Message Description

Dr. Kurt Bjorklund looks at John 15:11-17 and how we need to have both the demeanor and the priorities of Jesus to live with the kind of a mission Jesus speaks of here to have a positive impact in the world.

Message Transcript

Good morning. Let's pray together. Father, as we gather, we're aware that we don't all come from the same kinds of experiences. Some of us come here this weekend knowing that we're at the end of ourselves, that there is nowhere else to turn for hope, and Father, we pray that in these next moments, we'd be met with hope. Father, some of us, as we gather, come with a mindset that all is as it should be, and God, I pray that just in these moments, you'd speak to us. And God, many of us are here because it's a routine. It's something that we do, and God, I pray that you would break through the routine and speak into our hearts today. God, whether we're gathered in the chapel in Butler County, here in Wexford, in the Strip District, God, we pray for the men who are on retreat this weekend as part of Orchard Hill as well. And God, we pray that you would speak and that my words will reflect your word in content and in tone and in emphasis. And Lord, if I prepared things that don't reflect your truth, I pray you keep me from saying those things, and God, if there are things that would be beneficial that I haven't prepared, I pray you'd prompt me, and I'd respond, even in these moments. We pray in Jesus's name. Amen.

So, many years ago, there was a movie that was out that didn't gain a lot of acclaim at the time, but then, in the years that followed, it became kind of one of those cult following movies. And what I mean is sometimes there's a movie that when it's released, it doesn't have a big following, but in the years that follow, it becomes a part of the cultural folklore, at least for a short season. And the movie I'm talking about is Blues Brothers. So, you have to be a little older to remember this movie, but the movie featured these two brothers, the Blues Brothers, Jake and Elwood Blue, who would actually try to raise money for this orphanage, and the running gag was that the one had been released from prison, and they did a bunch of things that were unethical, even a little illegal. And they did it to try to raise money for this orphanage, and then, every time that they were questioned, or they would ask somebody for help, one of them would say, "We're on a ... "

Audience: "mission from God."

See. It is a part of the folklore, right there. We're on a mission from God, and what made it funny was you would see it, and you would say, "You can't be on a mission from God. You're the last person who would be on a mission from God." And yet, they were convinced, and they were genuinely trying to do good by raising money for this orphanage. And here's what that movie points out, which is actually a biblical truth, and that is that God doesn't call the qualified, but he qualifies those that he calls. And if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, God calls you to live in mission, to be on a mission from God, to not just say, "I'm here. I exist to get my life taken care of, to meet my needs," but that you have a grander purpose that your life is part of. And we see this in what's known as the great commandment. The great commandment is Matthew 28 or the great commission in Matthew 28, where Jesus was talking to his disciples, and he said this. He said, "All authority in heaven and earth's been given to me. I want you to go into the world, or as you're going into the world, I want you to make disciples, evangelizing them and teaching them to observe all that I command."

And so, Jesus, the great commission, was to his followers to say, "I want you to help people find Jesus Christ, evangelism, and I want you to help people follow Jesus Christ, teaching them to observe all that I command." If you've been around Orchard Hill, you'd know that that's the way we speak of our mission here, that we exist to help people find and follow Jesus Christ, but it's actually the mission not just of the church but of individual followers of Jesus Christ. That's what God says I want you to orient your life around. I want you to not just be about your agenda, but I want you to make this part of your agenda. And sometimes, you may think, "Well, that was his agenda for those disciples. Is it really something for all followers for all time?" And it really is. And what's significant about the way that he spoke to his followers then is that his followers were not the people who had achieved great things. This was a group of people that you could say were not the social elites of the day. In other words, these were people who didn't have a rabbi to follow because usually, what would happen is the people who were promising would attach themselves to a rabbi by seeking out the rabbi and getting an opportunity.

But here, Jesus the rabbi went to these people and said, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. I'll give you a mission. I'll give you a purpose." And you may say, "Okay. Well, maybe that's unique to that time," but let me just give you a list of people in the Bible that were used by God that, by many standards, we may say didn't qualify. Noah was a drunk and sometimes would parade around naked. Abraham was too old, and he was fearful, and he made up a story about his wife being his sister, that it would benefit him. Jacob was a liar. Leah was homely or ugly. The Bible said she had weak eyes, but it meant that she wasn't very good-looking. Joseph suffered abuse and hatred. Moses stuttered, and he killed a man. Gideon didn't trust God. It's a direct command to him, and so, he tried to arrange things to slant odds in his favor. Samson sold out to a pagan woman. Rahab was a prostitute. Jeremiah and Timothy were too young and inexperienced for the things that they had been called to do. David had an affair, and then, he covered up the affair, and in the course of covering it up, he sent a man to his death.

Elijah was suicidal. Jonah ran from God and disliked people who weren't of his same ethnic group. Naomi was a widow. Job went bankrupt. Peter denied Jesus. The disciples slept through the key moments when Jesus wanted their attention. Martha was a chronic worrier. The Samaritan Woman had multiple failed marriages. Zacchaeus was dishonest in his business dealings. Paul was one who persecuted Christians. Timothy was fearful, and Lazarus was dead, literally dead, when Jesus called him. And my point in just going through this list is, sometimes, what we tend to think is that the only people that God uses are those who have all their stuff together. But when you read through the Bible, what you see is that it isn't the people who had their stuff together that God used, but God used people in spite of them not having their stuff together. And so, if your mindset, if my mindset is maybe someday God can use me when I get my stuff together, you don't understand the message that is part and parcel of the entire scope of the Bible because following Jesus includes mission no matter how unlikely we think our ability is or how checkered our past.

Now, this fall, we've been working our way through John. John 14 through 17 was known as the Upper Room Discourse, and today, we're in John 15:11-17. You just heard it read a few moments ago, and this is part of an extended metaphor, if you will, beginning in John 15:1 through John 15:17, where Jesus uses this metaphor of him being the vine and his people being part of the branch or that our ability to bear fruit, hence the idea of mission, saying, "I want you to bear fruit," is tied to our connection to Jesus. And last week, we talked some about this idea of abiding, but today, we're going to focus on this idea of fruitfulness. Now, it's an important thing for me to say here, and that is in our culture, one of the things that parents say to their kids all the time is you can be anything you want to be. You can do anything you set your mind to. And I understand why parents say that because they don't want their kids to be self-limiting, but theologically, that's just simply not true. Because what John 15 says is apart from me, you can do nothing.

In other words, you can't do anything of eternal significance without being tied to Jesus Christ. So, you may be able to accomplish all kinds of things, but the essence of what will matter most is tied to your connection to Jesus. And this idea of fruit, in the Bible, there's 207 references to fruit. There's a few more if you count fruitfulness and some of the other derivative words. But sometimes, it's literal fruit, but it's often used as something that talks about the overflow of how we live. And then, it's used in some very specific instances, and I think John 15 is one of them where it means to have a positive impact in the world. Now, certainly in the Bible, there's at least two ways we can see this. One is fruitfulness means doing what it is that God has given you to do so well that it makes a difference in the world. In other words, your business, your family, the things that you do day after day aren't just in a isolated sphere, and then, you get serious about bearing fruit for the Lord in some other arena, but your entire life can be part of the productivity that God has given you.

Genesis 1, one of the first commands of fruit says, "Be fruitful, multiply," and the idea of fruitfulness there wasn't that you grew an apple. It was saying, "Have a life that produces positive things." So, when you employ people, when you're part of bringing products to market that help people, when you provide services that matter, what you're doing is, in some ways, the mission that God has given you. But there's another part of the mission, and that is helping people find and follow Jesus Christ. That's what the great commission talks about. That's part of what John 15 is alluding to here, and here's what I'd like to do is I'd like to suggest that from verses 11 through 17, we see two elements that are essential to being fruitful or to having a mission that's effective. And I'd like to just suggest that this is having the demeanor of Jesus and also the priorities of Jesus in our life. And I believe that we need both because sometimes, what can happen is we can be so focused on the demeanor of Jesus that we think all of the mission side will take care of itself, and some of us will say, "No. All I need to do is have the priorities of Jesus, and everything else will take care of itself."

But what we see here is that we need both the demeanor and the priorities of Jesus in order to live this kind of a mission. So, let's first look at the demeanor of Jesus. Verses 11 through 13 says this. I've told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this. Love each other just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this to lay down one's life for one's friends. And we see three elements here of the demeanor of Jesus. We see joy, verse 11. We see love, verse 12, and we see sacrifice in verse 13. Now, here's why I say that the demeanor matters because you have probably had experiences where you thought highly of somebody until you got to know them. And then, when you experience them, you said, "Whatever this person was about, whatever I thought they were about, I don't care for them as much." I saw an article recently that had reference to an experience like this for Harry Connick, Jr. Harry Connick, Jr is a singer, and he made his name by kind of singing old songs, Frank Sinatra and stuff like that.

And Harry Connick, Jr, when he was first beginning to sing, had a chance to sing in front of Frank Sinatra, and he was so excited because Frank Sinatra was somebody he revered and he thought the world of. And when he sang, according to his own recounting, he says he forgot the words, and it was just disastrous. So, after the show, he went to find Frank Sinatra, and he brought his girlfriend, who is now his wife. The lady's name was Jill Goodacre, who also happened to be a model, and he wanted to apologize. And so, when he got to catch up to him, Frank Sinatra was getting on an elevator, and he tried to say, "Look. I'm sorry. I think I'm better than that. I'm sorry I blew it." And here's what he said happened. He said Frank Sinatra looked at him and then looked at his girlfriend, Jill Goodacre, and then, he took his hands, and he grabbed her kind of by the face, and he kissed her on the lips, and then, let go, got in the elevator, and went away. Now, here's what Harry Connick, Jr said about that. He said, "It was so aggressive. If any other guy in the world other than Frank Sinatra does that, you definitely spark him out."

I don't even know what that means, but it sounds aggressive. Now, here's my point. What happened for Frank Sinatra in that moment ... for Harry Connick, Jr in that moment was he said, "I thought Frank Sinatra was this, and I probably would've heard anything that he had to say, but I lost all my respect in that moment." And that happens a lot of times for people who try to speak about God to people in their lives because they don't have the demeanor of Jesus. And so, here we see this demeanor of Jesus in at least three ways. One is joy. Verse 11 says, "Make my joy complete by having the same joy." So, let me ask you a question. When you think about Christians, when people, on a whole, think about Christians, do they think about joy as being one of the defining characteristics? I mean, my guess is, I mean, that's a leading question because in all likelihood, very few people think Christians and joy are synonymous. Most people think of Christians and they say, "You know what? Christians are people who are judgmental and obsessive about morality, and they're not very joyful. They're not a lot of fun," is how many people think of Christians.

But really, one of the things that should be a defining characteristic of the demeanor of somebody who has a relationship with the God of the universe is this idea of joy. Now, there are a couple ways that this can come about. I heard somebody years ago say that what the world needs is not more people trying to figure out what the world needs and doing what the world needs but more people who figure out where they come alive and leaning into that. In other words, sometimes what happens is people of faith, especially, will say, "Well, I want to live a life that matters." And so, what we'll do is we'll say, "What do people need," and then, we try to give it rather than simply saying, "Where do I have joy," and offering that to the world. Some of our joy might be in making music or in art. Some of it, it might be in creating new profitable businesses. Some of it, it might be in the recreational parts of the world, and the idea is to say, "God didn't call you simply to be always producing but to say your production should be part of your joy."

But not only that, joy comes when we understand and embrace what is the whole message of Jesus. This is what we've been looking at through the whole gospel of John, that God loved the world, gave his son, that whoever believes in him would not perish. And the joy that comes when you and I recognize that a relationship with God is not based on our performance, not based on us getting one more thing right or eliminating one more thing, but it's based on Jesus and what Jesus Christ has done and nothing else. That produces a kind of rich joy that is not common in our world. And so, the demeanor of Jesus involves joy. It also involves love. In verse 12, we see this. Here's what we're told. It says, "My command is this. Love each other as I have loved you." And love doesn't mean that we agree with everything or we endorse everything that somebody else says or thinks, but it means that we're able to say, "I'm for you even if you and I don't agree." I don't know if you saw this just recently, but evidently, Ellen DeGeneres went to a football game and sat at the game with George Bush.

And if you aren't familiar with Ellen DeGeneres and George Bush, they're not on the same side of the political aisle. And so, what happened was, immediately, when people saw this, evidently they got on Twitter, and now, I'm going to summarize thousands of tweets. And the people began to tweet saying, "Ellen, how could you? You're a sellout. How could you sit with this horrible man, George Bush?" Now, I don't know where you are politically, Ellen, George Bush. That's not even the point, but she went on her show the next day and said, "There's been a lot of criticism of me sitting with George Bush. Since when can't we be friends with somebody we don't agree with?" And she was right. And what she was saying was we have so politicized everything in our country that we refuse to be friends with people who don't see the world the way we see it. Now, here's what I would say. According to John, the Jesus words here in John, Christian people should be some of the people most filled with love, should be people who say, "Yes, we love each other, but there's a love for the world, for people and a kindness and a goodness that transcends simply trying to be right."

Here's what one author said about this. He said, "The Bible tells us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Surely, part of love in this way is trying to understand." I may not understand perfectly, and I may not agree, but if I love you, I should try to know what it is you wish I would know about you. Part of love means being willing to not just write somebody off who thinks differently, who believes differently, who lives differently, but being willing to hear and understand the world from their perspective. And sometimes, in a quest to be right, people of faith have shut down that process and, therefore, have no ability to say anything to somebody any longer. So, the demeanor of Jesus includes joy. It includes love, but it also includes sacrifice. Verse 13, and the word here is this. It says, "Greater love has no one than this to lay down one's life for one's friends." And clearly here, Jesus is alluding to his own coming death, but at the same time, what he's doing is he's saying, "The people who follow me, the people who live in mission should be characterized by this same kind of willingness to give part of their life away."

And here's what you know and I know, and that is anytime somebody sacrifices for you on your behalf, they do something that's loving and kind, that you know cost them something, you are more receptive to that person than you would be otherwise. And so, sacrifice is part of the demeanor of Jesus, a willingness to say, "I'm going to serve people when there's nothing in it for me." Years ago, I had a chance to spend some time in what is known as a closed country doing some Christian ministry work there. And a closed country means it's a place where you're not allowed to talk about Jesus publicly. And one of the conversations that has stuck in my mind from that time was talking with a man and saying, "How do you do evangelism when you're not supposed to ever talk about Jesus? How do you help people find Jesus Christ?" He said this. He said, "We have to live our lives in such a way that they're so distinct that people ask us why we live the way we live." In other words, the demeanor of Jesus matters. Now, there's a danger here, and the danger is this. And that is that we start to say, "My whole life is to exhibit the demeanor of Jesus," and we never talk about Jesus.

And what we do instead is we say, "I'm always setting the table, but we never serve the meal," because we're always trying to create a situation where we're able to say, "I have credibility," but we never actually talk. And what will happen is there will be people in your life who will die without the hope of Jesus Christ who will wonder why you were so nice. And I would say if that's true, then we haven't fulfilled the mission that God has given us. What we've done instead is we've simply said, "I use this to talk about being nice or a better person," which is true but not the whole of the mission. And this takes us to the second element, and this, I'm just going to call the priorities of Jesus. And we see this in verses 14 through 17, but verse 15 is clear on the front in terms of the calling. It says, "I no longer call you servants because a servant doesn't know his master's business. Instead, I call you friends. For everything that I learned from my father, I have made known to you." And so, what Jesus does here is he says, "You're not my servants. You're my friends. I have let you know exactly what I'm about, what I'm doing, and I've invited you to be part of it."

And what he's doing is he's saying, "I want you to share my priorities," and here, we see them, verse 14, a call to faithfulness, and then verse 16, a call to fruitfulness. Verse 14, "You are my friends if you do what I command." Now, I say a call to faithfulness because, sometimes, what can happen is people of faith can say, "Well, as long as I do certain things, then I can forget some other things." But faithfulness, keeping the commands of God, means that we believe what the Bible teaches, and we align our lives with it. And what happens sometimes is people will get so focused on the fruitfulness side that they'll say, "As long as I'm doing something that produces something positive, then I can have some areas where I'm not faithful." But those lack of faithful areas actually, again, erode credibility. Now, the other danger on this is that some people will think that faithfulness is more important than fruitfulness. And so, what they'll do is they'll start to say, "My job is to make sure that everyone's faithful, that everyone does everything the way that I see that it should be done."

And so, their badge of honor, their way of thinking they're on a mission from God is correcting other people for doing what they perceive is wrong or for holding views that they think are wrong. The Babylon Bee has an article about this idea, and if you're not familiar with it, it's a site of satire. And so, this is meant to be tongue-in-cheek. Here's the article. It says, "Local man receives rare spiritual gift for critical emailing." And then, here's what it says, "Kansas City, Missouri. Well, every Christian has a unique blend of God-given supernatural gifts. Some believers are able to discern what their gifting is much more quickly than others. Such is the case with a local man, Nathan Byers, a recent convert who immediately discovered that he had an uncanny, spirit-breathed ability to offer scathing critical rebukes to others via email, sources confirmed on Wednesday. Byers's gifting was reportedly confirmed by his local church Sunday afternoon as he fired off a holy email blast scolding his pastor for everything from the song selection, which was too modern, to the message, which was too stuffy. Then, his pastor told reporters, 'Byers is a real blessing to our church.' It's so encouraging to see a young man with a real passion for using his spiritual gift to really berate other people from a distance via electronic communication for any minor disagreements or difference."

In other words, faithful doesn't mean that you say, "How can I make everybody else see or believe exactly what I believe?" But it means that you say, "I'm aligning my life as best I understand with the scriptures, and I'm believing and living what is there." But here's the fruitful piece, and this is what we tend to think of when we think of mission. Verse 16, here's where it's stated very clearly, "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might bear fruit, fruit that will last. And so that whatever you ask in my name, the father will give it." So, Jesus says, "I chose you." I don't know if you ever went out on the playground when you were in middle school or grade school, and they picked up sides. And you know that moment where maybe you'd get chosen early, and you think, "That's great. I'm going to try and contribute," or that moment where the teams fight over whether or not they have to take you, and you say, "I'm not sure I want to do this," kind of thing? Here's the idea. Jesus is saying, "I chose you. I made you a high pick because I want you to bear fruit in my kingdom. That's what I want you to do. What I want your life to be about is this great commission, helping people find and follow Jesus Christ."

And so, one of the things that we talk about here at Orchard Hill is we talk about investing in people's lives and inviting them to be a part of what God is doing. But it isn't just a call to help those who you might say are lost, helping people find and follow Jesus Christ. In Matthew 25, just a few chapters before Matthew 28, obviously, Jesus was teaching, and he said that at the end, it'll be like people are divided into two camps: the sheep and the goats. And some people will get a chance to hear this idea that you have done things in my name, and people will protest and say, "What did I do?" And he'll say, "As much as you've done it, what, unto the least of my brothers, you've done it unto me." See, the call, the mission is to care about the lost and the least, to say, "How can we help people who are not connected to be connected?" And what Jesus does is he says, "I've chosen you for this." Now, there's another danger here, and this danger is that what we can do, especially in a church like Orchard Hill, is we can say, "Well, I'm part of a church that does this. Therefore, I do it."

And there's some truth to that. By simply attending and participating in this church, you can say with integrity that I care for the lost because as a church, that's one of the things that we really do, and I care for the least. As a church, we have ministries that we do in Haiti, and we work with the Light of Life Ministry in this city to try to help end generational poverty in our own city. Just by participating and resourcing this church, you're helping in those things. But when I say there's a danger, what I mean is we can say, "Well, since I'm part of it, I've done it," and you can, that you don't actually look for the moments that God gives you because it's an individual invitation to mission saying, "I'm calling you to be invested in people's lives." In other words, you could say, "From an organizational standpoint, all I ever do is participate in Orchard Hill," and I think you could say, "I check the boxes." You don't have to do anything else, but there are probably opportunities in your neighborhood, in your place of business, in your school, on the soccer team that your kid plays on where you have opportunities to be on a mission from God that nobody else has.

There's a man named Sam Schumacher who was part of Pittsburgh's history, and one of his claims to fame is his way of helping to spread Alcoholics Anonymous in its early days. He was a pastor in this town, years and years ago, and he wrote this. It's called I Stand At the Door. And this isn't meant to be a theologically accurate treatise as much as this is meant to express emotion. He says this, "I stand by the door. I neither go too far in, nor stay too far out. The door is the most important door in the world. It's the door through which men walk when they find God. There is no use. My going way inside and staying there when so many are still outside, and they, as much as I, crave to know where the door is. And all that so many ever find is only the wall where the door ought to be. They creep along the wall like blind men with outstretched, groping hands, feeling for a door, knowing there must be a door. Yet, they never find it. So, I stand by the door. The most tremendous thing in the world is for men to find that door, the door to God. The most important thing that any man can do is to take hold of one of those blind and groping hand and put it on the latch, the latch that only clicks and opens to that man's own touch.

Nothing else matters compared to helping them find it and open it and walk in and find him. So, I stand by the door. Go in, great saints. Go all the way in. Go all the way down into the cavernous cellars and way up into the spacious attics. It is a vast, roomy house, the house where God is. Go into the deepest of hidden casements of withdrawal, of silence, of solitude. Some must inhabit those inner rooms and know the depths and heights of God and call outside to the rest of us how wonderful it is. Sometimes, I take a deeper look in, but my place seems to be closer to the opening. So, I stand by the door." If you're a follower of Jesus, do you live with a sense of mission and saying, "I want to help people find the door, and I want to bear some fruit"? See, there's a tension, not only between the demeanor of Jesus and the priorities of Jesus. There's also a tension between faithful and fruitful, and I say that because sometimes, especially in church world, what people will do is they'll assume that if they're faithful, it means that their church or their ministry, their attempts, will be small, and they assume that anything that's big is suspicious.

But you know was well as I do that, sometimes, there are churches that are large and churches that are small that aren't faithful to the text. And sometimes, what can happen if you push into the faithful side is you can say, "Well, you know what? I'm all about being faithful," but you can be right in the wrong way, and you can just ignore that there's a world of people outside the door. Now, sometimes, on the other side, when we lean into the fruitful side, what can happen is we can say, "If it works, then it's enough." And we don't care about truth or about what's right or about how God has instructed us on things, or we can compromise some of our methods in order to try to just gain more and more people, but the call is to both, not just as a church but as individuals. Now, I would guess that, today, here in Wexford and the chapel and the Strip District, Butler County, that some of us are here, and we're saying, "Part of why I don't believe, part of why I'm not a follower of Jesus Christ is because I know some people who have been followers of Jesus Christ, and their demeanor, it has not been very good."

I had a Harry Connick/Frank Sinatra moment with somebody who claimed to be a follower. Maybe it was your mom, your dad who talked real big about God, but when it came to how they lived and treated you day after day, you just said that if that's their God, I don't want any part of it. Can I just say I'm sorry for you if that's been your experience? But can I also say stop letting it be an excuse? Because God is God apart from how well or how poorly people follow him, and if you heard my list at the beginning, you can go through the Bible and say, "I don't want to be a follower of Jesus because of all of these people." But that's the whole point. Jesus loves and cares for people in spite of all of their failures. And so, the demeanor of Jesus doesn't mean that they have everything right, but it means that we come to a place where we say, "What Jesus wants is actually the best thing, and it's worth my life." And if you're here, you're a follower of Jesus, can I just push you for a moment on this? If you've been a follower of Jesus for some time, you know from this text and what I just said that the call to live in mission is real.

And you know why a lot to times followers of Jesus don't live with a sense of mission? It's because down deep, our conviction is lacking. I said earlier that there will be people who will die without the hope of Christ who will wonder why you're so nice. And here's the truth. Even as I wrote that line, I realized that it's offensive in many ways in our culture because our culture wants to say, "If you're a nice person, a good person, then you have nothing to worry about." But the gospel, the message of the Bible is the only way that you can say my future is secure is if I've come into a relationship with Jesus Christ or if I've said, "It's not about what I do. It's about what he does," and sharing that hope with people is the only way that people have a hope of eternity. And sometimes, the truth about me is I don't want that to be true because the implications are too stark. It's a lot easier to think, "Well, everyone's kind of good, and I'm just doing my thing." I don't know if you ever get drawn into infomercials. I, once in a while, get drawn into an infomercial.

I always wonder if I can wear one of those belts around that has little battery packs that shocks you, if I can get six pack absolute kind of a thing, or if I can sit around my house in whatever I wear around my house and invest in real estate with no money down and become rich beyond belief. And here's, at least for me, one of the things that always interests me is how passionate people are when you catch on to an infomercial. Do you know what it is? If you wear this belt, it will change your life. You'll get six pack absolute and not have to work out or change your diet. It's amazing. By the way, I never bought one of those belts, but I've heard that what it actually does is produce constipation, not anything else. Or you can get rich, just follow this program, and you can have money to live the way you want to live. And then, there's Christians. I believe that God is the creator of the universe, that Jesus is the hope of eternity, but I hope I'm not too offensive. Conviction drives mission. And you know where we really get it? Do you see it in this text?

Greater love has no one than this that they lay down their life for their friends. It's Jesus laying down his life for you and me. It's his sacrifice on your behalf. You see, I can't manufacture joy and love and sacrifice, but what I can do is live in the reality of Jesus sacrificed for me, and if I really get that, then love will be an outflow. Joy will become more and more a part of my life. Sacrifice will be something I say I'm willing to do because I believe this. And then, the priorities of Jesus start to become part of my life. It isn't something that we try harder to do. It's something that we do because we've been so moved by the beauty and wonder of what Jesus Christ has done. And that conviction will cause Christ followers to live in mission, and I believe that it will also be winsome to those of us who are gathered who say, "I'm not sure I'm a Christ follower. Maybe I've been turned off by people's priorities or demeanor," but when you see what Jesus has done and the hope that it offers and the invitation to say, "My life can be about more," then you'll see the potential of what God has for you.

By the way, the text ends in verse 17 with love each other, another command. I think one of the reasons that's there is one of the things that destroys witnesses when people of faith can't get along. And so, he just ends by saying, "I want you to love each other. I want you to forgive when you've been wronged. I want you to give the benefit of the doubt when you assume that somebody has not had your best interest at heart. I want you to be a different kind of community because if you live differently, then that helps others to see the world." And here's just a concluding thought, and that is people are God's only plan for reaching other people. Meaning, there's the written word of God, but he uses people as the conduits of this. He's not going to write his message in the sky. He said, "You are my mission. You are on a mission from God if you are my follower. Will you live in it?" Father, we thank you just for the word that challenges us and gives us instruction, and Father, I pray that each of us would respond to you maybe coming in faith today for the first time, maybe just saying, "God, I want to live more fully in your mission." And we pray this in Jesus's name. Amen.