Sermon Tone Analysis

John 14:15-17, 23, 24

What It Means to Love the Christ

 

If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

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

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.

Whoever does not love me does not keep my words.

And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father’s who sent me.[1]

Some months past, I laboured for the better part of a week preparing a message.

As the Lord’s Day neared and the weight of worship pressed down on my soul, I realised that the message I had drafted failed the test of sound exposition.

It was not that what I had prepared could be deemed doctrinally errant, but I had forced the text to say something that it could not support.

There was a message in the words I had drafted, but it was not the message of the text that then lay before me.

I determined that I would continue my studies and use the research for a future message.

Today, I will employ the fruit of my research to bring a message that burns within my soul.

It is appropriate that I should speak of the way we are to express love for Christ our Saviour on this Mother’s Day, a day when we honour the love of God that is expressed through the love of mothers.

It is appropriate to consider how we are to love Christ, because godly mothers need to be encouraged to love Jesus unreservedly in order to ensure that their children receive the best example of love.

It is appropriate to study the way we should love our Lord, because godly fathers need to model the love of Christ, both for the sake of their wives and for the sake of their children.

It is appropriate that we learn to love Christ in the manner that pleases the Father, because our children need to see godly love revealed in the way we live.

Love is Revealed Through Commitment — If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

Despite the assertion of some contemporary evangelicals, especially those of the Emerging Church Movement, Christians are confident that there is but one way to God.

I am the way, and the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father except through me [*John 14:6*], says the Master.

Jesus asserted that He alone, in contradistinction to all others, is the sole means of approaching the Father.

What one believes does matter after all.

Commitment to Christ is commitment to His teaching—to the doctrine He has given.

If it is possible to approach the Father on any basis other than through the sacrifice of Jesus, then the death of our Lord Christ Jesus is emptied of meaning and His resurrection may be dismissed as a myth.

If through praying and prostration five times daily it is possible to draw near to God, then Christ did not need to die.

If I can know God through my own meditations, then there is no need to believe that Jesus died to give me life.

However, if Jesus is indeed the sinless Son of God, and if He died because of my sin and rose from the grave for my justification, then I am driven to the realisation that there cannot be many ways to the Father.

Do you care whether your neighbours are saved or lost?

Does it matter to you that they live only for the moment without thought of that awful day when they must give an account to Him who lives forever?

Friends and neighbours may be good people, nice people, but if they have never put their faith in Christ as Lord, they are lost and without hope in the world.

Tragically, far too many of us who are Christians have bought into the meaningless life embraced by the world about us; we live for the moment instead of living in the light of eternity.

We fail to make preparation for our eternal future.

While serving on the Lower Mainland, included among the membership of one congregation I pastored was a gracious lady from Quebec.

She was deeply concerned for her husband.

Though he professed to be a believer, she was apprehensive because other than saying that he believed in Christ he gave no evidence of having been born from above.

He frequently attended the morning worship services of the church, but he gave no evidence of concern for his spiritual welfare.

He did not pray.

He did not read the Bible.

He attended all the potluck suppers, but he studiously ignored other meetings.

One day, she bluntly asked him why he never spent time preparing for eternity.

“You dress up each week for your lodge meeting.

I see you carefully prepare for those meetings by reading the required literature and ensuring that your clothes are ready.

Whenever we travel to Montreal, you pack your suitcase and fuss about the travel arrangements, but I never see you getting ready for Heaven.

Why is that?”

She was deeply concerned for his spiritual welfare, so she asked me to speak with him.

I inquired about his commitment to Christ.

“I served my time,” he asserted in a dismissive manner.

“My grandfather built the Baptist Church in Sherbrooke.

I was a deacon there.

I’ve served my time.

I don’t need to do any more.”

I reminded him that there is no discharge from war [*Ecclesiastes 8:8*].

That man simply laughed and said, “Pastor, I’m all right!

Don’t worry about me.

I’ll be fine.”

I conducted his funeral just a few months after that conversation.

Though he had been a church member and though I had spent time speaking with him, I was unable to say anything concerning his relationship to Christ.

Had I spoken of his love for Christ, I would have been forced to speculate.

Had I spoken of his commitment to the Word, I would have no basis to speak affirmatively.

Protestations to the contrary, he was unfamiliar with the Word of God.

Had I attempted to speak of his communion with the Father, I would have been compelled to confess that he had never once prayed to my knowledge.

All I could do was present the Gospel and urge those present to consider Christ as Master of life.

It was a sad occasion, made sadder still by the uncertainty of a life consumed by that man’s self-centred attitude.

Let me contrast that sad funeral with the funeral of another man who united with that same church during the same period of time.

Courtney had led a rough life, at last landing in a nursing home as he progressively lost independence because of the toll from a hard life.

Having no better options on a Sunday morning, he accepted the invitation of another resident of the home to attend church services.

He didn’t intend to become religious, but he could not escape the pointed words that were preached week-by-week.

Like well-crafted hooks, they pierced his soul and permitted the light to enter into the darkened interior of his life.

One Sunday afternoon as he sat in his room doing nothing much, a care attendant knocked at the door and announced that she had his favourite snack, a cheese sandwich and a glass of milk.

“Come in,” he snapped.

“Set it there,” he snarled.

As Courtney picked up the sandwich, he began to think.

“She could not come into my room until I invited her.

Mike said that Christ is standing at the door.

He can’t come in until I invite Him in.”

Through precisely such thoughts, lives are transformed.

Courtney invited Christ into his life, and he was forever changed.

He couldn’t get enough of church.

He asked for a Bible, and when we gave him a large-print Bible so his failing eyes could read it, he consumed the Word, reading it daily.

He began to pray, keeping a prayer list and asking those for whom he prayed to tell him how God was answering prayer.

What is more important, as he spent time in the presence of the Living Christ, his life was changed.

Courtney did not just profess Christ, he possessed Christ.

Until his death, the nurses and care aides commented on how much he had changed.

I am not saying that his tongue could not be as sharp as ever, but there was a pronounced change in Courtney.

Now, there was genuine concern for the welfare of the workers and residents in the nursing home instead of what had once been an utterly self-centred attitude.

There was gentleness and restraint where there had once been sarcasm and retaliation.

The matron spoke with me about the change in Courtney’s attitude, wondering what had happened to him.

The new Courtney was enjoyable, whereas the old Courtney was always on the verge of being asked to leave.

The change persisted for almost twenty years.

I had been at this church only about one month when I was asked to return to Burnaby to conduct a funeral service for Courtney.

I spoke of his faith—faith that led him to read the Word, faith that taught him to pray, faith that created a longing to be with God’s people.

Courtney had witnessed to almost all the care aides, the matron and even the doctors that tended his broken body, telling them of Jesus and how he could transform a broken life.

It was a joyous celebration of victory, made all the more joyful by the certainty that this man had a faith that had transformed him and produced commitment to something greater than all the treasures of this dying life.

Knowledge of God creates commitment to Him and commitment to His cause.

Loosely associated with the Baptist Faith are people who drift into our services for a brief period and then eventually drift away to some other religious activity.

Perhaps these spiritual drifters even openly unite with the congregation for a short while, but when a better offer appears they will go elsewhere, or when they become bored they will take leave, looking for something more entertaining or less demanding.

A recent study of U. S. teens made a point that can accurately be applied to individuals without commitment to the Faith of Christ the Lord.

Christian Smith, a sociologist of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was quoted as writing, “God is something like a combination Divine Butler and Cosmic Therapist” who’s on call as needed.[2]