Can you go to church your whole life and still be spiritually dead?
WATCH
I Am, 7 of 7 from April 12 2026
“We wither without Jesus, but His life grows our love.”
John 15 by Michael Lockstampfor (@miklocks)
SUMMARY
This sermon explores Jesus’ teaching in John 15, “I am the vine, you are the branches,” emphasizing that our spiritual life depends entirely on truly abiding in Him. Pastor Michael challenges listeners to move beyond superficial Christianity to genuine obedience to Jesus’ command to love, highlighting that Jesus transforms us from enemies to friends and that we cannot manufacture this love ourselves, but instead it is produced as Christ’s own life flows through us while we remain connected to Him.
REFLECTION & DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
💬 Are we attached to Jesus or just in contact with Him?
💬 What does our worst relationship tell us about our heart towards God?
💬 What resources are we asking Jesus for?
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Well, good morning, everybody.
I want you to think for a moment about a person. Maybe it's a couple of different people, but just at the. At the risk of kind of driving us into a ditch right out of the gate, I want you to think about a person who just makes life hard. Who's a. Who's a person that, like, either they do it on purpose, like, they're antagonistic, they want to pick on you, they want to make your life harder, or they do it just out of the kindness of their heart.
Like, they don't mean to make life harder. It just seems like every time you turn around, they're like, oh, man, I gotta help with this again. I gotta help with that again. Right. And so, like, we don't tend to regard people as, like, enemies, but, like, we can come up with those people, can't we?
We can come up with people that make life hard. Oh, it's just me. Somebody else should. Ryan, you want this one? Okay.
Do we have people in our life that just make life hard? Yeah. Okay. And so, like, what's the relationship like with those kind of people? Like, sometimes they're our family, and, like, we are just kind of obligated.
Like, I've got to put up with you because you're related to me somehow, genetically. I don't even know how that works. And we didn't even order the blood test. I'm just taking it on faith. Like, they say, you're my sibling.
Right. And so we just kind of have to put up with them. And in those senses, there's some people that, like, we work with them, and, like, we would fire them if we could, but we don't have that permission to do that. Right. Or, like, we work for the person who makes our life difficult.
And that's a weird dynamic. Right. Are we tracking? Is this just me? Okay.
All right. Making sure. Now imagine for a moment that person who makes life difficult, like, is suddenly at your command. Like, probably. I'm going to assume that the thing that makes life difficult is they do what they want to do regardless of what you want them to do.
Right. But imagine for a moment that you've got just a few minutes. Let's say a week. You've got a week where they have to do everything that you tell them to do.
That was a dangerous chuckle from the back.
My suspicion is, is that if we were given that opportunity to, like, make the people who make our life difficult do exactly what we want for them to do, it would look more like they become our Servant. Right. Like, okay, you're not in charge anymore. I'm in charge. And now you're going to do exactly what I say.
And here's a list. I actually have prepared a list of things and ways that you're going to now take care of the thing that I think you should have been taking care of the whole time. Right? That's, that's like our natural impulse. Right?
Okay. If it's just me, it's okay. Making me feel self conscious this morning. The reason why I bring all that up is because Jesus isn't like that. Okay?
Jesus isn't like that. And over the last couple of weeks, we have been taking some time to look at statements where Jesus says what he is like and what he does. So we, we've been going through the Gospel of John or the biography that was written by John, and there's a couple of places in that story where Jesus kind of stops or stands up in the middle of a scene and he says, hey, by the way, I am. And then makes a statement. Now he's, he said some kind of goofy things.
He says, I'm the bread of life. I'm the bread, I'm the light, I'm the door, I'm the shepherd. Like, kind of goofy things. He's got, he's got illustrations. He's trying to illustrate something about his character and what he's like.
And then he gets like really, really specific. He says like, I am the resurrection. Well, that's like top tier. Like, I don't know how to interact with that. Or I am the way, the truth and the life.
Like, these are things that Jesus said about himself. And we've spent the last six weeks now looking at each of those. And so if you want to, if you're like, I don't understand any of those, great. Like we've got all of that in our YouTube channel. You can catch up or it's on our blog or podcast or however it is that you like to find those things.
But as we have been doing that, we've been doing it because we want to take a look at what Jesus says about himself for himself, as opposed to just listening to all the noise about who Jesus is and what he's like from our friends or from TikTok or from our workplace or from the news or from wherever it is that whoever happens to be talking about Jesus, rather than listen to all that noise, we want to listen in to what Jesus says about himself. So that's what we've been doing. Got one more to do together today.
Are we ready? All right, let's pray. It's our habit as neighborhood church to pray the disciples prayer. And so I put the words up here on the screen. If you want to say it out loud, I think that's beautiful when we do that together.
But Jesus can hear us even if we just do it in our head. And more importantly than the words that we say, what he's looking for is our heart attitude. So if you're feeling self conscious, maybe there was a difficult morning, then like, let's just pause real quick and let's take a breath. And if you haven't talked to Jesus yet, just one on one, just say, hey, good morning, Lord, we're here for you. We want to hear from you.
And so we pray together. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trust as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
If you would please navigate with me to John chapter 15. And if you're using the blue Bibles, they're tucked in the chairs around John 15 starts on, on page 1041 in the blue Bibles that are here in the room. 10:41 or John 15. I said, this is a biography about Jesus. So it's telling the story of Jesus life and his teaching, but it's written by one of his closest friends.
His friend's name was John. We call the book by the name of the author. And he takes a long time. He takes 12 chapters to cover about three years of Jesus life. And then starting in chapter 13, everything really slows down.
What's happening is a scene you might be familiar with. We often call it the Last Supper, where Jesus is the night before he's arrested and the night before he's crucified, he gets one more meal together with his disciples. And he actually spends a significant amount of the time teaching. He opens up that time by illustrating what he's going to teach them by washing their feet. But then he spends a significant amount of time kind of talking through.
So. So Jesus knows what's getting ready to happen in the morning. But these guys have no idea. They're kind of walking in blind. And so this is Jesus opportunity to say, hey guys, I'm getting ready to get out of here.
I'm leaving. And where I'm going, you can't follow Me. But there's a couple of things that you have to remember. You have to remember when I leave. And he starts to explain those things.
So that's where we are in John 15. We're right in the middle of this explanation. The stakes are high on Jesus end. For the boys, it probably is just another holiday meal. We've got this meal together.
We're enjoying dinner. It's a little bit weird because he washed our feet, but I think we moved past that because now he's doing his rabbi thing. He's teaching us again, right? And so here in chapter 15, just out the gate, he starts off with an I am statement. I am.
Let's read together John, chapter 15, starting in verse one.
I am the true vine, and my father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me 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.
Let's pause there at this part of the. Of Jesus teaching, he gives what's called a parable. And Jesus often used parables. These are like stories that highlight. They're real world stories that highlight spiritual truths.
And often, like, as we come across Jesus parables, there's a couple of things to keep in mind. The first is that in almost all of his parables, there's two or there's three characters. And the characters are the things that he's illustrating, right? And then he's using these characters to reveal surprising spiritual truths or to clarify relationships that are kind of counterintuitive. They don't.
Like. They don't. That's not our first natural thing that we would look at a thing and be like, oh, that's how it works. So he's given a spiritual truth, or he's clarifying relationships that are not really intuitive to us. So in this parable, we've got three characters, and he is clarifying counterintuitive relationships.
All right, who are the three characters?
We got. Let me start again. Okay, verse 15. I am the true vine. And my father is the vinedresser.
Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. And every branch that does bear fruit. Let's look at verse five. I am the vine, you are the branches. So here's our three characters.
We've got the Father, we've got God the Father, we've got Jesus the vine, and then we've got the disciples. He's talking to the disciples. First he says, I'm the vine, you are the branches. So those are our three characters. And he is going to use this.
This analogy of, like, a grapevine to illustrate some, like, relational truths that are. That go against the grain of how I think we would assume things are supposed to work. God the Father is the vine dresser. He's the person who owns the vineyard. He's the one who's taking care of the vines.
And Jesus is the vine. And then we are disciples of Jesus are the branches. Okay? We track it. Now, you did not know how interesting horticulture is, but I find it fascinating if you did not know, I spent a significant number of years working as a landscaper.
And so I'm a little bit of a plant nerd. And so this is, like, right up my alley, y'. All. And I'm afraid that this is going to come off like a biological lecture. But I'm not sorry, because underneath the, like, this analogy is so deep.
Underneath this analogy are some rich, rich spiritual truths. But if you don't know how vines work, it doesn't matter, right? So for many of these people, they would have been familiar with how the agricultural system works. They were much more closely connected to how their food was grown than how we typically are. I'm not trying to say that everybody ought to be crunchy or I'm just saying that they were all the way crunchy, okay?
And so they understood this analogy much better than us. And we don't know. Not because we're stupid. We just don't grow grapes. Who grows grapes?
Not even me. I did it one time. It was real hard, and I gave up. But I learned a lot in the process, and I want to share with you. So first I'm going to give you a diagram.
I did not draw this diagram, which is why I left the labels up. So this is a diagram written, drawn by Vinodiary.com and they kind of explain the different parts of a grapevine as they're cultivated today in, like, modern vine keeping. Now, here's your $10 word. Vine keeping is called viticulture. Can you say viticulture.
That's not Biblical, but it is fun. Okay, so here is a grapevine. You've got kind of. But Jesus takes this kind of illustrated diagram and he simplifies it. So I took off all of the labels and labeled it the way that Jesus did.
I am the vine, you are the branches. Do we see that? Okay, so there's a vine, which is a thick part, and then there's the branches, which are a thin part. Now, which of those is connected to the soil? The vine is connected to the soil, and the branches are connected to the.
And the hip bone is connected to the right. So the illustration is this. If you are the branches disciples, and you take away the vine, your ability to connect to life is eliminated. You can't do it. So he says, I'm the vine.
You were the branches. Apart from me, you can do nothing. If you take Jesus out of the. Out of the algorithm of your life, you end up with death. It just doesn't work.
Apart from me, you can do nothing. I am the vine, you are the branches. I put it in your notes this way. Our life depends on staying attached to Jesus. Our life depends on staying attached to Jesus because the vine isn't just grown to, like, look pretty.
It isn't just grown like grass. And. And I. All right, I have very strong feelings about lawns. I'm not going to get into all of those today because I said it wasn't going to be a horticultural lecture.
But, like, we don't just, like, vines or grapevines are not just grown to look at, although they are beautiful. Like, they're grown because we want grapes. And what you do with the grapes afterwards is up to you. If you grew up Baptist, you didn't turn it into wine, you turned it into grape juice. Right?
The vines have a specific purpose. The vine's purpose is to grow fruit. Right. And so it's not just an accident that we have this analogy. There's something purposeful that God is doing.
And he says that the way that the vinedresser takes care of the vine is he prunes it. Okay, so that's our third character. I have illustrated it thusly. You've got the vine, you've got the branches, and then you've got the vinedresser. Now, if you didn't know, that's a set of pruning shears.
What it is, is a knife. It is like the vine dresser will cut you. That's what his job is. So that vine didn't get thick and sturdy. That way, just by accident, that vine didn't just get thick and sturdy the way that it is, just by letting it do whatever it wanted to do and by letting it do its own thing, by just letting the vine grow wherever it wanted to grow.
It was trained that way for a purpose. And the way it's trained is kind of a long process, but it involves cutting it every year. You let it grow, and then you cut it. And when it cuts back, that strengthens the stem. But that stem of that vine becomes like the straw that the branches are gonna suck nutrients out of the ground from, which is good, because that's where the fruit is.
And the fruit needs the branches to go through the vine to go into the soil so they can get the nutrients. Cause you can't give fruit nutrients. You can't feed a fruit. Why would you want to do that? Well, if you feed them, they taste better.
But you can't actually feed a fruit. You have to feed the branch that the fruit is attached to. But you can't feed a branch. You have to feed the vine that the branch is attached to, but you can't feed a vine. You can feed the roots, but you can't even feed the roots.
You have to put the nutrients in the soil, around the roots, and really just kind of hope for the best.
Some of you have gardened enough to chuckle at my joke. I appreciate that. Are we completely lost? Okay. The vinedresser cares for the vine by cutting it for a purpose.
Christ suffered not just for the sake of a good story. He suffered for a purpose. And his purpose was to make it possible for us to have life with God.
And when suffering comes into our lives, when it is permitted by the vinedresser for us to come into hardship, that hardship is for a purpose. The pruning happens in order to help us to bear more fruit. That's the whole system. That's everything that's happening is for the purpose of bearing fruit. The world is broken, but Jesus never wastes pain.
It always, always, always has a purpose. Now, did the vine dresser sound kind of mean to you? I want to read it again. And just mostly because I like it, but also because Jesus says it better than me. I am the true vine in verse one, and my Father is the vinedresser.
Every branch in me 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 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 and thrown into a fire and burned.
So when we think about vine keeping and viticulture today, oftentimes we think of vineyards that look something like this, right? Clean rows, you've got trellises that all of the vines are growing on. Now, I had the privilege of traveling and visiting Israel, which is where Jesus, the country where Jesus would have been able, would have been talking this first time. And their agriculture is a little bit different than ours. But one of the things that was fascinating was this picture.
Now, this is a picture that I took out a bus window, and it is much clearer than I remember it being. But this is a picture of a vineyard. Does that look like this? Is it very different? Right.
Okay. Instead of growing. Instead of growing the grapevines on trellises, what they do, and let me zoom in here, what they do is they actually take that vine and lift it up and just set it on a rock, and that becomes the way that they Mark and support the vine so that the branches can grow, but the branches just grow across the ground. Now, if you're a vine keeper, you're walking through a field bent over, trimming the branches that aren't producing fruit and pruning the ones that are producing fruit. But have you ever tried to.
To, like, cut a vine off a fence?
Some of you have. I love that groan. I was a couple hours into digging some trenches yesterday, and my wife says, do you miss landscaping? I said, absolutely, I miss landscaping because you get to do. You work hard, and then there's something different at the end of it, right?
So if you've ever tried to take a vine off of a fence, you know that you can cut it, but then it's kind of wound its way through. Now, if the vine's growing across the ground, you can cut the unfruitful vines, but then you don't want to pull them out because what do you do to the fruitful vine? The fruitful branches, you'll damage them. So they would trim and cut, but they're just going to, like, leave them in amongst there, Right? So the picture is you've got a vine, clearly vine, healthy, thick, supported, and then you have a field full of branches.
Some of them are alive and some of them dead, but they're all laying together. So the question isn't, do you have contact with Jesus? The question isn't, are you laying next to Jesus, in proximity to Him? The question is, are you abiding in Him? Are you connected to him and drawing your life from Him?
Because we can lay in the field and come in and convince ourselves and know the things. We can know how it is that God works. We can describe what he may or may not be doing. We can have Biblical answers for the problems of our life and not be connected to Jesus. We can wear the T shirts.
It's crazy. They sell Christian T shirts to non Christians. Did you know that? Would you sell a Christian T shirt to somebody that didn't proclaim Christ like you sell T shirts? Yeah, because he sells T shirts and he doesn't know the status of your soul.
So you can dress like a Christian, you can talk like a Christian, you can quote the Bible like a Christian. Christian is a word that means little Christ. You can pretend to be like Christ and not be in Christ. Friends, Are we attached to Jesus? Are we just in contact with Him?
Or are we just in contact with other branches? Because there's times where, when you're laying, when you get around other people that are on fire for God, like, you just feel better, don't you? You feel encouraged, you feel lifted up. They're saying right there, you're like, yeah, that the things they're saying is true. And I feel good about that.
And that's part of what we do with this celebration. But you can celebrate and you can feel good and you can be completely cut off from the one thing that's going to give you life. When he says abide in me, he means dwell in me. And it's crazy. Like, I looked it up in verse four.
Do you see verse four? I looked it up in the Greek just to make sure. It says, abide in me, and I in you. Abide in me. That's imperative.
That's a thing I can do. And you know that phrase at the end of that, and I in you? That makes no sense in Greek either. Because I'm like, I can try to abide in you, but then you abide in me. How do I make that happen?
Because that's the thing that I want, isn't it? I want the power and the presence of God to be in me and superpower and supercharge me to do the things that I think I'M supposed to be doing. And. And he says, no, no, no. Abide in me and I in you.
Well, the. And what's the. And what do I do? How do I get that thing? Cause I think I'm connected to you.
I prayed the prayer. I. I say the right things. I spend time in the Word. Like, I think I know, but how do I get. How do I get the you in me?
But I can. I just don't know how to do it. And it's. That's the phrase. Like, that's a really good translation of what the Greek says.
Abide in me and I in you. What do we do with that?
I think we abide in him. That we let our selfish desires of the thing that we want God to do for us, let that drive us to Jesus, and then let Jesus rewire our desires so that we want what he wants and we do what he does, and we go where he goes and we say what he says. Not by trying to put a mask over everything that's broken, but by letting him pour his life into us from the inside out.
Simple phrase. Another preacher said, a faith that hasn't changed you likely hasn't saved you. A faith that hasn't changed you likely hasn't saved you. What's different from the day you started walking with Jesus to where you're at now? Are you basically the same?
Do you basically approach life the same way? Do you basically go to the same places to find the answers? Or is he growing in you new desires? Is he making us unsatisfied with the answers that the world provides? And is he drawing us, drawing us into a closer relationship with Him?
Is he asking us to abide in him? Because apart from him, you can do nothing? Knowing Biblical facts isn't the same as living with the author of Scripture. Right?
And I think it starts with a prayer of repentance. Starts by saying, God, I am doing it wrong. I've been doing it wrong my whole life, and I don't know how to do it right. But you say that if I abide in you, if I'm connected to you, if I'm attached to you, that you will grow these things in me. And so I don't know what all the implications of that are, but I'm coming to you, and I'm asking you to forgive the sin that's inhibited me and kept me away from you in the past.
And I'm asking you to fill me with your life now. That's a lot of preacher words you can say it however you want. He understands you. It's not a magic spell.
But the bottom line for this whole morning is, we wither without Jesus, but His life grows our love.
We wither without Jesus, but His life grows our love.
Let's continue reading in verse seven.
I don't know. Let's start in verse 5. These are so good.
Verse 5. 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 I have loved you. Abide in my love.
If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you. That my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. We wither without Jesus, but His life grows our love.
The purpose of the vine is to bear fruit. So what is the fruit of a Christian life?
If you have been around church for a while, you may have started singing the song. Because the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self care. Control is not a watermelon. It's not a cherry. It's not a pineapple.
Right. Do we know the song? What? Not a coconut. My mouth is dry.
It's not a coconut. Okay, That's, I think, like our instinct. Okay? But that's Galatians 5, and we're going to do Galatians 5 for a long time in a couple of months. So let's just set that aside.
What's the fruit of the Christian life in this passage?
Is love. The fruit of the Christian life is that we love one another. Now, let me give you a caveat first, because we said it a couple of times and I don't want us to miss it. Bearing fruit is a result of abiding with Jesus, not a qualification for it. So you should not feel this.
Oh, no, I don't have. I'm not fruitful enough. I need to get some more fruit. I need to suck up Some more. More nutrients so that I can bear some more fruit.
Because if I don't bear enough fruit, then God's not going to love me. That's not it. That's backwards.
Bearing fruit is a result of abiding with Jesus, not a requirement for it. It's not a prerequisite. You don't have to start with fruit. None of the branches start with fruit.
It's a result that comes later. Connection.
Connection of the branches to the vine equals life, and then pruning equals abundance. He who abides in me. He it is who bears much fruit as my Father prunes the vine. Okay? He says, this is how my Father is glorified.
This is how Jesus gets. This is how the Father gets all the credit. This is how God shows off in the world. I didn't give myself a note of the verses. By this my Father, verse 8.
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.
So by this my Father is glorified. This is how God gets to show off in the world, is that if we abide, if we live, if we dwell, if we make our home in Jesus love, if Jesus love becomes the source of our life, God gets glory. But abiding in Jesus love, how do I do that? Because that's an airplane conversation, right? That's like up in the clouds.
Abide in Jesus's love. That's really easy to say on a Sunday morning. What do I do on a Tuesday when the kids are going crazy? How do I abide in Jesus's love when I just want to wring everybody's neck? Okay.
How do I abide in Jesus love? Abiding in Jesus love is keeping Jesus commandments.
Hold on. We were talking love, Mike, in our feelings. We were tracking with you, and now you're talking commandments. That's not the kind of church I thought this was. You're gonna start thumping people, aren't ya?
I'm not trying to thump anybody. I want you to see it because these are the words of your Savior, that if you abide in my love, you abide in my love by keeping my commandments. And there's this.
There's this small tweak. There's this idea that I see as pervasive that we get so concerned about not wanting to be perceived as a hypocrite that we're Willing to disobey God. And so I just want to put it as clearly as I can that obedience is not hypocrisy. Doing what God said, whether you feel like it or not, is not hypocrisy. It's only hypocrisy if you pretend like you want to.
If you say, I don't really want to come to church this morning, but here I am because I'm being obedient. That's what we want. I don't. Can I tell you, there's some days that I don't want to come.
I have a weird relationship with church. I literally, like, part of my whole job is to be here. That changes the dynamic of a Sunday morning, right? There's some days I don't want to come. So am I a hypocrite?
Because I come anyway and I do my job. Obedience is not hypocrisy. But if you do it with transparency, that's where we actually learn and grow together. But you can't have transparency and disobedience. That's the opposite of what he's looking for.
Obedience is not hypocrisy. Love and listening go hand in hand.
Love and listening go hand in hand. How do I know that I love my kids? Well, it just depends on the day.
Would it make sense for me to say to my kids as they're coming home from school, hey, I love you so much. And then they start telling me about their day, and I just, like, zone out. Now listen. I'm ignoring them. I don't want to hear it.
I don't hear it. Love and listening go hand in hand. If you want to abide in my love, then keep my commandments. Obey the thing I'm telling you to obey. And that's how I know that we are in a relationship.
That's how I know that you are showing love. So, Michael, that doesn't sound like. It feels very warm and fuzzy. It. It doesn't.
Love is not a feeling. That's in my other. We'll get there. Sorry, I'm getting ahead of myself.
All of these words that he's spoken, he's not just speaking to hack us apart and make us feel guilty and remind us of how awful we are. What does he say? His goal is in verse 11? These things I have spoken to you. That my joy may be in you and that your joy may be.
No. That your joy may be just a little bit. That you might get a little smidge on Sunday morning. That your joy might just be a little Bit of remnants at the bottom of the barrel. At the end of a hard week, he says, I'm telling you this so that my joy, the joy of the Father, the Creator, God of the universe, the one who decided, I'm not just going to give them food and nutrients because I could do that in slop, but I'm gonna give them taste buds and I'm gonna let them taste chocolate.
The Creator, joyful God of the universe, who invented the idea of a rainbow, says, I'm telling you this so that my joy can be in you and that your joy can be full. There's the key to joy. What's the key to joy? Obedience. Ooh.
I was with you until you said that.
And obedience, listening is hand in hand with love. These ideas in our heads, naturally, I think, live on separate islands, don't they? Love, obedience, joy. Those are separate things. Like, we could do different sermon series on each of those things and we could wander around them.
And Jesus. Jesus is just like, that's all the same. It's all connected. If you're. If you're missing the obedience, you're eliminating the opportunity for you to have joy.
You want joy, but you don't want obedience. Or you. You want. Or people want obedience and they want to SAP you of your joy. Like, it's all about how it's set in the context of love.
It's about a relationship, not about a transaction.
We wither without Jesus, but his life grows. Our love and these words are a key to joy. Perhaps they are the lost key.
But loving Jesus means loving one another.
We cannot hate our spiritual family and continue to express affection for God.
We cannot withhold forgiveness and fully embrace what God would forgive in us.
We cannot grumble and curse our sisters and brothers while blessing their God and ours. Loving Jesus means loving one another. This is how the world will know that you're my disciples. If you have love for God, if you have love for the church, if you have love for good social projects, this is how the world will know that you are my disciples. If you have love for one another.
So what does our worst relationship tell us about our heart towards God?
I didn't want to put it that way. It was nicer in the first draft. And I thought, you know what? I'm going to gloss over that real quick. Like, if I say, what do our relationships tell us about our heart for God?
Like, oh, I'm going to think about maybe my best relationships on my good days. But what does our worst relationship on our worst day tell us? About our heart towards God, because that is where Jesus is going. He did not come to give us life and life abundant in the great beyond, beyond the other side of the sun. He says, I'm doing this work in you.
My invitation is to abide in me today, that your joy may be full, as my joy resides in you. What does our worst relationship tell us about our heart towards God?
Because holding a grudge is just drinking poison and hoping the other person dies.
And if we take his instructions on prayer seriously at all, Mastering forgiveness is just as vital to Jesus as our daily bread is for us.
But he is the bread of life.
Let your selfish desires drive you to Jesus and let Jesus rewire your desires. And it is in that context that we have this incredible promise. Friends, in verse seven. Did you see it?
This is one we grab into early on, verse seven. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it will be done for you.
Okay, I can charge that to God's credit card. Ask whatever I wish. Oh, I got some wishes. Jesus, let me tell you what. Ask whatever you wish.
We really quickly want to take this verse out and treat it like a little fortune cookie that we can break open and eat whenever we have an extra special want. But it's in the context of the imperative that we abide in him, abide in his love and love one another that he says, if you ask me for anything, I'll give it to you.
You don't have the power in yourself to fully forgive the sin that was done to you. Apart from God's power, you do not have the ability to forgive your sin against others without God's intervention. And so my encouragement, my exhortation this morning is that you love one another, that you abide in Jesus love, and that you ask him for help because he says he'll give you what you need when you ask. If you're asking for forgiveness and restoration and hope and healing, that is the heart of the vine. God will give us anything to help us abundantly bear his fruit of forgiveness towards others.
Because we wither without Jesus, but his life grows our love. It's mission critical. It's part of the purpose. This is how people who are far from God, this is how people who hate God will know that Jesus is alive and that we belong in Him. He says, I'm the resurrection and the life.
He brings the dead to life yesterday, today and tomorrow. And. And the way that the world will know that is if we love one another.
He's The Good Shepherd. He gives us life and love with God as we join his flock. And as we grow in our love for God, he grows our love for one another.
Let's read a couple more verses. I'll start in verse 12 again. This is my commandment. That you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay 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 the master, 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.
I said earlier that abiding in Jesus starts with a prayer of repentance. But I think we see here specifically in verse 16, you did not choose me. I chose you. That abiding in Jesus starts long before you ever got involved.
Jesus is proactive.
He makes the first move. He chooses us, and he opens himself up to be wounded so that we can be brought into life with Him.
God doesn't ask us for anything that he hasn't already walked through himself.
And there's a shift that's happening in this evening, that first Communion. He's shifting these disciples from being servants to being friends. Now, remember the person in your life who makes your life hard and what you would do if you had the opportunity to just tell them everything that they needed to do right, they would probably look more like your servants. And if we take those verses out of Romans 5 that we read this morning, Jesus is pretty clear that, like, we all start off as enemies of God. So what Jesus has done in the lives of the disciples up until this evening is he has taken enemies of God and made them servants of God, which, that's naturally what we would do.
If you bring an enemy into your control, that enemy is not to be trusted. They're to do what you tell them to do, right? You would make them prisoner. You would make them serve you. And there's a lot of us that, as we come to God, we think that's all we deserve.
Like God. I was your enemy and you saved me. Thanks for that. I just want to serve. Let me serve you.
I'll be your footstool. And what's incredible Is that Jesus looks at his servants and says, no longer do I call you servants. I call you my friends. I am disclosing to you what I am doing. I am sharing with you what I know from the Father.
Jesus shares his heart with us. So how do we respond?
Somebody asked me. It was a question. I haven't forgotten. It's been years ago now. They said, if you close your eyes and you think about God, what face is he making?
I think our instinctual response to that question tells us a lot about what we're expecting from God. If he's angry when we think about him scowling, maybe he's indifferent, maybe he's neutral. He'll put up with you, but you better not cross him.
But Jesus here says, I no longer call you my servants. I call you my friends.
And when I see a friend walk in the room, good day or bad day, my face responds.
Here in this passage, Jesus commands us to love.
But it's not a feeling to generate. It's a decision to loyally act in someone else's best interest, regardless of the cost or the return.
Whatever else love may be is no less than a choice to loyally act in the best interest of somebody else, no matter what it costs you and no matter what you expect to get in return.
Greater love has no one than this. That someone lay down his life for his friends. 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.
He says, sacrificial love, love that gives of itself is the greatest.
And here he says, sacrificial love for your friends.
We've seen too, in Romans that God shows his love for us in this. That while we were still sinners, Christ died. That he pursues his enemies. Not to make us servants, to make us friends. Not that we wait at his table, but that we're seated as children, brothers, and sisters at his table.
We wither without Jesus, but as life grows, our love. So what are we asking Jesus for? It comes up twice in this passage. Whatever you ask the Father, he'll give it if you ask him my name. I don't think he's talking about a magic spell to make sure you get a Ferrari.
I think he's talking about loving one another, abiding in his love. So what resources are we asking the Father for? Or do we just settle for asking for material resources. I think those things are important. We do have material needs and God sees those needs and he wants to meet those needs.
But is that all we ever ask him for? Do we ask him for our emotional needs, our emotional resources? Lord, just help me to not snap today. Do we ask him for spiritual resources? We might have life, have it abundantly.
Do we ask him for relational resources? Because how I love you on any given day is perhaps the most challenging question I have to answer.
But we wither without Jesus and His life grows our love. Let's pray together.
Lord, we thank youk for your word.
Lord, we thank youk for the ways that it's counterintuitive. It goes against what we would assume is true. Lord, left to ourselves, we would be vindictive and spiteful. And we know that apart from youm, we. We don't actually have the ability to forgive.
So, Jesus, I just ask that you would be revealing yourself to the folks who are here. In my voice today.
I pray that if there are those who have identified themselves as branches that are lying amongst the vine, that are in contact but are not attached, Lord, I pray that today would be the day that they plug into you, That they realize you've been chasing them, that you've been pursuing them, that you chose them and today is the day where they choose you back, whatever words they use.
And Lord, I pray that as they choose you back, that you just flood them with life. That it would be clear to everybody near and far that something is different. That you would fill them with life, that you would fill them with joy. That, Lord, that you would begin to empower them supernaturally to love those who are least worth worthy of loving, Lord, not just so that we can feel better about how good people we are, but so that the world might know that you are God and they too might be brought in.
For those of us who are feeling withered, Lord, I pray that you would cut through the noise and the distractions, that we could see clearly who you are and that we would abide in you, that we would dwell in you, that we would look to you for our life starting this morning. But Lord, every morning, that we would renew our strength in you.
Thank you for this time.
We thank you for all that you've entrusted to us. We pray that we would be good stewards of it in these moments. It's in Jesus name we pray.
LINKS
Music by Blue Dot Sessions
