John Chapter 17D | Bible Study with Frances Hogan | Voyage: A Journey through the Gospel of John

[Music] [Music] welcome to our sharing on the second half of saint john's gospel and we now come to the very end of the wonderful priestly prayer of jesus from verses 24 to 26. so let me read it for you first father he said i want those you have given to me to be with me where i am so that they may always see the glory that you have given to me because you loved me before the foundation of the world father righteous one the world has not known you but i have known you and these have known that you have sent me i have made your name known to them and will continue to make it known so that the love with which you loved me may be in them and that i may be in them this is the only time in this wonderful prayer where jesus uses the words i want something this prayer has been completely utterly other but this time he wants something and he addresses his father as abba unfortunately his translations as father in the english language which is much more formal address and what jesus wants is that his disciples will always be with him and it's it's this request that tells you just how much he loved these men that are around the table at the the last supper and how it must have absolutely broken his heart to see judas leave them and go to his destination really sad during this time jesus has lifted the beloved disciples up to the realm of above he has brought them to be born in the spirit which he told us in chapter 3 and verse 5 he has taught them how to live in the realm of the spiritual or the realm of above or in the kingdom of god he has showed them how to live together even though they were such diverse ages and characters and backgrounds and so on because that was going to be the reality of the church and he showed them how to live in loving communion and union with the blessed trinity that's wonderful but if it's only for now it's not that wonderful what about forever what about the longest part of our lives the shortest part of our existence is the little bit we live on the earth in our exile the longest part of our existence is the part we live in god's presence in eternity and so what jesus asks for is that their final destiny would be secured this is the great privilege of the believer and this is the absolute security of the believer that the lord has asked that their destiny would be secure that he is going to heaven to open heaven for them as we learned in chapter 14 that he is going to open the door and there's a place for everybody and he wants to make sure that he has actually requested this himself now since we know that jesus is one with the father the father is one with jesus they have one will they are one love okay so what jesus requests is actually what the father wants this is what we mean by god's will and so jesus is asking is expressing something on earth that the father actually wants and so the eternal destiny and salvation of the believers is made secure it's the most wonderful thing and so what does he ask i mean he could say save them and make sure they get into paradise he doesn't say that he says i want them to be with me so that they will always say the glory that you've given to me you will they will always see god this is heaven this is the beatific vision this is it philip had said to him in chapter 14 oh show us the father and jesus is now making absolutely sure philip will see the father and all the other phillips and he addresses the father at the beginning as the holy one that's the hallowed be your name part of the our father and now he addresses him as the righteous one because in the events that are just about uh to happen god the father will show both his holiness and his justice in all that actually happens and the disciples will learn in a very new way that god is holy god is just god is love god is mercy god is everything he isn't just love that wisdom and justice and mercy and everything else are all expressions of this one love and we're inclined to sort of think that his justice is merely punishment and that is not so it is part of restoring everything to the divine order so that there can be a final unity between heaven and earth unfortunately the unbelieving world the cosmos are not going to appreciate anything at least far too late they will only understand at the final judgment that's extremely sad and so there will not just be judas lost but there will be other branches lost as well branches of the vine but we've already seen that their blindness is culpable and it is deliberate and that they have chosen to put themselves under the influence of the prince of darkness but the beloved disciples will see god they will see his glory they will be present to the blessed trinity for all eternity so what they knew during their lifetime in their own hearts and they tried to express in their relationships in the church they will know in absolute knowledge for all eternity it's a very wonderful thing and so jesus finishes up by saying i have made your name known to them and i will continue to do it so jesus is going to continue working in the church for all time until the end of time so just as the father revealed himself on mount sinai and then came to live or tabernacle among his people as they went through their journey to the promised land so jesus also has revealed himself in his mission and he will tabernacle with us in the blessed eucharist and in our hearts for all time as well so that brings us to the end of this priestly prayer of jesus and we now go into this incredible mystery of the passion of jesus and i want to move into chapter 18. i first of all have to give you an introduction to this because things are not what they seem and john as you now know doesn't deal with things in the same way as the synoptic gospels deal with them he has his own unique way of approaching things so the first thing you would expect is that jesus goes into the garden of gethsemane and he has his three hours of agony which are described graphically by saint luke in his gospel john doesn't deal with that john deals with something else that the other gospels merely say happened and john picks it up as something absolutely astonishing and that we need to deal with that now john knows that you know about the agony in the garden he in fact he knows that you know all the details of the passion so that's not the point he doesn't have to say this again he just wants to bring us to a new understanding so as we move from chapter 17 into chapter 18 we have to take a deep breath because we're moving from the serenity and the cam and the beauty and the love of the upper room where jesus has been sharing his heart and his whole being with his beloved disciples and we go out into the darkness of the night and we go out into the darkness of the unbelief and violence of the cosmos so all the warnings that jesus has given to them about how the darkness and the violence of the cosmos will affect them is going to plunge itself on them they will get it within minutes and so it comes to us as a shock because we have been in the intimacy with the father we have been wrapped in the love of the most holy trinity we have been absorbing their food and their word and their life we have been there and then suddenly we're plunged into this frenzied activity of jesus's enemies who are in a desperate rush to kill him before the passover it's actually hard to take but i want to bring you back to bring you forward if you go back to the time of moses and moses spent 40 days on the mountain in communion with god and god gave him the ten commandments and god communicated with him and moses was transformed to the point where he had to cover his face because the people couldn't actually take the glory of god on his face but as moses descended the mountain carrying with him the two tablets of stone which expressed god's true will for how they should live as he was coming down the mountain he heard this frenzied sound coming from the people of god and there at the foot of the mountain they were busily setting up an altar to a false god and putting an idol on the altar and all the sexual immorality that went with the uh idol worship all this frenzied activity and all this sin and all this rebellion and it was literally under god's nose god was appearing on the mountain and it affected moses so badly that moses threw the two tablets at them what was the point in revealing god's will to this people in total rebellion against him and it's the shock of coming out of god's presence and the beauty and glory and grace and magnificence of god's presence straight into sin and the sheer ugliness of sin strikes you well that's the way it is for us now going from chapter 17 to chapter 18. and so we had this uh wonderful unhurried atmosphere once judas had left but when you come into chapter 18 the temple speeds up everybody's in a hurry in less than 24 hours there's going to be several trials for jesus there's going to be condemnation there's going to be torture he's going to be dragged from one place to another it's unbelievable and john wants you to feel the difference between communion with god and the world he wants you to see that these are really genuinely two different kingdoms two dimensions of being and they operate on extremely different principles it is a terrible shock not just for the beloved disciples who are meeting this for the first time but for us who know all about these events so by the time the final discourse of jesus is finished you and i have probably forgotten all about judas who left us in chapter 13 from verse 2 30 and he went off to join the enemies the sanhedrin and to make it possible for them to get jesus now why would it be difficult for them to get jesus they had decided that they wanted to arrest jesus by night they could easily have arrested him in the temple but if they tried to arrest jesus in the temple jesus would have been defended by the people because the people were all putting their faith in him so they weren't going to do that they were going to do this awful thing of trying to arrest him in secret but they knew that jesus would be surrounded by 11 men all of whom would be more or less dressed the same in the same colors and they'd be all wrapped up in their mantles because it's night and they all would have beards and so it would be very very difficult to distinguish one from the other only somebody who knew jesus intimately would know that this one is jesus not that one and that was the function that jewish has had to be able to distinguish jesus from the others in the garden of gethsemane you can see that night in in john is very destructive okay so the events that we're moving into now we have to understand that satan is going to take terrible revenge on jesus why because jesus came to restore humanity to god's original order and in all the actions of jesus and very particularly in his exorcisms he was interfering very badly with satan's order bringing chaos and hell into everybody's lives and an event that john doesn't actually deal with in his gospel what just needs to be mentioned in passing is the temptations of jesus in the wilderness where satan was trying to find out is it really you i can't believe that you would be so humble and so simple and so ordinary and that you'd be fasting and everything you could turn stones into bread if you really are the person i think you are and so from the very beginning satan just couldn't take it on board that god the living god that he knew from all eternity from the time of his creation that this living god would present himself in such a humble guise to his mere creatures whom satan despised and only wanted to destroy so the hatred and revenge of the dark angel is what we're actually dealing with and he's using the darkness and the unbelief and the sinfulness that's in the sanhedrin that's in pilot that's in the crowds he's using that for his own purposes now i'm sure that if the sanhedrin realized that satan was using them that they would have stopped [Music] pilate wouldn't have a clue he was a complete pagan so in the supper room everything is light and love out in jerusalem in god's own city satan has taken over and so all was darkness and hatred and chaos and it's going to end up very very soon as literally hell on earth for everybody so we have now got to confront the two realities that are going to meet each other light is going to be in contention with darkness love is in contention with hate and life with death so the issue is who will rule the world will it be darkness or light if darkness rules the world the world is hell on earth for everybody if hatred rules the world it's hell on earth for everybody if chaos rules the world it's hell on earth for everybody and so uh jesus and satan are the two that face each other and they're going to face each other down because one of them will rule the earth not the two one of them will rule and so it's very comforting for us to remember uh the prologue of john chapter one and verse five that the darkness could not overpower the light the light was the stronger of the two all the events that we are going to look at in the passion of jesus uh they have to be seen not just on a physical level but much much more on a spiritual level one of the sadnesses in the church is that so many people merely look at the passion of jesus on the outside what happened to him physically and they make no attempt to find out what is going on interiorly or to find out what is going on on the different levels of the different dimensions of reality but that's exactly the journey i'm going to try and take you on in the next couple of chapters and it's going to be dramatic and wonderful and even though the events are terrible when you see what's going on in the background you will have to join the crowd and say crucify him because it's the only way the world can be transformed it's the only way we can be saved it's the only way any of us will get to heaven and even if we say let him be crucified with tears in our eyes and we still have to say it because he alone can save us nobody else can save us and so this is going to be a spiritual journey for us we're going to on the one hand see caiaphas and the sanhedrin desperately clinging to power and trying to hold on to their institutions trying to hold on to their old jewish faith and trying to hold on to their national heritage and in the process they are prepared to kill a man in the name of god and you saw that back in chapter 11 from verses 49 to 50 where caiaphas the high priest was the one who said it's better for one man to die for the people so it has been very clear at caiaphas's head that he doesn't mind getting rid of jesus at all and so these high priests actually succeeded in killing god incarnate they actually succeeded in killing their messiah they actually succeeded in killing the king of the jews this is awesome this is awesome it's incredible on the other hand we have pilate who is a proper pagan who didn't know what truth was but he happens to be the governor of palestine and he happens to be the personal representative of caesar who is in charge of the great superpower in the world at the time and he and his government are prepared to compromise and kill just for the sake of political advantage and so these two powers that are operating in the cosmos in the unbelieving world are willing to manipulate and destroy each other as well i'm going to show you that there's much much more going on in the passion of jesus than we actually realize there's huge powers contending with each other and so it isn't just satan and jesus it's also the roman empire versus the jews and so we're going to see massive events take place and jesus is there the innocent victim in the center of it all i will continue this in our next episode thank you for listening sloan or hispanic day live goodbye god bless you 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Id: -re8vvaMcMw

Length: 22min 45sec (1365 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 02 2022