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Let’s pray for God’s blessing upon the reading and the proclamation of His Word.
Let’s pray.
Almighty God, Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are a God of revelation, that you
have revealed yourself to us.
You not only have revealed yourself and your eternal power and glory in your mighty works
of creation and providence, but you have especially revealed yourself to us and your mighty works
of salvation in the Scriptures, your special revelation given to us in your God-breathed,
inerrant, infallible, authoritative Word.
And so, Lord, we ask that you would bless the reading of the Word.
May we hear with attentiveness and bless the proclamation of your Word as well, and grant
unto me, your unworthy servant, the grace to declare your Word with clarity, with power,
with faithfulness, and with the assistance and grace of your Holy Spirit for the salvation
of the lost and the building up of your people in Christ.
In Jesus’ name we pray, and all of God’s people said, Amen.
Please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word.
We’re once again going to take a little break from Isaiah.
I’m going to be, I was rather busy with presbytery preparations this past week, and so I’m going
to be preaching an old sermon.
I don’t believe I’ve ever preached this sermon here at this particular congregation, but
I thought that this would be an encouragement to you as we consider a passage from the Gospel
of John, John 15, beginning at verse 12, and I’ll read through chapter 16, verse 4.
And you’ll find that beginning, you’ll find that on page 1072 in your pew Bibles.
And our Lord Jesus Christ here is addressing the people in this passage.
Hear the Word of God.
John 15 beginning at 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.
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 have made known
to you.
You did not choose me, but 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.
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 are 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 have 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 have seen and hated both me and my Father.
But the word that is written in their law must be fulfilled.
They hated me without a cause.
But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to 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 have been with me from the beginning.
I have said all these things to you to keep you from falling away.
They will put you out of the synagogues.
Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God.
And they will do these things because they have not known the Father nor me.
But I have said these things to you, that when their hour comes, you may remember that
I told them to you.
The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.
Amen.
You may be seated.
Dear friends, the title of my sermon this morning is The World’s Hatred of Christ’s
Disciples.
And there are four key words that the young people can be listening for in my sermon today,
the words love, hate, world, and disciple.
Well, dear friends in Christ, wouldn’t you agree that the world and our culture have
changed quite a bit in the last 50 years or so?
Indeed, the world has radically changed even in the last decade or so, has it not?
One of the ways that I believe our culture has changed and is continuing to change is
that it has become increasingly hostile toward the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ and toward
anything and anyone that is identified with or associated with biblical, historical, and
traditional Christianity.
For example, I don’t know about you folks, but I can remember when I was growing up,
there seemed to be a much greater sense of respect and esteem for the Christian church
as an institution in our culture, even among those who would not consider themselves to
be religious.
Now, I’m not saying that there was no cynicism towards the church when I was growing up or
no hatred towards the church when I was growing up, but it was more acceptable to be a churchgoing
individual.
I didn’t grow up in the Bible Belt.
In fact, as many of you know, I grew up on the other side of Pittsburgh, but even in
the community in which I grew up, churchgoing seemed to be regarded as a socially respectable
and a culturally approved practice, even among those who rarely, if ever, went to church.
And biblical morality was respected even if it wasn’t always consistently practiced.
But friends, today, in many segments of our culture, open hostility toward Christianity
and towards Christians seems to be on the rise.
And though he said this a number of decades ago, Ted Turner once made a comment that seems
to capture a growing attitude in our culture towards Christianity.
At one time, Mr. Turner said that the religion of Christianity, that Christianity is, quote,
a religion for losers, just in case you care about what Mr. Turner has to say about Christianity.
Well, dear ones, while this increasing hostility in our culture towards the church and towards
Christians is disturbing, if you know the Word of God, if you’ve read your Bible, you
know that this hostility should not be surprising to those of us who claim to be followers of
the Lord Jesus Christ.
Dear all friends, our Lord Jesus Christ warned His disciples in no uncertain terms that we
should not expect the world of the ungodly to respect us or to praise us or to accept us.
It is a fool’s errand when we Christians and when we in the church seek to get the world’s
accolades and affirmations and approval.
Instead, Jesus said that we who profess to be His disciples can expect hatred and even
persecution from the world.
In the eyes of the ungodly world system of this present evil age, we are not merely outsiders
to be marginalized and excluded.
In the eyes of many in the world today, we are enemies who must be silenced, if not destroyed.
And therefore, we should not be surprised when the world treats us like the enemies
they perceive us to be.
Now our passage for this Lord’s Day morning addresses this matter, and the setting of
our passage is our Lord’s farewell discourse to His disciples as recorded in this portion
of the Gospel of John.
Now in the first 11 verses of chapter 15, which I did not read for you, the focus is
on the relationship of the Lord Jesus to His professed disciples.
And Jesus uses a metaphor in that passage.
He calls Himself the vine and He describes His professed disciples as the branches.
Jesus is the vine, we are the branches, and if we are true branches, fruit-bearing branches,
we need to abide in Christ in order to bear such fruit.
So the first 11 verses of chapter 15 focus on the relationship of Jesus Christ to His
professed disciples.
But in verses 12 through 17, the attention is focused on the relationship that the disciples
are to have toward one another.
And in this section of our passage, verses 12 through 17, our Lord Jesus focuses on the
importance of brotherly love among brothers and sisters in Christ, among the professed
followers of Jesus.
But then in verses 18 through 25, the focus shifts to the relationship of the disciples
to the unbelieving world outside of the community of discipleship.
And we are told in this section of chapter 15 that the world would hate and persecute
disciples of Jesus.
Well friends, in my sermon for this morning, I want to have us consider what we can learn
in our passage about the relationship that we who are followers of Jesus are to have.
First of all, with one another and also what we learn in this text about the way we can
expect the world to relate to us.
We’ll especially consider the world’s hatred of Christ’s disciples.
But let’s first of all, let me have us focus our attention on the section of this chapter
verses 12 through 17 as we first of all consider the self-giving love that Christ’s disciples
are to have for one another.
This is the first point in your sermon outline.
If you’re following along, let’s consider the self-giving love that Christ’s disciples
are to have for one another.
Jesus says, this is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you.
Now if you’re a careful reader of the word of God, it’s important to read every passage
of scripture within its context.
And the question that should come to your mind is, well, what is the relationship between
verse 12 and the preceding section, the earlier verses of chapter 15, where Jesus had given
this metaphor of the vine and the branches?
How does Jesus now shift his attention to talking about how we are as his disciples
to love one another as Christ has loved us?
Where’s the connection between these two concepts?
Well friends, may I suggest to you that the connection between these sections of chapter
15, the connection is that abiding in Christ by a true and living faith, abiding in Christ
the vine should result in a mutual love among the disciples of the vine.
If you’re a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, you are a disciple of the vine.
You are a branch.
Christ is the living vine.
And if you have a living saving faith in him, you are a living branch in the living vine.
And therefore Jesus commands us as disciples of the vine to love one another as he has
loved us.
And so we see here in verses 12 and 13 that Christ’s self-sacrificing love for us is of
course the standard and model of the kind of love that we are to have for one another.
Again Jesus says, this is my commandment, and again he’s addressing his disciples and
through them he addresses us as the church.
This is my commandment that you love one another.
But notice he doesn’t stop with that.
He doesn’t just say, okay folks I want you to love one another.
He goes on to say, love one another how?
As I have loved you.
What does that mean?
How has Christ loved us?
Well Jesus goes on and fleshes that out in the next verse, verse 13.
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
If you’re a loving father or mother and circumstances require you to lay down your life in order
to preserve the life of a child of one of your children, you of course would do that
if circumstances called upon you to do that.
But Jesus lays down his life for us whom he calls his friends.
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
And this is the kind of love that we are called to in the body of Christ.
Now obviously there are some very important differences between Christ’s love for us and
our love for one another.
For one thing, Christ’s love was a redemptive love, a love which actually atoned for our
sins on the cross of Calvary.
And we can’t love each other in that sense.
I mean brothers and sisters in Christ, I cannot by laying down my life atone for your sins,
nor could you by laying down your life atone for my sins.
We are all sinners who need a sinless savior.
And so we can’t love one another in the same, exactly the same way that Christ has loved
us.
Christ loved us by paying the penalty for our sin, by atoning for our sin on the cross,
by redeeming us through sovereign grace.
However, there is an aspect of Christ’s love that we are to imitate by the grace of God.
Namely, we are to imitate its self-giving, self-sacrificing character.
Now this is a theme that is fleshed out elsewhere in the Johannine writings, and let me just
take you to a few other passages from John’s writings that highlight this.
If you go to John 13, let me read verses 34 and 35.
This is in the context of Jesus washing His disciples’ feet and then giving them instruction
in the aftermath of that event, and we read these verses in verses 34 and 35.
Jesus says this in John 13, beginning at verse 34, a new commandment I give you, that
you love one another, again here we see how we are to love one another, just as I have
loved you, you also are to love one another.
And then He goes on to say, by this all people will know that you are My disciples if you
have love for one another.
Now that’s very interesting, isn’t it?
Jesus doesn’t say, this is how they’re going to know you’re My disciples if you profess
correct doctrine.
Now again, I’m not denigrating the importance of doing that, but that’s not how outsiders
know that we are disciples of Christ.
They don’t know that we’re disciples simply by the creed that we profess, the worship
that we engage in, it says by this all people will know that you are My disciples, how?
If you have love for one another.
What kind of love?
The same character of love that was displayed by Christ in that He laid down His life for
us.
If the world sees us laying down our lives, loving each other sacrificially in a self-giving
way rather than in a way that seeks to get for ourselves, then that impresses the world.
That is a witness for the truth of the gospel.
The Apostle John brings out this same kind of truth in his first epistle.
Let’s turn to 1 John and let me just read 1 John 3 verses 16 through 18.
1 John chapter 3 verses 13 through 18.
I’m sorry, 1 John 3, 16 through 18.
The Apostle John writing under the Spirit’s inspiration writes this.
He says, by this we know love that He, that is Christ, laid down His life for us and we
ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
He’s not excluding the sisters there.
He’s using that as a generic term to talk of the Christian brotherhood, the brothers
and sisters in the body of Christ.
And what is the imperative or the indicative that grounds the imperative to lay down our
lives for the brothers?
It is the fact that Christ has laid down His life for us.
Therefore, we ought to, as a response of gratitude, we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
And then he goes on to say, but if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother
in need yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?
True children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and in truth.
In other words, true Christian love is love in action.
It’s a love that is not narcissistic or self-focused or centered primarily on your own emotional
sense of emotional fulfillment.
It is rather other-focused, outward-focused, self-giving.
It is a servant love.
So Christ’s self-sacrificing love for us is, of course, the standard and model of the kind
of love that we are to have for one another.
And then he goes on in verses, getting back to our passage in verses 14 through 15, one
of the amazing things that Jesus says here is that His love for us makes us His friends.
Notice what Jesus says in chapter 15, John 15, verses 14 through 15.
Jesus says, you are my friends if you do what I command you.
And I think the particular command that He has in view here is the command of loving
the Christian brotherhood, which is a fruit of true saving faith.
And He’s saying, you’re my friends.
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 have made known to you.
Think about that.
Think about that.
Certainly Jesus is Lord.
He is King.
He is our sovereign.
He is the lion of the tribe of Judah.
But He is also, by grace, our friend.
What a friend we have in Jesus.
What a Lord we have in Jesus, yes.
What a King we have in Jesus, yes, indeed.
What a sovereign we have in Jesus, yes, indeed.
What is so precious to us as believers is that in Jesus, we have a friend.
He has befriended us in sovereign grace.
And so we learn in the next set of verses, verses 16 and 17, that Christ’s choice of
us, His gracious election of us, enables us to bear fruit for God, including the fruit
of brotherly love, as it says in verse 16.
You did not choose me, but 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.
Now there’s debate about what particular fruit He’s talking about.
Is He talking about the fruit of conversions?
I mean, He’s addressing His immediate disciples, His apostles, and certainly they would bear
spiritual fruit through their preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
They would bear the fruit of conversion.
Or is He talking about the fruit of the Spirit?
Well, why can’t He be talking about both?
I think it would certainly apply to both.
But the point is, beloved, that it is God’s gracious choice of us, His sovereign election
of us in Christ, that bears fruit in brotherly love, one toward another.
And when you come to faith in Christ, the Lord comes and dwells in you by His Spirit,
and that Spirit implants within your soul a love for your brothers and sisters in Christ.
Now we don’t always act upon that love as we ought, and that’s why the Scriptures also
include exhortations to love one another.
Because we don’t do that perfectly, we’re not perfectly sanctified.
And yet there is a basic sense of love for our brothers and sisters in Christ that is
put there, and it is the result of God’s choice of us in Christ.
While our relationship with each other as fellow believers in Christ should, of course,
be characterized by brotherly love, in the context here, we should not expect such a
love from the ungodly world.
Instead, we should expect that the ungodly world will look upon us with an attitude of
hostility, and that hostility can take the form of indifference, but it can also take
the form of hatred and persecution.
And it’s that more aggressive form of hostility that Jesus addresses in our passage.
And that brings us to the next point.
Let’s consider next.
We’ve considered the kind of love that we are to have for one another in the brotherhood
of the vine, the brotherhood of Christ, as brothers and sisters in Christ.
But let’s consider next the world’s hatred of Christ’s disciples, the world’s hatred
of Christ’s disciples.
Beginning in verse 18, Jesus says this, if the world hates you, know that it has hated
me before it hated you.
The reason that the world hates us is because of our connection to Jesus Christ, the living
vine.
We are branches in the vine.
Those who are outside of Christ, they are not branches.
They are not connected to the vine.
They belong to another kingdom, the kingdom of darkness.
And so there is an antipathy towards us.
There is an antagonism towards us that is often expressed in persecution.
So Jesus says, look, don’t expect the world to give you accolades.
Don’t expect the world to prop you up and say, huh, aren’t these wonderful people,
these Christians?
No.
Jesus says, if the world hates you, don’t be surprised.
Don’t be shocked like, why are they so nasty towards us?
Why do they not like us?
If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.
They hate us, brothers and sisters, because of our connection to Christ, because we represent
Christ and we profess his lordship.
And we, by the grace of God, we seek to demonstrate that lordship in the world by the way that
we love one another in the Christian fellowship.
Jesus says in verse 19, if you were of the world, the world would love you as its own,
but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world.
Again, notice the emphasis on divine election.
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.
The world hates us because we are not of the world.
We’re not in the inn club.
We don’t have the membership card anymore to the kingdom of darkness.
When God in sovereign mercy brought us to faith in Christ, that membership card in the
world was taken away and we became, the devil became our sworn enemy.
When you were brought, effectually called to faith in Christ whenever that may have
been in your own life, you became a marked target for the evil one.
And he wants to destroy you.
And he will seek to either draw you away, draw your heart away from Christ, or he will
seek to destroy you.
But the good news is that he who is in us is greater than he who is in the world.
And that we, by the grace of God, we’re on the winning side because Jesus rose from the
dead and he reigns at the Father’s right hand, he intercedes for us and he is preserving
us even unto the end.
He has chosen us, he has befriended us, and he preserves us.
But Jesus says, don’t be surprised if the world hates you.
And why does the world hate us?
Because we’re not of the world.
But it also teaches us here in verse 21 that the people of the world persecute us.
Why?
Because they do not know God.
Look at verse 21.
Jesus says, but all these things they will do to you.
Why?
Because they are on account of my name.
Because they do not know him who sent me.
They don’t know the Father who sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.
Now certainly, even those who are unregenerate, those who are apart from Christ, they know
of God.
They know about God through general revelation, God’s revelation of himself in creation and
in conscience and in providence.
What does the Bible say that the unbeliever does with that knowledge, that innate knowledge
or that knowledge because of the sense of the divine that the unbeliever has within
himself?
Romans chapter 1 says that the unbeliever does what?
They suppress the truth and unrighteousness.
Sort of like when you’re at the swimming pool and you’ve got one of those beach balls that
floats on top of the water.
And you know, I used to play this game as a kid.
You try to keep the ball under the water, you push it down.
What happens the moment you let go of that beach ball that you’re holding under the water?
It pops right back up again, right?
The world is holding down the truth and unrighteousness.
They don’t, all of creation, every fact of creation confronts the unbeliever with the
truth that God is.
The reality of God is inescapable because we live in God’s world.
We were created in God’s image.
We were created because of that image.
We have this sense of the divine that we cannot escape.
Even in our sin and fallenness, we cannot escape that sense of the divine.
But the unbeliever does not know God in the sense that Jesus is speaking of knowing God.
The unbeliever does not know God in a saving, redemptive way.
They know God as their creator and judge.
They do not know God as their redeemer and friend.
Jesus says, that’s why they persecute you.
They do not know him who sent me.
We also see that Jesus makes it clear that the world’s hatred of Christ’s disciples
is inexcusable in the sight of God.
As Jesus says in verse 22, 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.
Think about it.
Jesus, no doubt, has in view his opponents, the scribes and the Pharisees, the unbelieving
Jews who had rejected him and resisted him.
But what does Jesus say?
Jesus says, they’ve been confronted with my word.
Think about it.
The Son of God incarnate, the very living truth of God incarnate, had confronted these
men with God’s infallible word.
He had spoken the word.
He, the living word, had spoken the true word of God to them.
They had no excuse.
They had been confronted with the word of God.
Not only that, Jesus goes on to say in verse 23, whoever hates me hates my father also.
The unbelieving Jews had prided themselves because of their ceremonial rigors.
They had prided themselves on being keepers of the law, on loving God.
Jesus says, if you hate me, you hate the Father also.
You can’t claim to love God the Father if you reject God the Son.
And he goes on to say in verse 24, if I had not done among them the works that no one
else did, they would not be guilty of sin.
But now they have seen and hated both me and my Father.
Not only did the Lord Jesus Christ confront an unbelieving world with his very own person
in his incarnation and earthly ministry.
Not only did he confront them with the true word of God, the word that the Father had
given him to speak, but Jesus also gave indisputable proof to his messiahship by his mighty works,
his mighty miracles.
He healed the sick.
He raised the dead.
He cast out demons.
He walked on the waters.
He multiplied the loaves and the fishes.
He calmed the storm.
And the unbelieving Jews could not deny that he did those miracles.
Jesus did those miracles not merely in front of those who were sympathetic to him, those
who were his followers.
He did those miracles, those signs of God’s kingdom in the presence of those who had rejected
him as the messiah and had rejected God’s kingdom.
I find it interesting that Jewish arguments against the messiahship of Jesus, especially
early on in the early centuries of the Christian era, often focused on, accused Jesus of being
a sorcerer.
Jesus was viewed as a sorcerer.
What does that imply?
It implies that the Jews could not deny that Jesus performed these mighty miraculous signs
and wonders.
They didn’t deny the reality of the miracles.
They denied the source of those miracles, claiming that Jesus did those miracles by
the power of Beelzebub, or the prince of demons, namely Satan, rather than by the power of
the Holy Spirit.
In any case, the point is, this hatred that the world has towards Christ and his disciples
is inexcusable in the sight of God.
That of course speaks to the human responsibility, but we also learn here that the world’s hatred
of Christ’s disciples was predicted by Holy Scripture, and therefore it is part of God’s
sovereign plan for the ultimate good of his church.
Jesus says in verse 21, but the word that is written in their law must be fulfilled.
They hated me without a cause.
And here again, as we read these verses in their context, we see the mysterious yet very
real interplay between genuine human responsibility and God’s absolute sovereignty in his works.
So friends, how is the church to respond to the world’s hatred?
Are we to respond as a church to the world’s hatred by taking up arms, by, you know, stockpiling
our guns?
Are we to respond to the world’s hatred by striving to restore a semblance of Christendom
through political activism?
Now, don’t get me wrong, there is certainly a place for political and cultural activism,
and for those of us who are followers of Jesus to be faithful in our Christian citizenship.
I’m not denying that.
But I’m talking about the church’s responsibility as the church, and as disciples of Jesus,
how are we to respond to the world’s hatred?
Are we to return like for like?
Are we to fight back, rise up and fight back in the power of the flesh?
No, Jesus tells us how to respond in this closing section that we’re going to consider,
verses 26 and 27.
This is my final point, beloved, the church is to respond to the world’s hatred by bearing
witness to Christ just as the Holy Spirit does.
The church is to respond to the world’s hatred by bearing witness to Christ just as the Holy
Spirit does.
In verse 26 it says, but when the Helper comes, notice the Holy Spirit is called the Helper.
When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the fact that Jesus says
I will send the Spirit to you is an implicit claim to deity, is it not?
Because he is sending the Spirit of God, that implies that he himself is likewise one with
the Father, that he himself is divine.
When the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who
proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.
And then it goes on to say in verse 27, and you also will bear witness because you have
been with me from the beginning.
The Holy Spirit, we learn in verse 26, is the Helper who is sent by Jesus Christ to
the church from God the Father.
The Holy Spirit helped the apostles to bear faithful testimony to Christ in the apostolic
era of the first century, and most of those apostles bore testimony to Christ even unto
martyrdom, according to what is likely reliable early Christian tradition.
All of the disciples except the apostle John, the author of this gospel, the human author
All of the other disciples, the apostles, died violent martyrs’ deaths.
And the reason that they had the power and the strength to stand up for Jesus even in
the face of such violent persecution is because the Helper attended them.
The Holy Spirit was sent as the Helper, enabling them to bear faithful testimony to Jesus Christ.
And the Holy Spirit continues today to help His church to bear faithful witness to Christ.
So let us trust in Him in our witness-bearing role as the church.
Now we notice in verse 26 of chapter 15 that the Holy Spirit, Jesus says that the Holy
Spirit proceeds from the Father.
Now our Eastern Orthodox friends, as an aside, our Eastern Orthodox friends deny that the
Holy Spirit also proceeds from the Son.
And they point to verses like this, they say, hey, hey, you know, Jesus says that the Holy
Spirit proceeds from the Father.
He doesn’t say that the Holy Spirit proceeds also from the Son.
Well again, this is a case where we need to understand why Jesus is focusing in particular
on the Spirit’s procession from the Father in this particular context.
There are other, many other I would suggest, scriptural considerations that support the
that the Holy Spirit proceeds from God the Son as well.
Jesus also, the Holy Spirit, I should say, also eternally proceeds from God the Son.
But in this passage, Jesus is speaking as the incarnate Mediator, as the God Man, as
the Word made flesh.
So we can understand why in this particular context His focus is on the Holy Spirit being
sent by God the Father and eternally proceeding from God the Father.
Jesus’ goal here is not to give us a lesson in Trinitarian theology.
His point is to point us to the Father who gives us the Spirit.
And so the Holy Spirit will enable the apostles to bear faithful witness to Christ.
And they are qualified to do so, to bear faithful witness.
Why?
Well, verse 27 tells us, because they had been with Jesus from the beginning of His
public ministry, as it says in verse 27, and you also will bear witness because you
have been with me from the beginning.
Now at this point, some of you may pause and say, well, okay, but that’s not true of us.
We did not accompany the Lord Jesus during His public ministry in the first century.
So how can we bear faithful witness today?
And where can we find this apostolic witness today?
Well, friends, the apostolic witness to Christ is found in its fullness in the New Testament
Scriptures.
And the church carries on this apostolic witness today as it faithfully proclaims the whole
counsel of God as it is revealed in the full canon of the Word of God, the Holy Scriptures.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, as we find ourselves living in the midst of a culture
that seems to be growing increasingly hostile toward us every day.
More than ever before, we need, we need the encouragement that comes from the self-sacrificing
brotherly love that our Lord Jesus Christ calls us to in the body of Christ.
So by the grace of God, let us strive all the more to love one another even as Christ
has loved us.
And I leave you with this question, dear listener.
Are you a branch in the vine?
Are you united to Christ?
Are you assured that Christ has loved you and laid down His life for you?
And do you receive and rest upon that good news by faith and faith alone?
Trust in Jesus, rest in Him as your Savior from sin, and then you can be assured that
Christ has loved you personally, that He’s laid down His life for you.
And that’s why you come to Him, that’s why you believe in Him, because He died for you.
So believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.
Abide in the vine, Christ is the living vine.
Amen.
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, we thank and praise and bless You, O Lord, for Your amazing grace given
to us in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Help us, Lord, as strangers in this present evil age, as those who are outsiders in this
foreign land.
Help us, Lord, to realize that we belong to Your eternal kingdom.
And help us, Lord, as children of the vine, branches in the vine, to love our fellow branches,
our brothers and sisters in Christ, even as Christ our Savior has loved us.
And make us willing to lay down our lives for the benefit of our brothers and sisters
in the body of Christ.
In Jesus’ name we pray, and all of God’s people said, Amen.
For our closing hymn, we’ll rise and we’ll sing together that familiar hymn, that wonderful
hymn, 456, Jesus.