Jan. 14, 2018 PM Service The Church A Model of Goldy Unity And Love by Pastor Josh Sheldon

John 17 and the High Priestly Prayer for the Church

When we come to a close in this short series we have done in the Lord's Discourse with the disciples on his final evening in John chapter 15 through 17. As of this afternoon we will attend to verses 20 through 26 and Jesus continues his prayer, his high priestly prayer which began at the beginning of this chapter and here it closes with these words.

I do not ask for these only but also for those who will believe in me through their word that they may be that 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.

The glory that you have given me I have given to them that they may be one even as we are one I in them and you in me that they may become perfectly one so the world may know that you sent me and love them even as you loved me.

Father 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. Oh righteous father even though the world does not know you I know you and these know that you have sent me.

I made known to them your name and I will continue to make it known that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them. You know almost any organization you can think of ultimately bears to some extent in some places more in some places less but to some extent it bears the imprint or the imprimatur as we might say of its leader.

That's true of nations, that's true of corporations, that's true of sports teams, that's true of families even churches led by godly men who would present to you none but Jesus Christ that church does to some extent take on the character and the personality of its leaders.

So even as we acknowledge this as a human dynamic when we read passages like Romans 12 and others, when we read Christ's prayer for us here in John 17 there's this overarching trait that must permeate everything.

If an organization is going to reflect to some extent its leader then here we have in the church the same idea but how much greater because of the greatness of our leader. The church, the church that bears Jesus' name must also bear his character to a large extent that's simply what we went through this morning in Romans 12 in the end of that chapter when we talk about not giving evil for evil, holding back our desire for vengeance, letting God avenge, he says vengeance is mine, I will repay, why?

Because that reflects the character of our leader because that's Christ-like and this place more than a nation, more than a corporation or a sports team must bear that imprint, the imprint of his character because we're not a nation, we're not a corporation, we're not a sports team, we are the people of God gathered together in the kingdom of God as fellow believers, united by the blood of God the Son who shed his blood for us.

How much more must we bear that imprint? How much more than a nation or a sports team or a corporation or anything else you can think of, any other gathering of people, how much more must we who bear the name of Jesus Christ bear also his character?

There are two qualities that the Lord prays that the church would have and both of these would then be that character of God himself. One of them is unity and the second character is derived from that first one, the second character we must have derives from the unity, Jesus prays that we might have love for one another, love for one another.

Both of these, this unity and this love are set before us and they're set as the highest and purest standards that is possible for us. If you think of the most unified and loving couple that you ever knew, the bar is set too low.

If we bent our minds to all the literature man has ever produced and found there the most perfectly loving and unified couple ever imagined and ever set to paper and ink by the best authors man has ever produced, the bar is still far too low.

It is being compared to what Jesus prays for here for the church because if we are as unified and loving as all those other things I mentioned, we are so far subpar as to be something of an amoeba trying to be a nuclear physicist because the unity and the love that Christ prays for the church to have is the unity and the love of the Godhead himself.

It's the unity amongst the Father, Son, and Spirit, here especially the Father and the Son together, but the Spirit as we know earlier from this long discourse that Jesus gave is not at all excluded. It's the love within the Godhead that Jesus prays for here.

And what unity does he pray for? Just that we all get along? That we all like each other? Well I do hope we get along and I do hope we like each other, but he's speaking here of the kind of love that the Father has for the Son and the Son for the Father.

That's the standard. This is the metric. People want to know what is the metric. That's kind of a modern way of asking the question. The metric is in verse 21 that they, and who is they? It's the church.

Who are they? Jesus started out and said, I do not ask for these only, these being the disciples, not just these eleven, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. What is their word?

Their word is the apostolic proclamation of the death and the burial and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, his death for sinners. This scripture is the apostolic word. They may be one as you, Father, are in me and I in you.

The church. At the start of this portion it's clear Jesus is asking these things for all who believe this word. He's speaking throughout all history. You and me. Everyone who came to faith by the hearing of the apostolic testimony, either by the hearing from their mouths 2 ,000 years ago, or the written record that we have today by which many of us can give testimony, we were converted by this apostolic word.

That's who Jesus is praying for here. He says it again at the end of the verse, that they also may be in us. And again in verse 22, that they may be one even as we are one. And it's almost as if he expects us to be dull of hearing because he says it again, that they may become perfectly one.

The love we are to have for one another is in verse 26, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them. And by these qualities, the world, those outside peering in, those who might see the light on the hill, as in Matthew chapter 5, might see our good works and give glory to our Father who is in heaven.

That sort of world looking in, how many times has the Lord repeated that this testimony of our unity and our love is for the purpose that the world may know that you sent me. This comes back to us just showing forth the character of Jesus Christ.

If we as a church don't, as best as we're able in our fallen state, but as best as we're able, with all of our being, try to reflect Jesus Christ as individuals and together as a body, then would that not then imply that God had not sent his son, that God didn't send Jesus Christ to declare the salvation of God, that God didn't send Jesus Christ to die for sins and through the apostles to found the church?

It would. It would be a dreadful thing. Three times here, Jesus says, so that the world may know that you sent me. That's the purpose for this. If we wonder what that actually looks like, I think we've been talking about that in the morning going through the book of Romans in chapter 12 there where the apostle leads the church to this mutual and unhypocritical love, to this mutual rejoicing and weeping and more.

Now, of course, God the Spirit doesn't have to be warned to have unhypocritical love for God the Father or anything like that. We're the same by analogy. We'd never be perfectly like God, of course, but that is where the standard is.

That's where the bar is set. It's that high. Do you want to know what we are to be about if we're to be about our master's business? Remember in the parable, Jesus says, Blessed is he whom the Lord finds so doing.

Speaking of his return, and blessed is the one he finds, this master, this Jesus when he is sent back by God, blessed is the one who he finds doing the will of his Father. What are we to be about? It's here.

It's in other places, but it is here. We are to be one as the Father and Son are one. He ups the ante in a manner of speaking. In verse 23, when he says that he gave us his glory so that we might become perfectly one.

Think of the responsibility this gives us as a body, as those Jesus Christ is explicitly praying for here. He's saying he's given us his glory, that the glory of God, the Shekinah glory, the one that chased the priests out of the temple and the tabernacle when it fell on those places before the worship began.

That glory is here amongst us. And what does this mean to us in the practical day-to-day existence of ourselves as believers and as a church? But that that glory should be seen, that glory should be acknowledged, even by someone who doesn't believe in God at all, much less Jesus Christ and his cross and his suffering on our behalf.

It reminds me of Paul when he says the unbeliever would come in and see your worship and see people repenting and see God being held up high and glorified. And of course I'm paraphrasing that whole argument he makes, but what does he say they will do?

They will say, surely God is among this people by seeing our unity, by seeing our love, by seeing Christ's glory exemplified in what we do. Our humility before him and with each other, our unity together, our love for each other.

That's the imprimatur of Jesus Christ himself. That is us reflecting back to God the Godhead, reflecting back to the world just the way God relates within himself. One God in three persons, Father, Son, Spirit, eternally loving and unified with each other.

It sort of reminds me of Adam being given stewardship over the world. Told him go forth and subdue it. Go forth and multiply. Be plentiful. Take care of this garden, this creation I've given you. And Jesus Christ here three times says that it is the world that is to see this testimony.

The world knows that Jesus Christ was sent by God the Father by the way we reflect him here. It's a stewardship. I feel like it's God as he told Adam take care of this world, take care of this temple I've made for you because Eden was a temple.

That's where God met with man and he's told us the same. Here's one way we can take care of the world. Do you want to know how we can improve things out there? The impact that we can have in them is this, mutual unity and love that reflects the unity and love of God himself.

Now this ought not to surprise us. I mean Jesus Christ is, he must always be our example. If we don't carry his character then we are as defective as a church, if a church at all. Peter wrote, for to this you've been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you might follow in his steps.

Christ is always the example for us. The apostle had in mind our patience when we suffer for Christ's sake. We follow his ways, we reflect his character. If we apply John 17 to what Peter says about this patient suffering, the way Jesus suffered, is that not just showing forth the glory of Christ, that he really did come, that God the Father truly sent him and we follow him, we follow his ways, reflect his character?

No, Christ is always the example. Not just here where it's the unity and love of the Godhead is to be our unity of love for the world looking in saying God did send Jesus if these people act this way.

In marriages, who must we find? Jesus. Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Philippians chapter 2 verse 5 says to all of us, have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus and he goes on to describe how Christ's faithfulness to God was flavored by his humility.

And so God exalted him when he raised him on high, when he brought him back, sat him at the right hand, gave him the name which is above all names. Paul says explicitly to the church, reflect this character.

How's the world going to know that God the Father sent God the Son? Because there is a people that have the mind of Christ for each other. Because there's a people that reflect the Father, Son, and spiritual relationship amongst each other in love and unity.

What does this look like? What must this unity look like? I mean just in America the diversity of churches is enough to make your head spin. I mean there are Baptists in conventions like the Southern Baptists.

There are Baptists who are independent like Providence Bible Church in Sunnyvale. There are Presbyterians of the PCUSA and the PCA and the OPC stripes. There are Catholics, there are Methodists, there are Episcopalians.

We have Pentecostals, we have Charismatics. Some say the Lord will return when we get things right. Others say things are only going to get worse. Some say the millennium is a church age from Pentecost to whenever the Lord will return.

Others say it's sure to start when he returns. It'll be a thousand years to the day. Where does the law stand in the life of the church? The Old Testament law in the life of the church today. Ask seven pastors, you're going to get three dozen answers.

How can there possibly be unity in the face of such an array of beliefs? Wine or grape juice at the table? Are women allowed to stand with any semblance of authority over men in the corporate worship?

Or was that just a cultural problem with restriction meant only for them in that time? What unity is there? Are we just hopelessly out of step with Jesus' prayer? Well, it doesn't seem that Jesus has in mind a single monolithic church after the style of a medieval church.

Paul was never slow with needed rebuke, and he criticized exactly zero churches for not believing in just the same way as another church. He taught one thing, he taught one gospel, he taught one Savior, Jesus, and he corrected all manner of misguided doctrines and practices.

But lockstep conformity wasn't there. Nor in the letters to the seven churches in Revelation 2 and 3. Is there anything that would standardize all that? So where is this love and unity to be found? It was to be found in the local discreet assembly.

It's to be found here in this place. Our dear friends and brothers and sisters in Fremont at Grace Baptist Church is to be found there. It's to be found in the voluntary connection between churches like these two that I just mentioned, and there are others with whom we're associated because we have the same set of core beliefs, the same way of viewing the salvation that we have in Jesus Christ.

But primarily, this unity, this love, this imprimatur of the Lord Jesus Christ that proves that God the Father actually did send his Son and he did something is to be here amongst us. What we do flows from who we are, and who we are as disciples of Jesus Christ.

Matthew 10 verse 24, Jesus said, A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher and the servant like his master. Is that not just what he's praying for in John 17?

That we be like him? Think of how high the standard is. A purity and a constancy of love so that I love any one of you and you love anyone sitting next to you and all the brothers and sisters who are truly in the Lord the way God the Father loves God the Son, the way the Son loves the Father.

What kind of unity are we speaking of here? Father, Son, Spirit, the eternal and one true living God eternally existent in three persons. That unity, again, I always fall back on it because I think it's the clearest place that speaks of the triune God and the different functions that each person has and yet all together are one undivided God where God the Father selects the people.

He chooses the people before the foundation of the world to be in his Son Jesus Christ who will redeem that people. This truth applied to your heart by God the Holy Spirit. This is what we're to reflect.

This is the imprimatur. This is the image. This is how people know that God sent his Son. If you look through Kings and Chronicles before each king, I'm not thinking of the kings of Israel in the northern kingdom, in the south, in the kingdom of Judah.

Before each king's deeds are recounted we are told whether he was a good or an evil king. And how is that assessment made? If he followed in the ways of his father David, he was good. And of course not father, it's grandfather David, great-grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-great-grandfather and it goes on and on and on so by the time you get to Uzziah or Hezekiah centuries after David, they still say because he walked in the ways of his father David.

He reflected him. That imprimatur was upon him. People could look at a Hezekiah or a Josiah or an Asa and say there really was a King David because this one is like him. It's no different for us. There really was a Jesus because this people is like him.

God really did send him to die for your sins because this people is like him. May not like Jesus, I would say most people out there don't. But an honest reading of the scripture and an objective look at even a place like this with all the improvements we still need to make, we always have to be reforming, we say well this people seems to really believe this.

This people reflects what an objective reading of the scripture would say Jesus was like. That's what he's talking about here in the Kings and Chronicles. Some of the kings before you hear their misdeeds have said that he was an evil king, he did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord as had his father David.

Again, it's exactly that same idea. We carry the image of our Lord and Savior, our King Jesus. We can apply this to ourselves in light of Jesus' prayer to do what is right as our Lord Jesus Christ had done.

What he prays for is our mutual love and unity and it's a love and unity he has always had with his father. There's unity in that Godhead, there's unity of purpose, there's unity of nature between the father, son, and spirit.

There's unity between Christ and all of his followers. John 14, 23 says, if anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words and the word that you hear is not mine but the father's who sent me.

These things I've spoken to you that while I'm still with you, excuse me, these things I've spoken to you while I'm still with you, but the helper, the Holy Spirit whom the father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.

Where's our unity found? It's found in the person, the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Where's our love found? It's the love of God that's been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given. How can anyone look in and see that we are that people in whom that love has been poured by God the father through his Holy Spirit?

Exactly what Jesus prays for here. He prays for us to have that godly love for that godly unity reflected and characterized by God himself within the Godhead. The bar is that high. It's both encouraging and convicting.

It's convicting because of course we will never meet this standard. That's impossible. When we see Christ in glory, we will not meet this standard. None but God is God. It's encouraging because Christ doesn't put this out here and then put some parenthetical excursus to say but you lousy sinners will never be able to do that.

And I know you're not going to try hard enough at it. I'm just throwing this out there to keep you constantly covering your head with your hands and hoping you don't get smited with lightning by God for all you see.

That's not the way he puts this forth. He puts this forth as a characterization that we must have of him proving that God the Father did send him. He puts this forth also as a work amongst ourselves that he by his Holy Spirit makes possible.

He will send us to help her to remind us of all things that he commanded. Not just here. He promises that at the end of the book of Matthew. He will send his spirit. And then the spirit in the book of Acts did come and stayed with the apostles.

And that same spirit is amongst us making possible our obedience to this. Making us able to have an otherworldly love for one another. Unity with each other. As we gather together around the one gospel worshiping the one true God who accomplished the one salvation and redemption that brought us to Christ.

That's where all this is found. In his person. In Christ's person. In his work. We're churched together because of him and because we as a body carry the one understanding of scriptures that we have. The nature of God.

What it means that God is one. God in three persons. All these things that unify us together. We take the London Confession of Faith as our statement of faith because we together unified agree not that it's over scripture but that it rightly expounds to us the scriptures.

And more important. We have unity because this is what Jesus prays for to the Father for us to have. And then not leaving us just to our own devices as he promised in John 15. He sent his Holy Spirit to make these things possible.

As we come together as a body I think it's good to always remember this. That each time we come together this way all of us several and individually are to be this person. This group. This body. This organization.

I remember when I was at PG &E I think the CEO changed at least six times. And every time the company would change a bit. His personality would somehow permeate and go through. What he was concerned about.

Maybe he was more concerned with safety. Maybe with efficiency. Maybe the finances got better. Whatever that particular emphasis was became sort of part of the tone and tenor the culture of the company.

I'm sure we had those kind of experiences in many organizations that we've belonged to. And I ask again how much more Christ's church not a company so much more important than a company or a corporation a nation or a club the church of Christ in all that we do and most especially in this reflection of the Godhead's love and unity for one another reflected amongst ourselves as proof that yes we bear this character because God the Father truly did send God the Son.

I'll close with that and we will move on to the Lord's table in a moment. Let me pray and then before the table sing number 177 beneath the cross of Jesus if you prepare for that. Heavenly Father we do come before you as Christ's people and bearing his character bearing his imprint Father I pray that you would make possible this love and unity amongst ourselves in a way that brings honor to your name in a way that proves to anyone who looks that you Father truly did send your Son and he truly did save a people for himself as predestined by you.

And Lord for all these things we give you thanks and give you all the glory in Christ's name. Amen.