The Gospel of John Chapter 15
Lesson in Fellowship
Do you like going to the movies alone?
Most people don’t.
Same thing with going out for an evening meal.
Most people don’t want to have diner in public by themselves.
We don’t want to look like we’re alone.
That’s why you see people with their ipods plugged into their heads,
Or their noses buried in their laptop.
Or smoke rising form their finger tips as they text message.
All those habits say—I may be by myself but hey I’m not alone.
When what they really say is I’m afraid you will think I am alone.
People who are alone—
Don’t we think that there might be something wrong with them?
Human beings are meant to be social.
We thrive with meaningful interaction with others.
To much alone time and we get depressed.
Loneliness can drive a person mad,
In the movie Castaway about a man stranded on an
Island by himself for 7 years did a great job of portraying the madness
of loneliness with Tom Hanks’ character creating Wilson from
the volleyball.
The remedy for loneliness and being alone is fellowship.
When I think of fellowship,
My definition is something much larger than a pot-luck after church.
To me fellowship is about camaraderie, friendship, intimacy,
Belonging, Closeness, togetherness, safe, loving and being loved.
Today we are going to have a lesson in Fellowship from the 15th chapter of the
Gospel according to John.
We are going to learn how to have fellowship with Jesus.
But before we concentrate our efforts on this lesson in Fellowship there’s
something else that the Apostle John tells about—persecution.
John 15:20 (MSG)
Servants don't get better treatment than their masters. If they beat on me, they will certainly beat on you.
Living the life of a disciple is costly.
Jesus lays it out for us—
Don’t expect the world to give you any better treatment than it did me.
Here in the USA we are only just beginning to notice persecution.
The frog is in the kettle and the temperature is rising.
In my life time there used to be something called Blue Laws.
Blue Laws were a type of law in the US that existed to enforce
a moral standard—
I prefer to think of them as safeguards to a certain
way to live life.
Most prominent of the Blue Laws was no economic commerce
on Sundays.
The stores, the restaurants were closed.
Sunday was a day of rest.
A day of worship
Struck down by the Supreme Court.
Prayers in Public Settings—
In public schools unconstitutional,
Barely tolerated in most other situations.
When I attended public school during the last century
we actually sang Christmas Carols during Christmas and
enjoyed Easter Break instead of spring break.
Christmas displays on public property.
Now considered unconstitutional.
Company’s instructing their employees to forgo
Merry Christmas for Happy Holidays.
Idiots—Holiday is the modern word for Holy Day.
A display of the Ten Commandments in a county court house—
Unconstitutional.
A hand on a bible in a court of law—hardly ever done
any more.
Pledge of Allegiance, In God We Trust on our currency,
Rapidly becoming unconstitutional.
In God We Trust already removed from our money.
Freedom of Speech is rapidly becoming the right of everyone
except the Christian.
Homeschooling—illegal in the State of California—awaiting appeal.
In France they want to ban all personal religious symbols.
It makes me wonder if one day I might be arrested because my pinky ring as
a overtly religious symbol on it.
The First Amendment to the Constitution of the Unites States established
Freedom of Religion, Freedom of Speech, and Freedom to Assemble.
Freedom of speech in certain settings has already been taken away.
Free exercise of religion is slowly being taken away from you.
Bring your Bible or other overtly religious symbols to work with you and
see what happens.
Every so often legislation arises to remove the tax exempt
status from places of worship.
Or remove a ministries non profit status.
How long until you can’t meet with others for religious reasons.
In 1935 our grandparents were told that their new Social Security Numbers would
never be used for identification purposes outside the Social Security System.
Today its how the government identifies everyone.
When the National ID card becomes mandatory it will not surprise me to find a
question that asks for your religious affiliation on the required application
If that’s true I wonder what it will be used for 20-30 years down the
road.
It’s going to be too late to do anything by the time the Homeland Security Officer asks to see your card.
John 15:18-19 (MSG)
If you find the godless world is hating you, remember it got its start hating me. If you lived on the world's terms, the world would love you as one of its own. But since I picked you to live on God's terms and no longer on the world's terms, the world is going to hate you.
The non-believers killed Christ—
They killed the Master—what do you think they will do to His servants?
The world loves its own.
Do the things that those who do not know Christ do and you
will blend right in, a camouflaged Christian, Chameleon
Christianity, the world will love you.
Make a sincere effort to live the life of a disciple you’ll meet with
great opposition.
Two scriptures I want to put side by side for you
Two statements that Jesus made:
John 15:25 (MSG)
'They hated me for no good reason.'
John 14:30
“…the prince of this world is coming But don't worry—he has nothing on me, no claim on me.”
There is no hypocrisy in Jesus.
There is No sin that He can be charged with
There is no crime that He has committed.
There is no lie He has told.
There is no harm that He has done---
Let the same be said of you His Disciple
So a hating world will only be able to unjustly persecute you.
To me this is all rather sobering.
Heart troubling, unsettling.
Fortunately Jesus hasn’t left us without resources to deal with those
who hate us.
Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would come upon His disciples.
More on this next week.
For now, I just want you to open your eyes to the growing
aggressive persecution of Christians that is happening
today, right here, where you live.
Video Presentation of John Chapter 15
The lesson I want us to learn from Chapter 15 is one concerning fellowship.
Do you have a best friend?
Someone whose you trust with your heart.
You can tell your secrets to them and know that they won’t reject you.
Someone who brings our the best in you?
Do you have a best friend?
Who will stand by you through thick and thin?
Who will laugh with you and cry with you?
Who will fight with you and for you and
perhaps lay down his or her life for you?
If you do then you have an idea of what Fellowship is all about.
Fellowship is best understood by Jesus words “Remain in Me.”
John 15:4 (NIV)
Remain in me, and I will remain in you.
This is one of the clearest pictures that Jesus paints for us.
A grape Vineyard
Here’s a picture of the vines:
Here’s a picture of the branches:
Here’s a picture of fruit:
Jesus likens himself to the vine, His disciples to the branch, and the fruit
Is the glorification of the Father.
Here’s what Jesus said:
John 15:5 (MSG)
I am the Vine, you are the branches. When you're joined with me and I with you, the relation intimate and organic, the harvest is sure to be abundant.
What could be more clear.
The purpose of the vine is to produce fruit.
So the vine sends out branches,
The vine uses the branches to produce the grapes.
The disciple is the branch of Jesus,
As the life of Christ flows through the life of the disciple,
Fruit is produced.
Notice the connection, “intimate and organic”
To me that means real, with no pretense, no showmanship, no games.
Plain and simple my life as a disciple is totally dependent on
being connected to Christ.
What’s are the grapes,
what is this fruit that Jesus produces through the life of His disciples?
The fruit is glory.
Remember that glory can refer to a physical manifestation of
the presence of God.
John 15:8 (MSG)
This is how my Father shows who he is—when you produce grapes, when you mature as my disciples.
It’s through you that others can see God.
The fruit of a disciple is to reflect the glory of God.
AS you mature as a disciple, you change, becoming more like Jesus.
Jesus said, see me, you see the Father,
The fruit of a disciple is glory.
Therefore the Christian is to remain in Christ.
The Disciple who does not remain in Christ is no disciple at all.
John 15:6 (NCV)
If any do not remain in me, they are like a branch that is thrown away and then dies. People pick up dead branches, throw them into the fire, and burn them.
Profession without practice, words without deeds, produce no fruit,
The fruitless do not fare well.
Uselessness invites disaster
To avoid destruction we must “Remain in Jesus”
We’re talking about
Abiding, communion, intimacy, connectedness,
togetherness, identification, unification—
to partake, contact
This is what we mean by the word fellowship.
First we are to remain in Jesus
Secondly we are to remain in one another.
Jesus tells us how to remain in Him:
John 15:10 (NIV)
If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love.
It is through obedience that you remain in Him.
Last week you learned that obedience motivated by love is the life
blood of any relationship.
From our relational perspective
Love motivates me to do the things that strengthen my relationship
with Jesus and
Love motivates me to shun the things that hinder my relationship with
Jesus.
Just in case we miss the point, Jesus spells it out for us once again.
John 15:12-14 (NCV)
This is my command: Love each other as I have loved you. The greatest love a person can show is to die for his friends.
We remain in fellowship with Jesus when we obey His commands
and the one command Jesus keeps bringing to our attention is to love others.
We know that we love others by serving them.
If you are not serving, you’re not loving.
If you’re not loving, you’re not obeying
If you’re not obeying. You’re not remaining.
Fellowship is about remaining in Christ
To remain in Christ you have to obey
You obey because love motivates you
You display that love by serving others.
Which creates even greater fellowship with those we serve and
those we serve with.
Fellowship means that you are not alone,
you’re connected to Christ and through Jesus to a group of other branches,
with which you identify, where intimacy can be found,
where strength can be found.
Acts 2:42 (NIV)
They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to the fellowship…
The Fellowship—loving and being loved, acceptance and belonging.
God has hardwired you for fellowship.
You thrive in a community of intimate others.
You don’t need earphones plugged in when the voice of
those that love you are speaking.
You don’t need a lap top to keep you company when you
are fellowshipping with a friend.
Jesus teaching about the vine and the branches tells me that I can have a
relationship with Him that can be described with words such as
camaraderie, friendship, intimacy,
Belonging, Closeness, togetherness, safe, loving and being
loved.
When I think about this relationship with Jesus,
It’s not a mushy kind of love.
It’s a love that is forged in the fires of affliction.
It’s following the hero that rescued you from destruction.
It’s knowing that the quest is long and the path hard,
With danger around every bend but we travel
together, ready to take on whatever evil.
throws in our way.
It’s a fellowship born out of struggling through life together.
Coming through for one another.
It’s a loyalty that comes from being chosen.
From someone great believing that you can be great too.
And the key for creating this kind of fellowship is to remain in Jesus.
To remain I must obey,
I obey because love motivated my obedience.
I produce fruit because I serve others.
And God brings His kingdom to those I serve.
We’ve had lessons on Worship, Obedience, Service and Fellowship---
These are the things disciples do 24 7 365.
Grow in these activities.
so that you, branch, can produce much fruit.