John 15:7-27 • Fuel of Hate - Fountain of Hope
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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)
We will look this morning at John 15, John chapter 15, beginning at verse 7 and reading through verse 27.
Yesterday, churches throughout the Pittsburgh area had prayer and worship services dedicated to the victims of USAIR flight 427.
Whenever there is a Holocaust and death, it is our typical nature to think of victims
and care for them.
In the passage in front of you, there will be another victim, another death, another Holocaust soon coming, that of the Lord Jesus' death upon the cross.
But as he prepares his disciples for this tragedy, it is not victimage on his lips,
but rather triumph and conquest.
And I would you would see that theme as you read with me, John 15, verses 7 through 27.
Jesus says, "If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be given you. This is to my Father's glory that you bear much fruit showing yourselves to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.
Now remain in my love.
If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be complete in you and that your joy may be complete.
My command is this.
Love each other as I have loved you.
Your love has no one than this that he laid down his life for his friends. You are my friends, if you do what I command.
I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends for everything that I have learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last.
Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.
This is my command.
Love each other.
If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.
If you belong to the world, you would love, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember the words that I spoke to you. No servant is greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. They obeyed my teaching. They will obey yours also.
They will treat you this way because of my name, for they do not know the one who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin.
Now however, they have no excuse for their sin.
He who hates me hates my Father as well.
If I had not done among them what no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they have seen these miracles, and yet they have hated both me and my Father.
But this is to fulfill what was written in their law. They hated me without reason. When the counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me.
And you also must testify, for you have been with me from the beginning.
Let's pray together.
Father, we were known by you since before the beginning of the world.
You chose us in you to do your work.
Now Father, we would ask that you would enable us to bear the fruit that you intend by having your Spirit conform us to your Word.
Do this we pray for the glory of your name. We ask in Jesus' name, Amen.
Paul Hill sat here.
Oh, I don't mean in these seats, but in a place much like this. He sat in your situation.
A sister seminary took the same courses, same background, went to the same churches, was ordained in this denomination that sponsors and supports this school.
Oh, I know we can claim we got rid of him before he did anything real wrong.
But the fact of the matter is, we made Paul Hill.
Our churches, our teaching, our Bible colleges, we made him.
Remember Paul Hill?
On July 29, he was the one who took a shotgun and in the name of right to life, killed two people in Pensacola. Ten years ago, he sat where you are sitting.
How did that happen?
What did we say, what did we do that fed a tormented and troubled mind?
I know that we can just kind of say, "Oh, he's just crazy."
No.
If you're honest, there is an element of those of us in a place like this who are deeply committed to living for the gospel of truth with our lives, a voice that says maybe he was just more courageous than we are.
Maybe he just did what we haven't been able to bring ourselves to do. If you know that voice in the face of a Holocaust that you recognize to be abhorrent to God,
if you hear that voice at all or recognize there are people around you who seem to at times hear it, then you have to ask as I do, "What did we do that fed that mind?"
Perhaps we begin to know by distinguishing what we do from what Christ did with his apostles as they began to face another Holocaust.
Oh, there were terrible things about to happen. Not only was Jesus saying that he was going to the cross, that the Lamb of God, perfect and blemishless, would be abused and sacrificed, but that the apostles themselves would be persecuted, that they would be thrown out of the synagogues and people thinking that they were serving God would kill them.
How does Jesus get them ready for such abuse and horrible things?
Maybe we can just begin here by telling them they are not victims.
They are not victims. Regardless of the abuse the world may seem to bring, they are not victims who call themselves disciples of Jesus Christ. Oh, I expect you to almost object and say that's not what this text says. After all, look at what starts at verse 18. If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. And it's not just going to perhaps hate you. Go on to the end of verse 19. "I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you." Verse 20, "Remember the words I spoke to you. No one is greater than his master. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also." And then the parent words of irony, "If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours too." Sure, like they're really obeying my teaching.
Verse 25 at the end, "This is to fulfill what is written in their law. They hated me without reason. And all that will follow in verse 16, I told you this so that you will not go astray. They will put you out of the synagogue. In fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think that he is offering a service to God." Surely, Jesus is saying here that there is terrible opposition to come. You are victims of this opposition.
But of course, that's not the message at all.
Oh, surely, Jesus is saying great opposition is coming, but you will not be overcome.
You are not a victim. You are my servants. No, more than that. You're my friends.
The victory is yours. Look how he says it in verse 7 and 8. "If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be given you. The sovereign God will serve in your behalf as you remain in his purposes and seek his will.
Ask whatever you will for his sake. And the sovereign God will work for you." Verse 8, "This is to my Father's glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples." Verse 11, "I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete." Verse 15, "I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends."
Verse 16, "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last."
And of course, verse 26, "When the counselor comes, whom I send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me." He's coming to you and he will testify about me. Listen, here is the basic message.
The Spirit and the gifts are ours.
We are not victims.
There will be opposition. There will be terrible things to occur. But we as God's people are never to see ourselves at the mercy of this world. Our God is greater than that.
We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. He has not gone away. We are hard-pressed, but not crushed. We are perplexed, but not in despair. We are persecuted, but not abandoned. We are pressed down on every side, but not destroyed. We are always led in triumphal procession.
By God, in Christ, so that the knowledge of Christ might be as a fragrance to everyone in this whole world, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. I am nobody's victim.
The reason that we have to say as much is because we know what victimage causes.
If people really begin to believe that they are victims just at the mercy of the world, it is the very first mark of their own faithlessness.
If I as a servant of Christ Jesus, a friend of the Son of God, am at the mercy of this world then I'm not the only one who is a victim.
God is a victim.
Why He just can't take care of things. He just can't take care of me. The problems have gotten too big. They're too immense. God must be away or asleep. Something's wrong. God's just not able to handle it.
It's not just a mark of faithfulness. It's an excuse for faithlessness when we begin to believe ourselves victims.
In your churches, sometimes people you counsel, sometimes people who are your friends in the workplace or places where you go to school, different ones of you, people you teach.
You will come across the people whose self-image is that of being a victim. The world is always taking advantage of them. Somebody's not giving them their dues. Somebody's always trying to do something to them. And their whole response to life is I'm a victim and somebody's trying to get me or somebody's taking advantage of me. And it is so hard to deal with those people because all the time that you try to motivate them and take them to take positive steps, they're not able to do anything because after all they're just victims. They don't have control over their lives. Why should they try to do anything? And you try to help those people and they just can't be helped. And it's not just because of their willingness to do nothing.
It's because of their satisfaction in complaining about it. It's the way they approach the world.
You see, whenever anybody begins to believe themselves a victim, not only is that an excuse for surrender, almost always with those people, right beside, slightly behind, the excuse for not doing is a seething, boiling anger.
Oh that mean old world, look what they did to me.
And how dare they? How dare they?
And with the surrender comes the anger.
Surrender and anger are the marks of those who believe themselves to be victims. And if we are to respond to the people in our midst around us who listen to us and not feed their victimage, we must recognize that dynamic. They will respond with surrender or anger or both. And we cannot feed them that way. The reason we cannot do that is not just because we are not victims, but because Christ's purposes should never vanish from our lives. And what are those purposes? He's made it perfectly clear in verse 8. "This is my Father's glory that you bear much fruit." That's the word to the disciples? You're supposed to bear fruit.
Now that is important for us, particularly in explaining this particular passage, because I know verses 5 and 6 are the ones that trouble us theologically.
Remember what they're about? If the branches don't bear fruit, I'll cut them off and put them in the fire?
And theologically we are troubled, because this sounds to us like a salvation account. If God isn't pleased with you, you're just cast away.
And it sounds like a salvific statement, but it's not.
Recognize what's being talked about here is spiritual effectiveness.
You're to bear fruit. And if you don't bear fruit, God is not talking about salvation, but He is talking about your spiritual effectiveness. You won't be of any use to Him. And so He begins to lay before us the qualifications for our spiritual effectiveness to bear much fruit, not just saying, "What should be done?" But why? That's verse 7. "If you remain in Me and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be given to you." These are key qualifications. "If you remain in Me and My words remain in you." If you're going to fulfill the purposes of Christ, you have to remain in Me. It's just the words of union, of being with Christ, of living for Him, of having our lives be identified with Him, and His clarification He even adds. "And My words remain in you." The Ramata, that teaching of Jesus in His ministry. My teaching is to be what you're about. Wherever you are, whatever you're teaching, whatever you're saying, however you're living with, whomever you're with, make sure your life and your lips reflect Me.
You know, it's the very calling we have here to be salt and light in our culture. That we are to be those disciples who are bearing much fruit because our lives and our lips are doing what has to be done so that the teachings, the living of Jesus Christ might be present in our culture and society. It is the reason that we are supposed to be concerned about the poor and the destitute. The reason that we take stands in the cause of justice. The reason that we stand on the picket lines. The reason that we are involved in the Hands Across Life programs. The reason that we are involved is because the words of Christ are to remain in us. We are to be active forces for the work of God in this world. It's clear.
But we're not just called to bear fruit by the way that we live externally or the words that we profess. There is another key qualification.
And our instincts ought to pick up on it when we hear the surrender or when we hear the anger.
Look at verse 9.
"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you now.
Remain in my love."
Look at all the verses that follow on that theme. It goes from verse 9 to 17.
It's a wonderful balance being set up. If you go from verses 18 through 25, the idea is the world is a hating community. The world hates. It will hate you. It will hate me. It will hate the purpose of God. The world hates. The world hates. The world hates.
But not my people.
My love must remain in you if you are to bear fruit. The world hates. It's a community of hate. My church is a community of love. Jesus is serious about this. Five times in these eight verses between 9 and 17, five times the word love is linked to the word command.
I'm commanding you to love thee.
It's clear what's being said not just as a matter of command, for instance as in verse 10, but even what that means, verse 12, the further definition, you're to love each other as Jesus has loved. And what does that mean, verse 13?
Greater love has no one than this, that he laid down his life for his friend. It's not just a commanded love. It's not just a love within the church. It is a selfless love. You are a community of love. But nothing explains the concept better than where we began in verse 9.
Now remain in my love. Very peculiar construction. The only time in all the Bible this particular construction occurs. It's actually the wording, I don't do this often, but you're a seminary crowd so I'll do it, te egape, te eme, the love that is me. Remain in the love that characterizes me. Remain in the love that is my very nature. You be like me in your love.
Now why do we have to say that so strongly?
Because we have people all around us who believe that they are going to be bearing much fruit in the cause of Jesus Christ because they identify himself with his, themselves with his church and they say much about his standards. But if we talk about his love characterizing their words and actions, we must confess it is far from them.
And they don't even appear to know it.
And sometimes we don't appear to know it because we have identified ourselves as victims of this culture and therefore we are willing to listen to them.
On one day, on one day last week, I got these three different articles in the mail.
I have blacked out the organization that sent them.
The first is the standard cry of victimage in the evangelical church these days.
"Evangelical Christian thought, ideas and ideals are not shaping American society. Christians have been cut out of the discussion and political process in that which affects the shaping of our culture." Now you might not disagree with that. I don't necessarily disagree with it, but I recognize what it is starting to say. You are a victim.
Well you are a victim.
I want you to see where it leads.
Same day, another male item.
In this editorial on the front, the writer variously identified those who are involved
in the pro-choice movement, believe me he will not use that euphemism, variously this way.
Butchers, executioners, death merchants.
Homosexuals are called queers and the writer laments the fact that it is not any longer politically correct to call them queers.
Conservatives are called defenders of liberty.
Liberals are called street gangs.
And in the name of Christ, we are to line up, raise our right arm and say together, "Hile Clinton."
And this person thinks he is doing the work of Jesus Christ with venom and hatred and invective.
There's this one too.
You see the target?
Kind of sadly reminiscent of James Davidson Hunter's latest book, which is subtitled Before the Shooting Begins.
Here the title is Public Schools Under Assault.
Our schools have failed America's children, public education, ready to collapse, school officials under a fair assault. Hear it, you're victims. You're victims.
Religious are determined to seize control of our school boards and other units of local government. Clergy unite. We will have a clergy breakfast because the leadership of the clergy has been crucial to the preservation of religious liberty.
And who wrote this?
Well interestingly enough, it's not from a Christian organization.
The subtitle here is Why the Religious Right Must Lose.
This is a call to arms for people for the American way to line up against Christians.
What's so interesting is that you didn't know that. It sounded exactly like the literature that comes from Christians in our mail.
How sad that we are trying to win the world with the ways of the world.
What is it that makes the Christian message distinct, separate, reviving, changing, empowering,
cutting to the heart? It is because it deals with the heart of Jesus Christ. I am not telling you to get off the picket lines. I am not telling myself to stay away from them. I am not saying that we have to in any ways mute our voices as salt and light in this culture. We are required to be salt and light in this culture, but not merely with the message of Jesus with the manner of Jesus. Hate and invective are not permitted in the church of Jesus Christ. And the fact that we do it so much is a terrible indictment of where the evangelical church is in this moment. And it's here, it's upon us and it's affecting everything that we do. Listen to the jokes that we tell. A year ago my children in a Christian organization were taught this. They were to stand every day in this organization and they were to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, which is fine. And after the Pledge of Allegiance they were to recite the names of the American presidents, which was fine also. Except with a lot of sniggering and laughing and joking, the last president that they named was Hillary Clinton.
How funny.
How cute.
How dare they.
How dare they in the name of Christ teach my children to hate and to be disrespectful and to break scripture, which says we are to honor the king and we are to give proper respect to everyone in authority over us. That's what scripture requires. And how can we be in a church where for me just to say that to you makes me suspect?
To challenge the ridicule and the invective in our churches makes me suspect that somehow I am not now loyal as an evangelical because I question the hatred that pours from us. Listen, I wrote down the words of a friend as he was saying them. I told him I was going to write them down. Here is what he said recently. I don't like being an evangelical right now. I am so distant from the harping and the pessimism that seems to be required like a loyalty oath in our churches. The letters I get in the mail from Christian organizations are full of panic and fear and are no different in tone from the ACLU or people for the American Way. Well that's sure true.
I don't even want to talk about societal or governmental issues with friends because if I disagree I either get patronized or pegged.
I was okay with being an alien in the world.
I just don't like being an alien in the church.
I know precisely what he's talking about. I know precisely what he's talking about. And so do you where you don't have to be cautious about telling the most disrespectful joke about the presidential administration in any of our churches.
But if you were to give a compliment you better duck.
What a commentary on us that obeying scripture is now what brings the tirades in our churches.
If I am suspect let me at least cite one who is not.
This is a man who once led the chorus of acrimony but now sings a much different song.
This a July 10th editorial by Cal Thomas who as you know once led the political wing of the moral majority.
This his words.
Christians have a responsibility to slow the spoilage of the kingdom of this world to be salt in the words of Jesus but they cannot do this through political power alone. It is too late for that. Trying to force their ideas on a reluctant public from the top down will only earn Christians further revulsion and rejection and for all the wrong reasons.
Moral power not political power is the superior force. If Christians will begin living what they claim to believe, loving their enemies, praying for those who persecute you, becoming a friend to sinners, even pro-choicers and hated liberals,
a new kind of power would be unleashed on this land. It would be a power that no one could stop. It might produce something called revival which would create the social conditions Christians say they want but will never be able to achieve by their present means.
Sometimes I think Christians must believe they are in an NBA playoff game instead of a battle for souls, that we are going to taunt and trash talk our way to conversion.
It is ridiculous. You cannot be insulting and salt and light at the same time.
We know that. We know that and this place should know it. I have a hope for us. There has been a wonderful thing the Lord has done in this place in the last decade. In a wonderful and marvelous way, the gospel of grace has come upon this community. Some of you have been changed by it as you have been changed from the legalism and the harshness of the churches in which you may have come from. And you come here and you recognize something wonderful and renewing and recognizing that God has made you own not by your works, not by your hates, but by His love.
And that's wonderful the work that the Lord is doing.
But we have to recognize in some ways we have become a reactive movement ourselves. And this jewel of grace can be something that we begin to admire and hold and watch over and covet for ourselves instead of praying that it would now become a fire. That what we have loved and what has changed us would go forth from this place. I pray that it will. That God would take an institution small like this one and the numbers that are here today only and somehow we would be part of the reviving of this country. This nation is not just sin sick. It is sick of its sin. It is ready and waiting for people who will come with the words and the life of Jesus Christ and also the love of Jesus Christ and say we have something different than this world offers. We are not of this world. We will not sound like it, be like it. We will never hate like it.
And then revival can come. It begins with our own repentance for our jokes and our words and our lack of courage in standing up on our own churches and saying that hatred cannot be tolerated here. It's our time to be on our knees and repent like Ezra and Nehemiah for the sins of their fathers and their forefathers and say our church has been wrong. We will not hate like this anymore.
And that this place would be an oasis from the hatred and the venom and that God would change this country because we stand for the right in the way of Jesus.
It is my prayer and I pray yours that when we pray that God would change this country we would sing the song that we sang before and recognize it is not with swords loud clashing or beat of rolling drums but deeds of love and mercy. The heavenly kingdom comes. May it come. May it come through us.
Because we resolve we are not victims. Nobody makes me a victim. I am a child of the king. He will work beyond me and through me. I may die in the cause and I'm still not a victim of this world and I will not act like a victim nor sound like one.
I'm a friend of Jesus and I will bear fruit that will last.
I am nobody's victim.
Let's pray together.
Give us oh Lord and our land but do it first by our repentance where we have failed the cause of Jesus by our manner.
Forgive us and correct us and make us a force unleashed by the love that is your own. May this conquest of the spirit now work through us. We pray in Jesus name.