Divine Oneness

Transcript

To the Gospel According to John, chapter 17. The gospel according to John, chapter 17. And if you have been with us for the past, well, really all of Easter. Right, so this is the seventh Sunday of Easter. So we're seven weeks in now.

00:00:19

Excuse me. We've been in the Gospel of John all of that time, and particularly the majority of that time. But in the chapters of 13 and through 17 of John, here we are at the crescendo today. So stand with me. When you get to John 17 and find verse 20, notice these words.

00:00:44

In John 17:20, Jesus prayed for his disciples. And then he said, I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me, and I am in you. May they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me the glory that you have given me. I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them, and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

00:01:45

Father, I desire that those also whom you have given me may be with me where I am to see my glory which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you. And these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them.

00:02:24

Jesus, thank you for this prayer for us right here in this room. Lord, you know us each by name. And now we pray that you would give us your spirit to enliven our minds, to light up something in us that is eternal and knows that these words are the truth. May you spark that in us by the flame of your love, the Holy Spirit, we pray in your name. Amen.

00:02:57

And you can be seated.

00:03:04

So, boy, let's think about this. In about 2000, what was it, 2002 or one. Actually, about 2001, I was sitting in my dorm room and I was reading Thomas Odin's Systematic Theology. And I was in the second book, which if you know, he has a three part series to his systematic. And the first part deals with the Father primarily, the second part with the Son and.

00:03:32

And the third part with the Holy Spirit. And so I was in the second part about Jesus and I was reading just because it was required. Right. I was in a Class Systematic Theology. And I remember reading by myself that day for about an hour or so.

00:03:50

I'm a slow reader, and I was reading and all of a sudden so many things clicked in my mind. You ever had one of those moments where it's just like so much that had been said in church or said to me about God became so palpably real in me that it was undeniable. Now, this wasn't a conversion point for me at all, but rather it was a realization that the more I know about God, the more I can love Him. That's what I learned that day. The more I know about him, the more I can love.

00:04:30

In other words, my capacity for God grows with knowledge of God. And of course, Jesus begins John 17, which is really my life, verse 17:3, with this statement. For this is eternal life, Zoe. Remember, not bios, not biological life, but Zoe, Zoe. Or eternal life.

00:04:54

This is eternal life. That they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. Knowing and loving God is the end of man. It is the purpose of our creation. In other words, God created us to know him and to love Him.

00:05:15

And he's given us, each of us, capacity to do that kind of thing. And the more we know him, the more we will love Him. Because he is only good, he is only light, and he is only action, if you will, with nothing boring about Him. And so anytime we. We sort of get into this tired old oh, yeah, I already know who God is.

00:05:41

We've already lost who God is. You see how that works? As soon as we think we know all that there is to know about God, we've already lost who he is because he is beyond us in this way. But that's not something that should be depressing. As I learned on that afternoon when I was reading this systematic theology, all these new words were coming to life to me, and I just fell in love with theology.

00:06:07

But notice, not just theology, but the God of the that theology. In other words, there's a person behind these words. There's a person behind these sermons or these songs that we sing. And his name is Jesus. And he tells us that there's another person who is the Holy Father and another person that he's going to send in his name, who is the Holy Spirit, and that he invites us into this community of divine relationship, who is the triune God.

00:06:39

And so this is the faith that we believe, and this is what has been passed down now for 2,000 years, is that when Jesus came, He revealed God to us because he is God.

00:06:55

Now, this here in 17 ends Jesus final words on his final night with his disciples. You remember, they gathered in an upper room at the beginning of that night, and he washed their feet. John tells us. Now, this was at the supper, the table. And really this scene that is set in John 13 through 17 surrounds the table initially and then moves out from that room into the garden where we're sort of back in the Garden of Eden.

00:07:33

But this garden is the Garden of Gethsemane. And where Adam failed, Jesus is going to succeed. You remember that serpent slipped up there on them and tricked Eve, and Adam willingly went into that. Now the serpent is there again, Satan. And he tempts Jesus, but Jesus overcomes him and by doing so wins the victory for all of us.

00:07:58

And he becomes the last Adam, Paul says. And the reason for this is because there's the first Adam who fails. But now this Adam, unlike the other Adam, he gives life where the other gave death. And so it is that Jesus gives life to all who believe, and all in him will be resurrected, in fact, whereas Adam, everybody that is under the curse, which is everybody that's born, anybody that's born is born of Adam until you're born again, which is the whole purpose of being born again. And that language is, we are already born into sin, born under the curse, born of Adam.

00:08:42

Now we must be born of the new Adam. And that only comes by the Spirit. Jesus says, you must be born again to receive eternal life. And of course, this is exactly what Jesus is offering here in so many words in this chapter, that is really, as I say, the crescendo of this section of Scripture that perhaps is one of the most profoundest, the profoundest words that have ever been spoken, to be honest with you. And here's why it's interesting that on the last night, and Dennis Kinlaw points this out, and I've never forgotten it since he did on this last night with his disciples.

00:09:22

Jesus could have said a lot of things. I mean, you just think about it like if this was your last night with those who are closest to you, and you're starting the church, like, not just a church, like Harvest Point, but the church, okay? And you've invested in these guys for three years, and now you're with them on this last night, and, you know, it's the last night. They don't know, okay? They don't get it yet.

00:09:45

They will soon, but they don't get it at this point. What would you say to them? You know, most of us would go immediately to the practical, wouldn't we? I mean, I would. That's what I do with my kids.

00:09:55

If I'm leaving. Hey, listen, put the dogs up, shut the door, lock it, et cetera, et cetera. Very practical things, like basically a checklist, okay? Which sometimes they don't. They fail to do, you know, like, like, like all of us.

00:10:09

Or maybe they even did that this week, you know? But I would go to the very practical things, wouldn't you? To like, hey, listen, guys, remember what I said about this? Like, you really need to do this and make sure you do that and make. That is not what Jesus does on his final night with his disciples.

00:10:29

He doesn't get real practical at all. In fact, he carries us up to the highest contemplative thoughts that could ever be thought by humans. He takes us to our brink, to the edge of reality, if you will, all the way up to God himself. And not only just God, but notice the inner life of God. In other words, how God works, called the economic Trinity, how it is that God relates to himself.

00:11:01

Jesus gives essentially, as Kinlaw says, a dissertation on the Holy Trinity here on his last night. That's what he leaves them with. The very last thing he says to them are some of the strongest, mysterious, again, highest superior, contemplative thoughts that have ever been uttered from a human. And of course, this human is God. And so he leaves them with a trinitarian, relational nature, which is kind of remarkable and maybe a bit confusing until we realize that that's because the end is what is most important here.

00:11:42

And it's God. All of what we do should lead to God. And in fact, he's designed us just like that. All of the things that we like or are drawn to are goods that we pursue, but that come from him ultimately. So that when we are in pursuit of these good things, we're actually looking for Him.

00:12:04

We may not know it, which is why we're blinded. The scripture says we don't understand it, that pleasure or honor or wealth and all these things that we seek and pursue, we're pursuing something good, but we do it the wrong way, or we go about it the wrong way, perhaps, or we fall short and we stop at wealth, when wealth is only a means, you see? And you can't stop at the means, but rather the end. And the end is always God. And so Jesus here speaks of.

00:12:36

Of the nature of reality again, which is our end. Who is God? Okay, so let me. Let me just dive in and. And begin to sort of tease out a little Bit of this this morning.

00:12:50

Notice we can't even get past the first words here in verse 20. Jesus prayed. I know we read it and we just skip right over it, but have you ever just really thought about that? Jesus is God. What is he doing?

00:13:07

Praying. Some of us have a difficult time praying. Yes. So forget to pray sometimes. Oh, I should have really prayed about that before I made that decision, you know, or we feel like, yeah, I really need to pray more.

00:13:23

Because when I pray, I get in touch with God. And when I get in touch with God, I actually feel some sort of satisfaction. But then I get distracted by so many things Jesus prayed. And it's worth stopping there for just a moment to say we are able to listen in. In John 17, kind of God is pulling back the curtain, if you will, revealing to us God talking to God.

00:13:56

Like that's worth thinking about for a minute, isn't it? God is talking to God. And we get to overhear that conversation in John 17, which again, that's impossible if God is some monistic sort of being. But rather we have here three persons, one God, one God in three persons, as our trinitarian formula demands. And so the Father and the Son are communicating, and how they communicate is called prayer.

00:14:30

Now, guess what we do when we communicate with God? We're praying, right? When we're communicating with God, when we call out his name, when. When we come before him, so to speak, in our minds or with our words, we're praying to God and entering into a conversation that has been in existence from the foundation of the world. As our text just said.

00:14:55

We get invited into the very inner workings of God and Jesus leads us there in. In this prayer as his disciples overheard this. And now John writes this thing, you know, here in John 17, Jesus prayed for his disciples. And then notice. And then he says, I ask not only on behalf of these here, the 12, if you will, but also on behalf of those who will believe.

00:15:23

Guess what? That's us. That's us. That's those who will. So here's Jesus on this very night.

00:15:31

And he's not just thinking about what's in front of him, which is typically what we do in life, but rather he's thinking all the way to June 1, 2025, 10:55am and he's saying, you know what? Hey, those people who believe, I'm praying for them too. Right here. Jesus talking to God, who is God, right? And then, and then, if that's not enough, notice what it said.

00:15:59

Jesus asked. Now, that struck me, even this Morning as I was rereading it right before we started, and I thought, here's Jesus not demanding something of the Father. How many of our prayers? Like, if I were to hear you praying or you hear me praying, sometimes it sounds like we're demanding, like, hey, Lord, do this and do that and help me. Do this and help me, help me, help me, help me, help me, help me, help me.

00:16:25

And there's a place for that. Okay? But notice. Notice here Jesus is in prayer. He asks God to do these things.

00:16:36

Not tells him. He doesn't tell him to do them. He's asking. This is God talking to God, showing us how to talk to God in prayer. We ask.

00:16:48

We don't demand. And it's okay to demand until you realize, okay, all right. You know more than I do. So this is why we pray. Not my will, but thine.

00:17:02

Listen, you can ask whatever you will. Jesus says this. Ask whatever you will, but we don't demand whatever we will. There's a big difference in that, isn't it? We don't demand.

00:17:13

We can ask. But understand that we always pray, just as Jesus taught us in the garden on this very night. Not my will, but thine.

00:17:27

Now, in praying for those who will believe, it includes us here at Harvest Point. And here's what's neat to me is in 2007, God put a vision, a burden on my heart and on Jessica's heart. And we both saw a community of people that loved God, worshiped God, but didn't stop there. They then translated that into serving God and other people. And, you know, that's the whole reason it's called Harvest Point, is we wanted to be a point in the world where harvesting was what we were doing, right?

00:18:08

That Jesus says, the fields are white with harvest. Where are the workers? And we wanted to see people raised up to go work in the fields of those who don't know, of those that Jesus calls us into. Just like he says here, the world doesn't know. So we wanted to plant a church.

00:18:29

God was putting a burden in our own hearts to do that. Now, we. We didn't know most all of you in this room, we didn't know that God would also call you into the midst of that and called many people even before you. That helped us get to where we are today. But who did see this was God.

00:18:50

He saw it. He foreordained it, in fact. And his providence has been clearly seen in Harvest Point's existence. And, you know, it's a very special thing for me to think about on our 18th birthday for this church is this point many of you could have left, many of you probably should have left if you were being practical.

00:19:14

Because sometimes being practical is not the most important thing you ever thought about that being practical isn't always the most important thing. If you were always practical, you would never stop to learn something new necessarily. You just do what is practical. But rather the contemplative is actually superior to the practical. In fact, however, they must not be separated.

00:19:37

Where we're just always up in the clouds. That can't happen either. And so just like in a relationship, we love because we know that person. The more we know that person, the more we love. And there's this balance between doing things for that person, practically speaking, and then spending time with them.

00:20:00

You know, quality time, that elusive quality time that. That Jessica wants with me. Right. She, you know, I've learned over the years. 21 years, in fact, we just celebrated that last week.

00:20:14

Yeah. Thursday. 21 years. You know, I can do a lot of practical things for her, like clean the kitchen or do something like that. But if that's all I ever did for her, if I didn't just sit with her sometimes dreaming about our life, thinking about memories or something like that.

00:20:33

Quality time, you know, do you think that'd be a healthy relationship? No, of course it wouldn't. There has to be this balance between knowing her and not just always doing something for her. Because you can do stuff for people but not actually love them. This is why I think also like the Ten Commandments says, honor your father and your mother, not just obey them.

00:20:59

You can obey them, but not honor them. But you can't honor them and not obey them. You see how that works? It's really the same way in our relationships with each other and also with God, is we can do very practical things, but we also need to spend time together and, like, think about spending your time together. Maybe not doing what you think is most practical.

00:21:23

Okay. Because, like, snuggling doesn't seem very practical to me on the couch. Right. But there's something that happens in the. In the snuggling up together and just being with one another, watching one of her shows and rather than one of my things or doing something I want to do.

00:21:39

Right. Is we connect. We are unified in a unique way. And it's the same way with God. If we're always just do, do, do for God, then we never are being with him, then we lose something.

00:21:54

But if we're also just trying to only be with God without Ever doing something, we also are deficient there. There is this unity. And I think Jesus praying for just that kind of unity, that being one with him means. Then you go into the world, which is why he never disconnects it from you. Knowing God and then the world needing to know Him.

00:22:15

There's an immediate need. Just like we sang a moment ago. Here I am, Send me Here I am, Send me As soon as we. Just, like. Just like take Isaiah, for instance.

00:22:26

He sees a vision of God, okay? He now knows God. He sees this beatific vision, so to speak, of God. This moment, like I had in my dorm room, where I see God in this expanded capacity, in this new way, and all of a sudden, I have love for him, but then it translates into love for others. I want to share that with somebody else.

00:22:46

Like, hey, do you know who God is? Like, he's not just what you thought he was. He's more than that. He's not just some judge or some king. He's the lover of our soul.

00:22:57

Like, do you know that God and many of us just have stopped short? Oh, yeah. You know, I know he wants to forgive us of our sins. He died on the cross. Thank you.

00:23:05

I really appreciate that. And that's where we stop. We haven't really gotten to know. We've done the judicial thing. Like, we've done the transactional, practical thing, forgiveness of sins.

00:23:17

Now I'm not going to hell. Whew. Practical's over. All right? I guess there's nothing else.

00:23:22

No, no, no. To know him more and more.

00:23:30

Some of this may seem fuzzy, but I'm hoping it's sparking something in you to say, you know what? I really have stopped short. Like, I stopped knowing God, and that led me to stop loving God. And the more I want to know him, the more I'll be able to love Him. You know, everybody, I think, that goes into marriage, and we just had a friend married yesterday.

00:23:52

Everybody that goes into marriage probably thinks the same thing. It's like, can I love this person? Like, really for the rest of my life? You know, this is something I go over in premarital counseling is like, you know, you really need to consider this because you're promising to, like, love this person no matter what, okay? Like, for the rest of your life, like, the same person.

00:24:11

And people like, yeah, that would absolutely get boring.

00:24:18

And, you know, I get that. I hear that. I hear that. But I can say after 21 years of marriage, like, our marriage is less boring now than when we began, actually. Like, I'm Serious.

00:24:31

Like, it's not just something I'm making up to make marriage look great. I'm dead serious. Like, I love her more today than I did on the day when I said I do. And I think she. Same thing here with her.

00:24:45

She loves me more, which is crazy, you know, which is a great thing though, right? It's a crazy love for each other that we've stuck together in this way through. And if we just bounced when it got a little difficult, bounced when it did have moments of boring or annoyance, you know, like chewing. Right. Breathing.

00:25:07

These are things that annoy her about me, which seem essential to being a human and animal, but nevertheless seem to get annoying to her very quickly. Well, here's the thing. If she would have left me over those things, you know what she would have found out? Somebody else is breathing and chewing, you know, and they're just as annoying as me right now. I say that to say and to circle back around to say this.

00:25:33

I really appreciate those of you who have stuck with Harvest Point. Now, it's not nothing about Harvest Point, but it's about sticking with each other. There's actually something beautiful about going through difficult times with each other and sticking together. It really is. Which is one of the beauties of marriage.

00:25:52

It's a beauty of family, is it's very difficult to get rid of them. Even when you want to get rid of them, even when you attempt to get rid of them, they're always there. They're just always there. And it actually, it turns out to be a grace of God that they are there. Because what you really.

00:26:11

If you start really contemplating the whole situation, it's really you that's annoying. It's not them. It's actually you that's got an issue, not them. And that's who God wants to work on, is you, not them. But he's working on you through them.

00:26:32

This is always the beauty of sanctification. He uses others to prompt us into a higher life than what we'd live for ourself. Again, if we're just living practically, we would have already axed most people in our life. I'm done with them. But listen, family sticks together.

00:26:56

We don't get rid of each other even when it's difficult. Maybe perhaps mainly when it's difficult, we stay together. And so I just want to say, like, on this celebration, some of you have been with us, like, from the very beginning of this thing of Harvest Point, this experiment of a church, you know, and you didn't stick because of me, because you would have left a long time ago. Okay. But you stuck because God called you to be together.

00:27:29

And it's that togetherness that he's praying for right here. Like, he saw that. You see what I mean? He saw that on that very night. He was the only one who could see it.

00:27:40

And he's praying to God. God praying to God. And we're overhearing it, and he's talking about us. He's talking about us in this room. And.

00:27:50

And it's just a humbling thing to be a part of, to be honest with you.

00:27:56

Yeah. Now, this inner life of God, and I'll be brief here, but the early church came up with a term, and they actually transformed, a term called parakoresis. Anybody ever heard of that term, parakoresis? Some of you have studied theology, have heard it. It's kind of to do with, like, a Holy Ghost dance, a union of three and one.

00:28:21

Okay. It's trying to get at this interpenetration of persons, this mutual indwelling of the divine persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, this almost dynamic, lively rotation of relationships of Father, Son, and spirit. Another way to talk about it. Charles Williams, who. Who was actually one of the inklings, if you remember, J.R.R.

00:28:48

tolkien and C.S. lewis, would meet at a bar to discuss their writings. Charles Williams was one of them. And he came up with a term to describe parakaresis. This mutual indwelling.

00:29:03

I mean, before I give it to you, just notice the language again. I in them, you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me all this in this, this I, and you, you and me, them in us. All of the. The lively pronouns and complicated sentences. Here he comes up with the term co in here, the person's co.

00:29:29

Inhere in one another, and we kind of know what this means on. On a relational level is like, when I leave this place and I don't even see you, or I leave, you know, for youth camp, and I don't see Jessica. I still experience her in my inner life. You know, the decisions I make on a trip, I have her in mind. Like, okay, I don't talk to this person in extended time.

00:29:53

I don't want to put myself in this situation because I'm married to her. Right. You see how this works. And all of us, anybody that's ever traveled knows the temptation of wanting to become someone new because nobody knows you. It's a grave temptation, in fact.

00:30:11

But no, we stay grounded in who we are, and who we are is who we put in our lives. And this is why even God himself defines himself by these familial terms. Father, son, notice, not like boss, employee, he could have revealed himself like that. He did not familial, okay? And then he even goes further when he.

00:30:41

When it comes to us and our oneness with God is we are married to Christ. Which is why there's guardrails all around marriage in the Bible, okay, is because it's kind of the premier relationship of this co. Inherence, this mutual indwelling, this again, probably the most graphic sort of interpenetration of the persons, not just physically, because God is Spirit. Okay, so we're talking in love, right? And so in dialogue, if you will.

00:31:12

And so one of the ways that, again, we've said this before, but, but St. Augustine speaks of the Holy Trinity is that the Father loves the Son, and the love by which he loves the Son and the Son loves the Father is the Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit is the bond of love between Father and Son. And as CS Lewis points out, again, the love between the two persons is so personal that he is a person. So that the Spirit is not some force or energy, but rather the third person who is also worshiped and glorified, just as we said the Nicene Creed a moment ago.

00:31:47

And so this prayer for oneness, this prayer for indwelling, this prayer for unity in community, if you will, is what we're all invited to. Like that is what salvation is. And so just as much as Jessica and I have only, only experienced 21 years together, like I could do another 21, you know, like as good as we've had it and as close as we've become with each other and as most difficult times as we've been there, she guarding me at times, I guarding her at times. Like we being togetherness, our togetherness and, and the fruitfulness of that, like, I really can't picture ever not having her in my life. You see what I mean by this?

00:32:25

It's the same way with God. Never gets boring. Persons never get boring. So as soon as we find persons boring, maybe we need to get off things that make us think that, that confuse us. You see, again, we were not made to be connected to the whole world.

00:32:44

We were only made to be connected to so many relationships. And if we try to connect ourselves to the whole world, we'll have no meaningful relationships. So maybe it's a corrective today that we need to catch a vision of God. And this is what Jesus is praying for. I think in John 17, he's inviting us into the inner life of God himself, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

00:33:13

And I would just maybe as I end this sermon, I would invite you to do this pray in a trinitarian way this week. Maybe your normal way is to start out Father or heavenly Father or Jesus or Lord or something like specifically pray in a trinitarian way to challenge your mind not to get in a set way of thinking about God, but. But it rather an expanded way, a way that is invitational for you to join into a community that is eternal, into a already ongoing conversation between Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That's what he's inviting you to. It is literally the foundation of our faith this morning.

00:34:00

And one of the ways he does it is through Holy Communion, which we're about to move into. And so Lord Jesus, thank you for these words that challenge all of us. None of us understand them, including me. Most of all me. None of us can capture all that you're saying here in John 17, but here's what we can be understand, here's what we can understand and know is that we're being invited into the very life of God himself.

00:34:29

And Lord, everybody in this room I know has already said yes to that invitation. So Lord, would you take us to those heavenly places and then ground us in your mission in the world? Would you help us to have eyes to see and ears to hear as we move about your world, claiming your kingdom in every place that we go? We pray this in your name and may it be so. Amen.

Total Duration 00:35:00