John 15:17-25
Sunday Morning Bible Study
October 20, 1996
Introduction
We are in the time of the last night before Jesus' death.
:17 Loving one another
:17 These things I command you, that ye love one another.
This is now the third time in the same evening that Jesus has given this command.
Illustration:
It's like the story of the new pastor who repeated the same sermon on "Loving One Another" three weeks in a row.
One of the older men went to him to complain.
The pastor replied, "When you start loving one another, I'll start preaching another sermon!"
Jesus is trying to make sure that the guys get the message.
And so He repeats it one more time.
He mentioned it in 13:34-35, in that the world would know we belong to Him by our love for each other.
He repeated it again in 15:12, in the context of how we would abide in His love if we kept His commandments, namely loving each other.
Loving each other brings us into a closer relationship with God's love for us.
And now He gives it again for the third time.
Here the thing that sticks out to me is the contrast with this verse and the next section, which is about how much the world hates us.
Lesson:
We need to love each other if we're going to stand against the world's abuse.
Like it or not, we have to live in the world.
And if we choose to live like Jesus wants us to, there are going to be people who will respond by hating us.
But the church should be a place of refuge from the world's abuse, a place where we can not only receive comfort and grace from the Lord, but sometimes the greatest way we can receive is through other brothers and sisters.
Illustration:
A mom wrote:
"It was one of the worst days of my life: the washing machine broke down, the telephone kept ringing, my head ached, and the mail carrier brought a bill I had no money to pay. Almost to the breaking point, I lifted my one-year-old into his highchair, leaned my head against the tray, and began to cry. Without a word, my son took his pacifier out of his mouth and stuck it in mine."
-- Clara Null of Oklahoma City, OK, Christian Reader, Sept/Oct 1995, p. 85.
That's what we ought to be like that little boy was to his mom, offering comfort and love to the weary.
:18-25 Us Versus The World
:18 If the world hate you,
We need to define the word "world".
We don't use it to mean the planet earth.
We don't use it to mean everybody around us that's alive and breathing.
We use it to describe an invisible, evil system, directed by Satan, and aimed at leading you into sin and away from God.
John talks about it in his epistle:
(1 John 2:15-17 KJV)
Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. {16For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. {17} And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.