"Jesus' Most Intense Personal Prayer for IBC" John 17:20-21 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Let me ask you this.

How many of you have experienced answered prayer at any point along the way in your life?

Most of us.

I have too.

It's a glorious sensation to see that the King of the universe is so intimately related to every one of his children that he knows the number of hairs on our heads, he hears our prayers, and he answers wisely for our growth and development and adoration of him.

Now let me ask you this.

If you could, would you answer Jesus' prayer?

You know, he prays too.

He prayed particularly potently when he was here on this earth amongst us, and he prayed for you here.

And for us there.

He prayed for his people in Boring, who would follow along 2,000 years later.

And he prays for his people in DC, who 2,000 years later follow him in another kind of a tight spot.

He prayed for you.

I want you to just listen carefully.

Close your eyes, if you will, and listen to Jesus pray.

And these are his amongst his final words.

He's in the upper room, it's the weekend, he's going to die, give his life for us, and he's got some things on his heart.

And when you want to know what one of your kids wants more than anything, listen to them pray when they don't know you're listening.

Okay?

Jesus is now praying to his father, so intensely related to his father, that fifty times forty-eight, I think, is the actual number in this upper room, he mentions Father.

Father, Father, listen to this prayer.

I come to thee, holy Father.

Keep them in thy name, the name which you've given me, that they may become one, even as, just like we are.

And I don't ask in behalf of these alone, but for those who believe in me through their word, that they might all be one.

The folks in D.C.

in the 21st century, and the folks in Boring in the 21st century, I pray for them, that they may all be one, even as the Father, thou art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us, that the world might believe that you actually sent me.

And the glory which you've given to me, I give to them, that they might be one, just as, like we are, even as, precisely the way we are, it's overpowering.

It's stupendous.

I don't know how deep it is.

That they might be one just as we are one, I in them, and you in me, that they may be matured in oneness, that the world might know that you actually sent me.

You have the privilege and the honor of answering the prayer of the Messiah, the King of the universe, the creator of the universe, by virtue of your being alive and knowing him personally in this day.

You actually get the privilege of answering Jesus' prayer.

I want to talk about that with you.

And ask you what matters really?

What really matters?

Tom mentioned earlier financial prowess.

He mentioned intellectual prowess, he mentioned those kinds of things.

Could I share with you that they don't matter a twit?

What really matters?

Get down to the bottom line of your life.

What really matters?

The answer for me began to come on a hillside in the springtime in a little valley, tropical valley, in a place called Vietnam, the Dokpoco Valley.

I was at a little mountain yard camp with uh Special Forces A team there, and we were in trouble, and the incoming rounds were impacting, and I was in a little red ditch.

I remember it right out of the corner of my eye, seeing the red mud in the ditch and and uh cordite in the air and concussion hitting the ground, and thinking, you know, if one of those comes in this hole with me, there's nothing I can do about it.

And for the first time in my life, death wasn't theoretical anymore.

And I began to ask, well, what if I did die here?

What would have mattered that a guy by the name of Stu ever lived anyway?

What does it matter?

What really matters?

In fact, unfortunately, that became a phrase amongst some of the ground pounders in Vietnam.

It don't matter, because one time there was a friend right there, and the next time there was not a friend.

What matters?

And it was troubling me.

I wasn't walking with the Lord in those days, and I was bothered by that deep question.

And not too many weeks after that Doc Poco Valley experience, here I am in another tropical valley, this time in Hawaii.

And my beautiful 22-year-old wife is laying on the beach beside me.

Funny what we men remember.

I still remember that two-piece swimming suit.

Like today.

And there was our little 16-month-old son whose lifetime had doubled since we were s I had last seen him.

And I was laying on the beach with Linda on my arm, and I was watching this little character kick a little blue ball into the surf and watch the waves bring it back.

It began to dawn on me.

There was a little light of life that began to spark in my heart.

Maybe the reason I'm alive is for them.

Maybe that's why I'm alive.

For my wife and my kids, for my family.

And over the next three or four months, things began to percolate in my heart before I came home, and I was convinced by the time I came home, the only reason I'm alive is for my family and his family.

For my bride and his bride.

That's the only reason I'm alive.

All the other things are accoutrements.

But I'm alive for him and his family.

What a joy to have a purpose.

And there's a strong purpose in living for him and his church.

I want to share some of it with you this morning.

It's um it's all of life, really.

Have you ever noticed that some of the most intense moments in life are moments of intense pressure, out of which come moments of great pleasure, because you've seen answered prayer in the midst of things.

And it's the pressure that grows us up as Christians, says James.

That's probably why I like high school basketball so much.

I uh we have what we call the annual Passover State Championship to be visited to all generations.

And so we always go to the state basketball champions and you watch those young athletes, because they're all, you know, even the older ones though, they still dance and celebrate when something good happens in the middle of pressure, don't they?

And the first, when something good really happens, you know, I can see kids driving for the lane and just strain all over their face as they try to pull this off.

You still see it in the big guys in the professional sports.

And when they do something good, what do they do?

They start looking for each other and slapping high fives and bumping and all this stuff.

They're actually celebrating because they made it to some through some intensity, and the pleasure of making it through that intensity with a positive result is overpowering, and they look for celebration.

I think there were a couple of times when Jesus had some high five moments with his guys.

They were strong moments.

They'd been under tremendous pressure for a long time.

His ministry is about to conclude with a drive toward Jerusalem, his eyes are set, he's ready for the big weekend, and it's not a game.

And so he's revaluating with the guys on his one of his leadership retreats there somewhere near the headwaters of the Jordan River, and he says, Let's see, how's it going?

What do people say that I am?

And there's all kinds of goofy answers and that sort of thing.

And then finally, Peter, in spite of himself, bumps onto the right answer because it's revealed to him.

He didn't conjure it up himself.

And he says, You're the Christ, the Messiah, the culmination of all things.

And Jesus said, Blessed are you, Peter.

But you didn't figure that out on your own.

That was a matter of revelation to you.

And two minutes later, Peter says, Well, whatever you do, don't go down there and die in Jerusalem.

And Jesus has to turn around to his dear friend and say, Get behind me, you little devil.

You're talking crass.

I'm going to die.

That's who I am.

And before he finished that day at the sea at the headwaters of the Jordan, I think he went around to those twelve disciples when they finally got the right answer and were thinking correctly.

And I like to picture him going around with this kind of motion to each one of those guys, and I picture him saying as he pats them on the five, I will build my church.

Five little words.

It changed all of history since that weekend when he gave himself for a ransom to rescue us.

Jesus' high five moments, one of them was, I will build my church.

There was another one to come not long after, where his hands, instead of like this, were more like this.

And he and the Father were one and in fellowship, and he said, It's finished.

It's complete.

We've done it.

I think that was a high five moment, as gruesome as it was.

But that I will build my church is what Jesus is about.

Did you know Jesus is a one-word explanation for church is a one-word explanation for everything Jesus is doing on the planet?

Church?

What?

One morning a week?

When I dress up and come with God's people?

Is that what church is?

Oh, and I think it's much deeper than that.

And you do too.

That's very much a part of it.

For we learn together to live like Jesus.

Jesus is all about, as we read in the Psalm this morning, gathering his people.

He loves his people.

He loves his people to come together.

And as they come together, there's supposed to be this reflection of something pretty special.

And it's the oneness that we just heard from his prayer.

I pray, Father, that they could be one just as we are one.

So the world will know that you sent me.

Sounds like an evangelistic tool.

The oneness of the church is part of its major burden to reach out across the globe.

Now I grew up in the church.

My father was 32 when he made the decision that Jesus is either everything or nothing.

He made the decision he's everything.

My mother didn't know the Lord, didn't want to, was afraid of church.

People judged you there.

Had a very negative impression of the body of Christ.

I was old enough to go with Dad, and so I did.

My brother was not even born yet, and my sister was too young to go, so Dad drug me to every church in the metropolitan area of 40,000 people.

And he was looking for a church that said, This is the Bible, the word of God, this is what it says, means, and what we do.

Well, my first introduction to church was in a large stone building.

I was in second grade, and uh the first thing they did was separate me from my dad, which was not a good thing.

So I was a little bit on edge, and they took me down to the children's assembly, and uh I didn't know anybody.

You know how you're a little tight, even, you know, still today a little bit when you come to the assembly?

Uh and I'm seven or eight years old, and uh the first Sunday I'm in this church, a kid kicks me under the second grade or third grade table, and we get in a fight.

My first really church experience was a fight.

Unfortunately, that sounds all too familiar around the countryside, doesn't it?

I mean, how many flavors of us are there?

What we do best is divide rather than become one, which is the answer to Jesus' prayer.

That's unfortunate that we're known that way.

Here, listen to this.

This is uh one of us Christian comedians who is kind of spoofing ourselves.

In conversation with a person I recently met, I asked, Are you Protestant or Catholic?

My new acquaintance replied, I'm Protestant.

He said, Hey, me too.

What franchise?

He answered, Baptist?

Me too.

Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?

Well, Northern Baptist, he replied.

Well, me too, I shouted.

And we continued to go back and forth until finally I asked, Northern Conservative Fundamentalists Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879?

Or Northern Conservative Fundamentals Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.

He replied, Well, of course, Northern Conservative Fundamentals Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912.

To which I said, Die, you heretic.

That's what we do.

We're really good at separating, which, by the way, the ultimate separation is called death.

That's what we do by reputation in our world.

It's too bad.

We've become, I hate to say it, but we've become a bit of a laughing stock to the culture.

Have you noticed?

It's real.

Here's a reader's digest.

Laughter.

The best medicine.

Finally, after years on a deserted island, Joe was being rescued.

And as he climbed onto the boat, the curious crew asked, no, just the three small huts.

Well, what are those?

They asked you as well.

The first one's my home.

The second's my church.

Well, what's the third one?

Well, that's the church I used to go to.

One lousy guy, and he can't even be one.

Because of the sin in our hearts, we are naturally a dividing, hiding, hurling people.

That's what happened in the Garden of Eden.

God, the woman you gave me, she did it.

What are you looking at me for?

And so we justify ourselves and we blame each other, and we end up separating.

And we defy the image of God in which we're created, which is a belonging image.

We read it in the Psalm.

I will gather my people.

It's what I do, it's who I am.

I will bring them together.

So I want you to hear that message in the time we've got left here.

It's the major, major message from Genesis to Revelation that God will have his people and they will be together as one people.

So could I put it this way?

Nothing pleases the Father like the oneness of the children.

You see that at Christmas?

My parents died in their 90s.

They would sit together in one corner when the kids would start home coming home for Christmas.

And I remember one Christmas, you could watch a couple of my sons got a hold of each other at the door, hadn't seen each other for a few months, and they were a we have what we call two hugs, three hugs, five hugs, and we'd all try to pick each other up.

And they were trying to pick each other up, and the smiles and the giggling and the struggling was just magnificent.

And I hear my parents saying, This is heaven.

This is heaven.

Nothing pleases the father like the oneness of the children.

The kids are coming home.

That's our father.

Jesus prayed 48 times to his father, addressing him as such in that upper room.

It's his heartfelt prayer.

That's the point of his glory.

We shall become one.

We will learn to live together like he does, Father, Son, and Spirit.

We will project his image in the world.

That's the whole point of marriage.

That's the whole point of the nation of Israel.

That's the whole point of the church.

All the people of God coming together as one.

And you see it on page one of Scripture.

It's throughout the Bible.

You see creation account, Janus chapter one.

And it's a rather, if I may risk the word, it's a rather ho-hum description.

And you can almost hear the Father saying, Let there be this, yep, let there be that, yep, let there be light, yep, light.

And it just kind of goes boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, a little patantic for a number of verses, and then the little word then appears.

Then he said, Let us, the triune God, let us create in our image a family resemblance.

Let's create human beings in our image.

In chapter 2, he multiplies that and he says, Alone is not good.

I will create and help mate suitable for the man.

And while it's directed toward marriage, it's a comprehensive principle throughout all of Scripture: the oneness of his people.

And when they start killing each other, he decides he's got to start over, so to speak, if you'll allow me the language.

And there's the flood.

And the flood wipes people out, and they start over, and not very long, that's not very long at all into Genesis.

It's just kind of early history to foundation.

And then you get to Genesis 11, and what happens?

It's time to scatter the people.

It breaks his heart.

The verb scattered is all over that chapter 11, and it breaks his heart because they're actually mocking him, saying, Let us make for ourselves a name and a route to heaven.

And we've been doing that ever since.

So he scattered them so that they didn't use the greatest gift for their oneness, their communication, their communion, so they didn't use that against him.

And he scatters them, breaks the father's heart, and the first thing he does is make a promise.

Genesis chapter 12, that great Abrahamic covenant.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

He says, This is not going to stand.

I will bless all the families through this promise I'm making to this man.

And you and I sit here today, still governed by that promise, and having been joined to him because of Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

And that theme appears all through Scripture.

We don't have time to go through it all, but we read kind of Jesus' capstone in his prayer.

Now Jesus then is with the disciples a little longer, death, burial, resurrection, and eventually ascension.

And the new church is started, the new assembly.

It will be my church.

That is, it will look like me.

There's lots of assemblies.

There's lots of reasons people get together everywhere.

We have organizations of all kinds.

But this one will be mine.

It will bear my resemblance, Jesus says.

It will look like you and me, Father.

Even as we are one, may they be one.

May they bear the family resemblance.

That's his prayer.

And then he ascends into heaven, and the church is born.

There's some magnificent things that happen in Acts chapter 1, 2, 3, and 4.

Acts 1 · chapter mention

But there's a couple of paragraphs that we call period statements that are actually summaries of what all was going on in the middle of all that excitement and different miracles.

And they were speaking in languages they could each understand each other in their own language.

You remember that?

It was a reversal of Babel.

The scattering is over from here on in.

My church will start to look like me.

And there were Parthians and Scythians and Medes and Persians, and they were all together, people that would normally be separated, were united in Christ and began to resemble the image of God and the family resemblance.

Here's one of those summary paragraphs.

The congregation of those who believed were of one heart and one soul.

And not even one of them claimed or was acting as though anything was his own, but things began to be common, shared amongst them.

What's the next sentence?

It's the answer to Jesus' prayer.

With great power the apostles were giving witness to the resurrection.

The greatest evidence of the resurrection in the first century was the oneness of the church.

Because the sentence right after that is, for there wasn't a needy person amongst them, for all who were owners of things, lands, houses, whatever, would be, it's a it's an imperfect tense, it's a continuing tense in that sense.

They would be habitually selling them and bringing the proceeds, and they would distribute as there was needs.

And so their oneness became a physical, visible demonstration of the family resemblance.

You with me so far?

Or is this too you hear what I'm saying, don't you?

It breaks your heart when your kids are at odds with one another.

It's the worst pain a parent knows is when the kids separate.

Nothing pleases the father like the oneness of the children.

Here's the summary of Acts chapter 2 when the church was born.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

All those who believed were together.

Alone is not good.

All those who believed were together, and they had all things in common, sharing, fellowshipping with all, as anyone might have a need, and day by day, continuing with one mind in the temple and breaking bread from home to home, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart.

No hidden agendas, just sincerity of heart.

And the Lord was adding daily to those who were being saved.

The two great summary statements of the foundation of the church are because of the church learning to live together like Father, Son, and Spirit, as one, they were a testimony to the resurrection of Christ, and people were coming in droves to the assembly that bears the family resemblance.

You with me so far?

It's actually pretty simple.

But it's so unexperienced in our culture.

I'm thankful that you're part of a great church.

This is a great church.

But it's not just a church on Sunday.

How engaged are you in the life of the body of Christ, believer to believer, friend to friend?

How engaged are you?

According to what I read in the scripture, the greatest evangelistic witness in the world is the way you treat each other in the family of Christ.

But unfortunately, we're known best for scraps.

Over huge things like carpet color.

And how long do we have to wait for a remodeling to be finished?

We've just been through that at our church.

I'm foisting our experience upon you.

We're an impatient people, and we get rude with each other because of it.

But the whole point of being a church is to be saved.

With gladness, they were together with gladness and sincerity of heart, and the Lord was adding daily those who were being saved from what?

From hell.

The ultimate separation, the ultimate isolation.

We're being delivered from that.

We're being delivered not only from hell, but from aloneness and from individualism gone to seed and from the I wait, I did it my way disease, and for all these kinds of things.

All the stuff that is the result of sin, which has everything to do with separation, to its ultimate end of death.

We're being delivered from that.

I had a seminary professor, he was our president actually, and when he was preaching churches, he would get up and deliberately alarm the people when he would say, Father, please save me tonight.

And what he meant was, help me on that journey toward full salvation and glorification.

Just like you believe here at IBC.

So you're no longer strangers and aliens.

You're not strangers and aliens, says Paul in Ephesians.

Your fellow citizens.

Of God's household.

Being fitted together, rubbed together like a couple of stones till there's no visible seam.

Being fitted together into a holy dwelling, a different kind of dwelling in the Lord, a place where people are at peace with each other, a dwelling of God in the Spirit.

In order that, the epistle about the church, the Ephesians, in order that the many fold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.

This is in accordance with his eternal purpose which he carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So the saved person, the healthy Christian, the whole person is a person in community.

In communion, in communication, and in oneness.

And so Jesus says in that upper room, you don't even have any idea how I've longed to have this meal with you.

And I'm going to break 1,500 years of tradition and we're going to do it this way.

Let this cup represent this.

Let this bread represent this.

It is our communion in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

So the autonomous individual, as the theologians would call him, is not actually a saved person.

If you're actually saved, you're communing.

You're becoming a community.

You're actually giving yourselves.

So as one theologian defines it, it's this way to be saved means to be in authentic relationship with other human beings under the authority and lordship of Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 4 in Eugene Peterson's message.

You were all called to travel on the same road in the same direction, so stay together, both outwardly and inwardly.

You have one master, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who rules over all, works through all, and is in is present in all.

Everything you are and think and do is permeated with oneness.

Is that the attitude you come to church, or do you sit on the opposite side of so-and-so just because?

See, the whole point is to learn together to live, not to recite a creed, not to know stuff, but to live together as Father, Son, and Spirit do.

That's the point.

Ed Dayton says it this way: God calls us out of the world one by one.

But what so many of us evangelicals have missed is that he also calls us into community.

It is a community where the first thing we set aside is our independent individualism.

Now you are all the body of Christ, and each one of you is part of it.

Here's a statement from a magnificent theologian by the name of Vince Lombardi.

Okay?

He's talking to football players who get paid a fortune to run around one day a week on top of a little brown thing.

I mean, I'm being silly, of course, but on the scale of the things we're talking about, it's nothing.

And here's what Lombardi says to his players.

You have got to care for one another.

You have got to love one another.

Each player has got to be thinking about the next guy all the time.

The difference between mediocrity and greatness is the sense you players have for one another.

Most people call it team spirit.

Well, the New Testament calls it kindred spirit.

That's the point of what Jesus is praying for.

So you get it, you have a real opportunity to answer his prayer by making it a point to go out of your way to shed your individualism of independence and give yourself away to each other as part of the body of Christ.

If you're going to follow Christ, if your life is going to matter, if it'll ever really matter that much in eternity that there was a person with your name and heart and soul and number of hairs on your head, if it's really going to matter, you're going to be walking in a great company.

And that great company is going to make a difference in your life.

And you're going to be mentoring one while perhaps that same one or another is mentoring you, and you're going to be experiencing mutual discipleship and mutual mentoring and mutual growing.

Because it's still true from the page one of the Bible alone is not good.

You can't be what Jesus wants you to be by yourself.

And I don't believe that's an overstatement in light of scripture.

Because the whole point of Genesis 1, 2, and 3, when death entered and separation occurred, the Father said, This is not going to stand.

And the first hint of Messiah is basically page one of the Bible.

And he's going to bring us together.

That's the point.

So if you love Jesus, you're going to walk in a great company.

You will be no lone ranger.

Over time you'll start to take off the camouflage.

You know what I'm saying.

We dress up pretty good.

You look wonderful this morning.

But I venture to say there's a wound in every heart that's in here.

And God gives you three change growth health agents to grow up.

He gives you his word, he gives you his spirit, and he gives you his people.

And frankly, if you're like me, as the little girl prayed, you need a little bit of God with skin on.

Call that a friend, a brother, a sister, or two or three or ten.

And walk in groups.

I actually had a group of young women who I never met minister to me powerfully.

I was on the campus of Texas AM University.

40 or 50,000 students, one of the largest ones in the country.

And it's a secular campus, of course.

And here comes this group across the campus, probably a dozen girls.

They're all wearing the same T-shirt.

And it says, Sisters in Christ, as they walk across a secular university campus.

They were strengthening each other in the midst of what would normally be seen as a fairly hostile environment.

That's the way we go.

They told us that the first day of ranger school.

You identify your ranger buddy, you go out together, you come in together, or you'll most likely not come in.

Alone is not good.

So learn to give yourself away to each other.

Take a few risks and say, let me show you the hole in my heart.

This is what I experience on this death trap called planet Earth.

And this is how it stung me.

And when you begin to share at that level of intimacy, pretty soon others start sharing that way.

And pretty soon you know each other at the soulish level.

And when you know each other at the soulish level, you are becoming one as the Father and Son are.

And you watch what happens around you.

Tom and I were talking about an old friend this morning who knows Jesus, the least likely candidate of the whole group.

I was speaking once at a Promise Keeper event, and out of those thousands of men, one came up whom I hadn't seen since high school.

He said, I just wanted you to know I finally came to Jesus.

Who did anything but in high school?

Be the church.

Live is the church.

Nothing pleases the father like the oneness of the children.

And then the world will know that the father sent the son to bring the family together.

Here's a little poem we close with.

It's about three birds.

I never met any of them.

But it's written by a literature professor long ago at, I think it was Houghton College, John Lowe.

He's talking about some birds that are in a tough spot.

It's the dead of winter.

There isn't much to eat.

And one of them actually can't eat.

Listen.

His feather flame doused dull by icy cold, the cardinal hunched into the rough green feeder.

But he ate no seed.

Through binoculars I saw festered and useless his beak, his wound.

I could see his wound.

Festered and useless, his beak broken at the root.

And then two two, one blazing, one gray, rode the swirling weather into my vision and lighted at his side.

Unhurried, as if possessing the patience of God, they cracked sunflowers and fed him beak to wounded beak.

Each morning and afternoon, the winter long, that odd triumvirate, that trinity of need, returned and ate their sacrament of broken seed.

That's us.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you for loving us anyway.

We all confess to everything you already know.

Left to ourselves, our hearts are dark and selfish, and have no desire to reach beyond ourselves.

But having come to know your son, who walked with his arms open and who embraced people, and who helped them understand the truth they needed to know to be free from the horrible power of sin.

Thank you, Father, for holding your arms out to us.

Thank you that you tell us in your word that you go ahead of us and you come behind us and you have our flanks.

And that there's no place we could go where you wouldn't be there with us.

Whether it's the depth of the sea or traveling at the speed of light in the morning.

And thank you for telling us that your thoughts toward us, each one of us, your thoughts outnumber the sand.

We are overblown with that sense of intimacy from the Almighty God.

And we have seen it in our Jesus Himself, the creator of the universe.

And we say thank you in his name.

Amen.

Thank you for being with us today.

And now a parting word from Pastor Jesse.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, emanualbible.

If you're not a member of the local church and you live in the Washington DC area, we'd love to have you worship with us here today.

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