The Saviour at Prayer No.1 The Time has Come

And stand. When all in hills and skies, My heart awakened first, May Jesus Christ be praised! The Lord has word and breath, To Jesus I renew. Let us read John chapter 17 verse 1 to 5. John 17 verse 1 to 5. I shall read in the name of our Christ.

After Jesus said this, he looked towards heaven and prayed, Father, the time has come, glorify your son, that your son may glorify you. For you have granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you have given me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began. Well beloved son, my Lord, he is the blessed Holy Spirit.

My Lord, he is the glorious three in one. He's God, he's man, my heart he is in dwelling. He opened heaven and his spirit hell.

For he is wonderful, and he has loved me dearly, more dearly than the spoken word can tell. My Lord, he is the diadem of beauty. My Lord, he is the pearl of greatest price.

My Lord, he is the gem of precious jewels. My Lord, he is the king of paradise. Someday his lovely face will light the nations, as ancient sages and the prophets tell.

Yes, he is beautiful, and he has loved me dearly, more dearly than the spoken word can tell. My Lord, he is the lily of the valley. My Lord, he is the rose of Sharon fell.

My Lord, he is the chief among ten thousand. My Lord, he is the friend beyond compare. To know him is to love him, that's for certain.

He's sweeter far than Bethlehem's sweet well. For he is tenderness, and he has loved me dearly, more dearly than the spoken word can tell. My Lord, he is the child of Mary's bearing.

My Lord, he is the man without a flaw. My Lord, he is the shorty for his people. My Lord, he is the keeper of the law.

He stained a tree, defied the grave by rising. As substitutes he served his people well. Is he not marvelous? Is he not marvelous? And that is why we love him more dearly than the spoken word can tell.

If you've got the NIV version of the Bible, let's read together those first five verses of John 17 once more. After Jesus said this, he looked towards heaven and prayed, Father, the time has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.

For you granted him authority over all people, that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.

And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began. We come back to John's Gospel, I say back because those of you with good memories will recall that I took you very slowly through the 14th through to the 16th chapter of John's Gospel a year or two ago. And now I want to pick up from the 17th chapter and to stay your attention upon the figure of our Lord Jesus.

There is no greater person in the world than our Savior. There is perhaps hardly any finer passage in the Word of God than this 17th chapter of the 4th Gospel. And it tells of this greatest of all men.

It tells us how he came to the Heavenly Father in prayer. So I want to preach to you a series of addresses. Maybe Brother Tim will also join in on this.

I'm not sure at the moment. We'll work it out during the week when we have time to interact. We want to bring to you the teaching as we understand it from the 17th chapter and the challenge of the person of our Lord Jesus.

What's your prayer life like? Well, you weren't expecting a quick blow under the belt, were you? But nonetheless, my task as a preacher is to comfort the disturbed and to disturb the comfortable. What's your prayer life like? Let this mind be in you, says the Word of God, which was also in Christ Jesus. In other words, although I would qualify the comment that this is a pattern prayer, there is always in the example of our Lord Jesus that for us to reproduce.

And he's a man of prayer. You find him at the beginning of his ministry in prayer. You find him the last words that he has from the cross are directed to the Father in prayer.

And when he comes to the disciples in the days of his resurrection, he has as a concern that they reach all men and women with the gospel. Why? Because it was that to which he had dedicated his life. It was the will of the Father.

And he prays that the will of the Father shall be achieved in the lives of his disciples, which therefore includes you, as it was achieved in his own life. Here I say in this beautiful chapter is one of the most wonderful examples of our Lord in prayer. It's the longest example of our Lord Jesus Christ as he engages his Father in holy intercession.

Someone has called it the most remarkable prayer, following the most full and consoling discourse ever uttered on earth. Here, says another writer, here we approach the secret place of the tabernacle on high, and A.W. Pink goes on to say you need to take the shoes from off your feet as you go through these verses of scripture. A man who was a colleague of Martin Luther Melanchthon said, there is no voice which has ever been heard either in heaven or earth more exalted, more holy, more fruitful, more sublime than the prayer offered by the Son to God himself.

And if you're from the Plymouth Brethren, here's W.W. Kelly. A chapter one may characterize truly as unequal for depth and scope in all the scripture. What's your prayer life like? Some people treat prayer like the majority of us treat lawyers.

We only go to our solicitors when we're in trouble. Do you only go to this great God when you're in trouble? Or do you follow the example of our Lord Jesus, a man of prayer? Well, we investigate further this high priestly prayer of the Lord, and I put up three questions which will help to lever some of the teaching that there is in these first five verses. My questions simply are these, when Jesus prayed, how Jesus prayed, and why Jesus prayed.

When Jesus prayed? Look at the first verse. After Jesus said this, he prayed. After giving critical teaching, Jesus prayed.

For some hours he'd engaged his disciples. He told them about the oncoming death that he would have to endure. But even more particularly, he had taught them sublime truths about the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and how though he went away from them in one sense, he'd come back in the person of the third member of the Trinity.

He taught them that great example from nature of the vine and the branches, as to how they were part of him, and how he was fulfilling God's role in their lives, as they drank from him and took power from him and from the Holy Spirit. He warns them in the 18th verse of the 15th chapter of the way that they would be hated by the world. He tells them in the 16th chapter again of the great cost that it will be for them to maintain his ministry.

And then he gives them even more sublime teaching from the 5th verse of the 16th chapter in regard to the Holy Spirit. When did Jesus pray? After giving critical teaching. He spoke to them on God's behalf.

Then he spoke to God on their behalf. Brothers who are in the ministry, you have no right to preach to your people if you don't pray for your people. When did Jesus pray? After giving critical teaching.

Moreover, when facing a crucial time, Father, the time has come. The clock was started eons ago, but there had never been in history a more important moment than the one that was just around the corner. Seven times in the Gospel of John, references made to the chronology which in some ways governed the life of our Lord Jesus.

His mother, the feast of the wedding in Cana of Galilee, tries to anticipate the ministry of Jesus, to encourage her lad into the area of the supernatural. And he says, dear woman, what have I to do with you? My time has not yet come. But it did come.

The climax of it all. And the Lord Jesus in the eleventh chapter, moving through to the seventeenth chapter, and all that the events within those chapters tell us about, shows that he is fully aware that the most climactic moment of history is about to dawn. When all the Old Testament sacrificial system will be brought to a fulfillment.

When the old predictions of the prophecies shall be completed in utter accuracy. When God in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ shall die for the sins of mortal people like you and me. That day will dawn, the like of which there had never been such a day, and there would never be a day like it again.

When God would take upon himself the vileness of human sin and offer himself as an atonement for all the rottenness and wretchedness of all of humanity. Right down to the twentieth century. Father, the time has come.

When did Jesus pray? After giving critical teaching. When facing a crucial time. When do you pray? I was preaching in Cape Provence last Sunday night to a man I've got to know very well in my trips out to that part of the world.

And he invariably ropes me into the ministry of his fairly gigantic church, though not as large as Pastor Enos's. And after proclaiming the gospel for some thirty minutes in a very heated atmosphere, heated as far as the climate was concerned last Sunday, I went back into his vestry and he said words to the effect, Well now, Tony, we've told them. Now let's tell him.

And we came before the Father and we prayed for salvation blessing amongst those one thousand people or so. Tell me, do you ever pray after you've been amongst God's children, after you've heard the word of the Lord, it's good to enjoy a good Sunday joint with your family and with your friends? It's good to have fellowship, but the meat of the word is even that much more important. Does sometimes what you have heard, what you have learned, so grip you that you want to come before the Father and at a critical time, at a crucial moment in your own life, pray through some of the things that have been brought to your attention? When did Jesus pray? He prayed after the preaching of a sermon, after having the sacrament.

He prayed on behalf of the family, for the disciples. He prayed before a parting, for he was soon to be taken away from them. That's when the Lord prayed.

And in that sense he sets up an example for you and me, a challenge for our own prayer life. Well, that was easy to follow, wasn't it? Let's go on to the second question. How Jesus prayed.

How Jesus prayed. After Jesus said this, he looked towards heaven and prayed. He prayed with his eyes directed towards the place where the Father was.

Some people believe that the book of Psalms was actually written in its entirety anticipating the ministry of the Lord Jesus. Every psalm is messianic. Well, I'd qualify that in some degree.

But I think that there is more than a germ of truth in the thought that often the meditations and the attitudes of the Savior are encapsulated in those psalms. So Psalm 121, I lift up my eyes to the hills. Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.

Jesus is praying at a crucial moment, at a critical point in his life. And so what does he do? He looks upwards towards the heavens where his Father is, as though he is showing afresh his dependence upon him. And you go on in the 122nd psalm and discover the psalmist saying more or less the same thing.

Our Lord Jesus prays in his humanity. Father, the time has come. Verse 5, And now, Father, glorify me.

And verse 11, I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name. And verse 24, Father, I want those you have given me to be with me.

And verse 25, Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you. How does Jesus pray? With his eyes towards Father. My dear friend whose ministry I shall ever praise God for, Martin Lloyd-Jones, once said in that great pulpit of his at Westminster Chapel, In one sense, if you know how to say Father, you have understood the whole gospel.

I think I know what Lloyd-Jones was trying to argue. That when there is this affinity, this relationship with you, that heightens any example that you have got of a good Father on earth to its absolute extent. And when you come before God and you say Father, and recognize your childlike dependence upon him, you have begun to understand the gospel and indeed how to pray.

How Jesus prayed? With his eyes on the Father, but moreover, with his mind on his disciples. You see, there is an element of personal petition here for our Lord Jesus, his Son of Man as well as Son of God. But the personal element is fractional, really.

When you think through all the verses, you discover that time and time again, our Lord Jesus comes back to the disciples. He has had his eye on the disciples and his heart has been towards the Father as he was teaching them. Now his eye is on the Father, but his heart is towards the disciples as he engages in prayer.

How does Jesus pray? He prays, I say, with his eye on the Father and his mind on the disciples. Do you pray for others? Do you say you love somebody? I'll test your love. Listen, the measure of our love for others can largely be determined by the frequency and earnestness of our prayers for them.

Husbands, did you hear that? Wives, did you hear that? Christian brothers, did you hear that? Christian sisters, you elders, you deacons, you pastors. The preacher speaking now, do I hear that? The words were those of A.W. Pink, a great man who lived in Hove, actually, for some years of his life. The measure of our love for others can largely be determined by the frequency and earnestness of our prayers for them.

How did Jesus pray? With his eyes to the Father, with his heart directed towards his disciples. Is that how you're praying? Furthermore, with a specific request on his lips. It's good when you pray to have an objective in mind.

Not as someone who's quipped perhaps a little unkindly. Not with the idea of spraying the universe with your words, the solar system with your words. But rather to have something direct to bring before the Father.

Father, says our Lord Jesus, glorify your name. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. And verse 5 he repeats almost, but not quite.

But he's in the same area. Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began. And to understand that, you've got to take in the fourth verse.

I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. Our Lord Jesus lived out his life for the Father, didn't he? I have glorified you on earth. Emphasize that in your understanding.

Even if you don't take a red biro and underscore the two words. You see they're significant. Nobody else had glorified God on earth, had they? Adam despoiled the earth that God made.

And all the sons and daughters of Adam have contributed to that spiritual pollution. That equivalent to the ecological problem. On earth we've despoiled the creation of God.

We've played fast and loose with the blessings of God. But Jesus says, I have glorified you on earth. How? The miracles that he did, do you think? The words that he spoke? No man ever talked to us like this man.

We never saw things done by the rabbis like this man has done. He's more than just a man. Even his own disciples were driven to that conclusion.

You're a man truly because, well, you sleep when you need rest. And you eat when you need food. But you're still the storm.

You make the maimed limbs of the lepers again. You give sight to the blind. Man truly but not man only.

But the greatest thing that our Lord Jesus Christ did was to maintain his own integrity. No man ever lived like this man. With holiness intact.

With reputation undefiled. I have glorified you on earth. Now, glorify your Son.

You'll never understand the doctrine of God unless you're driven to a term that I don't like. But it helps us to grasp something about the nature of God. And the word is Trinity.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each dependent upon the other. Each of the same essence.

Our Lord Jesus fulfilling the work of God on earth. But requiring the Father too to be involved in the consummation of all that he had in mind to do. Father, I have glorified you.

Now glorify me. The time has come. What time? The time when I'll be handed over to Pilate.

The time when Caiaphas and Annas will do their damnedest. The time when I'll be pinned to that cross. Now, Father, it's over to you.

Glorify now me as I have glorified you. I have done the work which you gave me to do. Now will you bring it to its fulfillment, to its climax? Nobody else ever worked for God the Father like Jesus did, have they? When he's just a teenager, he talks about his father's business.

And having to do that. In midlife, he said that his will was to implement what Father wanted. Now he's coming towards the end of this.

And he speaks to the Lord God. And he says, this is eternal life, verse 3, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ. The only reference to Jesus Christ in Scripture with both those terms actually being brought together.

Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. You see, when you take that verse, here is our Lord Jesus summing up all that he has endeavored to do in this world. He is making the most important observation in regard to knowledge of God.

And the reason why you and I have been given the chance of living on planet earth. This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. You can't know the Father, unless you know him through the Son.

That cuts out Hinduism. It cuts out Buddhism. And with great respect to Her Majesty the Queen, it cuts out interfaith religious services.

With the idea that you put all your great concepts together in some sort of theological stew. And you can go to Westminster Abbey, and somehow you can worship this God. With little bits of information having been brought from the great religions of the world.

There is only one way to know the Father, and it is through the Son. And this is what Jesus is achieving on this earth. And so he prays to the Father, glorify me as I have glorified you.

And there is a response to that prayer, is there not, that you discover in scripture. For in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, using the personal name of our Lord Jesus Christ. You find Peter telling us in his debut as a preacher.

Telling us about what the Lord God has done. Acts chapter 2 and verse 32. God has raised this Jesus to life.

And we are all witnesses of the fact. Exalted to the right hand of God. He has received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit.

I finished the work that you gave me to do. I have done all that I can. It is over to you.

I have glorified you. Now glorify me. And on the third day he is raised.

How is he raised? Listen to Paul in Romans chapter 1 and verse 1. He is raised in the power of an endless life through the Spirit of holiness. By the Holy Ghost who breathes his life giving power into that cave which has had the body of our Lord Jesus. And up from the grave he arose with a mighty triumph for his foes.

He arose the victor of the dark domain and he lives forever in my soul to reign. Father, Son, Holy Spirit all converging to bring glory to the illustrious God throughout time and eternity. All these things our Lord has in mind as he engages in prayer on this crucial climactic time in his life.

How does Jesus pray? He prays with his eyes towards the Father, his mind on his disciples with a specific request on his lips. Finally, why? Why did Jesus pray? Well, in effect I just summarize all that I have taught you thus far this morning. He prayed because the issues at stake were of monumental importance.

Someone has said when you pray there is a clash of arms in the heavenly sphere. This is life eternal. You see the most important thing, my dear friend, I don't know whether this is your first time in the tab, but in the fairly large congregation there are always those who are testing us out for one Sunday.

The most important thing in your life is to know to where you're bound, what life is all about. You see you're not a flute throughout some evolutionary process. There is that of you that is God-like.

And the way to recover what was lost by human sinfulness is through responding to all that Jesus Christ did for you in his ministry. And finally on the cross. This is life eternal.

Lord, there's no greater thing on this earth than the achieving of the goal that you have set for me. This is life eternal, that they might know you. But unless you raise me from the dead on the third day, then my work ends in frustration.

Why did Jesus pray? Because the issues at stake were of monumental importance. Because salvation is of the Godhead. Now Father, you come in and take over and hover around by your spirit the cross of Calvary and be involved in all that's happening.

You see when Jesus died, he didn't die to satisfy some bloodlust of a pagan God. The little girl who comes home from Sunday school and says, Mom, I love Jesus but I hate God, can be forgiven. But the teacher should be reprimanded.

God the Father was in Christ involved in that sacrifice on the cross. His heart has moved as much as your father's heart if you had a loving father might have been moved when you were in pain. So here is our Lord Jesus praying because the issue at stake is of monumental importance.

Because salvation is of the Godhead. And I close down with this shocking thought. Because he deserved what he was praying for.

Did you hear that? He deserved what he was praying for. Now earlier on I took some qualification when I suggested that this is a pattern prayer. You see I never do deserve what I'm praying for.

I come on the basis of the mercy of God. I am nothing but a sinner saved by grace. And whenever you think so highly of me that suggests that that is a minor thing, then you've got me wrong.

And if ever as a preacher or any preacher you hear in the pulpit which is a fertile soil for pride seems to be bigger than his message, then you know this, then he's gone awry in terms of the understanding of the gospel. I am what I am. Like yourself.

Because of the mercy of God. Amazing grace. How sweet the sound.

That saved a wretch like me. Jesus was never a wretch. Our Lord Jesus was never a sinner.

He took upon himself our sins, but that's a different matter. He was never a sinner. Our Lord Jesus Christ lived on planet earth and retained all his holiness, all the sanctity of his life.

He retained his integrity intact. Having finished transgression, he brought in everlasting righteousness, says the prophet Daniel in chapter 9 and verse 24. He was about to endure the cross.

It was right that he should enjoy all the glory. He was about to pour out his soul to death. It was right that he should be divided out, spoiled with the great.

Having glorified the Father on earth, it is right that he should be glorified by his Father in heaven. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began. Why did Jesus pray? Because the issues at stake were monumental.

Because salvation is of the Godhead. Because he deserved what he was praying for. You know, there's no record in scripture that Jesus ever told his disciples how to preach.

Never taught them how to preach. He only taught them how to pray. How's your prayer life? Prayer meetings, says Charles Spurgeon, are the throbbing machinery of the church.

All right? How much leverage do you give to the machinery of this church? The saint upon his knees sees more than the philosopher on tiptoe. I like that, says Augustus Toplady. There's power in prayer.

So we come to the conclusion of this address this morning. Here is our Savior praying. And I've tried to show you when he prayed, how he prayed, and why he prayed.

Do you pray? Do you feel like praying now? Will you pray for me? I'll pray for you. Let's pray for one another. And if you've never stumbled into the mystery of prayer because you've never become a Christian, then why not now just seal your conversion as you say, Lord, I didn't get all that the preacher was saying, but this I do believe that Jesus is your Son and he died for me to make it possible for me to live with you.

Later on in the book of Hebrews, reference is made to our Lord Jesus interceding on our behalf, gone into the holiest of all, and before the Father he pleads for you and for me. And this chapter is an illustration of that little verse that Jesus is our intercessor. Let's pray to the Father through the Son in the power of the Spirit right now.

Let's stand as we pray. Just for a moment, everyone, concentrate as we bring before the Lord the needs of this congregation. Father, our eyes are upon you.

Our hearts are towards our brothers and sisters. And our mind, our mind is filled with all the precious promises of your Word. To those who right now need a touch of your hand upon their lives in terms of salvation, will you grant it? For those who have heaped up worries, will you lift them? For those who find it hard to sleep at night for physical reasons, emotional or psychological, will you deal with them? And Lord God, will you forgive whatever area of prayerlessness there may be in our congregation from the preacher downwards? Enable us to pray after the fashion of our Lord Jesus.

Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me. Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me. Fill me anew, fill me anew.

Spirit of the Lord, fall afresh on me. Let's sing a verse of 1-3-4. The fight is fairly short and a rapid hymn to sing, so let's sing them all.

Then we're going to come around the Lord's table. There'll be a short break. That's not a break in worship, but just to make ourselves more comfortable for taking bread and wine.

Unless family responsibilities prevent you from so doing, then I invite you to come to the icing on top of the cake of worship, so to speak. As we reach its zenith, as we remember the death and the resurrection of our great Lord and Savior. There'll be a three or four minute break after this hymn, 1-3-4.

Let us sing to Jesus. His the center, His the throne. Alleluia, His the triumph.

His the victory, our glory. From the stones of holy Zion, Underline the mighty blood. Jesus out of every nation Hath redeemed us by His blood.

In sorrow now, He is near us. Faithfully is, no questions now. On Zion's free city, Where the forty days were o'er, Shall our hearts forget His promise, I am with you evermore.