John 15

It. Good grief. So. Oh, and the stuff is starting, I guess I have to talk to you guys after sa sa sad bowing here I find my rest? Without you I fall apart?

You're the one that guides my heart?

Lord, I need you? Oh, I need every hour? I need my one defense, my right just? Oh, God, how I need you within? Run deep, your grace is more grace is found?

Is where you are? Where you are? Lord, I am free? Holy is Christ in me?

What I need you? All I need every hour I need you? My wonder, my eyes? Oh, God, how I need you? Teach my soul to rise to you?

When temptation comes my way? When I cannot stand, I'll fall on you?

Jesus, you're my hope and save you?

My defense, my God, how I need you? 1234, the only answer to the darkness.

You're the only right among the wrong.

You're the only hope among the chaos. You are the Lord that calls me on? Louder than every lie? My story, every fight? The truth will chase away the night.

Your name is power over darkness? Freedom for the captive, mercy for the broken and the hopeless. Your name is faithful in the battle, glory in the struggle mighty? It won't let us down or fail us? Your name is power?

Oh, your name is power?

Yeah, I know it is written? Hope is certain?

I know that the world will never fade?

I know that in every situation?

Yes, I know you speak the power to prevail? Louder than every lie? My sword in every fight, the truth will chase away the night? Your name is power over darkness. Freedom for the captive, thirsty for the broken hand, the hopeless.

Your name is faithful in the battle, glory in the struggle mighty. It won't let us down or fail us. Your name is power.

Your name is power.

When you speak, you scatter darkness. Light arrives in heaven. Open, Holy Spirit, let us hear it when you speak, the church awakens. We believe the change is coming. Holy Spirit, let us see.

When you speak, you scatter darkness. Light arrives in heaven. Open, holy spirit, let us hear it when you speak. The church awaken. We believe the change is coming.

Holy spirit, let us see it. Your name is power over darkness. Freedom for the casting, mercy for the broken and the place. Your name is faithful in the battle, glory in the struggle, mighty. It will let us down our favor.

Your name is power over darkness. Your name is power in the chaos. Your name is power.

You came down from heaven's throne. This earth you formed was not your home.

A love like this the world had never known?

On the altar of our praise, let there be no higher name Jesus, son of God, you laid down your perfect life. You are the sacrifice, Jesus, son of God. You are Jesus, son of God.

You took us in, you bore our shame, you rose to life, you defeated the grave the world has never known, only after let there be no higher name. Jesus, son of God, you laid down your perfect life. You are the sacrifice. Jesus, son of God. You are Jesus, son of God.

We thank you for this day that you have given us. Lord, thank you for your blessings and your mercy and your providence and all good things. Lord, we know that all good things come from you above, and we just thank you. Father, we thank you for this evening that we have to gather to worship you, to read your word, to understand more about you and who we are in relationship to you and what you have done for us. And I pray as we do that, Father, that you will open our hearts and our ears to hear your spirit today, Lord, that you will let us grow in your spirit and walk in it, that we may glorify you and not fulfill the lust of the flesh.

Father, I pray that you'll hide us from the distractions of the world, whatever they may be, as we come to you, Lord, that we can just focus our heart on you in this time. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. All right, good evening, everyone, and welcome back to service. I know it's been two weeks since we met here due to some issues that I had where I could not be here.

So sorry for that. Last time we met. Okay. Everything came back. I lost everything.

Last time we met, we had finished John, chapter 14.

And really what we finished on, what I want to remind everyone of was the reassurance of Jesus. He says specifically where we picked up, that if we ask anything in the name of Jesus, that he will give us the desires of our heart. Now, when we talked about that, we talked about what that really meant. What does he mean when he says anything? Does that mean I could ask for a Ferrari for $10 million for a mansion on the hill?

So we discussed that in depth, what he meant contextually and what it means that if we're walking in his name and for his glory, for the things that he wills and desires, that the desires of our heart will naturally reflect the desires of the heart of God. And as we recall tonight, those promises and reassurances of Jesus to us, we're going to read John, chapter 15. We're only going to do the first 17 verses today, but I want to begin with verses one and two. It says, I am the true vine and my father is the gardener. Every branch of me that does not produce fruit, he removes and he prunes every branch that produces fruit so that it will produce more fruit.

So when we become christians, we're born again. Jesus told us many, many months ago in this study that we have passed from death into life. So being born again, or actually being born spiritually, it's not the end of our not. We get saved and we're done, and we're just biting our time, waiting until we get to heaven. We're not done yet.

In fact, there's a whole process known as sanctification, where day by day and year by year, up until we die, Jesus molds us into his image. He molds us to walk like him, talk like him, love the way he does live, the way that he wants us to live. And in this, he teaches us this. Through this parable. He says, I'm the true vine and my father the gardener.

First things first. When we see true vine, if he has to state that he's the true vine, that there's a true vine, what does that automatically and inherently tell us? Well, it tells us if there's a true vine, there's also a false vine or many false vines.

Shawnee distracted me. It tells us that there are false vines. So we need to. The reason jesus said the true vine, he could have just said, I am the vine, but he says, I'm the true vine. To set himself apart from any other vine that is false.

And I want to tell you all something tonight that'll be controversial. The church is not the vine. Your denomination, whether you are Baptist or Pentecostal or Methodist or Catholic or Mormon, or Jehovah's Witness, they are all false vines. If they portray themselves to be the vine, it is false. I actually had a conversation with a guy in cedar about a month ago.

He's a southern Baptist, and he knows that our church used to be a member of the southern Baptist. And we left the Southern Baptist convention, and we became nondenominational. And he went on for 30 minutes about how he's southern Baptist. In fact, if his church had voted to leave the SBC, he says he would consider that his letter of resignation from the church, because he's southern Baptist. And then he wanted to know.

He says, so why are you non denominational? He says, I know there's a lot of non denominational pastors and churches, and I don't understand why. And the answer is simple. If your identity is caught up in the name of your church or denomination, then it's not in Jesus, right? If you go ask a Baptist who they are, they'll say, I'm Baptist.

If you go ask a Pentecostal who they are, they'll say, I'm Pentecostal. If you ask a Mormon, they're Mormon. If you ask a Christian, regardless of denomination, regardless of whether the church they sit in is Baptist or Pentecostal or whatever, they will say, I'm a follower of Christ, I'm a disciple of Christ, I'm an ambassador of Christ, because their identity is caught up in Christ. If your identity is in the church that you sit in or in the name of the church, what happens when there's a huge scandal and you feel betrayed and everything seems lost? Statistically, studies have been conducted and shown those people will leave the church altogether and forsake Christianity.

Or when their pastor goes haywire and it's found out that he's been committing sexual crimes of all sorts, or stealing and embezzling, committing fraud, other things, they fall out of the church altogether. They never go back. That's because their identity was never a Christian. Their identity was never in Christ. The vine that they were plugged into was the church.

They were not plugged into Jesus. And this is not a branch system where Jesus is the vine and the churches are branches plugged into it. And then we as people are plugged further as little buds into those branches that are churches. No, we directly are the branch. We need to directly be grafted in to the vine of Jesus Christ.

So he is the true vine to be contrasted against any other person who claims to be the Christ. Right? And there are several of those. There's actually a guy in Parawan, Utah, so not far from me who actually claims to be Jesus Christ. It's to be set apart against churches that claim to be the way.

No true church of God will ever claim to be the way, because we're not the way. Jesus is the way. It's to be set apart. He is the true vine, as opposed to any other religious theology, such as Buddhism, Islam, or the plethora of others, that there are thousands of them. Jesus is the true vine and the Father is the gardener.

Right? Every vineyard, every farm, every place that grows and produces trees or bushes or plants has a gardener, someone who takes care of the garden, and that is the father. The father is the gardener. Here's what he does in verse two. It says, every branch in me that does not produce fruit, he removes.

If we have apple trees and we go out into our little. I don't know what you call a group of apple trees. What orchard? An orchard. Thank you.

I don't know why I couldn't think of that. So if we have apple trees and we go out into the orchard and we start looking at them and see that there is a whole branch that has leaves but no fruit on it, are we going to leave that branch alone? Every other branch on the tree is producing fruit. Has apples hanging. This branch is bare.

No, we're going to cut the branch off. We're going to cut it off because it saps energy from the tree, from the trunk. It's still taking nutrients and water and other things from everything that is healthy, everything that is producing fruit. And so we cut it off, and the father does the same thing to us. It says, if there's any branch in me that does not produce fruit, it gets trimmed off.

It gets removed? Cut off. Why? So that the healthy branches can grow. We see a clear example of this if we look at the further imagery.

If we went into the Book of Romans and looked at chapter twelve, we see the vine, right? There's a vine, and there's branches out coming out of the vine. And these branches are Israel. But what you'll see is there's a whole bunch of branches being cut off and thrown in a pile. And then there's other branches that are being grafted in.

Where those were sometimes in the image where they were removed, sometimes other places in the trunk, those branches being cut off. There were initially Jews who were part of the vine, God's chosen people, religious people. But they were cut out because they would not accept Jesus. And those grafted in branches were gentiles, people who professed Jesus, who followed him, who had gotten saved and come into the family of God. They were grafted in so they could receive nutrients, so the unfruitful branches are removed.

But then look at the concerning care of God, the end of this verse. It says that the branches that do produce fruit, he prunes them so that they will produce more fruit. So back to our apple trees in the orchard. We fully remove the branches that are unhealthy or that are not producing fruit, that are SAP and energy. But then the ones that do produce fruit, every year we just take a little bit off of the branch.

We just cut it back a little bit, and through the next year, it grows even more. And then the following year, we go and we cut a little bit off. But then it grows a lot more than what we cut off. And it continually produces more and more fruit as a result of the pruning, cutting it back allows it to grow more. But God does the same to us.

Even if you are fruitful, that does not mean you will not be cut. You won't be removed, but you'll be cut because you'll be pruned. That pruning is allowing us to grow where God might work in a period of our lives. He might cut unhealthy spiritual habits out of us. Or he might cut a sin that we've carried for too long out of us.

Or he might cut immaturity out of us so that we become more mature and we grow up and we learn. This could happen through bad experiences. Some of the most horrible experiences we suffer actually produces in us. Great character produces in us maturity, produces in us understanding and empathy and sympathy. So he says, every branch that produces fruit will be pruned so that it will produce more fruit.

Well, here's the thing. When you cut a branch, it hurts. It hurts that tree. And when God prunes us, it hurts. Pruning us can look like discipline, or it can look like dryness, spiritual dryness, or it can look like struggling mentally or spiritually, emotionally through something.

It can come in many forms. In any case, it's painful. But that pain is not God abandoning us or leaving us or allowing us to our own devices, but that pain is God preparing us, helping us to grow into more fruitful christians. Verse three. It says, you are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.

This verse here is actually critical in my understanding of theology. You are clean already because of the word I have spoken to you. Anyone here? When I taught through John, chapter three, verses five and six, you'll remember that when Jesus said in nicodemus, he must be born of water and of spirit. For that which is flesh is flesh, and that which is spirit is spirit.

In order to see the kingdom of God, I identified water there. Not as baptism, not as human physical birth, but I identified water there as the word of God. I identified it as the word of God because the word of God is said to clean us, to cleanse us, to wash us. And Jesus alludes to that here. He says, you are clean because I have spoken to you.

They're not clean because they had a bath or because they jumped in the river and washed the dirt off of them, or because they were dunked in baptism. But they are clean because the word of God had been spoken to them. And the word of God, it cleans us. It renews us and washes us. It gives us power and strength it directs us, it convicts us of our sin, and even help gives us the power to overcome sin.

It is that word of God that initially washes us and even gives us the ability to be born of the spirit. Let's read verses four through six. He says, 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 are burned.

So there is some great reassurance stuff here, and there's some stuff that sounds scary, and even I will have preached it to be scary in the past, and we're going to work on this a little bit today with some new things that we have discovered. So he says, remain in me and I and you. Right. Remain. When he says in verse five, he says, if you abide in me and I and you will bear much fruit.

The word for abide means to remain, to reside, to stay. That's what it means. So he first tells us in verse four, remain in me. Stay in me and I'll stay in you. This is actually a command.

The word remain. In my version, it's the first word of the verse. The word remain is actually given in the indictive verb. Sorry, the imperative verb. It's active.

It's imperative. When you read in the Greek, anytime you come across a verb that's imperative, that actually is a command to do something. So we're actually commanded to stay in Jesus and he'll stay in us. So this is a command, and there's a reason we have to stay in him. There's a reason, and he tells us the branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine.

So let's go back to our apple orchard. We go into the orchard and we cut a branch off this branch, and maybe it's a fruit producing branch, maybe it's one of leaves, no fruit. In any case, if you cut a branch off and throw it in the ground and come back in a month, will it have fruit on it? No. What if you come back in a year?

In a year, it's probably dry and as dead as can be, ready for burning to keep you warm or to smoke your favorite pie or dessert or meat, whatever. If you cut it off, it will not bear fruit, and the same is true with us. If you remove yourself from Christ, you will produce no fruit. You can't. To be absent of Christ is to be walking in the flesh, and in the flesh.

We cannot do any good thing. We can serve ourselves, we can serve the world and what the world wants.

We can have selfish ambition, but we can't do anything that's good.

So we must remain in Jesus. We must stay in him, be plugged in. We have to be nourished by him, fed by him, and commanded and controlled by him if we are to produce God pleasing fruit. And then he says, I am the vine and you are the branch. So here he identifies us as the branch, where in verse one, he did not identify who the branches or what they were, just that he's the vine.

And branches are cut off and pruned here in verse five, he says, while I'm the vine, you are the branch. And here is the beautiful promise. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear fruit. Not just fruit, but it says, the one who stays in me will produce much fruit.

This is a promise. It's a guarantee that if you remain with Jesus, you'll be fruitful. It's not hypothetical. It's not one of those.

If a group of people remain in me, some of them will be fruitful and some of them won't, or I'll give them the ability to if they decide to. But it's natural. If you are a healthy branch, healthy apple tree, branch plugged into a healthy apple tree, you will produce apples. If you are a healthy Christian who remains and abides daily with Christ, then you will produce fruit. It's in our dna to produce fruit like that, in our spiritual dna to produce fruit like that, because the spirit of God is guiding us and leading us and controlling us.

And if the spirit of God is controlling you, you can only produce fruit because God is not unfruitful.

So it's a promise. So what does it mean to abide, to stay?

Well, the actual word means to live with, which is kind of a difficult concept for us because we live physical lives in a physical world, and we serve and talk to a God who is invisible.

So how do we live with him? Well, we live with him. We can still talk to him. We can talk to God. In fact, he resides within us.

There is nowhere that we cannot talk to him.

We're able to commune with God constantly, even if it's not out loud verbally. We can always talk with God. We can talk with him in our mind and our thoughts, we can express feelings toward him. We can sing and worship to him. We can talk with God all the time.

God can even talk to us. He gave us the word of God, the Bible, so that he can talk to us. Any relationship is two way. It's impossible to have a one way relationship.

So if we're to have a relationship with God, it cannot just be us talking to God. But we have to allow God to talk to us. But the same is true in reverse. We cannot just let God talk to us. We must talk to God.

In fact, there's a famous verse in the Bible. It says, you have not because you ask not.

God knows our every need. He knows what I need before I ask him. In fact, he knows that in ten years, something may or may not happen to me. I don't because I don't know the future. But if I'm going to be in a car accident in ten years from now, God already knows that.

So he knows my needs, but he wants to have a relationship with us. And to have a relationship with us. God often waits on us to talk to him.

There's a lot of people I've talked to who say, hey, God's just not working for me. He's not giving me what I need. He's not helping me. He's not assisting me. I've asked people to pray for me.

I've asked for help. I've been in the scriptures. I've been reading, I've been going to church, why is God not helping me? And then I ask him, have you asked him? Well, I've asked other people to pray for me.

Yeah, but have you asked him? I do believe that it's critical. We pray for each other. We're commanded to. In fact, the Bible tells us there's power in that community of prayer.

But God wants a relationship with you just as much as he does with me. And so oftentimes God is actually waiting on you to ask him. He's not waiting on you to ask me to pray for you and to petition him on your behalf, but he is waiting for you to have a relationship with him.

He knows what we need. He is ready and willing and wanting to give us what we need, but he wants us to have a relationship. We must talk to him and hear him. It's a two way thing.

So remember, sometimes if you wonder, why does it seem like God's not helping me? I'm in church, I'm reading the word. I'm asking for prayer from people. I'm doing everything right and God does not seem to care about me. Ask yourself, are you asking him to yourself?

He says that you have not because you ask not. And that is a verse in the Bible.

So we must live with God. And if you're living with God, this is a daily thing. I'll use an example from church, but this applies every day, not just on church. A lot of people say they do not need church to be a Christian. I can be a Christian and believe in God and not have a church.

Here's the answer to that. You can also have a wife, but it's a whole lot easier if you live at home with her, right? I don't have to live at home and sleep in my bed with my wife to have a wife. I could have a wife and live 1000 miles away separate from her. But it's a whole lot easier to have that relationship if I'm home.

The same is true with God.

A relationship with God is not a one and done or when it's convenient. If you are living with God, if you're remaining with him, the word remain to reside. This isn't just a you come to him, but you're always with him, you're never without. So this has to be a daily thing. And not even just daily.

This isn't just get up in the morning and say your prayers and read the word and you're done, but you're with God continually. This is what it means to abide. And even if you're not actively doing it all day, it's a whole lot easier to live with him if you come home to him every night and wake up with him every morning versus living a thousand miles away from him, but yet calling him your spouse. You don't have to live at home to be married, but it's a whole lot easier standing with God if anyone does not remain in me. He says he is thrown aside like a branch and he withers.

They gather them and throw them into a fire. Well, that's what you do with wood, right? Dry wood. Well, it used to be you either make homes or make fires with them. Today we make wood chips and other things.

But the point is that wood is removed here and it's burned.

Previously I would have taught this verse to indicate that this person was never saved. I would look at this and say, this person was never saved if they're thrown into the fire. Because a lot of people look at this and say, well, this means that you can lose salvation. And I would say, no, it means you're never saved. But remember when we talked about Hebrew six a few weeks ago?

I indicated that those people were people who were saved, and they didn't lose their salvation. What they lost is their reward. This appears to be the same thing. In order to be in Christ, you have to be saved. We cannot get into Christ without first being saved.

So to be cut off and thrown in the fire cannot mean a loss of salvation. But what it must mean is a loss of reward, right? When they are burned, we are told that we will pass through the refiner's fire. Every one of us will. We're all going to go through the fire.

The only thing that's different between group a and group b is group a lived a God pleasing life after they got saved, produced much fruit, did much for the kingdom of God. And when they go through the fire, their works will remain. And the people in group b, they were unfruitful christians. They were christians, but they produced no fruit. And so when they go through the fire, all of their works burn away.

And when they come to the other side of the fire, there's nothing left behind. Well, your reward in heaven will be based on what's left behind.

The one who does not remain in Jesus will be thrown out and burned, will walk through that fire, and there will be nothing left behind. So remember the promise, the reassurance from last chapter. Look at verse seven and eight. We see the promise again. 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. So we had this promise in chapter 14 as well. Now it's clarified a little. In chapter 14, he just said, ask whatever. If you ask anything in my name, it'll be given to you.

He clarifies it a little more here in this chapter. In verse seven, he says, if you remain in me and my words, in you, if you live with me and I live with you, if you are staying with me and abiding with me and my words, this is how he remains with us. In verse five, he says, if you remain in me and I in you, here he tells us how we remain in him, but his words in us, whatever we ask him will be done. Well, if we're living with God and his word is living inside of us, are we going to ask God for anything that he doesn't want to give? No, because his word inside of us is dictating what we're asking.

So whatever it is we're asking, he's going to give us, because we're asking for what he wants.

So this is really cool. If we remain in him, our wants will be God's wants, or rather, that should be reversed. It's not that God wants what we want, but God's wants will be our wants. And God will give us the desire of our heart.

And he does it because he's glorified by this. God is glorified when we produce fruit. God is glorified when we share the gospel with our neighbor. And let me tell you something. God is glorified whether that neighbor accepts the gospel or not.

If we go and knock on the neighbor's door and share the gospel, and they slam it in our face and say, never come back, God is still glorified. Why? Because we produce fruit. His gospel still went out.

Someone still heard. God is even more glorified when that person receives it. But just the action of sharing the gospel, of obeying him, of doing what he would want us to do, glorifies him. I'll tell you a secret. There was a friend of mine up in Salt Lake.

Most people here have met him. Logan. He was sharing coffee in a coffee shop. Coffee. He was sharing the gospel in a coffee shop and had spent hours talking with a person about the gospel.

Was God glorified in that? Yeah, but that person never received the gospel. That person was hard hearted. It did not go into him, at least as of now, and he left. But then the server who had been serving them coffee and food throughout the conversation when they were done, said, can I talk with you about the Bible?

So a person that this guy had never intended to share the gospel with, just as a result of hearing him talk to someone else, had questions and was able to receive the gospel. Sometimes what seems like a failure. The person I sat down with to have coffee with and share didn't receive it. It's not affiliate or someone else overheard. We may not even know that's happening.

They go and they research on their own. Let's read verses nine through twelve.

It. Sorry, I needed water. 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.

Powerful section of scripture here. So, as the father has loved me, how has the father loved Jesus. We've actually talked about this in the last year. I think we actually read this within sometime in the last year. How has the father loved Jesus?

It was unconditional love. It was the most pure form of love. Remember the Father's God? Jesus is God. And there is no point from before the beginning of the world into eternity past and no point into eternity future.

With the exception of the brief moment he was crucified and died, where the two have never been apart.

Do you love your neighbor enough to never be separated them, ever? For thousands of years, God and Jesus, they've been together for longer than thousands of years. They have never been apart. Think of the love just from the sheer amount of time they've been together. Think of the love the Father has for Jesus with that love, he says, I have loved you so.

The same eternal, timeless, unconditional love that Jesus and the Father had shared between each other, he loves us with.

For one, just think about the type of love that means God has for you.

I can't even talk about it because it's hard to describe, but it's hard to feel and be like God has that much love for me, that the same amount of love he has toward his counterparts he has for me. And then he says, remain in my love. Right. Live in the love of God. We can do that, and that's hard in this world, in a world where we feel, many of us, that we feel outcast.

We actually talked about outcast today in the morning service. A lot of us feel like outcast, really are outcast. We feel like we're invisible. We feel like no one cares for us. We're insignificant.

And as we start to tell ourselves that, it becomes to where we feel like we are unloved and unable to be loved, unlovable and unwilling. But God says, remain in my love. And we do that by remembering that Jesus loves me. I'm not an outcast. Jesus chose me.

He saved me. He says that we didn't find him. He found us. I'm not an outcast. He found me and saved me.

I'm not unloved. Jesus died for me.

I'm not invisible. God sees me and hears my cries and my pleas and my desires and my fears. We remain in the love of God continually. We live in that. And if you are constantly being reminded of that love of God toward you, how can you ever feel unloved, unwanted, undesired?

It's impossible when you remember that the person who created everything single handedly picked you out to love you and to redeem you and to save you and to desire you. He then says, if you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my father's commands and remain in his. This is one of those if statements. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love. This isn't one of those.

In order to keep his commands, you will remain in his love. But as we keep the commands of God, we will be in his love continually. What's the first command?

The first command is directed toward God. Shawnee says, to love God. The greatest command is to love God. In fact, if we go with the two greatest commands, love God. Love people as yourself.

And Jesus says in these are all of the commands, right? But we're to have no other gods beside Yahweh. We're not to use his name in vain. If our attitude toward God is reverence, it's hard to walk outside of his love. And if our attitude toward God is reverence, the other commands come easy.

We're not to steal from our neighbors. We're not to murder. We're not to bear false witness against and covet what they have. We're not to do these things, and these things are all unloving. Is it LOving to steal from your neighbor?

No. But if we're walking in all of these things, we will naturally remain and abide in the love of Jesus, the love of God. And he says, I'm telling you these things so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. A lot of people say ChristiAnItY, bless you is FUll of rules and regulations. And actually, Christianity almost says, you're free to live how you want when you're in Christianity.

You don't want to steal from your neighbor. You don't want to kill, you don't want to lie, you don't want to do these things, and because you don't want to do them, anything else that we want to do. Paul says, all things are permissible to me. If you want to go see a movie, go see a movie. We don't go watch pornography because of rules and regulations.

Our religion says we can't. We don't go watch pornography because we don't want to. That's not desirable to us. We recognize it as unhealthy and evil, not because of rules and regulations, but because of the desires of our heart that God gives us. Jesus doesn't tell us all of this so that we'll be miserable, so that we have a set of tasks to do every day.

But he tells us this because he wants us to be happy.

He wants us to be happy and joyful, and he wants it to know no ends. He says, I want your joy to be full, to be complete, to be overflowing. And that's why he says all of this is that we can experience that which he wants for us. And he says, and this is going to be hard. Love one another as I have loved you.

How has Jesus loved us? He says, I've loved you the same way the father loved me. So now we are commanded here. He says, this is my command, the same way the father loved me. You are to love each other.

Do we do that? I actually can honestly say I don't believe I exhibit that love toward anyone.

I can honestly say that it's a command that we love one another in that same way. But I don't believe that I have ever truly loved anyone like that. That unconditional love, that unfailing love. We read in the psalms every Wednesday before we start, and in the last four or five weeks we have seen about God's love. It says, your love is faithful, your love is never ending, your love is unfilling, your love is true.

And then think about the love we have for each other. When we get mad at each other, rather than lovingly rebuking each other, we begin to yell and fight and hold aminosity toward each other. We tend to get frustrated and not talk to each other for weeks on end. We tend to say hurtful things. Is that the love of God?

Far from it.

So I say this is hard because as much as we love each other, we need to not just love each other, but we need to love each other with the same love that the father has for Jesus.

The only way we can love each other like that is to continually remain in the love of Jesus. If you remain in that love and that love is showered on you second by second of every minute and hour and day and year, that love is going to flow out of you. But we must continually live in that love if we are to love other people that way.

Verses 13 through 17 we're going to finish up here. He says, I do not call. Sorry, I started in the wrong place. 13 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. Hey, we talked about that a minute ago. You did not choose me, but I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce fruit, and that your fruit should remain so.

Whatever you ask the father in my name, he will give you. This is what I command. You love one another. Okay, so as we go through this, he tells us the greatest love. And this is critical to the entire passage.

Why? What is Jesus, this very night that he is teaching this gonna do, this very night he will be arrested, stand trial, and then by sundown the next day, will be crucified and killed. And he does it for us. So he says, the greatest love that exists is to lay down his life for his friends. Jesus laid down his life not because he was a sinner, not for himself, not for a good cause, but he laid down his life for those who he would call his friends, those he would save and redeem.

He himself died on behalf of us, and that is the greatest love that there is.

And then he says, if you do what I command you, you are my friends. So this is a statement that tends to catch people off guard. If you do what I command you, what has God commanded us? There's a lot of commands that God has given us, but if we are to read this contextually, he tells us in verse 17 what I command. If you do what I command you, you are my friends.

This in verse 17, this is what I command you love one another. So if we love one another with the very love that the father had toward Jesus and Jesus shown toward us, then we are the friends of Jesus.

We can't have that type of love without knowing Jesus, and we are the friends of Jesus. If we exhibit that type of love, he then tells us here, he says, we are no longer called servants, but friends. And he makes a distinction. A servant, a slave, does not know what his master is doing or planning or the future. But Jesus has revealed everything to us that he is doing.

He has laid it all out. He has told us everything that we need to know from the beginning, Genesis, to the end in revelation, all things that he is planning and preparing for us, and he has called us friends. Think about that. God doesn't think of you as a servant. He doesn't think of you as a petty slave to just do his whim.

He calls you his friend.

One thing I've always said is unique about Christianity, and this is the most unique thing about Christianity. All other religions are about what you can do for your God, for a hope of being rewarded. Christianity is about what God did for you so that he can reward you. But also unique to Christianity in all other religions, you are a servant to your God, a slave to your God. You serve at their whim, with hopes.

In Christianity, you are called a friend of the most high.

Just think about that when you go to bed tonight, when you wake up tomorrow. I'm not just God's child. I'm not just God's servant. I'm his friend. And think about what that means.

And we close here. In verse 16, he says, you did not choose me, but I chose you. No person chose God. No person sought after God. He chose each of us.

He sought after each of us. Remember when I said about the way he loved you? We are not unlovable or anything. Jesus loves us. He sought us.

He wants us. And tonight, I want to just end with that. If you are hearing this tonight, maybe you feel unloved right now. You might feel worthless.

You might feel like there is no meaning to life anymore, that you're invisible. But I want you to know you're not invisible. Even if no other man sees you, God does. He sees you. And he paid a very, very hefty price for you to call you his friend, to love you, to shower you with blessings, to redeem you.

And if you want to feel that love, the same love that he has for the father that he had for me and for those surrounding me, you can feel that tonight. But first, in order to fill that, in order to have that, we must acknowledge that we're sinners. We can't experience God and his love if we cannot see our need for him. So we must admit that we are sinners. We can't save ourselves.

You know that you feel the way you do right now, and there is nothing you can do about it. We must believe that Jesus Christ is the God man, the creator of the heavens and the earth, that he came here and lived perfectly and died for you, died for me, for each of us, that we might be redeemed and confess him as lord, as king. A lot of people want to say Jesus is my savior, but not a lot of people want to say, jesus is my lord. And that is the requirement of salvation, is to make him our Lord. To say, God, I take my crown off, I remove my power and authority over my life and submit to yours.

And the scriptures sum it up like this. If you believe in your heart, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved. If you're ready for that. As we go to our closing prayer here in just a couple seconds, I want to invite you to verbalize this belief, this commitment to God. Let him know that you are a sinner, that you believe who he is and that he is your God and king, that you're submitting to him.

And ask him for this gift and let us know. I want to celebrate with you and let you know that you are loved. Immediately after service, we'll partake of the Lord's supper, communion. Just give me 30 seconds after service ends to run upstairs and retrieve it. And then we will have our Bible study this Wednesday at 06:30 p.m.

As we look at the final judgments in the book of Revelation. Let's pray. Father, I admit that I'm a sinner. I admit, Lord, that I can't say myself, that my ways are corrupt and defiled and apart from you. There is no good thing in me.

And I believe, Lord Jesus, that you are God. That you did come into your creation for me because you loved me. And you knew I couldn't save myself, but you could. And I confess to you, not just as my savior, but as my king, my God, my lord, the one who commands my life and my destiny. I remove my crown from myself and submit to yours, Lord Jesus.

And I ask you to come into my heart. And I thank you for your gift. Father, as we depart here tonight, I ask that you'll help each of us to abide in you. To be grafted. To be the branches grafted into your vine, receiving your nutrients, living with you daily, day in and day out, and each hour to remain in you.

And, Father, not only to remain in you, but, Father, help us to remain in your love, to realize your love, experience it so that we can obey your command to love one another with that same love. Father, would you help us do that? Not just so that we can do it, but so that you will be glorified. As people know that we are your disciples because of that love, that love that is only of God, that we have. And they will glorify you and want to know you and come to you.

Father, we pray for all of these things now, in Jesus'holy name, we pray. Amen.