Questions for Children (or anyone else)
John 17:24-26
Eternity
April 26 2020
Click here for: John 17 Printable Worksheet
Draw a picture of actors on a stage performing one of your favorite stories, or of the actors coming out to bow after the performance.
What three characteristics of God are emphasized in Jn 17?
Can the Father, Son, or Spirit have played different roles in redemption than they did? Could the Son have sent the Father? Could the Spirit have become man in order to die for us?
What three ways does the Bible talk about God's eternal love?
- God's love is eternally ________________ (1 Jn 4:7-8)
- God's love is eternally ________________ (Jn 3:34-35)
- God's love is eternally ________________ (1 Jn 4:13-16)
Three applications that relate to these three perspectives?
Sermon Text
John 17:20–26 (ESV)
20“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word,
21that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
22The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one,
23I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.
24Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
25O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me.
26I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
A Little Deeper
In our sermon I make mention of Jonathan Edwards', "Heaven is a World of Love". Here is another delightful section from one of history's greatest theologians:
To consider the love which is there with regard to the subjects of it, or the hearts in which it is. And with respect to this I would observe that love resides and reigns in every heart there. The heart of God is the original seat or subject of it. Divine love is in him not as a subject which receives from another, but as its original seat, where it is of itself. Love is in God as light is in the sun, which does not shine by a reflected light as the moon and planets do; but by his own light, and as the fountain of light. And love flows out from him towards all the inhabitants of heaven. It flows out in the first place [[necessarily]] and infinitely towards his only begotten Son, being poured forth without measure, as to an object which is infinite, and so fully adequate to God’s love in its fountain. Infinite love is infinitely exercised towards him. The fountain does not only send forth large streams towards this object as it does to every other, but the very fountain itself wholly and altogether goes out towards him. And the Son of God is not only the infinite object of love, but he is also an infinite subject of it. He is not only the infinite object of the Father’s love, but he also infinitely loves the Father. The infinite essential love of God is, as it were, an infinite and eternal mutual holy energy between the Father and the Son, a pure, holy act whereby the Deity becomes nothing but an infinite and unchangeable act of love, which proceeds from both the Father and the Son. Thus divine love has its seat in the Deity as it is exercised within the Deity, or in God towards himself.
But it does not remain in such exercises only, but it flows out in innumerable streams towards all the created inhabitants of heaven; he loves all the angels and saints there. The love of God flows out towards Christ the Head, and through him to all his members, in whom they were beloved before the foundation of the world, and in whom his love was expressed towards them in time by his death and sufferings, and in their conversion and the great things God has done for them in this world, and is now fully manifested to them in heaven Jonathan Edwards, Ethical Writings, ed. Paul Ramsey and John E. Smith, vol. 8, The Works of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1989), 373.
This relatively short, but powerful work is available here: https://www.chapellibrary.org/book/hawo
Songs concerning the Triunity of God and His love. Use them before or after the sermon.