FIRE Session 4: The Beauty of Christ That Unifies Us

John 17 and the Two Problems of the World

All right, our speaker for this hour is Pastor Joel from Grace Covenant in Beaver Creek. I've known Joel for about seven years. Joel was in China for about 11 years and then came back to the States and he came on board at Grace Covenant seven years ago.

And so I've known Joel for about that long and we've had a good relationship over all these years and I think it's a privilege to introduce Joel. So Joel, come and minister the word of God.

Well you had to endure a sermon while you were hungry. Now you have to endure one while you're full and tired. Very thankful for FIRE and just the great fellowship we've had. And it's been a blessing for us and encouragement to us to have brothers in arms and the faith and the work of the ministry, so thank you, all of you.

We have great affection for you. Our passage for consideration this evening is John chapter 17. Please turn there. And please keep your Bibles open to this passage. There's a lot packed into this chapter, so as I skip through it, your eyes on the text may help to fill in some of those gaps that I might leave.

Here's the word of the Lord again, John 17. When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you. Since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.

And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you.

Have sent.

I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed. I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world.

Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you, for I have given them the words that you gave me. And they have received them, and have come to know in truth that I came from you, and they have believed that you sent me.

I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world.

And I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me.

I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost, except the Son of Destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

I have given them your word. And the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, just as I am not of.

The world.

I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil.

One.

They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.

I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, 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 that the world may know that you sent me and loved me, and loved 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.

O 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 have loved me may be in them, and I in them.

The Knowledge Problem and the Love Problem

Let's pray. O Father in heaven, woe is me. I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and yet you are merciful and gracious to us. Who are we that we would attempt to utter things too wonderful for us, and yet, so we ask now for humility, that we would speak, that I would speak your words faithfully, and that all of us now would see again the beauty of Jesus Christ, and Father, we cannot do this on our own.

We can only do this through the illuminating work of your Spirit in our hearts now, and so we ask that you would be here among us, so that you are glorified. We pray this in Jesus' name. Well, we begin with the problems that this passage addresses.

Neighbors hating neighbors, marriages ending in divorce, nations going to war against nation, division increases, but the problem is deeper and more ancient than we may even realize. The first son that the world ever knew murdered his own brother, and families, churches, communities, and nations have been murderous ever since.

More brothers has meant more murder. We feel it in our own lives because we can't escape that brokenness, those hurtful divisions, and all this comes with the claim of superior knowledge. Science is worshipped.

Information is a weapon. We justify our hatred because we are sure that we know what is true. There's a pundit with all the answers behind every keyboard in the screen, and yet for supposedly increasing in our knowledge, we have not increased in our love.

More than that, have we really increased in knowledge? What is it that we think we know if the fruit of that knowledge is more hatred? The sad irony and vanity of our world is that everyone thinks that they know what all the problems are and it's everybody else's fault, and we hate each other when we can't agree.

On it.

There are two problems in the world today, among many, the two problems that John 17 addresses, a knowledge problem and a love problem. The church sometimes has these problems when we act like the world, but freedom from these problems comes only through Jesus Christ.

The gospel alone gives us what we need, it gives us the knowledge of God and the love.

Of God.

Many people like to be thought of as knowledgeable. In conversations, many people, myself included at times, are embarrassed to say the words,.

I don't know.

And love also is an idea that's claimed too much. Culture, especially popular music, media, claim that all we need is love, right? These two ideas go together. People claim to have them too much, more than they really do.

The more people say that they know something, the less it appears that we know. The more people say that love is free and we can love anyone any way we want, the less that those claims appear to be truly loving.

Rather, pride and hatred are seen everywhere, but humility and true love are rare. In fact, only Christians have the knowledge and love that the world needs. Christians know God and they have the love of God.

Ephesians 3 .19 says that our goal as Christians is to know the love of God that surpasses knowledge, that we may be filled with all the fullness of God. To know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that we may be filled with all the fullness of God.

The love of Christ surpasses knowledge. There's a fullness that we cannot completely comprehend. It's mysterious to us. In our text today, in John 17, Jesus has already been speaking with his disciples for some.

Time.

Verse 1 says, when Jesus spoke these words. So in the previous chapters, he said things like this, John 13 .35, by this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.

John 15 .12 says, this is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. Jesus has been talking about love and knowledge for quite some time and he says that the world will know that we are Christians by our love for each other.

There's a certain knowledge that Christians have that produces our love for one another. And that in turn is the way in which the world will know that we are Christians. John 17 is Jesus' prayer for the church.

Sometimes called his high priestly prayer, but without giving it that fancy name, we should recognize that these are things that Jesus prays for. So we should be praying for them too. We can identify what Jesus prays for rather easily.

Just scan through this chapter and he directly addresses his father several times. So we see that here in verse 1 and verse 5 and verse 11 and 21 and 24 and 25. Kind of summarizing those several instances of his direct appeal to his father, we could say that Jesus prays for glory and for guarding.

He prays, Father, glorify your son. And Father, keep them in your name. He kind of repeats those same ideas several times. These requests are repeated throughout the chapter in a very unique way. Jesus prays for himself.

For his own glory to be revealed. And then Jesus also prays for believers. So he says in verse 9, I'm not praying for the world, but for those whom you have given.

Me.

And then also all believers after these first disciples too, in verse 20, saying, I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. That is the word of the apostles and the scripture.

So he prays for believers. And he prays that they would know something and that they would also show something. Believers are to know the glory of God and they are to show that they know God. That they are guarded, that they are being kept in his name.

In other words, that they would retain their identity as children of God by demonstrating the love of God with their lives. God's glory is what we are to know and the love of God is what we are to show.

If there's one thing that we are supposed to say that we know, it is that we know God and his love. Jeremiah 9, 23 -24 says it this way, thus says the Lord, let not the wise man boast in his wisdom. Let not the mighty man boast in his might.

Let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts, boast in this, that he understands and knows me. That I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth.

For in these things I delight, declares the Lord. We are to boast that we know God. And what are we to boast that we know about God? That he practices steadfast love, righteousness, and justice in the earth.

For in these things he delights. The one thing that makes Christians so different than the rest of the world is that we know and show the love of God. What makes a Christian? Christians are distinct from the world because of what they know and show.

The Glory of the Trinity Revealed in Christ

So let's consider from our passage today these two things that Jesus prays for. First, Jesus prays for the Christian's knowledge. So looking specifically here at verses 1 -10, Jesus prays for the Christian's knowledge.

And more specifically, Jesus prays that the glory of the Trinity would be revealed. Christians see the glory of the Trinity and praise God for it. God is what we are to know, and this is supremely known through the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The gospel is Trinitarian. It reveals the Trinity. The Apostle Paul tells the Corinthians of the priority of the knowledge we receive in the gospel, 1 Corinthians 2 -2, saying, I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

And so in Jesus' prayer, he prays for the Christian's knowledge. Have we ever considered, though, that one of the primary purposes of Jesus' advent, of his putting on the flesh, living 30-some years, teaching, making disciples, and dying on the cross is because there's something that we don't know that we need to know.

God had concealed a certain knowledge. Ever since the garden, there was a knowledge that God had reserved for himself. And Jesus putting on flesh and dying on the cross and raising from the dead is because he is revealing something to us.

He wants us to know something. Each of these two things that Jesus prays for in John 17 has a context to them. So the context of this first prayer request is when Jesus says in verse 1, the hour has.

Come.

What does he mean by that? Well, that Jesus' hour is the purpose for why he came to earth. In the flesh, he has been anticipating this moment for a while. He told his mother and his disciples previously that his hour had not yet come.

John tells us at the beginning of his gospel in John 1 .14, the purposes of Jesus' advent, saying, the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory, glory as the only son from the father, full of grace and truth.

But during Jesus' earthly ministry, there was a sense in which we could say that his true glory was concealed in his flesh. And Jesus' hour was the hour of his glory. Jesus knows that he must suffer first and face the cross before he is exalted.

Darkness comes before the light. Death comes before life. Verse 2 in John 17 tells us that Jesus' glory comes because the father gives Jesus authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom the father had given.

And so Jesus is resurrected in authority and he will lead others in their resurrection.

Too.

He will grant to others the glory of eternal life. Think about a time you've gone to the movies or a show or in the theater or some live performance. Oftentimes just before the show begins, the whole theater goes dark, right?

And then there's a great anticipation about what's going to happen next. And then a spotlight shines and draws our attention to the focus of the show. And there's great anticipation as we look at what the spotlight is shining on.

Jesus' ministry on earth also has great anticipation. We might even say that the whole of the Old Testament is a massive anticipation. The tension's building for thousands of years waiting for the spotlight to shine.

But especially in Jesus' life as recorded in the Gospels, the tension's building for quite some time and the room goes dark as he dies on the cross. And when Jesus raises from the dead, a spotlight shines.

Verse 3 tells us what the spotlight is shining on. And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. Continuing on in verses 4 through 5, we're told that this was Jesus' whole objective while he was ministering, to reveal the Father to us.

We sing the Christmas carol with the line, Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see. God is veiled in flesh, hidden in humanity. People saw Jesus as a man and didn't realize that right in front of them was the very God of the very God.

Can you imagine that? And the transfiguration then gives this little sneak peek into his true glory, which doesn't ultimately come until his hour, the hour of his glory, the hour of his resurrection from the dead and then his ascension on high.

And Jesus says that his mission is accomplished. The hour has come. He finishes that work by raising from the dead. And when Jesus is resurrected, the glory of the Trinity is revealed. To know God as revealed to us in the gospel of Jesus, we must know him as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And this is what heaven is supposed to be all about. The reason we want to go to heaven is so that we can worship God, to know him better. What Dana was talking about the first time. Worship is the goal of our lives, that we might know God more.

Our knowledge of God is what eternity is all about. Eternity is never boring because we never exhaust the knowledge of God. More than this, the knowledge of God never makes us prideful, it humbles us.

As Romans 11, 33 -36 says, Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?

Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. So, contrary to the snobby elitism that often comes in academics today, the knowledge of God does not puff us up, it humbles us.

I've met more self-proclaimed epidemiologists in the last two years than I care to count. Likewise, I can't tell you how many people have tried to convince me that their particular political views are self-evidently true to smart people.

I guess I'm not smart. Rather, the knowledge of God should give us an epistemic humility. It should put us in our place, it should make us realize we don't know very much at all. What is something you think you know a lot about?

Anybody think they're an expert at something? One of the paradoxes of maturity and learning is that the more we grow in our understanding, the more we realize that we don't know very much. We fool ourselves sometimes with thinking that we know more than we do.

College freshmen are notorious for thinking that they are only three years away from a complete working knowledge of the universe. Our marriages are a helpful illustration. How many of us, myself included, have been so foolish to think that we understand our wives?

The longer I'm married, the more I'm realizing that I have so much more to learn about my wife. And to live with our wives in an understanding way doesn't mean that we fully understand them. Just try to claim that on date night and see how that goes.

Proverbs 30 .19 says that one of the things that is too wonderful for us is the marriage relationship. That phrase, too wonderful, is used at least two other times in Scripture. One, when Job confesses that he spoke pridefully before God, saying, I uttered that which I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.

And second, in Psalm 139, O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up. You discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down are acquainted with all my ways.

Even before a word is on my tongue. Behold, O Lord, you know it all together. You hem me in behind and before and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain it.

Back to John 17, verses 6 through 8 then give us more detail about Jesus's mission, particularly the Trinitarian shape of his mission. The Father has chosen his children and given them to Jesus. And the conclusion is that Jesus came from the Father and received his mission from the Father and the disciples have believed.

And then verses 9 and 10 make clear that Jesus is praying for all elect believers here. He prays that all believers would hear Jesus's word passed down to us from those first disciples. And this is how we are to understand who Jesus is, as we believe in him through the words of scripture written for us.

As we hear the words of scripture telling us who Jesus is, the Spirit opens our eyes to see him by faith. If you saw Jesus walking around while he was here on earth, you would have just thought of him like an ordinary man.

Like we mentioned before, there was no beauty in him for us to be attracted to him. Nothing in his appearance that would draw us to him. But when you hear his words and believe, you would see him for who he truly is.

And that is still true today. You can hear his words and see him in his resurrected glory with eyes of faith. This is what Jesus wants us to know. This is the knowledge that he is praying that we would have.

This is what the spotlight is shining on. Jesus prays that his Trinitarian glory would be revealed. And is this the knowledge that we're most interested in acquiring? Are we shining the spotlight on this truth, the truth of who God is?

Are we like the Apostle Paul who said to the Corinthians, I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. There are many things we can spend our time trying to acquire knowledge of.

We can waste away our days swiping on our phones and not really learning anything new. The Internet gives us large stockpiles full of content that come to us at lightning speed, but we remain largely ignorant of the God in whom is hidden all the treasures of wisdom.

And knowledge.

The New Testament warns us of empty talkers who profess to know God but deny him by their words. We are warned of those who are ever learning but never arriving at a knowledge of the truth. There are many who seek to lead us astray by plausible arguments.

There are many who would distract us with volumes of information. But when we are bombarded by all the information that the world wants us to know, how do we respond? Our hope is not in knowing everything and becoming an expert in every subject matter.

I'm pretty sure we have enough epidemiologists. No, our hope is that Christians can be perfectly content with what we do know for sure. Christians should be able to say, I don't know to a whole slew of subjects.

I don't know a lot. But I do know this. God sent Jesus into the world to save sinners like me, so that we would know him and worship him and give him glory.

And do you know him?

Do you know God? Do you pride yourself with your knowledge about a certain subject in the world? But do you know God? Of all the things that we can boast and that we know, we should boast in knowing God.

God has given us a way to know him through his Son revealed to us in the words of Scripture. Just like a husband who spends time talking and listening to his wife to get to know her throughout the rest of his life.

Even more so, a Christian needs to sit at Jesus' feet and listen to him and know God. That's the first thing that Jesus prays for. He prays for the Christian's knowledge. But when we come to know God as three in one, what is it that we are supposed to know?

Christian Love and Unity in the Church

The second thing that Jesus prays for is he prays for the Christian's love. This point here is especially seen in verse 11 to the end of the chapter. More specifically, Jesus prays for believers to be lovingly united in their Christian identity.

We are to love because God loves us and God is love. To be identified as a Christian is to identify yourself as someone who loves your fellow.

Believers.

It's like a name badge we wear. Some people wear it for work. It's kind of all the same color right there. Well, for Christians, love is our identification and unity with other believers. And a Christian love flows from a Christian's knowledge.

The knowledge we are supposed to have is not just facts that fill our head. When you know God, you will know his love and you will be motivated to then display that love with your life. There is a relationship between knowledge and love.

It's very important. Sometimes in the pride of our knowledge, we puff ourselves up and we tear others down. But if that's what our knowledge does, then is that information worth knowing? In combating the arrogant knowledge of the Corinthians who debated eloquently about their freedom to live any way they wanted, the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 8 .1 and the ESV gives us some interpretive quotation marks here, we know that all of us possess knowledge, but this knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.

Instead, the knowledge of God will lead us to love others because God is love. This knowledge of God should lead us to build others up. And the proof that we know God is that we will love others. It is, after all, the first fruit of the Spirit.

We love because we know that he first loved us. In the parable of the unforgiving servant, the reason that the onlooking servants are so appalled is because that servant seemed to be completely forgetting about how much he had been forgiven first.

He was unloving toward his fellow servants because he wasn't humbly remembering the mercy of his master. Now, I need to qualify something I said earlier. I said that Jesus came in the flesh with a mission to give us some knowledge.

This needs to be qualified because I can easily be misunderstood to be saying that Jesus was simply on an information transfer mission, like he was a divine telegram. He could have sent us a text message.

It just would have been a lot easier, except they didn't have that technology back then. No, he came to give us more than a transfer of knowledge, right? It's one thing for me to text my wife, telling her that I love her.

It's a whole other thing for me to walk in the door when I come home and show her my affection in person. I said before that there were two contexts for Jesus' two prayer requests. The context for Jesus' first prayer request, praying for believers' knowledge, was Jesus said that his hour had come.

Now in verse 11, we see a second context for this second prayer request. Now he says that he is leaving the world, but believers are remaining in it. Even though Jesus is not going to be in the world anymore, he still wants them to have his identity, to bear his name.

He prays, Holy Father, keep them in your name.

Guard them.

God's name is given to Christians. We are God's chosen people, his treasured possession. He wants to guard us and to protect us in our identity as God's children, bearing God's.

Name.

Sometimes when my children fight over possession, they say, hey, that's mine. There's one thing that ends that argument faster than anything else, and that's if the child's name has been written on that toy, or if they walk away and put it in their box with their name on it.

When you fly in an airplane, you put your name on your luggage in order to protect it and keep it for yourself, and God does that with us. He puts his name on us. He wants everyone to know this is mine.

Verse 11 tells us the purpose of bearing God's name, that they may be one, even as we are.

One.

God is unified in the Trinity, and bearing God's name means that his people are unified with God together in love. This is the effect of beholding Christ that we are focusing on in these few days here.

As we behold the beauty of Christ together, we will grow in our unity together. And so as Jesus is leaving, he wants to guard God's people who bear God's name, and there is a threat that we need to be guarded from.

There is a threat that's coming against the church. We see that in verse 14 and following. The world hates the church because it hated Jesus, and it crucified him. Satan and the world want to destroy the church, to divide it, to bring scandal upon it, to sow division and discord, and the lies that separate brothers.

There's a threat against the church. But in verse 15, Jesus does not pray that God would remove the threat of the world from them, but that God would guard them from that threat by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit's not very explicit in John 17, but he's actually all over the place.

How does the Holy Spirit guard us? We see it in verse 14 and verse 17 and verse 20, that Jesus has given to us God's word. We will be holy because we have God's word. Holiness is the work of the Holy Spirit through God's holy word.

We have here both the origin and the nature of our unity. We might say that God's word is the origin of our unity. It's what produces it. It's how we know that we are, we know God through the gospel. If we want our churches to be unified, we must preach the gospel from the whole counsel of God's word.

God's word is the origin of our unity in Christ. And holiness is what we might say is the nature of our unity. Holiness is a good way of describing Christian unity. Holiness is what sets us apart and makes us distinct from the world.

And this is why the world hates Christians, because we have God's word and we are holy. And our holiness is a signal to them that they remain condemned in their sin. This is the contrast that Andrew was talking about earlier.

The ugly wickedness of the world versus the beauty of Christ in the church. And the Bible is where we find that truth that makes Christians distinct from the world. The Bible alone communicates that gospel of Jesus to us.

The Bible alone tells us how we are adopted into God's family and how we now bear God's.

Name.

Only the Bible tells us exactly who God is and what our identity in Christ is. God's word sanctifies us in truth. God's word leads us into holiness, the holiness that only comes because of the gospel, because we gaze with wonder at God's work for us on the cross through his Son.

This holiness is brought about by the Holy Spirit, opening our eyes to understand the depth of God's love for us in Christ. The Trinity is on display. We bear the Father's name as we gaze upon the Son, and the Spirit sanctifies us in truth.

One of the best ways we can summarize the gospel, I think, is with the phrase, union with Christ. I encourage you to study that phrase. Another phrase closely associated with union with Christ that the New Testament often uses to describe the Christian life is that we are abiding in Christ.

Union with Christ is the gospel, and abiding with Christ is the Christian life. And we see that union with Christ and that ongoing abiding in him here in John 17 with all of the times where it describes someone as being in someone else.

The Father is in Jesus, and Jesus is in the Father, and Christians are in God, and Jesus is in Christians, and the gospel creates this reality. God is glorious because he is tri-unity, three in one. And now through Christ, we see that glory, and miraculously and mysteriously and something beyond our comprehension, we participate in it.

2 Peter 1, 3 -4 captures this mystery of our union with Christ very well.

It says this,.

His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.

That's like a perfect summary of all that we've been saying so far. We are partakers of the divine nature, united to God in Christ, made holy by the promises of God. It gives us a new identity. And so our identity is that we are called Christians.

In a similar way, that's what happens in marriage. The two become one flesh. They share an identity. Likewise, if you love God, you will publicly identify yourself with him. You'll be baptized. You'll be in his family.

You'll covenant yourself to a local church. And so we have the origin of our unity in Christ, God's word, and we have the nature of our unity in Christ, our holiness. But there's one more thing I want us to notice.

Just like how the love that a husband has for his wife, and they have for each other, does not just stay with the two of them, but it overflows into bringing children into the family, the same is true with the church.

The loving unity that a church has as it gathers around God's word to worship God is supposed to produce something.

There's a purpose.

Or a goal of being united in Christ. The city that is on a hill is meant to shine forth a light into the world. So we need to understand the goal of our unity in Christ. John 17 teaches us that one of the main purposes of Christian unity is for the purpose of evangelism.