So that's page 903, this is John 17, one through five. 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. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth, 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. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we approach your word this morning in reverence and awe. Father, we ask for the illuminating power of your Holy Spirit to show us not only the true meaning of this passage, but how to best apply it to our life as we walk in faith following Jesus Christ. We pray these things in his name, amen. Rubik's Cube was created in 1974, but it wasn't released onto the world market until 1980. But by 1982, it had skyrocketed in popularity. Over 100 million Rubik's Cubes had been sold. And this is before the internet, by the way. So people had to actually physically drive to a store, buy one, and bring it home. With more than 43 quintillion, that's 43 with 18 zeros after it, with more than 43 quintillion possible combinations, It was difficult, yet intriguing to both children and adults. Everyone seemed to want to get their hands on a Rubik's Cube. It was an icon of the 80s. But it wasn't long before imitation Rubik's Cubes started to show up. Knockoffs. And although they claimed to be just as good, they were not the same thing. The plastic was a little lighter and a little cheaper. The colors weren't as bold and vibrant, and the stickers on the individual squares came off easier and lost their shine quicker. And they were called something else, like puzzle cube or color cube or something like that. They just weren't the same thing as the original Rubik's Cube. They didn't look the same. They didn't feel the same because they weren't the same. They were imitations. In John 17, one through five, we have the beginning of Jesus's high priestly prayer. He prays for mutual glorification between the Father and the Son. He also explains eternal life in a way that demands faith in Christ. There are other so-called gods. There are Christ-less gods, Christ-less idols, but they are not the only true God. They are imitations. Imitation gods are knockoffs. Although they claim to be just as good, they are not the same thing. They often look similar to and attempt to be like the only true God by requiring worship and devotion and prayer, but they are lighter and cheaper than the only true God. They are not as spiritually bold and vibrant as the only true God. And most importantly, for sinful creatures like you and I, they do not save like the only true God. Jesus opens his high priestly prayer with this statement of absolute, uncompromising clarity. This is eternal life, that you know the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. And as we hear this prayer from Jesus and this bold statement about eternal life, I want us to ask ourselves this question and be thinking about it, how far Are we willing to go to follow the only true God? Looking at this prayer right at the beginning of John chapter 17, he gives us really one line of introduction, one line of transition from everything that came before, the last night together, and then now the high priesthood prayer. And the one line says, when Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, so Jesus prayed with his eyes open, looking upward towards heaven. Now he's assumed this prayer posture before. If we remember back in chapter 11, right before the raising of Lazarus, he also assumed this same prayer posture. John 11, 41 says, so they took away the stone and Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me. Likewise, the psalmist records the same prayer posture. Psalm 123, one, to you I lift up my eyes. O you who are enthroned in the heavens. So this was a common first century Jewish prayer posture. Eyes open, aimed upward, and hands often either extended upward or outward in praise. Now we often pray with our eyes closed and our head bowed down, kind of the opposite of what we see here. And we do so as a sign of reverence, it's a sign of worship, It's a way of acknowledging the transcendent nature of God and his high holiness and our humble lowliness of creatures who come before him. But the Bible doesn't command a particular prayer posture for believers, which means we have the freedom to either kneel or sit or stand. We can have our eyes open, we can have our eyes closed, we can have our hands extended outward or upward, or we can have them folded, or we can have them clasped. There really isn't a wrong way to assume a prayer posture. Our hearts and our minds and our words are much more important than how our body happens to be positioned when we pray. So, any prayer posture that a believer takes as they come to God in humility and with faith in his son is acceptable. He prays, Father, the hour has come. Now, if you've been with us through John, we've talked about this several times. I don't really feel like we need to bring in the cross references and talk about the hour again. He simply means the time for his crucifixion. It's time to go to the cross. So we have Jesus, God the Son, praying to God the Father, and we are also to pray to God, and we are also to address him as Father. Not because we're the Son, we're not. We're not the Son of God. But we are joined to the Son spiritually by faith. And because of our spiritual union, Paul says in Galatians 4 that we have received adoption as sons. He continues, Galatians 4, 6-7 says, and because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father, so you're no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then you are an heir through God. In the same way, our old friend at Westminster Shorter Catechism says, adoption is the act of God's free grace by which we become his sons with all the rights and privileges of being his. So all believers, upon becoming believers and being born again by the power of the Spirit, receive that adoption sonship status. We all have that. If you are in Christ this morning, then you are considered a son of God. You have that sonship status. It's not individually tailored to gender. It's all of us, men and women. We have that sonship status. One of the rights and privileges of adoption or that sonship status is the ability to come before God and call him our father in prayer. There was a pastor in a, rural church down south who was preaching his way through the book of Matthew, and he got to Matthew chapter six and the Lord's Prayer, and he preached that if you are not a believer, then you shouldn't be praying the Lord's Prayer. Particularly, you should not be calling God your father. There was a visitor in church that day who didn't like what he was hearing, so he went up to one of the elders after the church service and complained. And the elder, who was on the ball, said the pastor's right and tried to give patient teaching on how it is appropriate for believers to call God father, but not for unbelievers to call him father. An unbeliever cannot and should not refer to God as their spiritual father because he isn't. They do not have that sonship status because they have not been born again and have not been spiritually united with Christ. In contrast, believers can and should address God as their father because through faith in Christ, he is. He is our heavenly father because of our union with Christ. The last part of verse, verse one, glorify your son that the son may glorify you. To paraphrase verse one, then we could say Jesus is praying that the time for his crucifixion has come and that This will be a time of mutual glorification between the Father and the Son. And then verse two starts with since, which means that whatever comes next serves as the ground for this mutual glorification. Verse two, since you have given to him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. Within the Godhead, it has been eternally decreed that there would be some that the Father would give to the Son for eternal life, for salvation. It has been eternally declared that the Father would give the Son authority, and in exercising that authority, the Son would give eternal life to those whom the Father had given Him. So Jesus is praying for this mutual glorification to take place so that, there's the purpose, the eternal redemptive plan of God could move forward. He's praying for this mutual glorification so that some may be saved by faith in the work of Jesus Christ. That work had not taken place yet. He's praying that it would, that everything would move forward. So Jesus had to go to the cross in order for the elect to be saved. It seems like 101. This seems like basic Christianity, but we've got to get this right. Jesus had to actually physically die on the cross to make atonement for sin. God cannot and will not simply dismiss sin. God cannot just snap his fingers and say, I forgive you, without something Tangible. The penalty for our sin must be paid, or to put it another way, forgiveness from God is contingent upon the concrete actions of Jesus Christ done on our behalf. It had to take place. Now, every once in a while, you'll have usually an unbeliever, sometimes a professing believer, unfortunately, raise an objection here, and I've heard it multiple times. You may have heard it too, and they'll ask a question. They'll say something like this. Why does anybody have to die? Why does it have to get bloody? Why does God have to punish anyone? Why doesn't God just forgive people without punishing Jesus, without sending them to hell? Why can't he literally just snap his fingers? Why all this drama? Why all this suffering? And they might even throw in this statement. Well, he's God, right? And he can do anything. He's all-powerful. Well, as an all-powerful God, why shouldn't he just forgive people outright if he wants to? After all, he's God. Let's answer that by way of illustration. Let's say you were talking with someone and you loaned them your pen. so they could write something down. And this is not a special pen. This is a pen that you got in a 20-pack at Walmart three years ago, and you gave them your pen. And then you kept talking after they used it, and you eventually parted ways, and they took it home with them accidentally. And then later on, you remembered, oh, I think they forgot to bring my pen back. And the person, maybe they see you next week and they say, you know what, and I don't have it on me now, but I think I forgot to give you your pen. It would not be unreasonable to hear the person say something like, don't worry about it. Forget it, no big deal, really. Just forget it. That seems like an appropriate response. But if someone takes the life of your child, And then they turn around to say to the judge in the courtroom, I don't see what the big deal is here. I definitely don't need the death penalty. I don't think I need any prison time. Judge, why don't you just tell me to forget about it? Why don't you just tell me it's no big deal? Why don't you just tell me it's okay and wave it away? What would we think of that judge? The judge would be considered unjust. We might even call that judge evil. We might even call that judge a monster. Why? Because the offense is much, much greater than forgetting to return someone's pen and stealing it by taking something that does not belong to you. Our sin is much more hideous, so much more wicked, so much more grotesquely vile than we could ever imagine. It is so much worse than any crime that any person could ever commit on this earth in a thousand lifetimes. And therefore, God being the perfect judge cannot say, don't worry about it. Or just snap his fingers and say, you're forgiven. People who dislike the idea of Jesus having to go to the cross, or the wrath of God, or people that think that God should just be able to forgive people without anything tangible, do not understand the nature and severity of sin. They do not understand the high holiness of God, and they view sin against God as a light and inconsequential thing. They view their sin the way they view their sin, not the way God views their sin. After all, they would say, my sin isn't that big of a deal to me, so it shouldn't be that big of a deal to God. I'm not that bad of a person. How hard can it be to forgive me? The less we think of God, the less serious our sin appears to us. If God were to wave sin away or choose to ignore it, that would make him unjust and therefore no longer a good God and therefore no longer the only true God. We would make him into a knockoff. We would make him into an imitation. He is the only true God. We need to understand this. Forgiveness of sins is not some philosophical idea. Forgiveness of sins is not something that God has to mentally just choose to do. There has to be something concrete, something real, something satisfying that takes place in response to our personal sin against God. There has to be a reckoning for sin. There has to be a penalty that is paid. Either Jesus pays the penalty on the cross, or we pay the penalty. and an eternity in hell. Those are the two options that God puts before us. And the good news is this, that through the cross, sin was dealt with. The concrete, satisfying, real thing that has to take place took place on the cross. God's wrath was satisfying. One of our ongoing prayers as elders, when we meet before the service and pray, is that if there's anyone here during the worship service who is not in Christ, that they would see this, that they would recognize the seriousness of their sin before a holy God. They would see their need for Christ, their need for a Savior, and that they would turn from their sin and trust in Jesus. God has graciously sent his son to pay the penalty for our sins and to pay the penalty for all who turn to him in faith. The good news is this, because of the cross, you do not have to pay for your own sin. Christ has took that upon himself. But the work of Christ is not applied automatically to everyone. It is not a given. You must commit your life You must follow him and you must follow him for your whole life. You must repent and believe and keep repenting and believing. So if there's anyone here this morning who has not done that, don't let another day go by without putting your faith in the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. To summarize, here's what Jesus is saying as he opens his prayer. The time has come for Jesus to go to the cross, and he prays this will be a time of mutual glorification because by way of the cross, Jesus will have provided the specific, tangible, and legal grounds to give eternal life to all those the Father has given to him. That's how he opens the prayer. Eternal life. And here's the statement. Here's the absolute, verse three, uncompromising, clear declaration regarding eternal life. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. Eternal life meaning salvation. Eternal life meaning forgiveness of sins, now, all of our sins, past, present, future, forgiven right now, in a right reconciled relationship with God. We have peace with God now and an eternal life with God forever in eternity. That's why we can say it, and it is often described as an already not yet salvation. It's already present. It's active. We receive benefits now, but it's also not yet. We still have that final glorification, that eternal state to look forward to. It's both. The one who has eternal life is the one who knows the only true God. Not knows of God, the demons know of God, but the one who knows God with saving faith in his Son. There is no eternal life, there is no eternal life apart from faith in the Son. There is no forgiveness of sins apart from faith in the Son. There is no right reconciled relationship apart from the Son. To claim to know God without saving faith in the Son is self-deception. Those that do not have the Son do not know God. Thinking I'll go to heaven when I die without the Son is false thinking, that's a lie. You're deceived. Over the years, I've heard a lot of people say they'll be okay because they believe in God, or because they went to Sunday school as a kid, or because they are a good person, or they've done nice things. I remember one man in particular who even acknowledged his imperfection. He said something like, you know, I am imperfect in the past, but I'm turning over a new leaf, or I want to turn over a new leaf. And I think if I really, you know, I really kind of clean things up, then I think God will accept me and I'll be okay. Stop, just stop. Here's what Jesus is saying in verse three. Unless someone has saving faith in Jesus Christ, they do not possess eternal life. And this is faith in Christ that's in our head and our hearts. This is faith in Christ that translates into a life that lives for Christ. This is faith in Christ that's not based on our own desire to be a better person, but it is brought forth by the power of the Holy Spirit who regenerates us and gives us new birth. This is faith in Christ that results in a radical reorientation of our life around Christ and his word and his commandments. I mean, it's so radical. The Bible uses language like dying to self. Dying. It is not life giving to know God in a way that seems right to us. We must know God in the way that the Bible describes to us. We must put our faith in the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. At the first church I pastored, I used to take a noon walk I do a lot of word work, it's a lot of sitting at computers, so I like to get up and move around. So I took a walk at lunch, 10 or 15 minutes, and I would walk down to the railroad tracks and back. And one day, a man in a truck pulled up next to me, rolled down his window, said, you're the pastor at the church over there, aren't you? I said, yeah. He said, well, you know, I've been looking for a place to send my grandkids because I want him to grow up right. The world is just a mess, and I want him to get a good moral compass, he said. I don't want him to lie and steal. I just want him to be good people when they grow up. But I'm also not, I don't want a church that goes overboard and says that Jesus Christ is the only way and everything else, everybody else goes to hell. I don't want that. So is that kind of what your church is like? I said, well, I preach the Bible and the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation. And I wasn't even allowed to finish the sentence. He took his hand and he said, ah, rolled up his window and drove away. He wanted his grandkids to be good people. He wanted them to grow up and be morally good, he wanted them to have good jobs, he wanted them to raise a nice family, he wanted them to be successful in life. There's nothing wrong with those things, is there? As Christians, we want that for our children as well. But we don't serve those gods. We don't make worldly comfort and success our goal in life, because those are knockoff gods. Those are imitations. They're very popular in America, but they're knockoff gods, and they do not save. And I would hope that everyone here prays that their children and their grandchildren, first and foremost, above everything else in life, put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ and believe in him for their entire life. That's got to be number one. But let's go all the way with that. Would we go as far as to say that we want believing children who might be failures in life? They might be unemployed, homeless, spending nights in dumpsters. Their spouse have divorced them, taken everything they had. Their kids hate them. Or would we rather have an unbelieving child who grew up to have a picture-perfect family, who was wildly successful in their professional field, was extremely wealthy and abundant possessions? Are we willing to go that far? And by the way, this isn't a legitimate question I'm asking. We shouldn't be spending any time at all thinking about the answer. We shouldn't be weighing these two options as if They're in question, we shouldn't hesitate. You see, the world doesn't understand that. The world understands, wait a second, you mean to tell me you'd rather be a believer sleeping in a dumpster than an unbeliever in a million dollar home with everything you wanted? Yes, yes. That's correct. If we hold to John 17.3, and this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. If you live that out all the way, the world is gonna look at you like you are an alien from some distant planet. They're gonna think that you are strange, they are weird, they're gonna immediately call you and label you as part of the far fringe of society. In fact, when they meet you and they get to know you and they hear what you believe, they're gonna say, wow, I've heard of people like you. You believe all the Bible is true and that Jesus is the only way? I've heard of people like you. I never thought I would meet one in the wild. Wow. How far are we willing to go in order to follow the only true God, and in Jesus Christ whom he has sent. Here's what we get. Suffering first, glorification second. Verse four, I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. Jesus is talking about everything he has done since his incarnation. Everything he's done since he came into the world. He has perfectly obeyed his earthly parents. None of us can say that. He has perfectly kept the law. We can't say any of this. He has perfectly spoken the truth. He has perfectly taught the things of God. He has perfectly shown and revealed the Father to a watching world. He has perfectly rebuked the Jewish leaders. He has perfectly discipled his fathers. He has perfectly completed all that Adam has failed to do. He achieved perfect righteousness as a man born of a woman. And he perfectly made atonement for sin. And somebody may, again, raise their hand and say, wait a second, how can Jesus say he accomplished everything, all the work that the Father has given him, but he hasn't been to the cross yet? Didn't he say it is finished right before he died? That was like after the cross, right? How can he speak of having accomplished all his work that he was sent to do? The reason he can speak of his work in the past tense, as he does here in the book of John, is because of the nearness and the certainty of that work being completed. Jesus can say he has finished his work because Jesus knows he will finish the work. And we still do this today. Everyone wants to know, right? Let's say somebody's out in the garage or a workshop and they're building something with wood and hammer and nails and they kind of set that last nail and right before they hit it, somebody opens the door and says, are you all done? And they say, yep, all done. Boom. And then they bring the final hammer down. Now they weren't all the way done, but they could speak of it as if they were. They could declare it and everybody knows what they understand because of the nearness and the certainty of bringing the hammer down. And in the same way, Jesus can talk about his work being finished because of the nearness and the certainty of the nails going into his wrists and his feet. Just need to be aware the Bible does this from time to time. For example, Psalm 22, 16, For dogs encompass me, a company of evildoers encircles me, they have pierced my hands and feet. There it is in the past tense. In its original context, this is a song of lament for the innocent sufferer, but it's clearly a messianic song, and it speaks of the work of Christ in past tense, before it happened. Verse five, and now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world. Jesus is praying that he be restored to his pre-incarnate glory that he enjoyed with the Father and the Holy Spirit before his incarnation. But notice the order of his petition. I've accomplished everything you gave me to do. I've humbled myself, I've suffered, I've been mocked, beaten, humiliated, spit upon, killed, now glorify me. Now bring me into your presence, into the heavenly realm. Suffering first, glorification second. And this is the pattern, this is the road that Christ walked upon. And you need to know that if you follow the one true God, the only true God in Jesus Christ whom he has sent, and if you follow him all the way, this is the same road that you will walk. Suffering first, glorification second. But for everyone who walks this road, for everyone who serves the only true God in Jesus Christ to be a son, that person will not be disappointed because they will have eternal life now and in eternity. They will have the penalty for their sins paid in full by the concrete work, the saving work of Jesus Christ on the cross. They will be in a right, reconciled relationship with God, with a new life, a new heart, new desires to follow Him. They will be able to call God their Father and pray, Our Heavenly Father, and have it be true because of their sonship status given to them by the Spirit of God, because they're united to the Son of God. And they will never again be a slave to sin. When the Rubik's Cube came out, It didn't take long for someone to figure out that those colored stickers could be removed. And so some people, after working with it for hours and days or weeks or months, gave up. And they just took all the stickers off and then put them back on so it looked like it was all solved and they put it on the shelf. So it didn't bother them anymore. But other times, prank-playing siblings would take their brother or sister's unsolved cube and rearrange or replace the stickers and put them on in a way that made the cube unsolvable, no matter how long someone tried to work at it. False gods and false religions are like a Rubik's cube with mischievously rearranged stickers. You can play with an imitation god your whole life. You can twist it and turn it as often as you want, but they're a waste of time. Not because they are unable to be solved, but because they are unable to save. They're knockoffs. They're not real. It is the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent that offers forgiveness of sins and eternal life. So decide today that you're going to follow Jesus Christ or that you're gonna continue to follow Jesus Christ all the way. all the way, that you're gonna walk his road of suffering first, glorification second. Resolve now that you will believe in the only true God and in Jesus Christ whom he has sent. Amen. Heavenly Father, we are so grateful, so thankful for the salvation that we have in Christ. because we have real sin. We need a real Savior. We need real atoning work. We need the penalty to have been paid, and it has been paid. It's been paid by our perfect Savior, Jesus. Father, enable us to say no to all imitation gods. Allow us to say no to the world, to reject those subtle and seductive idols that the world prizes so much, success, worldly happiness, popularity. And instead, let us turn to you. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen.