John chapter 17 has given this congregation several weeks to listen in while the Lord Jesus prays. This seventh message brings us to the last verses of that prayer. In the opening lines He prayed for the disciples standing near Him. As the prayer moved forward He looked down the halls of time and prayed for those who would believe through their word, including every generation of the church. When you listen to someone pray, you learn what matters to them. Conversation can tell you facts about a person. Prayer reveals the heart.
Jesus began by asking that the Father would be glorified through Him. To glorify God is not a vague religious word. It is to demonstrate and declare how good God is and how great He is. He then prayed for the sanctification of His disciples: “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth” (John 17:17). He prayed for their unity and for their being sent into the world. Now, at the end, He looks beyond the cross, beyond the resurrection, beyond the book of Acts, beyond the church age, and beyond every generation of believers still to come. He looks into eternity.
John 17:24-26
Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me. And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.
Long To Be Where Christ Is (vs. 24A)
“Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am.” That is where John 17 lands. That is also where the Christian life is headed: to be with Jesus.
One of the scourges of modern Christianity is that many want to do a great deal for Jesus, while far fewer want to be with Jesus. What makes heaven heaven is not first the bad things that will be missing. What makes heaven wonderful is the Person who will be there. How can we claim to be eager to spend eternity with Him if five minutes of fellowship with Him here feels like a burden? Why would we want forever with Someone from whom we are so easily distracted day by day?
Jesus does not begin His picture of eternal destiny with streets of gold or gates of pearl, though those things are real and will be glorious. He does not start with the river of life, or even with the blessed reunion of those who knew Christ. Those truths are biblical and they will be wonderful. He places something greater at the centre: “that they also… be with me where I am.”
Two years before this message, Pastor Léveillé landed in Ivory Coast to teach a class on the cults and how to engage them with the gospel. The students were eager, but not for the groups he had prepared to address. They wanted to hear about the Branhamites, a movement he had never studied. After asking a missionary friend, he learned it was the largest cult in that part of the world, tied to a health-and-wealth preacher from the United States. In one widely circulated testimony the man described a dream of dying and going to heaven. He spoke of happy people, modest dress, singing, and a warm welcome. He never mentioned Jesus. That is a large omission. Heaven is not made heaven by the scenery or the crowd. Heaven is made heaven by Christ.
Songs about a mansion over the hilltop can stir the imagination, but the word does not promise a private estate on the edge of a lake. Believers can get excited about a geographical change and miss the relational heart of the promise. Heaven is a real place. Do not reduce it to a mood or a metaphor. What makes that place special is that we will be with Jesus forever. Heaven is not only the absence of bad things. It is not only the presence of good things. Heaven is the presence of our Saviour.
There will be no sickness, no hospitals, no cancer, no temptation, no sin, no sorrow, and no death. Revelation assures us of those mercies. Still, heaven is not merely getting out of here. Heaven is being with Jesus. He had already told His troubled disciples, “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” (John 14:3). He does not say, “Where streets of gold are, there ye may be also.” He says, “unto myself.”
If a husband answered his wife’s invitation to dinner by saying it depended on the restaurant, he would have missed the point. The joy is not first the menu. The joy is the person. In the same way, heaven is not first the wonders of Revelation, magnificent as they are. It is the Lord Jesus.
Those who have walked with Christ for many years often say the same thing as they near home. What they look forward to is being with their Saviour. That was Paul’s longing: “For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better” (Philippians 1:23). What makes it far better is Jesus.
That raises a searching question. What exactly are you looking forward to about heaven? There are many good answers. There is one best answer. If heaven contained everything we wanted except Jesus, would we still want to go there?
In Exodus 33, after the golden calf, the Lord tested Moses. He offered to send an angel, drive out the enemies, and bring the people into the land of promise, but said His presence would not go with them. Moses refused. Agricultural success, military victory, and a land of milk and honey could not replace the presence of God. Without the Lord, Moses did not want the destination.
If we sincerely want to be with Christ forever, that desire ought to show itself in how much we want to be with Him now. We can sing about heaven with enthusiasm and still treat Christ as an accessory to the Christian life. We should not merely long to leave our troubles. We should long to be with Him. As one pastor put it, many people look forward to their own disappearing, but very few look forward to His appearing. Jesus prays, “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am.”
Live To Behold The Glory Of Christ (vs. 24B)
Jesus does not only want His people in His location. He wants them to see Him. “That they may behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world.”
He wants us to see His splendour, His greatness, and the full manifestation of His goodness. Throughout His earthly ministry much of that glory was veiled. The disciples received glimpses. They saw Him on the mount of transfiguration. They heard Him call, “Lazarus, come forth.” They heard Him say, “Talitha cumi,” and watched a little girl rise. For the most part, though, they saw Him in His humanity: hungry, weary, walking dusty roads, rejected, mocked, and crucified between two criminals.
John later wrote, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). We have read about Jesus, preached about Him, sung about Him, prayed to Him, and trusted Him. In that day we shall see Him as He is. How little we have understood.
Not everyone wants to see Jesus. Believers who have already gone ahead of us have entered that sight. Stephen gave a glimpse of what the sight of Christ can do. Surrounded by hatred, with Saul of Tarsus consenting to his death, “he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, and said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God” (Acts 7:55-56). Humanly speaking, everything was going wrong. Stephen was not staring at his enemies. He was looking at Jesus. When you see Jesus, everything else pales, whether it is great or horrible. What fills your vision will shape how you interpret everything else.
If we say we cannot wait to see Him in His glory, He ought to occupy our thoughts now. Career, possessions, entertainment, achievement, politics, and sport can crowd Him out. Pastor Léveillé recalled a pastor visiting his home while a hockey game played on the television. The pastor asked who was playing, and it became clear he could no longer follow the sport he had once played very well. Before he came to Christ, hockey had been a huge part of his identity. To follow the Lord he laid that interest down, not because sport is sinful in itself, but because he knew he could not keep that grip and keep his eyes fixed on Christ. The issue for each of us may be different. The question is the same. What has captured my attention more than Christ? What occupies my thoughts when I wake? What excites me? What do I fear losing? What holds my attention most easily?
If Christ will fill our vision in heaven, He ought increasingly to fill our vision now. We behold Him through His Word. We study His character, meditate on His promises, and worship Him for who He is.
Live In The Love Christ Makes Known (vs. 25-26)
Jesus ends the prayer with love. “O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee: but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me. And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it: that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
The world does not know the Father. Jesus has made Him known. He revealed the Father’s character, and the desired result is that the love with which the Father loved the Son would be in His people, and that Christ Himself would be in them.
Christianity is not merely knowing facts about God. Knowing God is meant to transform how we love. If we do not love, we do not know the Father as we ought. You cannot truly love Christ without loving what Christ loves. A wife may take up interests that are not natural to her because she loves her husband. In a far greater way, those who love the Son will love the Father, and those who love God will love the people for whom Christ died.
Jesus began this prayer with glory in verse 1. He ends it with love in verse 26. Unity, being kept in the Father’s name, and sanctification all come down on the runway of love. John himself is the illustration. When we first meet him with his brother, they are “sons of thunder,” ready to call fire down on a Samaritan village that refused Jesus. Later the same man writes, “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God” (1 John 4:7). What changed him? He spent time with Jesus. The council later perceived that the apostles were unlearned and ignorant men, “and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13). People who spend time with Jesus become loving people. If we are not loving, we have not been in fellowship with Him as we ought. We cannot spend weeks in John 17 and walk away with more notes and no more love for people for the sake of Christ.
He has made the Father known so that His love may be in us. Then He adds, “and I in them.” It is true that we will be with Christ one day, as verse 24 promises. It is also true that Christ is in the believer today. “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). We do not only talk about the Father’s love. We do not only look forward to heaven. Even now Christ lives in His people and produces the love of God through them.
Conclusion
This series began by listening to Jesus pray. It ends by showing us what matters to Him. The Father’s glory matters to Christ. He wants His people kept, sanctified through the truth, and sent. He wants us with Him. He lifts our eyes toward heaven, and then He says that one day we will be with Him there. Until then, He is with us here.
The trajectory of the prayer is the trajectory of the Christian life. There was a day when you looked up and saw that God is powerful enough to rescue you from sin. One day you will see Him as He is. In the meantime He is in you, loving the world through you.
Long to be where Christ is. It would be a useful exercise to list the things you look forward to about heaven, and then to remind yourself that none of them would be what they are without Jesus. Live to behold the glory of Christ, not only on the day you see Him face to face, but with a desire that grows until that day. Live in the love that Christ makes known.
