Sermons from Lone
Rock Bible Church "The Jealousy of Jesus" "Envy" is when someone else
has something we want. "Jealousy" is when we have something and intend to keep
it at all cost. In the case of Jesus, He has His people and intends it to stay that way.
In this rich verse of Scripture, He expresses His desire from these angles: 1. Past There is something about this verse
that is particularly gripping to me. I hope I can somehow communicate that as we look at
God’s Word. John 17:24 In I Corinthians 13, the apostle Paul
remarks, “When I was a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child, I
spoke like a child.” We have all been
there or we are there. The vantage point we enjoy as our children grow is that we can look
back and see things not only from where we now are but from where are kids are and from
where we once were. I have observed that in childhood we
can anticipate, we can look forward to, and we can enjoy, but we cannot really appreciate
the investments our parents make in our regard. For instance, ponder your last family
vacation. I can remember as a child anticipating those family vacations. I was looking
forward to seeing relatives, seeing new places, doing something fun. That’s how kids
look at vacations. I hope that it is a pleasant and enjoyable time Not until years and years later have I
stopped to think how my Dad might have looked at that. It was five kids in a ’64
Pontiac for 1,400 miles. He had not seen his parents in a year so we took the trip. He had
to save money for the trip. He may have had to have the car serviced for the trip, get
work done ahead so he is not so far behind once he returns. From the standpoint of a child
-- “Lets go! It will be great!” But from the standpoint of the parent, it is a
little different. I think it is like that with
Christians in our view of heaven. I think when we ponder heaven, when we talk about it,
think about it, preach about it, read about it, it tends to be a childlike perspective.
Won’t it be glory. “And in God’s word I’m told, we’ll walk the
streets of gold.” It will be streets of gold, in a city of multi-faceted jewels, with
all the nations of the world. How many times have you and I said I can’t wait to see
this person, perhaps a personal friend, perhaps a famous saint or Bible person from
yesteryear. I have questions. I just want to see Jesus. Sure, we
want to see Jesus. And I do not think there is anything wrong with that, of course. We
ought to be anticipating our eternity in heaven. But I am forced by this verse to say,
“What does it look like from Jesus’ side? What is His take on our eternity?”
As I do that, as this verse has taken us there, my appreciation for Him is deepened and my
sense of assurance in Him is absolutely strengthened because now He is standing on the
verge of paying it all. He is anticipating what is ahead. His prayer is powerful with regard to
His people. “Father, I want them with Me.” See the difference? We are going to take this verse on
just a little bit differently, not particularly in order but from a chronological
perspective. Jesus touches on three points in time in this verse. He talks about the past.
He talks about the present, His present, in His day, where He was. And He talks about the
future. That’s how I thought we would break this down. Jesus is saying that He has these
people and He fully, adamantly, intends to keep them. He is jealous for His possession. If
we are in Christ, we are His possession and He fully intends to keep us. This verse spells
that out powerfully. The Past First of all, Jesus’ past, as He
touches in this verse -- His past with the
Father. He mentions here, “You have given Me these people for You loved Me before the
foundation of the world.” That expression, “Foundation of the world,” is
found a number of times in the New Testament. It tells me that much was going on a long
time ago in the mind and in the activity of the God of eternity before the foundation of
the world. We are stretched here. We have to do our best to try to put ourselves there.
The Bible helps us. His past with the Father has to do with the foundation of the world. I will bring up a few references that
help us understand Jesus’ commitment, not only to the Father but their mutual
commitment, to a far-reaching agenda that involves you and me. John 1 The Word, we know, is Jesus. “In
the beginning” means “when the beginning began.” At the point of the
foundation of the world, the Word was already being with God and the Word had been
continually being God. There is just a whole string of linear verbs in there designed to
get us to appreciate the fact that whenever we trace the beginning to be, the creation of
the world, Jesus and the Father were already in gear and had been eternally. In the beginning, they already were
and they shared. The Word was with God and the Word was in a continual state of being
eyeball to eyeball in an ongoing loving, harmonious, perfect relationship with the Father.
The two of them were in lockstep with one another, in nature and certainly in purpose. I Peter 1:20 - speaking of Jesus and
His relationship to the Father: For He was
foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the
sake of you Foreknown -- Jesus and the Father had
a knowing, loving relationship before the foundation of the world, and that is huge. His
relationship with the Father in the past was first of all one of love, total harmony and
perfect unity. His relationship with the Father was
also characterized by unity. There are several interesting references, one in Hebrews and
two in Matthew. Again, I am picking up on the expression, “the foundation of the
world.” What was going on? What is that all about? We, with a bit of fear and
trembling are trying to get a taste for it. Hebrews 4:3(b) - speaking of people
entering into the rest of God: although
His works were finished from the foundation of the world. His works -- that presupposes a plan,
an agenda, a project. In Matthew, Jesus talks about this.
Again, we see Him and the Father in perfect concert with one another. In Matthew 13, Jesus
is speaking in parables, an earthly story with a heavenly meaning. He is discussing the
mystery of the kingdom in Matthew 13 and says in verse 35, quoting here from the Psalms: This was
to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet: Things that God knows -- they just are
part of His plan. He is totally aware, but people need to be told, need to be shown, need
to be taught, need to come to know. There is a plan. It is being worked out. Matthew 25:34 - speaking of the
judgment, separating sheep from goats, wheat from chaff. It says he will put the sheep on
His right and the goats on His left. "Then
the King will say to those on His right, 'Come, you who are blessed of My Father, inherit
the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. God the Father, God the Son, working a
plan, building a kingdom, preparing a place, have been at it a long time -- from the
foundation of the world. The kingdom has been planned and prepped for eons. The kingdom is
not just a place where the Father and Son will hang together. The kingdom involves people.
The kingdom is eternal. People are eternal. The Bible is very clear that heaven, the
kingdom, will be populated by the likes of you and me, believe it or not. His relationship with the Father is
one of love, one of unity, and harder perhaps to grasp, one of choice. Ephesians 1:4 - speaking of the Lord
Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places: just as He
chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, I don’t remember that. I don’t
need to remember that, but I am glad He does. Choices -- He does the choosing and we are
outside that loop. I don’t know who He chooses, I only know He chose me. How do I
know He chose me? I know because I am a Christian. This is all God’s thing. That’s
part of the mystery. He knows. We do not need to. We share the Word. He does the work. It
has to do, though, with people and God’s choice. Revelation 17:8 - talking about the
beast: "The
beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to come up out of the abyss and go to
destruction And those who dwell on the earth, whose name has not been written in the book
of life from the foundation of the world, will wonder when they see the beast, that he was
and is not and will come. That’s sobering. Names are
written down. Names not written down. Choices made. It is God’s kingdom, God’s
agenda. The Father and the Son in perfect unity since before there was terra firma or
anything we know as far as the physical world. This goes back a ways. It goes forward
a ways. This is God’s broad plan and Jesus’ past with the Father. This is where,
to me, it gets interesting because He not only mentions back in John 17:24 His past with
the Father, but He also mentions His past with His disciples. In the verse He says, with
regard to the disciples: “And they also whom You have given Me.” The disciples,
in a sense, function as the Father’s gift to the Son. Call it a love gift. That’s
fine, but His gift, to the Son, is His people. Now from Jesus’ standpoint --
think of this now -- we are on earth, let’s say A.D. 30. Jesus is beginning His
public ministry. He has left the realms of glory. He has departed from the ivory palaces.
He has humbled Himself (Philippians 2) and made Himself obedient to human flesh. He has
celebrated the first Christmas. He has been an infant in a manger and a toddler in
Nazareth. He has grown up with brothers and sisters. He has learned a trade and now it is
time. John the Baptist has had his say and now it is time for Jesus to go public. He was in Galilee when He first came
across Peter and Andrew and Nathanael. These were flesh and blood guys, working guys. It
was there when Jesus laid His eyes upon those men for the first time, called out to them
and spoke their names, that He made a connection with Ephesians 1:4. Their names were
written down, now He is connecting with them in space and in time and in history. “Peter,
your name is written down. Follow Me.” “Nathaniel, while you were under the fig
tree I saw you.” “Thomas, I understand your doubt.” “Levi, come out of
that tax gatherer’s booth. You are mine. I think we better change your name to
Matthew.” How about Judas? Jesus laid His eyes
on Judas, checked the list, and said “I need you for other reasons. You come too.”
At that juncture in history, from eternity past in the mind and on the ledger of God, take
on real life and the experience of Jesus and He begins now a personal history with people,
with them. It lasted for several years. Jesus met them. He laid eyes on them. He called
them to Himself. He taught them over and over and over. He broke out the Scriptures to
them and said, “This is what God is saying here.” All the people around, the
Bible says, marveled at His teaching because He taught them as one having authority and
not like the teachers they were accustomed to hearing. They hung on His words, but the
Bible says, at the same time He knew their hearts and He knew they had a long way to go.
So He taught them. They spent many nights around many
fires. He got to know them. He came to love them. They had adventures. They sailed across
the Sea of Galilee in the dead of night in the storm and He rebuked the wind and the
waves. He walked on the water and summoned Peter to do likewise. He rebuked the Gerasene’s
demoniac and they became, then, more afraid of Him than they were of anything else. They can remember, in their minds eye
now, the floating swine in the Sea of Galilee. These were all adventures they had
together, growing together relationally. Jesus had a past and He is saying, “Father,
You and I have been here forever. I have loved these followers and I want them with Me.”
The Present From Jesus’ timeframe, the
present -- and this really is the main verb of the verse. “Father, I desire.” He
is saying, “This is Me, right now.” We are in the present with Him. And right
now, He is saying, I desire this. That is the word we are looking at in the present. Here
is where My heart is, Father, at this hour, right now. This hour, in Jesus’ life, is a
big hour. He began His prayer in John 17:1 with, “Father, the hour has come.”
That moment that we have been anticipating all this time has now arrived. In John 12:27
Jesus is speaking: "Now
My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, 'Father, save Me from this hour'? But
for this purpose I came to this hour.” That is why I am here! What is He
talking about? This is the focal point of all human history. Jesus has completed the work
the Father has given Him to do. He has led that perfect life He needed to lead in
fulfillment of the Law. He is preparing now to go from where He is sitting at this prayer
to a cross outside Jerusalem. This is the biggest hour in the history of humankind. It is
here your sins and my sins and the sins of everyone from Adam on are going to be satisfied
before the wrath of God at the Cross. It is here that Jesus is going to make
the payment that will enable a fallen, cursed world to be turned around and set on its
head and made right. Everything changes with the payment that is going to be made at this
hour. At this hour, He is saying, this, right now is what I want. My heart is here and it
is for these people, right now. Thinking back a chapter or two, this
hour would include Jesus wrapping Himself in a towel and teaching some things about
servant-hood to His disciples. It would include His last words from John 13 through 16,
talking about I am about to leave. I know you are unhappy about that. My Holy Spirit will
be here to help you. He gave them so much wonderful instruction with those last words in
His final hour. It was a time of fellowship. They broke bread together. They celebrated
the Passover together. He served them. It was a time of prayer. This prayer
of John 17, that Jesus prayed to His Father, in the presence of His disciples, was for
their sakes and for yours and mine. It was in this hour He went to the Garden of
Gethsemane and there shed sweat as drops of blood. It was there He wrestled with His own
will and determined that His will and the Father’s lined up perfectly despite all
opposition, which was on its way even as He prayed. It was here in the garden that He
asked for some company, for some companionship. “Can you not stay awake one hour?”
Their eyes were heavy. Their spirits were willing but their flesh was weak. I’ve
always been glad that Jesus did not say, “If you can’t even stay awake, I’m
out of here.” But He knew them. He loved them. He had invested in them, and that
investment had not yet reached critical point, but it was about to. He is betrayed in their presence,
arrested in their presence. He is given a mock trial before an illegal court. He is judged
guilty by His peers, if you will, the Jewish court. He
is sentenced by the Romans. Then He goes to the cross, where they run spikes through His
wrists and a spike through His heels just between the Achilles tendon and the bone. They
hoist Him on a cross, it drops into its socket, and there He hangs for them, for us. This is the investment of Jesus’
cross and this is the hour for it. Knowing all that, He knows at this most critical of
moments in all time, His desire is clear for His people. Earlier on, He had told His
disciples and others, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
We think, ok, so I should not love money. The principle transcends money. What He is
saying is that your heart will always follow your investment and your desire will always
reflect your heart. He was saying, “My desire, right now, is that they be with Me
because they are My investment.” The Future Within hours He is making the payment
in His blood. That absolutely is amazing. “My desire.” Knowing what this hour
would hold, verbalizing His desire of that moment, yet Jesus cast His eyes even to the
future and prayed for His people, for the future, that they may be with Me where I am.
“That they may behold My glory.” He is looking now to the future. “I want
them with Me forever. I want them to behold and appreciate My glory forever.” This is the part that boggles my mind.
This is unspeakably touching to me. This is Jesus’ perspective on heaven. We may say
“I can’t wait for the streets of gold. I can’t wait to live forever. I can’t
wait for no more tears. I can’t wait for everything to go right. I can’t wait to
be with Jesus.” His whole point is this: “I want them with Me, that they may
behold My glory.” That is His point. “Because they are My treasure. Because My
heart follows My investment.” What does He want? He wants His people
“to be being with Me.” He is speaking now in an on-going sense. “I don’t
want them just to stop by and we’ll have tea. I want them with Me continually, that
they may be being with Me.” “I want them with Me in an
on-going sense, at My house, at My place.” He told them in John 14:3, “I am
going to prepare a place for you.” It is a literal, real place. And if I am going to
do that, if I am going to all that trouble, I am coming back to take you to Myself that
where I am, there you may be also” That is His point -- that where I am, there you
may be also. I think this is an interesting invitation. I have known people who have told me
that when they were kids they did not want to have friends over to their house. Things
aren’t good there. It’s uncomfortable there. There is something shameful going
on there, at least to the child. Jesus is saying, “Come on over. My place is great.”
There is nothing to be ashamed of. There is nothing but joy. Come on over. Be being with
Me. The eye has not seen, the ear has not
heard, it has not entered into the heart of man what the Lord has prepared beyond that
point. But we know it is unbelievably good. He wants us with Him, first of all, to
be being with Him and then secondly, in verse 24, to be beholding His glory. You will
always be with Me, in an on-going sense, and My glory will continue to be a part of things
and you will be, in an on-going sense, appreciating it the whole time. We will see His
glory, His clearly illuminated magnificence. He wants them to see Him as He really
is. Do we catch that? What they have seen in Jesus as He walked on earth -- they liked it.
The problem was He was not glorified yet and neither were they. They did not see Him in
His truest, fullest essence. But He wants them to. The apostle Paul says while we are
locked into this life on this earth, we see through a glass darkly. But some day that
glass will be removed and we will see face to face. We will have perfect vision to behold
our perfect God. We will be changed, the Bible says, and we will be like Him because we
will see Him as He is. Paul writes in II Corinthians 3:18, we
will be continually changed from glory to glory until we behold His face. It is all going
to be a wonderful thing. Our side of that is that we get to be changed. So yes, it will be
different and from His standpoint, though, much broader. Revelation 21 - in heaven now,
according to the description, speaking of the walls and the city and the material of the
wall being made of all kinds of gorgeous, precious stones and the twelve gates of twelve
pearls. The street of the city was pure, transparent gold. 22I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb
are its temple. That they may be beholding My glory. I
will light up the whole place. 24The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth
will bring their glory into it. It is the Lamb’s book of life --
from the foundation of the world. Most of this boggles my mind, but the
part about His investment, I think I get. He has poured out His life’s blood to pay
for you and me to go to heaven. That is quite an investment. There can be no higher cost.
He is simply saying if you want to go there, don’t fiddle around with thinking you
can be good enough. You cannot. You don’t have to try to be good enough to get to
heaven. You simply surrender to the One who is -- Jesus. Could it be more simple -- all my
trust in Jesus only. John 17:24 reminds us that heaven will
be heaven for Jesus too. He wants us there. He paid our way there. He fully intends to
keep us there, that we might know and enjoy Him forever. "Scripture
taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, Jim Carlson 2006, Lone Rock Bible Church, Stevensville Montana, USA |