Reading:
John 16:1-17:26
I want you
just to pass your eye over that prayer again - "He
said, Father... O Father... I come to thee. Holy Father,
keep them... As thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee...
Father, that which thou hast given me... O righteous
Father."
"I manifested thy name... I made known... thy
name", and, quite evidently, from this chapter and
from the whole of this Gospel, the name which the Lord
Jesus manifested and made known was "Father".
That may not impress us as it would have done those in
His own time, for, with the Lord Jesus, there came in a
revelation of God which was nothing less than
revolutionary. Go back to the Old Testament and look at
the manifestation of God in the names and titles which
are given to Him there. They are many, wonderful, very
great and very glorious, but they are usually very
remote, and put Him in a place of holy and awful
isolation. He is there the one who is unapproachable in
Himself, and whose presence always created fear, even
terror. If there was anything approximating to the coming
near of God, even in those strange forms of manifestation
called the 'theophanies,' when in the first place those
visited thought it was a man and then afterwards realized
it was the Lord, the people cried out in fear and terror.
And the Lord said even to Moses, who was such an
honoured, choice, faithful, devoted servant: "Man
shall not see me and live" (Exodus 33:20). When a
man wrestled with Jacob and subsequently departed, Jacob
cried: "I have seen God face to face, and my life is
preserved" (Genesis 32:30). To him that was a most
wonderful thing! Of course, he had met the veiled deity -
the veiled God had come in man form - but, even so, Jacob
recognized that it was the Lord, and the wonderful thing
was that his life remained whole in him.
When the Lord Jesus came into this world He brought an
altogether revolutionary revelation of God, and the one
word which was on His lips more than any other was
'Father' - 'My Father', 'The Father'.
This seventeenth chapter of John's Gospel is, as you can
see, the culmination and summation of all that has gone
before of the life of the Lord Jesus and the
manifestation of the Son of God with all His works and
words. The end has come, for you will notice that the
next chapter begins: "When Jesus had spoken these
words, he went forth with his disciples over the brook
Kidron, where there was a garden." Then the final
scenes of his earthly life were enacted and the cross
followed. So this prayer is the gathering up of
everything by Jesus. He is gathering up the very purpose
for which He came into this world, the meaning of all His
teaching and His works, the meaning of His having been
here in this world, and He is putting it into one
marvellous word, or name: 'Father'. He is saying: 'I have
done what I came for. I came to manifest THY name.' Note
the way in which He puts it. He did not come to give
people a doctrine, a truth or a teaching about the
Fatherhood of God, as a theme or subject. He said. 'I
manifested', or, for our purpose you could use the word:
'I demonstrated'. There is all the difference between a
lecturer and a demonstrator! To 'manifest' is very
practical; it is more than words or teaching, for it is
showing in a living way the thing that you are desiring
to have grasped and understood.
And so this matter of the Father God was manifested in a
Person. The Person Himself was the manifestation. When
you look at Him, listen to Him, watch Him, there is one
deduction that you can draw, should and must draw: 'That
is just what God is like.'
Whether it be with the little children, and His hands of
blessing upon them, drawing them to Himself; or any of
the many things that He did in healings, in comfortings,
in restorings; or in any of the wonderful things that He
said in parables, our conclusion should be: 'That is what
God is like!' It is an expression of God as Father, and
the Lord Jesus Himself is the manifestation of the
Father.
Now, open that out and go right back to the beginning of
history as the Bible gives it to us, and this conception
is inherent in the very beginning. What was the
conception with which the Bible opened, when God had
completed His creative activities and got His man and the
man's wife? It was a family. The FAMILY conception was
there right at the very beginning, and in God's mind it
was to be a family of His OWN children. He wanted a
family of children 'after His own image and likeness',
like Himself, and His heart was set upon this. There, at
the beginning, He says: "Be fruitful, and
multiply" (Genesis 1:22), and behind that is God's
intention to have a family.
Do you notice that in the second phase of the Bible, that
which we call the Patriarchs, it is the family which is
the dominant, characteristic feature? 'Patriarch' is a
Bible word, as you know, but do you know what it means?
It just means 'the head of the family'. Perhaps you have
not thought of that when considering Noah, Moses and
Abraham and calling them by this high-sounding name 'the
Patriarchs'! But right through that long and very rich
phase of the development of history in the Bible there
lies, deeply embedded, this idea of the family. And in
the patriarchal families it was not only the father who
was the head of the household. The eldest son was also
the priest of the family, in union with the father.
Fathers and sons were the divine idea, and if you like to
make it singular you can, for you are looking right ahead
to John 17!
And when you move still further on in Bible history and
come to that section of the Old Testament which has to do
with the kings, the monarchy, have you been impressed
with the fact that, when that phase reaches its highest
point in David and Solomon, the very conception and idea
of monarchy, of government, of dominion, of reign, of a
kingdom, lies with the father and son, David and Solomon?
That was the peak of the monarchy. And if you look both
into the Old Testament account and into the New Testament
references to it, you will find that those words spoken
by the Lord to David about his son, Solomon: "I will
be his father, and he shall be my son" (2 Samuel
7:14), are taken up in the letter to the Hebrews and
applied to the Lord Jesus. So God was looking THROUGH
David and THROUGH Solomon - not just AT them - to His own
eternal thought of the family.
You come to the next and final section of the Old
Testament, the Prophets. And what is the cry of the
Prophets? For in this section there is a cry, a sob, a
groan, an anguish, a travail, and, for the most part,
that is the spirit of the Prophets. They are burdened,
men with a burden, a cry, a heartache, men who are
expressing a travail. Listen again to Isaiah 53!
But what is it all about? God has lost His family! The
family of Israel has been broken up and disintegrated. It
has gone away from God and from His house. God is
deprived of that thing for which He first of all created
men, and then inculcated into the whole of His dealings
with them. In the Prophets God is seen to be in a state
of disappointment and sorrow. Listen to Hosea, for
instance. There is a cry of deep anguish in that
prophet's heart, and it all focuses upon this family
conception.
Well, that has covered a lot of history, and there is
more in it than that, but that is enough to show what was
in God's heart, what His heart had been set upon, what He
had hidden, in a way, in His dealings with men and in His
constitution of things. This was a hidden desire and
purpose in the heart of God.
Then the Son of God comes. Now you go through your New
Testament and tabulate the number of times 'Father' and
'Son' occur in connection with God and the Lord Jesus.
And then go on to the next step and tabulate the number
of times that the Lord's people are referred to as His
children, His sons, or as in a family relationship to
Himself - 'begotten of God', 'born of God', and so on. It
is very full and rich. We have only to mention it for a
great deal just to come back to us and break upon us!
We said that the Son of God came from the Father: "I
came forth from the Father" (John 16:27). And why?
For one thing, to take up all that history from the
creation, through the Patriarchs, through the monarchy,
through the prophets, and gather to Himself the
realization of this thing for His Father, in order to
satisfy His Father. Dear friends, if you want to know
what the Lord Jesus meant, and what it means where we are
concerned when He said: "I came to do Thy
will", it is this about which we are talking. The
will of God is the family of God in which He is truly
Father God, and His Son is truly THE Son, the eldest Son,
"The firstborn among many brethren" (Romans
8:29). Do you pray to know the will of God? Do you ask to
know what God's will is? Well, of course, you may apply
that to all sorts of things, but you must remember that
the will of God is very comprehensive and specific, and
is just this that we are talking about. The Son came, not
only to speak of the Father, but to manifest the Father,
so that He could say: "He that hath seen me hath
seen the Father" (John 14:9). 'There is no further
need for you to say "Shew us the Father"' (John
14:8). "I manifested thy name... I kept them in thy
name." And, as we have seen, in this chapter alone
He calls Him 'Father' six times - "O righteous
Father... Holy Father."
The Lord Jesus has come to give in His own Person the
revelation of God as Father, and to redeem unto God His
family. Those wonderful words in the early part of the
Letter to the Hebrews: "He is not ashamed to call
them brethren... I and the children which God hath given
me... Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly
calling" (Hebrews 2:11,13; 3:1) are the fruit of His
REDEEMING activity.
Dear friends, it is a good thing to be redeemed, to have
what redemption means in the sense of sins forgiven,
deliverance from bondage, security unto eternal life, and
all those blessings. But do we sufficiently recognize
that it is a FAMILY He has come to redeem, and that we
are redeemed as a family? We may be redeemed
individually, but God's thought, and Christ's thought,
was to redeem a family.
What is a family? Now, if you friends have a family, how
happy and pleased would you be if every one of your
children was a unit in himself or herself, living an
independent life without any concern or consideration or
interest in any other member of the family? Just so many
isolated units in one place could not be called a home!
Would you be happy about it if they all went off and
never had any concern for the other members, but were
just individuals? Well, they might be children of the
same parents, but, if that was the situation, the parents
would feel that the real meaning of parenthood had been
lost. How God must feel about anything and everything
that is other than a family concept and a family spirit
amongst His people!
We hear so much about the Church, the churches and the
local assemblies. Indeed, we can get very tired of that,
for it can be so technical. But what is God's thought in
companies of His people in any place? That they should be
a representation of the family where His Fatherhood is
the dominant thing, where His Son has the place that He
ought to have, and where all are a unit. "I pray...
that they may all be one" (John 17:20-21). How? 'As
Thou, Father, and I are one.' The Father is
revealing Himself in the Son and the Son is manifesting
Himself in the Father. What perfect oneness there is
between those two! "That they may be one, even as we
are one."
The prayer of the Lord Jesus, right at the end, as He
went to the Cross, was for the family. He went to the
Cross to redeem the family, that out of His death and
resurrection many sons should be born.
And there are not lacking some indications that there was
a very real answer to His prayer at the beginning. You
would never call those twelve disciples a family before
Calvary! I should say: 'The Lord deliver us from families
if that is one!' There was quarrelling, envying, striving
and jealousy of one another. But look afterwards: "But
Peter, standing up with the eleven"
(Acts 2:14). And there is that wonderful second chapter
of Acts when they "were all together in one place...
they had all things common... and not one of them said
that aught of the things which he possessed was his
own" (Acts 2:1, 4:32).
Well, we have reached something of the family when the
Holy Spirit brings Christ into His place, and God is
Father over all. Paul had some conception of this. You
know that in his letter to the Ephesians he prayed to the
Father "from whom every family in heaven and on
earth is named" (3:14).
So the Lord Jesus came, firstly to secure unto the Father
the satisfaction of His eternal desire, the realization
of His own ambition of heart, to redeem unto God a
family; and not to leave it there, but to bring that
family to reign, to govern in the eternal kingdom. It is
to be the governmental family of the ages to come. The
means by which He is going to govern this world in the
coming ages is by this family elevated to His throne. The
far greater and more glorious counterpart of David and
Solomon is the Father and Son. And then, to use another
phrase from the Letter to the Hebrews, "many
sons" whom He has brought to glory.
We cannot just say these things without reminding
ourselves that the realization of this, both on the part
of the Lord Jesus and on our part, if the Father is to
find His satisfaction, is a costly thing. It is by way of
travail. There is no family without travail. God has put
it in the very constitution of this creation that the
family is by way of travail, of suffering. In a word,
someone has to be prepared to lay down their life for the
family, and the Lord Jesus did it. And, dear friends, we
are not going to have anything like this amongst the
Lord's people unless we are prepared to suffer for it, to
lay down our lives for it, to set aside all our own
personal interests for it, really to put up with a lot,
that we might bring to the Father that upon which His
heart is so much set. It is the way of travail, of
sacrifice, of suffering. For this His Body was broken,
that we might share that Body as one family. For this His
Blood was shed, that we might, in drinking His blood - in
other words, His outpoured life - share as a family that
one life.
So we come back and close where we began, with His
prayer. What a cry it is! What an appeal it is! Shall we
say: what an agony it is! 'Father, the world has not
known, but these have known... Father, as Thou and I are
one... that they may be one.'
Have you been all the time poised and adjusted, asking:
'Is the Lord saying something to me? Somewhere, somehow,
I have violated this family spirit, family disposition,
and grieved the Spirit of God, who is the Spirit of the
family.' Is there something that He is saying to you and
to me? How does this apply to us? Is it just a lovely
Bible theme? God forbid! It was a prayer with Him, so let
us make it a prayer, and a prayer that will have a very
practical aspect, for sometimes we can go a long way
towards answering our own prayers. And this matter is not
ALL to be left with the Lord. He has done His part!
From
"A Witness and a Testimony" Nov-Dec, 1971, Vol. 49-6.