The Prayer of Great Promise
Jesus wants nothing less than for us to be reunited with him and his father in an incredible, intimate, and extraordinary relationship. This is an extraordinary prayer that Jesus is now bringing to an incredible ending, because in this prayer he is establishing something new, that never existed before, the ability for you and I to be in an ongoing, present and eternal relationship with God. The kind of relationship we were made to experience. This was the great, extraordinary plan that God had to restore us into a relationship that changes us – and requires us to change. A relationship of ‘oneness’ that the Father had envisioned from before the world began and it is now through His Son Jesus coming to reality. It is a prayer of Great promise – that we may know the love God has for us through our relationship with his son.
A relationship of true love. Shared love. Experienced love. The kind of love that Jesus alone knew and now longs to invite us to experience.
It is a mature love that involves trust and sacrifice on our part.
Jesus says the only way we can know this love is by our obedience – in other words we will have to trust him and sacrifice ourselves for him and others. There is no other way to experience this kind of love.
It is the kind of love our souls long for – because it is the kind of love they were created to experience. And at the same time it is the kind of love that every fiber in our humanity is going to resist. Our souls long for it and our humanity resists it..
24 "Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am
Jesus is not talking about a physical location but a relational location – to be with him and with his father. It is a new way of living life and experiencing life.
I am with Diana – even when we are apart physically. She is with me wherever I go. She is in my thoughts, my day, my hopes and future. We are never apart even when we are physically distant.
In this same way, Jesus is inviting us into a relationship with him and his father that regardless of where we may be in our life, we are with them and they with us.
and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world
We have talked about the glory of God and the glory Jesus experiences. The great and majestic glory of God and Christ. Nine times in this prayer, Jesus speaks of this glory because he knows it is a great thing to experience and in this prayer he gives it to us and he also never wants us to forget that he has invited us to witness and experience God’s great glory.
This is a glory that is experienced in love
In John 13, Jesus talks quite a lot about sacrifice, obedience and love. And it all leads to what His glory is, It says
John 13:1 he now showed them the full extent of his love.
John 13:4-5 so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5 After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet,
John 13:13-15 "You call me 'Teacher' and 'Lord,' and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet.
John 13:21 After he had said this, Jesus was troubled in spirit and testified, "I tell you the truth, one of you is going to betray me."
John 13:31-32 When he was gone, Jesus said, "Now is the Son of Man glorified and God is glorified in him. 32 If God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself, and will glorify him at once.
This is a Glory that is marked by a deep and extraordinary love. A love that he showed to his disciples when he washed their feet and invited them to emulate, even though they didn’t understand it, like it, it was not apart of their lives, but Jesus told them to do none the less.
There will be things in our life, particularly in our spiritual lives that we will not understand, may not agree with, or like to do, but we are called to do them none the less. And when we do this in an attitude of love we are on the road to experience God in a glorious relationship.
John 15:9 "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love.
Jesus wanted his followers to see his glory, a glory that was accentuated by his betrayal and sacrifice.
Now that is totally counter-cultural. He was going to find glory by becoming less, a servant, a punching bag, a martyr, a dead man.
Jesus ends his prayer with…
25 "Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me
“Righteous Father…” reminds us that it is God’s righteousness tthat has lead to his upright judgement of the world. The problem is not the worlds access to the knowledge of God – he came not to condemn the world but to save it (Jn 3:17) - but that the world refused to acknowledge that God had sent Jesus.
Jesus is the great ‘diversion’ of humanity.
Prov 14:12 There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.
di·ver·sion the act of diverting or turning aside, as from a course or purpose:
a channel made to divert the flow of water from one course to another
Each one of us is like a drop of water in the river of life – the river goes where the river goes, not a one of us can really change the direction of the river. Now maybe your in the fast current of the river or the more gentle meandering of the river, but all of us go the way of the river. Now we would like to think our river is heading to the great ocean steeming with more great adventure and life, but in reality and according to the Bible, our river is like the Jordan river that is dumping into the dead sea, the place where nothing is living – everything is dead and dying.
But God created a diversion to give us the opportunity for our lives to be redirected and there is only one way to experience this new way and it is through Jesus.
But all that accept the Son, who embrace him and the Father, will experience the ineffable love known only between Father and Son. We are loved by God with the love He has for His Son!
And our lives are transformed by the life of Jesus, who now takes residence within us.
Loving God looks like obeying him and finding joy in it.
Are you obeying God, even when you don’t understand him, or like what he says to do? Maybe it is not convenient or comfortable but will you do it or will you find an excuse to not obey him. God is talking about specifically loving other Christians, followers of Jesus, not only loving your co-worker but loving your Christian brothers and sisters. Maybe he wants you to be willing to serve in the childrens ministry or help set up on Sunday mornings or the worship team or in our administration, maybe he wants you to begin to serve some of our moms or encourage some of our newer believers. Not that it needs to demand a great deal of your time but certainly your heart. Not to serve begrudgingly but finding joy in it. Jesus prayed in this prayer that we would find ‘the full measure of his joy’ When your given the opportunity consider it an invitation from God to serve him.
Are you obeying God in your lifestyle, in your attitudes, in your values?
One way you can know you are obeying God is asking “is your life looking more and more like God’s glory? The representation of him in life? Where you fall short of that glory is where sin is controlling your life and Jesus puts that sin to death so we can live in God’s glory, obeying him and looking like him, loving him.
Consider – where would God want you to obey him in your life – write it down –
Loving Jesus looks like making him known
The world wanted to reject Jesus as God’s only Son and nothing has really changed. The world still wants to reject him, but he sends us out with the expressed mission of making Jesus known. The world needs to know that Jesus did not come to condemn them but to divert them into the stream of life.
The world is going to hate this message, but Jesus has chosen us out of the world (Jn 15:19) and tells us…
“If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also. 21 They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the One who sent me.
Some would like to offer multiple ways to experience God’s love, they are ways that are more tolerant of the world’s thinking, but they are not the way to know God, his love, nor his glory.
Consider… is your life bearing spiritual fruit? Who would Christ want you to make known to? Will you do it – whatever it may take?
Jesus establishes THE GREAT PROMISE of our relationship with the Father
By obeying the Father and making Jesus known we will never be alone – He will always be with us.
The last words Jesus prays before his arrest: “that I may be in them”
His last desire is to love his followers and indwell them and continue in them. To fill them with the glory and joy he has known, so that their knowledge of God will be unsurpassed and overwhelming. So the world my know that God loves them and sent Jesus to divert their lives to bring them to him, that their lives would demonstrate his glory too.