The Gospel of John - The Fruit of Our Salvation - Part 4- Loving Spirit filled Obedience!

GREET EVERYONE-

Good Morning Loved Ones

If I have not had a chance to meet you; My name is Scott and I am a follower of Jesus and have the privilege of serving Him as the Lead Pastor among the people of Stonewater Fellowship.

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Open it to the Gospel of John and Chapter 14 and verse 15 as we continue in our series called “The Fruit of our salvation” which is ONE part of our walking through the Gospel of John together verse by verse.

PRAYER OVER SERIES

My prayer over this series is that the Holy Spirit of God will being us all in to a deeper understanding of what the fruit of our salvation is.

AN understanding of what our salvation is to produce in our life -

OF what Salvation is to produce in the life of someone who is saved

and what fruit can be produced in the life of someone is needs to be saved

Fruit is what something is produced-

and a reality of this world that we live in - an objective truth that we all can observe is

Fruit is always after its own Kind - Apples equal apples - Avocados equal avocados

and so what is the clear implication of that when I aske the question “what do Jesus followers Produce? Jesus followers

And for us to do that Jesus is producing in us HIS loving nature and HIs character of truth!

And my prayer is as we come to a deeper understanding in what the fruit of our salvation is supposed to be.

AND - We would ask ourselves if we can see and feel and experience the transforming fruit that Jesus is supposed to be producing in our life?

and Loved ones - what I pray will happen to all of us is that we will all find ourselves wanting more and more of of Jesus - more and more of what Jesus and his saving work is to be producing in our lives and in the lives of everyone around us.

So that we will be more and more like Him in every way.

PRAYER OVER MESSAGE

My prayer over this mornings message is that we would hear and see how God uses His power to produce fruit of our salvation in our lives.

And that we would come to know that one of the fruits of salvation is obedience to the Commands of Jesus.

quite possibly it is the central fruit of our salvation. The Central thing that our salvation is to produce in us is obedience.

I believe loved ones it quite possibly is The Core fruit that grows as a result of our being saved and conformed into the image of Jesus.

Obedience like Jesus was so very obedient - that He was obedient to death even death on a cross. The Scripture says

I pray we would know that obedience is ONE of the fruits that God uses his power to produce in us

and my prayer over this mornings message is that we would come to know how intercorrelated our obedience is with our love for Him and His Spirit working in us and with his spirit being in us.

Loved ones - Jesus does not leave us alone to ourselves to try and be obedient to his commands in our own strength and our own will power.

ENGAGEMENT –

How many of us adults went though that time when our parents stopped trying to get us to obey them?

It is very a very interesting transition - When your parents move form authority to consultant to friend.

YA know if you have kids there will be a time that will transition in your relationship.

But there is this season - where parents are the authority - Where there is a demand from parents for obedience - and in most cases - in the healthy child parent relationships - The demand for obedience is solely based on the love that the parent has for their child -

Although it seem like the demand for obedience is less and less in our culture among some - There still is a basic understanding that the Parent is the authority when it comes to the kids.

But we grow out of it - We take the lessons learned in obedience and we begin to apply the or test them -

I was always a tester -

and we form our own stability and our own way of following the rules of life and we become obedient to the culture to be successful and autonomous.

Separated form the Authority of our parents - Autonomous - Self Governed - Free from our parents telling us what to-do.

I don't know a single 16 year old and even most 14 year old's that cant wait to be out from under the authority of parents -

The reality is we are discipled into it - We are discipled form a very young age to love freedom -

And we are supposed to love freedom - Free from the oppression of having someone else telling us what to do.

When in reality we are not all as free as we really think that we are -

We are serving someone or something - Even in our sense of freedom.

TENSION

The problem that this creates in our lives when we take this Idea that we are autonomous and completely free from any authority but our own, into our relationship with Jesus - we think that we are autonomous in our love for Jesus - We think we are autonomous in our service to Jesus -

Where we think that we are safe and secure with Jesus and our seat in heaven is secure as think WE get to make the rules about how we love him and about how we serve Him, about what commands we will obey and what commands we will not obey.

We get to the place very very quickly where we think to ourselves - “Ahh that is for someone else to do not me”

and we hear it in the very words that we use - “I don’t want to do that, I want to do this”

And we have even established a code for our perception of our autonomy as we design the way we want to follow Christ -

Wanna hear the code words?

“Yea, that is not my calling”

Now - Don't get me wrong loved ones - I am not saying that every opportunity you have to serve you should say yes -

Here is what the whole of Scripture would say to us: God loves us with a depth and severity we can hardly grasp.

And Because He loves us he has called us into a life of surrender to His Son as lord - Lord means master - means He is in charge and He calls us to surrender to a beautiful life of obedience to him - Not a life of obedience that is formed out of our autonomous self.

BACKGROUND

In the Time line of Jesus we are in the very last hours of his life in the flesh -

This is around the table where Jesus has celebrated the Passover - The Last Passover meal that Jesus would celebrate here on earth -

It is an important reminder and by way of explanation “The Passover Meal”

Jesus was born a Jewish person - A Jewish person is not only Jewish in their religious practices but they are also from a specific blood line.

All from Abraham - then from one of the 12 tribes of the sons of Jacob - There was a time when all of the people of God - The Off spring of Abraham - Gods chosen people were under the oppression of the enemy of God and the Enemy of God’s people - Pharoah of Egypt.

Pharoah is another name for King. God’s people were being treated as slaves by Pharoah.

Kinds of a short recap is God sends Moses to deliver messages from God to Pharoah - Pharoah is hard headed - God sends plagues to motivate Pharoah - The Last of the 10 plagues was the pelage of death of the fist borne of Egypt -

IF you lived in Egypt back in this day - The Only way to be saved from death happening to the first born of your household was to take a lamb - kill it — take some of its Blood and Paint the outer door frame of your front door -

and what happened is as Death came through the area - God would see that you were covered by the blood of the lamb you had sacrificed to take the place of the first born people in your house -

The God told His people that they needed to have a meal every year to celebrate this keep promise of God to deliver his people not only from the oppression of slavery setting his people free -

BUT also celebrating the kept promise of God that if you heard the instructions of God - were obedient to God - Sacrificed a lamb and painted the door frame of your house with the blood of this sacrificial lamb - you would be saved by God from death.

Jesus and His disciples have Just celebrated this meal - This meal of Celebration - This meal of Remembrance - This meal of salvation.

Jesus has Changed the dynamic of this meal - Declaring Himself as God in the fleas - the New sacrificial lamb -

HE has declared to HIs disciples for several months now that he will be leaving them -

Going where they cannot go - but promising them that after he has done what He came to do - which was to be that sacrificial lamb who takes away the sins of the world.

This has caused confusion among the disciples -

and Jesus had spoken words of promise and reunion - to calm them and help them understand that He will come back and get them - and they will not be separated for ever and ever.

and vss15 begins right after this promise of reunion -

and Jesus begins to unwrap and unpack the significant importance of obedience to Him as LORD!

Loved ones this is so important to understand - Jesus IS savior - He IS the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. for he IS the way the truth and the life and NO ONE comes to the father but thorough HIM

What Jesus is going to lay down for them and for us this morning is the significance of Him being LORD _ of him being MASTER of our their lived and the lives of everyone who desires to have their lives covered in the blood of Jesus to save them from the wrath of GOD when death and judgement come.

 UNPACKING

VSS 15-16-17

Jesus continued his previous words of comfort and reunion with a multifaceted “If - then” paradigm that he lays down - in VSS 15-16-17

Watch what he says:

If you love me you will Keep my Commandments -

This is the fist of Many statements where Jesus Ties - Love for Him and Love OF God to Obedience to Jesus. Thankfully for us and for them - Jesus is Laying down for us what it means for Him to be LORD and for us to be saved -

IF he says - Big IF - IF you love me you will do what? Keep my commandments -

Here is that other interesting thing - Jesus is not saying you keep my commandments out of authority or tyranny like our parents - Jesus is laying down for us this morning and I pray Oh I pray we pick it up —

Jesus is saying right here in the beginning our Obedience to His commands is our of out LOVE for him.

Watch what Jesus adds to this -

Watch - Vs 16 begins with the word AND -

John 14:16 ESV

And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever,

the word AND adds to the “if then” Here is what Jesus is saying - “If you love me then I will ask the father to send another helper”

and what happens loved one to the middle then “keep my commands” then become the identifier of our love for him.

and then Jesus goes on to describe this Helper that he said He would ask the father to send.

John 14:17 ESV

even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.

The Spirit will be with those who love Jesus - The Spirit will be with those who love Jesus forever -

The Name of the Spirit is the Spirit of Truth - One of many ways the word of God labels the Holy Spirit of God

Jesus says the world cannot Receive Him - Jesus answers the question WHY the world cannot Receive Him - Because they do not know Him and reality is Because they cannot see him.

VVS18

John 14:18 ESV

“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.

Jesus then makes a promise - A promise to His disciples that he has been talking through His departure - He has been telling them that he is leaving - He is going to a place they cannot go - then after they will be able to come where he is going - Now that Jesus has set the framework of loving him - and his sending the spirit -

He then turns and deepens his promise to them -

He says VSS 18 “I will not leave you as orphans”

Jesus uses this word “Orphans” - Orphans are children whose parents have died or who have abandoned them.

Jesus is saying “I am not abandoning you”

He then backs this promise up with “I will come to you”

VSS19

Jesus then assures them that their time apart is only temporary. And He answers by implication when their reunion will occur -

Watch what He says:

John 14:19 ESV

Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.

In a little while - - In a little while Jesus will die on the cross — This is what He is referring to when he says “The world will see me no more - But then He says “But you will see me”

And what Jesus is referring to by implication is His Resurrection. They will see the risen Jesus -

Jesus then says something Phenomenal - Something has a real deep meaning -

Jesus says - Because I live — This was a present and future look -

Because I live - Is a present tense - Jesus is looking forward - Forward to his Resurrection - He then says Because I live you also will live.

VSS 20

John 14:20 ESV

In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.

Give us the foreword view that Jesus is speaking of -

“In that day” - In what day?

On the day of his Resurrection -

Jesus is giving His disciples an assurance - that they will know - Not guess not need some sort of blind faith - but that they will KNOW that The father is in Jesus and Jesus is in them and they in Jesus.

VSS21

Here is what is interesting - Jesus returns to Obedience - Jesus returns to His Lordship - Jesus returns to the framework of verse 15

Last time He ties Loving Him to Obedience and to him sending the spirit -

This time he takes that one step further

John 14:21 ESV

Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”

And what is interesting is He opens it up and makes an inclusive invitation - But he makes this in reverse order of vers 15 -

Vs 15 If you love me you will Keep

VSS 21 If you have my commandments - And keep them -

Whoever HAs - This idea of Knowing - Having - Possessing - Who ever Posses my commandments -

Jesus says - if you have them and keep them - THEN you are identified as someone who love HIM -

There is a condition - It is an :If then” proposition - Whoever has them and keeps them

“Keeps” in the language of the New Testament is the idea of Following Commands - being Obedient like a soldier is Obedient to his officers orders.

Jesus says “it is he who loves me”

Loved ones “We are identified as one who loves Jesus when His word - His commandments - When we keep his commandments.

And Jesus amps it up one step further — “And He who loves me will be loved by my father”

VSS22

John 14:22 ESV

Judas (not Iscariot) said to him, “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?”

Asks the question that we are all asking this morning -

Jesus says if you have my Commandments and you keep them - You are identified as one who loved me - And you are loved by God and Then Jesus says :That one who is identified as the one who loves me and loves the father are also retrospectively love by the Father and Jesus.

“And I will manifest myself to Him”

Judas Asks (not Judas Iscariot) -

“How is it that you manifest your life to us and not to the world”

We are Left with two questions:

1 - What ones it mean that Jesus will “Manifest Himself to us?

And

2 - Why to them and not to the world -

Manifest in the language of the New testament means:

To make known - To appear - to Demonstrate

And second why not to the world?

This is what Jesus is preparing them to do - Jesus in just a few moment will be in the garden and He will pray for these 11 disciples that are left with Him and he will pray that they will make Jesus known.

and these 11 will be part of the instrument that Jesus ordains and commissions when the Spirit falls on 120 people and the Church is launched.

Jesus come behind Judas’s question and answers Him

But notice what Jesus returns to - What is the subject Jesus turns to first

VSS23

John 14:23 ESV

Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

Jesus returns to the “keeping of His word” and the inner connectedness of the love of the father - and obedience to Jesus commands - he reverts back to where He started this passage -

And He add to this inner connectedness - this correlation between Keeping Jesus word and the love of the father How Exactly he will Manifest Himself to those who love Him and the father and are loved by Them both.

“We will come to Him and make our home with Him”

Here is what Jesus is speaking of - From the Whole council of Scripture “ it is the Holy Spirit of God - That comes to the life of the believer and dwells in the flesh of the believer -

The father is God - The Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God - They are three distinct persons with three differing roles in the the God head - But here is also the deal - You can get one without the other - You have the Spirit you get the father and the son -

Jesus then tells them exactly how we is not leaving them as orphans -

VSS24

Is one of the scary things Jesus says -

“Who ever does NOT Love me does NOT keep my word.

Here is what the implication of that -

Jesus Just said “Love me you keep my commands” - Meaning IF you are Obedient to do what I have commanded - you love me - AND you are also loved by the Father

By Implication - If we do not love Jesus Because we don't keep his commands -

are we loved by the Father?

Here is what is interesting About God’s love -

And this is the best way I have to explained it.

Love of Jesus draws us into Obeying Jesus and in all of that we are love by God the Father as Adopted Children.

Does God love the world? Well he loved it enough to send his son into it and die for it.

And so Yes God loves you, But your relationship is the recipient of his desirous love -

Not his relational love.

VS25

He simple starts by saying “I’m telling you this while I am among you. and this is a reminder that Jesus is leaving - and his beginning if his reaffirming promise to them that He is not abandoning them.

VS26

But the Helper - Another name in the Scriptures for the person of the Holy Spirit of God - The Helper - Who The father will send in My name -

This is interesting to think through - Jesus has been saying through the Gospel of John for several months now in the Time line of this gospel that He was sent into this world by who?

The Father -

Jesus just said that the Holy Spirit will be sent by who?

One difference - Jesus was sent into the world. Where is the Holy Spirit sent?

Into the believer -

But watch what the holy Spiritual does in His role of Helper -

Two things -

1- Teach you all things AND

2- Bring to remembrance ALL that I have said to you -

When we think about the Holy Spirit reminded the disciples ALL that Jesus told them -

Is one of the things the Spirit will remind them of is in this passage - love me, Keep my word and the father will love you also.

Is one of the things VS 15 - If you love me you will keep my commands?

There is an inescapable correlation here in this text so far - Our loving Jesus and the father and their love for us seems to be directly tied to our effort in keeping the commands of Jesus -

VSS27

Jesus changes the Subject - He turns to peace and contentment.

John 14:27 ESV

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

I want you to see and hear the framework by Jesus said about being at peace -

Jesus said My Peace I give you - Then He said - I’m not giving you the peace of the world - Then He says what His peace looks like - Hearts not troubled - and not afraid - Troubled hearts - Meaning worry and anxiety - Feat meaning well FEAR

But listen loved ones - Jesus is hours from the cross - He is moments away from suffering the most horrendous way a human can be executed in all of human history - And watch what He just said -

I have peace to give to you - No fear - No worry - No anxiety - Jesus went to the cross with peace -

He then turns to a adjust the disciples thinking about His death but what he is adding is His ascension!

VSS28

John 14:28–29 ESV

You heard me say to you, ‘I am going away, and I will come to you.’ If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you before it takes place, so that when it does take place you may believe.

If you loved me you would have rejoiced - this is a big adjustment in their thinking - They have left everything to follow Him - they have been doing it for three and a half years or so and He has been telling them He is leaving through death and they have been sad and confused and emotional -

and Jesus says “Rejoice - Because I am going to the Father and the father is greater than I -

Jesus then puts like a period on it when He said “now I have told you before it takes place -

What is the IT that Jesus is telling them about?

The “It” that he is telling them about before it happens is His ascension - He has just said I am going to the father - Rejoice in that - I'm telling you know so that when you see it you will Believe - When you see it you will Trust.

VVS30-31

Jesus is speaking of the fact that His time is short - He uses the image of the “Ruler of the World” who is that ? Satan

But here is what Jesus says, and this is so important to grasp on to - I don't have that much more time, The ruler of the world is coming - But Her has no claim on me -

Watch loved one - “I do as the father had commanded me, so the world may know that I love the Father”

Jesus began in vs 15 with this inter connection between Loving Him - Keeping His commands - and That Correlating into Loving the Father and being loved by the father -

In the Middle _ VS 21 Jesus reiterates the Love and Obedience to HIs commands Paradigm -

VS 23 Jesus goes back to it -

Jesus ends with it as well in His own life -

Then Jesus says “Rise lets go” and they will leave the place of the Last supper - and the will be heading to the garden -

THE GOSPEL CONNECTION - WORSHIP TEAM

APPLICATION

The 10 commands of Jesus -

GEORGE

PRAYER TEAM