This message was given at Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. At the end, we will give information about how to contact us to receive a copy of this or other messages. The Gospel of John chapter 17, and we'll be picking up in verse 20. This is God's word. I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one just as you father are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. the glory that you have given me I've given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one so that the world may know that you sent me and love them even as you loved me. Father, I desire that they also whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Oh, righteous father, even though the world does not know you, I know you and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name and I will continue to make it known that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them. It's the reading of God's word. Let's pray. Our father, please be with us. We ask for your Holy Spirit to do the work that we cannot, to open our eyes to the truths that you have given us, to convict us of sin, to grow us in the ways of righteousness, to transform us to look more and more like Christ. Lord, we pray for your blessing on this time, your blessing on the word preached, your blessing on us as we listen to you speak. It's in Jesus' name we pray, amen. So as we get towards this tail end of this high priestly prayer, I've been saying that this has been an intimate prayer. This has been an intimate prayer we are witnessing here because really we're seeing this last moment shared with a father and a son, shared before everything is about to change, shared before everything is about to go wrong. Well, by earthly standards, But now, intimacy here to me seems to intensify and I'll tell you why. All along, we've been observing a moment. We've been watching a father and a son. In this part of the prayer, Jesus turns his gaze, so to speak, from his immediate disciples, those there with him, to us. He turns to us. He's praying for those to come. And if this were just some average man praying this, I would think differently about this. I would think he's just praying generally. He's just praying generically, all those people who are to come, right? But when the sovereign God over all creation prays for all those who are to come, I think we're supposed to read it differently than just some average man. I think when the one who foreknew each one of us from eternity past prays for us, I believe he is really praying for us. Christian, he is not just praying for us, he is praying for you. And hear how he prays. When we get into the text at verse 20, I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. Jesus is looking ahead. He is foreseeing something that really only God could do. He is foreseeing the spread, the successful spread of the gospel. At this point in the plan, no one but God could have confidence right now. He's got a bunch of disciples who on the eve of being left alone are full of weaknesses and flaws. They're getting ready to desert their master shortly before he is going to be murdered. Shortly before he's going to be tortured and humiliated before the world. No human planner would be confident right now. No human planner is thinking, I've got them right where I want them. Jesus on the eve of all this about to happen, he foresees that the gospel is about to go forward. Jesus knows his plans are succeeding. From all the chaos that's about to ensue in these coming days, Christ knows that he will emerge victorious from all that's about to go wrong, seemingly. The God who took on flesh as a fragile little baby He is going to emerge as the liberating Redeemer of humanity. The broken will be made whole. The convicts will be pardoned. And those who trust in Him, they won't just be forgiven. They'll be given life. Gospel is going forward. Jesus knows his plans and he knows his power. He knows his kingdom will not be stopped. There is no obstacle nor any opposition that can stop it. Like a boulder pushed down the side of a mountain, it is going to keep going until it reaches its end. There will be nothing to stop his kingdom from going forward. And he is foreseeing in this moment exactly what we have been witnessing in history. Am I right? by the word of his apostles, he is going to save an entire people. That's what we've seen happening. One generation after another, after another, after another, believing in him by the word of those apostles. 2,000 years after his ministry, we sit here in this room as the blood bought children of God, because God has been faithful to his people over all this time. We are here because God's word has been faithfully handed down, faithfully preserved, faithfully proclaimed. And for those ones who would receive his word, Jesus has this specific prayer for them. All of this prayer has had something to do with us, but this prayer very specifically looks forward to those who were to come. What does he pray for? If you were to just not look at this prayer and say, okay, what would you pray for for someone who's about to get sent off into a hostile land to serve the Lord? I wonder if you'd pray anything like this. I don't think I would. I think I would pray for wisdom. I pray for protection. I pray for strength. You know, these are very Christian prayers. Isn't it interesting? Jesus doesn't pray that. He prays for something different. That's what you see at 21. This is his prayer, that they may all be one. Just as you Father are in me and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. Jesus prays not for strength or wisdom, or protection per se, he prays that Christians would be one. One with each other like the father and the son are one with each other. These are things that you have to think about slowly because otherwise they'll just go right over your head. The standard that he's putting out there is that we would be one like he and his father are one. He's not praying that they would be one like peas and carrots or peanut butter and jelly. He prays for divine standards here. He prays that we would be one like the Trinity is one. I mean, get your mind around that. Think about what the oneness of the Trinity is like. I mean, frankly, these waters are too deep for me to swim down very far. I can't hold my breath that long, right? To go into the depths of what it means that the Trinity is united, unified. And he prays for that for us. I mean, at the very least, he can say some basic things. And that's in the unity of the Trinity, there is no self-seeking. There is no pride. There is no envy. I mean, talk about good missing ingredients for unity. What you have in the Trinity is perfect love, perfect harmony. That's the kind of unity he's praying for, for us. A unity like the Trinity is united. This unity, as it turns out, it is all over the scriptures. This is a big moment about Christian unity here in this high priestly prayer, but Christian unity is everywhere in the scriptures. Take the imagery that is given of what Christians are supposed to be like, a body, right? We are one body, the scriptures tell us, united together. 1 Corinthians 12.27, now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. Ephesians 2.16, Christ reconciled us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. I mean, this is in multiple places, this body imagery. The idea of a body, of course, being that it's never supposed to be divided. Any part of your body that you don't think is all that valuable, I mean, ask yourself what you think if you try and divide it from your body. You're gonna miss it a whole lot. Whether it's a thumb or a shoulder or a knee or a back, you hurt a single thing on your body, and then you realize you used it every single day all the time. The imagery of the body is like that, where all the members are supposed to be depending on the body and benefiting the body too. We're united, there is no option to divide a body. That's the picture that the gospel gives us. This is what our unity looks like. But there's more, I mean, Christians are united in one family, the family of God, right? See what kind of love the Father has given to us that we should be called Children of God and so we are 1st John 3 1 Matthew 1250 for whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother What we find here is that this family imagery is needed because we're not just cogs in some impersonal machine There is a relationship We are a family For the sake of family, when we know this just in an earthly sense, we will do all kinds of things. We will be patient. We will persevere. We will go beyond what we thought what we had to give for the sake of family, because we are family. That is what we are in Christ. We are one body. We are one family. We could talk about other images, but I think you get the point. We are, United. The entirety of the Bible teaches that Christians are meant to be united. That is the point. And we can touch on that more later for what that exactly means. But let's amen this one truth without qualification. We are meant to be united. Amen? Amen. And this unity among each other, among Christians, has everything to do with what Jesus is going to pray for next. Because next he prays that his followers would also be in us, he says. That they also may be in us. So he and the Father, believers, one with God. That's more than the human mind can take in. Again, you have to go slowly over these thoughts. Otherwise, I mean, we're not gonna know what to do with it once we go slow, but you certainly won't if you go quickly. You say, one with God? Christ's prayer for believers is that they would be united with God himself in God. I mean, what does that even mean? I mean, could any of us describe that for more than 30 seconds coherently? What does that mean that we would be in God? As I pondered this, I figured, again, scratch the surface, at least that's something. I mean, this must be related to us being in Christ. Right? The picture of our salvation is that by faith, we are united with Christ. We are in Christ, in his death, in his resurrection, in the benefits and blessings he earned. And so maybe in God's economy, it's just the natural conclusion that our unity with Christ should mean unity with the Godhead. Maybe that just adds up naturally, but it's stunning. This is the kind of thought that should blow your hair back in God. We spend our lives so separated from God. And then by the work of the gospel, we're not just in his presence. We're not just near him. We're not just with him. We're in God. Whoa. And it is so far above us to consider. I mean, just two things about this first, that God would condescend to that level. It's one thing to go rescuing the miscreants on the street. It's another thing to say, okay, now come live with me. And then second, that we, you know, look at yourself honestly in the mirror, that we would be so transformed, that we would be so blessed. It just blows you away. And so you consider the two types of unity together. The unity of Christians with each other, it reflects and it flows out of the eternal reality that we are united with God. They are joined together at the hip. They go hand in hand. Our unity reflects the unity that we have with God. And so this is a truth that demands application, right? You can't just walk by this. God calls us to unity. Now unity is going to mean various things to various people. So we should be clear what we're talking about. On the one hand, what are we not talking about? Well, Christian unity must be more than ethical. Christian unity must be more than ethical. For example, I could very much picture joining a coalition of Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and Christians against abortion. I think that'd be good. I think that's a common grace, you know? We could stand together in that. That's not Christian unity though. That is not what we're talking about here. That is not the oneness we're talking about here. Christian unity must be more than ethical. Furthermore, Christian unity cannot be that that undermines the truth, right? In contrast to how I'd be willing to join with whoever of whatever belief in opposing abortion, I wouldn't go around with a group of Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses and say, hey, we all believe in Jesus together. We believe in very different ideas of Jesus. That wouldn't be helpful, wouldn't be clear, and I would be obscuring the truth by being a part of that, right? It turns out that that core ingredient of oneness here must be truth. Our unity must be based in truth, first and foremost. I think you even see that hinted at here. If you look at verse 20, I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word. You see already the idea of a foundation here. It's not just a, I pray for oneness, I pray for kumbaya. I pray for those who will believe in me, Jesus says. There's an idea of a foundational truth upon which we will stand. When you look at other places in the Bible, I said, John 17 is a major spot for Christian unity, but Ephesians 4, likewise. Ephesians four, Paul's idea of unity, what it's going to flow out of, it's this. There is one body and there is one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of all who is over all and through all and in all. Ephesians four, four through six. The unity Paul describes is founded, is based on these truths, these seven truths that he lays out. It is based on truth. Our unity must be based on truth. It cannot undermine it, it cannot hide it. So that brings you to the hard question, doesn't it? So we're supposed to be united in truth. Well, how much truth? Right? We all wonder. You tell me to be unified. What am I allowed to give up on? What am I allowed to compromise? What is the hill I have to die on? What kind of truth can I have with other believers, differing beliefs behind them, right? It's actually a really big question. I don't pretend that I'm going to solve it in the remaining, I don't know, 15 minutes that I got here. but I think we can take two very important steps toward a solution. I can't give you all the details of this because truly it's a complex thing, but two steps toward a solution, toward an approach at least. First off, we need to exercise just common sense discernment, right? We're never freed from the need to use our brains, to use the word of God, to be wise as it calls us to be wise. We need to look at other people's beliefs and evaluate, well, just how important is this distinction? Just how important is the difference that we have here, right? I think you have something of a spectrum when you're evaluating how important a belief is. Because when you talk about our convictions in the Lord, well, everything's important. Everything's truth, right? You can't throw out anything. You can't say anything's unimportant. But we do have to recognize that there is some prioritizing we can do here. There's some discernment we can use to evaluate what is most important to what is least important. Everything's still remaining important. I think you have on the one side of the spectrum, does this differing belief undermine who God is? Right? From the very get-go, you can say, okay, well, that's a deal breaker, or we can keep moving. Do we believe in the same God? I think from there, you might have a next level up. Does this undermine what salvation is? Does this undermine how it is? that we can believe and know that we are saved. Also pretty important, right? Some of these things you just, you hear me say, well, yeah, that's important too. Well, then you might go another step of a little less severity and say, okay, does this undermine the health of the church? And I think in that you recognize there's still an important ground, but you could imagine scenarios like church governance, for example. where you might be able to be okay letting that one go, right? We are Baptists. We have a Baptist form of government. Doesn't mean we're going to go boycott all the Presbyterian churches out there. I actually have more Presbyterians to come. Just you wait. Does it undermine, as maybe the other side of the spectrum, does it undermine a Christian's day-to-day health, day-to-day practice in the faith? And so in that, you can imagine someone who understands God, who understands salvation, who has a healthy church life, and then goes and believes that the only proper way to prayer is in their hallway closet. Right? You're like, oh, that's kind of weird, but I probably have some unity with this person, right? I probably have a lot in common with this person. See, if we can get to that point, exercising that discernment, that biblical spiritual common sense, we can recognize that some things truly are more important than others. They are more critical than others. And once we do that, we start finding, start developing, fleshing out a roadmap for how it is we can pursue unity with one another. We start getting an idea of what we can stand on together. And so if that's the first step, the second step's gonna flow right out of that first one. Once we have some understanding of other people's beliefs, right? We can actually recognize and embrace the unity that we do actually have. There is unity out there. When we pursue truth, we have this tendency to just focus in on what's different. Maybe it's faster. What do I have different in that person? Oh, church governance, nature of the body, and scripture. We have different beyond that. It's easier than the 87 things we have in common or something, right? But what we do is we focus in on truth. We try and get really sharp, really polished. We find that the more we focus in on those differences, we start forgetting about the common ground. And more importantly, we forget how important that common ground is that we share. In some sense, the truth will divide us. It will separate us. That's just what the truth is going to do, but that is not its only function. The truth should unite us, right? It should bind us together. It's like Christ didn't just give us truth so we could go be isolated from one another. The truth truly is supposed to hold us together. As an example of that, I want you to think about the historical faith. One of the things I love about The faith is that it's not 10 years old or something like that, right? It didn't come out at the same time as the iPhone. We have a faith that is historical, and I find great comfort in that. I mean, take the Nicene Creed, right? The Nicene Creed comes from the 4th century. And every one of the creeds, and this is one of the ecumenical ones, one of the ones that all the branches of Christianity actually recognize. All of them are some attempt to stand unified and generally against some kind of heresy, right? But the Nicene Creed, I think, is just fantastic for the truths it espouses. I'm going to do something I don't normally do. I'm going to read you the entire Creed. We've done this actually before here in service. I'm going to read you the entire Creed, and I want you to get a sense for the unity that we truly do have. We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen. Can you amen that? Amen, right? We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father. Through him all things were made for us and for our salvation he came down from heaven. By the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate. He suffered death and was buried. On the third day, he rose again in accordance with the scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end. I mean, amen? And it just keeps going. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son, he is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the prophets. Amen? We believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen. I mean, just take that in, soak that in. Do you know how hard it is to talk for that long about that many things to Christians and have everyone amen it? Man, I probably talked for 30 seconds before one of you disagreed with me, right? This is this historical creed that has been passed down and Christians everywhere agree on it. And don't undermine this by saying, oh, well, that's just the basics. The basics are good. If someone agrees with you on the basics and that's what the basics are, you agree on so much. And put this in contrast to what the world would think. Do you think the world would amen even one sentence of that? We believe in some God-like being out there and in a very moral guy named Jesus who really inspired us. Right? That's what the world can offer you. The world does not amen that. Christians everywhere, we amen that. I love that we can confess truths that have been going strong for 1,700 years. Isn't that cool? I love picturing the untold number of Christians over the years who have confessed this in their local bodies together. I love picturing the unity of the faith across all history. I love witnessing brothers and sisters in unity. Another example of the unity that we have in truth. And this is the one I draw from my personal experience. As many of you know, I went to Westminster Seminary in California. It's a Presbyterian seminary. I obviously am not a Presbyterian, but I was blessed to go there. What do you think is the difference between Presbyterians and Baptists? What's the thing that pops to your mind? Baptism, right? I mean, maybe you said governance, maybe you said the nature of the church or something like that, but pretty widely across the room, baptism. That's what we've got different, right? Well, let me go to the other side of the coin. What do we have in common with Presbyterians? Well, you can't even come up with a unified answer because there's like a gazillion things, right? There is so much that we have in common with the Presbyterians. And of course, I'm referring to, you know, the Reformed Baptist side of things and the Reformed Presbyterians. Obviously, there's lots of flavors out there. but we have so much in common. You take our historical confessions, right? You have the Westminster Confession of Faith and you have the London Baptist Confession, which we subscribe to as a church from 1689. You may know this, you may not, but the London Baptist Confession was written basically on top of the Westminster one. Westminster was basically used as a source document. The Baptists were like, oh yeah, we agree with that. put it in ours, right? We don't agree on everything, but we like all these sections and we're gonna take it over. I actually used to kind of like tease the Baptist in my head. I'm like, could you not come up with your own confession of faith? You just had to go hijack the Presbyterian one, you know? But there is a really great reason why they are alike. And actually there's a historical bit to it that I'm not gonna get into, but there's this sentiment The Baptists are saying, yes, we are distinct. We believe things differently. And so we want a different confession of faith, but look how much we have in common. Those confessions of faith are like 32 chapters long, the densest kind of stuff around. And they share so much in common. We being the kinds of thinkers we are, we want to jump to what we have that is different, like baptism, right? It would take us so long to list what we have in common. We have so much in common and we should remember that. We should rejoice in that. What you find is Christians that in many cases, there's tremendous unity that already exists. It already exists between us and our brethren out there, together. We confess a Lord and a faith and a salvation and a hope that the world widely rejects. And in that we have unity. We have true unity. But the reality is it's a unity that's not just going to work itself out. It's not gonna maintain itself. We are called on to fight for the unity of the body, to fight for the unity of our family. We need to nurture it. We need to maintain it. To experience any level of Christian unity, we need to fight against so many divisive impulses. I mean, there's just the pride, right? You sit down with a brother or sister of different beliefs, and there's some part of you that says, I want you to leave knowing you're wrong. And that I was right. We weren't both wrong, you were wrong. Right? It's this pride that's deep in us. This divisiveness comes naturally to us. Well, if you're not going to admit you're wrong, then I don't really know if we should hang out. Right? that need to get the last word in. That wasn't that good of a point by the way, you know, as you walk off. We have to fight against so many impulses that just come so naturally to us. And if we are going to have any success in this though, in Christian unity, well, the world will be able to see it. We're going to be able to know if we're having any success here. We should be seeing it in our churches. We should be seeing it, let's not talk generically, let's talk here. We should be seeing it right here in our churches. If someone walked in off the street and were just to kind of look around at us, our unity should be obvious, right? On rich display should be grace and kindness and love and patience, gentleness, It should just be evident, right? And these characteristics should likewise be on display when we're dealing with Christians outside these walls. There's a lot of them out there, right? Rather than just throwing each other under the bus on Twitter, we should be those who in word and in prayer and in deed are eager to be heard. Hear that, eager to celebrate the truth that are in our brothers and our sisters. That should reflect our heart and our actions will flow out of that. In contrast to this fractured world we live in, Christians, we are meant by our savior to be unified. There should be unity of every kind. Unity, of course, not meaning conformity, but unity. There should be unity that is ethnic, right? The gospel transcends ethnicity. There should be unity that transcends our political convictions. There should be unity that transcends any socioeconomic barrier we want to put in between us and them, right? There should be unity between those who love the best sport in the world and those who love baseball. Why? Why is this so important? It's right here in the text. Jesus says, our unity, our oneness, it reflects on him. We don't do this because I'm saying, hey, there's some wonderful people out there. Go get involved and meet some people. You'll be blessed. There are wonderful people out there, but that's not the reason. There's a lot of miserable people, right? We don't do it for each other. We do it for him. The unity of Christ's followers will communicate to the world that Christ came from his father. That's what he says here. He prays to his father, we're in verse 21, that they also may be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me, right? That you sent me is at the core of his prayer here. He wants it to reflect on that he truly came from his father. You know what's fascinating? You know where else he uses that language, that you sent me? He uses it right before raising Lazarus from the dead. He wants those to know that his father sent him and he raises a dead man from the grave. Our unity is put on a level on par with like the most miraculous thing you can imagine. What we look like, how we treat each other is on level with death being overcome and a man walking out who should be rotting, right? And living again. Does that put it in perspective how important Jesus views our unity? You might not be very passionate about unity. I understand that. We're passionate about different things. But if you're passionate about what your savior is passionate about, you're passionate about the unity of the body of Christ. Our treatment of each other turns out to be a central component in how it is we proclaim Christ to the world. Our unity, the way we treat each other right now, is showing that Christ came. Our unity proclaims Christ's truth. Our division undermines it. Our lack of unity as Christians, both here and everywhere, it gives the world a reason to doubt him. I don't say an excuse as if they're off the hook, but we give the world a reason to doubt him. Tell me that doesn't just leave a bitter taste in your mouth, that we should ever be the reason for doubt in Christ. So that then leaves us with a burden and a privilege. They're the same thing. Our lives must, there is no option. Our lives must reflect the truth that we stand united by the finished work of Jesus Christ. Our day in and our day out, everyday moments must reflect this reality. So brothers and sisters, let us be a people who fights for unity. In our hearts, In our hearts, let us long to see and embrace unity among the body. In our words, in our actions, let us seek it, purposefully seek a unity that is befitting of a gospel that is truly bought and united a people. Brothers and sisters, let our lives proclaim to the world the truth that Christ truly came. Let's pray. Our God, we stand convicted that we have not sought the unity of your body. We confess that sometimes we contribute willfully, joyfully even, to divisions within your body. Forgive us. Lord, we rejoice in a faith that is bigger than us, bigger than our families, bigger than this church, bigger than this generation. We rejoice to be a part of a unified faith, a historical faith. We thank you that you have been faithful to your people across all time and you will be till the end. Lord, we ask that we would see unity among our body. We pray that we would be seeing it all across this valley. and across this state, and across this nation, and across this world. Please be our help, and may we see such a day. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. We hope you've enjoyed this message from Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. To receive a copy of this or other messages, call us at area code 775-782-6516 or visit our website gracenevada.com.