Good evening to you all.
I see this is a very unusual assembly
here tonight.
Most places that I visit nowadays, if we
have a real good crowd in the morning,
we can count on about 25% of
them for the evening.
So I see you are a much superior
gathering than what is generally seen around there.
Will you turn with me, please, tonight to
the Gospel by John, Chapter 17.
Some of you, I believe, if you have
thought about it at all to date, have
a question mark in your mind as to
what connection there might possibly be between our
morning studies and the evening studies.
So I'm just going to ask you to
be patient, and I think you'll find as
we go that there is definitely a link
between them.
We began this morning, as you recall, with
the subject of stewardship, and I hope to
pursue that with you for the rest of
the week.
We will look at it in the various
aspects of it, and those who are concerned
with the matter of stewardship, we began this
morning with what we call the Luciferic stewardship.
John's Gospel, Chapter 17.
Those of you who are familiar at all
with the life of our Lord and reading
through the Gospels, as we all delight to
do, will know that it is unnecessary for
me to say that our Lord was preeminently
and constantly a man of prayer.
We have several times in each of the
Gospels accounts of him praying.
The Gospel by Luke, particularly and characteristically, gives
to us eight occasions when our Lord was
seen in prayer.
That is, after he began his public ministry.
What happened before that we may only conjecture.
But, beginning with his baptism, when you remember,
as he was praying, the heavens were opened
and the Spirit of God descended as a
form of a dove and rested upon him.
It was while he was praying.
Then we go on through the Gospels, and
we discover that on various occasions, and for
various reasons, seemingly, our Lord was engaged in
concentrated prayer.
Mark tells us in the very first chapter
that he often went out into the lonely
places to pray.
Luke tells us in Chapter 6 that he
continued all night in prayer, and one particular
occasion was before he chose the twelve disciples.
I think it is a good lesson for
us, when we are making major decisions in
life, to spend some time prior to the
decision in prayer.
For this was a very specific and special
occasion when the Lord was to choose those
by whom he was to evangelize the world.
He spent all night in prayer.
If you recall, after he fed the five
thousand, he sent the disciples away in a
boat, and he himself went out into a
mountain to pray.
Before major decisions, and after major miracles, our
Lord often resorted to prayer.
As a man of prayer, for he was
just that, he has given to us valuable
and vital lessons as to our prayer life
as well.
But it is also noteworthy that of all
the times, the frequent times, when our Lord
gave himself to prayer, this is the only
prayer of any length that we have extant.
There are other occasions, of course, from short,
Father, forgive them, for they know not what
they do, to the lengthy all-night prayers.
This is the only one that has been
retained and kept for us.
Therefore, we approach it with anticipation, we approach
it with concentration, and we must be willing
to give it the best of our thought
life.
Personally, I feel that I hesitate to enter
on a study like this.
It reminds me of Moses in the burning
bush.
It reminds me of Joshua at the entrance
to the land.
It reminds me of Hezekiah, it reminds me
of Solomon.
This is really holy ground.
We feel, the more we meditate upon it,
that it is incumbent upon us to remove
the shoes from our feet as we listen
to the Lord in this prayer.
And yet, at the same time, we realize,
as he said himself in the course of
the prayer, that he was speaking this audibly,
and in some degree publicly, for their sakes
and not for his.
It was for the sake of those whom
he was leaving behind him that the Lord
did engage in this prayer.
You will have heard it said many times
that this is a high priestly prayer.
I hope to subject that to a little
examination with you, because sometimes, you know, things
are said, things that are very interesting, things
that are very real, perhaps, to the person
who says it.
And yet, it does not necessarily mean that
everything that is said from a public platform
or elsewhere is necessarily true.
When I was a younger Christian than I
am now, I haven't got old yet, you
understand.
I refuse to do that.
I'm pushing it away off in the background.
Every once in a while, my wife says
to me, you know, I don't know, but
it seems like so many of our friends
are retired, have retired, or about to retire,
and what are we doing still here?
And I say, don't push me.
I'm not in a hurry yet.
I went walking with my little grandson down
in Tampa there.
He was about seven or eight, I think
it was.
And someone had sent word to us that
there was an old friend of ours that
died up north.
And actually, he thought it was my mother.
She was a great-grandmother.
But it wasn't.
It was someone else.
And we were walking the dogs, he and
I, as we do when I visit here.
And he said to me, you're very serious,
like you looked up at me.
He had one dog and I had the
other.
And he said, you know, Grandma, you and
Grandma have been around a long time now.
You'll soon have to be going.
And I tried to remember the scripture that
says, out of the mouth of babes, you
know.
But I decided that I wasn't in a
hurry yet, really, at all.
It seemed to me there was far too
much yet to do.
So we shall read a portion of this
prayer.
And not very much of that tonight, because
it will take us some time to even
consider this.
Most of you will know that it is
considered that this prayer was said when the
Lord was on the edge of the Garden
of Gethsemane, having celebrated the Passover, that last
Passover with his disciples.
And Judas had gone out, you recall.
And before he asked the eight of them
to sit on the edge of the Garden,
and then he took three more, you recall,
into the Garden with him.
And he gave to them one of those
very few, not even half a dozen are
there, of the occasions when the Lord asked,
being here, something personally for himself.
It may be of interest to you to
consider that sometime when you can't sleep, about
2.30 or 3.00 in the morning.
And see if you can run over in
your mind the occasions when the Lord Jesus
asked for something personally for himself.
You'll be amazed how few times there are.
And he had these three preferred disciples.
Now, I say that guardedly because there were
those three special occasions of which you are
aware that our Lord took these three with
him when he left the others behind.
At this time, there are just eleven of
them, so he leaves eight on the edge
of the Garden, and he goes in with
the other three.
And then he asked them to do this,
he said, carry here and watch with me.
Now, it was before that, they failed in
that, as you know.
You recall that he said a little later
than this prayer that we have here, when
Peter drew his sword in defense of the
Master, and he said to Peter, Put up
thy sword into thy sheep.
Knowest thou not that I could immediately ask
my Father, and he would send me twelve
legions of angels?
But then, if that were so, how should
these things be accomplished?
Twelve legions of angels.
And the Father didn't give him twelve legions
of angels, but he gave him twelve men.
And of the twelve men that he gave
him, one was a traitor.
Eight could not enter into some of the
circumstances into which the Master moved, and the
three that he left to watch with him
failed.
It's a sad record, isn't it, of our
human insufficiency to be what the Master desires
of us.
But as he's standing there, evidently he is
in the presence of the eight, though we
assume it was on the borders of the
garden.
And we read these words.
These words speak Jesus, and lift up his
eyes to heaven.
He said, Father, the hour has come.
Glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may
glorify thee.
As thou hast given him power over all
flesh, that he should give eternal life to
as many as thou hast given him.
And this is life eternal, that they might
know thee, the only true God, Jesus Christ,
whom thou hast sent.
And that will be sufficient, I think, for
our meditation this evening.
These words speak Jesus, and that's what we
have in the last part of the previous
chapter, 16.
And he lifted up his eyes to heaven.
A young man came to me one time,
and he said to me, Brother Adams, he
said, Where is heaven?
I said, I don't know.
He said, oh yes you do.
I said, no I don't.
But he said, you do!
I know you do, you just won't tell
us, that's all.
I said, no, I'm sorry, I don't know
where it is.
If you're speaking geographically, I don't know where
it is.
And he said, you do know where it
is.
And I said, all right, please tell me
what I thought I didn't know, but evidently
I do.
So he said, you know what's behind the
North Star.
And I said, oh, that's interesting.
Heaven is behind the North Star.
How many times have I stood and looked
for the North Star so I'd know where
I was in the world, and never once
did it cross my mind that heaven was
behind the North Star.
Very enlightening sometimes to be informed of these
things.
But what happens here is, we do read
that Jesus lifted up his eyes to heaven.
He lifted up his eyes to heaven.
Let's not go into an unnecessary discussion as
to the four cardinal points of the universe.
And let us not think, well, if he's
lifting up his eyes to heaven there, if
he were on the other side of the
world, he would be lifting up his eyes
in an opposite direction.
So on these who like to digger and
quarrel and discuss this kind of question, I
think we are wasting our time to do
that.
But in the sense of being who he
was at this point, and in the dependency
of being the submissive servant, he turns his
eyes to heaven.
As far as I'm concerned, that's sufficient evidence
for me where heaven is at any time
for myself.
And as he turns his eyes towards heaven,
in that dependent position of the traveler to
the cross, he says, and I think these
are the most poignant words that we have
in all our New Testament, if not in
all our Bible, he says, The hour has
come.
Compressed into those few words, we have the
millennia of human history, and we go back
before the world was.
You remember our Lord mentions in this prayer,
farther down, about him being with the Father,
and being loved by the Father, and the
glory that he had with the Father before
the world was.
Now, it's very difficult for us to conceive
just exactly how it was before the world
was.
But we do know some very clear statements
from Scripture about some of these things.
And here is our Lord, and he says,
The hour has come.
Now, there are many times and decisions and
seasons that God has given to us in
this work.
This one stands out in very large, bold,
capital letters.
The hour has come.
I recall being impressed one time reading 1
Peter 1, we come to verse 18, and
you remember when Peter says, You are not
redeemed with corruptible things such as silver and
gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition
from your fathers, but with the precious blood
of Christ.
Some of you have noticed that only once
in all the Bible, the blood of Christ
is called precious.
We use the expression frequently.
We speak it often at the Lord's Supper,
when we're partaking of the cup.
And in the preaching of the gospel, we
speak about the precious blood of Christ.
And I was struck with the fact, in
fact, I went in to have looked it
back and forth, and inside and out, up
and down, it must appear somewhere else.
You hear it so constantly.
We use it so frequently.
The precious blood of Christ.
And when finally I was disillusioned with my
own concept of it, and discovered that it's
not used anywhere else.
The blood of Christ is never called precious
anywhere else.
And then there's something else that impressed me.
It's this.
It is in connection with the remission of
sins.
And there was something else that rather startled
me.
You're not redeemed with corruptible things, such as
silver and gold, from your vain conversation, lifestyle,
habits, a fruitless way of living.
And I said to myself, is this so
important that what we were before redemption was
vain, it was useless, it was fruitless, there
was nothing to it at all?
And is it that important that the only
time the blood of Christ is called precious
is in connection with us being redeemed from
a fruitless lifestyle?
And it made me appreciate more just exactly
what salvation, redemption, and the new birth really
is.
An insight of God.
Peter speaks about that.
And then he goes on to say this,
"...as of a lamb without spot and blemish,
who verily was foreordained from before the foundation
of the world."
And that rather arrested me, too, because I
said to myself, now, just a minute, the
world hasn't been yet.
History hasn't begun yet.
The birds and the bees and the animals
of the forest and the fish of the
sea haven't been created yet.
And yet, before there were any lambs, he
was marked out to be the Lamb of
God.
And in this, I found something a little
majestic about the concept of our redemption and
how we're living today because of the precious
blood of Christ.
There were no lambs, but he was marked
out as the Lamb without spot and blemish.
It's something similar when we read in Galatians,
"...when the fullness of time was come, God
sent forth his Son, made of a woman."
But who made the woman?
He did.
And he who in Genesis made the woman
for the man is the one who was
made of a woman.
That arrested my attention at Christmastime, a little
while back, when I thought of this.
Do you remember Gabriel said to the Virgin
Mary, "...thou shalt conceive him by womb, thou
shalt bring forth a son, thou shalt call
his name Jesus."
Made of a woman whom he made in
the beginning.
And when he came, it was the fullness
of time.
You will know, of course, that God is
a God of order.
He is a God of precision.
He is a God of fixed occasions and
plans and purposes.
And nothing runs amiss, and nothing runs behind
time, and nothing runs ahead of time.
And we who live in this modern age
of technology realize that it is because of
the precision, cosmological precision of the universe, that
man has been able to do what he
has in outer space.
It's marvelous what he has done, but it's
more marvelous still that God put the laws
there with so much precision that he could
do what he has done.
And so, it was the fullness of time.
God sent forth his son.
And when he sent him forth, he sent
him forth to be made of a woman.
The constant marvel of the Incarnation.
But how about this business of time?
We try to conceive of that, and we
don't have a word to describe it, because
you can't say period, you can't say era,
you can't say eon, when there was no
time.
For before the world was, there was no
such thing as time.
And now there will always be time.
I know that we sing sometimes, we used
to sing, time ends, then eternity.
But, of course, that's another one of those
little things we sing and say that isn't
true, because there's no such thing as time
ending.
You know that the expression that we have
in our Bibles for endlessness, which we call
eternity, endlessness, is not the extinction of time.
But as long as you have matter in
space, you have time, don't you?
And there will always be matter, won't there?
The heavens and the earth are coming, which
are new, or will be new.
And whether it's matter between atoms or protons,
or whether it's matter between light years, from
star to star, or galaxy to galaxy, as
long as there is matter in space, there
must be time.
Yet, here is something that was planned and
purposed before time began.
And in these succeeding ages, God had all
the cycles of time planned and fixed.
And that goes through, of course, as well,
for that which is yet to be.
Hath he not appointed a day in which
he would judge the world in righteousness by
that man whom he has ordained?
Was it not when our Lord came the
exact time, was it not in the consummation
of the ages that he appeared, as Hebrews
9 says, to put away sin by the
sacrifice of sin?
Did not Paul write to the Corinthians and
speak to them that the things that were
written aforetime were written for our learning?
Upon whom the ends of the ages have
come, the purpose, the cause, the reason for
the preceding ages now has appeared.
And so, Paul says to the Galatians, it
was when the fullness of time was come
that God sent forth his Son.
God sent forth his Son.
How say some of you, then, that he
who came to Bethlehem was not the eternal
Son of God?
I do not understand the clever theological minds
now who are promulgating this doctrine that he
was not from before time the eternal Son.
Tell me what does it mean when it
says in 1 John 4 and 14 the
Father sent the Son to be the Savior
of the world.
The Father sent the Son.
Can there be a Father without a Son?
Who was it that came?
The Son.
Who was it that sent the Son to
come to be the Savior of the world?
The Father.
If he were not the eternal Son before
he came, then there was not a Father
who sent him.
Because the fact that he is called the
Son sent by the Father, it means there
was that Father-Son relationship before he came.
For I don't understand the meaning of the
words.
And so our Lord comes to this point.
You will remember that previously in his life
service he mentions about his hour, his time.
His brethren want him to go up to
Jerusalem and show himself to the world in
John chapter 7.
And he said, no, you go on up.
My time has not yet come.
But your time is always ready.
My time hasn't come.
And down through the millennia, from before there
was time, from before the world was, the
Father and the Son are moving inexorably and
irresistibly towards this hour.
And our Lord looks to heaven and as
though the disciples were not there, he says,
Father, the hour has come.
There is something very moving in those words.
He had been anticipating it from he was
declared to be the Christ, the Son of
the Living God in Matthew 16 and Luke
chapter 9.
From that moment on, he is speaking to
the disciples about this hour.
The hour has come.
You have perhaps noticed in the seven times
that our Lord mentions his death after Matthew
chapter 16 when he asked them, Luke chapter
9 when he said, Whom do men say
that I, the Son of Man am?
Each time from the very first time and
every time as it's moving on, he mentions
the fact that he is going to be
killed but that he is going to rise
again.
But in the details that he gives to
the disciples, you will have noticed an increasing
intensity and added details.
The closer he gets, particularly in Luke chapter
19 on that last journey down through Jericho
and up to Jerusalem, you will notice how
the shadow of the cross is falling over
his spirit and he adds one detail after
another that he hadn't said per chance the
previous time until he brings the Gentiles into
it as well.
And he brings the mockery into it.
He brings the spitting into it.
He brings the details that cause you to
shudder realizing that he knew them all beforehand.
I don't know why Shakespeare, somebody said, I
might as well blame Shakespeare.
He gets credit for most things he didn't
do.
Somebody said, Omnipotence from the future kindly veils
our eyes.
And we who look back over the decades
now say, If I had only known that
this was going to happen, I wouldn't have
done that.
But we don't know the future, do we?
And the problem, particularly in our youthful days,
was we looked for a blueprint from God
to give us to understand what our life
was going to be like and if we
would serve him in one particular sphere or
not.
And he hid it from our eyes, didn't
he?
And if the falls had been known, would
we have carried on?
If our mistakes had been set before us
in anticipation, would we have made them?
If we had realized how cruel we could
be and how caustic and how critical at
times and how wounding we could be to
others, if we had known the failures that
we were going to experience and how we
were going to fall so far short of
his purpose of life for us, if we
had known all this in anticipation, how would
we or could we have met it?
And yet our Lord was very conscious of
everything that was ahead of him.
And he states the detail to his disciples.
On some of these very memorable occasions.
And he is moving with the Father.
They went both of them together, didn't they?
Until now.
And he looks up to heaven and he
says, Father, the hour has come.
The hour has come.
He's standing on the border of his suffering.
It only happened to me once, and I
don't know if I said this to you
the last time I was here or not,
but it only happened to me once.
You know, we have dreams all the time,
most of us do.
And my wife seems very peculiar as far
as I'm concerned in this.
She remembers them all when she wakes up
in the morning and knows all the details.
I asked her one time if she dreamt
in color, and she wasn't sure, but I'm
going to tell you they're very colorful, some
of the dreams she has.
I never remember anything.
I think mine all probably proceed from an
upset stomach or a bad liver or something.
But I do recall very vividly one occasion.
I had a dream, and it was given
to me to know, in fact, I was
told.
I don't really know how I was told,
but I know that I was told that
in the morning I was going to be
crucified.
And I've never dreamt that before, and I've
never dreamt of sin.
And I don't want to.
However, it did enlarge my appreciation, not necessarily
of what crucifixion really was, and all the
sensitivity of the human frame in the physical
part of the torture, but also it entered
into my bones in a way I had
never thought of it before, probably too materialistic
or too carnal or whatever when I was
awake, what our Lord actually went through when
he was crucified.
But, to me, it is augmented horror to
know ahead of time everything that was going
to happen.
And it seems to me that in this
very close relationship which he kept all through
his life with the Father, he looks to
heaven and he says, Now, the hours come.
Then, in the midst of that, he goes
on to say, Glorify thy son, as thy
son might glorify thee.
Now, I take a different view of some
of the passages of John chapter 17 than
others do.
And the one picture, and I probably have
occasion to mention it as we go, one
fact of this psalm that I cannot understand,
I cannot really receive or appreciate, is those
who interpret this chapter being retroactive.
That is, they tell me, and you'll see
there are some statements where you might think
that, that the Lord is looking forward, and
looking forward, he has experienced in his soul
what is going to happen.
Therefore, he retraces his steps and he gives
expressions to things in this prayer that really,
actually, have already happened, although he hasn't gone
through it yet.
Now, let me give you an example why
they say that, and yet we haven't come
to it in the prayer.
I have finished the work which thou gavest
me to do.
How do you understand that?
I have finished the work which thou gavest
me to do.
Rather, I say, and I believe, that we
must take it as it was said, in
the time frame in which it was said.
And when the Lord says to his Father,
Glorify thy Son, is he talking about post
-resurrection experience?
I think not.
For if he were, then how does it
connect itself with having said, the hour is
come?
What hour?
The hour of his resurrection?
No.
The hour he's been speaking of from way
in the north of Galilee to this time
now, the hour of the cross.
The center of all time, the focal point
of eternity, that to which everything converges in
the mind of God, and that from which
everything emerges in the purposes of God.
If there is no Calvary, there is no
future.
If there is no Calvary, there is no
prophecy to be fulfilled.
If there is no Calvary, my friend, there
is no anticipation of that which is yet
to be.
No.
The hour must be the supreme hour of
all time.
That which was purposed before time was.
And that which will long be remembered after
this world and these heavens are gone and
others have taken their place.
The hour has come.
And in the midst of all that, he
says, and it seems to just jump out
at us as very characteristic of the Master,
he says, glorify thy son, that thy son
also may glorify thee.
You remember back in chapter 12 of John,
the Lord said, now is my soul troubled.
What shall I say?
Shall I say, Father, save me from this
hour?
But for this cause came I unto this
hour.
How can I say, Father, save me from
this hour?
Because this is the hour for which I
came.
It is inevitable.
It is inescapable that he go through this
hour.
That doesn't mean, of course, that in anticipation
of that hour he wasn't so deeply burdened
in the prayer that follows this one.
The prayer when he was prostrated and said,
Father, save me from this hour.
There's a mystery hangs over Gethsemane, isn't there?
The humanity of the Lord Jesus springs out
at you with particular emphasis when you hear
him repeat.
But he didn't repeat the same words three
times, but he did repeat them twice.
And after he said, Nevertheless, not my will,
but thine be done, we see the individuality,
not only of the person, but the will
of the Lord Jesus.
He was truly man.
And he was so exhausted by the pressure
of the fulfillment of this hour that he's
referring to here that it says in Luke
22 that an angel came from heaven and
strengthens him.
Did you ever think of that?
Do you remember on two very split occasions
angels ministered to the Lord when he was
here?
Once after the 40 days of temptation in
the wilderness when he was with the wild
beasts and then confronted in what are called
the three cardinal temptations by the adversary himself.
When he was challenged to make bread out
of stones, that which he needed was the
greatest necessity of his humanity at that moment
with bread.
He wouldn't do it, would he?
And finally, after the three temptations were over,
it says angels came, in the plural, angels
came and served him.
How do you suppose they served him in
the wilderness?
And then move on to Gethsemane and read
about his prayer in Gethsemane.
There appeared an angel from heaven strengthening him.
I don't have any difficulty with the first
ministry of angels in the wilderness because it
seems to me they did what another had
done for Elijah that brought him bread and
water.
But that's what he needed most then in
the wilderness.
But how did an angel strengthen him in
Gethsemane?
You remember Hebrews chapter 2 tells us he
was made for a little while inferior or
lower than the angels.
And now they're waiting on him as they
so often wait on us according to Hebrews
1 and 14.
Now they come to him, or an angel
said rather, it's in the singular, an angel
came to him and strengthened him.
He didn't need material food, did he?
For a few hours before he had eaten
the Passover with his disciples the Rosh Halaam
and the Unleavened Bread.
How did an angel impart strength to our
Lord?
Well, I think there must be an answer
to that.
But what I was thinking of here is
when he said to the Father the hour
has come, glorify thy Son.
Is he speaking of the resurrection?
No.
Is he speaking of the glory which is
yet to be which we'll meet farther down
the chapter?
No.
He's speaking about the hour of the cross.
And he says if though it be difficult
for us to comprehend it, he says glorify
thy Son.
Back in chapter 12, as I mentioned, when
he said at that time now is my
soul troubled.
He ends up by saying Father, glorify thy
name.
Don't you see how the perfect servant puts
in subjection the glory and the will of
his Father, his own glory and his own
will.
And then there came a voice from heaven
saying I have both glorified it and I
will glorify it yet again.
And we have something very similar here when
he says the hour has come.
I can't tell you sometimes how I feel
the weight of those words.
But then he thinks about his Father and
this cross that is before him and the
tremendous work that is to be accomplished.
He is to be strengthened to do it.
His spirit, his soul, they must take courage.
They must move onward.
He has been oppressed.
He has been depressed.
He has been compressed in Gethsemane.
But now he looks forward and he says
Father, glorify thy name that thy Son also
may glorify thee.
Was there glory in the cross of shame?
Was there glory to the Father in this
obedient servant's son that he would go through
what was planned for him and laid out
for him without a murmur, without a word?
And is there to be glory to the
Son by the Father because of what he
had done in that act of submission, that
act of obedience and suffering?
Yes.
Yes, my friends.
Yes, there is.
Before we ever get to the glory farther
down the chapter, here is the first glory
of the chapter.
It's the glory of the cross.
It's the glory of the one who goes
forward to accomplish that mighty, majestic work.
The reconciliation of all things is in his
hands.
Everything depends on him.
Yet he and the Father are one.
And they are at this point very closely
joined in one in the glory that is
to emerge for all the ages yet unborn
from the fact that this hour had come
and that he met it with submission.
He says, Glorify thy Son that thy Son
also may glorify thee.
And this happened in both sides of this
tremendous work that was before him.
Now, just briefly in closing, verse 2 says,
As thou hast given him power over all
flesh, authority over all flesh, that he should
give eternal life as many as thou hast
given him.
Here's a very interesting statement, isn't there?
As thou hast given him authority over all
flesh, he stands alone.
He stands in his human ability and capacity
and frailty.
And he looks to the Father and he
says, As thou hast given him authority over
all flesh.
Isn't that a marvelous thing?
On the edge of the cross, on the
edge of being beaten, being maltreated, being battered,
being bruised, being crushed, being publicly disdained and
disclaimed, he's saying, Thou hast given him authority
over all flesh.
What does authority do for the average man?
It makes him arrogant.
It makes him demanding.
It makes him self-centered.
It makes him self-pleasing.
Everything is to come this way to the
man that has the authority.
What does authority mean to the Son of
Man?
It means the capacity to give.
Look what he says.
Do you remember in John chapter 13, Jesus,
knowing that the Father had put all things
into his hands, everything depended on him.
Ultimate, absolute, total authority.
He put all things into his hands.
The reconciliation of the world, the expiation of
sin, the putting away forever of the barrier
that stood between God and man.
It's all in his hands.
Jesus, knowing that the Father had put all
things into his hands, what did he do?
He divested himself of his garments.
He took a towel and he girded himself
and he took a basin of water and
he got down and he watched the disciples
speak.
What is the proper expression of true authority?
Service and humility.
What do we know about authority?
How can we handle authority?
We look for everything to come in.
And here you have the same thing.
Thou hast given him authority over all flesh
that he should give.
That he should give.
That he should give eternal life.
Here he is about to face death.
The unspeakable death of the cross.
Yet he is rejoicing in the fact that
by the arrival of this hour he will
be glorified, the Father will be glorified and
he has received, invested in himself absolute universal
authority that he might give, not that he
might receive.
Have we learned, brethren, the true essence of
God-given authority?
That he might give eternal life, he says.
Well then, thou shouldst give to him.
And then what does he say?
With this I will close.
He says, this is life eternal.
What is life eternal?
The children in Sunday school ask you, what
is eternal life?
And the first thing the teacher thinks of
is the gift of God is eternal life
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Eternal life is a gift.
Paul writes to Timothy, he says, tell the
rich in this world to lay hold on
eternal life.
What's that?
That's the state in which they are to
live.
Not for this life, but for eternal life.
What does it say in Matthew 25?
He shall go away into everlasting punishment, but
the righteous are going away into what?
Into life eternal.
It's the state of all the ages to
come.
What does the Lord say about the man
who gives up father and mother and houses
and lands and so on for his sake
and for the gospels?
He shall receive a hundredfold more in this
life.
And in the life to come, what will
he get?
Eternal life.
I puzzled over that to, as we say
in Spanish, romperme la cabeza.
What does it mean?
He is giving a reward for those who
have given up everything for him, and he
says it's eternal life.
But then I know that the simplest believer
in Christ has eternal life.
I know that eternal life is the state
in which we are to live now.
I know that eternal life is that which
yet shall be.
But why did the Lord so succinctly put
the reward of the faithful servant into these
words, in the world to come, eternal life?
Here's the answer.
What's eternal life?
This is life eternal, that they might know
thee, the only true God.
And Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent, my
brethren, he has given us eternal life, that
we might know God, and that we might
know something of the glorious person of our
blessed Lord.
This is life eternal, that they might know
thee, the only true God.
And Jesus Christ.
Do you remember what the prophet said?
He said, My people are destroyed for lack
of knowledge.
And what is the knowledge that they lack?
He said, There's no knowledge of God in
the land.
And that's something that we, indwells of the
Holy Spirit with the scriptures of truth in
our hands, enjoying the blessings of eternal life.
This should be the object, and this should
be the purpose, and this should be the
goal of life, that we might know God.
I wonder if as Christians we drift along,
saying, well, it's marvelous, you know, I'm going
to heaven.
I have eternal life.
A man, a brother that I know real
well in the north, just came to me
the other day and he said, You know,
Dave, I guess you've heard I've got cancer
of the bone marrow.
I said, Yes, I've heard it.
He said, People are beginning to feel sorry
for me, and he's had more chemotherapy than
would kill five or six other men.
They gave him a dose.
He's had 12 chemotherapy treatments back-to-back.
Two lots of 12 back-to-back.
And he said, They're trying to harvest something
of the bone marrow where they've killed all
the cancer so that they can inject him
with his own marrow as you know the
treatment.
Well, he said to me one day, He
said, You know, Dave, people panic because they
know I'm doomed to die.
They're doing their very best and I'm doing
their very best and he's an inspiration how
really all that he has taken in the
last few months.
Taken that which would have killed the other
ten men, I believe.
Very upbeat, very hearty, very practical.
He said to me, I don't know why
they panic.
I know I'm safe.
I have eternal life.
And if this is the time God has
chosen for me, and he's fighting it, mind
you, every inch of the way.
And if anybody ever can do it at
his age where he's quartering on sixty.
If he's not, he's about sixty now.
But he says, If this is the time,
why should I panic?
Isn't it all better before?
This is life eternal that they might know
thee.
The only true cause.
Jesus Christ to whom that is said.
And that, my brethren, is going to be
our future eternal exploration.
To know him.
Shall we pray?
Our Father, how poor, how feeble, how weak
is our understanding, our concept and appreciation of
what thou hast given to us.
When thou gavest us...