Four steps to apostasy, John 18:12-18, 25-27

As I have previously pointed out, John isn’t presenting a blow by blow account of the arrest and trial of Christ.  By the time he is writing this epistle, the other three gospels have already presented all of the chronological events in detail.  Instead, what John is doing is specifically highlighting certain events in order to illustrate particular principles which he is attempting to teach.  And as we have seen from our previous studies, John is very focused on presenting the gospel as the truth of God.  He quotes Jesus reaffirming this principle again and again in statements such as “God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”  And “I am the way the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father except by me.”  And another, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”  Finally one more, “Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.”

In fact, 83 times in his writings John writes about either truth or what is true.  I firmly believe that for the apostle John, truth was the preeminent theme of the gospel.  So what I think he is doing here in addition to presenting the events leading up to Christ’s crucifixion is he is including a sub plot, which is contrasting the truth with the dangers of apostasy.  The truth of Christ is contrasted with the apostasy of Peter.  And Peter is representative of the church.  Remember, Jesus had said in Matt. 16:18 “I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.”  So the apostles, and especially Peter, are emblematic of the church because they are the foundation of the church.  And in this passage we are looking at today, John is highlighting the dangers of the church slipping into apostasy.

Apostasy means the abandonment or renunciation of belief, particularly religious belief.  So to become apostate is to abandon or renounce your faith, or the principles of truth which undergird your faith.  In 2Thess. 2:3, Paul speaking of the second coming of Christ says, “Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first.”  The Bible teaches that in the last days there will be a great falling away from the truth. False prophets and false teaching will fill the church to the extent that Jesus said if it were possible even the very elect would be misled.  

And we know from church history that in fact happened. When Jesus speaks for the last time to the church in Revelation 2 and 3, which was also written by John by the way, He speaks to the seven churches in Asia, which were symbolic of the church universal, and in practically each of His messages to the churches, He emphasizes their need to stay true to His word, and warns them to repent of their apostasy, lest He remove their lamp stand from the Earth.

Now last week we looked at the first part of this passage set in the Garden of Gethsemane where the mob came to arrest Jesus along with the Pharisees and the Roman cohort.  And particularly we focused on the response of the disciples as an example of how the church often responds to a hostile world.  We talked about the natural response of the human psyche to fear or intimidation known as the  fight or flight syndrome which was exemplified by the disciples fleeing, and Peter swinging his sword and cutting off the ear of the High Priest’s slave. And if you will remember, my application contrasted the church’s natural response to the world as opposed to what should be the true response of the church as identified by Acts 2, in the first church of Jerusalem immediately following Pentecost.

In a similar fashion, I want to show a subsequent application to the church through the events recorded in this passage that may not at first be apparent from a superficial study of the chronology of events.  But if you will bear with me, I hope to show you how the denial of Peter and the trial of Christ mirror the choice confronting the church today, namely, remaining steadfast in the truth, and on the other hand, denying the truth, or becoming apostate.

So what we see from the passage is that really what  was on trial was the Truth. That becomes apparent in Jesus’s response to both Annas and Pilate later on in the chapter.  It was all about the truth that Jesus taught and represented.  Jesus was the Truth personified.  That is what the Pharisees and Sanhedrin hated.  They weren’t interested in the truth, they were interested in the law.  The law was their religion.  They had learned to manipulate the law.  They could take advantage of the law. They could enrich themselves through the law, administered through religion.  But Jesus focused on the truth.  The truth trumps the law because the law comes from the truth.  However, as I said, they were not interested in the Truth, they were interested in law, which was administered through their religion.  And sadly, we see today in the church that there is an emphasis on religion as they define it, but there is very little emphasis on the truth. Truth is relative today in our culture, and the church in it’s efforts to be relevant to the culture has become a mirror of the culture, rather than a reflection of Jesus Christ who is the Truth.

So John’s record at this point doesn’t focus so much on the illegality of the trial or on the Pharisees, but he seems to deliberately juxtapose Peter’s denial with Christ’s affirmation of Truth.  Twice John shows another side of what was going on, that which was happening in the courtyard below with Peter.  And I am proposing that his intention is to show the counterpoint to the truth of the gospel, which is apostasy, and how easy it is and possible it is for the church to fall into it.  

So without further introduction, let’s look at four steps to apostasy as illustrated in this text.  And I will give you each step in advance; First, the steps to apostasy begins with acting in your own wisdom, which leads to # 2, distance from God, which produces #3, a desire for acceptance from the world, and #4, results in blasphemy and denial.   That’s the four steps to apostasy.  

Let’s consider how this is illustrated in the text.  The first point, acting in your own wisdom we pretty much covered last week.  When confronted with the hostility of the mob, Peter did what he thought was right according to his own wisdom, according to his own strength.   When he should have followed the Lord’s example and looked to him as to how to respond to the attack of the mob, instead he acted in his own strength, according to his own wisdom, and it resulted in disaster.  He pulled his sword and whacked off the High Priest’s servant’s ear.  That was a bad move.  It could have been even worse had not Jesus healed the man’s ear.  Because as we see later, Malchus’s kinsman was sitting at the fire later in Annas’s courtyard, and he recognized Peter and called him out in front of the soldiers.  

We see this same attitude played out today in the church all the time, though perhaps in a little less dramatic fashion.  More and more we see the church relying of philosophy, psychiatry, science, survey’s,  and business practices in order to achieve their goals. The average sermon today is an impotent mixture of pyscho-babble and sentimentality, with a few jokes and a poem thrown in for good measure.  Rather than looking at how the Bible says we should approach things like marriage, or sexuality, or church organization, etc, we follow what science or business or common sense tells us to do.  But we need to remember that God has given us a blueprint for the church, and when we deviate from it to follow our own wisdom, we do so at our own peril.  

I want to point out another contrast inherent in this scene.  Peter decides to fight with his sword against the forces of darkness that are arrayed before him.  And though he manages to wound one out of possibly 50-200 armed men, it was not a very effective strategy.  And as I said earlier, if Jesus hadn’t stopped it and healed the servant, it would have probably ended badly for Peter.  But then notice the contrast of the truth.  In vs. 4, it says, “So Jesus, knowing all the things that were coming upon Him, went forth and *said to them, “Whom do you seek?” They answered Him, “Jesus the Nazarene.” He *said to them, “I am He.” And Judas also, who was betraying Him, was standing with them. So when He said to them, “I am He,” they drew back and fell to the ground.”  

Here is the irony of the contrast.  Peter takes his sword and wounds one man, and potentially sets up a disastrous situation.  Jesus uses the sword of His mouth, the very word of God, and 200 men are knocked flat on the ground.  I believe that John shows us this contrast to illustrate that even the foolishness of God is greater than the wisdom of men.  We must not neglect the word of God.  It is powerful even to the destruction of fortresses. 2Cor. 10:3 says, “For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.”  The  efforts of our flesh in our wisdom and strength fail to make a difference for the kingdom.  Whereas God’s word is powerful and sharper than a two edged sword.  Because it is the truth of God.

Well, as we see in Peter’s case, acting in your own wisdom leads to the second step towards apostasy, which is distancing yourself from God.  It’s really amazing that Christ demonstrates His divine power even in this hour of darkness, in both knocking the mob on the ground and healing the man’s ear, and yet the mob is unmoved.  They are resolute in their hatred and determination to put Jesus to death.  Their hearts are hardened. 

But what’s even more amazing is that the disciples, also seeing these things, and having seen so many other miracles that Jesus had done over three years,  are unmoved as well.  They run away.  You would think that they would have recognized that the safest place for them to be was with Jesus. 

I have said that from this pulpit many times and I will say it again this morning.  There is no safe place outside of the will of God.  And there is no safer place than to be in the will of God.  Yet how quickly we forget that.  The disciples thought that it would be safer somewhere else.  So they ran.  Peter, I will give him some credit, doesn’t run.  Instead he follows from afar, according to Matthew 26:58.  And so when Jesus is in the house of the High Priest, Peter is hanging around outside in the dark, outside the courtyard door.  

Over the last couple of months or so, I have had a number of people tell me that they felt as if they were far from God.  They didn’t feel close to God anymore.  They feel like God didn’t care, or didn’t love them anymore.  They felt distant.  And I will tell you what I tell them every time.  It’s an alternate version of the old adage; sin will keep you from God, or God will keep you from sin.  When you feel distant from God it’s usually because you have moved away from God, not vice versa.

It’s like the couple that had been married for 30 years, back in the day when cars had bench seats, not like the bucket seats we have today.  And the couple were driving down the road, and the wife looked over at the husband who was driving and said sort of reproachfully, “Remember when we used to take a drive when we were dating, and how you used to put your arm around me, and hug me close?  Don’t you ever miss that kind of closeness?  And the husband looked over at her on the passenger side of the car and said, “Well, I didn’t move, you did.” 

God doesn’t move to distance Himself from us.  Even when we are in rebellion against Him, He pursues us. The Lord is like the husband of Hosea, who watches and provides for his love from afar, waiting for her to return to Him, and never stops loving her.  James gives us the prescription for a healthy relationship with God in James 4:8, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.”  

Distance from God usually happens as a result of a lack of dependence upon God.  You stop reading His word.  You start skipping your devotions.  You hardly pray.  Start missing church services.  It’s usually characterized by a desire to keep a comfortable distance from God, while all the while claiming to be in fellowship with Him.  You want to be free to make your own decisions, and then that leads to neglecting the word of God so that you can operate independently without a guilty conscience.  

Thirdly, distancing yourself from God leads to a desire for acceptance by the world.  We see this illustrated in Peter’s example.  There is an unnamed disciple in the text, who John says was known by the High Priest’s family.  Most commentators believe that this is John himself.  And so John realizes that Peter is outside the door, and  he speaks to the girl watching the door so that Peter can come inside.  I’m not sure that Peter really wanted to come inside.  But nevertheless, he more or less had to come in when John came to the door.  

But where he ends up is not back beside Christ as you might think.  He hasn’t felt enough remorse over his earlier actions so that now he just wants to be next to Christ again.  No, he just sidles over to the fire where the enemies of Christ are hanging out getting warm.  So it’s apparent where his sentiments are at this point.  There are two sides in this mock trial.  There is Jesus all alone, and there is everyone else.  Peter gains entrance to the house, but he chooses sides with the enemy.  He wants to keep his distance from Christ.

We see that in Christianity all the time.  There is a crisis in one’s life, and so they feel remorse that they were caught up in some crime, or put in jail, or totaled the car, or messed up their marriage somehow, but rather than come all the way to Christ, the natural tendency is to come only so far.  To hang on to their autonomy, to hang on to their sin.  The choice Peter should have made was to come all the way to Christ, even to the death if necessary, which was what he had boasted earlier that he would do.

So of course in our text we see that the enemy recognizes Peter as having been with Christ.  So they start to call him out.  First the slave girl says, “You are not also one of this man’s disciples, are you?” And He said, “I am not.”  He denies being a disciple.  He doesn’t deny knowing Christ at this point, just denies being a disciple.  

I don’t think that Peter was afraid of this slave girl.  I think Peter suddenly is getting a clearer understanding of what Jesus has been saying all along about what it really means to be a disciple, to  suffer for Him.  I think it was easier being a disciple when they had this miraculous power to call down fire from heaven or cast out demons.  But now this hour belonged to the power of darkness.  And in this hour he begins to remember  how Jesus had just told them they would be persecuted and killed for following Him.  It suddenly is no longer theoretical, but an immediate possibility.  And maybe he realizes at this point that this being an outcast from society, being persecuted, being publicly ostracized was going to be part of what it means to be a Christian.  And at that moment, he wasn’t sure that he really wanted to commit to that.  

So he chose friendship with the world, which Paul tells us is enmity with God.  He found himself at odds with Psalm 1:1 which says, “How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked,Nor stand in the path of sinners, Nor sit in the seat of scoffers!”  

Acting in your own wisdom results in distancing yourself from God, which leads to a desire for acceptance from the world.  And we see that all the time in the church today among Christians.  Who at some point, come to realize that following Christ completely and being stedfast to the truth of God puts them in opposition to the world. It’s makes us an outcast, a fool for Christ. So  to appease the world we want to soften our stance on things that the Bible speaks clearly about.  We start to accept the dictates of the culture, because if we spoke out about adultery or homosexuality or evolution or a host of other subjects then we would become ostracized in our communities.  We could lose our job.  We might get “unfriended” on face book. We might get laughed at in school.  

And before we know it, we have moved from walking according to the counsel of the wicked to standing in the path of sinners, and before we are done we end up sitting down with the scoffers.  We find ourselves like Lot, who moved from living in the country near  the city of Sodom to living next to it, to finally moving downtown.  On the road to apostasy you get comfortable with the world, and uncomfortable with discipleship.  So you move further and further towards apostasy.  When you start to accommodate the world’s views in one area, it leads to another area, and soon it like yeast in a lump of dough it corrupts completely.

That takes us to the final point, which is a desire to be accepted by the world leads to blasphemy and denial of the truth.  Peter finds himself getting warm by the fire.  Notice that John repeats that twice in vs 18 and 25.  That accommodation of Christ’s enemies leads to Peter denying the Lord three times.  You will remember that Jesus prophesied that before the night was over Peter would deny Him three times.  Peter had denied such a possibility vigorously.  Once again you see this disregard of God’s word.  We think we can disregard God’s word with impunity.  But we cannot.  If the word of God convicts you, then you need to repent and ask God to forgive you.  Because when you disregard the conviction of the Spirit of God through the word of God your heart becomes hardened, and you give the devil an opportunity to destroy you.

In his later years, Peter illustrated that he come to appreciate the schemes of the devil and how he uses such things to take you down.  Peter writes in 1Peter 5:8, “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”  But at the point in our story, Peter had not learned that lesson yet. He thought he was good, he was strong, he could handle things himself.  But in fact, Jesus had warned Peter earlier that Satan had demanded permission to sift him like wheat.

Peter didn’t believe that he was weak, however.  He was confident that he could stand up to the devil’s temptations.  Peter exhibited overconfidence in himself, and a lack of confidence in God.  It would have been good for him to know  1Cor. 10:12 which says, “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall.”  

Well, as we see here, one denial of the truth leads to another lie, which leads to yet another lie. That’s the way sin is.  A little leaven soon leavens the whole lump.  And so we see Peter get deeper and deeper into sin, until he ends up not only denying Christ, but blaspheming and cursing in order to prove himself not a friend of Christ.  It’s really just incredible to watch the fall of Peter.

John 18:25 “Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. So they said to him, “You are not also one of His disciples, are you?” He denied it, and said, “I am not.” One of the slaves of the high priest, being a relative of the one whose ear Peter cut off, *said, “Did I not see you in the garden with Him?” Peter then denied it again.  (Matthew 26 tells us that Peter denied it with an oath, and then when asked again he resorted to cursing,)  and immediately a rooster crowed.

Most of us when confronted with the possibility that we would deny Christ would protest as Peter did that we would die before denying Him.  But that is in theory.  In actuality, it doesn’t often go the way we think it might.  Satan gets us to deny Him first by denying the Lord’s power in favor of our own.  We do it our way, kind of like Frank Sinatra.  We try to make it look like we are doing it for the Lord, but the bottom line is we want to deny Christ control over our lives and want to exercise our will and wisdom.  That leads to further distance from God, as we think we are doing fine, and don’t really need to depend daily upon God.  Skipping devotions or prayer time or church time becomes more commonplace as everything else starts to take precedence over the things of God. And that distance from God leads to a desire to find acceptance from the world.  Maybe that is even our original motivation.  We like the acclaim of men, so we seek out ways of pleasing the world, rather than pleasing God.  And then finally, that leads to down right denial of Christ.  

Oh, we may not be cursing God, or uttering blasphemies directed towards Christ directly, but in many ways I’m afraid we deny Christ in our relationship with Him, in His Lordship over us, we deny Him control over our lives, and we don’t trust Him to take care of us.  And if we don’t turn and repent of such things, it can lead us into outright apostasy.  We end up denying the truth of God.  We deny the truth of God’s word.  We fail to stand up for Christ when He is attacked by the world.  

I think the lesson to be learned from this story is that if apostasy can happen to Peter it can happen to the best of us.  Because, contrary to the way many portray Peter, I believe Peter was the best of us.  I believe he was passionate about following the Lord.  He loved the Lord.  He was faithful to the Lord.  He was an intimate friend of the Lord.  And yet, he fell from faith in denying Christ three times on the night of His crucifixion.  It is a tragedy that is possible for all of us.  And many of us have already done as bad if not worse at some point in our lives.  I know I have.  

But like Peter, I am a child of God.  Thank God my disobedience and denial of my Lord does not negate the fact that I am His child.  God is a God of restoration.  He came to seek and to save those that are lost.  And just as Christ made a point to meet with Peter specifically after His resurrection and reconcile Peter to Himself, so He will do with you and with me if we are truly His people and we are willing to repent.  If you don’t repent, Satan will use your rebellion to try to destroy you.  But if you turn back to God, He will heal you and restore you.

In Peter’s case, not only did Christ reconcile with Peter, but He still used Peter to be the foundation of the church.  Peter’s past mistakes did not disqualify him, but once he was reconciled to Christ he was used as the chief apostle of His church.  God has a plan to use us, even when we have been broken and beaten up by the devil and by failures.  The key is we learn to trust God, to let Him have control of our life, and we don’t trust in our own strength or wisdom, but trust in the word of God.  

Fight or flight, John 18:1-11

My message today is titled, “Fight or Flight.” And I hope that the reason for that being so named would be evident from the content of the verses we just read.  On the one hand we know from this text and the other gospels that all the disciples fled as a result of this incident, and on the other hand we see Simon Peter trying to put up a fight by taking out his sword and cutting of the ear of the high priest’s servant. Hence I have called it, Fight or Flight.  

Psychologists tell us that fight or flight is associated with a physiological reaction which occurs in humans or animals in response to a perceived harmful attack, or threat to survival. It is an automatic, instinctive response from our nervous system that activates our physical muscular system in order to help us survive.  It is natural.  It is instinctive.  It is normal.  But in the realm of the spiritual that which is natural and physical is not necessarily the kind of reaction that is in alignment with God’s purposes.

And we find that natural vs spiritual response illustrated in this text.  The disciple’s reaction to the mob coming to arrest Jesus was pretty normal.  It was a natural reaction.  Some fled, and some attempted to fight.  That is the way the body is engineered.  We are told in Mark 14 that even as the disciples fled, one  young man was caught and he slipped out of his clothes and ran away naked.  And of course, we know what Peter did.  He drew a sword to defend Christ.  He was going to fight the spiritual battle in his own strength, with his skill and determination.

I think that the church is often guilty of similar responses as we try to find our way in a hostile world.  We tend to try to use human ingenuity to accomplish spiritual goals.  But when we do so we fail to apply Ephesians 6 which we studied not long ago in our Wednesday evening Bible studies, which said we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers in the heavenly places.  

Jesus made the same principle clear in this chapter, in vs 36. Jesus answered to Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.”  So if as Jesus indicates, our kingdom is spiritual, not physical, and our enemies are spiritual and not physical, then it stands to reason that the church’s strategies must be spiritual and not physical.

So Jesus and the disciples climb the Mount of Olives to engage in a spiritual battle, the battle of the will of man. It was in the Garden of Eden that man first encountered the spiritual warfare with the enemy of his soul. There the battle with Satan was lost by man, there he forfeited the rights of the earth over to Satan by yielding his will to Satan's will. Now Jesus enters another garden to do battle with Satan. The issue again is God's will versus the will of Satan.

But the disciples react in the flesh instead of according to the Spirit.  So Christ rebukes Peter in vs.11 saying, “Put the sword into the sheath; the cup which the Father has given Me, shall I not drink it?”  The Lord Jesus had known ahead of time how all this was going to come about.  He knew that Judas had planned to betray Him there.  And yet He did not try to avoid arrest  by fleeing from the soldiers or by planning a defense.  Instead, we are told that Jesus went boldly out to meet the mob.  I’m sure it would have been possible for Jesus to have easily eluded them in the dark in this olive grove.  But that wasn’t the Father’s will.  And Jesus had prayed in the prayer recorded in Luke 22 that He was concerned that the Father’s will be done, and not His own.

John’s record of this time in the Garden of Gethsemane is selective.  He doesn’t make an attempt to mention a lot of what the other gospel writer’s have already written about. Out of all the events that transpired in the garden, John emphasizes the fact that Jesus initiates His own capture. He doesn’t mention the night spent in prayer, or the sweat drops of blood that Christ spilled as He prayed.  He doesn’t mention the disciples falling asleep.  He doesn’t mention Judas’s kiss of betrayal.  And what we can deduce from that is that what John does record is to illustrate certain facts that he felt served his greater purpose. As he said in chapter 20 vs.30, “Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.”  So John emphasizes that Jesus went boldly forth to offer Himself as a sacrifice by doing the will of the Father

That sacrificial love is illustrated in vs.8, in which Jesus says in effect, “Take Me, and let these go.”  That is the same sacrificial love that takes Jesus to the cross for us all. In bearing our judgment for sin, He said the same thing to the Father's justice.  “Take Me, and let these people go.”

So what John has given us is selected to teach us certain truths.  Now there are many applications that one could get from this passage.  But there is one particular application that I would like to make, which may seem like a stretch perhaps, but which I think is appropriate. Rather than doing my normal exegesis of each verse, I want to use this text to make an application that I feel God has laid on my heart this morning; and that is the purpose of the church.  I see in this situation an illustration of how the church is to respond to the demands of  a hostile culture.  

Now I feel this application is  justified because these 11 disciples represent the church.  We know from other scriptures, particularly Ephesians 2:20, that the apostles are the foundation of the church.  And at this point there is very little else but the foundation.  Christ has spent the last three years building the foundation, teaching the disciples concerning the kingdom of God.  

You will remember that Jesus said to Peter in Matthew 16:18, “I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it.”  So the disciples were the foundation stones upon which Christ would build His  church, and Christ is the cornerstone.  But the main point I want to emphasize is they are the church at that point.  Eleven guys, and they have all sorts of shortcomings, and they are facing all sorts of challenges, and their response is often completely wrong and yet Christ has chosen them to be the foundation of His church.  

So the Lord will use this situation and others like it to teach them so that when Jesus is no longer with them in person, they will know how to lead the church and so that the church will not only survive, but thrive.  The disciples will learn from even their failures how to continue Christ’s ministry.

On this particular night, it must seem to the disciples that the gates of hell are prevailing against the church. And so while Peter attempts to take matters into his own hands, and the other disciples flee into the darkness, Jesus stands firm knowing that He is acting according to the Father’s will. 

However, notice that Jesus's promise to the church that the gates of hell will not prevail against it, is conditional.  His promise is conditional upon the fact that it has to be His church, and He has to be the builder of it.  If He is, then there is the promise that hell will not prevail against it.  But if it is not His church, and He is not the builder of it, then there is no such promise.

As a pastor, I am routinely asked from time to time about our plans for this church.  What are our goals?  What is our long term plan?  Where are we going with this thing?  I guess those are valid concerns.  But I can’t help but feel that they are often prompted by unbiblical expectations.  And that is because the Christian community today has a picture in their mind of what they think church should be, what the church should look like.  That vision may have been influenced by many factors, such as what seems to be working elsewhere, what church was like when they grew up, or what they’ve been told the church has to do to reach our modern culture.  

And I can tell you that from a pastor’s perspective that answering this question isn’t easy for me either.  There are dozens and dozens of books out there which purport to tell you how to build a church.  Or what a successful church should look like.  Rick Warren wrote a very popular book many years ago now which has had a tremendous impact on the modern evangelical movement, called “The Purpose Driven Church.”  There are a lot of things in that book that sound good.  But there are also some things that I feel are misdirected. Namely, that there is a formula, a tried and true business style model for how to build a successful church.

Whether Rick Warren intended to imply it or not, the average church pastor who uses that book as a template does so hoping that it will result in building a large church.  Because Rick Warren has a huge church and he used that formula.  And because large numbers are what practically everyone thinks is emblematic of a successful church.  How many people you have, how many Sunday morning services you conduct, what kind of programs you have and so forth indicates how successful you are.  

But for the most part I have eschewed such handbooks for church growth. Instead, about three years or so ago, or maybe longer than that now, I began a study in the book of Acts on Sunday mornings because I wanted to address some of these fundamental questions concerning the church.  And what better source is there to determine how God builds His church than to study the first church in Jerusalem from the book of Acts.  However, that was a long time ago, and some of you weren’t here at that time to benefit from that study.  

So I want to go back to Acts chapter 2 in order to refresh our minds.  If we are going to have a church which is Christ’s church, and which is built by God, which will stand against the gates of hell, then I can think of no better example than the church in chapter 2 of Acts which was birthed by the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.  And first of all we note that 3000 people were saved on the day of Pentecost.  That means that if you’re going to have a church that is built by God, and protected by God, then it must start with a saved congregation.  The church is the congregation of the saints.  

Church buildings that are filled with unsaved people aren’t actually Christ’s church. The people may be the social pillars of the community, they may have all the trappings of the church, they may look like what we think churches are supposed to look like, but if they are not made up of born again saints then they do not constitute the church according to God. That eliminates a whole lot of so called churches right there. Nice people practicing religion does not constitute a church.  People who have received and believed the truth of the gospel are granted righteousness, resulting in salvation. So a saved congregation is the first prerequisite.  

And then in Acts chapter 2 we find in one verse the purpose of the church, as designed by God, and given to us.  Acts 2:42 gives the divine blueprint they followed: “They were continually devoting themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” Those are the four essential elements that make up the actual function and life of the church.  

To be saved is to become a disciple of Christ.  That’s what Jesus’s mandate was to the apostles as recorded in Matthew 28:19. Go into all the world and make disciples. And a disciple is a learner, a student.  So then the first order of the church is to teach Christ’s doctrine. To teach Christians how to live as Christ would have us live according to what Christ had taught them. This was the primary responsibility of the apostles.  And in Ephesians we read that as the church goes forward, Christ gave to the church first apostles and prophets, then evangelists, and then pastor’s/teachers.  So if we are going to pattern ourselves according to God’s blueprint for the church, then the church must continually devote themselves to the teaching of the word of God.  And we do that not just so that we might have an intellectual knowledge of doctrine, but so that we might know how to live as Christ taught, and that we might be obedient to that truth.  That is sanctification, being saved, being conformed to the truth of God.

A godly church then is made up of saved people who apply themselves to the teaching of the word, and then are obedient to the word, so that they might be witnesses to the world.  The purpose of teaching is that we might be conformed to the image of Christ.  That we might become in practice like Christ.  We have become righteous by justification through Christ, now we must be sanctified in practice like Christ.  We must be obedient to what we are taught. It is to no advantage whatsoever if we meet to have what is called a worship service, but there is no evidence of the transforming power of God in our lives.  If the church is filled with people living in adultery, filled with people who are living in sin, who are still enslaved to sin, then what kind of witness is that to the world?  It’s a useless exercise in self righteous religion.  The purpose of the church is to make disciples that look like Christ and act like Christ as they live like Christ.

We conform to the image of Christ because He was conformed to the image of the Father.  He was obedient to the Father’s will.  Hebrews 5:8 says, “Although He was a Son, He learned obedience from the things which He suffered.”  That’s what Jesus was referring to in His rebuke of Peter.  He had prayed in the Garden in Matthew 26:39, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.”  He was apprehensive in His flesh, but when the mob came, Jesus was obedient to the Father’s will saying to Peter; “Put the sword into the sheath; the cup which the Father has given Me, shall I not drink it?”

Listen, we can learn from this example that God’s purposes are not always apparent to men because they are not according to the natural man.  His purposes do not always lead to our immediate exaltation.  His purposes sometimes takes us through thorny ways before we meet the joyful end. As the hymn writer says, 

“Be still, my soul; the Lord is on thy side;

Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;

Leave to thy God to order and provide;

In every change He faithful will remain.

Be still, my soul; thy best, thy heavenly, Friend

Through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.”

So the first priority of the church is continually devoting yourselves to the apostles teaching.  That’s the word of God.  Because the word of God has power to transform lives.  Programs don’t have that power.  Music doesn’t necessarily have that power. Activities and outreaches don’t have that power.  But God’s word is powerful and sharper than a two edges sword, able to pierce the heart and soul, and reveal the inner thoughts and intents of the heart.  

Now I don’t want to neglect the other three essentials of the church; fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayer.  But the teaching of the word is what is the priority, and then fellowship comes from the sense of unity we have in the truth.  Our church name is the Beach Fellowship.  It means communion, with God first and then with one another in the truth of God.  We talked about that last week; Christ prayed for unity.  And we discovered that unity is found in the truth.  Not in organizations, but in truth.  

And then the breaking of bread could be referring to the Lord’s Supper.  But in all likelihood it was just as simple as the daily taking of meals together.  Vs.46 says they were breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart.” Eating and sharing together is a basic form of fellowship.  That’s why we have dinner every Wednesday night before Bible study.  We believe it promotes fellowship.  It is sharing in the physical comforts to meet physical needs, so that we might be able to reach spiritual needs. 

And of course prayer is the last vitally important component.  I spoke about prayer at the beginning of chapter 17.  And for three weeks we studied Christ’s prayer as a template for our own.  As I said then, if we are a praying church, then all the other disciplines of the church would be elevated.  But even in prayer, it must be in truth.  Prayer must be grounded on Biblical truth, or it is not effective prayer.

When you have those four vital aspects of the church in effect, then you will see the result noted in Acts 2:43 which says, “everyone had a sense of awe and many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles.” Though we no longer see the same kind of miracles and wonders of the apostolic times, God’s power still remains on display. What could be more miraculous than giving life to people who are dead in sin? He heals people of their hurts, puts broken homes back together, and brings people out of the bondage of sin to Christ. In short, He transforms lives. When the church follows God’s design, He will do marvelous and powerful things in individual lives before a watching world.

But it has to start with a saved congregation who submit to the teaching of the word of God and then are obedient to the will of God in their daily lives.  Even though many times in the Jerusalem church to obey God meant that they would experience suffering.  We too suffer many times if we are going to be obedient to God.  We suffer perhaps the loss of a job which does not honor God.  Or we suffer the loss of friendships that are of the world or that are ungodly associations.  There are lots of ways that we might suffer, but through thorny ways, God leads us to a joyful end.

The church that is willing to suffer with Christ is a church that experiences a sense of awe or reverence for the Lord.  That’s what is meant by they felt a sense of awe.  It doesn’t mean they were oohing and ahhing over the drama of the  miracles.  It means that they felt a holy reverence for the Lord.  They had a reverence for the holiness of God.  And if you read further in Acts, you will see the Lord’s response against Ananias and Sapphira who did not revere the Lord as holy nor His apostles.  So God struck them dead in the middle of the church because God desires reverence.

And then there is one more point that I would like to make from the example given to us in Acts.  It says in Acts 2:47  that “the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved.”  If you want a formula for success in the church there it is.  You start with God saving men and women, and then the church being transformed and sanctified by the teaching of the word of God, add fellowship and prayer and then you add to that the reverence for the holiness of the Lord, and you end up with God adding to the church day by day those that were being saved. That’s God’s church growth plan.  

It has nothing to do with building projects.  It has nothing to do with appointing committees or Sunday School directors.  It has everything to do with being saved according to the truth, then  taught the truth of the word and then being obedient to it and living it out in the community.

Listen, I don’t think I need to belabor this point this morning.  I’m convinced most of you are here today because you want to follow Christ’s teaching.  You want to be transformed, to be set free, and to be a witness to the world of the saving power of Christ.  But neither do I want you to be discouraged or distracted by what the world might tell you is important.  The disciples acted on their instincts, they acted in their own strength, and they acted out of an emotional, natural response.  And they found themselves at odds with the purposes of God.  After the resurrection, Jesus will spend the next 40 days to help them understand the principles that He had been teaching them so that they would be ready to take charge of His church when He left to go back to His Father.

But we have an advantage that they didn’t have. We have the advantage of learning from their mistakes.  We have the advantage of the complete revelation of God right in our hands.  So the teaching of the word is the first priority of this church.  Because it is everything we need for life and happiness.   As 2Timothy 3:16 says, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.”  

Let’s not forsake the assembling of ourselves together as the scriptures tell us, and let us continually devote ourselves to the teaching of the word of God through pastors/teachers “for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.”  That is how the church is supposed to look.  That is the plan of God for the church.  That we all grow to mature men and women, being conformed  to the full measure of the image of Christ.  

Christ’s prayer for unity, John 17:20-26

For the last few weeks we have been studying the prayer of Jesus on the night before His crucifixion.  And as we have noted, there are three levels to His prayer; He prays first for Himself, then for His disciples, and then for those who will be saved in the future (that is the church at large).  But in addition to that purpose, there is an underlying application to His prayer, which is not only for our edification, but for our education.  We can learn from Christ how to pray effectively in a way that will please God, and we can learn doctrinal truth.  We have focused on both of those perspectives in past messages.

This week, in addition to studying what the Lord is praying concerning us, we are going to examine the underlying doctrine of Christ’s prayer.  And if I had to pick one word to encapsulate the doctrine of Christ’s prayer it would have to be the word “truth.”  Truth is the key doctrine emphasized in Christ’s prayer.  And as such, truth must be the foundation of our prayers.  Our prayers have to be grounded in the truth, or they will be of no avail.  As Jesus told us in chapter 4 vs 24, “God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”  

Even though the word “truth” is only mentioned specifically in vs 17,  it’s theme is found throughout all of the prayer.  In the first section Jesus is the manifestation of the truth.  That produces sanctification through the truth in the second section, which in turn produces unification in the truth in the final section which we are looking at today.  So as we look at Christ’s specific prayer for the church, we see that her unity is His predominate concern.

Jesus mentions unity three times, in verse 21, verse 22, verse 23, each time praying that we might be one. So unity is obviously the theme of the conclusion of Christ’s prayer.  And I would suggest that He makes four points in reference to the unity of the church that I would like to look at today; unity in  congregation, unity in glorification, unity in consummation, and unity in manifestation.  

First let’s look at Jesus’s prayer for unity in congregation.  I have used congregation as a substitute for the church.  The church is a congregation of the saints; whether local or universal.  That is who we are, and that is who Christ prays for at this point, saying, “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word.”  So He is speaking to all those who will believe as a result of the apostle’s doctrine.  The apostles are the foundation of the church in the sense that what they taught and wrote concerning Christ’s teaching is the truth by which we are saved.  They established the doctrine of the church.

So notice that Jesus says unity in the church is established by belief in the word.  This is immensely important. Unity must never come at the expense of the truth of God’s word. Unity is not found in an ecclesiastical organization or denomination, but only in the word of God, and as the church is true to the word.  The unity of the church then is spiritual, not necessarily physical. Those that are in agreement with the truth of God are one with God and thus one body of Christ.  There may be different parts of the body, but all are one spiritual body. 

However, when a church strays from the truth, then we are under no compulsion to be unified with it, but rather we are actually commanded to break fellowship in order to protect the truth. Jude warns of this deception that entered the church in Jude 1:3, “Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints. For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand [fn]marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”

And to counter that corruption from within Paul wrote in  1Cor. 5:11, “But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is an immoral person, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or a swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? But those who are outside, God judges. REMOVE THE WICKED MAN FROM AMONG YOURSELVES.”  

I don’t know if you noticed an article in the news last week about a certain Baptist church in South Carolina.  Some years ago they made the decision to break away from the Southern Baptist Convention primarily because they wanted to accommodate the practice of ordaining women to the pastorate.  And so they broke away and for a few years had a woman pastor.  A deliberate affront to the truth of God’s word though always brings with it a continual hardening, which often results in further apostasy.  And in their case, that culminated last week with the church appointing a married lesbian couple to be the pastors of their congregation.  With such churches we cannot be unified.  We must in fact rebuke such who go against the clear teaching of the word in favor of the culture.  The culture will change with the times, but the word of God endures forever unchanging. 

So the unity of church is established by salvation, and salvation comes through the word of God.  Paul said in Romans 10:17, “So faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”  We are saved by the apostle’s doctrine which has been written for us as the scriptures.  There is no other way to saving faith.  Nature may teach us enough about God according to Romans 1:20 to incriminate us, but not enough to save us.  There must be the preaching of the word of God. 1Cor. 1:21 “For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”

And unity comes through the word, so that the world might know the truth of Jesus Christ.  He continues in vs.21, “that they may all be one; even 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 sent Me.”  Our unity then is not for purposes of organization, but for the preservation of the truth, that the world might know the truth of Jesus Christ; that He is One with God, and that salvation comes through His name alone.  There is salvation in none other.  Jesus said, “I am the way the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except by Me.”

Secondly, Jesus prays that the church might have unity in glorification.  Vs.22, “The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one.”   What is the glory that was given to Christ from God? I have read a lot of suggestions as to what glory represents, but I would suggest that it is the truth of God.  That is Christ’s glory; that He was God and was sent from God. And that is the glory of the truth that He gave to the apostles. 

John affirms this glory in  John 1:14 saying, “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.”  So Jesus goes on to say that when they receive that glory of the truth, they will be “perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.”  Perfected means completed.  Our unity with God is completed when we know the truth of God in Jesus Christ.  And when we are complete in our knowledge of the truth, then we can fulfill the mission of the church, which is to go into all the world and make disciples.  When we know the truth about Christ, then we can make Him known to the world, that the world might come to a saving knowledge of God.

Notice that twice Jesus prays the same phrase; vs 21, “so that the world may believe that You sent Me.”  And then in vs 22, “so that the world may know that You sent Me.”  This is obviously important to Christ, that the world would come to know that He was sent from God to save the world from sin. That He was God come in human flesh to be our substitute as a sacrifice for sin. This is the core of the gospel.  “For God so loved the world, that He gave HIs only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” This is God’s love for the world; that through faith in Christ they might be saved from sin and death. 

This truth is worth dying for.  Did you ever realize that Christ died for telling that truth? How then can we diminish what Christ died to prove?  The truth is obviously important to God.  And the truth is that God sent Jesus to die for our sins that we might be saved from sin and death.  Our job is to make that truth known.  That is job one of the church.  That is our unifying mission. And any so called church that diminishes the gospel of Jesus Christ or His deity cannot be unified with His church.

Thirdly, Jesus prays that the church might have unity in consummation of His kingdom.  If you were at our Wednesday night Bible study then you will remember that I spoke of the inauguration and the consummation of the Kingdom of God.  We live in  the time between the inauguration and the consummation.  Jesus here prays that we may see His consummation of the Kingdom. Vs.24, “Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.”  

Jesus was going away back to the Father.  He has told them this over and over again.  In fact, at the beginning of the Upper Room Discourse He said, “Let not your heart be troubled: you believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there you may be also.” (John 14:1)

So what Jesus is praying for is that the church would be united with Him in heaven, that they might see His glory, even the glory which He had before the world began.  The disciples had come to know a veiled glory, but He desires that we might know His full glory. He is speaking of His second coming when every eye will see Him coming in the clouds with glory.  And when we see Him in glory, it will result in our glorification.  The children of God will be given new bodies like God.  As John describes for us in 1John 3:2, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.”

When we see Him come in the consummation of His Kingdom, we are going to be given new bodies like Him.  We are going to be seated on thrones with Him.  We will share in His glory.  And then the bride of Christ will be joined to Christ in a celestial union the likes of which our earthly marriages are but a pale shadow.  This union with Christ at His consummation is what we call heaven.  Heaven is an actual place, but more importantly it is a perpetual state of being. We will be with Him, and as such be like Him, and share in His glory.

I want to give you a preview of what we will be talking about eventually in our study of Revelation on Wednesday nights.  When most people think of heaven, they think of the streets of gold, and the pearly gates.  Such themes are the subject of the description given to us in Revelation chapter 21.  

But if you will turn there for a moment I want to show you something interesting.  Revelation 21:1-3, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth passed away, and there is no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne, saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them.” 

Then skip down to vs.9: Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and spoke with me, saying, ‘Come here, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.’ And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.”  So I want you to notice that twice in this passage the New Jerusalem, that city which we think of as heaven, is said to be the bride of Christ, which we know from Ephesians 5 in particular and other places is a way of referring to the church.  Now I will save the full exegesis of those verses for the future, but suffice it to say that our union with Christ will be as His bride, and that constitutes heaven.  

Thus Paul could say, “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.”  “And that is ever more better.”  I believe this is the consummation of the Kingdom when Christ will return for HIs bride and take us to be with Him and thus will ever be with the Lord according to 1Thessalonians 4.  

But before we leave Revelation 21, let me show you one other thing.  Look at vs.14, “And the wall of the city had twelve foundation stones, and on them were the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.”  Note how synchronistic that is with Ephesians 2:20 which in speaking of the church says it is  “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone.”  That is what Jesus has been praying for in this prayer of John 17, that those who believe in the Lord as a result of the apostle’s doctrine would come to know the fullness of the truth of Christ, and being unified with Him in doctrine, we will one day be unified with Him in the consummation of the Kingdom.  And then we will share in His glory, for we shall be like Him, having seen Him as He is.

The fourth and final thing that Jesus prays for here for the church is that we might know unity in manifestation.  Look at vs.25,26; “O righteous Father, although the world has not known You, yet I have known You; and these have known that You sent Me; and I have made Your name known to them, and will make it known, so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”  When we are unified with Him in truth, then we will be unified with Him in presence, in HIs manifestation to us both in revelation and incarnation.  

But first I want you to point out here that Jesus calls His Father righteous. It’s interesting that Jesus ascribes two characteristics to God the Father in His prayer.  The first is in vs 11, Jesus calls Him Holy Father.  And now in vs25, Jesus calls Him Righteous Father.  Holy and righteous, two great distinctives of God the Father.  These are the two characteristics that are important to Christ.  Not the only characteristics that are important.  He goes on to speak of the love that God has for Him and for the church.  But above all else, God is holy and righteous.  God is also just, He is merciful, He is compassionate, His is loving, He is wrathful, He is Mighty, He is awesome in power.  There are a multitude of characteristics of God.  But I would say that the danger in the church today is that we want to boil down God to one characteristic.  Rob Bell says that God is love and that one characteristic eclipses all other considerations of God.  So that the love of God overshadows the righteousness of God. Therefore God will not send anyone to hell, he says, because love overwhelms all of God’s other distinctives of His character. He is not concerned about righteousness any more.  But notice Christ includes both righteousness and love.  God’s righteousness demands justice and consequently punishment for sin, but God’s love requires that He substitutes Christ to be punished on our behalf.  

So Jesus isn’t teaching some watered down version of the gospel.  Jesus goes on to say that the world does not know the Father.  And I would suggest that is because they aren’t concerned about knowing the truth of God, nor the word of God.  They have devised notions about God according to their image of what is right or correct in light of the present culture.  But God is unchanging.  He is God from everlasting.  He must be worshipped in truth, or He will not be known at all. So then intimacy with God is predicated upon fidelity to the truth of God, of which the pillars are righteousness and holiness.

As the bride of Christ we must be concerned about righteousness and holiness.  Because God is concerned about righteousness and holiness.Jesus said if you love Me you will keep My commandments.  That is God’s standard for righteousness.  If God did not care about righteousness and holiness then the death of Jesus Christ was a great tragedy and a waste.  It need not have happened at all.  But we know that it was not a tragedy, but a triumph.  Christ died to take away the penalty of sin, God’s punishment for an affront to His righteousness.  Now in return, we are to be as commanded in the scriptures such as 1Peter 1:16 to be holy, even as He is holy. 

But though the world doesn’t know God, Jesus says these disciples do know Him, and because they know the truth of God, and know that Jesus is the manifestation of the righteousness of God, then He will make God ever more known to them.  Listen, that is speaking of what I have said many times from this pulpit.  And that is that the revelation of truth is progressive.  As we are obedient to the truth given, then the Lord will give us more truth.  When we keep the truth of God as revealed through His word, then He will lead us into more truth.  He will lead us into intimacy with God, that we might know the love of God.  That is the intimacy of the bride of Christ with the bridegroom; that we might share the love of God.  

And that love of God towards us is manifested by the Spirit of God who indwells us. In that sense we share in the incarnation of Christ, in that the Spirit of God dwells in His people, and we are His temple. Vs.26, “so that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.”  You cannot know intimacy with God more than that, can you?  To know God,  to know the love of God and to know the presence of God.  I said a few weeks ago, that the greatest thing in the world is to know God and to be known of God.  And we can know God because we have the Spirit of God in us, to lead us and guide us into the truth of God.

The Spirit of God is given to us that we might know God intimately, and that we might do the works of God.  He is given that He might write the laws of God upon our hearts according to Hebrews 10:16.  That the truth of God is manifested within us by the Spirit of God who is in us. The Spirit conforms us to the image of God from the inside out.

I had some woman call me last week from a  church down on the southern part of the Eastern Shore, and she identified herself as the pastor.  She said she had come across a young man who had been saved, but wasn’t in a church, yet he lived in our area.  And so she wanted to recommend him to a good church up here.  But before she could recommend us to him, she wanted to know if we were a spirit filled church.  Of course, I said we were.  Otherwise, we are not saved.  But I knew what she was actually getting at.  She wanted to know if we practiced speaking in tongues and other gifts of the Spirit.  To her, that was the critical thing.  So much so that I believe after talking a while she had decided not to recommend him to this church.

Listen, the defining characteristic that Christ desires for HIs bride is not that we all speak in tongues, or that we have some sort of emotional experience which may or may not be in keeping with the truth of scripture.  But the vital characteristic of the church is that we be in union with the truth of the word of God.  The Spirit of God is given to us that we might know the truth, and that we might have the truth written in our hearts, so that we might have the power within us to work the works of God. The Spirit is in us, so that we might do the work of Christ, which was to manifest the truth of God to the world.  That is why Jesus calls Him the Spirit of Truth.  

And that is why Jesus prays that the church will know the truth, and that truth will produce unity in  congregation, unity in glorification, unity in consummation, and unity in manifestation.  I pray that you know God in truth.  I pray that you have come to believe in the truth of God manifested in Jesus Christ, and having believed in Him for salvation, you have been born again, and are the dwelling place of the Spirit of the Lord.  I pray that you will come to know God more fully, and that you will become complete in Christ, as you are conformed to His image.  That one day, when Jesus Christ returns for His bride, He might find you ready and waiting, dressed in the spotless robes which were provided by Christ’s righteousness for us, and that you might enter into the marriage supper of the Lamb in the presence of the Lord and there be forever with the Lord.