Becoming An Authentic Christian

Sermon Date 02-24-2013 Becoming An Authentic Christian (Chuck Gohn)

Well, good morning. I don’t know what to do without technology. This is making me nervous. I really don’t. You guys are going actually open your bibles today. Amen. I got a quick question, though. How many of you attended private school as a child, like a Catholic school, parochial school. Anybody? Quite a number of you. And the rest, I assume, attended some sort of a public school, correct? And I actually attended both. I attended a public school, I think, kindergarten and first grade, and then second, third, and fourth I went to Catholic school at St. Ann’s and then I went back, so I was really kind of a mixed-up kid. Consequently, I had kind of a limited view of school. In my mind, there was basically Catholic school or public school. And that limited view of school carried out into kind of a limited view of religion, at least until somebody corrected me. I remember one day I was at a store, and I think I was about 10 years old, and somebody was talking about religion or something like that, and I, seeking to expound on my knowledge, I basically asked somebody, “So what are you, are you Catholic or are you public?” At that point, the person proceeded to tell me there is more than Catholic and public out there. She wasn’t public, she was Protestant.

Anyways, as we know, there are a lot of different denominations. Many, many denominations. In fact, we just look around this community, we see quite a bit. We can see the Presbyterians obviously, the Methodists, the Catholics, and the Baptists, and once in a while you will see a group of Lutherans walking by or something like that. So they are all over the place here, many different denominations. The problem with denominations, as some of you know, is that it tends to put up walls between us. The walls between Christians. As we think about what God wanted, I think he is in the process of beginning to come up with a new type of church, a church that is not bounded by walls. In many ways, a church that reflects the desire of Jesus as expressed in what is referred to as Jesus’ high priestly prayer that is found in the Book of John Chapter 17, Verse 20. So if you want to open your bibles to John 17:20. As many of you know, if you have been here for a while, we are going through the core values of worship, discipleship, outreach, and community. Today, we are swinging back around and talking about community. Again, when I refer to community, I am not talking about the larger community outside, I am talking about the community that we call the church. A community that is made up of what we call the Global Church, the Big Church, the Church made up of all Christians everywhere, as well as the many, many, many local manifestations of the Church. There are many, many denominations. I recently read there was like 41,000 denominations. I couldn’t believe 41,000. I mean takes in a count of a lot of different smaller denominations. But anyway, I suspect that that is not what Jesus had in mind when he began to think about the church starting following his resurrection. The church that Christ had in mind was one church, a unity of church, one church fully submitted to the Triune in God in worship. A church that may be diverse but also a church that is united in submission and worship to the one God. That is what we are going to look at today.

Looking at this particular passage, starting in John 17:20. A little bit of background. Now this is referred to as Jesus’ high priestly prayer, and it really starts at the beginning of Chapter 17, Chapter 1. It is a very long prayer of Jesus that he gave on the night before his crucifixion. It is really broken down into three parts. The first part is often referred to as Jesus’ prayer for himself. So the first five verses, Jesus is actually making a prayer to the Father for himself. And that prayer is really quite simple. It is just that he would be glorified just like he was glorified before the world began. In other words, as we know, if we look at the Book of Philippians, it speaks to the idea of how Jesus through the incarnation, through taking on flesh, set aside his heavenly glory and took on human flesh. He became a man. While he was down here, he did work for the Father. His work was that he would begin to let people know about the Father and specifically that there is no way through the Father but through Him, and it talks about that in John 14:6, I believe, that “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” and no one goes to the Father except through him. And so his work was being completed, and so basically what he was saying, let me have the glory back that I had before the world even began. So that is Jesus’ first request.