Wednesday in the Word...John 20:20-26...Why am I here?

Maine has issued a "stay at home" for the month of April.  The President has extended the 15 days to another 30 days.  No time such as this for the last 100 years so lets see how we will handle it in light of history.  I pray we do well.

We finish the prayer today.  A question of life is, "Why am I here?"  What is great is the Bible gives us the answer for the Christian.  Jesus will actually say it two or three times in this passage of scripture.  We do many other things in "this life" but one thing is supreme because our focus is on "that life."  Let's find out what that one thing is.

Today's Wednesday in the Word is covering John chapter 17 and verses 20 through 26.  This is Jesus' prayer to the Father prior to heading to the cross.  He has prayed for Himself and then for His disciples and ends with praying for all believers.  That's us so let's listen in.

v.20, 21 - "I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me."

Christianity was not a one generation thing.  It wasn't just for the 1st century or for the disciples only.  Jesus is saying these words prior to His death on the cross, rising from the grave on the third day and ascension into heaven.  This is a prayer given before the Great Commission is uttered.  The disciples were truly going to be "fishers of men."

The requirement is, "those also who believe in Me" and they get this information through the disciples.  To believe in Jesus is to respond to God's love by sending His Son with repentance and obedience.  We are to believe that God did send His Son Jesus as our Savior to die on the cross for our sins and raise on the third day to show our future resurrection over physical death.  We now center our lives on who He is rather than who we are.  We deny ourselves, take up the message of the cross and follow His very words and actions.  

The result is that the world will know that God sent Jesus for this purpose to seek and save the lost.  This message from the disciples will be reproduced over and over again so that the whole world will know, i.e. to the ends of the earth.  The Christian has a task in front of them to go back into the broken world and share the way of escape that God has provided.  This is our common task and the unity factor between us as Christians.  We are brothers and sisters of the same family that are proclaimers like the disciples of a risen Lord.

v.22, 23 - "The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me."

Jesus says it again, "that the world may know that You sent Me."  We also have the fact of His love for us.  While Jesus died on the cross He was loving us and we need to wrap our arms around the thought that God was loving Jesus too even though this sacrifice was part of the redemption plan. Sometimes love is painful.  You have probably had some of those incidents in your life.  You keep loving when it hurts to love and no love is coming back.  This is the agape, unconditional love.  

It was glory for Jesus to bring us salvation and as believers we have obtained that glory through Jesus.  We also have the opportunity to share that glory of salvation with others.  We are the ones who say the words and do the deeds that Christ has prepared for us.  We point people to Him.  This is our unifying mission.  At times it will hurt but knowing Jesus is worth any physical pain we might endure here.   

v.24 - "Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world."

Where is Jesus going to be?  He will be at the right hand of the Father in heaven.  Where will we be who have been given to Jesus through the response of repentance and obedience, i.e. faith?  We will be in heaven and able to see Jesus in all of His glory.  I love how John says this later in I John chapter 3 and verse 2 which reads,

Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be.  We know that that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.

Listen to the words of Paul in Philippians chapter 3 and verses 20 and 21,

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ; who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself.

Okay one more because we don't talk about heaven enough.  Here is Paul speaking again in 2 Corinthians chapter 3 and verse 18, which reads,

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

v.25, 26 - "O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me; and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them."

And we could all say, "Amen."  It is like a broken record but Jesus says again to we are to make God's name known just as He made it known to us.  It is as simple as that.  What is your purpose in this life?  It is to make God's name known.  We share with others about a great God who loved us to provide a way to stand before Him someday.  It an act of love but also of justice because God is a righteous Father.  There is right and there is wrong and no in-between.  

There seems to be 3 groups but only 2 places.  There is the truly converted who are rewarded with what we have been reading about in this passage.  The second group are those who are contrary to God and Jesus, attacking against Him and their end is separation from God.  The third group are those who are merely churched and receiving the benefits of being with God's family who are practicing the "one anothers."  It looks great but their end is the same as those contrary to God and Jesus.  If you listened to last Sunday's sermon, their pot is destroyed too.

If you are child of God, this prayer from the lips of Jesus is for you.  His desire is to have you with Him someday in His glory.  While we are waiting for that day, we make His Father's name known to all the nations of the world.  We endure pain at times like He did to accomplish this task.  Lastly, we keep our eyes not on this earth, this world, this age but on heaven, that world, that age to come.

Pastor Adam