029 - Love Hate Relationships

You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?

Is there something here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.

Welcome to More Than Ink. Hey, have you ever heard this song? Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I'll go eat worms.

No, I never sang that, but I did hear it. Well, Jesus said, hey, if the world hates you, they hated me first. Well, this is good news for us as followers of Jesus. Well, it's something we need to know. Jesus told us in John 15.

I guess he did. Let's find out why. Today on More Than Ink. Well, good morning. I'm Dorothy. And I'm Jim.

And this is More Than Ink. We're sitting at our dining room table, we've got our coffee cups, and we're ready to continue with John 15. We kind of left off in that segment from 12 to 17 last week, and we're going to kind of revisit that as we begin today, talking about the love of God, and this is my commandment that you love one another. What does that mean?

What does that look like? So we're glad you're here, and we hope you've read this over the course of the week, and you've made some personal observations and began to think about abiding and loving and keeping. In fact, we hope that we covered it so shallowly last time that you said, wait a second, I've got to go check this out. That can't be all there is.

We missed something here, and we probably did, because we have like half an hour here. Even the first 11 verses of John 15, you can't cover in half an hour. It's just too deep.

It's got so many ramifications. But we can touch the idea. We can grab onto the illustration, and that's the glorious thing about Jesus' teaching the way he did. He gives them these portable illustrations. So portable. Every time they walked through a vineyard from that moment on, their minds were going to return to the vine and the branches and the fruit. And I find actually working in my garden is a very effective way of meditating on these truths.

So it's a very portable picture, and we did talk about that a lot. So I hope you carried it with you this week. We will not bear fruit if a branch is disconnected from the vine. It's just going to wither up and die. So we need to remain connected, remain.

Remain was the word abide, and that's where we came from. And then Jesus said, he didn't drop the whole idea of fruit because that's going to still come up right now. But as we go into verse 12. And he's been talking about love all evening.

Love all evening. So this is not new either. Why don't you read 12 to 17 and we'll revisit it a little bit. Okay. So verse 12. This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. And you are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants for the servant does not know what his master is doing. But I have called you friends for all that I have heard from my father. I've made known to you.

You did not choose me. I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide. So that whatever you ask the father in my name, he may give it to you these things I command you so that you will love one another.

So that's 12 through 17. You know, we talked about last week that it's it's pretty obvious that the branch and a vine have exactly the same purpose, which is fruit. So so often we look at Jesus life and our life and think we have two different tasks.

We really don't. Jesus task was to glorify who God was and make known who he was. And that that really is part and parcel of the fruit that we're talking about. And and I would maintain that that a large characteristic of that fruit is making known the love of the love of God. And so the degree to which we not only talk about it, but we actually do it brings glory to who God is. That's that's Jesus purpose as the vine. That's our purpose as the branch that's connected. And so here he says, let's just get explicit. Here's your purpose.

Here's your fruit. Love. Love one another as I have loved you. Well, how did Jesus love them?

If we just stop and think about that for a minute. Back in the beginning of the evening. John says in the beginning of John 13, if you remember knowing who he was, knowing where he came from, knowing where he was going. He loved them to the uttermost. And so he got down on his hands and knees and he washed their feet.

Uh oh. You mean I have to wash feet to love people? Loving has something to do with humility and serving. Because later in the evening, he said, you know, I'm your lord and master and I've done these things to you and you are blessed. You are full of me abiding in you if you do the same.

Right. I've always told people that love from a biblical perspective has nothing to do with you. It has everything everything to do with the other, the benefit of the other.

But we often slip into this kind of cultural definition of love which is, well, you know, I fell into love and now I'm in this swirl of emotional thing and look what love is for me. That's a very self-centered definition. This person just makes me feel so good.

I really love them. Exactly. Exactly.

Right? No, that's not what Jesus is talking about here. In fact, I mean, he made it very clear in 13 that this is someone laying down his life. That's like, boy, that's ultimate love. Well, because God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. So if you ever start thinking that love is all about you and what someone does for you.

And how you can be fulfilled. Exactly. Then you've got it upside down because the biblical idea about love, the God-sized idea about love is always about the other.

Always. Always about the other. And it's about giving. So it's sacrificial, it's giving, and it always is aimed at the best for the other person. Indeed. Actually, John writes in his first letter in Chapter 4, Verse 7, he writes, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

Right. So the way we love is the evidence of his abiding in us, that we really have grasped the reality of his character and his life flowing in us. Yeah, and you know, the people who saw Jesus live in action for those three years, they would probably comment to each other, you know, no one's ever taught the way he teaches. But I think they are much more amazed at the degree of his love. Even for the outcasts in society, for the leopards, for the blind, for the people who really had no one advocating for him. His love was really what touched people, and that's how he physically showed what the heart of God is. God loves us, and so he loves, and as a result he's commanding us, so you love, because that's what's radically different about this world. God loves this world and the people that are in it, but you're not going to find much of that kind of sacrificial love in this world.

This world is all about itself. You're going to be a big contrast when you go out there, Jesus is saying to these guys, if you love one another just like that. And he says, and I'm calling you my friends, because friends have a common purpose. Right. We're going the same direction and we're seeking the same thing.

We're seeking the love of God poured out and the glory of God known in the world. Yeah, I like the distinction he makes with friends, because he says, you know, I'm your master and you're a servant, and I can just command you to do it and you need to do it. Right. But your heart may not be in it, but I call you friends because your heart's in this.

Your heart is into making known the love of God, because you've seen the love of God. And we all know you can obey without loving. Exactly. If you love, you will obey.

Yep, yep. So this is something that's deeply incorporated in their natures. They've come to love Jesus tremendously and he says, so you need to love in order people will understand that. So it's interesting because we skipped over this last week and we need to spend a little bit of time here, when he says, you didn't choose me, but I chose you to go and bear fruit that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. Now he had already said that to them back in verse seven. He did. He said, if you abide in me and my words, the concrete reality of my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish and it'll be done for you. Oh, well.

Why is that true? You know, that's a huge promise which we know lots and lots of people misunderstand. Yeah, yeah. That means I can tack the postage stamp in Jesus' name on the end of my prayers and God will give it to me. He's got to do it. He's obligated. There's a condition attached and that is this abiding in the reality of his Spirit in us, his love in us, his purpose in us, so that his purpose becomes our purpose, so that what we want becomes what he wants, or we are shaped to what he wants, so that the outpouring of our hearts when we pray will be along the lines of his purpose. His purpose. And that's why we pray in his name. In his name. And we do it not as a postage stamp. No, no.

With the authority of who he is because he has said, You're my friends. We love the same things. We're seeking the same things. We have the same purpose. We're aimed toward the same thing. So if you pray in my name, you're basically saying, God, I'm praying just as though Jesus was in my shoes and in fact he's in me. So same purpose, same direction, same heart.

Yeah. Yeah, and actually, you know, this just occurred to me. If you can't picture the Lord Jesus himself saying in prayer the things that you're about to say in prayer, then maybe better rethink it.

Ooh, ooh. That's a good way to do it. Maybe better just put that thought down and just hold still until you get a grasp on the Lord Jesus praying. That's really helpful when we come to John 17 in a couple of weeks. Oh, that's true.

That's true. So you can ask yourself, if God's being slow in answering my prayer, is it because you asked according to his own purpose or because of your own purpose? My purpose.

Yeah. So that's really what's different about, I pray these things in Jim's name, and then God goes utterly slow. Sometimes we think if we gather a lot of people or if we have a big national call for everybody who can pray to pray that God's got to answer. Well, not necessarily.

No. But God does respond when we pray according to his purpose and his desire and in his love. If the purpose of the branch is the same as the purpose of the vine, then... God will do it. Yeah, it's what God's business is all about.

That's what he intends to do with those branches. Yeah. Love one another. Now, from this point, he goes into a gigantic contrast.

A gigantic contrast. Because as time, as the years go on, they will love one another, but it will be in the context of a world that's so deeply broken that all it does is hate, and it will actually direct their hate against you. I've said this to people many times. God calls me to love universally, so why would you get angry at me? But there is a good reason why people get angry at you and you love in the context of hate. You better read this. So let's go on and see what he's talking about.

Now, you want to pick up at 18? Yeah, because he had just said, now these things I'm commanding you, so that you'll love one another. If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own. But because you're not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said 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 all these things they will do to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of sin. But now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me, hates my father also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they've seen and hated both me and my father.

But the word that's written in their law must be fulfilled. They hated me without a cause. So love one another, but the world is going to hate you.

Yeah. And if they hated me, they're going to hate you. And that's a curious thing. Why would the world react in hatred to someone whose life is characterized by love? Because it's selfless.

Exactly. And there's a tripwire in here, and that tripwire is sin, the guilt of sin. So at the same time that Jesus lived such a total life of love, it was also implicitly indicting to people who did not live that way, but instead lived selfishly and hatefully and sinful.

So those came at the same time. That's why Paul says there's two reactions you get when you talk about the Gospel. You get a reaction of people sensing death and those sensing life. So it's like a good news, bad news thing. The good news is that God wants to live with you. The bad news is you don't.

And so that's going to be a problem. Well, and Jesus says if you were of the world, the world would love you, right? Because you want what they want. What does the world want? The world wants its own way, the world wants to do life without God, the world wants to be God, right?

But Jesus said you're not of that mindset, you're not of that heart. You're in the world, but you're not of the world, so they're going to hate you. They're going to hate you. Because they hated me first in your mind, and I'm in you.

Yeah. Boy, you look at those crowds that said crucify Him. You think, what did He do wrong? Well, why did they reject Him? It's because His purpose was different than their purpose. Their purpose was to have a king and restore their kingdom and rule the world and have power. And to some degree, yeah, to some degree for them personally to have power and have everything that they want. Right, and recognition. And Jesus said, hmm, kingdom's not about that.

Kingdom's not about that. The love of God is genuine and it's profound and it's broad for anybody, but you cannot start to enjoy the love of God unless you understand that repentance is your first barrier. You've got to agree with God that you have a profound problem that separates you. That's what confess means. It means just to agree to say, you know, you say the same thing God says about your condition.

And that message is not well received. You know, if you remember when Jesus started out in ministry, it says in Matthew, it says He went out and He started His ministry and He went around saying what? He said, repent the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Right. So, I mean, the first barrier to enjoying the love of God is your own prideful, stubborn, stuck-up-ness about your own sin. And you say, well, I'm not guilty of sin. And Jesus says, well, you are. And that's going to stop the whole process of you living with God. Repent, the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Right here among you.

Yeah. Because woohoo, the King is here. Yeah, so Jesus says in 22, look, if I hadn't come here, this has come down for me, if I hadn't come here and spoken to them, well, they would not have been guilty of sin, but now they have no excuse. They've been served notice. And then He says, after that, He says, you know, if I hadn't done the works that I did, which validated who He was, well, then again, they wouldn't be guilty of sin, you know. But they've seen what I've done. They've heard what I've said. They hate me and they hate the Father because of that. And, you know, whoever hates me, hates the Father.

Remember He had said earlier in the evening to Philip, well, don't you get it? If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. You've seen the Father.

Right. He's in the flesh fully explaining the love of the Father, the purpose of the Father. So, you know, He who hates me hates the Father also.

You know what? That means you cannot have God the Father without Jesus. Yeah, because when we talk about the Trinity, they're one and the same. Right.

Yeah, yeah. And the purpose of God is to glorify who He is. The purpose of Jesus is to glorify who He is, make known the love of God.

But doggone it, you guys have a problem with sin, have a problem with selfish rebellion. And until you come and square away and you agree with God on that, you're just always going to be a barrier to what God's intentions are for you to find joy and love in His relationship with Him. So, you know, again, this is not the first time Jesus had talked about this, about this contrast between the love and the hate of the world. I just want to read to you from John 3 because we all know John 3, 16, but we stop reading there.

Nicodemus. Starting in verse 17, he says, For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged. He who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds were evil.

Deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who practices the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be manifested as having been wrought in God. So Jesus is saying, I am the light, and if you're drawn to Me, then your deeds are going to be exposed, but you're going to repent. You're going to recognize your sin and turn away from it and believe that I came to heal your sin. But you've got to start with realizing that you've got a sin problem. But if you, like a cockroach, run for the darkness, that demonstrates that you're really not interested in God. That's right, and you want to continue to embrace your own sinfulness, and you don't like the idea. I think it was in the middle of Luke somewhere that Jesus was saying to the apostles, He says, look, if you don't repent, you're going to perish. So really, when someone presents to you, hey, you've got a problem with sin, you have one of two responses.

You can either repent and go, eh, I'll shrug your shoulders, you're right. What do I do about it? Or you can rebel and say, no, I don't have a problem. And that separates all of mankind. You have the one to say, no, I don't have a problem with sin, and the other one to say, yeah, I do.

What can I do about it? And Jesus says, I'm glad you asked. Yeah, because He says actually in John 5, if you don't believe that I'm He, you'll die in your sin. You'll die in your sins, yeah. And what happens if you die in your sin? You stay separated from God. Yeah, so a loving God is communicating through Jesus that there is indeed a problem, and His love is manifest in the fact that He's straight up about what your problems are. I mean, it's only your friends that tell you the truth about your problems, and God who loves you tremendously is saying, look, here's the problem you've got. But I've solved the problem. Right, there's a remedy for your sin. If you're willing to agree with me about the nature of your sin and about what I'm going to do on your behalf through Christ. So that's why there's hate.

You know, you can either repent or you can rebel, and the hate comes when you rebel. And you say, I don't want to hear it. You stick your fingers in your ears and go, la, la, la, la, la.

I don't want to hear about it. Okay, so this doesn't only happen among unbelievers. This happens in the church. Oh, all the time. Stick our fingers in our ears.

La, la, la, la, la, la. I'm not wrong. I'm not sin.

I want to hear the good stuff, not the bad stuff. At the call of the scripture is always to repentance. Yeah. And I might add to this as well. Oftentimes, people tend to characterize God as being a killjoy when it comes to sin.

You know, well, I want to do this kind of stuff. But I'm a very strong believer in the notion that sin is self-destructive. It's something that doesn't go well with the way you're designed by God. Well, that's the truth about sin.

It is, yeah. But I call it a notion because I'm trying to convince people, look, this is self-destructive. This is bad for you. So if God indeed is love, he's not going to mince words about the self-destructive nature of what it is you embrace and you do on a daily basis. He's going to say, look, you know, I love you. I need to tell you this because this is killing you.

This is killing you. So when we talk about a loving Jesus, you're also talking about a confrontive Jesus. He's not being confrontive about sin because he's just a spoilsport. He's confrontive because, like cancer, you're embracing your cancer and you will perish because of it.

That's loving, actually. Well, and, you know, you can ignore your cancer until it gets to the point where your doctor says, listen, you're going to die unless we take this out. Right. So ultimately you're thankful for that confrontation because you can live in denial up to a certain point.

And you say, man, I'm glad my doctor told me the truth. That's right. Yeah. So that's why Jesus said, so forcefully, unless you repent, you'll perish. Come on, you're going to die in your sin.

So that's why the world hates you. That's the first message. But the second message, when someone agrees with you about their sin, when you say there's a solution and it comes to the blood of Christ, you go, ah, and then everything changes. But, you know, he says there at the end of 25, it was David who a couple of times in the Psalms went just crying out to God and said, God, they hate me and they don't have a cause.

That's right. In fact, one time he says, they hate me and they want me to pay back what I took, but I didn't take anything. Does that make sense?

So here again, David is sort of prefiguring what Jesus is saying right here. They hate me without a cause because what's the cause for hating? Is it the cause because God loves you? No, it's because God's telling you the truth about who you are.

And that's being hated without a cause. We should finish this in 26. Oh, we need to. Yeah, Jesus then comes back to talking about the Holy Spirit. He says, but when the Helper comes whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me and you also will bear witness because you've been with me from the beginning. When the Helper, the one called alongside who will be in you, as he said earlier.

Now this is interesting. He says, whom I will send to you from the Father. Well, earlier he had said the Father will send him.

So who is it? And then later on he'd said we will send him. So, but I'm going to send him to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father.

Yep. And he will bear witness about me. He will bear witness about me.

And then you will bear witness. And you're back to the vine and the branches. Right.

The vine flows into the branches and the same purpose, the same juices come out the branches. And so that's why the Holy Spirit is what makes the entire thing work. And the purpose for which God has come to dwell to make his abode in us is to make his love known to the world. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And I might add as well here, most people don't know this, but this word witness right here, it's John's big word in his gospel. I mean, love is one of them, but witness is the other. When you look at this word witness, which actually is the word martyr. Martyr.

Yeah. When you look at martyr, it's only used once in Luke, I think once in Matthew. And then it's like... John uses it all the time.

It's like over 30 times. You know what? It shows up in Revelation repeatedly.

It does. Yeah. This is John's word. And you know why it's his word is because even as he's writing this gospel, he starts off in the beginning of it saying that I'm a witness of these things.

Right. Well, what's a witness? It's someone who just tells what they've seen.

Yeah, exactly. And so that's part of the fruit as well he's talking about. You're going to tell what you've seen. And the Holy Spirit, this helper that's going to come, that's coming from the Father, he is going to be the one who bears witness about who Jesus is. And as a result, we will bear witness about who Jesus is. It's an astonishing carry through of the vine and brain.

The purpose of the vine is now the purpose of the branches. It's the continuation of the glorifying of God's love for us, as well as the frank talk about how it is that sin itself keeps us from the love of God. Well, and Jesus is going to amplify his talk about the Holy Spirit a whole lot as we move into chapter 16. And we learn that one of the things specifically that the Holy Spirit does is convict of sin. Convict of sin. And that is he gives us that deep recognition of the truth of our sin.

Yeah. And our need for repentance. That's a fruit of the Spirit.

Which sounds like a bad life. Actually, it sounds like a hyperactive conscience. Why would I want to live with a hyperactive conscience, the Holy Spirit, and tell them inside me, say, that's wrong? Well, again, a loving God's going to say, can I kind of tell you what you're doing that's self-destructive?

Let me correct you. You know, this is not going to lead you to life. It's going to lead you to death.

I mean, you really don't. Paul says the wages of sin is death. If you want to, if you think that using sin as some way of earning life is going to bring you anywhere, it's not. It's not going to earn you life.

It's going to earn you death. So the Holy Spirit's going to be there to kind of, not just correct you, to keep you on the solid trail, but to actually work actively to eliminate the influence of sin in your life. Now, that's actually very good news.

Through this power that has indwelled you. Exactly. Oh, my goodness.

Yeah. So he will, I mean, Jesus introduces the Holy Spirit in the last chapter, and now we're kind of, we're really going places now. This is a remarkably changed relationship with God that he's talking about with the apostles, and we share in it as well. And there will be this continual regenerating and renewing of the Holy Spirit, Paul says in his letter to Titus. So, you know, as we begin to talk more about the Holy Spirit next week, go back and keep thinking about the vine and the branches and abiding and that whatever it is, that life flowing from the vine into the branches that pushes out in fruit and manifests in fruit.

Right. So are you engaged in making fruit for God? Because that's what a Christian is called to do. That's the purpose, to glorify who God is, to make known his love and kindness, to spread his word.

And we here sit here and we read his word and fall even more deeply in love with who he is. So come back with us next week. We're going to go into John 16. You better read it before we come back.

Well, go back to 14, 15, and then we'll be ready for 16. So I'm Jim. And I'm Dorothy. And we love to have you here and we hope to see you next week. So next week. Next week, More Than Ink. More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City and is solely responsible for its content. To contact us with your questions or comments, just go to our website, morethanink.org. Yeah, so, um, so I don't know what to say after that.