Sovereign and Sacrificial Love
Notes
Transcript
Main Idea:
Main Idea:
How do I see Jesus:
How do I see Jesus:
Growing up we used to learn a lot about Jesus being our friend and we would sing this song,
Sing it with me if you know it.
What a friend we have in Jesus..
All our sins and griefs to bear,
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer
O What piece we often forfeit
O what needless pain we bear
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in Prayer
As I aged and as music began to develop we would sing this song today
Who am I, that you are mindful of me
That you hear me when I call
Is it true that you are thinking of me
How you love me, its amazing
I am a friend of God…
I am a friend of God
I am friend of God
He calls me friend….
In fact, after singing this song a few years ago, I remember an elder telling me his daughter didn’t want to be friends with Jesus. She didn’t want to be God’s friend… and I think she didn’t like the newer song, but I get the sentiment of it, and I agree, Jesus calls us friend, but we have to be careful… because God is not OUR friend.
And when I think about this text it made me think about the old WWJD bracelets we used to have years and years ago. The whole idea of the bracelet was for us to look down and see it when we were making decisions and decide What would Jesus do. And it was really a way for us to have behavior modification. I may have told you guys about this before but there was a time when I didn’t know Jesus I used to curse, a lot. In fact when I came to really know Jesus I had to figure out a way to keep myself from cursing, and I wish I could say that it was this conviction from God that had me wanting to stop cursing, but I had already came up with this idea Jesus had called the Pharisees a brood of vipers so he setup some dirty language, but in all honesty what finally had me want to quit cursing was when I heard someone say people only curse because we aren’t smart enough to think of another word. I didn’t want that. SO anyway, anytime I would curse I had this rubber band on my arm, and if I cursed I would snap myself with it, and not just a little bitty snap, I’m talking I pulled that thing way back and let it go. And when I first started doing it I’d snap myself and it hurt, so I cursed and then I would have to snap myself again. But the WWJD bracelet was kind of the same thing, without the pain, the idea was it would modify our behavior. But what we realize is the whole heart behind that is wrong because really what Jesus did is he lived a sacrificial life for us. And this morning there is a tension about how we are supposed to live.
When we look at the first 11 verses of John 15, we realize its all about the relationship between the vine and the branches and next week we will look at how the branches should interact with the world, and today what we are looking at is how the branches will react with one another. This passage today is really about how the church is supposed to do life together… What Would Jesus Do as fellow believers if you would. And I think the answer the text will show us is because we were loved by Jesus we should love each other sacrificially.
I believe he gives us this in four ways
The First:
The Command of Sacrificial Love
The hard thing for some of us is in our culture is we have this really skewed idea of love and we tend to think love is a feeling, which is why I think a lot of marriages fall apart because when it becomes work and those initial feelings are gone people no longer feel like they are in love. And what we are missing out on, other than the fact that love is verb, is the fact that love is not a choice like we have made it out to be. Really that is what we have done when we have made it all feelings we have decided it is a choice we can make if something else isn’t there we don’t have to do it, but we have made love out to be this choice. We think we get to decide whether or not we can love others. But we have given ourselves this worldly view of love , as if we are in control and we get to decide, but what we see in vs 12 is this
12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
We can see quite clearly this idea of love is a command. And when you put this together with verse 10 Jn 15:10
10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.
What we see is the way we abide in Christ love is by keeping his commandments (that is doing the things he has told us) and then he gives us the commandment we are supposed to keep just two verses later when he tells us we keep them by loving one another the same way he loved us. And what we can be in danger of is loving people in our own way, making up ways to love people that feel good to us or make sense to our human mind.
We could love in the way some of our parents did by expressing our love through gifts, because the more you buy the more you obviously love the person. Or we could attempt to love with pleasantries and just say nice things and maybe a lot of words of affirmation. And you could walk all the way through the five love languages and talk about being able to love that way, and I am not saying there is anythign wrong with loving those ways they are definitely needed for people, but it is not the way he loved us. And so that begs the question, how did he love us, and of course we can see he loved us sacrificially. And verse 13 really lays out how that is supposed to happen:
13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
And he lays it all out there, the way we are supposed to love, is by laying down our life. And I can only imagine this would have sounded super crazy to people you want me to lay down my life for people? And then he is going to go and show them how he can do that; he is literally going to lay down his life for these men and all of us just a few hours from now. And so we can get up in our heads like peter did and really feel ourselves we can start to question and think about situations where we are sure we can lay down our lives. There are some of us in this room who probably think a time is coming soon and very soon where we will be faced with this decision on whether we will lay down our life for Jesus. We think the country is falling apart in a way where we will be put before the firing squad and people will ask if we believe in Jesus and if we say Yes we will be shot. I doubt we are anywhere close to that here, but we start to think I could do it… and maybe you could. But having to literally lay down our lives is probably not as probable as we would like to think, so what does it really mean to live sacrificially in our lives.
We may be able to think about laying down our lives for our spouse or children, I would gladly faced with the circumstances offer my life for theirs. But we talked about how this may not just be physical, what is more practical is in our everyday life… are you willing to serve them? To give up your own wants and desire to serve them and make their life better?
What about them democrats are you willing to still serve them even though they don’t believe in the sanctity of life… can you sit down and serve them and do life with them and still love them, remember its not a feeling, even though they feel that way.
What about those republicans, can you still serve them even though they don’t believe everyone is created equal, that god loves all people and we need more social Justice?
But remember, John goes in even deeper on this idea in his 1st letter as he says.
16 By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
Look around you. Look just in this room, would you lay down your life for your brothers and sisters in this room? What about the person that cuts you off in traffic, would you lay down your life for them? This is what love is. This is our command to have a sacrificial love for those around us.
So firstly, Jesus gives us this command of Sacrificial love, and then he talks about the privilege of sacrificial love
As he continues to teach them, he says this Jn 15:14-15
14 You are my friends if you do what I command you.
15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.
And we shouldn’t be surprised when Jesus says this to realize obedience is what marks true discipleship. Jesus talked over and over about how his obedience to the Father is what showed God’s glory. It was that obedience, so why would our obedience be any different? Its no wonder the way we become friends of Jesus is by being obedient to his commands. And becoming a friend of God is a huge privilege, because not everyone as we talked about is able to say that. In fact, the bible teaches us that we were the enemies of God before we became his friends. Before he died for us, we were not his friends, we were his enemies, and he has told us the way we become his friend is by being obedient and what we see in the nature of this relationship is the friendship is NOT reciprocal. We are his friend, he is not ours. In fact, in the old testament Abraham and Moses were both called friends of God. And now, Jesus tells us all who follow his commands and are obedient are his friends and this is a special privilege for us.
And what we can see in this relationship that Jesus is trying show them is this intimacy with him. I don’t know if you have any real friends, but when we talk about community this is the kind of thing we are talking about; this intimacy we see Jesus talking about. A place where you can be real and open with people and show your true self. A place where you are not ashamed to let your true self out and for most of us we don’t have many people we can be that way around. And not only that, but people who we have given permission to speak freely into our lives and give us wisdom and direction. Can I just say being a pastor for as long as I have the places I see so many people having disagreements is when people offer unsolicited advice to people who haven’t welcomed them into this place of safety. People who think they should be able to say what they want because of position instead of intimacy.
When Jesus calls us his friend it is a huge privilege.
Here is the cool thing about all this, Jesus knowing how we would like to blow ourselves up and make this whole friendship thing a big deal where we would say, Oh I’m a friend of Jesus, I am so cool, I am the best he reminds us in Jn 15:16
16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.
See Jesus tells us, look, this friendship didn’t start with you… don’t forget that. I chose you, not the other way around. And in this he is telling us his sacrificial love is founded on his sovereign love. And this is tough for us to hear, because we like to think we are good and all the good things we have are because of us, but this is not the case. And the thing so different about this in their time period was Rabbi’s didn’t choose their students the students chose the rabbi, which is completely different here. And the same is true for us, Jesus chose us. And Jesus lets us know he chose us in an attempt to keep us all humble.
ANd we could easily ask why he chose us, why did he chose them, and why did he chose us, and he tells us here in this verse… he chose us to bear fruit. And Paul tells us mroe about this in Philippians 1:9-11
9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment,
10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,
11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
But that is not all he tells us about fruit, he also tells us the reason we are supposed to keep this fruit growing in our life through prayer… look at what he said at the end of vs 16 John 15:16
16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.
He wants us to ask… we have to pray…
And he concludes this section the same way he started it,
17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.
And again we see Jesus repeating himself…
Worship team. THe purpose is because it is so important… And we have to get to a place where we think in the same way he did.
