Last words are important!

Title: Last words are important.

Theme: love as I have loved.

Text: ; John 13:34-35

Goal: love as I have loved

ME: ORIENTATION: FIND COMMON GROUND WITH THE AUDIENCE

ME: ORIENTATION: FIND COMMON GROUND WITH THE AUDIENCE

Most often I like to make Maundy Thursday experiential.

rather this evening I see it as a call to the last words of Jesus as he walks to the cross.

WE: IDENTIFICATION (MAKE IT CLEAR THAT YOU STRUGGLE)

As a disciple we struggle to follow, understand and to learn. As we shall see in the resurrection we are empowered by the act of Christ and the Holy Spirit to accomplish this.

Yet it is still very difficult to loose someone you love.

Yet it is still very difficult to loose someone you love.

It was very difficult for the disciples to understand all that was happening.

Mother some of her last words were to let me know that she loved me and she was going to heaven.

Harry G. used the words of Christ

42 saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.” (ESV)

GOD: ILLUMINATION (THE GOAL IS TO RESOLVE THE TENSION

I. He loved Selflessly

34 A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another.

35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:34-5

The last words or words toward the end are important. Jesus was stressing the importance of love. Surely these words would be important, especially how we lived our lives.

 (1) He loved his disciples selflessly. Even in the noblest human love, there remains some element of self. We so often think—maybe unconsciously—of what we are to get. We think of the happiness we will receive, or of the loneliness we will suffer if love fails or is denied. So often we are thinking, what will this love do for me? So often at the back of things it is our happiness that we are seeking. But Jesus never thought of himself. His one desire was to give himself and all he had for those he loved.

II. He loved his disciples sacrificially

Jesus loved his disciples sacrificially. There was no limit to what his love would give or to where it would go. No demand that could be made upon it was too much. If love meant the cross, Jesus was prepared to go there. Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking that love is meant to give us happiness. So in the end it does, but love may well bring pain and demand a cross.

Harry want to stay with the family he loved but if God had no more for him he was ready to go.

III. He loved hi disciples understandingly

(3) Jesus loved his disciples understandingly. He knew his disciples through and through. We never really know people until we have lived with them. When we are meeting them only occasionally, we see them at their best. It is when we live with them that we find out their moods and their irritabilities and their weaknesses. Jesus had lived with his disciples day in and day out for many months and knew all that was to be known about them—and he still loved them. Sometimes we say that love is blind. That is not so, for the love that is blind can end in nothing but bleak and utter disillusionment. Real love is open-eyed. It loves, not what it imagines people to be, but what they are. The heart of Jesus is big enough to love us as we are.

IV. Jesus loved his disciples forgivingly

(4) Jesus loved his disciples forgivingly. Their leader was to deny him. They were all to forsake him in his hour of need. They never really understood him. They were blind and insensitive, slow to learn, and lacking in understanding. In the end, they were miserable cowards. But Jesus held nothing against them; there was no failure which he could not forgive. The love which has not learned to forgive cannot do anything else but shrivel and die. We are poor creatures, and there is a kind of fate in things which makes us hurt most of all those who love us best. For that very reason, all enduring love must be built on forgiveness, for without forgiveness it is bound to die.1

V. Jesus loves you and calls you disciples

Disciple: Its fundamental meaning is one who seeks to learn from another. A disciple is not only a partaker of information, but also one who seeks to become like his or her teacher ().

English Standard Version Chapter 6

40 A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher

YOU: APPLICATION (TELL PEOPLE WHAT TO DO AND WHAT THEY HAVE HEARD)

Love is the language and expression of Christ toward all.

4 But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first.

5 Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.

Repentance is the way back

Do the works you did at first