John 17, let's turn to John 17 this morning, brothers and sisters, and I would like to read from verse 20 down through verse 23, as we continue this study on Jesus's prayer for his people. So stand together with me and let's read from John 17, verses 20 through 23. I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they all may be one as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that you sent me. And the glory which you gave me, I have given them, that they may be one just as we are one, I in them, and you in me. that they may be made perfect in one and that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me. And to everybody said, amen. You may be seated. Let us pray. Our Father in heaven, oh God, we pray the presence of your spirit through the speaker and the listeners this morning. Father, we pray you would open up these majestic words, these awe-inspiring words of Jesus. Open up the heart of Christ to us and open up our hearts, oh God, this day, by your Holy Spirit, that we would receive this word in Jesus' name, amen. We continue through this prayer of Christ, and it seems to me that these last four chapters reveal the heart of Jesus to his inner circle. Remember that Judas has left. These words are not for any Judases. These words are for the inner circle, those that have ears to hear. And it is, of course, the Spirit that opens us up to this. As we come close, I think many of you know that these are the words that come from the very heart of God. From the heart of the Son of God to the heart of the Father. And the prayer itself is the inner part of the inner part of the heart of God shared with us, his disciples today. Now I believe that the rest of the prayer has application too. all of his disciples, including us. And that's why I preached it that way. But now as we come into verse 20, Jesus opens it up some more and says, I'm not just praying for the disciples that are here, but I'm praying for those who are believing in me from here on out. Anybody who hears my words and believes in me, They are my disciples and I'm praying for them as well. That's what he says there in verse 20. So we open up to the entire church as these words are expressed. Jesus has us in mind. He has the church through the centuries in mind as he brings this message concerning the import and his desire of the unity of the saints in the prayer. So this prayer is for all believers, including us. And I know that some of you are thinking there is some irony that he should refer to us like this, knowing that, and I'm sure he knew that, there would be much fracturing in the church from roughly AD 800 onwards, as the East splits from the West, the Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Church split off from each other, and then the Protestant Church splits off from the Roman Catholic Church in the West, and continues on for some 400 years of nightmarish fracturing. So here we stand after this 400 years, And we hear these words, and in some way, these words are painful to us. In some way, these words are encouraging. And the message I bring to you this morning, brothers and sisters, is a combination of a pain and a hope and a glorious vision that I know that Jesus is bringing about in his church through the ages. So I have one goal for you all as we enter into this section of the prayer, and that is that all of us would share the heart of Jesus this morning. that all of us would be able to say amen to the prayers. If Jesus were here praying this prayer to the Father, that all of us would join in arousing amen, because this is the aching desire of our hearts, that this come about in our experience as well. That this is your bottom line desire, and this is my bottom line desire. Let me say from the outset that I have not experienced this very much in my church experience. However, I see it developing, and I am encouraged I'm encouraged in the 55 years that I've spent in the Christian church. So I come with a bit of pain, but also a heart that has been encouraged by this. Let's begin with verse 21. I do not pray, back up to 20, for these alone, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. that they all may be one as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us and that the world may believe that you sent me. Here we see that the unity that Christ seeks in the church with us is a divine unity, that our unity in the church would be a reflection of the unity that the Father and the Son have experienced throughout the eons of eternity past. That there is a tremendous and divine and ultimate unity that we experience ourselves in the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me ask you this. Do you believe that God is one? Do you believe there is a unity in the Trinity? We believe that God is three persons. We believe that God is one God. How important is that doctrine to you? It's essential. Is there any negotiation on that point? If someone said, well, there could be three gods, What would you say? I'd say, well, that's to be anathematized, right? We would respond rather negatively to that. I think all of us would. We have seen polytheists. We've experienced it. Seen it before in history, we see it with the pagan tribes, and we reject any kind of polytheism because it's the wrong religion. So there's something very ultimate about this doctrine of the oneness of God. There's an intimate oneness about God. And that oneness is something that Jesus himself experienced and he knows something of. And so he says, this is the kind of oneness I am praying for my body, the church. The church, I believe, is the most realistic demonstration of real faith. There is so much in terms of the inauthentic about us, and I think all of you could agree with me. You've seen inauthenticities in yourself. You see inauthenticities about the macro church. You've heard of the scandals, and you've seen things, experienced certain negative things in the churches, and you know that there is something that is not real, and that there is something that is real. The church itself is a very realistic view of the true faith. I've had opportunity to evangelize, to bring in messages to conferences, and even when I was single in the 1980s, I moved from church to church for a short while, maybe three, four, five years. And when you do this, in fact, this occurred to me just this last weekend when I was away to another church congregation, I noticed that you tend to get a rather unrealistic perspective of what is going on. you don't really see the real thing that's happening. Imagine if you just kind of dropped in on the Swanson family during a birthday party or something and we're all celebrating and you walk away going, that is one of the friendliest, most joyful, most celebratory family I've ever met after being with us for six hours. Well, you know, you're not with us over the weeks and the months. You don't really see us. Does that make sense? You don't really have a realistic perspective of the Swanson family. So you see how you can develop a pie-in-the-sky, unrealistic perspective of the church if you're Franklin Graham. Well, I know Franklin Graham has his own body, but if you were an evangelist and that's pretty much all you do, you probably wouldn't get an idea of what is really going on in the body. So the church, the local church is a realistic demonstration of what is really going on in the Christian faith. If you go to one revival or one conference, you know, you feel like you've done something amazing. I've seen this before. We all walk out, and we're high-fiving each other. Best conference ever. Unbelievable. The response, whoo-wee. Boy, did we make a mark for the kingdom of God. You know, that kind of thing happens. But the local pastor. Pastor Billy Bob, who has to dig in for 40 years. You know, the evangelist is long gone. Now he's got to work in the field with the ups and the flows, the ups and the downs. Sometimes I find this church is just on a high level. We're just loving one another. We are enjoying the worship. And there's the ringing voices of God's people. And then five days later, we come together in a prayer meeting, and everybody's down. Has that ever occurred to you, that there's just kind of this coldness, and it kind of sets in for a little while? Does that make sense to anybody? Have you ever experienced ups and downs in your family or in the church? Oh, this kind of thing happens all the time. This is the realistic perspective of the body. If you watch a church over 20, 30, 40 years, what do you see? You see the morphing of the body, ups and downs, the purging of leaven, the developing of the organic unity and the growth over time. Have you ever watched a tree grow? You ever sit for 25 years and watch a tree grow? I'm watching our blue spruce grow outside of our, I've watched it for 10 years. Not nonstop, I've done a few other things in my life, but I kind of watch it grow over time. And what happens when a tree grows? It's an organic thing. It loses a branch here, it loses a branch there. It has a bad year, it doesn't do anything for three years, and then suddenly, boom, it gets another foot, gets another two feet. The church is organic. the real vision of the body. You want something realistic, dig in. Hang out with a group of sinners. You know, we used to say, pick your bunch of sinners and hang out with them, remember that? Pick your bunch of sinners, hang out with them, see what happens over 20 years. You say, I just want to be in the very best tree where everything goes good and there's never a bad year and there's never a branch that drops off and it's just, I just, it's all good, baby. Of course that's not gonna happen. Amen. Of course that's not gonna happen. It's organic unity. If there's anything the word of God says about the church, what is it? Organic. What does that mean? Connected. Not Mr. Potato Head. With all the pieces scattered around the floor if you're a two-year-old was throwing potato head parts everywhere. No, no, no, the church is organic. It's presented as a vine. A tree, candlesticks, bodies, buildings. What do you get out of that? What do you get out of that? It's oneness. That's oneness. Pre-established oneness. Turn to 1 Corinthians 12 for just a second. 1 Corinthians 12 draws all this together so you get an idea of what the church is. Probably the best chapter in the Bible that refers to the church as a body, of course. And what we get here is what? That God establishes the organic body as a body. It's definitively a body. That's why I'm not up here saying, guys, you've got to be a body. What's wrong with you, Mr. Potato Head? Don't be that way. I don't need to do that. Why, you're already a body. God has already ordained you to be a body. Now, yes, there are people with chainsaws. People who come in, kind of mess it all up, and they do that kind of thing, they've done that for 2,000 years. Oh yes, there's those who disturb the body, they don't help to solidify, they're not growing in, they're more leavenous, and all the rest, agreed, agreed. But 1 Corinthians 12, 13 refers to the body as a body from the beginning. Look at verse 13 there in chapter 12 of 1 Corinthians, for by one spirit, We were all baptized into one body. Does that mean that we should be baptized? We should be kind of working our way into the body? Or does that say that we have been baptized into one body? Is that what it says? Take a look at it again. What does it say there? What do you read there? We were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and have all been made to drink into one spirit, for in fact, the body is not one member, but many. So this assumes that the body is the body. The tree, the olive tree is the tree. The vine is the vine. The candlestick is the candlestick. The body of the building is the body in the building. That's what we get in all these references. So I know that this is a great mystery. We read that in Ephesians 5, very great mystery, that there is this oneness, that we are bone of his bone, that we are flesh of his flesh. But this is the metaphysical reality defined by God. So, because the ultimate metaphysical reality on earth is the oneness of the church of Jesus Christ, you have two choices. Either ignore it and wind up being leaven and being counterproductive in the body, or just deal with it. Receive it. Play it out. Grow in it. be active in receiving and experiencing the body life of what really is body life? So we're left with those two options, brothers and sisters. God brings the body together. Look at verse 18 of the same chapter, 1 Corinthians 12. What does it say there? But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as he pleased. What does that say? Does that say that Our publicity campaign really kicked in big time. No, no, no, no. The people that are part of this body are the people that God brings into this body. We are the ecclesia, we are the call at once. And when we see a body, you can say, I just wish that we had three more of these parts and six more of these, and we could get rid of these too. Okay, I mean, you can kind of do your little design thing on your little pretend potato head, but are you with me here, brothers and sisters? This ain't your deal. What does it say in verse 18 again? Says God to set the members, each one of them the body as he pleased. So the body is organic, the body is one and needs to be viewed this way by all of us It's not a YMCA, it's not a 4-H, it's not a school, and it's not a nation. It is the body of Christ. And it's very precious to him. It is the very apple of his eye. And that's why in 1 Corinthians 3, the apostle says, if anybody should mess up the church of Jesus Christ, God will come and God will destroy that person. A very precious, precious body. Now, here's one more thing I want to point out from 1 Corinthians 12. There's a little bit of tension in me regarding whether this is referring to the local body or to a broader and a wider body of Jesus. Now, I want you to look at verse 28 of this chapter 12. Now, see again, this plays in because There are some who say, I don't really wanna be part of a local body, I just like superficial relationships with people who call themselves Christian, and I just kinda travel the world, and I have temporary relationships and fellowship with people that may or may not be members of any local church anywhere, and that's just me, that's who I am, and that's the way I plug into the macro body of Christ. Then you have those who say, I am all about the ingrown church. And they don't say that, but that's what they are. Basically, you know, it's us against the world. It's us against them. And if a visitor comes into our body, or if I run into somebody from a different church in some other context, I just can't see them as really belonging to the body of Christ, because the only expression of the body of Christ, in my experience, is going to be this local congregation. So which is it? Now, both ditches, we want to avoid both ditches. The most realistic expression of the body of Christ occurs when you buy in to a local body over the long haul and you begin to see, for better or for worse, how you respond to the body and how others are responding to the body around you. However, the word says, Verse 28 of 1 Corinthians 12, that the wider body of Christ includes the apostles, the prophets, and others. And Paul uses the word we throughout, indicating that the church involves somebody more than the Corinthian church in that local body. It includes the Apostle Paul. It includes visitors who come into our body. And when they come from other bodies, and when they want to be part of our body, then we embrace them as the body of Jesus. God has placed this body here and brought the parts together. Now, of all of the things that I have taught over the years, I believe this is the most difficult of all for American Christians to receive. This, I believe, is the big one. Why? Because America's individualistic. Rogue individualism is what America is about. And what we need is a paradigm shift, a repentance, a renewal of mind in our understanding. Believe me, brothers and sisters, I'm in the same support group with the rest of you. I grew up with some of the most radical individualistic perspectives concerning the church that I think anybody could ever receive. And so it's been a 25 to 30 year journey for me to learn what it is to be part of a local body. It's extremely challenging for us, but that's the first thing to be said for this radical, ultimate, divine unity as presented to us here in verse 21. Now, it's also a functional unity. a living unity, a growing and edifying unity. The body has to be moving, it has to be developing. Look at Ephesians chapter 4 verse 15. This is the other passage that ties in very closely to this subject. Ephesians 4 and verse 15 and 16. Paul says we need to speak the truth and love because We want to grow up in all things unto him who is the head that is Christ, from whom the whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love. Have you ever sensed that you have not grown or you're not growing in your Christian life? Well, one of the reasons for the lack of sanctification in your life is right here, because your sanctification is really a matter of whether or not you're growing in the body. Because you see, you grow up together. Imagine a thumb saying, I am going to sever myself from the body, and I'm going to move over here to the corner of the room, and I am going to become a very big thumb. Too bad for the rest of the body. Imagine that for a moment. I am so concerned about my spiritual life that I need to get isolated from all of these other people, the rest of the body, and I just need to grow on the mountaintop with the gurus or whoever's up there, and somehow in this individual relationship with God, I am going to grow. Well, that's not how you grow. It's not how the text says, what does the text say? It says we grow up in all things unto him who is the head Christ from whom the whole body joined and knit together by what every joint supplies according to the effective working by which every part does its share causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love. The thumb doesn't get to grow apart from the church. So as people begin to draw back As people do not want to participate in the body, as they do not respect the body and receive what the body is going to give them in every joint supplying, then the question is, will those people grow? Will the thumb grow outside of the body? The answer, of course, is no. It's just not going to happen. We are growing by every joint supplying. The body has to be moving. There has to be a nutrition coming through the mouth, processing through the stomach, and through the intestines and everything else. I don't know how this all works. But there has to be a moving, a contribution of parts. There has to be some contributions going on in the body if the body is going to grow. There has to be. a symbiosis. So the question that you need to ask yourself today is, how are we gonna grow today? We've brought the body together, how about a little interaction of the body, the elbow with the muscles that attach the, shoulder to the elbow. Should there be some interaction of the body parts as we engage in the one another's? I don't have time for all the one another's in this message today, but there are, what, 20 to 25 one another's in the New Testament as we are active in the one another's, as we wake up, as we get off the gurney, and we begin to function as a body. I mean, literally interacting with each other throughout the week. praying with one another, edifying one another, who are you gonna edify today? To whom are you planning to give $100 to today? Because you have the gift of giving, and that's what you do on a Sunday. On every Sunday, you find somebody who could use $25, or $100, or $150. What exactly are you doing for the body? That's my question. Have you invested in the body? Are you involved in the body? And brothers and sisters, that's all of you. That's why it's dangerous for me to take a salary. I'm wondering sometime I should just drop the salary for a couple of years. That might be a good idea. Todd, we should talk about it. I don't know, because this is a body. This is me. I need you. You need each other. We need each other. We are a body. This is how we grow. Brothers and sisters, can you see it? Can you see what the word is telling you today? Who are you going to stir up to love and good works today in the body? Symbiosis is recognized by the animals, as I've mentioned. God has created the animals as a tremendous example for all of us. As our brother Neil has shared with us so many times. You know the blind pistol shrimp digs a burrow in the seafloor looking for food, but he teams up with the goby fish because he's blind. He can't identify his predators, but his goby fish friend plays the bodyguard for the shrimp as he digs. The goby fish can't dig, but the shrimp can. The shrimp has a little tentacle that he can't see anything, but he puts a tentacle on his buddy's whatever, Stomach and he just feels his buddy and if his buddy gives him a little signal the goby fish and the blind shrimp They'd make a beeline for the hole and they bury themselves into the hole that was just dug by the blind shrimp Listen if a blind shrimp and a goby fish can figure out symbiosis How about us Amen Some of you are blind, others of you are really good at digging. We're keeping an eye out for the bad guy. Let's engage the symbiosis in the body. The primary means of edifying, growing, and life-giving functioning in the body comes by agape love. We'll just pull that briefly from Ephesians 4 there. You see that the body grows by the edifying of itself in love. It's the love for the saints, it's love for Christ that we always come back to. What is the glue that holds the body together? It's going to be love. The greatest of these is love. And the more that we love, the more we're gonna find the unity of the body forming here. We might get beyond preschool and graduate into kindergarten when it comes to love, and I'm hoping for that. I'm waiting for my certificate, finally making out of preschool on love into the kindergarten class on love in this body. I've just watched this movie, Tortured for Christ, and my takeaway was that this was a refreshing definition of love for me. I think it gave me a clear view of what it is to love Jesus. And occasionally you just need that, right? You need to get a better idea of what it is to love Christ, even in the midst of trials and tribulations. The torturers were beating on the Christians, using hot pokers, killing relatives in the presence of these pastors. And the thing that they kept on pressing on them as they were torturing them with their hot pokers and all the rest, the thing that they wanted was give me the names of your brothers and sisters. And they refused to do so on their own death or the death of their loved ones. They refused to turn on the brothers and sisters in the body. because of their love for Jesus. They had so experienced the love of Christ, they so loved Christ, they would pray for the torturers, of course, but they would not give on their brothers and sisters. If your wife was being shot, was being threatened, and the gendarmes were turning to you and say, who are the names of the brothers and sisters in this congregation? They had a gun to the head of your wife. Would you turn in Joel? Would you turn in Todd? Would you turn in Neil? Would you turn in the brothers and sisters here? Would you do it for the love of Jesus? I press this upon you, brothers and sisters, where are you in terms of your love for Christ? Will you turn on the body or will you stand for Christ? Which will it be for you? But day to day, how do we suffer for the body? Are you willing to suffer a little bit today for the body? How do you love somebody who's new to the body and you have no idea what their sins are? And you suspect they have sin. But you're just introducing them to the body. Now you have to wade into their lives, but you're not sure what you have here. or brothers and sisters have been here 15, 20 years, you know exactly what their sins are. You know almost all their sins. You have to be able to say, I don't care if you will hurt me. I will love you anyway. I don't care what you're gonna do to me. I'm coming into your life and I'm gonna love you anyway. Do you love Jesus? See, that's the question here. The love for Christ is manifested in how you treat the body, the stranger who is new to the body and those who have been in the body for a long time. Either way, Your love for Jesus will be known by your interest in loving and sacrificially laying down your life to the point that these people will hurt you. But you have committed, you have committed that you're going to love Jesus despite their hurt, despite the fact you may die in the process, you are still going to love Jesus and you're gonna love your brothers and sisters in Christ. Now the application is still, I encourage you all to take the baby steps. Six inches. You don't need to throw yourself six feet into the arms of Stephan. Although he is a very loving guy, I love you brother. But I'm saying that a six inches, can you do six inches? Can you take baby steps into this? Can you love a stranger more? Can you love each other a little bit more today and tomorrow? Will you do that for Jesus? For the love of Christ, will you do that? Well, that's number one, it's a divine unity. Number two, verse 22, it is a glorious unity as well, and the glory Our Lord says, which you gave me, I have given to them that they may be one just as we are one. There is a gloriousness about the unity Jesus shares in his body and that Jesus is praying for, for his body. There is a gloriousness to the unity. Now I know that everybody has their stories. Over 55 years of my experience in the church, I can only remember two very bad congregational meetings. I'm not gonna give you the whole nine yards of them, but one of them ended with the pastor resigning, the other ended with five or six elders resigning. It just was not glorious. I want us to look back at some of these experiences in the church. And I'm saying this only because I know there are people, they've already confessed to me in the last couple of weeks, they have seen some inglorious things that happen in the church. They've seen, they've witnessed it. They could tell you all about it, as I could too. There is something inglorious that I think we've all witnessed in the church, and yes, it was a crushing, heartbreaking experience for me as a young man. So how do we treat this? Several things. Number one, what splits the church should never be Christians splitting off from Christians. but non-Christians who are acting out of malice, envy, pride, and collecting gross heresies for themselves. And this would require Christians to unify around the truth against these gross heresies. So that's the principle, that's the basic principle. Now I know that we live in an era of chaos and it's all confusing to people. There's the tremendous humanist incursions into the church, humanist ideologies through public schooling largely, public media, public culture, all these churches of the false religion called humanism. And so this has caused a great deal of stirring up in the church. People are compromising on evolution. People are compromising on feminism. People are compromising on every new humanist ideology that comes down the pike. So it's confusing to people, and I get that. It's also an era in which a billion people are reinterpreting the word of God the way they want to. As Martin Luther would say, I'm so much more afraid of the Pope than me. a billion popes than I am of one pope in Rome because of this massively individualistic form of interpreting the faith. And so what you get is chaos. We treated this yesterday in the theology study as we looked at tradition zero, one, two, and three, and contrast these various traditions. Tradition one, zero being the tradition that every man does and thinks and interprets the word of God as it seems fit in his own eyes and creates his own little cult. If he can get 35 people behind him, then that's good. He's good to go. So there's just so much individualism that's cut us off from historic creeds and confessions of the church, and it has been just chaotic. But here are a couple of encouraging words here. Number one, here's the number one thing about where we are today. Don't be discouraged. This thing is burning out already. I'm convinced of it. Looking at the Gen 2 data, the church journeys of the millennials and all the rest, it's blowing over. Whatever we've been dealing with the last hundred years is already blowing over. It's disappearing, will be gone, I believe, in the next 30, 40 years. So don't get the idea that the chaos that we've received from the last, say, five or six generations of American, cultic, individualistic, wild-eyed reinterpreting of the Word of God approach, this is going away. It's already disappearing. And the key, of course, for us is that we're rooted in church history. The churches that are rooted in church history will do well. The Roman Catholics are not rooted in church history. They're rooted in whatever the church just said yesterday. That's why Martin Luther and John Calvin and others were debating the X and others all over the table, around the table, under the table with what they knew about the church fathers. That's why, you know, we present our curriculum and we recommend reading the Athanasius' and the Augustine's even for ninth and tenth and eleventh graders because we are going to be, by God's grace, a church rooted. in history and unified with the church around the world and throughout the last 20 centuries of history. We must be part of the historic church, period. And this idea that we need to join the 10,000 cults and denominations out there ain't gonna happen, friends. Not for the true church. That can't be the way that we go. So a couple of encouraging words. Number one, don't be discouraged. The historic church will continue. But number two, be very careful that you not give way to suspecting your brothers and sisters who take on labels and belong to certain denominations or movements. There's just a lot of suspecting going on right now. I see this, not everywhere, but I see it Even between churches, sometimes within churches, people suspect each other, assuming the worst of each other. No, no, love rejoices in the truth. Love hopes all things. So be careful, be ever so careful in a time like this that you don't give way to, I think it's just you and me, honey, and I'm just not sure about you. Let's not go there. The devil takes advantage of times like these and gets us suspecting everybody. These are evil suspicions. We must root ourselves in the truth of God's word and the truth about our brothers and sisters in Christ. Yes, we absolutely do root ourselves in the word, in the truth of the word, but we're not taking false reports about our brothers and sisters. It doesn't matter what their labels are. Most often you find people don't live up to their labels. Praise God. He saves them despite their labels. Amen, how many of you can appreciate that? So what makes this unity so glorious? Let me give you a couple of things. And is this unity more than just agreement on propositions? I have written here is that pencil-necked theological pinheads who agree on 300 propositions and just nod their head a lot when they lecture at each other. Is that all it is? And I think you'll find in Scripture that's not all it is. One of the reasons why it's glorious, listen, is this. If you've ever seen the inglorious, you get to appreciate inglorious. I wonder sometimes, why did God bring such a division into that Reformed Baptist church I was a part of in 1984? Why such a division? Because the unity is so much more glorious than disunity, and when you begin to see a little unity developing, you begin to say, wow, that's refreshing compared to some other things I've seen in my life. Secondly, this is an altogether different kind of unity. It's an otherworldly, a supernatural unity, and it's abiding in character. It's not an institutional top-down uniformity that's pressed on people, and sometimes the cults, you can see, they all dress alike, they all talk alike, they all use the same kind of expressions, and they just kind of walk the same way, too, like robots. And it's this top-down uniformity that's pressed upon them by the socialist state or by the cultic approaches to life, etc., etc. And so you know the uniformity that's all fake and the world is faking it, and it's not the real stuff. No, that's not it. That's not the unity that we're after. We're also not after the hierarchical church government, the Episcopalian, Roman Catholic form. the one pastor government in a church that does this top-down thing. I can think of many times in my experience as a leader where I thought it would be so much more efficient if I could just say, okay, all the elders, I'm calling the shots from now on. Okay, we're gonna deal with this, but the way we're gonna deal with it is I get to be on top, and I get to control the whole shootin' match. Now, that would be a good way to retain the unity of the body for a while. And some organizations can retain their unity for 1,000 years that way. It's very impressive. But friends, there is another way. It's called humbling ourselves before each other, loving one another, preferring one another in the assembly of the Presbyterian government in which we all have to love one another. It's the only way we're ever gonna survive. And I've finally come to the conclusion, in the Presbyterian form, it's love or bust. Todd, I love you. And may I love you more. Typically, Presbyterian government are elders with equal power and authority in the body. It's like a circle of elders. But the temptation, I'm telling you the temptation exists, even within the Presbyterian form of government, for the circle to kind of, do you see what's going on here? It's kind of morphing, see that morph, you want me to do it one more time? It's kind of morphing. You know, the power of a personality, the guy who really wants to take charge, you see how easy it is? It's love or bust. You say, well, that's impossible. Exactly. It's impossible. And we're gonna be tripping all over each other along the way. We're gonna miss out on love along the way. But friends, we've got to come back to the drawing board again and again. Remember with this last experience of what, 20, 22 years ago, my wife and I were crushed, and I turned to Brenda and said, We're not giving up on this. If Rev. A didn't work, we're going to Rev. B." She says, what do we do if Rev. B doesn't work? I said, we do Rev. C. And then, are we going to give up on the church then if that doesn't work? No, no, no. No, we're going to go to Rev. D. And then the E and the F and G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P. And then AA, AB, AC, AD. We're not going to give up on the potential of the Holy Spirit of God enabling us to be able to lead a body with love and humility. Amen, brothers? Why? Because we think Jesus is good for it. I'm getting ahead. But there's also what makes this unity so glorious is this joint awe, a unified wonder and praise, an instinctive, spontaneous, coordinated praise. Not the individualized praise where my hands go up, my eyes are closed, me and God, I'm just kind of unaware of everybody else, too bad about the rest of the crowd, but man, I am enjoying the greatest spiritual experience of my life. No, no, no. One voice praising God. Romans 15 is Paul's passage that deals with the unity that he calls for in every epistle. But in verse five of Romans 15, he says, now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded toward one another according to Christ Jesus that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, receive one another just as Christ also received us to the glory of God. So he's saying the prayer is at one heart, one voice, glorying in God the Father and His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Because it's the same objective, it's the glory of God we're all after. For a while I didn't think this was possible with human beings until I went to the Rockies playoff game. This happens about every 75 years and I showed up for the Rockies playoff game, I don't know what it was, nine, 10 years ago. And it was in the ninth inning, tie score, bottom of the ninth, and somebody hits a double. And I saw it. I saw it. Unified, spontaneous, praise! Hands went up. Think about 50,000 people all at one time. Foom! There was no individual worship going on that day. 50,000 Americans praising the guy who hit a double. I'm sorry, there are 49,999. One was watching, taking notes, and we were thinking, could this happen in the worship of God? Do you think that we with one heart and one voice could glory in God and in his salvation and what he did in bringing us his son, Jesus. United praise is 100 times more glorious than individual praise. That's why we're just not after one or two people getting excited, getting their hands up. We're not into that. We're into a congregation. A body, one heart, one voice, praising Jesus. That's what we want. Thirdly, or fourthly, unity is glorious because it's driven by common loves. And love for God is bigger than love for golf. That's one of the more serious understatements of the sermon. Shouldn't it be? Should love for God be bigger than love for the Rockies? Is God bigger than the Rockies? God created the Rockies. Enough said. Love is also 100%, probably 100 times stronger than hatred of abortion and hatred of evolution. You see, I think, again, with conservatives, we're very good at hating. The Deeds, the Nicolaitans, the abortionists, everybody else. Just not good at loving. So you say, why can't the pro-lifers or the homeschoolers or fill in the blank, why can't they unite? because that's not enough. Love for God is so much bigger than hatred of the antithesis. And then finally, the reason this unity is glorious is because this unity represents the true reconciliation of God. God has reconciled man to himself, and that's amazing. In Ephesians chapter four, we read that God has reconciled us to Jesus Through Jesus who is our peace. And, I'm sorry, chapter two he says, the middle wall of partition is broken down between Jew and Gentile. The 1,000 year cultural difference between Jew and Gentile is crushed by the reconciliation that Jesus brings to us with God. This genuine divine reconciliation brings a peace that passes all understanding. If God is reconciled, that trumps all horizontal squabbles 1,000% over. Let me give you an example. Suppose you had 100 friends who owed you 25 bucks. You had 100 friends owed you 25 bucks. Then one day, a rich uncle left you $25 billion. Would you Be on your 100 friends for the 25 bucks. Maybe some of you would because you're so myopic and you can't even think of what just happened in your life. Listen, you get $25 billion, you don't sweat the small stuff anymore. Isn't that true? I'm looking at some of you are a little more wealthy than I am. Right? You get $25 billion. 100 people owe you 25 bucks. You don't sweat the small stuff. You got bigger fish to fry now. The same thing applies here. I'm halfway through the sermon. Let me go quickly. The unity Christ seeks involves a perfection in the oneness. That's verse 23. I in them, you in me, that they may be made perfect in one and that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me. There is a perfection that Jesus is seeking in the oneness. and this vision is going to be accomplished. That should be encouraging to you, that you're not working on a pie-in-the-sky vision that will not be culminated and completed and perfected in the years to come. So that's encouraging for all of us. We will be perfected in the things that separate us, forever and ever. we will see the unrighteousness that we deal with in our own lives that keep us from a perfection and union between those who are in other denominations, those who are within our own congregation. These things will be completely dealt with in time, and that's encouraging to us. We need this hope that this unity will come together. And then fourthly, The last part of 23, what does it say? It says that unity Christ seeks is a demonstration to the world of the divine miracle, unachievable and unimaginable in the world. The world is in awe of what is going on, that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me. The world sees this and they will know that something amazing has happened to these people. And this part of the verse, is not the first part of the verse which deals with perfection in heaven, but this part of the verse deals with a world still extant who is sitting there from the outside looking in at the church and saying, wow, what hath God wrought in the church? Obviously something is going on in the body. There's some miracle, some supernatural element of love that has been accomplished in the body. And the world is in awe of this, that the love of God has visited us. and created a divine love in us that is far above the kind of love and unity expressed in the world, and the world is stunned about this. You know, it's interesting that this communists that were torturing Richard Wurmbrand in 1955, they're gone today in Romania and Hungary. These are the nations that are receiving increasingly the word of God and the gospel. After all of the beatings and the torture, they could not beat the love out of the body of Christ. And I am convinced this is what has made the difference in Eastern Europe. Faced with the love of Christ and the love of these men who were tortured for 15, 20 to 25 years. Listen, Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords. He used that love to overcome these communist governments and the communist governments were crushed. They were smashed by the love for Jesus and his people and their love for the enemies that were represented by the people of God. In fact, I was shocked, I saw this last night, that this movie, Tortured for Christ, was filmed in the exact torture chambers where Richard Wurmbrand was tortured some 40 years earlier. And Jesus was magnified. And his kingdom has been glorified. He won. He won. a beautiful, beautiful picture of what Christ does through this miracle of love. And yes, is it difficult to love when somebody is torturing you for 10 years, for a long, long, long time, torturing him in his feet over and over, beating on his most sensitive parts of his body for years upon years upon years, and yet, brothers and sisters, love still won? Love came through. Jesus won. Jesus demonstrated to the world that the love that can be demonstrated by His congregation as they go through church squabbles, as they go through offending one another a little bit here and there, perhaps they're not being beating on each other as the communists did, but as we begin to experience a little bit of rubbing against each other the wrong way, Nobody, as far as I know, has really taken a hot poker down your back yet. I don't think you've suffered according to blood yet, as you've striven against sin and striven for the unity of the body of Christ. But friends, as love begins to manifest itself, the world steps back and says, I don't know what to say. At one point in the movie, do you remember, where the guy bursted in and he saw Wirtz Warmbrand praying. And every time he saw him praying, he'd drag him out and beat him for an hour and a half. Came in this time, he said, I've beaten you for praying for the last 10 years, and you've prayed for your wife, she's still in the prison camp. You pray for the son, he's begging for bread on the streets. Who is there left to pray for? And Wurmbrand looks up at him and says, I was praying for you. And the man just collapsed. It's supernatural. It's out of this world. It doesn't compute with the world. They can't put it together. It blows the mind of the world. They have nothing to compare it with, nothing. Well, as we close, do you believe in this vision for unity? Hypothetical person responds, impossible. The unity that Jesus presents here, based on my experience, impossible. Yes. Yes. The person comes back and said, no, no, no, I mean it's impossible. It won't ever happen. After 300 years of denominationalism and church quals, I've descended into a swamp of cynicism, and I just don't believe it can happen. May I encourage you all with this. You must believe in God. Even if you've seen utter failure in the love of the brethren and the unity of the saints for 50 years, I don't care. You must believe in God. You must believe in the heart of Christ He's asking His Father for it, and He will have it. The second thing I can say is I have seen it. More so than anywhere else, I have seen it in the torture chambers of a Romanian jail. In Chinese prisons, and amongst the Iranian brothers. It does exist. I know it exists. I know God can do it. Can you all say amen to that? But more than that, it has happened. But it does take faith to see God's miracles. Well, we've seen the context. We've attended churches. We can't be utopian or judgmental towards others, given our reticence to self-sacrificing love on ourselves. So our love is slow at believing all things, hoping all things, enduring all things. You know yourself. You know how you blow it. So don't be pointing fingers at everybody else, amen? But here, let me ask you this. Do you agree with this vision? Can you say, I share in the commitment of Christ for this? If so, then pray the prayer of Christ and pray for a miracle. Here's what happens. This happens with almost everything in life. You see so much failure. that you're finally convinced it's impossible. And then you pray for a miracle according to the will of God, and you pray with faith, and God brings it about. That's the process. That's how it works. So some of you may have gone through this. Again, I've heard this recently, that you've seen some lack of unity, some breaking up of relationship. You've seen it before. and it hurts you, it's painful. But the point is this, what we're talking about here is more impossible than a human creating galaxies. It's just impossible. It's utterly impossible to have this unity apart from a work of God. So, are you willing to lay down your life, number one, for God's truth, but number two, for love of the brother. And a question I'm asking myself as I close this, how does this contribute to the unity of the body? How does anything I do contribute to the unity of the body? If you start to complain about somebody or something, ask yourself, now exactly how does this contribute to the unity of the body? If you're degrading somebody's ministry in your mind, or descending into the ministry of criticism, or measuring on a polemical issue, or whatever it is, how does this contribute to the unity of the body? You see, if you share the heart of Jesus, the glory of God and the unity of the church is the major objective of your life. Remember the Franklin day planners? Do they still do day planners where you've got to figure out what your major objective is in life? You start with your major objective, how do I accomplish this today? Your major objective in your life, according to the prayer of Jesus, is that God be glorified and the church be united. So, as you lay out your Franklin Day Planner for this week, ask yourself, how is this going to contribute to the unity of the body? If you're choosing a family activity over a church activity, in this situation or that situation, how is that gonna contribute to the unity of the body? Just ask yourself the question. Your decisions, your priorities, your actions, even in the service, as you decide to do this or that in the service, how is what you're gonna do right now in this service going to contribute to the unity of this body? Just ask yourself the question. That's the simple thing to do. Will my actions help the unity of the body, or hurt the unity of the body. Ask yourself these things. That's the priority. The unity is maintained this way. We'll close with Ephesians 3 in verse 18. Paul's prayer begins in 318. We're gonna read through chapter four because that's where the unity kicks in. But he prays first for it because he knows he's not gonna achieve verses one and two of chapter four unless he's prayed first. And so Paul prays in Ephesians 318 that you may be able to comprehend with all the saints What is the white width and length and depth and height to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God now to him is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us to him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever amen I therefore The very next words, I therefore, based on everything I've just said in my prayer, for the power of God, for the love of God to be known, et cetera, I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling wherewith you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with long-suffering, bearing with one another, with all lowliness and gentleness, with long-suffering, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace. How is this impossible thing accomplished? It is the supernatural work of God. It comes by the power of God that works in us. It is only possible for those who have known the love of God, filled with the fullness of the love of God. They've got a sense for the height, the width, the length, and the depth, the ocean of God's love. They've already been overwhelmed by this experience of knowing God's love for them, and only then will Paul dare to go on to the next verses and say, Now you need to strive for the unity of the Spirit and the bond of peace with all lowliness and humility and gentleness and patience. He does something similar in Philippians chapter 2 and verse 1. Therefore if there is any consolation in Christ, if there's been any comfort of love, if there's been any fellowship of the Spirit, if any affection and mercy, fulfill my joy by being like-minded, having the same love, being of the same accord of one mind. Let nothing be done through selfish ambition or conceit. Paul is begging, he's pleading, he's beseeching. If there's any consolation, if there's any comfort, any fellowship of the Spirit, any affection and mercy, if there's been any reception at all in your life of God's forgiveness, if you have any knowledge at all of God's love, God's mercy, and the sweet fellowship of the Holy Spirit, then he says, then love one another. Then seek the unity of the Spirit. A very good question to ask people is this, have you received any love of God? One of the reasons why some may find it hard to, or even impossible to forgive, to be loving, to overlook, to be tenderhearted to one another, their relationship with God is characterized by a harshness, a servile fear, a distance. They don't know the love of God for them. And that's the reason why the church in America, and the churches in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, and our church, has had a hard time with unity and with love. We have seen God too much in a spirit of servile fear. We have seen God too much as one who is characterized by harshness. We have not adequately received the amazing, infinite, eternal, unbelievable love of God. It hasn't swept over us. If it does, we will increasingly see the love of the body and the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. I leave with these words. Can you hear God saying, I love you so much that I sent my son to die on the cross for you? I could not have possibly loved you more than that. I have loved you with an infinite and eternal love. I have forgiven your sin, and I've brought you into my family, and I'm powerfully saving you from your sin. As you hear those words this morning, can you say, I hear you, God. I believe you, and thank you for your goodness to me. Amen. Our Father in heaven, oh God, you are such a loving God. Your love is overwhelming to us. We cannot possibly know the extent of it. But Father, I pray for us, for our denominations, for everybody. Churches in this valley, churches in the Denver metro, throughout Colorado, around the world, that we would know more the height and the depth and the breadth of your love for us. and the power that works in us that we might be able to humble ourselves and love one another. In Jesus name, Amen. Now let's come to the Lord's table and I'd like to Draw from verse 23 one more time for the table. By the way, those of you visiting, please look at the back of our bulletin for how we practice the Lord's Table here at the church. But John 17, 23, what an awesome verse. I'm not sure you'll find a more awesome, breathtaking verse in all of Scripture. Listen to verse 23. That the world may know that you have loved them as you have loved me. Again, to step back and see the sheer bigness of these words, the magnanimity, the largesse, the hugeness of what this means. I don't think we understand this. And at some points in reading God's word, we need to step back and say, this is bigger than my thoughts are able to comprehend. How does God love God? We know how a husband loves his wife. We know a few things about love. But how does God love God? How does God the Father love God the Son? We don't know what it would be like to be loved and to know that you were loved for 100,000 years or for 10 million years. This love is an eternal love. It's an infinite love, a holy love. Agape love, a perfect love and an unchanging love. The son was loved even when he is hanging on the cross and receiving the brunt of God's wrath and justice poured over him. How do we say that? Because the father so loved the son to find a way to provide a gift for his son in the church. And it was a hard way to bring it about, but the Father brought it about. He loved His Son. Even as the Son was on the cross, even as the Son receives the brunt of His Father's wrath, we should be awestruck by these incredible, amazing considerations. But God loves you with this love. God loves you with this love. As you come to the table, remember, this is the love of God. It's the love wherewith God loved His Son. That's the love wherewith He loves us. He loves us as He loves His Son. So let's accept it and embrace it as we come and receive His love today. That the world may know that you have loved them as you have loved me. There's an amazing thing about being loved. But contrast for a moment being loved to not being loved. Have you ever not been loved or sensed that you haven't been loved? Perhaps you have not been received or perceived love, and you have not been loved for a moment, or perhaps a day or a week. And not being loved is a very lonely, a very empty and dark and dehumanizing, barren and sad kind of life, to not being loved. But on the other hand, to be loved, and those husbands and wives that courted each other and began to sense each other's love for each other, it's a beautiful thing. You begin to feel a fullness to life, the world you see in bright colors. There's a beauty and a joy that comes down upon you. Silver linings appear all around you, and you begin to whistle while you work, even in the salt mines. So everything becomes so much lighter and more beautiful as you are loved. And to be loved by God, the source of all love, is to see the world in bright colors with a fullness and a beauty and a joy that is inexpressible and full of glory. And that's why Richard Wurmbrand, again, could write in his book, I have seen Christians in communist prisons with 50 pounds of chains on their feet and tortured and so forth and so on. He gives all the ways in which they've been tortured. starving, whipped, suffering from cold, praying with fervor for the communists. He says this is humanly inexplicable. It is the love of Christ which is shed into our hearts. So the one thing that they knew is that they were loved by God. And even in this horrible condition, they so enjoyed the world. It was like there was a silver lining behind all the beatings. There was something beautiful going on in the cell. And the cell became, in some people's words, like Brother Oon's words, a heaven on earth. Sometimes these persecuted saints say, it was like a heaven on earth. Well, just like the guy who's been newly betrothed to a woman is in the salt mines, and he's whistling, and he's enjoying life, and everything's beautiful. Even his boss that is such an evil guy and beats on everybody else, he just thinks of him as kind of a cherub. You know, everything is just a beautiful thing, but that's because he's loved. He's been receiving the love of a woman. And the same thing here, brothers, except in a much fuller sense. Everything becomes of little consequence if you are loved by God and you know that you're loved by God. The negatives, the trials in your life begin to fade away and there's silver linings everywhere because you know the love of God. So as we approach the meal, there's one message. This meal shouts to you. Every time we come to this table, the message shouts to you again. Jesus said, here's my blood. This is my blood. This is my life. I died for you. I loved you this much. and His blood comes to cleanse us. And then it fills us with His spiritual life and eternal life that can only come through His body and by His blood. So the message is, this is my love for you. That's what this table says. I've loved you with an eternal and an infinite love that was incredibly manifested on the cross for you when I suffered and died there for your sins. Amen. Let's pray. Father in heaven, Once again, oh God, we appreciate the love that we have felt, we have received, and we have embraced that has come by your Holy Spirit ministering it to us, and by the beautiful gospel message of Jesus taking our wounds, taking our sins, taking our judgment, our punishment upon himself, and then dying for us. that he might share with us his life, eternal life, substantial life, an amazing gift that we'll continue giving into the eons of eternity. We praise you, Father, for this love. Everything else just fades in comparison with the amazing love wherewith you loved us. that same love with which you have loved your son, you've shared with us. We don't know why, we just know that we have been graced by your love and we receive this meal, we receive this bread and this cup as a reminder that we have received the body and the blood of the crucified and risen Savior, amen.