THE LAST PRAYER OF JESUS
UNITY
DR. JIM DIXON
JOHN 17:1-6, JOHN 17:20-23
MAY 10, 2009
Two of the most mysterious objects in the Bible are called the Urim and the Thummim. These objects are mysterious because we do not know their meaning. Sometimes in the Septuagint, and in the Greek language, Urim and Thummim are translated by the words “phos” and “alethea,” which means light and truth: Urim and Thummim. Other times the Greek words “logos” and “telos” are used to render these Hebrew words and these words mean word and perfection or oracle and completion. But you see, we don’t know the meaning of these words and the objects themselves are mysterious. We do know that these objects, the Urim and the Thummim, were possessed by the high priest of all Israel and he carried them over his heart under the breastplate of the high priest in the ephod. He used them as sacred stones. How they worked we don’t know, but we do know that the high priest of Israel used the Urim and the Thummim to discern the will of God for the people of God because the high priest represented God’s people. The high priest prayed daily for God’s people. The high priest prayed constantly for God’s people. The high priest made sacrifices for God’s people. The high priest loved the people of God.
Now the Bible tells us that Jesus Christ is the great high priest and he has the fulfillment of the high priestly office. We saw in our Easter series how Jesus is the Christ. He is the Messiah from the word “masiah,” or from the word “chrio.” The word means anointed. He is the anointed one and he fulfills the three anointed offices of Israel: the office of king, the office of prophet, and the office of priest. Jesus is the fulfillment of the high priestly office and he offered the sacrifice by which we are saved, by which his people are saved and he intercedes for us. He prays for us. He intercedes for us daily with the Father. Even now, even today, Jesus Christ sits at the right hand of the Father and intercedes for his people. It’s a beautiful thing that we have in the Bible, in John 17, a prayer of Jesus for us. I am so grateful that the Holy Spirit of God inspired the disciples of Christ to write down the prayer of Jesus that we would have these words before us and we can examine this prayer in these next few weeks.
Now we know that in this prayer Jesus prays for his church, his people, and he prays for unity. I want us to take a look at this this morning and I want to pose the question: are you praying for unity? Are you praying for oneness with Jesus and do you seek oneness with his people? First of all, we look at oneness with Jesus Christ. His prayer to the Father was, “that you might be of me and I might be of them.” He sought oneness with us and he promises in this prayer that as we find oneness with him, we have in some sense find oneness with the Godhead and with the fullness of God. This is obviously rooted in an understanding of the Trinity. When you look at the high priestly prayer of Jesus in John 17, all through it you see implications of the Trinity.
Now there’s a mystery to the Trinity. I’m always kind of bugged when I talk to Christians who don’t like mysteries. I’m always a little bit irritated when I talk to believers in Jesus Christ and they want everything tied up real neatly. They want God in a box. They want everything just to be linear. They want to be able to proof test everything and know everything for sure. They don’t want any mystery. But you see, in the Bible there is this word “mysterion” and it means truth revealed, but not necessarily understood. So, when we speak of the Trinity, it’s a mystery. It’s the truth revealed. It’s revealed by God, but it’s still not understood. There is no one in this room, no one in this assembly, no one in this church that really understands the profound nature of the Godhead. The Bible tells us that God is one and blessed is he. The Bible tells us that Jesus is God. The Bible tells us that the Father is God. The Bible tells us that the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there is one God. We have this concept of the Tri-unity. We have this concept of the Trinity and the Church historically has struggled with this.
Look at the Ecclesiastical Councils who study the nature of God and begin with the first Ecclesiastical Council at Nicaea at 325 AD. They refuted Arianism. Arianism was the teaching that Jesus Christ was the highest created being. The Council at Nicaea said, “No, Jesus Christ was not created. Jesus Christ is co-eternal with the Father.” Then you come to the Council of Constantinople in the year 381 AD., and they looked at the fullness of the Godhead and they proclaimed that God is not only Father and Son, but God is Holy Spirit. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And then you come to the Council of Chalcedon in 451, and you have this discussion regarding the nature of Jesus Christ: fully God, fully man, united in one person. The complexity of all this is impossible to fathom, and yet I honestly believe the Ecclesiastical Councils got it right. As I study the Bible, as I study Scripture, I really believe that the Ecclesiastical Councils rightly studied and divided the Word of God. They rightly understood it and this is called orthodoxy.
In this high priestly prayer of Jesus, we see all through it the Trinity, and Jesus says, “I have glorified Thee,” and then Jesus says, “Now glorify me with the glory that I shared with You before the foundations of the world.” Nobody in this room could pray like that. I certainly could not pray like that. You couldn’t. But Jesus can because of his union with the Father, before the foundations of the world, before the cosmos were made. And so, we see the Trinity in this beautiful high priestly prayer and the incredible prayer that we would be one with him and that as we become one with him, we in some sense experience the fullness of God.
Just amazing promise that oneness with Jesus begins through what the Bible calls regeneration, anointed what the Bible calls rebirth. You come to John 3 and you see this conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. Nicodemus is a Pharisee. He’s one of the religious leaders of the Jews, one of the religious leaders of the nation of Israel, and he’s powerful. He’s a member of the Sanhedrin. He’s a member of the highest court. He’s a member of the supreme court of Israel and he comes to Jesus stealthily. He comes to Jesus by night and he says, “Rabbi, we know you are a teacher sent from God because no one could do the works, no one could do the miracles you have done unless God be with him.”
I love the response of Jesus. Jesus doesn’t respond by saying, “Well, thank you very much.” Jesus responds by saying, “Truly I say to you, unless you are born anew, you’ll never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” Jesus looked right into this man’s soul, right into this man’s heart, and he said, “Truly, unless you are born again, unless you are regenerated, unless you are born anew, you’ll never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” Jesus uses this word “ano gennao.” In some other places in the Bible it is “gennao anothen,” but the concept is the same. It means to be born again or to be born from above.
Nicodemus says he doesn’t understand. He says, “Rabbi, can a man enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born again?” And Jesus said, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, but that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I say to you, “You must be born again.”‘ The Bible tells us that we’re born again; we’re born from above, when we embrace Jesus Christ. When we come to him and receive him as our Savior from sin, and when we make that commitment to him as Lord, in that moment, the Bible teaches us, Jesus sends the Holy Spirit to indwell us. The Holy Spirit comes to tabernacle within us and we become temples of God and we’re born anew. It’s not a physical experience that you can feel like something physical. It’s a spiritual experience that you accept by faith that he has sent his Spirit within you and then you have become a daughter of God or a son of God. We become children of God through faith in Christ. We are born anew. This is the beginning of oneness with him. This is the beginning of union with him.
Now how many Christians are in America? We don’t know. But it’s a curious thing that recent surveys have shown that almost forty percent of people in America claim they have been born anew. Almost forty percent of the people in America claim they have been born again, born from above, through faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Recent surveys demonstrate that 76% of the people in the United States self-confess that they are Christian. Seventy-six percent of the people of the United States self-proclaim that they believe in Jesus Christ. You may have seen the recent Newsweek magazine, the Easter edition, of which the cover was “The Decline and Fall of Christian America. This was their Easter special, “The Decline and Fall of Christian America,” and they reported on a survey that involved 50,000 Americans. In the survey, according to Newsweek, the percentage of people in 1990 who identified themselves as Christian were 86% of the population, and now in 2007, 76%, so the decline and fall of Christian America according to Newsweek. But understand; this is bogus.
I have here an incredible article in the USA Today and I know you can’t read it, but I just love to hold things up. The title says, “Post Christian: Not Even Close.” And the subtitle says, “A high profile religious landscape survey is said to show that America is rapidly losing its faith in Christianity. One problem: it’s just not so.” This article in USA Today, full-page article is written by Stephen Prothero, who is the head of the Religion Department of Boston University, and he points out that America is amazingly Christian. When you look at the religions of the world, there’s no religion of the world that has more than two percent representation amongst the American population. But 76% plus self-profess to be Christian, and indeed, America is more Christian than Israel is Jewish. America is more Christian than Utah is Mormon. This is an amazing thing.
He also continues to point out that even in the segment, the group of people who seem to be growing in their unbelief, the people who identify themselves as non-religious, that group in 1990 was 8%, 2007 15%, and so, they say this is hugely significant, like atheism is growing because these are non-religious. But when you look at the survey more closely, most of those people in that 15% say they believe in God and they believe in Jesus and they pray regularly. They don’t want to be associated with what they consider to be institutional religion. There’s a great deal of faith in America.
I know it’s hard to believe when you are constantly bombarded by secular media that wants you to believe you’re losing. I just want you to be encouraged a little bit to know God is at work in this nation and God is at work in churches and in lives all over America. I have a book here called Blind Spot. I just picked this up recently. It’s about journalists in America and it says, “When Journalists Don’t Get Religion.” Written by Paul Marshall. Paul Marshall is the senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. This book just shows how many folks in the media just don’t understand faith-based systems. They don’t understand religious thought. You’ve probably seen these surveys reported in the newspapers in just the recent past week claiming that America is losing its faith, claiming that people are switching their religions. Have you seen those articles in papers just this past week? All over America they’re claiming that people of America are switching their religions and changing their faith. The journalists just don’t get it because they are talking about people who have moved from being a Baptist to a Methodist, or from Methodist to being Episcopalian. They don’t understand that to be a follower of Christ is the faith. To be a follower of Christ is the Christian faith and people aren’t leaving the Christian faith when they move from being a Baptist to a Methodist, or a Methodist to a Lutheran, or from a Catholic to a Protestant or a Protestant to a Catholic. They don’t understand the nature of the Body of Christ, the Church, the Ecclesia, the Assembly of Jesus Christ.
This other book I just got is God is Back. It’s a great book written by two guys who graduated from Oxford University and one of them is John Micklethwait and he is the chief editor of the Economist magazine, one of the most respected magazines in the world. And their point is despite popular opinions, and you won’t find this book in Christian bookstores. It’s not explicitly Christian, just scholars trying to be honest, and they’re just saying all over the world faith is growing. Christianity is growing massively all over the world. You look in former communistic nations, you look in Russia and even in China, which is still communistic, Christianity is just growing massively in Russia and China. All throughout South America, Africa, God is back. Even here in America, incredible movements of God, amazing things are happening in churches. I just don’t want you to be discouraged.
Obviously in the secular media, and in institutions of higher learning and academia, there are certain individuals—not all, but certain individuals—who have an agenda and they really seek the destruction of faith in religious institutions and delight in what they perceive to be the decline. I know that many of you are bombarded by that, and I just want to encourage you. Ultimately, it’s only God who knows who believe. In a sense it doesn’t do any good to try to survey the nation, try to determine the percentage of Americans that believe in Jesus Christ, because Jesus knows who believes in him. Jesus knows, and only Jesus knows, and he knows how many people in this room today really believe in him and love him and seek to follow him. He knows.
On this Mother’s Day, it’s kind of interesting, a study was just done at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem by Dr. Marcia Kaitz, and this study was conducted with 46 new moms in the maternity ward in a hospital. They had baby-switched and they give a variety of babies while they were blindfolded, it sounds kind of cruel, doesn’t it, and asked to choose which one was their own. Seventy percent of these moms, just by the touch, by the feel, by the smell, somehow sensed which baby was theirs. That’s true of moms. They know their own. I promise you: Jesus knows his own. Jesus said, “I know my sheep. They hear my voice. They follow me. I give them eternal life. No one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father is greater than all and no one can snatch them out of my Father’s hand.” So, he knows who believes and the question really is are you seeking oneness with him? If you are indeed in his flock, and you have embraced him as Savior and Lord, and you have entered his family through regeneration, this is his prayer for you: that you would become one. The Greek shows process so that you are to seek oneness with him, and are you seeking that?
Many times, as a pastor, we have people on our staff who will send me a note or come and talk to me and tell me they want to go to monastic communities, maybe a Catholic monastic community, maybe a monastery, or maybe a Protestant monastic community, but a place where they can get apart and maybe even take a vow of silence. Maybe have brief times of worship, gobs of time in prayer and Bible study, and I’m very grateful and pleased that on our staff we have people who seek greater friendship with Jesus, and people on our staff who seek a greater intimacy with Christ. Here at the church, we’ve brought in some of the greatest leaders of the Christian contemplative movement right to our church. We’ve brought here to our church Dallas Willard, professor of sociology at USC and one of the great leaders of Christian contemplative thought. And we’ve brought in Richard Foster to our church, also one of the great leaders in the contemplative movement in the Christian community. So, we’ve had Dallas Willard and Richard Foster, and we’ll bring guys like that again. We have their books in our Inklings bookstore. We have many tools to help you if you want greater oneness with Jesus Christ, if you want more unity with Christ. We’ve always encouraged you and always will continue to encourage you to carve out some time every day to be alone with Christ and to pray and to read his Word, and maybe hum a hymn or sing a song that would bring you closer to him, to take time to get away and just focus on him because this is his prayer for his people. It’s not easy in this crazy world to carve out the time to seek that unity with Christ.
One of my favorite people is Wayne Cordeiro. Wayne Cordeiro is a pastor in Hawaii. Wayne is actually pastor of the largest church in Hawaii. It’s in Honolulu. It’s about 10,000 people. He’s a great guy and he’s recently asked if he could come and preach at our church, and I think we’ll bring Wayne in and let you be blessed by Wayne. He’s just a great guy and a wonderful communicator. He, a few years ago, had a breakdown, a mental, emotional, physical breakdown. He was just exhausted by the demands of the ministry. Wayne is a goal-oriented guy and he’s always on task. He’s driven each day, drinks a lot of coffee, and he just burned out. Part of his healing process was he needed to go to a monastic community, and so Wayne was sent to this monastic community to just be alone with Jesus.
He goes to this monastic community and everyone has taken a vow of silence, there’s a half-hour a day they can chant and sing some songs, but the rest of the time they are praying and reading and just experiencing silence. It’s remote. It’s removed from any civilization, and you’re just there day after day, and he starts to go crazy, just stir crazy. He can’t take it anymore. Here’s this driven guy and everything’s quiet and he’s just climbing the walls, and so, finally one night he has a rental car and, in his words, he escapes. He gets into his rental car late at night and he just leaves and he drives for miles in this remote area and he finds an internet cafe where he can plug into a computer and find out what’s going on.
He gets a cup of coffee and he’s settling in. He calls his wife and she says, “You ought to get back there. You can’t bail out on this. Go back there. You’re going to get in trouble.” So, he goes back thinking, “Oh, I’m going to get in trouble,” but he didn’t get in trouble because everybody had taken a vow of silence and nobody said anything! But it is a crazy world, isn’t it? It’s just a crazy world. It’s hard day by day, and there’s so many stresses and so, many challenges, and yet the prayer of Jesus is in the midst of it all, that we’d find greater oneness with him and we’d seek that unity with him.
I have a second and final teaching from this prayer concerning unity and that is we would seek oneness with each other. This too is the prayer of Christ: that his people would seek unity with each other, that we would seek oneness with each other, that we would become one, with the Greek showing process, that we would grow closer and closer as his people. A few years ago, I got a phone call from Dan Ritchie, and Dan was at that time chancellor at Denver University, at DU. Dan has been very significant in building that institution of higher learning and the physical campus: a very gifted and talented man. He asked me if I would be willing to serve on a group he was putting together, a clergy group, and he said that together we would be examining morals and ethics and value systems in America. He said there would be a couple of Muslim imams, that there would be Jewish rabbis, that there would be Hindu and Buddhist leaders, and even Native American tribal leaders. He said that there would be Christians, both Protestant and Catholic, and would I be part of it.
I said, “Well, I’ll give it a try,” and I went to a couple of meetings and I was asked to sign something that I could not sign, and so I refused and tried to explain why. I was asked to sign a statement that I believe in unity with all people. I was asked to put my name, sign Jim Dixon, to the statement that I believe in unity with all people in the world. I don’t even know what that means. I don’t believe in unity with all people of the world. I don’t believe in unity with Al-Qaeda. I don’t believe in unity with Hezbollah. I don’t even know what that would mean. If I lived during WWII, I would not believe in unity with Adolf Hitler. I would not believe in unity with the Nazi party. I wouldn’t even know what that would mean: different worldviews, different belief systems, different morals, different ethics, different values, different life purposes, different views on humanity. I wouldn’t even know what that means.
But I do know this: I know I’m called to love everybody and I know with regard to unity, I am called to seek unity for the church. I am called to seek unity with all of Christ’s people, all of the people who follow him and believe in him. I’m called to seek unity there. I’m convicted of that. I’m convinced of that and I want you to be because this is part of the high priestly prayer of Jesus for us: that we would seek unity with each other as believers in Jesus Christ. I’m concerned about our nation. One of the mottos of America is E Pluribus Unum, out of many, one. We are a melting pot of peoples: mixed racially, with mixed ethnicities, varieties of religious perspectives, a melting pot.
Yet there is some sense as Americans in which we’ve always sought oneness, we’ve had some common ideologies, and I’m worried about our country. It seems to me that right now our two-party system has become so entrenched that there is just animosity, anger and hatred there. It just feels more and more like Republicans and Democrats hate each other in the midst of their entrenchment. I don’t know whether I’m just misremembering, but somehow when I was younger it seemed to me that while we had a two-party system and it brought some healthy checks and balances, ultimately everybody was in it for America. But right now, it just feels like there’s a war going on. It doesn’t feel healthy.
I think of the words of our Lord Jesus Christ that a house divided cannot long stand and it seems to me that instead of a two-party system we are now a house divided. It seems to me that we used to have certain ideologies that united us and we all believed in democratic freedoms and capitalistic incentives and reward for work well done, and hard work. We believed in civil liberties and in basic human freedoms. But it feels now like in the midst of America we have growing numbers of people who are Marxist in their thinking and are dabbling in Marxist-Socialism and it’s a scary time.
But as afraid as I am for this nation, I’m far more concerned about the church of Jesus Christ. I love my country, but it’s the church that has my highest allegiance. Jesus is Lord of Lords and King of Kings and I live for his eternal kingdom and I look at his church. He said, “I will build my church and the powers of Hell will not prevail against it,” and I’m concerned for the church, because the church of Jesus Christ is oh, so divided. I think of this high priestly prayer, and it’s scary. There are so many people out there who are more concerned with being a faithful Baptist than they are with being a faithful Christian, or a faithful Lutheran, or a faithful Episcopalian, or a faithful Catholic, or a faithful Protestant, and we’re supposed to be followers of Jesus Christ holding hands.
I was born in Presbyterianism, born at Presbyterian Hollywood Hospital, raised in a Presbyterian church. I, for a period of time went to the Four-Square Church, which is a Pentecostal church that my mom’s family was involved with. In college for two years, I was a member of a conservative Baptist church and I enjoyed it. For two years in college, I was a member of an Anglican Episcopal church called All Saints by the Sea, in Santa Barbara, California. My knees got sore getting down and up, but I loved it. I loved the church.
For two years I pastored in a Lutheran church, Missouri Synod, I was a youth pastor in a Lutheran church. This church is affiliated with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church and I’m grateful for our denominational affiliation. I’m grateful for our checks and balances, our standards of ordination and for the community of support, but the big deal is Jesus. That’s what it’s all about. It’s not about being a Presbyterian. It’s not about being a Baptist, a Methodist, a Lutheran, Episcopalian, Pentecostal, Catholic, or Protestant: it’s about Jesus. We are called to hold hands, come together, because we have a great enemy. We don’t battle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers of darkness, spiritual hosts of wickedness who seek the souls of our children and children all over the world and indeed seek our very own souls. So much is at stake.
I was reading recently in National Geographic about the artic wolf, and I know they also had a video on this on TV. They showed this wolf pack of seven wolves and musk oxen they were seeking as prey. There were 11 musk oxen and these 11 adults had a whole bunch of baby oxen they were seeking to protect. In the article this wolf pack in the artic won’t attack an adult oxen, but they will attack the babies. National Geographic showed how these 11 musk oxen, as the wolf pack approached, formed a circle, heads together with their rears going outward, and they kicked their hoofs backwards and they’re powerful. They formed this defensive circle and they put their babies in the middle. They put their babies, their little ones, in the middle of the circle and they just formed this circle and they kick their hoofs outward and keep the wolves at bay. But in the article, and also on the TV program, they showed how one musk oxen broke ranks, for some reason pulled away and left a gap, and that wolf pack just went right in the hole and killed baby oxen. There is so much at stake when you don’t hold together. I look at the community of Christ today and I’m concerned.
It reminds me of Christian persecution during the Roman era. For hundreds of years Christians were persecuted. I’ve traveled to ancient Roman ruins throughout what was the Roman empire in Asia Minor. I’ve been to Ephesus, and Smyrna and Pergamum and Thyatira and Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea. I’ve gone to Alexandria Troas, Troy, Aphrodisius, Hierapolis, Colossi, and in all these places I’ve walked old stone marble streets where the ruins of ancient buildings rise up and you can see it: virtually every Roman city there was either a hippodrome, which is like the Circus Maximus was in the city of Rome, a huge stadium, or a vast amphitheater, like the Flavian Amphitheater in Rome, which is called the Colosseum, and these arenas were used to satisfy the bloodlust of the Roman peoples. For hundreds of years, Christian men, women and children were brought into those arenas and they were killed for the pleasure of the masses. The persecution of believers in Jesus Christ has continued throughout time and it continues today. Jesus said, “I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves.” But his high priestly prayer is that we would hold hands: that we as his people, as those who love and follow him, would stand as one and be faithful unto death. That’s his prayer for us.
In Ephesians 4:4-6 you have the 7 “ones,” and we’re told that in the plan of God there is one body, one spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all, and in all. This is the consistent appeal of the Bible: that we might come together in our oneness. We are one body. That one body is the assembly, the Ecclesia, the Church. Jesus said that he would build his church and the gates of Hell would not prevail against it and it’s universal and it consists of many different denominations and even non-denominational churches: Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, the church is huge and it’s global. There is some sense that which anyone could say to me, “I’m a follower of Jesus Christ,” that person is my brother, my sister and I need to hold their hand and we stand together as we seek to live for Christ on this earth.
We are one body. We are one spirit: the Holy Spirit, Hagios Pneuma. How strange it is that the Holy Spirit is so often used to divide the people of Christ when it is the Holy Spirit that unites us in one baptism: the “baptisei en pneumati,” baptism of the Spirit, which we all receive when we embrace Christ as Lord and Savior. I believe in all the gifts of the Spirit, but they should not be used to divide us. No one is better than you, and you’re not better than someone else because you have a particular gift. Our job is to be open to all of God’s gifts and then let him distribute the gifts in accordance with his will as we rejoice in what he gives us and what he gives others. But the Holy Spirit should unite us, not divide us.
There is one hope. What is that hope? The second coming of Jesus Christ. He will judge the world and receive his people to himself. That one hope is Heaven itself. How strange that that one hope divides the Body of Christ. We have pre-tribbers and mid-tribbers and post-tribbers, pre-millennial people, all-millennial people: get over it! Jesus is coming back and really pan-trib is the position: it’s all going to pan out. Jesus is coming back. We don’t need to be divided as the Body of Christ. There’s one Lord, and that one Lord is Jesus Christ. You talk to somebody and they say, “I believe in Jesus,” but they don’t believe in the Bible. Their belief in Jesus is kind of meaningless. How do you say, “Jesus is Lord” if you don’t let him speak to you, if you don’t believe that this is his Word? If you don’t believe that this is the reliable rule of faith and practice, if you don’t believe that the Bible’s is reliable in terms of what it teaches on morals and theology, if you don’t believe that, how do you let Jesus guide you?
Jesus told his disciples that he would send the Spirit and that the Spirit would bring to them remembrance all that he had spoken so they could record it. Jesus told John, “Write what you see in a book.” We have this from Jesus. If you deny Scripture and you say you believe in Jesus, well then Jesus is whoever you want him to be. So, do whatever you want and call it Jesus. But there is one Lord and one faith, and it’s the faith that we contend for, and it is the faith delivered once and for all delivered to the saints. This is the high priestly prayer of Jesus that we who truly believe would love each other and come together and hold hands and serve the cause of Heaven on Earth, and that we would seek every day oneness with him. This is his prayer. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.