John 17.1-5


Soon the Church will be celebrating the first coming of our Lord Jesus. We
do this for many reasons, not the least of which is to be well prepared for
His second coming. So, I thought it good for us to take a more direct look
at Jesus these next several weeks in the hope that it will help us celebrate
as faithful disciples, rejoicing in our Savior. I think that you'll find
this week's topic apt as most of you will be tempted for the next few weeks
to rush about, trying to 'get everything done'.

I read five verses as our text, but I am going to focus only on one of them.
Listen again to verse four. 'I have glorified You on the earth. I have
finished the work which You have given Me to do.' How would you like to be
able to say, 'I have finished the work'? Imagine being able to say that to
the Father at the end of your days. Jesus did! (Amazing!!) In this, He is a
model to us of what faithfulness is to look like. So, that means that doing
this is possible for us, which also means that doing this is expected of us.
We don't always need something written out as a command like, 'Watch how you
use your time', for it to be required of us. We are called to imitate Jesus.
His life is a picture of obedience to the Law of God. He is the model we are
to follow.

But, how did He do it? How can you do it? My assumption here is that you can
do what Jesus did. You may not arrive at that by tomorrow, but you can
change – or better, be changed – so that, to start with, you will be able to
say at the end of a day, 'Father, I finished the work which You have given
me to do today', and then grow from there. It is something that you can do,
and it is something that you need to do. But, again, how? How can you do
this? How can you make the hard decisions about the use of your time? The
answer is in the text. Listen again to the first part. 'I have glorified You
on the earth.' One key to this is bound up with the simple, yet profound
fact that, 'You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So
glorify God in your body.' [1 Corinthians 6:19-20] Your time is not your own
because your life is not your own. The goal of the use of your time is to
glorify God. Now, that is an important place to start and yet, it's not
sufficiently helpful. It's too vague. What exactly would that look like in
your life? So, it's back to the text. Listen again to this part of verse 4.
'I have finished the work which You have given Me to do.' This is more
helpful because it is more specific. The goal is to finish the work the
Father has given to you. That has something to say in general terms.
Consider the brothers James and John. They were both called to be apostles.
In this, they were given work to pursue and finish, things like proclaiming
the Gospel and starting churches. That calling applied to them equally. And
yet, there were important differences in what God had called each to do. We
know that because James was martyred early on while John lived to be an old
man. The call of God as it related to their apostleship was similar yet
different. So, for example, some of you have been called to mothers. There
is much in that general call of God that you mothers have common. Yet, there
are obvious differences between one mother and another. The specific work
that God gives to the one will be different from the work that He gives the
other. Let's take this one more step. God has called each of you to some
rather specific things. But life changes. And God's call to you changes as
your life changes. What this means is that God's call for you is a moving
target. Back to you mothers. That role in your life will change over time.
It's one thing to be Mom to a bunch of toddlers and quite another to be Mom
to your adult children raising their own toddlers. A change in employment
will mean lots of other changes. As you get older, health issues may well
become a bigger factor than when you were younger. Discerning God's call for
your life is not a once for all thing. In fact, it really is a day to day
thing since even each day is different.

I'm going to guess that some of you are thinking, 'Asking the question,
"What is God calling me to do?", is something that takes time. I don't have
time for such things!' Back to our text! When I read, 'the work that You
have given Me to do', most of you probably thought about a 'to do' list. You
figured that Jesus was talking about the things that He needed to do from
day to day; His 'to do' list. In thinking this way, you miss the more
important part of the work that the Father gave Jesus. You neglect what the
Father called Jesus to be. You do this by focusing so much on what the
Father called Him to do. Jesus did much while He was here. There were
miracles, healings, teaching and, of course, His death. But all that Jesus
did happened in the way that it did because of who Jesus was. Behind all the
doing was Jesus' passion for His Father, His love of the people, His desire
for justice and His willingness to suffer. The foundation for what Jesus did
was who He was. Take away that foundation and what have you got? Nothing!
This sort of thing runs through all the exhortations of the New Testament
letters. Who you are is the necessary foundation for the things you are to
do. So, part of God's call, part of the work that He has given to you, is
that you become a certain kind of person. You need to be so that you can do.
So, you need to invest the time to discern who it is that God has called you
to be. Neglect this and you will never be able to come anywhere close to
finishing even just the 'to do' part of His call. This will be difficult,
but it is necessary.

So, how are you doing with all of this? How are you doing at finishing the
work that God has given to you? I offer a whimsical test. Many of you will
need to adjust it, but I thing that it's still a helpful test. It's a test
of one question. Remember it is supposed to be a bit whimsical. Do you make
your bed each day? I know that it's an odd sort of question and many of you
will need to adjust it, but there is something important here to ponder. I
think that I can say that most of you would like to step into your bedroom
and find it neat and orderly, a place of peacefulness. [Again, make the
adjustments.] So, you would really like it if you had the habit of making
your bed every day. But you don't. (You teens are exempt from this test. I
know that you don't really care what your room looks like as long as you can
find your IPOD and some clean underwear. I was that way too, way back when.
Except for the IPOD, of course.) But for the rest of you, whether it's the
bed or something else, you would like a bit more orderliness in certain
areas of your life. But it's not there. Why? 'I'm just too busy. There is
simply too much to do. You have no idea of what I need to get done in your
average day.' Now, think with me. You've read enough of the Gospels to know
that what I am about to say is clearly true. You never see Jesus rushing
about. Never. You see lots of different emotional states in Him. You see
love, anger, tears, even frustration, but you never see Jesus frazzled
because there was 'just too much to do'. And He had lots to do. So, to put
it in terms of my rather whimsical question, Jesus would have made His bed –
every day. He looked at each and every day very differently from what we do.
And that's why He was able to say, 'I finished...' We have a ways to go, but
real progress can be made.

So, what should you do in light of all of this. I think that I can say that
at least most of you need to start by repenting. Does that sound too
strong? Think about last week. Can you honestly say to God, 'I finished the
work You gave me to do'? This past week the Father gave you some specific
'work' to finish; some things to do and most certainly also some things to
be. Did you finish that work? Remember how I said that Jesus models for us
what obedience to the Law of God looks like. He modeled how to invest your
time and energy. Am I wrong in saying that you failed to follow His lead
this past week? Being wise in the use of your time is not a matter of
efficiency. It is a matter of holiness.

But [and how precious this is!!] there is good news for sinners. Jesus has
come. God, the Son, was born to a lowly young woman. And He has come not
only to model what faithful living looks like. He also has come to provide
forgiveness for your failures to imitate Him. So, repent. Repent of your
sin. Repent and believe the Gospel. If you do, you will be saved. There will
be forgiveness. Rejoice! Isn't that supposed to be at the heart of our
celebration of His Advent? Joy to the world! The Lord has come.

But that isn't the end. Having been forgiven, now act upon your repentance.
Live as faithful disciples of Jesus in this area of using your time. It may
require some large changes. There may be some assumptions that you will need
to examine and reject. Are you often frazzled? Is the schedule just to
complicated at times? Is your unmade bed a symbol of more profound problems?
On top of that, is your focus on doing obliterating God's call to be? And
finally, what lessons are you teaching your children as you model before
them your unwise choices?

Let me offer one concrete suggestion; a place to start. And this also comes
from Jesus' life as a model for us. Jesus prayed. I find that amazing.
Here's one place that stands out to me. 'And rising very early in the
morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate
place, and there he prayed.' [Mark 1:35] This stands out because it comes
right before a surprising decision about how He would invest Himself and His
time. You each and all need to have a time for a little Bible reading and a
bit of prayer. And I would think that one part of those daily prayers would
be asking the Father to show you how to pursue and finish the work He gives
you for that day. It makes no sense to me to omit this. Jesus prayed! How
much more do we need to? As you strive here you will see the Spirit do His
work. And, in time, you will find yourself saying at the end of a day,
'Father, I glorified you today, having finished the work that you gave me to
do.' What a joy it will be to be able to say those words.