Abiding in Christ: The True Goal of Christian Life - Jn 15:9-10

Good morning. My name is Pastor Simon and welcome to the preaching ministry

of Dillingham Moravian Church.

May the Lord work in us to abide in Him as we study the Word of God together.

As the Super Bowl is fast approaching, I wondered to myself how much tickets

to the big game were going for.

According to one site, the cheapest tickets are currently listed at $6,500 on Ticketmaster.

Over $4,800 on StubHub and over $4,900 on Vivid Seats, all of which could include additional fees.

And almost $7,200 on SeatGeek, including fees.

And over $5,900 on TickPick, including fees.

And those prices could change quickly as tickets are sold.

We go to football games because we want to see our favorite team win.

How does our team win? By fulfilling the purpose of the game to score as many

touchdowns and field goals as possible to win the game.

Now, I understand the game can be more complicated, but simply this is the goal of football.

The life of a Christian has a goal. In fact, it's the same goal as all of life on earth.

In Genesis chapter 1, God commanded and gave authority to all the plants,

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

animals, and humans to do what? to grow and bear fruit and multiply and thus bring glory to God.

And for us as Christ's disciples, we carry out the goal of bearing fruit and

multiplying ourselves by abiding in Christ and staying in his love.

And the result is God causes our life to bear fruit and to give glory to God.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we come before you in the name of Jesus Christ.

Your Son, who died on the cross for us, shed his blood so that we can have life

and not only have physical and spiritual life, but in that spiritual life that you have given us,

we can abide in you. We can stay and remain in you.

Lord, as we go to your word today, show us how to do that.

And grant us the power to be able to obey you and to live according to your ways.

To remain, to stay in relationship with your Son, Jesus.

In your precious Son's name, Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, we pray. Amen.

Jesus in John chapter 15, verse 9 through 12 taught one of the most pivotal commands in Scripture.

John 15:9–12

Just as the Father has loved me, I have also 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.

These things I have spoken to you so that my joy may be in you,

and that your joy may be made full.

This is my commandment, that you love one another just as I have loved you.

Here at Dillingham Raven Church, we have been going through a short teaching

series on John 15 and the importance of abiding in Christ our vine.

Previously, in John 15, Jesus taught his disciples that the Father God,

the vinedresser, removes the diseased, rotten, or dead branches,

meaning unbelievers or false teachers,

from the vine, so that they can eventually go to their judgment in the everlasting fires of hell.

We also learned that God the Father prunes the sin-affected lives or parts of

the lives of his fruit-bearing disciples and congregations so that we can abide

more in Christ and bear more fruit for the glory of God.

Additionally, we were taught that as the branches of Christ's vine abide in

him and bear fruit for the Father, they will have Christ's desires.

And God will answer their prayers.

Lastly, Jesus taught us as disciples that God the Father is glorified as Christ's

disciples bear fruit for God as evidence that we are indeed disciples of Jesus Christ.

In our passage today, Jesus is teaching us two more foundational and critical

truths about abiding in Christ, our only true mind.

The first truth I want to bring to your attention today is that we are to abide

in the love of Christ as we trust an example of the Father.

Being a father is perhaps one of the greatest joys and privileges that God has ever given me.

Amidst the challenges of being a parent and a pastor and the enormous amount

of time those two occupations take to do well, I am quite amazed at the level

of love and trust that my two little boys have for me.

It reminds me of taking the boys to school where I used to have to instruct

my five-year-old Paul and explained to him continually that he had to hold my

hand while in the parking lot or crossing the road.

Now, mostly, Paul reaches for my hand when we're in the parking lot and waits for me to take it.

I've realized there was never a lack of trust on Paul's behalf why he wasn't

obeying and wanting to run out in the parking lot, but rather it came out of

rambunctiousness and a lack of understanding.

I'm sharing this example with you to communicate that similar to my little son's

trust in me, his father, so also in an infinitely greater way,

Jesus trusts his father.

The main timeless truth from this verse that Jesus was teaching his disciples

is that he, Jesus, loves his abiding church because his father loves him.

This is super important. This is the reason why Jesus was able to give up his

position of power and authority as Lord in heaven and come down to earth as

a baby, live as a human slave,

suffer all the indignities of humanity,

be tortured, crucified on the cross, and be separated temporarily from the Father

as a result of taking our sins upon himself.

Christ was able to joyfully love us in the midst of the worst circumstances

imaginable because he was secure in his Father's love.

The writer of Hebrews wrote in Hebrews chapter 12, verse 1 through 3,

Hebrews 12:1–3

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us,

laying aside every weight and the sin which so easily entangles us,

let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus,

the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him endured the

cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

What was the joy set before Christ that allowed him to endure the cross and despise the shame of it?

Christ's joy was knowing that the Father loved him. And this is what Jesus was

getting at back in John chapter 15, verse 9.

John 15:9

With the same love that the Father loved Jesus with, Jesus then loved his disciples.

Then Jesus went on to instruct his disciples to abide in his love.

I want you to see two words of great importance to the Christ-like life.

The first word is the word for abide that referred to someone who does not leave

a certain realm or sphere.

In the context of John 15, abide means to never ever leave the love relationship

that we have with Christ.

The word for love that Jesus used was agape love, or God's love,

which meant to have a strong non-sexual affection and love for a person and

their good as understood by God's moral character,

especially characterized by a willing forfeiture of rights or privileges in

another person's behalf.

Christ has given us his love, his affection, his compassion,

through his loving sacrifice on the cross.

Christ has given us his fellowship, his unity with God by the Holy Spirit,

by giving up his rights, his desires, his wants, his privileges.

Don't miss this, please. Christians, no matter the circumstances,

are to always live as we are loved by Christ.

How do we live this way? How is it possible to constantly go throughout our

day knowing that we're loved by Christ?

By trusting and believing that the almighty God of the universe and crucified Lord loves us.

This begs the question, how can we truly trust that Christ loves us enough to

go through even the worst times abiding in Christ?

By remembering and believing that Jesus was able to go to the cross because

he knew and trusted in his Father's love.

Christians are to follow the example of Christ as he trusted in his Father's love.

The Father loving Jesus, his Son, and then Jesus trusting in his Father's love

is the example to us of how to abide in Christ's love.

How then do you and I abide in the love of Christ?

By first believing and trusting in the agape love that Christ has for us.

This, my friends, is so essential. You and I must believe this truth.

We must, must believe that Christ loves us.

Without trusting and believing in the love of God in Jesus Christ,

we have no power of God's Spirit in us to tackle the challenges and circumstances of daily life.

Even more crucial, without believing Christ and trusting in His love,

the life of God is not in us.

Faith in Christ's love for us, His church, is the key.

Paul in Ephesians chapter 3, verse 14 to 19 prayed, For this reason I bow my

Ephesians 3:14–19

knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named,

that he would give you according to the riches of his glory,

to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inner man.

Please pay attention to this, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through

faith, and that you, being firmly rooted and grounded in love.

Meaning grounded in God's love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints

what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know what?

The love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

How can we as Christians be filled to all the fullness of God,

or that Christ becomes so large in us that nothing of ourselves exists except Christ?

Paul clearly taught in this prayer that for us to be filled with God,

we need Christ living in us by the Holy Spirit.

And that can only happen through faith in Jesus.

Moreover, Paul exclaimed that in order to truly trust Christ,

we need to be firmly planted in the love of God, meaning that we are to be saved

and are recipients of the love of Christ.

And the more that we trust in Christ's love, not just individually,

but within the context of loving each other in the body of Christ,

Paul confirmed that we can know the love of God that is so deep and so wide

and so long and high to be unknowable without Christ's grace.

The more that we trust in the love of Christ for us personally,

but also in Christian community,

the more we will know and experience Christ's unfathomable love,

and the more we will be filled up to the fullness of God.

Secondly, for us to abide in Christ, we, you and I, must believe in the Father's

love for Jesus and follow Jesus' example of trusting his Father.

To me, this is one of the most challenging areas of faith.

The biggest challenge for me and for many believers has been that our ability

to trust has been affected by the examples and actions of our earthly father.

For many Christians who have grown up in challenging relationships with their

fathers, giving out our trust can be very hard.

Now, personally, I am very grateful the Lord has done some major surgery on

my heart and helped me to sort out the truth of certain memories of my dad that

I had viewed in incorrect ways.

Thus, the Lord is healing my heart and growing my faith in God, my Heavenly Father.

Yet, the Bible teaches us that God the Father is the archetype.

He is the source of all earthly fathers. And God the Father is so completely good.

He is perfectly right.

God the Father is the perfect example of fatherhood, and he has never,

ever failed a promise, nor will he ever do so.

Jesus Christ trusted his Father to such an extent that he allowed himself to

be sacrificed on that cross of shame by minuscule and puny humans who detested him.

It was out of Jesus' trust for his Father that he could love us to such an extent

as overwhelming and merciful.

Extent that he did. You and I as believers are to trust in God,

the Father's love for us, because Christ completely trusts and loves his Father.

The second foundational truth I want to point out to you that Jesus taught in

John chapter 15 is that there is an added component to abiding in Christ Jesus' love.

John 15 · chapter mention

And that component is that we are to abide in Christ's of by keeping Christ's commands.

When Abigail and I were first married, we lived in a small basement suite of

a house a few blocks from the school that we both attended.

Later on, after about a seven-month period of being separated as a result of

immigration, Abigail and I lived in a townhouse on the campus of Multnomah School

of the Bible in Portland, Oregon, that was situated in some of the meanest streets in that city.

We moved from that place because the gangs kept chasing each other in SUVs down

our street and shooting at each other.

When a bullet hit our windowsill, that was the last straw.

We then moved to the parsonage of the church I had interned for five years,

and that was the last residence where we lived until we moved here to the Moravian

Parsonage in Dillingham.

And we have stayed or remained here until the present, And the hope is to remain

in Dillingham for as long as the Lord will have us here.

I bring a bit of my family's background to you to share with you the concept

of abiding or remaining or staying or making one's home somewhere.

Because Jesus commanded us to abide or stay in his love.

In John chapter 15 verse 10, Jesus commanded his disciples.

John 15:10

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.

In verse 10, Jesus told the disciples that if you keep my commandments,

you will abide in my love.

The word for keep refers to observe or to conform, to conform one's actions or practice too.

Can anyone obey all of God's word by ourselves? No, we don't have that power.

That is where believing by faith in the love of Christ comes in.

Faith gives us access to the power of Christ as we trust in the love of Christ

so that we can obey God no matter the circumstances.

Paul in Galatians 2, verse 20 taught, I have been crucified with Christ.

Galatians 2:20

It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God

who loved me and gave himself up for me.

Now, when we look at Christ's command for us to obey his commandments so that

we abide in his love, we have to understand what Jesus said in the light of

John chapter 15, verse 12.

John 15:12

For Jesus spoke, this is my commandment, that you love one another just as I have loved you.

Jesus summed up all of his commandments from his word in one command,

that his disciples were to love each other in the body of Christ,

or the church, as he loved them.

However, we need to understand that this love that Jesus was commanding his

church about was not the love as the world defines love.

This is not a tolerance for what other people believe or do out of respect for

their belief, that they are doing what is right in their own eyes. Absolutely not.

Jesus commanded the disciples of Jesus Christ to love each other with the same

love as he himself loved them.

And how did Jesus love his church? Let's look at Philippians 2,

Philippians 2:3–8

verse 3-8, where Paul wrote, Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit,

but with humility of mind.

Regard one another as more important or more valuable than yourself.

Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus,

who although he existed in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, But he emptied himself,

taking the form of a bondservant and being made in the likeness of men.

He found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to

the point of death, even death on the cross.

This is so crucial By being obedient to his father's will To lower himself in

his own perspective And to raise his father in the church To be more valuable

And more important than himself In his own viewpoint.

It was out of this humble attitude that Jesus was able to give up his position

and authority that came with being almighty God.

To become a human slave under occupation so that he could be slaughtered on

the cross as the blood offering to pay the debt that we should have paid.

And this was Christ's example to his church on how to love each other in the family of God.

As we love each other in the body of Christ, as Christ loves us,

then everyone around us will know that we are Jesus' disciples.

But I want you to see something else as well in verse 10. If you keep my commandments,

you will abide in my love.

And here's what I want you to

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

As believers in Christ, if we conform our lives to Christ's word by trusting

in Christ's love and power, then Jesus promised that we will have the same type

of relationship with him as he has with his father.

Talk about privilege. No one else in the universe, including the angels,

have this kind of honor given to them.

Why is this passage so important for us as part of Christ's church?

Abiding in Christ is about being conformed by Christ's word and conformed to

be like what the word commands and teaches us to be.

But, and this is of central importance, we cannot conform unless we truly want to abide in Christ.

Abiding in Christ is not just about being obedient. A person can be obedient

and never conform to the image that God, through his word, wants us to be.

That's behavior modification.

And that doesn't change anything. To be completely transparent here,

for so many years, I didn't understand this verse.

I was focused on the obedience.

Obey God, and the more I obey, God will love me.

The problem is, is I can never obey well enough to meet God's perfectly right standards.

Why? Because Christ has already met God's right standards for me.

None of us, including myself, can earn God's love.

We cannot make God pleased with us. This is a foundational tenet of the Bible.

God's loving pleasure towards us is given to us in Christ. You see,

the emphasis of Jesus' command is focused on abiding or staying in the love of Christ.

And if we, you and I, want or desire to abide in Jesus' love and have the same

kind of relationship with Jesus that Jesus has with his Father,

then we must be conformed to the image of Christ.

And to do that, we need to keep God's commands by trusting Christ's love,

surrendering to the love of God's work in us and through us. and obeying his word.

This verse is about our affections, about our love.

Do we really, really want to make our home in the love of Christ and have that

same kind of affection for Jesus that Jesus had for his father?

Obeying Christ is the way to abide in Christ. And the more we abide,

the more we conform to the image that God, through his word, wants us to be.

How badly do you and I want to be in relationship with Christ?

Is Christ your true treasured?

What then has God been teaching us through this passage this morning?

The first foundational truth that God has taught us is in two parts.

As disciples of Christ, we must trust in the agape love that Christ has for

us. We must believe this truth.

And to trust in Christ's love and abide in Christ, we, you and I,

must believe in the Father's love for Jesus and then follow Jesus' example of trusting his Father.

Secondly, to abide or make our home in the love of Christ.

Christ calls us to conform to the image that God, through His Word, wants us to be.

Every fiber in our fallen beings

wants to make this scripture about obeying so that God will love us.

But as those who have surrendered to the grace of God in Christ Jesus and have

been saved from the wrath of God by Christ, God already loves us so very much

and he is pleased with us.

The problem is, is that our human affections are just so fickle.

We will follow after whatever we want to desire.

But Christ is calling us to desire him and to desire to stay in relationship with him.

Christ wants yours and my love and our love is evidence by conforming our lives

to the commands of God Christ wants us to abide in him our vine so that we will

fulfill our purpose and bear fruit for God and bring the father glory,

leave us all with this.

Very, very important question for our lives. How much do we really love Jesus?

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the great opportunity and honor it is to

be able to be in your presence through the sacrificial slaughter of your Son on the cross.

Thank you for that. Thank you for your love that you have poured out to us in him.

May we abide in his love as Jesus abided in your love.

And Lord God, I pray also that for every person who is listening to this radio

message, and that's including me, please, Lord,

teach us and help us to learn to abide in you. Thank you, Father.

Thank you, Lord Jesus Christ. Thank you, Holy Spirit, for working in us.

We praise you, we bless you, and we give you honor and glory today.

In your precious Son's name, Jesus Christ, I pray. Amen.

I'll leave you with a blessing from Romans 15, verse 13.

Romans 15:13

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing,

so that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope.

Have a wonderful Sunday, and then may the Lord bless you.