A New Society - John 15:5-17

Cody Hale

Never Alone • Sermon • Submitted 4 months ago • Presented 4 months ago

John 15:5–17

Love

Brotherly Love

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Introduction

The British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, once said: “Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.” She was acknowledging that America had effectively created a new kind of society, a society based upon self-evident truths, personal freedom, and opportunity. America provided what essentially no real society had ever provided before: the opportunity to advance beyond the situation into which you were born.

(show pictures) If you ever have the opportunity to serve as a guide to someone from a country very different from ours, it will open your eyes to just how remarkable this place is. A few years ago, Geoffrey was flying into the states for our missions summit, and I asked him if there was anything he’d like to see while he was here. Now, you have to realize that you can essentially drive across his whole country in an hour; so, he asked to see Washington DC, not realizing it was 11 hours away. But, I decided to take him any way. And, he was just amazed by everything. He was taking pictures with FBI cars and in front of the White House and was captivated as we toured the Capitol Building. He even asked to see the president so that he could witness to him, but the president’s schedule didn’t permit. And, the reason that DC so captivated Geoffrey is because he recognized, in a way that we don’t often appreciate, that Washington DC is the epicenter of a new society that has been actually realized. It’s the epicenter of an ideal that people who live in tyrannical nations can only read about.

God’s Word

When Jesus came to inaugurate his Kingdom, he came for the purpose of creating a new kind of humanity that would lead to a new kind of society. He came to return humankind back to the Genesis 1-2 vision that God had put forth and to assure that it would come to full fruition. And, Jesus established the church to be the epicenter of this new society. We are meant to be a microcosm in the here and now of what Jesus is ultimately going to bring about in his return. We are the world’s introduction to Jesus’ kingdom. And, what we’re seeing in Jesus’ final moments with his disciples are The Characteristics of a New Society: (Headline)

“Radical” love.

You don’t get to choose your family, do you? For the single reason that you are born, you become connected to a particular family with particular problems for life. And, even though you didn’t choose them, you are expected to love them for life. You have Cousin Eddie and Aunt Bethany and Ruby Sue, and as hard as they may be to love, that’s the expectation. It’s really a strange occurrence when you think about it. Many of us spend our entire lives trying deal with the simple fact that we were born into our specific family.

Now, what’s interesting is that Jesus makes clear that a similar connection happens when we are “born again.” It’s important to note here that when Jesus says, “I am the vine” that He also says, “you are the branchES.” It’s plural. You’re not the only branch on the Vine. So, you’re connection to him implicitly and eternally connects you with other “branches,” a re-birth family. So, there’s a second family, not of your choosing, to whom you become responsible to love, and your love relationship with one another is intended by Jesus to give the world a foretaste of the new society that is coming.

Our love shows who “Jesus is.”

John 15:12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

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

The fruit on the branch has a lot to say about the tree it represents. My father-in-law is one of these guys who can name every species of tree he walks past by looking at the leaves and the bark. He doesn’t just know that it’s an oak tree but whether or not it’s a water oak or a white oak or a post oak. For me, I need to see apples and acorns to know. And, for those in the world from whom the Kingdom is hidden, that’s how they catch a glimpse of Jesus too. They’re supposed to be able to look at the fruit in our lives and know without a doubt in whom we abide.

Earlier Jesus had told us that if we abide in his love, we’ll keep his commandments, and now we see there’s a very specific commandment that He has in mind. It’s a command that defines a lot of John’s writings. It’s the new command that Jesus gave right after He washed his disciples’ feet. “Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. BY THIS all people will know you are my disciples……” That is, the way that the world will come to know Jesus and see Jesus begins with how his disciples love each other.

The clearest evidence of how completly you “abide in Jesus” is how well your brothers and sisters in Christ. “By this all people will know that you are my disciples.” And, that’s why much of the modern iteration of the Church just won’t do. Much of the Church today is built around efficient, well-produced services with emotional charges and self-help principles. They’re designed for you slip-in and slip-out with little interaction, little investment, and little accountability. Now, contrast that with the early Church. Man, they broke bread with each other every day. They knew who was struggling, and they’d pay their power bill and provide them food. They, out of love and not compulsion, would open up their homes and dining room tables for each other when their families threw them out for following Jesus. Now, I ask you: Which one captures the beauty of Christ? Which one shows who Jesus is? We have to show our children, not the importance of a well-produced service with lots of window dressing. We have to show our children the beauty of Jesus when you have a family that will come cook for you when your husband passes away or sit with you all through night in the ICU to see whether your loved one will make it.

Our love shows who “we are.”

John 15:8–12 “By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”

We saw, last week, that the test of whether you love Jesus is if you follow his commandments. This week, we go a step further when Jesus says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” You see, the test of my love for Jesus is whether I am willing to obey him, and the truest test of my obedience to him is how well I love his the people in his Church. That’s the “one another” He’s talking about.

Jesus is easy for me to love and obey until you stand in the way. And, Jesus is easy for you to love and obey until I stand in the way. It’s easy for me to obey Jesus until obeying Jesus means forgiving you for hurting me. It’s easy to obey Jesus until my love for you requires a hard conversation with you that I don’t want to have. It’s easy to obey Jesus until it requires me to step into the drama of my brothers and sisters in Christ so that I can be a peacemaker. But, you see, that’s when we learn the character of our faith. It’s not in the classroom. It’s on the battlefield. It’s not in our minds on Sundays. It’s in our kindness, forgiveness, and gentleness on Mondays.

Can we just be honest for a second and say that church hurt is real? And, our instinct is to say: “Never again. Fool me once. Shame on you. Fool me twice. Same on me!” And so, you think to yourself, “I’m just going to slip in, attend the service, slip out, and go to Cracker Barrel.” That’s it. I totally get that impulse. In some of my hard days at church, I’ve been exactly there. I’m just gonna preach a bare bones sermon and go home. But, you see, it’s there. It’s in the muck and the mire and the hurt and the betrayal that we have the opportunity to love with the radical love of Jesus. It’s against the backdrop of betrayal and abandonment and disappointment that we have the opportunity to demonstrate the radical love of the cross, to “love one another AS” Jesus has loved you. Don’t subject yourself to abuse, but do submit yourself to the cross. And, realize loving like Jesus is going to hurt.

“Objective” love.

1 John 4:8 “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

In 1 John, he writes in chapter 4 that “God is love.” But, today our culture has decided to flip the order. No longer do we believe that “God is love” but that “love is god.” You can see what I’m talking about in the recent Zac Brown Band song, Remedy. He writes:

Jesus preached the golden rule Buddha taught it too Gandhi said eye for an eye Makes the whole world go blind With a little understanding We can break these chains That we've been handed I've got the medication Love is the remedy

He concludes the song by saying this: “God is love one another.”

But, there’s a fallacy here that’s subtle and important. You see, if “God is love”, then love is what God defines it to be. Love flows downhill from the essential holiness and goodness of God. But, when “love is god,” then love becomes anything we need it to be. Love becomes a means to insist on the acceptance of whatever I need to be accepted to ease the burden of my conscience of my sin. But, what Jesus shows us is that true love is definable and objective. It isn’t squishy the way our culture wants it to be. True love……

Love will “pay” the “price.”

John 15:13 “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”

Jesus clarifies his definition of love by a prediction of the cross. “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” Love willingly suffers for the other. That’s the standard. That’s what it is. That’s who Jesus is and what Jesus did. And, that’s the standard to which we’re called. Love isn’t a squishy, gooey, sentimental emotion. Love is spilled blood.

And, sacrificial love is as much about living and is it is about dying. If I’m willing to die for you, then it stands to reason that I must be willing to live for you. You see, sacrificial love is when I choose to do what is best for you even though it’s not best for me. Because I love you. And, it’s the costliness of it that makes it worth having. You see, I don’t actually know who I love and how much I love them until it cost me something.

And, it’s only when Jesus’ sacrificial love is turned loose in a church that the church can realize the full vision that Jesus has for her. Our senior adults have taught me the most about this. They’ve challenged me when I want my way and my preferences to be met. First of all, I think our senior adults are the absolute best. Like we hit the senior adult lottery as a church. When other pastors ask me why we’ve grown, one of the answers that I always give is that we’ve grown because of our senior adults. Our senior adults made it their mission to serve and support young Christians and young families. Most of them don’t get their preferences met. Our music is different than many of them would draw it up. They serve in preschool and in the kitchen and. Mary Vaughn cooked for our teenagers at camp two weeks ago, and she cooked for me when I was a teenager. And, when that type of self-sacrificing love, the kind that says I want what’s best for US not me, the kind that says “not what I want” but “what we need,” when you have a church more committed to loving one another than themselves, you have a church that is united in the way of Christ and ready to flourish for God’s glory.

That’s what love is: Sacrifice. And in that sacrifice……

Love will “go” the “distance.”

John 15:13 “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”

1 Corinthians 13:7 “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

The reason that Jesus says this is the proving ground of our faith is because it’s going to hard. Most of the NT commands can be summed up as be patient toward one another, bear with one another, be there for one another. It’s going to messy. “Laying down one’s life” in light of the cross means staying with it until “it is finished.”

True love is always a commitment. And, we use the word “commitment” because it’s going to require endurance and perseverance and resolve. That is, when it comes to our commitment to each other, we should reject the fake beauty of the cohabitating culture and embrace the God-ordained beauty of a committed marriage. You see, cohabitation says, “I love you — for now, but I’m keeping my options open.” It’s to say, “I don’t love you enough to curtail my freedom for you.” (Keller) If you gain too much weight, I want to be able to leave. If you stop romancing me, I want to be able to leave. If my sexual satisfaction declines, I want to be able to leave. If I get bored or if someone better comes, I want to go. But, marriage says, “Till death do us part.” Like, I’m in with you. If you gain weight or if you become a paraplegic or if you lose your job, I’m all in on you. Which is love? True love isn’t squishy. It’s objective, isn’t it?

And, that’s what it means to love the Church the way Jesus is calling you to love it. It’s beyond attendance. It’s membership. It’s entering a covenant of commitment to each other. It’s a commitment that says I’m in on this, and I’m committed to you. It’s not keeping your options open in case a better show or better programs or a more charismatic preacher comes along. It’s: “Even when it gets hard. Even when I want to quit. Even if I get bored. Let’s go. I’m all in.” That’s love, y’all.

“Intimate” love.

Jesus looks to his disciples and says something remarkable, “You are my friends.” And, notice how Jesus describes his relationship with his friends. “All that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” Jesus defines his friendship through his disclosure. He made himself fully known to his disciples because they were his friends.. He confided in them as his inner circle. That’s what friendship entails. Trust. Transparency. Confidence.

Jesus is setting the tone for the intimacy that is meant to define his Church. We’re to be a society of friends — friends who confide in each other and are transparent with one another and confess sins to teach other and face problems. That is, one of the great gifts that Jesus is giving to his disciples is each other so that they are never alone. And, until you are known, you will always feel alone.

We’re a community of “transparency.”

John 15:14–15 “You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.”

That’s why we have to aim higher than being a mere church service. We have to be a church family to realize Jesus’ vision. This has to be a place where it’s okay that you’re not okay. This is the safe place. This is the place that you admit you feel like a failure as a parent. This is the place where you can get help learning to manage your finances or facing your addiction. This is the place that you can be so transparent that your fully known so that you can know you’re never face your ‘stuff’ alone. Oh, we want this to start with Connection Groups, but let it find it’s way all the way to your dining room table.

We’re a community of “codependency.”

John 15:16 “You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.”

All of the “you’s” in chapter 15 are plural. You can replace them all with “y’all”. Here’s why I point this out. We’re meant to be prolific in bearing fruit. And, we saw last week that we can only bear much fruit if we’re connected to the vine. But, it’s just as true that we can only bear “much fruit” if we abide together. Each of us has been “appointed,” He says. It’s a word that speaks to a divine call, often a call to ministry. And, Jesus is saying that He has “appointed” and “arranged” for his discipleship community to be laid out just as it is so that we have what we need to accomplish his will. Jesus intends for his disciples to be co-dependent upon one another.

You’re not here by accident. You’re here because Jesus has chosen for you to be here. You’re here because we need you to be here. You’re here because you need to be here. Jesus has brought us together in this church at this time because He has a particular way He wants us to advance the kingdom. He knows why you’re here. He knows who He brought you here to encourage. He knows what gifts He’s given you and with whom you should connect them. He knows the prayers that must be prayed and who they are to be prayed with. And, you’re abdication of this responsibility means that someone will be lonely that shouldn’t be, someone will be untaught that needs to be taught, someone will remain discouraged that you were sent to encourage.

No, we’re sent to keep each other in the faith and on the mission. Notice that Jesus lands this with prayer. Prayer together is meant to express our dependency on God when call on his name and our codependency on one another when we join together. You see, I’m preaching this morning because of a group of men that caught this vision. For four years, I suffered from debilitating migraines. I had one headache that lasted for seven months and another that lasted for eight months. They changed my personality. They made me bitter. I tried treatment after treatment to no avail. I saw neurologist after neurologist to no avail. I took state of the art medications, and they didn’t help. Well, I had opened up with my d-group about the despair that I was experiencing. I was ready to pursue disability. I couldn’t keep going. And, they said, “We want to pray for you and lay hands on you.” So, they each prayed over me — out loud and personally. A couple of weeks went by, and I had my worst headache yet. I was literally laying in the floor asking God how He could let this be my life. I was to be hospitalized the following week for inpatient treatment. And, I got COVID. Well, in the process of treating my COVID a headache that I had for 8 months resolved. And, we were able to discover a simple treatment that has all but fully eliminated my headaches. And, today, I’m about to graduate with my Masters and continue my ministry to you. And, standing behind me is a group of praying, ordinary men whose prayer God answered for my good. That’s the power of connection that I want you all to experience.

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