John 17: The prayer of Jesus.

1. Glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee.
This shows the final motive behind Christ’s suffering on the cross. Yes, it was to save mankind. But further on, the real motive for our salvation is that God the Father is glorified. All our work and efforts should serve one single purpose “The Father should be glorified”.
Let us read 1 Cor 10:31.

2. Jesus claims his suffering to be a glory to himself and a glory He receives from the Father.

We can see this in John 12:23. The colon after this verse points that the method the Father is receiving Glory is in the next verse (17:2) that we receive eternal life. When we receive eternal life, the father is glorified or this is the glory the father seeks. This is the basics of Christianity.

We can see an emphasis on this at John 15:8, Isaiah 43:5-7.

Even if this salvation is painful, Jesus does not call his “pain” or a “disgrace” as we all would do. We can see this example in the gospel of Luke (Luke 23:33, 39-43) where the crucifixion would be mentioned in a single verse but the salvation of the thief beside Christ would be explained in about 5 verses.

3. Glorify me together in the Glory which I had with you before the world was. (v5)
This clearly points to the fact that since Adam failed, the Glory Christ and the Father shared was not complete because of our disobedience through Adam. Also, this shows God’s pursuit towards our salvation. When we are not saved, Christ sees this as a dip in His glory. That again explains His love towards us.
Jesus Christ was the only person who lived a perfectly sinless life and thus He crushed Satan’s head as we see in Genesis. Now, by the grace, we are made righteous through Christ’s sufferings and by bringing us back to the Father, Christ and the Father are glorified. See how important our position is in here.

4. “thou has given me” (v2, v6)

We are creations of the Father to Glorify Him. But, here Jesus claims ownership of us with a proud heart. We belong to Jesus completely and not to the old covenant. Even as Jesus is the one who pays the price, we should notice the humility that we are given to Jesus by the Father. There is no boasting here. This is the model for all Christian leaders. Our responsibility is that “God you have given me so many believers and my duty is not to merely increment the count, but Lord, it is to remember that it is a responsibility and would work hard bring salvation to all those you have given me”. This is a perfect model for ministers from Christ.

In Mathew 16:18, Jesus clearly says that the building of Church is His responsibility. Whereas making them a disciple is ours. (Mathew 28:19)

5. “Authority over all flesh: Salvation to few”.

Jesus has authority over all flesh. He has the opportunity to punish or even destroy all mankind. But, He uses His authority to save a few of us. Rather than condemning us, the Lord chose to take the condemnation to himself. He knows only a few (those given by God to Jesus) would be saved. But, the Kingdom will be constructed in Heaven with these people who truly trust in God. We should understand how precious we are in God’s sight. If God’s pride is in our salvation, imagine what kind of glory we would receive when we reach Him.

This is a model for supervisors, managers and business owners who have people working under them. We should always remember that authority is always given only for the good of the people who we have authority of.

6. Knowing God is eternal life.
This “Know” is much different from our understanding of the word know. In the OT, (Gen. 4:1), we can see that Knowing pointing towards marital bonding. God expects a similar bond. This is the reason Christ sees the church as His bride. Our relationship today with God should be something similar to that of a husband and a wife. It should mature and bring fruits. The conditions should fall apart and it would become a natural habit of loving each other.

7. Holy Father (v11)
In the entire bible, the word “Holy Father” appears only here and it is being mentioned by Christ. Jesus wants the Father to keep us in His Name that is “Holy Father”. If God has to keep us as He is a Holy Father, then the foremost fruit and the final result will be that we all would be ONE. If we are not together in fellowship, then the purpose of God keeping us safe in His hands is not fulfilled.
In v22, we see that the Glory we receive from Christ is for our unity with fellow believers and with the Almighty. Only our unity will show the world that we are being sent from the Holy Father.

8. Righteous Father. (v25)

The world did not know You are righteous. Because You are righteous, you had to send you only begotten Son so that the world lives. Christ had to come to this world because of the Father’s righteousness. Otherwise, if our sins would be pardoned without punishment, it would never be right. Its just that God took our punishment.

So, this event results in the Father’s love to be present in us, that is Christ be present in us.

The promises in Joel 2:18-27

Joel 2:28 says that:

And afterward,
    I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
    your old men will dream dreams,
    your young men will see visions.

And this was clearly fulfilled as per Acts 2:16 & 17. This words start with “and afterward” meaning that the prophecies preceding this one should have been fulfilled before this one. Our meditation is based on this thought so that we may check if these promises have been fulfilled in our lives.

God has promised a lot of fortunes in these verses and clearly these signs or fruits of victory in a spiritual sense and not materialistic as the history does not show any signs of victory before Christ’s glorious victory at the cross.

     1.       Then will the Lord be jealous for his land, and pity his people.

This is the first promise that God the father has changed His view on us. He does not look at us as sinners but as prospective heirs.

     2.       Yea, the Lord will answer and say unto his people, Behold, I will send you corn, and wine, and oil, and ye shall be satisfied therewith: and I will no more make you a reproach among the heathen

The words grain, new wine and oil (some as corn, wine and oil) can be seen in a lot of places in the bible. Ex: Deut 11:14, Nehemiah 13:5 and many others.

We should note here in Joel that the Lord says “I am sending you corn, wine and oil”.

We can see that the people of God were a reproach because of their lack of corn, wine and oil. (lack of food basically). On satisfaction, we turn from being an object of scorn to an object of blessing and inspiration. I would personally say that the corn, wine and oil point at

     a.       Corn: The life of Christ which gave us a perfect example of how we should live and what we miss in our lives. A first step towards repentance, the solid food of understanding.

     b.      Wine: The death and resurrection of Christ which gave us forgiveness, the refreshment.

     c.       Oil: The Holy Spirit who gives us strength and abundance of Holiness.

These three together gave us the opportunity to transform ourselves to the likeness of God.

We should really check if this has happened to us. Are we being looked up as reproaches among non-believers or as “light of the world” as Jesus expects us. Our happiness and full satisfaction should be visible to others. Have we received the food that God has given to complete this transformation?

     3.       I will drive the northern army far from you pushing it into parched and barren land.

This is an important sign in our lives. Is the enemy very close enough to consume us in every opportunity? Are we in a state of falling in every little temptation? Or is the enemy in a barren land where he has nothing to graze upon in our lives? We may not be present in this mature state. But are we getting far from the enemy every year? Are we progressing towards holiness?

The enemy may be seen powerful from east to west. But it should not have the capabilities in come anywhere near the south. The enemy’s failures will cause him to develop a stench which is the results we see now. Examples are: Bribery, corruption, rapes, churches being destroyed, missionaries tortured and abduction of Christian women, the actions of IS and plenty more. These actions would remain as stench far away from our personal Christian being.

Sometimes Christian lives become pathetic that they are part of this stench. Satan has succeeded into creating an illusion that just by baptism and other rituals we will be successful Christians. But no, we should feel the failure of Satan in our lives that he develops a stench.

     4.       I will send you autumn and spring rains in abundance

We should feel the receipt of His grace so that faith and love grows and nourishes well. (1 Timothy 1:14). There is no deficit in His grace, but is there anything that stops us so that our love towards Christ and one another does not grow well or our faith is not fed well? We should have love and faith in abundance with us.

     5.       O wild animals, the open pastures are becoming green.

Our life becomes so flourishing with love and faith that our neighbours and dependents feed and understand the Lord from our lives. There should be abundance of righteousness that is the fruit of salvation. There will be fruits everywhere and in every area of our lives. Our work lives, our family, everywhere.

     6.       I will repay you for the years the locusts have eaten...

This is another interesting thing that every blessing we have lost because of our and our forefather’s sins, we are entitled to earn them back. This is essentially the status of mankind in the garden of Eden. Everything God has taken from us. Here, we should note that God calls “Cutting Locusts” in some versions or “Chewing locusts” in a few versions as “My own army” but not the rest. When God is angry at our transgressions, He sometimes sends His army to cut our blessings and then the swarming, crawling, consuming locusts which are not from God come and consume or destroy them. God gives or repays all our losses here.

Interestingly, we can see that God mentions His own army in the list of those of the enemies. This shows the importance God gives to us, His children.

     7.       You will praise the name of the Lord.

We will truly praise the name of the Lord who has given us all these blessings. These praises will not be present due to any inspiration from other friends or fellow Christians, but out of gratitude to the Lord who has made us stand up in front of everybody else as successful over comers. We would attain a state where there is no shame at all.

Conclusion:

We should also acknowledge that our previous state was shameful. The devil and the world around us were mocking us because of our failures. Now, when Christ arrived to our lives, we stand up as successful men or women.

Only on receipt of these signs and wonders, we go next to a state of prophesying, dreaming and getting visions. Those are really good. But first, we need to experience all these signs of success to ensure that we are really saved.