Jesus prayed with the customs of prayer common in His own day (John 11:41, Mark 7:34, Psalm 123:1). ![]() In the prayer customs of the western world, we often bow our head and close our eyes. This is a posture that we don’t usually associate with deep prayer. Lifted up His eyes to heaven: This indicates the physical posture of Jesus as He prayed. “The object being not so much to let us know what He said on a special occasion, as to show the constant attitude of His mind, the informing idea of His unceasing ‘intercession’ for us during the time of His absence.” (Trench)ī. ![]() The New Testament tells us that Jesus has an ongoing, present work of intercession for His people (Romans 8:34, Hebrews 7:25). The Two have but one mind… Where the Son speaks He is not seeking to bend The Father to Him: rather is He voicing the purpose of the Godhead.” (Trench) “The request of our Lord thus given in John’s seventeenth chapter is clearly no prayer of an inferior to a superior: constantly there is seen in it the co-equality of the Speaker with The Father. Yet there is something different in this prayer Jesus did not pray just as He told His disciples to pray. There is concern for keeping from evil.There is concern for the work of the kingdom of God.There is recognition of and concern for God’s name.Prayer is repeatedly directed to God the Father.Many of the same concerns of what is commonly called the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13) are here in this prayer. In this prayer, Jesus will touch on many of themes developed in this Gospel: glory, glorify, sent, believe, world, love. John 17 is an unique opportunity to see the nature and heart of Jesus. Genuine prayer often reveals a person’s innermost being. “There is no voice which has ever been heard, either in heaven or in earth, more exalted, more holy, more fruitful, more sublime, than the prayer offered up by the Son to God Himself.” (Melanchthon, cited in Boice) The sentences are simple, but the ideas are deep, moving, and meaningful. ![]() Far beyond all that was this prayer Jesus prayed unto His God and Father, which is the only long, continuous prayer of Jesus recorded in the Gospels. Most of us know what it is to hear a true man or woman of God deep in prayer there is something holy and awesome about it. We are impressed with Solomon’s prayer (1 Kings 8), Abraham’s prayer (Genesis 18), and Moses’ prayer (Exodus 32), but this prayer is by far the greatest recorded in the Bible. Jesus spoke these words: The Bible is filled with great prayers. Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said:Ī. “John Knox, on his death-bed in 1572, asked his wife to read to him John 17, ‘where’, he said, ‘I cast my first anchor.’” (Bruce) A.
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