How is that we have the smile of God?

“Father, Glorify Your Son…” Part 4
(John 17:4, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, February 28, 2010)

John 17:1-4 … "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, 2 since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 4 I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.

Q: What is the first petition in Jesus’ prayer to the Father?
A: "Glorify your Son." (John 17:1)
Q: Father, what have you given Your Son concerning humanity?
A: "You have given Him authority over all flesh." (John 17:2)
Q: Heavenly Father, what is eternal life?
A: "That they know you.” (John 17:3)
Q: How did Jesus speak of His glorifying the Father on earth?
A: “I accomplished the work that you gave me to do.” (John 17:4)

How did Jesus know God?
You and I were created to know God. This is so much the case, that we are moving toward the absolute best experience that we could every enjoy, which is all about knowing the Father and the Son. That is why Jesus prays in the hearing of His disciples the words of John 17:3 that celebrate what heaven and eternal life are all about: “This is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” If you want to know what your destiny is as a person who believes in Jesus Christ, this is it: that you will know God forever, apparently in a very fulfilling and wonderful way.

Jesus led the way for us in this destiny by becoming man, and knowing the Father, both in the fullness of His divine nature and in His life as a true man. Jesus is both God and man. In His human nature, Jesus of Nazareth grew in His knowledge of God. At the end of Luke 2 we read about this. Luke says, “Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man.” Hebrews 2:10 connects this way of spiritual growth for Jesus with our own growth. The author writes, “For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.” Jesus the man grew through suffering. That was very fitting. Why? Because we also can grow through suffering. Growing through suffering... learning to love God and others in a world of suffering, this is one of thinking about your life. In your suffering, you can glorify God. (Consider various illustrations of care during the recent storm, and more ongoing acts of maintaining relationships with people you love.) In your suffering, you can glorify God. Jesus lead the way in this.

How did Jesus glorify God on earth?
At what is almost our Lord's final step on His way to the cross, He says in this prayer that He glorified the Father on earth. How did Jesus do that? The church has confessed certain things about the suffering of Jesus for centuries; that He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Piate, was crucified, died, and buried. When Jesus prayed this prayer recorded for us in John 17, He had not completed all these great things that we confess about His life and death on earth. He had not yet appeared before Pilate, been crucified, died, or been placed in a tomb. Yet He says, “I glorified you on earth.” What does this mean?

Jesus obeyed the Father. Jesus suffered. Jesus glorified God on earth. These things go together. Suffering is a test of our intention to do what is right at a cost. The fullness of obedience is necessary in order for God to be perfectly glorified through the life of any of His servants. Every other servant of the Lord prior to Jesus, had fallen short of the goal of perfect obedience, perfect suffering, perfectly glorifying God on earth, perfect humility, perfect gentleness, perfect love.

Moses was a great man. The Bible says this about him (Numbers 12:3): “Now the man Moses was very meek, more than all people who were on the face of the earth.” When he died, the people of Israel wept for thirty days. But this great man was not allowed to lead Israel into the Promised Land. In his frustration with the sinfulness of Israel in the wilderness, he rebelled against the Lord's instruction. He lashed out against them in a moment of anger, and did not honor God as holy in that one instant of trial. Moses did not fully glorify the Lord on earth.

That's part of the story of Moses. What about other great people. Job was the greatest of all the men in his time and place. God says that he was blameless and upright. But when God visits him in his suffering at the end of the book of Job, He asks Job question after question that no man could answer, firmly putting Job in His place. Job did not perfectly glorify the Lord on earth.

Moses, Job, all of us, cannot say this simple sweeping statement that Jesus says here. “I glorified you on earth,” without some very significant qualification. But Jesus did what Moses and Job could not do. He leads us into the real Promised Land above, and when the Father talks to Jesus, He does not ever have to put Him in His place. He never says to Him, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” He says these words instead: “This is My beloved Son in who I am well-pleased. Listen to Him.” Through the obedience of Jesus, His willingness to suffer, and His perfect life of glorifying God on earth, Moses, Job, you, and I were saved.

The art and discipline of accomplishing work on earth
Jesus glorified God on earth by accomplishing the work that the Father gave Him to do. It is not easy to accomplish anything on earth. I am amazed at and applaud almost any kind of achievement. It takes art and discipline to do something of beauty, and yet, in this world, beauty fades. (Story of our windshield repair, yet the whole car will one day be reduced to rubble.)

Jesus' God-given work on earth
There are many great plans that are never achieved. Where they are achieved, they are subject to seemingly unending delays and disappointments. Even the greatest success story that we can bring about is a part of a larger environment of decay, and ends up in the pile of what people may have accomplished but which their descendants have forgotten. But Jesus... He accomplished the work that the Father gave Him to do, and that will be remembered forever.

It was a very difficult work, and it had to be done perfectly. There could be no tolerance for error. For the cross of Christ to work for our salvation, the man on the cross had to be sinless. Even the slightest hint of real sin against the Law of God, and the cross would have just been the sad death of another man, a man with great intentions who could not accomplish the work that he set out to do. (See Luke 14:28-30) Consider the enormity of the fact that one man has actually accomplished something so great. He taught, healed, loved, and obeyed, and all without sin. As He prays this prayer, He is just about to do His greatest deed by far, His most excellent act of obedience. He will die for your life. And that is why we will know the Father and the Son.

The glory of an accomplished redemption – Consider the smile of God upon you, for Jesus' sake, and smile back at the God who loves you, and who calls you to know and love Him.
1. What does it mean for a person to glorify God on earth?
2. Is it a very difficult task to accomplish something of lasting significance?
3. What is the whole scope of the work of the Son of God?
4. What work did Jesus accomplish on earth and what is its lasting significance?

Knowing God is Eternal Life

“Father, Glorify Your Son…” Part 3

(John 17:3, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, February 21, 2010)

John 17:1-3 … "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, 2 since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. 3 And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.

Q: What is the first petition in Jesus’ prayer to the Father?
A: "Glorify your Son." (John 17:1)
Q: Father, what have you given Your Son concerning humanity?
A: "You have given Him authority over all flesh." (John 17:2)
Q: Heavenly Father, what is eternal life?
A: "That they know you.” (John 17:3)

The requirements for and experience of eternal life
Some of us grew up in an environment where we thought very little about how someone gets to heaven. It was not something that anyone talked about in our circles. We either assumed that almost everyone went there, or that no one went there, because there probably was no such place. There was not necessarily a lot of clear thinking on this topic in our minds.

That looser way of dealing with spiritual knowledge assumes that we can never really know God, and that we can never really know what life will be like after we die, so that there's no particular point about being too definite about these things. A person can operate on a certain set of assumptions about spiritual matters without having to be too certain of the truth. All of that can change very quickly when the dividing line between life as we know it, and life as it may be beyond death gets uncomfortably close. We tend to get impatient with vague and uncertain answers when we suddenly need to know. (As Tom Hanks says in Apollo 13 waiting for the reentry plan for the astronaut's return to earth, “The world's getting' awfully big in the window.”)

There comes a point when a person is more determined to have a clear answer to the question, “What must I do to be saved?” As important as that question is, it's not the only question that the Bible answers. Much of what God wants us to know about eternal life has very little to do with what we must do to get there, especially since we can't make eternal life happen for ourselves anyway. There are other questions and answers. For instance, “What is eternal life?” In John 17:3, when Jesus says, “This is eternal life,” we have to be careful to notice that He did not say, “This is the requirement for eternal life,” or “This is what you need to do to experience eternal life.” He said this is eternal life. He is speaking to His Father in the hearing of the church about the experience of eternal life. Whatever else can be said about heaven or the resurrection, this much is of central importance: Heaven is a place where people know God. “This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

They
Jesus uses this simple word “they” to speak of the group of people that will experience eternal life. In the previous verse, when the Lord spoke of His authority over all flesh, He referred to the people that the Father has particularly given to the Son. The Son will give them this experience of eternal life. In this chapter, this “they” first refers to the specific original 12 (minus 1) disciples that Jesus prays for in verses 6-19. But beyond those few, in verses 20-26 Jesus prays for a larger group of disciples. This larger group “will believe in Me through their word,” meaning the word of the original apostles. Jesus has authority over all flesh, but not all people will believe in the apostolic testimony concerning Jesus. Yet many, however weakly or falteringly, will call upon the Lord, they will be saved, they will be granted eternal live.

Know
This group that Jesus calls “they,” these people who are known by the Father from before all time, are given to the Son, and who receive eternal life as a gift from him; they will know God. Whatever else can be said about eternal life, when we get to heaven we do some very amazing knowing. There is much variety in knowing. It is great to know some facts just in time to pass a test. It's even better to gain a real mastery over some area of study so that you could successfully face a group of experts in your field and calmly answer whatever questions they might want to ask you. Above this kind of knowing of things is the knowing of a person, and that experience can certainly grow. But eternal life involves an even better knowledge.

You, and...
When we come to faith in the Son of God, we enter upon the journey of spiritual life that Paul says will get much better in heaven. It is a journey of knowing God. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” There must be something different between the fullness of God's knowledge of us and our knowledge of Him. Nonetheless, there can be no doubt that God is telling us to think of heaven and eternal life as a place and time where we will know Him, the only true God, beyond our wildest dreams. (The example of Job.)

The best ways for us to know God is by knowing Jesus the Messiah whom He has sent. He is the One praying here, the One who is asking His Father in this chapter to glorify Him. God has granted us many ways to know Him. We are told that all people know God through creation (Example: like recognizing someone you have seen several times before, though perhaps you have never been introduced.) It is through hearing the Word of God that we see Jesus. By the work of the Holy Spirit our knowledge of God can increase throughout our lives. Yet can anyone doubt that there is a greater and fuller relational love and a most wonderful knowledge of God that is in the very air of heaven? (The illustration of parenthood and growth in relationship.)

Knowing and serving a God who can't be fully know and does not need anything from anyone... Wouldn't it be great to be able to see into heaven? Three of the disciples were given a special gift of seeing and feeling eternal life here on earth in the transfiguration of Jesus (Matthew 17:1-8), and it was obviously an experience that was beyond them. In fact, knowing God is really beyond us. Solomon says in Ecclesiastes about our knowing even just the works of God: “Though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out.” That's true. Who can claim that he knows the works of God or the wisdom of God? If we cannot know these, how can we say that we know God Himself? And yet Jesus said in John 8:31-32 that those who abide in His Word would be His true disciples, and that they would know the truth. He said, “You shall know the truth, and truth shall make you free.” And we have John 17:3, John 1:18, and many others...

This knowing of God is a gift of Jesus to the ones that the Father has given to Him, the ones for whom He gave His life, the ones for whom He died. If we are allowed to serve Him in any way, it is not because He needs us, but because He knows that we need to give ourselves away in order to be what we will be. Do you know the Father and the Son? Will you serve the Father and the Son eternally? That is the best life, and it is a gift of God to be received even today, but above all, let your heart be thrilled with the fact that your knowledge of the Father and the Son will not be limited to whatever you may have attained to so far. In heaven, you will really know the only true God and Jesus the Messiah. This is eternal life.

1. What are the requirements for a person to be granted eternal life?
2. How does this verse summarize the experience of eternal life?
3. “You know God.” What are the variety of meanings of this statement:?
4. What does this verse teach us about God the Father, and Jesus Christ His Son?

More thoughts on John 17:2

The Big Picture – Ephesians 1:10 – God is determined to unite all things in His Son Jesus Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.

This Amazing Prayer – John 17

The first petition – “Glorify your son”

Today's verse – v. 2

Connection between two thoughts-
Verse 1 – Petition: Glorify your son
Verse 2 – Statement of a very important fact

“Since” – The Connection between the petition and the fact

Since = “Just as” A point of close connected comparison
The sun came up today just as the earth rotates around the sun every year... Part of a bigger project

The Father has given the Son authority over all flesh as part of a bigger plan of eternal life

The absolutely essential position of the Son

The trust of the Father

Not a matter of compulsion – but of giving and willing taking of what is given – not stolen or forced upon

Verse 1 and 2:
1. It is so very right for the Father to glorify the Son now in His death, resurrection, and ascension

2. Because the Father is completely committed to the whole plan of heaven and earth, and to the central position of Jesus in that plan, just as surely as the sun rose today because it is a part of the bigger plan of God for a whole year.

Therefore-
When you serve... (especially the people in your family)
Remember this thought,
that your service IS AN EXPRESSION OF THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS OVER ALL FLESH,
that Jesus is bringing everything together in the right way, and enjoy that thought.

And then remember this giving of the Father and the Son,
and eternal life,
and the central gift that secures eternal life,
that the Son of Man came to serve
and to give His life as a ransom for many.

Why is it so right for the Father to glorify the Son?

“Father, Glorify Your Son…” Part 2
(John 17:2, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, February 14, 2010)

John 17:1-2 … "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, 2 since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.

Q: What is the first petition in Jesus’ prayer to the Father?
A: "Glorify your Son." (John 17:1)
Q: Father, what have you given Your Son concerning humanity?
A: "You have given Him authority over all flesh." (John 17:2)

Since
It is God's intention to glorify God (v. 1). Perhaps you had some opportunity over the last few days to think about that and to decide that this plan of the Lord to glorify Himself is more than OK with you. We imagine that we must come first in God's thinking, and we are confused when we face pain and trouble. It can be a very freeing discovery for us when we admit that God shining His brightest light on Himself, on His greatness, and on the perfection of what He has done, is absolutely the best thing. It is a major step in removing any unnecessary unsettled feelings we may have had toward God, and somehow also in removing our unnecessary disconnect with our family, our history, the world we live in now, and the created order of things. Seeing the rightness of God glorifying God helps us to embrace the rightness of His plan more broadly, and therefore the rightness of His determination to use what is not right on the way to securing what is best for His own glory. That kind of thought can bring you peace.

The first word in today's verse, “since,” is a very powerful word. It is most often translated “just as,” and it is used to establish a significant point of connection between two ideas. “Father, glorify the Son, just as you have already committed Yourself to this in giving Him authority over all flesh.” We will take a close look at what that all means, but we should first pause and think about this “just as,” this “since.” It is a reasoning word, a thinking word. As Jesus prays to the Father in the presence of the listening church, He uses reasoning, thinking. Good thinking can change your life. It can bring you feelings of well-being. It can help you find a way out of trouble. It can improve all sorts of relationships. It can bring your family back together again. This reasoning is part of the wonder of being a person.

Whatever it may mean that the Father has given His Son authority over all flesh, it apparently has a point of connection to the rightness of the Son being glorified by the Father. “Father, (listen to me church while I pray),” Jesus says, “Father, you have given me authority over all flesh. Since you have done that great thing, surely it must be right for you to glorify me.” This “since” is powerful. We can use it too. We say, “Father, we know You are going to freely give us all things, since You gave Your Son for us.” Some of our reasoning might not always be exactly right, but this last one is perfectly correct because Paul says it in Romans 8. And this reasoning in John 17:1-2 is exactly right, because Jesus says it in His prayer.

There's a lot to think about there. It allows us to take what we know and believe about Jesus, and to let those facts that we have already embraced in our hearts touch the other facts about Jesus that may still be jiggling around in our brains. We corral those renegade facts that are running wild, we lasso them by the powerful combination of Scripture, reason, and experience, and the Holy Spirit brings them home to our hearts, and we say with Jesus, since the Father has given Jesus authority over absolutely all flesh, it must mean something about the rightness of the Father glorifying the Son. You start putting that together, with some of His miracles, some of the things that He said to weak people, what He did on the the cross, the fact of his empty tomb, and what He taught us about heaven, and these thoughts finally find a resting place in your heart.

You have given Him authority
So what does it mean that the Father has given authority over all flesh to the Son? We remember that God is the source of everything, that He is in charge, and that He gives people authority in different times and places. God is the Creator of everything. He keeps all things going. He is the judge of all His creatures. All authority, all rightful being in charge belongs to Him, and it is His to do with as He sees fit.

That's one of the reasons why we are told to be submissive to governing authorities that we may not agree with, because their authority comes from God. God is able to use a Nebuchadnezzar or a Cyrus to execute His judgments against many nations, but he can also use a Nero. What we see here is that God has chosen to give the highest authority to the man Christ Jesus.

Over all flesh
Just how big is the authority that Jesus has been given? He says in the hearing of the church listening in to His prayer to the Father that God has given Him authority over all flesh. After His resurrection, Jesus says to His disciples that he has been given all authority in heaven and on earth. He has authority not simply over one country, but over all people, even over all flesh, every being that ever was, is now, or ever will be, both in this age and in the age to come. That is a lot of authority. Jesus is the ultimate King. His disciples may have known Him as a big fish in a small pond. But now, look at what Jesus is revealing about Himself! Did they know that He was this great? Do we understand His greatness, and what He is doing?

Jesus has authority not only over those who worship Him. He has authority over all flesh. His authority will be expressed in His judgment and salvation when He comes again in power. The day is coming when we will see everything in heaven gladly submitting to His authority. That day is not today, and yet Jesus has authority over all flesh even now. If Jesus has authority over all flesh, why do we and other people still sin? It is apparently not His purpose today that every indication of evil within us and around us be immediately removed. That day will come, but for now we have evil. Nonetheless, Jesus has overwhelming authority, and that is good to know.

To give eternal life
We are told that one purpose for this authority that Jesus has over all flesh is the giving of eternal life to people. God is not content with human death as the end of His mercies toward us. He has given us life, displaying this life in Christ's words and actions. Next week we will consider something of the content of this eternal life (v.3). For now we can simply say that this eternal life that comes to us as the gift of God through Jesus Christ is something big. We can have a taste of it now, but there is much more of it to come. Our words fail us here... (Ephesians 1:10)

To all whom You have given Him
Eternal life came at the cost of the one to whom God gave the highest authority. It was not stolen, but given. If you had all that authority, how would you use it? Jesus willingly used it in a way that cost Him His life. Now He gives us life. The Father trusted the Son with the paying of the price for eternal life. He trusted Him with the people who would be given eternal life. He trusted Him with the job of actually giving you eternal life, He trusted Jesus with charge over everything about the way things are going to be forever. Therefore, it is so right for the Father to glorify the Son, and to shine a very singular spotlight on the death and resurrection of Jesus.

1. Where does the authority of Jesus in salvation come from?
2. How extensive is the authority of Jesus in salvation?
3. Why is the full authority of Jesus in salvation true, good, and beautiful?
4. What is the connection between the will of the Father and the Son concerning salvation?

God is committed to glorifying God

“Father, Glorify Your Son…”
(John 17:1, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, February 7, 2010)

John 17:1 When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, ...

Q: What is the first petition in Jesus’ prayer to the Father?
A: "Glorify your Son." (John 17:1)

He lifted up his eyes to heaven
Before our Lord went to the cross, He prayed. In fact, He prayed aloud. This is somewhat unusual. He did this also when He called Lazarus from the grave, which was His final sign of His power prior to His own resurrection. On that occasion He talked to the Father about how thankful He was that the Father heard Him, and then He said, “I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.”

This kind of thing was very unusual for Jesus. We read of him going off by Himself to pray, and we know that He spoke against the Pharisees because they insisted on making a show of their prayers. He speaks to God now in the presence of the disciples, and He is summarizing His mission and asking for some very specific things from the Father wanting them to hear this prayer. Why would He do that? He wants them to know what He asked for at this important moment, so that they could remember that these requests by the Son to the Father would surely be granted.

Father
The first word of His prayer is simply “Father.” This is the word that Jesus invites us to use when we pray to God, “Our Father.” Jesus comes as the beloved one-and-only Son of the Father. By His invitation, we come to the Lord as the beloved adopted children of God in Jesus Christ. We are just as surely sons of God as Jesus is the unique Son of God.

There is a dedication and devotion here between the Father and the Son that we cannot ignore. God is not addressed merely as a distant and frightening judge, but as a loving Father of a perfectly obedient Son. Jesus came into the world for this moment. After this prayer He will be arrested, attacked, unjustly convicted, and crucified. These things people could see. What they could not see, but what we know because of the Bible, is that the wrath of the Father against us for our sin would fall upon Jesus as the sacrifice that would turn away the holy wrath of God, and allow for the most complete expression of the Father's love for us, a love which is not a new idea, but is from before the creation of the world.

The hour has come
Jesus then prays these words: “The hour has come.” He has told this to His disciples before, but now He says it to the Father. The Father knows this. Jesus knows this. The disciples need to hear Jesus say this to the Father, and we need to be able to hear these words recorded for us in John 17, so that we are all very clear that the Father, the Son, and the church all know that the hour has come. The brutality of the hour is going to be so significant, that we all need to be reminded that what is about to happen is something intended and known by God.

The hour coming is first about the cross. Jesus lifted up these words to heaven, but we could never be lifted up to heaven unless our guilt was paid for. In John 18 we will hear the account of what people do to Jesus. But we miss the point if we got lost in that part of the story. We need to see that this was the key moment in the plan of God, not only in the salvation of our souls, but even in the restoration of heaven and earth from the brokenness that we experience to the beauty of life in God's perfect order. Jesus came to atone for our sins. He also came to remove our allergic relationship to the good created order that is His gift to us. All of this required the satisfaction of the wrath of God through the death of one sinless substitute. The hour has come.

Glorify your Son
The first request in Jesus' prayer to the Father is “Glorify your Son.” If you know what the word “glorify” means, this may seem like a strange request, especially in a prayer to God where others are listening. To glorify someone is to place them in the position of great honor, to boast about them in front of everyone. The Old Testament tells us plainly that God will not share His glory with anyone (Isaiah 42:8). Here Jesus is asking for the glory that is His by right. He is the Son of God, and is just as much God as the Father. This request is made for us to hear, knowing that the Father, the Son, and the church should all know that it was right for Jesus to be glorified, and that it was right for the Father to glorify Jesus, since He and the Father are one.

But there is another problem here. We said that the hour that has come is a suffering hour. How can this be consistent with the prayer of Jesus that the Father glorify Him? There is a glory to the cross that we need to appreciate if we are to love Christ and His death for us more accurately. No one else could have achieved what Jesus accomplished through His death. To be the singular Law-Keeper, to be the only Lamb of God who could take away the sins of the world, this was an extraordinary achievement. It was glorious. That glory of the cross began to be seen in the resurrection, but as great as that was, it was only the beginning of the glorifying again of Jesus, which we will have more to say about in later verses.

That the Son may glorify you
There is a close connection between the glory of the Father and the glory of the Son. Jesus asked for glory from the Father in order to give glory back to the Father. Some would contend that the whole message of a sacrifice that takes away the wrath of God is an embarrassment to their sensibilities. Jesus does not agree with that opinion. Others would have such a low view of human worth that they might sneer at the cost to be paid to secure our right standing with God, thinking it was just not worth it. The cross is not an embarrassment to the Father, and the final restoration of heaven and earth, and your place in it is not some incidental nothing to God.

Jesus says here, “Father you are right about the worth of a redeemed humanity and a restored creation, and you are right about the cost necessary to satisfy your holy anger against the sin of your beloved people. Father you are great! Father you are right! I want to give my life now to glorify you, your holiness, your justice, your power, and your love, and it will be well worth it. Glorify your Son so that I may in turn glorify you. Father, you are right to glorify God!”

Approach God as the greatest of all fathers who approves of you fully in Christ and who loves you completely in His Son. Because of the wonder of this prayer, know for certain that the cross was not a big mistake, but a wonderfully glorious victory. Turn away from all panic about the past, and give in to the glorious peace of knowing that the Father's plan was big enough to include the death of His Son, turning the lowest and most ugly mess ever known to man into the most amazing and wonderful glory to God. Here is something that you can do as you respond to this verse: Ask God to take your lowest moment, and to quietly turn it into something of glory.

1. Why would Jesus pray to the Father?
2. What is unique about this particular prayer?
3. Is it right for Jesus to seek His own glory?
4. What is the great desire of Jesus in this prayer and in His life?