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[0:00] Well, we've been working our way through this magnificently holy 17th chapter of John's Gospel.

[0:23] ! Of course, all of Scripture is God-breathed, therefore all of Scripture is holy. We've been working our way through this chapter, and we've been working our way through this chapter.

[1:00] And this alone is an example of the great grace gift that God gives us, that He would let fallen, though redeemed, finite creatures to listen in.

[1:17] It's amazing. I want to make a point this evening, and this is certainly not a departure, it fits right in. It's, I guess, an addendum to our study.

[1:30] It has been made necessary by the fact that though we are redeemed, and I trust and hope and pray every one of you are, but though we are redeemed, the fact of the matter is we still live in a fallen world.

[1:51] We see that every day, don't we? And our minds and our emotions still battle with sin.

[2:02] We battle every day. We battle every moment every day. And in the opening verse or verses of John chapter 17, the Lord makes reference frequently to the topic of glory.

[2:23] glory. Probably not something we've spent enough time on. He wants the Father to be glorified. If He wants the Father to be glorified, we should want the Father to be glorified, right?

[2:35] And He wants to receive glory Himself. And in fact, the Lord says He wants to receive the same glory He had when He shared a throne in heaven with the Father.

[2:56] And, you know, some theologians or commentators have written, that's pretty bold talk. God's goal is His glory. God's goal is to receive glory.

[3:07] And this fact really needs explanation because over the centuries it has been misunderstood and the misunderstanding, at least in part, I think, is due to the fallenness of man.

[3:28] It is working. the point I want to make as we open up the word this evening is that the triune God desires and expects glory and that is not a divine ego trip okay God's desire for glory is based upon divine love and divine goodness so we have to keep that in mind God wants to be praised because he is praiseworthy his praiseworthiness and he is exalted because of his goodness and because of his greatness so we come to a point where we want to praise God for who he is and for what he has done and this glory has two sides to it first

[4:35] God has shown his glory he has revealed his glory both to men and to angels he can do that on Sunday morning he has freely done so but the second part of this is the fact that humans should give glory to God as a as responsive adoration I guess we could say on their part we are to give glory to God out of a grateful heart for what we have seen what we have seen through the pages of scripture what we have received what we have seen in creation every creature on earth should praise God because every creature on earth can see creation and it's through that that we know there is a God we know there is a God and God in fact has redeemed us with his blood to become creatures that offer him glory now there is something interesting about giving God glory that very act brings joy to the heart of God but I am going to tell you something when it is real and when we are sincere then not only does that giving of glory to God bring joy to the heart of God it brings joy to the heart of the giver does that make sense the redeemed man the redeemed woman who is offering glory glory to the Lord receives joy that we can communicate with the living God holy God

[6:35] God without sin and so the word glory in the Old Testament was really interesting it has with it concepts such as worthiness wealth splendor and dignity and God chooses to reveal his glory and when he so chooses these are the traits that are present now when the New Testament era was ushered in humanity saw God's glory in a new and brilliant light in this age we see the glory of God manifested in the Lord Jesus Christ and I've said before that the glory of God the greatest expression of that revelation of the glory of God was in Christ but it was veiled why did he veil it because he wanted us to live through the experience so he veiled it in human flesh you know there's some videos or movies out there that are really good the gospel of Matthew the gospel of Luke and we have those at home and every now we watch them and like Jesus will walk into a village and you know it's crowded it's market day or whatever and he's brushing you know people they can't help but bump into somebody it's not malicious it's just human nature and I watch it and I marvel

[8:10] I wonder if that guy knows he just bumped into God you know and of course they didn't because that was veiled in human flesh it had to be that way or we would have all died I watched again that video of a blasphemous church in California where they sprinkle down glitter or whatever and they say that's the glory of God coming down and I mean people are oohing and on and like MacArthur said and others if that was the glory of God they'd all be dead we'd all be dead it's veiled Moses wanted to see the glory of God so God said ok let me get you behind this boulder and you're going to see my backside you know so it's a very serious thing but through the incarnate son we see displayed God's nature character power and purpose and we could string together a lot more things but God's ultimate glory is displayed in the working of his plan to save sinners and that great act should generate praise from his creatures

[9:23] I mean I'm astonished beyond beyond explanation that God would save someone like me I'm just I'm astonished at that I understand Mike I understand Dan I understand Lee sometimes but me me I don't know as the redeemed of God praise should ever be present in our hearts and minds and actions I told Dan I missed church last night I really did I missed you getting up there and preaching to us and about four o'clock I got up and had a little nap got up and I didn't Dan knew this website I didn't know it hymnal dot net and you can type in almost any hymn particularly the old ones which

[10:24] I really like but I like all of it and it's instrumentals and you can get them in piano or maybe even acapella I'm not sure or guitar on some of them not really the old but I mean I sat there for an hour listening to a mighty fortress which I personally think is the most doctrinally pure of the old hymns that was Martin Luther wrote that I think right okay and I listened to some of the others I mean it was just a time of praise it just really was that should be ever present in our hearts our minds and our actions all of our life's activities should be pursued with the aim of giving God glory and honor and we should do so on a very practical level I heard a guy one time he said if you're if you're praising God and you know being controlled by the spirit of God brushing your teeth can be a spiritual act if you're if you're seriously

[11:26] I've gotten to where I turn my little thing on those hymns while I'm in the bathroom in the morning shaving and showering and all that it's just it's wonderful now the central truth of scripture is that salvation is of the Lord people often ask me well you guys are reformed yeah I said yeah we all graduated from reformatory and we became reformed he said what does that mean I said we believe salvation is of the Lord he said well we believe that too I said well then you're reformed I mean that's that's where you know whether we call it reform or Calvinism or whatever by the way John Calvin would be appalled that we people went around and said Calvinism he would be that term came in about four years after his death but my point being is that it's real simple we see everything through the lens of God's grace we can't take another breath without the grace of God and for that we should give him glory we should give him glory so the central truth of scripture

[12:34] I think is that salvation is from the Lord and this is such a great act on the father's part and we probably as a church not this church but the church universe probably take that for granted far too much it is such a great act on the part of the father that we realize what he did he sacrificed his own son to achieve the salvation of his people he paid the penalty with his son's blood how can anyone dare to share in the glory of his or her individual salvation how can we you know describe our salvation using terms the personal pronoun I and me oh I did this then I did that and then we went over here and let's give glory to God for that salvation is of the Lord says that in the old and the new testament taking credit for even a fraction of our salvation may be the grossest sin there is in the world and I have to say that probably the majority of people today that either are

[13:51] Christian or claim to be believe that I had a friend of mine very critical of our church you would know his name if I called it very critical for our beliefs and so I asked him I said I said well how did you get said well I read and I made a decision and I did this and then I came over and I said well in heaven how much credit are you going to give Jesus for your salvation he said well I'm giving 100% I said why you just told me all the things you did before you were converted and I think some lights started to come on now that wasn't as bad as another friend of mine who said why do people go around saying God chose me he said I chose him he had anything to do with it I chose him and he saved me as a result well let me tell you Romans 3 there are none who choose God if we believe scripture and Paul was quoting the Old

[14:55] Testament which said there are none who choose God Jesus told his followers you didn't choose me I chose you you were drawn to me by the Father and by the Spirit they worked together in the salvation of a soul the reformers understood all that and they broke with a very egocentric Roman Catholic church Rome was focused on themselves and on the Pope or Popes at times there were sometimes two and three of them they went to war against each other to decide who was going to be Pope well that's scriptural Reformation theology was driven by one overriding guiding principle and that was sola de gloria glory to God alone we don't give glory to the church although we are glad to be part of that bride if you will but we need to be zealous in maintaining this principle that all glory is to

[16:16] God alone the Bible says do not touch the glory of God when W.A. Criswell was still alive at First Baptist Dallas and he had the College of the Prophets and they would go in about 200 of them a week and they would go through their school down there and the last day Dr. Criswell would come out in a white suit and they said he looked like Colonel Sanders and he was in like an amphitheater you see those things like at medical school where the guys in training wanted to be doctors are watching a surgery and they're looking at it was like that and he was down there and they had like a moderator and they took questions and the last question he had on one session was what advice can you give us and he said never touch the glory of God do not touch the glory of God and I remember another session he said they said if you had to do anything over what would you do and they said for two minutes he was silent can you imagine that that is a long time and then his lips started quivering and tears started coming down and he said I have failed as a father and he did

[17:39] I mean he had he had a daughter that got on drugs and I don't know what all she did and he said I have failed as a father I forgot it was God family church and I did God church family and he said a friend of mine was there and very moving for Ed to have witnessed it so what was God's God the father's plan for his son during the incarnation he chose to sacrifice his own precious son for the likes of me and you it's just amazing and I think it's difficult for us to think in terms of God sending Jesus to die on a cruel cross although that was the plan from millennia from eternity a few years ago if you had asked me who

[18:46] I thought was responsible for the death of Christ I would have listed in no particular order the Romans the Jewish leadership Satan sin and me that's how I would have listed it in many respects I would have been right all of those played a role in the death of the Savior but ultimately God the father foreordained the death of the Savior and when Jesus came to this earth and when he started that ministry he knew that ultimately he was going to Jerusalem to a cross he knew that and Jesus had full knowledge of this and actually at one point he said no one takes my life I'm going to lay it down he and the father were of one mind there and all that was predetermined before the foundation of the world before there was a star twinkling in the sky and now if it is still unthinkable in our generation that Christ would die by the father's will and people get really upset about that think of his disciples in the first century they had no concept of the death of the

[20:08] Messiah none it did not fit their pattern or their preconceived ideas of what the Messiah was to do when he came to earth he was to be the deliverer he was supposed to in their minds to kick the Romans out establish his kingdom in Jerusalem he was going to sit on a magnificent throne and build little bitty thrones so the disciples could sit near him and rule with him that was their concept that's the messianic concept or a Jewish messianic concept they were not listening or could not comprehend the fact that the Messiah was to be handed over to the Roman authorities by the religious leaders of

[21:11] Israel and be killed and they could not understand under any circumstance that this was God's will and when the time came for Christ to die the disciples were working against this plan they didn't want it to happen and thus they found themselves working against God they protested they even pledged that Peter said I'm going to die rather than allow you to be handed over to the authorities when they came to arrest Jesus Peter tried to take the head off of one of the temple police officers he didn't have a good aim but he lopped off his ear Jesus foresaw all of this and even gave them ample information so they could be ready and prepared for the time of his departure let me read to you the words in

[22:13] Matthew chapter 16 beginning in verse 21 from that time Jesus began to show his disciples he must go to Jerusalem there's two times it says he must go he must go through Samaria because he had a divine appointment with a woman at the well and he must go to Jerusalem why to suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised up on the third day and you got to love Peter don't you Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him probably not wise to rebuke the creator God of the universe but he did saying God forbid it Lord this shall never happen to you well the

[23:14] Lord brought a lot of comfort to Peter he turned and said get behind me Satan you are a stumbling block to me for you are not setting your mind on God and God's interest but man's and it was not until after the Lord's resurrection and especially when the Holy Spirit came to indwell the church and to illuminate the minds of his followers that they began to understand the concept of the substitutionary death that was foreign to the Jewish mind but they started at least to understand it was only then that the disciples began to have that understanding that Jesus died as the perfect substitute for sin and by that act they were reconciling sinners to God through the cross so the death of Christ was central to

[24:14] God's plan all along Peter would later declare that Christ died by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God the Father so he came to understand this and there's an important point to be made here God nailed Jesus to the cross and the cross satisfied completely the righteous wrath of God and that is one of the reasons we call it the propitiation that means the satisfaction or the appeasement God sees the blood of Christ applied to the life of a sinner and he is satisfied he will pass over in judgment we get a great picture of that in the Jews in captivity in Israel they applied the blood to the door post and lentil and the angel of death passed over if that blood has been applied to your heart the angel of death will pass over it will pass over

[25:19] God sees the blood of Christ applied to the life of the sinner and he is satisfied but and I want to stress this these facts are in no way an excuse for the men who murdered the Messiah Judas was guilty of the death of Christ he's been judged the Jewish leadership were guilty the Romans were guilty Satan was guilty sinners was guilty and Tom Holland was guilty we are all equally guilty in the death of the Savior Judas and the members of the Sanhedrin and the Jewish the Roman leaders they killed Christ because they wanted to not because they were puppets and God's up there with the strings doing that they wanted him dead they wanted him out of their life and out of the nation yet the scriptures tell us it pleased

[26:30] God to put Christ to death so that his chosen vessels might have eternal life God had beforehand decided to save a remnant of people from the human race people sometimes ask and I've been asked in this classroom not on Monday night but on Sunday night why didn't God just save everybody well that's the wrong question the question we need to ask is why did God save anybody if I was God and you said I'm going to have to sacrifice my son I'm starting over they won't know it I'll just get rid of all of them and we'll have another Adam and Eve and they'll do better next time I just start over but God didn't do that why God saved certain individuals and why he saved any of us is far beyond our ability to comprehend and don't ever buy into this thing that's out there that says

[27:36] God was lonely so he needed to save people let me tell you he wasn't lonely he was not lonely God is saving people he's been saving people for millennia and he is saving people to this very day because he's calling out people for his son who will offer eternal praise to his son in heaven that's why we are saved God is building a church that will praise his son forever there's the reason for salvation and we often hear of the plan of salvation and then I've often heard individuals or churches give a real weak human centered at times perverted twisted version of just what that means usually we'll hear something like if you do this or you do that or you pray the right words and you join the right church you'll be saved in reality we were not present when the plan of salvation was formalized that was that happened in the mysterious eternity before the universe came into existence

[28:57] Additionally the plan of salvation was based upon a promise a promise was given by God the father who cannot lie and cannot break any promise any covenant that's what a promise is a covenant and to whom did God in eternity past make these promises concerning our salvation there were no humans there were no angels in existence at that time so to whom what was the promise made the promise was made by God to himself in trinity father son and holy spirit the promise was made by the one true God among the three persons of the trinity God the father was the author of salvation God the son carried out the plan and the spirit of God is to this very day the great revealer of salvation the spirit reveals that concept to those whom

[30:01] God chooses and he goes and he quickens them and here's the amazing thing he uses the church to do that one of the means amazing the spirit has to reveal the plan to everyone who is being saved because the natural man and that's the unsaved man does not understand the revelation of God and he can't because he sees it with dead eyes before salvation fellows we were dead and a lot of people I heard one preacher say planet earth is walking zombies every time I turn on TV there's something zombie I've never watched one but it's really except for believers everybody's a zombie they're walking dead they're dead in trespasses and sin and what does it mean to be dead you ever think about that it's the inability to do anything can't breathe can't talk can't move can't receive

[31:11] Christ spiritually dead people can't do it they have to be made alive they have to be quickened and made alive if anyone is going to be saved is because!

[31:25] God has opened their eyes and given them the ability to understand and believe and if you and I have chosen Christ it's because he first chose us he first chose us he said that to the very beginning of the first believers in the Christian era disciples does that mean we only witness to the elect of course not we know who they are I don't have a clue!

[31:51] who they are and you know as soon as! I try to figure out who they are I get it wrong we preach and teach and witness to every creature and I love what Spurgeon said and when one of them gets saved I can say well he's one of the elect we preach and teach but you know what we don't do is manipulate and there's been a lot of that over the decades we don't want to do that either God is hidden from us who the saved are so we witness to every creature and then let God do his work Spurgeon said if God had painted a stripe down the back of every one of the elect my job would be going around London lifting shirts you know see if the stripe was there well he didn't do it that way sinners are not saved because they have the intelligence to get themselves saved no one is that smart sinners are not saved because we possess some worthy characteristic by which

[32:53] God looks down and says well I've got to save them sinners are certainly not saved because they have a lot of money and God knows well the church needs money and you know I'm sure he'll give some sinners are saved because God the father draws them to himself so he can in return give them as a love gift to his son and people eject at this point because they see all these people out there saying I want to be saved and God said no you don't want to be elected I'm not going to save you Jesus you know they have Jesus standing at the door of the church arms folded across his chest you're not coming in here yeah you can come you're not coming in here I wouldn't point you in that's Jesus through the doors open said come all ye who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest and we do it every Sunday morning these doors are unlocked well we got a sign down here you can come around unless Oscar is still down there and cars are going up and down there fishing boats are going up and down there families going coming back from vacation going up and down there people don't want part of this they're good enough in themselves they want to come another way they don't believe it any number of reasons our doors are thrown wide open well on his part

[34:18] God God is saving people to present to Jesus as a love gift on his part the son of God lovingly receives the love gift of the saved from the father as we go through this we're going to see another covenant promise if you will that Jesus makes to the father never to be broken that all that the father gives him the son will lose none none are going to be lost people say what about Judas never a believer he didn't believe he was looking for that political messiah the military messiah never believed another point I want to make and this will become clear as we go through John this chapter our security does not rest in a place

[35:23] I hear people say this even in our day if I could just get to heaven close the door behind me then I know I'm going to be safe nothing could be further from the truth salvation is not in a place Satan and angels the number of which we can't even count fell from heaven they were cast out salvation is not in a place it is in a person and that person is the Lord Jesus Christ your security and my security rests in a promise that was made between the father and the son and to date the son has lost none that the father has given him and he will lose none that by the way is a beautiful picture the father the father gives to the son his redeemed his chosen his elect as a love gift the son reaching out with joy receives this precious gift from the father the son opens his arms to sinners not because they deserve it but because they are a love gift from the father this was a gift wrapped with a red bow before the foundation of the world and so sure is

[37:01] God of this that he wrote their names down in the book of life before the foundation of the world now last week we looked at the fact that the son asked the father to glorify him and when Jesus said that he was asking that the eternal plan of salvation made as a promise in eternity past be consummated just had as God had sovereignly ordained Jesus is glorified remember we're talking about the glory of Jesus Jesus is glorified when a sinner is redeemed that brings glory to the son and the son gives that back to the father so the father is glorified so Jesus is glorified through the redemption of sinners and by the way that's how sinners are turned into saints what dr.

[38:04] McGee used to say look you're either a saint or you're an ain't and if you're an ain't you ain't a saint and if you're a saint you ain't an ain't that was dr.

[38:19] McGee and he had a beautiful way to say it Jesus receives glory through redemption and Jesus was not asking for exclusive glory it was his desire that the father receives glory as well as Jesus prays in these opening verses we're going to see at least four parts of God's saving purpose and here they are the right is the right to offer eternal life the relationship that he offers to sinners which is with himself day to day said before God when you wake up at three in the morning and you look at that dark ceiling and the world seems like it's caving in on you that's time to start praying dr.

[39:09]  Graham said pray when you pray the most when you want to pray the least he's going to tell us about the price of eternal life what did it cost the son what did it cost the father and then we'll talk about the worship and reverence he deserves for having granted eternal life to sinners it's just simply amazing and I guess my favorite part of this chapter is he's talking to the saints of 2000 years ago but he has a whole section on the saints in 2017 in Highland Park Baptist Church it's just it's amazing now all that's going to happen on the cross and when we get to this point in the chronology of the Bible in the chronology of the inner sanctuary the cross is mere hours away the clock is ticking and it's going to have eternal ramifications it'll have ramifications for the father for the son for the holy spirit for the saved and for the lost and starting point is just hours away