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An archive of Jacob Nannie's Sermons & Teachings
This lecture is the first lecture in a class called "Belong." Belong is a core class,
one of four core classes at Christ Community, and it's on how to be a church family
and how to belong and make sure others belong in the church family. This lecture was an introduction,
and it was much different than what the other lectures will be in this series.
It was pretty long. I went way too long and way too in-depth for what the class is,
but nonetheless, it's a biblical theology of belonging rooted in the Trinity, and it's titled,
I think it's titled "Introduction." And so, yeah, enjoy this episode. Also, the audio is a little
off because it's from my phone, didn't have my recording device handy, and there's lots of kids
in the room next to us, and there's lots of pickleball in the room behind us. So there's
lots of extra noise, but I think you can hear the audio pretty clearly. So yeah, enjoy this lecture.
What do you think about when you hear or think about the word "community"?
When you hear that word "community," whatever context you hear it in,
what do you think about when you hear that word?
>> I think about, like, eating together.
>> Eating together?
>> Dinner together.
>> Dinner, okay.
>> I think about, like, neighbors.
>> Neighbors, okay. Yeah.
>> We had a great community when we had our kids at St. Elizabeth School in Kansas City.
You did everything with those families. I mean, you really got to know. It just
felt like such a community. Then we moved to Johnson County and it didn't.
>> Okay. Okay. Anyone else?
>> Community almost feels like it's the feeling you get when you're around a group of people.
Like, you can have community with people, or you can just live in a community.
Like, a condo complex is a great idea because, you know, example, because you can drive by
people who are walking and then pull into your own garage and that's it.
Like, now that I was able to go retired and I'm going to this Bible study, all of a sudden I know
people in my community and I know people in different houses and we have a little community
lady's prayer text line. So it's kind of the feeling that you get when you're in a community.
>> It's a feeling. >> It's the feeling you get when you're in a place.
>> Okay. That was great. So how about when you think about Christian community? Does that
adjective change anything for you when you think about Christian community
versus just community? There's no right or wrong answer.
>> Yes, because it's a different plane of connection.
>> I like that. Different plane of connection. Okay.
>> It makes me think of church. >> Just think of church. Yep. Okay.
>> And all the people outside of this particular church who believe as you do.
>> Yeah. Global faith, right? A global community. Yeah.
>> Maybe global, maybe just your local community. >> Yep. That's right.
>> Maybe instead of just dinner, it's communion.
>> Yeah. There's a lot of truth to that. >> Christ is central.
>> Yep. Community with Christ is central. I like that. Yeah.
I'm very good. Yeah. So when we think about community, Christian community versus just
that word, blanket word community, some of us have -- I think those are all positive answers.
Some people we might encounter have negative answers about what they think about when they
think of community. When I think about community, I think about four things when I hear that word.
And specifically when I think about Christian community. And the first thing I think about,
I tend to think about is home. So wherever I've been in my life, I have felt the most at home or
the least at home based on my community, my church community, how much of that I experience.
And so community is really a sense of home for me. If I'm starved for community, I don't feel
like I belong anywhere. When I was right out of high school, I did a nine-month discipleship
program in Victorville, California. If you're not familiar with that, I'm super happy for you.
Victorville is a -- they call it the high desert because it is the high desert and there's nothing
there. And so before I really got plugged into the church that I was placed at for this discipleship
program, I felt like I did not belong in any sense of the word. I didn't feel at home. And it was
only when I got plugged into that community, really invested in it, that I started to really
feel like I was at home. I would even say it's the same for us here, Christina and I here.
Christina has, and I do too, a sister-in-law and brother-in-law here that we live close to.
She's from this area originally. But not until we dive in here at the Shawnee campus at Christ
Community do we feel like we belonged somewhere. And so I think of home and I have that strong
sense of community. That's when I feel like I am at home. Secondly, I think of when I think
of community is support, right? So it's a place, community for me, I've been blessed to have good
communities in the churches I'm at and the places I go. They are the places I go to for support,
whatever I need. If I needed a mass amount of financial support, I know I could come here and
ask for that. If I needed a bunch of emotional support, I can come here and get that. Spiritual
support, I would hope that I can come here and get that. I can come here and get that. Whatever
support I need, if I need to borrow a car. In fact, Carolyn and Jeremiah, when I first got here,
I didn't have my car yet. My dad was driving it over for me and they let me borrow their car for
a week and a half. So whatever support I need, I can get in community. That's what I think of
when I think of the word community. In fact, I love calling on support so much that
I call people when I could just ask chat GPT or Google a question. I'd rather talk to someone,
even though I know I can get the answer somewhere. I enjoy that connection, even over the phone for
five minutes. I texted someone this morning, "Hey, did you use gels when you did your marathon?" I can
get that information online, but I enjoy talking to this person. I get support that way. A third
thing I think about is family. I'm close with my family, my blood relatives. I have two sisters,
mom and dad, 23 plus cousins, 20 of which are all girls. So I have a lot of family,
but many of my friends in my community are more like family to me than most of my blood family.
When I say that my church is my family, I really, really mean that. So when I say you are my family,
I really, truly mean that. It's not a light, "Oh yeah, it's a church family." No, I mean that
these are my brothers and sisters. I talk to my brothers and sisters here more than I talk to my
sisters that live across the country, which leads me to my last and most important thing that I
think of when I think of community. When I think of community, I think of the church. The local
church is where I found everything that I need to belong to a community. It's where I get that
support. It's where I feel at home. It's where I feel connections, where I feel family. The local
church is important. It's where I find the deepest sense of all those things. It's where I belong
and I really feel like I belong to the most amazing family, the family of God. And it's
because of the sense of belonging that I am dedicated, encouraged, united, and supported,
and energized by the local church. In fact, this is how scripture views community. Community is a
place where God's people are to belong. If you write anything down tonight, I want you to write
down this definition. This is what community is. The church family is to be a community
that is devoted to one another in love. Those two words specifically are important. Devoted
in love. A community that is devoted to one another in love, meeting regularly,
and they meet regularly to encourage unity, support, and good works.
A community, a Christian community, is a community that is devoted to one another in love,
meeting regularly to encourage unity, support, and good works. And again, take special note to that,
devoted to one another in love. This whole definition flows out of two things. It's devotion
and love. You can't encourage. You probably won't meet regularly. You won't encourage unity,
support, and good works if you're not devoted to one another in love. And that is where I want to
anger us this evening. That's where we're going to begin this 10-week drain together. Tonight's
lesson is going to be longer than the next ones because there's no homework and discussion to talk
about tonight. You didn't have to do homework before you got here. I was joking earlier.
So what I want to do is I want to take us to where devotion and love find their ultimate
expression. If you didn't get that definition down, it'll be back up in a bit. Where devotion
and love find their ultimate expression is in the Trinity. Okay, so we're going to walk through what
I'm calling the biblical theology of belonging, and we're going to start with the Trinity. And
you might be asking why are we starting a lecture and series on belonging with the Trinity? It's
because it matters. It's because that's where devotion and love find their ultimate expression.
The Trinity is where life itself begins. There's this book called The Deep Things of God. How the
Trinity Changes Everything. It's by a man named Fred Sanders. It's an awesome, really applicable,
tangible, and readable book on the Trinity. In that book, he says that the Trinity makes all
the difference in the world for practical things such as salvation, spirituality, prayer, Bible
study, and church life. The doctrine of the Trinity is a practical doctrine and has immediate
implications for the Christian life. But Sanders asks, what is the Trinity for? What is it for?
My mom used to tell me growing up, I used to ask her, why did God create us? And she said,
well, God created us because he was lonely. And when I was like 18 or 19, I would tell her,
that's terrible theology. It's not true. So what is the Trinity for? Well, the Trinity isn't,
this is Fred Sanders, isn't for anything beyond itself because a Trinity is God. God is God in
this way. God's way of being God is to be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit simultaneously from all
eternity, perfectly complete in a triune fellowship of love. Man, I got to get better at these slide
cues. The boundless life that God lives in himself at home within the happy land of the Trinity
above all worlds is perfect. It's complete. It's inexhaustibly full and infinitely blessed. The
Trinity is for itself. In other words, from all eternity, the Father, Son, and Spirit,
they have been in an intimate relationship with one another, and this is good news.
You see, we often focus on the good news that the triune God has opened this fellowship up to us,
right? That we can come into it, and that's good and great news, but that would not be possible
if not for the good news that God existed for his own, in his own perfection. So this would have
been, has been, and will be true whether or not the universe ever existed, right? God, contrary
to your mom's old theology, God did not need us to exist to be full. "It would be wrong," Fred
Sanders says, "to say that God created because he was lonely." Thanks a lot, mom, again. "Unfulfilled
or bored." God is free from that kind of dependence. He's not bored. He's not lonely.
He's not unfulfilled because he exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in devotion and love.
He didn't create us because he needed us, nor does he redeem us because he needs us or because
he was obligated to. Instead, God did these things out of the abundance of love that he has for
himself within the Trinity and from that that he has for us. It is by the will of God and an
overflow of this devotion and love within the Trinity that all creation came into existence.
A very real and tangible illustration is to think of marriage. When men and women come together in
marriage, they exist first and foremost for each other, right? They don't need, it's never been
true that marriages need children to be complete. In fact, I think a lot of marriages, if they feel
that need to have children to be complete, there is something a little off that might cause some
tension in marriages and families. They don't need children to be complete, but sometimes out of an
overflow of love and an intimate relationship, children are born, and so it is with the Triune
God. Out of an overflow of devotion and love, the Trinity's love for itself, creation came into
existence, and this relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is what holds all of these
things together. The personal fellowship between the persons of the Trinity is a scarlet thread
throughout Christianity. Again, this is the anchor of the story of the Bible and what it means to
belong to the church family. As one scholar says, believers are called to share in that warm
fellowship that existed from all eternity between these three persons, a fellowship that scripture
announces to us when it speaks of the Father's love for his Son. And one of the ways that we're
able to share in this warm fellowship is because the Son has become incarnate in his life, death,
and resurrection. So if you have a Bible, or a phone, or a tablet, you can turn to, or please
turn to John 13, and we're going to start in verse 31. John 13, verse 31. And we're going to be
spending some time in John chapter 13 through John chapter 17. We're not going to read every
passage, and we're not going to dive deep into each chapter, but we're going to be spending some
time with that chunk of scripture, John 13 through 17. And in John 13, Jesus is with his disciples in
the upper room. He's teaching and sharing a Passover meal with them when he stops to wash
their feet in a stunning act of service to them. I mean, it would be incredibly astonishing for a
student of a rabbi to wash a rabbi's feet. That would be wild to witness. And what's more wild is
a rabbi washing a student's feet. And that's what Jesus is doing. And then here's what John records
in John 13, 31 through 32. Does someone want to read John 13, 31 through 32 for us?
Go ahead, Phil. When he had gone out, Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man is glorified,
and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify
him in himself and will glorify him at once." Okay, so Jesus is up in the upper room
with the disciples. He's been teaching. He washes their feet in this astonishing act of service.
Then he says this, right? What Phil just read for us about the Son of Man being glorified, and
God will also glorify him in himself at once. And so it raises some questions, right?
Like, I'm curious to know, what do you guys think Jesus is getting at here when
he's doing this act of service? And he says this. What is he getting at?
And to be transparent, when I read this, I did not know. I was stumped. Why did you just kind of
bring this up? But what are your thoughts? Initially reading, he sounds confused.
Sounds confused, yeah. That's a good, yeah. Is he talking about the cross?
He is. It's a very, you know, glorified. I wouldn't say, "Oh, I'm going to be glorified
because I'm going to be crucified tomorrow." Right, yeah. And why is Jesus calling his hour
of death a moment that God will glorify him? What do you guys think?
It's the moment he took on sins of the world. He redeemed us.
He redeemed us, yeah. Yeah. And I ask that because it's a hard question.
I trust that if all of us studied, you know, long enough and took some time to really dig into it,
we would all get there. But it just seems like a weird thing for Jesus to bring up.
Why is he calling an hour of death a moment that God will glorify him?
So to understand that, we have to understand the concept of God's glory, which could be a whole
another, like, 10-week series on God's glory, right? This is a big concept, okay? But in some,
here's what I'll say, is that God's glory, and my pastor in California used to always use this
phrase, he would say, "God's glory is all of God's beautiful attributes on full display."
God's glory is all his beautiful attributes on full display. In the Bible, God's glory is
intimately connected with his presence, with his people. When he's present with his people,
that's when his attributes are on display. We just went through Exodus in the summer,
and when God was leading his people out of Egypt, some of his attributes were on beautiful and
powerful display. When he conquered the false gods, when he parted the Red Seas. And so God's
presence with his people is when we see God's glory throughout the Bible. Donald Fairbairn,
which I'm going to be quoting him a lot, and the Fairbairn is a hard word to say in a sentence, so
if I'm quoting someone, it's going to be him. In speaking about Exodus, he wrote a book called
Life in the Trinity, where he speaks about Exodus in this book, and he says about Exodus 13,
20 through 22. "Here, just after the breathtaking deliverance from Egypt that constituted Israel as
a nation set apart for God, the Lord gives the people this constant reminder of his presence
with them, his unique relationship to them." It's just a pillar of cloud and fire. "And the phrase
scripture uses for this presence in Exodus and all throughout is the glory of the Lord." So God's
glory is his presence. After Exodus, God dwelt with his people in the tabernacle. His glory is
powerful, and there's a lot of talk in Exodus and Leviticus of how do we dwell in the presence of
God, because if we don't come as clean people, God's holy presence will purify us, and sometimes
it purifies us by killing us. Nadab and Abayu, for example. In the New Testament, God dwells
with his people very richly in the person of Jesus Christ. Again, the scholar says, "The point is
simply that the glory of God is connected to the presence of God with his people, and this presence
is uniquely shown in the entrance of his one and only Son into the world." God with us, Jesus with
us. And so God's glory is not just his beautiful attributes on display, it's his beautiful
attributes on display present with us. Present with us and acting for us. Okay, so let's read
the word to do this one more time in John 13, 31 through 32. Can I have someone else read that
passage again? I can read it. Go ahead, Nathan. "Therefore, when he had gone out, Jesus said,
'Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. If God is glorified in him,
God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him immediately.'"
Immediately, I like that. What translation is that? That's the NASB. NASB. 1995. Yeah.
"If God's glory is not just his greatness but his presence with us, then this passage
must mean that the impending death of Jesus is the supreme way in which God is present with us."
The death of Jesus is the supreme way in which God is present with us. In the death of Jesus,
we see God's beautiful attributes on display. The glory of Christ in the death of Christ
is far more shocking than a rabbi washing his disciples feet. And what is so important about
this as it relates to the family of God is that Jesus in washing disciples feet and then talking
about his hour of death, his action for us as him being glorified, is Jesus modeling for us
what community looks like. So here's what Jesus says following his words about being glorified.
Now we're going to jump down a little bit more to John 13,
34. Someone want to read John 13, 34 through 35 for us? Steve, go ahead.
"A new command I give you, 'Love one another, as I have loved you, so you must love one another.'
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another."
"By this everyone will know you're my disciples if you love one another."
So Jesus tells us our love for one another is intimately connected to his love for us.
"Because I have loved you, because I have loved you, because I, Jesus, have loved you, therefore
you love one another." The love of Jesus for us is intimately connected to our love for others.
Now remember, our definition of community, of Christian community, is one that is devoted to
one another in love, meaning regularly to encourage unity, support, and good works.
We are devoted to one another in love and our love should mirror,
our love should mirror the love that Christ showed us.
Jesus tells us that when we love one another in the same way he loved us,
we are showing and reminding the world what God did for us in Christ. When we love one another,
when I love you and you love me just like Jesus loved both of us, we're showing the world that
Christ's glory, his presence with us, and his beautiful attributes are on full display.
That's why he says, where is it at? "This is how other people will know you're my disciples,
by showing love for one another." They'll know that the Son is glorified. They'll see
Christ when we love each other like Christ loved us. And so if we are to glorify Christ and be
devoted to one another in love, we must love Christ by obeying him. Is everyone tracking me so far?
Any questions? This sounds like God and Israel. God chose Israel and Israel was supposed to be
his showcase. That's right. In the same way we're chosen by God, we're his showcase,
by the relationship we have with each other. That's right. He's exactly right. And he's
continuing that in an even more rich and full way. He doesn't just dwell in a camp.
I'm kind of jumping ahead. He doesn't just dwell in a camp, but he dwells in us now.
That's exactly right, Phil. We have to love Christ by obeying him.
Now turn to John 14. 14 we're going to go next, chapter 14.
Louanne, would you mind reading this one for us? Sure.
14, 15 through 17. "If you love me, you will obey what I command,
and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another
counselor to be with you forever, the Spirit of truth." I guess that's it. Sorry,
I was doing a good job there. "The world cannot accept him because it neither sees him nor knows
him, but you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you."
And I think one more verse. Through 17. Really?
Well, 18. Oh, sorry, I got it wrong here then. That was a little halted. Sorry, it might be 21,
but here's the rest here. "The one who has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me,
and the one who loves me will be loved by my Father. I also will love him and will
reveal myself to him." Oh, that's 21. Sorry, that's 21. I had it wrong in there in my notes.
"The one who has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me, and the one who loves me
will be loved by my Father, and I will also love him and reveal myself to him." And what Jesus is
doing here is connecting love to obedience. Jesus connects love to obedience. Love and obedience are
not an opposition to one another. And in fact, when we think otherwise, what we're doing is
we're considering ourselves higher than the one giving the command. But we are not higher than
Jesus, nor will we ever be higher than Jesus. And so if we're tempted to think that obedience is an
opposition to love, we must reckon with the fact that we are actually lower than Christ.
The command to love one another in the same way that Christ loves us is a command.
It's not a suggestion. It's not a wish of Jesus. It's Jesus commanding us.
Scholar says that whether a person really loves Jesus will be evident from whether that person
loves other people. If you really love Jesus, you're going to show that by loving other people.
In fact, our love for others is so reflective of our love for Jesus that John will later write in
one of his own letters, "If anyone says I love God, it hates his brother. He is a liar." That's
1 John 4.20. Okay, now we're going to pick it back up in verse 18. Sorry. "I will not leave you as
orphans," Jesus says. "I'm coming to you. In a little while, the world will no longer see me,
but you will see me. Because I live, you will live too. On that day, you will know that I
am in my Father. You are in me, and I am in you. The one who has my command and keeps them is the
one who loves me. And the one who loves me will be loved by my Father. I also will love him and will
reveal myself to him." So Jesus has sent the Spirit to indwell believers and enable them to obey
Jesus's command to love one another. He doesn't leave us alone. He doesn't leave us to figure out
how to love one another and to figure out how he has loved us. He gives us the indwelling of the
Spirit to empower us to love one another with a truly supernatural love. I mean, I don't have it
here, but I'm sure I know of stories and could find you stories of what I would call supernatural
love, of Christians loving one another despite many different circumstances. And that happens
because of the indwelling of God's Spirit and because Jesus loves us first. It's because the
Spirit that we intimately know the love the Father has for the Son. We can't really grasp fully the
triune God, but we know as we grow in our Christian walk, we know what the love that the Father has
for the Son. We get a glimpse at it. We start to understand it more day by day because of the
Spirit in us. And then we get to see how the Son has love for us. The Holy Spirit is the link
between the Son's relationship to the Father and the Christian's relationship to the Son.
The Father, Son, and Spirit, Christians, love, and obedience are all interconnected. The very fabric
of who we are is an intricate tapestry of relationships and actions. We are who we are
because of the relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit, the actions that they take,
and also that trickles down to us. We are who we are because of relationships we have with Jesus,
with the Father, with the Spirit, and the actions that we take and the love that we have for one
another as well. This is the life that God intends for us, to have fellowship with him, the triune
God, and to love one another with the same type of love that God has shown us. And Jesus laid out
that life for us, the life he intends for us in John chapter 17. Let's turn there next. John
chapter 17. I feel like I'm moving fast, so if you want to slow down and discuss more, please, please
stop. Any questions so far or observations? That part about God's love for the Son flowing to us
through the Spirit, there was kind of a, I was just trying to take that down. I was like,
I don't know how I get that. Yeah, and I don't think we, I don't think I quite get it, right? So
not to say I can't re-explain what I have written down, but the Father loves the Son,
and out of that love that the Father has for the Son, out of the overflowing abundance of that
love, he sends his Son to us, and the Son loves us with the same love that the Father loved the Son,
and then we're called to love others with the same love that the Son has loved us with,
and the Father has loved his Son with. It's all love all the way down, and so it's the most
intimate relationship in love with an eternity, and as we get a glimpse at that, as we view God's
glory, and his love, and his devotion, we are called to model that. Does that make a little
bit more sense, Laura? It's okay if not. It kind of reminds me, I think I'm, it's reminded me of
that part in, I think it's like John 19 in the High Priestly Prayer, and he's, like John 17,
yeah, we're going to go there. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah, and it's crazy, you and me, and I and him,
and they and me, and I'm like, yes, Jesus, I know you're Jesus, but can you slow down and
give me the bunny-hell version of this? It's just, it's like, okay, I get it, okay, I don't get it,
so. Yeah, there's a lot of that, I think I'll throw out John too, there's a lot of that abiding
I and you, you and me type language. Yeah. Yeah. It kind of gives me the visual picture of a
waterfall, how water falls down, and it soaks everything down, and there's a pool down below,
we're kind of the pool down below where God overflows. That's right, that's right, yeah.
Okay, before we get to John 17, there's one commentary that says this, in the discourse,
in this discourse, in the discourse, Jesus has laid out a picture of life as God intends it.
In the prayer, the High Priestly Prayer, in John 17, he asks his father to bring about the kind
of life that he has just described to the disciples. It's in this prayer in John 17
that Jesus prays first for himself, that's verses one through five, he then prays with the 12
disciples, 12 disciples in verses six through 19, and then for all of those who will later become
his followers in 20 through 26. I'm going to read for us that first prayer where Jesus prays for
himself in John 17, one through five. Jesus spoke these things, looked up to heaven and said, "Father,
the hour has come. Glorify your Son, so that the Son may glorify you." Right? "Be present with the
Son, put your full attributes on display with your Son, so that the Son may present you, glorify you,
bring all of your beautiful attributes on display, since you gave him the authority over all people,
so that he may give eternal life to everyone you have given him. This is eternal life,
that they may know you, the only true God, and the one you have sent, Jesus Christ. I have glorified
you on earth by completing the work you gave me to do. Now, Father, glorify me in your presence
with that glory I had with you before the world existed." So what is eternal life?
Knowing God. Eternal life is not heaven.
I give some space for that because sometimes people are like, "What?" It's not heaven.
It's not living forever. That's not eternal life. It's not escaping earth. These desires do not
capture the heart of eternal life. Yes, Ms. Allison? Okay.
Eternal or the Greek word "ionios" in the New Testament refers to a few things, okay?
It can refer to the timelessness of God, right? If God is without beginning and without end,
that's one thing it can refer to. It can refer to the timelessness and supernatural nature of
possessions and gifts, like the spirit or glory or dominion or comfort or salvation or redemption.
Those are all eternal things. Or eternal life can refer to the object of eschatological expectation,
okay? Or the object of, sorry, that's language from a textbook, the object of the end of all
things, the object of the final age, the object of the kingdom. In other words, it's the kingdom
of God. Eternal life is referring to life in the kingdom of God, a new life and a new age that we
experience already right now, but not fully until Jesus comes again. And so eternal life is not
heaven. Like if you go into eternity living forever without knowing the Father and the Son,
you don't have eternal life. If you go into, yeah, endless being without knowing the Father and Son,
that's not eternal life. That's just kind of eternality. And so eternal life is referring
to this new age, this life with God. And the main point of Jesus's words is that life can begin here
and now. So we think of eternal life, I've for years thought eternal life as dying and being in
heaven. And I'm not going to begin my eternal life until I get to that stage where I'm glorified
in heaven with God. And that's true, I'll have eternal life then, but the eternal life that Jesus
describes, I can have that right now. It's tangible, it's here, it's in this room even.
And the way to enter into this living, into eternal life itself is by knowing God and knowing Christ.
This comes to Christians and Christians only, as God in Christ glorifies himself. God is not just
bask in his own greatness and magnificence, he shares it. He shares the greatness within himself
among the persons of the Trinity. And he shares that glorious presence with his people as well.
And so part of the way God shows forth his magnificence is by leading human beings into
knowing him. And knowing him implies knowing about the Father and the Son whom the Father has sent.
So that's Jesus's prayer for himself, that he'll be glorified and that through that glory
people would have eternal life. They would know the Father and the Son. Now we're going to skip
that middle section about the disciples and go to verse 20 in John 17 where Jesus prays for the
disciples of all ages. He says, "I pray not for these, not for just for the disciples, the twelve
that are with him, but also for those who believe in me through their word. May they all be one,
just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you." There's that language, Laura.
"May they all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you.
May they also be in us, so that the world may believe you sent me.
I have given them the glory you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one.
I am in them and you are in me, so that they may be made completely what? Completely one.
That the world may know you have sent me and I have loved them as you have loved me. Father,
I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, so that they will see my glory
which you have given me, because you love me before the world's foundation."
Jesus wants his disciples to be one, just as he and the Father are one. That same unity that the
Father has with the Son, Jesus wants that for us. Jesus wants us to be one just like that.
What Jesus desires for all who believe in his name
is that they have the same life together that Jesus and the Father have together.
Notice how high of a calling this is.
Notice how intimate this relationship is between the Father and the Son.
Jesus talks about it all the time in the Gospel of John. And my question to ask to you,
that we can't answer here, or maybe answer it in your minds, is are you in a relationship
with fellow believers that is like the relationship that Jesus has with his Father?
When you come to church on Sunday, do you have relationship with believers on Sunday,
or Monday, or Tuesday, that is modeled after and like the relationship that Jesus has with his
Father? Because that is what Jesus is calling us to. And this extreme oneness, right, one is in that
paragraph over and over again, this extreme oneness is how the world is to know the glory
of the Triune God. They know God is glorious and beautiful when we are one.
Saying that just now reminds me of Gabe said at the congregational meeting, if you guys were there,
that the Gospel is the same message today and forever, but it gets placed on different
doormats throughout the generations. And there is a time where the Gospel was really
contending with truth. Is there truth in the Gospel? There is truth. But now,
Gabe says, it's contending with beauty. Is there beauty in the world? And the Gospel shows us that
there is beauty in the world. And one way we can show the beauty of God, the beauty of the Gospel
and of the Son is by being one with one another. It's how the world knows the glory of the Triune
God. So ask yourself, write it down, answer it in your head. Am I in a community that is so powerful
that the world sees the glory of Christ? My community group meets on Wednesdays.
Is that community so powerful that when we're out and about, people see God's glory? Are they
questioning that? Are they intrigued to think about God by witnessing our oneness?
And this is not an impossible question. This is not a trick question. This is not a,
oh, I should strive towards that. You should accomplish this. I've seen it accomplished.
I was once part of a church that did this very well. We met in a very small building.
The worship center was probably maybe twice the size of this room, three times the size of this
room. The entirety of the ministry was maybe the size of this one room. We were a small church,
and we were growing extremely rapidly, constantly looking for a new building. We had tons saved
because people were coming and the building was getting overflowed. We were growing so rapidly,
and the one thing we heard constantly time and time again, why did you come today,
is because people either witnessed or heard about how much love and unity was in this community,
and they wanted to be a part of that. And it's because our community knew the love that the
Father had for the Son, as the Son had for us, has for us. Every Sunday after service, we would have
lunch together. We'd make lunch in the small, small, small kitchen and eat outside. And we
ate outside because that's the only room there was, was to eat outside. But also, people saw
that community, and that drew them in. They saw the unity, the oneness, the love we had for one
another, and that's why the church grew rapidly. They saw the glory of Christ in community. It's
not an impossible question. It's not a question you should strive for. It's a question you should
accomplish. Am I in a community that is so powerful that the world sees the glory of Christ?
The unity, the oneness that Jesus calls us to, is intimately rooted in and tied to love. Recall,
again, our definition of Christian community. A community that is devoted to one another in love,
meeting regularly to encourage unity, support, good works. We should be one by having the same
love and devotion for each other that the Son has with the Father and the Father has with the Son.
Do you love fellow believers like Jesus loves the Father?
You heard Jesus say "one" quite a bit. You heard me say "oneness" earlier, and I want to make a note
that the oneness that Jesus wants for his disciples is not, is not, is not, is not a unity in purpose
where groups might unite for a cause. Oneness is not a unity in physicality and emotions like
that of a husband and wife. The unity is not in substance where oneness morphs into sameness.
Oneness is not sameness. The Father, the Son, and the Spirit are one, but they are not the same.
That's actually a big debate that was in the early church. Are the Father, Son, and Spirit
the same person? No, they're not. They are completely one, but they are not the same.
And so us here, we should be one. We should not be the same. You're not called to act like me,
and I'm not called to act like you. We each play our individual role.
So the oneness that Jesus wants for his disciples is a unity of love.
Jesus is talking about a unity of love, and unity in this prayer is a synonym for love,
as Jesus has used that word throughout the upper room discourse. To say that the Father and the Son
are one and are in each other is to speak of the love they have for each other. And Jesus says they
have shared this love from all eternity, from before the time when they have made the world.
So when he says, "I am in you and you are in me," what he's saying is we love each other, Father,
and I want the disciples to be one. I want them to share that love. The life that the Son has with
the Father and that the Son shares with us is modeled for the life we ought to live.
Let me start over. The life that the Son has with the Father and that the Son shares with us is a
model for the life we ought to have in the community of believers, a life of unity of love.
So that is the foundation of Christian community. It's the Trinity. It's the love there. It's the
unity there that Jesus models for us. He lived an entire life based on his love for the Father
and his Father's love for him. Everything he did, I'll mention this in a second, everything he did,
he says, "I only do what I see the Father doing." His whole life was an overflow of his relationship
with his Father, and community is supposed to be that, shared in that and modeled after that. So
what does it tangibly look like? Remember, the relationship between the Trinity was so valuable
that God created people in his image to share in that relationship, and this sharing was meant to
take place not merely through people's relationship to God, but also through human relationships with
one another. In other words, our lives are to be a reflection of the love between the Father
and the Son empowered by the Holy Spirit. Through this lens of this Trinity fellowship and community,
we redeem our sense of the world in four areas in particular. So the first area in which we redeem
our sense is our sense of significance.
Christianity teaches us that our significance does not ultimately lie in what we accomplish or what
we do. It lies in the one to whom we belong. Your significance has nothing to do with your job,
nothing to do with what you do with your life. You are significant because you belong to God.
What was the first sentence you said about, like, the bullet point version of that?
We redeem our sense of significance. Is that it? Yeah.
That's the first area we redeem, our sense of significance.
When we belong to the family of God, we do not need to acquire significance
because we belong to God, and you and I are as significant as we will ever be
because we belong to God. We find personal significance in the family of God because
we all together and individually belong to God. In the family of God, we mutually encourage and
remind each other of the significance that we already have in Christ. People come in here and
they want to be significant. We remind them that they are significant because they belong to God.
So we redeem first our sense of significance. Second, when we view community and belonging
through this Trinitarian lens, we redeem our sense of peace. Second thing we redeem is our sense of
peace. Peace is found not in the absence of chaos, but in the love found in our relationship with the
trying God and our relationship with one another. I can live in the chaos of the world because I am
secure with Christ, but also because I have a family here. Right? Gearing up for this class
and for fall is chaotic, but being in this class with you is where I can find peace. I don't need
to strive for significance because I belong to God, you belong to God, and we're at peace here
because we all belong to God and we find peace in the family of God. And as we devote ourselves to
each other in love, we find safe refuge and peace in the reality that we belong to God.
We remind each other of that peace, that we belong to God, despite the chaos that happens in the
world. So we redeem our sense of significance, we redeem our sense of peace, and then we redeem
our sense of work. I don't mean the job that you do, but the actual action you take in the world.
Just as Jesus loved his Father by doing the Father's work, so we love the Father,
Son and Spirit, by carrying out God's work in the world. That's my desire for myself and my desire
for you all is that you only do what you see the Father doing or you see the Father leading.
In the family of God, we are encouraged and reminded of the work Jesus did for his Father
out of the abundance of love that he had for the Father. He wasn't performing,
he wasn't checking off task lists, he was loving the Father. And because he loved his Father so
deeply, he did what his Father asked and he did what he saw the Father doing.
And we're encouraged to carry out that work that the Father
has for us in the world, empowered by the Spirit.
We redeem our sense of significance, we redeem our sense of peace, our sense of work.
In the family of God, we're reminded of Jesus' words, "Truly, truly, I tell you,
the Son is not able to do anything of his own, but only what he sees the Father doing.
For whatever the Father does, the Son likewise does."
And finally, when we view community and belonging with a Trinitarian lens,
we redeem our sense of relationships.
Significance, peace, work, relationships. The Trinity offers a framework for understanding
human relationships, acknowledging that all roles are equally important.
In the family of God, we maintain a unity of love rooted in the Trinity that shows us that we are
one, but we are not the same. And that's good. It's good that we're not the same.
In the family of God, we are encouraged and supported in the roles that the Father has
called us to. And we celebrate the importance of each role that we play.
The Trinity, the love the Father has for the Son and the Spirit, redeems our sense of significance,
of peace, of work and relationships. Any questions there? Anything you'd like me to go back over
again? Good stuff.
What was the first thing you said about relationships?
All roles are equally important. In the family of God, we maintain a unity of love
where we are one, but not the same. Is that what you're getting at?
So this is my hope for all of us in these 10 weeks, is that we become a community that is
devoted to one another in love, meeting regularly to encourage unity, support and good work. So my
hope is that we become a community where people can belong, where our sense of significance,
peace, work and relationships are redeemed by the love we experience from God and the
love we experience from one another. Amen. Let's pray.
God, we thank you for your trial nature. We thank you for the deep love and devotion
that we get to see that you have in the Trinity. We pray that you would give us greater glimpses
into that triune fellowship and devotion. We pray that we can see it. We pray that
we can experience it. And then we pray, God, that we can take action with it.
Spirit, help us, empower us to supernaturally love one another. In this class, yes, in these 10 weeks,
yes, but, God, forever. God, make this class, make Christ Community Shawnee, make Christ Community,
make the church, your church, a place where people can belong. And through that, God,
help us to give you all the glory. May the love we have for one another bring you
lots and lots of glory. And for our good, God, we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.