Jesus' Friends

A message by Phil Rogers 18/03/07

To listen to Phil's message click here mp3

At Google’s Zeitgeist (Spirit of the Age) conference in 2006 David Cameron said “It’s time we admitted that there’s more to life than money, and its time we focussed not just on GDP but on GWB - General well-being .. it’s about the quality of our culture ..and above all the strength of our relationships.” A basic human need is to be happy, but despite better circum- stances and more money people are no happier. “We enjoy a thousand material advantages over any previous generation, and yet we suffer a depth of insecurity and spiritual doubt they never knew.” How can we find happiness? What are the keys to increased general well being?

Abram, called the friend of God, over 4000 years ago was chosen to be the father of God’s chosen people. God’s remarkable dealings with this nation included being given such high forms of worship and codes of conduct, for their well-being. e.g The Law: that you may not sin and blessings Deut 28. Yet they were never able to live the life and never did find lasting happiness and peace. Paul and the writer to the Hebrews tells us that their worship and codes of conduct were a signpost to something better and higher, a new way of life that would totally eclipse and make obsolete the laws and rituals that God had given them. Heb 8:13.

Into this nation God sent his Son to bring about this ultimate and only true way of life. Israel, like a wild vine, had produced only worthless grapes, but Jesus was the real vine. Becoming part of him we would produce the good fruit that God has always desired, that could never be produced by the ‘law of commandments’. Jesus gave the old commandments a new twist. He showed what was behind them raising them to new level making them even more impossible to live up to. Jesus said, “Without me you can do nothing.” inaugurating a wholly new way to live, us living in him and him living in us. AS we read Jesus’ words ‘keep my commandments’- Don’t think old law. He is saying ‘treasure my instructions’ Ps 19:7-11.
In Jn 15 we see four characteristics of this new life of Jesus living in us and us living in him, totally dependent upon him.

1. Living in his Love
Jesus’ new commandment, that replaces the old, is ‘that you love one another’ (Jn 13:34) but here he adds ‘as I have loved you’. v12 Jesus was supremely aware of how much he was loved. God, his Father, loved him so much that he not only loved his Father in response but overflowed with love to his disciples, (v9) Only someone loved so much can love like this and he called his disciples to ‘live in my love’, to be at home in such profound love. Can Jesus love us that much? God not only loved Jesus, but he ‘so loved the world that he gave his one and only son’. This greatest of all loves led Jesus to lay down his life for us all. What immense love that even while we sinners, he died for us. Jesus wants us to know that he loves us, just as much as his Father loves him, so we might live in his love, being totally at home and comfortable with being loved so very much, just as he is completely at home and comfortable in his Father’s love. His Father’s love caused Jesus to treasure his Father’s every instruction, to hang on his Father’s every word, only doing what he saw his Father doing, only speaking what his Father told him to speak. There is no fear in love like this, just total devotion and dependence. He calls us to live in his love as he lived in his Father’s love hanging on his every word as he did his Father’s. How can we ‘live in his love’ if we don’t value and heed every word he ever spoke and every instruction he ever gave us? How amazing it is to be loved by God like this! And when we know how much we are loved we love him, and we love one another and value each other and even lay down our lives for each other. He charges us to love one another in the same way he loves us, which is the same way he is loved by his Father.

2. Having Jesus’ Joy
Why did Jesus tell his disciples about this? Because nothing causes such joy as knowing that you are loved. (20s want to know they can love and are lovable eg.engagement) Jesus is the most joyful, happy person in the universe. He is full of such intense, glorious joy. When we know his love, we feel his joy and it fills us up to the brim. “Unutterable joy full of glory!” A deep innner well or we feel like bursting - no words to express such emotion! This is what living in him and him in us is like. This is a major key to happiness and well-being.

3. Friendship with God
Jesus’ disciples, all in their twenties, followed Jesus calling him, Teacher, Master, Lord. A slave would address the master who owned him as Lord. But to Jesus they weren’t slaves, they were his friends. Slaves do as they are told, they expect no explanations, no understanding! Like the law, a master says - Do this! Don’t do that! But they were Jesus’ friends with whom he shared his life and his heart. He let them see his deepest feelings. He shared with them everything his Father had taught him. Then they watched their dearest friend die! They were devastated! But he rose again and ascended to heaven and sent the Holy Spirit so he could still be with tham and still be their friend and he is our friend too. We all need friends. Those with close loving friendships are happier than those with no friends. What a remarkable truth that we are Jesus friends. What other friend loves us as much as him?

4. Chosen by Jesus
“You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and produce fruit, fruit that lasts so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he might give you.” How do we get to be Jesus friend? He picks us to be included in his circle of friends. The Jews, so proud of being God’s chosen people, were arrogant and exclusive, despising uncircumcised gentiles, (ethnics - a derogatary term for all non-Jews). Such attitudes have no place in Jesus loving circle of friends. He picked us for a purpose - to produce the fruit he had always wanted, fruit that lasts for ever. His life in us and our life in him impacts other people in lasting ways. Jesus friends who live in his love and treasure his instructions and overflow with his joy are indeed the happiest people on earth. Our well-being, our joy, our love attracts others. What can give anyone more happiness than knowing that every sin is forgiven, that God loves us, is always with us and lives inside us and that whatever he puts in our minds to ask for, our Father will give it to us! In Ascot our gross domestic product is higher than most of the world, but that does not make us happy. Keeping laws and trying to be good cannot make us happy, but living in his love, full of his joy, devoted to his teaching is the only way to true well- being and joy and Jesus has picked us to live such a life.

All through our lives we face changing questions that make us unhappy Whatever age we are, loving and being loved is the key to happiness and we only get that key when we know that our God who loves us so much has a contribution for us to make in his kingdom at every stage of life. We can be happy in the fresh uncertain challenges of youth, in the routines challenges of middle age and in the challenge of losing some of our capabilites in later years. God loves us through it all, his love never changes and in every season we expect to bear fruit.

Questions for Group
1. Spend five minutes quietly thinking about things that make you happy. In the praise time give thanks to God for these things.
2. How can we practically develop our friendship with God and how might that spill over into us loving one another?
3 Pray with each other in threes or fours.