Amen. Well, we're going to our
main sermon now, so if you have your Bibles, turn with me, please,
to John's Gospel, chapter 15. John's Gospel, chapter 15, and
we're going to read from verse 9. We're going to read John's Gospel
chapter 15 and verse 9. As the Father hath loved me,
this is the Lord Jesus who's speaking, so have I loved you. Continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye
shall abide in my love, even as I have kept my Father's commandments,
and abide in his love. These things have I spoken unto
you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might
be full. This is my commandment, that
ye love one another as I have loved you. Greater love hath
no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever
I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants,
for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth. But I have called
you friends, for all things that I have heard of my father I have
made known unto you. Ye have not chosen me, but I
have chosen you, and ordained you that ye should go and bring
forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatsoever
ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you. These things I command you, that
ye love one another. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. Sometimes we read a verse or
a passage in scripture and the implications and the significance
of the words are just astonishing. And we might find ourselves saying,
whoa, that's amazing. And the opening statement today
in our reading, this opening statement from the lips of the
Saviour is just such an example. The Lord tells his disciples,
as the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you. As God the Father has loved God
the Son, So Christ has loved his church and bride, the people
for whom he came and died. And as I was thinking about this,
I thought it would have been sufficient, surely, for Christ
to tell his friends as he was preparing to leave
them, for Christ to tell his friends of his affection, without
attaching to his avowal of love such a comparison as he does
here. And yet here it is, literally
saying to these men, I have loved you with the self-same love as
my Father in heaven loves me. Now the disciples knew something
of the Father's love. They'd several times heard it
declared. When the Saviour was baptised,
a voice from heaven said, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I
am well pleased. Again on the Mount of Transfiguration,
that same voice was heard. This is my beloved Son, in whom
I am well pleased. Hear ye Him. Whenever the father speaks, it
seems he is ever ready to declare and confirm his love for his
son. And what the Lord is telling
us here is that this is the same love with which we are loved
by Christ. Isn't that astonishing? God the
Father loved the church for Christ's sake with an everlasting love
before the earth was made. He loved us for Christ's sake. And he loved Christ with an infinite
pleasure. He loved us in Christ in whom
we are from eternity represented and preserved. There's an old word that some
of the old writers and commentators and preachers used to use. It's
not used so much these days, but it's a useful word. It's
a helpful word to remember. This old word, which is used
to describe the love of the Father. We speak of God's love of complacency. It is the special, unique delight
and pleasure that God the Father takes in his only begotten Son. God's love of complacency in
his Son. It's supreme love. It's the highest,
greatest love ever known. It's the infinite love of the
Father for the Son. And this love is the standard
and the pattern with which the Lord would have us know He loves
us. This is the love the Father has
for us as children by adoption into His family. And in Christ,
We too delight and please the Father as the Son delights and
pleases the Father. Nevertheless, the Saviour would
have his disciples know not only does the Father love him and
them in him, but Christ himself, as God-man mediator, loves them
with the self-same love. so that in Christ and under the
representation of Christ and under the suretyship of Christ,
we, the church, are loved by God, the Father, Son, and we
may assume God, the Holy Spirit, to whose love the Apostle Paul
appeals in Romans 15.30. We are loved with the same love
of complacency that subsists between the persons of the Godhead. Love that is freely bestowed,
that is unconditional, that is eternal, that is immutable, that
is enduring and everlasting. Love from which every blessing
flows. as the source of every good gift
from God. Every blessing of grace and mercy
and goodness and kindness and forgiveness. Every good and perfect
gift accrues from that. Love that forged with us that
indissolvable union. between Christ and his bride,
which lies at the very heart of the covenant of grace and
peace. This is the union that the Lord
Jesus Christ is speaking about. This is the union that he prays
for in John chapter 17, which, God willing, in a few weeks we
will come to, where he says in verse 21, that they all, that
is His people, His church, those for whom He shed His blood and
gave His life, that they all may be one. As thou, Father,
art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, that
the world may believe that thou hast sent me. Listen to this. And the glory which thou gavest
me, I have given them, that they may be one even as we are one,
I in them and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one
and that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved
them as thou hast loved me. So that what the Lord is saying
here is that with this union that has been established between
him and his people, him and his bride, comes this perfect love
of God and comes the glory that God gave to Christ the God-man. This is the privilege of our
state. This is the position in which
we are. is the benefit of our covenant
relationship, our union with the Lord Jesus Christ. All of
which is to say, brothers and sisters, there is nothing on
earth more blessed, more comforting and reassuring than the pledge
that Jesus has given us here, both of his Father's love to
him and his own love for us who are in him as our Lord and Saviour. Whatever befalls us in time and
whatever lies ahead for us in eternity in the way of union
and glory is all in accordance with the divine love of God for
us. That is a promise, that is a
privilege, that is a principle upon which to build our lives
and our faith in Christ. In yesterday's note, I mentioned
a number of ways in which this love of God and the love of God
the Son can be applied for our day-to-day encouragement. And I want to especially draw
your attention to the Saviour's statement, if ye keep my commandments,
ye shall abide in my love. And I want to do this not only
because I wish to contradict those preachers who teach that
believers obtain God's pleasure by keeping his commandments, although contradicting them is
an added bonus, but I want to draw your attention to Christ's
words because I want you to know that God's pleasure in his people
and Christ's love for his bride is neither variable nor conditional
on our obedience. Christ's love for us is as unchangeable
as Christ is unchangeable. And Jesus Christ is the same
yesterday, today, and forever. God's pleasure in us is as unchangeable
as Christ is unchangeable, who says, for I am the Lord, I change
not. Therefore ye sons of Jacob are
not consumed. Indeed, far from the Lord laying
on his little ones guilt for our sin, and fear for our standing
in Christ. And far from any of these preachers
who take such a verse as this and endeavour to impose it as
a stricture and as a demand upon the Lord's little ones. What
the Lord is actually telling us is that he undertakes to keep
us in his love. despite our failures and our
weaknesses. Now let us be clear. Our sin
will hurt us. It will shame us. It will bring
us into conviction. It will fill us with regret and
remorse. Sin is not good and it must be
opposed. It must be refused. It must be
evaded. but never ever think that the
Lord will withdraw his affection or withhold his care or abrogate
his concern for your soul because of the sin into which you fall. Nothing could be further from
the truth. Christ's love and pleasure in us is not based on
our human merit, but on his own obedience and it is upheld by
the immutability of his own character. We did not obtain God's love
by keeping his commandments and we do not retain it by doing
so either. All our righteousness, all our
acceptance with God is a matter long ago settled in the eternal
councils of the divine purpose, before the foundation of the
world, when we were chosen in Christ, that we should be holy
and without blame before God and our Father in love. Keeping
Christ's commands is not the cause of our standing in Him. It is the consequence. The outward evidence of God's
grace towards us is our obedience because of our union with Christ. He is the vine and we are the
branches. As we are in Christ, so there
is a fruitfulness flows from Him. We are a new creation and
our conversion and our transformation Our desire to honour and serve
the Lord is proof of his continuing love in us and for us. Our changed heart and soul will
keep us in his love. And that's not to say that we
never fall into sin or break his commandments or spoil our
testimony or hurt our conscience. by our thoughts, by our words,
by our actions. In truth, we do so frequently
and we do so sorrowfully. Nevertheless, by His grace and
for His glory, He will never lose us. We shall persevere in
His service because we are His. and we shall follow His direction
and our union with Him will be maintained until we sin no more
in glory. Keep your eye on your Saviour. Keep your trust in the efficacy
of His blood and His promise of forgiveness. Your sin will
cause you sorrow. but it will not lose you joy. Commandments that are written
on the fleshy tables of our heart are commandments already kept
and the guilt of their subsequent breach will not be imputed to
us. And here's another encouragement
granted to each of us who are loved of the Lord. and love the
Lord at least a little in return. God grant that our love for him
might grow. Here's another little blessing.
Our saviour calls us his friend. He calls us friends. Do you have a friend? It's good
to have a friend. Someone we can speak to. Someone
that we can confide in. Someone we can trust. And what
a friend Jesus is. We can speak to him. We can confide
in him. We can trust him. Oh, how we
can trust him. Think on this. God is my friend. He used to be my enemy. Now he
has reconciled me to himself and he is my friend. And he is
a friend who sticks closer than a brother. There's something
lovely here as well. Jesus calls us his friends. Now, I might call some great
person, some illustrious person, my friend, in hope of gaining
some benefit from doing so. And yet, no person would ever
drop my name because my name means nothing. And yet Jesus
calls me his friend. Jesus calls my name. And he says, you are my friend. Jesus identifies me as his friend. With Jesus on our side, we have
a friend in the highest places. We have a friend at court with
influence and power and authority. Our friend is rich and generous
and well supplied with all that we have need of to help and sustain
us in this world. And yet our friendship is much
more intimate and personal than just an open checkbook. Christ
is a father to us. and he provides for us as a father. Christ is an elder brother to
us and he cares for us as an elder brother does. He draws
close when we weep. He comforts us when we're lonely,
when we're frightened, when we're confused. He stands with us. He shelters us in the palm of
his hand. He says, I am thy husband. The eternal God is thy refuge
and underneath are the everlasting arms. Remember the vine and the
branches. Remember the head and the body. Remember the tender overtures
of mercy, the sweet whispers of love and forbearance. Remember kindness and concern
and sympathy. Our dear, dear friend knows all
we are suffering and all we have to endure, all we are thinking
and all that we feel. And he is constant and undemanding
and gracious and wise and gentle towards us. He is the best friend
a man and a woman or a boy and a girl could ever have. And he
will come and visit you when you need him. And he will generously
receive visits from you every time you go to him in faith. I mentioned yesterday, this love
of Christ for us, once enjoyed, this is what the Lord is telling
His disciples. He speaks to them of His love
towards them, likens it to His Father's love towards Him. And then He says that this love,
once enjoyed, once received, once experienced, is multidimensional. It's multifaceted. What we receive
from Him, we give to one another. What we receive from Him, we
share with one another. Our Lord will have His people
live out their experience of His love by following His example
and loving each other. Now we can't love each other
with the love that the father loves the son. But as the Lord
leads us to experience the significance and the implications of his love,
he calls us to love one another in return. And here we shall
discover the enabling power of transforming grace. The Lord
frequently calls his disciples to love one another. And he describes
the peak of that love as being sacrificial love when he speaks
of laying down one's life for a friend. What a concept, what a thought,
what an ideal that is for such a principle. to reign in the
hearts of a people brought into fellowship one with the other
in the Lord Jesus Christ. What a way to see and perceive
our brothers and sisters in the Lord as they for whom we would
be willing to lay down our lives. In truth, the Saviour was about
to excel even this in dying for his enemies. For it was while
we were yet sinners, says Paul in Romans chapter five, it was
while we were yet sinners that Christ died for us. While we
had enmity towards him. Finally, let me mention what
the Lord says here about electing love. Excuse me. When Jesus says that his disciples
did not choose him. He does not mean that they were
his disciples by force against their will. No doubt the Lord's
disciples consented to be his followers. But here the Lord
Jesus is insisting that their election and appointment to their
office was his choice of them first. He chose them before they
chose him. He called them to be his disciples
and apostles. He called them to follow him.
He called them to preach his gospel and to be fishers of men. And he equipped them to the task,
though they were simple men in the main. fishermen, tax collectors, men who just
lived and worked in relative obscurity in the communities
of which they were a part. And yet he called them, and he
equipped them to the task, and he fitted them for his service
of taking his gospel to the ends of the earth. They were ordained
to serve the Lord according to God's plan and purpose. And this is an important principle
of God's sovereignty and of his grace. And it is a principle
consistent with God's sovereign will and purpose in election
to salvation. Ordination. to eternal life,
like ordination to service, is God's prior choice. That's what
the Lord is telling us here. God could not have ordained them
to service had he not first ordained them to salvation. The Lord doesn't
send unsaved men out to save his people from their sins. The
Lord ordained them to eternal life and then he ordained them
to service. Election, God's choice of a people
to save, election is freely and unconditionally settled by God
without consideration of an individual's merit, character, or condition. Let me just draw something to
your attention, which I'm sure most of you will probably realize,
but it's worth saying just to be clear. When we talk about
free grace, the word free in that little phrase, free grace,
means that God gives it without any merit on our part. that he doesn't look at anything
within us, but he acts freely according to his own criteria,
his own will, his own purpose, quite distinct from anything
within us. He acts freely with his grace. That's what free grace means.
God's elect are chosen to salvation and ordained to eternal life
at his pleasure and according to his will. And yet there is more. Not only
had the Lord ordained these men to salvation and to service,
but he also ordained the success of the apostles' ministry. These
men would be the means for converting others Now they would be the
means of converting others on the day of Pentecost when thousands
were gathered in. Thousands were convicted and
converted and were joined to the church on that single day. And in the years that followed,
these men continued to preach the gospel and success followed
their labours. God ordained it. Christ ordained
it that his church would be gathered through the fruitful activity
of these men and he would ensure that they had every provision
necessary to fulfil their task and accomplish his will. Whatever
these men needed to complete their great commission, was simply
to be asked for and it would be supplied. Only this says the Lord, only
this. Let them love one another. In
their common cause of serving Christ, let God's people love
one another. Let there be no division in this
cause upon which we are embarked. Let there be no falling out in
our fellowship. Let there be no breach of friendship
who are, each one, the friends of Christ. which request is repeated
here by the Lord for the third time to emphasise its importance. May the Lord make it so for us
all. Amen.