John 15:1-17 · The Vine and the Branches
God's Chosen People: Partners
John 15:1-17
Sermon
by Maxie Dunnam
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A certain society matron took a course in First Aid. A few days after completing the course, she was an on-the-spot witness of a bad auto accident. Occupants of the car were thrown out by the impact and lay seriously wounded on the street.

Later, describing the accident to a friend, the matron said, “It was awful, awful — and it happened so fast, right there in front of me. Tires squealed, breaks screeched, and all of a sudden there was the grinding crash. The next thing I knew people were lying in the street, bleeding and moaning.”

“Yes — and what happened next?” the friend asked anxiously and excitedly.

“At first I hardly knew what to do,” continued the woman. “Then I remembered what they taught us in First Aid Class. Immediately I put my head down between my knees so I would not faint.”

Behind the humor of that is a commentary on human nature. Our first concern is ourselves.

In my last sermon, based on the same scripture lesson as today, I talked about the privilege of Christ’s Chosen People. We are chosen for joy and we chose to be friends of Christ. That is our privilege.

But there is a flip-side to these six power packed verses. Not only are we chosen for privilege, we are chosen to be partners partners with Christ. And when we are partners, unlike the way the society matron used her First Aid training, our first concern cannot be for ourselves.

Let’s live again with this scripture, and discover what it means to be chosen as a partner with Christ. Soak your mind in that astounding, exhilarating word of Jesus “No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave doesn’t know what his master is doing; but I call 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.”

Let me remind you of what I said in my last sermon about the exhilarating word. The title doulos the slave or Servant of God no title of shame; it was indeed a title of the highest honor. Moses was the doulos, the servant, the slave of God. (Deut. 34:5); so was Joshua (Johsua 24:29), so was David (Psalm 89:20).

It was a title which Paul counted it an honor to use (Titus 1:1); (Over and over again, he was proud to address himself, “Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ”)…The greatest men in the past have been called the douloi of God. And Jesus says, “I have something greater for you yet; you are no longer slaves; you are my friend.”

The slave could never be a partner. The slave was defined in Greek law as a living tool. His master never opened his mind to him. The slave had to do what he was told without reason and without explanation. But Jesus said to us: “You are not my slaves; you are my partners, my friends. I have told you everything, I have told you what I am trying to do, and why I am trying to do it. I’ve told you everything which God told me.” Jesus has given us the honor of making us his partners in his task. He has shared his mind with us, and opened his heart to us, and told us of his plans, his aims, and his ambition.” (William Barclay, The Gospel of John, Vol. 2, The Daily Study of the Bible, pp. 208-209).

So, let’s see for ourselves what it means to be partners with Christ – and of course, as always, we get our direction from Scripture.

I

PARNTERS IN WITNESS

Jesus said: “You did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit.” So, this is our first direction, we are to be partners in witness. “I send you out,” Jesus said. Too much of what the church does, I am afraid, emphasize our privilege, rather than calling us and equipping us to be partners with Christ in witness. “I send you out,” said Jesus.

Jesus was always going out in the sense that he was always seeking and serving people who had not yet experienced being chosen as friends of God. You can’t read the New Testament without realizing that. The Lord dines with Pharisees and with Publicans. He shocked people by going home with Zacchaeus. He shocked them even more by paying attention to an adulteress. He simply doesn’t seem to have refused invitations to partake hospitality from whatever quarter it came. The formalist complained that he was “gluttousness, a winebibber and a friend of Publican and sinners.” Now, a part of that is true. He was not gluttousness; He was not a winebibber, but he was a friend of the Publicans and sinners.

Focus on that for a moment. Jesus was always gong out. His mission was always to minister at the point of their need. We have to keep learning that lesson over and over again in the church. It never seems to stay with us. As Jesus’ partner, we are to be his witnesses.

A friend of mine, Sir Alan Walker, told of having a preaching mission down in Florida. The church was packed with people and after the evening service had begun, a man, disheveled and ragged in his dress – unshaven, somewhat dirty, a cigarette hanging from his mouth, wandered into the side door of the church at the front of the sanctuary. He just stood there simply observing what was going on. He made no noise, caused no commotion, but certainly got a lot of attention. He leaned up against the wall, and began to listen and look. Very soon ushers came up and engaged him in quiet conversation, and it wasn’t long before quietly and without adieu they were accompanying him out the door.

After the service, a very proper and polite woman, handsomely dressed, wanted to make sure that Sir Alan had not been distracted or upset by what had gone on. She asked him if he had seen the man come in and all that went on. After carrying on in that fashion for a while, she concluded by saying, “He obviously knew that he didn’t belong here.”

What a pity! If anyone belonged there, it probably was that particular man. Thinking about Sir Alan’s experience, I remembered another story. Many years ago a drunken sailor literally stumbled into a small Methodist Chapel. His language and lifestyle were disgusting, and he looked a reprobate. He listened to the preacher’s words, and for the first time he actually heard what was being said.

The man was converted in that revival service. He began to look differently at himself, and over a period of time discovered there was so much inside of him that he never knew was there. He found a sense of joy and fulfillment. He fostered a new commitment unlike anything he had ever experienced.

Because he had a talent for writing, he began to share the story of his conversion through the printed word. One day he penned four of the most precious lines of Christian verse that the world knows:

Amazing grace how sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me,

I once was lost but now I’m found,

Was blind but now I see.

I’m certain that as he wrote those lines he was thinking of that transforming experience in that small Methodist Chapel.

How else can it happen my friends? How else can it happen unless you and I exercise our partnership as witness?

There is a second privilege for Christ’s Chosen People. Stand on tiptoe now in your mind. Get read. This is one of the most heartening, exhilarating words of Jesus. Listen to it in verses 15 & 16: “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.”

WE ARE CHOSEN FOR FRIENDSHIP.

Now, if that doesn’t touch you as deeply as it should, rehearse the setting and know how tenderly piercing this word would have been for those who heard it first.

The more precise translation here is “No longer do I call you slaves.” The Greek word is doulos.

Barclay reminds us that “the title doulos the slave, the servant of God was no title of shame; it was indeed a title of the highest honor. Moses was the doulos, the servant, the slave of God. (Deut. 34:5); so was Joshua (Joshua 24:29); so was David (Psalm 89:20). It is a title which Paul counted it an honor to use (Titus 1:1); (Over and over again, he proud to address himself, “Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ”)...The greatest men and women in the past have been proud to be called the douloi of God. And Jesus says: “I have something greater for you yet; you are no longer slaves; you are friends. The offer of Christ is a blessedness which not even the greatest person of the world knew before Jesus came into the world; he offers an intimacy with God which was impossible before His coming.” (William Barclay, The Gospel of John, Vol. 2, The Daily Study Bible, pp. 207—208).

Ah, my friends if we could remember that. One of our greatest problems as Christians is that we forget. We can’t sustain the awareness of our identity. We allow the experience of God’s love to become a vague hint of memory - no aliveness at all. The question is, how do we keep the experience alive? How do we keep the vision of who we are, friends of Christ glowing and growing in our lives? I suggest three helps.

One, we need to immerse ourselves in the witness of Scripture. The overwhelming message of Scripture is that God really loves His people - that we are friends of Christ. Scripture affirms it over and over again — that God loves us — and that His love reaches out to us, not as we might be if we were better, but that He loves us as we are and where we are. Isaiah uses an emotion-laden image to picture God’s love:

“Can a mother forget her own baby and not love the child she bore? Even if a mother should forget her child, I will not forget you.” (Isaiah 49:15 TEV).

Jesus pictured that love over and over in symbol and parable the most unforgettable one about a prodigal son. The grandeur of the story is revealed when the son, from the sheer motive of survival, decides to return home. The father is there, waiting and ready to receive him.

When we seriously consider this parable of the Prodigal Son and the message of Scripture, it leaves no room for continued doubt about the attitude of God our Father toward us;: He loves us. So we need to immerse ourselves in Scripture to keep alive the awareness of who we are – friends of Christ.

Then, a second help is to hold onto the experience of God’s love and our and our friendship with Christ in our memory.

The Psalmist illustrated the power of memory over and over again. They talked about being “pricked in heart,” of being “afflicted and in pain,” of being “cast-down, O my soul…” They talked about being “like an owl in the waste places,” or “shut-in so they cannot escape, eyes dimmed through sorrow.” In the midst of cries of desolation and moans of despair they emerge in joyous exaltation. The transition from sadness to song is memory, captured in a word like, “I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord.”

It has been true for me. I can recall occasions when there was no doubt about it – God loves me. I am a friend of Christ. My conversion experience – the malignancy of my mother, in the midst of whose suffering the love of God sustained her and her family; a long period of recuperation following an auto accident that left me with a broken leg, broken ribs, and a punctured and collapsed lung – they were all dramatic experiences, alive in my memory, which testify to my relationship with Christ.

Ponder your history, call to mind experiences that are clear witnesses of God’s love, live with those memories and keep them alive in your life and in the future when you are cast down in your soul, pull out one of those memories and let it set you on tract again, let it rekindle the vision of who you are – a friend of God.

Then there is a third help, a third help in keeping alive the awareness of who we are in relation to God’s love – that is our relationship with other persons through whom God expresses His love.

When Speaker of the House, Sam Rayburn, near the end of his life, discovered just how ill he was, he surprised his colleagues in Congress by announcing that he was going home to Bonham, Texas. Why go to such a not-even-on-the-map kind of place when he was so ill, when the best medical facilities of the world were available to him in Washington?

Rayburn told them why. “Bonham, Texas,” he said, “is a place where people know it when you are sick and care when you die.” Now that’s worth something isn’t it?

Other persons who are channels of God’s love are essential for our keeping alive the vision of who we are. Friends can be the instruments to underscore our friendship with Christ. Much of the love, in fact, I would be bold to say that most of the love that comes to me from others, is God’s love coming to me through them.

When a person loves me in spite of myself; when I am loved though undeserving; when I have hurt another deeply, or have been calloused to another’s feelings and needs; when I have been insensitive to the pain and reaching out of another, yet am loved and accepted. I experience this as Christ’s love for me. So through friends, through what Wesley called “Christian Conferencing” we keep alive the experience of who we are – Friends of God.

The invitation that I am going to share with you at the close of this service will give you the opportunity to cultivate these three helps in your life.

Let me say just one other word about the privilege of friendship. There was a custom both at the Courts of the Roman Emperors and the Eastern Kings which really shedsome light on this designation of Jesus. “At these courts there was a very select group of men who were called the Friends of the King or The Friends of the Emperor At all times they had access to the King; they had even the right to come to his bed-chamber at the beginning of the day. He talked to them before he talked to his generals, his rulers, and his statesmen. The friends of the king were those who had the closest and the most intimate connection with him, and who had the right to come to him at any time.

“Jesus called us to be His friends and the friends of God. That’s a tremendous offer. It means that no longer do we need to gaze longingly at God from a far off; we are not like slaves who have no right whatever to enter into the presence of the Master; we are not like a crowd whose only glimpse of the King is in slit passing on some state occasion when, if we tried to come nearer, we would probably be arrested. Jesus did the amazing thing - he gave us this intimacy with God, so that God is no longer a distant stranger, but an intimate friend.

My friend had put the two together. She had found her life by losing it, and in my mind, she had become great by serving.

IV

Now, a final word. Jesus’ radical instruction for us – that we find our lives by losing the, that we serve him by serving others, come together in our: DYING TO LIVE.

Recently, watching television, I was moved as I always am, when I heard the trumpet reveille played in a memorial service at Arlington Cemetery – a reveille in memory of the dead. Then it hit me. It is the same reveille played as a trumpet call to awaken soldiers in the morning. What a symbol. Music in memory of the dead, the same music to awaken us in the morning. Jesus said when we follow him in dying as a style of life, we will be where he is when we die – that is we will be awakened to live eternally. That clinches his argument. I pray that you are convinced.

ChristianGlobe Networks, Inc., Collected Sermons, by Maxie Dunnam