Jesus Prays for the Glory of God

John 17:1

This Sunday marks the first week that New Covenant Baptist Church will not assemble together as a congregation for worship due to the threat of the global COVID19 pandemic. It was not an easy decision to make. We want to do the right thing in being careful to keep people safe and to comply with the requests of our government authorities (Rom. 13:1-2; 1 Pet. 2:13). Yet we all know that meeting together as a church is such a vital part of our Christian life (Heb. 10:25).

I already miss seeing you face to face. I hope this teaching today will encourage you in this crisis. Although we cannot all meet together we can still be the church of Christ—encouraging one another, loving one another, praying for each other, teaching and preaching the word of God, and sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. We will continue to do these things in the best and safest ways possible.

Before I share God’s word with you today, first I want everyone in our church family to know that I love you and I am praying for you and your families. Second, I want you to know that we will do everything we can to support you spiritually and practically during this time. Third, I want us to remember that although the world changes and often seems as if it is in chaos, our merciful, loving God is still sovereign over all things (Psa. 115:3; 135:6) and He works all things together for good for who love Him and are called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28). Fourth, since God is good and is in control, we have no need to fear (Psa. 27:1; 46:1-2).

As most of you know I have been preaching through the Gospel of John. We have just finished John 16 which ends Jesus’ teaching to His disciples on the night He was betrayed. In John 13-16 Jesus made many great promises to His disciples as He prepared them for His hour of suffering and death. He promised them peace (John 14:27). He promised them joy (John 15:11; 16:20-24). He promised them answered prayer (John 14:13-14; 15:7,16; 16:23-24). He promised they would do greater works (John 14:12). He promised to prepare a place for them and to return for them (John 14:2-3). He promised to send the Holy Spirit to encourage and teach them (John 14:16-17, 26; 15:26; 16:13). He promised them fellowship (John 14:18). He promised them love (John 13:34; 14:21, 23; 15:9-10). He promised them hatred from the world and tribulation (John 15:18-25; 16:1-4; 20, 33). Then Jesus ended His message with a promise of triumph (John 16:33), “These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”

Immediately after that promise of ultimate victory Jesus prayed. John 17:1 says, “Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You.” So John 17 is the prayer of Jesus to His Father that all His promises would be granted to His followers. He is entrusting the fulfillment of everything to His Father. He prays to the Father to bring to pass His redemptive purpose, to bring to fulfillment all the promises that Jesus made. This is a prayer for the glory of God. Jesus prayed (John 17:1), “Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You.”

Jesus shows us in this prayer that a key to overcoming this world of trouble (John 16:33) is to pray for the glory of God (John 17:1). Jesus prays for God to be glorified as His hour of suffering approaches. As we live in this hostile, troubled world of suffering we must also focus on and pray for the glory of God in Christ.

In this prayer Jesus uses the word glory, or glorify eight times. Look at how this theme comes out in Jesus’ prayer:

1 Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You, … 4 I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do. 5 And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was. … 10 And all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them. … 22 And the glory which You gave Me I have given them, that they may be one just as We are one: … 24 Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17:1, 4-5, 10, 22, 24—emphasis mine).

If you have paid attention as we have studied through the Gospel of John you may have noticed that this theme of glory is not new in John’s Gospel. John has emphasized the subject of God’s glory throughout his narrative (I am drawing on D.A. Carson’s excellent treatment of this subject).

In John’s Gospel the word glory first appears in John 1:14: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” John 1:14 is part of John’s introduction or prologue to his Gospel (John 1:1-18). In the first 18 verses John lays the foundation for many of the themes he will emphasize in his Gospel. John’s Gospel is full of allusions to the writings of Moses in the Old Testament (Genesis through Deuteronomy). Specifically, John 1:14-18 has several conspicuous allusions to Exodus 32–34, where Moses receives the Ten Commandments, and shatters the tablets of stone when he learns that the people worshiped around a golden calf idol while he was with God on Mount Sinai. I want to share just four of the connections between Exodus 32–34 and John 1:14–18 that will help us to understand this theme of God’s glory for which Jesus prays in John 17.

1. John 1:14 reads, literally, “And the Word became flesh, and did tabernacle among us…” (Young’s Literal Translation). At Sinai God instructed Moses how to construct the tabernacle or the tent of meeting (Exo. 26). The tabernacle was the meeting place between God and His old covenant people (Exo. 29:42-43). It was the place of sacrifice and atonement (Exo. 30:16). Now, Jesus Himself is the supreme meeting place between God and His new covenant people, and He Himself is the sacrifice that makes atonement for sin.
2. In Exodus 33:20, God says to Moses, “You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live.” So in John 1:18 the apostle writes, “No one has seen God at any time.” But John also adds, “The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him” So although no one has seen God in all His glorious splendor, we have seen the Word-made-flesh, Jesus Christ, the Son of God — and Jesus said (John 14:9), “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.”
3. In Exodus 34, when God puts Moses in the cleft in the rock and allows him to see the backside of His glory (Exo. 33:23), God proclaimed His name (Exo. 34:5) by invoking several magnificent truths about Himself saying (Exo. 34:6), “The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth . . . ” (34:6). The pair of words “goodness and truth” in Hebrew can also be translated “grace and truth.” And that is what John says of Jesus, the Word made flesh, who is “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). John 1:17 explains, “For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” In other words, Jesus Christ, the Word-made-flesh, is the very expression of God who proclaimed His glory to Moses.
4. Exodus 33:18 shows us why God declared His glorious name to Moses.  There Moses needed assurance from God at a time of horrific rebellion among his own people. After praying for his people and asking for God’s presence not to leave them, Moses cries out in prayer (Exo. 33:18), “Please, show me Your glory.” God replies (Exo. 33:19), “I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the LORD before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” Moses asks for God’s glory; God promises him goodness, grace. So now in his Gospel John writes, “we beheld His glory … full of grace and truth.” God’s glory is manifested in His goodness, His grace shown in His Son Jesus Christ.

We could trace the theme of God’s glory in Christ all the way through the Gospel of John. We see it immediately after Jesus performed the first of His “signs,” by turning of water into wine. John 2:11 says, “This beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory; and His disciples believed in Him.” The glory was not just in the miracle but in the sign: it pointed beyond itself to the provision of the “new wine” of the new age that would be inaugurated by Jesus’ death and resurrection (see the sermon, Water into Wine).

This glory theme keeps recurring in John pointing to Jesus’ death and resurrection. Most clearly this appears in John 12 just a few days before His crucifixion, when some Gentiles seek to see Jesus. He says (John 12:23), “The hour has come that the Son of Man should be glorified.” Jesus knows His “hour,” the hour of His death and resurrection, has arrived. He says (John 12:27), “Now My soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour.” Then He prays (John 12:34), “Father, glorify Your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, saying, “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again” Jesus went on to say (John 12:32), “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.” And John comments (John 12:33), “This He said, signifying by what death He would die.”

What is this all teaching us? Namely this: that the place where God is supremely glorified is in the death, resurrection, and exaltation of His Son. Jesus’ “glorification” is His return to the glory He had with the Father before the world began (John 17:5), but this “return” is through the suffering and death of the cross. Here God’s goodness, His grace, is supremely displayed. God has indeed caused all His goodness to pass before us.

What does this background mean for the prayer of Jesus in John 17? Let me read through the glory verses in John 17 again commenting on what it means for us:

John 17:1 “Father, the hour has come (the time of Jesus’ death and resurrection). Glorify Your Son (through Jesus’ death on the cross and the vindication and exaltation to follow), that Your Son also may glorify You (for by this Your gracious goodness will be displayed through the Son dying and rising), … (17:4) I have glorified You on the earth. I have finished the work which You have given Me to do (not only the words and works of Jesus’ entire ministry, including the “signs” that have pointed forward to the cross, but also now in His death and resurrection that lie immediately ahead). … (17:5) And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was (for the glory of the cross will end with the “glorification” of vindication, Jesus’ being raised from the dead and returning to the glory of heaven). … (17:10) And all Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine, and I am glorified in them (the glory of Jesus’ ministry is fulfilled in the disciples who belong to Him and to the Father as He chooses them out of the world and saves them). … (17:22) And the glory which You gave Me I have given them (I have revealed You and Your glory to them, in My person, words, works, and supremely in the cross and resurrection: there they receive Your glory, Your grace, Your goodness), that they may be one just as We are one: … (17:24) Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory (the glory of My death and full vindication and exaltation) which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.”

All this display of the glory of God focuses finally on the goodness of God in the cross and the vindication of the Son for the sake of His chosen believers — and all of it is grounded in the sheer love of the Father for the Son — the same love, Jesus insists, that the Father has for us (John 17:23).

So what does this mean for us as we face the turmoil and uncertainty of this world? Here is one thing it means: as we live in this world of tribulation our prayer, like the prayer of Jesus, must be ultimately for the glory of God. We pray that God would be glorified in us; that God’s goodness would be display in us; that God’s grace would shine out from us; that God’s love would be shown in us. God be glorified!

That means in the midst of this global pandemic we fix our eyes on Jesus “the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” (Heb. 12:2). We glory in the crucified, risen and exalted Son of God. The one thing that will guide you through these days is a clear vision of the glory of God in Christ. This glorious God loves you so much that He sent His Son to die for you on the cross. He loves you so much He will take you to be in glory with Him some day. He loves you so much He graciously shows His goodness in Christ to you every day.

Do you glory in Christ? Is He your greatest treasure? Is His glory what gets you going in the morning, what sustains you through the day and what gives you peace as you lie down at night?

Do you pray for God to be glorified in your life? Through your obedience? Through your witness? Through your love? Through your suffering? Can you really pray today, God be glorified in me?

In the cross of Christ I glory,
Tow’ring o’er the wrecks of time;
All the light of sacred story
Gathers round its head sublime.

When the woes of life o’ertake me,
Hopes deceive and fears annoy;
Never shall the cross forsake me:
Lo! it glows with peace and joy.

When the sun of bliss is beaming
Light and love upon my way,
From the cross the radiance streaming
Adds new luster to the day.

Bane and blessing, pain and pleasure,
By the cross are sanctified;
Peace is there that knows no measure,
Joys that through all time abide.

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