The Vine No.4 Baring the Heart

The reading is taken from the 15th chapter of St. John, verses 9 to 17. A very wonderful passage. The words of Jesus about love.

The love of God the Father, the love of Jesus, and our love for each other as God's children. There may be some people whom we don't yet like, but thank God we can love them. Verse 9. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.

Now remain in my love. If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

My command is this. Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this that he lay down his life for his friends.

You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends.

For everything that I learned from my Father, I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name.

This is my command. Love each other. And this is the word of the Lord.

And let's come to God's word in the passage which Mr. Golden read, Gospel of John and chapter 15. And I want to speak to you about the Lord Jesus bearing his heart. You ever sing that song? Of course you do because we have it from time to time in hymns of faith.

I am listening, Lord, to thee. What hast thou to say to me? I mentioned a burden that I had last week. It still remains with me that it is so possible for people to come and listen to addresses.

And in one sense, you can listen to too many. If the addresses that you listen to, if what is expounded from God's word is not applied to your heart. In fact, if that is the case, then one would argue that you are not really improved by being within the hearing of the word of God.

For it's not the hearing of the word that's important, that obviously is essential. But it's not just the hearing, it is the doing. And so I challenge you in my somewhat blunt northern fashion right at the beginning of my address this morning.

Are you submissive to this word? Mr. Golden in concluding his reading made reference to its inspired authority and rightly so. So I ask you, are you going to put yourself under the authority of the word? Have you come to listen to someone just expound scripture for half an hour and that's all it's going to mean? Because if that is the case, then perhaps lovingly I could suggest, certainly with humility in my heart, that you would be as well making your exit at this very moment. For you merely to serve attendance on the word of God without serving obedience on the word of God is really to violate the scripture and its message and to insult its author.

So with those opening comments which I felt placed on my mind from the Lord, I believe to deliver to you, let's come to these verses in which our Savior is in the company of his disciples. He's leaving, you remember, the upper room and he's walking towards the valley of Kidron. Gethsemane is only a little way ahead and in front of our Savior is the awfulness of taking that terrible cup from which he shrinks and offering his life to the Jews, to the Roman authorities who will callously butcher him for he will be killed on a cruel cross.

Now that's the context, you see. There's a great preacher who lived in England some years ago, a couple of centuries ago, and when he was asked how he approached ministry he said this, I preach as a dying man to dying men. I preached as if I'd never preach again, as a dying man to dying men.

And if you knew that the half hour or so that you had in the company of loved ones was the last 30 minutes that you would actually be in their presence, how much you would compress and how wise would people be if they listened to what you have to say. For a man who knows he is dying distills the wisdom that he has acquired assuming he has such precious commodity and he shares it as Jacob did with his sons, with those who are in attendance on him. And here is our Savior in one sense a dying man and he's speaking to dying men and he has a great deal to say.

There is nothing more sensitive, I'm persuaded, in the whole of scripture than what is discovered within these 14th through to the 17th chapters of the gospel of John. And so with the context of our Lord having spoken on the true vine and indicating to those who are listening to him that the purposes of God are being worked out through his life and by extension to his branches, that is the disciples, he continues to lay bare his people. Now at that point I want to stop again.

You see scripture is a remarkable vehicle of conveying God's word. It was written 2,000 years and more ago and yet it has a quality that even Shakespeare will never have. It is timeless.

You see it's not so much what Jesus was speaking but what Jesus is speaking. As I understand scripture it is cast always in the present tense, in its application. Thus the writer of the Hebrews when quoting the Old Testament will invariably use the present tense, not what God said but what God is saying.

So it's you and the Lord Jesus this morning. Not a historic scene though I put the flavor of the background in but it's you and the Lord. The Lord bearing his heart, a dying man speaking to dying men and women and what does he have to say? Well in summary fashion at least four things.

Number one, remain in my love. Verse nine, as the Father has loved me so have I loved you. You see our Savior has spelled out to his disciples in the opening of this incident in the 13th chapter the measure of his love in some fashion and it's John the evangelist who puts a sort of editorial comment which comes out perhaps better in the authorized version than in the NIV when he says of our Lord Jesus having loved his own he loved them to the end.

Our Lord Jesus knew something about love. The love of God he abided, he dwelt, he remained in it. His own love he wants the disciples to appreciate it in the same experimental fashion as he has entered into the former.

To abide in the love of Jesus you remember my quote from Charles Spurgeon last week is to be lovingly knit to the Lord Jesus Christ. Remain in my love, the constitution of it. What does it require? What is the essence? You see this love of the Lord Jesus, this love of which scripture in the New Testament speaks is not a sentimental passive thing.

If that's your understanding of love, if it's a teenage crush then you're far removed in your grasp of scripture from what it really is conveying. Love in the New Testament is always active, if it is not active it is not love. Remain in my love, if you obey my commandments you will remain in my love.

You see technical language to say it's pragmatic that means to say it's experimental. It must be worked out in your heart attitude. It's not just the moving of the emotions, so thank God for emotions in a religious service.

That's important but it's the throughput into my relationships an hour after I've been in the tabernacle, in the way that I conduct myself on a Monday through to a Saturday, in the words that I will allow fall from my lips. That's how I show the love of God through me to other people and incidentally to him himself. For worship is what you do not just at church but in your lifestyle throughout the week.

Remain in his love the constitution of it, obedience to my commands, love is active. Remain in my love the demonstration of it, just as I have obeyed my father's commands and remain in his love. You see the thing about the Lord Jesus which advantages the disciples historically more than you is this, that their teacher was the greatest illustration of what he shared.

The constitution of love that he will define, the demonstration of love that he will illustrate as I have kept my father's commands. You see our Lord Jesus did not come into the world merely to please himself. Romans 15 verse 3 makes that very clear as also does another comment in John's gospel when he says my meat is to do the will of him who sent me.

Fulfillment of the will of God in the person of our Lord Jesus brought God the father the greatest satisfaction. It always also brought us the greatest salvation. Think it through, what were the father's commands that our Lord Jesus should keep his sinless nature, that ultimately he should die that grotesque death to which reference has already been made.

Every hour, every day, every week, every month he is involved in doing one thing, keeping his father's commands. That will satisfy the father the greatest satisfaction. The son will show the love that he has to the father, but in the very pursuit of that love he brings salvation because having kept his father's commands he offers a sinless life and the benefits of that life are applied to you and to me.

So you see how wonderful is this instruction our Savior gives the disciples remain in my love. He defines its constitution and by his own life there's a marvelous demonstration. As the father loved him who was most worthy, he loves them who were most unworthy.

The father loved him as his son, he the Lord Jesus loves us as his children and he wants you to remain. Have you got that? To be actively involved in working through what he wants of you so that the benefits of his love are felt every day. That's an activity that you can engage in.

You see I can't do it for you, I wish I could in many many ways. In one sense I increase your responsibility by trying to teach you clearly from scripture, but if you will not accept and apply what is taught then the responsibility is yours for I can go no further in helping you. Remain in his love.

We are in Christ by the gift of God's salvation, but our abiding in Christ, our realization of the virtues of Christ in our own life, it demands from us activity each day. So he bears his heart remain in my love and then he tells us in the 11th verse to realize his joy. I have told you this, I've given you these instructions so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.

Having mentioned love, he speaks of joy. Later on he's going to speak about peace. Now there's a twofold joy that's referred to here isn't there? There is his joy, my joy and the joy of the disciples, your joy.

You don't generally think, let's take the first one, of our Lord Jesus in terms of joy being a dominant characteristic. He's referred to as the man of sorrows, not so? And you think of the serious nature of our Lord and indeed it's right so to do, but it's wrong to eclipse the fact that he was a man of joy. I preached an address here which made an impact.

I was glad to hear on some people a year or so ago speaking of our Lord Jesus, my title was the ecstasy of joy. He was a joyful man. Later on in the 17th chapter you'll see him looking up to his father and speaking of his joy and asking that that might be passed on to his disciples.

In the epistle to the Hebrews, reference is made to his impending death and in daring language the writer speaks of our Lord's attitude to Calvary and says for the joy that was before him, he endured the cross and despised the shame. He looked upward and received joy, the stimulus to joy from his father. He looked forward into the into the completion of God's will on the earth for his life and once more, joy is an attendant consequence.

My joy, he wants us to realize it in our lives. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. My friend, it is a dominant characteristic in your Christian experience, joy.

Paul says and he's not afraid of a bit of repetition. Good repetition that doesn't blind the intellect is very helpful. Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice.

He reminds himself of it as the Psalmist reminds himself umpteenth times on one of the Psalms for his mercy, the mercy of God endures forever. He repeats and repeats and repeats and repeats in every verse of the Psalm. There are times when we need to reinforce what we're learning and the praise that we are ascribing so that it comes from the depths of our personality and is ingrained into our mental processes.

Charles Spurgeon says the Christian, I like this, the Christian is the laughing cavalier. He has reason to be to be joyful. Another Puritan says this, can you believe it? These men of yesteryear who some of you have got a complete wrong understanding of what they were trying to say because you don't read them very often.

A gloomy Christian is a contradiction in terms and nothing in all history has done Christianity more harm than its connection with black clothes and long faces. What is sometimes sung by our Sunday school boys and girls, joy is a flag that flies from the citadel of the heart when the king is in residence. Oh my friend, do you know the king? Some of you have jumped up that was John encouraging me.

That's all right. I like encouragement. It's the yawning I can't stand.

Mercifully it doesn't happen here too often. Joy because our Lord Jesus resides within our hearts and lives. That is something that is mind-blowing really.

That the Lord Jesus Christ is in a right relationship with you and wants you to share the commodity of his own experience, his joy. How do you receive this joy more and more? Well once again it's as you keep his command. Verse 11, I've told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

My command is this, love each other as I have loved you. You see you can't be joyful as a Christian unless you're walking in obedience to the commands of the Lord God, not so? Here is David. Psalm 51, it encapsules the point that I'm trying to make.

He has done terrible deeds. He knew that he shouldn't have taken that woman as his wife. He knew that he shouldn't have been an accomplice, indeed a prime motivator in the death of her husband.

And as a result when the prophet comes along and exposes his sin, David is plunged into a morass of sorrow and melancholy. And so he writes the 51st Psalm. He's a convicted sinner and he deserves to be convicted.

He's in pain and anguish and he deserves to be in pain and anguish. And suddenly he appreciates against you, you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight. And then the horror becomes even more grotesque.

His salvation, is it now in the balance? And so he prays, take not my salvation from me, restore unto me the joy of my salvation. Some of you are saved. But I say with breaking heart, you lost your joy.

Perhaps a year ago or a month ago or a decade ago. You're into John 14 but you're not into John 15. But here if that sounds a somber word, there's a possibility of the regaining of joy as you bring your life, your personality, your vocabulary, your temperament, everything that you are back under the control of God.

There is no joy out of fellowship with him. Peter goes and weeps bitterly. The blackness of the night is even more dark in his soul when he has denied the Lord.

His joy is gone. But Jesus meets up with him on the banks of the Galilee, you remember? On the shores there. And here he commissions Peter and he fills him again with a sense of well-being and joy.

This is what the Lord wants, you see. Now don't misunderstand me, I'm not in any sense suggesting that we should always be engaged in levity. I know the danger of confusing the Almighty with the Almighty, but I also know the danger of substituting a conformist Christianity which is all somber and dull and liturgical and lacks the very life of the Spirit.

And that is an apology for what this New Testament teaches in terms of what should be your experience and my experience. Jesus bears his heart and he says, abide in my love, realize my joy, and what's more, can you believe it? Be my friend. Be my friend.

Verse 14, you are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends.

You see, there's a distinction in the teaching here of our Lord Jesus between what we conceive ourselves to be and what he perceives us to be. Our conception and his perception are different, at least in degree. The apostle will sign himself at the slave of Jesus Christ, and it's right that at that level we always appreciate the nature of servanthood.

That's our perception, you see. That's our conception, rather, of us standing before the Lord. But his perception is different.

You are my friends. One of our loveliest hymns, one of the three or four hundred that will be sung at my memorial service, is what a friend we have in Jesus. But you see, it really needs an adjustment to get into the context of these verses.

At a memorial service, what a friend I was to Jesus. Have you ever thought of that? You being a friend to the Lord Jesus. You see, that's his perception of you.

I don't refer to you as servants or as slaves. In Greek law, a slave was known as a living tool. You see, it has no reasons given to it, no explanation as to why he or she is doing this or that.

He's completely within the control of the master, the one who owns a living tool. You are not living tools, says Jesus. You're my friends.

He must have had Abraham in mind, of course. The only man who's referred to in scripture in terms of a friend of God, as James looks back upon the Old Testament and gives Abraham that title. Now, what did James have in mind? What did our Lord conceivably have in mind? Well, when God was about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, you remember his reasoning? Shall I do this and keep it from Abraham, my friend? He's my confidant.

So I'll draw near to Abraham and I'll reveal to him what I have in my heart now, says our Lord Jesus, who is the essence of the Father speaking to his children. You're my friends. You're my confidants.

Mark's Gospel will tell you in the fourth chapter, I've run out of time to look it up and extend my comment upon it, that occasionally our Lord Jesus would speak in parables so that those who heard him at the wider level would not completely understand what he had to say, but those who were his intimates, they would grasp. To you it is given to know the secrets of the kingdom. To you it is given to know the guidance that God wants to deliver in terms of where you are to go and what you are to achieve in your life.

You're my friends. All that the Father has declared to me, I have spoken to you. And though there is yet such that you haven't been able to take in, even the additional revelations will be granted when my spirit comes and brings to mind all that I've taught you and extends upon it.

You see, he treats them as friends, as confidants. In days of old, there were a group of men in each court known as friends of the king. They had immediate access into the presence of the king, beyond the politicians, beyond the generals.

They could go even into the king's bedchamber, they didn't need an appointment, they were friends of the king. And that's what the Lord Jesus has called you and me to be, friends of the king, access into his presence, if you keep my commands. You'll abide in me, you'll realize my joy, you can bear the name of friend, and what's more, you'll justify the choice.

I'm skipping verse 13 because it's a great verse and I want to come back and spend 20 minutes on it this evening. You'll justify my choice, you are my friends if you do what I command, I no longer call you servants, that's 14 and 15. Let's drop down to verse 16.

You did not choose me but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit. Here's the negative, you didn't choose me. Here's Christ's initiative, I chose you.

Here is the objective, that you go forth and bear fruit. That's how you justify his selection you see. Now it was quite true wasn't it, Peter didn't opt to be a follower of Jesus, the Lord came along and said, hey stop fishing, come and follow me.

Matthew, civil servant, well you may get an index link pension but come and follow me, it's much better. I mean the rewards I offer out of this world compared with the civil service and you. I wept once and I don't weep very often, I wept once with uncontrollable tears in London some 20 years or so ago when working my way through the Greek of Romans, I suddenly realized something of the elective love of God that he chose me.

It never hit me like that before and I opened the frontispiece of my RSV Bible that I was using to help me in the translation and I wrote something to the effect, it's not that I did choose the Lord for Lord that could not be, this heart would still refuse thee hadst thou not chosen me. I chose you, you didn't choose me, the initiative was mine and the objective was that you might bear fruit. You justify my choice, you see, he's back to the imagery of the vine and the branches.

What is the branch? A reproduction of the vine. There's no life in the branches, the branch is utterly of no use unless it's growing sap from the vine. Here don't you see in the imagery of the vine is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, all spelt out in in terms that we can understand.

The son is the vine, the sap is the spirit and the father is the gardener who the husbandman who tends the vine. And what does the Lord want from the branches? That you might bear fruit. I can't be Billy Graham, you say.

All right, he doesn't want you to be Billy Graham, there's only one man of that nature. He doesn't want you to be Gerald Golden, he certainly doesn't want me to be, you to be me. He wants you to be what you are right now but using your potential to the full.

You see this business about bearing fruit has not primarily to do with winning souls, that may be a consequence but that's not the prime thing that the Lord has in mind. He has in mind the fruit of the spirit. In the last chapter he speaks of my peace, in this chapter he speaks of my love, then he goes on and he speaks of my joy.

Go to Galatians 5.22 what do you discover? The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering and so forth. It's these characteristics, this ninefold fruit of the spirit that our Lord is looking for in your life and in my life and how does it come? By keeping his command. And my dear brother and sister, what is his command? Three times he tells you, verse 34 of chapter 13, a new command I give you, love one another.

Verse 12 of this chapter, my command is this, love each other as I have loved you. Verse 17, this is my command, love each other. I wonder if Jesus knew that love would be short rations within the Christian community.

Is that the reason why the Apostle Paul when he writes to the Ephesians is pleading always that they forbear one another with love, they submit to one another. You see a divided church is a contradiction in all that Jesus stood for. And here you are my brother and sister, I care not whether you're 7 or 17 or 70, you have a contribution to make to this fellowship.

Even more importantly you have a contribution to make in terms of the vine and the branch and the fruit is concerned. Now are you drawing from his life, the life of our Lord Jesus? Are you determinedly trying to abide in him day by day? Would you take the correctives that come from a pulpit and apply them to your own heart? Or are you that sort of person who always deflects the message to someone else? And if some brother sister put their arm around you and said, hey this is wrong in your life, don't you think you ought to rethink this particular attitude, this negative approach? Would you receive that as from the Lord or would you recoil and pour down abuse upon them? You see this is what we ought to do, to help one another, to correct one another, to submit to one another. And more than anything else, par excellence, in large language, put it up so that the glow never fades.

You are to love one another. For unless we love each other, we negate the very gospel for which Jesus Christ came into the world to bleed and to die and to be raised again. He loves us and he asks us to love one another, not in word only, but in deed.

That is the heart of Jesus laid bare. Let's bow our heads in prayer. Let's listen to a little song being sung which we're going to join in singing in a moment or two ourselves.

My peace I give unto you. It's a peace that the world cannot give. It's a peace that the world cannot understand.

Peace to know. Peace to live. My peace I give.

My joy I give unto you. It's a joy that the world cannot give. It's a joy that the world cannot understand.

Joy to know. Joy to live. Let's join in singing.

My love. Stand and sing that. Let's ask the Lord to fill us with this peace and love and joy.

Let's sing three verses of 442. It passes knowledge that dear love of thine will sing the first verse, the third verse, and the fifth verse. You could join us this evening and give me the opportunity to expound that verse that I missed and I think you'll benefit from our time around the Lord's table.

Some of you will know Mr Grineer. He's quite ill and I ask you to remember him, you friends who do know him, in your prayers. Father we thank you for the opportunity of being with you this morning and of being with one another.

Take us out into the fullness of this sunshine knowing the sweetness of your presence. Bless our boys and girls as we hear their noise right now. Bless them this day we pray and may the hour that we spend in your house this evening here be a blessed time when we know the joy and the peace and the love of our God even in greater dimension for the Savior's sake.

Amen.