Gospel Glory (John 17:1-9)

John chapter 17, starting in verse 1.

John 17 · chapter mention

Jesus spoke these things, looked up to heaven, and said, Father, the hour has come.

Glorify your Son, so the Son may glorify you, since you gave him authority over all flesh, so that he may give eternal life to everyone you have given him.

This is eternal life that they may know you, the only true God, and the one you have sent, Jesus Christ.

I have glorified you on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.

Now, Father, glorify me in your presence with that glory I had with you before the world existed.

I've revealed your name to the people you gave me from the world.

They were yours.

You gave them to me, and they have kept your word.

Now they know that everything you have given me is from you, because I have given them the words you gave me.

They've received them and have known for certain that I came from you.

They have believed that you sent me.

I pray for them.

I'm not praying for the world, but for those you have given me because they are yours.

And we'll stop there for today.

Lord, I thank you so much for this morning.

I thank you for your word.

I thank you for the blessing of having your truth in our hands.

And I ask, Lord, you'd be glorified as we study it, that you would fill me with your spirit to speak your words, that you would rightly give this your spirit to rightly divide if they know you.

And I just ask that we would draw closer to you, fall more in love with you as a result.

In your name.

Amen.

Alright, go ahead and have a seat.

So we have been going verse by verse, chapter by chapter, through the Gospel of John.

And John chapter 13, through John chapter 17, is all one meal, one whole thing together.

John 13 · chapter mention John 17 · chapter mention

So for those of you who were here a while ago, when there was the washing of the disciples' feet in John 13, same event as where we are here, as we are rounding the corner towards Jesus' betrayal, death, and resurrection.

And so we have to always remember that this is all just one big night.

And so the disciples have heard a lot this evening, a whole lot.

There's been a whole lot of different things, so I really don't feel bad for them when in all these chapters that we've gone through when Jesus says something and they're like, huh?

Because he has given them a fire hose of information compounded upon that.

And here in chapter 17, he speaks these things and he looks up to heaven and he begins to pray.

So we have a transition from him teaching the disciples to starting this prayer in chapter 17 before he is going to go and be ultimately betrayed and arrested and tortured and crucified and then rise again.

Spoiler alert on the third day.

So, with that in mind, let's look at the beginning of his prayer.

In verse 1, Jesus spoke these things.

He looked up to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come.

That's as far as we got so far.

The hour has come is a very weird thing to say.

Do you know how I know it's a weird thing to say?

Because we have a prayer meeting before church with all the different people coming to help.

And I started that prayer meeting today with the hour has now come.

And everybody gave me the most confused blank stares that would have been expected.

It's not a phrase that we use often.

The hour has now come.

What on earth does that mean?

We see that in contrast a few times to the Gospel of John.

This is what helps us see what is going on here.

In chapter 2, verse 4, when Jesus turned the water into wine, when Mary comes to him and says, Hey, they're out of wine, and he says, My hour has not come.

In chapter 7, verse 30, and chapter 8, verse 20, they try to seize him to arrest him, but they couldn't, because his hour had not yet come.

So there's this interesting theme throughout here that it's not time.

It's not time.

Hold, hold, and then when we get to chapter 12, 23, right before Passover, and then chapter 13, verse 1, as the Passover drew near, it says, the hour has come.

So, and here he's saying, the hour has come.

Why am I making a big point of this?

Because this is everything, everything in the Gospel of John comes down to what's about to happen.

Which is really cool as we see that.

Jesus' mission on earth is funneling down to his death and resurrection as atonement for our sins.

So when he says the hour has come, this is it.

This is the moment.

The whole thing, the hinge on human history is about to be here.

That's a big deal.

And as Christians, if you're anything like me, you go, yeah.

Uh-huh.

Cool.

No, this is a big deal.

The whole thing, God in the flesh, coming as a human, fully God, fully man.

How does that work?

I don't know.

Ask Pastor Chris.

And uh, fully together and going to sacrifice once for all atonement for sins.

What gives him the confidence that this is the time that the hour had come?

Because he knows the mission from the Father.

This is the crux of human history we're about to witness, which is really amazing.

And why am I making a big deal out of this?

Because I don't make a big deal out of it.

Because I'm like, yeah, answer what's the what's the church answer?

Jesus.

Exactly.

And so someone's got it.

That's awesome.

And it is easy to be like, well, yeah, cool, but it's like he is in this prayer saying, it's happening.

Everything we've been praying for, everything we're working for, the prophets leading up to this, all the narrative, all the stories, the promises, all the way back from Genesis 3 are coming to pass.

So he says, Father, the hour has come.

Glorify your son, so the son may glorify you.

Glorify.

As I was reading through this, you may have noticed how many times glory, glorify, glorify, glory, glory, glorify, glory, glory, glory, glorify.

And that is a theme in this passage.

So we've got to know what on earth does that mean?

What does it mean to glorify?

So I have a slide for that, for the word doxazo.

And it means it has obviously has a wide variety of meanings given the different context and everything, but I want to draw our attention to the last line of that, to cause the dignity and worth of some person or thing to become manifest and acknowledged.

So one way to see glorifying here is to cause that dignity and worth to be manifest and acknowledged, to take a flashlight and shine it on something amazing so you can see what is amazing.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who's like this, but I really hope I'm not the only one.

If we're going to have company over, we have a ritual of taking a whole bunch of stuff, putting it in laundry baskets, and sticking it in our bedroom and closing the door.

That is the opposite of glorifying.

That is the, hey, we haven't folded that laundry yet.

Uh, that's that's my job, by the way.

And let's get rid of that.

But then there are other things we're like, we can leave that out, and we'll even dust it, and we'll have that there.

And it things that are important with that, and pictures, things like that, uh, that are important, to show something that's worthy and to cast attention to it.

So it's not ascribing the worth to it, it's showing everybody else this is huge and valuable and cool.

And it's interesting here because he is praying that the father would glorify him so that he may glorify the father.

And that's cool because he is seeking the glory from the Father.

We see in John 8.54, he says, If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing.

My father, about whom you say he is our God, he is the one who glorifies me.

So the glory, the acknowledgement of that worth comes from another.

Now, why do I say that?

Well, because we live in a culture where we glorify ourselves.

We like to trade, look at me, look at me, look at me for little like buttons and hearts.

And so there's a little bit of a context with a contextual difference with that, that Jesus is actually coming and saying, Father, glorify me that I may glorify you too.

He is getting that from the Father, not from himself, even though his worth, his value is already there, is already manifest and evident.

He's asking the Father to shine the light on it.

What does that look like in this context?

He's not saying, This is my moment, I am about to take over Rome.

This is my moment.

I am about to show the whole world the most cool thing ever with all of my power and authority.

We'll get to this in a second.

Ultimately, his aspect of glory is his suffering and his death and his resurrection.

In his innocence.

That's a little bit backwards from how we like to think.

We live in a culture of glorifying things.

We idolize people, we idolize things.

We look at people, we want to put them on a pedestal and say, This is my identity too, guys.

And Jesus here, in his moment of suffering and sacrifice, is going to be glorified.

And in verse 2, when he says, glorify your son, so the son may glorify you, since you gave him authority over all flesh, so that he may give eternal life to everyone you have given him.

The Father gave the Son authority over what?

All flesh.

All people, depending on which version you have, depending on which translation there.

Everybody.

All means all.

Everything.

It doesn't mean some, it doesn't mean part.

All means all.

A equals A.

You stick with that, you're never wrong.

And that is the crazy thing here is he has authority over all flesh.

But what is his mission with all that authority?

To give eternal life to everyone the Father has given.

He has all power, all authority.

If you were given a you can do whatever you want card, what would you do with it?

Please don't tell me.

I don't want to know.

I don't want to know you that well.

If your heart is anything like mine can be, I prefer not to know what that would be.

You can do anything you want, with no consequences, with no one questioning, with no cost.

And what does he do here to give eternal life to everyone they have given him?

Why am I making a big deal out of this?

Because this is the big thrust, not only of the gospels, not only of scripture, but in this passage, that his glory is tied to his sacrifice and salvation and death and resurrection.

And that is what he did with his authority.

Jesus came to earth during a point where the nation of Israel was a part of the Roman Empire, which was the apex of corruption and evil.

Until the next one, until the next one, until the next one.

You know, it's amazing how that works.

Do you know what's interesting?

Jesus didn't turn over Rome's tables.

He did cleanse the temple, though.

He did not come to set up an earthly kingdom.

He did not come to purge the wickedness through might and authority and executive ability with that.

He could have.

But he didn't.

Why?

That was not his mission.

He had a bigger thing in mind.

Why?

Well, number one, because uh it would have been a moment in time rather than throughout eternity.

But secondly, no one else would have been a part of it.

He is the only one at that point who is sinless.

The sacrifice had not been made.

So he could have set up a kingdom, but we would never have been offered the salvation given by him.

And if everybody is hearing this, who is not a follower of Jesus, we believe that salvation comes only through confession and belief in Jesus as the sacrifice for our sins.

That although we are in guilt because of our sin and therefore separated from God, because he loves us so much, he sent his son to live a sinless life and yet die on our behalf, to take our sin upon him as a sacrifice, so that in his death and resurrection he could impart his righteousness unto us, which is not earned, but rather received through faith in Jesus.

And so, with that in mind, that's his mission.

And that is what he is being glorified in here: to give eternal life to everyone you have given him.

He has authority over everyone for the purpose of giving eternal life to everyone who has been given to him.

So it's not everybody, it is a subset of all, which is everyone the Father has given him.

So, what is the determining factor for eternal life?

We're going to look at that in a little bit here.

Because in verse 3, he says, This is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and the one you have sent, Jesus Christ.

Side note, if you were one of the disciples, would you sit there and go, why is he talking in the third person?

When did this happen?

We were talking, it was going fine.

He starts praying, and now he's talking to God in the third person about knowing the Son and knowing Him and knowing Jesus Christ.

What's going on?

I would argue, although this is my opinion, that he's making not only is he praying, but he's preaching.

He's making a point in the midst of his prayer for the disciples to hear.

So eternal life that they may know you, the only true God, and the one you have sent, Jesus Christ.

He is defining eternal life here as knowing, which has a connotation of not just perceiving, not just, I've heard about that, I get that, I know that.

If you've heard a fact at some point in time, then you know it, right?

That's not the same thing here.

It's an experience and an understanding to know the Father, the only true God, and the one you have sent, Jesus Christ.

Christ means Savior, Messiah, that is the Greek of the Hebrew Messiah.

Christ, Messiah, same word, different language.

So right here, in this little thing that we go, yeah, cool, we get this.

Jesus calls himself the Messiah.

Point blank.

That's pretty cool.

And eternal life is knowing God and the one he has sent, Jesus the Christ.

How does one know the Father and know the one God has sent, Jesus the Christ?

How do we do that?

Well, the good news is we have the whole rest of the Gospel of John and the Bible, but especially the Gospel of John.

So we're going to do a quick blitz through some mentions of this in the Gospel of John.

And there are so many of them that we have three slides for that.

So we'll start with the first one.

Looking at John 3, 14 through 16.

Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.

For God loved the world in this way.

That everyone who believes in him will not perish, but have eternal life.

John 3 36, the one who believes in the Son has eternal life.

The one who rejects the Son will not see life.

Instead, the wrath of God remains on him.

John 4, 13 through 14, Jesus said, Everyone who drinks from this water, this well will get thirsty again, but whoever drinks from the water that I give him will never get thirsty.

In fact, the water that I give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life.

And then on the next slide, John 5 24.

Truly I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and will not come under judgment, but pass from death to life.

John 6 27.

John 6 40.

This is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him will have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

John 6.47.

Truly I tell you, anyone who believes has eternal life.

And then our final chunk here on the next slide.

John 6.54.

The one who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life.

I will raise him up on the last day.

Sounds weird without context.

Talking about his death and resurrection, participating in that.

Which we celebrate with communion.

John 10, 27 through 30.

My sheep hear my voice.

I know them.

They follow me.

I give them eternal life.

They will never perish.

No one will snatch them out of my hand.

My father who has given them to me is greater than all.

No one's able to snatch them out of the Father's hand.

I and the Father are one.

And then finally, here in John 12, 49 through 50.

I have not spoken on my own, but the Father Himself, who sent me, has given me a command to say everything I have said.

I know that his command is eternal life.

So the things that I speak, I speak just as the Father has told me.

Key points in that.

Constant theme.

Belief.

How is it given?

Given by the Son.

Given by Jesus.

What's the Father's will part in this?

His command is eternal life.

His desire, his goal, his purpose is for salvation.

So boiling this down, what does it look like to know the Father?

To know the one who sent him?

To have eternal life?

Hear, believe, sorry, hear, receive, believe.

How do we hear it?

Well, he's telling us.

He's telling us through the whole gospel, the way to salvation, the way to eternal life, through the Son, through his sacrifice, being lifted up.

Receiving, to take that information and not reject it, but rather to take it and be willing to consider it, and then to believe, to affirm, to agree, to put your faith in that.

So the way of knowing the Father, the way of knowing the Son, and the way of knowing eternal life is as simple as hearing it, receiving it, and believing.

Notice in those passages what he did not say.

Everything else.

I'm not saying anything bad about those things and those convictions with that.

But they're not requisites for salvation, for eternal life.

Eternal life is contingent solely upon belief in the Son, belief in the Father.

The problem is that we like to add a whole lot of stuff to that too, because we can be afraid of what's called easy believism, where it's that idea of like, okay, but if we make the gospel sound too simple, then people will just take it, but they won't apply it, and they won't bear fruit, and they won't uh understand what it really means.

So we'll have to kind of couch it with a bunch of other things.

Those other things come as a result of being with Jesus, of being in a healthy church body, of being rooted in the vine.

Abiding in it, even you could say.

And so just know that while those things are important, they come as a natural byproduct of belief in Jesus.

So with that, his mission, the moment we're talking about, is here in this passage, so that he may be glorified by the Father, and he may glorify the Father.

In all of his authority for the purpose of giving eternal life.

Which looks like knowing the Father, knowing the Son, the Messiah, through hearing it, receiving it, believing it.

Continuing forward in verse 4, I have glorified you on the earth by completing the work you gave me to do.

Now, Father, glorify me in your presence with that glory I had with you before the world existed.

So Jesus has glorified the Father in his doing the work that the Father has given him to do.

How did he know what the Father's work was?

Well, number one, he's one with God.

Cool.

But also, this was the plan from the very beginning, from before the foundation of the world.

This was not a plan B.

This was not a I'm going to create everything.

It will be paradise.

And I will put the man and the woman in the garden, and it's going to be awesome.

And then they broke it, and God's like, what am I going to do now?

Man, I'm going to have to figure something out.

From the foundation of the world, the gospel was in place.

So he glorified the Father by completing the work that the Father gave him to do.

And now he says, Father, glorify me in your presence with that glory I had with you before the world existed.

Again, put yourself in the in the shoes of the disciples who are hearing this, who have heard a lot of things, who have seen a lot of things, and yet there's these little nuggets he says that are like, hey, glorify me with that glory I had with you before the world ever was.

And be like, gonna file out a way to ask him later.

But then it makes sense with the mission of the gospel that is the source of his glory.

Let's take a look at Philippians 2, 5 through 11.

We have a slide for that.

Paul exhorts the Philippian church, adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited.

Instead, he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant, taking on the likeness of humanity, and when he had come as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even to death on a cross.

And for this reason, God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus, every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Lot of similar words in this passage.

Father, glory, obedience, following the Lord.

Jesus' mission was setting aside, as God, setting aside his glory, coming to earth, emptying himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even to death on the cross, being willing to be executed by his own creation, so that they may be reunited with God through faith in him.

And the result is God exalting him, giving him the name above every name.

So the name of Jesus, every knee will bow in heaven and earth under the earth.

Every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

What does the Father value?

What does he glorify?

Jesus is asking him to glorify him in this process.

What is going on that is so valuable that the Father wants to shine a light on it and say, this is good.

The sacrifice of Jesus, his death and his resurrection.

You can't separate those two.

One is a payment, the other is the new life, and the demonstration the payment was fulfilled.

And so what point am I trying to make here?

The gospel is glorious.

We're church folk, right?

We're like, yeah, that's cool.

Gospel's glorious.

Yeah, okay, that's awesome.

And we're gonna have for lunch.

Man.

No.

The gospel is glorious.

This is the eternal core of the Christian life and faith.

The gospel.

Think about this.

If you have a tree that is growing out, which is all of the aspects of the Christian life involving a continued maturing, continued growing in Him, a continued growing into more Christ-likeness, glorifying Him in that way, loving one another, being a part of a healthy church body, taking care of those things, making disciples.

The tree is rooted in the commingling of the Word of God and the gospel.

It doesn't grow apart from it.

You don't receive that and go, okay, now I'm gonna get started.

It always comes out of that.

And anything that does not grow out of that is problematic.

And so with that in mind, we can very often, I can very often, forget how glorious the gospel is.

Why?

Because it's not necessarily always spilling out of us.

I like to see how in 2 Corinthians, I believe it's 2 Corinthians 4, he talks about us having this treasure in earthen vessels.

Imagine having this really valuable thing in a clay pot.

What's the best way to see that clay pot?

Well, when it breaks, you see what's inside.

And we've been talking about suffering, we've been talking about the expectation of that, we've been talking about the comfort of God as a result.

But what we see that's inside.

What do people see in us as followers of Jesus?

Now, I want to be very, very clear.

Evangelism is a gift, a spiritual gift.

A spiritual gift that it's very easy when preaching about the gospel to make people who may not have that gift feel really bad about the fact that they're not out street witnessing every day.

That's not what we're talking about.

Not at all what I'm talking about.

If that's your gifting, awesome.

But what spills out of us?

What is our natural interaction with other believers?

What's our lingua franca in which we can know that one that you are a Christian and I am a Christian?

Is it talking about the goodness of God, the things He has done, the way that we're growing?

Is it uh griping about current state of things?

Is it rejoicing about current state of things if our person wins?

Is it all what is it?

What spills out of us?

This is what the big thing that has been convicting to me as well, that really I think dovetails off of that idea that Pastor Chris expounded so well of that idea of meditating on these things in Philippians 4:8.

Philippians 4:8

Whatever is good, whatever is holy.

So, with that in mind, is the gospel the center of our hope and joy, the seed of our confidence, the core of our passions.

We'll talk about that at the end, because the what where we're where we're not landing this is you're doing it wrong.

Do better.

Come on, guys, that's not where we're going with this.

Ultimately, but it's a good self-check and be like, this is the crux of human history.

This is the mission of God on earth.

And oftentimes, that's sure is peripheral to me in my everyday life.

Do I even have unbelieving friends?

Do I interact with people who are not saved?

Or have I cloistered myself so protective, so guarded, that I'm going to be infected by the sin I was saved from, that I don't have any interaction with unbelievers.

Think of things it takes stock of.

We'll talk about that more towards the end.

But here's the thing: the gospel is glorious.

This is the core of everything.

That is how Jesus is glorified.

That is the glory with which he asks for the Father to glorify, so that he may glorify the Father.

Now, verses six through eight.

I revealed your name to the people you gave me from the world.

They were yours, you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.

Now they know that everything you have given me is from you, because I have given them the words you gave me.

They have received them and have known for certain that I came from you.

They have believed that you sent me.

Okay.

There is a mingling here in different responsibilities of three different parties.

The Father, the Son, and the disciples here.

Different things the Father has done, different things the Son has done, and different things that the disciples have done.

And it's kind of word salad-y in seeing where how all of this gets mingled together in these passages.

So I thought it would be helpful to break these down just to see them, what this looks like.

So I can take verses 6 through 8 and reshuffle the exact same words, and this is what it looks like.

I have a slide for that.

The Father gave people, gave Jesus the people from the world.

He gave Jesus his words.

And he sent Jesus.

So we see in verse 6, I revealed your name to the people you gave me from the world.

They were yours.

You gave them to me.

So in verse 8, I have given them the words you gave to me.

They have received them and know for certain that I came from you.

They believe that you sent me.

So the Father is the giver of the people, the giver of the word to Jesus, and the giver of Jesus.

Doesn't seem like a very mad guy, does it?

Can you imagine it being your birthday?

Your parent, like, just comes and is like, here.

It's not usually how that happens.

And so the Father is giving and giving and giving in that way.

What about the Son?

Jesus revealed the Father's name to the people he gave from the world.

And he gave them the words the Father gave to Jesus.

So Jesus took what was given by the Father and gave it to the people given to him.

We see that in this passage.

In verse 6, I've revealed your name to the people you gave me from the world.

And verse 8, I have given them the words that you gave me.

So Jesus' name, the Father's name, and the word from the Father were given to the people.

Now what about the disciples?

Surely they have a big part to play in this, right?

They did all the cool stuff in the Gospels, they healed the people, they had all authority.

No, okay, so what do they do here?

They kept the Father's word.

They know that everything the Father gave Jesus is from the world.

They received the words the Father gave Jesus.

They have known for certain that Jesus came from the Father, and have believed that the Father sent Jesus.

So remember when we went through all those John passages and boil it down to hear, receive, believe.

Very similar here to what the disciples have done.

They have heard what was told to them from Jesus.

They are receiving those words.

They hear, they have received, and they have what?

Believed.

This is the core of the gospel.

The breakdown of these roles here.

The Father gives, the Son reveals and gives, the disciples' responsibility is to hear, receive, believe.

I have a slide for 1 Peter 1, 18 through 21.

You know that you are redeemed from your empty way of life inherited from your fathers, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of an unblemished and spotless lamb.

He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for you.

Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.

We have been purchased with something immeasurably precious.

That should be exciting.

That should be exhilarating.

Hopefully, we will wake up in the morning and go, I have been bought and redeemed by the blood of Jesus, and when I was an enemy of God, now I am his friend and child.

It's a whole lot easier though to roll over all blurry-eyed and grab our phone and start scrolling through the news.

Kind of an opposite effect in that, because we're discipled in different ways by the world.

How do we orient our brains to the glory of the gospel so that it spills out of us?

We'll talk about that in one second.

But in this last verse, I'm not going to camp out on this because there's a lot more going on in the next passage next week.

But he says, I pray for them.

I'm not praying for the world, but for those you've given me because they are yours.

Here's the fun thing.

At the end of chapter 16, the disciples are like, Yes, we got it.

We're on it.

And he's like, Really?

Because you're going to scatter.

You're going to all leave and leave me alone.

But then he encourages with them, be at peace, I have conquered the world.

And then here he's praying for the disciples.

One of the most ominous verses to me in Scripture is in Luke 22, when Jesus turns to Peter and he's like, Satan has desired to sift you like wheat, but I've prayed for you.

And it was like, could you like tell him to stop it?

Could you, I mean, you have all authority, right?

You can make that not happen.

There is an interesting thing in that, that in the midst of what's about to happen, that he's praying for them rather than in all of his authority causing it not to happen.

And I believe, this is this is Ben speaking, not the word of God, of course, but that that shows his confidence in the Father's ability to keep his sheep and to restore them and to go after them, which is so cool.

So putting all of this together, the gospel is a center of our life, the source of our joy, the object of our affection.

Is it?

Sometimes.

Here's the cool thing.

It's not all on our shoulders to make that happen.

Because otherwise, we'd be earning it.

How do you earn something that you can't afford, can't pay for, and can't otherwise receive?

So, but we want that to happen.

Do we treat the gospel as the main event or do we are we fixated on other things that we think are the core of the Christian faith?

Things that don't last a century.

How do we recenter from these things?

Because we live in a, like I said, uh something that Pastor Ed from Shoreland would say a lot is that the brightest minds in the world are constantly discipling us into other things than the gospel.

Are constantly pulling our attention to other things from the gospel.

So what do we do?

That sounds bleak.

That sounds a little unsettling.

Here is the best way I can think of it, and I stole this uh from a book called Deep Discipleship, which I haven't finished, so if it's not good, don't yell at me.

Let's talk about spatial disorientation.

You came here for this.

Okay, I'll give you a definition of that.

So I have a slide for that.

Spatial disorientation, according to Encyclopædia Britannica, is the inability of a person to determine his true body position, motion, and altitude relative to the Earth or his surroundings.

Both airplane pilots and underwater divers encounter the phenomenon.

You don't know which way is up.

Don't know which way is accurate.

Spatial disorientation.

What is going on?

Everything we trust in our bodies, and everything we may know, is firing in different directions and not giving us something that is necessarily accurate.

What do you do in that situation?

Well, we have some this is coming straight from the FAA.

How do you prevent spatial disorientation?

I have a slide for that.

Number one, obtain training and maintain your proficiency in aircraft control by reference to instruments.

When flying at night or in reduced visibility, use and rely on your flight instruments.

If you experience a visual illusion during flight, and most pilots do at one time or another, have confidence in your instruments and ignore all conflicting signals your body gives to you.

Accidents usually happen as a result of a pilot's indecision to rely on the instruments.

So, maybe going, why are you telling me this?

Okay.

Spatial disorientation happens when our sensory experience and the context of what is around us is causing us to not be able to trust our objectivity in a situation.

At that moment, are they telling you just go with your instincts?

No.

Live your truth, guys.

No.

Rely on your instruments.

In the context of the Christian, the person who follows Jesus, what is that instrument that we rely on to be that centering point?

The Bible, the Holy Spirit, working together, absolutely.

It is not within us, if we get miscalibrated with the gospel, to white knuckle our way back into what is right with that.

Just you know, spoiler alert, that'll get you even further in the wrong direction.

We recenter based on what is proven and true, which for the follower of Jesus is the word of God and the Holy Spirit living within us who speaks through that.

So this is what I would ask for us to ask ourselves.

Do we live in such a way, speak in such a way, interact in such a way, so the gospel spills out of us?

Do we even have a single unbeliever around us that it could spill on to?

How do we rectify that?

Stay close to Jesus, cling to his word, dive into the word, not searching for that magic super nugget, but it's an immersion and experience and a bath in his truth, followed by the Holy Spirit.

And that is the blessing of this.

The glory of Jesus on earth is enveloped in the gospel, the salvation of souls that comes through faith and belief in him.

That is the core of everything.

May that be the core of everything as we continue to grow and mature in Jesus.

But may that never be put by the wayside, but rather be the foundation of that.

And how we recalibrate that is to trust our instruments, which is the word of God and the Holy Spirit living within us.

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus, I thank you so much for your word.

I thank you for the truth of your word.

I thank you for the gospel, which is the power of salvation for those who believe.

I thank you that the Father loved the world so much that he offered reconciliation.

I thank you that our God is not a seething warlord that the Son has to keep away from us by his blood.

But rather, someone who loved us so much that he sent Jesus as a sacrifice for our sins and his perfection that we could live a new life with him and be reconciled with God, not because of anything we have done, not because of any power of our own, but because of what Jesus has done.

For anybody who hears this, who has not given their life to Jesus, there is a way to be reconciled with God.

That is not a whole bunch of doing, but a bunch of believing in Jesus as the one who did the work for us, who paid the price for our sins, that in our guilt, when we were separated from God, he loved us so much that Jesus shed his blood a perfect sacrifice on our behalf.

And it's as simple as hearing, receiving, and believing.

And Lord, I ask that by your spirit you would save souls.

That by your spirit you would be working to convict of sin and encourage to the cross, that you would bring alongside people to share that message.

I ask that you would spill out of us, that your gospel would be quick on our lips, not as a sales pitch, but as an evidence for what is inside of us.

I ask that you would continue to stir us up in this way, that you would continue to be working mightily, that we would be people who may not even realize how much you're spilling out of us because it is so natural as a part of our character.

And as we seek to calibrate to this, may we draw close to you and not fall for the lie that it is by our own striving and white knuckling that that happens.

But rather, may we dive into your word, may we listen to your spirit, be a part of a healthy body of believers.

Lord, I ask that you continue to guide us and recenter us to what you find beautiful.

In your name.

Amen.