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Christ Singular Desire By Stephen Bignall

08/09/1996 Calvary Baptist Church Lambton NSW
John 17

Jesus spoke these words, lifted up his eyes to heaven and said,
Father, the hour has come, glorify your Son,
that your Son also may glorify you,
as you have given him authority over all flesh,
that he should give eternal life to as many as you have given him.
This is eternal life, that they may know you,
the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
I have glorified you on the earth.
I have finished the work which you have given me to do.
And now, oh Father, glorify me together with yourself,
with the glory which I had with you before the world was.
I have manifested your name to the men
whom you have given me out of the world.
They were yours.
You gave them to me.
They have kept your word.
Now they have known that all things which you have given me are from you.
For I have given to them the words which you have given me.
They have received them
and have known surely that I came forth from you.
They have believed that you sent me.
I pray for them.
I do not pray for the world.
But for those whom you have given me,
for they are yours, and all mine are yours,
and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them.
Now I am no longer in the world, but these are in the world.
And I come to you,
holy Father, keep through your name those whom you have given me,
that they may be one as we are.
While I was with them in the world, I kept them in your name.
Those whom you gave me I have kept,
and none of them is lost except the son of perdition,
that the Scripture might be fulfilled.
Now I come 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 pray that you should take them out of the world,
but that you should keep them from the evil one.
They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
Sanctify them by your truth.
Your word is truth.
As you sent me into the world, I also sent them into the world,
and for their sakes I sanctify myself,
that they also may be sanctified by the truth.
I do not pray for these alone,
but also for those who will believe in me through their word,
that they all may be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you,
that they also may be one in us,
that the world may believe that you sent me,
and the glory which you gave me I have given them,
that they may be one just as we are one,
I in them and you in me,
that they may be made perfect in one,
and that the world may know that you have sent me
and have loved them as you have loved me.
Father, I desire that they also whom you gave me
may be with me where I am,
that they may behold my glory which you have given me,
for you loved me before the foundation of the world.
O righteous Father, the world has not known you,
but I have known you, and these have known that you sent me,
and I have declared to them your name and will declare it,
that the love with which you love me may be in them and I in them.
Let's just pray together, brethren.
Lord, we hesitate to come in prayer when we hear the perfect prayer,
when we see the wonder and the glory of Christ interceding for us,
who have believed on the word that you sent into the world.
We come because we know you bid us come,
and we desire to be fed from your hand,
and we wish to know your presence,
and we want to continue in your ways,
and for this we need your power and grace.
Be with us now, Lord, we ask.
Take our abundant need and fill it with your goodness and truth and grace.
Forgive our sins.
Subdue our rebellions and iniquities.
Strengthen us in our weaknesses,
and feed us from your hand, we pray.
For Jesus' sake, Amen.
If I were to entitle this message,
I would simply call it the Saviour's singular desire.
In John 17 we have the culmination of an evening prior to the Lord's crucifixion,
prior to His trial in those dark hours,
prior to His scourging,
prior to His agony in Gethsemane,
prior to the cross.
And in this evening He is with His most intimate companions,
those eleven men whom He was to send into the world
as His disciples and ambassadors after He ascended to His Father.
And in that time we see that they begin to doubt and to murmur
and that they are not understanding what it is that He has truly come to do.
They are comparing themselves, among themselves,
even on the way to the garden.
And the Lord seeks to comfort them, not to chide them.
He seeks to guide them and to give them understanding as to what it is
that He is about to do for them,
what it is that He has been teaching them
and bringing to them in the three years that He brought them to Himself and taught them.
He is seeking to give them a foundation upon which to stand
as they witness the trials and the mockings and the scourgings and the shame of the cross.
He is giving them something that they will call to remembrance
in the dark hours between His death and His resurrection.
And we see that John himself in a later time
when he penned those epistles to the churches,
if you just turn to 1 John,
he recalls what it was that those disciples who knew Christ in person
received from His hands.
He writes in 1 John 1,
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard,
which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon
and our hands have handled concerning the word of life,
the life was manifested and we have seen and bear witness
and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father
and was manifested to us, that which we have seen and heard,
we declare to you that you also may have fellowship with us
and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.
Now that was written many years after the events that we read of here in the Gospel took place.
And you see that the Lord Jesus' prayer even in the beginning is answered.
And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God
and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
And that is that which John testifies in the beginning of his epistle,
what he has seen and what he has handled and whom he has known,
even the word of life and that eternal life which was from the Father and from Jesus Christ.
In the beginning of the Gospel of John, John makes this statement.
We beheld His glory in John chapter 1 and verse 14.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory,
the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
And the Saviour's singular desire that I've picked here this morning to bring to you,
there are many things in John 17, there are many sermons in John 17,
an endless number of timely meditations.
But the one thing that strikes me is this singular desire that He has.
He says,
He says,
Such a desire on the part of our Saviour is really the essence of our reason for existence as Christians.
We go through this life from our conversion when we're brought into that light and life and liberty that is in Christ,
when we know our sins are forgiven, that they've been done away with,
and we journey and we journey sometimes haltingly and we journey fitfully
and we journey often with that present weakness of this body.
But our hearts are drawn to Christ more and more and more as we proceed in this life.
And we find ourselves serving Him if we are true Christians and true believers.
We find ourselves testifying to Him.
We find ourselves in communion with Him daily.
We find that His Word speaks to us.
We find that in our failures we have a place to come and a throne of grace and a place of mercy.
We find that in our confusion and the things that vex us and trouble us and cloud our minds,
we have a light that shines through and guides us.
And the end to which we move is the glory that Christ possesses in the presence of His Father in Heaven.
And that is really the true place that is reserved for every believer.
And I don't know about you, but I do know about myself.
And this life and this world can so entangle our feet and can so cloud our gaze
that we forget that this world is just a place through which we pass,
that the things that we enjoy in this world will not last,
that the substantial things that we hold in our hand will one day dissolve or we will dissolve
and we will become dust again and our spirits will go to be with God.
And if we know Him and if He has called us by name, then we shall sit at His feet
and we shall see His glory in a way that we could never comprehend on the earth
for we shall be without sin.
And sin clouds our gaze and this present flesh and this present world cloud our gaze.
There is a portion in Psalm 73 where the psalmist says that God is the strength of His heart
and His portion forever because he says my flesh and my heart fail,
but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
And the psalm that we read, Psalm 27, has a desire in it that is an echo of this desire
on the part of the Saviour.
One thing have I required of the Lord, that which I will seek after,
that I might dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life
to behold the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in His temple.
And if you take the Saviour's desire that those whom God had given Him
might be with Him where He is to behold His glory
there is a psalmist's desire that he might dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of his life to behold the beauty of the Lord.
You see the wonderful symmetry.
When Christ prays, then His prayers come to pass
and are echoed in the lives and the desires, the heartfelt longings of His people.
And that's what we want to look at this morning.
What was it about this singular desire of our Lord's
that is relevant to us now in this 20th century?
We are those who believe. We are those who He prays for.
Here, He says in verse 20,
I do not pray for these alone, these eleven men.
I don't only pray for these, but I pray also for those who will believe in Me
through their word that they all may be one.
And you see that is the first thing that the Lord prays for us
that we would be one, that we would be united with Him
in one body as it were, in one family, in unity with Him.
And He prays for them also that they would be sanctified,
that they would be set apart.
Those who believe on Him through the word of these disciples
set apart from the world.
And He prays also that they would be kept from the evil or the evil one.
I do not pray that you should take them out of the world
but that you should keep them from the evil one.
And the purpose for which they are called out of the world
and believe on the word, the purpose for which they are set apart,
the purpose for which they are kept from the evil one
is that they might come to a place where they behold His glory,
that they might render worship to Him,
that they might benefit from that wonderful relationship
that a child of God should enjoy
of reflecting the glory of their master,
of drinking in the beauty and the wonder of the Son of God,
of drinking in the mystery of the power
and the knowledge and the grace of God,
of understanding their Creator in a way
that fallen humanity never can understand,
knowing God in a way that man was intended to know God
and yet fell from that higher state,
of being intimate with God in a way that passes understanding,
being married to the Creator,
being joined to the Saviour, being the bride of Christ,
knowing God as Father.
And this is the first point.
There is an intimacy for the child of God.
There is an intimacy that Christ Himself gives to the child of God.
Christ's prayerful desire is very, very personal and very, very intimate.
And as we begin to just unpack this verse a little in verse 24,
the Lord Jesus says,
Father, I desire that they,
that they whom you have given me may be with me.
You see, Father, intimate, personal, term,
not only a term that is to be found upon the Son of God's lips
but a term which is to be found,
as our brother Ron prayed this morning,
upon the lips of every believer.
Abba, Father, dearest Father,
the Lord taught us to pray,
Our Father, who art in heaven,
and He goes before us
and He establishes the right to come to God as Father
and He prays to God as Father
for they, they whom God the Father has given Him as a gift,
those who have believed on Him,
He has given them His Word and they have believed on Him
and yet they remain in the world
and He comes to the Father in an intimate prayer
for just His disciples,
for just those who believe in Him in this most intimate way.
Christianity is a personal relationship with Christ,
an intimate relationship with God.
It is not a form of religion,
it is not a formal way of life,
it is not even a body of teaching.
All these things may be found
and yet Christianity, true belief,
may be absent, may be absent.
Habitual attendance upon the Word of God may be found
and yet that Spirit which cries,
Abba, Father, dearest Father,
may be absent.
Those who benefit from this prayer
are those who too can say,
Father, Abba Father, Our Father,
give us this day our daily bread
forgive us our trespasses,
lead us not into temptation,
deliver us from evil,
who can say with knowledge,
Yours is the kingdom,
Yours is the power,
Yours is the glory
and with that knowledge can move expectantly
to that time when they shall see Him,
they shall know Him
and be known even as His children,
perfect and without sin.
That is the desire,
the goal of every child of God,
not just to have a place where they can come
when they wish to fulfill a religious obligation,
not just to be seen and numbered amongst the people
who call themselves by the name of God,
not just to please those
whom they wish to please in this earth,
not just to be seen of other men
to have a relationship with the Almighty,
but to journey and to progress
to a point where they shall see Him
and be with Him forever.
This world teaches us to cling to the world.
This world teaches us to grasp for the world.
This world calls out to us to desire
all that is in the world.
But Christ says,
I will, that they whom you have given Me,
be with Me where I am, you see.
And that's an intimate and a personal thing
and it begins in the heart of man
and the heart of man is changed by the power of God.
And a journey begins,
a journey whose end is in eternity,
a journey that takes the whole of our lives to complete,
however short and however long,
a journey to which all our desires
and all our faculties and all our abilities
must be put to journey that pathway
John Bunyan talked about in The Pilgrim's Progress
to that celestial city.
Every part that The Pilgrim went through
in The Pilgrim's Progress was but a journey.
There was no place where he could stay, was there?
He couldn't stay in Vanity Fair
where all the allurements of the world were.
He couldn't stay in Doubting Castle
where despair crushed him with a giant hand.
He couldn't even stay in those pleasant arbors
where God gave him rest.
He couldn't stay with the shepherds.
He had to keep going.
He had to progress.
He had to go to that place called Death
and cross that river and it was there.
It was there that he came to the end of his journey.
It was there that the gates of the city were open.
It was there that those shiny ones came down to him
and clothed him in that glorious raiment
and took him to the king.
It was there that there were the sounds of singing
in the hearts and the trumpets of God.
That believer is the place that you are destined for
and this world is but a shadow
although our lives seem to us so long and so full
yet they are but a shadow and a small thing
compared to the eternity of God.
And we must see that the Lord Jesus Christ desires
strongly for us to know that
and he prayed and interceded for us
that we should experience this glory.
It's very hard in this 20th century
to look upon the world.
It's very hard to look upon the world
and to listen to its unbelief
and to see those, even those in our families
and in our workplace and in our friendships
utterly deny the God of the Bible
and the God of heaven, the God of creation.
But by his grace we not only must behold that
but we must reject it
and see that this world is a small thing
that he has overcome the world
and that when he prays for his people
his object is to take them eventually from this world
and to bring them where he is.
In John chapter 14 he gave the disciples a comfort.
He gave them a vision of what was taking place in heaven
of what he was going to do.
He says to them,
Let not your heart be troubled.
You believe in God, believe also in me.
In my Father's house and many mansions,
if it were not so, I would not have told you.
I go to prepare a place for you.
And if I go and prepare a place for you
I will come again and receive you to myself
that where I am there you may be also.
And that's the second point.
There's a place where we will be as believers.
There's a position that we will occupy as believers
and it will be greater than any position we can occupy on this earth
and it will be more glorious than anything we can consider
on this earth and it will be more fulfilling
than anything we can experience on this earth
and that is to dwell in the house of God,
that is to dwell with the Son of God,
that is to glory as we are meant to glory as creatures
in his perfection, in his love, in his goodness,
in the truth that he so abundantly brings,
in his wisdom that he so marvelously applies in all that he does
and in the love, in the love that exists between him and his Father
and the love that we are privileged to enter into for eternity,
the intimate adoration of God,
the intimate affections of God are the portion of the believer
and that should wean us from this life
and that should wean us from this world.
And I say it is a hard thing, it's a hard thing for a young man
in his middle thirties with a family,
little children growing up lovely and beautiful
and a wife to face the prospect of being weaned from this world
and as age encroaches upon us
and as our children make their own lives or are taken from us
and as our frame becomes weary
and as we find we cannot do the things we wish to do
and we cannot grasp the things the world wishes us to grasp,
that it's a hard thing not to long to retain our youth
and our vigour and our possessions and our place
but the Lord calls us from them, He weans us from them,
calls us to His glory, to a position that is eternal and unchanging
in the heavens, an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled
and full of glory and when we consider Him, you see,
when we consider Him who endured the contradictions
that He endured at the hands of sinners,
then we're lifted from the faintness and the weariness of our mind.
When we see ourselves in that eternal position
of dwelling with Him without sin, without sorrow and without crying,
then we understand what it was that the Lord Jesus was saying to those eleven men.
What a marvellous thing it would have been to dwell with Christ for those three years.
What a terrible thing it was for them to see Him crushed,
to see Him scourged, so terrible that they could not bear it
and they fled and they feared and they were full of unbelief,
yet His prayer availed for them
and there was a time when they had gave up their lives
and ascended to the glory of which they spoke
and there is a time when we will give up our lives,
God will take it from us this earthly life
and if we are Christ's we will ascend to the most glorious position
that a creature can ever fill,
that of being the bride, the consort, the companion of the Son of God
and that is the future expectation of every believer
and what we have to see here is that it is a great and an honourable privilege
and that God has been gracious and marvellous
in allowing those who have rebelled against Him,
those who are born in Adam,
those whose thoughts would be constantly away from Him
to enter into that glorious position.
It is a privilege and an honour
and though we be few in number in this earth
and you may think that here at Calvary Baptist
you may be fewer in number than other churches but it is not so.
There may be churches where there are hundreds of people gathered
but it has been my experience that very often
that spirit of intimacy,
that spirit of God's presence,
that spirit of purposefulness
and those sober few are still a sober few.
That there are many that gather when the fields seem ripe to harvest,
that there are many that gather when the songs are sweet
but when the trials come and when the difficulties come
there are many that are still not weaned from the love of this world
and who have not discerned the glories of the world to come
and who are not moved by the picture of their Lord and Creator
pleading for those whom He loves,
prostrate on the ground before His Father in Heaven
and pleading for those sinners whom He has been given as a gift
for whom He must die
utterly unmoved by those things
and they drift away
and the door of the chapel can be like a revolving door in some large fellowships
and so many come in and so many go out
but there are few that be saved
and if you are saved this morning
you have entered into the greatest privilege and the greatest gift
that human soul can ever know
and be comforted in that
don't look at the world and the world's promises
and don't look at all that passes for religion in this world
but look at Him
look at His prayers for you
see what it is that He desires for you
and walk in His ways
and follow Him and hear His voice
and the end will be glorious and marvellous
and the end will be this
that for which He prays
that we will declare His name
as He has declared to us His name
that the love with which you loved me
the love with which God loved His Son
may be in them and I in them
my believing friends
if you know the love of Christ
is in you
and the love that you know
is nothing less than that love
which God has for His Son
and that is a rare and a precious thing
and that will abide time and eternity
and that is the purest and the highest
love that a man can know or a woman can know
and I bid you to rejoice in it this morning
to rejoice in your inheritance
to rejoice in your Saviour
and I say to those who may not know Him
those who may come for all those other reasons
that I spoke about earlier
consider Him this morning
do not consider what others think
do not consider the world
consider Him
why?
why do you not know Him?
why can you not feel that intimate and personal presence of His Spirit
when the Word is preached?
why is it a mystery to you?
it's because you do not know Him
because you have not asked Him
because you will not come to Him
and I bid you to come
as He bids you to come
everyone that labors
everyone that is heavy laden
come
and He will give you rest
but if you will not come
then in eternity
you will not know
the intimacy
of the love with which
He was loved
but you will know only His anger
you will know only His rejection
you will know only the punishment
that is due for all that you have done
and been
that was against Him and short of His glory
and that is a terrible end
and that is an eternal end
and as enjoyable and as glorious
as the love of God is
for the blood-bought sinner
just as terrible in intensity
and just as terrible in glory
is the punishment
that the Lord will bring upon those who refuse Him
those who tread His Son under foot
those who are ignorant
of Him
and the mercy of God is that
you are here this morning
that you have heard this morning
this gospel that Christ
came into the world
to save sinners
that He came into the world to give His life
a ransom for many
that He has a people
He has a people
for whom He prays
whom He sustains
whom He loves
whom He desires
that they may be with Him eternally
and I say to you
do you hear His voice
has He called you by name
when He says come unto me
do you feel the call to come
do you know
the light dawning upon your soul
of Christ speaking to you by name
and saying I have loved you
with an everlasting love
calling to you to come
because you're weary
and you're heavy laden
and to find rest for your soul
my friends
I hope and trust that every soul here
knows Christ
but even in the smallest of gatherings
there can be those
who have never seen Him
and if you have never seen Him
then I say to you
look, look at Him
in the garden
suffering, dying on the cross
rising from the dead
sending glorious
and victorious
hear the testimony of the Apostle John
that He did behold His glory
that He is true
that everyone who says He is not true
is a liar
and believe
to the saving of your soul
my brethren, look forward
you who know Him
look forward to the time when
when everything that binds
us to this earth and causes us to
feel weak and heavy laden
will be done away with
even the sicknesses
and the trials of our
aging bodies will be no
more and we shall be with you
may God bless you in that
meditation, may you see
your Saviour's singular desire
is that you will dwell
with Him and behold
His glory
because He is loved by God
that you will be loved
for eternity
Amen
Let us pray
Our Father
we wish to know
the Spirit that cries
Abba Father
that will allow us
to be taken from this world
and all that it offers
happily and joyfully
that will allow us
to journey
with hope and expectation
and we know that that Spirit
comes only from you
and that He alone
can make us those
who will journey with joy
and journey with strength
and journey with purpose
Hear once more
the intercessions and prayers
of your Son
that those whom you have given Him
might be with Him
where He is
that we might behold His glory
and know that you have loved
Him before the foundation
of the world
and that the love
wherewith you have loved Him
will be the love by which we are
loved and by which we are
now loved
We ask it in Jesus' name
Amen