Sermon Tone Analysis

2008-10-25 (pm) John 15:1-17 Plugged In

 

            Why do good?

Consider what doing good costs you.

Once you do good, you’ll be expected to keep on doing it.

You’ll be known as a good person.

You’ll be constrained by that moniker.

You’ll be taken advantage of, and you won’t be able to tell people what you really think, because it won’t look good.

Furthermore, if you do good, and by doing good choose to live your life in a certain way, you’ll be called a goody-two-shoes.

Then, if you try to encourage others to live a good life, they’ll snub you, and dismiss you for being legalistic.

So, why do good?

The simple answer is this.

We’re plugged into the living vine, Jesus Christ.

We can’t help but do good.

Honestly, legalism, goody-two-shoes-ism, has nothing to do with it at all.

We might come across that way, but really, we cannot control what other people will think of us.

We might have the best goals in mind, the most careful attention to other people’s feelings, and still make people upset.

That shouldn’t deter us, though at times it might.

That’s not the issue.

The issue is this.

Christians should be living in a certain way.

Christians ought to do good, Christians ought to be pure and holy, and obedient, on account of what we looked at this morning.

Also, our passage tells us this very thing.

But before we get into that, I want to look at the Catechism for a minute.

There are many people who don’t like to be told what to do.

They pass it off as having a problem with authority, and they say that with pride, as though having a problem with authority is a good thing.

It isn’t a good thing at all!  It’s a very, very bad thing.

Jesus Christ is our Lord!

We’re supposed to be slaves to Christ.

Anytime someone tells you they have a problem with authority, it means that they think they know the best way to live their lives.

Usually it means that they are proud, and in reality, they are slaves to themselves.

Pride, the selfish idea that they knew better than God is what encouraged Adam and Eve to listen to the serpent.

Pride and self assurance is totally incompatible with Christianity.

The apostle Paul says we’re to be slaves to Christ, slaves to righteousness.

So, when it comes to the catechism, the people who don’t like being told what to do, grab a hold of the first two questions and answers of Lord’s Day 24, conveniently (for them) ignoring the last question.

They say that how we live doesn’t really matter, because we’re saved by grace through faith.

That’s true.

That has to do with salvation.

Salvation is a gift.

You cannot earn it through any number of good works, nor can you destroy it or remove it by any number of bad works.

Salvation is totally won for us through Christ.

People who loved works righteousness hated these two questions because they were concerned that it would lead to a Christian anarchy, where people do whatever they want to do.

And in some ways, that’s true today, in many churches, though it has less to do with these two questions, and more to do with the some in the seeker sensitive movement naming people as Christians without actually seeing any real conversion take place.

So, today we have people who might be in churches but who really are not saved.

They say they believe in Jesus, and yet they drink to get drunk, they go to parties where they flirt, and dress seductively.

They engage in sexually charged conversation.

They might sleep around before marriage.

They might consider and engage in adultery even though they’re married.

They pursue financial gain over spiritual growth; they value owning things more than having Biblical wisdom.

By what you can see with your eyes, they are not producing much fruit.

Join Facebook, find your friends online, and look at their pictures.

It is an indication of what they value in life.

But again, this is a result of shallow Christianity, not a concentrated effort to use and abuse the doctrine of grace, though of course there are some who do that as well.

Allow me to reference a couple other passages that we could have looked at.

Jesus says we’re the light of the world.

The light shines in the darkness.

Have you ever been asleep in a dark room and had someone wake you up by turning on the lights?

It can be painful, it can take a while for the eyes to adjust.

We’re called by Christ to shine his light into the darkness.

Like cockroaches, people who don’t want their evil deeds shown, they shy away from the light.

If you get that kind of reaction, then you know you’re on the right path, even though you might have to put up with some serious abuse as a result.

Another example Christ uses is salt.

Sometimes, salt is sharp.

It is salty.

Most North American Christians aren’t salty.

If anything, we’re more like MSG.

We enhance the flavour of anything people want to try out.

And we let them do it, giving them the blessing of Christ and the church.

How many Christians do you know who lived together before marriage?

How many do you know who have cheated on someone or something?

How many do you know who have rebelled just for the sake of rebelling?

I was shocked at how many of my fellow employees at Calvin College were sleeping with their boyfriends.

I guess I was a bit naïve.

Now, we say this with full humility, knowing that our own lives will not stand up to similar scrutiny, though we must allow scrutiny to happen, so that we can overcome temptations through Christ!

Now, for all who are worried that God’s loving graciousness will produce licentiousness, lukewarm Christianity, we have this amazing passage in John.

Jesus is the vine, we’re the branches.

The vine, the stem, the trunk produces the sap, the lifeblood of the branches.

If you cut a branch off a tree, does it not wither and die?

But if you carefully remove a branch from a poor vine, you can, through the process of grafting, put that branch into a good stump, a good trunk, a good vine, and it will grow well and produce good fruit.

The quality of the fruit is not dependent upon the branch, but upon the trunk.

The wine growers in the Okanagan, realised that their vines needed to produce better grapes, so they grafted in varieties from other vines.

The result was some extraordinary grapes!

Christians who truly submit to Christ will produce fruit.

It is inevitable.

But God will prune the branches that don’t produce good fruit.

If a person does not thrive and grow fruit, then they are not plugged into the vine, they are not plugged into Christ.

So, what do we do?

First, we must examine ourselves.

That’s the admonition Jesus meant when he said, pluck the log out of your own eye before getting all hot and bothered about the one itty bitty thing your fellow Christian is doing wrong.

Look long and hard enough at other people, and you will find something to find fault with.

This is not at all surprising considering the fact that we won’t be perfect in this life.

But first examine yourself.

Invite the Holy Spirit to bring conviction of sin.

This is not how to do it.

“Hi God, please examine my heart, see if there is any offensive way in me (Psalm 139).

Okay, you’re done, good.

Thanks, Amen.”

Meditate on God’s law.

Pray, pray earnestly, then listen to the Holy Spirit of conviction, not the evil spirit of guilt.

Can you discern the difference?

Sometimes it is hard.