Sermon Tone Analysis

Text: John 15:15-17

CIT: Christ chooses to glorify his Father.

FCF: We can underestimate the importance of Glorifying God.

God glorifies God...

God the Father and God the Son covenanted together to bring God’s people out of the Egypt of sin and slavery into the freedom and everlasting glory of sonship for the very same reason that God brought Israel out of Egypt — that he might get glory over sin and Satan and Hell and all the principalities and powers that brought Jesus to the cross and all the world systems that rise up against his people—that he might get glory over them and all the world might know that Jesus, the crucified and risen one, is Yahweh, the glorious personal God who is.

This is what God is calling you into.

The reason you should glorify God in everything is that God glorifies God in everything — that Jesus glorified God in everything.

I think it is fair to say that God is interested in his glory.

And it is without a doubt that Jesus lived his life with the essential pursuit of Bringing his father glory.

It is startlingly easy to live life for any other of what Scripture calls vain pursuits.

Gains and distraction that take us away from shining like a light in a dark place.

Motivations that make us focus on entertainments and comforts that remove us from the action of Loving God and loving others.

It is a scary notion that one can “waste their life for the glory of God...” in the mind of the unregenerate a life lived for him is wasted.

But if our affection is set on things above we will quickly see that this life is measured in such small increment of time that we cannot afford to waste them on anything but the glory of God.

I have chosen you...

On the day after the night in which Jesus spoke these words to the eleven, he laid himself down on the cross and bought you with his blood.

You are now his fruit and his fruit-bearer.

The only fruit that will ever endure to eternal life is fruit which grows out of the cross.

We are Christ's fruit because he died for us.

We are his fruit-bearers if we are willing to take up our cross and die with him.

One preacher asked us “Turn it around.

What if Jesus had said, "I did not choose you; you chose me?"

What would most likely be the point of saying that?

Wouldn't it mean, "I'm not bound to you.

You wanted to come along.

If the going gets rough, don't come whimpering to me.

It's your choice, man.

I didn't stake anything on your success."

But Jesus said the opposite: "You did not choose me, but I chose you."

And so the meaning probably is: "Your presence here is my doing and so I take full responsibility.

I know you agreed to join me in this work, but deep in your heart you know it was I who laid claim on you and so my honor, not yours, is at stake in this work."

If that is what Jesus means, then the reason he said, "You did not choose me, but I chose you, was to encourage us that he would help us.”

Help you bear fruit to the Glory of God.

I remind you that this idea of fruitfulness comes from the beginning of this same passage.

We know of whom he speaks for just a couple hours earlier Judas was pointed out.

It is evident who Jesus is referring to when he says they were chosen.

He is speaking of the eleven Apostles who he will use to introduce his church to the world.

That is not to say that Judas wasn’t chosen.

Chosen for Betrayal

Chosen for Proof

Chosen for Boldness

This is the same understanding of the word ‘chosen’ that we see in the same meeting the night Jesus was betrayed.

We are to understand that chosen here is in reference specifically to the Apostles.

Matthew, and Peter, and John and Bartholemew were not selected at random.

Jesus chose them.

Understand that God has chosen them for this purpose.

God has set out on the purpose of His Glory...

But we learn something about God’s glory it is not a straight line to the top.

It is not an elevator ride.

It is not a highway.

He is glorified in the good and in the bad.

And all of these things will serve their place in his glory.

Why do we need to know this idea of chosen - because of the misteaching of this text...

There are those that would like to tell you that this is a proof text for the doctrine of election.

Election says that God chose some to be saved and some to go to hell.

And that it is the soveriegnty of God that he would choose for some to never be saved.

That is not what this text is teaching.

But it is teaching THE doctrine of election.

The biblical doctrine of election is that God in his great wisdom and soveriengty chose the Hebrew people to be his chosen people and by these people the whole earth would be blessed.

Genesis 12.3

Consider John 15.16

He is speaking to the Apostles chosen for the start of the church.

Chosen from his chosen people.

Notice that the election of the Apostles was meant for the good of the World not to their exclusion.

Chosen for Closeness

Closeness that if absent leaves us barren.

Chosen for Fruitfulness

Christ had chosen them for remaining fruit.

Look around you the fruit is still on the vine.

We still have access to the Father to ask what we will.

We still have the Gospel to carry around the world.

This is what happens when the Spirit of God is doing the work and you and I are resting in that fulfilled work of Calvary.

The Church is the outcropping of this selection.

You recognize that we are here tonight because of the love professed to those disciples that night.

And we are here tonight because God chose to demonstrate his love by giving us his gospel through the chosen people, and chosen Apostles.

Chosen for Hatred

Remember that our Apostles will be killed or persecuted everyone with the same sensless hate they had for our savior.

But were hated and fruitful all to the Glory of God.

I Peter would say to the church of his Day I Peter 2:9

So now we feel the pressure of the call… John 15:8

It is the love of Jesus that put me in the line of this calling and it is his love that constrains me to bear fruit to the Glory of his Father.