Sunday Sermon
sunday morning 5th Oct 2008
John 15v18-27
The people of God are the representative of God on earth.
The context is obviously from the first half of the chapter where Jesus talks about the vine, branches and gardener.
One of the points of the picture is to show that the branches have to be part of the vine to produce fruit.
The meaning of which is that the believer has to remain in Christ in order to bring glory to God.
When the believer is so united to Christ there should be no difference between Jesus and the believer.
Just as a vine is one organic whole so is Christ and His church.
This great unity that comes from being united to Jesus is put on display to the world as we love each other.
Moving onto the second half of the chapter the Lord draws more teaching from the fact of our being united to him.
The main theme of this section is: Jesus Christ.
1) the way the world treats the disciples is because of Jesus Christ - the Vine.
The disciples are treaded by people in the same way as they treated Jesus.
V20 if they listened to Him they would listen to the disciples. If they rejected Him they would reject the disciples. “No servant is greater than his Master.”
V21 they rejected Jesus because they did not believe he was sent from God
They will reject the disciples because they don’t believe Jesus is Lord.
2) Jesus Christ is the only way of salvation.
V23 those who hate Jesus hate God.
Could not say they loved God if they rejected Jesus.
V24 Those who rejected Jesus are without excuse because they saw all the signs but still refused to believe.
3) the Holy Spirit is sent to enable the disciples to witness to Jesus Christ.
V26- they needed the Spirit to help them take on board all that Jesus was talking about, especially at that time!
27 - they had a special charge as witness of all that they had seen of Jesus from the beginning.
From all this we see the centrality of the Lord Jesus Christ.
A) “no servant is greater than his master” v20 (13v16)
B) “on account of my name / for my names sake” v21
C) “he will testify about me ….you also must testify” v26-27.
All that happened to the disciples of old was because of the centrality of Jesus Christ.
Today we need to regain the centrality of Jesus Christ.
1) He should be central to the judgements that the world makes about us.
If the world hates us, the only good reason for that is the Lord himself.
In other words in and of ourselves we should not be offensive to the world.
The offence that the world may take from us should be because of our Great Saviour.
Too often the world takes offence at us because of our tradition or denomination!
Equally, on the other hand, if the world loves us, it should be because it loves Jesus.
Here the danger is that the church tries to woo the world by redefining Jesus so that He is more easy to accept. We water down the truth. How? E.g the whole ecumenical movement, that says all roads lead to heaven and that Jesus is a good way but not the only way.
Maybe in our age where there seems to be so little response to Jesus the temptation may be to water Him down! But in so doing we are making a false religion - that is a religion that pleases man rather than God. Answers our needs rather than glorifying God.
2) He is our only hope. He is our message of Salvation.
We live in an age that tries to be very inclusive of everything.
Especially when it comes to what we believe.
As Christians we must maintain the right of everyone to believe what they want to believe but, that does not mean we believe everyone’s belief is valid and true!
Our only message to the world is that Jesus is the way of salvation, there is no other way to be saved.
Would Jesus have held the Pharisees guilty if their beliefs were acceptable (v24)!
In rejecting Jesus people are rejecting God v23.
Jesus came so that God would be all the more accessible and thus if we reject him, there is no hope left!
But what a message of salvation we have to bring! What hope there is!
There is a way of salvation, there is a way to get to God.
3) what then is our responsibility to our Master?
Our responsibility is to know him, and then to tell about him, but all in the power of the Holy Spirit v26-27.
The Holy Spirit is sent into the world to enable us to know Jesus.
The Spirits work, ministry, job, task is to facilitate our relationship with the Master,
so that in his power we can tell others about Jesus.
Notice in the centre of it all is the Lord himself!
We are to know Him, we are to tell others of Him.
The Spirit is given in order that we might know Him, and tell others about Him.
It is all about the Lord Jesus Christ.
To turn the three point on their head we see this:
Our responsibility is to get to know Him;
so that we can then tell others that He is the Only hope of Salvation - that He is Salvation;
so that in turn the world will treat us because of Him - with either acceptance or rejection.
sunday evening 5th Oct 2008
Gen 18v16-33
Context: Lord had appeared to Abraham he had provided for them and then received the promise of the miracle child.
1) Abraham walks with God.
V16 When the men got up to leave, they looked down towards Sodom, and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way.
The men are on their way to destroy Sodom. Abraham is walking with them!
He is keeping in step with the Spirit! Walking along with the LORD.
Lesson 1 - faith walks with God.
Walking with God is what faith is all about.
It is living life with God!
Gen 5v24 - Enoch walked with God
Gen 6v29 - Noah walked with God
Gen 48v15 - all the Patriarchs walked before God, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Walking grounds faith in real life. It is something we do, its physical / bodily.
Faith does not exist outside of our lives and outside therefore of our bodies!
It is not something spiritual in the atmosphere!
It is spiritual but the spiritual is revealed in the physical!
Thus “walking” is a great metaphor for the life of faith.
The challenge is that we walk every day, “with” God.
How? It flows from all that we saw last week about faith: faith desires God.
Longs for God, rejoices in His presence, waits upon Him, seeks to Serve Him etc.
In all that we are “walking” with God.
2) Abraham talks with God.
Next v17-21: as Abraham is walking, Yahweh reveals his plan to him. He does this because of who Abraham will become, a great nation and a blessing to the whole world. Yahweh is going to see if Sodom is really as bad as it sounds!
Strange language to use in describing Gods ways!
Surely He is the one who sees and knows all things!
- yes but Abraham does not know that, thus God is revealing his character to him.
Showing that He is one who is right in all his ways!
Next v22-32: here we have the great interchange between Yahweh and Abraham.
V22 - Abraham stays before Yahweh.
V23-25 This time Abraham questions Yahweh.
He obviously understands Gods intention to destroy Sodom.
So Abraham reveals something of his own heart here.
He intercedes for Sodom! Or more specifically the righteous people of Sodom!
V26 - Gods reassuring answer
V27-28 Abraham is not content to leave the matter! What if there is less than 50!
The answer is the same - no destruction.
V29 The conversation continues - only forty? Same answer
V30 Again the conversation continues - only 30 ? Same answer.
V31 Now, only 20? Same answer
V32 Now, only 10? Same answer! At this Abraham is satisfied.
He knows God will do what is right.
Lesson 2 - the prayer life of faith is informed by the character of God.
- thus faith intercedes on behalf of people.
Faith knows what God is like, faith knows God.
We believe in a compassionate, merciful, loving and forgiving God.
We know he is the judge of all the earth and we know He will do what is right.
From that we pray for people because we know God loves people!
Our prayer requests of God must be based upon the knowledge of God that we have.
Praying in faith means praying according to what God has revealed!
We believe what God tells us and so we pray.
Abraham’s intercession was based upon the fact that he knew God would do right.
That truth emboldened his prayer life.
How much more we know of God. We can talk freely with him!
We can enter into the holy of holies!
But is there that bold prayer life in our walk of faith?
If not the reason may be that we are in fact not walking as we should!
3) Abraham goes home.
Finally we see the true dynamics of the conversation.
V33 When the LORD had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home.
It is the LORD speaking to Abraham, not the other way around, v22-23!
From our perspective Abraham was in control of the situation.
He walked with God and he talked with God.
But the revelation at the end is that God was in charge of proceedings!
And that is a great picture of what grace is all about.
Lesson 3: faith works, prays and walks with God etc, but all the time it is by the Grace of God that we do what we do.
Grace is Gods work in us enabling us to do the things we could not do on our own - like Abraham here praying for Sodom and Gomorrah, all along it was God drawing that out of him!
The important question for faith is how do we engage in the grace of God?
The answer is by trying our hardest to walk with God, as we do that he will lead and guide and talk to us!
Grace is opposed to earning Gods favour but it is not opposed to effort!
Abraham’s praying and Gods speaking came to him all as a consequence of his walking with God.
He put in the effort to follow God as He got up to leave!
Why should we put in the effort? Because of who God is!
We need to be captivated by the wonder of God so that we desire to follow him and thus are made willing to do all that we can to follow him!
True discipleship is after all following the Lord and allowing him to disciple us!
He is the Disciple-er we are to be the disciples.
