Bible Text: John 17:20-26 | Preacher: Lieutenant Rob Westwood-Payne | Series: Full Measure | In this Salvation Army mission sermon online, we are challenged to get out from behind closed doors and give ourselves on the frontline.

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The Church is not meant to be kept under wraps

A corps that settles in its citadel or barracks behind closed doors, really isn’t a Salvation Army Corps. It’s not much use. It doesn’t fulfil its vital mission. We need to remind ourselves that our place is out there on the frontline.

John 17:20-26, NIVUK

Jesus prays for all believers

20 ‘My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one – 23 I in them and you in me – so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

24 ‘Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.

25 ‘Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me. 26 I have made you[a] known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.’

Jesus: The Incarnation of God

John 17:26 ESV

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.”

Jesus came in incarnation to reveal who God was, in his glory, and to make his death powerful to save us from our sin and wrongdoing.

As this Salvation Army mission sermon online reminds us, he has shown us what it is like to be wholly dependent on God. Christ’s example throughout his life is one wholly focused on doing what the Father wills, so desiring to bring God glory through his living and working that it controls every aspect of his life.

Jesus’ life is a participation in the glory of God. (G.M. Burge)

The Church: The Incarnation of Jesus

John 17:22–23 ESV

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.

Here is what Jesus prays for the Church: that we might bear the Spirit of God. And that by bearing the Spirit of God we might also bear the call of God to the world. We are now the expression of the love and glory of God to the world.

The essence of Jesus’ vision for the church … is not a community that heals people just so that they will be whole (though healing is important); it is not a community that teaches so that people will be gratified by knowledge (though wisdom is valuable); it is not a community that evangelises so that it will grow its ranks (though its mission to the world is crucial). The church is a community that invites people to touch the glory of God, to be changed by it, and to bear it to the world. (G.M. Burge)

Be incarnational

We are called to be part of that incarnational movement. Like Jesus we must “move into the neighbourhood”.

The world will get saved by Christian movements, not walled churches. (Commissioner Phil Needham).

What that means for the world

Nothing will open a person to the Gospel as much as in-the-world Christians looking enough like Jesus to make people curious and interested. Worldly holiness. (Commissioner Phil Needham)

We have a priceless gift to offer to the world.