Glorify the Son

[0:00] Let's turn back then to the chapter that we have read, John 17. And we can read again at the beginning of the chapter this time.

[0:12] When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.

[0:32] And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. Father, the hour has come.

[0:45] Glorify your Son, that the Son may glorify you. A few weeks ago, when we looked at this chapter for the first time, again, just to summarize, we had seen various things in connection with it.

[1:00] We had seen, of course, that it is virtually the only time, apart from Gethsemane, in which we see our Lord, or we have recorded for us, one of our Lord's prayers.

[1:14] We see him going to pray by himself in many places, but this is really the first and only time that we are given an insight into an actual prayer as such.

[1:30] And I think I referred to it as a normal prayer of the Lord, but there is nothing in one sense that is normal about it. It is quite an abnormal prayer.

[1:41] And we had looked particularly at the idea of the Lord Jesus Christ as the mediator between his people and the Father.

[1:54] And we had seen that in verse 19, particularly, for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. And we had recalled that that referred to the consecration, of course, of the high priest, going into the Holy of Holies once a year, on the Day of Atonement, with blood, in order to atone for the sins of Israel.

[2:20] And in the same way, our Lord Jesus Christ enters into the Atonement with the Father, on the cross, once and for all, in order to satisfy the wrath of God, and that justice would be done.

[2:37] And you probably will remember that the main theme that I dwelt on in the course of that sermon a few weeks ago was that the assurance of faith that is given to the believer in this prayer.

[2:55] There are various themes that come up in the course of the prayer, but perhaps for many people, the most important one is the assurance of faith that they are given.

[3:07] Particularly when we look at verse 20, I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. And that, of course, is the written word, as we have it in the scriptures of the New Testament.

[3:24] And you will remember that those present at the high priestly prayer would have included the 11 disciples. Judas has already left at this point. And we speculated a little whether perhaps others would be present as well, including the woman and probably his mother, might well have been present, as would have been quite normal at the celebration of the Jewish Passover.

[3:49] And tonight I want to look particularly at the idea of Glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you. And look especially at what you and I can learn from this prayer in terms of our own prayers.

[4:09] Now there are, of course, differences between our prayers and the prayer that we have here. This is a very different prayer to the prayers that you and I will pray.

[4:25] And yet, nevertheless, it is a model of prayer for us. The model of prayer that you and I frequently will use and the prayers that we are given as a model is what we usually know as the Lord's Prayer.

[4:40] But you will notice that there is one thing in the Lord's Prayer that is missing from here. There is no request for forgiveness of sin.

[4:53] In the High Priestly Prayer, there is no mention of sin. That is not surprising because the one who is praying is sinless.

[5:06] The Lord Jesus Christ is sinless. And therefore, when we compare the model of the Lord's Prayer or what we should really call the Disciples' Prayer because it is done, of course, in request to the disciples of Lord teach us to pray then we see that there are several things in it that do not enter into the prayer that we have here.

[5:31] And what we see here is that it is a prayer from equal to equal. This is not a prayer that is full of petitions.

[5:46] Petitions are made by inferiors to superiors. What we have here are requests from one equal to another.

[5:59] And we remember, and it shows forth to us, of course, the divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ, that he is God. This is the whole purpose of John's Gospel.

[6:12] John's Gospel, from the very beginning, sets out to prove that Jesus is not just human but also divine. And again, I went into that, I think, a little bit more last time and I'm not going to go into it again.

[6:28] Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you. I wonder how much time you and I, in our prayers, spend on the idea of glorifying God.

[6:47] Is that why we come in prayer? Do we really come in prayer to glorify and to worship God as our first objective?

[7:00] If we don't, then there's something wrong with the priority of our prayer. And very often, I'm quite sure, like myself, that when you examine your prayers, you find that very often your prayers are a list of petitions, a list of things that you want God to do either for you or your family or for your church or for your minister or perhaps for other people throughout the world.

[7:27] Now, there is nothing, of course, wrong with that. Quite the opposite. We should bring our petitions to God, but we should bring them in the proper place and in the proper order.

[7:42] And we should remember that our first objective, as our Lord does here in his prayer, that our first objective is to glorify God. Isn't that what the first catechism says?

[7:56] What is man's chief end? Man's chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. Glorify your son that the son may glorify you.

[8:10] The word glorify and glory, the term glory, occur frequently in Scripture.

[8:23] But what do they actually mean? What does glorify the son mean? Now, most people, when we think of that, we think, of course, of the glorification, of the cross, of the resurrection, and of the ascension.

[8:42] But there has to be more to it than that. Glorify your son that the son may glorify you. Is the glorification of the son at the beginning of the sentence the same as the glorification at the end that the son may glorify you?

[9:02] And if you compare that with verse 24, Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me, that's you and I, may be with me where I am to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

[9:21] Is that the same glory that we're referring to here? How was our Lord to be glorified? Well, some people will argue that Jesus was not glorified on the cross, that he was glorified only in the ascension by returning to the right hand of the Father.

[9:48] But those who argue that fail to see the connection between the cross and the resurrection and the ascension. All three things have to be tied together.

[10:02] We very often spend a lot of time looking at the crucifixion. We spend perhaps less time looking at the resurrection. And we spend very little time, if hardly any time at all, looking at the ascension.

[10:19] And the ascension is only mentioned in Scripture in a couple of places and in a few words. We don't have a great amount of detail about it.

[10:31] And yet, without the ascension, the work of the cross is incomplete. It's incomplete. The ascension, the resurrection, and the cross, all three go together as part, first of all, of the humiliation of the passion of Christ, but secondly, of the restoration of the passion of Christ.

[10:57] Of Christ being taken once again back to the heavenly glory, as he says himself, that he had before the foundation of the world.

[11:12] Have you ever wondered what that glory was like? What was the glory that the Son had, along with the Father, before the foundation of the world?

[11:29] It's quite a thought, isn't it? It's one of these things that enters into the come, let us reason together, says the Lord, that we were meditating on this morning.

[11:41] That it is very difficult for us to understand anything of the glory that our Lord Jesus Christ had with the Father as the second person of the Godhead before his incarnation.

[11:58] You see, many people think, maybe I said this last time, maybe I didn't, many people think that what happened, you see, with the Son was that when man sinned and fell, that God had to put Plan B into action by sending the Son to earth in order to provide a rescue, a rescue mission for people.

[12:25] That is not what Scripture shows us, quite the opposite. Scripture shows us that the plan of salvation through the cross was there from all eternity.

[12:37] It was there even before the creation of the world, before the creation of the angels. And many who think that the angels were created similarly at the same time along with Adam and Eve were not told in Scripture when the angels were created.

[12:57] But it would seem clear from the many things that we see that the angels were created before man. How long before man? Again, that we would enter into speculation on that.

[13:15] What need did God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit have to create the angels?

[13:27] You ever wondered about that? God did not need angels to serve or to glorify Him.

[13:37] His glory was sufficient in itself. Now these are deep things and difficult things to meditate on.

[13:48] But as we look at the Trinity and the pre-existence of the Trinity before time begins, the Trinity is sufficient in itself.

[14:03] the love of the Trinity is what we call reciprocal love, going backwards and forwards between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, never increasing and never decreasing.

[14:19] It cannot increase because it is all sufficient. And this is the love that our Lord refers to in verse 23, that they may become perfectly one so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.

[14:39] It's quite amazing to think, isn't it, this evening that if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour, you are loved with the same love as the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit experience before the creation.

[14:59] the same love. It is the same love that brought the Lord Jesus Christ to die for your sin.

[15:11] That is an astounding thought that you and I can refer as our Lord does in the course of this prayer, can refer to our Father in Heaven as Holy Father and Righteous Father on the same terms as our Mediator does.

[15:35] Now, I am not saying that you and I as believers are equal to Jesus Christ. We are not equal to the Son. There are many things about the Son that are different.

[15:49] But there is one thing in which we are equal. We are adopted. Remember that we are justified, adopted, and in the process of sanctification we are adopted as Paul puts it as heirs and joint heirs along with the Lord Jesus Christ.

[16:10] And if you are a believer you have every right to call your Father in Heaven. That is why the Lord's Prayer begins with our Father in Heaven.

[16:21] and as your Father in Heaven you have exactly the same love applied to you as is applied to every other believer and I think also as to the two other persons of the Trinity, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

[16:43] perhaps not in the same way that we will understand once we are fully sanctified in Heaven. And there will probably be many things about the glory that we cannot understand in this life.

[17:01] You see you and I in this life have decaying bodies. Perhaps not all of us yet.

[17:12] Some of us in our younger days are still not beginning the process of decay but it's not long before it begins. Your hair begins to go, your eyesight begins to fail, your teeth fall out, etc.

[17:25] and so on. And as you get older and older you can see the various stages in decay that are taking place. But yet you are being renewed inwardly by the Spirit every day.

[17:39] And you know that this body that was sown in corruption will be raised in incorruption at the second coming of our Lord. That in itself is quite an amazing thought.

[17:54] How will it be possible that the body of someone like Moses buried by God himself dead for 2,000 years or more, 3,000 years perhaps?

[18:11] Obviously nothing left of it but fragments of bone. How can it be raised again? How can your body and my body be raised again?

[18:24] What will the raised body be like? I'm sure many of us have spent hours thinking about that. But of course then again very often we end up going into speculation.

[18:36] And so often we think, oh will I look better than I look now when my body is raised? Will I be fat and tall, small, etc? What will I look like in my raised body?

[18:47] I don't know and I don't care. That's not what matters. What matters is of course the fact that you will be raised and that you will be raised to spend eternity learning about the glory of God.

[19:06] Father the hour has come, glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you. Whatever we learn about glory in this life is probably insignificant compared to what you and I will learn about glory throughout eternity.

[19:31] I believe that that is when we will really understand what glory means. And that is, you notice, our Lord's prayer for you. In verse 24, Father I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory.

[19:51] that is what Jesus wants for his people. As the Messiah, he wishes that you and I as believers in it will see his glory.

[20:07] And obviously the glory that we see there seems to be different to the glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you. that is a glorification that perhaps pertains only to the Trinity.

[20:25] And yet you notice that our Lord wishes you and I also to see his glory. Why? Because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

[20:39] how many glimpses do you get into glory during this life? Well, there may be times in prayer, there may be times in fellowship, there may be times even at the Lord's table where you feel the presence of the Holy Spirit so strongly that you are given a glimpse of glory.

[21:09] that's what the psalmist refers to when he says, oh, taste and see that God is good. You are given a test, but it's only a foretaste, nothing more.

[21:27] Paul puts it that it's as if we are looking through a glass darkly, that we cannot really perceive, we cannot understand.

[21:38] Our human minds, while they are capable of amazing things, are incapable of understanding and perceiving the full glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.

[21:55] to see my glory that you have given me. And if the glory that is given to the Son is given by the Father, then the question automatically occurs, what will the glory of the Father be like?

[22:16] is it different from the glory of the Son? Well, there are many commentators who speculate on that.

[22:30] Some maintain that the glory of the Father is altogether different from the glory of the Son, that the attributes of the Father that we see revealed to us through the Scriptures, particularly of the Old Testament, are different from the attributes of the Son.

[22:51] But others maintain that the attributes are exactly the same. And we see that when we see that the unity of the Father and the Son are one.

[23:05] We see that in verse 11. I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.

[23:23] Does that mean that the oneness of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and we often forget about the Holy Spirit as the third person of the Trinity, we tend to have a picture very often, don't we, of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

[23:41] But yet, Scripture teaches us that all three are equal. And you notice that although the term Trinity is not used in Scripture, it is referred to constantly, and we see that, of course, in verse 17, sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth.

[23:57] And if you look back earlier in the discourse in chapter 14, with the disciples, that our Lord had made it clear to the disciples that he had to go in order that the Holy Spirit might come, and that the Holy Spirit is the one that teaches us of all truth.

[24:18] Sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth. Why was our Lord leaving? You notice in verse 13, now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

[24:39] How joyful are you of God's salvation for you? How joyful are you about the work of the atonement, the work of the cross, and how joyful are you of the fact that you have a saviour in heaven, a high priest in heaven on the right hand of the Father who is continually interceding for you.

[25:07] You see, many times as Christians we are burdened down by sin. Now I don't mean that we shouldn't be, of course we should be aware of our sin, that's a different issue altogether, but we should also be aware of the joy that we have been given as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ.

[25:35] Is this joy something that you and I show in our daily lives, in our behaviour, in our dealings with others? When we come to glorify your Son, that the Son may glorify you, how do you and I glorify God in our daily lives?

[25:54] You see, it's not just in our worship, in our prayers, that we should glorify God, but all, everything we do, all our existence, should be to the glory of God.

[26:12] Because one of the things that you and I should be doing as believing, is showing the attributes of the Father to those round about us.

[26:26] One of the main attributes that we should be showing to each other as believers is, of course, love. And it's easy to love those who are nice to you and who hold the same beliefs as you, although perhaps some are more difficult to love than others, but that is, again, part of our human problem.

[26:48] But do we show the attributes of the Godhead to others who are not believers? Do we treat them in the same way, with love?

[27:03] Do we treat them with honesty? Do we treat them with respect? I'm not referring here to the nonsense of tolerance that is preached so much in today's social media.

[27:15] It's not about that. It is about referring to the attributes of the Father that you and I, in our glorification of God, show in our walk and our talk and our daily living.

[27:32] I can hear you thinking that's impossible. Well, it ain't easy. That's for sure. It certainly is not easy. But that is what we are called to do as believers, to show forth the qualities, the characteristics, the attributes of the Trinity in our daily living.

[27:55] you see, so often what happens is that you and I can do that fine, at least on the outward, in church, on a Sunday, at the weekly prayer meeting, perhaps at weddings and funerals and other occasions where we get together with other believers.

[28:19] But what about in our work? what about in our disputes with our bosses or with those over whom we have authority?

[28:30] How do we treat them? If the people round about you were to write you a character reference, would they be able to say that this passion reflects the glory of God?

[28:49] that's a pretty hard accusation to make, I can hear you thinking. That's impossible.

[29:00] How can we do that all the time? Well, of course, we have a problem with our human frailty. We are weak. We are prone to failing.

[29:11] Even as we see our Lord in his bodily part, in his human part, he became tired, he appeared at times, even disheartened. And we see him in his greatest difficulty of all in Gethsemane.

[29:28] But you notice that in Gethsemane he still has the compassion to heal the ear of Marcus whom Peter had cut off.

[29:40] He didn't have to, but he did. are you and I capable of showing the same compassion to others as our Lord did?

[29:55] I can hear you thinking you're asking for the impossible. Well, maybe I'm not asking for it. I'm simply telling you what the word says about how we should glorify the Father.

[30:06] and I would be the first to admit that I fail every single day in each one of these things. But nevertheless, it is incumbent on us to try to glorify the Son and to glorify the Father by showing through the attributes of the Godhead.

[30:31] you see, that is perhaps with the question that I left for the children this morning, that is part of the process of sanctification.

[30:44] You and I are saints in the process of sanctification, but that process may take a lot longer than you and I realise.

[30:59] In fact, in many ways, the process of sanctification will not finish until we leave this life and pass into eternity.

[31:11] It is then that the finished article will be seen. Isn't that what Job said in the middle of all his trials? He said, when you have tried and tested me, I shall come forth as gold.

[31:28] And you remember how gold is symbolic, throughout the Old Testament and into the New. And in the Book of Revelation, we see the gold in the tabernacle and the lining of the temple.

[31:40] We see the gold in the New Jerusalem coming down. gold in the gold. And the gold signifies the purity and the holiness of God. gold in the world.

[31:53] We cannot be fully holy in this land. Because our human nature, our fallen nature, is of course a sinful nature. And Paul refers to that when he says that the two natures struggle constantly one with the other.

[32:10] He says, the good that I would do, I do not. And the things that I don't want to do, that's what I actually do. And how many times has that happened to us?

[32:23] Glorify your Son, that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.

[32:38] We tend quite often, do we not, to think of eternal life as something that starts when we are dead. there. Bit of a contradiction, isn't it? It's when you're dead, eternal life begins.

[32:51] That's not what Scripture teaches you. Scripture teaches you here, and in various other places, that the moment you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour, you are already enjoying eternal life.

[33:07] You already have eternal life. And what he says in verse 3 is not really a definition of eternal life, this is eternal life, that they know you, the only through God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

[33:22] Now that is what eternal life is about, but it does not define eternal life. I don't know if it is possible in this life for us to define what eternal life actually means, except that it means being with God and worshipping God in the beauty of his holiness.

[33:47] Can you even begin to understand eternity? What does eternity actually mean? We can only function in relation to time because we know that time has a beginning.

[34:06] And we can only relate it in the way that we see time functioning in our own lives. But when we think of eternity that has no beginning and no end.

[34:21] We can cope with the no end bit, but how do we cope with the no beginning bit? God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit had no beginning and have no end.

[34:35] that is beyond our understanding. It is beyond our reasoning. It's one of the deep things of Scripture that we simply have to accept and believe by faith.

[34:49] you have been given at the moment that you were converted. At the moment you came to faith, you are a partaker in eternal life.

[35:03] And notice that this eternal life is given to you by the Father. It's what verse 2 tells us, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.

[35:17] You have been given to the Son by the Father. I think we touched on that a bit last time when we looked at the assurance of faith.

[35:29] But here of course is the mystery of the doctrine of election. A doctrine which so many people find so difficult to deal with.

[35:40] And again I'm not going to go into it in detail this evening. I think I've spoken about it before a couple of times. Simply to say this, election is none of your business.

[35:59] It's God's business. You and I will never understand in this life election. We will understand how it works.

[36:11] We will understand the fact that it is God who elects. we see that throughout scripture. That God has chosen a people from the very beginning. But when you come to consider yourself as a believer, why were you brought to faith more than anyone else run about you?

[36:39] Perhaps there are those in your family, brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, grandparents, etc., who have not come to faith. And for whom perhaps you pray daily that they will come to faith.

[36:53] And they may well be what we call part of the church invisible, the church that is still to come to faith. faith. And we believe that there are many of them still to come to faith.

[37:05] That none will be lost, as scripture tells us, in the day that he makes up his jewels. But when you come to consider what did you ever do to deserve being brought to faith?

[37:28] Absolutely nothing. absolutely nothing. Why were you brought to faith more than anyone else?

[37:39] It's the mystery of election, the mystery of God's grace, the mystery of God's love, that you and I cannot understand, but yet we can be thankful for.

[37:54] Election is none of your business, it's God's business. It's not something perhaps that we should worry about, but we are told, Peter tells us, to make our calling and our election sure, and notice the order, calling, then election.

[38:10] of course we could go into all kinds of theological arguments about which comes first etc and be here all night, but that's not the purpose of the exercise.

[38:22] I glorified I glorified you on earth, he says in verse four, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do, and now Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

[38:44] What was that glory like? The glory that he had with the Father before the world existed. Is the glory that our Lord has now with the Father different to the glory that he had before?

[39:03] Well, there are some who think that it is. There are some who think that because Jesus went through the process of humiliation by becoming human in a human body, and through all the things that he went through before ascending back to the right hand of the Father, where he still has a resurrected body.

[39:30] And they pause there and think, well, he didn't have a resurrected body at first. The glory that I had with you before the world existed, there was no resurrected body then.

[39:43] Does that mean that the glory is different? I can't answer that. Many theologians have speculated that it is, and some say that it isn't, some say that it's the same, some say how can it be the same when it's a resurrected body that is on the right hand of the Father?

[40:03] I don't think it really matters. I don't think it makes any difference whatsoever, because the glory is not something that is manifested in a resurrected body.

[40:15] The body is part of it, but the glory is an intrinsic quality that is part of the essence of the Godhead. You see, the essence of the Godhead, the essential quality, that's what essence means, the essential quality of the Godhead, of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, is love.

[40:39] And it is that love that produces the glory. it is because of that love that our Lord came in his humiliation to the earth in order to die and to be resurrected and to ascend again to the glory that he had before.

[41:03] It is because of love that the atonement was rendered. That's what he means when he says the hour has come. How often had he said before, the hour has not yet come.

[41:20] But now the hour has come. It is not quite beginning yet. It's really beginning in chapter 18 onwards with his arrest, with his betrayal, and then with the trial, and then with the crucifixion.

[41:35] That is the hour that had to come. The hour that had been pre-planned from all eternity. It's hard for us to understand that.

[41:49] How could the plan of salvation have been laid out in eternity even before man was ever created? You see, when you and I come to speculate into and to reason as we were thinking this morning about the deep things of God, there are times when we come up against a brick wall.

[42:13] There are times when we simply have no answer. But we can be thankful that that was the plan, that it wasn't a plan B, that it wasn't a plan, an emergency plan put into action when man fell.

[42:33] It's laid out here so clearly in this prayer. from the very beginning. And we see that our Lord is so conscious of the fact in this prayer that we will struggle with many of these things.

[42:52] But you see, he has reassurance for you. And he says in verse 12, when I was with them, I kept them in your name. And although he's referring directly to the disciples here which you have given me, I have guarded them and not one of them has been lost except Judas, the son of destruction, that the scripture might be fulfilled.

[43:14] But he has preempted that in the verse before by saying, Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.

[43:27] one. And that brings us on to another amazing theme in this chapter. And the time has gone by, but I'll just spend a couple of minutes on it. The unity of the Father and the Son and the Spirit and the unity of believers, that they may be one, even as we are one.

[43:50] one. It's a difficult thing to think of, but perhaps we are more disunited as believers than we are united.

[44:09] How do we read into this, that they may be one, even as we are one? Is Christ referring here to the idea of one massive megachurch?

[44:25] I don't think that's what it refers to at all. It is referring to the fact that we should be one in essence as believers, that all believers should have the same attributes and the same qualities, the striving after holiness, the love, the showing forth the attributes of the Father and the Son and the Spirit that we've already spoken about.

[44:54] That doesn't mean, of course, that we should avoid unity among believers. But coming, of course, into what unity actually means is another major theme, and a theme that would perhaps take hours and hours to debate and discuss.

[45:14] others. But so often we have the tendency, do we not, to think that we are the only ones who are right.

[45:24] We don't share with believers from other churches, we don't have anything to do with them, because they are different, they're not as good as us. That's not what Scripture teaches us at all.

[45:40] Scripture teaches us so often that there are dissensions among believers. Look at what happened to Paul and Barnabas, having spent the first missionary journey together.

[45:52] The dissension between them was so strong that they separated, went separate ways, and we never read that they ever met again.

[46:04] These things happen because of our human nature. but we have a tendency, do we not, to isolate ourselves as believers in our own little cliques and our own little fellowships, rather than reaching out to others so that our joy may be fulfilled.

[46:29] That's something that I think we fail in massively, as individuals and as a church. It's perhaps improving now compared to years ago, but this is the idea that Scripture gives to us, that we should be one, even as the Father and the Son and the Spirit are one.

[46:56] one. It's a very difficult theme, but I'll close with this. Even as you examine yourself, as a fellowship of believers this evening here, can we really say that we are one?

[47:18] one. Or are we divided? Are there divisions among us that shouldn't be there? Because our Lord's wish is that in each small fellowship that we should be one, even as he and the Father are one.

[47:39] And that unity of faith, unity of belief, unity of love, if we were able to put it into practice, as individuals and as churches, would perhaps convey stronger messages to those who observe us outside than much of our preaching would actually do.

[48:02] It's a thought, it's something perhaps to think about. And I'm well aware that what I've said there may be very controversial, and you may of course disagree with me 100% and tell me so, later on, I have no problem with that at all.

[48:19] There is nothing wrong at times with stirring things up, so that we come to meditate and to think on what the Word of God actually says.

[48:31] And especially the words of such an important part of Scripture as the High Priestly Prayer. When our Lord prays for unity for his people, are we really putting that into effect?

[48:46] Let us pray. Oh Lord, we thank you for your Word this evening. There are so many great themes within this prayer that we haven't even touched yet, and yet some of it is so difficult for us to understand.

[49:01] But we pray, oh Lord, that we may be one, even as you and the Father are one, that we may reflect and glorify the Son, even as the Son is glorified in the Father.

[49:14] And we thank you, oh Lord, that we are in Christ. We pray for any who are here this evening who may be struggling with these things, and to find them difficult to understand.

[49:26] And we have to admit that were it not for the guidance of your Spirit, that it would be impossible for us to understand them. Be with us now as we conclude our worship, and pardon our sins through Christ Jesus our Lord.

[49:39] Amen.