exegesis of the Father.

And this relationship between Father and Son has been repeatedly, over and over and over, in this gospel given to us. And here it is again. He calls God his Father. So he addresses him by Father.

And then his timing. The first thing he says before he gets to his petition is he says, “The hour has come.” Jesus prays knowing the hours. And there are other clear statements of the sovereignty of God throughout this gospel—three or four times. “Well, they wanted to take him, but they didn’t, because his hour had not yet come. Well, you know, this was going to happen, but it didn’t happen, because his hour was not yet come.”

The hour is the hour of the determination of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And this hour has now arrived. Jesus has a sense of timing in the context of his prayer. It is this idea that he understands what’s to happen and his timing is the Father’s timing. He prays through this in relationship to the Father’s time: that his hour has come.

This is the hour of his death, the hour of his glorification.

Okay. Now, the prayer itself that Jesus makes—and it’s the prayer for himself. We’ll see he prays for his disciples and then for the rest of the church. But here he starts by praying for himself. And his first petition is self-glorification. “Glorify thy son.” That is the petition: that God would glorify the Son.

This is what Jesus prays for. We’ll see that he’s going to get into some reasons why this should happen. And then at the end of this prayer in verse 5, he gets right back to the same thing. He prays for self-glorification. So the Son doesn’t shy away from seeking weightiness and glory to be given from him. And in fact, the very first petition in the prayer is a prayer for self-glorification.

Now we want to quickly move on to the next half of that: the purpose for the Son’s self-glorification is the Father’s glory. It’s not his own glory ultimately. He wants glory so that he can accomplish something else, which is to give the Father glory.

“Glorify thy son that thy son also may glorify you.”

You see, he seeks self-glorification for the very purpose of giving glory to the Father. Not as an end in itself for himself to become self-glorified, but he might receive glory, weight, and honor that he might indeed minister that to the Father.

And so taken together, one commentator said that this phrase is the whole of the prayer, sums up the entire upper room discourse: “Glorify the Son that he may glorify the Father.” In fact, it sums up the Bible. This is what the Redeemer comes to accomplish—to receive glory from the Father that he might glorify the Father.

“What’s the chief end of man? Glorify God and enjoy him forever.”

And now we see in our savior the way he will accomplish the glorification of the Father is by receiving glory first from the Father. You see? So that’s the petition. That’s its purpose. And then he pleads the Father’s plan in the context of this, as a connective here.

“As thou hast given him power over all flesh.”

See, the Father gives utter sovereignty. Psalm 2: “Ask of me and I’ll give the nations for thine inheritance.” Jesus has asked it, and men received it. “You have given him power over all flesh, not just, you know, the church people, but over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.”

A lot of giving going on here. Father gives him total sovereignty. He gives life to—not all flesh, but to the ones that have been chosen, that have been given by the Father to the Son. The Son is given a bride by the Father. That’s the basis, by the way, of our security. We’re part of the bride given from the Father to the Son. That’s what we rest in. It’s in the Son’s love, the Father’s gift of us to him. The Father’s not an Indian giver. He’s not going to take us away from him.

And so we rest in that. But here Jesus is saying that he’s going to glorify—he. The basis for this asking of glory is the fact that the Father has given him authority over all flesh to the end that he might give life to as many as he has been given by the Father.

And then we have this parenthetical statement thrown in verse 3, that’s almost like a confession—you know, one of the great confessional anthems of the church, perhaps.

“And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God in Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”

You know, a beautiful statement. This is what salvation is. This is life. This is the gift that God gives to us. This is the great gift that encompasses all the other gifts: knowledge, communication, relationship with the Father. It’s not an intellectual knowledge that’s being spoken of here. It’s the same kind of giving back and forth that Jesus is portraying for us in these verses.

You know, he’s asking for glory that he may give glory to the Father. The Father gave him authority. He gives life to the people that God the Father has given to him. And we’re brought into that fellowship, that community of giving. True life is to know the Father and Jesus Christ.

So this clearly eliminates any other way of life. All other paths are passed to death and destruction—whether it’s Islam, Buddhism, Mormonism that denies the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, the exclusiveness of that deity, anything that denies the Trinity, is clearly ruled out here as a way of life and in fact is a way of death.

“The only God, Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”

So his absolute sovereignty over all things is here, and his definition of life is given to us well.

Now, this sovereignty over all things—look at the way it’s linked. He says, “You’ve given the Son authority over all flesh to the purpose that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him.” Okay, what that means is that the sovereignty of God—this kind of abstract doctrine we can think of—over all things. “Jesus Christ is king over all things.” Its purpose is your salvation.

The purpose of the sovereignty of Christ over every last detail of the created order is to the end that you might have life. That’s what the text tells us. God has given him authority over all flesh for the purpose of giving life to those that the Father has given to him.

What a tremendous blessing! And again, a great statement of assurance to us. God’s dominion over the ordinance of men, over all men, is in order to the end that the salvation of the children of God might be effective.

2 Corinthians 4:15 says, “It’s all for your sake.” It’s all for your sake. You’ve been chosen by the Father. And that’s what this prayer of Jesus recites to us as well.

But as I said, this knowledge of the Father that Jesus talks about transcends the intellectual, focuses on relationship and community. So there’s this personal relationship with God the Father through the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is what’s described in the text here for us.

This was a common way to sum up all of the Bible as well: to know God. The Rabbinic commentators pointed to Proverbs 3:6 as the summation of the law: “In all your ways acknowledge, know him, and he will make straight your paths.” This, some of the Rabbinic commentators said, was the summation of all the Scriptures—and all the law was to know God. And in knowing God, you have then life. Life is this knowing of God.

Again, Amos 5:4 was another summation they said: “For thus says the Lord to the house of Israel, seek me and live.” There’s a simple statement, four words, probably three in the Hebrew: “Seek me and live.” That’s what Jesus is saying that’s going to happen. You know, we are to know God. That this is eternal life.

This is the sum of all things: to know him as our Creator, to love him, to obey him, to submit to him, to trust in him as our owner and our ruler and our benefactor. To devote ourselves to him as our sovereign Lord, to depend upon him as our chief good, and to direct all our praise to his glory. This is the means of life. This is life itself—to know the Father in this way, through the Son, and by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Now, the fourth part of Jesus’s prayer is his past performance. So he’s prayed that he’d be glorified to the end that he might glorify the Father, and it makes sense he’s pleading the Father’s cause—because the Father has given him life that he might give life, given him authority that he might give life to other people. And this will glorify God. So it makes sense.

And then he also brings in the aspect of his past performance that’s been completed: “I have glorified thee on the earth. I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.”

So in Jesus’s prayer, he pleads his past obedience to the Father. Remember earlier in this gospel they say, “Oh, he must needs food or something,” as he’s talking to the woman in Samaria, I believe. And Jesus says, “My food is to do the will of my Father in heaven and to finish his work.” This was the highest priority to Jesus: is fulfilling the Father’s wishes. And that’s given to us here. The basis for him asking for glory from the Father is the fact that he has already glorified the Father on the earth.

He has finished the work which God gave to him to do.

Now, this finished work is a reference, of course, to his coming death. And it talks in the past tense about this future event.

And then finally, in verse 5, the petition is repeated:

“And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.”

So what we have is a final request for self-glorification. And now, very explicitly, this self-glorification is in the context of community:

“Glorify me with yourself, with the glory that I had with you before the world was.”

Jesus comes to earth, leaves his glory behind—not so much in becoming a man. A man is not a bad thing to be. You know, we have this theory that Jesus laid aside and was humbled because he became a man. No, he was humble because he took upon himself the death and the sin of sinful men. That’s the humility of Christ. It’s not taking upon humanity. Humanity was made the highest of all God’s creatures. “What is the Son of Man that thou hast regard for him?” God does have regard for us. He treats us as more important than we often treat ourselves.

So it’s not that, but it is that Jesus is humbling himself and having his glory stripped away as he goes to the cross. And now he prays that the glory might be given back to him in answer from the Father.

So again, it’s self-glorification that is asked for, but it’s a self-glorification in community.

By the way, this word “now” in verse 5—”And now, O Father”—this is a technical idiom, probably. That refers. This particular way of speaking in the Greek was used in courts of law. You know, you’ve made a summation of arguments, and “now,” because of this, do this thing. So it’s like, “Please, now acknowledge this prayer has been correct and put this thing into effect.” It pleads the past actions, meaning that the end result, the end petition flows quite logically, naturally, and immediately from the case that’s been presented.

So Jesus’s prayer does this for us.

Now, as I said, I think it’s proper to look at this prayer as a model for us. At least, clearly he prays for things here that are only his own as the second person of the Trinity. But much of this, of course, is to be seen as us as a model for how we’re to pray as well. This is a model prayer, or an exemplary prayer, to us.

He, as I said earlier, prayed to be overheard. And not only overheard by his disciples—praying out loud in the context of this upper room discourse—but he prayed to be overheard by us. He included this in the text of Holy Scripture.

And the question is: what do we see about prayers and about how we should pray as we think through these specifics of our savior’s prayer?

So I want to now go back over these same points quickly and talk about its relationship to us.

His context were his words. And he tells us that the full bucket dilemma is something that we’re to submit to and believe in—that our actions require, along with them, prayers as well. So the first thing we’re taught by the context of our savior is that we do these actions. We speak words, but our prayers are significant.

So it’s a reminder to us first of the significance of our prayer life. And I would ask you, you know, based on that reminder: How do you do here? What is your prayer life like? Do you pray regularly to the Father?

And if you don’t and don’t think you have need of it, recognize that the Savior had need of it, even after he proclaimed this wonderful sermon and speech. And even though he knew that his victory was assured, he had need of prayer. He went to the Father. And this is a model and example to us.

Secondly, his posture. You know, we live in this—we’ve got this Greek world where our bodies are some kind of irrelevant thing to us. We’re a bunch of Gnostics who think we’re just kind of a bunch of intellectual thoughts going on. And this prayer—particularly these first five verses—just strikes a deadly blow to that view of who we are.

We find out that our bodies are quite important. The Savior’s body, a human body, was quite important, and he lifted his eyes to heaven.

What do you do? Do you ever modify your posture as you go to prayer? Do you think about the impact upon your life of your habit, your clothing? You know, the nun has a habit, right? We used to—when I was young—you didn’t have drug addiction or drug abuse. You had drug habits. That’s what they used to call it. I never hear that word before, but that’s what it used to be called. It was a habit. It was something you did habitually. And it formed who you were. And so it became really a problem because you couldn’t do without them.

Well, we dress in habitual ways. And those habitual ways of dressing inform us as to who we are. We’re not so much the result of interior things that then project themselves. Much of what we are is what we put on ourselves. You see, God’s baptism comes from outside to you. And he creates internal changes from the outside. And our habits are ruts of what we do with our bodies, how we clothe them, how we comport ourselves.

And very much to the point here: how we go about modifying our posture when we’re speaking to the Father in heaven. How do we modify our habit to get into a habit of righteousness in terms of clothing, in terms of posture when we come into the formal presence of God. You see, our savior would have us reflect upon our posture in prayer.

As one commentator said, “All the arguments for kneeling, standing to pray are compacted in this little note: he looked toward heaven and pray.” Good reasons to change our posture. There’s not one posture that’s right or wrong. As I said, throughout history, different people pray in different ways. This is a good way, though.

I mentioned before that our typical way of prayer—to have head down, cast eyes downward, hands folded—was primarily the prayer of a peasant before a lord who did not really expect to be treated well by him. Now, it’s okay. The publican in the Publican and Pharisee story in the gospels prayed with downcast eyes. Nothing wrong with that. But if that’s the only way you ever pray—in terms of your posture—instead of looking upward to heaven exuberantly, waiting for what God is going to give you, probably you’re going to develop a habit then of thinking of your Father in heaven as close-fisted, not really wanting to give you what you need.

See, it’s good to raise our hands to God. It’s good to lift our eyes up to heaven. It’s good sometimes to bow and to kneel and to lower our eyes. But our posture is important.

Calvin said that it’s with the same view that the hands are lifted up in prayer. For men being by nature indolent and slow—Calvin always says that over and over—”Men by nature are indolent and slow, and drawn downwards by their earthly disposition. That’s who we are in and of ourselves. They need such excitement. Or I should rather say, chariots to raise them to heaven. Sursum corda, raise your hearts. They need chariots,” Calvin said, “to raise them to heaven.”

And our posture are chariots to bring our prayers to heaven. Not as if God needed them, but it transports us. You see? And functions as the context for our prayers.

Our address—and if there’s nothing else, you know, you come away from this today with this—I think this is the most important point of what we have here. We must, in our prayers, reflect this view that we’re praying to our Father.

R.J. Rushdoony, in his systematic theology, talks about prayer in the very first section. I just love it. He says, “There are all these books on prayer: how to pray right and whatever. Yeah, they can be okay. He said, “But you know, when I got married, nobody needed to tell me. I didn’t need to read a book to be able to talk to my wife. Now some of you do, after 20 years of marriage, but usually when you first get married, you don’t need some book to tell you how to talk to your wife. You want to talk to your wife. It’s why you married her. You have communication and fellowship. It’s natural throughout the day to say little things to each other, and sometimes during the day to hold each other’s hand and say longer things to each other.”

And Rushdoony compared that to our prayers. And that’s right. You see, when our savior gives us his first word—as “Father”—and calls us to enter into that prayer and we see this beautiful intimacy of Father and Son in this communication of prayer from Jesus in John 17, see, that’s what it should be to us.

We should be entering into prayer to our Father in heaven, correcting our view.

I had some anxiety earlier in the week. I mean, not horrible, but I had. I was really worried about a few things, and I just started reading—preparing for my sermon, I think it was Monday night—and I read some of the commentators on this particular prayer, this great focus of the Father in heaven. And I thought, “Yeah, what am I worried about?” I mean, I still have to do work on particular things I’m trying to fix, and all that. I don’t want to become indolent and slothful again.

But underneath all of that, underneath all of our prayers, underneath any concerns or worries we have, should be the sure confidence that we have relationship with the Father in heaven. He loves us. He wants to give us whatever we need to accomplish the task that he has placed us on earth to do.

I want to read some quotes here. And I know they get a little long. And you know? But what I’ve just—there were some quotes from Rob Raburn’s sermon on John 17 that I wanted to read here. So put up with me.

“It’s the conversation that persons who know one another have with one another. It’s precisely not a religious exercise. It’s not a formula for success or divine favor. It’s not a religious technology. It’s not merely religious duty or the obligation of piety. Prayer is. It’s knowing God. We’re always tempted to turn it into something less than this, to depersonalize our prayer, to offer it to God as an act of obedience rather than to look up to God in faith, love, and dependence and talk to him as someone we have come to know.

“There’s nothing of this kind of prayer in Buddhism. Buddhists pray—they even use prayer wheels. But there is no relationship with a personal, living, infinite God whom you have come to know, trust, and love. Buddhism has no such god, and no such relationship is possible in it.

“Islam makes prayer one of the five pillars of religious devotion. But it’s not the outworking of the practice of a personal relationship with God. It’s nothing like John Knox’s account of Christian prayer.”

And quoting Knox now: “As earnest and familiar talking with God.”

So Knox says prayer is “earnest and familiar talking with God.” And the Muslim does not have that. Muslim prayer is the repetition of a formula in Arabic accompanied with a strictly prescribed set of ritual stances, genflections, and prostrations. Everything was written out for them. In Islam, God is distant and unknown.

And of course, nominal Christians in all forms of civil religion similarly employ prayer, but prayer that is nothing remotely like the conversation exchanged by two persons. Nothing like a child addressing a father whom he or she loves and trusts and needs.

“Only in Christianity is there the promise that an individual human being can know God, can know him really individually, privately, affectionately, seriously, can talk to him and ask him for things and be heard.”

See, in the context of Jesus’s prayer, he says that this is life: to know the Father. Only in Christianity is there the promise that the living God, the maker of heaven and earth, would stoop to be known by us.

John Bunyan said it this way: “I have often found that when I can say but this word, ‘Father,’ it does me more good than if I called him by any other Scripture name.”

We can go to God and call—there’s lots of names of God listening in the Scriptures. But Bunyan said, “The one that most puts me at rest is to address him as Jesus did: as Father.”

John Owen described this freedom to address God directly as our Father (Abba). And quoting Owen now: “The great and fountain privilege of Christians.”

And J.R. Packer said, “What is a Christian? The question can be answered in many ways, but the richest answer I know,” Packer said, “is that a Christian is one who has God for his father.”

“Father,” as one theologian said, “is the Christian name for God.”

That is what Christianity alone, among all the religions and philosophies of the world, proclaims. That God makes human beings his children, brings them into his family. And like any truly loving father—but so much more wonderfully—always stands ready to listen to his children whom he loves when they come to talk to him. He puts up with them because he loves them.

That’s what Christ has done for us. We get guilty about our sins. God puts up with us because of his love for us. And so those sins, which break relationship and drive us from God, God says, “Don’t do that. Don’t go hide. Come to me as your Father. I can make it better.” And he will.

That is his purpose: to minister grace to us that we might minister grace to others. That is what Christ has done for us. He has brought us into God’s family. He has, as the God-man, become our elder brother in that family.

That’s the truly astonishing thing. Many people claim to know God who know nothing of God as their father and who do not see themselves and do not even attempt to relate to him as children to a father.

But prayer in Christianity is children talking to their father with all the love and the confidence and the reverence with which children talk to their fathers in happy, healthy, and well-ordered homes. Prayer is just like that.

What a wonderful word world lies in that first word of the prayer: Father.

Now, you know, you’ve been at RCC for a long time—we try to be a theologically driven church. We understand our theology. We stress the law of God. We stress the high reverence of God and the need to worship him reverently, coming before his presence. And that understanding. You know, we’ve talked about the law and its implications for our lives. And we try to see ourselves as affecting reformation. We try to build a construct of what a Christian is here—not as some kind of weak, wimpy little thing, but as a strong dominion man or woman, as a warrior king going forth in the name of Jesus to conquer, and then later in life as being true prophets under Christ to speak words that change the reality of our world.

We try to have a cast of a mature Christian man and woman as the model that’s presented from this pulpit. And so I think I’m in a good position to reinforce everything that Raburn just said in his sermon to you: to tell you that part of this model of mature men and women is understanding this deeply personal covenantal relationship with the Father in heaven that Jesus came to give us.

That this is the heart of who we are as Christians: is to know the Father, the Son, and the power of the Spirit. And to be able to go to him no matter what the circumstances are of our lives—no matter how badly we’ve messed things up and how badly other people have treated us—to go to him as our Father, trusting his deep love and his thoughts toward us, and driving us to prayer.

This is part of the model of who we are as Christians.

Now, fourth, our savior yielded to the timing of the Father. And as we approach this Father, this is important for our prayers too: recognize that there is a time for everything. The hour may not have come yet for whatever it is you’re praying. There’s a submission to the Father’s timing in Jesus’s prayer. There’s a reliance upon the need for prayer. There’s a change in posture. There’s an approaching God as our Father in heaven. But there’s a submission to the Father’s time that our savior had. And that must inform our prayers as well.

Now, the prayer himself of our savior also serves as a model for us. Very briefly here: our petition is proper. And this is one of the points I’ve been trying to make. You see, of these three gifts, the toughest one for us to kind of say, “Well, okay, I believe that” is this gift of glory.

You know, somehow we think that’s something that’s reserved for God. That’s not for us. And yet our—we can see from this model that the Savior’s first petition is self-glorification. And I guess what I’m saying is that I think it is proper for us to see even that as a model for what we’re to pray for.

“For all men fall short of the glory of God,” the Scriptures say, “and are restored then to glory.” The implication is by forgiveness of our sins and a restoring to us of the weight and glory and luster of who we are.

And we’re we tend not to want to pray for self-glorification. But our savior says his first petition for himself. And as we go to God, our petitions for ourselves should be glorification. I believe that to be the case, and I believe that is consistent with Scripture.

Romans 8, in the golden chain, you know: “Them he also he—sanctifies us. He also glorifies.” It says in that golden chain of Romans 8.

And just as I think that the text does not tell us that there’s nothing in the text to say that this glorification thing happens way out somewhere after we’re dead and gone. No, it seems like it’s part of the present reality. Now, there’s a coming glorification in heaven, no doubt. But there’s a glorification that God properly says is part of our covenantal union with the Savior.

And Romans 8 tells us just that. Romans 8 tells us the same thing that 2 Corinthians 3 tells us: that in 2 Corinthians 3, it says we’re all going from one degree of glory to another. It doesn’t say in 2 Corinthians that we don’t have any glory and then we’ll get glory in heaven. No, it says that we’re all moving from one degree of glory to another. That we go—reflecting on Moses and Jesus—we also will go from glory to glory.

To pray for increased glory to ourselves is to pray in accord with what God’s word reveals is his purpose for calling and saving and sanctifying us: is to glorify us. And it’s to pray in terms of the purpose of God in 2 Corinthians 3, that we’re to go from glory to glory.

It is proper to pray for self-glorification.

Revelation 21 and 22, the picture of the new Jerusalem, has been understood by Vos and Owen and other commentators as a picture of the present glory of the church, not some future glory. It will be more glorious in the eschaton, but it talks about the present glory as well.

In Ephesians 2:6, we read that we’re now seated in heavenly places of Christ. We have that heavenly glory now. Ephesians 2:6 says—Ephesians 1:19 indicates that the power of Jesus Christ that raised him from the dead is at work in us. And it is this resurrection of Jesus that he’s praying for in terms of glory.

The glory of new creatures is that they’re new creatures, and that’s who we are. It is proper to pray for our self-glorification.

However, we must go on quickly that our savior prayed for self-glorification that he might glorify the Father. So when we pray for things from God, it must always be to the end that we would receive things, we would become more glorious and more weighty, to the end that we might glorify God. That’s the mission he gives us.

Now, if we don’t pray for self-glorification, he’ll give it to us anyway, because he accepts our stupidity. But if we refuse self-glorification, we can’t ever get to the place of glorifying the Father. You see, he wants us to pray for self-glorification. But not that it ends there, not that it’s selfish, but that it yields glory back to the Father.

Again, the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. If we secretly honor ourselves and ask for things for ourselves in terms of our prayers to God for our glory, apart from glorifying God, then indeed he’s likely to heap shame upon us, to humble us, and to cause us to cry out to him in repentance.

The purpose for anything we pray for should always be the glory of God. It’s our chief end. The Larger Catechism says—Jesus portrays it here. So we should pray for health, financial blessing, safety in military combat, all these things for the glory of God.

And frequently, it’s his desire to glorify him in another way from what we’ve asked. There are men dying in Iraq—martyrs for the Lord Jesus Christ who are prayed up. And God, they prayed to God for safety. Their parents did, but the parents, if they were Christians, knew that they prayed in terms of the glory of God. And God decides to glorify himself and to glorify people by them dying the martyr’s death in the face of the enemy, bravely and courageously because of their faith in Christ. That’s glory. That’s the glory of heroes in battle.

Our savior also prayed in terms of this plan. You know, all authority been given to him to be able to give life to others. And this is what he’s going to pray for us. He wants us strengthened with self-glorification that we can minister life to other people and bring them to this knowledge of the Father.

We’re to pray in terms then of the Father’s specific revealed plan. We’re to pray in terms of obedience to that. And that plan has to do with knowing God. And frequently, the plan to know God may come about as a result of us suffering—through physical illness or death or financial problems, loss of friends. That suffering is frequently what God will yield, will use to yield an increased knowledge of him in the context of our prayer.

So our prayer should recognize that we’re praying in terms of the plan of God. That the plan is to know the Father. Our savior pleaded his past performance, his obedience to the task that he’d already been given. And we should be able to go to God and say, “We’re doing the work you called us to do. We look back at our last week, month, year, and we did work for you.”

And if we do not have those things to come to God to plead for, then we must in the first instance pray that he might empower us to glorify him here on earth. Because that’s the basis for this further prayer for glorification. You can’t go from glory to glory if you’re not glorifying God in the present in some way.

If you’re not doing the work—children, how do you glorify papa? You do what he tells you to do. You do the dishes. You do whatever it is. You finish the work he’s told you to do. And when you do that, you see, you’ve glorified him. And then you go to Dad and say, “Could you glorify me so that I can glorify you some more? Can you maybe give me some money so that I could go have a candy bar, and boy, it’ll make me real joyous, and next time I’ll be willing to serve you again?”

Good. I don’t want to set up any problems here, but you know—but the end of what we’re accomplishing in these relationships in our home is to reflect the relationship of the Father to us, his children.

And children, you’re to glorify your fathers by finishing the work they call you to do. If you don’t do that, then it’s not good to go back to the father and ask for something. You see, the purpose for you asking for it is to glorify the Father. And you tell him, “I will use it to glorify you. Because look, you know, you bought that nice vacuum cleaner, and I used it to vacuum the house. I did what you asked me to do. Now glorify me some more and provide me things whereby I can glorify you.”

We plead our past work just as the savior did.

And then finally, this self-glorification—this petition is for self-glorification in the context of community. You know, so often our prayers are such that we don’t have to live in community, right? “You know, make us rich. You know, make us happy. Make us joyful. Give me a car so I don’t got to take the public transportation, for instance.” You know, different things. But our prayers frequently are ways to shield us from having to go to other people with needs.

And so we must understand that God wants us to exist with self-glorification in the context of community. That’s what we said with our savior. He was asking for the glory they had in community.

And our prayers should be toward the line that God might glorify us—not in isolation from his plan, but rather in accord with that plan. And that plan is for the purpose of building Christian community, building our fellowship with the Father in heaven, entering into that giving that goes on and entering into the giving of the relationships of Jesus Christ here on earth as well.

Our savior gives us this wonderful prayer that we can marvel at, but it’s very practical and gives us some very practical illustrations to come to our own prayer life, to teach our children how Jesus prayed. Just open it up to the first five verses of John chapter 17 and say, “Here’s how we pray, kids. We pray knowing that it’s important to accomplish what we do, but what we do must be mixed with our prayers. It’s important to change our posture, to get down on our knees or to raise our hands to heaven. Kids, it’s important that we, when we speak to God, acknowledge him as our Father. And it’s important in our prayers to say his timing—Father’s timing is what we’re trying to accomplish. And then we can tell our kids, ‘It’s important to ask that God would glorify you, that he would strengthen you, that he would make you better at whatever it is you’re doing so that you can give all glory to God the Father and minister God’s plan to bring life to the world and to exist in the context of community.’”

These are all things that frame up the way we pray. Prayer for ourselves is proper. Prayer for self-glorification is proper. Prayer for self-glorification goes out to a Father who loves us more than we can ever really comprehend.

Let’s pray.

Father, we do thank you, Lord God, for these first few verses of this prayer. And we pray that you would bless us, Lord God, as we meditate on John 17 over the next three weeks as we approach a consideration of the passion of our savior and his resurrection. Help us, Father, to be built up in our prayers, to be more consistent, to have them formed and put into context of our savior giving us this great instruction in this book.

We pray that you would bless us as we come forward. Father, help us to commit ourselves afresh to not shrinking back from you, but to trust you even in the midst of great trials and difficulties, to approach you in prayer that we might seek our glorification to the end that we may glorify you.

In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.