Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1378
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, October 14, 1877
“O righteous Father, the world has not known You. But Ihave known You, and these have known that You have sent Me. And Ihave declared unto them Your name, and will declare it; that the love with which You have loved Me may be in them, and I in them.” John 17:25,26.
THESE are the last sentences of our Lord’s most wonderful prayer. May they not be regarded as the flower and crown of the whole intercession? Minds usually burn and glow and reach their highest fervor as they proceed and it will not be wrong to conceive of the Savior as having here reached the climax of His pleading, the summit of His supplication. He has kept the best wine until now and brings forth His richest sentences last. How, then, shall our slender ability attain to “the height of this great argument”?
It is far beyond our little skill to draw forth all the sweets which lie within these words like ointment in a box of alabaster. For their full consideration, a lifetime would be too brief and the mind of the most Grace-taught Believer too feeble! Here are great deeps which neither reason nor thought can fathom nor experience fully know. Only the scholars of the New Jerusalem who have, for ages, studied the manifold wisdom of God in the glorious work of redemption and, perhaps not even they, would be able to discover all that the Savior meant by these most simple but yet most pregnant words.
John’s Gospel is always easy for the child to read, but it is always hard for the man to understand. And these two verses, which are almost entirely made up of words of one syllable, contain mysteries which baffle the most enlightened understanding. When I consider what they veil, I am constrained to cry out, “O the depths!” I can only hope to present to you a few grains of gold which have been washed down by the streams of meditation—I cannot take you to the secret mines from which the treasures have been borne. It shall need your own experience and the personal teaching of the Holy Spirit for you to know the height and depth of the Truths of Gods spoken here. And even then it shall require death and resurrection and a sight of the Eternal Glory to qualify you wholly to comprehend them!
There are two things in the text manifest to every careful reader. There is, first, a knowledge which is exceedingly peculiar and inestimably precious—“O righteous Father, the world has not known You. But I have known You, and these have known that You have sent Me.” In connection with this knowledge you will observe that there is a great Teacher who first knows for Himself that which He teaches—“I have known You.” And then He communicates His knowledge— “And I have declared unto them Your name, and will declare it.” That fruitful theme shall furnish the first topic of our meditation. May the Holy Spirit lead us into it.
The second part of the text is not knowledge—it is that to which all Divine knowledge is intended to lead, namely, love. The 26th verse speaks of wonderful discoveries of a love of infinite excellence—“That the love with which You have loved Me may be in them.” And you notice that in order to bring that love home to us, there is a Divine Indweller who goes with it, and without whom it could not be! As a Teacher is required to bring us the choice knowledge, so an Indweller is necessary to infuse into us the infinite love—“And I in them.” Jesus must teach us or we shall not know the Father. He must dwell in us or we shall not rejoice in His love.
Thus our first subject is Divine knowledge and the Divine Instructor. Our second subject is indwelling love and the indwelling Lord. The two are one! The blessed Person of our Lord Jesus is so connected with both and so unites both that the subject is one! To know God in Christ Jesus is to love Him—and to be loved of Him is the cause of our being made to know Him! When Jesus declares the Father’s name, we both know and love. And when we see the Father in the Son we are filled both with instruction and affection.
I. Our text speaks of A KNOWLEDGE OF INFINITE VALUE AND ITS TEACHER. What is that knowledge? Jesus tells us in verse 26—“I have declared unto them Your name.” God has made man and, naturally, man ought to know his Maker. The creature should acquaint itself with its Creator. The subject should know the name of his King. But by reason of the blindness of our heart, through the depravity engendered by the Fall and, also, by reason of each man’s personal sin, there is none that understands, there is none that seeks after God.
Whatever else fallen man desires to know (and by nature he is always ready to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil), yet he desires not to know his God, but says to Him, “Depart from us. We desire not the knowledge of Your ways.” Yet it is evident that a man can never be in a proper state till he knows his God and is at peace with Him. A man who is totally ignorant of God must be in a dark state of mind—and since he loves that darkness—it is plain that his mind is biased against good. His willful ignorance of God proves his enmity to Him. While man is opposed to God he cannot be happy, holy, or safe. How can he be, when he fights against One who is perfect holiness and love?