So take your Bibles, open with me to John chapter 17. Again, we'll be looking at verses 20 through 26 this morning. I want to start though with the hymn that goes along with our text this morning, and this is a hymn titled, The Drop That Grew Into a Torrent, written by Charles Spurgeon in 1890. We'll actually be singing another hymn by Spurgeon this morning in our worship service, Why Do I Sorrow More? But this morning the title of this hymn is, The Drop That Grew Into a Torrent. Based on Isaiah 41, 18, I will open rivers in desolate heights and fountains in the midst of valleys. I will make the wilderness a pool of water and the dry land springs of water. We experienced a little bit of that this week, didn't we? Thankfully to get the rain, but Spurgeon writes, All my soul was dry and dead till I learned that Jesus bled, bled and suffered in my place, bearing sin and matchless grace. Then a drop of heavenly love fell upon me from above, and by secret mystic art reached the center of my heart. Glad the story I recount how that drop became a fount, bubbled up a living well, made my heart begin to swell. All within my soul was praise, praise increasing all my days, praise which could not silent be floods were struggling to be free. More and more the waters grew open wide, the floodgates flew, leaping forth and streams of song flowed my happy life along. Low a river, clear and sweet, laved my glad, obedient feet. Soon it rose up to my knees and I praised and prayed with ease. Now my soul in praises swims, bathes in songs and psalms and hymns, plunges down into the deeps and all her powers in worship steeps. Hallelujah, oh my Lord, torrents from my soul are poured. I am carried clean away, praising, praising all the day. In an ocean of delight, praising God with all my might, self is drowned, so let it be. Only Christ remains to me. As we're looking at the high priestly prayer of Jesus at this final portion of his prayer, He finishes the prayer and says, I do not ask on behalf of these alone. but for those also who believe in me through their word." And you realize that because of the work of the apostles and the prophets recorded for us in the inspired scripture, Jesus being the cornerstone, through their testimony, we have all heard the gospel and have believed. So yes, the apostles and the prophets are still working even today. And Jesus here in the garden, before he goes to the cross to pay for our sins, prays for us. for those who would believe. He prays that they may all be one, even 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 sent me. The glory which you have given me, I have given to them, that they may be one just as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them, even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, be with me where I am, so that they may see my glory, which you have given me, for you loved me before the foundation of the world. O righteous Father, although the world has not known you, yet I have known you, and these have known that you sent me, and that I have made your name known to them and will make it known, so that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them. Here Jesus is praying for those who will be brought into the family of God through the ministry and the work of His disciples, the apostles. And He prays for unity and for love. We made the point looking at this that if you look at the church today, we do need to probably ask a question, and that question most commonly asked in regard to this text is, has Jesus' prayer for unity in His church not been answered? Because as we look at the church today, it seems that everybody's arguing. Everybody's taking sides. Everybody's all divided up and split. Everybody's contrary. It seems like some of the most argumentative people on the planet are Christians. They just don't seem to get along. Well, we need to take a closer look at the church and in order to answer the question, we need to understand what unity is, what unity is not, and what the true basis of unity needs to be within the church. We have to understand that unity is not uniformity. Unity does not mean we are all going to be exactly alike. In fact, if you see a group of people that all look alike and act alike and talk alike, it's probably a cult. More than likely, because outwardly they all want to conform. We understand that just as there is unity in the Trinity, there are still distinct persons in the Trinity. And when we look at the church, we are all members of a body, but we're all members. We are not uniform. Unity is not conformity to where we all look exactly alike and think exactly alike. When we look at the body of Christ, in fact, we have to see that the body of Christ is made up from people of every tribe, every tongue, every nation. And if we want to be honest about it, the church is, it should be, but it is the most diverse group of people on the planet. because our brothers and sisters in Christ are all over the place, and most of them don't look like us. Aren't you glad? If we were all the same, that would be boring. I mean, what is the excitement? People say you marry somebody who you're like, I hope not. The saying is opposites attract, and it's true. Shh, no testimonies. It's true. There is diversity in the body of Christ. We also understand that unity is not organizational unity. That is structure, power, fundraising, wealth. It's not even about having a common pursuit other than the worship of God, seeking to honor and to glorify Him. That unity is modeled for us. As Jesus prays here, it's modeled by the Father and the Son. He says that they may be one, even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us. D. A. Carson writes about this, this is not simply a unity of love, It's a unity predicated on adherence to the revelation the Father mediated to the first disciples through His Son. You realize, as Jesus was there, Jesus manifested the Father to His disciples. He, just like the written Word of God does, reveals the Father to us. This is the revelation that they accepted. It's the revelation that they then passed on, those who also believe in Me through their word, through their testimony. It's analogous, Carson says, to the oneness Jesus enjoys with His Father. Here it's fleshed out in the words, just as you are in me and I am in you. The Father is actually in the Son, so much so that we can be told that it is the Father who is performing the Son's work in John 14.10. The works that He does, the Father is doing in Him. Yet the Son is also in the Father, not only in dependence upon and obedience to Him, but His agent in creation, and His wholly concurring Son in the redemption and preservation of those the Father has given Him. The Father and the Son are distinguishable, yet they are one. This proves for us then that, yes, there can be distinctions between us, but we can be unified. Believers then, while distinct, are to be one in purpose, in love, in action undertaken with and for one another. How many one another's are there? Somebody counted. I think there's 52 one another's that the New Testament gives us. You know, if we just spent the time doing those 52 one another's, we wouldn't have time to get in trouble. because there's so much that we're to be doing for one another in the body of Christ. As we do this, we do it in joint submission to the revelation that's been received, to the Word of God. There's unity in the Word, which reveals to us, of course, Jesus on every page. We also see here unity is found as we abide in Christ. He prays that they also may be in us. So when we look other places in the gospel of John, just as the branches abide in the vine, we abide in Christ. We're dependent upon Him for life, for fruitfulness. We're dependent on Him for everything. What can we do without Him? He tells us, without me, you can do just enough to get by. No, what does Jesus say? Without me, you can do nothing. You understand that for as much as we talk about being independent and pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps, the Christian life by definition is a life of dependence, depending upon Christ. All of this is so that the world may believe that You sent Me." In fact, that's the definition of salvation, of eternal life, isn't it? In chapter 17 here, in verse 3, as he begins, This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent. The very definition of eternal life is knowing God. It's fellowship with Him. And how humbling is it Honestly, to know that God sent His Son to die for us because He wanted to fellowship with us. And in order to fellowship with us, He couldn't leave us as we were. He had to change us. He had to redeem us. He had to give us His righteousness. He had to make us fit to be in His presence. He did all of that out of His desire to glorify His name by fellowshipping with us. This kind of observable unity can only be explained by seeing who Jesus is and knowing why God sent Him. Again, D. A. Carson says, it's not achieved by hunting enthusiastically for the lowest common theological denominator. but by common adherence to the apostolic gospel, by love that is joyfully self-sacrificing, by undaunted commitment to the shared goals of the mission with which Jesus' followers have been charged, by self-conscious dependence on God Himself for life and fruitfulness. It's a unity necessarily present among genuine believers, and it's a unity that must be brought to perfection. That is the standard that God demands. That's what He's equipped us for. And that proves, then, that unity and love in the Christian life are not just tolerance. Have you noticed that the world preaches tolerance an awful lot? And by tolerant, they mean, let me sin and leave me alone. And when the world demands that we be tolerant of them, they are intolerant of the truth and of anybody who adheres to the truth. We understand then, if unity is missing in the body of Christ, that's a reminder to us that not everyone who claims to be a believer in Jesus is truly saved. Jesus says, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, and what does he say to them? Depart from me, I never knew you. Unity is impossible where lust and where evil desire rule. James writes in chapter four, what is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you? Is it not the source of your pleasures that wage war in your members? You lust and do not have, so you murder. You're envious and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask with wrong motives so that you may spend it on your pleasures. You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world sets himself as an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose? He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us." When we read what the Word of God says, this needs to change the way we think. When we are quarrelsome, when we are fighting with one another, we need to realize that the source of that conflict is our own lust, our own evil desire, to the point that it's equated with murder. You lust and don't have. You want something that you can't get, and so you're willing to murder to get it. And we all say, well, I wouldn't kill anybody. If you're angry at somebody because of your own lust without a genuine cause to be righteously angry, Jesus said that's the same as murdering them. You're going to be held to the same judgment as if you murdered them. Now, if that were true, how many of us are murderers? Every single one of us. Every single one of us. because we are ruled by lust and our quest for fleshly pleasure. And that means that what we ask for, we can't receive because we're asking with wrong motives to spend it on ourselves. The unity for which Christ prays then is not given without the requirements that we need to do our part. We need to walk in obedience to the word of God, particularly those one another's. Now, when we look at that, we have to realize It's still not up to us. People say, it's all up to you. Let me relieve you of the pressure. It is not up to you. If it's up to you, you're going to fail. It's not up to us. It's the work Christ has done and is doing and will continue to do in us and through us and with us. We also see that our unity is tied directly to the glory of God. In verse 22, He says there, "...the glory which you have given Me, I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one." Here, Jesus mediated God's glory to His disciples. And through them and the written word that He gave to them by His Spirit, He's then given that glory to us. to share, to manifest the glory of God. He has revealed the Father's character and nature to us, and we are conformed to the image of the Son, who is the image of the Father. We're being made like Jesus. Jesus manifests to us the Father, so we are conduits of the glory of God. The question would be, let's look at the last week and how well did we carry that glory and share it with others. Verse 23 says, I in them and you in me, that they may be perfected in unity so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you have loved me. This petition for complete perfected unity, it's a request that all believers might share richly in the unity of purpose and wealth of love that tie the Father and the Son together. We are being caught up, and think about this, We, in our life being saved, being sanctified, one day being glorified, we are being caught up in the love between the Father and the Son. The Father gave us to His Son so that He might redeem us. In this prayer, He gives us back to the Father for safekeeping while He's going to the cross. He prays for those who the Father has given to Him, and He tells us that He's not going to lose a single one of them. Make the point from this chapter that we have been re-gifted. Have you ever re-gifted anything? I have several gifts that I keep in the event that we have a white elephant party. Things that I want to give away, but I want to give away in jest and in fun, because if I gave them away seriously, people would think I was nuts. But the Father gave us to the Son, the Son gave us back to the Father for safekeeping, and that means we are caught up in an expression of love between the Father and the Son. There is no greater love in the world than the love of the Father for the Son and the Son for the Father. Verse 24 says, Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me be with me where I am, so that they may see my glory which you have given me, for you loved me before the foundation of the world. This is significant because Jesus expresses to the Father here something that He says He wants. Jesus says, this is what I want. I want the ones you have given me to be with me where I am. You understand, that means Jesus is waiting to come back for us. He's here with us. He indwells us with His Spirit. but still waiting that day. Now, Jesus expressed that while He was here on the earth, He didn't know when He was going to come back. He says, at that point, only the Father knows. I don't think that Jesus still doesn't know when He's coming back. He has been exalted. He is Lord of all. He knows now when He's coming back. And He is waiting for that moment, anticipating that moment. That's why we're told to watch and to wait for His coming, because He is waiting to come. And at that moment when that trumpet blows and He comes for us, that the ultimate glory and the ultimate expression of love in that moment when we see Him and we're transformed immediately where we stand if we're here when He returns. Now, the good news is, is if we die before He comes back, our soul will go to be with Him, and then we have the fun of being resurrected before anybody here is changed. You know, that means that we get to come back and say, haha, I beat you to it. to be resurrected, to be raised, to be glorified, and then those who are alive and remain instantly glorified and we're all caught up to be with Him. Jesus wants to be with us. He wants us to be with Him where He is. Within the unity of the Trinity, there's a desire for fellowship with us. Carson says, those who share with the Son the delight of being loved by the Father, share also in the glory to which the Son is restored in consequence of His triumphant death and exaltation. We are thus brought back to the futurist eschatology of chapter 14, verses 2 and 3. I'm going to prepare a place for you. This is where creation and consummation meet in the glory of the Son. Verse 25 says, O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You, And these have known that You sent Me, and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them." Jesus ends this prayer looking to the consummation of all things. Between now and then, He is going to continue to make the Father known. Through His Word, by His Spirit, He's going to make His Father known. And that again from verse 3 is the definition of eternal life, knowing God. Can you stop and imagine for just a moment, imagine your life if you did not know Him. And then imagine your life if you were not accepted by Him in the Beloved. We know Him and have been accepted by Him, and that alone should blow our minds, that God so loved us and desired fellowship with us that He sent His Son to die in our place to make us fit for fellowship with Him. Here He addresses God as righteous Father. He knows that His mission will not fail. Jesus is not going to fail. He's not going to lose a one that's been given to Him. He says the world doesn't know Him and while the world doesn't know Him or the One who sent Him, His disciples do know Him and they're going to make Him known. You realize that the disciples, all but one, went to their death to make Him known. And they tried to kill John. They tried to boil Him in oil and He wouldn't die. So they exiled Him to Patmos where He saw Jesus revealed and wrote to us that revelation. These men were so changed, so given such boldness by the Spirit of God after Jesus had ascended and sent the Spirit to be with them, that they testified of the truth about who He was to the end of their lives. This revelation that God has made of Himself, it continues to this day by the work of the Holy Spirit through the Word which He inspired. God's desire then on every page of Scripture is to demonstrate and to share His love with us by showing us Christ. Again, this was Spurgeon's point. When a woman asked him after he preached one Sunday, I don't understand how God can say that he loved Jacob but hated Esau. How could God hate anyone? And Spurgeon's response was that he was not mystified by the fact that God hated Esau. He couldn't understand how God loved Jacob. When we understand how holy He is and how sinful we are, His love is a mystery to us. But He's expressed that love by sending His Son to make us fit to be adopted as His children. Again, D. A. Carson says the crucial point is that this text does not simply make these followers the object of God's love, but promises that they will be so transformed as God has continually made known to them that God's own love for His Son will become their love. The love with which they learn to love is nothing less than the love among the persons of the Godhead." I've commented before that in doing premarital counseling and in counseling married couples, it's always amazing to me that anybody in the world can stay married because they don't even really know what love is. To know what love is, you have to have experienced this love given to us by the Father through His Son. And as we participate in their love, we learn that love is not an emotion. Love is not a roller coaster. Love is not something you fall into or out of. How many times have we heard this? Well, I just don't love you anymore. That's not love. It never was. Love is a decision. It's a choice as to how we're going to respond to one another. And we learn how to love by seeing the love that God has shown to us. We also see that Jesus concludes this prayer with this. He says, so that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them. This is our everlasting hope. that God is going to dwell with His people. He promises that throughout the Scripture. I will be their God and they will be my people. And He will make His home with us. He will dwell with us. At one point in the future, our unity then will be perfect. For now, it's marred by our sinfulness, by our lust and our desire and our quarreling and our fighting. But one day that unity will be realized when Christ comes back and we're glorified. You see, what ultimately stands in the way of unity is us. We get in the way. But we're being perfected. We're being sanctified. We're growing in this love. And that means that a mark of the church should be that we are growing together in unity. Not that we're all going to get along perfectly. If anybody tells you that they get along perfectly, especially if they're a married couple, look at them and tell them you're lying. No, we don't get along perfectly, but we need to be getting along better and better and better. Until Christ comes, then what do we look for? We need to look for unity in our lives. We need to strive for unity. Paul says in Romans 12, 18, to be at peace as much as depends on us. I love that Paul includes that. Be at peace with all men as much as depends on you. That means there's some people you're not going to be able to be at peace with because they're just not happy unless they're not happy. You met anybody like that? They're just not happy unless they're not happy. Well, at that point, God bless you, go away. If as much as it depends on me and it can't depend on you, then I don't have to be around you. Now, if you're married, we need to talk because you need to be around the people that you're married to. As most of the counseling that we do with married couples, a lot of times you find out that couples love each other. It just happens from time to time you don't like each other. And if you ever noticed the things that you thought were endearing when you were engaged drive you nuts now that you're married. This is the reality that we are all sinful. We need to be growing, though, in that unity, pursuing that unity, unity in our family, unity in our churches, understanding that true believers will want unity. They will seek it and they will find it. Now, that doesn't mean that we compromise the truth for unity. In fact, the foundation for unity is The truth. We have to be unified in the truth of the Word of God. Those who bring division, those who bring divisiveness, we're told somebody who continually brings divisiveness needs to be treated as an unbeliever because they probably are. Because believers want unity. Titus 3, 9-11 says, "...but avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and strife and conflicts about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless. Reject a factious man after a first and second warning, knowing that such a man is perverted and is sinning, being self-condemned." Have you ever known somebody that it doesn't matter where they go, they're always going to make enemies and cause fights? Always. We've had a few here in our church. One that came in, and one of the first things he said to me, this was years ago, I hope y'all don't know who this is, but he said that God had sent him to our church to root out problems in my theology so that I could be a better pastor. And I thanked him for his special anointing, and he didn't last long because he was always looking to find something wrong. Now, if you're living in the truth and following the truth, you're going to recognize when there's something wrong. And when we do, we need to confront that and rebuke that with love. Part of the role that we have with the Word of God is reproving one another so that we can be healed and restored and corrected. But if all of our ministry is to go around and point out what's wrong with everybody else, you know what? Those people need to stop and just look at themselves in the mirror for about five minutes, and they would see enough wrong to wonder if there was any faith at all. As Christians, we don't go seek to divide. The truth will cause enough division. Understand Spurgeon said, though, most of that division is the division between the sheep and the goats. Truth will divide. but we don't need to be divisive in the way we handle it. So when we have debates and when we have disagreements, we can still have love and unity. In our disagreements, we have to be searching the Scriptures. If there's an area that we disagree on, we need to search the Scriptures together, not to prove one is right and the other is wrong, but to see what does the Word actually say. That's actually how I was brought to the doctrines of grace. A preacher's son, who is now a preacher in his own right, and I, I was 15, he was 13, and I grew up Southern Baptist, and I was full-blown 100% Armenian, whosoever. And he said, nope, God chose those who are gonna get saved. And I said, you're out of your mind, you heretic. And he said, well, what does the word of God say? And what was amazing, we actually, we used to do this thing where we would write letters on paper with Bic pens and put them in envelopes and lick a stamp. and mail back and forth. And we started with two or three pages and ended up 14, 15, I still have all those letters. 14, 15, 16, 20, 22 pages delving into the Scripture. What does the Bible actually say? And over the course of a year, he came out of hyper-Calvinism and I came to Calvinism. We met in the middle searching the Scriptures. Not, I want to be right and prove that you're wrong. What does the Bible actually say? And I'm still amazed at times that as we grow in the Word and as we mature in the Lord, as of last Sunday, I've been a believer for 45 years and I'm still a baby. We read the Word and you read a passage that you've read over and over and over, and suddenly, that's what that means. I never saw that before. What does the Bible really say? If we have disagreements, especially over issues that are not gospel issues, then we need to delve into what the Word really says. Jesus reproved the Pharisees in John 5. He said, you search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. It is these that bear witness about me, and you're unwilling to come to me so that you may have life. The Word reveals to us Jesus. Paul writes in Ephesians 4, Therefore I, the prisoner in the Lord, exhort you to walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love. I love that phrase, bearing with one another. That phrase literally translated is, in the body of Christ, put up with each other. How much better would it be in so many churches if Christians just put up with each other? Well, here's the truth, and here's the sad reality. You can choose your friends. You're stuck with your family. But we're the family of God. There's something that unifies us that's found and rooted in the love of God for His Son. And we need to strive to walk in that unity. He says, Paul says, "...being diligent to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." There is one body and one spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all." The unity that we have been promised, that Jesus prayed for, it's not that it's lacking. We just need to look for it closely. Because I truly believe that where you find a true church, a healthy church, you will find the unity that Jesus prayed for. We might have disagreements. We might not all get along perfectly. If we all got along perfectly, I would be worried because we are independent, and yet while we are independent members, we're also members of the same body, members of one another. We find our unity then in the head of the body, who is Christ. Our unity is found in Him. If you meet another believer that goes to another church that holds to some different doctrines, don't focus on the things that divide you. Focus on the Savior who saved you. Have you ever experienced that where you meet another Christian and before they tell you, you kind of have an inkling, I think they're a Christian. And then when they tell you, it's like, ha, I knew it. Well, that wasn't you being a genius. That was the Spirit in you recognizing the Spirit in them because we have the same Savior. So while there are things to divide over, most of what we divide over, we shouldn't. Look for what we have in common in Christ. And in reality, if we don't have Christ in common, we need to be careful. Paul warns us in 2 Corinthians 6 that we are not to have fellowship with darkness. Not just because we're in the light, we are the light. That's Paul in Ephesians 5. You were darkness, now you're light in the Lord. That's a radical transformation of what we are. We're a new creation. So now as we come to know other believers, In our local body and even in other local churches, if somebody confesses faith in Christ, rejoice that you have a Savior in common. And if there are things that divide you and that you disagree on, praise the Lord for an opportunity to search the Scriptures together and to disciple one another in the truth. If we just cut everybody off that doesn't agree completely with us, we're going to be lonely, miserable people. Because Christ has saved us to be a member of His body, to be members of one another. And the proof of that salvation is striving for this unity and this peace for which Christ prayed. Let's pray together. Father, we do thank You this morning for Your Word, for this prayer that Jesus has prayed. We thank You that He prayed for us and we know that as He continues this ministry of intercession, You hear and will answer what He asks. We pray for Manifestations of this unity in our midst, in our church, we thank You for the unity and the love that we have and we pray that You would continue to grow it as we love You, as we learn more about You, as we know You more each day. We thank You for Your Word, for the fact that it purifies us and refines us, convicts us and challenges us. And thank You for Your Spirit that applies it to us. so that we might walk in obedience so that we might be sanctified by your grace. We do pray for this unity in your church around the world. We know that it will one day come to be because Jesus asked it and what he asks you will do. We pray these things then in Jesus name. Amen.