Dan Lee
John 17:22-26, For Love and Glory (Part-2)

Jesus prays regarding two kinds of glory. He speaks of glory in the present age for His people’s sanctification. God’s elect grow in conformity to Him as they behold His glory in Christ. Jesus also prays for future glory, that His people behold His full, divine, eternal glory in heaven. We are to behold the glory of God now for our sanctification and the glory of God in the future for our glorification.

Dan Lee
John 17:22-26, For Love and Glory

Jesus concludes His prayer with love and glory. Love is the focus of this sermon. The Lord prays that we would come to experientially know (taste) of the Father’s special love. This is the special love of the Father like His love toward His only begotten Son. Like that love, the Father loved His elect from eternity past and “in love predestined us to adoption as sons.” This is the love which Jesus wants us to savor. May the Holy Spirit reveal to us more and more of this awesome love of God.

Dan Lee
John 17:20-23, Salvation Blessing for the World

Jesus’ prayer reflects the heart of God that seeks salvation blessing for the world. Jesus sees the church as the vehicle by which the elect of God worldwide will come to faith in Him unto salvation. In this first installment on a two part sermon, we explore the facets of the church, our mission, our godliness, and the special love of God toward the elect (next sermon).

Dan Lee
John 17:14-19, A Dangerous Mission

Jesus’ prayer for His disciples is undergirded by the reality of a dangerous mission. He knows we will be hated by the world and targeted by the Devil. As such, we will need divine protection. Hence, He prays, “Keep them from the evil one.” Moreover, we will need to live holy lives if we are to make any meaningful impact for the gospel that reconciles and restored sinners to the holy and righteous Father. Our own lives would have to be sanctified in order for us to be useful to the Lord in leading the rest of His elect to this salvation. Therefore, the Lord prays, “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.” The word of God that has regenerated us is the same word that will sanctify our lives. May the Holy Spirit through His word evermore conform us to Christ that we would be like Him on earth and make disciples for His honor and glory.

Dan Lee
John 17:9-13, For the Joy of God's Elect

Jesus’ first petition for His disciples is found in these verses. Jesus prays that the Father would keep them in His name. Jesus prays for a special people, His disciples and He does so because He was about to physically leave His disciples. What He would no longer be able to do in His physical absence, He asks the Father to accomplish. May the Lord grant to us a greater work of His Spirit to draw us to walk in Jesus’ ways and thus live with His joy evermore in our hearts.

John 14:12-14, The Promises of Christ: Answered Prayer

Jesus promises answered prayer for His people. His promise brings up many questions. Is His promise a blank check or a magical formula for getting whatever we want? Is this just another version of the pagan idea of prayer? What does it mean to pray in Jesus’ name? How does this passage reconcile with the rest of the biblical teaching on prayer? The teaching of our Lord regarding prayer is this: We pray in accordance to His likeness and His will. We pray as those who abide in Him and His words abide in us (John 15:7). In short, we pray Christian prayers. We pray to seek the purposes of God to be advanced in this His world. May the Lord evermore teach us to pray as we should: in His name!

John 14:12, The Promises of Christ: the Greater Works

Jesus promises for His people provisions for the time of His physical absence from them. In John 14:12-20, Jesus assures His people that they will experience the greater works, answered prayer, and His Holy Spirit. The first of these is the focus of this study. What are the greater works? How should we respond if we are not seeing the greater works being carried out in our lives?

John 14:4-11, Jesus Is God

Jesus possesses a perfect overlap with the Father in His divine nature. He is truly God. But this familiar and orthodox doctrine has ramifications. Jesus first points out the implications of this doctrine to show that the disciples actually had failed to believe the doctrine. There is an important lesson for us in this. If Jesus is God, then certainly, that doctrine must flesh itself out in our lives also. That belief should be evident in our perspective, lifestyle, worship, and obedience to the Lord. May the Holy Spirit, our Helper, give us the grace to embrace Jesus as Lord and God more fully and deeply as we should.

John 14:2-3, Comfort in Times of Trouble (Part 2)

Hope is what enables us to endure times of trouble. Jesus knows the needs of His troubled disciples and points them to the vivid hope of heaven. He portrays heaven as a home, a return, and a reunion. What will mark our reunion with our Lord is His return. This is the rapture explained further in 1 Thess. 4:17. The Lord Jesus Christ will indeed remove His church before unleashing His wrath upon the world for its wickedness and its persecution of His people. May our Lord find us busy about His work whenever He should come for us. Maranatha!

John 13:36-14:1, Comfort in Times of Trouble

Have your dreams ever been shattered? Or, have you ever felt that your situation was outside of your control? This is precisely what Jesus’ disciples faced in this scene in the Upper Room. Jesus’ impending departure from them (13:33) meant shattered dreams. But it was also a loss of control. SImon Peter tried to offer his own life to take control of the situation, but Jesus assures him that that could not be. This was troubling for them all. The shattered dreams and the loss of control weighed heavily upon their hearts. But Jesus is fully aware of their disappointments and sorrows. He, therefore, comforts them with the only assurance that we can hold onto in the midst of trouble: Trust in God. That God is sovereign, that He loves them, and that He is all-wise to orchestrate all things for their eternal good, this is the God-ordained comfort for His suffering people. Jesus also shows us that the object of our faith must be the only true God who has revealed Himself in His Son. We are to place our trust in the Jesus kind of God, the triune God, whose character and glory we see in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the secret to comfort in times of trouble. Trust in the only true God whom we know in Christ.

John 13:33-35, Love One Another

Jesus loves His disciples (13:1). As He sees His impending arrest, trials, and crucifixion, Jesus prepares His disciples for the period of separation they will experience. Jesus will head to the cross and thereafter ascend into heaven. With a telescoping viewpoint, Jesus reveals this twofold destination to which He was going. With this mind, Jesus also prepares His disciples with His prescription for what they are to occupy themselves with while they await His return (14:3). They are to love one another. This is truly a new commandment for the new covenant people in the new church age. This stunning new commandment of Jesus is what we are to fill our lives with. May the Holy Spirit teach us to hold fast to these marching orders of our Lord and make them our greatest aim in life as we await the Savior who is coming again for us.

John 13:31-32, The Glory of the Cross

At the outset of the Lord’s farewell discourse, He prepares His disciples with a proper perspective with which they were to view His impending crucifixion. They were to see it as Jesus saw it, the means of glorifying God in His grace and in His divine oneness with the Father. Jesus Himself did not cave under the pressure of the challenges that surrounded Him, but He instead maintained His resolve and mental clarity about what His cross was all about. May the Lord open our eyes to see our Savior for the man of steel that He is and learn to trust in this most dependable Savior and Shepherd all the more.