Title: God’s Spirit points you to Jesus!
Text: John 17: 11b-19
11b [Jesus said:] Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.
14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.
17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.
Charles Spurgeon once wrote:
"To remain divided is sinful! Did not our Lord pray that they may be one, even as we are one"? (John 17:22). A chorus of ecumenical voices keep harping the unity tune. What they are saying is, "Christians of all doctrinal shades and beliefs must come together in one visible organization, regardless... Unite, unite!" Such teaching is false, reckless and dangerous. Truth alone must determine our alignments. Truth comes before unity. Unity without truth is hazardous. Our Lord's prayer in John 17 must be read in its full context. Look at verse 17: "Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth." Only those sanctified through the Word can be one in Christ. To teach otherwise is to betray the Gospel.
Charles H. Spurgeon, The Essence of Separation, quoted in The Berean Call, July, 1992, p. 4.
God’s Spirit points you to Jesus!
11b Holy Father, keep them in your name … that they may be one, even as we are one.
Jesus too desired unity around the truth. Jesus’ will was in accord with the will of his Father.
Jesus says: I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost.
Jesus’ desire is to keep and protect those whom he will leave soon as he returns to the Father. His desire is that they (his disciples) may be one in unity with each other just as Jesus and the Father are one in unity … though distinct in person. Christ says that he has guarded them and that not one has been lost except for Judas - the one who went the way of destruction – so that the scriptures may be filled.
And as Christ prepares to leave them, he prays for them that the Father would keep them, in your name, in the name of the one true God, so that they would be guarded and not lost. As Christ prepares to leave the world he knows that his own will remain in the world just as you and I also remain and though in the world are not of the world. We remain but also we represent the work of God in us to abide in Jesus to remain in him, to be his and to show forth his will against the power of the evil one who looks only to steal, kill and destroy.
God’s Spirit points you to Jesus!
Having just returned from Germany, I couldn’t help thinking while there as we were driving to the airport in Berlin how much has changed in the 70 years since the Nazis and Hitler were defeated.
Ill.
During World War II, Hitler commanded all religious groups to unite so that he could control them. Among the Brethren assemblies, half complied and half refused. Those who went along with the order had a much easier time. Those who did not, faced harsh persecution. In almost every family of those who resisted, someone died in a concentration camp.
When the war was over, feelings of bitterness ran deep between the groups and there was much tension. Finally they decided that the situation had to be healed. Leaders from each group met at a quiet retreat. For several days, each person spent time in prayer, examining his own heart in the light of Christ's commands. Then they came together. Francis Schaeffer, who told of the incident, asked a friend who was there, "What did you do then?" "We were just one," he replied. As they confessed their hostility and bitterness to God and yielded to His control, the Holy Spirit created a spirit of unity among them. Love filled their hearts and dissolved their hatred.
When love prevails among believers, especially in times of strong disagreement, it presents to the world an indisputable mark of a true follower of Jesus Christ.
Our Daily Bread, October 4, 1992.
All of us have differences. We all have conflicts. We have families and this too can pull us apart as we wrestle with the changes in society and civic life. As marriage gets redefined the true goal is not tolerance but a breakdown of the family as has been based on Biblical principles and God’s word.
Jesus says: 17 Sanctify them [or make them holy which also is to be set apart] in the truth; [he then tells us that] your word is truth.
Apart from God’s word we live in a world where God is re-made in man’s image and that is how the devil wants it. To turn what God has said upside down into that first deceptive question: “Did God really say?” It gives us all, like Adam and Eve, a high view of self and a low view of sin … which is simply, missing the mark and coming up short, on what God expects and so what do we do? We lower the bar rather than honor God’s commands.
Jesus’ desire for you and me … in the world … is that they also may be sanctified in truth.
God’s Spirit does that by pointing you to Jesus!
As Jesus returns to the Father he leaves his disciples with a promise.
8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” 9 And when he had said these things, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.
Acts 1:8-9
Our first reading follows this as the disciples return to Jerusalem and the upper room where they were staying … where Jesus had appeared to them.
14 All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.
Unity around truth, that Jesus Christ is the son of God.
How do we know this? How can we know this?
… your word is truth. God’s word … Jesus … is truth.
At Baptism we are marked as God’s own child, as one redeemed by Christ, as one who was crucified for you and me. This Jesus upon his ascension gave the promise that we would not be left alone and that the comforter, who would come at Pentecost, would be with us a point us to the unity found in Jesus the word of God made flesh.
God’s Spirit points you to Jesus!
Dr. Scott Murray in his wonderful Memorial moment devotion reminds us that:
When the Word is lost everything is lost. Over the past twenty years, churches have begun to jettison the confession of faith in the Creeds of the church. They are no longer recited as part of church services. When this trend began the clergy, who were so eager to get rid of the public confession of the faith by the faithful, were quick to reassure the skeptical that even though they no longer said the words that they certainly still affirmed the content of the Creeds. More recently the clergy who jettisoned the recitation of the Creed are now quite aggressively rejecting the content of the Creed, including its Christological [focus on Christ] content. Once we stop saying the words, it isn't very long until we stop believing the content of them.
Dr. Scott Murray: Unloving Love Wednesday of Easter 6 13 May 2015
The truth comes to us in the word of God and is made know through the work of the Spirit who points us to the truth of Christ’s work.
Luther reminds us:
"In the issue of salvation, on the other hand, when fanatics teach lies and errors under the guise of truth and make an impression on many, there love must not be exercised and error must not be approved. For what is lost here is not merely a good deed done for someone who is ungrateful, but the Word, faith, Christ, and eternal life, etc. are lost. Therefore, if you deny God in one article of faith, you have denied Him in all; for God is not divided into many articles, but He is everything in each article and He is one in all the articles of the faith."
Martin Luther, Commentary on Galatians, 5.9
17 Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.
Christ has made you his own and will keep you by his Spirit connected to him and his truth. This is his promiss.
In the name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit
Amen
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