A Lesson in the Spiritual, Part 1

Joy does not mean the absence of trouble. You can have joy and have trouble all at the same time. Dr. Tony Evans says your joy is ultimately determined by your relationship with God.

Joy is the stability God gives you in spite of the trouble you may be in or the world may be creating around you. This is the alternative broadcast featuring the timeless biblical teachings from the archives of Dr. Tony Evans. Imagine being able to listen in on one of the most significant conversations in history, one that could change everything for those who hear it. That's exactly what happens in the passage Dr. Evans explores today, where we find Jesus praying to the Father shortly before his crucifixion. In this powerful moment, Jesus isn't praying for himself or his disciples. He's praying for us. Let's join Dr. Evans in the Gospel of John as he studies this extraordinary prayer and what it reveals about God's heart for his people. Jesus has concluded his time with his disciples in the upper room. Jesus has been teaching them how to function in light of his absenteeism. He's getting ready to leave them.

Even though I'm leaving you, I'm leaving you with someone else. He calls it another comforter. This other comforter is the Holy Spirit whose job it is to be with us all equally everywhere. Jesus, in his physical body, limited most of his actions to his physical location.

With the Holy Spirit, that spatial limitation would not be there because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit. He would act on Jesus' behalf to indwell every believer and thus the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit is called in Scripture the Spirit of Christ because it is that member, the third member of the Trinity who brings Christ to bear in the life of the believer. Jesus approaches God in prayer, lifting up his eyes to heaven. Verse 1 says, he says, Father, the hour has come.

Throughout Scripture, you'll see God working with things related to timing. So, the hour has come to glorify your Son because the Father seeks the glory of the Son and the Son returns the favor back to the Father that the Son may glorify you. So, you see this mutual admiration society, okay? The Father is going to glorify, advertise, bring brilliant notice to the Son, and the Son is going to return the favor back to the Father. So, as I've said before, you and I are caught up in something much bigger, and that is the intertrinitarian love that the members of the Trinity share for one another, which we have been invited to participate in. So, even as you've given him authority over all flesh, Jesus Christ has been given authority, that to all to whom you have given him, he may give eternal life.

Of course, Christ gives eternal life to all who believe in him for it. So, we are a gift. Every person who believes in Christ becomes a gift from the Father to the Son.

The Father loves the Son so much that he wants to give him a gift, and the gift is a group of redeemed humanity who live for the praise of the Son, which are a gift from the Father to the Son. So, you and I are part of this gifting that he gives to us, then, eternal life. Now, this is a very important verse, verse 3, eternal life.

This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Now, the reason why this verse is so important is we have an explanation and definition of eternal life. Eternal life is not merely a length of time. Everybody lives eternally. There's nobody who doesn't live eternally because the soul is eternal. The soul never stops living, which is why you never die, because the true you never ceases to exist. But eternal life is not merely the ongoingness of one's existence. Eternal life is the experience of God. So, when it says that you have eternal life, God is not meaning just that you're gonna live forever.

Everybody lives forever. It means that you now have a relationship with the living God that will grow throughout eternity. If I were to define eternity from a Christian's point of view, eternity is merely the uninterrupted knowledge of God. You and I live today in the interrupted knowledge of God. In other words, our experience with God gets interrupted. It gets interrupted by time and space. It gets interrupted by distractions. It gets interrupted by sleep. It gets interrupted by sin.

It gets interrupted. So, we have growing experience with God, but it is not uninterrupted. When you are ushered into eternity, it then becomes the uninterrupted experience of God. There is no night. There is no sleep. There is no getting tired, so you need to sleep.

There is no negative things that are affecting you. And because God exists in infinitude, He's in infinity, there is no end to Him. He is the infinite God.

There will be no end to our experience of Him. There will be so much experience with God in eternity that God will have to give you a new body to be able to take it all in. That's why you have to have a new body, because this body could not consume what you will experience in eternity with eternal life, which is the knowledge of God. So, what God has invited us into, even on our way to heaven, is a growing, deepening experience of Him, which is the life that Jesus gives us, eternal life, which He wants us to experience abundantly, according to John 10. So, I glorified you on earth, Jesus says in verse 4, that as I live for your glory to highlight you. How did Jesus glorify the Father?

He says in verse 4, because I accomplished the work which you have given me to do. So, the way the Son glorifies the Father is by fulfilling the will for His life. The way we glorify the Son who glorifies the Father is doing the will of God. So, what glorifies God the most is doing His will. That is how Jesus glorified the Father, and that's what we do, to accomplish the will. Acts 13, 36, after David served the purposes of God in his generation.

So, your passion, because the more you pursue this passion, the more of eternal life you'll experience, is to pursue the will of God, okay? Because that's what Jesus said He did. Now, Father, glorify me altogether with yourself, because they are in this perfect union, with the glory which I had with you before the world was.

Okay? So, now Jesus speaks about His eternality. Give me the glory that I possessed before creation existed. So, you see, Jesus acknowledges Himself to have existed before creation, before the world was.

And why would not that be the case? As in John 1, it says Jesus, on behalf of the Father, created the world. So, time exists because Jesus pre-existed time, okay? Because the Son is eternal in His deity. So, He wants to return back to the Father to have a reunion, and to have that reunion that He possessed before creation was instituted. He glorified God, verse 6, by magnifying your name to men whom you gave to Me, by making a big deal of the Father. So, we should not be surprised that the Father wants us to make a big deal of His Son.

So, I made a big deal of the Father. They were Yours, You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. Referring to the disciples and referring to those who would come to keep His word, that is, a word regarding their receiving of the Son. Now they have come to know that everything You have given Me is from You.

How did they come to know that? Through the experiences that they saw and through the teaching that they received, they now had come to the conclusion Jesus is who He said He is. I hope through this process, you have come to a deepening understanding that Jesus is who He says He is. For the words which You give Me, I have given to them, and they received them and truly understood. I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me. So, over and over again, Jesus has made it known that to receive the Father, You have to accept the Son, that to reject the Son is tantamount to rejection of the Father and of the one true God.

So, He makes a request. I ask on their behalf, so this is Jesus' prayer, I do not ask on behalf of the world, this is now a prayer for Christians only, but for those whom You have given Me, for they are Yours, because if You belong to Christ, You also belong to the Father. All things that are Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine. Again, He brings this inner Trinitarian working, and I have been glorified in them, because as they take My word, which is Your word, then we're operating on the same word, and so I ask on their behalf, I am no longer in the world, and yet they themselves are in the world, because Jesus is going to leave the world. And I come to You, Holy Father, keep them in Your name. The name in Scripture refers to not only nomenclature, the word, but the name refers to the character of an individual, the attributes, the things that make up that person, who they are. That's the name.

It's the person behind the word. So when He says, I want you to keep them in Your name, keep them connected to Your person, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as we are one. So here's a request. The request is for unity, that they may be one even as we are one.

Now, we've explained this before, but let's review. The Trinity. One God composed of three co-equal persons, who is one in essence and distinct in personality. The Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, but together they make up the one Godhead. The crude illustration I give, and you've heard me give, is about the pretzel with the three holes.

The first hole is not the second hole, the second hole is not the third hole, but they're all tied together by the same dough. So all three members of the Trinity have the same divine nature, but they're not the same person, but they share the same nature. One God, three co-equal persons. That's why only the Christian God can say God is love, because in order to be love, there's got to be somebody to love.

Love has to have an object. God's object is Himself, but the reason He is love is because He can love within Himself, because there's three people in the one God who make up the love relationship. So He is asking that there might be unity in the body of Christ, or among His disciples, that is shared within the Trinitarian relationship.

That is His prayer, that they might be one. And so He says, verse 12, While I was with them, I was keeping them in Your name, keeping them connected to Your person, which You have given Me. And I guarded them, and not one of them perished, but the son of perdition, so that the Scripture might be fulfilled. That is, He covered the disciples.

None of them apostatized or departed from Him except Judas, and Judas, when he did it, was only fulfilling the Scripture. So even when you're rebelling against God, you're only going to wind up fulfilling God's will. So even your rebellion is in the will of God, not because He prescribes it, but because He uses it.

So God uses our rebellion to accomplish His purposes, even though we pay the consequences for that rebellion. We'll learn more from Jesus' high priestly prayer when Dr. Evans returns in just a moment. First though, I want to let you know that today's message is part of Tony's 14-lesson study of the Gospel of John. In this New Testament book, Jesus' divine nature is highlighted, revealing Him as the Word made flesh and the light of the world.

Through this study, you'll gain a deeper understanding of Christ's teachings, miracles, and love for humanity, uncovering timeless truths that will strengthen your faith and provide solid guidance for your life. We'd like to send you the complete series on CD or digital download as our gift when you make a donation to the Ministry of the Alternative. And as a special bonus, we'll also include a copy of Dr. Evans' encouraging book, Dry Bones Dancing.

It's a study of Ezekiel's vision of brittle bones brought to life by the Spirit's breath, and it'll help you experience the same sort of dramatic transformation in your life. Just visit us today at tonyevans.org or call us at 1-800-800-3222. Make your contribution and let us send you the Gospel of John audio series and Tony's book, Dry Bones Dancing. I'll have our contact information for you again after part two of today's lesson and this.

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No, not at all. Observational science confirms the Bible over and over and over again. Equip yourself to face today's toughest cultural challenges with clarity and confidence. If we're going to deal with issues in our culture, we need to start from our foundation, first of all, to understand what we should believe. Discover faith-strengthening truths from Genesis and explore more courses to deepen your understanding of God's Word at tonyevanstraining.org. Explore the kingdom anytime, anywhere. So he comes in in prayer and he says in verse 13, these things I speak in the world so that they may have my joy made full in themselves.

So this is very important. Notice it's his joy, it's not your joy. So what Jesus is doing is he's sharing the joy he has with his disciples who are keeping his Word and maintaining identification with the Lord's name. So your identification with Christ and his Father frees them up to share his joy with you.

And remember, Jesus has just said at the end of 16, in this world you're going to have tribulation. So joy does not mean the absence of trouble. You can have joy and have trouble all at the same time.

Joy is the stability God gives you in spite of the trouble you may be in or the world may be creating around you. So he says, I've given them your Word. So he keeps going back to the Word. I've told them what you've told me to tell them, and the world has hated them because the more loyal you are to the world, the more rejection you'll get from the world.

There's no soft way to say that. The more you identify with Jesus Christ based on the Word of God, the more rejection, particularly when the world is being more rejecting of the Lord. Because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. You are in the world, you're not of the world.

You must function in the world, at work, at play, in your neighborhoods, with this civic association, you gotta vote. We're in the world, but we are not to adopt its value system. It should not dictate our values. It should not determine our definition of right and wrong.

It should not determine our definition of good and bad. So to be of the world means you've adopted its worldview, its priorities, its value system, and its culture. And when you don't do that, and the world is moving away from God, you become the odd man, odd woman out. But Jesus says, no, what I'm going to do, if you stay identified with me, is I'm going to share my joy with you. So even though Jesus was being rejected, he shared he was a man of joy. Sanctify them in the truth.

Your word is truth. Sanctification is a big theological word that means to be set apart for God's purposes. To be sanctified is to be set apart for God's purposes. So when you and I are in the process of sanctification, that is, we're growing in our being set apart for God's purposes for our lives. So every believer is in this process of God putting us in this being set apart-ness, and that happens as his word penetrates us and is internalized by us. Apart from God's word and internalizing it in your own life, sanctification cannot occur because the word of God is alive. If you could see food, you can even chew food. But if you don't internalize food, then the benefit that comes to the body is not being taken in. So you can hear the Bible, but not internalize it.

You know, make it your own so you don't get the benefit from it even though you have it, you read it, you know, you're not getting the benefit from it. So he says, sanctify them in the truth. The reason why the word of God is so powerful is that it's truth. Truth is an absolute standard by which reality is measured. So the issue is, the reason why the word of God is unique is because it does not only contain truth, it is the truth, okay?

It is the final standard on any subject. Any subject that the Bible talks about, it's absolutely perfect in the information it gives you. There is no flaw. That's why people have been able to use the Bible for science, people have been able to use the Bible for medicine, people have been able to use the Bible for history, people have been able to use the Bible— I mean, there's all kind of things that have been discovered that the Bible talks about that people didn't think existed, but then they finally discovered later that it did exist, like Belteshazzar and Daniel chapter 5. They didn't say there was no such person.

Then they came across some writings from Nebuchadnezzar to his grandson, Belteshazzar. Anything the Bible speaks of, it speaks up perfectly. And if it doesn't look like it's true, it's just because you don't have all the information yet.

Just give it enough time and the information will prove itself to be true, okay? And you can see in every discipline the Bible has been used. Even when Moses, Moses' mother, fixed his basket with tar and pitch. Well, if you've got tar and pitch, you've got oil. So, this is many years ago, this guy was reading his Bible, it's tar and pitch, tar and pitch, tar and pitch, tar and pitch. It's got to be oil. And of course, come to discover the Middle East is gushing with oil. But just through an observation in the Bible, a man came to an awakening of the huge presence of oil in the Middle East. So it's just, it's over and over and over again that you, the Bible validates itself as truth. So it's true, even if it doesn't look like it's true.

You just don't have all the information yet. And as you sent me into the world... So you're not to be in a monastery, you're to be in the world. I also have sent them into the world.

So you are to make your presence known, felt in the world. For their sake, I sanctify myself. I set myself apart and they themselves also may be sanctified in the truth.

I set myself apart that they might be set apart all in the truth. Remember, Jesus Christ brought grace and truth, according to John chapter 1. For their sakes, I sanctify myself and them. I do not ask on behalf of these alone. So I'm not just talking about my eleven disciples who are left, but for those who believe in me through their word.

So that's me and you. So this prayer is prayed for everybody. I do not ask for just them, but for all, that they may all be one. Here's this thing of unity again. Even 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 sent me. Jesus makes a poignant point here that the unity, the legitimate unity, not illegitimate unity, unity is not sameness, and neither is unity uniformity. Unity is oneness of purpose. All through this prayer, He's fulfilled the purpose of God. You are not unified because you are the same.

You are unified because you are operating in truth toward the same goal. Dr. Tony Evans, sharing important biblical truths we can learn from Jesus' high priestly prayer, as recorded in the Gospel of John. Now, if you missed any of the lessons up to this point, or would like to own the complete series to review on your own timetable, then I encourage you to take advantage of the resource package I mentioned earlier, all 14 messages from both volumes of this series on the Gospel of John, along with Dr. Evans' encouraging book on breathing new life into a tired faith.

It's called Dry Bones Dancing. They're yours with our thanks when you make a donation to help keep this listener-supported program coming your way. Just visit tonyevans.org to make the arrangements, or call our resource center at 1-800-800-3222, where team members are standing by to assist with your request.

But this special offer ends this week, so get in touch today. The number again, 1-800-800-3222, or online at tonyevans.org. Some of life's most important truths are only revealed when we take a look beyond the obvious. Tomorrow, Dr. Evans walks us through the betrayal and trial of Jesus, showing how those physical events point to a deeper spiritual reality. Be sure to join us for that. .