The Heart of Our Master

God is too wise to be mistaken
God is too good to be unkind
So when you don’t understand
When you don’t see His plan
When you can’t trace His hand
Trust His Heart

Today’s text is an astonishing detailed X-ray of the heart of our Savior.  It is commonly called the High Priestly Prayer of Jesus, or His Intercessory Prayer.  It is the longest of any recorded prayer of Jesus in any of the gospels.  And it takes place on the night He was arrested.

I have one faith objective:  That you may be abundantly blessed by the heart of our Master.

This prayer is different than the prayer in Gethsemane.  As we will see, this one is utterly divine.  Jesus reflecting on the glory He had before He came to earth and to which He is returning.  He is looking beyond the suffering, and beyond His impending death. The prayer of Gethsemane is utterly human.  Where He confronts what is to come.  We see Him processing

John 17:1-26 (NIV)

¹ Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.

• Jesus’ arrest was no ambush. He knew it was coming.
• Through all that is about to happen to Me, reveal who I am to You and who You are to me. And this certainly happened.  The night he was arrested the soldiers fell back when Jesus announced who he was.  Pilate tried to release Him because he could find no fault in Him.  When he was crucified one of the men dying beside him said, “Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom.  And when Jesus died, the guard standing near the cross said, “Surely this was a righteous man.”  The sky darkened.  An earthquake ripped the curtain of the temple in two.
• This is also a fantastic model of a prayer for us. Father, in all that is transpiring in my life, glorify Jesus through me.   Whether you eat or drink to do all to the glory of God.

² …you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him.

• That is what the authority of Jesus looks like throughout the NT giving. This is what it will look like throughout all eternity.

 ³ Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

• Death may separate me from my body, but it can never separate me from the life I am enjoying in the Lord right now. On the contrary, death can only liberate me to a fuller experience of it, without the limitations of the flesh.

⁴ I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.

• He established a trust fund for us. We trust in Him and all the unsearchable riches of Christ become ours.  Drawn upon the account of His blood.

⁵ And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.

• I’m coming to You. Looking past death.  Like we might talk about boarding a plane

¹⁰ glory has come to me through them.

• Jesus knew what the disciples had done to glorify His name.
• He knows what all of us have done. Hebrews 6:10.  Says He won’t forget.

Three times (vs. 11, 21 and 22 He asks for us, His church to be one

• The goal is for all of them to become one heart and mind— Just as You, Father, are in Me and I in you, So they might be one heart and mind with us. Then the world might believe that you, in fact, sent me.

¹³ “I am coming to you now, but I say these things while I am still in the world, so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.

• Learning to just enjoy Him, is the greatest source of spiritual vitality and effectiveness.

¹⁵ My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.

• He’s protecting us from the evil one, because if the evil one could fully have his way we would all be destroyed.

¹⁹ For them I sanctify myself, that they too may be truly sanctified.

• This summarizes what Communion is about. Jesus set Himself apart as a sacrifice for our sins. So that we may be truly set apart.  Not by our pitiful efforts but by His payment.

²¹ May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

• We’ve been invited into the very life of God. We did not just invite Him into our lives.  He invited us into His life.  Our fellowship is a sampling of the life of God.  It’s not perfect, but at its Spirit-filled best, it reflects the life of God by the Spirit. It is divine.

²⁴ “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.

• The glory of God shown upon Jesus at His Baptism. It shone upon Him at His transfiguration.  People witnessed both of those manifestations.  But neither of them was like the glory He had before the world began.

²⁶ make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”

• Hebrews 7:25 tells us He continues to intercede. Not on the basis of what He is about to do, but now, on the basis of what He has already done.  On the basis of His body and blood given as payment for our sins.