Sermon Tone Analysis

Bookmarks & Needs:

B: John 17:20-26

N: Welcome card, mug

Welcome

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Family Worship.

I’m Bill Connors, the senior pastor, and I’m blessed to be a part of this family of wonderful saints called Eastern Hills Baptist Church.

The church isn’t the building, it’s the people.

If you’re here in the room and you’re just kind of checking Eastern Hills out today, I’d like to ask you a favor.

Would you take a moment and take that welcome card that’s in the back of the pew in front of you and fill that out?

We want to be able to send you a note thanking you for being here this morning, and to be able to answer any questions that you have about the Eastern Hills family.

You can just put that in the offering plates by the doors or bring them down to me here at the front after the service, as I have a gift I’d like to get in your hands: a mug filled with chocolate.

If you’d rather not do a hand-completed card, you can text WELCOME to (505) 339-2004, and you’ll get a text back with a link to our digital communication card.

Either way, I’d still like to meet you and give you a mug if you have the time today.

Announcements

Tonight at 5:30 we will have our bi-monthly business meeting, where we as a church come together to stay informed about what’s going on in the life of the church, as well as to make decisions together.

The business meeting packet is out in the foyer if you’d like to review it before tonight.

We have several important things to vote on this evening, including an update to our Personnel Policy and an updated contract with our architect because of some changes that have been made to the Master Plan for the building.

We also have received information back from our church assessment that we did back in May, and I’m going to be sharing that information tonight as well.

Quorum requires at least 50 members of the church be in attendance to conduct business, so plan to be here this evening at 5:30 for business meeting.

Thanks in advance!

We take up our special annual offering for World Hunger and Disaster Relief in July, and our goal as a church this year for this offering is $5,700.

Through last Sunday, we’ve received $4,855 toward that goal!

Thank you for giving so faithfully to our special offerings.

Opening

This is the last week of our series focused on the signs of Jesus’ identity as God and Messiah in the Gospel of John.

We’ve looked at each of the seven miracles: turning water into wine, curing an illness with only a word, healing a paralytic, feeding the 5000, walking on water, giving sight to the blind man, and raising Lazarus from the dead; as well as one additional miraculous sign: the sign of the crucifixion and resurrection itself.

These signs all speak to Jesus’ power and authority over His creation, and to His mission as Messiah to save us from the power of sin and death.

There is one last perspective that we want to take in this series, one last sign (which may or may not in your opinion be particularly miraculous) which testifies to Jesus’ identity and authority as Messiah and God.

That sign is here in this room.

Because that sign is us.

Let’s stand as we’re able and read our focal passage this morning, which comes from Jesus’ High-Priestly prayer in John 17:

PRAYER (pray for Eagle Springs Baptist Church in Cuba, NM, Tim Liftin, Pastor)

Last October, because of the love and generosity of this church family, I got to check an item off of my “bucket list.”

My family was able to go to Pittsburgh and see the Steelers play a home game at Heinz Field (yes, I know it’s Acrisure Stadium now).

Here’s a picture of us after the game.

We were there with like 60,000 other people, most of whom like football, and most of whom like the Steelers, specifically.

We had a great time.

We yelled and cheered and the Steelers beat the Broncos, so that was a plus.

All of us there were generally rooting for the same things at the same time.

We wanted basically the same outcome.

So I guess you could say that we had something in common with the mass of humanity in that stadium that day.

But when it was over, everyone just got up and left.

While we had a momentary shared experience, the end of the game determined the end of the sharing.

I mean, I could never call on any of those people to get together for a board game or a cup of coffee.

I don’t know any of them.

I certainly wouldn’t call on any of them to help me in a time of crisis.

I don’t know their numbers, and they don’t know mine.

I didn’t do anything with those people besides cheer on a football team wearing similar looking clothing and eating the same overpriced snacks.

I have no idea who they are, and they have no idea who I am.

That time with those people holds no real meaning in our lives right now, apart from a really fun memory… and I guess now a little sermon illustration.

Is this how we see the church?

Is it an event that we go to once a week with a decidedly smaller mass of humanity that is maybe fun or interesting while it lasts, but which holds no real meaning in our lives apart from that moment?

Maybe it’s a box we check off on our list of things to do for the week?

Do we see the church more like a social club or something we’re all fans of?

Do we view the church the way we might view our favorite restaurant or hobby shop: “as long as it’s meeting my needs, I’m there.”

Sadly, for many in our churches today, this isn’t far away from the truth, even though they might not say it quite so bluntly.

The truth is that if we see the church this way, there’s a terrible, two-pronged problem: First, we are missing out, because we are saved into a wonderful community of faith, not a solo endeavor.

We’re meant to be together.

Second, we damage both our own testimony and the testimony of the church, and not just the local church, but the entire Church, because according to this prayer from our Lord, our UNITY is a testimony to who He is and what He’s done—His identity as both God and Messiah.

What does it mean that we are to have unity in the church?

I think that Paul painted a pretty good picture of it in his letter to the Philippian church:

This concept of unity of spirit isn’t complete uniformity, where we all look exactly the same and do the same things.

That would go against God’s good plan for making His church out of many differing parts that come together to form a singular whole:

In Webster’s 1828 dictionary, there’s a great definition of unity of spirit:

“Unity of spirit, is the oneness which subsists between Christ and His saints, by which the same Spirit dwells in both, and both have the same disposition and aims; and it is the oneness of Christians among themselves, united under the same head, having the same Spirit dwelling in them, and possessing the same graces, faith, love, hope, etc.”

The church is to be decidedly different than a bunch of Steelers fans.

We are to be unified in the Spirit and by the Spirit as we together form the body of Christ—His bride.

In my article that is on the front of our bulletin, the EHBC Life, this morning, I wrote about unity between churches.

But this morning for my sermon, we’re going to consider this topic mostly from the perspective of the unity of the local fellowship, the unity that is vital for every individual church family.

I can say that we are blessed to be a part of this particular church family, because we currently have a very high level of unity here.

So the last “sign” that we are looking at in our series is the church herself.

We are a “sign” (perhaps a different type of sign than the other 8 we’ve considered) of the fact that Jesus is both Messiah and God.

Our focal passage is a prayer of the Lord Jesus Christ where He asks for a supernatural unity for His followers.

We’re going to approach our focal passage from the six classic questions of WHAT, WHO, WHY, HOW, WHERE, and WHEN this morning.

We’ll start with WHAT:

1) What is the foundation of our unity?

At the Steelers game, we had a clear foundation in our common interest in Steelers football.

But did that mean we were united in spirit?

Not according to our definition this morning.

Just all of us being interested in Jesus isn’t enough to give us unity.

There’s something more that’s needed.

When Jesus prayed this prayer, He opened with:

John 17:20 (CSB)

20 “I pray not only for these (meaning His disciples right there, whom He had just prayed for in verses 6-19), but also for those who believe in me through their word.

I remember the first time I read this passage after I came to faith in Christ and realized that the Lord Jesus Christ prayed for me in this prayer: since all of us are spiritual “grandchildren” in some form of “greatness” of the apostles.

The apostles declared the Gospel to someone who declared it to someone who declared it… etc. all the way down to us.

ALL of those “faith generations” are included in this prayer, so it’s for everyone who has come to faith throughout history and everyone who will come to faith in the future through their word.

And what is the word that they (the disciples) had?

The message of the Gospel.

The Word preached about the Word incarnate.

John, the author of the Gospel we’ve been studying these 9 weeks, was likely the last of the original 12 apostles to be alive and write.

In his first epistle (or correspondence) regarding the faith, he connected the identity of Jesus as the Word and the message of the Gospel with unity and fellowship:

For John, the foundation of our fellowship and unity is the Gospel: the Word preached about the Word of life.

That Jesus, the Son of God, came in the flesh (as John said, that he heard and saw and watched and touched), and as we studied last week, Jesus took the punishment that our sins deserve so that we could be made right with God again because of the incredible love God has for us.

He died so we could be forgiven, and He rose so that we can have eternal life, if we belong to Him through faith.

The reality is that if we aren’t basing our unity on the truth of the Gospel, then we have the wrong foundation, an unstable foundation.

In Matt Carter & Josh Wredberg’s commentary on our focal passage this morning, they write (too long to put on the screen):

“Every Sunday morning when my church meets, I look around and see scientists and accountants, professors and students, blue-collar workers and management, small business owners and retirees, moms and dads, husbands and wives.

There’s no reason for them to sit in the same room listening to me unless I am teaching the truth about Jesus revealed in His Word.

We didn’t go to the same colleges, we don’t like the same sports teams, we don’t have the same hobbies, but our bond is far stronger than the bond shared by those at the same country club or stadium.