Well, I've enjoyed the spice of variety this evening, especially with the offertory.
And I will know we have arrived when I hear during an offertory a mandolin and a guitar
and a fiddle playing.
We get some bluegrass, Christian bluegrass, yes?
Please, we don't want all that positive response right away.
I rode down to the Minneapolis luncheon this way with Joe Brandenburg back there and he
has a tape cassette in his car and put in some Christian bluegrass on the way.
I didn't think, I thought I was going to go straight to heaven before we got to Minneapolis.
It was a wonderful evening, or afternoon rather I should say.
Maybe you don't know what a mandolin is, you think it's some kind of Chinese food.
But I can assure you it wouldn't taste very well.
Let's open our Bibles to John chapter 17 and look tonight at our theme, the good gifts
of John 17.
Usually we like to give gifts which our friends and our family are going to use more than
once.
I suppose that food is not such an item, although frankly I've never discouraged such gifts.
But especially to those that we love, we look for gifts that they might use many times and
perhaps even keep for a lifetime.
These might become heirlooms that are then passed on from generation to generation.
But imagine a gift if you will that lasts longer than a lifetime.
What kind of gift could that be?
Well that's the kind of gift we're going to look at tonight in our study as we conclude
this series about the good gifts of John 17.
This gift that we're going to talk about tonight is so awesome to consider that frankly
I think our minds will tire before we begin to comprehend its magnificence.
Look with me in your Bible at Jesus' words.
We'll begin in verse 20.
He says, I do not ask in behalf of these alone, that is those immediate disciples for whom
he was praying, but for those also who believe in me through their word.
Ladies and gentlemen, you and I are included in that verse.
That they may all be one, even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may
be in us, that the world may believe that thou didst send me.
The glory which thou hast given me, I have given to them, that they may be one just as
we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may be perfected in unity, that the world
may know that thou didst send me, and didst love them, even as thou didst love me.
Father, I desire that they also whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am, in order
that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me, for thou didst love me before
the foundation of the world.
We've been looking at those occasions in John 17 when gifts are said to be given by
the Father to the Son, by the Son to those who are His.
Tonight, we notice that the Scripture says that God has given to the Son eternal glory,
and likewise, the Son has given to His own eternal glory.
Let's think first about the Father's gift to the Son, which is specifically mentioned
in verse 22, and then again in verse 24.
The Son's glory was that the Father had manifested Himself in the Son.
In other words, all of His attributes were made visible in the humanity of His Son.
That was the Son's glory.
He is the radiance of the glory of God, the outshining of all of the glorious attributes
that are the Father's.
That is the Son's glory.
That during His time on the earth, He was the vessel, He was the channel by which God
radiated the glory of Himself for mankind to behold.
But there is a future sense in which we need to think about the glory of the Son, because
earlier in this chapter, Jesus prays that the Father would again glorify Him.
There the Lord seems to be thinking of the restoration of His visible glory as deity.
Remember that when He came to earth, that glory was veiled in His humanity.
The glory of God's attributes shined through Him in His deeds, in His words.
But the essence of the glory itself, the shekinah, was veiled in His humanity, except on that
occasion that we call the transfiguration.
When Jesus allowed that inner glory, the shekinah, to come through the very skin of His physical
body, so that He shone like the light of the sun.
And now Jesus in this chapter prays that that visible glory that He had before He partook
of our humanity might be restored to Him.
His glory is the sum of all that He is, all of His attributes.
I think that this idea of the Father glorifying Him should also include in our thinking the
fact that the Father has given to the Son the highest position of authority in all of
the universe.
Philippians chapter 2, remember that?
Because of His humbling of Himself even to the point of death on the cross, God therefore
has highly exalted Him and given Him a name above every name.
And what is that name?
L-O-R-D.
Lord, He is above all.
He is the supreme authority in the universe.
That too is His glory, the Father's gift to the Son.
It was that during His earthly ministry, He had the privilege and the joy of representing
all that God is to us.
After His resurrection from the dead and His ascension back to heaven, He resumed that
glory that was His before the incarnation, still in a human body, a glorified human body.
He nonetheless is in a place of having resumed that glory.
It is so magnificent that when John, who was the closest to Him in His earthly ministry,
saw Him in Revelation 1, He fell at His feet as a dead man.
He was overcome by the glory of the risen Christ.
That glory involves too the title that is His, that name Lord which is above every name,
and to which every knee in heaven and earth and hell below will bow one day.
Now let's think regarding the Son's gift to His own.
It seems to me that Jesus here talks about two aspects of that glory that He gives to
those who believe on Him.
We might just sum them all up in two words.
One is union, the other is heaven.
The Son's gift to His own is eternal glory.
In other words, union with Himself and heaven.
Our glory that Christ has given to us is this, that Jesus Christ is in us and we are in Him.
That's union.
Furthermore, the glory that He gives us is that Christ will one day be with us and we
will be with Him.
That's heaven.
Now let's think about those two aspects of this gift of glory that He has given to His
own.
Our glory is our permanent and present union with Himself, Jesus Christ, by His personal
indwelling of each one of us.
That union with Him results in two important things.
It also results in our oneness with the Father, Jesus says that here, and it results in our
oneness with one another.
Our union with Jesus Christ means that we are one with God the Father as well and that
we are one with each other in the body of Christ.
The concepts.
We possess within us the person of Jesus Christ by the Spirit of God.
We possess within us the attributes of God as they are found in Christ.
That statement has to sink down a little bit into our minds, but it's true.
We have the very life essence of Christ indwelling us.
In Colossians chapter 1, the apostle Paul puts it this way, verse 27, he speaks about
the saints to whom God willed to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery
among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
At this very moment, dear Christian, Jesus Christ Himself dwells in you.
That is your assurance, your certain expectation of glory.
In chapter 3 and verse 4, the apostle puts it more briefly when he says, when Christ,
who is our life, is revealed, then you will be revealed with Him in glory.
But notice that right now, Christ is our life.
Isn't that what he says in Galatians 2.20?
I have been crucified with Christ.
Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, but Christ who lives in me.
You and I possess within us every moment the attributes of God as they are found in Jesus
Christ who lives in us.
Just as God manifested Himself in the Son, so now the Son manifests Himself in us.
Just as the Father is in the Son, so the Son is in us.
John 1.12, but as many as received Him, to them He gave the power, the exucia, the authority
to become the children of God, even to them that believe on His name.
Down in verse 16 it says, and of His Christ's fullness have we all received.
The fullness that is in Christ, we have received of that.
As it says in the handwriting of Peter, we have become partakers of the divine nature.
2 Peter 1.4.
That's not that we become God, but that God is in us.
That's the point.
Paul says to the Colossians again in the second chapter, that the fullness of deity dwells
in the Son.
And he says, and you are fullness, you are complete in Him.
Let me quote to you Dr. William Henrickson, the glory which Jesus gives to believers means
that they have become one plant.
There he's going to the idea perhaps of the vineyard.
The glory which Jesus gives to believers means that they have become one plant with Him.
That is, that He cannot be conceived of apart from them.
That He is the source of all the blessings which they will ever receive, and that they
in turn earnestly desire and strive to do everything to please Him.
You and I share the glory that is Jesus Christ's.
He's given it to us by His union with us.
This shared glory that we have with Him is the basis for our mutual oneness.
Because we share, we Christians share the same indwelling Christ.
That is the basis, that's the heart of our oneness.
Now for that oneness, that unity to be experienced in the fellowship of our church for example,
or in any local church, for that oneness to be manifested, we must choose to live in the
power of that union and to renounce the independence of self.
It seems to me that there are two qualities that must be manifested, they are essential,
if practical oneness is going to exist in the fellowship of the church.
Those two qualities are holiness and love.
Holiness is separation from sinful conduct unto God.
The negative is separation from sin, the positive is living righteously.
Where there is a lack of holiness, there will be a lack of unity, a lack of oneness in fellowship
between God's people.
Now we are one positionally because Christ dwells in us.
But if there is sin in my life and or sin in your life, that is going to prohibit us
from experiencing that oneness, that's the point.
And along with holiness comes love.
Love is kind acts, sacrificial deeds for the welfare of others.
Holiness and love, separation from sin unto God in my conduct, in my choices, in my lifestyle,
in my words, in my attitudes.
And love, choosing to do what is best, yielding to what is best for others, putting myself
second.
Those qualities, to the extent that they are found in you and in me, will enable us to
experience the oneness that truly is there because the Holy Spirit indwells us.
Lack of oneness in the body violates God's design in our union.
And it violates Jesus' prayer likewise for our oneness.
He prayed that they may be one.
Now as I said last week, that oneness was accomplished positionally when the Holy Spirit
came to Pentecost because we have the same Spirit of Christ indwelling us.
Jesus is praying for more than that, he is praying that we might experience practical
oneness.
Every day, every week oneness.
In the way that we treat each other, in the decisions that we make together, oneness and
unity.
And that oneness is the practical goal that all of us must grow toward.
Look over to Ephesians chapter 4 for just a minute, verse 1.
Paul says, I therefore the prisoner of the Lord entreat you to walk in a manner worthy
of the calling with which you have been called.
He says, get with it.
He says, walk in a manner that is consistent with who you are in Jesus Christ.
What does that mean?
Verse 2, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, showing forbearance to one another in love.
Being diligent to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
That's what practical oneness is all about.
And we grow toward that as he says later on here in the chapter, and I'm not going to
take time now to deal with that.
The result of our oneness, not just our positional oneness, but that practical manifested oneness,
the result of that is that the world has a testimony of who Jesus Christ is.
That's what he says in John 17 23.
You see the world does not discern the truth by the doctrine that it hears preached.
But the world discerns the truth by the oneness of believers with each other.
That's how it discerns the truth.
We cannot accuse the world of not listening to our sermons if we are not living out oneness
in our conduct.
And not just within this body of believers.
That's where it starts.
But our attitudes toward other believers in other churches.
It is a terrible thing when Christians begin to fight with one another.
It's terrible because it destroys the testimony of Jesus Christ before a world that judges
truth by that oneness or dismisses the truth because of its lack among Christians.
Our gift of glory therefore involves oneness that we now have with Jesus Christ and with
the Father and which God wants to be evidenced in the body with other believers.
Jesus said, I have given to them that glory.
So glory is number one union but secondly it's heaven.
The gift of glory which God the Son gives to us also embraces the thought of our presence
with Him in heaven one day.
He prays that we might be with Him.
That we might behold the glory that God has given Him.
Does that not align perfectly with what He said in chapter 14 verse 3?
When He said that He would come back and receive us to Himself, that where I am there you may
be also He says.
Notice that Jesus here in this verse that we've alluded to, verse 24 says, Father,
I desire.
That is a very deep word.
Jesus says here, my deepest delight.
Father, my greatest pleasure.
The thing that I yearn for above all other things is this, that those that you've given
me may be with me.
Now that certainly is our desire isn't it?
We desire to be with Christ one day.
Do you realize that Christ's desire for you to be there surpasses your desire to be there?
The Son has given to His own glory which involves one day being with Him in heaven.
Now of course spiritually now He is with us.
Matthew 28 20, and lo I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
Hebrews 13 and verse 5, I will never leave you or forsake you, He says.
But just as that is true spiritually now, one day it will be true physically.
Because all of the redeemed will be privileged to gaze upon the unveiled glory of Christ
and to live in that glory forever.
Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, neither has entered into the heart of man those things
that God has prepared for those that love Him.
I cannot explain to you tonight what it will mean for us to gaze upon the unveiled glory
of Christ.
But that is His gift to you.
That is His gift.
Hendrickson says, and I quote again, the Son desires that all believers shall gaze forever
on Him.
That is, on the radiance of His divine attributes as these are reflected in His exalted human
nature.
He desires, He yearns for you to be there with Him in heaven.
Now we know that that is the believer's experience at death.
The apostle Paul says that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, doesn't
he?
And he himself was in a quandary as he wrote to the Philippians.
He said, I don't know which to choose, as though he really had the choice.
He says, I need to stay here with you.
But he says, I desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is very far better.
So how would he know that?
Because I believe that what he says in 2 Corinthians chapter 12 is autobiographical.
At some point, perhaps at the point when he was executed in his missionary journey, stoned,
and then came back to life, perhaps at that point it was that he was caught up to the
very presence of God and he saw things that he is not permitted to express.
A few people have had experiences something like that.
I related to you several weeks ago the story, something of the story of Vanya, the Russian
soldier, young man 22 years of age who ultimately was tortured to death by the KGB about 15
years ago now for his faith in Christ.
One of the things that Vanya shared, very intimate personal things with his family just
a few weeks before he was killed, were things that he could not go into detail about.
He simply was not permitted to express some of the experiences that he had had during
those times when he was in persecution.
The apostle Paul said, I cannot tell you while I saw what was said to me.
We know that when a believer dies, he goes into that presence immediately.
There is no soul sleep, as some talk about, as though the soul sleeps in the body waiting
for the call upward.
The soul, that person himself, herself, immediately goes into the presence of Jesus Christ.
I've never had a near death experience so I can't tell you a personal experience about
that, but there are those who have.
Merrill Womack is a friend of mine and some of you have heard Merrill sing.
The time that he had his airplane accident, Thanksgiving, 25 years ago I guess now, and
as he was lying there in the hospital room between life and death for several days, on
one occasion he had what we call an out of the body experience.
And he left his body and he said in a testimony that I heard that he saw a beautiful green
pasture with a stream.
And up on the other side of the stream, like what was a hill, there was a building.
And from that emanated a bright light toward which he felt drawn and that at the stream
there was a boat prepared to take him across the stream so that he could walk up to that
building.
And he felt himself being drawn that direction.
He knew that if he, in his experience, were to walk toward that river and cross it that
he would not come back.
And yet even as he was drawn toward what he was seeing, he heard his voice being called
the other way and came back from that and lived in his born testimony in a powerful
way to Jesus Christ.
Well there was a near death experience.
He saw only just a glimpse of what perhaps was the entrance into glory for him.
How Jesus comes, what that is like when death really occurs, none of us can say.
We haven't been through that.
But the fact is that whatever the experience seems like, it takes us to the presence of
the Lord so that we behold his glory.
But the consummation of course waits until the rapture.
For it's then that you and I will receive new bodies.
He says, for our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior,
the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humble state, that's now,
into the conformity with the body of his glory.
Paul says here in Philippians 3, 20 and 21 that these humble earthly bodies that we live
in now will be transformed, changed, to be conformed to the body that Jesus has.
As he says in 1 John 3 and verse 2, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.
I don't understand all that that means.
I don't think we can at this point.
But I think that we can say that in some way those new bodies that we will have in our
glorification will be like prisms, capable of receiving and then reflecting the glory
of Jesus Christ.
So that the radiance of his glory will be broadcast, magnified, through us, the redeemed.
And our presence with him in that glorified condition will continue on into the coming
kingdom.
As he said there in Colossians that we read a few moments ago, when Christ who is our
life shall appear, then shall you also appear with him in glory.
When is Christ going to appear when he comes again to the earth to establish his kingdom?
Jesus spoke of this to his disciples as they gathered around the table at the last supper.
And he says, I will not eat of this or drink of this until that day that we drink and eat
it new in the kingdom of God.
The kingdom that will come to the earth.
We will be with him in our glorified bodies to reign with him for that thousand years,
but that's not all.
That glory that he gives to us will continue on and on and on into eternity as we participate
in the eternal kingdom of Christ.
It's not just a thousand years.
That will fulfill the Abrahamic covenant, the Davidic covenant, but his kingdom will
go on unendingly, turn into the book of Revelation chapter 21 and look at these amazing words
by John as he begins now to bring to a culmination this great revelation of Jesus Christ.
He sees a new heaven, a new earth.
And then he says in verse 3, Revelation 21, I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
behold, the tabernacle of God is among men.
I ask you, who is the tabernacle of God?
In whom does the fullness of his glory tabernacle and dwell?
In Jesus Christ.
And he shall dwell among them and they will be his people and God himself shall be among
them.
That is the glorious state in which we will live throughout all of eternity in his presence.
And we will live in this place that is called the New Jerusalem and which is described in
such sweeping statements as found in this chapter and in chapter 22.
Look in chapter 22 and verse 3.
It says, there shall no longer be any curse and the throne of God and of the Lamb shall
be in it.
That's the city.
And his bond servants shall serve him and they shall see his face and his name shall
be on their foreheads and there shall no longer be any night.
And they shall not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun because
the Lord God shall illumine them and they shall reign forever and ever.
Somehow that gift of glory that God gives to the Son and which the Son then gives to
his own will radiate in our very beings throughout all of eternity.
The gift of glory for Christ's own involves their presence, our presence with him in a
glorified state forever.
We can only begin to probe these thoughts.
It's like a bottomless pit where there is no bottom to it.
You just go down as deep as you can and still there are depths that are left.
The wonderful gifts of John 17 involve glory given by the Father to the Son and by the
Son to his own.
What can we say to these things?
What should our response be?
Well, surely it ought to be living the kinds of lives that will see his purpose in us fulfilled.
Separating ourselves from sin, being done with it, not allowing the flesh to dominate
us but presenting our bodies and our potentials and our abilities to him as instruments of
righteousness.
Is there anything that he can ask of us, things that we possess that is so important to us
that we would not make it available to him for the use, the work of his kingdom?
The one who has given us eternal glory, can he ask anything of you that is too great for
you to give to him?
He deserves our everything, our all.
I don't know what better application to make of this than just that.
Tonight as we think about all that Jesus Christ has given and will give to us yet, let that
liberate us and free us forever from thoughts of selfishness and covetousness and grasping
and let us desire to serve him with everything, everything we are, everything we have because
he is worthy.
I'd like us to sing in closing hymn number 480.