Text: John 17:1 1 These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes
to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that
thy Son also may glorify thee:
INTRODUCTION: In previous messages, we have learned that what is commonly call the Lord’s Prayer is not really what is the Lord’s Prayer. It is the Model Prayer.
It is called such by those who understand the Scriptures because Jesus was giving the pattern by which we should pray.
Now that we understand that, we need to examine what the real Lord’s Prayer really says and what does it mean.
Let us first get the setting of John 17.
Jesus and the disciples had just finished the Passover Supper and He had instituted His Supper, the Lord’s supper. They had finished with the supper and had left the upper room in Jerusalem where they had met. They had proceeded out of the city and were going to the Garden of Gethsemane which was one of Jesus’ favorite places to pray.
Their proceeding to the Garden adds much to the interest of this prayer in that it was in the stillness of the night, in the open air, and in the peculiarly tender circumstances in which Jesus and the disciples were.
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It is the longest prayer recorded in the New Testament. It was offered on the most tender and solemn occasion that has ever occurred in our world.
It is perhaps the most sublime composition to be found anywhere.
Jesus was about to die!
Having expressed His love to His disciples, and made known to them His last desires, He now commends them to the protection and blessing of the God the Father.
This prayer is an excellent example of the manner of His intercession and shows the intense interest that He felt in behalf of all who should become His followers in all ages of the world.
Now, let us begin our study of the Lord’s Prayer!
Sources: Albert Barns’ New Testament Commentary and Garner’s PowerBible CD.
John 17:1 KJV 1 These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to
heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that
thy Son also may glorify thee:
We find revealed to us in this verse the most common attitude, and position, of pray in that day and time. We do not know with this prayer if He was kneeling or standing. The verse does not reveal that.
Later when we find him in the Garden, He was kneeling. If we run a comparison of other Scriptures, we find that it is not uncommon for a person that is praying, either in public or private, to lift up his/her eyes up toward heaven. By way of contrast, let’s take a look at Luke 18:13.
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Luke 18:13 KJV 13 And the publican, standing afar off, would not
lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast,
saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.
This verse relates to us that the Publican was under so much conviction that he didn’t even feel that he was worthy to even assume the common attitude of prayer. He simply asked God to save him. The very mention of this informs us that this was a common attitude of prayer.
You will notice that Jesus starts out His prayer by addressing the Father. Since Jesus is the example for everything that we should do, then we should also begin our prayers with “Father.”
Even more appropriately would be, “Our Father in heaven,”
“Heavenly Father,” or some combination of this that addresses God as the Father and where He is located. We are to pray to no other.
Not Jesus, the Holy Spirit, Mary, etc., only God the Father.
We find no example anywhere in Scripture that we are to pray to anyone but God the Father. Anything else and He is under no obligation to answer any prayer that we pray.
If we want our prayers to be heard, then let us be correct in the beginning.
We find in this verse that Jesus acknowledges that the time has come for Him to die for all mankind. This was why He came to this earth. His arrest was just minutes away.
He would be found in the Garden by those who had been led there by Judas Iscariot. This was the beginning of the end.
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We could properly say that it was the beginning of the beginning.
It was the beginning of our redemption. It was the beginning of the way for us to serve Him. It really wasn’t the end, but the beginning!
In the words Jesus spake concerning God glorifying Him, the Son, we find that He is requesting that the Father demonstrate to the world that He was indeed His Son.
This was what the multitude would not believe about Him.
They believed He was of the lineage of King David. That could be established, and someone probably did establish it as fact.
We are not told that that did happen but as much as the Jews refused to believe other things about Him and attacked Him on so many things but not this probably that it had been verified by someone in authority.
To me, that is just common sense that it would have been done, especially with the claims that Jesus made. He is asking for the Father to sustain Him thereby manifesting God’s power in His death, resurrection and ascension as absolute proof that He was the Son of God.
In the last phrase of this verse, Jesus asks that the Father glorify Himself that He may glorify God the Father.
Albert Barns states in his New Testament Commentary that this clearly refers to the manifestation of the honor of God which would be made by the spread of the Gospel.
Jesus prayed that God would so honor Him in His death that striking proof might be furnished that He was the Messiah, and thereby men would be brought to honor God the Father.
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By His death the law, the truth and the mercy of God the Father would be honored.
By the spread of the gospel and the salvation of the lost, by all that Jesus had done and would do, now that He is glorified, to spread the gospel, God the Father would be honored.
Conclusion: We have learned from this verse that Jesus set the example for us in how to pray. We also learned that He was very much aware that the cross was looming even closer. Let us pray as Jesus did.
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THE LORD’S PRAYER