SPEAKER_01: John chapter 17, we're going to be looking at verses 20 to 23, just a small segment of it, to think about the unity of the church.
SPEAKER_01: In his high priestly prayer, Jesus prays, verse 20.
SPEAKER_01: I don't ask for these only, that is the disciples, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one.
SPEAKER_01: Just as you, Father, are in me and I in you.
SPEAKER_01: That they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
SPEAKER_01: The glory that you have given to me, I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one.
SPEAKER_01: 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 loved me.
SPEAKER_01: So reads the word of the living God.
SPEAKER_01: In an astounding act of heavenly love, a Jewish teacher kneels down to wash the feet of his students.
SPEAKER_01: They had known each other for a couple of years, and still in a shame-honor culture, this was an unthinkable act.
SPEAKER_01: Quite the reversal.
SPEAKER_01: And so the pupil refuses.
SPEAKER_01: No, you can't wash my feet.
SPEAKER_01: But the teacher persists.
SPEAKER_01: He grabs a towel and his pupil's sand-covered feet and begins to wash them.
SPEAKER_01: That teacher's name was Seth Postel, who is a Christian faculty member at Israel College of the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: The setting was the school's first graduation ceremony.
SPEAKER_01: The timing was a little over ten years ago, just after the Gaza War between Israel and Palestine had claimed over a thousand Arab lives.
SPEAKER_01: The feat that this Israeli teacher washed belonged to an Arab student.
SPEAKER_01: When the school began, the faculty was not sure if the Arab students would show up.
SPEAKER_01: Understandably, so much deep ethnic division, so much bloodshed, so much violence dividing these two groups.
SPEAKER_01: How could they study the Word of God together?
SPEAKER_01: Many Arab students even told them after signing up that it was just too risky and they dropped out of the program.
SPEAKER_01: And so the faculty prayed and prayed and prayed, and on the first day they showed up.
SPEAKER_01: And they stayed and they learned.
SPEAKER_01: And then came their graduation.
SPEAKER_01: They learned all about Yeshua together.
SPEAKER_01: And on that graduation day, Seth said.
SPEAKER_01: All they could say is, look at what the Messiah has done.
SPEAKER_01: For once, bloodshed had brought them together, not apart.
SPEAKER_01: Since the Tower of Babel, this world that we are in has been divided by many things, including ethnicity.
SPEAKER_01: So it shouldn't surprise us when we see it even in our day.
SPEAKER_01: Sin seizes on any difference to begin to hate another person, and ethnicity is just another kind of difference.
SPEAKER_01: But I think what has surprised certainly me, maybe you too, is that over the last few years there has been such pronounced revived division, ethnically speaking, in the church.
SPEAKER_01: In many ways, the rifts go deep and have been there for a long time, but there's a kind of new fissure, a new fracturing in the church.
SPEAKER_01: We see it all over the place.
SPEAKER_01: Barna polls just a couple months ago said that almost half of all of Protestant pastors in the United States, and you know, take this for what it's worth, how Barna figures these things out, but almost half of all Protestant pastors in the United States seriously thought about quitting vocational ministry altogether last year.
SPEAKER_01: And one of the chief reasons is because of division in the church.
SPEAKER_01: That's not your pastors, just to be clear.
SPEAKER_01: Church doors have closed in unprecedented numbers over the last two to three years because of church division.
SPEAKER_01: And my guess is that you've seen and felt this personally, whether you're just kind of a timid casual observer on Facebook or social media, and you've seen the fights happening digitally, or if it's been in person and you yourself have been engaged in hard conversations.
SPEAKER_01: You've felt the division that's so pronounced, having to do with race and justice and ethnicity.
SPEAKER_01: And even among Christians, it seems like those conversations do more to promote anger than they do peace.
SPEAKER_01: So my goal this evening is not to diagnose all of the potential causes for that, what led us to where we are now, but just to observe that the church in America is still reeling from ethnic division.
SPEAKER_01: And it should be heartbreaking for us.
SPEAKER_01: And I think the question we need to ask then is what do we do?
SPEAKER_01: What do we do in the face of that?
SPEAKER_01: Our church is not immune to this.
SPEAKER_01: How do we respond?
SPEAKER_01: Let me suggest that we do what we always do.
SPEAKER_01: We look up to heaven, we pray for light, and then we look down at our Bibles, and we find it here.
SPEAKER_01: And the Lord's mercy has revealed to us truly in this passage, I don't think it's too strong to say, the cure for all division in the church.
SPEAKER_01: In the high priestly prayer of Jesus Christ for the everlasting worship of Jesus Christ and the unity of the Church of Jesus Christ, and it's real simple, and it's also pretty complicated.
SPEAKER_01: Christ is our unity.
SPEAKER_01: Apart from Christ, what do you have?
SPEAKER_01: Division.
SPEAKER_01: In Christ, unity.
SPEAKER_01: He who has united Jew and Gentile, Israeli and Arab, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free, is still powerful to make his people perfectly one across ethnic lines, cultural lines, and even battle lines.
SPEAKER_01: And I hope you appreciate what I'm saying here.
SPEAKER_01: Well, look at this.
SPEAKER_01: This is not just Christian rhetoric.
SPEAKER_01: This isn't just us talking and saying Christian things because it makes us feel good.
SPEAKER_01: No, this is reality.
SPEAKER_01: This is actually how the church can be one.
SPEAKER_01: Practically.
SPEAKER_01: If we as a church, Emmanuel, would sing together in unbroken, joyful harmony, then we should bend low to listen to our shepherd's voice as he prays to his father and learn what he has to say, which is in summary that Christ is our unity.
SPEAKER_01: As we sing, all other ground is sinking sand.
SPEAKER_01: So the context of John 17 is that it's usually called the high priestly prayer of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: It's the longest prayer of Jesus recorded in the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: In some ways, it's the most expansive, reaching all the way back to eternity past and all the way to eternity future.
SPEAKER_01: This is Thursday night of Passion Week.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is about to go to Gethsemane.
SPEAKER_01: I think probably the prayer happened somewhere on the way to Gethsemane, after the upper room discourse, after the Last Supper, before he's in the garden, weeping and praying, and then before he's arrested and crucified.
SPEAKER_01: And the basic structure of the prayer is that in verses one through five, Jesus prays for himself.
SPEAKER_01: Begins 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.
SPEAKER_01: He's focused on his glory in this prayer, and that's where he begins.
SPEAKER_01: But then in verses six through nineteen, he turns the camera lens of his prayer onto his disciples, which should just astound you, that knowing he's about to be arrested and bear the full weight of the wrath of God on the cross, he prays for himself, but has far more words for his people.
SPEAKER_01: He asks that the Father would keep them.
SPEAKER_01: And then in verse 20, we see this turn.
SPEAKER_01: Now he's not just praying for the eleven who are left, but for all who will believe.
SPEAKER_01: That's what he says.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 20.
SPEAKER_01: I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word.
SPEAKER_01: Now, I pretty regularly tell folks in the foundry, you are not in the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: The Bible's not about you.
SPEAKER_01: It's not, you're not a featured character, like after Samson, then Dan, like that's not how that works.
SPEAKER_01: But I think I gotta correct myself because verse 20, we're in the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: If you believe in Jesus through the words of the apostles, which is now here, that's you.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is praying for you.
SPEAKER_01: And his prayers are always effective.
SPEAKER_01: And it's at the beginning of this third section where we find some of the most precious words in the entirety of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: And in summary, Jesus is praying that the Father would unite his own, that he would make them one in him.
SPEAKER_01: How do I know that?
SPEAKER_01: Well, he says it twice.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 21.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I ask, verse 21, that they may all be one.
SPEAKER_01: Or he says again in verse 22, the glory that you've given me, I have given to them, that they may be one.
SPEAKER_01: So that's the substance of this part of the prayer.
SPEAKER_01: He's going to go on to talk about eschatological glory in the following three verses, but right here he's just focused on the oneness, the unity of the church.
SPEAKER_01: But more specifically than that, he doesn't just say, I want them to kind of get along with each other generally, to have a worldly kind of unity.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Father, would you unite them in me?
SPEAKER_01: This unity is all about Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: He uses the first person eleven times in these three verses to refer to himself, and twice the first person plural referring to us or we.
SPEAKER_01: So I take that to mean that Jesus prays for our unity to be in him.
SPEAKER_01: That this prayer is how Jesus unites his ethnically divided church.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is praying that he himself would be our unity.
SPEAKER_01: And so that's what we're going to look at this evening in three parts.
SPEAKER_01: How, or even why Christ unites us.
SPEAKER_01: Christ unites us.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to give you three parts to it up front.
SPEAKER_01: Christ unites us like himself, Christ unites us in himself, and Christ unites us for himself.
SPEAKER_01: Or if you're from a Southern Baptist background and you like alliterated outlines, the ground of our unity, the gift of our unity, and the goal of our unity.
SPEAKER_01: If you'd prefer that, but I like prepositions.
SPEAKER_01: Christ unites us like himself, in himself, and for himself.
SPEAKER_01: So let's begin by looking how Christ unites us like himself.
SPEAKER_01: What I mean by saying this is that the church's unity is not just some kind of pragmatic marketing scheme by which we win people from outside of the walls of the church because they see that we're very lovey-dovey with each other.
SPEAKER_01: There's something so much more profound to the unity of the church because it finds its proper root and fountain in the unity of the Godhead.
SPEAKER_01: Or you could say it this way: our unity is grounded in God's tri-unity.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 21.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I ask that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I in you.
SPEAKER_01: Or if that's not clear enough, go to verse 22.
SPEAKER_01: The glory that you have given me, I have given to them that they may be one, and it's the same word as just as, even as we are one.
SPEAKER_01: God's tri-unity is the ground of our unity.
SPEAKER_01: Monotheism is so fundamental to the Bible, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: We have one God.
SPEAKER_01: Hero Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one.
SPEAKER_01: We do not have three gods, we don't have a pantheon of gods, we just got one.
SPEAKER_01: The one who made everything and the one who rules.
SPEAKER_01: And yet, progressively through the Bible, this one God reveals himself as three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit, each equally God, one in essence and being three in person.
SPEAKER_01: That's what we call the Trinity.
SPEAKER_01: And I think it's astounding Jesus' economy of words.
SPEAKER_01: He captures that all in three little words.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 22.
SPEAKER_01: Even as we are one.
SPEAKER_01: Just think about that for a second.
SPEAKER_01: We are not one.
SPEAKER_01: That's we is plural.
SPEAKER_01: One is singular.
SPEAKER_01: And yet it is.
SPEAKER_01: And he prays that the unity of all believers would be just as the oneness of the Trinity.
SPEAKER_01: So, in order to understand how Jesus wants us to be united, we need to understand how God himself is united.
SPEAKER_01: How the Trinity has always been one.
SPEAKER_01: To be one in the most fundamental sense means that two persons have a single shared life between them.
SPEAKER_01: We get this in the illustrations that the Lord gives us in Providence, marriage.
SPEAKER_01: The two become one.
SPEAKER_01: You start sharing a life.
SPEAKER_01: You maintain your distinction as a person and yet you share a life together in a sense.
SPEAKER_01: Or the Bible also uses the branches of a tree that are connected to the vine.
SPEAKER_01: They're different from the vine, and yet they're connected to the life of the vine.
SPEAKER_01: Oneness means having a shared life or fellowship.
SPEAKER_01: Now, of course, there's lots of all kinds of really bad, unhelpful metaphors having to do with the Trinity, and I'm sure that you've heard of them, right?
SPEAKER_01: Trinity is like water, it's three phases, or whatever.
SPEAKER_01: The Trinity is like an egg and the shell and the yoga.
SPEAKER_01: They're all of them break down at some point and they're unhelpful to a certain degree.
SPEAKER_01: I think better to just say that in the Godhead is one life, one essence possessed fully by each person.
SPEAKER_01: The Father is totally love, totally justice, totally mercy, totally goodness, and so is the Son, and so is the Spirit.
SPEAKER_01: Each person of the Trinity fully possesses all attributes of God.
SPEAKER_01: But the Bible tells us that oneness actually even goes further than that.
SPEAKER_01: Not just three sharing one being, but who never interact with each other.
SPEAKER_01: The implication of their sharing that one being is that they are involved with each other.
SPEAKER_01: That's the way that Jesus says it here in verse 21.
SPEAKER_01: Just as you, Father, are in me and I in you.
SPEAKER_01: There's a mutual indwelling in the Trinity.
SPEAKER_01: And turn just a couple chapters back to John 14, the Upper Room Discourse.
SPEAKER_01: I just want you to see how Jesus himself talks about this oneness with the Father.
SPEAKER_01: There's lots of examples of this.
SPEAKER_01: This is just one passage.
SPEAKER_01: John 14, Philip says, this is 14, verse 8, Philip said to him, Lord, show us the Father and it's enough for us.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus said to him, Have I been with you so long and you still don't know me, Philip?
SPEAKER_01: Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.
SPEAKER_01: How can you say, Show us the Father?
SPEAKER_01: Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me?
SPEAKER_01: So what are the implications of that?
SPEAKER_01: Here he goes.
SPEAKER_01: The words that I say to you, I don't speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.
SPEAKER_01: Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus does works, the Father's doing works, Jesus speaks words, the Father's speaking words.
SPEAKER_01: That's the implication of this.
SPEAKER_01: It's shared life in the fullest sense.
SPEAKER_01: Attributes, action.
SPEAKER_01: Now, how then is Christian unity like that?
SPEAKER_01: Like the tri-unity of the Godhead?
SPEAKER_01: In what way?
SPEAKER_01: Well, we have shared life.
SPEAKER_01: It's not identical.
SPEAKER_01: This is a comparison word, just as.
SPEAKER_01: It's not equal to.
SPEAKER_01: But it's something like that.
SPEAKER_01: The unity that we experience, that Jesus prays for in the church, which we'll talk in a moment about how we get it, is that every believer would fully share the same heart and mind, leading to the same kind of action.
SPEAKER_01: Think of it this way: if you cut an apple, you open it up, it's just all apple inside.
SPEAKER_01: If you cut a Christian and you peel them open, what do you get?
SPEAKER_01: Unity.
SPEAKER_01: Shared life.
SPEAKER_01: That's what's inside.
SPEAKER_01: That's the characteristic of the Christian.
SPEAKER_01: Paul writes in Philippians 2, then practically, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Christian unity looks like.
SPEAKER_01: It looks like having a shared life together that works itself out in how we feel and think and do.
SPEAKER_01: And this is so different from worldly unity.
SPEAKER_01: Because worldly unity is all external, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: It's just about doing the same things together or being geographically in the same space or liking the same sports team or who knows.
SPEAKER_01: It's all external.
SPEAKER_01: But this is a spiritual, internal unity.
SPEAKER_01: Last night I was building a Lego car with my son Danielito, who's four, and we had very different motives for approaching the same task.
SPEAKER_01: Mine was that I was kind of just reliving my childhood, and it was pretty great.
SPEAKER_01: I loved it.
SPEAKER_01: His was if I don't remind Poppy that it's actually past my bedtime, then we can keep going as long as this takes.
SPEAKER_01: And it took a while.
SPEAKER_01: So we were doing the same thing, but we have very different motives.
SPEAKER_01: That's the way that unity is in the world.
SPEAKER_01: You can participate in basically the same activities, but down in the heart of the thing, it's all selfishness.
SPEAKER_01: It's all self interest.
SPEAKER_01: They're not the same motive.
SPEAKER_01: They're not working toward the same goal ultimately.
SPEAKER_01: That's why we in the church would say we don't have unity with the world.
SPEAKER_01: Because we don't have the same motives.
SPEAKER_01: We don't have the same life.
SPEAKER_01: We have a different life than the life of the world.
SPEAKER_01: We have a new life that is in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: So Christ unites us like himself.
SPEAKER_01: Secondly, Christ unites us in himself.
SPEAKER_01: In himself.
SPEAKER_01: If it's true that God's tri-unity is the pattern and mold for our unity, then Christ's indwelling in believers by the Spirit is the means of us getting that unity.
SPEAKER_01: The way that we become united is by Jesus joining himself to us, becoming in union with us.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus takes the eternal unity of the Trinity and makes it internal to us.
SPEAKER_01: That's what he says in verse 21.
SPEAKER_01: He says that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I in you.
SPEAKER_01: Then he goes on to say that they also may be in us.
SPEAKER_01: Or verse 23, after saying that they may be one even as we are one, he says, I in them and you in me.
SPEAKER_01: Now, probably when you first read that, you just kind of glaze over it because there's a lot of people, you know, back and forth.
SPEAKER_01: I can't remember who's in who at this point.
SPEAKER_01: But just slow down for a second and appreciate what's actually being said here.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is praying about our unity not just in comparative terms.
SPEAKER_01: He's not just saying the unity of the church is kind of like the unity of the Trinity.
SPEAKER_01: He's saying that he actually accomplishes this unity by uniting us to the Trinity through indwelling.
SPEAKER_01: He just promised in chapters 14 through 16 to send his Spirit, He who was with you, will be in you.
SPEAKER_01: And now here he's praying for that very reality that the Spirit would come, indwell believers, and in so doing unite those believers to Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: This is what we call the doctrine of union with Christ.
SPEAKER_01: It is a spiritual union, as it is in the Trinity.
SPEAKER_01: It's not like spatial, like we don't just have union because we happen to be in the same room.
SPEAKER_01: It's a complete union.
SPEAKER_01: It's not just you get a part of him.
SPEAKER_01: It's a reciprocal union.
SPEAKER_01: It says he is in us and we are in him.
SPEAKER_01: And it's also, and this is critical distinction, an invisible union.
SPEAKER_01: You don't see it immediately.
SPEAKER_01: There's not like a magical tether running between all of us that if you turn on a black light, somehow you could see it.
SPEAKER_01: That's not how that works.
SPEAKER_01: It's invisible.
SPEAKER_01: And yet it is a real union by which Christ unites himself to our hearts so that we begin to love what he loves and hate what he hates.
SPEAKER_01: Namely, we love unity and we hate division.
SPEAKER_01: And I think we don't often talk about union with Christ because it's just in these little prepositional phrases, in me, in him.
SPEAKER_01: But this is the primary way that the New Testament describes Christians.
SPEAKER_01: The word Christians isn't used about a couple times.
SPEAKER_01: Usually the way that someone talks about what you are is they say it's someone who is in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: That's the primary way to identify you in the New Testament.
SPEAKER_01: You are in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And everything flows from this.
SPEAKER_01: John Murray said, quote, union with Christ is really the central truth of the doctrine of salvation.
SPEAKER_01: And John Flavil said, quote, all our participation of Christ's benefits is built upon our union with Christ's person.
SPEAKER_01: So this is really what we mean when we say that someone, we use the language of someone got saved.
SPEAKER_01: What we mean by saying that is that they became someone who is in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Christ is now dwelling in them, and they are in Christ, like a vine and the branches.
SPEAKER_01: So the question then would be how?
SPEAKER_01: How does he bring about that union?
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 22.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says to the Father, the glory that you have given to me, I have given to them.
SPEAKER_01: Which there's a lot of astounding statements in this passage, but that's one of them.
SPEAKER_01: God's immense, eternal weightiness, his pure character communicated eternally to the Son, perfectly to the Son.
SPEAKER_01: The Son then turns around and gives to us.
SPEAKER_01: How does he do that?
SPEAKER_01: Well, look at verse 8 in chapter 17.
SPEAKER_01: For I have given them the words that you gave me.
SPEAKER_01: There's a medium that he uses to get this to us, and it's words.
SPEAKER_01: What words?
SPEAKER_01: For I've 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.
SPEAKER_01: Essentially, it's a summary of the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: I gave them the glory that you gave me by preaching the gospel to them, which is all about me disclosing who I am in relationship to you and what I have come to do so that they may be one.
SPEAKER_01: When we preach the gospel, brothers and sisters, we are not simply telling people, you gotta come to church, you gotta turn your life around.
SPEAKER_01: What we are telling them is that you can share the life of God.
SPEAKER_01: Does that astound you?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus himself prayed for this.
SPEAKER_01: And we get that today through this book.
SPEAKER_01: This is how we have the words of the apostles, which contains the gospel which we preach, so that Jesus would give his glory to make us one.
SPEAKER_01: So I take that to mean then, at least, that unity is predicated on belief.
SPEAKER_01: If there's at least one condition that Jesus puts on our unity in this passage, he says, for those who will believe in me through their word.
SPEAKER_01: Those whom I have given my glory to.
SPEAKER_01: So if you're following the logic, one of the prerequisites for this unity must then necessarily be belief in the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: There is not unity outside of belief in the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: You don't believe in the gospel, you don't believe in Jesus, no unity.
SPEAKER_01: You do unity.
SPEAKER_01: That's it.
SPEAKER_01: And what's astounding about this is that it doesn't change.
SPEAKER_01: It's there, it doesn't go away.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus doesn't unite himself to his believers and then disunite himself.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't give a little, but if they're being really good on Wednesday, then I'll give them some more.
SPEAKER_01: No, he gives us all of himself all at once in the moment of salvation.
SPEAKER_01: When he regenerates us and sends his spirit to dwell in us, we get all of Christ forever.
SPEAKER_01: But you might be asking, what on earth does this have to do with unity in the church?
SPEAKER_01: Well, Jesus is very specific with his language.
SPEAKER_01: He uses the word in verse 22, the glory that you've given me, I've given to them that they may be one.
SPEAKER_01: That's what he's aiming at.
SPEAKER_01: That's why I gave them the glory, is so that they would be one.
SPEAKER_01: Our union with Christ is how we have unity with each other.
SPEAKER_01: That's what he's getting at here.
SPEAKER_01: It's like, think of it like, it's not a perfect analogy, but spokes on a wagon wheel.
SPEAKER_01: There's the center, and then there's all the spokes coming off of it.
SPEAKER_01: I am not spiritually directly united with all of you, apart from the center.
SPEAKER_01: I have unity with you, I have fellowship with you, I have a shared life with you, insofar as I am connected to the center.
SPEAKER_01: And you are connected to the center, which is Christ.
SPEAKER_01: If you ignore the center, there's no unity.
SPEAKER_01: But if you have the connecting element, which is Christ, then you and I have the same life.
SPEAKER_01: You and I have the same Lord, the same faith.
SPEAKER_01: And I know this is kind of dense and theological.
SPEAKER_01: Let me make it a little bit more practical here.
SPEAKER_01: This means that the church's unity isn't in the church.
SPEAKER_01: The church's unity is in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: We don't just get together and try to figure out how to like each other more.
SPEAKER_01: That's not how that works.
SPEAKER_01: We get together and sing glorious songs about Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And we hear the preaching about Jesus so that we love him more, and the more we love him, the more we look around and say, You like him too?
SPEAKER_01: I know what that's about.
SPEAKER_01: We got that in common.
SPEAKER_01: One other implication of this would be that if that's true, that our unity is in Christ, in union with Christ, if that's true, then to try to manufacture unity on any other basis will actually divide the church, not unite it.
SPEAKER_01: This is what Paul himself says in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, talking to those knuckleheads in Corinth who keep dividing from each other.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Corinthians 1 10, I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.
SPEAKER_01: For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there's quarreling among you, my brothers.
SPEAKER_01: What I mean is that each one of you says, I follow Paul, and I follow Apollos, and I follow Sebas, or I follow Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Is Christ divided?
SPEAKER_01: You see, they took something that wasn't Christ and tried to make it the thing that they were all united around.
SPEAKER_01: My favorite preacher.
SPEAKER_01: My favorite book.
SPEAKER_01: My hobby, my particular area of theological interest.
SPEAKER_01: And you know what Paul says to them later in 1 Corinthians chapter 3?
SPEAKER_01: If you're gonna be like that, I can't even address you as Christians.
SPEAKER_01: He says in chapter 3, verse 3, for you're still of the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?
SPEAKER_01: For when one says, I follow Paul, and another I follow Apollos, are you not being merely human?
SPEAKER_01: Saying, listen, if if your unity is in something other than Christ, then it's actually division.
SPEAKER_01: It's not unity.
SPEAKER_01: I remember a number of years ago I went to a church out in California and was that uh a pastor's conference there, and some of my friends uh called me to where they were, kind of in the back of the building, and said, Hey, there's a guy who's protesting the conference out here.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and we want you to come talk to him because we know that you do ministry uh down at the abortion clinics.
SPEAKER_01: And so I said, Okay, I'll go talk to him.
SPEAKER_01: It's this guy from an organization called Abolish Human Abortion, which is which is not a good organization.
SPEAKER_01: And uh and he was protesting this conference and saying, You guys aren't essentially, I'm summarizing, essentially, you aren't doing enough to oppose abortion.
SPEAKER_01: You need to be doing more.
SPEAKER_01: And so I talked to the guy, and I said, Okay, well, what would you like for us to do?
SPEAKER_01: And he said, Well, I will you need to be going down to the abortion clinics on a weekly basis and telling uh ladies there that they need not get an abortion.
SPEAKER_01: And and I told him, actually, brother, uh, we do that.
SPEAKER_01: I do that every week.
SPEAKER_01: That's what we do.
SPEAKER_01: We go preach the gospel down there.
SPEAKER_01: And wouldn't you know it?
SPEAKER_01: That didn't change his mind one bit.
SPEAKER_01: He just kept right on protesting.
SPEAKER_01: Because for him, unity was not in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Unity was in do you say things the way that I say them?
SPEAKER_01: Do you oppose things the way that I oppose them?
SPEAKER_01: That's what's so astounding about that for a Christian is that it's law, not gospel.
SPEAKER_01: You just haven't done enough to be united with me.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna protest you.
SPEAKER_01: Even if you keep it.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what Paul says.
SPEAKER_01: Galatians chapter 3.
SPEAKER_01: If you've been baptized into Christ, well then you've put on Christ.
SPEAKER_01: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: That's the basis of the unity.
SPEAKER_01: All those other identities still exist, they still matter, and yet they are at least secondary to the primary identity, which is in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Our unity is in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Everything else as a basis will only divide.
SPEAKER_01: On the right or on the left, friends, politics, preferences, social programs, whatever it is, if that is where you think we as a church have unity, we're in trouble.
SPEAKER_01: Because there's always gonna be someone who doesn't like that thing, right?
SPEAKER_01: And who knows if we're even right.
SPEAKER_01: The point is our unity is in Christ, not in anything else.
SPEAKER_01: And if we have unity in Christ, then we really have unity.
SPEAKER_01: Lastly, Christ unites us for himself, he unites us like himself, in himself.
SPEAKER_01: That's how he accomplishes it.
SPEAKER_01: And then lastly, here's what he's doing with it, here's the goal.
SPEAKER_01: He unites us for himself.
SPEAKER_01: Our unity, as precious as it is, is not actually Jesus' ultimate goal.
SPEAKER_01: He has to go higher.
SPEAKER_01: This is what he says in verse 21.
SPEAKER_01: 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.
SPEAKER_01: What he's saying is that this invisible unity, this union that we have with Jesus Christ, will necessarily become visible in the church in such a way that the world will take notice and believe something about Jesus because of it.
SPEAKER_01: There is an evangelistic impulse to this, that Jesus is reaching the world through our unity as a church.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus unites us to put himself on display in us.
SPEAKER_01: Notice what it does not say.
SPEAKER_01: That the world may know that we.
SPEAKER_01: No, that the world may know that you, Father, have sent me.
SPEAKER_01: It's almost like we're not even a part of the equation anymore.
SPEAKER_01: We're just vessels, we're channels for the glory of Christ in the unity of the church to get to the world so that they might believe.
SPEAKER_01: We're just clay pots, Jesus is the jewel.
SPEAKER_01: So, practically speaking, then, how does that happen?
SPEAKER_01: How does the invisible unity that we have in Christ, how does that become visible?
SPEAKER_01: Well, we get two hints in this text.
SPEAKER_01: One is in verse 23.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one.
SPEAKER_01: This implies that there are kinds of degrees, and at least the kind of unity that he's talking about here.
SPEAKER_01: Our manifestation of this total oneness can admit to degrees, and I assume that that's because of our sin, because of our prideful hearts.
SPEAKER_01: So, what he's saying and what he's praying for is that he would be more beautifully and gloriously put on display the more we live out what is already true in us, that we're one in him.
SPEAKER_01: The more it becomes manifest and obvious in the way that we treat each other, in the way that we talk to each other, in the way that we live.
SPEAKER_01: And so we grow in our expression of unity.
SPEAKER_01: But you should still ask, what does that itself look like?
SPEAKER_01: Is it like matching t-shirts?
SPEAKER_01: Is that what we do?
SPEAKER_01: Four-part harmonies?
SPEAKER_01: No, look at verse 23.
SPEAKER_01: He adds to the end of this statement that he's already said, with I think it's just one of the most astounding statements in the whole Bible.
SPEAKER_01: So that the world may know that you sent me, get this, and loved them even as you loved me.
SPEAKER_01: I just gotta take a second with a sentence like that.
SPEAKER_01: The infinite love of the Father for the Son, perfect, holy, radiant.
SPEAKER_01: That's how he feels about this old sinner.
SPEAKER_01: And and Jesus himself feels the same way.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you caught this earlier in the upper room discourse, but he says in John 15, verse 9, as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.
SPEAKER_01: So it's not only the Father loving you with this infinite, inexpressible kind of love.
SPEAKER_01: It's also the Son loving you this way.
SPEAKER_01: And what's the implication of that?
SPEAKER_01: Verse 12 in chapter 15.
SPEAKER_01: This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you.
SPEAKER_01: Which would be impossible apart from union with Christ.
SPEAKER_01: But being united to Him, it will always happen.
SPEAKER_01: So I hope you appreciate that really this whole thing, the whole time, has all been about love.
SPEAKER_01: We haven't said it, but that's what this has been about.
SPEAKER_01: The love of the Father for the Son, the most secure reality in all of the universe, gets thrust into your heart by the Holy Spirit so that it can pour its way out onto this congregation.
SPEAKER_01: Our privilege, our joy, our greatest act of united shared life is to receive gladly the love of the Father and the Son, and then turn and love each other.
SPEAKER_01: And I think if the world would see even just a fraction of the kind of love that the Father has for the Son in me, in you, they would be astounded.
SPEAKER_01: There would be no doubt about who we're united to.
SPEAKER_01: The one who loved them is telos to the end, to the uttermost, such that he would go to a cross for them.
SPEAKER_01: Greater love has no one than this.
SPEAKER_01: Someone laid down his life for his friend.
SPEAKER_01: Johnny Lee Carey was an imperial wizard in the KKK when he met Reverend Wade Watts, an African American pastor.
SPEAKER_01: They were scheduled to debate on a television program, and so Reverend Watts.
SPEAKER_01: Walked up, extended his hand, and just kind of by reflex, Johnny Lee extended his hand and shook it before realizing he had broken the KKK's code.
SPEAKER_01: He couldn't do that.
SPEAKER_01: And the first thing Reverend Watts said to him was, Hey, I love you, and Jesus loves you.
SPEAKER_01: He pulled back his hand in disgust and started just yelling racial epithets at him.
SPEAKER_01: And Reverend Wade's response was, You can't do enough to make me hate you.
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna love you and I'm gonna pray for you whether you like it or not.
SPEAKER_01: They went on to have quite the relationship.
SPEAKER_01: Johnny Lee really hated him and so started calling his house, making threats, throwing things in his lawn.
SPEAKER_01: Eventually he got a bunch of Klansmen and showed up on his lawn with hoods, stood there to intimidate him.
SPEAKER_01: That didn't work.
SPEAKER_01: He just asked, Oh, I didn't think it was Halloween yet.
SPEAKER_01: So they put a burning cross in his yard.
SPEAKER_01: And he came out and said, Do you guys need marshmallows?
SPEAKER_01: That didn't work.
SPEAKER_01: So he showed up at a restaurant where they were eating.
SPEAKER_01: Uh, Reverend Watts and his family surrounded the table with about 30 clansmen, and there was a chicken in the middle of the table, and he said, What you do to that chicken, I'm gonna do to you.
SPEAKER_01: And so Reverend Watts picked up the chicken and kissed it.
SPEAKER_01: And everyone busts out laughing, even the Klansmen.
SPEAKER_01: They're like, that's pretty funny.
SPEAKER_01: Eventually, Johnny Lee burned down Reverend Watts' church.
SPEAKER_01: And he made a phone call to him trying to disguise his voice, but Reverend Watts knew who it was.
SPEAKER_01: And he said, Is that you, Johnny?
SPEAKER_01: Hey, thanks for taking the time to call someone just like me.
SPEAKER_01: You know, let me do something for you.
SPEAKER_01: Father, I asked that you'd forgive old Johnny.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't mean to be stupid.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't mean to be ornery.
SPEAKER_01: He just doesn't know any better.
SPEAKER_01: Later that year, Johnny Lee was reading his King James Bible, came across Luke 15, the parable of the prodigal son.
SPEAKER_01: And he saw the love of the Father.
SPEAKER_01: And God saved him.
SPEAKER_01: He went and apologized.
SPEAKER_01: I can't imagine what that would be like to Reverend Watts.
SPEAKER_01: And started going to Reverend Watts' church, which is entirely African-American.
SPEAKER_01: Eventually, in a couple of years, Johnny Lee became an elder at that church.
SPEAKER_01: And he said in an interview, that's how one old black man defeated the entire Ku Klux Klan.
SPEAKER_01: Well, to be fair, that's how Jesus did.
SPEAKER_01: Because he does it for himself to put himself on display.
SPEAKER_01: Only Christ can unite his church because only Christ can put the eternal love of the Father for the Son into the hearts of sinful men so that we can love each other like he has loved us.
SPEAKER_01: And when we do, when we do love each other like Jesus has loved us, oh how Christ is magnified.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, how his glory is seen to a divided and lonely world.
SPEAKER_01: If he can tear down the wall between Israelis and Arabs, between clansmen and black men, between Jews and Gentiles and every other group that we could divide ourselves into, well then surely, Emmanuel, he can unite us.
SPEAKER_01: Can he not?
SPEAKER_01: So let me close.
SPEAKER_01: Not with another kind of tired call for more unity.
SPEAKER_01: We really got to work this thing out and hug it out and sing kumbaya.
SPEAKER_01: But let me let me end with just an encouragement for you.
SPEAKER_01: For over 30 years, I have personally been the recipient of the love of Christ through this congregation here.
SPEAKER_01: So I think I have a little bit of experiential knowledge to say with some certainty that here at Emmanuel, the Father is answering the Son's prayer.
SPEAKER_01: He's making us one.
SPEAKER_01: He's doing it.
SPEAKER_01: Life by life.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we're not perfectly one, are we?
SPEAKER_01: Get on each other's nerves.
SPEAKER_01: There's still division.
SPEAKER_01: But yet there is something so much more profound, isn't there?
SPEAKER_01: We're one in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Christ is our unity.
SPEAKER_01: And he shines in this church through just the thousands of thankless, unseen acts of Christian love.
SPEAKER_01: The meals and the phone calls and the late nights.
SPEAKER_01: Christ is being put on display here.
SPEAKER_01: And as we fix our eyes on Christ together, his love pours through us into each other.
SPEAKER_01: And I do think the world takes notice.
SPEAKER_01: You know how else unity shows up?
SPEAKER_01: It's one of my favorite versions.
SPEAKER_01: Manifestations.
SPEAKER_01: Singing.
SPEAKER_01: Did you ever notice that in Revelation chapter 7, that glorious passage where there's this countless multitude around the throne of the Lamb and from every tribe and tongue and ethnos, it says that they're crying out with a loud voice.
SPEAKER_01: There's thousands upon thousands of countless thousands of lips moving one voice.
SPEAKER_01: Do you remember what they sing?
SPEAKER_01: Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.
SPEAKER_01: So let me pray, and then we can join them in singing as one.
SPEAKER_01: Heavenly Father, please we pray.
SPEAKER_01: Answer the prayer of your son.
SPEAKER_01: Make us one.
SPEAKER_01: Unite us, bind us together in the cords of love.
SPEAKER_01: How beautiful and how pleasant it is when brothers dwell together in unity that you have wrought in Christ.
SPEAKER_01: We ask, Father, that you would keep this church united.
SPEAKER_01: That you would manifest your likeness among us each day.
SPEAKER_01: You would humble us and pour your love into our hearts so that we might love one another just as you have loved us.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Pray this in his name.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now, for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, I would love to see you at Emanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on our church or our current service times, go to iBC.church.
SPEAKER_00: For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to TMS.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with all of us.