January 19, 2025
What did Jesus desire? What was it that motivated His life, ministry, and sacrifice while on earth? We get a window into the answer in John 17:24, where Jesus explicitly prays for those whom the Father has given Him. In this selfless, specific request to God, ultimately sourced in the love of the Father for the Son, we see that Christ longs for us to be with Him and to see His glory—a glory that will give us light and life for all of eternity.
Sermon Transcript: Print
I invite you to turn to the seventeenth chapter of John and follow along as I read from verse 1. 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, 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 glorified 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.
“‘I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you. For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.
“‘I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one, just 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 have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.’”
Father, we turn to the Bible now, and we want to hear your voice, beyond the voice of a mere man. Help us to understand it. Help me to teach it. Make us more like Jesus, we pray. And we pray in his name. Amen.
Well, here we are in John 17. I hope you don’t feel that we’re stuck here, but I do feel in this chapter the way I feel often when I read a book that I’m really enjoying. Perhaps you do this as well: that as you realize that the number of pages left before you’re finished are diminishing, and you don’t want it to end, and so you slow your pace in order that there’s still more to come.
Well, there’s no doubt that we’ve slowed our pace here. And this morning, we are looking just at one verse, and that is verse 24. I read the whole chapter in order that we might have context, that we might remind ourselves of the things that we’ve already discovered. But the twenty-fourth verse reads, “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.”
It is an immense privilege for us to listen in as Jesus prays. We’re taken, as it were, into the closet with Jesus here, and we hear him as he intercedes. And the clarity with which he addresses the Father is unmistakable. What I’ve just read, paraphrased by J. B. Phillips somewhat more colloquially, reads, “Father, I want those whom you[’ve] given me to be with me where I am; I want them to see that glory which you [gave me]—for you loved me before [the foundation of] the world.”[1]
One of the things that has become apparent to us as we’ve been studying this seventeenth chapter is this immense thought that before there was time (as we often say), before there was anything, there was God—God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, dwelling in eternity in a devotion to one another, in a love for one another that is unparalleled anywhere in the entire universe.
And in this intimacy of relationship between the Son and the Father we discover just exactly the longings of the heart of Jesus. It is quite a mystery, isn’t it, that Jesus, who is God, in one sense does not need to pray? And yet Jesus, the God in man, Incarnate One, prays all the way through his life. The majority of the prayers of Jesus are actually contained not in the Gospel of John but in the Gospel of Luke. And when he exhorts his followers to be men and women of prayer, he’s not urging us to do something that he is unfamiliar with, but rather, it is that which is the very heartbeat of his life.
It comes across so clearly, doesn’t it, at the beginning of the Gospels? When he is confronted with temptation, he responds to the temptation that comes by proclaiming the Word of God back to the Evil One. And then, after he has been used to silence the demons, to heal the lame, and to speak the word of the gospel—“The kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe [the good news]”[2]—we’re told by the Gospel writers that early in the morning, he went to pray.[3] He went to pray. He went to confine himself with his Father because he was here as a result of the sending of the Father, and he relied on his intimacy with him.
This is his final request in this prayer. There’s still verses 25 and 26, but verse 24 is his final request. Jesus’ own desire is here. You remember some years ago, it was quite fashionable for people to wear these bracelets that had on them “W.W.J.D.” You may even have had one of these. It was an acronym: “What Would Jesus Do?” The idea was that as you wore the bracelet, it would remind you to respond in circumstances in a way that would be patterned after the example of the Lord Jesus. It was helpful up to a point, but only up to a point, because in many cases, we could never know what Jesus would do. And so, we need to know exactly what Jesus has done, and we need to know exactly what Jesus desires.
And so what we have here is not “W.W.J.D.,” but actually, we have “W.D.J.D.”: “What Does Jesus Desire?” What does he desire? In the former acronym we can’t always be sure, but in this we definitely can. He has prayed already for his disciples’ protection. He’s been praying for their sanctification. He’s been praying for their unity, that the world might know. And here, he prays expressly that they might see his glory.
Now, let’s just first of all notice something very straightforwardly: that Jesus’ own desire is selfless. It is selfless. I don’t know about you, but often as I pray, I’m always asking God for things that are going to directly affect me or mine and so on. It’s not wrong to do, but it declares something of our focus. Jesus, you will notice here, prays in a selfless way. We can see that by just allowing our eyes to go beyond the end of chapter 17 and into chapter 18, because there we read that “when Jesus had spoken these words”—the words that we’re just reading now—“he went out with his disciples across the brook Kidron, where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered.”[4] And then what follows there is the story of the betrayal of Jesus, the arrest of Jesus, the scorn that was meted out upon him, the abuse that he suffered, the nails that he bore, and the cross on which he was crucified. All of that is in the offing as Jesus brings this prayer to an end.
I think it would be fair to say that he has a lot on his mind. And yet, in these moments, his concern is not for all that he is about to face; it is rather for those on whose behalf he is about to face it—not on all that he’s about to face, but his focus is on behalf of those for whom he’s about to face it.
Now, these individuals—and I tried to point this out as I was reading—these individuals are those whom the Father has given to him. You will notice that this is his focus here: “I desire that they also…” Who’s the “they”? Those “whom you have given me.” And this phrase comes again and again in this. And if you go back up to verse 2, for example: “since you[’ve] given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.” It comes again and again down in verse 9: “I[’m] … praying [not] for the world but for those you have given me.” You see it again in verse 11: “which you have given me, that they may be one.” In verse 12 again: “While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me.”
Now, obviously, Jesus is focused on this. He’s absolutely clear that his concern is for those that have been given to him. When we studied the “I ams,” we found ourselves in John chapter 6, and we paused there purposefully for this very same reason. And I don’t expect you to turn to it necessarily, but if you go to John chapter 6, you will see that this is exactly the focus of Jesus: “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”[5] Now, you’ll need to allow your eyes to go up to verse 37: “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have[n’t] come down from heaven … to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.”
Now, may I just pause here for a minute and acknowledge something? Even as our service has opened this morning, the phraseology as we’ve been led in song makes clear that we understand ourselves in large measure to be a gathered community made up of those who have come to know Jesus in a personal and a saving way. While that may be true in large measure, there is no doubt that it is not entirely true. And so, when I was working through my material this week, I said to myself, “What about the person who is sitting in the seat and immediately saying to themself, ‘Where am I in relationship to this group? If Jesus’ focus is expressly on those whom the Father has given to Jesus as a gift, am I in that group? And if not, do I care? And if I do, is there some way that I might be helped to consider what it means to be included in that company?’”
So this is just a sidebar for a moment or two for those who may be asking themselves that very same question. Because “those whom you have given me,” as the phrase is used, is made up of a company of individuals who have come to Jesus. They have come to Jesus. It’s not made up of the general population that was moving around him, hearing him as he proclaimed, hearing, watching him as he performed his miracles. There were many, many people who were familiar with him in that way, but they had not come to him. And the only way to come to Jesus is to come to him as a Lord and a Savior and as a King.
The story of the Bible in short order is the story of all that God has chosen to do in Jesus to redeem men and women who are actually disinterested in him—worse, who are in rebellion against him. The story could go simply like this, in three phrases: God made it. We broke it. Jesus fixed it.
God made it. Made what? He made the entire universe. He made everyone on Planet Earth. When he established the world, it was perfect. He made it, he looked on it, and he said it was good. Into that world he put Adam and Eve, giving them the privilege of enjoying all that he had made save one tree. What’s the issue with the tree? God gave to them a test to see whether they were prepared to trust him as the Giver more than become fascinated with the gift. And, of course, what actually happened was that they believed a lie. They believed a lie that is a contemporary lie: that somehow or another, God wants to deprive you of the things that will make you really happy, that will fulfill your life, and so on. “If only you had this…” They believed it. They turned away from God. They were banished from the garden. And we in Adam, our representative head, fell along with him.
That’s when the writer says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we[’ve] turned—every one—to his own way,”[6] we recognize that to be true—so that the good world that God made we broke. Why is there so much sin, sorrow, disease, pain, death? Because death is the punishment for sin. Despite what people tell us today about just the natural process, death was not God’s intention. Death is as a result of our rebellion. And God’s hatred of sin—which has broken the world and broken our individual worlds—God’s hatred of sin is unchangeable.
And yet at the same time, his love is unfathomable, so that although they were banished from the garden, he still clothed them; he still pursued them; he still called out to them. And fascinatingly, they were hiding. Hiding from God! How do people who are hiding from God find themselves included in the company of those who are known by God, who are part of the company that God from all of eternity has given to his Son Jesus as a gift? How does that happen? Well, it happens in and through Jesus—only in and through Jesus.
I can’t delay on this, and maybe I just suggest to you that you take the Gospel of John and read it for yourselves. Because there we discover that the Lord laid on Jesus the iniquity of us all[7]—that he bore our punishment so that we might enjoy life with him now and forever. And that’s why people today, seeking satisfaction, seeking security, seeking significance… And they are! You can’t read a newspaper or a magazine or listen to a podcast without understanding these things. Whether they’re fourteen-year-old youngsters or whether they’re forty-five-year-old adults: “Where is my significance to be found? Where is security to be found? Where is satisfaction to be found?” The lingering cry of the Stones from the ’60s remains: “I can’t get no satisfaction.”[8] You tried religion. There’s no satisfaction in religion. You tried good deeds. There’s no satisfaction in good deeds, ’cause you’ve got a lot of bad ones as well. No, there is only one person and one place.
You remember C. S. Lewis in the essay “The Weight of Glory”? He says the problem with us is not that our desires are so strong against things; he says it’s because our desires are so weak. “We are,” he says, like “half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he can[’t] imagine what is meant by the offer of a [vacation] at the [beach].”[9]
Well, that’s just a sidebar to anyone who may be asking that question.
Jesus’ desire is not only selfless in focusing on the concerns of his own, but it is also specific. And we know it’s specific because he tells us exactly what it is. “This is my desire, Father,” he says, “that those whom you have given me may be with me”—may share his company. Share his company.
It’s a wonderful thing to be in the company of those that we love, isn’t it? In fact, that’s what we long for. Some time ago, I was invited to an event, and I was assured that it was going to be a wonderful occasion because I was going to be with a certain person. When I got there, I discovered that I wasn’t going to be with the person at all—that I had just been granted a ticket so that I could have access into a big crowd. And it might have been petulant on my part, but I spent the whole evening saying, “But I wanted to be with him! I didn’t want to just… I can get in here one way or another, but that wasn’t the draw.”
Now, look at what this is saying. Jesus is not just giving us access, as it were, into the company; he actually wants us to be with him, to spend time with him, to know him. At the beginning of the Gospels he makes this clear. You’ll have to read it for yourselves, but it’s in Mark, and it says of Jesus that “he went up on [to a] mountain,” and he “called to him those whom he desired …. And he appointed twelve … that they might be with him.”[10] “That they might be with him.”
The perplexity that we see when we go through John’s Gospel on the part of the disciples in the prospect of being without Jesus… You remember in our studies, in the conversation that takes place where Jesus says, “I’m going away, and I’m going somewhere you can’t come.” And the immediate response is to say to one another, “What does he mean that he’s going away?”[11] Essentially, what they’re saying is “We can’t imagine life without him. We have known him in this way. He has taught us, we’ve walked with him, and now he’s gone.” “Where I[’m] going,” he says to them, “you cannot come.”[12]
And then, in his grace and in his tenderness, in the very next chapter—because I’m quoting from the end of 13—he says to them in chapter 14, “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions,” or rooms. “If it weren’t so… I wouldn’t have told you that I’m going to prepare a place for you if I wasn’t. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself.”[13] Notice the relational aspect of that: “I will not just bring you into the department, as it were. I will not just have you in the building. I will not just have you in the room. I will have you to myself.” How can Jesus have us all to himself? How can each of us in our prayers on a daily basis draw near to Jesus? It is a great mystery, but it is the promise. That’s what he’s praying for.
And if the disciples were tempted at all to wonder at his promise in John 14, here it is underpinned. I imagine as they hear him saying these words, somebody nudges him and says, “So that thing that he said in chapter 14 about being with him, that’s a certainty.” It’s a certainty. It is underpinned. The promise of Jesus is underpinned by his prayer.
Now, let’s just think about this for a moment. You take, for example, the encounter with a man who is facing the last dregs of his humanity. He has lived a life that would not fit most of us at all. He has ended up under the jurisdiction of the Roman authorities. He has been tried; he’s been found guilty. He’s a thief. He’s a robber. He has got no prospect at all save the cross on which he hangs.
You remember the conversation. And eventually, this particular individual says to Jesus, “[Lord, will you] remember me when you come into your kingdom[?]”[14] What does Jesus say? He doesn’t say, “Yeah, maybe,” or “I’ve got a lot of people to remember.” No, I think he says, “Remember you? Today you will be with me.”[15] “Today you will be with me.” They’re both facing death on the cross. The cry of the man is heard, and the assurance of Jesus, who here is praying for his own, for “those whom you have given me”—and he looks across, and he realizes, “Here is another one that the Father has given me! And on the strength of the Father’s giving and his promise I may say to you, ‘Today you will be with me.’” “With me”! This is the deal.
You see, Christianity is all about Jesus. Nobody needs to know Buddha personally. Nobody can know Buddha personally, nor Krishna, nor Muhammad. You may find their graves and find their bones, but you cannot know them. You cannot meet them. You read the pages of the Bible, and what do you discover? This amazing claim that is underscored here by Jesus’ prayer.
That’s why when Paul, thinking about this—and he’s writing to the Philippians. He says, “I’d like to come and see you. I don’t know if I’ll see you. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. I don’t know if I will die and go to be with Christ, which is better by far.”[16] Where do you go when you die? Paul says, “When I die as a man in Christ, I will go to be with Jesus.” When he writes to the Thessalonians, he underscores it for them. He says to them, “You may be confident in this: that we will always be with the Lord.”[17] What is Jesus praying specifically here? This! “I pray, Father, that those whom you have given me might be with me.”
This is the language of love. If you have a lover, you want to be with the one you love. You’re not content to just be in their orb. You want to be in their company. I remember in the ’60s, we used to sing a song out of Song of Solomon. It’s the only time we really touched the book, I think. And it went like this:
I am my Beloved’s, and he is mine.
And his banner over me is love.
And he welcomes me into his banqueting table.
And his banner over me is love.
This is the reality for the Christian.
Bruce Milne describes this scene in these words: He says, “As the last grains of sand trickle through the hour glass before [Jesus’] rendezvous with darkness, gaz[ing] across the rolling aeons of the future,” he “anticipates the embrace of his beloved bride in the glory that is to be.”[18] What a picture! “Father, I am coming to you.” His pathway to the Father is through suffering and through the cross. He is then raised up in triumph over the grave. He ascends to the Father. And in that context he awaits us when we come.
You see, that’s why I paused to say something to somebody who may be asking the question, “I’m not sure where I am in relationship to this.” The way the Bible speaks about it, the way Paul particularly speaks about it, he speaks about being in Christ—being in Christ—and then living our lives for Christ, looking forward to the day when we will be with Christ. But only those will be with Christ in that day who are in Christ in this day.
Richard Baxter wrote the hymn—and I quote it always, because it’s my only go-to when people ask me this question. His hymn begins, “Lord, it belongs not to my care whether I [live] or [die].” What he means in saying that is “I’m not in charge of the length of my life. That’s your department.” And then he writes about the pilgrimage. And his closing verse I find as helpful as anything, and it fits this. Because he says—thinking of eternity, thinking of death, thinking of the valley of the shadow through which we go—he says,
My knowledge of that life is small;
The eye of faith is dim;
[It is] enough that Christ knows all
And I shall be with him.[19]
“With him.”
His concern is specific in the company that he desires and in the glory that he wants them to see: “I want them to be with me to see my glory—the glory that you’ve given me.” Now, this is vast as well. We could spend… You think we’re going slow? We could slow it down to a phrase if you would like! “Father, I desire”—the desires of Jesus, not for himself but for those whom he’s been given, specifically that they might “be where I am in order that they might see my glory.”
Now, the prologue of John’s Gospel begins by John announcing the fact that “we have seen his glory”—the fourteenth verse of chapter 1: “We have seen his glory, [the] glory as of the only [begotten of] the Father, full of grace and truth.” It’s in John that we have the first miracle at Cana of Galilee, when he turns water into wine. And John records, “This [is] the first of his signs,” the signs that “Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory.”[20] It caused people to go, “Wait a minute! You don’t do that. That’s not normal. You can’t do that—unless, of course, you’re the creator of the universe.” “We saw his glory,” he says—the glory of God, increasingly unveiled through the ministry of Jesus.
By the time John is writing, of course, all of this is behind him. They knew—James, Peter, and John—an amazing event had happened when they got hooked up with Elijah and so on in the Mount of Transfiguration. And it is there that they found him transformed before their eyes, his face shining like the sun, and “his clothes became white as light.”[21] “We have seen his glory. He wants us to know this glory, to see it.” They’ve seen it in the cross. They’ve seen it in the resurrection.
Incidentally, without the resurrection, we wouldn’t even have a New Testament, for those of you who are still wondering. There wouldn’t be a page of the New Testament that would ever have been written were it not the fact that Jesus is alive! Why would anybody write this stuff down if everything came to a crashing halt on Good Friday, and all the claims that this Jesus had made were all spurious and really irrelevant? No, no. The reason we have it is because Jesus is alive. And because he is alive, we will see him.
When you read the Old Testament, you find anticipations of this. Psalm 17:15, and David writes at the end of that psalm, “As for me,” he says, “I shall behold your face in righteousness; when I awake, I [will] be satisfied with your likeness.” What in the world are you talking about, David? What do you mean you will behold his face, that you will be satisfied with his likeness? Whose face? Whose likeness? Well, the likeness of Jesus.
We have little glimpses of it as we’re going through. “We … are being transformed … from one degree of glory [in]to another.”[22] But there is a day coming when we will see him, and we will be like him.[23]
Great things he has taught us, great things he has done.
And great our rejoicing through Jesus the Son,
But purer and higher and greater will be
Our wonder, our [worship], when Jesus we see.[24]
We must stop. Jesus’ desire is a selfless desire, it is a specific desire, and the source is found in the love of the Father for his Son—a love before the foundation of the world. The Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father. In chapter 14 of John, Jesus says, “And I’m doing all these things in order that the world might know that I love the Father.”[25] You can spend your life pondering the thought of an eternal conversation between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The glory that the Father gave the Son arises out of the love with which the Father loved the Son before the foundation of the world.
J. C. Ryle says, “This is a very deep saying, and contains things far above our full comprehension.”[26] No doubt! The person says, “Well, I won’t believe unless I can get it all buttoned down, unless I can understand everything. You see, I’m a scientist. I’m a rational thinker and so on.” Good! Good! Bring all your rationality. Bring all your thinking, all your investigating to the Scriptures. Come humbly. It’s a low entry at the gate of heaven.
What we’re being told is that one day, we will gaze upon Christ. It’s hard to fathom this stuff, isn’t it? That we will refract, as it were, the light that comes from Jesus, which he mediates—that which is sourced in the Father. You say, “Now you’re starting to make it up.” No, no, no, no! Why would I make it up? Nobody makes stuff like this up!
Revelation 21:22: “And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.” Where does God dwell with men? That’s the question. “Will God really dwell with men?”[27] asks Solomon. Yes, he will. Where? Well, in a temple in Jerusalem it was, in an ark it was, and so on—but no longer there! No, “the dwelling place of God is with [men],”[28] and we are brought into him and live in him. And that’s why there was no temple in the city.
“And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it.” Well, where’s the light coming from? “For the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.”[29] Who’s the Lamb? The one “who takes away the sin of the world.”[30] Where’s the source? In God the Father. Where is it manifested? In God the Son. And “by its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations,”[31] and so on.
There is no doubt, loved ones, that we find ourselves gloriously out of our depths in the wonder of God. The story of the Bible is of an amazing symphony. It’s a great symphony of redemption. It has wonderful little melody lines in it here and there. It swells, and it ebbs, and it flows, like the great symphonies of our world. And eventually, it comes to a great crescendo. And it is in that crescendo that we then bow down and say with the apostle Paul as he pondered these things, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”[32]
When he was just in his early twenties, Spurgeon, at the New Park Street Chapel in Southwark, London, on the 7th of January 1855, he says essentially this to his congregation: This is a subject that is so vast that all our thoughts may be lost in its immensity. It is so deep that our pride is then dethroned in its infinity. And so he says to his congregation,
Would you lose your sorrow? Would you drown your cares? Then go, plunge yourself into the Godhead’s deepest sea …. I know [of] nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of grief …; [and] so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead.[33]
God the Father loves the Son, gives to the Son that which is the heritage of history and of the nations, when a company that no one can number from every race, tribe, language, and so on gathers there.[34] And it is the utterly undeserved privilege of all who in repentance and in faith would turn to Jesus and say, “I come to you. I need you. I believe in you. Include me. I want to be with you.” You don’t have to say, “I want to be in church.” When you’re with Jesus, you’ll be in church. But the invitation is not to church. It’s not to religion. It’s not to a theological framework. It is to Jesus. I hope we understand that.
Father… Father, thank you for sending Jesus. Thank you, Jesus, that you came. Holy Spirit, won’t you tell us more about his lovely name? Grant, Lord, that our closing song may be an expression of the genuine response of every individual heart. For your name’s sake we ask it. Amen.
[1] John 17:24 (Phillips).
[2] Mark 1:15 (ESV).
[3] See Mrk 1:35.
[4] John 18:1 (ESV).
[5] John 6:40 (ESV).
[6] Isaiah 53:6 (ESV).
[7] See Isaiah 53:6.
[8] Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, “(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction” (1965).
[9] C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory,” in The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses (New York: Macmillan HarperOne, 2000), 26
[10] Mark 3:13–14 (ESV).
[11] John 13:33, 36 (paraphrased).
[12] John 13:33 (ESV).
[13] John 14:1–3 (paraphrased).
[14] Luke 23:42 (ESV).
[15] Luke 23:43 (paraphrased).
[16] Philippians 1:21–24 (paraphrased).
[17] 1 Thessalonians 4:17 (paraphrased).
[18] Bruce Milne, The Message of John: Here Is Your King!, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1993), 241.
[19] Richard Baxter, “Lord, It Belongs Not to My Care” (1681).
[20] John 2:11 (ESV).
[21] Matthew 17:2 (ESV).
[22] 2 Corinthians 3:18 (ESV).
[23] See 1 John 3:2.
[24] Fanny Jane Crosby, “To God Be the Glory” (1875).
[25] John 14:31 (paraphrased).
[26] J. C. Ryle,Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: St. John(New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1878), 3:205.
[27] 1 Kings 8:27 (paraphrased).
[28] Revelation 21:3 (ESV).
[29] Revelation 21:23 (ESV).
[30] John 1:29 (ESV).
[31] Revelation 21:24–26 (ESV).
[32] Romans 11:33 (ESV).
[33] C. H. Spurgeon, “The Immutability of God,”The New Park Street Pulpit1, no. 1, 1.
[34] See Revelation 7:9.
Copyright © 2025, Alistair Begg. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations for sermons preached on or after November 6, 2011 are taken from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
For sermons preached before November 6, 2011, unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® (NIV®), copyright © 1973 1978 1984 by Biblica, Inc.TM Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.