Sermon Tone Analysis

Unity in Ministry

 

John 17:1-26; John 13:1-7; 13-17

September 10, 2006

*Introduction: Disunity over Ministry*

The story is told of three men, all in the New Testament, who were born blind but who had been healed miraculously by Jesus.

These men heard about one another and decided to get together to celebrate their unity in Christ and to exchange testimonies.

After the men introduced themselves to each another and exchanged warm embraces, Bartimaeus began.

He said, “Gentlemen, I can just hardly wait to tell you what Jesus has done for me.

I was outside the city of Jericho when Jesus and a mob of people walked by.

I cried out, ‘Son of David!

Son of David!

Have mercy on me!’ and Jesus stopped.

The crowd quieted down.

He asked me the most unusual question.

He said, ‘What do you want me to do for you?’

And I said, ‘Rabbi, I want to see.’

He said, ‘Go your way.

Your faith has made you well.’

Gentlemen, at that moment, instantaneously I was healed, and I could see.

I have come to this conclusion: That when it comes to healing blind men, Jesus uses our faith and his word, and that equals healing.”

The other two men should have been enthusiastic about this, but they weren’t enthusiastic at all.

The man from Bethsaida began his testimony by saying, “Gentlemen, my story of how Christ touched me isn’t anything like that.

Jesus took me out of the city, and he spit directly in my eyes.

And then he touched my eyes with his hands.

I was expecting the instantaneous healing you received.

But I opened my eyes, and I would have rather been blind.

It was awful.

I saw men as trees walking.

I thought, /If this is what it’s like when you’re healed by Jesus, I don’t want it./

Then Jesus repeated the procedure.

He spit in my eyes again and touched me again.

Gentlemen, the second time I opened my eyes, I could see.

And I am convinced that when Jesus heals blind men, he uses spit, and it’s always in two stages.”

The other man was red in the face.

He said, “Gentlemen, I would seriously doubt the validity of both of your healings.

When Jesus healed me, he used saliva all right.

But he didn’t spit in my face; he spit in the ground, and he took the saliva and the dirt and made mud packs and put mud packs in my eyes.

It was most uncomfortable.

Then he told me to go to the pool of Siloam and commanded that I wash the mud out there.

As I washed out the mud that he had made, I could instantly see.

I’m convinced that when Jesus heals blind men, he uses mud and the holy waters of the pool of Siloam.”

Needless to say, the outcome of the conference was devastating.

Forgetting their common bond in Jesus, the three blind men who could now see went away divided, focusing on their own experience and on their own doctrine, which had become icons to them.

Of course, three distinct denominations developed from that day—the Spitites, the Mudites, and the Bartimites—the Spitites making as their sacrament saliva and everything in key stages, the Mudites making a sacrament out of mud and the holy water at the pool of Siloam, and the Bartimites focusing on Bartimaeus, their charismatic leader, with no sacraments necessary at all, only Christ’s word and our faith.

Though the story is obviously of doubtful veracity, we can all relate to it.

The bond of unity in the body of Christ can so quickly be broken.

The church of Jesus is easily pushed off its tracks and derailed through division in the church.

Seeds of division don’t need to be planted in the church.

These are hearty perennials that grow up out of the old nature—your nature and mine.

A critical question that I would like to have the Lord answer is this: As we work in our areas of ministry, at times in places where people are embroiled sometimes in very hot debate, where there are personality differences and clashes, where there are boards and staff that many times do not characterize the love of Christ, how are we to be ministers of unity?

We have to look to the broader context of John 17 to get the answer to that question.

You’ll remember that when Jesus prayed this high priestly prayer—that we would be one as the Father is one with the Son—he prayed this not by himself but surrounded by twelve disciples where the air was thick with personal and political agendas.

You remember they came to that prepared upper room to celebrate the Last Supper, the Passover, and also to hear the Upper Room discourse and to have Christ pray for them.

Let’s read that passage now, John 17; it is a long passage, but an important one.

Jesus’ last words to His disciples were on unity.

In my Bible it is entitled the “High Priestly Prayer”: /“When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, "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.

\\ "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.

\\ Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you.

\\ For I have given them the words that you gave me, and they have received them and have come to know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me.

\\ I am praying for them.

I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours.

\\ All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them.

\\ And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you.

Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one.

\\ While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me.

I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.

\\ But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves.

\\ I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

\\ i do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one.

\\ They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.

\\ Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.

\\ As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.

\\ And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth.

\\ "I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, \\ that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

/(Did you hear that?

We are to be one so the world will see and believe) Let’s continue.

\\ /The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, \\ I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.

/(There it is again.

We are to be one so the world will know of Jesus) Three more verses to go.

\\ /Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.

\\ O righteous Father, even though the world does not know you, I know you, and these know that you have sent me.

\\ I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them."

/Oneness!

Unity!

Jesus last teaching – not because it is least important, but because it is most important.

And as they entered that upper room, they had proud hearts and dirty feet.

Each one of them walked by the customary pitcher of water and basin and towel that was by the front door, and these men reclined around that low Middle Eastern table with dirty feet in one another’s faces.

The table talk that night was about which of them was the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

We don’t talk this way any more.

We are too sophisticated for that.

In fact, I haven’t heard anybody in this assembly trying to convince another person that he will be greater when everybody gets to heaven.

Instead we want our ideas to become greatest.

We want our doctrines—those interpretations of Scripture relating to gender roles, to worship, to how we should do church, to difficult decisions made at a leadership level—to become greatest.

All of us, if we were to get down into the mystery of our sin, would admit that we can paint it different colors, but underneath it’s all the same: it’s all the flesh seeking to be greater, greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

It’s in this environment that Jesus, the Leader, passes down a legacy to all leaders as to what it means to be a minister of unity.

I have two points tonight from our context.