Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] A little closer to home this weekend.
[00:00:02] Good morning, church. Today we are. I had to redo that. I have to like, get back into the flow. We are finishing out this short series we've been doing called Distinctive. We've been exploring some of the aspects of our church life, of our convictions that I think really kind of help set our church apart. Not that our church is any better than any other church in the world or community that preaches the gospel. But as you think about the fact that we are surrounded by gospel preaching churches in our community, why would you be a part of this faith family? What is it that God is calling us to here at Emmanuel that we want to sink our teeth into and actually build some of our lives around? And so we spent several weeks talking about kind of this progression of thought and flow. And today I'm bringing it all together. Today it all wraps up into a nice little package with a bow. And I couldn't help but think of the Emperor's new groove as I was writing my sermon this week. It's. It's all coming together. And listen, it's not that I do have theme music when I'm writing my sermons.
[00:01:08] Sometimes I do.
[00:01:10] Anyway. We've talked about several ideas. We talked, we opened, talking about our vision statement at church. This idea of overflow ministry that is Christ pours into you, he pours out of you. That we have to find our own individual life and freedom and vitality in Christ before we're full. And it flows out of us into the world. There's an order of operation that you find life in Christ and you find fullness and healing and you find all these things and then it pours out of you into the world around you. We talked about the nature of the connection between God's glory and our joy. How there's something about the glorious, wonderful goodness of our God, the inherent goodness of our God that draws us to deeper and abiding joy as we seek him, as we glorify him. That there's this feedback loop of the gospel where you living into your design as a child of God and pursuing the things of the kingdom actually bring you the greatest joy and fulfillment you could find in life. And it kind of goes back and forth. And then last week we talked about this idea that the church becomes a kind of family that not. Not exactly like a family, but similar to a family. We relate to one another, we intermingle our lives together. We help one another grow toward Christ. And today we're going to wrap that all together by talking about discipleship. We're going to talk about what it means to be disciples of Jesus and to make disciples for Jesus. We're going to do that, by the way, by looking at John 15. So if you want to go ahead and turn in your bibles to John 15, that is where we're going to be today. If you don't have a Bible with you, we have house Bibles around the room.
[00:02:49] Really believe in important. The importance of access to God's word here at Emmanuel. So if you don't own a Bible, you can snag one of those pew Bibles or ask a pastor for a nicer one. We'll get one for you. But John 15 is where we're going to be today.
[00:03:02] While you're turning there, I've got a weird reference, but you're going to have to stick with me for a minute. I know you're not. You're used to that. At this point.
[00:03:09] I really enjoy knife sharpening.
[00:03:12] And I know that's a creepy thing to have someone say out loud, but it's true. I do. I really enjoy knife sharpening. And the reason is simple. A few years ago, my family went in together and they bought me a really nice chef's knife.
[00:03:24] Here's a picture of it.
[00:03:25] Yeah, there's my chef's knife that I use when I cook. I really enjoy cooking for my friends and family. I don't often get to sit down and do, like, fancy meals and things like that, but even like just weeknight casseroles that my kids will say is gross and refuse to touch. Like, I enjoy getting in the kitchen and making meals for people that I love. It's. It's something I find a lot of life in. And so because of that, you know, I watch all the YouTube videos and I try and learn all the skills in this and that. And over the last several years, I've tried to increase my chef's knife skills. And one of the things I've learned is that having a sharp chef's knife is incredibly important. It's kind of counterintuitive, but actually having a sharper knife is significantly safer than having a dull knife when it comes to the kitchen. And so I have this, this Christmas tradition in this again, you're just going to stick with me for this. But every year in the week between Christmas and New Year's, I take all my kitchen knives down to this store in the hill, this restaurant supply store in the hill, and they hand sharpen all my knives. And I love it. I love the Whole experience. I love the neighborhood, I love the store. I love walking in and talking to this gritty guy in an apron. Be like, let me see them knives. Like, you sharpen these for me because I'm. He's cooler than me, you know, Like, I just, I love the whole experience is very cool. They take care of my knives, I bring them back. I love the first time you cook. You've had your knife sharpened and it just like right through that vegetable, like it doesn't even know it's there. It's such a cool thing. I, I really do enjoy it. But I also know this.
[00:04:59] Once you sharpen your knife, no matter how careful you are, no matter what kind of surfaces use, no matter what you do, it instantly dulls.
[00:05:08] Instantly. The very first time your knife blade touches any surface, your $300 wooden, like oil soaked cooking board, the instant it touches it, it dulls. And the reason is really simple. The very edge of your knife blade, it's metal, but the very edge is super thin. It's super thin.
[00:05:30] So as soon as it touches anything, it just goes like this. Okay?
[00:05:34] It curls in on itself.
[00:05:36] And so every single time you make a cut, your knife bends, it wobbles, it flattens out, it curls in and it just slowly gets duller and duller and duller and duller. And you can, you can minimize that by using wooden cutting blocks and things like that. But there's no way to avoid it. There's no way to avoid it. Your knife will dull. And if you don't take care of it, that professionally sharpened knife will be dull enough to be dangerous. If you're using it every day, in about three weeks, legit about three weeks, unless you hone it.
[00:06:09] This is another thing that to me at least is incredibly counterintuitive. If you got like a knife, a kitchen knife set for your wedding, there's this weird round thing in the middle. It's not a knife. And most of us are like, I don't know what that thing's for. And it just kind of sits there. That's a honing rod. It's a steel rod that doesn't sharpen your knife, but it maintains your knife's blade's edge. And it does it in a really simple way because it's steel, because it's so hard, when you run it across the knife, it takes all those bends and curls and it straightens them back out. So if you ever watch videos of professional chefs in the kitchen, they run about five or six slides in the honing bar. On each side of their knife.
[00:06:51] Every time, they use it all day long. Every time, every time they pull it out to cut something and then they cut it. And if you actually hone your knife, if you actually use the honing bar, a good professional sharpening will last you one to two years instead of two to three weeks. It's nuts how much of a difference it makes. And what's interesting is a honing bar doesn't sharpen your knife.
[00:07:13] The sharpening happens at the grinding wheel. Right. The only way to sharpen a knife is removing material. The honing blade doesn't sharpen it, but it maintains the edge it already has, keeps it strong, keeps it ready to use. Why did I share all that?
[00:07:29] One of my favorite texts on discipleship is about as simple as it could be. It's Proverbs 27:17 that says iron sharpens iron, and one person sharpens another.
[00:07:41] Beloved, we sharpen one another.
[00:07:46] And I think a more precise way to say it would be to say we hone one another.
[00:07:53] We are the steel, the iron that straightens each other out.
[00:07:58] Community is the steel that is hard enough to help us keep our edge and our faith.
[00:08:06] You, beloved, we as the church, are the primary tools that God uses to grow each of us towards spiritual vitality.
[00:08:16] We hone one another.
[00:08:18] Which really brings me to my main point today, which is simply this.
[00:08:22] Disciples grow together toward Christ.
[00:08:27] Disciples grow together toward Christ.
[00:08:31] It's not a solo mission. It's not something we do on our own. Yes, your faith is deeply personal. You have an intimate you and God relationship between you and Christ. But your faith, the vitality of your faith, the life of your faith, will not happen by itself.
[00:08:50] It won't happen in isolation.
[00:08:53] We, the community, are what God uses to hone each other, to sharpen each other. Disciples grow together toward Christ.
[00:09:05] But I know as soon as I say that from. For many of us, that raises an immediate question which just goes like this.
[00:09:13] Okay, but like, how, right? If that's true, why don't I experience that?
[00:09:21] If that's true, why does it feel like my brothers and sisters in Christ, those are the people I hang out with on Sunday. And, like, if I'm really good at being Christian, like, I sign up for a small group and I see them in the middle of the week. But, like, that's pretty much it.
[00:09:35] And I know that even as I was saying that some of you think back on a season of life, maybe when you were in college and you joined a campus ministry where you had deep discipleship where you walked in deep, like life on life with a few people and you were digging in together and it changed the way you look at the world and you look at your life now and go, I mean, that was awesome. But that just doesn't happen anymore.
[00:10:01] That's not a thing that happens in church. We're all married, we're all busy, we're all adults, we all have work, we all have stuff that's just not man. We lived in a dorm, we didn't have jobs, we saw each other every day. That's not how my life is anymore. That's not what happens in church life.
[00:10:16] And maybe you don't resonate with that, but I'll tell you guys, I hear that story over and over and over and over and over and over from folk who sometime in their late teens and early twenties, through some ministry, some friendship, some circle, some connection, find deep, abiding, life changing discipleship.
[00:10:36] And then they step into adult life and they step into the life of the local church and it just kind of fizzles out and their spiritual community ends up looking like an hour and a half on Sunday mornings and sometimes an hour in someone's house later in the week.
[00:10:53] And that's just kind of how they sum it all up. And I'm here to tell you guys, I don't say this to be harsh, but it's true.
[00:11:00] If the extent of your spiritual communal discipleship is an hour and a half on Sundays and an hour in someone's living room, sometimes your faith will not flourish.
[00:11:11] It won't.
[00:11:13] You are removing yourself from the tool that God uses to hone your faith.
[00:11:19] You're separating yourself from the system God has set up to grow vitality in your faith. And you may go. But you don't understand. I'm actually really spiritually disciplined. I'm super involved. I read the daily bread every day. I have the daily Bible verse reminder on my phone. I'm involved in a precepts class. I do all these wonderful things. Hey, that's great.
[00:11:38] I'm glad you are feasting on the word of the Lord.
[00:11:41] But faith happens in community. Disciples grow together.
[00:11:45] You give and receive.
[00:11:46] And if you are not doing that, you may be growing in knowledge about the gospel.
[00:11:52] But I promise you, you are not actually growing in spiritual vitality.
[00:11:56] You're not actually growing in maturity.
[00:11:59] You can learn a whole bunch of facts about the word of God without ever taking a single step toward greater growth and maturity in your faith.
[00:12:10] You will not find real spiritual vitality outside the context of Community, you won't.
[00:12:19] So we're going to look at a text that's probably relatively familiar to some of our church folk. If you don't know this text, that's fine, but it's one that's more on the well known side and I think it's going to wrap together all these ideas and bring it together and I think a really cool and practical challenge for us. So John 15, starting in verse one, we read this.
[00:12:42] I am the true vine and my father is the gardener.
[00:12:46] Every branch in me that does not produce fruit, he removes and he prunes every branch that produces fruit so that it will produce even more fruit. You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. Remain in me and I in you. Just as the branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me.
[00:13:06] I am the vine and you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit because you can do nothing without me. If anyone does not remain in me, he's thrown aside like a branch and he withers. They gather them, throw them into the fire and they are burned. But if you remain in me and my words in you, ask whatever you want and it will be done for you.
[00:13:27] Pray with me, Church and we'll take a few minutes to talk about this. Jesus, we thank you so much for the gift of this morning, Lord. Thank you for the gift of gathering together, Lord, regardless of what happens with technology, regardless of what kind of week we've had, regardless of what distractions may be floating in the back of our mind. Lord, we thank you for the gift that we are right here together with each other and with you.
[00:13:52] And that is enough.
[00:13:54] Holy Spirit, be our discipler today.
[00:13:57] Challenge us, encourage us, grow us, push us to grow in you, to seek after your kingdom. God, we need you for this. We pray in your name, Jesus. Amen.
[00:14:08] So let me give us a hair of context before we talk about this. John 15 is part of a larger chunk of the Gospel of John near the end. And John zones in on a particular moment in Jesus's ministry that for whatever reason, the other three gospels kind of skim over.
[00:14:25] John really zones in on the last conversation that Jesus has with his followers before his betrayal, on the night of his arrest. And it happens in between when they eat the Last Supper and when Jesus is arrested in the garden, when they're taking that walk from the upper room through the city, out the gates and up to the garden of Gethsemane. As they're walking along, they're talking, and John records the entirety of that conversation.
[00:14:52] It's John, like 13 through 17. It's a really long chunk. Most of the other gospels skip over it in like a sentence. John digs deep, and we're right in the middle of that bit. It's almost as if Jesus, knowing that this is his last few moments, he's like trying to jam pack in every little ounce of encouragement and truth that he can before his time with his friends is done. This section of Scripture is. It's powerful to read, right? So understand that context. But you also have to understand a unique thing about John.
[00:15:22] John has what I'm going to call an annoying habit, which is summarizing what was almost certainly a long, extended back and forth conversation into a single declaration from Jesus.
[00:15:35] So he'll take something that probably in real life took 15 or 20 minutes. And he sums it up as one thing Jesus says out loud. And the result is that when you read John, Jesus often reads like he's kind of rambling, like he's kind of repeating himself and kind of going in circles. John's a little harder to read than the other Gospels for this reason because he's bringing these kind of summaries. And so that's a little bit of what we're getting in John 15. If you find it hard to follow, don't feel bad about that. It's kind of, kind of unique to how John writes. But even with the complexity of this text, the metaphor Christ uses here is really easy to grab onto, and it's really powerful.
[00:16:13] I am the true vine, you are the branches, right? I am the vine, you are the branches. Jesus is the trunk, the stalk, the body of the plant. And you as his disciple, you as his follower, you are the branch.
[00:16:30] That's powerful. It's powerful. When you start thinking about the way he kind of fleshes this metaphor out, the branch is totally dependent on the trunk of the plant, right? I mean, that's how it works. The branches are there to bear good fruit, but they can't do that if they're not plugged into the trunk.
[00:16:51] I mean, that's really basic plant biology, right? Like, the trunk draws up the water and the nutrients from the soil distributes them into the branches so that the branches can bear fruit if you chop off a branch. I have a series of apple trees in my backyard that I love a little more than a human should love trees. I really like these trees. And I have a gala apple tree that about a week ago. In spite of the fact that it has a five foot tall fence around it, a deer somehow ripped a branch off of it.
[00:17:22] It's not for right now. We can talk about it later, okay? But a deer ripped a branch off my apple tree. And I was so sad about it that I didn't even remove it. Like, I left it hanging on the little fence and was like, can't believe you got ripped off. I was so mad about this. But here's what happened. Like just a little. It was like kind of ripped down. A little scraggle was holding on. I need to be chopped off. But I left it sitting there in my sorrow. And you know what happened to that branch full of leaves and buds and flowers?
[00:17:48] It died.
[00:17:51] That's obvious, right? When you remove a branch from the trunk, it dies.
[00:17:58] It has no connection to the source of its life. It's not able to do what it's supposed to do.
[00:18:06] So Jesus is saying here, he's the vine, he's the stalk. We are the branches.
[00:18:13] If you detach from Christ, you die.
[00:18:17] He is the source of your life. You need the trunk to live.
[00:18:23] But also notice the branches aren't just there for fun.
[00:18:28] They're not there just to be pretty.
[00:18:30] The branches serve a purpose. They're there to bear fruit. Here's actually a picture of one of my apple trees right now, my oldest one, bearing little fruit, little apples growing in my backyard.
[00:18:40] This is what branches are supposed to do.
[00:18:43] They're supposed to bear fruit. That's what they're designed to do. And when they're healthy and they're connected to the trunk of a healthy tree, that's what they do.
[00:18:53] They bear their fruit. If they don't bear fruit, if you're a person who runs an orchard and you have branches that don't bear fruit, they're sucking resources from the tree.
[00:19:05] They're taking up vital moisture, nutrients, and SAP, and they're not adding to the output.
[00:19:11] So you know what you do with fruitless branches?
[00:19:13] You cut them off. How many of you guys grow blackberries in your backyard or have blackberries in your backyard?
[00:19:19] Blackberries are really an interesting plant, first off, because they're mean to you. They poke you.
[00:19:24] But they, they, they grow new stalks and new branches each year. And the ones from last year, they go, I did my work, I'm done. And they don't bear fruit anymore. They still sit there. They're still part of the plant. It's just the outer edge of the BlackBerry bush that grows the berries. The inner parts go I did my time. I don't bear fruit anymore. So if you take care of blackberries, you kind of have to move them in a circle. You. You let them grow one year, and the next year the next part grows, and this part's just sitting there, so you hack that part off, and then those grow for the next year, and they just kind of move as you keep them. If you don't, they turn into a massive bulb of plant that only has fruit on the outer edge. Right?
[00:20:03] So you have to keep up with it. If a branch is not bearing fruit, you get rid of it.
[00:20:08] You cut it off. It's a waste of resources, guys. The branches that do bear fruit, the. They don't escape from this either, by the way.
[00:20:20] The ones that do bear fruit, they're pruned.
[00:20:24] They're optimized to bear the most fruit. They get snipped also, so they can grow in health and strength.
[00:20:32] Because I think this brings us back to that first week in our series and talking about our vision as a church, our mission. You know, Christ in, Christ out.
[00:20:42] Our connection with Jesus, that is what causes us to bear fruit, right?
[00:20:47] We have to remain connected to Jesus, to be filled with him, his life, his spirit, his SAP. That is what produces spiritual fruit or maturity or mission or kingdom advancement in our life.
[00:21:03] It's through our connection with Jesus that the kingdom moves forward.
[00:21:08] And notice, by the way, this is Christ's work in us.
[00:21:14] It's Christ's work. He bears fruit through us. Jesus is the one who does that work in us. It was his work accomplished on the cross that. That brought us our life. It was Jesus who saves us, and it is Jesus who sanctifies us. And it is Jesus who will return and take us into his perfect eternity. He is the life source, the SAP, the spiritual fruit produced in your life, guys, is a direct result of your connection to Christ.
[00:21:44] Not your own spiritual maturity, your own discipline, your own awesomeness. As he pours into you, he pours out of you.
[00:21:54] So remain in Christ. Abide in Christ. Stay connected with Jesus.
[00:22:00] Beloved, this raises a really practical question for us before we even move on.
[00:22:05] Are you actually abiding with Jesus?
[00:22:08] That's a really churchy way to say this, but the real question is this. Are you doing what is necessary to connect your heart to the heart of Christ?
[00:22:18] Do you actually live your life in such a way that outside of this 90 minutes, you actually are chasing after Jesus and connecting with Him?
[00:22:28] Do you spend time in the word of God so that you can actually hear from him do you spend time praying and speaking to him so that you can share your heart with him and allow His Spirit to mold you and form you? And hear me when I say this, are you doing both of those things, hearing from him in His Word and speaking to him through your prayer? Are you doing both of those things? And are you doing both of those things regularly? This is not me trying to beat you up and tell you to be more spiritual. This is me telling you this. If you want to connect with Christ, if you want to abide in Jesus, if you want to be a branch that is receiving the life giving SAP from the stock, you have to actually engage.
[00:23:08] Doesn't happen by accident.
[00:23:11] We have busy lives.
[00:23:13] We all have priorities. We all have jobs, we have families, we have commitments. And beyond that, we've got phones with Internet connections and streaming services.
[00:23:24] A lot going on in our lives.
[00:23:26] There's a lot that asks for our time and our attention.
[00:23:30] Beloved, your spiritual vitality will not happen by accident.
[00:23:36] It'll happen because you want it to happen.
[00:23:39] Because you're abiding in Christ, because you're making the decision to connect yourself to him, to spend time with Him.
[00:23:48] He'll do the work, he'll sanctify you, he'll grow you. But it's not going to happen if you just detach yourself from Him. Branches detached from the trunk don't grow.
[00:23:59] It's not what they do.
[00:24:01] Read on with me and we'll talk about how this bearing of spiritual fruit verse 8 we read this.
[00:24:08] My Father is glorified by this that you produce much fruit and prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, I also have loved you, so remain in my love.
[00:24:20] You keep my commandments, you'll remain in my love. Just as I have kept My Father's commandments and remain in his love. I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you. You and your joy may be complete.
[00:24:32] This connects us back to that second week where we talked about the inherent goodness of God and the relationship between his glory and our joy. God is glorified by our bearing spiritual fruit.
[00:24:46] When you are connected to Christ continually and you're finding life and overflow and freedom and, and the Gospel is working in your heart and connecting you to the Lord. And you begin to bear spiritual fruit in your life because you're actually full of Christ. You're growing in your faith that glorifies God.
[00:25:08] It glorifies Him.
[00:25:10] And Jesus describes here how this works. Practically, we stay connected to Jesus by obeying His Commands.
[00:25:20] Because that means actually engaging the teaching of Scripture and allowing it to affect your heart.
[00:25:28] It's really, really easy for us to receive and accept the loving goodness of God. Oh, yeah, God loves me. He loves me exactly as I am. He invites me to come to him with all my warts, with all my sin, with all my baggage. And here's the thing that's true.
[00:25:42] God loves you so much that he says, come to me as you are.
[00:25:46] Don't hide anything. Don't make yourself up. Don't pretend, don't try and get better. Just come to me.
[00:25:52] I'm waiting for you.
[00:25:54] But you need to know something.
[00:25:55] In his love for you, God does not leave you where you are.
[00:26:00] He receives you just as you are. And then in his love, he sanctifies you.
[00:26:08] He heals you, he restores you. He carves out of you the calcified, dead sin that has grown upon your heart. Years upon years of living into the flesh and chasing after the things you want. And you gotta know that doesn't feel pleasant.
[00:26:27] That feels like getting hacked on.
[00:26:29] I can't imagine the marble is a big fan of the sculptor in the moment, right?
[00:26:36] And yet look what the sculptor brings out of the marble.
[00:26:41] In the same way, your God loves you too much to leave you in your death and sin.
[00:26:46] He heals you. He forms you. He draws you to himself.
[00:26:52] That means, beloved, that we must learn not just to receive God with joy as our Savior, as lover of our soul, but to bow our knee to him as our king, as our Lord, as our authority, who gets to tell us how to live our lives, which is not pleasant, but is wonderful.
[00:27:15] It's not something we're naturally bent toward, but it's something you were made for.
[00:27:21] It's difficult to bend your knee to the lordship of Christ.
[00:27:26] And yet, as we do, we find life, we find joy, we find freedom. It's so easy in our flesh to look at God and go, why do you even care about that?
[00:27:35] Why do you care about my ethics? Why do you care about my sin patterns? Why do you care about me being anxious and zoning out and doom scrolling on YouTube. Why do you care about that?
[00:27:44] Because he loves you.
[00:27:46] Because he wants better for you.
[00:27:48] Because he wants healing and growth and restoration and perfection for you. So, yes, he does care about that.
[00:27:56] He does.
[00:27:58] And as you learn to bend the knee and to give your allegiance to Christ and to obey his commands, it does something.
[00:28:07] It does something.
[00:28:09] It grows your faith.
[00:28:12] It changes you. It shows, it proves the text says, your identity as a disciple of Jesus and that that brings God glory, that glorifies God when we bear much fruit. And look how Jesus wraps it up, that glorifying of God, it brings us joy.
[00:28:35] This is the feedback loop of the gospel.
[00:28:38] God is so good, and he has designed reality such that our greatest joy is found in our connection with Him.
[00:28:47] That when we do the work of connecting with Christ and engaging in his kingdom and seeking out the design he has for us, it brings him much glory and brings us deep and abiding joy and contentment.
[00:29:00] It feeds back on itself. The more joy in life you're finding in Christ, the more you realize this is what I actually want. The more you actually seek it out. The more you seek it out, the more God is glorified. The more God is glorified, the more joy and completeness you find in him. And it just circles back on itself, by the way, forever in eternity, in heaven.
[00:29:18] That's what it's aiming us toward.
[00:29:20] Truly, the gospel is wonderful news, beloved. It is worth chasing after Jesus.
[00:29:27] It's worth it to pursue him. To prioritize your spiritual life is a wonderful thing because it taps you into the deepest purpose your life can find, Period.
[00:29:40] Read on with me and we'll wrap this all together. Verse 12.
[00:29:43] This is my command.
[00:29:46] Love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this to lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants anymore because a servant doesn't know what his master is doing. I have called you friends because I have made known to you everything I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me, but I chose you. I appointed you to go and to produce fruit, that your fruit should remain so that whatever you ask the Lord in My name, he will give to you. This is what I command you. Love one another.
[00:30:22] So now as this, this text wraps up, Jesus moves from our our individual relationship with him, our abiding in him, our connection with him, to our relationship with one another.
[00:30:36] Like we said last week, the church is like a family.
[00:30:41] We have something that's a deep and special connection with Christ and with one another. Jesus even says here, we're no longer servants, but we're friends of God, relationally connected. This is amazing.
[00:30:54] Jesus chooses his followers. He seeks them out. He does the work of saving them. And Jesus's work here, guys, it's more than simply forgiving us for sin. Sin like that would be enough.
[00:31:07] Jesus does that. He does save you from your sin, but he goes beyond that.
[00:31:14] He adopts you into the family of God.
[00:31:17] You're given Jesus's own righteousness. You were included in God's family and given the rights that go with sons.
[00:31:26] We're given the expectations of children of the living God. Jesus Christ chose you, beloved.
[00:31:33] How amazing is that?
[00:31:35] He considered you and sought you and chose you.
[00:31:39] But note this, note this.
[00:31:43] When Christ thought of you, when Christ sought you out, when Christ said, you're mine, he didn't choose you to just sit around and enjoy all his gifts.
[00:31:55] Okay, you do get to do that. You do get to enjoy the gifts of Christ.
[00:31:59] But he didn't. He didn't call you to just be lazy in the midst of privilege.
[00:32:05] He didn't save you to leisure.
[00:32:08] He saved you from your sins and he saved you to kingdom work.
[00:32:15] Look at this church. He. He has appointed you to go and to produce fruit that lasts.
[00:32:22] We're called not to just experience the wonderful gift of the gospel, but, but to do something with it.
[00:32:30] Something is to grow out of us, and we're to go with it.
[00:32:35] So then what is this fruit Jesus wants us to produce?
[00:32:39] And by the way, that's a serious question.
[00:32:42] Like, I think John 15 is this beautiful text, and it's this one where, like, it's a simple enough metaphor that you kind of get into it, like, oh, yeah, that's really beautiful. Oh yeah, I want to be connected to Christ. I want to. I want to buy. Yeah, I want to bear fruit. But you get to stop for a minute and go, okay, but what is he actually talking about?
[00:32:57] Because that's a metaphor.
[00:32:59] You're not a plant. You don't have apples growing out of your fingers. Hopefully you're a person.
[00:33:06] So what is the actual in your life meaning of this metaphor?
[00:33:12] I think Jesus would answer this question in a few short days, very bluntly. So turn with me over to Matthew 28. Remember, he said John 15 in those last few hours before his arrest. Matthew 28 picks up a few days later, after he's risen from the dead after being betrayed and killed.
[00:33:30] This text again is well known. It records Jesus's last words to his followers after his resurrection and before he ascends back to heaven. Read this with me. Matthew 28. Starting in verse 18, it says this.
[00:33:42] Jesus came near and said to them, all authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.
[00:33:48] Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always to the end of the age.
[00:34:05] Think of this text in the context of what we've been talking about, of wanting to be connected to Christ and full of Christ and to bear fruit for Him.
[00:34:15] Let me point out just a couple specifics from this text that again, if you've been around church for more than a few months, you've probably heard this text preached or discussed before. But let me point out a couple ideas that I think really answer this question for us. What is this fruit that Jesus wants us to bear? What is the thing that connection to Christ moves through us and births out of us that we're to go and take with us into the world? What is it?
[00:34:42] Well, note here first that Jesus gives this command, Go.
[00:34:47] Give that Command in John 15 also.
[00:34:49] Go. Go.
[00:34:51] Now, there's some nuance to the grammar here. I am not a Greek, like person. I don't understand that stuff. But if you read commentaries on this, they'll talk about kind of how there's this little bit here in the where it's a command, but it also has this kind of passive present tense where it's like go, like leave and go, but also like as you are going along, right? But regardless of that nuance, it's important to note this.
[00:35:14] Jesus is giving you a command to do something.
[00:35:19] Go means go.
[00:35:22] Go does not mean sit on your couch and binge into the Netflix show.
[00:35:27] It doesn't mean that it's a command that is active.
[00:35:32] It requires movement, requires action.
[00:35:36] Go.
[00:35:38] Something about the Gospel, the gift you receive.
[00:35:42] You're not supposed to live your life like nothing happened.
[00:35:45] The gospel gift is wonderful, and it's supposed to spark movement in you.
[00:35:51] Your life in Christ requires you to do something as you live in this world.
[00:35:58] I mean, note this right when you got saved, Jesus could have, in that exact moment, stopped your heart and vacuumed your soul up to heaven and put you straight into your perfect eternity. But he didn't.
[00:36:10] He left you here living your life.
[00:36:12] And if you think about it, that's kind of a bummer because he left you here in this broken and sinful world where terrible things happen.
[00:36:21] I'm pretty confident that at some point between right now and when you receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior, something terrible happened in your life.
[00:36:30] You've probably had some hardships, some pain, some suffering between then and now. And for whatever reason, when Christ thought of you and saw you out and chose you and drew you into his family and adopted you as a child, he said, I know this probably won't make any sense, but you need to live a few more years on this earth and it's going to be rough.
[00:36:51] He left you here to finish out your life.
[00:36:54] There's a reason for that.
[00:36:57] There's a reason for that.
[00:36:59] Christ left you here because your work for the kingdom is right here and right now.
[00:37:06] There is something he has called you to.
[00:37:09] Your life in Christ is to look like something.
[00:37:13] It's to be active.
[00:37:16] So what is it?
[00:37:18] What is the thing you're supposed to do? How do we love each other as Christ has loved us? How do we bear spiritual fruit from the spiritual special SAP that Jesus has given us in his. In his Gospel? The answer is right here in the text. It's as pure and simple as it could be. It's right after. Go make disciples.
[00:37:35] Make disciples.
[00:37:38] Guys. Disciple is just a Bible word for follower or student.
[00:37:42] Someone who's chasing after Jesus just like you are.
[00:37:47] So what are you supposed to go and do? What is it, the action in your life as a follower of Christ?
[00:37:51] Well, it's to invite more folk to come to Jesus and to find the same life and freedom that you have found.
[00:37:59] And notice this command has two distinct aspects.
[00:38:04] First, plain and simple, is what we call disciple making.
[00:38:08] Someone who is not a disciple of Jesus can hear about him through you and can then choose to become a follower of Jesus, a new disciple. This is what. What we call evangelism. This is mission.
[00:38:23] It's wonderful.
[00:38:25] And by the way, we can all do this.
[00:38:29] If you are a follower of Jesus, you can be an evangelist, you can be on mission, you can make new disciples.
[00:38:37] And I don't mean by that that you need to be some person who's really skilled at cold call sales and you need to go walk around our streets and knock on doors and be like, if you died tonight and you got hit by a bus and Jesus was there and there's a question, I'm so like, you don't have to do that.
[00:38:49] That's not what we're talking about.
[00:38:51] You, no matter what your skill set is, no matter how introverted or extroverted you are, no matter what your life looks like, you can interact with people who don't know Jesus and you can tell them what your life is like.
[00:39:05] You can tell them your story, your testimony.
[00:39:08] This is what I experience. I'm a mess. And I met Christ and gave me hope and changed me. He's moving me towards something amazing. And that's available for everyone. That's available for you.
[00:39:18] You can do that.
[00:39:20] You can.
[00:39:21] I promise you, you can. And if you're someone who's more introverted and you go, listen, I know I could do that in, like, a hypothetical sense, but I would literally rather die than talk to a stranger. I'm with you. I get it.
[00:39:33] But I have wonderful news.
[00:39:35] You know people as friends who aren't believers.
[00:39:40] They may be kids, they may be grandkids, they may be neighbors, they may be co workers, they may be friends at the gym, they may be friends on your team, they may be friends in your hobby. You know people who don't know Jesus, who are friends with you.
[00:39:56] And I gotta tell you something.
[00:39:58] If you were in Christ, abiding in Christ, connecting your life to him, seeking after him, allowing the spiritual SAP of Jesus to fill you and flow out of you, then I gotta say, Christ is probably one of, if not the most important facets of your life. Amen.
[00:40:15] Yeah.
[00:40:18] So why would you keep that from your friends?
[00:40:22] Why would you be so disingenuous with them as to not let them know what your life is actually about?
[00:40:29] And I'm saying this. Listen, guys, I'm saying this to myself as much as you, but if you have friends, co workers, neighbors, kids, grandkids, who. All you talk about with them is surface stuff.
[00:40:42] All you talk about with them is the weather and plans and what's going on. And you never actually share the most important facet of your person in your life.
[00:40:51] You don't have friends, you have acquaintances.
[00:40:55] You make small talk with them, you share your life with your friends, and you share your life genuinely. That's part of how we measure friendship, is that we intermingle our lives. We share of each other. We're vulnerable, we're honest. If Christ is the Lord of your life, then that's part of the way you relate to the world around you. And I gotta tell you something, in the context of deep friendships, that's not weird.
[00:41:21] It's not.
[00:41:23] Think of your closest friends.
[00:41:25] If your closest friends, you're sitting with you and you're having dinner, you're playing your game, or you're doing whatever they do, and they just start telling you about some book they read or something they've been thinking or a podcast they heard, and how it's kind of changing the way they think or affecting the way they think about relationships. That's not weird.
[00:41:40] That's normal.
[00:41:41] That's how friends talk.
[00:41:45] And so when you respond by saying something like. And I really get that, that actually reminds me of how, like, crisis changed my life in that Area, like I struggled in that before. That's a normal conversation. It's not weird. It's not off putting. It's intimate. It's vulnerable. It's friendship.
[00:42:01] And do we need awesome, like really outgoing, bold people who walk up to strangers and tell them about Jesus? Yes, and amen. And if that's you and you're an extreme extrovert, please, please proclaim Christ from the rooftops. Help us introverts out. We'll die. We can't do it. We need your help.
[00:42:18] My point is this.
[00:42:21] This is what it means to make disciples.
[00:42:23] To spend time with someone who isn't a disciple, to tell them about Jesus and to invite them to become a disciple. And it doesn't require you to have a degree in theology or to be a brilliant apologist, or to be an amazing public speaker, or to be super outgoing. You don't have to magically become a different person or have a different personality. It is as simple as this. Bear witness. This is my life.
[00:42:48] Yeah, I was a mess.
[00:42:50] Jesus helps me and gives me hope. He's healed me in these ways that's available to you too.
[00:42:55] It's as simple as that.
[00:42:57] And they may have all sorts of really intelligent, articulate reasons why you're wrong and you don't have to worry about it.
[00:43:04] That's nuts. That's a good. I don't know the answer to that. I can tell you this.
[00:43:08] My life was a mess. Jesus gave me hope and healing and you can have that too.
[00:43:13] That's as simple as it is, guys.
[00:43:15] That's just one side of the coin.
[00:43:17] Note that Jesus also tells us to teach them to obey everything he has commanded. This is a reference to the flip side of disciple making, which is discipleship.
[00:43:27] Again, this is really the same thing, but it's two aspects of the same thing.
[00:43:32] You see, we don't just share the Gospel with a person and then move on.
[00:43:38] You must continually share the gospel. You must keep sharing the gospel. We keep helping others to know that Jesus is actually sufficient for them, that his accomplished work on the cross, that his resurrection and his eventual return is actually enough to save them and heal them, give them hope and move them into eternity. You share that over and over and over because you need that shared with you over and over and over. You need to be reminded of the Gospel, brought back to the truths of the gospel. You need to help contextualize the Gospel to the everyday stuff of your life. Because you hear it in church and you sing the song and you go, yes and amen. Christ is amazing. I love this. The gospel is wonderful. And then you get to Tuesday afternoon and some co worker or neighbor makes you so fearful, frustrated that your heart rate is raising and you don't know how to understand the gospel in that moment. You need help with that.
[00:44:29] So you sit with brothers and sisters and you go, oh my gosh, this is what's going on in my work. And all I want to do is do this and this and this and this.
[00:44:34] And you know what they do? They remind you of the gospel and they help you contextualize the truth of Jesus to that bit of your life.
[00:44:43] And then as you live more life, you come up against another wall where the gospel doesn't make sense. Oh, we're struggling with this and I'm really worried and anxious about this. And what if this happens and you share it and someone reminds you of the gospel and you do the work and you dig through scripture and you contextualize the gospel to that facet of your life. If you are a follower of Jesus, it's because a lot of people have done that for you and hopefully they're still doing it.
[00:45:05] And you get to do it for others.
[00:45:07] You show up in their lives and you don't give them platitudes, you don't give them little happy feel goods, you don't give them cliches that we could get off any self help Instagram profile. You give them the truth of scripture.
[00:45:21] You contextualize the gospel.
[00:45:24] When your friend comes to you and says, my husband lost his job, I have no idea what we're going to do, you don't go, dang, that's, that's rough. I mean, everything's going to be all right.
[00:45:31] That's not what you say.
[00:45:33] You cry with them, you sit with them in their, in their worry and their sorrow. You remind them that Christ is their true treasure.
[00:45:41] You, you contextualize the gospel to that moment. And then, Lord willing, you mobilize the church to come around them, right?
[00:45:48] That is discipleship.
[00:45:51] It's not just sharing the gospel with a non believer. It's sharing the gospel with believers and doing it over and over and over and over in a context of safety, in a context of real vulnerability, in a context of consistency where you don't give up and walk away from it, but you keep walking long term with people, sharing the gospel with them, contextualizing it to the everyday stuff of life. And if you do that long enough, it sharpens us, it hones us, draws us back to Christ, it lets us access the Life he's given us.
[00:46:27] Guys, the whole text ends with Jesus reminding us that he's with us forever.
[00:46:32] I'm with you to the end of the age. Remember, guys, you're not doing this on your own.
[00:46:36] This isn't some big ask for you to figure out how to be brave and outgoing and to just white knuckle your way through being a good Christian. Christ is the one. He is the vine. He provides the life and he walks with you through every facet of life and faith.
[00:46:50] He's the one who disciples through you.
[00:46:54] This is it, guys.
[00:46:56] This is how we live our Christian life.
[00:46:59] We go and we make disciples.
[00:47:02] We find life in Jesus. We tap into the joy and the life of engaging the gospel and glorifying God and we connect with brothers and sisters and we make disciples. So beloved, go make disciples.
[00:47:17] Like, like, like actually do this.
[00:47:20] And some of you are sitting here going, this is the thing, this is the thing that doesn't happen. This is what I'm talking about. You described that, Pastor, and it sounds awesome. I remember experiencing that when I was in Crew or when I was in Navigators or I was in Campus Christian House or whatever it is. But I don't experience that now.
[00:47:36] Now my life is busy and now I have a million things going on. And now I come to church on Sundays and I hear these cool sermons, but I don't contextualize it. The rest of my week I don't think about it again until I come here two weeks from now. Because next week I got stuff going on and it's really good weather and I don't want to be here.
[00:47:51] Sorry, a lot of us feel that way.
[00:47:56] I'm here to tell you guys, this happens because we choose to make it happen.
[00:48:03] This is what discipleship looks like if it's actually important in your life.
[00:48:08] If Christ is actually the vine within which you abide, if he is your Lord and you bend your knee to him, if he is actually as life giving and freedom finding and joy inducing as he claims to be, then you prioritize this.
[00:48:24] And that does mean changing the way you live your life.
[00:48:28] That might mean getting up early so you can connect to the Word, so you can call a friend before work and pray over them.
[00:48:35] That might mean watching less tv so you can set aside time in your schedule to connect with brothers and sisters and study the Word together.
[00:48:43] That might mean changing your family schedule so that you can prioritize things like small group or discipleship groups. That might mean choosing less activities for your kids so you have More time in your schedule to connect with people, to contextualize the gospel to their life.
[00:49:01] It's a real thing.
[00:49:03] It actually involves real change in your life. It actually causes you to live differently than the world around us.
[00:49:10] But it's worth it.
[00:49:12] It's wonderful. And I'm here to tell you guys, you will not grow in Christ the way you desire to.
[00:49:21] If you don't make your life look that way, you won't get there.
[00:49:26] If you don't prioritize discipleship, you will not grow in your faith the way you want to band. If you want to come back up, I'm going to invite us to take a few minutes to connect with Christ in prayer, to consider him.
[00:49:39] To consider what he might be telling you today, but he might be challenging you to. And listen, I don't want to be too on the nose, but I am.
[00:49:49] Disciples of Jesus grow together toward Christ.
[00:49:53] They prioritize this lifestyle where we connect, where we pray, where we study, where we challenge, where we hone one another.
[00:50:01] I'm here to tell you our church wants to help you do that.
[00:50:06] I want to help you live that way, want to move that direction together.
[00:50:11] I would strongly encourage you to consider what it looks like to jump into our discipleship groups this summer.
[00:50:18] They're not perfect. They're not amazing. It's just our attempt to take a practical step this direction and say, you know what? If we're in this together, let's grow together toward Christ. Let's take a real step to grow together.
[00:50:32] And whether you've been following Christ for 30 years or 30 minutes, I promise you it won't be a waste for you to connect with brothers and sisters and grow toward Christ together. Let's take a few minutes to pray, and then we'll continue on in communion.
