“If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done unto you” – John 15:7
Prayer is not a monologue, but a dialogue and this verse suggests that it begins with us allowing his words to abide in us.
Listening to God’s voice is the secret of the assurance that he will
listen to mine.
Read the verse carefully once again, “If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done unto you.”
His words abiding is the equivalent of himself abiding. The old testament believers lived in this reality.
“So, Abram went as the Lord had told him.” Their life was marked with fellowship with God – the interchange of word and thought.
What God spoke they heard and did; what they spoke God heard and did.
‘Beloved, God is willing to give us a listening ear and give us whatever we ask Him in Faith, but are we giving him a listening ear by reading and abiding in His words?’
If not, then let’s come to him with an open mind and an open heart
daily, let his words take deep roots and nourish our soul.
Prayer:
O God, help us listen to you daily just as you listen to us. May we abide in you daily as you abide in us.
“If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done unto you” – John 15:7
In this verse the promise and its conditions are inseparable. The verse suggests that if we want God to answer all our prayers, we must first abide in him.
To abide in him means walking in obedience in accordance with his word and the leading of his Spirit. It is only when we keep his commands, we fully abide in his love, if we love him, we will obey him.
Beloved brother & sister, I’m sure you have a list of prayer requests that you want God to answer, but may I urge you to first search your heart with full honesty and seek to abide in our Savior.
And as you continue to abide in him, believe that he is working on your request and in due time will answer them and fill your heart with overflowing joy.
Prayer:
May God give you the grace to seek him, love him and abide in him, and may he fulfil all the desires of your heart for the Glory of His Name!
Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!” John 21:22
In this busy and short-sighted world, we live in, we think that we always fall short of something. We look at the new car our neighbour bought, or the promotion our colleague received, right from the colour of our skin to the money in the bank account, we compare ourselves with our peers, friends and social media friends. This often leads to self-doubt which spirals into all kinds of emotions, stirring a mental battle within our minds.
We are in spiritual warfare. Comparison is a joy killer. Satan uses it to get us away from God and doubt His love for us.
Here is a reminder.
You are called to be You. God has made you with so much detail, not so that you would be like someone else but yourself. You are called and chosen by the One who bore your transgressions on the cross of Calvary, Jesus Christ. He died for you because He loves you. He was the ransom which was paid for our sins. When you compare his work, you doubt his creation and his plan.
God already has a plan for our lives. He has gifted us with the privilege to reflect Him through all that we say and do. God doesn’t call the ’prepared’ but prepares the ’called’.
We don’t have to do what others are doing, we have to do what God has called us to do. We got to trust him with His plan and surrender ourselves. We are custom designed by God for fulfilling His purpose and calling over our lives.
Jesus died to make us “free indeed” (John 8:36), and this includes freedom from the tyranny of sinful comparison.
Prayer: Jesus, we humble ourselves under your mighty hand, trusting you to redeem us from all our suffering. Let us exalt you in the way that will bring you glory and help us find joy in you.
In fact, all of these topics are probably taught in our moral science classes & certainly in other religions. But what’s the difference here? While in all the other cases, people teach and talk about how we need to do so many things to achieve a prayerful life or a humble life or a satisfied life.
In contrast, what we’re saying is that the good news of Jesus in fact empowers & enables us to do all of these things!
And continuing in this series we have a wonderful theme this week called “Gospel Obedience”. I’m presuming that some of you as soon as you heard this…you were like “it’s going to be another sermon on how I need to do this and that and then by the end I realize how I fail to do all of those things”.
And I just want to let you know that I understand that sentiment. I remember a few years at a camp that I attended, the speaker spoke on obedience and the title of his message was “the thrill of obedience”.
And I remember being a little taken off guard by the title because I never thought obedience as something thrilling or enjoyable or something to look forward to. And that happens because of some baggage that we carry with us.
We view God as a Rule-book keeper
All of us have had a strict teacher at school or a headmaster or a parent or a pastor – and we sometimes think of God as being like that – Like a very strict headmaster who is making a list of all our moments of obedience and disobedience and waiting to punish us for every mistake that we make.
And although God is Just and Righteous in everything, but He’s not like the Headmaster that we think He is.
We see ourselves fail to keep up with the rules
The other reason why a topic like obedience could be discouraging for us is because we know how we fail in our attempts to obey God’s Word. Some days might be good in our performance – I read the Bible today, I had no arguments with people today, I completed my daily work on time and I even managed to share the gospel with one person.
But then there are quite a few other days where we don’t do any of them and then suddenly, we realize that we cannot keep up with the performance. We keep missing the mark. We keep falling and failing. And we keep looking up at the “headmaster” wondering how angry he is.
Has anyone
ever been there? That’s why I think today’s sermon is going to be important
because it’s going address our baggage that we’re carrying and also push us
forward to gospel obedience.
Our main
text passage is from John 14:15:
15
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments.
If you notice it doesn’t say – if you go to church, you will keep my commandments. Or if you read your Bible, you will keep my commandments.
What does it say? If you “LOVE” me, you will keep my commandments. Love for Jesus is the motivation for obedience!
We express our LOVE for Jesus by keeping His commands. So the real question is do we truly love Jesus? That’s the real question.
Let’s begin changing the way we ask ourselves questions about our obedience. Obedience is not about Do’s and Don’ts but it’s about loving Jesus. Do we love Him? What does it mean to love Jesus? How can I love Jesus?
1. Loving obedience is always a response to God’s love
19 We
love because he first loved us. (1 John 4:19)
Our love
for God is always a response to His love for us! When we obey God, it’s not to
do Him a favor neither is it a way of us to receive favor from Him. Gospel
obedience is the result of a deeply thankful heart for what Christ has done for
us!
Tim Keller
mentions there are two types of obedience:
Religious: I obey, therefore I am loved and accepted by God
Days when I read my Bible and I try to live a good, spiritual life and I’m active in the church and that’s why I think God loves and accepts me. Days when I’m not able to live a good, spiritual life – those days I’m fearful and insecure. My spiritual performance determines God’s relationship with me.
Gospel: I am loved and accepted by God in Jesus, therefore I obey
God has loved me infinitely through His Son Jesus and He accepts me wholly as His child. His love and acceptance doesn’t change based on my spiritual performance but on His Son’s perfect life.
Because God’s love and mercy is sooo great….because the worth of His sacrifice is immeasurable – I want to joyfully serve Him in obedience.
A few years back when I was in full time ministry, I remember getting really discouraged after doing 9 months of ministry. 3 times a week I would go to different business parks around Mumbai trying to share the gospel with different people.
And even though some people would initially show positive response but after 9 months no one believed and I found no seekers as well. Plus I would go for all these conferences where people would come and say that they planted many churches in year and I would think “it’ll be good if at least 1 or 2 people believed in my case”.
And I remember feeling very insecure because I wasn’t sure if God was pleased with my ministry. Maybe I was doing something wrong. And I was talking to this one pastor friend of mine who said this “There’s nothing more you can do for God to love you more, and there’s nothing less you can do for God to love you any less.
He loves & accepts you fully and completely in Christ Jesus”. And a weight of pressure and condemnation just left me. In fact that day…a new freeing joy entered my heart to share the gospel! Not because I wanted to gain acceptance from God but because I’m already accepted in Christ.
This is different from antinomianism which means “God loves and accepts me for who I am so it allows me to do whatever I want to do”. No, that’s heresy.
God’s love and His acceptance in Christ – humbles me and makes me want to joyfully, willingly obey Him. I hope you understand this very key point on obedience.
We obey from love not for love! We obey from acceptance not for acceptance!
Not only is
Loving obedience a response to God’s love but
2. Loving obedience is always whole-hearted
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord
your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
(Matt 22:37)
It’s not
partial obedience like 50% or 80% or not even 90% but loving obedience toward
God is 100%. It’s all or nothing. I’m sure some of us might be thinking “I’ve
heard this verse numerous times but what does loving God with all our heart and
soul and mind and strength actually mean?” I think it could mean two
things:
Delight in God:
Have you ever thought of delighting and enjoying God? For some of us it sounds like a strange thing because we think of God as the “rule book keeper” and we never think about God as someone we would be enthralled and delighted in! I remember when I was in my teens how me and one of my friends from school would end up watching full 5-day test matches.
Sometimes when these matches would be played in New Zealand and Australia, I would also wake up early in the morning to watch it. And this was during regular school days! Quite crazy but at that time I enjoyed watching cricket! It didn’t seem burdensome or tiring to me.
And now when I think about this – it was for something of very little value (sports and entertainment)…how much more should I delight in the One who Created me and Redeemed me from my sin? He wants us to enjoy our relationship with Him.
As we grow in our understanding of what Jesus has done for us, as the beauty and radiance of Jesus becomes brighter to us, as we see God answering our prayers, as we see God use us to minister to our brothers and sisters, and as we see ourselves looking more and more like Jesus everyday – God’s desire is for that to thrill our hearts and our minds.
God’s desire is for us to be in awe – and realize that we are in a relationship with an amazing God! God doesn’t desire begrudging obedience – that doesn’t bring Him any glory…what He desires is delightful obedience.
Not Delayed
Have you ever thought of Delayed obedience as disobedience? I realized this some years back as I was having a conversation with my brother in Christ. At that point I was 8 years into the faith but still not baptized. This brother asked me what my thought was about baptism?
And I explained how I believed in believer’s baptism but wasn’t sure if the time was right. Maybe I would want to do it sometime in the future. That’s when he told me this – “Delayed obedience is disobedience” and it just made sense and convicted my heart immediately. Similarly, I want to challenge you which ever area God is calling you to right now in obedience, what would it mean for you to obey right now?
What would it mean for you to not delay? To not give this excuse or that reason but actually obey God. In some cases I know it might be painful or hard, but would you obey God no matter how difficult the cost?
Not only is
loving obedience a response to God’s love & wholehearted but :
3. Loving obedience is always
self-sacrificial
By this
we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his
commandments (1 John 5:2)
For me this was a little strange verse initially because I kept thinking what’s the relationship between loving the children of God and my obedience? The two things seem separate and contrasting.
How is my obedience or disobedience related to loving someone else? Well, that’s the biggest myth we need to put out. Our personal obedience is not just between us and God. Our obedience/disobedience is always affecting other people- our families, our church and the people we interact with on a daily basis.
Let’s say for example I’m harboring unforgiveness against someone else. I know I need to repent & reconcile but I’m disobedient, what happens? I’ll keep a distance from the church. I’ll try to be isolated. But am I truly being loving?
No, I’m actually withholding the church members from receiving my gifts, my encouragement, my comfort and service that God has given me. So my disobedience is actually not just grieving the heart of God, and affecting the other person but also the whole church. This is just one example.
Similarly,
what the area in your life where God is calling you to obey Him
self-sacrificially? You know that your disobedience is not just affecting your
relationship with God but also the other people that are doing life with you.
In the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating the fruit – with that one act of disobedience idolatry, adultery, immorality, murder, theft, lies and every other kind of sin and wickedness flowed into their hearts.
And with that the guilt and shame associated with disobedience. And we all were born with that very same nature of disobedience. But when Jesus Christ the Son of God came to the earth, unlike us he did not have that nature and lived a perfect life of obedience.
And through His death and resurrection – he paid for our lifetime of disobedience once for all and not just that but reversed and began the restoration process for us who believe so that one day when He returns we will be like Him perfectly obedient to God – not out of our will or efforts but totally by the grace of God. So let that encourage our hearts today – if we have repented of our sins & truly trusted in the finished work of Jesus, then where we are today is not where we will be when He returns.
He will fully and completely finish the work of reversal and restoration that He began at the cross. Let that be our hope. Amen!
Good morning church! We are a couple of days away from Christmas day and what a wonderful season for people all around the world. In fact sometimes I think during Christmas, unbelievers seem to be more enthusiastic about this time than believers. But it should be a special time for believers as we remember that Christmas is about Jesus.
And this morning we gather together to celebrate His birth, death and resurrection as a family! As I was pondering on what passage to preach on this week, I felt like John 1 would be perfect for all of us to study this morning. Even as you are turning to John chapter 1, I just want to setup the context.
This gospel is written by the apostle John. He was one of the three disciples in Jesus’ inner circle apart from Peter and James. His main purpose for writing this gospel was to tell people that Jesus is the Son of God, the awaited Messiah and that we can receive eternal life by believing in Him. Simple, straight forward purpose and we are excited to see what God wants to communicate to our hearts through this passage. John 1:1-17
I believe this passage has 3 things for us this morning:
Christ is the true God
Christ is the true Light
Christ is the true Revelation
Christ is the true God
The apostle John starts this gospel with the words “In the beginning was the Word”. Do you remember any other place in Scripture that has a similar intro? Genesis 1:1 – “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” And right from the start John is trying to connect both passages and tell people how Jesus is the true God.
a.His Pre-existence
“In the beginning was the Word” (v1). Before anything was made or before anything existed – Jesus existed. For everything else in all the world, there is a start date…everyone and everything has a manufacturing date but not Jesus because He is God. Before the universe existed – Jesus existed. There are debates on how old the earth is – some say between 4-10 thousand years…others say a million years…either ways Jesus existed way before that! Isn’t that amazing?
b.His personal relationship within the Trinity
“the Word was with God” (v1) implying a very close relationship between God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. Jesus didn’t exist in eternity past in isolation but in a community and fellowship with the Father and Spirit. Jesus was with them before any thing was ever made. Every decision, every plan, every action was performed out of that intimate relationship.
c.His Divinity
“and the Word was God”. (v1) And then John explicitly refers to Jesus as God! Jesus wasn’t a created being. He Himself is God! That means Jesus is the All-Powerful, All-knowing and All-Present God. He is the Sovereign God who works out every situation and circumstance for His glory. He knows and sees the hidden intentions of our hearts. There’s no place on heaven or on earth that’s out of God’s reach. He is there everywhere!
d.His active role in Creation
All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. (v3)
That’s a powerful thing to say. It’s one thing to say that he helped or assisted in some parts of creation. It’s another thing to say that everything was made through Jesus and without Jesus nothing was made! When we look at the beauty of the sun rising from the east, when we look at the breathtaking view from a hill, when we look at the sky above us, when we look at the deep depths of the sea, when we look at the complexity and manner in which God has made us and stitched together our DNA – All of us have a unique DNA – when we look at all of this we realize that Jesus Christ was actively involved in creating all of this. Without him not even a single thing was made!
All of this should move our hearts to worship and honor Jesus as God! We live in an age where Christ is conveniently removed from culture and conversations. Christmas has now become X-Mas. Talking about Jesus in public is looked down upon and considered offensive in this culture. How should believers live out our faith in the midst of this? We continue to place Christ as central to every thing in life. We make Christ the centre of our marriages.
We make Christ the centre of our workplaces. We make Christ the centre of our friendships. We make Christ the centre of our entertainment. We make Christ the centre of our vacations and holidays. We make Christ the centre of our birthdays. We make Christ the centre of our worship services. We even make Christ the centre of our private moments when nobody is watching. Christ being the true God changes our worship! He’s not an ordinary human being or a figment of our imagination – He is God!
Christ is the true Light
John uses an interesting way to explain why He refers to Jesus as the true light.
a.Our necessity for the Light (v4, v7, v9)
4 In him was life,[a] and the life was the light of men.
7 He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him.
9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.
From all these verses we understand that John is stressing on one thing – we are all in darkness and are in desperate need for Light. This need is not just for those rapists and murderers but for “everyone” who has been born on the face of the earth. Apart from this Light, we will be left in darkness forever – Separated from the presence of God forever! Terrible position to be in. We need help. We need Light.
b.Our love for darkness (v10-11)
10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own,[b] and his own people[c] did not receive him.
Not only do we need Light but sometimes what prevents us from coming to the Light is our love for darkness. It’s like a guy who is stuck up in a deep pit and then over a period of time gets comfortable and starts loving his environment rather than wanting to get out of it. Crazy right but that is true of our sinful hearts.
John 3:19-20 says 19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.
c.Our provision through Christ (v12-13)
12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
Because we are in desperate need of the Light & because we ourselves are saturated with sin and love darkness more, we can’t help ourselves. We need God to make a way. We need God to provide an answer to this problem. And God provides for us His own precious Son to live a perfect life and then to die as a perfect substitute for our sins. So that v12-13 would be given to us as a free gift! So that by receiving Jesus and believing that He is the Son of God and has made a way for us through His death, we can now be God’s own children!
In my last church I once heard a story mentioned by an evangelist who used to minister in the villages of Maharashtra. My previous church had a legacy of being one of the oldest churches of India believed to have its roots in the ministry of the apostle Thomas. So this evangelist once was at a mission field talking to a group of new converts talking about how our church had a 2000 year history from Thomas.
As he was talking, one of the new believers stopped him and asked honestly “Brother, I understand that you have had the gospel for 2000 years, but why did you take so long to bring it to us?” A simple yet astonishing statement to the evangelist for many years.
Brothers and sisters, this truth about Christ being our true Light is an absolute necessity for everyone to hear and know. I know sometimes we do get discouraged when people don’t respond to the Light. I get discouraged easily myself. The reason why they can’t receive the Light is because they love darkness.
They don’t even see Jesus as Light because of their blindness. But let’s not allow that to stop us from telling people about the true Light. Since Jesus is the provision, let’s trust that God is the One who causes the spiritual birth in people’s hearts.
When we tell people about the Light, it’s not as though we are selling Jesus or a religion. We are pointing them to the true Light who will save them. That’s why we need to always accompany our evangelism by being on our knees. It’s Jesus who shines among the darkness and darkness cannot overcome Him.
Christ is the true Revelation
a.He is God incarnate (v14a)
14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us
All of us have similarly at some point or the other said something like this “You don’t know what I’m going through”. “It’s easier to say that from the position that you’re in”. That idea that if someone hasn’t been in your shoes, he won’t empathize with you is there in all of us. Now let’s think about what Jesus Christ did. He became flesh – he took on the form of us as a human being & endured every possible temptation and suffering that we go through yet without sin.
So we cannot say that God doesn’t understand – because Jesus lived in a fallen world among fallen people just like us. Talk about identifying and empathizing with us…Jesus takes it to the next level. The other thing that’s super encouraging is God’s pursuit to dwell with us – to stay with us. Even though he is the pre-existent, creator God – he doesn’t want to be disconnected and far from us…he desires an intimate relationship with us and He’ll do whatever it takes to make sure that He can dwell among us.
b.He fully reveals God to us (v16)
16 For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.[e] 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God,[f] who is at the Father’s side,[g] he has made him known.
Not only does Jesus identify with us by becoming like us and dwelling with us but He fully and completely reveals God to us. The full grace of God was poured out on us through Jesus Christ. Till then people understood God as a rule book keeper through the law, but through Christ we can now know see the length and breadth of God’s grace – and understand that there is no end! And it’s not in a sense where God’s grace is a cheap thing.
It came at the highest cost – the death of Jesus to now give us grace. And the best benefit of this grace – knowing God through the face of Jesus. No longer do we need a prophet to tell us who God is, we don’t need any signs to reveal something about God…we have God’s own Son Jesus who tells us everything about Him. How does he do that? Through the written Word.
I really think this should
open our hearts to trust Jesus more and more. The truth about Jesus being God
incarnate and fully revealing the heart, mind and person of God to us should
allow us to trust God in situations and decisions that we struggle with. Jesus
is totally for you and not against you. You don’t have to feel insecure about
situations or people or decisions in your life.