May They Be One

Actually, some of you, you sent me links to a, a 33 week series on John, chapter 17. Others, a 27 week series on John 17, and I just want to say I take that as a challenge. Now we'll just be spending a few weeks here. We will be reading the entire chapter. We'll likely be doing this each week that we are in John 17 because it's just hard to pull out one section.

All these themes are so interwoven. And I know your eyes have looked at a lot of things this week. A lot of billboards, blogs, emails, everything competing for your attention. But what we're looking at now is different. This is the word of God and demands our attention and our focus.

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. And I am praying for them.

I am not praying for the world but for those 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 1 even as we are 1. 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 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 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 believe in me through their word, that they may all be 1, just as you, father, are in me and I in you, that they may also 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 1, even as we are 1. I in them, and you in me, that they may become perfectly 1 so that the world may know that you sent me and love them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Oh righteous father, even though the world does not know you, I know you and these know that you have sent me. I've 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.

This is the word of the Lord. Pray with me. Father we ask that through your spirit, you would once again bring bring clarity to these words in front of us. But we need more than clarity, we need open hearts and open minds to receive this truth, and so we pray that your Spirit, He would do that, That we would absorb these life changing words. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but Lord may your words remain and may they change us.

We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. I've got 3 little girls, ages 13, 10, and 8. They all share a room together. It's actually the smallest room in our house, so we just kind of crammed them all in there.

And I would have to say though, as a parent, the greatest joy I have is listening to them while they're in their room. So I will go in, I'll tuck them in bed, give them good night kisses, turn off the lights, close the door and leave. I love it when I hear the little gentle talking happening. And sometimes Lauren and I will will come to the edge of the door and we'll just kind of listen in and just just to hear them talking to one another, hear them giggling with one another. There's there's nothing that just fills my heart with more joy.

And just seeing these sisters who love one another and hear that, It doesn't always happen. A lot of times there's arguments and fights and we have to go in and break that up, but those those sweet moments are just such a joy. This is the same thing that warms Jesus's heart. Jesus, he's going away, He's leaving. And he and he wants, when he leaves to be able to look and to listen to his church, relate to one another well, love one another well.

He wants to see his church be unified so much so that they would be called 1. And when he sees the church being 1, it warms his heart. Last week we saw how throughout the New Testament, Jesus, he would spend time talking to us about his father, but this chapter here is different. Here he's talking to his father about us. He's praying for us.

And in the weeks ahead, we're gonna be looking at at all the things that are in this prayer, how he prays for our sanctification, our holiness, and our mission. But but tonight, what I want us to look at in particular is how he prays for our oneness, that we would be unified together in 1. This is one of the most dear things to Jesus's heart, is how we would relate to one another. Look again at a few verses. We we read in verse 10 this, Jesus says, all mine are yours and yours are mine and I am glorified them in them.

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 1 even as we are 1. And then you go down to verse 20 and he says, I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. That's us here in this room. So now he's not just asking that the disciples be 1, but he's looking ahead to generation after generation after generation, knowing that the gospel will be faithfully shared with every generation.

So he's looking 2000 years into the future to us here in this room, and he prays for our unity, our oneness. He says, may they be all 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've given to them that they may be 1 even as we are 1. I in them, and you in me, that they may become perfectly 1 so that the world may know that you sent me and love them even as you loved me. So as Jesus is approaching his death and he's crying out to the father, we're seeing the things that are most dear to his heart.

And what's most dear here is the oneness, that we would be 1. And being 1 isn't the the same thing as being the same. He's not praying for sameness. He's not praying that we would all wear the same clothes, listen to the same Christian music, that we would have the same personality or the same sentiments. He's not praying for our uniformity, he's praying for our unity.

And this is a unity that's that's based out of the Trinity in which there are 3 distinct persons, yet the Godhead consists of these 3 persons, yet they are all one God. And the church consists of all these different personalities, yet we come together as 1 church. We are united together. And so what this means is when, when I could go to a place like Haiti and see our Christian brothers and sisters there, I I can run into Sister Gladys, who is one of my favorites there and and when I see her, we are 1. She is a Haitian black woman from one of the most powerless and poor countries in the world who speaks Creole.

And I'm the exact opposite. I'm a white male who speaks English, who lives in one of the wealthiest and most powerful countries in the world. We have nothing in common, yet when we come together, we're united. Because when when we go and we give each other a hug and I look her in the eyes, I see the life of Jesus radiating out of her and she sees the life of Jesus radiating out of me, and Jesus binds us together in a way that no other thing in the world can. Jesus makes every social, every cultural, every racial distinction fall away, and he can unite us together.

This is what Jesus here, he is he's praying for. And I just want to make a point here that he's not that he's not talking about community here. He's just saying, I I want the church people to have a really good community, And community is important, community is something we all want to be a part of, but you can have community apart from Christ. I see a number of college students here. If you're in college, it's impossible not to have community or be in community.

I mean you're people who all look like you. You're living together, studying together, you're playing together. It's you you can't not have community. When I was at the University of Georgia, I could get a basketball and I could go out in the basketball court all by myself, bounce the ball once, and everybody would just come out. And you would instantly have a community in which you can play basketball for a couple of hours.

It gets harder when you're older. Now I could get a group of guys, you get out your phone and your, you know, your planner, and you're you're trying to figure out maybe a month from now, if we all get babysitters, we can get like a Tuesday afternoon for 30 minutes. It's harder to get that game, but but you could still build a community. But what Jesus is talking about isn't just community, it goes so much deeper. He's talking about oneness here.

Let me define oneness. And I'll I'll go through this definition twice so you can write it all down if there's there's a lot of ways you could define oneness. If you don't particularly like this one, you could just email me about it. Oneness is that through Jesus Christ, we can enjoy a deep connection, transparency, safety, and selflessness with another person that supersedes all else. Let me repeat that.

Oneness is that through Jesus Christ, we can enjoy deep connection, transparency, safety, and selflessness with another person that supersedes all else. Jesus is praying here for a life giving, other centered way for us to relate to one another. So let's go through some of these. There's a deep connection. This this goes way beyond any superficial connections we might have like liking the same music or, I like to go on Netflix and watch old eighties TV shows with my kids.

And and maybe if that's you, and we could, like, really connect over Knight Rider or the a team, and that's that's a that's a connection, but it's it's not a deep connection. This connection here, it goes even beyond a family connection, even beyond blood because this is a connection that endures for all of eternity. You're literally sharing the same Spirit. The Spirit of God in me, relating to the Spirit of God in you. New life relating to new life.

There is a deepness to the connection that we have. And then there is a transparency and a safety. I like to call this a soul trust, or soul trust that we share with another. What I mean by this is when you are relating to someone else, another Christian, you never have to worry about being taken advantage of. But you always feel safe in that relationship.

And the way you relate to somebody else, you're always making sure that they feel safe in this relationship. And so when you're with another Christian, you you shouldn't ever have to worry about, did I share too much? I think I share too much. I think they now know a little bit too much about me and they're gonna use it against me. There's none of that.

There is a transparency and a safety. We can be vulnerable with one another. You don't have to risk or fear rejection with another. And then there is a selflessness in the way we relate. When we are with other believers, we we can forget about ourselves and we can actually be caught up in the wonder of that other person.

I mean, we could we could look at that other person and we could think, wow, Jesus saw you of such value, he died for you. And if Jesus died for you that he might spend an eternity with you, I can just sit here and bask in your presence for 5 minutes. I can be wowed in your presence. There's a selflessness in the way we relate to another. We can really really pay attention to them and to serve them.

Each one of these things we're going to look at and we'll flesh out a little bit more as we move through this text. But first, I want us to see why this unity is so important to Jesus. I mean, it's the cry of his heart, but why? Why is why is this so important to him? Jesus gives us two reasons.

Look at verse 23 again. If you haven't highlighted 23 or started, you probably should. I in them and you in me that they may become perfectly one so that so that the world may know that you sent me and love them even as you loved me. Both in verse 20 and in verse 23, Jesus prays that we would be 1 so that the world would know that God sent Jesus. In other words, our oneness, our unity reflects the very self giving nature of God.

The self giving nature of the Trinity, our oneness is rooted in the love that the father has in the Son and the Son has in the Father. You see before there was before there was anything, before there was matter, before there was stars in the sky, before there was earth, before there was you or me, there was God existing as three persons. And there was God the father and he would look at his son and he would say, you are beautiful and you are glorious and I love you. And then there was the son looking at the father saying, no, you are beautiful and you are glorious and I love you. And they would echo this back for all of eternity.

For all of eternity, there has been a loving, self giving, transparent, sharing relationship among persons in the Trinity. And creation became simply an extension of that eternal love that God has for himself. You see, if if God had just existed as one person and not as 3, and then you were to ask the question, well why were we created? If he existed just as one person, the answer could have been, well he was lonely. God was just really lonely, and he he needed companionship.

And because he needed companionship, he created me to fill that hole in his heart. But God has never been lonely because He has always existed in a relationship of persons, a perfect, selfless, transparent, forever sharing and life giving relationship with persons. He has never known loneliness but only love. And so when God created the universe, when he created you, it wasn't because he was lonely, it's because it sprang out of who he is. He's the self giving God.

He's the God who shares. And for all of eternity, He has always been giving of Himself and sharing of Himself. There has forever been a deep connection and a transparency and a selflessness with the persons of the Trinity, and this energy is what created us. And so when we read here that that the oneness that we have as Christians, the way that we give to one another is what God wants. He's saying, I want this because when you give to one another, you selflessly give of yourself.

People understand my nature. They can look at the way you selflessly share with one another, and they could think, oh, that's what God is like. That's what He is like. He's the God who gives. He's the father who would give even his own own son.

You know, we are created in the image of a triune God. This this can mean a number of things, but one of the things it most certainly means is that you were created to have relationships. That's part of what it means to be created in his image. And God is saying that when you selflessly relate to one another, you image me, You show who I am. Now, does this selflessness come naturally to us?

Heck no. We do not come out of the womb selfless. Anybody who's a parent sees this. I mean, you're fooled at first for like the first few weeks when you think your child is perfect You're telling everybody, oh, I'm sleeping through the night and my child never cries and I don't think sin has actually affected my child, but then then they you realize you were just delirious. If you have more than one child, you you readily understand that a child is naturally selfish and not selfless.

If you have 2 children, I can pretty much guarantee you what the first word, one of the first words your second child said, mine.

They're selfish. It's only through Christ that we move from saying mine till we start saying thine, and we start giving ourselves away. I have never met a 5 year old, I've never had one of my 5 year olds come up to me and say, dad, I've I've noticed how you're always doing things for me. You're always so selfless. I mean, you're always playing the games that I want to play.

How about we make today all about you and we do what you want all day? I've I've never ever That that has never happened. It's not on a child's radar. We've inherited this sin nature, and we come out of the womb just wanting everything to center on us. The sin nature, we got it, it comes from Adam.

And when Adam sinned, it distorted this image of God. All I have to do is just look at what happened after Adam and Eve sinned. Before they sinned, they had this perfect relationship with God. Adam walked with God in the cool of the evening. He walked around with Eve that is described as they were naked and unashamed.

They could look in one another's eyes and they could rejoice in what they saw there and the life that was in there, no guilt and no shame. And yet when Adam and Eve took the fruit, you know what they were essentially saying? Mine. This is mine and I will obey my laws. Then that sinful nature came to us.

And do you know what the the first thing that happened after after they said mine and they took the fruit and they ate it? The first thing they did was they hid. They hid from each other. They had to put on fig leaves to to cover themselves, then they hid from God. They they jumped in the bushes and hid so God would not see them.

They lost that deep connection that they had. They lost the transparency that they had with one another. They certainly lost that safety that they felt with one another. And they certainly were no longer selfless. If anything, they're throwing the other one under the bus.

God, it was the woman that you gave me. She's the one who who gave me the apple. They became so ashamed that they had to cover themselves up and hide, and we've been doing that ever since. Humans have been hiding ever since. You know there's a reason we can't endure eye contact for long, We can't.

When when you're in traffic and you pull up next to somebody, how long is an appropriate time to establish eye contact? How long are you how long can you hold that? Like a quarter quarter of a second maybe? Hold it longer this week. Y'all report back to me.

Somebody's next to you. Just just stare that person in the eyes and see how long it takes before they really get creeped out and they start speeding up. We don't like people to look into the window of our soul. Makes us very uneasy. I mean, I I have I have a dog who sometimes comes up to me and you know what dogs do, they come and they just put their head, like, on your lap and they just stare at you.

It creeps me out after about a minute. And it's just a dog staring at me. I'm like, look away, look somewhere else. That's us hiding. We don't want people to look through the windows of our soul and see what's really there. We see this hiding, I think clearly illustrated in the book of Acts and the story of Ananias and Sapphira. It's one of my my favorite stories in Acts. I shouldn't say favorite. 2 people die. I'm like, it's one of my favorite stories.

It's a rich story. Let me just read it to you because it really speaks to the way that we hide before one another. But a man named Ananias, with his wife, Sapphira, sold a piece of property, And with his wife's knowledge, he kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it and laid it at the apostle's feet. But Peter said, Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own?

And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal? Why is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to man but to God. When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last and great fear came upon all who heard of it. The young men rose and wrapped him up and carried him out and buried him.

After an interval of about 3 hours, his wife came in not knowing what had happened. And Peter said to her, 'Tell me whether you sold the land for so much?' And she said, 'Yes, for so much.' But Peter said to her, How is it that you have agreed together to test the spirit of the Lord? Behold the feet of those who have buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out. And immediately she fell down at his feet and breathed her last. Ananias and Sapphira told a little white lie, and then they were immediately killed by the spirit.

And and you read this and you're like, really? I mean, really? Death's because of a little white lie. There there's a lot worse sins committed in the new testament, and yet they don't ever result in 2 dead people at the feet of the apostles. Mean all I have to do is read Paul's letter to the Corinthian church.

I mean these people were committing sexual immorality. They're eating food sacrificed to idols. They're even boasting over the fact that somebody in their congregation was in a sexual relationship with their stepmom. They're boasting of that. They're getting drunk at communion.

Yeah, you don't see people dropping dead at the apostles' feet. And here's Ananias and Sapphira and they give generously to the church, very generously. Let me just say probably more generously than anybody here. Unless you've been selling property and then coming and bringing the proceeds and cramming it in those little offering boxes. Unless you've been doing that, probably there's not a person here who is as generous as Ananias and Sapphira even though they held back a little.

So so they give generously to the church, hold back a little without telling anybody, and they are slain immediately. I mean, you can try to spin this however you like, but the bottom line is you have 2 dead, generous people killed because of a white lie. So it's when you when you're reading through this, it's a it's a difficult passage to understand because something something's gotta be going on, something of of of higher stakes than you first see. And this is what's going on. In the first four chapters of acts, as the church is being described, you see Jesus's prayer answered.

The church is unified. The church is 1. They're always eating together, they're getting teaching together, they're sharing everything with one another. Just a few verses before we hear of Ananias and Sapphira, we read this in Acts 432. Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things belonged to him was his own.

They had everything in common. Now the full number of those who believed, all the Christians were of one heart and one soul. That is being unified. That's Jesus's prayer being answered, they are 1. And then all of a sudden you have Ananias and Sapphira. They come and their sin is not so much greed. I mean, even Peter said, I mean, the money, it's yours. You could have done whatever you wanted with the land. Even after you sold it, you didn't even have to give it all. That's not the sin.

The sin was this. This is the first time you came and pretended to be somebody else. This is the first time you hid from us who you really are. You put on a mask when you came to church. You destroyed the unity of the church.

You no longer were transparent. You no longer thought this was a safe place. You broke the deep connection that we had. And God in this moment, he said, he sees importance of unity, of oneness within the church, and he says, no, do not destroy what I have built. And he gives a severe consequence to the person who brings that fakeness, that pretending who comes in hiding from other people within the church.

This is not the church that I've prayed for. They will be 1. I like to think how different that story would have played out if Ananias and Sapphira had actually been honest with people. They had men in their home group, they're they're, you know, and they're sharing. Like, guys, you know, we really wanna give generously to the church.

I mean, we admire what Barnabas did, and that was pretty fantastic, but honestly, we're having a hard time giving everything. We're struggling, and they would have felt that was a safe place. They could've been open about who they are. I mean, they still love the lord. Their identity is still in him.

Could you imagine how different the story would have been if they were vulnerable, if they didn't hide? Oneness is extremely important to God because it testifies to who he is in his self giving, sharing nature to us. Let's look at the second reason oneness is so important. It won't be nearly as long as the first. The first is because it reveals the self giving nature of God, and the second is that it shows the world that we are loved by Jesus, that we are loved by God.

Look at verse 23, again. Once again, it's the verse that you highlighted and starred. 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. I believe that the 2 most powerful life changing words in this prayer are the words, even as. Even as or just as your translation might say, the Father loves us just as he loves the son even as he loves Jesus.

I mean, you need to just take a moment and let that wash over you because we've been talking about that love. Think of all of the love that the father has for the son, that endless self giving, glorifying love that he has lavished on the son. At sometimes you you get the sense the father is is so in love with his son, he's literally bursting buttons when he when he sees Jesus, and sometimes he just has to proclaim it out loud. Hey, everyone. This is my beloved son in whom I'm well pleased.

You all need to know this, the father loves the son. And here Jesus says, you know that love he has for me? It's the same love he has for you. He loves you just as he loves me. I tell you what, if you could if you could wrap your hearts and your minds around that, you would be forever changed.

That is a rock for you to stand on, the love of the father. Understanding that kind of love is what allows you to be one with other Christians. It allows you to have that deep connection because you're like, you are that loved by God and I am that loved by God. And just knowing the love of God connects you with the other people. It allows you to to feel safe and to be selfless with others.

There's a safety in that relationship because you're not looking to anybody else for approval. You're you can't be hurt by someone else. You can't be if they reject you, it doesn't hurt because you have the love of the father. You're not looking to impress another person, You're not looking to another person to fill any hole in your heart. You're not looking to another person to receive love because you have the love of the father.

That's a rock on which you can stand, that is a liberating way to live. And when you when you begin to believe that and to receive that, your cup gets so filled with the love of God it begins to spill out into a self giving relationship with others. Let me ask you, does that describe you? Has your cup been filled? Do you believe that God the father loves you just as he loves Jesus?

That the father loves you as much as he loves himself? Let that fill you up until you reach a point where you overflow selflessly into others. And if you don't feel that way, if if you don't feel like you're experiencing this oneness, I want you to take confidence in this. Jesus himself prayed that you might experience this oneness. Jesus has prayed for our unity, and the prayer of Jesus will not be denied by His Father.

And the work that He has begun anew, He will bring to completion, and His timing on that day. Pray with me. Our father, all of us in here agree with the prayer of our savior, Jesus and we plead now that we might be 1. That there might be a deep connection among your people, a transparency and a safety and a selflessness that defines who we are. We want to be 1 because we want the to know who you are, god.

And we want to the world to know just how loved we are by you. Thank you, Jesus, for making this possible. We pray this in your name. Amen.