Greater Love
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Yesterday I’m sure you all know was Rememberance Day. A day to honor and remember those who have given their lives in battle to defend our country and the ideals for which it stands. Often at Rememberance Day services or events I have heard quoted the words of Jesus in John 15:13
No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends.
Certainly a sentiment that applies to those who have laid down their lives for us in war. They showed their great love for all of us and even for strangers in other nations by fighting against tyranny and oppression to the point of death.
So thinking about that verse and the nearness of this sermon to rememberance day I began to wonder about its context and what the larger point that Jesus was making was. Now don’t get me wrong, the verse applies here even taken out of context, but there is more to what Jesus said here than just honoring those who have died for us in battle. In fact it’s not even primarily about that.
Before Jesus says these words He gives a parable about a vine. Let’s read John 15:1-8
John 15:1–8 (CSB)
“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. Every branch in me that does not produce fruit he removes, and he prunes every branch that produces fruit so that it will produce more fruit. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me.
I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me. If anyone does not remain in me, he is thrown aside like a branch and he withers. They gather them, throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you want and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this: that you produce much fruit and prove to be my disciples.
I want you to keep that parable in mind, but I want to focus especially today on the next nine verses, John 15:9-17
John 15:9–17 (CSB)
“As the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commands you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.
“I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.
“This is my command: Love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants anymore, because a servant doesn’t know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father.
You did not choose me, but I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce fruit and that your fruit should remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you.
“This is what I command you: Love one another.
The question we are asking ourselves today is what is Jesus teaching His disciples when He says those words, and what then can we as His disciples today learn from what He had to say to them. Primarily Jesus in these verses is talking about love, and I would like to focus on three aspects of love that Jesus emphasizes in this passage:
Love’s Foundation
Love’s Application
Love’s Production
1. Love's Foundation
1. Love's Foundation
Have you ever wondered how engineers can build those huge skyscrapers that you see in New York and other cities like it? I don’t know about you, but I’ve built block towers with my son, and I know that the taller it gets the more unstable it is, and it’s just a matter of time until it tips and falls over. The only way to build these huge towers, some of which are over a 1000 feet tall, what matters most is the foundation. The One World Trade center for example has a foundation that goes 150 feet deep into the earth to support it’s massive structure.
It is just so with us. When you think about the high demands of holiness and radical love that the Bible places on us the question comes naturally as to how can we possibly accomplish what the Bible calls us to do. We need to have our foundation built right before we can start constructing a healthy Christian life, and that foundation is built on abiding in Jesus and in His love. Let’s reread John 15:9
“As the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Remain in my love.
Remember that this is following the metaphor of the vine and the branches. Jesus’ first call to us is to abide in Him and in his presence, the foundation of our faith and our ability to live according to God’s will.
So understanding what we do about the nature of love, we need to be wise builders who don’t neglect the foundation. It can be easy to focus so much on the outward signs of Christianity, on doing good things on building up the church, that we neglect the very foundation of the good things that we are doing. So the first step to healthy and productive discipleship is to do just what Jesus said and to abide in Him. What does that look like in day to day life? That looks like actually carving time out of our busy schedules to spend time of solitude and prayer with Jesus. You can’t expect to build relationship with Jesus if you never spend any time with Him. It’s just not possible. This is the most important part of the sermon really, because the things I’m about to talk about are literally impossible if we don’t do this. Remember what Jesus said earlier in this chapter John 15:5
I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me.
Jesus Himself practices what He preaches, unsurprisingly. Matthew 14:23
After dismissing the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. Well into the night, he was there alone.
Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he got up, went out, and made his way to a deserted place; and there he was praying.
While he was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say that I am?”
He went out and made his way as usual to the Mount of Olives, and the disciples followed him. When he reached the place, he told them, “Pray that you may not fall into temptation.” Then he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, knelt down, and began to pray,
Jesus regularly practiced times of solitude and prayer, despite being Himself in very nature God. This is very much one of those “go and do likewise” scenarios.
So when are you going to spend time with Jesus this week? Pull out a piece of paper and write it down, make a note in your phone, set a calendar reminder. Stop listening to this sermon long enough to do it, I don’t care. I can take a quick coffee break while you do it if me talking over it is too distracting.
2. Love's Application
2. Love's Application
At our last men’s breakfast I remember having a conversation with the men about our fathers, and many shared that they had a father that seldom if ever told them that they loved them. This is a common story you hear from people whose fathers come from a certain generation. Many will however tell you that even if their father didn’t say that he loved them he still showed it with his actions. I think we would all agree that you shouldn’t just assume your actions are enough, but you should match them up with saying “I love you.”
Imagine with me for a second the exact opposite of this. Imagine a husband and a father who dilligently made sure to say I love you to his wife and kids, who was constantly saying it, but never matched it with his actions. He never did anything with or for his family or showed any affection of any real kind, but just constantly said the words. Eventually the words themselves would become almost insulting to his family, wouldn’t they?
What we as disciples of Jesus want to avoid is doing that same thing to Jesus. Saying that we love Him at least once a week but never living out that love in our day to day lives. This was a significant part of the sin that Jesus accused the Pharisees of towards God in Matthew 15:7-8
Matthew 15:7–8 (CSB)
Hypocrites! Isaiah prophesied correctly about you when he said: This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.
So what does it mean to love God in both word and deed? Let’s take another look at John 15:10-13
If you keep my commands you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.
“I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.
“This is my command: Love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends.
Here are the two steps of Jesus’ logic in these verses: First, we show our love by obeying His commands. Jesus demonstrated this first by living for 33 years on this earth a perfect life of obedience to the father. He remains perfectly in God’s love because He has submitted perfectly to God’s Will. So in order to live in and demonstrate love for Jesus we need to live in obedience to His command. What is his command? That we love one another. So in order to love Jesus we must obey Him and in order to obey Him we must love one another with the same love that He showed for us.
I’m reminded of Jesus’ conversation with the expert in the law in Matthew 22:36-40
“Teacher, which command in the law is the greatest?”
He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets depend on these two commands.”
Love is the sum of all that God commands of us, so showing love to God includes showing love to others. Specifically to love others the same way Jesus did. How did Jesus love others? Romans 5:8
But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
And this is exactly what Jesus says in verse 13, the inspiration for this sermon; that we show love the same way He did by laying down our lives.
So based on Jesus’ great love for us we are to love other people. In this chapter Jesus is talking to the disciples about the importance of loving one another, but we know from elsewhere in Scripture that Christians aren’t just supposed to love other Christians, but everyone even including those we could consider our enemies. Not just to love them, but to love them enough to give up everything for them.
In other words we need to dedicate ourselves to putting others first and showing them the love of Christ, even if they are messed up bad people. That’s the love Jesus showed for us, because we are all messed up bad people but He still gave up everything in the greatest act of love ever done in the history of mankind.
So who can you show love to this week? Pray that God would give you opportunities to show people love in very practical ways. Remember that the greatest gift that you can give someone is Jesus’ grace and eternal life through Him, but even just a cold cup of water, or maybe in our curent season and context a hot cup of hot chocolate, can go a long way to showing that we care.
3. Love's Production
3. Love's Production
Who here has ever planted a food garden? Who here has ever put a lot of work and effort into a plant or maybe even a whole garden just for something to go wrong and to have absolutely nothing to show for it. All that effort and all that patience for nothing. This is the frustration of a plant that should be producing fruit but isn’t. It gets even worse if you imagine a fruit tree, because even if everything goes right with fruit trees you can’t expect any fruit within the first few years, so if you’ve got yourself a bad tree that doesn’t produce fruit you won’t even know until you’ve already sunk at least 2 or 3 years into the plant.
This is why God was so frustrated with the religious leadership in Israel. We read His frustration in Isaiah 5:1-7
Isaiah 5:1–7 (CSB)
I will sing about the one I love, a song about my loved one’s vineyard: The one I love had a vineyard on a very fertile hill. He broke up the soil, cleared it of stones, and planted it with the finest vines.
He built a tower in the middle of it and even dug out a winepress there. He expected it to yield good grapes, but it yielded worthless grapes.
So now, residents of Jerusalem and men of Judah, please judge between me and my vineyard. What more could I have done for my vineyard than I did?
Why, when I expected a yield of good grapes, did it yield worthless grapes? Now I will tell you what I am about to do to my vineyard:
I will remove its hedge, and it will be consumed; I will tear down its wall, and it will be trampled. I will make it a wasteland. It will not be pruned or weeded; thorns and briers will grow up.
I will also give orders to the clouds that rain should not fall on it. For the vineyard of the Lord of Armies is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah, the plant he delighted in. He expected justice but saw injustice; he expected righteousness but heard cries of despair.
It’s no coincidence that the judgment on the leadership of Israel in this passage uses the same metaphor that Jesus uses at the beginning of this chapter of John. He wants His disciples to succeed where Israel failed, to abide in Him and to bear much fruit. So what is the fruit that we are to bear? Well in Isaiah the fruit God expected was justice and righteousness. In the New Testament frequently the image of fruit is connected with good works and righteousness. The fruit of the spirit in Galatians likewise in Galatians 5:22-23
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The law is not against such things.
But we already talked in the last point about obeying Jesus’ commandment, and especially focusing on love. So am I repeating myself here? Well let’s think a moment about the image of fruit. What is a fruit? Well a fruit contains within it the seed that will produce more of the plant. So the fruit that the spirit produces in us isn’t meant just for our own edification but to reproduce others in our likeness, to make more disciples.
Just so you don’t think I’m stretching the text, consider John 15:14-16
You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants anymore, because a servant doesn’t know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me, but I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce fruit and that your fruit should remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you.
So there’s a few things here. First of all our new relationship to God is as friends, not just as servants. So we no longer serve God passively for mere obedience, but now we are made His confidants. He has shared with us His plan, and the appointed us to “go and produce fruit” and this fruit is meant to remain. Now how could the fruit of the disciples remain if it was only meant to represent their good deeds? When the twelve died their good deeds went with them. So what remains of them? What remains is what they built with their obedience: the church of Jesus Christ. The mission that Jesus appointed them for was the mission of Matthew 28:18-20
Jesus came near and said to them, “All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
There are two earthly purposes for good works and obedience to God: To show our love and devotion to God and therefore to give Him the glory and the praise that He is due, and to show our Godly character to others in order to show them God’s love and bring them to know Jesus.
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
“You are the light of the world. A city situated on a hill cannot be hidden. No one lights a lamp and puts it under a basket, but rather on a lampstand, and it gives light for all who are in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
That means that when we are abiding in Christ and showing love to Him and others we need to be careful not to remain self-centered. It isn’t about just us, but about others as well. The good things that we do are not just to advance our own ‘treasures in heaven’ but to bring other people to know Jesus and to share in His Kingdom.
So are we bearing fruit? This is where we need to make the shift to just “loving on” people and treating them well and doing good works for them to see and make it intentional. You may have heard the famous quote “Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words when necessary.” This is supposed to be a quote of St. Francis of Assisi, but it turns out he never said these words. This is good because I’ve never liked that quote. The fact of the matter is that anyone can treat people nicely, and deeds alone are not enough to spread the gospel. Words are always necessary.
Consider the example of Jesus, who did more good in three years to others than most of us will ever do in a lifetime, yet He used words to preach the gospel. The first words He used were “repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” The important thing is that our deeds should match our words. We should avoid hypocrisy not by avoiding speaking the truth but by avoiding living by lies.
Only when we match bold declaration of the truth of the gospel with lives of passionate obedience to Jesus’ law of love will we see people transformed and lives changed by our ministry.
Conclusion
Conclusion
What does it mean to be disciples of Jesus? A disciple is someone who follows after a teacher, not just learning from them but being like them. In fact the word “Christian” comes from a Greek word that means “little christs” and was meant to be an insult, but captures exactly what we are trying to do. We’re trying to be like Jesus.
Jesus as in everything is our example of how to live life well. He does the three things we’ve talked about today perfectly. He is the foundation of our love by loving us first, but even in this He is our example of how to abide in love because He perfectly abides in the Father’s love. So we need to be like Jesus and abide in Him as the foundation for all of our love and godliness.
He also is our example in obedience. He lived a life of perfect obedience to the law, a feat that we will never be able to perfectly replicate in this life, yet we should be inspired by His example to strive for righteousness, keeping in mind that our righteousness is produced by Him and that we cannot be truly righteous on our own strength.
Finally Jesus is the ultimate example of bearing fruit that endures. He came to bring the kingdom in the first place, and everyone who enters the Kingdom does so because of His ministry and His making the way for us. So we should imitate Him in inviting all to come to the Kingdom, even those who we might feel are unworthy, because we too were unworthy when we were called.
So before we go out and try to be little Christs, let’s go before the Lord in prayer and ask Him to help us abide in Him and live the life He intended us to live.