Advent Week 3-Love

John 15:12-19

What Is Love?

Intro: This week’s Advent theme is Love. And love and peace go together like the two sides of a coin. In fact, John chapters 14 and 15 Jesus interweaves the concept of Love, Peace, and Joy.

So the question in the Title is What is Love? Now this is not the 80s Pop song that screams what is love? This is in the funk genre. Tower of Power asks What is Hip?

The song starts off with a someone who wants to be hip

But you ain't just exactly sure what's hip

So you start to let your hair grow

Spend big bucks to cop you a wardrobe

But somehow you know there's much more to the trip

There is much more to being hip than clothes, hair and cars.

Likewise if you ask people what is love, you can get a lot of answers. Is it just an emotion that differs from Liking someone? Is it the feeling we get when we are with our families? Some may be more feelings based or subjective about what love looks like to each person or maybe doesn’t look like.

But the objective answers come from Jesus himself. The context of our passage comes from Jesus’ farewell discourse. This is his speech at the Last Supper and he gives his disciples some instructions and teachings specifically about Love.

Read Verses: 13:1, 15:12-17

Main Point: God Loves his own people and loving others as God loved us is to be Christ-Like

I. Love is Never Ending (13:1)

Jesus’ time to fulfill His mission. John tells us having loved his own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.

Jesus knew he was going to die, that he had in fact, been like a sacrificial lamb, he was born to die. John has the benefit of hindsight so the things Jesus said at the dinner had more significance after the Resurrection.

God has come for his own people because He loves them. Subsequently, the world loves their own. We are going to look at that in the last point of the sermon.

But God’s love for his people is never ending, because God is never ending and God is love as John explains. In 1 John 4:8.

When we read the Old Testament, we see the never failing actions of a loving God. We are his greatest creation, he cares for Adam and Eve even after the hey Disney God’s one command. God Loves Abraham and keeps his promise to make Abraham's descendants a great nation. He lovingly leads them out of slavery not the promised land. In Exodus 34:6-7, On Mount Sinai, God passes before Moses and explains his Character “The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands,’”.

God’s Hesed, his steadfast love, which is sort of the best way to describe that word in English. Which makes sense because it the ideas behind it are so vast and indescribable it is the perfect word for a Big God.

God is faithful in his love, even when his people are not. We saw it in the Elijah story. People left Yahweh for baa’l. But god did not leave His people. He set aside 7000 plus Elijah to keep His promise.

The same way, Jesus, the God man, faithfully came to earth, and steadfastly completed his ministry for his own.

In Chapter 15 starting verse 9 Jesus. Explains Chapter 15 starts the I am the true vine speed he and starting in verse 9, As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.

John 15:9 (John 12–21 (NAC)): Here some of the elements of the circle of love are enunciated. They are as follows: the Father loves the Son (cf. 3:35; 17:23), and the Son obediently loves the Father (cf. 10:17; 14:31); the Son loves his followers, and they are to love and obey him (cf. 13:34; 14:15, 23); loving and obeying the Son means being loved by the Father (cf. 14:21, 23; 17:23); being loved by the Son also implies loving one another.

The circle should be unbroken from each person. God Jesus, me, in a circle connected.

To bring us into the circle Jesus had to die for our sins. Jesus’ love for His people is sacrificial and he calls us to live the same way.

II. Love is Sacrificial (15:12-13)

Jesus sums up love starting in chapter 15, verse 12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

Jesus has told his disciples time and again that he had an appointed mission nd time. And Now it was time.

Love one another as I have loved you. How does he love us? He lays down his life for his people.

He is telling them, I am showing you the greatest amount of love because I have come to pay for your sin debt.

Think about that. How many people would you take a bullet for? How many people would you run into a burning building for or go off to war for?

Some people may say no one. Or they may say, I. Don’t feel called to do that. And not everyone is called to die for someone else. And Jesus’s death is the one that has worldwide/and eternal implications. God the son brings you into the presence of the Father.

Jesus’ Words, brings to mind both the unending love for God such as the Shema, Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and Mark 12:29-31 but also to extend that to others. This is a combination of the two commandments and really what the Entire Old Testament law is about. Love god and Love your neighbors. What is the measuring Stick? Jesus sacrificial love, God's Sacrificial love for his own.

And while it may seem like the idea of friends giving up their lives for one another is universally accepted behavior, the true motivation behind the command, should be and must be your love for God. It has to be in the imperative. This is not an option because anything less falls short. You can love other people all you want, but if it's not grounded in your love for God, then it is nice, but essentially meaningless. But the world places value on doing good. with no value on God. This is the crux of the Rich young ruler story. The foundation of your life must be The Love of God and He must be the only god in your life. That’s why that is the first commandment.

So the question is Do you love sacrificially? Do you give up what you want for the other person? Do you complain about it when you do? Do you expect payment or repayment when you do it?

Jesus didn’t complain, he gave up his life for you so you could enter heaven if you are one of His own. We cannot repay God with anything other than your life.

It is difficult to love sacrificially because we are dealing with other people and that requires us to get close to people. Love is also personal

III. Love is Personal (15:14-16)

Verses 14 and 15 are a little bit like a graduation ceremony for the Apostles. You are my friends if you follow my commands. Think of this like a class ring you wear. That people can see and know where you went to school.

This does not mean that Jesus will be your friend just because you are doing what He says. Jesus says in verse 16, that I chose you and appointed you.

In first century Israel, students followed a rabbi. And they chose which teacher to follow. But we see with the calling of the 12, that it is the other way around.

The shift from teacher/students to friends comes because Jesus lets the Apostles in on what he is doing. He lets them in on the plan. DA Carson points out that Jesus’ friends are informed of his thinking, enjoy his confidence and learn to obey with a sense of privilege and with full understanding of their master’s heart.

Israel did not know of the full plan of redemption that was unfolding in them and through them. But here the 12 men, representatives of Israel, get the front row seat to the behind the scenes portion of the show.

But they were chosen and not only that, they were appointed pro set apart for a purpose so that they might bear fruit. They were not set apart to just be apart, they were set apart to bring others in. To help teach and make disciples. To multiply and propagate the fruit trees forever.

And God does the choosing because we would only pick people we like into the collective group, but God brings in people he saves for His purposes. It’s because we have a problem with those two things, Our will and His will being compatible. That is why he says you must abide in me. We have to move our will out of the way.

And that is what makes Love difficult.

IV. Love is Difficult (15:17-19)

Verse 17 acts as a summation or restatement of verse 12 but it is also a transition to the next topic. How everyone else acts toward a friend of God. If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, it wold love you but your not,so they don’t.

We saw this in Matthew last week, where Herod killed every male. Child. Under two because he wanted to get rid of the competition. I read something last week after the sermon about Dragons and repents imagery in the Bible. For Herod the newborn King was competition for the throne. For the devil or the serpent, the seed of a woman is his doom, from Genesis. So every baby is his enemy. So the devil instructs Herod to kill the newborns and toddlers.

Likewise every believer is in the Army of God. That is part of the reason why He is referred to as the Lord of Hosts, or Armies in the Old Testament. He is th eKing and commander. And we are enlisted to fight against the darkness.

Jesus is warning the disciples that it is going to get hard especially when he is gone because the world does not like them because of who’s uniform they wear.

We must keep our focus on God and that can help us put everything in Perspective on How we live our lives. Because then we move form just a moralistic existence to Living for God.

If we learn from Jesus, he was not like by either party, because he did not side with the them on everything. He sided with God. We need to be spiritually and intellectually honest with ourselves and it sets us in a better position to withstand the world.

And that is what makes loving difficult. Sometimes when people push back we start to question if loving God is worth it. Or even loving our spouse or our parents or a stranger.

Application:

The four points answer the What is Love question. But now we are going to look at the How. How do we practice this theory of Love. Especially when people may not be lovable, in our minds.

1) Be Intentional

Abide in Him. Loving someone takes effort. Getting to know God and understand His will for our lives takes work because we have to pray, study, and ask. Loving someone doesn’t just happen. Like tending to the vines to bear fruit, it takes work to clear the weeds, and trim the right branches, watering and feeding the plant that is your spiritual formation.

Turning the other cheek, walking the extra mile, takes effort to stop from being angry when someone slaps you or you are working for someone who drives you insane, you have to purposefully think it through It takes intentionality to find the perfect gift for a loved one. It takes planning to pray to God every day instead of just doing it when you get around to it. To love God with all your heart, mind and soul takes effort. And part of that effort is being consistency.

2) Be Consistent

The definition of abiding is enduring or lasting a long time. Your love must be long lasting. It be when you feel like it. God consistently showed is people love, even when they were whining in the desert or creating a golden calf.

Jesus stayed the course, even though as John 1:11 says, He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. He came to save these people and they were ungrateful and either did not believe he was the messiah or thought he was crazy or a liar.

Being intentional and consistent should keep us from defaulting to the status quo and being complacent. Because we are watching for the changes and adjusting how God is leading and loving us.

But as much as we do the first two actions, We are not machines. We have good days and bad days and we have to be forgiving.

3) Be Forgiving

On Yourself

On Others

The Lord’s Prayer says Help us forgive others as you have forgiven us. Jesus’ great gift is the forgiveness through God’s grace and so we must offer others grace., because we also end it, both from others and more importantly God.

Also, we cannot beat ourselves up when we mess up. We must love ourselves as we love others. So if yelling at someone else s not acceptable why would it be OK to yell at yourself.

God has forgiven you for your transgressions. His love Saved you from yourself essentially. He saved you from His wrath. He gave you eternal life if you are one of His own.

Colossians 3:13 ESV

Bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

Ephesians 4:32 ESV

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

4) Be Bold

Loving people is difficult and it is scary if you don’t thinks so maybe you are the difficult one to love. You have to put yourself out there and hope you don’t get shot down.

More importantly and more difficult is Loving God and proclaiming that Love for him. But leaving the world is very difficult. The world is all we know, it is all we have or so we are lead to believe. And part of what we know is the world hates God. And so logically, if the world hates God and we love God,then the world will hate us.

But that is OK, because God is bigger than the world, He created the world and he commands the events in the world. He transcended time and space by coming into the world to do battle.

Paul says If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:31–32)

In Christ, “we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith” to God our Father (Ephesians 3:12).

Conclusion

But we know, as tower of power sings What's hip today, Might become passe. But As we see through the actions of Jesus that God’s love never becomes passé. We should never get tired of the Christmas or Easter Story. Because God Loves his people and wants us to have the same love toward Him and others. It is The His death on the cross is a once and for all deal, it is endless.

We have to practice loving. Both God and people. Love is the rope that connects the circles, think hula hoop here, that God through Christ to each of us.

The Father’s Love sent the Son to earth to pay for our sins and if we live in that love, we can show others love.

So how will you love God more this week. How will you love people more this week?