I Chose You To Love, Obey, Befriend, Teach, And Pray Sermons – Grace Evangelical Free Church // Wyoming, MN

John 15:12-17 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. 16 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. 17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.







INTRODUCTION







One thing common to all people is the need to make sense of the big questions in life.







Who am I? Why am I here? Is there any ultimate meaning? Why is life hard? What is good and evil? What happens after I die?







We’re not always conscious that we’re trying to find consistent answers to these kinds of questions, but it is a phenomenon universal to all mankind. It is a track that is perpetually running inside of us. That’s part of what it means to be made in the image of God. Not having answers is part of the restlessness that is common to all apart from Christ, even as having answers is a part of the peace of the Spirit for all who are in Christ.







Another of the big questions in life relates to our wills. Am I free? Why do I desire the things I desire? Is there anything outside of me that has influence on me or authority over me?







The heart of this passage is part of the answer to this last set of questions. To be clear, this passage does not give the final word on free will or answer every question we might have on the relationship between God’s sovereignty and our freedom. What it does do, however, is give us a clear statement on the lordship of Jesus and the fact that it shapes our choices in significant ways. Jesus has and uses authority to choose a people to follow Him as well as to determine the purpose of our following. Let’s make sure we don’t read more into this passage than what’s in it, but let’s be equally sure not to miss what’s there.







In other words, the big idea of this passage is that Jesus chose His followers (they didn’t choose Him) and He did so in order that they might bear lasting fruit among all mankind. Throughout the six verses, Jesus named five specific kinds of abiding fruit: love, obedience, friendship, teaching, and prayer. Consequently, the main takeaways are to abide in Jesus and out of that, give ourselves to love, obey, befriend, teach, and pray.







Before I pray, I’d like to quickly remind you that we are in the last quarter of John’s Gospel. His overall purpose for recording the things he did concerning Jesus’ life and ministry is to convince his readers that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, the Savior of the world, so that his readers would believe in Jesus and be saved (20:31).







To that end, John spent eleven chapters recalling the first three+ years of Jesus earthly ministry and then the final nine chapters recalling the events of the final week of Jesus life on earth. We’re in chapter fifteen, the events of which (along with all of chapters 13-17) took place on Thursday evening, the night of the Passover meal, the night of His betrayal and arrest, and the night before His crucifixion. Our passage consists of Jesus’ words to His eleven disciples (Judas had already left to betray Him), His closest followers.







The main thing for us to get our heads around in the way of background is that our passage records some of Jesus’ final words on earth.