Sermon Tone Analysis

The Great Prayer Part 2: Unified for the sake of the gospel

Cities: We’ve all seen a play or movie, or read a book, about the small town kid who dreams of going to the big city.

One of the reasons that someone desires the city so much is certainly that there is diversity there, and for a young person who ay have grown up in a small town where nearly everyone thinks the same, looks the same, and as the same prejudices and stereo types, the city holds attractions because there they see the melting pot, where people of all different nationalities, and religions, and Ethnicity live together in this wonderful unity.

So often young people are drawn to this.

Perhaps they feel their family and small town is full of intolerance towards other types of people, or they just long for a little more variety in the types of people they see.

So they go to the big city, where everyone gets along, only to get there and find out that it is sometime an artificial unity, or that while people in big cities may cast aside differences of skin color and Ethnicity, they do not tolerate differences in ideas, or people who think differently.

I think that people, on some level, always desire to have unity with other people, and they really want to come together, but for various reasons of pride, or fear, or whatever, they are never fully able to do so.

In fact, it is impossible to come together in true unity unless God is among those who seek the unity.

One writer said, “the world’s attempts to come together without God are always at the expense of human life”.

And it is true.

Attempted unity without God leads to just what we see in nearly every large city today: Intolerance of ideas that are opposed to the group, attempts to justify bad behavior using the excuse of tolerance, support for abortion for the innocent unborn while opposing the death penalty for the guilty.

And so on.

If you live in a big city and don’t think like the group, you learn to keep your mouth closed because the ones who say they are tolerant have very little tolerance for those who disagree.

If you disagree with changing the definition of marriage, you are a homophobe.

If you think Christian values are superior to some other religion’s values, you are a bigot, if you believe that people should be hired and promoted based upon their talents and abilities and experience rather than their race some say you are sexist, or racist, or just unfair.

And so on.

Throughout human history, people have been drawn to the bigger cities, where they imagine that there, since so many different types of people live together, things must be really good there because how else could they live together if there were not mutual respect and dignity, and everything must be really great.

And throughout history, those idealistic people have gotten to the big city only to find disappointment, or to find themselves sucked into a forced conformity, rather than the broad acceptance they were looking for.

The world’s attempts to come together without God are always at the expense of human life.

In his last recorded prayer before being arrested, Jesus was especially concerned with unity.

He prayed for us, the church, that we would have unity.

You see, the unity that people seek in the city, the ideal they long for, can only be achieved in the church.

Outside of a single, highest ideal that unites, people can not be truly unified.

Lower ideals may unite for a while.

You may unite with other fans of your favorite team, for a time.

You may unite with people whose politics agree, for a time.

But the one thing that can unite people of all different demographics is mutual faith in Jesus, which puts us each in a family together.

And Jesus prayed for that unity, and he specifically stated that the unity of the church would provide evidence to the world of the truth of the gospel.

Earlier Jesus had prayed specifically for the apostles.

He had prayed for them to have spiritual protection and strength, he had prayed for their witness, now his prayer moves to those who would believe because of the witness of the apostles.

That means Jesus is now praying for all believers, this is a prayer that is sent forward through history from Jesus, and a prayer that includes believers today.

Jesus is concerned for unity among the believers.

“That they may all be one”.

Jesus was not saying that believers had to have all the same hobbies, or the same ideas, or the same anything.

He is not praying for uniformity but for unity.

The beauty of the unity that can be found in the church is that it is a unity that cuts across many other things that divide people normally.

We have had the privilege of seeing this at general Council, where our denomination comes together every 2 years, and there you find Christians from all parts of this country, as well as from other places in the world.

You find that there are people from the cities and people from farms, people who speak many different languages, people who homeschool and people who use the public schools, people who come from wealth and people who come from poverty.

People who grew up in a Christian home from birth and those who were saved in adulthood.

There are a lot of different kinds of people there.

But there is one thing that unites us, and that is Jesus Christ.

And that is the only way you would ever find the kind of unity among such a diverse group of people.

Jesus prays that we would all be one, just as the Father and Jesus are one.

This is perfection.

Jesus is praying for us to have perfection in our unity.

We Have Seen it!

John writes that they have seen Jesus, looked at him, touched him, and now they testify to it.

And why testify to it?

That you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ.

John says they, the apostles, proclaim it to you, to that you too may have fellowship with us.

In a sense, John is saying unless you do know Christ as we do, you do not have fellowship with us, but when you have believed in him for yourself, we will have true fellowship.

In the church should be the truest form of fellowship.

We are united in Christ, even if we are not united in every way of thinking we have.

Our unity with each other in the body of Christ can only come if we are each individually united to Christ.

For all the striving, through seminars, and books, and classes, that are done to try and help church folks get along, the number way we can learn to get along is to each of us individually first put our relationship with Jesus Christ at the first priority in our lives.

If we focus on him, and becoming like him, and uniting ourselves to him in obedience to His word, if we take this personally and work out our own faith with fear and trembling, than we will be less focused on trying to figure out what is wrong with everyone else and work on perfecting ourselves in Christ, work on responding to others as he would, speaking as he would, answering as he would, loving as he would, forgiving like he would.

If we want unity in the church, it does not start with individuals in the church trying to get along, it starts with individuals aligning themselves with Christ, so that, if we are aligned with Him, then as he is in the Father and the Father is in Him, we also would be in Him, and if we are united with Him, we will share his love and concern for all believers.

So Jesus wants this perfect unity to be among us, for us to pursue that kind of unity, and here he gives a reason: “So that the world may believe that you have sent me”.

Thomas Manton said that divisions in the church breed atheism in the world, and here Jesus says the corollary, that unity in the church will be helpful to those outside the church when it comes to believing in who Jesus is.

The unity in the church should be so clear, and so evident, that the world takes notice and will consider that they can put some stock in the gospel, because here they should see the unity that the world cannot achieve.

No big city has perfect unity, or anything even close.

Human ideals that lead people to believe in the city because it promises fairness to everyone should pale in comparison to the unity that should naturally be found in the church.

In the church, this unity must mean true love and concern, not pride and seeking authority or power over others.

Not lording over one another but becoming a servant to them.

This is not easy, but it is what Christ modeled.

He said to be great in his kingdom was to become like a child.

In the church, we should have such unity that no one ever would fear walking in and being judged.

And sadly, this is not always the case.

How may people avoid church because they missed last Sunday and if they come this Sunday they expect to be harassed about it, not in a loving concerned way, but in an accusing way.

How many people avoid church because they have committed a sin, but instead of feeling the church to be the safest place to come, where love abounds, and covers for a multitude of sins, they stay away because they expect to be shamed.

How many people avoid the church because they don’t yet understand all the teachings, and are afraid to be criticized for their lack of understanding, when instead they ought to feel encouraged to keep learning and moving forward.

If the people in Christ’s church are his sheep, then why do some of those sheep fear coming to the place that should be the safest place for them in the world?

Why do they fear that there may danger in the church?

They should expect it outside the church, not inside it.

The Puritan Thomas Brookes said, “For wolves to worry the lambs is no wonder, but for one lamb to worry another, the is unnatural and monstrous”.

Many parents have noted their child faking an illness to avoid school, where they are so anxious about how someone is going to mistreat them that they do not even want to get out of bed.

Some people as adults experience the same anxiety in going to work.

It is no wonder that this should be the case in the world, but God forbid this be the case in the church!

Pastor Gary Wileman, who was my pastor when I was in bible college, often said that the most painful bites are not those from the unsaved, but the most painful bites are sheep bites, and he would caution that we don’t allow sheep bites to become infected.

If you have ever felt uneasy about coming to church because you have experienced the pain of having someone who is supposed to be a fellow sheep bite and snarl at you, or exclude you, then I sincerely apologize to you; whether it was here or at any other church, it should not have happened.

And I suspect it may have happened to some of you; it has happened to me.

I also have experienced that sick feeling of wondering when the next sarcastic or judgmental words are going to come.

I know how it can paralyze and cause anxiety.

While I can’t take responsibility for every individual, I can apologize on behalf of the body of Christ, because our Lord would not have condoned that.

If you are one of the ones who tends to point out to others how they missed the last service, or have tried to usurp the job of God’s Word and his Holy Spirit that convicts people of their sin, and have taken it upon yourself to try and be Jiminy Cricket, the conscious of the congregation, then for the Lord’s sake, consider what He prayed, that our unity would be like the unity between God the Father and God the son.

Loving, united, and bound together by our common faith, and rather than being someone that others fear, be the one with perfect love that casts out fear.

And if we can be unified like that, Jesus says, the world may believe that Jesus was sent by the Father.

Moving on to verse 22:

Jesus gives his glory to us.

That glory is found in our unity.

A church without unity will not have much glory, and a church whose unity is not based upon Christ will not have much glory.

But a church that unifies in Christ will have His glory.

Are you seeing how important this is to Jesus?

Unity again, he has now mentioned 3 times in these few verses the unity of the church.

Unified with him, unified with each other because we are in him, and unified perfectly, and once again he links this to the witness of the church.

Our unity is a verification of the gospel being true.

This is why when a church split happens, or people hear about fighting in the church, or they hear Christians gossiping about each other, they will not be as likely to believe the truth about Jesus.

One reason scripture warns about gossip again and again is that it often involves untruths, and James writes:

Gossip has no place in the church, because it disrupts unity, and judging other believers and speaking evil against other believers, James says is speaking evil of the law and judging the law.

So church should be a place where people feel free that they aren’t going to be constantly judged.