Learning to Listen: Day 15 - John 15 with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the Medichurch podcast.

My name's Clayton.

I'm the pastor here at Medichurch.

And my hope is that today's podcast finds you at the perfect time in your life, that God uses it to inspire and enlighten you.

I hope that you enjoy today's message.

We are on day 15 of our Learning to Listen series, our journey that we've been on together as a congregation.

If you're new with us, my name is Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here.

I am so glad that you joined us.

Let me kind of get you caught up to what we're doing right now at MetaCurch.

We're in something kind of new for us, it's a new initiative.

We're all together as a congregation across all of our services.

For 21 days, we have been reading a chapter of John's gospel every day.

There's 21 chapters.

We're gonna read the whole thing.

Every day we are praying together through some guided prayer prompts.

And every week for these three weeks, we have been choosing something to fast from in our life.

That means we're intentionally giving something up that's in our normal rhythm of life to grow our dependence on God.

And man, so many hundreds and hundreds of you have been following along every single day, learning how to listen, learning to hear from God.

This matters so much for us to take a step up, not just being what has become kind of the status quo of church where your spirituality only happens from Sunday to Sunday to Sunday, but instead learning how to feed ourselves spiritually and clothe ourselves spiritually and actually pursue the purpose that God has placed on our life.

So if you're joining with us here or online, you might feel like you're walking into the last third of a movie or something like that.

But I believe God's put you here at the exact right time because it is always the right time to start reading the word of God and praying and practicing spiritual discipline.

So I want to invite you to join us as we close out the rest of this series.

We've tried to make it really easy.

We've got a lot of resources.

If you go and if you're here or online, you can get out your smartphone right now and go to metachurch.tv slash listen.

That's metachurch.tv slash listen, where you'll do two things.

Number one, you'll sign up for our newsletter by plugging in your email.

This is gonna send you daily reminders and daily links to get to our blog.

On the blog, every day one of our leaders has put out a video helping you understand that day's chapter, and the actual chapter is there, and there are prayer prompts at the bottom of it.

It's like a one-stop shop.

Hundreds of you have been getting on there every single day, and I really, really believe that this is setting us up with the spiritual practices in our life to be able to take this not just as something that's impactful on Sunday, but that is impactful in your sphere of life every single day.

And so, man, thank you guys for participating.

If you're like new and you want to do this, but you're type A, you had that 4.0 GPA, I'm gonna let you know you could do three chapters a day for the next week and be all the way caught up.

I don't care how you choose to join in, but I would love for you to join in.

We have made it all the way to John chapter 15.

John 15 · chapter mention

I'm very excited to jump in today, but before we do, let's pray.

Holy Spirit, we are asking for you to just continue to speak to us, and we are really, really trying to listen, to learn how to discern your voice, your promptings in our life.

We thank you for all you've shown us through John's gospel so far, and we look forward to what you're gonna show us today.

We love you, and we pray all these things in Jesus' name.

And everyone said, Amen.

Uh, we're in John chapter 15.

John 15 · chapter mention

I want to kind of set the stage before we jump in.

Uh Metachurch, as most of you know, is a place for all people and all different parts of their faith journey.

We said MetaCurch is a place where you can belong before you believe even what we believe.

It's a place where you can come and wrestle with the biggest questions of life and faith and spirituality.

It's also a place where we prioritize the scriptures and just exactly what they say to us.

And we do believe that truth is found in them and the instructions for life is found in them.

And so we go to them and we try to let them speak for themselves.

And what we've been doing throughout this 21 days of learning to listen is we just really simply, whatever day we land on, like today is day 15.

So we're gonna go through John 15, and then we're gonna pray all together, like you've been praying on your own throughout this journey, and we're gonna talk about our fast for the next week.

But I do want to make a few things clear as we head into John chapter 15.

John 15 · chapter mention

Most Sundays, what I'm trying to do up here is I'm trying to help those who are not yet convinced of the claims of Christianity to really understand what is being offered to you to believe in Jesus, and for those who are already believers to challenge you in what it really means for you to now follow Jesus and live in light of the faith that you have in him.

And we've seen throughout John's gospel, he has this one word that he comes to again and again and again.

It's the word believe.

That is John's word for what it means to gain eternal life, to be in relationship with God, or as he says it, to be a child of God.

All that it takes to get eternal life, which means for the rest of your time on earth, you can live with 100% confidence and 100% security of what comes after this life.

All that that requires is that you believe in Jesus.

You believe that he is who he says he is, and that he's done what he says that he's done, and that is it.

At that moment, you are justified before God, declared righteous, declared not guilty for all of the sins that you have committed and all the sins that you will commit.

That is a beautiful, beautiful uh reality, a beautiful truth, and it's why scripture calls it a gift.

Gifts have no contingencies.

If I handed you a beautifully wrapped present, bow on top, handwritten letter, you wouldn't be able to read it.

Y'all have seen my handwriting, but handwritten nonetheless.

And I handed you a beautiful gift and said, here is a gift, and it's all yours if.

Well, now it's no longer a gift because gifts don't have contingencies.

The gift of eternal life is absolutely free.

There is nothing you can do to earn it, there's nothing you have to do to keep it, it is yours forever.

This is the part where you could say, Amen.

You could clap your hands because we don't we have like eternal life, those are good things.

We're going to learn this year, meta church.

We clap when Jesus does good things for us.

So good.

Oh man.

The spurs are so bad, y'all clap when they almost make a shot this year.

And we don't clap.

That our eternities have been transformed.

Okay.

In John chapter 15, um, you're not gonna see the word believe, and you're not gonna see the word eternal life.

John 15 · chapter mention

Because uniquely in the passage we land on today, this is written just to believers.

Just to believers.

As a matter of fact, it's Jesus speaking just to his disciples, and not even all 12 of them, because Judas has already dipped out to go and betray Jesus.

So it's just the eleven who are about it, who are right or die, and they're trying to do this all the way to the end.

And this is like after the Last Supper, Jesus has taken the disciples out on the Mount of Olives.

This is gonna matter when we get into the metaphor he uses.

They're looking down on orchards and vineyards, they're living in this agrarian society, and you're gonna start to feel the sense of urgency that Jesus is speaking with escalate.

And because of that, it forces me, as the preacher of the text today, for my sense of urgency to also escalate.

But I don't want us to lose sight, and so I'm gonna remind us from time to time as we go through John chapter 15, that this is not about how to get to heaven.

John 15 · chapter mention

That is a free gift that comes straight from the love of God.

This is about how to follow Jesus.

And we say it all the time: believing in Jesus costs you absolutely nothing.

Following Jesus just might cost you everything.

And what Jesus is trying to assess is whether or not these disciples have a faith that is fortified enough to actually be able to bear up under the suffering that is going to be out in front of them.

And this is a tough message for us, and it's kind of hard for us to even wrap our minds around.

Because we have a very comfortable Christianity.

You know, our biggest problems we hear about is like we keep it too cold in our Sunday services, you know?

Oh, it was so chilly, I couldn't even hear the Holy Spirit that morning, you know.

Our music is a little loud sometimes for some people.

Like, those are those are our issues, you know.

And we have a form of Christianity that's been presented by the West in our comfort and with our religious liberties, where we can actually grow to assume that we can follow Jesus without it costing us anything.

And I think that John chapter 15 will argue with that.

John 15 · chapter mention

John chapter 15, verse 1, Jesus says, I am the true vine, and my father is the gardener.

John 15:1

Jesus is claiming here, like he's claimed throughout John's gospel, that he is the light, he is the shepherd, he is the gate, he is the way, he is the truth, he is the life, I am the true vine.

And there had been a metaphor throughout Israel's history that Israel was like the vine.

They were the source of life and power and purpose and inspiration.

And Jesus said, the promise that started at the beginning of Israel when God called one man, Abraham, and said, I'll make a great nation, the nation of Israel, so that one day all of the nations will be blessed.

All of that is going to be fulfilled in the person of Jesus.

He says, I am the true vine, and my father is the gardener.

And God is the gardener of gardeners, right?

He's the Lord of lords, the king of kings, and the gardener of gardeners.

All the way back at the very beginning in the creation narrative, we see the Garden of Eden.

And who is in charge of the garden?

It's God, the ultimate gardener, who is curating and cultivating and walking and talking with his creation.

And Jesus is again making a claim of deity.

All the way back, chapter one, verse one.

In the beginning he was with God, and Jesus was God.

He says in verse 2, every branch in me that does not produce fruit, he removes, and he prunes every branch that produces fruit, so that it will produce more fruit.

Now, this is a little bit difficult for us to understand because we don't live in an agrarian society.

Like, if you asked my kids where grapes come from, they would say H E B, you know?

Like, they don't know that these are like plants that grow somewhere.

And we don't usually know that.

Most of us probably don't have vineyards in our backyards, and maybe we don't understand a lot about plants.

And I don't understand a lot about plants.

I kill basically every plant that I've ever owned.

And my wife, uh, she has so many plants that part of what we're gonna do today is an intervention.

Y'all are gonna help me so she'll stop buying plants.

And what's crazy is it's not just that she buys them, our plants are reproducing.

I'm playing too much Marvin Gaye in the house, I don't know what's happening, our plants are making more plants.

You gotta know what you're doing.

You know, you think sunlight and water, and that will get you so far, but there's an art.

And especially with something like growing grapes in a vineyard, it's very difficult.

These are very, very delicate plants to grow.

And there's a few things you have to know about grapes.

Number one is when you first plant your vines, it's at least three years until you see grapes.

And your first grapes that come are probably gonna be pretty useless.

You might be a couple more years from having grapes that you can actually do anything with or produce wine with.

It just takes a long time.

And in the metaphor, God is the gardener, our heavenly father, and Jesus is the vine, the source of life and power and purpose, and we are the branches.

And as we move forward, the call to the branches is going to be to remain in the vine, to abide in the vine, in Jesus.

And over time we will have a fruitful life.

And sometimes we can get discouraged as Christians because we don't see evidence of what Jesus is doing in our life, like right away, right away.

I'll be honest, I was baptized when I was pretty young, and I did make a sincere confession of faith.

I I really did believe in Jesus, and and I really did have eternal life in that moment.

But I had it in my mind that something was gonna happen when I came out of the water, and I was gonna feel it, you know?

Like I didn't know what it was supposed to be, some kind of like a spidey sense, you know, some kind of tingle.

I was supposed to have some some kind of physical thing.

You know, I was gonna like float up the stairs, not really walk back up them, you know?

And I didn't feel it.

Like I didn't have this overwhelming sense that I was expecting.

It was a little bit disappointing to me.

And sometimes fruit takes a while to show.

And it doesn't mean that God isn't working.

As long as you're connected to the vine, God is working in your life.

Jesus is doing things in your life.

And some of you get disappointed because you got baptized in November and you're not walking on water yet.

But it takes time, and some of you are frustrated because you've been a Christian for three years now, and there's a habit or a sin, and as hard as you fight it, you keep slipping up and falling back into it and feeling all kinds of guilty and trying to white knuckle it, which only makes you focus on the sin even more and fall back into it more, and you're just wondering why you can't get rid of these things or move on to something greater in your life, and there's a process.

And we live in such a culture of convenience, we don't really understand some of this process.

We eat grapes year-round.

When grapes only grow in seasons, we get it and we get it right now.

Sometimes it takes time and you have to trust the process, you have to trust that your proximity to Jesus, doing the very things that we're practicing in this series, staying in his word.

And I guarantee you, if you really stick in for all 21 days in scripture and in prayer and listening for God and fasting in your life, there's gonna be moments where you're like, I never saw that, or I didn't know that, or you're gonna feel like God is speaking to you.

And I bet there are some days where you get out of John chapter 10 and you're like, I don't know what I just read, you know, and you head off to work.

John 10 · chapter mention

But you're staying connected to the vine.

And what does it say?

It says, the branches that do not produce fruit, he removes.

And I haven't done a lot of this because I really want our Sundays in this series to be like almost like you watching me do my quiet time.

But I do think this is one place where I'm gonna bring up a Greek word.

And the word removes is the Greek word arrow, a i R O.

And I bring it up because different English translations will translate this differently.

Some will say removes, and some will say lifts up.

And the reason for this is because the Greek language is far more expressive than the English language.

And the word means both.

It can mean lifts up and it can mean removes.

And both of them apply here.

You see, a good gardener, and for some of you who grew up under the auspices of religion and a God who hates everyone and is mad at everyone and can't wait to judge you and send you to hell, for those of you who have that view of God, you first need to seek to understand the heart of the gardener, the heart of our Heavenly Father, who loves us so much that he revealed himself in the person of Jesus.

And if you're wondering just how much you're worth to God and just how much he loves you, you're gonna see it this week in our reading.

When Jesus, the only innocent person to ever walk this earth, goes to a cross and is brutally murdered on a cross that I deserved, that you deserved.

Our sin was the cost of that cross, and Jesus, in the Father's infinite love for us, took it anyway.

This is a good gardener who will do anything in his power to help you live a fruitful life, a successful life, a powerful life, a purposeful life.

Very new branches often don't have the stability to hold themselves up.

You'll see this if you go to a vineyard, that they're often drooping very low, some of them all the way down in the dirt where they're hidden by the other leaves, and they can't get the sunlight and the nutrients appropriate for them to begin to produce fruit.

And so a good gardener will walk through the vineyard and look for these weaker branches and will literally lift them up.

They'll often tie them to the trellis, which I don't have time to preach on, but back in the day looked just like a cross.

And they'll tie them where they can access sunlight to give them every chance to produce.

And maybe you are young in your faith, or maybe you have been a believer for a long time, but you're still immature in your faith because you've never practiced any spiritual disciplines in your life.

And God will gently, over and over and over again, seek to lift you up.

And maybe he's seeking to lift you up by putting people in your life to encourage you or to hold you accountable or to challenge you or to help you rethink things, mentors, people who are ahead of you.

One of the uncomfortable ways that God will help to lift us up is by allowing us to incur the natural consequences that come when we live our life apart from his design for us.

And oftentimes we think of consequence as punishment or you know, this way to get at us punitively.

When the truth is, consequence, if we leave it in the hands of God, is a way to correct us and change our course.

Consequence literally can lift us up and help us get to where we belong.

It says, even for the fruitful branches, those who are pursuing Jesus, you weren't content to just believe in him and sit back with your get out of hell free card and wait to go to heaven someday.

You've actually been seeking to follow him, and your life is making a difference for the kingdom of God.

And people around you are becoming curious about the faith that holds you through the difficult times in your life, and people around you are starting to maybe even consider showing up to this weird meta church that you talk about, and they're asking you spiritual questions, and your kids are pursuing Jesus because they see the way that you're living your life.

People who live a fruitful life, it says, even those get pruned.

And pruning can be painful, but it's very necessary.

And I don't do well with plants.

When I would get a plant historically, I'd water it and I'd put it in the sun, and eventually you would have a lot of branches, and I'd be like, I'm killing it.

Look how much it's growing.

What I didn't know is a lot of those branches aren't growing the plant, they're killing the plant.

On a grapevine, there are these shoots that will grow off of the branches right next to the vine.

They're called laterals, but vineyard owners call them suckers.

And they call them that because they are sucking all the water out of the vine and keeping the water from going out to where the fruit is grown.

And they have to go through and clip off all of these little laterals, all of these little shoots.

They have to prune them because they're diverting water away from the place of purpose in the plant.

And even the most fruitful Christians will have these little things that attach themselves to your life, these habits that can develop over time, or these worldviews, or these little pieces of anger where you feel like something isn't justified in your life, or these relational tendencies that you have, or you lord things over people or dominate them, or you know, what really gets in the way of a lot of people who are pursuing a Christian life is they get past the point of relationship and move into this idea of religion where all of a sudden, instead of using their relationship with Jesus to show people the love of God, they use the law of God as a club to beat other people who aren't following the laws of God.

And over and over and over again, a good gardener comes through and prunes those things out of your life.

And sometimes it can be very painful, but it's it's critical because without pruning, we won't ultimately reach our purpose.

And these are all of the things that a loving gardener does for followers of Jesus.

Because what he wants is for you to experience the full and fruitful life that he created you to live, he purposed you to live.

And that life comes on the other side of struggle, it comes on the other side of suffering, it comes on the other side of the commitment to stay attached to the vine no matter what, and then you can experience a fruitful life.

A fruitful life is spelled out in one of the other letters of the New Testament.

It says the the life of a spirit filled, fruitful existence is one that's characterized by love, joy, peace, patience, which means long suffering, the ability to suffer for the right things for as long as necessary.

Love, joy, peace, patience.

Kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, being in control of your own impulses, being able to delay gratification.

In other words, a fruitful, fruit-filled life is a life that stands diametrically opposed to the way the rest of the culture is pursuing their lives.

Not lives of kindness and gentleness and self-control, lives of division and anger and anxiety and frustration and pride and ego.

We were created to live a fruitful life.

It is the life that you desire at the deepest part of you, a life of meaning and purpose and significance that makes an impact on the world around you.

In verse 3, Jesus says to his disciples, You are already clean because of the word I've spoken to you.

Remain in me and I in you.

Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me.

He makes the metaphor clear.

And here's a contingency.

Remember, let me remind you: eternal life is a free gift with no contingencies.

Following Jesus costs you.

If anyone does not remain in me, he is thrown aside like a branch and withers.

And they gather those withered branches and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.

We have to be very careful here because we all grew up watching cartoons where the devil and hell are characterized only by fire.

And every time we see the word fire in the scripture, we're like, it's talking about hell, and it's not.

Jesus is talking to his believers who have the gift of eternal life.

We already read in John's gospel that once you have eternal life, you are in the Father's hand, and no one can snatch you out of the Father's hand.

He is not talking about heaven or hell.

He's talking about a fruitful life versus a useless life.

And a gardener, a vineyard owner, has no use for a branch that refuses to produce fruit.

And our Heavenly Father, who is the gardener of gardeners, will do everything he can for as long as he can to lift you up, to get you where you need to be, to show you your nutrients.

He will do everything he can to prune off of you all of the things that have attached themselves to you, trying to divert your purpose away from where God actually has it in a fruitful life.

But something else we learn in Scripture is that God gave us a gift from the moment we were born.

One of the most important gifts, it's it would be an ontological gift, which means it's built into us.

And that's the gift of freedom.

And God has allowed us to choose how we are going to live this life, which is how we can exercise faith, believing in Jesus and receiving eternal life.

And he's given us so much freedom that he will allow genuine children of God, genuine people who have had a moment of faith, to move forward from that and decide not to remain in Christ.

To be guaranteed heaven, and still, if you choose, live like hell for the rest of your time on earth.

And you're not gonna get kicked out of the family because a lot of you are parents.

It's hard to imagine what your kid would do for you to disown them if you're a good parent.

However, they're not going to inherit the family business.

And if your kid is in act of rebellion and living in ways that you can no longer support, you'll probably stop writing checks if you're a good parent.

And maybe if their life is going enough against God, you might take them out of the will.

They wither, they fall off the vine, they're gathered, and they are burnt.

And God wants so much more for you than that.

He wants so desperately for you to live a fruitful life as a believer in Jesus, he will go to the greatest lengths imaginable, even the cross of Calvary, to make sure that you have every opportunity to live out your purpose and to live in the power of the Holy Spirit inside of you.

He says in verse 7, if you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you want, and it will be done for you.

My father is glorified by this, that you produce much fruit and you prove to be my disciples.

Not you prove that you have eternal life, you can't prove that.

It is given to you freely that you prove you're actually following him, you're actually about it, you're actually going to live this out.

In verse 9, as the Father has loved me, I have also loved you.

So remain in my love.

And such a powerful verse.

And there is a reason that we sin.

We sin because it's effective, at least in the short term.

And we live in a world of incredible pain and incredible brokenness.

And we don't have these parts of us that feel broken, and we have these wounds that have been inflicted on us sometimes by other people, sometimes self-inflicted wounds, and we're trying desperately to fill those holes and to find a sense of meaning, to have some kind of purpose, to belong somewhere to some group of people.

And so we try all of these things that the world offers us.

All of these other paths.

We do it because it works, at least for a little while.

The issue is all of the options that the world will give you to try and fill that gap inside of your soul.

The longer you go down those paths, the emptier you ultimately will become.

Only the one who created us and placed the purpose inside of us can fill the hole that is in us, this void that we all have, and give us the sense of love and peace and purpose that we're longing for.

And Jesus is almost like, I have stood in the heavenly places, in the presence of our heavenly Father.

I've experienced the love of God in its fullness.

And you have to understand, like, the most loving thing you will ever do during your time on earth, the most loving, selfless, genuine, amazing thing that will ever be done to you during your time on earth, it's like a shadow of a reflection of the fullness of the love of God that He has for us.

And Jesus is like, I've seen that.

And the same way that God loves, I love.

And if we will stay attached to the vine, if we will abide in Christ, if we will trust him through the struggle and through the strife, and while he's lifting us up, and while we're undergoing consequence, and while he's pruning our life, we will experience his love, and it is his love that we're lacking, and it is his love that completes us, and it is his love that brings peace.

As the Father has loved me, I have also loved you, so just remain in it.

You're going to be tempted left, right, up and down to walk away, to take your eyes off of eternity and be consumed by the temptations right in front of you.

Just remain.

Just abide.

Stay in his love.

He says, if you keep my commands, you will remain in my love.

You want to know how to stay in his love?

Keep his commands, just as I have kept my father's commands and remain in his love.

I've told you these things so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.

So this is my command: love one another as I have loved you.

And no one has greater love than this to lay his life down for his friends.

And so you are my friends, a lot of contingencies.

You are my friends if you do what I command you.

You are children of God if you have believed in Jesus, no contingencies.

Do we understand that?

I have to know that we understand that.

So I can preach John 15, there's this thing we do in America, you do like this, and then I know.

This means yes, this right here?

Okay.

But Jesus says, if you want to be a friend of Jesus, if you want to be a disciple of Jesus, if you want to be a follower of Jesus, obey my commands.

Stay attached to the vine.

Remain in me.

And if you want to remain in my love, do what I have commanded you to do.

This is the call.

And so here's the picture.

To cross the line of faith and be given eternal life, Jesus broke down every barrier, he built every bridge, he tore down every wall, he lit up every room, he made it to where anyone at any point in their life can come, no matter your background, no matter your past, no matter how many skeletons are in your closet, Jesus will meet you exactly where you are, and he will give you eternal life based on what he has done, not on what you have done.

On the other side of that line of faith, Jesus raises the bar.

To believe in him will cost you nothing.

To follow him might just cost you everything.

And he says the ultimate expression of love is if you're willing to lay your life down.

The other gospels, Jesus says, if you want to follow me, take up your cross, take up the ultimate instrument of torture and execution, take up the greatest suffering that you can possibly bear under, then deny yourself every day.

Our culture's motto is you do you.

You follow your truth.

This might be coincidental, I don't know.

The church of Satan, which doesn't actually worship Satan because they don't believe in any spiritual realm, they worship themselves.

Their motto is do what thou wilt.

You do you.

Jesus says, You deny yourself every day.

Deny your own worldview, your own habits, your own ideologies, your own desires, your own attractions, your own goals, your own kingdom, your own pride, your own ego.

You deny yourself.

And then follow me.

You want to know what kind of love Jesus requires?

The kind of love that would lay our lives down.

And we love to say that, and we love to sing that.

I would give my life.

And the truth is, if we won't deny the smallest things in our life, we have not positioned ourselves to where we truly can say we are ready to lay our life down.

He says in 15, I do not call you servants anymore because a servant doesn't know what his master is doing.

I've called you friends because I've made known to you everything I've heard from my father.

You did not choose me, but I chose you.

I appointed you to go and produce fruit and that your fruit should remain.

Remember that to produce fruit and that your fruit should remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you.

And this is what I commanded you love one another.

Jesus doesn't just want you to produce fruit, he wants you to produce fruit that remains.

And that matters because this metaphor and this teaching can't be understood without what comes next.

Because what comes next is what Jesus actually wants to say, which is, you are going to suffer.

Not just producing fruit when you're comfortable and everyone's good, and thousands of people are following after Jesus and hanging on his every word, and he's taking the happy meal and feeding 5,000 people, and he's walking on water and turning water into wine.

Not just then, but are you producing the kind of fruit?

Do you have the kind of fortified faith that will remain under the most severe persecution and hours from when Jesus teaches this?

He'll be arrested.

Tried, beaten, crucified.

I mean, he's calling his shot.

And if we will actually live in ways that are so often diametrically opposed to the direction that our culture is going, we will suffer.

It will cost us.

And if we are seeking every single opportunity we can to build the kingdom of God, it will cost us.

Are we ready for that cost?

He says in 18, if the world hates you, understand it hated me before it hated you.

If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own.

If you just did what the culture did, if you do you, and you go get your truth and you just follow along, then that's fine.

However, because you're not of this world, but I have chosen you out of it, the world hates you.

Remember the word I spoke to you.

A servant is not greater than his master.

If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.

If they kept my word, they will also keep yours.

But they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they don't know the one who sent me.

And please hear what I'm not saying, because you know, a lot of a lot of pastors think they're Old Testament prophets and they're gonna predict the future, and in May of 2026, the world governments are gonna flip and the lizard people are gonna take over, and all of us are going to prison, and they say all that so they can get you really afraid because they think out of fear they might be able to compel your behavior.

I'm not trying to compel your behavior, I'm trying to put the truth in front of you and let you decide what you want to do with it.

So I don't know.

I don't know.

What I know is that we live in a post-truth culture, we live in a post-Christian culture, probably a pre-pagan culture.

We live in a place that no longer recognizes the teachings of Jesus as valid and sees many of them as completely anti to the very way that things are going.

And so, what does it mean to stand for the truths when the truths are no longer recognized as valid, and some of them are seen as backwards or hateful?

And how do we do all of that out of a place of love, the kind of unconditional love that has been shown to us?

Verse 22 says, If I had not come and spoken, they would not be guilty of sin.

Now they have no excuse for their sin.

And the one who hates me also hates my father.

And if I had not done the works among them that no one else had done, they would not have sin.

But now they've seen and hated both me and my father.

But this happened, so that the statement written in their law might be fulfilled.

They hated me for no reason.

And we should really pay attention to this.

And for believers in Jesus in the room, this gets a little bit uncomfortable.

But Jesus says something that he has echoed before in this gospel that it is our knowledge that condemns us.

He says, look, if they didn't know any better, how could they be held accountable to it?

But they know now.

I've come now.

And we have the scriptures, the words of God, available to every one of us.

It's in our hands, it's on apps, on our phones, it's on our computers, it's all around us.

And the word of God does not hide from us the way that God has asked us to live.

And if you want to remain in his love, you must follow his commands.

It outlines everything.

And what the rest of the New Testament does is it takes the truths of Jesus in the gospels and it extrapolates it out for every part of our life.

Here's what following Jesus means in your career, here's what it means in your marriage, here's what it means in your parenting, here's what it means in your sexual ethic, here's what it means in your money, here's what it means in every aspect of your life.

It's all there and it is all clear.

None of it has been hidden from us.

And our call is to remain in Him.

And since it's all there, and none of it's hidden, we will be held to it.

And there's a big difference between, like Paul says in Romans 7, I don't do what I want to do, and I do what I don't want to do, and woe is me in this body of decaying flesh, and my flesh battles my spirit, and the spirit battles my flesh.

This is not a call for perfection.

None of us will get there.

This is a call to stay attached to the vine, to stay in Christ, which means He is the priority, He is the filter for your life, He is who you seek, and when you mess up, you mess up through struggle.

You wrestle with it, you give it to God, you seek Him, you get help, you get accountability, you strive forward.

God is not afraid of you failing, He is afraid of you taking His truths and moving in opposition to them.

We have His word, and in following Jesus, there are no contingencies allowed.

I'll follow Him if.

You know, I'm gonna follow Jesus, but I'm gonna follow Jesus, however, you have to understand that the scriptures were written a long time ago, everything's different now, and so then we take our current culture as the lens we read Jesus through instead of taking Jesus as the lens that we see our culture through.

And I hear people say, look, look, look, I know what it says, but man, if Jesus was alive today, Jesus is alive today.

He has spoken and he is coming back.

And his expectation for those who have believed in him is that we follow his word, even if it requires us denying ourselves daily.

What will we sacrifice to follow after Jesus?

And my guess, not an old testament prophet, my guess is it is only going to get more difficult to follow Jesus and to do it openly and to stand on those truths and to stand centered on love.

And we can do both.

We can stand on and in love.

We can love people without condition and without fear, and we cannot compromise on the truths of how God has revealed our lives are supposed to function and supposed to operate.

We can do both of those.

And if we can do both of those, we can be a movement that has an impact we cannot even imagine.

This is how it ends.

When the counselor comes, the one I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will testify about me.

And you will also testify, because you've been with me from the beginning.

That Holy Spirit that was promised came.

And scripture says that everyone who has believed in Jesus and received the free gift of eternal life has also received the gift of the Holy Spirit.

And that is why what we're doing in these 21 days is so significant because you're not approaching Scripture alone.

You're approaching Scripture through the illumination of the Holy Spirit who's inside of you, who is so desperate to speak to you.

And I'm grieved because I'm watching as Christians are saying, I know what the book says, I understand what it says, but I'm gonna do this thing.

I'm gonna live this way anyway.

I know what it says not to do, but I'm gonna do me.

And I think God will understand.

And I'm here to tell you, as someone Who deeply loves you, he won't.

And on the other side of your life, as a believer in Jesus, you'll stand before Jesus.

And you will see your Savior and you will understand what He was willing to sacrifice for you.

And there will be no excuse for what we were not willing to sacrifice for Him.

And so I had all these prayer prompts.

I'm going to throw them out and do something else.

But I want us to go into a time of prayer as we close out today.

And as you get into a time of prayer, you can bow your head, close your eyes.

There's nothing magic about that.

Just create some space in the room.

I want to invite you, challenge you maybe even, to do something that's going to take a little bit of courage.

I want to invite you to ask the Holy Spirit to take an inventory of your life.

And what we're trying to find is anything we're holding on to in our lives that we are not willing to sacrifice to follow Jesus.

And look, this isn't the church where you come and you put on your good mask and you pretend you have all the answers and everything's perfect, and it's just a chance to get real.

What is the thing that is your contingency?

I'm all in following Jesus.

I love Jesus.

Man, I love God.

I love what He's done for me.

I'm all in, but I'm not denying this part of me.

I'm not letting go of this desire.

I'm not giving up this habit.

And so as we go into prayer, this is your time, Holy Spirit, show me.

Inventory my life and show me the things I am putting in front of Jesus.

Show me the things that I am unwilling to sacrifice.

That's all I'm wanting you to do is just ask for clarity in this moment.

Let's pray.

That you would reveal it.

Whether it is our relationship, a worldview, the way we're handling our money, our ego, our sexual behavior, our relational behavior.

God, whatever it is, we know what you've said and we keep moving in opposition.

I pray you would show it to us.

Bring it to the light where we can wrestle with it.

We thank you for your love.

Before we close out, I want to remind you we're moving into week three, which will be our third fast.

The first two weeks, we let you pick.

The third week, we are we're gonna pick for everyone.

In week three, we're gonna fast from social media.

And these seven days might be a long seven days if you're spending three or four hours a day on TikTok or Instagram.

It's a lot of hours we just freed up for you to pray and spend in the Word.

We're moving in to chapters 16 through 21, which means you're gonna see Jesus arrested, tried, beaten, crucified.

I kind of left you on a cliffhanger here.

All I want is for you to get honest if there's something or some things in your life that you're unwilling to let go of.

And I want to put the ball in your court.

You are going to read this week the sacrifice that God was willing to make for you.

And I pray that you will wrestle this week on what exactly you're willing to sacrifice for Him.

Let me pray for you.

Jesus, you said that wide is the path that leads to a useless life.

Narrow is this way that you've called us to.

I pray that we would pick the narrow road, even though it entails suffering, even though it requires sacrifice, because we believe on that path is where we live a fruitful life, a life of purpose, a life of ultimate joy, even in the face of suffering.

I thank you for your free gift.

And I pray if there's anyone here that God does not yet know you, that they would seek you, and I believe they will find you.

You'll change their life now and their eternity forever.

I thank you for this movement, for every person in it, and we pray it all in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thanks so much for listening to the message today.

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And I love you guys, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.