Who Knows?
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Who Knows?

 (ID: 3710)

What is it that keeps people from knowing God? As created beings bearing the divine imprint, we are made for a relationship with God—yet because of our sin, we choose to live without reference to Him, finding our identity and security in other things. In this message on John 17, Alistair Begg examines the prayerful words of Jesus in verse 25 and their encouragement for the believer. Although the world does not know the Father, Jesus does, and through Him, we are graciously invited to meet God as Creator, Sustainer, Savior, and King.

Series Containing This Sermon

The High Priestly Prayer

A Study in John 17 John 17:1–26 Series ID: 14302


Sermon Transcript: Print

Now I invite you to turn to John chapter 17.

And as you find your place, let me pray:

O Lord, open our eyes that we may behold wonderful things in your law.[1] For Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Now, having slowed our pace of study in John 17 to a snail’s pace, we turn our attention to the John 17:25, which reads as follows: “O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me.”

We have now for some considerable time been dealing with the mystery of the Trinity—that there are in God three persons: the one true and living God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the same in substance and equal in power and in glory. And we have been brought into the peculiar position of being able, as we read the Bible, to listen in, along with Jesus’ original disciples, to the cry of the Son of God to the Father on behalf of his own. And we’ve been discovering that not only is he interested in those who were in the immediate hearing of his prayer but that he was also praying for those who would become the followers of Jesus as a result of the proclamation that would come from the lips of those who were present as he prayed.

And so, as that word goes out to the ends to the earth—and it does today—the message of the gospel is made plain and clear. It’s not immediately absorbed by people, as we’re going to see this morning. But we need to make sure that we understand that God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—created us, male and female, in his image[2] in order that we might know God, love God, trust God, obey God, and glorify him as God.

Last time, we made a brief journey back into the early chapters of the Bible, into Genesis. And I want to make sure that we’re clear about this: that God set Adam and Eve in the beauty and in the perfection of this garden. And the trouble happened very quickly, because they rebelled against God. They essentially decided that they would rather please themselves than please him—that he had set up a test for them (a test of their heart and of their will), said, “You can enjoy absolutely everything except one thing.”[3] God gave them the opportunity to make it clear that they would obey him not because they thought it was a good idea but because they wanted to trust him as God himself.

And so, made to trust and to love and to obey him, they stopped trusting him. And when they stopped trusting him, then they stopped loving him, and they stopped obeying him. And as a result of that, chaos ensued. And we bear the evidences of that all around us. No longer were Adam and Eve the friends of God. They became his enemies. They were banished from the garden. Their sin needs to be punished. And so sin, deserving to be punished, has to be addressed by God, because he is righteous.

And so it is that the response of men and women today towards God, the Bible says, is not the response of neutrality but actually of hostility—that we are by nature at enmity with God. And so, just as Adam and Eve were banished from the garden, so we do not live in the presence and immediacy of God. We are not enjoying that. He is the Father of the Lord Jesus; he is the holy God, as we saw earlier in John 17; and he is the righteous God, as we see here in verse 25.

So the circumstances of our world, which you won’t get from the average class in sociology in a college… But the Bible is very, very clear: that as a result of sin entering into the world, communion with God was broken. Communion not only with God was broken, but it was broken between man and woman, husband and wife, brothers—Cain and Abel. Cain kills his brother Abel. Not only is there a brokenness at the level of divinity and humanity but also at the level of creation, because the fall disrupts nature and harms all the relationships within nature.

It’s entirely understandable that people are phenomenally concerned about the natural world in which we live. Because without understanding the explanation of Genesis, they recognize their concerns. It wasn’t God’s intention that there would be pain in childbirth. That’s a result of the fall. It wasn’t his intention that there would be thorns and thistles. That’s as a result of the fall. It wasn’t intended that when you went to work, you would break your back. That was as a result of the fall. Our friend Poythress says, the struggles in this world, including the curse of death, hang over human life. They are a reminder to us that all is not right with the world.

Now, it is in that context that we understand verse 25. We’re made for a relationship with God; we choose to live without reference to God; and in seeking to be the captain of our own souls, the masters of our own identities, we deprive ourselves of the perfect plan of God, and we seek to find our identity and our security in other things. And so, verse 25: “O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you…”

Now, I want to call this study this morning “Who Knows?” “Who Knows?” First of all, Jesus says, “The world doesn’t know you.” Secondly, he says, “I know you.” And thirdly, he says, “And these guys, they know that you have sent me.” So that’s the sort of framework of our thinking as we try and come to terms with it.

“The World Does Not Know You”

“Righteous Father,” number one, “the world does not know you.”

Now, when we studied in Romans chapter 1, which some of you will recall, we saw that the unbelief on the part of men and women is not on account of a lack of evidence. We won’t turn to it now, but you can make a note of it if you choose to. In Romans chapter 1, you’ll remember that Paul makes it clear that both by creation and by conscience, humanity has no excuse for choosing to live without reference to God. And yet, as we saw again in Romans 1, claiming to be wise, we became fools who would exchange a glory—the glory of the immortal God—for things that creep and crawl and fly.[4] In other words, we would start to worship the gifts or the provisions that God has made rather than worship God himself.

And it’s interesting—and I think we should make note of it—that it does actually say that it is behind a facade of wisdom. If you listen carefully to the news on a daily basis, if you read any kind of magazines or literature, you realize how much great store is laid in our world, in our culture… “Well, Miss So-and-So said this, and she is very clever. Mr. X, the professor from such and such, is very, very clever, and we ought to make sure that we pay very careful attention, because after all…” Well, I’m sure they are very, very clever—clever fools, some of them; intellectual fools, behind a facade of wisdom, setting aside the reality of God, who has made us, and trusting in other things.

Both by creation and by conscience, humanity has no excuse for choosing to live without reference to God.

Now, I want to suggest that we can be helped in this by turning elsewhere, and this time into the Old Testament and into Jeremiah and to chapter 9. Jeremiah chapter 9. If you’re able to turn to it, I want you to see just a couple of verses that are there. When mankind gives itself over to foolish speculation, when men and women are blinded by our pride and by our prejudice, this is how we live: We live in a blinkered state of self-denial, denying that God has any claim upon us at all—living in denial of the fact that the God who made us made us for himself that we might know him, love him, trust him and so on. And so we blinker ourselves from that reality, and we seek to fill the vacuum with other things.

Now, we should actually—at this point in the twenty-first century, as we seek to find and create our own meaning—we should actually be embarrassed by our lack of originality: that we haven’t really gone very far forward at all. As soon as men and women deny God, they tend to go to the exact same things.

Now, the background in Jeremiah chapter 9 is death and disaster. I’ll leave you to follow up on that. The background in Jeremiah 9 is a world that was broken. And in that broken world, Jeremiah is addressing the way in which they seek to find significance and security. And God sends Jeremiah to the people in that day to point out to them that their attempts are futile. He sends a prophet. The prophet speaks with sympathy for the circumstances that they face, and yet, at the same time, he provides a solution for their sins.

In each of the areas that he addresses, it’s important to say that he is not negating the value of these things, but he is making it clear that these things can never be an end in themselves. What are these things?

Number one: wisdom. “Thus says the Lord: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom.’”[5] Well, is God not the all-wise God? Yes. So what’s the problem? Well, it is a substitute. Remember Ecclesiastes: “For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.”[6] Einstein said, “I have discovered that the men that know the most are usually the most gloomy.”[7] I often say to my friends—and I’ve told you this before—I’ve got very many clever friends, and I tell them, “I feel so bad for you.” They say, “Well, why?” I say, “Well, you’re so clever. You’ve got so many things to worry about! If you were like me, you can reduce the worry level significantly. I don’t know enough to worry about all that stuff.”

“Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom,” or the gym geek in his strength. “As for man, his days are like grass, the glory of man like the flower of the field. The grass withers; the flower falls.”[8] And yet we’ve got a multi-billion-dollar industry that sends you tweets and posts and everything every single day of your life through every newspaper and everything telling you, “You can beat this. Mr. Bezos, he’s at the front of beating this. You’re going to be able to live forever if you just do this and do this and do this, if you just become strong.” Well, go to CVS, and just walk up and down the aisles, and look at either what you need or what you’re going to need. “Don’t be crazy,” says the prophet.

Wisdom, strength, money. Money: “[or] the rich man … in his riches.” It’s been well said that money is the universal provider of everything except happiness, and it’s the universal passport to everywhere except heaven.

Spending counterfeit incentive,
Wasting precious time and health,
Placing value on the worthless,
Disregarding priceless wealth.[9]

“Don’t be crazy,” says the prophet.

What runs all the way through the Bible, speaking into the lives of those who do not know God, is the invitation to meet God as he has made himself known as the Creator, the Sustainer, the Savior, and the King.

Now, what is he doing? Well, he’s simply warning those who do not know God. Because remember: “Righteous Father, … the world does not know you.” So the prophet says to those who do not know God, “Don’t think for a moment that you can make sense of your life or find significance in it by means of an agile mind, a healthy body, and a fat portfolio.” There you have it. There’s the dream: agile mind, healthy body, fat portfolio. “As long as you have your health, that’s all that matters.” No, no.

What then? Well, what does he say is the answer? He says, “You shouldn’t be boasting in these things. Let the one who boasts, if he wants something to boast about, boast about this: that he understands and he knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness.”[10] In other words, what runs all the way through the Bible, speaking into the lives of those who do not know God, is the invitation to meet God as he has made himself known as the Creator, the Sustainer, the Savior, and the King.

Now, you can go back to John chapter 17 and actually pick it up there at the third verse, where we saw earlier, “This is eternal life, that they know you.” “That they know you.” “That they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”

Who knows? “The world does not know you.”

“I Know You”

Who knows? Secondly, Jesus says, “I know you.” “I know you.”

Now, we can sit and think about that for a long time, because this is such a mystery, isn’t it? This mutual, reciprocal awareness within the Trinity—that before the world is ever created, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit live in devotion and in love for one another. And out of that relationship the creation of the world comes; the solution to the predicament of man that doesn’t know God comes. And here the Son of God, in the presence of his own disciples, says, “You know, righteous Father, I know. We know the world does not know you, but I know you. I know you because of the love with which you have loved me before the foundation of the world.”[11] That’s verse 24.

This runs all the way through the Bible—Jesus in that wonderful passage where he says, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd [gives] his life for the sheep.”[12] It’s in John chapter 10. And it is in that context that he says, “[And I’m telling you this:] just as the Father knows me and I know the Father.”[13] This is a divine mystery, isn’t it? I mean, this is phenomenal. “All things have been handed over to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”[14]

Now, listen carefully: We cannot access God on our own time and in our own way. We cannot know God by our own striving. We cannot come to know God by investigation (although investigation will be rewarded), only by revelation: that what God has done in creation and what he has done in Christ is the invitation to men and women to ponder these things.

I didn’t see all of the inauguration, and so I don’t want to speak out of turn, but the parts that I did see—and particularly when under the heading of prayer there were a number of speeches made. And so, “Now Mr. So-and-So’s going to pray,” then we had a speech, and then another speech, and another speech. I don’t know if I’m right or wrong—you can go check this—but for me and what I heard, there was a big absence of Jesus. A big absence of Jesus. There was a lot of “Almighty God.” There was a lot of “great God, Almighty God,” and so on. But where is Jesus? “Well, we can bypass Jesus and go straight to God.” No, you can’t! He’s the only one who knows him in that way! “The world does not know him. They’ve got ideas about divinity. They don’t know him. But I know him.” That’s what Jesus says. “And I am the one who makes him known to others.”

Who knows? “The world does[n’t] know you.” Who knows? “I know you.”

“These Know That You’ve Have Sent Me”

Who knows? “These know that you have sent me.” “These know that you have sent me.”

You see, the knowledge of the disciples—which we have recorded for us in the Gospels and in some cases in the letters—the knowledge of the disciples is directly related to the incarnation. They don’t know God in a vacuum. They know God because they have seen God. They have met God. That’s why when John writes in his first letter, he [ends] his first letter—I mean his Gospel. He says, “There’s all these things that I’ve written. There could be much more. I’ve written in order that you might believe that Jesus is who he says he is and that by believing you might have life in his name.”[15] When he begins his first letter—you can check this—he actually begins by saying, “We have heard with our ears, we have seen with our eyes, we have handled and we have touched the very things that we are writing to you about.”[16] That is exactly the case. That’s why the person who is thinking about these things, who’s investigating these things, has to be prepared to wrestle with direct statements concerning this. Either this is the most amazing fabrication, or we are dealing in the realm of truth.

Now, since your Bible is open, some of you, you can look, for example, back just at chapter 16, where this comes across. Jesus says, “These fellows that are with me right now and those who will become followers along with them in due course—including people at Parkside Church in northeastern Ohio—here’s the deal.” This is 16:26: “In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me”—now, notice—“and have believed that I came from God. I came from the Father and have come into the world, … now I[’m] leaving the world and [I’m] going to the Father.” And his disciples said, “[Oh], now you[’re] speaking plainly and not using figurative speech!” Listen: “Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you; this is why we believe that you came from God.”

You see, if you are a genuine, trusting, believing Christian today, at the heart of all of this is the reality of a knowledge of God that has been entrusted to us. And, you know, for these disciples to make these statements, it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t as if they’re like, “Oh, yeah, that’s straightforward.” In fact, when we read the Gospels, we realize that they were having a really hard time figuring it all out. But as they begin to declare their trust and allegiance, they stand out against the people in whose company they’re spending time.

Remember in the conversation with the Jewish people, Jesus is speaking. They say to Jesus—this is John 8:53—“Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died? And the prophets died!” Listen to this: “Who do you make yourself out to be?” You see what they’re saying to Jesus? “Who do you think you are?” Was the rabbi’s prayer heard by God? Only mediated through Jesus. Only through the Messiah. Only through God’s revelation of himself, finally and savingly, in the person of Jesus. “Who are you making yourself out to be?”

Jesus says, “[Well, let me say this:] If I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’” “He’s our God.” This is Jesus:

“But you have not known him. I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and I keep his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced [to] see my day. He saw it and was glad.”

So the Jews said to him, “You[’re] not yet fifty years old, and … you[’ve] seen Abraham?” [And] Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.”

And they said, “That’s enough of that,” and “they picked up stones to throw at him,” and “Jesus hid himself” from them “and went out [from] the temple.”

“You do not believe me.” John chapter 5; we could go to many places. “You do not believe me, for you do not believe the one he has sent.”[17]

Who knows? The world doesn’t know God. Who knows? Jesus says, “I know.” Who knows? Jesus says, “Those that I have revealed myself to, they know.”

Now, when Paul, who was devoutly religious, thinking he knew God, finally met God in the person of Jesus, when he then writes out of the fullness of a discovery of the true and living God, he acknowledges—this is what he writes—“The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they[’re] folly to him, and he[’s] not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.”[18] That’s what we were singing about: “Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide thee, though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see…”[19] That’s reality.

There is no saving knowledge of God outside of the person of Jesus. It is impossible to know Jesus and not know the Father, and it is impossible to know the Father except through Christ, the Mediator. That’s how John began his Gospel, remember: “In him was life, and [that] life was the light of men.”[20] What has happened is that the torches of the lives of the disciples have been lit from one torch, from he who is the Light of the World.

You know when you light things—whatever it is, those sparklers or whatever—you get one of them going and then everybody, all the children hold their things up to that one thing, and then it finally goes [imitates sparkler sound], and then it’s all there. But it’s all come from one source. The Father says, “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him. He is the Light of the World. Don’t walk in darkness. Don’t fill yourself up with bright ideas about significance apart from me. I am the living God. You must come. Come!”

It is impossible to know Jesus and not know the Father, and it is impossible to know the Father except through Christ, the Mediator.

Well, “Because I tell [you] the truth,” says Jesus, “you do[n’t] believe me.”[21] “Righteous Father, … the world does not know you.” Why is that? What is it that keeps people from knowing God? It is unbelief. It is unbelief. We’re not kept away from God by the extent of our sinfulness, because God in Jesus has taken care of all that sinfulness. God in Jesus is offering to us a forgiveness. He’s going to drown our sins in the sea of his forgetfulness.[22] So it can’t be that that keeps us away. No, it’s pride.

You see, this message is an offense both to the moral and intellectual capacities of men and women. Morally, it confronts us with the fact that we cannot get ourselves fixed up enough to fix up our broken world and be accepted by our Creator. He must do that for us. And intellectually, it means that no matter how vast the extent of our mental faculties and capacities may be… If you remember where we read from Matthew 11: “I thank you, Father, that you have concealed these things to the intellectual, to the arrogant, and you have revealed them to children.”[23] That is the issue. It is unbelief that keeps us from God.

Let me finish by employing another Scotsman, from the nineteenth century, saying similarly to his congregation and with a greater sense of clarity than I can muster… This is what he says to his congregation:

I simply charge you, upon the authority of God, with [your] willful unbelief, this deliberate rejection of his infinite gift. It is at your peril that you attempt to excuse yourself for one [moment to continue] in your unbelief. Your doing so is but adding guilt to guilt; and you cannot really suppose it possible that there is any one to blame for your unbelief but yourself, or that there is any sufficient reason for your remaining in that state another hour.[24]

This prayer begins, “Father…” He says, “You are the holy Father.”[25] Here in 25 he says, “You are the righteous Father.” Sin must be punished. His justice demands it. The extent of his love is such that he provides in Jesus one to bear our sins in his own body on the tree[26] in order that we then—knowing, loving, trusting, following, serving, glorifying him—may be as lights in a dark place.

You know, we’re very familiar with John 3:16. We quote it all the time, and so we should, because it’s so wonderfully helpful. But I’m not sure that we actually pay attention to the verses that follow. Let me end with this and then a prayer: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” What we deserve is to perish, but the promise of eternal life… “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him”—that the people who do not know him might come to know him. “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already.” Why?

Because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment [of a righteous God]: [that] light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light, … does[n’t] come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.

Who knows? The world doesn’t know God. Jesus says, “I know. And these here with me,” he says, “and others like them, they know that you have sent me.” Do you know? Do you know?

Father, thank you for your Word. Thank you for the clarity of it. Forgive us, Lord, when we cloud the clarity with our own inventions or strange expressions. Thank you that you have loved your world so much—a world in rebellion, lives lived without reference to you, filling ourselves up with foolish dreams and silly ideas, finding no satisfaction, longing for forgiveness that we can’t produce, hoping for a future that we can’t imagine, and all the time Jesus standing before us to say, “Come to me.”[27] “Come to me.”

Lord, help us in our hearts today, wherever we are—wherever we are in the journey of our lives—to take Jesus up on this wonderful, gracious invitation. All the tawdry things that we can amass, all the things that will go in a U-Haul trailer that won’t go behind the hearse, all of that stuff is as nothing compared to the solid joys that are ours in and through the Lord Jesus Christ. And in his name we pray. Amen.


[1] See Psalm 119:18.

[2] See Genesis 1:27.

[3] Genesis 2:16–17 (paraphrased).

[4] See Romans 1:22–23.

[5] Jeremiah 9:23 (ESV).

[6] Ecclesiastes 1:18 (ESV).

[7] Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, et al., “The Russell-Einstein Manifesto,” https://pugwash.org/1955/07/09/statement-manifesto. Paraphrased.

[8] Psalm 103:15 (paraphrased).

[9] Ray Stevens, “Mr. Businessman” (1968).

[10] Jeremiah 19:23–24 (paraphrased).

[11] John 17:24 (paraphrased).

[12] John 10:11 (ESV).

[13] John 10:15 (ESV).

[14] Matthew 11:27 (ESV). See also Luke 10:22.

[15] John 20:30–31 (paraphrased).

[16] 1 John 1:1–3 (paraphrased).

[17] John 5:37–38 (paraphrased).

[18] 1 Corinthians 2:14 (ESV).

[19] Reginald Heber, “Holy, Holy, Holy” (1826).

[20] John 1:4 (ESV).

[21] John 8:45 (ESV).

[22] See Micah 7:19.

[23] Matthew 11:25 (paraphrased).

[24] Horatius Bonar, The Story of Grace (London: James Nisbet, 1853), 84.

[25] John 17:11 (paraphrased).

[26] See 1 Peter 2:24.

[27] Matthew 11:28 (ESV).

Copyright © 2025, Alistair Begg. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations for sermons preached on or after November 6, 2011 are taken from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

For sermons preached before November 6, 2011, unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® (NIV®), copyright © 1973 1978 1984 by Biblica, Inc.TM Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Alistair Begg
Alistair Begg is Senior Pastor at Parkside Church in Cleveland, Ohio, and the Bible teacher on Truth For Life, which is heard on the radio and online around the world.