Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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John Seventeen verses, one through five. When Jesus had spoken these words,
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he lifted his eyes to heaven and
said, father, the hour has come
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glorify your son, that the son
may glorify you, since you have given
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him authority overall flesh to give eternal
life to all whom you have given him,
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and this is eternal life that they
know. You, the only True
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God, and Jesus Christ, whom
you have sent. I glorified you on
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Earth, having accomplished the work that
you gave me to do, and now,
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father, glorify me in your own
presence with the glory that I had
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with you before the world existed.
Amen. Well, I can promise you
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right now that you're not going to
understand all of this passage, because there
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are infinitely deep things here. Even
the word glory itself. How do you
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describe that? How do you define
what glory is? I'm going to try,
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but you will for sure sense that
there is some difficulty in that.
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There is difficulty in describing the father, the son, their relationship with one
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another, the glory that Jesus had
before he came into this world, the
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glory that he is going to the
glory that we are caught up in.
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Glory is a big thing, we
might say. That is the nature of
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glory. It's bigger than us with
that's one reason we talk about it in
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these ways. We have the feelings
that we do, which means that it's
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never going to be something that we
can just grasp on, to hold on
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to, Tuck in our pocket and
say, okay, good, got that.
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What instead we find are these there
are things here that we learn,
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and we learn truly and we understand
truly, but only to a certain degree,
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and ultimately it's it's to the degree
that God desires us to understand them.
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We don't understand them as God knows
himself in in himself, but we
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understand them in the ways that he
wants to communicate to us and he wants
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to communicate to us, to you, so that you might be encouraged.
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Consider it this way. Notice what's
happening here in our passage. Jesus,
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the Eternally Begotten Son of God,
whom all glory and honor and Dominion and
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praise belongs, is praying to his
heavenly father, the father from whom he
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was eternally begotten, to whom all
glory and honor and praise belongs the persons
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within the Trinity, within our one
God, or who are our one God,
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are speaking. The son of God
is speaking to God, the father,
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and we get to hear that.
And he's not just speaking, he's
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praying. Jesus lifts his eyes up
to heaven and says father. Remind you
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of the Lord's prayer, doesn't it? Well, Jesus taught us to praise,
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pray like this, say our father, who are in heaven. Jesus
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lifts his eyes up to heaven and
says father. Some commentators have pointed out
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that it's a very useful thing to
think about this prayer in light of the
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Lord's prayer. Jesus taught us to
pray and here he is praying, and
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indeed we learn things, we come
to understand things about, understand some of
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the things that we pray, that
we ask for in the Lord's prayer,
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by thinking about Jesus's prayer here in
John Seventeen. So I'd encourage you,
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as we go through this chapter,
not all today, to think along these
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lines. What does this teach us
about the Lord's will being done on earth
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as it is in heaven? What
does this teach us about God's name being
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hallowed? What does it teach us
about God providing us our daily bread,
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these these kinds of things? Well, as we have this prayer from the
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father to the son, the important
thing to remember, to tie back to
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what I said a moment ago,
is that we're not sort of sneaking in
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on this conversation, accidentally overhearing something
that we ought not to hear, something
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holy, accidentally finding ourself in the
holy of holies. I don't belong here.
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No, it's just the opposite.
Jesus praised to the father, but
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he does and he is speaking to
the father, but he specifically wants you
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to hear this prayer, to learn
from it, to understand from it,
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to be blessed by it. How
do we know that? Because he gave
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it to his disciples, John here
in particular, by his spirit, to
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be included in this Gospel. Remember, at the end of John He says
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there's lots of things that Jesus did
that I didn't write, but I wrote
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these things so that you might know
and believe and have eternal life, which,
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interestingly, fits perfectly with the mission
that Jesus has been given here.
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As we read it and John,
Chapter John Seventeen too. He says you
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have given him. He speaks of
himself. He's in the third person.
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You have given me him authority over
all flesh. Why The me? Here's
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the mission to give eternal life to
all who you have given Jesus. He
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came to give eternal life. That
was his mission, and that's why these
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words are recorded. All that to
say this simple point, these words are
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for you. We're not sneaking in
on a extremely holy conversation, though it
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is very holy, precious, worthy
of taking our shoes off, we might
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say, of being careful, of
listening carefully, of humbling ourselves, but
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nevertheless, God is revealing himself and
his mission to you. He wants you
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to understand the glorious mission of the
Sun. So it is Jesus's mission.
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Why? And why is it glorious? Let's consider these things. Well,
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we've already read his mission, as
I mentioned in verse two, to Give
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Eternal life to all whom you have
given to him. That's Jesus is a
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mission. He describes it a little
more in verse three. He describes what
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eternal life is, that they know
you, the only true God, and
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Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
One way you might think about it is
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Jesus is mission, in a way, is to reveal his mission. He
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is on a mission to reveal the
knowledge of his mission, and the knowledge
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of that mission, the knowledge that
he comes for this purpose to give eternal
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life, is knowledge which can save
it's not the kind of knowledge that is
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just sort of the kind of thing
you know, you write down in your
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notebook and then forget about. But
what Jesus wants to do is give the
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kind of knowledge that changes our understanding
of everything, of the world, the
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purpose of the world, the beginning
and end of the world, a way
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that helps us to understand God himself
and our life in him. This is
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Jesus mission, and all the words
that surround that mission in our passage help
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us to understand the glorious nature of
it. Notice that. That's why I
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say that he wants us to understand
that his mission is glorious. Let me
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just walk you through quickly the flow
of this passage. Jesus, praise father
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the hours come, glorify your son
that the son May glorify you. He's
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asking for this thing to happen in
the future. He's asking God to glorify.
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And the reason, then, is
in verse two, because you've given
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me this mission, as he defines
in verse two and three, a mission
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which he has completed. Verse for, He says, I glorified you on
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Earth, having accomplished the work that
you gave me to do, and now,
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father, glorify me in your presence
with the glory that I had before
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the world existed. You see what
I mean by saying his mission is wrapped
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all up and glory. That's why
we don't want to. He wants us
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to think about it in this way. Jesus, we could, we could
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reorder the passage and still speak very
truly and put it this way. We
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could say that, before the world
began, the father gave a people to
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his son, as he says in
verse two, to Give Eternal life to
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all you whom you have given me. He gives a people to his son
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to save, to give eternal life
to the father sends his son into the
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world and says do this work,
glorify me, that I may glorify you
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and these people that I have given
you in my glorification of you. So
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the Glorious Triune God determines this glorious
plan from before time to save us and
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to wrap us up into his own
glory to give us eternal life. Is
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How it's described there. Well,
that's Jesus's mission and clearly it's glorious.
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It's a glorious thing. Let's think
now about some of the specific ways in
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which it is glorious and a little
more about what glory exactly is, and
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I hope that as we consider this, as we consider the glorious nature of
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Jesus Mission, that will increase your
confidence in your courage and you're hoping him.
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As I said, glory is a
tough thing to define, but I
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do think it's one of those things
that you know it when you see it,
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you know it when you feel it. Glory is that quality of magnificence.
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Glory is what we see and here
and experience when a particular quality or
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trait is magnified, when it is
made great, when it is worthy of
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praise. And I want to give
you four examples and think about those in
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relation to the mission of Christ.
First one is power. One way we
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see and experience glory is in power. One image that comes to my mind
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is is an army marching, dressed
ready for battle, the tanks rolling,
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the flags flying, you hear their
stomping. March, March, March.
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Everything is tight, everything is organized, everything is planned, nothing is out
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of place. There's power in that. That's why armies march in this way,
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specifically before people and in in when
there are parades, in this way.
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It is to magnify the power in
a way that makes you stand back
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and go wow. And if you're
on the side of the army, it
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gives you confidence. Right, it
gives you boldness. We're going to win
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this thing, we're gonna this is
gonna work, we're going to defeat our
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enemies. And if you're are not
on the side of that army, it's
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supposed to instill and you fear that
glory in that power is it marches before
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use to make you feel overwhelmed.
Right, that's what glory does. It's
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magnificent, it's big. But take
the our example of the army marching.
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We all know that, even as
we watch that parade, if you that
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it's not always as it seems.
Perhaps the weapons are not fully operational.
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That soldier that just walked by that
seems so confident and strong, there's probably
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a good chance that in the back
of his mind he's going, did I
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leave the Coffee Pot on right?
He's thinking about, you know, is
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it did I get all the loops
on my belt? Or what's going to
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happen tomorrow? or I've got to
make sure I finish this thing when this
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thing is over. There's a way
in which, even at are at the
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height of power, it doesn't last
very long and there's it's something of a
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veneer, of a show. There
might be truth to it, but there's
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a certain amount of fragility to any
kind of human power when we also know
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that these kinds of parades are not
what it looks like on the battlefield.
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Armies don't typically March and their dress
a uniforms out and just walk through the
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battlefield and then go home. Now
they fight, they die, there's blood
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and and and glory and death.
People lose their sons and their father's plans
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go wrong. Enemies sometimes win.
This is human power. This is the
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glory and the not so glorious nature
of human power. Now consider that with
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the power of Jesus's mission, the
glorious power of Jesus's mission, Jesus comes
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into the world to conquer Satan to
conquer sin, to conquer death. He
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comes not to secure a border or
to secure a region or a food supply
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or have this victory of that victory. He comes to conquer death itself.
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Remember his mission to give eternal life. What army, what rule or what
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kingdom has ever given anyone anything even
close to what Jesus gives in his mission,
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eternal life. And when you think
about the ways in which Jesus exemplifies
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this mission, the way that he
glorifies the father throughout his mission here on
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Earth, we get a taste of
that. A man who has not walked
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for decades all of a sudden walking, a woman touching the hem of Jesus's
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garment and the power going out from
him, or she is instantly healed,
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after doctors had tried for long time
to help her. People who are vile,
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despicable sinners turning their lives around,
giving themselves fully over to him and
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being willing to die for him.
Tax Collectors who had previously been hoarding money,
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stealing money, oppressing people, now
giving back what they had stolen.
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Power and these things in Jesus is
miracles that we see, and we could
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listen any more. These miracles and
things that we see his teaching, as
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well as attributed to his glory and
power. They're just little for tastes of
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the glorification that he will receive later
on, little warehouse samples of what he
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will come into and what we will
see and experience with him at the resurrection.
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Amazing, amazing. The power of
Jesus is mission, the glorious power
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of Jesus's mission, surpasses all the
powers of this world, the in the
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ease and which he does things and
things which are humanly totally impossible. There
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were two. Another way Jesus shows
us is glorious, his glory, of
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his mission, in his wisdom.
You know, wisdom is right and wisdom
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is win. The means and the
ends are perfectly chosen, and so are
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all the means to get there.
The beginning and end are all planned and
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matched and everything is decided. Well, we know this, of course,
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and in the world, when you
read a book that describes something and you
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go that person gets it right and
all of a sudden questions you had and
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things you didn't understand, it at
all comes together and your heart fills with
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joy and that wisdom and that understanding
you say, Oh, that's so helpful,
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and you go and you recommend the
book to your friends and you say
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you've got to read this. This
really helps you understand whatever it is you're
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you're reading about the glory of wisdom
fills with joy. But of course,
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again, humanly, this is extremely
difficult to do. Think about some of
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our wisest people, or people at
least who spend a great amount of time
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and money trying to gain wisdom.
What do we do? We specialize,
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we narrow our field down more and
more and more and we focus more and
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more and more, gaining degree after
degree, job after job, so that
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we can really get close to what
we might call mastery over this tiny little
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thing. And even then, those
humans that we say are best in class,
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they'll even say that there's still so
much they don't know, even in
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their own field. And that's the
best that we can do. And then
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there's God, from all time and
space, deciding every leaf, every grasp
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blade, every hair on our head. What would be to accomplish this mission?
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It's not amazing. The glorious nature
of Jesus's mission is not only in
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his power, but it's in the
wisdom. How this all fits together.
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Sometimes it confuses us. Why exactly
did Jesus called Judas? Perhaps some of
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you are thinking of certain answers,
perhaps they're correct, but the point is,
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notice the wisdom of God. Who
would think of these kinds of things?
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Or calling someone like Paul so late
in the game, or the prophets
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prophesying these things, or the the
the genocide that Herod a committed. You
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can on and on and on list
all kinds of things and you can see
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how God pulls them together. Sometimes, sometimes you can't. But in all
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of it what is undeniable is that
the Lord is sovereign, that the Lord
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is wise in a way that doesn't
even begin to compare to our wisdom.
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Jesus came into the world in a
veiled form that the world would call foolishness.
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Well, that's your save. You're
dying on a cross. Yes,
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that's our savior dying on a cross. Why does God do it that way?
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To confound you, to put you
to shame, to make it known
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that your wisdom is not so wise
and so that the wisdom of God and
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the grace of God might be magnified
in Jesus on the Cross? No plan,
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no mission has ever been devised that
will ever begin to compare to surpassing
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the glorious wisdom of the mission of
Jesus. I really want to talk about
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beauty, but we're going to skip
beauty and talk about love. What about
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the glorious the gloriousness of Jesus's love
in his mission? In this life,
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again, following this pattern that we're
on, we experience sometimes great love.
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It's father's day, perhaps, between
a father and his son or daughter.
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Perhaps it's between a husband and wife, perhaps it's between two friends. I
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hope that you've all experienced it and
have opportunities to experience that, where you
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look into someone's eyes and you are
so in sync with them, so connected
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with them, at a moment where
you sort of lose yourself. This is
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my friend, this is my child, this is my spouse, and you're
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just together, just together, and
isn't there a glory in that? Something
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that when the two come together,
it's more than just the two people together,
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that the two become one in a
way there's a community that grows that
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either can hardly express, and our
great poets try to write about it,
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try to write about love, try
to express to try to get at it
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when you talk about, you know, being in the clouds or feeling weightless
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or losing ourselves, all very in
exact language, but we're trying to get
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at something, trying to get it
something bigger than ourselves, and these moments
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are so wonderful. They fill us
with joy and confidence and safety. But,
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of course, and talking about it, we all know how fleeting these
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are, even with the people that
were closest to, most committed to relationships
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that seems so strong in this life, fall apart in such a way that
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makes me feel so angry I want
to cust and swear a little bit.
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Maybe you have. It's frustrating,
isn't it? We want so badly to
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be connected with each other, to
be unified, to be at one and
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at peace, and we just can't
manage it. It's so, so hard.
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What does Jesus do then, in
his mission, he comes into this
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world and he gives us eternal life
that is so unifying. He says that,
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as the that he is as in
the father, and the father is
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in him and we are in him
and he is an us, that we
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might be one with each other.
Do you know how much unity there is
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within God? I don't know what
else to say after that, I really
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don't. But that's what we are
united to when Jesus fully engages with us,
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when he gives us his spirit.
It's not a fleeting thing, it's
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not something that he's going to drop
the ball on. It's the glory of
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that love, the glory and of
that unity is not something that's going to
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fall apart in a few minutes or
a few days or a few years,
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because we're talking about Jesus who does
the impossible, he does the glorious things.
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His mission is glorious. Well,
I said earlier, this glory,
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the Glorious Mission of the Sun.
It's the kind of thing that if you're
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if it's for you or against you, it kind of depends on how you
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relate to it. If you are
against it, if you are separated from
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it, it's all sorrow and despair. But if Jesus Christ is looking into
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your eyes and says you are my
beloved, I will be your God and
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you will be my people, and
I and and the father in love sends
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his son into the world so that
whoever would believe on him would be saved,
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so that all who look to Jesus
Christ on the Cross and see their
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sins there would be caught up into
his love and his power and his wisdom
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forever. That kind of thing helps, helps a great deal, and that's
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one of the reasons Jesus wants you
to know this, because this life,
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as we've been discussing, is very
hard. We want glorious things. We
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don't want to be entrapped by fleeting
things. We don't want to put our
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work to things that will vanish into
the air or blow away like the chaff.
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Life is hard. But if we
put our eyes in faith, in
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the sun, in the glorious promise
that he's given, what did he say?
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He says that when we know God
and the son whom he has sent,
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we will have glory, Eternal Life, God himself as one that we
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can pray to and say, our
father, who are in heaven, how
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would be thy name? So when
the fleeting things of this world are feel
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fleeting and when the inglorious things of
this world are so inglorious and only things,
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like everything is just keeps slipping through
your fingers and you want to despair
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and you want to give up,
remember the glorious mission of the Sun set
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it before you like a bright,
Shining City, that you are going to
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keep going. It's there, it's
promised for you. He came into the
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world and what did he do?
He did what he came to do.
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He says that I have glorified you
and now glorify me, and that's exactly
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what God did. Jesus Christ sits
in heaven now at the right hand of
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God, the Father, ruling and
reigning over us, working in us,
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calling us, bringing us to these
final ends. So keep your eyes on
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him, remember that the glory that
he brings is different than the glory that
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we experience in this life, and
press on, beloved. Let's pray
