Glorify Your Son

My 10 Resolutions for 2008. I have decided that with God’s help, I shall: Give up complaining, focus on gratitude. Give up harsh judgments, think kind thoughts. Give up worry, trust divine providence. Give up discouragement, be full of hope. Give up bitterness, turn to forgiveness. Give up hatred, return good for evil. Give up anger, practice patience. Give up pettiness, put on maturity. Give up gloom; enjoy the beauty that is around me. Give up gossiping, control my tongue.

2008 Predictions: 1. The Bible will still have all the answers. 2. Prayer will still work. 3. The Holy Spirit will still move. 4. God will still inhabit the praises of His people. 5. There will still be God-anointed preaching. 6. There will still be singing of praise to God. 7. God will still pour out blessings upon His people. 8. There will still be room at the Cross. 9. Jesus will still love you. 10. Jesus will still save the lost.

Our Lord prayed as a man, and as the go-between of his people; yet he spoke with self-assurance and power, as one that is equal with the Father. Eternal life could not be given unless Christ glorified the Father, and was glorified by him. The sinner’s way to eternal life is when he comes to this knowledge, By believing he will be made perfect in love for Christ and then He will enjoy happiness that can be found no where else. In these few verses we are taught that our praising God is a needed evidence to show our love Christ. It is through Him we receive eternal life as God’s free gift.

Father Glorify Your Son (17:1-5)

The prayer of Jesus in John 17 is The Greatest Prayer Ever Prayed and we find four reasons for saying this. It is because of the Person who prayed the prayer. He is the only one who claimed to be God’s Son. It is because of the occasion that commanded the prayer. Jesus in the next day will give His life for a world of lost sinners. It is because of the contents of the prayer. He came to earth for reason and that being complete He was confident that the glory of the Father was done. This leads to the victory in Jesus that He has done what needed to be done to bring us to God.

Let look at three things we find in these first five verses. WHAT IS JESUS ASKING FOR? WHY SHOULD GOD GRANT HIS REQUEST? WHY WAS JESUS’ PRAYER ANSWERED?

I. WHAT IS JESUS ASKING FOR?

A. THE request expressed, “Father, the time has come, Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you.” “Father, glorify me with your very own radiance, the very radiance I had in your presence before there was a world.”

What does it mean to glorify? It means to bring praise to an outstanding position or form. Jesus was asking to be reinstated the glory He had before the world came into being.

We see here two great truths concerning Jesus.

1. His existed before the world began. Mic 5:2 “Whose goings forth has been from of old, from everlasting.”

2. His Divinity was shared with God His Father alone. IS 42:8 "I am the Lord; that is my name? I will not give my glory to anyone else. I will not share my praise with carved idols.” When the Gospel of John starts it says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. He was in the beginning with God. And the Word was God." Jesus is asking the Father to give back to Him the glorious position He had before coming to earth.

Jesus left heaven to come to earth that He might give his life for our sins that we might go to heaven. He did what needed to be done and now He asks to return to heaven to be with the Father.

II. WHY would GOD (who is holy and without sin) GRANT HIS REQUEST?

A. Jesus prays “that your Son also may glorify You." Jesus wanted to bring honor to his Father. His prayer is not merely personal. He wants to return His glory by honoring the Father. This provides an important pattern in considering our own prayers. Do we always ask for blessings that we might better serve God and do His will? Many of our prayers might go unanswered because they are for selfish reasons. JAM 4:3 “And even when you do ask, you don’t get it because your whole motive is wrong, you want only what will give you pleasure.” The reason we pray is to have our Father’s will in mind. 1 JN 5:14 “And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he hears us.”