Dennis Tuuri

Okay, today’s sermon text. Wow, you’re all way back there, huh? On their way out the door. No, hopefully not. Okay, today’s sermon text is found in the Gospel of John, chapter 17, verses 20-26. And this concludes this chapter of John’s gospel that is his prayer at the end of the evening just before they go to the garden where Jesus will be arrested and the next day tried and crucified. So it’s not quite his last words because, of course, he was around for 40 days, but this is sort of like a conclusion—sort of, kind of, maybe one of his sets of last words—and this is the very end of that prayer that occupies all of John 17.

You know, all of the scriptures are very significant, but this is placed in such a way as to draw our attention to it. And I think it’s a significant piece of scripture to address as we’re in this series on evangelism for reasons I’ll explain in a couple minutes. Please stand. John 17:20-26. “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 love them even as you love 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.”

Let’s pray. Lord God, we have this same goal and desire, that we would receive the instruction of your word from our Savior, who promises to continue to manifest you and your word to us by the Holy Spirit. Now do that, Lord God, in obedience to the word of the Lord Jesus Christ. Bring us your word and transform us by your Spirit. In Jesus’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated. Are y’all awake? Yes. Sure. I was a little groggy this morning. First dark day in several weeks at church. Can make you a little groggy. If you need to stand up to get the blood flowing, do it. Okay, anytime during the sermon, it’s okay with me. Is it okay with the other people in the church if you stand up to keep yourself awake? Is it? Yes. Okay, so we’ll do that if we need to. Heck, they may even at some point ask you to stand up. Okay, so what are we talking about? We’re talking about unity. And by the way, this ties directly with Joan from Hope 360. You know, I use Office 365 and I keep wanting to say Hope 365. It’s not that there’s five days of the year that she’s not going to give hope to people. I think it’s that 360 is all-encompassing. But, you know, it’s an exciting deal and I hope you are here for the agape and then listen to her after our meal together. It’s an exciting deal and it relates to this text.

We’re going to talk about unity in the context of RCC and its relationship to our evangelistic efforts. This fits right in. This text just told us that maybe the key—at least one of the keys to evangelism—is the unity of the church. So before we go on to later stuff in the book of Acts, Paul, Areopagus, those things, those evangelistic dialogues which we’ll get to, I wanted to take a couple weeks, maybe even three, to talk about the unity of the church.

Now we’ve looked at the basic method of Paul and we’ll review that in just a moment. But the idea is that unity is a big deal. And this is why we—me, the elders of the church, and you, the congregation of the church—should be very pleased about the church in Oregon City and the increasing unity that we’re trying to work out and manifest here in Oregon City because Jesus isn’t just praying for each little local church. He’s praying for the extended body, and we have to see that in terms of the church in a particular city, which is what the New Testament talks about—that there’s a local church, there’s a church in the city, and there’s the universal church. And so Hope 360 will only work if the churches support it. And so we’re part of that. We’re an important part of it, whether we like it or not. That’s where God has placed us. We’re an important part of the church in Oregon City. And you’re important, in other words.

So if you could really support this effort, it’s about trying to prevent girls from, you know, killing their unborn children, using, of course, ultrasound equipment. The woman who’s going to be helping—who will interpret these, the doctor—is a pediatrician that many of our families already use. It’s exciting that for the first time since we’ve been here in Oregon City, at least, we’ll have a pregnancy care clinic right in the city, right in the context of the community college, right by the place—the Oregon Health Plan place—that encourages girls to abort their children. So it’s a really strategic deal and it fits right in with the unity of the church here.

The pastors in Oregon City are supporting this endeavor, and we’re calling you to find out about it today and support it too. And I think there’s flyers in the pew—a couple in each pew. Okay, so let’s get to what we’re going to talk about and see this first of all in the context of our series of sermons on evangelism.

Now, I’ve given at the top of your outline—I know it’s long, five pages—we’re not going to do much with most of those pages. So rest at ease. Still awake? Oh, that wasn’t good enough. Stand up, please. Go ahead, do it. It’ll help you. Yeah, it’s good for you. Yeah, yeah, it’s good. That’s good. I’ll jump on one leg. No, we won’t do that. Go ahead and sit down. We’ll put a chorus up here. No.

So I’ve got these review questions from Acts 17, and I wanted to mention that question number two: “Do the subjects of your evangelism know the structure by which the gospel can be known?” Probably it would have been better to put “story” there. And story is in the next question. So the idea is the gospel—when Paul presents the gospel in Acts 17. So don’t worry, the review is going to be a little bit longer, and we’re going to open up the subject of John 17 today and do more next week. So don’t worry where I’m going and how long I’ve taken on this review. It’s part of what we want to do: connect this back to that.

Okay, so in Acts 17, when Paul presents the gospel to people who are very much like the people we’ll be presenting the gospel to in Portland, he puts the gospel in a narrative, in a structure, in a story that begins with creation and ends with judgment. And so the gospel can’t be understood. Remember Leonard Cohen—when they said “repent,” I wonder what they meant. People don’t know what you mean. They don’t know the gospel. You say Jesus died for their sins. They don’t know what a sin is. Seventeen percent of people in a survey related sin to God. The rest of them thought sin was not related to God. We’ve lost the language. So we have to work hard at the context, and we want to know this basic structure. We got this wonderful text with Paul at Mars Hill where he tells us: this is how you do it. This is the big story. This is the meta-narrative of reality that you’re going to place the gospel in, and then you place it in their story of their life. You’re going to call them to believe in the gospel.

So that structure—there, by me, “story”—and now it’s going to be a little offensive, the fact that you talk about a story that is comprehensive. Postmodernism likes stories. We got a lot, you know, inroads to postmodern people because we know the stories of the Bible in this church really well, and we understand how they represent various things and how cool they all are. But we need to get beyond the individual stories to talk about the meta-story, the meta-narrative by which all other stories can be understood. And postmoderns don’t like that. But that’s our job: to place the gospel in our particular context in the midst of a story that explains everything—that explains everything.

So if you haven’t attended to those review questions, please do so. I think it should be helpful to you. Remember what we’re trying to do: we’re trying to help people discern the particular idols of people we talk with. We’re trying to expose them, help people to see that they’re being controlled by these idolatrous things they’ve set up in their head.

Wow, by the way, what a week for that, right? One of the biggest idols in our land is looking to the civil government to give us—not to help, not to, you know, give us health, education, wealth—there, and here we are. Right now, people are troubled. I listened this morning to a fellow, a radio talk show guy. His premiums are $800 a month. Just got the letter—they’re going up $500 a month for the bronze plan. Now that’s going on in millions of families across this country, folks. That’s going on in families. You know, people in—they are troubled. The family budget in this country have just had a huge hole blown in them through the so-called Affordable Care Act.

Now, you know, and I’m not trying to be political here. I guess I am. When you look to the state to take care of everything in a particular area, it tends not to do that great, right? What do we hear over and over again? It’s education’s a mess. Well, we’ve had a federal department of education. We’ve centralized that thing and it hasn’t helped. And now healthcare is a problem. So we centralize it and people’s costs go way up. Pay up if they can even get the policy. So it’s a good time to think about exposing that idolatry—that so often we look, not to Jesus ultimately for our health, education, welfare, but we’re trained in this country to think of the government as doing it.

Now, the government’s got a good place. It’s got a proper role. Jesus established civil government. But when you look to it solely for your help in having health, no good. So our job is to expose that and then to destroy the idols. And this is what Paul does on Mars Hill.

Now, in your handouts, I think the first page is this diagram, right? Take a look at that diagram. Might want to wiggle the pages a little bit to keep yourself awake in my currently nicotine state. No. So there’s this diagram, right? Oops, upside down. No, it’s on both sides. Okay, that’s very convenient. I didn’t mean—okay, so you’re down here. You’re the believer, right? And you’re talking to an unbeliever if you’re doing evangelism, right? Do you notice his back is turned to you? He’s running the other way. Who is he? Well, that little circle above his head says “the possessor and suppressor.” He knows the truth. This is what Romans 1 says. But he’s suppressing the truth. So when you bring him the truth, he’s going to try to get away from that, okay? He’s actively suppressing the truth of God.

So you have to know that, right? Now, it doesn’t mean there’s no commonality between you and him. That little place where the circles overlap—you know, this is where: what kind of authorities does Paul use? He uses so-called general revelation. He talks about creation and providence and God’s sustenance. And he actually quotes unbelievers. He takes their twisted truths and says there’s some truth in this. Leonard Cohen is right. They won’t know what you mean when you say “repent,” okay? Michael Jackson is right. You should start with the man in the mirror. You want to change the world, look at yourself and make a change, right? That’s what we do every Lord’s day. We behold what the scriptures teach us about God and us, and then we try to make some incremental changes. So, you know, we can do that when we talk to people. We can talk about their music or their movies or whatever it is. That’s overlapping territory and we know that ultimately everything, you know, is part of God’s decree. And so it may be twisted truth, but we can talk about it and move from it. That’s what Paul did.

Okay, general revelation. The next two pages of your outline, please don’t look at it today. You can look at it if you want to later, but they’re just two pages where it takes Paul’s presentation in Acts 17 and then it shows the scriptural basis for those statements from the Old Testament. So Paul is talking about so-called general revelation, but he’s using the scriptures all through that presentation. Now, he’s not saying, “The Bible says”—that’s what we can say to believers or people committed to the scriptures. He’s not doing that. But his mind, right, is full of the word of God. And so the word of God informs what he’s going to tell the unbeliever in terms of creation, who God is, who man is, and the judgment to come.

So it’s not as if it’s just general revelation. This general revelation is general revelation understood through the lens of Scripture. He’s always got—we should always have—those Bible glasses on. Now, the Bible glasses let us use modern sources of authority. Even though it’s twisted truth, we can interpret it through the scriptures. Same with general revelation. We want to interpret it through the scriptures.

And then over on the right is the basic method of this believer. Down at the bottom of that group of C’s in the circle: Christianly, he addresses them with respect. I don’t want to, you know—I’m going to take too long here if I’m not careful—but with respect, contextually. He understands the context of the people he’s talking to. He’s listened to Athens. He’s listened to people in the marketplace. He understands who they are, and he treats them graciously. “I see you’re very spiritual people,” okay. And then he starts to talk committedly. Paul is committed to Jesus Christ. He’s not trying to figure out the best way to win people. He’s committed to Jesus and following Jesus in his presentation of the gospel. So you have to be committed to Jesus in how you go about doing this.

Contrastingly, he gets to the place of saying this: “This is what the scriptures teach. This is what creation is. Don’t worship him that way.” He contrasts biblical truth with what they’re doing, right? He begins to bring them to a point of calling on them finally to repent by contrasting their—treating them graciously, but he contrasts the truth of the scriptures with what they’re doing and what their spirituality is about.

He gives them a commentary, right? So he takes general revelation—God created things—but then he comments on it: “Since God created all these things, you can’t worship him by worshiping those things. That’s your big problem in life,” he says. So he gives a little commentary on the basic facts of who God is, who man is. He comments on it. And he has a certainty to his position. This is not, you know, “it’s not I think this or I think that.” This is what the word of God says because he talks from the word of God without using, you know, Christian terms necessarily or church speak. But because he’s really got—what he says—informed by the scriptures, he can be certain of it. And when we present the gospel to people, if our gospel comports with what the word teaches, we can be certain of it, and it brings a certainty.

And then finally, he challenges them: “You need to repent because judgment is coming. You’re dead if you don’t repent.” That’s part of the good news—is that it’s bad news for people that won’t believe in Jesus. They keep going their own way. So he brings them to a point. The gospel always demands response—always demands response. It’s never just good news. It’s good news that calls for you to enter into that.

What Paul is doing is here’s an illustration. So everybody has a house that represents their life, right? I mean, you can think of this as a common philosophical thing or throughout history people have referred to their lives in terms of a house. You can think of it that way. And so we have a house that we live in, right? And the unbeliever has a house that’s built on suppressing the truth of God in unrighteousness, in injustice, in sinful ways. And we do not want to add a chapel to the top story of that house, right? You get the metaphor.

We don’t leave the house intact and say, “We’re going to add a little chapel up here.” Because the house has cancer. The house has dry rot. It’s going to collapse. He’s going to get crushed by it. And if we love him, the last thing we want to happen to him is for that house to collapse on him. And so the little chapel in the upstairs—that didn’t cut it. We have to, in the words of the Talking Heads, burn down the house. We’ve got to destroy his house. Not because we hate him, but because we love him, so that he can start to rebuild on a firm foundation: Jesus Christ and his word.

So evangelism is not adding a chapel, an upper story place where you go and be spiritual. Evangelism is calling on people to tear down their house and rebuild it as a disciple of Jesus Christ. And that’s what Paul does in Acts 17. He shows us that.

Okay, so that’s what’s going to happen in our relationships with people if you’re being faithful to Jesus, being part of doing your part of the Great Commission. Times in your life you’re going to talk to people, and hopefully all this helps you. But now we’re going to talk about something you can do here today that is not directly involved with your speech to other people. And yet it’s something that, as I’ve said, is absolutely critical to witnessing in the large sense of the term, to evangelizing, so that the world might know that Jesus Christ was sent by the Father.

Okay, now there’s a context for today’s text, and this is the last page, I think, of your handout. If you turn to the last page—”John 17: Three Gifts”—you know, so you got that. Now, take your order of worship like John had you do last week and open it up. And I think on page three, remember he had you look at those bars, those headings, and he talked about that in relationship to Psalm 51. Those bars, I think on page three—the end of that statement in that bar—is “the gift of glory.” Everybody see that? Anybody see it? Can I get an amen? Everybody got it? Not yet. Okay, I’ll wait.

Is it page three? Am I right? Yeah. Page three. Page what? Two. No, it’s page three, I think. Covers page one, then the page. Okay, so whatever page you’re counting with. So you see that bar and at the end of it, it says “the gift of glory.” Everybody got that?

Now turn the page and look at the back of that page and you see the bar and it says “the gift of knowledge,” right? And if we wanted to—and we won’t do it now, you know—but later, just before communion, there’s another bar and it says “the gift of life.” Yeah, you know it even though you don’t have to turn to it. That’s what—we’re at worship and God gives us three gifts. He gives us glory, knowledge, and life. We’ve sinned and come short of the glory of God. He forgives us and restores us to glory. What’s glory? Well, glory is like—uh—it has kind of two meanings to it. One is weight or heaviness, and the other is shining, luminance. And so when you sin, you become a light thing. You ain’t heavy no more. You’re blown away. So when God forgives us our sin, he restores us to respect, weightiness, glory. He makes us back to who we are made to be—someone who carries the glory and weight of an image bearer of God, okay?

He gives us that gift. And then he gives us the gift of knowledge. Everybody wants to know what’s going on. What’s the real deal? What’s going on with Obamacare? Is it just a bunch of mess-ups because that’s what government does? Is it a conspiracy? Did they change the way they were going to roll it out a couple weeks ago because they wanted it to blow up so they could go to single-payer? Everybody wants to know, and they’re talking about what’s the real deal. You don’t know. I don’t know. We’re not going to know that thing. We don’t need to know it. But everybody wants to know knowledge.

Well, the preaching of God’s word—and the things accompanying it—is the gift of knowledge. We are in heaven now positionally. We’re always in heaven, but in worship, in a special way, we come into God’s house. He tells us to wipe our feet off. He cleanses us. He brings us into the living room. He has a conversation with us. And then he’s going to have a meal with us. And in the conversation, he’s giving us a heavenly perspective on the world.

You go up in an airplane today. If you leave Portland in an airplane, it’s sunny. The heavenly perspective is: God’s Son is always blessing you. Doesn’t look like that, but that’s what it is. So the heavenly perspective on what’s going on with the government is found in the preaching of God’s word when it’s faithful to the word. And I just explained part of it, at least.

What’s going on at the polarization of the world? Why is everything broken? Bob Dylan had a great song years ago on an album called “Oh Mercy,” and it was called “Everything’s Broken.” Try to find it. Listen to it. He’s right. Why is everything broken? Because the country’s turned away from Jesus. Jesus, as our text tells us today, is a uniter of people. He makes oneness between people. You move away from Jesus, he’s not going to let you have oneness anymore. You’re going to splinter. You’re going to break apart in all kinds of ways. Men are mad at women. Women are mad at men. Blacks and whites are mad at each other again in this country. Republicans and Democrats. Everything’s broken. Everybody’s polarized. Nobody’s getting along because that’s what happens.

Praise God. When a country moves away from Jesus, why do I say praise God? We don’t want the country going to hell. I don’t—I don’t like to see anybody go to hell. And if the country continues apart from Jesus, that’s where a lot of people in this country are going to end up: burning eternally in hell. I don’t want that. So I like it when the chickens come home to roost, when God doesn’t let a nation move away from him and have comfortable lives. That’d be the worst of all possibilities, right? Worst of all possibilities. So it’s good God has broken everything, every thing, so that man would return to the only uniter: Jesus Christ.

As our text today tells us, he prays only for those who believe in him. He’s not praying for the unity of the world generally. He’s praying for the unity of all people who believe in him, the Lord Jesus Christ. And when people move away from that, they end up broken. Okay? So glory, knowledge, and life. Life is that unity together at the Lord’s table. We’re united back. So he gives us forgiveness and glory. He gives us his preaching of his word and knowledge—true knowledge, a heavenly perspective. And he gives us then rejoicing, life together at the table. Joy, hot dog, not contemplative, quietly meditating on whatever—joyous life together.

Now there’s some contemplation that’s okay, of course, but in general, that’s a—this is a celebration, this meal, you see. And you know, I hope you’re awake for that part, because we’re supposed to have joy together, right? Okay.

So in John 17, I won’t belabor these points here, but if you look at what happens in John 17, I think you can relate it to glory, knowledge, and life. That’s what he’s praying for. In fact, in the first section, what does he say? “Jesus spoke these words, lifted up his eyes to heaven.” I’m stopping for just a minute there. Sometimes the kids look at me, and we’re praying and everybody’s like this, and I’m going like this. Now you don’t have to go like this. If you don’t want to be like Jesus, you don’t. No, I just—a joke. Just a joke. But here we see his posture of prayer. He’s looking up to heaven. And in other places in the Psalms, we see about people raising hands.

You know, R.J. Rushdoony—he says that prayer used to be like this, and then during a period of declension, when people became peasants to the government, no—to their feudal landowners, that when you’d go to the owner of the land, and you were a—what do they call it?—a serf, you would want to show him respect. You’d bow your head and put your hands together and you can—”I please get a new plow. It doesn’t work. I want to plow your land, master.” That was that. And so it’s okay, there’s some practical benefits of closing your eyes, folding your hands—good, particularly for kids—a distraction, okay. But Rushdoony claims that before this, Christians would go like this because they’re looking to heaven, eagerly expecting to get something in their hand because they trust God. He loves us. He’s a giftgiver. That’s what he does in worship. He’s given us glory, knowledge, and life. All the things we long for. Everybody wants to have a significance to their life. Everybody wants to know what’s going on. Everybody wants to have Miller time at the end of the day. They want to have rejoicing life together, right?

So God is a giver, okay. I belabored a very tiny little thing that has nothing to do with my sermon, but it does because sermons are always about God and his character. All right, it’s always reminding us who this God is that we seem so afraid of.

And okay, well, after he does this, what does he pray in that first little section? “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your son that your son also may glorify you.” And he’s going to pray for glory for them as you have given him authority. Authority is by means of his word, right? Authority over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as you have given him, right? And this is eternal life: that they may know you.

If you know God, he’s restored you to glory, knowledge, and life. And I think—and I won’t look at it now—but if you look at those matching sections, you know, I don’t know, these structures, they help me to remember what’s going on in a text. And you know, “glory” isn’t always used in the sections that I’ve identified with glory. Same with “word.” But generally, it seems to flow that way to me. And if you look at it that way, then what is it? Glory, knowledge, life. Life, knowledge, glory. And right at the center, you know what it is? Look at the center. What is it? What’s the word at the center of this outline? Joy. Joy. Exactly. There’s joy, okay.

So that’s the big context for these verses about unity that we’ll turn to now. So you can put that away, take it home, maybe discuss it with your wife or husband and kids or friends, whatever, or just forget about it. That’s fine, too. But we’re going to move on now to the actual text and draw some quick lessons from it.

Okay, so today’s text—it’s a text for us. The way the Lord’s Prayer works is he first prays for himself and then he prays for his immediate group of disciples. And then in verse 20, we read this verse. In verse 20, “I do not ask for these only.” And you can use that kayastic structure—if you don’t want to turn your Bibles open, you can just look at that in terms of the verse. In verse 20, he says, “I do not ask for these only. In other words, not just for his immediate disciples, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.” That’s us. So in verse 20, as he moves toward the conclusion of his prayer, he’s praying for all Christians throughout time, okay? So this is a prayer. This is the part of the prayer that’s specifically addressed by Jesus for us.

Now, who is the “us”? Us are those who believe—faith. Our faith in God is the one is is what is talked about here: those he’s praying for. And it’s not just having faith or even in a god. It’s “believe in me,” in Jesus, okay? So this is specifically for the church, not for all people. How do we believe in him? Through their word—the apostles’ word. How did you come to belief in Jesus? Well, if it was John 3:16, that was the apostle John’s word, right? So what’s happening—we become believers in Christ by means of the apostles’ words as written in Scripture, okay? So it’s the word that brings us to faith in Christ, okay?

So that’s the people that he’s praying for here, and that would be us, okay.

Okay, what does he pray for us? Well, a prayer for our unity. He asks for unity. Verse 21, what does he pray? I mean, this is interesting because he’s saying, “Now I’m going to pray for you.” And you say, “Well, what’s he going to pray for me for?” Jesus is going to pray—probably be answered—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 what does he pray for? He asks God for the unity of the church, okay.

Now we’re going to talk about our response to that good news. But that is gospel. That’s gospel. He doesn’t pray that the church would get it together enough so that they would be unified. That’s an implication of the prayer. But that’s not what he prays for. He asks for unity. Does the Father answer the Son’s prayers? Indeed, he does. Are we united in some sense of the term? Now, absolutely, because Jesus prayed for this and the Father answers it.

Unity is first and foremost a gracious gift of the Father that he gives to his church. We’re not here united today to whatever degree we are united because of our efforts. We’re here because of the grace of God. Part of the gospel message is that God unifies his people. He sees them. He treats them as a unity, okay? So it is first of all this unity that—well, depending on how manifest it is, which can vary—but this unity is a gift of God, grace, it’s gospel, right? It’s gospel, okay.

What’s the second part of the prayer? This unity images the intertrinitarian unity. Oh, lots of syllables. Intertrinitarian. Seven syllable word. What am I going to do? Sorry. “That they may be one just as you, Father, are in me and I in you.” Now we know something about this unity. It’s to image the inter—the unity that exists between the Father and the Son, and of course we would say also the Holy Spirit. There is a unity that exists in eternity in the Godhead that our unity here is supposed to be modeled after, okay. This is that dreaded other big word: perichoresis. What is the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

Well, the Church has used this term perichoresis for a long time to describe the interpenetration of each other’s lives that exists in the Trinity. It’s a mystery. We cannot fully understand it. We try to draw this thing up here and it’s good, it’s beautiful. But you know, when you see these diagrams of intersecting circles—like that one with a believer and unbeliever that we just looked at—you know, the implication seems to be there’s a part of the Father that is known by the Son. But Jesus says in the Gospels, he fully knows the Father. Their lives are fully interpenetrating one another. There’s not, you know, it’s not like there’s a little bit of the Father and Son that overlap. That’s not it. And it’s also not it that there’s such a unity that there’s no diversity.

We’re going to talk a lot more about this next week because it’s very significant for our unity, particularly in the context of people that husband-wife relationships, pastors-congregant relationships, boss at work, et cetera. It’s the model for all of that, okay. And it’s very interesting. It’s a topic of conversation for the last twenty, thirty years, particularly across the world theologically. There’s some really exciting work being done, and I want to talk about that next week. And it’s very practical. It sounds, you know, it’s—but this tells us that the sort of unity that we have and that we’re supposed to try to maintain—we’ll look at that in a couple of minutes—we can’t understand it unless we look at the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So our unity is to reflect the perichoresis, the mutual indwelling of one another of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, okay?

So we’ll talk a lot more about that in the next week or two. But that’s the model. Clearly, that’s exactly what this verse says. All I’m doing is telling you what the verse says, right? And it’s just very easy to look at it and say that’s right.

This unity is evangelistically effective—effective. So he prays that you all might be one, modeled after the Trinity, so that the end result of this being that the world may believe that you have sent me. So if we want to look at the big picture of how we’re going to restore America to a Christian country, or to a set of Christian countries, or whatever it turns out to be, or the world, right? If we’re going to look at the big picture on the effectiveness of our evangelism, Jesus points us to the unity of the church, right?

Thomas Manton was an old Puritan, and he said—Manton said—that divisions in the church always breed atheism in the world. Divisions in the church breed atheism in the world. I’ll talk a little bit more about that later on. But the reverse is what Jesus is saying: that unity in the church breeds Christianity in the world, integrally tied to it. And so it’s very important for this evangelistic series. That’s why I interrupted the flow of Acts to get to this fourth point.

This unity comes from the gift of glory, right? So in verse 22, very significantly, the very next verse says: “The glory that you have given me, I have given to them, that they may be one, even as we are one.” So Jesus’s method of attaining the unity that will evangelize and disciple the nations has something to do with glory. And again, big topic, but—and there’s stuff here about the glory of us as sons of God, sons and daughters of God—but I think that it’s very significant that practically speaking, unity best happens in the context of specific relationships and of the church when glory is seen as significant to effecting the unity.

What do I mean? Glory is acknowledging someone’s weight, respect, right? Who they are, the significance of their life. Jesus restores us to glory through the forgiveness of sins. And what he wants us to do, I think this text is telling us, among other things, is to minister glory to each other. The biggest thing—one of the biggest factors that destroys unity in a church—is coldness. Coldness that finds its expression in a lack of saying thanks to somebody or acknowledging their benefit, their gift, their personhood.

If you just do one thing today and on into the next few weeks, you want to obey this direction of the elders to evangelize, all you got to do in terms of applying this message today is to give people in this church glory. Give them weight. Think of them as an image bearer of God, saved by the blood of Jesus Christ. They do some tiny little thing around here to help out. Tell them thank you. Tell them that was really significant. Thank you so much for adding a little bit to my life and the life of this church, your labors. I mean, it’s that simple. I think. I mean, it’s more than that. But if we don’t do that much, then I think we’re missing what Jesus in this prayer identifies as sort of the first step in creating unity: the glory that he gives us.

Now, he’s talking about his glory. We’re united in him. There’s other theological things going on, but very practically speaking, I think this points us to a takeaway from this text: that one of the most significant things we can do to enhance community, to enhance the unity of our church and the church in Oregon City and other Christians, is to give people glory. If people don’t think you have respect for them, if they don’t give you glory, and if instead your relationship is marked by absence or maybe even shame—they don’t like you, man—that’s—that just is corrosive acid to the unity of the church. And as a result of that, it’s corrosive acid to the evangelistic effort in Oregon City and in the cities and communities you come from. See that? Very practical. Comes right out of the text for us, okay.

Glory. Five. This unity visibly manifests the love of God. “I you knew we’d get to love. Well, here it is. So I am them and you and me.” Verse 23. “That they may become perfectly one.” It’s interesting. In John 17, he prays that they might be one. He prays that they might be one. We just looked at. He prays they might be one. And then he says, here’s the fourth reference to this. And he says that they may become perfectly one. Kind of a fourth, you know, topper to this thing: that they may become perfectly one so that the world may know that you sent me and love them even as you love me.

Again, the evangelistic effort is addressed, and the world is supposed to see our love. There was an old hippie Christian song: “They will know we are Christians by our love.” By our love. Maybe it wasn’t hippie, but that song’s right, okay. Now it’s love biblically defined, but it’s love nonetheless. And so love is to permeate the relationships in this church, and as a result of that, the world sees who God is, right? That’s what Paul does. He says, “Hey, you’re rebelling against this guy who made you and takes care of you. He sustains you. He gives you good gifts. Look at the food you’re going to eat today. He could have fed you with pills. No. God is a good giver. Look at that wine you’re going to drink. Praise God for it. God loves the world in Jesus Christ.” And so that is the great message.

Now I know it can be kind of become way too watered down or whatever it is, but this is what the text says. Giving people glory results in the flow of love in the context of the church, and that love is the evidence to the world, and is the great kind of underpinnings of our individual evangelistic efforts, okay.

How are we doing here? Probably terrible, okay. Well, we’re getting close, okay.

These are quick points. See, it’s so critical. So he prays this great thing, right? He prays it for us, and then he ends with an oath. We could say his word is always an oath. His word is sure. So in verse 26, “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.” So the very last thing he says, and the very then we’re at the end of the chapter, and he goes to his death—but the very last thing he says—he began with gospel, it’s a gift, right—and the last thing he says, he says, “You know, I’m going to do this. I give you my word that I’m going to continue to manifest the Father and his word to you. I’m going to send the Holy Spirit to teach you about the Father and the Son, to bring you his word, right?” And Jesus says, “I will continue to make it known that this love might be evidenced.” The last thing he does is he gives us a promise. He gives us a wonderful promise that he’s going to commit himself. “The Son ever lives to make intercession for you,” so it says in Hebrews. He’s at the right hand of the Father, and he’s praying for you, and he’s ministering his word to you. He has promised you he will continue to make known to his church and to you the knowledge of the Father through his word. He promises you that, all right.

This is gospel. Gospel always brings us to a response, right? So I said that you know unity is a gift, but Ephesians 4 says: “I therefore, a prisoner of the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you were called. Respond correctly to the gospel,” he says, “with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” You see, he assumes Jesus’s prayer was answered. We have a unity in the Spirit. But our response to that great gospel truth is to be eager and to strive to maintain the unity through glory, through love, right? So that’s our proper response to this.

Here’s Jay Adams, and actually this is from his book on the Christian family. He says, “Few things are sapping the strength of the church of Jesus Christ more than the unreconciled state of so many believers. So many have matters deeply embedded in their cross, like iron wedges forced between themselves and other Christians. They can’t walk together because they do not agree when they should be marching side by side through this world, taking men captive for Jesus Christ, or we would say, cutting them loose from their bondage to idols. They are instead acting like an army that has been routed and scattered, and whose troops in their confusion have begun fighting amongst themselves. Nothing is sapping the church of Jesus Christ of her strength so much, Adams says, as these unresolved problems, these loose ends among believing Christians that have never been tied up. There is no excuse for this sad condition, for the Bible does not allow for loose ends. God wants no loose ends.”

Now, brothers and sisters, I chose this text because I think this is a problem in this church. Now, you know, I think there’s many things we do good and right in terms of what we’ve talked about today, the unity of the church. And you know what? When we started RCC, we knew about this. We’ve been at churches where, you know, eventually you leave the church because enough little problems have come up that haven’t been resolved, where it just gets doggone uncomfortable going to church with those people that you’re kind of at odds with. Who wants to do that? That’s no way to worship God. Some people just leave. And we were resolved to try hard to work on our relationships. That didn’t happen. And you know, I don’t know why. I don’t care why. I don’t want to point fingers. I’ll point at myself first and foremost. But for whatever reason, I think we’ve lost some of that.

We thought the agape would help. It’s going to be real hard sitting down eating with somebody when you know there’s some problem between the two of you, right? But and it does help some, but I think this is a problem, and I think it’s going to hurt our evangelistic efforts. I’m preaching to myself, and I’m preaching to you.

That what we want to do is see the tremendous importance of the unity of the body of Christ. See, as Jay Adams says, one of the biggest detriments to the unity is not some huge doctrinal differences but little personal stuff. I’ve always said the mafia or the church is the anti-mafia. The mafia, it’s never personal. It’s always business. But in the church, it seems to be never really business, or never really theological. It’s always very personal. Now that’s because the church is the body of Christ. In a way, that’s a good thing because we have personal relationships. And when they’re, you know, at loose ends, it bugs us. But we need to attend to it. And so I, you know, I exhort you. I exhort myself. Let’s do what we can to hear this verse—these verses today—to hear the great gospel calling for our response to maintain the unity that Christ purchased with his blood on the cross and the Father has so graciously granted to us.

May we endeavor to have this kind of unity here, here in this church, in a way that maybe has slipped somewhat. I’ve got some concluding observations, but I will probably—let’s just forego those until next week. I think that we’ve set the stage for these observations. There are questions at the bottom—again for use in your community groups, your families, whatever they might be, your own personal use.

I, you know, I want you all to know this evangelistic model that Paul lays out for us in Acts 17. I want us all to know how to approach people in a most informed way to talk about the gospel of Jesus. I want you to have a heart for your friends and neighbors and co-workers who aren’t Christians. I want you to really be driven, you know, to release them from bondage and to save them from hell. I want all of that stuff. And because I want that—and praying for all of us toward that end—this text becomes of paramount importance because Jesus says so. He says that the most significant thing to evangelism, this text tells us, is the unity of the church.

We’ll talk more about what that unity looks like next week. It’s not uniformity like the Trinity. It has to do with unity and diversity. Doesn’t mean you got to be best buds with everybody in the church, but it does mean, to begin with, we want to start working on relationships that have become strained. Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for your great grace, love, and gospel to us today in this message. Thank you for the work of our Savior. Thank you for this fantastic prayer that applies so importantly to our day and age and our times and us as a congregation as well. Bless us, Lord God, that we would not be stupid people who look at who you are, who we are from your word, and go away and forget about it. Help us, Lord God, to apply ourselves to this text in proper response to your great gospel. In Jesus’s name we pray.

All right. Amen.