May 24, 2020  SERMON ARCHIVE

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen

The text for our meditation today is one verse from the Gospel Lesson of the day, John 17:11: “Holy Father, keep them in Your name, which You have given Me, that they may be one, even as We are one.”

We begin in the name of Jesus, AMEN

You know my friends, there are some sermon texts that are slam dunks or hanging curve balls: the pastor takes one look and says, “I know exactly how I’m going to preach that text,” and the sermon almost writes itself.

This text is not one of those texts. It might be the same for you: this could be one of those portions of Scripture that you come upon in your daily devotions, read through it, shrug and say, “Not much in there for me.”

This does not mean that there isn’t: it probably means that this text is full of stuff that you need to know but fail to appreciate.

Part of it is cultural: I’m betting that a Christian preacher in the Middle East would see this text as a slam dunk, while we Westerners aren’t quite sure what to do. Part of it comes from your sinful nature: there’s always the temptation to measure the worth of God only by His works. Maybe you’re not all that interested in who He is, but only in what He does for you.

Try that measure in your other relationships. It’s not a good thing when somebody says to their spouse, “I really don’t care that much who you are: I really only care about what you do for me.”

It’s not a good thing if a pastor says to the people of God, “I’m not concerned with you personally, but only if you attend and tithe regularly.” It’s horrible parenting to say to a child, “Just do your chores; otherwise, stay out of my way.”

To say to someone, “I don’t care who you are” is to reduce them from a person to a tool, which is to say, “You’re only worth what you do for me.” Such an attitude is disgustingly self-centered, but that is how the sinful nature acts towards others: “I’m more important than you, so please don’t trouble me with you and your problems.”

Your sinful nature wants to treat God the same way: One of the ways that your sinful nature works on you is to measure God only by His acts, and tell you that it’s irrelevant to know who He is. That’s part of what makes a text like this tough, because much of it focuses on who God is, not what He does.

But if you skip past such texts, you’re effectively saying to the Lord of heaven and earth, “I want the blessings to keep pouring down, but I don’t really care who You are.”

Dear friends, how can such an attitude not damage your faith?

This text took place at the Last Supper. Jesus had just spent chapters 13-16 (a huge portion of John!) teaching the disciples His Word. He told them about His cross and that it was for the salvation of all who believe. He warned them of persecution. He promised them the gift of the Holy Spirit.

And then what did He do? He prayed; and if you read through all of John 17, you find that He prayed to His Father on the basis of what He had just taught to His disciples.

You see, prayer follows the Word of God: God-pleasing prayer always begins with God’s Word and prays it back to Him. As you commend your concerns to the Lord, you do so with His Word in the background, forming your requests and petitions.

But while this is a great example of how you are to pray, don’t miss this truth: Jesus prayed for you. Not just in the Gospel lesson, but even now. Romans 8:34 declares that "Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us."

But why does Jesus pray for you? Well, according to Romans 8, for the same reason that He did so in the Gospel lesson: so that you would not be condemned. As the High Priest who sacrificed Himself for your sins, Jesus continues to intercede at God’s right hand— continues to declare that you are forgiven and righteous for His sake.

This is comfort worth extensive meditation: the Lord Jesus Christ, who saved you by His death, who gave you salvation in His means of grace, that same Jesus Christ also continues to pray for you. He did not ascend into heaven to take a break, to get away from you and your needs for a while. He continues to pray for you and works all things for your good even now.

Secondly, when Jesus prayed in this Gospel lesson, He mentioned glory a lot: five times in the first five verses to be exact. He began, “Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son that the Son may glorify You, since You have given Him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom You have given Him. And this is eternal life, that they know You the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. I glorified You on earth, having accomplished the work that You gave Me to do. And now, Father, glorify Me in Your own presence with the glory that I had with You before the world existed.”

Clearly, God is glorious—both Father and Son, and the Father and the Son glorify each other. Furthermore, Jesus prayed, they have authority over all flesh because the Father has given that authority to the Son.

But what does this glory and this glorifying mean? Does it mean that heaven is a mutual admiration society, where the Father and the Son sit on thrones facing one another and telling each other how wonderful they are?

Not at all. God is glorious. God is also a servant by nature, and God also works by His Word. All three of these— His glory, His servant nature and His Word, go together.

So as Jesus began this prayer talking about glory, He was talking about the cross. He declared that His Father sent Him to give eternal life, so that they might know the only true God. He glorified the Father by accomplishing the work that the Father gave Him to do: this included His perfect life, His teaching, and His imminent death on the cross.

When Jesus spoke of “the hour” that has “come,” He was speaking of His suffering and death, to accomplish the Father’s plan for your salvation. And how would the Father glorify the Son? By raising Him from the dead, by restoring Him to life.

The Resurrection would give eternal life to all of His people, because they would receive their life from the risen Christ. The Resurrection is also part of the Son’s return to heaven, for He was not abandoned to the grave. Ascended into heaven, He would be and is in the presence of the Father, possessing the glory that He has had as the Son from eternity. There, in heaven, Father and Son continue to glorify one another—and how do the Father and the Son continue to glorify one another? By continuing to fulfill their promises to you.

This is astounding: God is glorious, and He is glorious for you. The Father and the Son don’t say, “As the one true God, we are glorious and holy, and you are not: therefore, we will demonstrate our glory by getting rid of you and your intolerable sin.”

Instead, the Father and Son say, “We have spoken our Word, and we will glorify each other by keeping it—by faithfully delivering you from sin, death and devil so that you can have eternal life. We will continue to send the Holy Spirit to give you repentance and faith. The Son will continue to be present in the means of grace for your salvation.”

Don’t skip lightly past the glory of God, past the glorification of the Father by the Son, and the Son by the Father. They continue to glorify one another by saving you. If you skip this truth of Scripture, you’ll expect the Father and the Son to glorify one another in different ways—for instance, by showing their glory through acts of power and mighty deliverance.

And when those mighty acts of deliverance don’t come on your schedule, you’ll be tempted to be miffed with God and look for a different Savior instead.

The problem here is not that God failed to be glorious: the problem is that so many Christians fail to understand that God exercises His glory quite frequently in glorious service, not mighty acts of power—and that the cross is the most glorious deliverance of all, given to you freely

And one of the great reasons why you’ll be disappointed in what God does is because you’ve failed to rejoice in who He is: the all-powerful, one true God who uses His glory to humbly serve.

A third, brief point: if you want even more certainty of your salvation, you can find it in Jesus’ prayer here. Your salvation is sure because it has nothing to do with your works: Jesus did it all by His death and resurrection. You’re saved by grace, not works. Jesus says, “I forgive you all of your sins,” not “I forgive you, which counts toward fifty percent of your salvation.”

You never have to say, “I’ll be saved as long as I’ve done enough;” instead, you say, “I am saved because Jesus has done enough.” That’s what makes your salvation sure. In the text, Jesus adds to this certainty: He prays, “I have manifested Your name to the people whom You gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your Word.”

In this, Jesus reveals that the Father entrusted each one of you to the Son, that you might be saved by His Word. This only confirms more that the Father and the Son are at work together for your salvation: Jesus is not trying to sneak you into heaven through the back door against the Father’s will—there is no danger that the Father will say, “Welcome home, Son, but it’s time for Your friends to get out of here.”

You can joyfully say, “I know that the Son of God has died for me because the Father has chosen me in Christ to be His beloved child.”

There’s one more (at least one more!) big point to draw from this text: Jesus prayed that you might be one: “Holy Father, keep them in Your name, which You have given Me, that they may be one, even as We are one.” Jesus prayed that you, the people of God, be one—not just united, not just friends or people who work well or put up with each other, but one.

How are you to be one? By being kept in the name: Jesus prayed, “Holy Father, keep them in Your name.” How does that happen?

Martin Luther summed it up for you: “When the Word of God is taught in its truth and purity, and we as the children of God also lead a holy life according to it. This grant us, dear Father in heaven. But he that teaches and lives otherwise than God’s Word teaches, profanes the name of God among us. From this preserve us, Heavenly Father.”

It all comes back to the Word. It is by the Word that you, me, all of us are joined to Christ: together, we are the body of Christ, the one holy Christian and apostolic Church.

Because we are one, we serve one another. We look for opportunities to help one another. When one hurts, we all hurt because we are one in Christ. If we are not serving and hurting for one another, this is an accusation that we are not one as Christ would have us be.

And this is certainly not good for the Church. Where Scripture speaks of one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, etc., it does not promote unity when Christians disagree. Nor is it given to Christians to angrily attack one another: that leads to sectarianism and division, not unity.

Instead, it is given to the people of God to do the far more demanding thing— the constant study of the Scriptures, the continual confession of the one true faith, and the ongoing task of speaking that truth in love. It is by the Word of God that Christians are made one in Christ, and that union will finally be achieved to perfection on the Last Day.

This task of preserving and confessing the faith is vital, for this is what it proclaims. The Father and the Son have glorified one another by the death of Jesus on the cross for your salvation, and by the resurrection of Jesus for your eternal life.

The Father and the Son continue to glorify one another by continuing to grant you grace and salvation by the means of grace—by that one Word, that one Baptism and that one Supper.

There is no division in God’s will, for the Father and the Son are one, working together in service to you. Undividedly, they desire that you be one in Christ and one with another in Christ, and they will accomplish this: because they glorify one another to declare that you are forgiven for all of your sins.

Christ is risen.