Numbers 6:22-24 “The Lord said to Moses: Tell Aaron and his sons, ‘This is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them, The Lord bless you and keep you.’”

When your pastor says, “The Lord bless you and keep you,” it doesn’t mean “keep” in the sense of “retain possession.” The Lord certainly intends to do that, too. One of the big messages of your baptism is God saying, “This one belongs to me now, and if the devil wants him (or her) back, he is going to have to fight me for him.”

You remember Jesus’ promise as our Good Shepherd, “No one can snatch them out of my hands.” I have been saying to my wife for some time now that we need to go through our bedroom closet and decide what to keep and what to get rid of. The old favorite shirt that feels so comfortable but has gotten a little stained and threadbare–it’s probably time for that to go. But the high-school jacket celebrating our 1982 football state championship– that’s still a keeper. The Lord keeps us around not because of our superior condition or special accomplishments, but just because he loved and redeemed us.

That, however, is not the kind of “keep” in the blessing. “Protect” could be a useful translation, though perhaps a little limited. This is more than a promise of angels, or supernatural intervention to protect us from sickness, violence, or catastrophe. Maybe we could expand this “keeping” to “preserve and protect.”

The Lord promises to take care of our daily lives and provide for our daily needs, the kinds of things that keep us alive and functioning. In this sense you “keep” your car by changing the oil and filters on a regular basis, washing and waxing the body from time to time. You keep your houseplants by watering them regularly. In the same way the Lord keeps us by seeing to our feeding, maintenance, and protection, as evidenced by the fact that we are all here today reading these words.

But because some of our parts may be a little worn, and some of them outright broken, we are tempted to doubt these words from the blessing. We don’t sense that God has been “keeping” us when we struggle to make ends meet. Chronic health conditions, like the asthma or allergies that will never go away, the high blood pressure or diabetes that is hard to control, leave us feeling neglected. Never mind that the momentary financial struggle has been the opportunity to see more clearly that God takes care of us, not because we are so talented and work so hard, but because he is active in our lives and puts people in our lives who love us generously. Never mind that we live in an age of medical wonders, and the health issues we battle day today would have killed us long ago if we were born in an earlier century. We may not understand God’s choices for keeping us as he does. But it is godless unbelief, not faith, that denies or questions whether he keeps us at all.

This keeping is our Father’s work. It is evidence of his fatherly love, even in the forms we may find painful or difficult to understand. Remember how Jesus once described it to his disciples? “Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”

That is just what he does. Have no doubt. The Lord is blessing you as he fulfills his promise to keep you.

Psalm 127:1-2 “Unless the Lord builds the house, it’s builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain. In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat– for he grants sleep to those he loves.”

The world in which we live can give its favorites many things: power, wealth, distinction. The Lord gives sleep to those he loves. Does that sound like a chincy gift? Isn’t sleep free? Or have you lived long enough and experienced enough of life to know that the Lord’s gift of sleep is the real treasure here? If this were a Master Card commercial, “(The Lord) grants sleep to those he loves” would be the “priceless” part at the end. Why?

All of us experience some sleeplessness. A colicky baby, nerves before the big day, or an occasional case of indigestion can rob us of a night’s sleep.

Then there is the chronic sleeplessness that comes because we can find no peace. When we aren’t sure how we are going to make ends meet, sleep can be hard to find. The bills are piling up, job prospects are drying up, collection agencies are showing up, and our stress and anxiety is building up. The future’s uncertainties haunt our thoughts and plague our dreams. Sleep is elusive while we live in a constant state of tension.

But nothing makes it harder to sleep than a guilty conscience. King David once described the misery this way: “I am worn out from groaning; all night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears.” When we can find no peace with God, we can find no peace at all.

What if we could be sure he loves us? What if we could be sure that he forgives our sins? Then our consciences could be quiet. Then our worries about the future would be answered. Then we could lay our heads down on our pillows at night and sleep like a baby, because we could be sure that we were resting in his loving hands.

We don’t have to wonder whether or not we are those the Lord loves, to whom he gives the gift of peace and sleep. He came here to tell us himself– actually became human flesh so that we could see his love in action and hear it from his own lips. Jesus then took the sins that disturb our consciences and let them disturb him instead. He made our guilt his very own and took it all the way to the cross, where he gave his life to rid us of the curse once and for all. Now he lives again to run the universe for our benefit and assure us that when our eyes close in the sleep of death, they will open to a new day of life that never ends.

And do you notice that he does not say, “He grants sleep to those who are really good.” “He grants sleep to those who try really hard.” “He grants sleep to those who are better than others.” No, he grants sleep, he makes it his gift, to those he loves. It is available to all. It is yours right now by virtue of the fact that you are his children by faith. You know your sins are forgiven. You know that God is going to provide. You know the peace that can give you sweet dreams tonight and every night. So go ahead, and work hard. But know that God gives you peace, and sleep, as a gift of his love.

1 Corinthians 2:1-2 “When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.”

Not every good missionary is an outstanding public speaker. Paul realized it wasn’t his mastery of rhetoric and grammar and vocabulary, it wasn’t his ability to move a crowd to tears or laughter, that changed hearts.

In Paul’s day expert public speakers were highly thought of, especially in Greece and Rome. For many, they were one of the chief sources of entertainment. There was no television, of course, and even a book could cost as much as a house. A gifted speaker could draw an impressive audience and wield a powerful influence over his listeners, more so than today. Paul may have worked hard at it, but he wasn’t counting on superior speaking gifts to win the Corinthians to faith.

We want our message to be interesting and our worship to engage the people. But that is as much as entertainment and winning souls have to do each other. There are those who say we live in an entertainment age, and we need to put on a good show for those who walk through our doors. We certainly want to hold the attention of those who attend our churches, but the message can also disappear under the dazzle of clowns, balloons, and juggling acts. What works for people is a message that offers the straight stuff, not our ability to spiff it up for them.

Paul mentions another thing that appealed to the Greek residents of Corinth: wisdom.  The Greeks were thinkers. They thought about the meaning of life and the best way to live. They thought about the world in which they lived. They loved thinking so much that they actually looked down on those who worked hard for a living. They favored people who did nothing but sit around and think and talk.

Paul knew that in Jesus Christ he had much more to offer than all the solutions the thinkers of his day invented. The Corinthians had the Epicurean philosophers, whose motto was “eat, drink, and be merry.” So do we. This wisdom tells people that if you have problems, you can escape them in leisure, or perhaps a bottle of booze, a pipe, or syringe. These solve nothing, make problems worse, and drive practitioners further away from God and salvation.

Then there were the Stoics. Stoics were realists who believed people should accept the way things are and take responsibility for themselves. They resemble those who think science, education, or self-help books and counseling will solve all our problems. Those may be helpful. They aren’t bad. But they are not the ultimate solution.

You see, we know the difference between good and bad, right and wrong. The problem is that we still make the wrong choices anyway. The problem is sin. It doesn’t just make our lives miserable; it destroys them eternally. Paul’s solution was superior to “superior” worldly wisdom.

“For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” Jesus was the answer. Knowing him is everything people need to experience God’s power in their lives. Paul’s own appearance and life were in many ways rather ordinary. He admits, “I came to you in weakness and fear, with much trembling.” When he came to Corinth he was at a low point in his ministry. He had been chased out of Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea. They laughed him out of Athens. He suffered health problems that made him weak. Knowing Jesus Christ and him crucified didn’t remove all the problems in Paul’s life.

Nor will it for us. It doesn’t mean our problems suddenly vanish. In some ways our problems may multiply. Remember Jesus words in the Sermon on the Mount?  “Blessed are you when men insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.”

But knowing Jesus equips us to deal with the one great problem: our sin. You and I haven’t stopped sinning. But when we do, we have someone to whom we can go with them. When we confess them to Jesus, he carries them to the cross and disposes them there. We experience God’s power as he replaces sin and guilt with peace and joy. Knowing Jesus Christ and him crucified means knowing he has taken my place, paid for my sin with his blood, reconciled me to God, and carried me to the very doors of heaven. Jesus Christ and him crucified is power—not the kind that gives me control over other people or all the circumstances in my life; the kind that changes my heart and my eternity. It’s all we really need to know.

3 John 1:5-6 “Dear friend, you are faithful in what you are doing for the brothers, even though they are strangers to you. They have told the church about your love.”

We Christians don’t give the Apostle John’s third letter much attention. Chances are, you never memorized any passages from it. The whole thing is only 14 verses long. They form a personal letter from John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, to a dear friend, a lay person named Gaius. It seems Gaius had both a deep concern for the truth and a heart for mission work. If he did mission work himself, we don’t hear anything about it. Rather, John commends him for his faithful service at home. Gaius was supporting travelling missionaries by taking care of their day to day needs.  When they were in the area, he opened his home to them. When they left, he sent them off with food, money, or whatever else he could provide.

Gaius did this for them even though they were strangers. He may have known a few things about them. They had the Apostle John’s recommendation. They were full time workers in God’s Kingdom. He shared a common faith with them. But they were not people he knew deeply on a personal level.

We still work together in God’s Kingdom with this kind of faithful service at home. You likely support missionaries and teachers around the world through your gifts to your congregation, though you have never met most of them personally. They do the Lord’s work in places you and I are unable to go.

Sometimes it may pinch a little to support training schools and missionaries. But let’s not become so concerned about the work at home that we forget about spreading the Gospel around the world. Even in our mission work, a selfish spirit can creep in. We want to see big things at home. We want to be served at home. We feel less concern for billions of souls around the world who need the gospel, too. John would still say to Christians who support gospel workers they never met, “Dear friend, you are faithful in what you are doing for the brothers, even though they are strangers to you.”

John would say that especially because of what it reveals. “They have told the church about your love.” The men Gaius supported recognized it wasn’t mere duty or obligation that moved him to do so. This wasn’t a stunt to win them as friends or a ploy to make them indebted to him. He wasn’t trying to make himself look good in the church. Gaius’s support was a product of love. His faith was expressing itself in acts of love.

That is not a purely natural thing. Faithful support of the strangers spreading God’s love in other places isn’t the result of heredity. Merely educating people won’t make them so smart they choose to do this. Naturally selfish people don’t fork over their hard earned dollars to support people they have never heard of. They want to know, “What’s in it for me?”

That was never Jesus’ question. He simply loves us. He didn’t live among us because there was something in it for him. He didn’t trade places with us and die for our sins because it was the natural thing to do. It was purely an act of unselfish love. He doesn’t continue to forgiver all our sins every day because he is somehow indebted to us. The debt runs entirely the other way. Yet he freely and willingly loves and forgives.

This love has the power to take hold of us. It transforms and leads us to do things we otherwise would never do. Now that Jesus’ love has set up housekeeping in our hearts by faith, we live for him. Gaius knew Jesus’ love. It gave him such a love for the Gospel that he opened his house to strangers who were leading others to Christ. He supported them from his own pocket.

You and I know Jesus’ love. It leads us to look beyond the narrow confines of our church’s walls. We work together with sister churches across our country and around the world.  In doing so we are participating in a world-wide mission even from home. Serving and supporting such strangers makes us missionaries with them, working together for the truth.

Proverbs 3:5 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.”

Do you ever find what you think and what God says going in opposite directions? Sometimes we look at God’s way and think to ourselves, “That’s not going to work.”  Bible history is filled with examples: the people who lived in Noah’s neighborhood while he was building the ark; the children of Israel waiting on the shores of the Red Sea; the people of Jericho while the children of Israel were marching around their city walls each day; Jesus’ own disciples just before he took five little loaves of bread and two small fishes and started passing them out to over 5000 people. But God’s way does work, even when it seems to defy our common sense.

Sometimes we want what we want so badly that we tell ourselves, “It won’t hurt anything,” even when God warns us not to. Again, the Bible is full of examples: Adam and Eve and the forbidden fruit; Lot’s wife turning around to take a look back at Sodom and Gomorrah; Israel worshiping the golden calf at the foot of Mount Sinai; David committing adultery with Bathsheba. But ignoring God’s warnings always has consequences. We lose his blessings and invite his judgment– not just now, but forever.

This “Trust in the Lord” approach, then, will be tested in our own lives in many ways. If a financial crisis strikes, will you lean on your own understanding and give in to worry, or will you trust in the Lord and his promise to provide your daily bread? As you arrange your priorities, will you lean on your own understanding and arrange your life to maximize your personal comfort and enjoyment, or will you trust in the Lord and put him first in how you budget your time and other resources? As you raise your children will you lean on the understanding of so many others that you need to give them every toy and gadget, or participation in all the music or athletics they could ever want? Or will you trust in the Lord and make sure they receive God’s word above all else, and loving, godly discipline next to that?

The Lord has earned our trust in all these little details of our lives by his handling of the one great issue we had. If we were to lean on our own understanding in dealing with our sin, we would try to pay for it ourselves. We would try to earn God’s love and acceptance. And we would fail.

But the Lord has that covered for us, too. Who would have thought of asking God to save us from the sins we had committed against him? But that is just what he has done. Who would have thought of asking God to sacrifice the only Son he had to pay for those sins? But that is what Jesus was doing when he died on the cross. Who would have thought of asking God to make forgiveness and eternal life a free gift? But that is just the gift he has given to us.

The gift of God’s Son inspires us to trust in the Lord with all our heart, and lean on him, not just with our soul’s salvation, but in all the little details of life as well.

John 17:23b “May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

How do you introduce people to Jesus? That is a big question for Christian churches at a time when churches are shrinking. How do we get people to sit still and listen long enough for us to tell them the good news?

A few will let us approach them as strangers and tell them why we have interrupted their lives. Over the years my own congregation has done a lot of neighborhood canvassing. We have knocked on thousands of doors. Perhaps half the time someone answers the door. Perhaps half of them take our information, but only a few people are interested in a discussion about faith. This kind of approach can be useful, but the percentage of people who respond to it is very low.

People are more likely to listen to a friend or accept their invitation to church. Once they get there, a sense of love and unity can offer a powerful witness. Nicholas, a member of a sister congregation in Ontario, invited his girlfriend Ambyr to church. Not everything made sense to her right away. She was nervous to be in a church. But she kept coming back because she found a community. She found people who cared about each other and cared about her. She saw that the church is not a big, scary institution. It is people who love Jesus and love people.

When she took the pastor’s class for inquirers, she learned about God’s free grace. Now she says that this church has changed her life. Ambyr is just 19 and has no car, yet she will pay as much as $40 for a taxi ride to get to church on Sunday morning if she has to.

Isn’t this the reason Jesus was praying for our unity? “To let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” There are days when I wish Jesus was still around, and I could lead someone up to him and say, “Friend, this is Jesus. Jesus, this is my friend.”

Jesus’ plan is to let people see him through our love and unity, and hear him through our words and witness. So he prays for the unity of all believers, because he uses it as a witness.            

Dear friends, today let’s be the answer to Jesus’ prayers.

John 17:22-23 “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity…”

Jesus’ glory is the source and cause of our unity. This glory is more than a bright, shining light. It is more than praise and popularity. It is what brings God praise and makes him distinct. God’s many mighty powers are included, but most religions conceive of their gods as powerful. Nothing so distinguishes the God who came to save us in the person of Jesus Christ as the love that led him to so humble himself, and join our human family, and live as servant of servants, and carry our sin, and finally sacrifice his life in our place.

Jesus gave us this glory first by doing it, by loving us this way. Then he gives us this glory by creating it, this same kind of love, in each one of us. As Christ-like love works through us, God’s own glory is at work in us. Then we are living as one with God and with each other.

So Jesus prays that we may be brought to complete unity. The word “complete” is related to the word “finished” he cried out from the cross just before his death. It says there is nothing left to do. The goal has been reached. Everything is perfect, just the way it is supposed to be. If we are so united to God by faith that he is always in us, and we are always in him, and the glory of his love always holds our hearts, and that love has taken over the way we live and treat others, then our unity is complete.

If you have kept up with me this far, you may be thinking that this makes your head spin a bit. It all seems so theological and theoretical. Let’s talk about what it means for you and me. Jesus’ concern is not so much a call to put an end to denominations and merge all the Christian churches, though it may have something to say about what it would take for that to happen. It is more about how we relate to the Christians we know. To put it another way, it is less about unifying the visible churches, more about being the One Holy Christian Church, the invisible Church of faith.

Do I have to point out that any time we take it upon ourselves to contradict God and his word, to adopt our own beliefs, to live against his commands, to withhold our love, we are essentially opposing Jesus’ prayer and whittling away at the unity we share? Some of the things Jesus teaches may not make sense to me. There is a scene toward the end of the movie Risen, in which this Roman soldier has been pursuing the disciples after Easter trying to find out what happened to Jesus’ body. He has finally come to believe Jesus is the Savior and did rise from the dead. He asks Peter a question about something that doesn’t make sense to him about Jesus, a hard question. And Peter has a great answer. “I don’t know. We are just followers.”

We may find it hard to make sense of some of the things he asks us to believe. That does not give us the right to chuck what he says, as though we know better than him, and adopt something that seems more reasonable. Then how are we one with him and his Father, and with the others who are one with him by faith? We are followers, and breaking with Jesus on some issue spoils our unity.

Sometimes Jesus asks us to do things, to live a certain way, that isn’t appealing. “Love your neighbor” sounds great until you actually have to do it. Then you find out this includes your unwashed, undeserving family members who are always taking advantage of you, and the busybodies who gossiped about you at church, and the committee member who essentially told you your idea was stupid, and the adulterous elder who has apparently destroyed his marriage.

And that’s just the people at church. Christian love, of course, extends far beyond other believers. But if we can’t love the people who share our faith, the same people Jesus loves, imperfect though they may be, we are tearing at the unity ourselves and further fraying our oneness in Christ. Jesus prays for the unity of all believers, that their unity may be complete.

Then let’s not forget the amazing privilege and grace that we have been included in this unity at all. We are one with Jesus, and with his Father, and with our faith family not because we are so good and perfect. Jesus incorporated us by forgiving our sins, and he keeps us plugged in by continuing to forgive us day by day. We have been loved into this unity with God and each other. It is here, in the unity of faith, that he intends to keep feeding us his love.

John 17:20 “I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 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…”

Before we can understand the unity Jesus wants for us, we need to understand the unity he has with his Father. This isn’t so much about the unity of great Christian institutions. There are over 30,000 Christian denominations in the world today. There are some things they must have in common to be considered Christian at all. Historically, creeds like the Apostles or Nicene Creeds, which summarize Christian teachings, have been seen as kind of a litmus test, the bare necessities, what C.S. Lewis once called “mere Christianity.” Deny and oppose what these say, and there is a good chance you are standing outside of the Christian faith. But beyond that limited and brief consensus among Christians, there are still these 30,000 flavors, each with some unique take on the things Jesus taught. Certainly that is not what he intended for the billions of people who claim to follow him.

But the concern of Jesus’ prayer is more personal, less institutional: “that they may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us…” This is something deeper, more profound, than a set of ideas we can all agree on, though it is not something less than that. Jesus and his Father are so united, so joined or combined as one, that they are never really apart. Jesus remains Jesus, and the Father remains the Father. Yet, where Jesus is, the Father is in him. Where the Father is, Jesus is in him. They share a oneness in their very being. It is more than the oneness of an old married couple. They have been together so long that they finish each other’s sentences. They sense what the other person wants before he or she even asks. They have adopted pretty much the same set of opinions and ways of expressing things. They even start to look like each other.

Yet husband and wife may still be parted by geographical distance, or by death. Jesus and his Father are one God, so they never are parted. They are connected, they are bound together, in a way that far surpasses our ability to describe or understand. They are connected, they are bound together, at a level of oneness, of all things held in common, that we will never share with another human being this side of heaven.

Still, Jesus says, “may they be one, Father just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us.” The oneness of Jesus and his Father is still the pattern for our unity. When we come to faith, we know that the Holy Spirit makes our bodies his temples. Christ lives in me and begins to live his life through me. The Father also makes my heart his home. God comes and lives in me, in us.

At the same, it is also true that by faith we are in him. God, so to speak, takes us into himself. We live our lives immersed in his presence, enveloped by his love, directed by his purpose. It is a oneness with God himself. Jesus is not merely saying that if we were a fish, God would be the water in which we swim, or that as land creatures, he is the atmosphere through which we move. Nor is he saying that we have become gods. We remain his creatures.

Yet by faith we have this intimate and unbroken connection with his whole being. We live and move, and his will is being done. His grace and promise are blessing us. His love is touching the people we help and serve, because he is in us, and we are in him.

John 15:27 “You also will testify; because you have been with me from the beginning.”

How many courtroom dramas haven’t you seen in which the outcome of the case hangs upon the testimony of an expert witness? His testimony about some little-known fact of medical science, or ballistics, or physics will convince a skeptical jury of innocence or guilt.

How many times don’t Christians face people harder than a skeptical jury to convince? Jesus warned his disciples that the world would be more than skeptical of their message. It would hate them for it, because it hated him first.

Somehow, people still hear his message and believe. We can be thankful that Jesus doesn’t send us out to face that world alone. We have his Spirit and his tools to make a convincing case.

It is a little hard to imagine what preaching must have been like for the Twelve Disciples. They had no written New Testament from which to work. I never get into a pulpit without a Bible text from which to preach. Admittedly, sometimes I preach on an Old Testament text. But at Christmas I preach on the Christmas story from Luke. At Good Friday or Easter I preach on one of the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The first twelve men Jesus sent didn’t have anything like that.

They had something better. “You have been with me from the beginning.” They had their eye-witness experience of Jesus’ life and ministry. They told others the things that they themselves had seen and heard. As Peter later wrote, “We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” They were expert witnesses because they had seen it themselves.

Today their written testimony and the Spirit’s ongoing work make us witnesses as well. So long as we are believers, that is more than a possibility. Jesus’ words to the Twelve, “you also will testify,” aren’t so much a command. They are a promise. This is an honor. “You ARE witnesses,” he tells them.     

We have received his grace. We have faith. We have his Spirit. We know his word. We bear the title Christian. We are Jesus’ force to bring his message of forgiveness, love and new life to the skeptical and hateful world in which we live. Armed with the Apostles’ words and the Spirit’s power, we have all that it takes to be Jesus’ witnesses today. Be who you are, and tell them what you know.