It isn't what our culture says that our personal narrative and whatever is important to me makes truth truth. It is that he has been glorified by God that makes him truth. People will say, "Well, Jesus is your truth." Our culture says, "You go ahead and believe that. If you think Jesus is real, then he's your truth. That's your truth. But it's not truth for all mankind. That's not true." Did you know that Jesus prays for you? In fact, right now he's praying for you. We're told in Hebrews that he seated at the right hand of the throne of God, praying for you and me continually. Welcome to Gospel Daily. My name is Josh Weibman, pastor of Grace Chapel. I'm here proudly to tell you I have a Savior who prays for you. If you're his own children, you've already put your faith in him, then you can rest assured that you have a high priest, one who has access to the throne room of God on your behalf. He's praying for you. He's going in and interceding for you. How sweet is that? Well, listen, Jesus didn't just pray for us once he returned to the right hand of the throne of God, but he modeled for us a life of prayer all throughout the New Testament. One of my favorite passages is found in John chapter 17, where Jesus is praying. He starts by praying for his disciples, and then he moves to praying for the whole world. It's one of the sweetest passages because it models for us that we have a Savior that loves us enough to stop and pray for us. Haven't you had that before where somebody says, "I love you and I'll pray for you?" And if they really mean it, then you feel their love knowing that they're following through by ushering your requests or your needs before the Lord. Well listen to me, Jesus Christ loves you so much that he prays for you, and not only does he pray for you now, but he prayed for you when he was on earth in John chapter 17. So today we're going to dive into a message entitled, "Why the Glory of Christ Matters in a Postmodern World?" We're going to see that Jesus is praying for his own glorification. He's talking about his own glory that must be known in our hearts and around the world. But we live in a postmodern culture that doesn't always understand why the worship of a Savior like Jesus is so important. So today, let's listen into this message, let's open up our Bibles and apply this truth. And by listening to the words of the Bible and getting the heart of Christ, I think we're going to walk away with something that we can apply to our daily lives. So let's listen in. Well we are just a few weeks away from having our fifth child, which is pretty crazy. We are probably about three weeks away if it doesn't come early. And I said to Molly yesterday, I said, "Malls, if you could just kind of keep all things together and inside until I get through John 17, that would be perfect because I really want to get through this passage." She said, "Yeah, you talked to the Lord about that one. Being pregnant in the middle of July has not been pleasant for heat purposes, so she's ready for this thing to come. But I see the evidence of her being ready because if you were to come to our house, you would see that she has cleaned every closet that absolutely needed to be cleaned and every closet that did not need to be cleaned has now been cleaned. She is for sure nesting. She has pulled out every box of every baby thing that we have ever owned, and she has done a detailed inventory of what we have and what we still need. And all of these baby things are now showing up all over the place, and she's saying just in case, we just have to be ready because it could come at any moment." Well, that's fine, I get that, it's important we're ready, but I have fun playing with the baby things. Putting the swing together was one of the tasks this week, of which she ended up finishing that task. And there were other things that I was supposed to sort through, but I got distracted. There's always cool baby toys. One of my favorite of all of our baby toys is the baby monitor. I love the fact that you can watch your kid sleep in another room, you can hear everything. These things are high tech now, man. You can all but smell them from the other room on these monitors, they're pretty cool. And so I just have fun kind of making sure we got that, and it was funny, when we first had our first child, Chandler, that monitor, I watched it like a hawk, right? Every move, everything, I knew everything he was doing at any given moment because I watched it. The fourth kid, you're just lucky if it's plugged in, right, and on. The fifth baby now coming, I'm like, we got to use this thing again. And I was reminded of just how funny it was to watch them, not only as they were sleeping and getting rest, but then as they started to figure out they were being watched, I don't know if you've had your kids figure this out, but all of a sudden they figure out they're being watched, and then they start calling you by name, or even looking directly into the camera to be like, "Hey dad, come get me," right? And you play this stand-off game with your kid through the monitor. You're watching them, and you're like, "Please go back to sleep, please go back to sleep, please go back," all the while they're like, "I know you're there, I know you're watching." I was thinking about it this week, I was thinking if we had a baby monitor, not a baby monitor, but like a heaven monitor, like if we could look in the heaven, what would we see? What would be on the other side of that screen? If I could see God just through a monitor, I'm not talking about like see Him fully as I will one day experience Him in eternity. I'm talking about if I just had a baby monitor to be able to view into heaven a God monitor, right? To view into heaven and to see Him as He is, what would I see? I mean, the mere fact that He exists would be unbelievable. I mean, just to see Him in all the angels and all of His glory, however that would show up on a pixelated monitor would be life changing in and of itself to know that He's there, to know that He's alive and real, it would change my reality. It has, but imagine visualizing that. And if I could zoom in on Christ, what would I see Christ doing? I know He's seated at the right hand of the throne of God, however that works in that whole Trinity thing, but He's there and He's present with God because He is God and He said that He'd be seated at His right hand and so what's He doing there? Is He still, is He moving? Is He checking His email? You know, it's like prayer email, all the prayers that are coming in, deleting all the junk that comes in, right? Is He looking into some kind of view of the world that He can look down on earth and see the discern every heart? I mean, what's He doing? Imagine that if I could look into the hearts of, excuse me, into the view of heaven and into His heart for me, I would see a posture of Him praying for me. The Bible tells me that He never stops praying for me, that His heart is for me, that He's with me, that even though He has the world to rule, He's the ultimate multitasker who is praying for me and who is lifting me up and that reality in of itself, that the very God of the universe is praying for me, if I could see it, that'd change everything, but I can know it from Scripture. Hebrews 7, verse 25 talks about Jesus, the very one who redeemed us, now seated at the right hand of the throne of God, it says that He's able to save those who are in the uttermost parts, throwing them near to God, but then in verse 25 it says, "Since He always lives, it's active, He always lives to make intercessory prayers for us." He's praying for us and He's not just praying for us because that's a cool thing that a holy person does and of course He's holy and He's God so He would pray. He's praying for us because He knows that our entire eternity rests on the shoulders of God's sovereign will to save us. This is life and death for us, so He's interceding for us even now as I speak to you because He knows that our souls are on the line. Romans, chapter 8, verse 24 says, "Christ Jesus is the one who died, but more than that is the one who was raised, who's at the right hand of God who intercedes for us." He's praying for us and interceding for us knowing that He can save us, knowing that our lives are on the line and we must believe in Him, that He is the only one who can save, so He's saying to the Father, "Father, save them on my behalf, save them on my behalf." Call them to faith in me. The scriptures talk about Christ being glorified. I think if we could peer into heaven we would see Christ is glorified, that He's alive and well that He's seated at the right hand of the throne of God and like Christ being glorified, it means that God is accepting everything that He has done and everything that He will do as truth and as real. Everything Christ does is the ultimate reality for all of us. Now track with me on this for a second. We live in a postmodern world where truth and reality are understood to be individual things specific to you. Your personal history, your social class, your gender, your culture, your religion, whatever is true to you, that is the ultimate reality. That's what our postmodern culture tells us. The fact that Jesus is alive and well and seated at the right hand of the throne of God, the fact that He has been glorified, that God has verified that He and all that He has done and all that He will do is the ultimate reality or climax of God's work. That makes Him the ultimate truth. It isn't what our culture says that our personal narrative and whatever is important to me makes truth truth. It is that He has been glorified by God that makes Him truth. You see, people will say, "Well, Jesus is your truth." Our culture says you go ahead and believe that. If you think Jesus is real, then He's your truth. That's your truth, but it's not truth for all mankind. That's not true. The fact that Christ has been glorified and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God means that He is the ultimate truth because He has been verified by God. The glorification of Christ has massive implications for all of humanity, so today I've entitled my message why the glory of Christ matters in a postmodern world. We as fallen humans have this powerful tendency towards self-centric thinking, towards self-absorption so much so that when we think about Christ being glorified by God, our first question is, "So what does that mean for me?" Because when we live in a postmodern culture as we do, it all comes back to, "What does it mean for me? What's reality for me? What's truth for me? How does that impact me?" And while there are things that should impact you by Christ being glorified, at the end of the day, God is all about glorifying Christ merely because He is all about Himself. He cares about you, and He cares about how His glory plays out for you. But He cares most about glorifying Himself. He has to glorify Himself in order to be God. And so we're going to understand how the ultimate reality of truth, the ultimate reality of Christ being glorified by God impacts us, but we have to start by understanding it is merely God's heart to glorify Himself. The transforming message of the gospel is rooted in the fact that God loves Himself. God the Father loves God the Son, which loves God the Holy Spirit, all of them existed before anything was ever created. Love still existed in the triune Godhead. And it was glorifying Himself. God is all about Himself, loving Himself, glorifying Himself. If He loved anything else or glorified anything else, that object or person would then be God. So He has to be about loving Himself first and foremost, but then the gospel spans beyond the love that He shares with Himself and says, "Listen, I invite you in not to be equal and God as I am God, but to share into the love that I share with myself. I love myself, I love my Son, I love my Holy Spirit, and because I am God, I will allow you to love or experience my love, why so that I may be glorified." Now in a postmodern culture, we say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on." That sure sounds like He's all about Himself. Yes, exactly. The message of the gospel is counter-cultural, but the fact that He allows us to share in this love that He has that existed before creation existed is life transforming. He allows us to believe in Him, to be changed by Him, and to be impacted by the love that He shares far before He ever said, "And you will exist." You don't have to take my word for it. I want to show you the power of this love and the power of the love between the Father and the Son captured for us in John chapter 17. Let's open up our Bibles to John chapter 17 verses 1 through 5 on page 109 in the Bibles that are in front of you. If you're joining us online, then I want to say please open up your Bible wherever you are. I want to make sure that we're looking at this together. You can use the Grace Chapel app, which is found in both app stores. Download it. You can see my notes there. And if at any time, no matter where in the world you are, you have a question, feel free to text this number, and I will be glad to answer your questions. Actually, the next two weeks at the end of my messages, granted that a baby doesn't come, I'm going to be here and we're going to answer several questions live. Some of those might be related to today's message even, so feel free to text those as we go. Now, listen, this love that Jesus shares with God is going to be seen very clearly. God the Father is going to be seen very clearly in John chapter 17. We are joining Jesus as he prays to the Father. Now, just hold on and get your mind around that for a second. We have, in Scripture, recorded for us a conversation amongst the Trinity. We have Jesus praying to the Father, recorded for us in an entire chapter in John chapter 17. Now, we've seen him pray to the Father before, asking the Father for specific things, but for an entire chapter, we get to listen in on a conversation that Jesus has with the Father. He's praying for his disciples, but he's also praying for modern believers. You and I here today, and he has, in his heart, a desire for us to see him glorified. It's very clear. It's going to be very clear in these first five passages. He desires for us to see him glorified. Why? Because he wants us to push back or push against some individualized truth and obliterate any idea that you can save yourself. And so he prays for himself to be glorified so that we get beyond ourselves, so we see him as ultimate truth, so that we see him as a means to comfort, to full assurance, and to empowerment to do the things he has for us in our life. In other words, Christ lives for us, and through him, he's prayed through his life, through his words here in this passage, he's praying that his glory will be manifest to the world so that we will know the love that the Triune God shares with itself, and from it we will be able to have joy and peace. So this passage, in other words, is a monitor, baby monitor, right, monitor of the Bible to look into what's happening in the Godhead and how they speak about us and speak to one another. Look at this. John 17 verses 1 through 5 says this. "When Jesus had spoken these words," remember he was speaking to the disciples, he had all sorts of things empowering them in chapter 16, "you're going to go through hard times, but I'm with you, abide with me," John 15, after he said all of these things, he lifted his eyes up to the heaven and said, "Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given him, and this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorify you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do, and now Father glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. Five times in five verses, he uses the word glory. I have each one highlighted here in my Bible. Five times he uses the word or a form of the word glory in only five verses that almost the setting of what's happening here. He's hours away from crucifixion, a bloody and gruesome death by the hands of the Romans. He doesn't pray some selfish prayer, like will you please not let the bloody gruesome death happen. He doesn't pray like will you just let this all pass from me, though, that we have another gospel account to him praying that the wrath of God not be poured out upon him. He in this moment is not focused on what is about to happen to him. He starts by saying, "It's all about you, Father. It's all about your glory, and it's all about you being glorified by glorifying me, and we are one in the same. We are both God glorified me. Only God can glorify himself." So he's saying here in this moment, "Glorify me," selflessly he's asking for himself to be glorified for the sake of the Father's glory and for the benefit of those who believe. I'll unpack all that in a moment. But I think here's a term we need to define right off the bat. What is the glory of Christ? What is this idea when he's praying for God to glorify him? What is the glory of Christ? And the most succinct way I can say it, I would define it as this. The glory of Christ, if you're taking notes, you can write this down on the back of the bulletin. The glory of Christ is the tangible manifestation of the invisible God. He's saying, knowing that he's about to walk through what he's going to have to walk through, he's going to walk the path of the cross in order to be back with the Father in heaven, verse 5, glorified as he was before all time. He's saying, "Listen, I want you to take all of your attributes and all that is true of you, that is also true of me, but I want you to make it true in me. May I be the visible, tangible means for the world to know the invisible God. Glorify me, Father." And by glorifying me, you are glorifying yourself. One Puritan writer, Thomas Goodwin, said it this way. He said, "Christ's glory is the highest manifestation of the Godhead that could be communicated to creatures." Christ is saying, "Give me the highest manifestation of your glory in a way that these humans may be able to understand it, and by letting them grasp you in all that you are, by allowing them to have a relationship with you, you will glorify yourself." Everything God had accomplished through Christ to this point and everything that he would accomplish through Christ continually are God's glory days. They're glory for him, but they are also glorious for us. John Aerosmith, another famous Puritan, he said, "God is glorifying Himself by taking what is too dazzling for our weak eyes and making it conceivable or visible in the person of Christ." He goes on to explain it like this, he says, "We can't grab the sun from the sky. It's too great. It's too vast. We burn up. Right? We can't grasp the sun from the sky, but I can have a basin full of water, and I can see the reflection of the sun on that water in the basin. And there I hold it within my own grasp, and he said, "So that is also what has happened with Christ. Christ becomes the basin by which the glory of God is held." Christ is that basin that allows us, enables us to behold the fullness of God in the everydayness of our life. So in Christ is saying, "Glorify me, Father." And in glorifying me, you will glorify yourself. He is praying for his own glory to be made known, but in a way, in a tangible way, that we could understand it and grasp it. Sometimes I think we go too far in talking about Jesus as if he's our best friend or a close companion or a Facebook friend, right? He's so much more than that. He's the glory of God manifest in our life. Yes, he is a friend, and he says that he comes in and he doesn't call a slave anymore, that he calls us friend, but he is the manifestation of all that God is in our lives. He was when he was here on earth, and he still is through the power of the Holy Spirit being proclaimed in our hearts. So we praise here in this prayer, "God, make your reality all that you are dwell in me fully, and only he can pray that." No one else can pray. You and I can't say, "God, allow the fullness of who you are to dwell in me. It dwells in us through the person of the Spirit, but none of us have the full manifestation of God in us." That was only in Christ. He was both God and man, and they both existed 100% equal parts in the same place. And so he's saying, "Your glory dwells in me, and let it be known, glorify yourself through me." And then he prays, "Knowing that the cross is before him, and return the fullness of your glory to me, just as it was before the world was ever created." You see, God's glory and God's love have nothing to do ultimately with creation having to exist. He is glorified by the way he loves us, but he was glorified, and he was loving before the world ever existed, verse 5. So as Jesus is here requesting for God to glorify him, he's not praying some prayer of self-aggrandizement, "Make me greater than I actually am." No, he's actually praying, "Make me as great as you know that I am, and let the world see me in my glory." He had full expectation of the horrific suffering he was about to go through, but he knew it would all be worth it, for he would be restored to glory. And that is not only wonderful for God, but it is absolutely wonderful for us. He is not some God that came, manifest something, and then fade it away. But he is a God who came, manifest his glory, and then return to it in an even more powerful way than when he had it here on earth. You've been listening to the first part of a message entitled, "Why the Glory of Christ Matters in a Postmodern World." We've been talking a lot about why Jesus should be exalted, why he is supreme, and why his glory matters to us. I take tours every year over to Israel, and we walk in the footsteps of Jesus Christ. We go around Galilee, we even go on the Sea of Galilee, and we talk about what Jesus did in his earthly ministry. But not only did he do great things on earth here in the land of Israel, he does things every single day in our hearts no matter what land we live in. You see, his glory is greater now. He's now more magnificent than ever before. Not that anything has been added to him, but by the multiplication of the power of the Holy Spirit across all of the world and through all of the saints, the glory of Jesus Christ is being declared. He's with you, no matter where you're at right now, and he's with me, and he's praying for us as he's seated at the right hand of the throne of God. So let's keep that truth in our heart, and remember, his glorification in our life is important, especially in this dark and postmodern world. If you'd like more resources to encourage you on how to be a light in the darkness, would you stop by our website, gospeldaily.org. That's G-O-S-P-E-L-D-A-I-L-Y.org. Thanks so much for listening, and let's go live out the gospel daily. (upbeat music)
