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You will notice that there are three acts of giving.

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In verse 2 we've already looked at the first one.

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Tonight, with God's help, we want to look at the last two.

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That to all whom thou hast given him, he may give eternal life.

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You will notice that there are two acts of giving in the last part of this verse, and

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they are ones in which you can, and I hope will, have a personal part.

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The first gift is the gift of the Father to the Son, those whom thou hast given him.

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The gift of the Father to the Son is an elect people, a people that God the Father has chosen

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to belong to his Son.

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Just as the Lord Jesus Christ is God's love gift to us, so in the fathomless grace of

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God, we are God's love gift to his Son.

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This phrase, to all whom thou hast given him, suggests to us that not absolutely everyone

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is included in these who are given to him.

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In other words, there are some who are not given to the Son.

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That implication is there, and that implication is true.

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There are some who intellectually stumble over this bit of revelation that God has chosen

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some and not chosen others.

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But the fact is that the other side of the truth is that anyone who chooses to come to

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him is free to do so.

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Those are not contradictory concepts in the mind and the purposes of God, although we

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ourselves struggle with them.

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As we study the Bible, we see that God has always chosen a remnant out of the larger

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hole to which remnant he is pleased to reveal himself, and he is pleased to save them.

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We see this, for example, in the choosing of Noah and his family.

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It is true that Noah walked with God, but it was previously true that Noah found grace

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in the eyes of the Lord.

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Why?

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Just because he did.

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Not because he was a neat man, not because he was some faithful person, but just because

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God was pleased to pour his grace, his undeserved favor, upon Noah and his family.

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And to that small group of eight out of the millions who inhabited that antediluvian world,

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that world before the flood, to that handful of eight, God manifested himself and he saved

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them.

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He was condemned, only a remnant.

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And of the population in the world in Abram's day, God overlooked most and revealed himself

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to this man, in Ur of the Chaldees, and called him as an act of grace.

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Out of all the population of Egypt, God was pleased to reveal himself through Moses, but

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to the people of Israel, and to call them out.

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And likewise, out of all the people in the world, even the exiles of the Jews who were

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scattered everywhere, only a minority were chosen to return to Palestine.

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God has always been pleased, for his own purposes, to choose a remnant, and to that remnant reveal

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himself and to save them.

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And it's still true today, isn't it?

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Of the four and a half billion people, almost five billion people in the world, only a remnant,

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only a few out of the many are saved.

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Does that not coincide with what our Lord Jesus himself said when he said, enter by

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the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction,

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and many are those who enter by it, for the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads

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to life, and few are those who find it?

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We sometimes wonder, why didn't God choose to save everybody?

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Have you ever wondered that?

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I don't know the full answer to that question, but there is a surprising answer that I think

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is consistent with the Word of God, and that is that God is just as pleased to reveal his

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wrath as he is his grace.

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Because that is part of God's nature too, his justice and his righteousness.

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The apostle Paul writes, what if God, although willing to demonstrate his wrath and to make

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his power known, endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction?

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Those seem like strange words to be in the middle of the book of Romans that deals with

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salvation.

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But what that verse says is that God is perfectly willing to demonstrate his wrath, just as

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he is perfectly willing to demonstrate the riches of his glory upon the vessels of mercy.

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He demonstrates his wrath upon what he calls vessels of wrath prepared for destruction.

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Prepared by whom for destruction?

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Well I think the better question is prepared by what?

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Because that which prepares them for destruction is their own sin.

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But God intervenes on behalf of vessels of mercy, and the verse goes on to say, and

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he did so in order that he might make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy,

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which he prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom he has called.

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And I don't profess to understand very much about all of this doctrine, except that the

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word of God teaches it, and I believe it.

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The Bible teaches us that God is at work in our world in this age, and he is taking out,

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first of all, from among the Gentiles a people for his name, Acts 15, 14.

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In addition to that, he is calling out a remnant, but only a remnant, of the Jews.

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As Paul says again in Romans, quoting Isaiah, though the number of the sons of Israel be

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as the sand of the sea, it is the remnant that will be saved.

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What is God doing in this age?

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He is calling out a remnant from Gentiles and from Jews, making them a body to present

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to Jesus Christ.

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How grateful that you and I can be that we serve a God who is a deity who does not leave

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all of mankind in its deserved misery and death.

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But God is a God who seeks to save the lost and does.

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And these whom he chooses, the elect people in this age, those whom he has chosen from

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Pentecost up until this day and until the day of the rapture, belong to an entity that

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we call the church.

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According to Ephesians 3 verses 4 through 6, this entity was not known in ages past.

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It was a hidden mystery that God has now been pleased to reveal to man.

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We are not the same thing as Israel.

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As much as I appreciate the course Perspectives on Missions and the ministry of Don Richardson,

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who was here recently, that course and Don Richardson and some others are confused on

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this subject because they see Israel and those of us saved today as being all the same people.

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And that is not what the Bible teaches.

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The Bible teaches that the church of Jesus Christ is a distinct body called out during

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this age to be presented to Jesus Christ as a gift.

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The church is composed of all those saved from Pentecost when the Holy Spirit began

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to indwell believers until that day that the church of believers is called out from the

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world.

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It is an elect body of Jew and Gentile, but neither Jew nor Gentile, but those who belong

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to Jesus Christ.

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The church, a chosen constituency from the nations, called to faith throughout this age

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is God's love gift to his precious Son.

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As God says to his Son prophetically in Psalm 2, 8, ask of me and I will surely give the

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nations as thine inheritance and the very ends of the earth as thy possession.

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All of those who are given to the Son by divine choice will come to the Son in faith and not

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one of them will be lost.

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We are in John, just turn back a few pages to John chapter 6, and notice the words of

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our Lord Jesus himself when he says, All that the Father gives me shall come to me, and

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the one who comes to me I will certainly not cast out.

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Notice that.

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And by the way, we see the delicate balance between divine sovereignty and human responsibility

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just in verse 37, All that the Father gives me shall come to me, election, and the one

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who comes to me, there is the human response, the one who comes, whosoever will may come,

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the one who comes to me I will certainly not cast out, for I have come down from heaven

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not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

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And this is the will of him who sent me, that of all that he has given me I lose nothing,

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and raise it up on the last day.

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For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in him may

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have eternal life, and I myself will raise him up on the last day.

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Again in verse 44 he says, No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws

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him, and I will raise him up on the last day.

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Again in verse 65, and he was saying, For this reason I have said to you that no one

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can come to me unless it has been granted him from my Father.

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So we get the point here, Jesus is saying those who come to me have been given to me

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by the Father, and those who come I will not lose.

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Those who come I will raise up on that last day.

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And there he's speaking about that future day of resurrection.

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But not one of those that belong to him will miss that day of resurrection when he calls

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them forth from the grave.

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Here we have the gift of the Father to the Son.

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It is a people, a people purchased by his own precious blood, a people called out during

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this age to belong uniquely peculiarly to him as his own.

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Are you one of those?

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The will of the Father is that you believe on him whom he has sent.

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Have you believed on Jesus Christ?

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If you will you may come to him in faith tonight and trust him as your Savior.

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Know this that if you come, and I hope you will, that you come because the Father has

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chosen you and given you to the Son.

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That's the truth of the Scripture.

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But in our text in John 17 there is another gift that correlates to this.

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There is the gift of the Father to the Son, those whom the Father has chosen to give him.

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But then the two, those who are his own, the gift of the Son is eternal life.

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That's the second aspect of the giving here in the verse.

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Eternal life is first mentioned in the Gospel of John in the third chapter.

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And I'd like you to look at this because whenever you find a phrase or a word in a

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book that you want to explore.

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It's helpful if you go back in the book and you find where it was first used and see the

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context there and try to trace that phrase through the book.

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Tonight we're just going to look back in John chapter 3 where the term eternal life

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is first mentioned in the Gospel of John.

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That is in verse 15 where it says, John 3.15, that whosoever believes may in him have eternal

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life.

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Notice the context.

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As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up,

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that whoever believes may in him have eternal life.

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These are the words of our Lord Himself.

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He is pointing back to that time in the wilderness when the nation of Israel was under the judgment

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of God and God sent fiery serpents among them so that they died.

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That God graciously provided for them escaped from that judgment in the form of that brass

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serpent.

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And if those who were bitten would but look at that brass serpent that was lifted up,

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they would live, they would be healed of that poisonous bite of the serpent.

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That brass serpent, brass in the Bible speaks of what?

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I know many of you know judgment, that's right, it speaks of judgment.

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And so the brass serpent speaks of judgment.

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And as they would look at that brass serpent that was judged as it were in their place,

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they were healed.

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Jesus is saying here that He will be lifted up too.

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Judged in the place of sinners and that whoever believes, whoever looks to Him in faith will

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have eternal life.

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He goes on to say in this most beloved of all verses, for God so loved the world that

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He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have

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eternal life.

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And let's read verse 17, for God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world

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but that the world should be saved through Him.

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And let's continue to verse 18.

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He who believes in Him is not judged, he who does not believe has been judged already because

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he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

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Then verse 36, he who believes in the Son has eternal life but he who does not obey

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the Son shall not see life but the wrath of God abides on him.

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Notice in that verse that belief and obedience are equated.

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Now why is that?

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Is Jesus here suggesting that works are somehow added to faith to bring eternal life?

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No.

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He is simply pointing out that to believe on the Son is to obey what God tells us to

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do.

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That is the will of the Father.

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And so to believe is to obey the Son.

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And not to believe is not to obey the Son.

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Well here we see that term eternal life.

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What does it stand for?

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Well at least three statements can be drawn from the verses we've read.

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In the first place eternal life, whatever it means, stands as opposite of what it means

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to perish.

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Notice in verse 16 that whoever believes should not perish but have eternal life.

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So eternal life is an apposition to perishing.

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What does it mean to perish?

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Perish is not to die physically.

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It can be used in that way, but it means more than that.

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To perish is not annihilation, that is to cease to exist, to no longer be a person.

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But rather to perish means to come under divine condemnation or wrath.

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Verse 17 suggests that.

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God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world.

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He who believes in him is not judged.

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But the other side of the coin is that he who does not believe is judged and therefore

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perishes.

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So to perish means to come under divine condemnation and wrath.

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To be utterly ruined.

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To lose purpose for which one is created.

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Perhaps the most frightful aspect of hell is not the flaming fire and the torment.

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But it is to be cut off from God and to lose the meaning of one's existence.

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And to have no purpose and to face eternal ages without any meaning.

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For that is what it means to perish.

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Commentator Hendrickson says, as the context indicates, the perishing of which this verse

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speaks indicates divine condemnation, complete and everlasting.

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So that one is banished from the presence of the God of love and dwells forever in the

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presence of a God of wrath, a condition which in principle begins here and now, but does

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not reach its full and terrible culmination for both soul and body until the day of the

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great consummation.

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That's why it says in verse 36, the one who does not obey the Son shall not see life,

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but the wrath of God abides present tense on him.

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See that?

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In principle right now the condemnation, the judgment, the wrath of God is upon the one

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who does not believe.

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Well, whatever eternal life is, it's the opposite of that.

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It's the opposite of what it means to perish.

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But then what does it mean?

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Well, again if we look at the context, it stands as synonymous with what it means to

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be saved.

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What it means to be saved from condemnation and from wrath and from sin according to verse

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17.

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God did not send the Son to the world to judge the world that is in his first coming.

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Eventually he will judge the world.

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But that the world through him should be saved.

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So to have eternal life means to be saved.

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This eternal life then becomes the possession of the one who believes on Christ.

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That is the one who places abiding trust and confidence in Christ who was given for him.

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Keep in mind that believing involves accepting and not doing.

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Believing is not a work on our part.

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It's simply accepting.

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It is simply responding to what God offers to us in Christ.

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But we still haven't answered the question of what does eternal life entail?

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What is eternal life?

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This gift that the Son gives to those who are his own.

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Well there are two thoughts that seem bound up in the idea of eternal life.

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On the one hand there is a quantitative idea.

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It says eternal or everlasting.

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So there is quantity that is involved here.

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It's something that is never ending.

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It can never be exhausted in any measurable quantity of time.

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However you measure it, it can never be exhausted.

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That's one thought that is bound up in eternal life.

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We had a beginning, but we have no ending.

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It is to live on and on and on.

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How do you measure time?

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Well somebody has said that the shortest measurement of time is that between when the light turns

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green and the guy behind you honks his horn.

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That's the shortest measurement of time.

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What's the longest, billions and billions of years?

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Is that the way you do it?

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Well eternity is even longer than that.

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There is no measurement to it, that's the point.

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It's never ending.

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It's ages and ages and ages and ages.

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I heard someone illustrate it this way one time and I thought of it when I was walking

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a beach in Florida a while back and I looked at all this beautiful white sand.

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One way to illustrate eternal ages would be that a bird flies down and picks up a grain

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of sand in his beak and then flies off, if it were possible, to the moon to deposit that

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grain of sand on the moon and then turns around and flies 250,000 miles back to the earth,

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picks up another grain of sand and flies to the moon and deposits that sand and keeps

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up that round trip and that process until the beaches of the world are emptied of their

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sand.

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When that bird has finished, eternity will only have begun.

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When you sit down and try to imagine eternity, you quickly get lost in thought because there's

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just no way that finite creatures can comprehend that which is never ending, eternal life.

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There's that idea, the quantitative idea, but the second idea that's bound up in eternal

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life is the qualitative idea.

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It's an existence, and I quote Henderson, which pertains to the future age, to the realm

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of glory, but becomes the possession of the believer here and now that is in principle.

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In other words, just as the wrath of God in principle abides on the one who does not believe,

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even now, so even now you and I possess in principle eternal life, a quality of existence.

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We share the life of the eternal one, and so to enjoy the qualities of love, peace,

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and joy that are found in him and which come to us through a personal knowledge of him,

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that is eternal life.

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Sometimes the choir does that famous song, poem, the words by Saint Francis of Assisi.

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He was not Assisi by the way, but his name is A-S-S-I-S-S-I, something like that, right?

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Close to that.

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Saint Francis of Assisi.

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Saint Francis wrote eternal life, and in that he does not depict eternal life so much as

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never ending, but as a quality of a way to live.

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You see, because you and I now possess eternal life because we belong to the Son, we are

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able to enjoy a quality of life that belongs to the future age.

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We are able to reach into the future and to bring in by appropriation to our very life's

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manner and mode right now the life of God.

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That makes us distinct from the average worldling who does not know Christ.

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Because we have a quality of life, now we don't have to enjoy that, some people are

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actually rather miserable in their Christian life, it's too bad.

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Because God has given us his life really to enjoy.

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That we might live now in the fullness of it, that we might experience love and peace

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and joy and all of those other characteristics that come through a personal knowledge of

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him.

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The qualitative idea, the Son gives to those who are given to him eternal life, his own

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very life essence to enjoy even here and now.

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And it does not even begin to appear what that's going to be like when we're with

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him.

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What kind of life we will have in his presence when we are conformed to his image and can

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fully experience that life.

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The glory that awaits cannot possibly even be imagined at this point.

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But at this point we do have the reality of that life to enjoy as much as we can in our

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present flesh.

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John 17, 3 is sometimes looked upon as a definition, it's really not a definition.

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And this is eternal life, that they may know thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom

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thou hast sent.

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This is not a definition of eternal life, but rather it explains how that eternal life

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is experienced.

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To know the Father and Jesus Christ refers not to merely abstract knowledge, but to joyful

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acknowledgement of his sovereignty, glad acceptance of his love, and intimate fellowship with

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his person.

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Again I quote Dr. Hendrickson, God's gift to his own is the joyous privilege of spending

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eternity with him, sharing all that he is and has, of being in heaven and in his glorious

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presence and of ever coming to a greater knowledge of him.

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Now as we look at the good gifts of John 17, and when I began tonight I said that these

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are two gifts in which you can have a personal part.

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I hope you see how.

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It is by coming to know Jesus Christ and God through him by faith.

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You see the gospel presents a choice to man, and that choice is no more clear than in John

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chapter 3.

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The choice is to believe or to perish.

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There's no alternative.

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If you believe, you will not perish.

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If you do not believe, you will perish.

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Aren't you glad for those words of our Lord right here again in the same gospel in which

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he says, my sheep hear my voice, and I know them and they follow me.

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Who are they?

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They're the ones the Father gives him.

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He says, and I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish.

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If you've studied that verse, you know that Jesus there put two negatives together.

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He says, as we would translate it literally, and they shall not never perish, which is

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very bad English, and two negatives make a positive, but not if you're using Greek grammar

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rules so that in the language of the New Testament you put two negatives together.

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It merely underlines, it reinforces that thought.

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So he's really saying, and they shall not by any means perish.

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You and I who know Christ have meaning in this life that will go on forever and forever

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and forever.

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We have purpose because we belong to him.

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I'd like to sing about that as we close tonight.

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Number 538, the words of Norman Clayton, words that are familiar to you.

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Now I belong to Jesus, and wonder of wonders, Jesus belongs to me.

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Let's stand as we sing tonight about this wonderful truth.

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Come on, stand.

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Jesus, my Lord, will love me forever.

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From him no power of evil can sever.

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He gave his life to ransom my soul.

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Now I belong to him.

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Now I belong to Jesus, Jesus belongs to me.

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Not for the years of time alone, but for eternity.

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Once I was lost in sins degradation.

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Jesus came down to bring me salvation.

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Lifted me up from sorrow and shame.

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Now I belong to him.