If you remain standing and take out your Bibles. For the reading of God's word this morning. Turning to John's Gospel, Chapter 15. Gospel of John, Chapter 15, we're going to be looking at a couple of Verses from this passage, but I'll be reading beginning at verse one through verse 17 this morning. Gospel of John, chapter 15, this is the holy and errant word of God. Give it your full attention. I am the true vine and my father is the vine dresser, every branch of mine that does not bear fruit, he takes away and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers, and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you. 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. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends. 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. 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. These things I command you so that you will love one another. Thus far, God's holy word. You may be seated. Let's begin with prayer. Again, Holy Father, we are thankful for this opportunity in worship now to give attention to your word. We thank you for the privilege of singing praises to your name. And we thank you that you have given us this means of grace. your revelation, your inscripturated word, that we might know the truth that you want us to know about you and about our lives before you and living for your glory. We pray now, Lord, in spite of the frailties and sins of the preacher, that your mighty word by the presence of your spirit would indeed be proclaimed and understood by your people, that it would pierce their hearts, continue to cause them to grow in confidence and trust in Christ, and in righteousness to walk before Him all their days. And we ask it for Jesus' sake. Amen. Excuse me. bad back, falling apart. When I began this preaching series on a number of the one another passages in the New Testament, really in all of scripture, we looked at a couple in the Old Testament as well. A couple of months ago, I wanted these texts before us because I believe they are crucial for our spiritual health and even for our spiritual survival as a true church of Jesus Christ. From time to time in the life of the church, we may find ourselves under heavy attack from our adversary, the devil, who prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. And we may suddenly realize at times we're on his menu, that the devil has been poisoning and severely disrupting the peace and the purity and the unity of Christ's church. And of course, humanly speaking, we are a frail and pitiful institution. And in and of ourselves, we easily fall prey to Satan's deceptions, So we have to be diligent in keeping up our guard, staying alert to what Paul calls the devil's schemes, so that we are not overcome or fooled by them and not kept from fulfilling our calling as Christ's ambassadors in the world. It seems that in the history of redemption, Satan's most devastating attacks on the church have not come so much from external opponents or pressures, but from within. From the way believers view and treat one another. The way we respond to problems. To the conflicts we have with each other. and over or about each other. I don't want you to think for a second that Satan wants us to ignore our problems, that he's satisfied with hypocrisy, with our pretending we don't have any problems. No, he wants us concerned and focused and working hard on our problems. convinced we're going to fix them. We're going to overcome them. We're going to be conscientious and we're going to do whatever it takes to keep our church going the way we want it to go. That's Satan's goal. He wants noble sounding dedication to and love for the church, while in reality, We treat each other in worldly, prideful, self-sufficient, non-Christian ways. Rather than according to the crystal clear ways, God, in his word, has commanded us to act toward each other no matter what problems or conflicts arise among us. That is why these one another passages are so important. God wants us to live his way, to obey him from the heart in conformity with his word, no matter the cost, no matter what seems best or right in our own eyes, regardless of what might happen. or how we think others may or may not respond to our doing what Christ commands us to do in submission to him as he directs in his church. This is Christ's church, not ours. And he reveals exactly how he wants his church to think, to act, to mature and to work internally, and how to love and worship and serve Him in contrast to the world for His honor and glory. And when we drift away from handling conflicts or differences with each other the way that Christ commands, We can quickly split into factions and begin to unravel the way the church did in Corinth. You remember as Paul addressed the Corinthians about what was going on there? 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 10, Paul wrote, I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same spirit and the same judgment. For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, I follow Paul, or I follow Apollos, or I follow Cephas, or I follow Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else. For Christ did not send me to baptize you, but to preach the gospel and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. And then also in chapter three, he writes, But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you're not ready for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way? For when one says, I follow Paul, and another, I follow Apollos, are you not being merely human? What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one and each will receive his wages according to his labor. For we are God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's blessing. And then he ends up this chapter and writes, let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, he catches the wise in their craftiness. And again, the Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile. Let no one boast in men, for all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours. And you are Christ's and Christ is God's. When interpersonal conflicts, when conflicts aren't reconciled the way Christ wants, we can feel like we're coming apart at the seams. And sometimes we don't just feel like it, but it really happens. And the church is severely wounded by schism or splits and factions. Have you ever had a favorite, a really favorite piece of clothing, one that you wear so often that the seams start to wear out before the cloth does? I have a son who likes t-shirts that way. He's wearing t-shirts that he was wearing 15 years ago. And before long, as the thread unravels, The gap in the seam gets wider. The separation appears. And when that happens to your favorite soft, perfect fitting shirt or blouse or whatever, you don't throw it away. You simply repair the seams. Now, my desire for this series on the one another commands in scripture is to help us re-stitch any seams that have started to separate in the fabric of our life together in Christ. These one another verses can help mend or repair any relationships that need a stronger seam. Now, I also hope that these messages in some way have made all of us garment inspectors. Have you ever opened some package with clothing in it, you know, like a package of underwear or a package of new T-shirts or a shirt in a package and seen that little note drop out? This garment inspected by number three. I want all of us to be garment inspectors. Whenever you notice a seam beginning to pull apart in your relationships in the church or in your family, I hope you're encouraged to go right to the tear, right to the separation and double stitch it with the proper thread. Now, with that same sewing analogy in mind, the spools of thread that we've been reminded to use thus far are greet one another, don't lie to each other, speak truthfully to one another, bear with one another, forgive one another, carry one another's burdens, Speak to one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Now, there are other one another commands we haven't considered in this series, such as fellowship with one another. Offer hospitality to one another. Encourage one another. Do not slander one another. Submit to one another. accept one another, instruct one another, and be devoted to one another. And hopefully at some future point we will cover each one of these in greater detail. But we need to understand that these behavioral commands cannot be practiced in isolation from each other. They all overlap and are intertwined. The seams that hold your lives together in close relationships, in other words, are not single stitched. By design, God wants the seams in your lives double and triple and quadruple stitched. They must be sewn and sewn and re-sewn. The Lord intends For the way you treat one another to result in secure relationships, meaning relationships that are inseparable and even beyond that, relationships that are beautiful as well. God is a unified being. And he wants you to reflect his unity in your attachment to each other. Now, Paul calls this welding of our lives together, quote, the bond of peace in the unity of the spirit. In John 17, Jesus prays for our lives to become inseparably interlocked this way when he says, Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. So there's the ultimate connection. The relationship the Father and the Son and the Spirit have in the Godhead. And only once has there been a disturbance in that ultimate and mysterious unity. And it came because of our sin. Jesus the Son voluntarily endured the Father's wrath in your place. He suffered punishment for the crimes which you had committed and for which you were justly tried, convicted, and sentenced. And Hebrews chapter 1 verse 3, speaking of Christ there, says, after making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. The intimacy between the Father and the Son was restored. But only after the shedding of Christ's innocent blood. And Jesus now, as your great High Priest, now He intercedes for your relationships with one another. That they would duplicate His intimacy with the Father. He asked the Father for your protection. while your lives are being knit together. We also see in Christ's prayer there that our unity is not simply an end in itself. The ultimate joy for which we were created is not union with one another, but union with God. And unity with one another prepares us for something even greater. It is in anticipation of Christ's royal wedding. Christ wants you, His bride, ready for that wedding. Revelation 19 verse 7, which is basically a pre-recorded video of that royal wedding, says, Let us rejoice and exult and give Him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, And his bride has made herself ready. The one another commands then, beloved, the one another commands we might understand as engagement activities. They are pre-wedding assignments for making yourself ready. When I first began to study these one another passages for this series, one of them was unquestionably the crowning command. It is all over the New Testament, the Gospels, Acts, the letters of Paul and Peter, James and John. It's in Hebrews and Jude and Revelation. And where it isn't said explicitly, it is there by implication. This command dominates because, in a sense, it encompasses all the other commands. In fact, when Jesus was asked to prioritize God's commands or his commandments, he chose this word. Not only to prioritize, but also to summarize. All the law and the prophets, he said, hang on this virtue. And in our passage, John 15, this morning, which is part of the upper room discourse, part of Jesus's final words to his disciples, he gives them numerous commands and instructions. But here in John 15, in verses 12 and 17, Jesus appears to give the disciples what we would call the bottom line. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. These things I command you so that You will love one another. In my concordance, there are 792 entries under the topic of love. That means, among other things, that the understanding and implications of this supreme virtue cannot be compressed into one sermon. And even though love is a major topic in scripture, it seems that many Christians in our culture don't understand love biblically. Instead, they tend to buy into a secular imitation, which also in our society happens to be, at least right now, or is considered the greatest virtue. toleration. The world suggests that love is tolerating someone's beliefs or behaviors regardless of what they are. The popular word is unconditional. Often appears in music today when talking about love. If you really love someone unconditionally It is implied that you won't require anything of Him. No conditions. Nor will you ever hold anything against Him. No conditions. And the subtle suggestion is that love doesn't place any stipulations, boundaries, or demands on Him. And that love will work hard to remove all the negative consequences for the decisions he makes or the actions he takes, because that is love's way. I'm hopeful that what we consider this morning will correct the worldly idea of a love that tolerates wrong values, actions, and thinking and will replace it with a true love, a love that is sacrificial, Christ-like, a tough love that confronts and corrects sin, one that comes from trusting God's definition of love and God's direction for showing it to one another. Now, my thoughts this morning are really directed more toward answering the who, where, when and why questions of love rather than the how to. In one sense, we've already been listening to a series on how to love one another. Each of the ways in which Christ commands us to treat one another in the passages that we've considered is in some sense an act of love. Now, and I know you've been taught numerous times, especially. When contrasting the secular and Christian views of love, that true love isn't primarily a feeling, but an action. John says, little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed, d-e-e-d, actions, and in truth, in actions and in truth. So we recognize to begin with that God's love is manifested. It's not an elusive, ethereal thing. Nor is it passive. You don't fall in or out of it uncontrollably. It doesn't just come over you like a cloud and sweep you away in euphoria. It is active, concrete, visible, and learnable. Because Jesus requires that we love our enemies in addition to one another. We know that such love is a function of the will rather than the emotions. Of course, God's matchless manifestation of love for you was Christ on the cross. In Romans 5.8, Paul wrote, but God demonstrates, manifests his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Now, sadly, This may be the most misused and misapplied verse in the past century by Christians. In thousands of evangelistic messages, that verse has been proposed to the lost as a reason why one should believe. And so God's love is used as a marketing tool an advertising slogan to sell the gospel and make it more popular. In his book, Made in America, Michael Horton writes, quote, our gospel itself is consumer centered rather than God centered. A J.I. Packer describes this this well-intentioned but consumer-dominant message in his little introduction to John Owen's work on the atonement. And Packer writes, he's talking about Christians. We want rightly to proclaim Christ as Savior, yet we end up saying that Christ, having made salvation possible, has left us to become our own saviors. It comes about in this way. Here's where I want you to listen. He says, we want to magnify the saving grace of God and the saving power of Christ. So we declare that God's redeeming love extends to every man and that Christ has died to save every man. And we proclaim that the glory of divine mercy is to be measured by these facts. And then, in order to avoid universalism, we have to depreciate all that we were previously extolling. And to explain that, after all, nothing that God and Christ have done can save us unless we add something to it. The decisive factor which actually saves us is our own believing. What we say comes to this, that Christ saves us with our help. And what that means when one thinks it out is this, that we save ourselves with Christ's help. This is a hollow anticlimax, but if we start by affirming that God has a saving love for all, And Christ died a saving death for all. And yet, balk at becoming universalist, there is nothing else that we can say. And let us be clear on what we have done when we have put the matter in this fashion. We have not exalted grace and the cross. We have cheapened them. We have limited the atonement far more drastically than Calvinism does. For whereas Calvinism asserts that Christ's death as such saves all whom it was meant to save, we have denied that Christ's death as such is sufficient to save any of them. Michael Horton adds, a gospel that suits the tastes of people who are alienated from God and dead in sin is not the gospel found in the Bible. The gospel's starting place is not God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. As though the unbeliever's problem is a lack of education in God's love and a lack of spiritual and moral direction. Rather, the gospel begins with a deeper problem and hence a deeper solution. John 3.18, whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. Unquote. And so, beloved, the proper interpretation of the for us in Romans 5, 8 is the church. Christ's bride. You are engaged to Christ. And that means, among other things, waiting. And waiting can entail a growing, joyful anticipation of the wedding. But it can also involve fits of doubt. and bouts of uncertainty as you wonder, does he really love me? And to you and only to you who are trusting in Christ, he says in Romans 5, 8, yes, yes, yes, I love you. And I showed you how much I loved you. So stop going. with the flow of your feelings and look at the facts, the fact of my cross. That is where my love was shown, not just said. In turn, Christ tells us we must love, He says, one another in the same way. He says, as I have loved you. So you already know how to do what you can do. But the more pressing question for us every day is, will you? As you await the bridegroom, he wants you providing concrete, not circumstantial, concrete evidence that you love each other that way. Now, a second quality that complements the manifestation of God's love is that it is measurable. Six times in the Upper Room discourse, in these texts from which we read in John 15 before and after, six times in that discourse, Jesus repeats some form of this statement. If you love me, you will obey what I command. Now, in addition to wondering if he loves us, we also face those terrifying moments of internal self-awareness and self-examination when we ask, do I really love God? Is this all real? Am I just playing a game? with all this Christianity stuff? Maybe I don't really love God. Do you ever find yourself just fearfully obsessed with those kinds of questions? I do. There are moments when I'm startled and frightened by my bankruptcy of feelings for God. When I'm not zealous for him. Or I don't feel like I did, for instance, when I was first converted. And I remember those years. What do you do? What's your response to this vacuum of affection toward God? I'm suggesting this morning a very simple solution for such moments. Ask a question and then take action. First, you need to ask yourself about your desire to obey Christ. Do you hear what that just said? Your desire to obey Christ. I'm not talking about emotions, feelings. Desire to obey. Do an internal audit of your disposition. Is your spirit willing, even though your flesh is weak? Secondly, that's the question. Secondly, find ways to love Christ's people, his visible people. And I mean active, intentional, observable behavior. with all the best attitudes, not worst case scenarios toward one another. I know it's simplistic in one sense, but I think we often experience a lack of feelings that normally accompany love for God because God is invisible. It's difficult to love what you can't see. And you know what? God knows that. And He's given us a fantastic way to handle His invisibility. It's called each other. John writes in his first letter, For anyone who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command, whoever loves God must also love his brother. True love, God's love is manifested and it is measurable. And you also need to remember that it is mysterious. We know that he loves us. We know how much he loves us. But what about why he loves us? J.I. Packer, in his classic Knowing God, says, it is staggering that God should love sinners. Yet it is true. God loves creatures who have become unlovely and unlovable. There was nothing whatever in the objects of his love to call it forth. Nothing in man could attract or prompt it. Love among men is awakened by something in the beloved. But the love of God is free, spontaneous, unevoked, uncaused. God loves men because he has chosen to love them. No other reason can be given." Now, have you learned to personalize this mysterious truth? Has God's love staggered you? God has chosen to love you in a way He hasn't loved others. Now, of course, in the broad sense, God loves all men. Generally, what that simply means, generally displaying His goodness, His kindness to men, to all creatures. But you have been loved by God with His special love that led to your salvation, even though there is nothing special about you, nothing that deserves God's favor. Now, as that truth fills your thoughts, God's love becomes more than a spiritual gift or a fruit of the Spirit. It becomes a powerhouse in your life. God's love moves you, changes you. It's the energizer that keeps going and going and going. Love ignites your worship of God. And it fuels your goodness toward men. Though hidden in mystery, keep asking the question, beloved, oh God, why did you choose to love me? Why did you choose to love me? The Father's answer never discloses his secret will. But in that silence, he directs your eyes to his son on the cross. There alone will you find the peace which transcends the answers to all the questions. Dear friends, writes St. John, dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. Amen. Let's pray. Lord, we thank you as we think about this glorious truth of your love for your people. That love, which has been revealed throughout Holy Scripture, revealed ultimately in Christ our Savior, the one who loved us so much that he condescended and came into this world of misery and sin and death to become our substitute, to demonstrate that mysterious love that you have for your people. We thank you, Lord Jesus, for showing it so clearly. We pray that we would cling to it. We pray that we would understand it in terms of its moving us and motivating us each and every day to obey you, to live for you, to seek your glory and honor above all that we do. We know that as we do that, we will be loving you according to your word, loving you even as you have loved us. We thank you for that and pray that you would strengthen us in this resolve for Jesus' sake. Amen.