Be With Jesus

We are looking at this series called Disciple.

And the reason we're going through this series is that we believe that God has called us to exist that all may know the joy of his salvation.

And we want to work to that end by being a people who are sent on mission to make disciples and plant churches.

And so if we're going to be a people who make disciples, it is critical for us to understand and know what a disciple is.

And so we're spending the first six weeks of this year diving into understanding that better.

We already talked about the first week, what Jesus' call is to follow Him, and that He calls disciples to Himself.

And then last week we looked at the cost of discipleship, how Jesus cautions us to consider the cost of what it means to actually let go of all of this life to follow after him.

And then this week and the next two, we're going to be looking at this kind of identity of a disciple.

A disciple is someone who is with Jesus to become like Jesus, to do what Jesus did.

So we want to be a people who are with Jesus to become like him, to do what he did.

This is what it means to be a disciple.

So this morning we're looking at be with Jesus.

I want to start us off with this question.

What if we experienced spiritually what we believed theologically?

What if we experienced spiritually what we believed theologically?

I'm going to assume that most of us, if not all, in this room, believe that Jesus loves us with a relentless, always and forever love.

But we may go days or even weeks without ever feeling loved by him.

We believe Jesus gives us a peace that surpasses our own ability to even comprehend it, but our chests are often tight with anxiousness and worry.

We believe Jesus gives us a joy that surpasses every circumstance that we could ever face in this life, but you and I are all too familiar with the shadow of sadness.

We believe that Jesus is with us by his spirit.

But far too often his presence remains unfamiliar.

Why is it that our spiritual experience seems so contrary to our theological belief?

Perhaps it's because we fail to make our mind and our hearts home in Jesus.

You see, to be a disciple of Jesus is to be with him, be like him, and to do what he did.

Now, here's what I don't want us to do.

I don't want us to think of discipleship as a three-step program.

Discipleship is a progress of maturity.

I believe that it is a working, functional answer to the prayer of John the Baptist.

He must increase and I must decrease.

And the very first step of this progress, of this pathway of discipleship to Jesus is to be with him, to be aware of his presence, to be attentive to his voice, to cultivate being with Jesus as the baseline of our entire life.

You see, Jesus calls this to abide in him.

To abide in him.

Now, at Sacred Mission, we love functional definitions, right?

Because we can use this biblical language in this ambiguous way, and we don't really understand how this impact my life.

And so here's what I want us to work from in our understanding of what it means to abide in Jesus.

It is to make Jesus the resting home of our mind and heart.

To make Jesus the resting home of our mind and heart.

After sharing the Passover meal with his disciples on the evening of his betrayal and rest, Jesus shares his heart with them, leaving them with his final words before his crucifixion.

And in John 15, we see Jesus sharing about the necessity of his disciples to abide in him.

So we're going to work through John 15 together.

If you have a Bible or a device with an app on it, open it up because we're going to want to go through these verses with me.

But he says this in verse 1 I am the true vine, and my father is the vine dresser.

Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.

Here Jesus declares his final of the seven I am statements that we see throughout the Gospel of John.

And he says this, he proclaims that I am the true vine.

You see, throughout the entire Old Testament scriptures, the vine was this representation and symbol uh for Israel, the covenant people of God.

It was held that if you were connected to them, if you were connected to Israel, then you were connected to God the Father in the fullness of life that is discovered in his promises.

But Jesus is making the statement that to be truly connected to God, and to truly have the life that he alone delivers to his people, then you must be connected to him because Jesus alone is the true vine.

Jesus is making this statement that he is the true and faithful Israel.

And that to be connected to the Father, you would have to be connected to him because he is the fullness of God's promises for his covenant people.

He then draws out this relationship that he and the Father have, and he communicates the Father as this vine dresser.

The Father is working to ensure that this vineyard, his people, is abundant in fruit by tending to the vine, his son.

He's inspecting the branches, he's discerning between fruitful and fruitless.

You see, Jesus says that for the branches in him, the people who claim to know him and to be in him, there are two possible outcomes.

Number one, the father sees that you aren't bearing any fruit in your life, and he cuts you off from Jesus, the vine, and throws you out.

Or, the second possibility is that the father sees that you are bearing fruit, and he lovingly prunes you so that you would bear more fruit in your life.

Here's what I want us to get in this moment.

What's the aim of being in Jesus, of being connected to him?

It's that we would bear fruit in our life.

We're connected to the vine because the branch has no life in itself.

It's not able to produce fruit in its own striving and working.

We have to be in the vine that we might bear fruit.

That's what he's pointing us to here.

And even those who do bear fruit are graciously and lovingly pruned or disciplined by the Father so that they would bear more.

This is God's love for us.

And what we have to try to comprehend is that it is a love that affirms in our hearts that we are his children.

The author of Hebrews, he writes in Hebrews chapter 12, verses 5 through 6.

Hebrews 12:5–6

And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?

My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him, for the Lord disciplines the one he loves and chastises every son whom he receives.

Notice how the author of Hebrews is connecting, receiving, and knowing the discipline of God and our identity as children in him, as those adopted through the blood of his son into his royal family.

In fact, the author of Hebrews even takes it one step further, and he says that if we do not experience the discipline of the Father, then we should fear within our hearts, because it would dictate that we are bastards.

That we are children without a father.

You see, the pruning of God, the discipline of those who are bearing fruit, is his love, affirming in us we are his.

Abiding in Jesus means that we cultivate a home for our mind and heart in Him.

And we do that, when we do that, we are able to see the fruit that we desire produced in our lives because only Jesus is able to actually produce it in us.

You see, we cannot bear fruit in our lives apart from Jesus.

He is the vine that causes the fruit to blossom on the branches who are in him.

That's what we have to understand about this whole thing called Christianity.

We cannot work to produce a life that glorifies God on our own.

We can't be good enough, kind enough, loving enough, merciful enough, just enough.

There is nothing within us that can produce fruit.

We are dead branches apart from Christ.

Thinking through this, I think it begs to ask the question well, what fruit is Jesus talking about?

What does it mean to be fruitful?

Well, fruitfulness means to be productive.

It means to live, working from the love of God for the glory of God.

You see, fruitfulness is actually rooted in action.

It's rooted in doing something.

We see verse 5, Jesus alluding to this.

He says, I am the vine, you are the branches, whoever abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit.

For apart from me, you can do nothing.

A life in Christ is one that fundamentally does.

That is productive, that works for the glory of God.

Verse 8, he continues on By this, my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

That there's an evidence that should be observable in our fruitfulness and production for the kingdom of God.

That the world around us should be able to see our life, observe it to some measure, and be able to say, These are his disciples.

Look how they're set apart, look how they work for the glory of his name, see how they labor for his kingdom, see how they count everything as lost to gain him.

See how peculiar they are to the world of which they dwell in.

You see, a productive, fruitful life is lived for the glory of God.

But we must not focus our attention on the doing.

We must understand from which our work comes from.

You see, it's not a life working for the love of God, but Jesus is calling us to a life where we work from the love of God.

Verse 9.

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.

Abide in my love.

This is the beauty of the gospel.

That we do not work for his love, but we work from his love for his glory.

You see, church, there is nothing you could ever do to earn God's love for you.

That's what makes his love so amazing.

Is that it is birthed out of the good pleasure of his own will to set his affection upon you.

And there is no bad that you can do to remove it.

There is no good you can do to increase it.

God loves you.

And from that, oh, we get the joy of working for his glory.

You see, it is from having received and known Jesus' love that we're called to abide.

And in abiding, we are to produce the fruit of God glorifying lives.

This means that his love for us comes before our work for him.

Let's try to break this down into a simpler understanding.

A disciple of Jesus is one who has come to know his love and from that love abides in him so that he might produce a life that is for the glory of God.

But how do we abide in him?

How do we abide in the love that he has shown to us as his people?

Verse 10.

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.

Now, listen to what Jesus is saying.

The way in which we abide in him is through obedience to him.

It's an obedience that flows from the eternal fountain of his love for us.

And I get that this may seem odd to us as we first approach it, because what we're probably thinking is that, oh, you're tying obedience to love.

And we see it in a perverted sense where that obedience earns love.

The better we do, the harder we work, the more good we accomplish, then he will love us more.

Because that's the relational exchange, the currency of which we've worked with within our own culture.

But let me ask you this question.

Many of us, I think, have been children before.

We've had parents.

And maybe you grew up in a home where you were just enamored and overwhelmed of the abundance and lavish nature of your parents' love for you.

Maybe you grew up in a home where your parents' love was distant and removed.

Maybe you grew up in a home where their presence was hostile towards you.

Let me ask you this one question.

If there ever was a moment where you so delighted in their love for you, wasn't obedience easier?

Wasn't obedience joyful?

When you were overwhelmed by their affection for you.

Obedience was not burdensome, it was joyful.

You see, we have to flip our understanding of what Jesus is talking about.

Is obedience and love tied together?

Yes, but obedience does not come first.

God's overwhelming, lavish, unrelenting, always and forever love for you comes first.

You see, Jesus desires for his disciples to be with him, to abide in him, to establish the home of their mind and heart in his love for them.

And the way in which they'll remain there, connected to him, is through obedience to him.

Because we all know deep down, disobedience creates disconnection.

Disobedience creates disconnection.

We know that.

Yet somehow we're still astonished when it happens in our life.

And here's the reality: this isn't some burdensome task that he puts on his disciples alone.

This is a joy-filled pleasure that he has fulfilled in his very own life.

Let's read the second half of verse 10.

Just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love, I would argue, I would submit to you that there was not one moment nor fracture of a second that Jesus wasn't attuned to and overwhelmed with and aware of God's love for him.

And look at what he faced in this life.

Look at the hardships of which he traversed, the temptation in the wilderness to name one, or the agony of the garden, or the ascent to Galgotha.

Name it.

His life was hard, it was difficult, but he remained obedient, and that obedience was full of joy.

And I would submit is because there wasn't a moment of his life where he wasn't enamored by God's love for him.

And so every agonizing step of the way was still somehow full of joy.

A delight to be obedient to a Father who loves him.

You see, Jesus knows that the means to abiding in the eternal fountain of the Father's love is through a joy-filled obedience to him.

And it's in Jesus fully knowing and receiving the love of the Father that makes his obedience joyful.

You see, Jesus shows us something.

There is no ability for us to separate abiding in his love and being obedient to him.

They are inseparable realities, codependent of one another.

And he showed us that most clearly in his own life for the glory of the Father.

Jesus so loved the Father and knew the Father's love for him that his obedience to the Father was full of joy.

You see, this is part of the joy of the gospel.

That we actually get, we receive Jesus' perfect obedience to the Father.

We receive his perfect righteousness.

It becomes accounted to us by grace through faith, covering our sin and disobedience that flowed from a rebellious mind and heart.

And now Jesus desires for his disciples to know that joy, to have that joy real and experienced in their life.

He says in verse 11, These things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

You see, disciples of Jesus abide.

In the love that they've received from him through obedience to him, so that their lives would produce fruit for the glory of God and their joy would be made full.

Church Jesus longs for us to abide in him, his disciples to be with him, to stay rooted in his love for them.

He calls for us to make the home of our mind and heart in him.

But let's not move away from this passage of Scripture just yet without giving full weight to the warning that it contains.

Every word Jesus spoke, whether it was gentle or harsh, was loving.

And he includes this admonishment with inside the discourse of John 15.

He includes this warning for us that is grace to us, that is rooted in love for us.

He says in verse 6 if anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away like a branch and withers.

And the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.

Here's the warning.

Your mind and heart can have a different home than in Jesus.

And if they do, your life will be fruitless.

And you won't receive the life that only Jesus' disciples inherit.

That's what he wants us to be aware of.

You see, our mind and heart have a home.

The question isn't do they have a home?

The question is, where is their home?

Because often for us, our mind and heart abide in fruitless homes.

You see, here's what I mean by that.

All of us have some source that we're rooted in in this life.

It's a kind of default location that we return to, that we run to.

It's emotional or mental or spiritual, where we seek to dwell within.

It's where our mind goes when it's not busy with tasks.

It's where our feelings go when we need comfort.

It's where our bodies go when we need rest.

It's where our money goes where we're seeking to find joy.

Where do we run to?

Well, that's our home.

Think about this for a moment.

In both the highs and the lows of everyday life, where does your mind and heart run to for refuge and rest?

In the highs and lows of everyday life, where does your mind and heart run to for refuge and rest?

If we're rooted in the infinite scroll of social media, it's going to form us.

It's going to shape us into a people.

Angry, anxious, arrogant, simplistic, distracted.

If we're rooted in the endless options of our streaming platforms, they're going to form us too.

They're going to make us into a people who are lustful, restless, bored, never present to the people and moment that we are in.

If we're rooted in the pursuit of pleasure, another drink, another smoke, or another physical climax, just to take the edge off the pain and let us find a moment of peace that's going to form you, it's going to make you into a person, likely into someone who's compulsive, addictive, running from our pain and ironically enough, simultaneously running from the healing you so desperately need.

You see, you make your home somewhere.

The question is, where?

And the danger in making our homes in these places is that there's no intrinsic ability for it to produce any fruit in your life.

You're building your dwelling in fruitless homes.

And without fruitfulness, we face the danger of being cut off from God altogether.

And listen, these aren't the volatile words of some hellfire and brimstone preacher standing before you.

I'm just quoting Jesus' words back to you.

We must strive to build our homes in Him, to have our mind and heart find its refuge and rest in His presence.

The ancient church called this the practices of the presence of God.

To function in spiritual disciplines that formed us into the people that we knew God was calling us to.

To depend upon the Spirit's presence and power in our life, to be conformed to the image of Jesus of which we were predestined to.

It would be practicing the presence of God through dependent prayer, through meditation on his righteousness, reading of his holy scripture, contemplating his beauty, to foster a joy-filled desire to obey.

Because we're enamored by his love for us.

But if we're honest with ourselves, most of our days are shaped around building other spaces to have our mind and heart call home.

Our meditation has become doom scrolling.

Our prayer has become thoughts of jealousy, covetousness, and envy and comparisonism.

Our Holy Scripture becomes an influencer's video script.

Our contemplation becomes fantasy of worldly pleasure.

We have all but worked tirelessly and labored to make our dwelling in a home that cannot produce fruit.

So where does your mind and heart find its rest?

It's no wonder through this work to abide in fruitless homes, we are relationally distant from Jesus.

It's no wonder that what we say we believe seems so foreign to the life that we experience.

This is what I'm trying to get us to understand here as a church that prides itself on its theological and doctrinal sharpness.

If that doctrine and theology doesn't change you, if it doesn't impact your Monday morning when you can't seem to have the strength to make it through the week, if it doesn't impact the Wednesday night when you're at your wit's end frustrated and on the verge of yelling at your spouse or your children, if it doesn't impact your Saturday where you found some free time to just fully commit yourself to some sense of self-pleasure and gratification, if it doesn't change us, then all of that theological and doctrinal sharpness is going to produce in us prideful, puffed up, arrogant people who are useless in the kingdom of God.

I'm tired of being theologians.

I want us to be disciples.

And here's the hardship.

We find it so difficult to abide, perhaps because we have so much difficulty knowing and receiving the love that Jesus has for us.

And we're relationally distant from Jesus.

And when we're relationally distant from Him, obedience feels burdensome rather than joyful.

You see, to abide in Jesus, we have to be present, attuned to his extravagant love for us.

And when we are, obedience becomes a joy, and our lives are spent for his glory.

Here's the wise and fatherly loving Apostle John writing to those whom are his children.

For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not burdensome.

His commandments aren't burdensome.

Jesus' yoke is light.

God's law is for the flourishing of his image bears.

So why does obedience seem so hard?

I would submit because we are not enamored enough by his love for us.

There is no separation between God's love for us and our joyful obedience to him.

We mess up when we flip the order.

But here's the good news for us: our ultimate hope is not in how perfect we obey.

It's not in how good we do, it's not in how right we live.

Because here's the promise of walking out of here.

You will fail.

We sit in the company of failures and screw-ups.

I'm going to fall short, you're going to fall short.

And if our hope was in our perfection, man, we would be a hopeless people.

We will discover that we will continue to need the truth of the gospel and the grace of God to press forward and to press into Him.

And so our ultimate hope is in Jesus, who abides in the perfect love of the Father through perfect obedience to him.

You see, Jesus bears fruit.

And he bears fruit by abiding in the Father through perfect obedience.

Look, let's go back to the second half of verse 10 for just a moment as we wrap things up.

Just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.

Church, if this wasn't true for Jesus, there would be no hope for us.

You see, this is the great exchange of the gospel.

The great exchange that we get Jesus' perfect obedience, and he gets our sin.

We get his righteousness, he gets our unrighteousness.

We get his faithfulness, he gets our rebellion.

We get his life, he gets our death.

This is the great exchange of which we find joy in.

Verse 21 of 2 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul is exhorting the church there in this word, 521, for our sake, he, God the Father, made him, Christ his Son, to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we, his people, might become the righteousness of God.

That's the exchange of a loving Father for an undeserving people, that we might become his children.

You see, we would never be able to abide in Jesus.

We would have been cut off eternally from him.

And the life that only the Father delivers to his people, if earning the Father's love was obtained through our own striving to be obedient, we would be a people without hope because we would have never been able to earn his love.

God loved us, and he showed it by sending his son to live a perfectly obedient, love-filled life, and then die as if he rebelled against his holy father, all in our place.

And it's only because of the gospel can we now hope to abide in Jesus, working from the Father's love for us to be joyfully obedient to him for his glory.

You see, throughout our lives, we're going to be tempted to build our homes in fruitless dwellings.

It's inevitable, the reality of our everyday existence.

But the call of the disciple is to work to have the home of our mind and heart in him, to practice the presence of his love for us, that we would have true life and joy in him.

And so here's my prayer for you as we kind of bring this to a close.

My prayer, sacred mission, is that our mind and heart would abide in Jesus.

So I want to ask you the same question.

This is a question I want you to meditate on as you're carried throughout your day and into your week.

What if we experienced spiritually what we believed theologically?

Man, what an abundant life that would be.

What a fruitful life for the glory of God that that would be.

You see, discipleship is not a program, it's a progress.

And the first step of that journey begins by being with the one who calls you to follow him.

To make Jesus the resting home of our mind and heart.

So, church, may we be a people who build our home in him and who remain ever present to his love for us through joy filled obedience for his glory and our ultimate good.