Sermon Tone Analysis

KINDNESS

The Real Signs of the Spirit—May 9, 2010

John 15:6–15

6 If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.

7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.

8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.

Now remain in my love.

10 If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love.

11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

13 Greater love has no one than this: that he lay down his life for his friends.

14 You are my friends if you do what I command.

15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business.

Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.

This is the Word of the Lord

The marks of a supernaturally changed heart, a heart changed by the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, are listed in the classic text Galatians 5:22–23, which lists, what’s called there, the fruit of the Spirit.

Those traits are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and so on.

Each week, we’re taking one of those traits and looking at it in order that perhaps we could experience more of that supernatural change in our own lives.

Now tonight we get to the trait, the spiritual fruit, of kindness.

Whenever preachers are working through the fruit of the Spirit, this is a big challenge, this particular one, because the Greek word translated kindness in the New Testament has a real breadth of meaning, unfortunately.

Sometimes it can be, depending on the context, translated fitting, sometimes pleasing, sometimes honest, and sometimes compassionate.

Therefore, how do you talk about kindness if it’s a word that has that kind of, what they call, lexical range?

The answer is you can’t do it abstractly.

You have to look at a kind of relationship that combines all those traits.

The kind of relationship that combines them all is friendship.

So what we’re going to do tonight is look at friendship.

Not that you can’t have friends without a supernaturally changed heart, but I think we’re going to see there is a kind of friendship and there are resources for friendship given to you in the gospel that are second to none.

Now one of the most iconic, cinematic presentations of the power of friendship … it’s so iconic that it’s often mocked, but it’s still iconic … is the second of the old Frankenstein movies with Boris Karloff, Bride of Frankenstein.

There is one scene in which the monster lurches into a cottage in the middle of the forest.

There is only one person living in the cottage: an old, poor, blind man.

When the blind man comes to the door to meet the monster, of course he can’t see him so he’s not afraid.

He does sense that he can’t speak.

So he says something like, “Are we both afflicted?

I cannot see and you cannot speak.

Maybe we could be friends.”

So he brings the monster in and treats him kindly, constantly calling him friend.

At one point, the blind man kneels by the monster and begins to pray.

He prays, “Our Father, I thank thee that in thy great mercy, thou hast taken pity on my great loneliness and now out of the silence of the night has brought two of thy lonely children together and has … sent me a friend to be a light to mine eyes and a comfort in time of trouble.

Amen.”

A writer commenting on this part of the film says, “In this incredible scene, the Monster sees the hermit break down and cry at the end of the prayer.

The child-like Monster sheds a tear and compassionately reaches out to comfort the crying man with a consoling pat on the back.

They both share a need for human compassion.

[…] During the prolonged fade out from the scene, the glowing [Christian] crucifix is the last object to vanish from view.”

Of course, as some of you may know (and you can always go see this on YouTube; it’s up there), what happens eventually is the villagers come to the cottage.

They see the monster.

They attack the cottage.

They begin to set it on fire.

The last thing you see in this part of the scene is the Frankenstein monster lurching his way out of the flames and out of the smoke saying, “Friend?

Friend?” pleadingly, but there is no answer.

The point is nothing is more humanizing and nothing is more life-changing than friendship.

Why? How?

Take a look at this passage, which is the classic passage in all the Bible, in fact, in all of religious literature, I think … It’s a unique passage about friendship.

There is nothing like it anywhere else, and here is why.

First of all, it tells us the character or nature of friendship.

Secondly, how you forge friendship.

Thirdly, where you get the power for friendship.

1.

The character or nature of friendship

What’s intriguing about this passage (and I gave you, in a sense, a sample of it) is at the beginning of chapter 15, Jesus speaks about his relationship to the disciples under the metaphor of vine and branches.

He says, “I am the vine; you are the branches.”

That’s a metaphor that talks about relationship, right?

It’s a metaphor of deep unity because the vine and the branches share a common life.

They share a common bond.

Then, around verse 9 or so, Jesus shifts into another metaphor.

Instead of calling them the branches (“You are my branches,”), he starts calling them my friends.

They’re very tied together, as we’re going to see.

There is actually a verb, the word remain, that he uses both when he is talking about them as branches and when he is talking about them as friends.

There’s more overlap between this image of vine and branches and friends than you might think because in the Bible, friends are often spoken of like this.

Deuteronomy 13:6, almost a throwaway statement, says, “If you have a brother, the son of your mother, or a friend who is as your own soul …” Then, of course, in 1 Samuel 18, it says, “The soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.”

This idea of souls knit together is the biblical image of friendship.

I want you to think, “What does that mean?

Souls knitted together?”

It’s more than just mental agreement.

You might have a colleague you work with, and you both agree mentally.

This is more than that.

Frankly, it’s even more than sexual attraction.

It’s more than just the connection of bodies.

It’s more than just the connection of opinions.

Souls knit together means you have common loves, common passions, common beliefs, and common interests.

There are a couple of classic things you can read on this.

Go online, and you’ll find Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a fascinating essay on friendship.

Of course, the chapter on friendship in C.S. Lewis’ book, The Four Loves.

Ralph Waldo Emerson says something like, “Friends do not ask, ‘Do you love me?’ so much as, ‘Do you see the same truth?’

or ‘Do you care about the same truth as I do?’ ” C.S. Lewis said the typical expression of an opening friendship would be, “What!

You too?

I thought I was the only one.”

That’s how friendships start.

C.S Lewis basically puts it, “Though we can have erotic love and friendship with the same person, in some ways there is nothing less like a friendship than a love-affair.

Lovers are always talking to one another about their love.

Friends do not usually talk about their friendship.

Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in one another, but friends stand side by side absorbed in some common interest.

That is why those pathetic people who simply want friends can never make any.

The very condition for having friends is that you want something else besides friends.

If someone asks you, ‘Do you see the same truth as I?’ and your honest answer is, ‘I don’t really care about the truth; I just want you to be my friend,’ no real friendship can start.

There would be nothing for the friendship to be about.

Those who have nothing can share nothing.

Those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travelers.”

What is this?

It means basically that friends are people you meet who have a common interest, a common passion, and common beliefs.

You immediately feel a oneness.