Morning, brothers and sisters.
Let’s go to the Word of God and look in John 17. Let me get a few things in order here. This will be a short reading.
John 17. I’m going to start with verse 20.
I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe on Me through their word;
that they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us: that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me.
And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given unto them; that they may be one, even as We are one;
I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected into one; that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and lovedst them, even as Thou lovedst Me.
Let’s go to the Lord in prayer.
Father, we come to You by Your blessed Son. Lord, we pray that the truth of this prayer that Your Son yielded on the face of the earth before He went to Calvary would resonate with us.
Lord Jesus, we pray that You speak this day, Lord. We do not want to hear the voice of men; we want to hear the voice of God. So, Lord, we pray that You would speak, that You would make this prayer real in our hearts, that we would know You and that we would follow You.
Lord, help us. Lord, empower us that we may hear You this day. We ask in Your name.
Wednesday night, I told the brothers there was a debate about words. My confusion was that I had a professor who was both a professor of homiletics, and I could not remember which one was which.
I will tell you that I am going to violate some rules of homiletics, which is the art of preaching. There are some things that are not supposed to be done. You are not supposed to give personal references. You are not supposed to give personal testimony. You are not supposed to ask for the audience to participate with you.
All those things I am going to throw out the door. They are gone.
I am going to read some verses of Scripture, and I am going to ask you, brothers and sisters, to read verses of Scripture for me—not because I am someone who is going to sit and interpret this for you. You really do not want to sit here and hear me read through a long passage of Scripture and, with my dyslexic brain, sit there and try to interpret it for you.
So I am going to ask for some help. Okay? Is that agreed? Okay?
We are going to do this as always: when I speak, this is interactive. If you sit there and go like this, it is not going to work. I am going to start asking questions and expect you to answer—and really answer—not just sit there.
So this is interactive. And I think it is fitting that it is such, since the subject matter that we are going to be taking up is this matter of oneness in the body.
So let’s begin. I am going to tell you that we are going to take this in two sections. There is going to be an ethereal part of this. There is going to be a practical part. There is going to be a subjective part, and there is going to be an objective part.
We will see how long it takes me to get through the subjective, or the ethereal, and then we will try to tackle the reality of it on the face of the earth.
This burden and these Scriptures come to me as a result of something that was said almost a year ago—maybe well over a year ago. Brother Stephen came and said the testimony had left us.
And he said, “The candlestick’s not out, but the testimony had left.” Then the brothers started meeting, and we were asked to search the Scriptures and to look for what the Lord’s heart was.
It was one afternoon—actually, early one morning—I just asked. I said, “Lord, I know what I want. What do You want?”
The answer I got back was clear and resounding, and did not come from inside of me. It was a voice. I am not saying that the Lord spoke in an audible voice outside of me, but I heard this: “I want you to be one as We are one.”
Now, I am going to do a little translating there, because that “you” was not me personally. Forgive me for saying this: the Lord speaks to me in Southern. So He said, “I want y’all to be one as We are one.” Sorry about that, but it is true.
From that, I started looking and asking, “Lord, where are these verses? What are You trying to say? What are You trying to point out?” These are the verses that I was given.
I am going to read to you basically what the Lord shared with me, what flowed out. It is going to be a lot of reading, and then I am going to ask brothers and sisters to fill in the Scripture verses.
These verses show the Lord Jesus Himself praying for us. This prayer is for us who believe in Him through His disciples’ word. So make no mistake: this is for us now. It is not just for the apostles of old.
What He asks the Father is that we may be one. This aspect of oneness cannot be achieved by earthly means. It is divine.
The Lord asks the Father for us to be one as He is one with the Father. There has never been a relationship conceived on earth like this.
We try to explain the Trinity with our feeble pictures and concepts, but fail to define the relationship and the bond that exists. For how can we understand with our minds the concept of two individuals being perfectly united in one thought, yet maintaining individuality? It is impossible.
They have the same character, the same Spirit. One is in subjection to the other, but there is no dispute in that. There is no problem, yet each is equal.
How can we understand this relationship? How can we explain it? We try to explain it in terms of father-and-son relationships, earthly marriages, and everything else, and we fail utterly because it is not of this world. It is divine.
We do not see it. We cannot fathom it with a natural mind. There is a mind that can fathom it, and it is a mind that comes from above.
There is nothing on earth to compare this to. But our brother T. Austin-Sparks said of the Lord, I believe, that He is other. So is this relationship. It is other.
It is not of this world, nor can it be replicated by earthly means. Please note that: by earthly means, this relationship cannot be replicated. That is going to become important later on.
Yet this is the request of the Lord to His Father: that we would be one. The Father and the Son, and the Son and the Father, share Their life with one another, being so close that when the Son is seen, the Father is known.
This prayer of the Lord Jesus for us is that we share in this bond with one another, as He shared fellowship with His Father. Take a moment and fathom that statement.
Not only that we would be one with one another, but that we would be one with the Father and the Son. Our Lord asked that Their character be our character, but much more than that.
He is asking that They be identified with us, and we with Them, in a way that is very hard for us to understand and comprehend. We tend to think of being like the Son and the Father, but that is not what is being requested here.
Imitation is not the goal in view, but rather a living bond: that where He is, we will be also; and like He is, we will be. That His life is our life, and we have a relationship together with Them.
That is just the first part. That is the premise upon which this prayer was put.
Take a second and fathom this. The Lord wants us to be in such a bond, in union with Him, that when the world looks at us, they see Him.
And He wants us to be in such a bond, in relationship with one another, that when the world sees us together, they see the relationship between the Father and the Son.
This is the prayer of the Lord Jesus.
The second thing that I want to bring up is purpose. What is the purpose for which this prayer was uttered?
The purpose and the goal is that of testimony. The testimony is that the world would believe that He is, and that He is from the Father, as He said—not only in word, but in deed.
When the world looks at us and sees Him, they know He is of the Father. When the world looks at us, they should be confounded and know that the only way this is possible is because God has surely done this through His Son.
This is the testimony of the Lord Jesus that we are to carry. This is what His desire is. This is the desire of His heart for us.
Not that we be something. Not that we know of Him, but rather that we be identified by Him and in Him.
Not that we would be like Him, but that His life in us would be seen. That when the Father and the Son look at us, They see a reflection of Themselves. This is the Lord’s prayer.
Now, Elsie is going to shoot me, because she has warned me, “Don’t use me in sermon illustrations.” But when I talked to her about this, she said, “What’s that supposed to look like?” I am going to illustrate what that is supposed to look like.
The world should have their mouths gaping open when they look at us, going, “How is this? How is it?”
Excuse me for being blunt about this. How is it that a boy raised in South Alabama, in a hometown where Black people lived on one side of the tracks and White people lived on another side of the tracks, can fellowship with a ninety-year-old Black woman and have perfect fellowship?
How is that? The world should look at this and go, “What is this?” Not only, “What is this?” but, “I have got to have this.”
This is the purpose for which the prayer was laid out.
The longest section I want to talk to you about is this power that has been given to us. I have already stated that it is impossible for us to replicate this on the face of the earth.
It is impossible by human endeavor, human teaching, human plotting, and planning to have what the Lord looks for in this prayer. So there has to be a way. The Lord does not do things and leave us in the lurch trying to figure it out. He did provide the power for this.
When I wrote this, it was a continuous flow of thought, so forgive me. I am going to pick up where I left off.
This in itself is too wonderful. Yet the Lord goes beyond all we can ask or think. The Lord did not leave it up to us to achieve this, but provided the very means for this humanly impossible task to be accomplished.
He states to the Father:
And the glory which Thou hast given Me I have given unto them.
The Father has given the Son glory, and the Son has given us glory. What is this glory?
Now here comes the interactive part. Someone read John 17:1-5. Bear this in mind. Someone read John 1:1-18, please. Someone, Revelation 1:12-16. Thank you.
I want you to take a moment and fathom these statements. His glory has been given unto us.
We do not see ourselves this way. How can we? We are sinful creatures. How can we comprehend ourselves in this manner? Yet it is a statement of fact.
The Lord did not say, “I hope,” “I want,” or, “This should be.” He said, “I give My glory unto them.”
Yet how can this be? To be clear, we need to see this in a proper context. We have His glory by the One He sent to us and Who lives in us. That Person is the Holy Spirit.
That is detailed in John 16:7-15.
It is not our own power that we have. The Lord did not make us God, but the Lord did give us the Holy Spirit. And by His Holy Spirit, we possess His glory.
The Holy Spirit empowers us to carry forth that which is His heart’s desire. So this prayer is not something that cannot be accomplished. It is something that very really can be done, for it has already been done.
If you have the Holy Spirit residing in you, the glory of the Lord resides in you in fullness.
The more we allow the Holy Spirit to have of us, the more of this glory is manifested in us.
Yet He was not sent for ourselves, but for the Son’s glory. And that is the problem we have: we wrap everything the Lord Jesus Christ does around us.
It is for us. He died for us. He shed His blood for us. He redeemed us. But there is a greater purpose in all this. It is not just for us. It is for His glory.
If we view this any other way, it is not Christ-centered. Yet if we can comprehend this, we still wonder why His glory was manifested in us.
The key is not to look at ourselves, but to look in the reflection of His eyes. When He looks at us, He sees bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh. He sees this because He has paid the price to make us His bride.
Someone read Ephesians 5:25-32.
That reference has often been used, and I have actually read this at weddings. But Paul, when he wrote this, was trying to illustrate a greater truth. It is not husbands and wives on the face of the earth; it is the glorious and eternal relationship of us in union with the Father and the Son.
So much so that Christ gave His life to make it come about, and continues to mediate as a High Priest according to the order of Melchizedek, that we may enter into the fullness of this.
The reason we cannot fathom the depths of this statement—that this glory has been given us—is because we are looking at this as if we possess it based on some merit and worthiness. Not at all.
We possess His glory because it is the only way we can have fellowship with the Father and the Son.
Here is the reason stated by the Lord Himself:
That they may be one, even as We are one;
I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected into one;
that the world may know that Thou didst send Me, and lovedst them, even as Thou lovedst Me.
I am going to refer to a quote that Kenny gave some time past. It is in the refrain in Genesis 1:21-25: “after their kind.” Yes, Kenny, I was paying attention.
Here is what the Lord sees: those after His kind. The Father and the Lord cannot have fellowship with anything less. This is the fulfillment of that which was from the beginning: that He would have those who fulfill His heart’s desire.
And I am going to change this just a slight bit: that we would be in Their image according to Their likeness. That is Genesis 1:26a.
This is the reason that He gave His glory: so that we may be in Him, and He in the Father, and with us in Him.
To conclude the ethereal part of this message: in this, we will be in perfect unity—perfect unity because They are in perfect unity.
There is no other way but by this divine life lived out by Him in union with us and in union with the Father. We will fail any other way.
There is no other way for the church of the living God to exist on the face of the earth except that His divine life is lived out through us in union with Him. Any other way fails.
It ceases to be the church of the living God. It no longer is His creation, His new man, His body. It is something we create.
We cannot know the love of the Father outside of fellowship—one with another and one with Them. For any other way fails to yield the testimony of Him on the face of the earth.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, if our Lord Jesus Christ made this request to the Father and so richly gave Himself as the very means that we may have fellowship with one another, fellowship with Him and the Father, to be known of Him and for us to know Him—
—which by His own words is eternal life.
The reason I picked Him as I did is because so many of the concepts we have in the faith have been muddled and otherwise translated into things that they are not. They have been mutated.
The definition of eternal life is to know Jesus Christ and know the Father. That “know” is not, “I can recite verses of Scripture.” It is a personal relationship, a oneness. That is eternal life. Anything else is a farce. It is not true.
To be a corporate expression of His testimony—of He who is, and that He was sent from the Father—do we dare settle for anything less than fulfilling His heart’s desire?
Is there any price too great, seeing that He gave Himself for this very reason?
This is not a dream. It is not a pipe dream. It is not a concept. It is not a theory. It is not a vain hope.
It is our calling, for it has happened before. Reference John 1; reference 1 John 1-2.
Brothers and sisters, when we look at the Scripture and dismiss the fact that this testimony has existed once, we are doing the Lord a great disservice.
It existed for a brief history in time, and then men started getting a hold of it, and it fell apart. The Lord has been recovering this ever since.
It is possible on the face of the earth for the Lord to have His true testimony.
Again, this is not for the apostles alone. It is for us, for He Himself prayed it to be so.
I do not pray for these only, but also for those who believe on Me through their word.
Not for our glory, that we may be accounted for anything, but for His: that the world may believe that He is and that He is of the Father. How can we fail Him when He has given all for us?
May He Himself give us the revelation of Who He is and who we are in Him, that we may receive glory and that He may receive glory on the face of the earth until He comes. May it be so.
This is the conclusion of what I call the ethereal. This is the subjective part. I am going to stop.
I do not have time to cover the objective parts: bearing the cross, contending for one another, and believing. If the Lord wills, I will take that up some other time.
Brothers and sisters, I said I am going to violate the rules of homiletics because one strict rule I got from my professor—the one five semesters I was in seminary—was this: always leave them on a positive note.
Well, I am going to leave you with a positive note. This testimony is indeed possible. Not only is it possible; it is very real.
It is a matter of utmost importance. It is a matter of life and death, if you really want to get to the realization of it. I am not talking about physical life. I am talking about spiritual life and death.
The Lord Jesus gave us everything that this may transpire: that we may be one.
Not just one with the Father and the Son. Not holy heroes going out in faith, saying, “When everyone else failed, I continued on.” That is not what the Lord is looking for.
It is us being one with one another as He is one with His Father. This is the testimony He is seeking. It is not humanly an easy task, but divinely, it has already been done.
The question is whether we are going to live in the reality of what He has done or not; whether our heart’s desire is His heart’s desire, or whether our heart’s desire is our own.
I am going to make a confession, brothers and sisters.
I cannot keep living with one foot in the world and one foot seeing this. Either I am going to go back into the world or I am going to head on.
The problem I have is this: unless other brothers and sisters go with me, it fails to yield a testimony. I cannot be a testimony by myself of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Forgive me for saying this. I have debated on doing this. I like movies. Brother Stephen, unfortunately, the Lord has not broken me from that habit yet.
There is a movie called Pirates of the Caribbean. I dearly love the movie. Forgive me, Lord. There is a line in it where Jack Sparrow is sailing a ship toward a pirate port with one man on board. He looks at this guy and says, “You know, you have pirate in your blood. You are going to have to square with that.”
“The question is not whether you are a pirate or not. The question is, can you take orders from a pirate? Because I cannot bring this ship into Tortuga by my onesies.”
Brothers and sisters, we cannot live the Christian life by our onesies. That is not the design. That is not the plan. That is not what the Lord Jesus is looking for on the face of the earth.
He is looking for a corporate vessel in which He can indwell, in which His life will be manifested, which the world will see.
If I go out and I become Saint Bill—Lord, help—I have failed to live the Christian life.
That has been the failure of the church from the beginning, as they started looking toward men instead of looking toward God. Now, I am not saying that there are not godly men and that there is not a purpose for godly men—men of courage and men of faith.
But for there to be a division between God’s people, where there are the haves and the ones who just want to struggle along and live in this life, is not His plan.
We, all of us, cannot get along without one another. There is not a brother or sister who has been redeemed by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ who is insignificant for what the Lord is doing. Not one.
Not one brother can afford to walk away from what the Lord is doing, and we cannot afford for them to walk away.
This cannot be, because if it is, the testimony breaks here and now.
It is time for us, brothers and sisters, to make a decision. Do we want to be the testimony of the Lord, which we already are? Do we want to keep that which we have been given, or do we want to squander it away?
Time is short. I do not know how long we have, and anyone who comes up and says the Lord is coming tomorrow—watch them, because the Lord Himself did not know, which is a mystery in itself.
But time is short. The Lord has been speaking to us. The Lord has been talking to us. He spoke to our brother Stephen. He has been speaking through our brother Lance. He has been speaking through our brother Dana. He has been speaking through other brothers and sisters in this assembly.
The question is not if there can be a testimony here. It is if we are willing to yield our lives so that there will be that testimony.
I have the great sense otherwise the Lord is just going to go His way. That does not mean we will not be saved. That does not mean He will not love us. He said He would never leave us or forsake us. He said He never lost one except the son of perdition. He has already been fulfilled, so He is not going to lose anyone else.
But this subject matter of His testimony on the face of the earth, and the fact that He wants us to be one as He is one—one with one another and one with Him—brothers and sisters, if we do not heed what He is saying, He is going to walk away.
It will not be for His loss. He will lose something here. We will lose much.
He will find someone on the face of the earth that wants that testimony.
Forgive me for being that direct and blunt. Forgive me for not leading you to this, but it needs to be said.
Either we are going to spend the rest of our days living what we want, and when we get to the Lord, He is going to go, “Guys, I do not know who you are.” It is not that I do not know who you are, but you are not of Me.
Or He is going to go, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant. You fed Me when I was hungry. You clothed Me when I was naked. You gave Me water when I was thirsty.”
“When did I ever do that, Lord?” When you did it to the least of one of My brothers.
I know there is an interpretation that says that is the Jewish brothers, but I think it has application here.
Well, may the Lord bring out what He wants to bring out.
Gamaliel said, “If it is of the Lord, it will continue. If it is of man, it is going to fall apart.”
May the Lord have what He wants on the face of the earth among us. May we be willing to be willing to let Him have that for His name.
Let’s go to the Lord in prayer.
Father, I want to thank You that by the blood and the sacrifice of Your Lord and Son, Jesus Christ, Your Son of glory, we can know You as Father, that we can be one with You.
Lord, we know that we are not God. We know we do not have this power within ourselves. But Lord, You have given us Your Spirit that these things may be accomplished, not for our own glory, but for Yours.
Lord, open our eyes. Help us to see You beckoning and calling and pleading with Your church, that we no longer be of this world, that we no longer be like we are, but that we be like You are.
Lord, open our eyes. Help us to hear Your voice. Lord, we are but dumb sheep. We need a great Shepherd to lead us.
Help us, O Lord, yield to You, to be under Your covering, under Your protection, to be in the flock of God.
We ask these things because You have already accomplished them. We have faith that You will bring them about.
Thank You, O Lord. We pray in Your name. Amen.