Let's return together to the gospel of John. The gospel of John and a key passage this morning, it's hard to say that for every passage in the scripture is a key passage. None can be left out for the Lord has taught the disciple so much more and there is so much more of God than we have that we have revealed that each and every verse of scripture is a verse that we should treasure and that we should hold. But nevertheless here in John 15 we are finding a summary of the teaching of Christ as we have been exploring it together these past few weeks. As I was reading through and planning for this week, I couldn't help but think of the success of that book by Rick Warren, the purpose-driven life, subtitled one on earth and my hear for. And this passage in fact would answer that very question. What Warren has given an entire book, has some merit of course but Christ has taught us here in such a smaller amount of space. That book of Rick Warren's reveals the dilemma of the modern mind though. He has touched on a nerve, hence the expanded and continuing expanding cells of that book. I couldn't even find an accurate figure when I did a search on the internet. I came up with different years and different numbers as it continues to sell. It's well over 40 million. I can promise you that. Today people are born, they're nurtured, they're educated, they're provided remarkable opportunities in this world, but more and more as children become adults, they seem to have no idea why they are here at all. It seems that the more opportunity there is, the more lost we become. So we go through life simply doing what we have to do, never really knowing where it'll take us, never really learning the context that we are supposed to be living and just carrying on as if we're part of a great machine called humanity and never really feeling fulfilled in our lives. John 15, verses 15 through 17, could it be that Christ answers in two or three short passages the greatest questions of our lives lived here on this earth? Verse 15, 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 known, or rather 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. May the Lord bless the reading of his word. In Ecclesiastes 1, we find essentially the voice of the generation that we now have among us. In Ecclesiastes 1, we find an introduction to post-modernism, a sense of directionlessness, a sense that it doesn't really matter where you go or what you do as long as you go somewhere and do something that nothing really has connection with purpose. Nothing really has connection with calling. Just do a little bit over here now and do a little bit over there later. What does it matter and the big scheme of things? As long as I have enjoyed the day in which I live, but isn't that the message of Ecclesiastes? It's ironic how Solomon himself perhaps was the first post-modern except Solomon because of his wisdom did arrive at the right answer, but the toils he went through, the journey he went through to arrive at that answer is heart-rending. Vanity of vanities, he says. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. What does man gain by all the toils and which he toils under the sun? A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. Isn't that the voice of the generation in which we now hear? They say, we live and we die. Our days are short, they're brief. Why should we labor? Why should we not have fun and excitement? They're so short, they're so brief. Life is so vain. At least I will indulge myself today and know that today I had fun and that becomes the measure of a successful life that we had fun today. The sun rises and it goes down. It hastens to where it rises. He goes on talking about nature, streams that flow into the ocean and the water continues to flow, but to what end and for what purpose? Just to fill the ocean, the postmodern would say, there's no glory in that. There's no wonder in that for the postmodern mind. Going over to chapter two, verse 16 and 17, he continues, for of the wise, as of the fool, there is no enduring remembrance. Seeing that in the days to come, all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool. Can you not hear the student in a school saying it doesn't matter if I study and get smart or if I don't study and stay dumb, we're all going to die in the end. Don't we hear the echoes of Solomon even in the days in which we live? And the result is the same in verse 17. So I hated life because what is done under the sun was grievous to me, for all is vanity and striving after the wind. We live among a people who do hate life. They hate life. How do we know? Look at the exploding suicide rates that we see. Look at the people who are in counseling for depression. Look at the wandering and the wasted lives. Look at the seduction of the flesh and how people will seek pleasure through money, through flesh, through drugs, through whatever indulgence they can find to try to find something and all of those just take more and more away from life. They don't contribute. So in the end, they are left an empty shell saying, I hate life. I hate it. It has nothing for me. It took me nowhere and I ended up with nothing but bad memories of solid conscience and a knowing that I am not right before God. And so they hate life. Just like that old song, perhaps, you knew it depending on your generation, Pink Floyd saying it, all in all, we're just another brick in the wall. Is that all that we would have of a view of ourselves that we're just a brick in the wall. We're just another passing day in life. We reject educational establishments. We reject family. We reject the church. And still, even after all of that rejection, we have no idea what on earth we're here for. All we know is that we reject everything. We have no idea why we're here. We just know it's not for anything that is put before us. So we have a generation agreeing with Solomon, vanity of vanities, all his vanity, all his striving after the wind. There's nothing to be gained under the sun. But Jesus Christ answers that dilemma and He answers it in these passages. Our Lord Jesus answers and gives to Solomon an answer. He gives to us an answer as well. Jesus has been transitioning the disciples from aimlessness in their life to purposefulness. And I can't emphasize that enough. That all most is a sermon in itself. He's been transitioning the disciples in his teaching of them and in his walking with them from a people who were aimless to a people who have purpose. He has removed their desperation that's due to the end of all things because he's been telling them, I'm leaving you, I'm leaving you. They have oriented themselves and geared themselves completely to being his disciple. Now he's leaving. It would seem that now it is all over. So once again, they're aimless. But he's saying to these disciples, your discipleship was not vanity of vanities because it continues on into eternity. He's giving them an expectation of continuing on with him. I don't want the point to get lost because of clever sermonating and so I'll give you a bottom line up front. So does ours. So does ours. If the disciples continued ministering with Christ as disciples after the crucifixion and resurrection, then so do we. In the same way, not in an apostleship but in discipleship, we also continue with him in the same way. So these words and this assurance that was given to the disciples is valid for us today. If we will seize upon it or we can continue to labor with Solomon and vanity of vanities knowing that in all of history, those who do not know it being doomed to repeat it, we also will end up like all of those who come before us who've chose to live a vain life and we also will end with the same. But it does not have to be. In verse 14, Jesus has made clear to the disciples there by calling them his friend that because they are his friends, they have a common aim and a common outlook that they share with him. He says to them, if you do the things which I command you, you are my friend. He's revealed the father's mind to them all that the father's told them. He's revealed to them revelation and like remindedness rather than their simple obedience is what characterizes their friendship with him. There's been a transition from where he said, just do what I tell you to where he says, now you share my mind. Walk with me. Not behind me as if I still carry a whip to drive you along but walk with me because now you share a mind with me. Jesus has a right to command them. He is the Lord. He could command them to do what he says but instead he is calling them his friend. That doesn't diminish his power. It doesn't diminish his right but he's seeking their transformation. He's not seeking a servant. He's seeking transformed lives, a disciple who follows after him and has an obedience that is not forced but is desired because obedience doesn't make them his friends. Obedience characterizes them as his friends. Whereas a servant, just like a child, is just to do those things they are told. The one Jesus calls a friend is a co-laborer, fully aware, fully aware of the mind of Jesus and bound by a relationship of love rather than simple legal obligation. It's a free obedience if you want to think of it that way but the friendship is not reciprocal. I mentioned this last week. We don't say Jesus' our friend. He calls us his friend because we can't say of him that if he does what we say he is our friend. That's why he called Moses and Abraham his friend but they never called the Lord their own friend. We are to have the mind of Christ. He is not to have our mind. We are now his bond servants, those who serve willingly, not those who are in captivity. They're transformation from servant to friend is accomplished by his confiding in them the fundamental idea of his life. They are brought into the work of a disciple through thought and motive through revelation and love. Jesus is essentially setting them free if they are only his servants but binding them to him eternally if they are his friends. This is a moment of liberation for them. They have a choice. Jesus is leaving. They can leave if they choose. They can abandon him. They can abandon the calling they have in life. They can abandon it all. They can walk away. They are no longer under obligation except in their soul and with their conscience. Judas walked away. Judas left. Judas betrayed the Lord. Judas left to do something else. They are not under legal obligation but they are under moral obligation because our Lord has invested his life in them. They are free to run away. They are free to stay and travel the road that Jesus has laid before them. John Peter Lang puts it this way. The name of friend is placed in connection with joyfulness and death. Friendship with Christ is co-partnery in his loving and his self-sacrificing in his dying. Courage in the strength of self-sacrificing love. Jesus is showing them that if they love him they will follow him unto the end and he said the same thing in John 131 when Jesus knew that his hour had come to the part out of this world to the Father having loved his own who were in the world. He loved them to the end. How can so great a love Christ be expressed? If this is the love of God poured out to us through the life of Christ, how can that actually be expressed? The greatness of his love is shown in his own impulse to love us first. Here is speaking of their apostleship. They were fishermen. They were tax collectors. Only one was a doctor. None of these disciples had anything that caused them to be a marvel to Christ that caused the acquisition of their discipleship to be a boon to his ministry. They didn't even know that they ought to love him when he called them and when he prepared them to go and to serve. But of course with man he always feels the initiative is his own. We always feel that it was our choice. It was our prerogative. It was our initiative. But Jesus assures us here that that is not the case. Normally a disciple does in fact choose to be attached to a particular rabbi. It was the case and it was the culture where the people of Israel would hear a man teaching and they would associate themselves with that teaching and they would take sometimes even the name of the teacher and they would follow that teacher but we are entering into a relationship with Jesus which is by birth or rebirth if you will. Just as a baby doesn't choose parents so we don't choose Christ on our own initiative because we come into that relationship by birth not by choice. He first loved us before we loved him. He chose us before we chose him. Augustine says, see then how he chooses not the good but makes those whom he has chosen good. This is Christ's work in us. Not only need he chooses but he appointed us to our work. The first work of a disciple is to be an emissary for Christ, to be one who testifies, to be one who brings the gospel to people. The second work of a disciple is to bear fruit and that's where we've been focusing on most of our teaching. To bear fruit and the fruit of a disciple isn't simply a flash in the pan project. It's not a flash in the pan idea. It's not something that just hits and goes. It remains. It abides. It bears fruit that last but how does it remain? How do we do a ministry that has fruit that abides? That is fruit that extends into eternity. Anyone in this room and anybody even outside of this church that's not even a Christian could come in here and do something good for the church. We can make something happen. We can perform a ministry. We can put on a concert. We can put on a play. We can do a project. We can build something. Whatever it may be, we can teach a class or a seminar. We can cook a meal. We can provide a carpool for someone. The only way those have eternal significance, however, is if they bring the gospel of Christ into contact with the soul of man, then you've done something that does, indeed, have any eternal significance, a fruit that remains. Any fruit we bear for our own glory, however, will start to fade the moment that it's created. Ecclesiastes 2, 11, then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it and behold, all was vanity and a striving after the wind and there was nothing to be gained under the sun. One thing Solomon did that most of us avoid is he reflected on his own life. He reflected on the work that he's done. He's reflected on his own study. He reflected on his own contributions. He reflected on how he had spent his time and days and his days and then he had the courage, perhaps the audacity, to judge them, to consider are these worthy or not and did they have any lasting influence and what he determined is everything that I've done has just withered away. It's faded and it's floated away and it means nothing. It's all vanity. All of my investments of my time, all of my investments of my resources, all of my investments of everything that I've done is now fading away and all the glory that was mine, every round of applause that I got after some wonderful achievement has now faded into history and has not remembered anymore. But fruit for God's glory that increases the kingdom and builds the church remains because the kingdom of God and the kingdom of God alone is eternal. You won't fruit that remains that invest yourself in the progress of the kingdom. As Deacarson points out, our purpose of election then is that the disciples who have been so blessed with revelation and understanding should win others to the faith. That is fruit that will last. So we've discovered the purpose of it, haven't we? The purpose of life, we've discovered what it is all here in verse 16 of John chapter 15. 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 here is the purpose of life. How do we translate that into real life, though, that we should bear fruit and that it would abide we should bear fruit and that fruit should abide. So we have to attend to two matters in our life. Are we bearing fruit that is the fruit of God and does that fruit abide? We begin with the idea of the vineyard and our teaching on the fruit and Jesus had a cumulative teaching approach to them. He taught building one upon the others like math class when I was in school. You begin with simple numbers and a number line maybe and then perhaps you go to addition and then subtraction and then a multiplication and then division. Each one growing incrementally upon the other but if you never learned addition or if you never paid mine to multiplication you'll never be able to factor when you get to algebra because it requires those easier functions for you to be able to do the more complex functions. So Jesus begins with an illustration of a vineyard and he teaches them about a branch and a vine and how the branch needs to produce fruit or else the branch will be pruned but it's pruned so that the next year it grows even more fruit. We've been speaking of fruit in verse 2 the branch is to produce fruit because it's the nature of the branch to produce fruit. With the indwelling of the spirit our fruit will naturally be the fruit of the spirit we've mentioned those on a number of occasions what should be the fruit of the spirit manifested in our life primary and chief among them love and then joy and peace and patience kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness self-control if we live by the spirit let us walk by the spirit so the scriptures teach the Lord goes on to say that we are pruned so that our own fruitfulness will increase so the second lesson is not just that the Christian should bear fruit because we are one with Christ and unified with Christ who is the vine and we are the branch but as that unity is true and as we are in dwell by the spirit the fruits of the spirit become manifest in our lives but that's not static there's an increasing of those fruits of the spirit through all of our lives this removes the possibility any possibility of complacency as a Christian virtue such as was found in the church of Laodicea feeling they had their fill of the Lord they had become lukewarm and the Lord spits them out of his mouth for the church pretty good is never fruitful enough for the fields are wide under harvest but the laborers are few and then in verse 8 Jesus expands his teaching to our call to be fruitful saying that in bearing much fruit much fruit we will glorify God not in getting by not in knowing that fruit exists not in hearing sermons own fruit or watching other people bear fruit and supporting them in their fruit bearing either by praise or even by giving a financial gift it's not the support of others bearing fruit it's through hours bearing fruit not a little fruit but much fruit much fruit we will glorify God implied is the inverse that not bearing much fruit does not glorify God it is in bearing much fruit that we glorify God there's no virtue in not bearing much fruit there is nothing we can preach on to redeem the value of not bearing much fruit verse 16 the final characteristic of fruitfulness by possessing the fruit of the spirit love being cardinal among the fruits and by living those fruits as expressions of our transform character we will produce fruit how do you produce fruit by living according to in your character being framed by the fruits of the spirit if you live out the fruits of the spirit which we've mentioned time and time again you will produce fruit in your life a transform character will produce fruit and that fruit will increase and it will bring God glory and it will bring us joy and it will cause us to have fruit that abides that is lasts forever forever you say forever you mean that really love joy peace patience kindness goodness truth faithfulness I can live that way and have fruit that endures forever there's only one who is eternal and that's the triumphant God father's son holy spirit and he dwells in the eternal city city and only his work lasts forever scriptures teach the grass withers the flowers fade but the word of God remains forever what is your life the scriptures ask for you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes how can we have fruit that lasts forever the work which he blesses is the work which we do in his name that flows from his spirit which is renewing us daily to do his will it's no longer I live the Christ who lives in me it is the spirit of Christ which is doing a work a kingdom work to build the kingdom which is eternal and we are partners with him in that Jesus concludes by repeating again the new commandment he's given to them can we skip this again haven't we heard it enough haven't we heard this new commandment haven't we heard the emphasis on love enough each week we come in here and each week we preach a sermon together and each week this issue of love comes up but that was five sermons ago can't we skip another sermon own love surely the disciples had heard it from our own lit Lord's lips better when with more clarity than you've heard it from mine we cannot leave it off we dare not leave it off we must not leave it off because our Lord did not leave it off the scriptures teach us that God is love Paul tells us that without love we have nothing Jesus tells us that we must love one another and he repeats it again and again and again to burn it into our hearts and to burn it into our minds and even after the resurrection he comes to Peter and he asks him three times straight do you love me do you love me do you love me so then we will ask simply well then how do we love if it must be about love how do we love we pray for one another because we love one another we remain faithful to one another and we deal in good faith with one another fidelity to each other in Christ we support one another emotionally spiritually and materially whenever we have opportunity and so now we have it don't we now we have it what is it that answers the postmodern dilemma in life the view that all life is vanity it comes and it goes and we pass along people being transformed into Christ's likeness manifesting the fruits of the spirit obeying the command of Christ sharing the gospel glorifying God experiencing genuine joy in a community of love and so now I ask you in closing who wouldn't want to be a part of that who would rather drift along aimlessly just seeking a pleasure here or there in life if you walk in the spirit as a living disciple in the way of the Lord you will not labor and die in vain your life will bear fruit into eternity