Sermon Tone Analysis

If you have your Bible with you, go ahead and open up to John 17:6-19 and this is the longest section of Scripture that we will be looking at this weekend.

There are a lot of things that we could cover in these verses but I am going to try and limit it to 3 important realities that are connected to our Christian lives: 1.

The unity we have as believers and how that relates to our unity with Christ.

2. Our place in the world.

3. The importance of our sanctification.

I mentioned earlier today that we could divide Christ’s prayer in John 17 into 3 distinct sections and here in this middle section His prayer at first concerns His immediate disciples but the application of that prayer reaches beyond that initial group of followers.

The 3 realities that we are about to look at tonight are just as important to us as 21st century Christians as it was to these 1st century Christians.

Let’s open up in prayer and then we will dive into these verses because we do have a lot that we need to get throught.

John 17:6-19

The Unity of Believers

Let’s look first at the unity of believers and I want to look at it quickly from 2 perspectives: a vertical perspective and a horizontal perspective.

Vertical Unity

Let’s quickly talk about vertical unity.

The most important relationship that you can have is not the relationship you have with your parents, with your siblings, with your spouse or future spouse, the most important relationship that you can have, that you need to have, is with your Heavenly Father.

That’s not to say those other relationships aren’t important.

It is to stress just how critical it is for you to be united with the God of the universe.

Your restored relationship with God is the most important relationship in your life.

Your being united together is the most important thing in the world.

If you are not united to your Heavenly Father and He to you, the horizontal relationships of your life ultimately will do very little.

In this prayer, Jesus stresses the unity that exists between Him and God the Father and it is a perfect unity and it is a perfect example of how we should live with one another but that is not what I want to draw attention to in these verses, as important as that reality is.

Jesus begins verses 6-10 by stressing the restored relationship that exists for His followers between them and the Lord.

This entire chapter is also a chapter of giving.

17 times in this chapter alone, the word give is used in some form and I say this because these verses that we just read stress the reality that Christ gave Himself, gave His life, the Father gives the Son, the Son gives the Word, to His people so that His people would be reconciled and united with their Heavenly Father.

It is because we as Christians are united to God that we can be united with one another.

It is because our relationship with God is changed that our lives with one another is changed.

Horizontal Unity

Let’s spend a little more time talking about our unity to one another.

What do we even mean by unity?

I guess the cheap answer is that we are united together and as Christians, we are united in a way that we had never been before because we are brought together by a shared faith.

We are united not because we bring ourselves together but because Christ Himself brings us together in His Body, the Church.

Jesus says in verse 11, “Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.”

This unity is so important because the world will know that we are Christians by our fruit.

The world will know we are Christians by the way we love one another, the way we serve one another, the way that we worship the Lord together.

All these things should be painfully obvious to the world because we are different from the rest of the world.

Christ stresses this in verse 9 when He says that He is not praying for the world but for those whom the Father had given Him because they belong to the Father so we clearly see that Christians are different and cared for I guess you could say differently than anyone else.

Christ understands that we are imperfect people and as imperfect people, we need a lot of prayer.

We need to be united together because it is a terrible thing for blood-bought Christians to go to war with each other, especially over petty things.

J.C. Ryle said, “As long as we have Christ and a good conscience, let us patiently hold on our way, follow the things that make for peace, and strive to promote unity.

It was not for nothing that our Lord prayed so fervently that His people might be ‘one.’”

Paul says in Romans 12:16-18

I love how Paul says, “if possible.”

He understands our human nature.

It’s hard to live perfectly peaceful with imperfect people.

Yet at the very same time, Paul says this so that we as Christians know that we are not to tolerate sin.

We can’t let sin run rampant in the Church so we as Christians have a responsibility to strive for holiness in all we do.

We are to be a holy people, the called out ones, those that are sanctified according to God’s Word.

John Murray said, “The responsibility for discord must to no extent be traceable to failure on our part to do all that is compatible with holiness, truth, and right.

Peaceableness of disposition and behavior is a virtue to be cultivated in our relations with all men; there is no circumstance in which our efforts to preserve and promote peace may be suspended.

On the other hand, we may never be at peace with sin and error.”

As Christians we are to hold each other accountable and we are to pursue not just individual righteousness but a corporeal or righteousness of the whole.

One bad egg can ruin the whole bunch and the same is true of the church.

One speck of sin unchecked can damage the entire group.

Jesus stresses the need for us to be united together and that unity begins with the unity that we have with our Lord and Savior.

If Christ is not your Savior, these people around you are not your brothers.

If you are a Christian, it is your responsibility to love your brothers and sisters in the faith.

It is your responsibility to pursue your own holiness so that you may help them in theirs.

We are brothers in arms.

It is us against the world.

It is us against the Kingdom of darkness and if all we are going to do is beat each other up from the inside, the outside is going to have its way with us.

If you are a Christian, it is your God-given responsibility to love your brothers and sisters.

Christ Himself, at the moment when He needed encouragement the most, still desired almost above all else that you and I would be united and at peace with one another.

Is the Church important?

Is it important for you to be in church and with other believers?

You bet it is!

It’s so important that Christ prayed multiple times that we would be united together.

Let’s turn now to our place in this world because some of what we are talking about right now is going to roll into tomorrow morning.

Our Place in the World

What is the Christian’s place in this world?

Once again, we’ll talk about this from 2 perspectives because I believe Christ addresses to elements of us as Christians being in this world.

The first envolves our physical lives in this world.

Paul says in Romans 14:8 “For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord.

So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”

Life and death are in the hands of our sovereign God.

Charles Spurgeon said, “If we die, it is not by chance but because God takes us out of the world.

Believers fall asleep in Jesus neither before nor after the predestined time.

No disease or accident can cut short their lives, and it would not be possible to prolong their existence beyond the time appointed by the Lord.

Our lives are entirely in the keeping of our loving Father.

The prayer of Jesus recognizes His Father’s sovereignty, but we ourselves must also recognize that we are entirely in God’s hands.

He can take us out of the world, or he can keep us in the world and preserve us from evil.”

Your life and your death are in the hands of the Sovereign God of all things.

I don’t know if it is necessarily great theology but I have often said that I’m invincible until God tells me I’m not.

Unless God says otherwise, unless Christ first returns, all of us in here will die one day.

Sorry to say it, but it is true.

Death comes to everyone.

Yet even that reality we can find comfort in as Christians because death for us is just a gateway to glory.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:53-57

Our lives and our deaths are held perfectly in the hands of God.

He cares as much about you in your life as He does in your death and His sovereign hand is over both.

What we also see in our passage in John 17 is that God’s desire for us is not for us to be immediately removed from this world the moment we are saved and while there are several reasons why we as Christians should remain, there is one specific reason that we as Christians need to be on this earth that I want us to look at.

It is our God-given duty as Christians to remain in this world as proclaimers of the Gospel.

God leaves us in this world to give Him glory and to show others His glory.

The world needs missions, the world needs preachers and proclaimers and quite simply, the world needs Christians.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones said, “God sent the Son into the world to preach the truth and to present the Gospel and to make a way of salvation and now, as He is going out of the world, He is sending them into it and leaving the message with them.

They are going to be the preachers, in their lives as well as with their words- they are going to represent Him.

Therefore they cannot ask to be taken out of the world because they are being sent there to perform this specific task.”

We are here so that we may preach the Gospel but now let’s look at the second perspective.

The second perspective involves something that we talked about a little over a week ago at YC and that is that we as Christians are to be in the world but not of the world.

What does it mean for us to be in the world but not of it?

It means that we are simply passing through.

We are like Israel on its way to the Promised Land.