Before and After - 6 - Love

Scripture: John 14:15-21

John 14:15–21 NIV

15 “If you love me, keep my commands. 16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—17 the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you. 18 I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you. 21 Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.”

5/10/2026

Order of Service:

Announcements

Opening Worship

Prayer Requests

Prayer Song

Pastoral Prayer

Kid’s Time

Offering (Doxology and Offering Prayer)

Scripture Reading

Sermon

Closing Song

Benediction

Special Notes:

Standard

Opening Prayer:

Loving God, we confess that we have failed to love You with all our hearts, our minds, and our strength. We neglect Your commandments and seek our own way. Forgive us and fill us with the spirit of truth and love. We pray this in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Call to Worship

Leader: Let the whole earth shout joyfully to God!

People: Sing the glory of His name; make His praise glorious.

Leader: Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”

People: We come to worship the one who is faithful and true.

Leader: Come, let us lift our voices to the Lord.

All: Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Love

Movement 1: Opening

Where have you seen Jesus this week?

(pause)

Hold onto that. We’ll come back to it.

Last week, we said: there is more of Jesus with you than you realize. Even as he prepared to leave, he promised to prepare a place for us and come back for us. He showed us his relationship with the Father and invited us into it. We focused on being aware of Jesus’s presence and inviting him into whatever happens next—because the tides of life roll in and out, and sometimes they crash against us.

Today, Jesus shows us where he is with one word: love.

Love is where Jesus lives—and where you live with him.

Movement 2: A Jarring Comment

When I was growing up, I was told that if you were starting to read the Bible for the first time, you should start with the Gospel of John. After a few readings, I decided they should have said John 3:16—because almost everything else in this Gospel is hard to understand.

Some people read John and call it mystical. There have been times I just called it spooky—like John was the disciple wearing a tinfoil hat, picking up radio waves from heaven while he waited for Jesus to return. And even if you’ve never thought it was weird to that extreme, it’s easy to let these words pass over us and feel like we’re never really going to understand them.

But right here in verse 15, in the middle of all this description of the Father being in the Son and the Son being in the Father—and hints that this is something he wants us drawn into too—Jesus makes a jarring comment: “If you love me, you will obey what I command.”

What is that doing there?

Right in the middle of all these promises—a place prepared, a return, a home, a Helper—Jesus drops this little line that sounds like a command. What is he doing there?

He is redefining love.

When we read that, our minds flip it around, and we hear: “If you do what Jesus commands, it will prove you love him.” But that’s not what he said. What he said is: if you live in him—in this relationship of love—you will find yourself obeying his commands. The commands are not a test you pass to earn his presence. They are the shape your life naturally takes when his presence is already in you.

Jesus is trying to be as literal and plain-spoken as humanly possible here, and he understands that our instincts are mixed up when it comes to love. He tells us plainly that love leads to obedience, but everything inside us keeps hearing that obedience leads to love. The process of being changed and living in love with Jesus feels like driving a car with the gas and brake pedals switched. There are a lot of fits and starts at first.

Movement 3: Mother and Child

We know we aren’t perfect, and Jesus knows we cannot be obedient to his perfect commands on our own. So, before the disciples can even whisper a concern or an excuse, he tells them, “I’m going to send you a helper,” for all of those times when you cannot be obedient in your own strength. The more time we spend with Jesus, the more we realize how much we need that helper in our lives. But don’t worry. Hang in there. We’re going to learn more about that helper in a couple of weeks.

What Jesus is telling us is this: you have a helper. An advocate. Living with you. And as you live in him and he lives in you, you will find yourself obeying his commands. The obedience comes from within you because Christ is within you.

You were never made to do it on your own. You were made for him. For his life in you, and your life in him.

All of this—us in him and he in us—right along with the previous passage about him being in the Father and the Father being in him, can feel confusing. It can feel like Jesus is playing that cup game, trying to keep you guessing which cup has the ball underneath it as he shuffles them around. But that’s not the image he’s trying to give us. He’s giving us an image closer to home. An image you probably already know.

Mothers are created to love their children.

Many of them love their children and prepare for their children before those children even exist. They conceive and carry them in love. That love doesn’t stop when they’re born and physically separated; it grows. There is a new joy in that birth that mothers are able to share with those around them, and new kinds of love and care are shared between mother and child in the days, weeks, and months ahead. That love grows and changes in years one and two. Then they turn three, and many mothers are thankful when they finally turn four.

A short time later, they’re starting school, and suddenly they’re fifteen. The relationship is different, but the love is still there. As that distance continues to grow, they’re driving a car and out exploring the world. Then it’s not long before their children experience the joy of having children of their own. The distance continues, but the love doesn’t stop—it grows with it. And every one of these mothers has a mother of their own that they stay connected to, and their love grows and changes even as the distance changes.

Our world is not perfect. There are obstacles, wounds, suffering, and even death, but the love between mother and child continues to grow around, between, and through every one of those obstacles. Some of us grew up with love that was thin, or absent, or wounded. And some of us who became mothers have had to bury the children we loved. What we long for, even when we cannot find it here, is the love God has for us—a love these earthly loves can only point toward. If we, who are imperfect, fragile people, can keep finding ways to love our children despite the obstacles that stand in our way and despite ourselves sometimes, how much more can God live in love with us?

That is the difference the resurrection of Jesus makes for love. Before, we struggled with our broken relationships with God and each other. After the Resurrection, Jesus showed us that his love overcomes the brokenness, and even death cannot stop it. He will not leave us as orphans.

He will come to us. And here is the promise that changes everything: even though the world won’t see him anymore, we will. Because we live in him, and he lives in us, we will keep seeing him.

(pause)

And that changes how we see everything else.

Movement 4: Seeing Jesus

When it rains, most of the world sees droplets of water fall from the sky and hit the ground with a tiny splat or splash into the puddles they’re forming. But if you’ve lived with the land long enough, you learn to see the movement of water in deeper ways. You can tell which direction the water is flowing. You know where it will gather, both above and beneath the ground. You can tell by the sound and feel of the rain whether that water will sink deep and soften the earth or simply wash away.

Jesus spoke to Nicodemus about the work of the Spirit in a similar way, comparing it to the wind we cannot see with our eyes, but whose effects we can see in everything around us. And now, he’s talking to his disciples about his presence, his work, in a similar way. Jesus is inviting his disciples—and us—into that same kind of deeper seeing. He says, “Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me.” Most of the world can only see droplets falling around them. Those who love Jesus and live in him begin to see where the water is flowing. Where it’s gathering. Where it’s going to soak in and bear fruit.

As we grow in our awareness of Jesus around us and within us, and invite him further into that intermingled life together, he begins to show us what he sees. Where we could only see faults and failures, he shows us opportunities for redemption. In places of darkness, we begin to see where the light of Christ shines brighter. This is not just looking on the bright side. This is Jesus showing us what he sees — and what he sees is often not where we would have looked on our own. He directs us to the most unexpected places and people.

When Jesus says, “Because I live, you also will live,” he means that literally. He is moving in with us. His life in you is not a metaphor.

Jesus says he will show himself to those who love him. He has been showing himself all through this Gospel—in bread broken, in feet washed, in tombs opened. And next Sunday we’ll see one of the first places he shows himself after the resurrection: in the Scriptures, opened to the disciples’ minds. The Scriptures are one of the places Jesus still shows himself. If you want to see him this week, start there.

Movement 5: I See You

Several years ago, we started tracking attendance by name rather than just by number. We did that primarily because that is how Jesus does it. He knows his sheep by name, and he cares a little bit more about who is gathered in his name than how many. It was a little extra work, but it allowed Bekah and me to have conversations on Sunday afternoons about who we saw and worshiped together, and also who we didn’t see. I know some of you have those conversations on Sunday afternoons, too. Seeing who was there and who was not guides how we pray for each other, how we make phone calls and visits, and how we find those small but personal and powerful ways to bless one another.

Some of you take this beyond looking for your people on Sunday mornings, in prayer groups, and around the study table. You’re following Jesus as he brings those people and others to mind throughout the week. You’ve shared baked goods, garden produce, and some of the results of your farming, as well as your hunting and fishing expeditions over the years. You’re following Jesus and doing that in timely ways—not just ways that are convenient for you. He’s teaching you to really see each other as brothers and sisters in Him, and not just as a way to use leftovers. That’s the kind of post-Easter love Jesus is inviting us into with him… and it doesn’t stop there. Love is growing up among us.

It’s tempting to turn these acts of love into heaven’s DoorDash — as if dropping off a blessing is the whole of it. That is giving to others out of the abundance that Christ has given us. But as Christ dwells in us and allows us to see Him at work around us, He calls us to do more. He calls us to share with others the ways we see Him working in their lives as well. That small move is the difference between giving someone a drink that will leave them thirsty again and giving them the living water of Jesus that will live in them, just as it does in you. Most of the time, that doesn’t take an evangelistic sermon. All it takes is an interaction that moves from the love that says, “I see you,” to a blessing that says, “I see Jesus at work in you.”

Movement 6: Where Have You Seen Jesus?

Where have you seen Jesus this week?

Take a moment to picture one person in your life who, right now, shows you what it looks like for Jesus to live in someone. Not a famous saint—a real person. Name them silently. Thank God for them.

Some of you came in this morning still carrying prayers that have felt unanswered. Sometimes the answer shows up in someone’s face before it shows up in our circumstances. Part of how Jesus is answering may be by showing himself to you in the person you just pictured.

Sometimes we just want to simplify what Jesus says to us, and we’re tempted to skip all the words that can create confusing images in our minds and just say, “Jesus loves us.” But we don’t understand love the way Jesus does. Sometimes we feel like he loves us at a distance because we’re not good enough, or we’re not worth his time and effort. We feel like he doesn’t have to answer all our prayers because maybe we don’t know how to pray correctly.

But today, Jesus showed us that love is where Jesus lives and where you live with him. Whether he is sharing your home, your life, or is waiting on your front porch, waiting for you to let him in, he is not distant. He’s closer than you think, closer than you believe. I think Jesus told his disciples about this life together — this dwelling — because the hardest place to find Jesus is the one place we have the most trouble seeing: in ourselves.

Often, we need other people to point out where they see Jesus at work in us, in ways we can’t see because we aren’t even looking. We assume our lives are our home, and they stay exactly the way we keep them. When we invite Jesus to come and live in us, we don’t expect him to move the furniture around. But he does, sometimes in surprising ways. Sometimes he does it just to get our attention, and sometimes he does it to make room for more of the life he’s bringing into us.

And in two weeks, we’ll meet the Helper by name. The whole Trinity wants to move in.

If Jesus has been waiting on your front porch and you haven’t opened the door, today is a good day. He’s not going anywhere. But he is waiting.

Love is where Jesus lives — and where you live with him.

(pause)

So I want to leave you with a final question:

Where has Jesus been moving the furniture around in your life?

Closing Prayer

Lord Jesus, thank you for loving us. Thank you for making a home for us and for making your home with us. Thank you for showing us that wherever we find ourselves, we can find our home in you.

Help us to see you. Help us to see you in the lives of those around us, and give us the faith and love to share where we see you in them. Help us be a blessing to them and show them how you are filling their lives with your love.

We want to follow you faithfully as you help us live for you. We need your helper, the Holy Spirit, to lead and guide us closer to you each day. Help us to be grateful to you as you lead us in faithfulness, and help us to trust in your faithfulness where we fall short. Lead us to trust, and love, and live in you.

In Jesus' name. Amen.