The Church of Eleven22 - S02E22 - Love One Another

Episode Date: September 6, 2021

More than any other, we are commanded to love one another as He has loved us. We can’t do this alone; Jesus invites us to abide in Him and He will abide in us. The more we abide in Jesus, the more fruit we bear that can pour out to love one another unconditionally, like Christ has loved us. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. – John 15:12

Welcome to Deepen with Pastor Joby Martin. The Church of 1122 is a movement for all people to discover and deepen a relationship with Jesus Christ. And we're praying this message helps you deepen your relationship with him. Now let's dive in. Hey family, welcome back to the Deep and Devo. I think this is our second time now, Robbie, that the one another is in the text that we just preached this previous weekend. and so we are in John chapter 15. And I'm going to be honest, I mean, all of the Bible is inspired of God

and infallible and useful for sure. But there have been certain parts of the scriptures that have been more useful to me in my walk. John 15 has been one of the most life-shaping, life-giving text in regards to what discipleship and sanctification really is. Because it's Jesus' invitation. So many of us, man, so many of us think

that being a Christian is about doing more. We do, even though we preach the gospel here over and over and over and over, and we preach, and I preach all the time that the verdict comes before the performance. There's still something in us all that thinks, if we want to be a good Christian, then we've got to do better, got to do more. And there's no such thing as a good Christian. You're either dead or you're alive.

And Jesus does not give us a to-do list. Jesus gives us an invitation that says this, come here. Abide in me and I will abide in you. He is saying, abide me, stay close. I bet I said that a thousand times this weekend. Stay close. Stay close to me and I will stay close to you. And then you may ask, well, how?

Jesus, how do I stay close? And he says this. He says, abide in my word, and my word will abide in you. This is why I'm obsessed with not only teaching you the Bible, but I have to teach me the Bible. I have to ask the Spirit of God to teach me the Bible so that I can teach you the Bible, knowing that it's really the Spirit of God that teaches you the Bible.

And I love the Jesus was such a master teacher. I love this, I love the picture that he paints, right? that he's the vine, that he is the source, and that we are the branches, and that when we are connected to him, when we're close to him, when we're tied into His Word, then we're tied into the power source.

And I do think there's got to be a tie between John 15 and Galatians 5, where we get the fruit of the spirit, right? We're talking about gardening and both. So do you want to be more loving and patient and kind. Do you want to be better? Do you want to be more gentle and faithful? Do you want to be a person marked by self-control? Well, good. Cool. Then you need the fruit of the spirit. Well, how do you grow fruit? Well, fruit is produced from the inside out. It's not manufactured from the outside end.

That's why when you go get fruit at the grocery store, it's called the produce section, not the manufactured section, because you can't manufacture fruit. So you can't manufacture love, you can't manufacture joy, you can't manufacture patience. I've talked to people that say, I just want to be more patient. That's the silliest thing I've ever heard in my life. To want to, you're impatient with how impatient you are. You see how silly that is? And what Jesus says is exactly the opposite.

He just says, come here. Just come here. Just come here and stay close to me. And as you stay close to me, and I stay close to you, it's not always going to be easy because what's going to have? happen is my dad, he's a gardener. And you got some stuff in your life and you got to clip it away. You got to prune it. But it's in the pruning that you'll abide in me. All right, that was the sermon. So ultimately, what the Puritans called this was mortification and vivification.

And this gardening kind of terminology, it means if you want to grow really good grass, you got to do two things. First of all, you've got to feed and fertilize the grass. What do you do that stirs your affections for the Lord? What do you do that grows your heart for the Lord? Make sure you have a healthy dose of that in your life. For me, it's coffee and the word and a tree stand. That's what it is. That's what it is.

When I get it out of the woods with the Lord, I love to watch the world wake up. I love to just read his word, pray, drink some coffee, hopefully see some animals. It stirs my affection for the Lord. That's what it means for me to abide. What does it mean for you? But fertilizing your grass is not enough, right?

You've also got to pull some weeds. That's called mortification. John Owen said that you've got to be killing the sin or it will be killing you. What are the things in your life that shrink your affections for the Lord? Maybe it's that Netflix show that you've been binge watching, and I'm not saying, well, you probably shouldn't watch it anyway, but there's some things in it for whatever reason when you spend a couple hours watching that, it seems like your heart for the Lord is smaller, not bigger.

Maybe there's a sin, maybe there's a habit, maybe there's an addiction, maybe there's a relationship, whatever it is, man. You better pluck the weeds up out of there. And so buried in this chapter in John chapter 15, we get our one another. And it's the most one another and one another of all the one another's.

more than any other times we're told to do this to one another. In fact, back in John chapter 13, I almost did it there, but I didn't. In John chapter 13, Jesus says, I give you a new commandment. It was right after the last supper, it was right after Jesus watched the disciples' feet. And I can imagine the disciples, again, they're students, not all, they're learning, but they're also trying to do what the rabbi did. And Jesus says, I give you a new commandment. Right after you said, if you love me, you will obey my commandments.

and they're like, cool, what are they? And he says, I give you a new one. I can imagine they get all their stuff out. They're like, what is it? And he goes, the commandment is this, that you love one another, as I have loved you. In John chapter 15, he tells us that we are to love one another. Let's just review.

He says this in verse 9, as the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide. in my love, just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. And again, remember the new commandment that he gave us? The new commandment that he gave us was to love one another as he has loved us. He says, these things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. Again, this is fruit language. This is abiding language, that you

cannot manufacture joy from the outside. That's called happiness. Happiness is fine. I'm pro-happy. I'd rather be happy than sad, but happiness is based in your happenings. Joy is found in the person and work of Jesus. He said, his hope is that his joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. And this is my commandant, that you love one another as I have loved you. Now, I'm just going to be honest, it's not a new commandment. It's not new. The new is not that we are to love one another. The Bible tells us this back in like Leviticus 19, we're supposed to love our neighbors. All right? But Jesus has a different standard of love.

Jesus' standard of love is the way he loved us. And again, my definition of love is simply this. Love is my joy in the Lord expressed towards you at great expense to myself. That's what love is. My joy in the Lord expressed towards you at great expense to myself. And you say, where did you get that definition from the way Jesus loved us? His hope was that his joy would be in us to the full.

His love for us is rooted in the reality that as God the Father loved the Son, then God the Son loves us expressed towards us that God demonstrated his love for us and this that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us at great expense to ourself. for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that Jesus went to the cross to demonstrate his love for us. In fact, he keeps going. He says, greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

And you are my friends. Did you know that Christianity is the only religion where the followers are invited to be friends with the deity? That's it, man. Because Jesus did not come to say, simply rule over us, he came to be a brother, he came to be a friend. He said, you're 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 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. 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. All right. He says, I give you this new commandment

that we love one another, how just as he has loved us? Let me give you five ways that Jesus loved us. I could probably come up with 50, but I'm going to give you five. Number one, one of the ways that Jesus loved you

is he chose you unconditionally. There was no tryout, there was no test. He did not pick you because of what you could do for him. He picked you because of who he is and he is love. That's how you're supposed to love one another. You don't love somebody for what they can do for you.

You don't love them because of what they can reciprocate towards you. You love them unconditionally. Number two, Jesus' love went first. His love was aggressive and proactive, not passive and reactive. Husbands, he didn't wait until his wife acted right and then he loved her. He went first. Three, God's love for us never gives up. Don't believe me, see Peter in the Bible.

He failed over and over and over and over. And yet, with every single failure, Jesus was right there to redire. redeem him, to restore him, to forgive him, and to love him. He never gave up for. One of the ways that Jesus loves us is that he speaks life into us. I mean, have you seen the number of Bible verses that just speak life over the children of God? The Bible says that God delights over his children, that God dances over his children. Speaking of Peter, the biggest screw up probably amongst all the disciples, and at one moment, Jesus looks at him and says, you are no longer his old name, your new name will be Petra, Rock. He gives him that name.

He says, the things that you are saying right now come from a divine revelation. I'm going to hand you the keys to the kingdom of heaven that Jesus did not just talk to people about their current circumstances and where they are right now. He spoke life into them about where they could be if they would follow after him. That's what love does, man. Love speaks life into people. five one of the primary ways that Jesus loved us is he took responsibility for something that was not his fault that's right he loved us enough to bear our burden he loved us enough to not worry about being right but instead being our savior he went to the cross even even though the sin debt was not his to pay and that's how he loved us so five ways he chose us unconditionally

So who do you love unconditionally? His love went first. He was proactive, not reactive. So who are you loving proactively? Number three, he never gave up. Who is it that you've given up on? Because Jesus never gives up on you. So who do you need to go back to and continuously pursue in love?

Number four, his love speaks life over us. What relationship do you need to change your vocabulary and begin to speak life into? and then five, he took responsibility for our sin. Where is it that you need to bear one another's burden? So you may say, how in the world could I love like that? John 15. Jesus says, come here. Stay close to me.

Stay close to me. Abide in me and I will abide in you. And as you abide in my word, and my word abides in you, as we walk together in this relationship that what's going to be birthed inside of you, what's going to be produced inside of you, is fruit. And according to the list in Galatians, the one that hits lead off is love. So in order for you

to be able to love one another, then you abide in that loving relationship with Jesus Christ. May we love one another as Christ has loved us. Let's pray. Father, we love you. And we love you because because you first loved us. And God, we thank you that this is love. Not that you are responding to us, but we are responding to you. This is love. Not that we love you.

You loved us, and you sent your son as the propitiation for our sin. And God, I thank you that since Jesus is the payment that satisfied that you are not dissatisfied in us. And so, Lord, may we love one another this way. May we love one another with our words, with our time. May we love one another conditionally.

one another relentlessly, may we love one another aggressively, because that's how Jesus loves us. And God, we thank you that the world will know that we are your disciples by the way we love one another. We pray it in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for joining us for deepen with Pastor Jobi Martin. If you're looking for additional resources to help you further deepen your relationship with Jesus Christ, visit co-e-22.com slash resources. We're praying this message you heard today helps you experience God in a unique and fresh way. And as always, be free.