John 17:1-5 - Knowing Jesus = Eternal Life.

Michael White

The Gospel • Sermon • Submitted 3 years ago

John 17:1–5

Eternal Life

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21-01-10 - John 17 - Knowing Jesus = Eternal Life.

HBI – For the glory of God we are called to know Jesus which we need to do to receive eternal life.

Intro

Last week we went over what the gospel means. We learnt that the gospel is to know Jesus. To know His life, what He taught, How He fulfilled and taught all the scriptures and How He died and rose again to defeat sin and death.

To teach People about and to tell the gospel to people like this takes time. This is what we call discipleship. Truly knowing Jesus like this, I have broken down into 3 parts: Knowing, growing in and showing Jesus.

So, we start out our series on different aspects of what it means to Know Jesus. To Know Jesus is not just knowledge of who He is and what He has done. But rather to Know Jesus is to have a relationship.

I want to go to a prayer that Jesus prayed as He was with His disciples. It was shortly before He was crucified, and it is the prayer that I want to investigate today.

You see, to get to know someone you need to talk to them, spend time with them get to know their cares and concerns and what drives them to do what they do.

Kind of like being married. When you get married, if you hope to remain married you need to get to know the person with whom you have chosen to spend the rest of your life.

This is something that you may never stop doing, as people change as they get older and they deal with different circumstances.

I will admit that this is not my strong suit. I am not one that excels at communication. I try, I work at it but in the end, it is something I need to continue to work on it.

Or should I say communication, especially in marriage is not something that comes easy to me and I need to be reminded to work at it.

Any wife asks your husband what He is feeling, what is the response that you get? More often than not the response is something along the line of “I don’t know? Hungry, tired maybe?”

We are going to look into How it is that we build this relationship and learn to continue to learn more And more about the one true God that we serve.

I want to start with eternal life and what that means for our lives and what it looks like. What this passage tells us is that knowing Jesus is eternal life and is all for the Glory of the Lord.

Vs 1a – For the Glory of God

It may seem like an odd place to start. But all to often I have heard people start to think that our faith, salvation is all about me and what God has done for me.

Salvation is a free gift for us but one thing I see a lot is that we forget it is for the glory of the Lord.

John 17:1a When Jesus had spoken these words,

The words that Jesus spoke refer to what was said earlier on in the passage. This is important because the rest of the passage builds off of what was said before.

So if we go back a little bit to see what it was that was spoken about We see that Jesus was telling His disciples that He would soon not see them again. But then after a little while He would return.

This really confused them, but the idea is that He was going away and would one day return to the world in the same way He left. He told them that He came from God and that God loves them because they Loved Jesus.

Saying that He was going to leave them but come back again He lifted His eyes up to heaven and prayed this prayer for Himself, His disciples and the rest of the world that would become His followers.

After He said these things, he started His prayer, and the main idea behind the prayer we see in these first three verses. And it all starts with giving God the glory.

he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you,

This must be important as the word glory is used in this prayer in Chapter 7, 8 times. 5 of those times was contained in the first 3 verses alone.

According to the book of Philippians Jesus emptied Himself when He came down to earth. He did not consider His glory as something to be used to His own advantage but came down to earth to die for our sin and glorify God.

The reason why this all happened is so that we could glorify God. This is an especially important part of Knowing Jesus and having a relationship with Him.

Like Jesus our prayer should be that we to Glorify God. We will never be glorified to the extent that Jesus was. But as we live a life here on earth our duty as well is to glorify God in all that we do.

This is something that I think we often forget that this life that we live now is all for the glory of the Lord. This is what we need to keep straight first before we leave this point.

I want to go back to a Psalm that is repeatedly used to make people feel good about God being for them. Yes, it is true that Jesus died for your sin, He loves you and one day God is going to bring His children back to Himself.

There is more to it though. Psalm 23 is a Psalm that lots of us probably remember. The Psalm talks of How the Lord God is our shepherd which means that we are the sheep.

The good shepherd makes it so that we will not want. He provides green pastures for us to eat and sleep in and leads us beside still waters.

He restores our soul and leads us down paths of righteousness. This all sounds great and makes us think, well I can get into this. It makes us think well this is looking pretty good don’t you think. God loves me and is all about me and for me.

But what we forget is the next part Psalm 23:3 He renews my life; he leads me along the right paths for his name’s sake.

It is for His name sake that He does this. It no longer becomes about us but the reason why He does it is for His own glory. As one pastor put it, God is for God.

For the glory of the Lord, For His name sake that we need to understand as the reason for knowing Him Growing in Him and showing Him to others.

We need to give up ourselves, to let the Old life die before we can truly have Eternal Life.

Vs 2-3 Eternal Life

It is all for the glory of the Father and the Son, it is not about us. But what is it that is for the glory of the Father and the Son? Our eternal life is for the glory of God and the glorified Jesus.

This was a prayer from Jesus that God would glorify Him, His glorification so He could give us eternal life.

John 17:2 since you gave him authority over all people, so that he may give eternal life to everyone you have given him.

Jesus came to give eternal life to all who would accept the message of salvation. God knows which people will choose Him.

The gospels are filled with evidence that Eternal life is given by Jesus alone. And what all these passages do is assert that the central purpose of Jesus was to glorify God by imparting eternal life unto Man. It comes back again to glorify God.

But it also tells us as we know that Eternal life is found in Jesus alone. The evidence always comes back to the fact. That our own righteous deeds are not good enough, it takes much more then that, more then we can possibly give.

This is just one passage that mentions the idea of election though we will not get into that right now as this is not the main idea of this passage. But this I will say for now.

Eternal life, from the Human standpoint, comes when we believe in Jesus. This the bible tells us. But from the divine standpoint Eternal life only begins because God has drawn us to Himself to begin with.

It is the idea of God’s sovereignty and our free will. Which are by no means mutually exclusive.

Moving on, it says that Jesus gave eternal life to all those that God gave to Him. If the gospel is the history of man and how Jesus saved us, then our next step is to Know Jesus more. We need to get to know Jesus to know the meaning of the gospel.

Vs 3-5 – Know Jesus Know Life

This is what the next verse tells us, This is eternal life, not the salvation message but rather it is knowing the one true God and Jesus whom He sent.

John 17:3  This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and the one you have sent — Jesus Christ.

So we see here that Eternal life is given to us to Glorify God, and eternal life comes from Knowing Jesus.

To know Jesus and God who sent Him is so much more then just a head knowledge. To know someone meant also to have an intimate relationship with someone.

Then to know Jesus is so much more then just reading the bible and knowing what it says but to know means that we are going to take time to build a relationship with Jesus.

Then having a relationship with Jesus, knowing Jesus becomes about and for the glory of God.

When we went through the book of Philippians we learnt that to know Jesus is to be our goal. Philippians 3:10 My goal is to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death,

Vs 4 - Jesus work

finished work Here on earth was for the purpose of giving us eternal life, that work was for the glory of God.

Vs 5 tells us that Jesus would return from where He came, from the Fathers right hand where our eternal life and knowing Him is to be used for the glory of God the father.

This passage speaks of the need, to know Jesus for He was sent from God and to Know Jesus is to Know God.

The Glory of the Son and the Glory of the Father. “Glorify Me so I may Glorify You”.

So that He may give eternal life to all people who are children of God.

Eternal life comes from Knowing the Messiah who was glorified alongside God.

Jesus prayed that He would be glorified so that God would be glorified.

Jesus glorification leads to our eternal life so that we may then glorify him in our salvation.

So What?

Five short verses that teach us so much about eternal life. What we are promised as children of God is that eternal life is given to all those who have become children of God.

This is the great hope that we have, that all who believe in Jesus will live even though He dies. This is a promise that gives me great hope in spite of all the garbage that is going on in t he world.

Not that I do not care about the world but rather that our hope is on life eternal that is promised to all those who believe.

To Know Jesus then takes time, it takes work and in order to receive eternal life in needs to start with Knowing Jesus.

And to know Jesus is all for the glory of the Lord. It all goes back to giving God the glory. Eternal life is for the Glory of God, Knowing Jesus is for the glory of God

It is no longer about us but all we do is for the glory of the Lord and the building of the Kingdom of God for the glory of God.

If Knowing Jesus is Eternal life, how then are you building that relationship with Jesus for the Glory of the Lord, for the sake of the name of the Lord.

To know the Lord is like getting to know your wife, after all the relationship between the husband and the wife is likened to the relationship between Jesus and His church.

Spend time with Jesus, pray to Him, read the bible and see what He was like and learn from Him. Give Him the glory and live your life completely for Him.

Spend time getting to know the saviour that died for your sin and then commit your life to what You are learning about Him. This is where eternal life starts.