Abiding People: Abiding in Him

I. Introduction

A. New Sermon Series - Abiding People. Are we people who abide in Christ? What does it mean to continually abide in Him?

B. Context of John 15 - This is the night Jesus is going to be arrested perhaps on the walk between the upper room and the garden. The disciples are about to experience separation from Christ for the first time. I see him desperately trying to prepare them for that by sharing this analogy of the vine and branches. Even though there will be cutting, removing, and uncertainty, you can remain in Christ!

a. All disciples of Jesus will go through a season, short or long when they feel a bit of separation. A season when you don’t sense God, hear God, or really feel connected. God is in fact not far but we just don’t see the fruit of our connection.

b. Share my time of feeling separation and my community that I found home in.

b. It’s a this critical moment that we remain anyway. Just remain in Him in the face of unanswered questions, loss, injustice, etc. Remain anyway and the promise of good fruit will come.

II. Abiding People

A. Remain or Abide - “meno” - to stay, remain and lodge with. It can literally be translated to make your home with. 40 times in the gospel of John and 24 times in the small letter of 1 John. It is used of the Godhead abiding in each other and then the invitation for us to abide in Godhead as well.

“Home” is a powerful word that leads to all these positive or negative emotions. For some it is a geographic location, a family, a person. To others it’s the source of abuse, disappointment, and division. Yet to others it’s a foreign concept all together.

Home is a place, a people in which you always belong. A place of multi-generational memories with familiar sights, smells, and traditions. Home is the anchor that let’s you take the risks and forge out into the world because you can always come home.

Home has always been Athens, the Gurleys, and Eastern Hills. It’s the land I live on now and it’s the memory of the smells and sights of my Grandmother’s house. Yet home can always be taken away, family dies and land is sold.

The truth is we all have a home. We will all make our home somewhere. We are all rooted in a default setting that we all return to. An emotional home. It’s were our minds go when they are not busy, our feelings go when we need comfort, where our bodies go when we have free time and our money after bills are paid. It might be a dysfunctional toxic home, but still home. Bars, clubs, online communities, political parties, etc. And there is always fruit coming from where we choose to abide.

The true healthy reality of home can truly only be found in one place, Jesus. What if Jesus was your home? You live in Jesus, but the crazy thing is that He makes His home with you.

John 14:23 (NIV) - “Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. “

f. Home with God is not living in a monastery but aware of being at home with Jesus with whatever your doing: drinking a cup coffee, filling in a spreadsheet, changing diapers. It’s about your body being the overlap of heaven and earth.

g. You see continually abiding in Christ is impossible if you don’t see, feel, sense Him as your home. And good fruit that you long for can never flow to you and through you without this connection.

B. Two Barriers to Abiding

Sin - 1 John 3:6 (NRSV) “No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him.”

“hamartia” - “ha” not or loss - “merios” of one’s portion or part. God has a portion, an identity of life for you. Sin is the false self you choose instead of God’s portion for you.

Think of the tree of life and tree of knowledge. If you chooses not to walk, live in your portion of life you will keep choosing death. There can be no abiding.

Genesis 1:26 (NIV) - “Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky…”

Image is the person God crafted us to be before the foundations of the world. Likeness is us actually choosing to become that. Every time we don’t become what God crafted us to be, it’s sin.

As a Father I know when my kids are becoming who they really are. I support my children’s true self, not their false self. We can only be at home when we are who we really are. God’s image in us on a journey to His likeness.

2. Unbelief - John 5:38 (NRSV) “and you do not have his word abiding in you, because you do not believe him whom he has sent.”

“pisteuo” - to believe or trust. Describes the act of believing or trusting something on the basis of it’s truthfulness and reliability.

So is God our Father truthful, is He reliable?

Homes are founded on acts of love but they are maintained with a lifestyle of trust. Home is a place of trust or it’s a toxic home.

We must quit sacrificing the character of God on the altar of our understanding and circumstance. He is so much bigger than both. His love is proven, our trust to Him needs to be unwavering. We can only feel at home with Him when we trust Him.

III. Come Home

A. We all long for our true home with God and I believe God has put a homing beacon inside every human being. We are all made in the image of God and that image can’t be complete without being at home with God with us embracing our true likeness. Only good fruit will come from a good home.

B. I remember coming home after a difficult season in my life. Shannon had heard from God for us to return to my roots. I needed to just be and remember who I was. It was only then I found my true purpose again.

Mt 11:28-30  (NIV) “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

C. Come home and be with God. Will you trust Jesus and are you willing to leave the home of sin for the home of heaven. Find out or remember again who He really is and who you really are. Then and only then find the purpose and fruit you were made for.