I'd like to start by reading with you from Holy Scripture at the request of Pastor Mordech from John 17. John 17, we'll read the entire chapter. These words speak Jesus and lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour is come. Glorify thy son. that thy son also may glorify thee, as thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. I have glorified thee on the earth. I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify Thou me with Thine own self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was. I have manifested Thy name unto the men which Thou gavest me out of the world. Thine they were, and Thou gavest them me, and they have kept Thy word. Now they have known that all things whatsoever Thou hast given me are of Thee. For I have given unto them the words which Thou gavest me, and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me. I pray for them. I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me, for they are thine, and all mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them. And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to thee. Holy Father, Keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one as we are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name. Those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost but the son of perdition that the scripture might be fulfilled. And now come I to thee, and these things I speak in the world that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them thy word. And the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through thy truth. Thy word is truth. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. And for their sakes, I sanctify myself that they also might be sanctified through the truth. Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also, which shall believe on me through their word, that they all may be one as thou father art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me, I have given them that they may be one, even as we are one. I in them and thou in me that they may be made perfect in one and that the world may know that thou has sent me and has loved them as thou has loved me. Father, I will that they also whom thou has given me be with me where I am that they may behold my glory which thou has given me. For thou loveth me before the foundation of the world. Oh, righteous father, The world hath not known thee, but I have known thee, and these have known that thou hast sent me. And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it, that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them. Thus far. Beloved, it's our privilege this morning to consider the oneness of the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ. a most beautiful gift and act of God, the hope of the world and the future of the world. We confess it every Sunday, and we should, that because of the work of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, there is, not there might be or there will be or we're working on it, there is one holy universal Christian church. And yet I think also all of us feel that sometimes it seems like an oxymoron that is a contradiction in terms like talking about dry water and warm ice. How can you speak of the unity of the Church of Christ with a straight face when you read the list of advertisements in the phone book or just type in local church on your web browser and read the long list of various denominations and churches in your hometown, let alone the world, in their hundreds and thousands of flavors and kinds. How can we consider the tremendous variety in doctrine, worship, ethics, practice, creeds, confessions, and priorities of all the groups that attach the name Church to their building and their gatherings. Can we still speak of the oneness of Christ's Church? How can we speak of the oneness of Christ's Church when you yourself have looked down on and spoken belittling words about fellow Christians and other churches? And I say this to myself, too. If the unity of the church depended on us, do you know what we would accomplish? My sister-in-law is a kindergarten teacher, and one time during playtime she noticed a little boy and girl playing mother and father, and she thought, how cute. The little girl was bustling in the kitchen with the plastic dishes and toys. The little boy was sitting with his feet on the dinner table. He had a paper in his hand. representing the church bulletin. And he shook his head and sighed several times and said several times in Dutch, het is niks mythicetik, het is niks mythicetik. Things are all going wrong in the church. And sadly and tragically, that appears to have been his father's regular activity. That's what you conclude if you look from below. at what humans are able to accomplish and the level we have achieved. But the secret is not to begin or end with people, but with God. The key to maintaining a proper perspective on the church is this. Otherwise, you will be like a person walking around a construction site where the footings have been poured, the first couple of walls are in, there are piles of stone and wood and you complain and you say, you can't talk about a building here, it's a mess. There are pieces everywhere. This will never be one beautiful whole. Then you would foolishly ignore the blueprints on the table and the contractor's trailer, the secured financing and materials. And the final goal toward which the project is moving, everything is in place from the ingredients to the workmen, to the plan. and to get at the foundation of the existing oneness of the Church of Jesus Christ, we must turn our attention to the Savior God Himself. Sin, after all, is the great divider between God and us and each other. The moment Adam and Eve sinned, the blame game and the hiding started. There was no unity when God summoned them to account. And in this light, Grace and salvation and Christ are the ultimate unifiers because oneness in love and glory under the name of God is the salvation Christ has purchased and applies to his church and it isn't finished until that oneness is perfect, entire, and complete. Prove this we turn to John 17 and that's where I'll spend my time in this first message. And please open there because in a minute I'm going to walk you through the sections and see how it all builds up to unity. This is the prayer of our Lord Jesus the night before he gave his life on the cross to save us poor sinners. This is this is holy ground. Like Moses we should be in our minds taking the shoes off our feet. This is priceless what we get to hear here. Have you ever walked into a room and heard things not meant for your ears, that there's such an intimacy and love and tenderness that you say, should I be hearing this? Maybe you know growing up that your parents pray for you and pray for you by name and pray about all the steps and parts of your life but if you walk into the room unexpectedly as they are praying for you urgently and lovingly and tenderly and perhaps even with tears and for you in detail, it hits you and you say, I didn't know that having a praying mother and a praying father involved such loving intimacy. Some 20 years ago, I was at the wedding shower of a friend and the father of the bride-to-be closed the evening in prayer I don't recall the words anymore, but I recall vividly the effect of that prayer, so tender, so intimate, so full of love, love for God, love for his daughter and son-in-law, so realistic about the challenges of life in a fallen world and the challenges of marriage, so full of confidence in God, such hope and such love, and such a delight in the Lord that of the 30 people in that basement room, there was not a single dry eye when it was finished. What a privilege to have someone who walks with God like that praying for you. And when you hear prayers like that, you look into someone's soul. And in John 17, we, as it were, walk in. But it's no accident. Jesus wants it this way. We look into the heart of our Lord Jesus and we hear Him and His intimacy and His love for His Father. Maybe you want to say, if you heard the story I just told, I wish I had someone like that praying for me. And if you're a child of God, you do. Our Lord Jesus lets you overhear how He speaks of you to His Father who is your Father. You are mentioned in this prayer. Jesus says it. I pray for all who will believe through the testimony of the apostles. And he says here, our Lord, things that none of us could say without being blasphemous. Glorify thy name with the glory I had with thee before the foundation of the world. Father, I will. I announce my will in the confidence of love, knowing that I will get what I ask. We pray thy will be done. He says my will be done because my will and thine are the same. What is mine is thine and what is thine is mine. Verse 10. To come to such a prayer with our agenda, our hobby horses and our priorities. Would be as obnoxious as to interrupt the two prayers I mentioned as illustrations and say you shouldn't be saying that you should be saying that. And it means that right, not that. These are the dying wishes, no the will, no the undying heart of the Lord Jesus Christ for his church around the world. He's about to accomplish that salvation that will unify his people. And here he prays for its full application and he shows us what that salvation looks like and what it leads up to and where it ends. What he has in mind in his heart and thought, bridge heaven and earth, his whole soul is in heaven. but it's spoken about what will happen on earth. And he doesn't fill his heart as he prays with self-pity. He doesn't plead for comfort or strength. That will come in Gethsemane. Now his one thought is the glory and name and will of his father and the gift by his father of his people and finishing what his father sent him to do. And we may eavesdrop, no not eavesdrop, we may hear because he wants us to hear what he thinks of his church. And it's the theme of unity that ties all of this together, this theme, this prayer climaxes in the oneness and unity of the church. Let me show you that and I'll quickly walk through it and then zero in on the core verses in 20 to 23. The theme of unity ties it all together. The unity between the Father and the Son first. Verse 1, they're united in glory. The Son wants to glorify the Father so that the Father can glorify the Son. They have no separate glory. Verse 3, eternal life is to know this one united God through Christ. Verses 4 to 5, Christ glorifies the Father by making salvation known and glorifies His Father by finishing it. And what is this salvation? Verse 6, knowing God's name. What name? The one name of Father and Son. How do you know that? Verse 7, that everything the Son does comes from the Father, not Himself alone. Verse 8, through the word of salvation, proving what? That the Son comes from on behalf of the Father and is one with the Father. Verse 9 and 10, What does that look like? Well, he prays for his people also here today as the gift of his Father. What's Christ's is God and what's God is Christ's. United in taking sinners as their own, Christ is glorified as this takes place. The whole first half of the prayer breathes out a united everything. The glory, name, and word and knowledge of God. And the union of Father and Son and salvation continues in verse 11. As leaving the world, He commends the gift of His Father back to Him. Father, preserve them. How? In the name, the joint name revealed by the Son. And what does this look like? When Christ and God the Father's people are as united as is possible, one in Christ and the Father. Not that we become gods, but that in every way otherwise we are one in God. United by His name. Knowing His glory, being His special possession, the Son considers your salvation, believer in Jesus, as greatly glorifying His Father. And His heart is thrilled as He prays about this. Verse 12 and 13, Jesus prays for the Father to keep or preserve them. Why? Because this fulfills the joy of the Son of God. Verse 13, this is His tone. the night before the cross, bursting with a joy nothing can cancel, with the joy set before Him. And when we see God answer and fulfill this prayer, we should rejoice too. Why does the Lord Jesus let us hear this, verses 14 to 19? How does this preserving take place? By the Word of God. that separates the people of God from the world and sets them apart by His truth of who God is, of who we are, of what's right, of what's wrong. Unity is in truth and without it there's no unity at all. We'll come back to that in the second speech. What does this build up to? What's it add up to? What's the climax? What's the intended result of all this? It's mentioned four times in verses 20 to 23. When the Lord says it once, it's important. When he says it twice, it's very important. When he says it three times, it's of highest importance. And when he says it four times, we really should take up and notice this, that they may be one. This isn't something you and I have to establish. It's the prayer of the Lord Jesus revealing his heart He will unite saved humanity into one. And if real unity is what salvation must result in and end in, then the Lord Jesus has to be the one who establishes it. If the unity of the church is something that we had to accomplish, it would never happen. Because we are like the Corinthians. I am of Peter, I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, I am of Luther, I am of Calvin, I am of Hendrick de Kock, I am of Kirsten. That's the most gift, that's the preaching, that's the emphasis. Some wanting to be more spiritual said in their snobbery, but I am of Christ. I'm not like you petty squabblers. even Paul and Barnabas disagreed so sharply that they couldn't serve on the same mission team anymore. The apostles don't establish the unity of the church and the people of God in the pew don't either. Christ does. We need to see this because this is the foundation for this unity. This is the secret of its hope and success. This unity is based on the unity of the Trinity, of the Father and the Son. That's the kind of oneness Christ has in mind for His church, and until it reaches that level, it is not good enough. Have God the Father and Son ever quarreled? Have they ever gotten upset with each other? Have they ever said, you do your thing over there and I'll do my thing over here and as long as we meet once a year and nod at each other, that's good enough. This unity is so close that the Lord can say in verse 21, I am in the Father and the Father is in me. One being, two persons. And if we are made in the image of this God and saved by knowing this God in Christ, then the only possible result that does justice to this is if we are on earth as one as the Father and Son are. Verse 21, that they may be one in us. One of the most interesting things about toddlers is when mom and dad share a hug and a kiss. And they don't want to be left on the outside looking in. They don't toddle off to another room. Maybe they do that when they're 10, but when they're two, they don't or one. I remember my oldest daughter, especially when my wife and I would share a hug and a kiss, she would come running no matter what she was doing. She would insert herself between the four legs and she would be pulling until we picked her up and until she was in the group hug and her face was between ours. and there she felt loved and safe and included. That's what toddlers do. Would we even dare imagine joining in the loving, holy, face-to-face, eternal embrace of God the Father and God the Son? We don't have to dare anything. Verse 23, Jesus prays, I in them and thou, Father, in me, that they may be made perfect in one." This is so mind-blowing. We should not rush past. This is so foreign to us that we must stop and ponder it. The secret of the unity of the church is being embraced and sheltered in between the embrace of God the Father and Son through the Spirit. There is no safer, better, or more loving place. And how does the Son, as it were, pick us up into such an embrace? Verse 22. The glory which thou gavest me, I have given them, that they may be one. I in them, thou Father in me, made perfect in one. The Lord Jesus even gives us his glory. What is his glory? Himself as the One eternally One with the Father. Verse 1, Father, glorify Thyself that Thy Son may glorify Thee. Verse 5, Father, glorify Me with Thy own Self, with the glory I had, not by Myself, with Thee before the foundation of the world. Verse 22, I gave them the glory Thou hast given Me. How did He do that? He gave us Himself and in so doing gave us the Father. God's glory is who He is as the triune God and what He does. And God the Father looks at Christ the Son in the flesh and says, this is my Son. He reveals the family name. Well done, in Thee I am well pleased. What's it take for an earthly father to speak this way to his son? How does an earthly father show Worthiness, worthiness of the family name. How does he see that in his son? What does it take for you to say to your son, I'm so proud of you, well done? Not if he does something easy. If the whole family got up at 6 a.m. to do fall cleanup day and your son gets up at 9 a.m., you don't say to him, well done, I'm proud of you. It's when our sons do something hard that requires effort, character, sacrifice, and integrity, that there is a righteous sense of joy, of well-done, of saying, it is glorious to have such a son or daughter. What evokes this response in God the Father? Jesus Christ's willingness to come down to the cross to gather into one a bride for himself from this shattered, disunited human race. to be forsaken by His own Father so that He can draw us poor sinners in between the embrace He has always shared between Himself and His Father. And the Father says, I'm willing to forsake and crush my own Son with curse and wrath on the cross so that I can include His people I gave Him in our embrace. Christ completed this work on the cross and said, it is finished. This is the glory of God in Christ. And this glory, this oneness is spelled out as love. Verse 23. That the world may know that thou hast sent me and has loved them as thou hast loved me. Don't read over this. Jesus Christ is saying he was sent into this world to prove that God the Father loves his church. and each of his people with the very same love with which he loves Jesus Christ. God doesn't save his highest and best and greatest amount of love for Christ and give lesser love to his people. We have to do that. As a husband, being a one-woman man means that there is much of your love that belongs to only one. I remember one engaged woman writing to her friend and saying, I send you all the love my fiancé can spare for me. The point is there's only so much to go around and the best goes to that one. God's love is different. We are creatures. That means it's easy to find the lengths and breadths and depths and heights of our love. It can only go so far. We've only got so much energy. Only so much to give. It runs out, it runs out. A mother after an exhausting week or day can say, I just have nothing left to give. Tomorrow is a new day. But God's love is of a different kind. It has no creaturely limits. It is perfect love, full love, amazing love. unending love, unfathomable love. We don't have a tape measure that can get to the lengths and breadths and depths and heights and widths. And if the believing church asks, how great is the love of God for us? Then you have to answer by asking another question. How great is God's love for his son? Because the answer to those two questions is the same. He loves His Son from all eternity past to all eternity future. He cannot love Him more and will not love Him less. If He gave anything less than perfect love to His Son, He would no longer be God triune. He would no longer be God, one God. And this one love is shown in every possible way. This is first class love, the same love He gives to His Son. The same qualitative and quantitative love, the same kind of love, the same amount of love, a love so great that Paul can say lengths and breadths and depths and heights. These words are useless. It passes all knowledge. And how is that love best displayed when the church rests on and exhibits the oneness of God, the father and God, the son? Love and unity are inseparable. And where there's disunity, it's because there's a lack of love. This love in verse 23 cannot be made perfected until the church is as perfectly one as God the Father and Son are in themselves. And until then, Jesus Christ's work is not finished. Yes, he could say it is finished about redemption accomplished. But he cannot yet say that about redemption applied until one church out of every tongue and tribe and nation, slave and free, Jew and Gentile, male and female, are casting their crowns at his feet before him as one with all earthly divisions and names forgotten, with one Lord and one church. We don't create it. Ephesians 4. announces it as a fact. And there's only one way this can be. If we begin and end with the unity of the church as based in who God himself is. Do you see that this view of God changes everything? And it defines everything. Do you see God this way? Until you do, you do not really know Him. Is it not so that as sinners we are deep down suspicious of God? Unfortunately, the theology of the serpent poisons our blood. It's our instinct, a wretched, depraved instinct. Satan said, did God really say, can you believe God said no to you? The only reason he did that is because he doesn't love you. Obviously, he doesn't want you to break free from his control, and he doesn't want you to climb higher by yourself than you ever could have when tied down by what he told you not to do. God is mean. God is stingy. God is Scrooge, who, when he thinks of your pleasure, says, bah, humbug. God is against you reaching your full potential. God is lying to you. You can't trust him. That's the theology of the serpent. And every unconverted person thinks this all day every day and twice on Sunday. That's why worship is boring and obnoxious and difficult. Why would you want to listen to a God like this? And a person like this is so utterly blind to reality. And the only cure is to believe in the Son and see his glory and see God as he is. But every child of God still has times where the old venom from the poison of the serpent pollutes your thinking about God. God wants to hurt me with suffering and trial. God is punishing me. God doesn't want me to have all the blessings of life. I'll always be second best to God. One woman put it this way, talking about a sin of her youth. My mom says she's forgiven me, but I don't think she ever has. Do even some of God's children sometimes fear this about the Lord? I'll always be second best. Because I didn't do this right, I didn't do that right. Then you need to hear your Lord Jesus pray out loud for you by name, as he does in this passage, do you not? He doesn't shush you and say, I'm praying, come back later. He lets you into the middle of his embrace between the Father and the Son, because that's what this prayer is. It's a loving embrace and delighting of one another. He picks you up as it were and says, let me include you in the circle as my father and I face each other and delight in each other. And it's the embrace of God, the father and son with his people in the middle that displays the glory, name, love and salvation of the living God. And this is what makes the world take notice. To be disunited is to be handicapped and stunted in love and to earn the sneer. They say they love each other, they use the word brother, but it doesn't mean much. But what Christ has done and is doing will silence the world's hatred and scorn. Every earthly political alliance breaks. Every political coalition of nations is held together by shoestring and it depends on the unity of sinners. They all fail, they all reach their expiry date, they all reach the point where they can't pass the smell test. Every human union and relationship on earth dissolves. But nothing can dissolve the eternal embrace of God the Father and God the Son. Nothing can dissolve what they embrace together within the circle of their union. And that's why in this first speech you are not asked to do anything at all. Child of God, you are to simply relax in the embrace where God the Father has put you between himself and his Son by the Spirit. There is no angst in these words of the Lord Jesus. There is no hand rubbing, there is no saying, I really want this unity, but I don't know if it's achievable. I made it possible for them to be one, but now they have to do their part. I hope they do. He is bursting in verse 13 with joy. That he's going to the cross to gather his people in this embrace, he calls it his joy, and he says to his disciples, as it were, I'm letting you eavesdrop on this prayer so that my joy spills over onto you. And that is what he desires for all his people today, too, as we hear this passage, that his joy would spill into you. And he wants this joy fulfilled in the unifying of his people. You glorify him then by rejoicing in this. Our Psalter says that in them that fear him he delights, in them that trust his love O Zion, O Church of Christ, praise the Lord thy God. His wondrous love confess. He is thy glory and thy strength. He will thy children bless." This is how you begin to talk about the unity of the Church. And here as he expresses it in the glory, love, name, and word and holiness of God we may take a breathtaking panoramic view, we may climb away from this location and this view to the high view looking down on all of planet earth and all of history, all cultures, tribes, nations, kindreds, and peoples, everything that's been split and divided by sin now will be gathered in one. Revelation 7, 9, this vision of what the church is in Christ. After this I beheld and lo a great multitude which no man could number of all nations and kindreds and peoples standing before the throne of God and of the Lamb, clothed with white robes, palms of victory in their hands, crying with a loud voice, salvation to our God who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb. Then all the wounds in the unity of the church will be healed and there will be no more denominations and all the old differences will be forgotten and all the old errors corrected and all the sins scrubbed away and the blueprint of God will become reality in the finished building of his church. And then it will be a period appear that the church is the greatest unifier the world has ever known because of her Lord and had a unity that will last to the unending billions of years of eternity. And that is something to anticipate and to reflect now as much as possible with all that is in us. And then racism will be a thing of the past. And how often the testimony of the church in this world has been marred by racism, by thinking that different ethnicities are superior or inferior to each other. There is only one race, the human race. And the Church of Christ will be made up of all the variety, unified in the Son of God. This is the unity of the Church from the time of the Old Testament, from Adam to the Second Coming. This is the oneness of the church that God has made. And the best part of it is we don't have to make it happen and we don't have to finish it. We are to live in light of it. We are to seek to express it and we are to make every effort to reveal it and how we act. And our Lord Jesus himself in verse 26 promises he will not rest and he will not stop until it's done. till all his own are perfected in love and see his glory fully as the one eternally embraced by his father. Verse 26. I have declared to them thy name and I will declare it. He won't stop. How far will he go? What's the result that the love wherewith thou father has loved me, that love may be in them and I in them. Because Christ is in His people, for God to love His people any less than He does His Son would be for Him to love His Son less. That is the union that union with Christ and therefore union with God brings about. That's what the Son of God gathers, defends and preserves for Himself by His Word and Spirit, one church agreeing in the true faith. And when you look at it from God's point of view, what a refreshing, perspective on the church, the brokenness of the church, the under construction signs posted for all to see. They are not the last word. The divisions that the body of Christ now sadly produces, and sometimes they're necessary when the core of the gospel itself is at stake. But sadly, too often they're not. The saddest page in church history was when one of the reasons listed for two reformed Dutch denominations splitting was whether ministers should wear pants that go all the way down to your ankle or only halfway down your calf, and whether they should wear a triangular three-cornered black hat. Pathetic. That's what we humans produce. But there's hope amid the noise and mess of construction. The Son of God, the Great Unifier, is gathering at church a new human race to forever agree in the true faith This must be the first word and the last word that is spoken every time this subject comes up. If it were not for him, the critics would be able to say the church is the great divider. But now we may say by faith, I believe, just as surely as I believe that God the Father and Son and Spirit exist and work what I confess them to work. I believe because of them there is and forever will be one, holy, universal, Christian church. And we see foretaste of it, don't we? You can meet people you've never met before. Even if you don't know each other's language, you hear stories of people meeting each other in airplanes and seeing a Bible. turning each other to various passages and expressing Christian greetings and care through the words of the scriptures. Two of the finest weeks of my life were spent teaching at an underground seminary in Asia. Never met any of them. Most of them only came up to my waist and they nicknamed me Goliath of Gath. I ate rice three meals a day for the only time in my life. The only word that I recognized in their vocabulary was the name of Jesus. And there was an instant oneness as we went through the Gospel of John and soaked and gloried in its pages and in its truth and in its beauty. Some of them learning to appreciate the doctrine of election. There was a unity. Is it all that God had in mind? We'll talk about that in the next hour. But for now, simply marvel and stand in awe as you overhear the Father and the Son embracing each other with you, believing child of God, in the middle and saying, this is what it's about.