The Characteristics of the Friends of Jesus Part 1

Pastor Mike will be speaking on The Characteristics of the Friends of Jesus. He will be in John 15: 12-16.

When Jesus says love your neighbor as yourself he is simply saying that as you care for yourself as you are making sure that you are nurtured and you are cared for so it is that in the way that we love our neighbor is to look out for their needs.

This is Pastor Mike Sanders. Hope Worth Having is the program that you’re listening to. You’re at the right place and God has sovereignly put you here that you might hear a wonderful message. We’re going to be in the Gospel of John chapter 15 verse 12 through 16 and I want to talk to you about the characteristics of the friends of Jesus.

What were they like? These people that not only followed Christ believed in Christ but really became close friends with the Lord Jesus Christ as he ministered in this world. So I want you to take your Bible and maybe you need a cup of coffee or a cup of tea whatever it is and let’s get into studying the Word of God today.

If you have your Bibles this morning I want you to join me in the Gospel of John and we’re in John chapter 15. This morning I want to talk to you about the characteristics of the friends of Jesus. In the times that Jesus lived the Romans believed that friendship was based upon mutual profit meaning that what could you do for me and what could I do for you.

There certainly this friendship was based upon the enjoyment of one another’s company but that was the goal of friendship. But Jesus Christ teaches us something totally different about friendship. He teaches us that true friendships are built upon shared beliefs and values and shared goals.

As a matter of fact the Bible teaches us that Abraham was called the friend of God. You remember in the book of James chapter two verse 23 that the Bible says the scripture was fulfilled which sayeth that Abraham believed God and it was imputed unto him for righteousness and he was called the friend of God.

What an amazing title to have. The friend of God. The truth is because of our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, Christians are in a state of friendship with God. And when we come to our text this morning, I want you to note in verse 15 what Jesus says to his disciples.

Henceforth I call you not servants for the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth but I have called you friends. For all things that I have heard of my father, I have made unto you.” Underscore that phrase, I have called you friends.

To be the friend of God, to be the friend of Christ, is an exalted title. It is a privileged relationship, and it is one that we should protect and desire very much in each of our hearts. And yet there are some who choose, not the friendship of God, nor the friendship of Jesus Christ.

They choose the friendship of the world. And as opposed to loving Christ and being a friend of Christ, they find themselves being a friend with the world. The Scripture says in James 4, do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?

That whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God? The question is, are you a friend of God? A friend of Jesus Christ? Or are you a friend of the world? Now do not misunderstand James as he’s teaching us about making sure that we’re not the friends of the world, for the Bible teaches us that Jesus was a friend of sinners.

And he is not telling us that somehow we need to isolate ourselves from the world and disassociate ourselves from people that are in this world. But James is telling us that if we desire the approval and the appeasement and the friendship of the values and the system and the ways of the world more than we desire, the friendship and the appeasement of our Holy God, then we are at enmity with God.

My friends, if you and I this morning are truly the friends of God, and we are the friends of Jesus Christ, I want you to know that as long as we have the friendship of Jesus Christ, that there is nothing, there is no challenge in this world that we cannot face together with Him.

So what are the characteristics of the friends of Jesus? If you’re taking notes, I want you to note first of all, the friends of Jesus love each other. Look at verse 12 and verse 13. Jesus said, this is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. You see, Jesus calls us. to love each other. But Jesus was not one to just say it, but he exemplified it, right? Jesus exemplified that, and we see that in verse 13.

Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life. Jesus laid down his life for you. He laid down his life for me. He laid down his life. He gave his very life so that we would no longer be the enemies of God, but rather we would be the friend of God, that we would have such a personal relationship with Christ, that we would not only be restored and redeemed and forgiven in Christ, but we would have a meaningful and a very prosperous relationship spiritually with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Christ’s death was the supreme act of his mission. Jesus was on mission when he came to this earth. He lived a sinless life, but he came and he was born to die. He was born to die for our sins, and while on this mission he was able to turn us from the enemies of God to the friends of God to all who would believe in him.

It is why the apostle Paul said in Romans 5 10, for if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. How wonderful it is to know that through what Christ has done for us, we are not the enemies when we trust Christ, but rather we are the friend of God.

Jesus accepted from the Father a covenant that required the shedding of his own blood for our sins, and in that covenant relationship he has brought you and I into this friendship and true authentic relationship because he laid down his life for us the foundation of our friendship now get this the foundation of our friendship with God and a foundation of our friendship with others is truly the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ if the foundation of your friendships in your life are simply based on you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours you do for me and I’ll do for you that is going to be a relationship that is going to fall apart it is going to be a reckless relationship it is going to be tumultuous why because people are people and people fail you and people are flawed and people have issues and they have drama in their life and how many of us know that there have been people in our lives that are up and down and it’s just difficult to be a friend to them,

amen? But when the friendship is rooted in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, when the friendship is rooted in our relationship with Christ and what He has done for us on the cross, then it is transformative in our life and it is what is the power and the strength, if you will, the impetus to be able to love one another.

So Jesus says, I want you to love others as I have loved you. I want you to love others as I have loved you and there is no greater act of love than to be able to lay down your life for your friends.

So I think that there three things that we ought to note this morning about this loving one another, that is the foundation of our friendships, whether they are in the relationships of marriage, whether they are in the relationships of our own children, whether they’re in the relationships in the church body, whether they’re in the relationships and friends we have in the community.

I think these three things must be true. And that is number one, all friendships and this evidence of loving one another must be sacrificial. It must be sacrificial. For the foundation of our friendship with God is the sacrifice of Christ.

And Jesus says, as I have loved you, how did He love me? Sacrificial. He laid down His life for me. And so if you’re going into a relationship to be a friend, to get all you can get out of this person, I’m telling you it’s a crash and burn relationship.

If your marriage is based upon what I can get out of this relationship, it’s a crash and burn marriage. relationships, where there is authentic, godly, divine love, loving one another, is about sacrificing for each other.

It’s not about what you can get. It’s about what you can give. It’s about what you can give. And that’s why we get offended with each other. That’s why we get upset with each other. We think about what we want to get out of this relationship.

And when we don’t get that, we’re upset. We are focused on us, and Jesus tells us to deny self, but God calls us to love one another sacrificially. Give. Give your life if you must. Be willing to sacrifice your life.

The second word I would put in this loving each other is selfless. And I think when we think of sacrifice, we think of selfless, right? Jesus was very selfless. we know that in his life he showed love to his disciples in that he was willing to be a servant, he was willing to take the towel, he was willing to be selfless, and he calls all his disciples to deny self.

Hey, if you’re having marriage problems, the greatest advice I can give you, this will save you a lot of money right here, because I’m not going to charge you a dime. Okay, isn’t that wonderful? I mean, you can go to 13, 15 sessions, and I’m telling you, this wraps it up right here.

Wraps it up. You say, how do you know this stuff, pastor? Friends, I have walked with couples, and it really comes down to this, what Jesus said, deny self. You want to have a great marriage? Deny self.

You want to have a meaningful relationship with others? Deny self. You want to love one another in the church as you ought? As Jesus tells us that the friends of Jesus love each other, this is his commandment that we love one another, then you must be willing to deny self.

The third word is servanthood. You see, if every husband would go home and not think about what’s for dinner, and would go home and say, how can I serve my wife? How can I serve my children? How can I serve my family today?

If everybody went into a relationship and came to church and say, I hope the pastor gives us something good today, or I hope that I get this out of service, or I hope every person came and said, how can I serve God’s people today?

How can I come and be a blessing? I’m telling you that the love that would flow in and out… out and through this ministry would be impactful upon this community. But when we come and we got the consumerism mentality and we’re ready to critique and we’re ready to find fault and we’re ready to attack and we’re all about getting rather than giving as we talked about earlier, well, that’s why church divides.

That’s why people get upset. That’s why people get mad at one another because there is no servanthood. And if you truly wanna love one another church, we must all of us together in sync with the example of our savior.

We must be willing to serve one another. Jesus taught us to love people. It is the second great commandment, right? We were taught that the most important commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul and mind.

But the second is like in unto it the scripture says in Matthew 22 that you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Now many have misunderstood this verse and they have fallen in love with self and in this effort to fall in love with self they have been promoting self.

But Jesus never calls you to love your self but just the opposite. When Jesus says love your neighbor as yourself he is simply saying that as you care for yourself, as you look out for your particular needs, as you are making sure that you are nurtured and you are cared for so it is that in the way that we love our neighbor is to look out for their needs, is to look out for opportunities to care for them and to nurture them.

This is what Jesus means when he tells us that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. Now get this friends, really we can simplify the Bible. We can simplify it because Jesus tells us simply that the bottom line of a Bible is to love God and to love people.

Okay? I mean you know the Bible has a lot of pages and a lot of verses and a lot of books in the Bible and some of you are overwhelmed with it and you’re like Mike it’s hard to understand or navigate through it all.

And what I want to challenge you is this just start with loving God and loving people and you’ll be surprised how much you will fulfill the law of Christ by loving God and loving people. Now 45 times in the Bible we are commanded to love one another.

I guess God wants to get the point across, amen, is that he has told us over and over that we are to love each other. As a matter of fact the apostle Paul said in 1st Corinthians 13 13 that now abide a faith hope love these three but the greatest of these is what church you can do better than that the greatest of these is what church thank you I mean we better get this figured out amen and if we cannot even say the obvious of what the scriptures in the Bible are telling us then how are we going to live the obvious and my point is this simply that you can have great faith and you can have great hope in your heart but as Paul teaches us if you don’t have love it is all meaningless you may speak the tons of angels and people run around and brag about their spiritual giftedness and their abilities to speak with angels and they went to heaven and came back and they did all these things but Paul says none of that means anything if you don’t love one another the Bible teaches us that love is a fruit of the spirit.

Can we be honest this morning? Is that okay? We’re in the house of God. It’s good to be honest at church, amen? When we assemble together and we stand before the full evaluation and examination of God’s word this morning, that loving people is not natural for us.

That just the opposite is true. That within our flesh, there is a desire to get even and to hurt those who hurt us. You say, how do you know that, Mike? Because I know myself too good. And what I have found, even though you say, yeah, we’ve noticed that about you, Mike.

Thank you. What I have noticed is that you’re no different than me. And that we’re in this battle called humanity. And that loving people can be one of the most difficult things that we have to do. And so my encouragement to you church this morning is don’t do it in your flesh, but do it in the power of the Spirit of God.

For when we are filled with the Spirit, we will show the fruit of the Spirit, which is law. Love will cause us to clothe the naked, to visit the sick, to relieve the stranger, to supply the needs of others, to sympathize and empathize with others, to even overlook the faults of others.

I had to stop there because this is what I try to tell our new members. Listen, there’s nearly 700 members here. They’re all people. They’re all flawed. They all got issues. I can’t promise you they bring their A -game every Sunday.

morning, and Sunday night, and Wednesday night. I’m not promising you that they’re gonna walk in the spirit every time that we assemble together, or every time you see them out in the community. I’m here to tell you that as you get to know people, you get to see their strengths and their weaknesses and their faults.

Yet the Bible teaches us that through the power of loving each other, we have the capacity to not let the faults of others cause us to shrink back from loving them. There are times that our brothers and sisters need to be talked to one -on -one.

Some of you may feel like it is your job to correct every person, every thought and every comment. Some of you spend your life responding. to every comment on Facebook. I don’t know how you have this much time, okay?

But our brothers and sisters are going to make mistakes. And, you know, they say love is blind, right? And it is true. I love it when these couples come to me, they want to get married. And they’re just in la -la land, and I start talking to them about conflict resolution.

They’re like, pastor, don’t worry. We never fight. I mean, I tell every young girl, don’t marry any guy until you have made him mad. I want to see how he handles it. I want to see how he responds to you.

I mean, just set up a date and don’t show up. Isn’t that a good advice? That is awesome. Let’s see how he processes that one. If he wants to pray with you, and he wants to reschedule, we’re in good hands.

But if he has an emotional meltdown, and he’s verbally abusive, kick him to the curb, amen? I mean, I love everybody, but some people need to go to the curb, right? Love will cause me to forgive. Love causes me to forgive you.

There are no enduring relationships without forgiveness. I think that’s a common knowledge. But I don’t know if we really understand it. You see, we are able to continue relationships with each other as the body of Christ, not because we are perfect, but because we are forgiving.

And we are forgiven, we forgive others, not because you are worthy of it, or that somehow Mike showed up one day and he became worthy of your forgiveness. No, we forgive one another because of the work of Christ on the cross in that he forgave us as unworthy sinners.

You see, when the motivation of your forgiveness is the cross, cross, you’re gonna be able in the power of Christ and the Spirit to forgive others. But when the motivation of your forgiveness is on the worthiness of the individual, you will fail to forgive and always fall short of forgiveness in your life.

Love is the proof that we are truly disciples of Christ. Love is the proof that we walk in the light of Jesus Christ. Love is the proof that we have passed from spiritual death to spiritual life. Love is the proof that you are the friend of Jesus this morning.

The characteristic of Jesus’s friends is that they love one another. Now you may feel overwhelmed about loving and you may really struggle with the command to love. as Christ loved us and many times people say to me how is it pastor that I can love others as I should well I kind of tell them do it like do it like exercising do it like jogging now you know some people when they’re getting ready to exercise or jogging they go to the sporting goods store and they go there and they buy all the fancy clothing and they get the the headband and you know you can always tell new people are just starting to exercise because they got the latest gear all right I mean I noticed now people they got these jackets that apparently are supposed to help you see them at night okay and so they’re all geared up and then they jump out there and they start sprinting for as long as they can go certainly not even a mile but they’re out there sprinting as hard as they can and all of a sudden their body begins to cramp they begin to ache and their lungs are burning as they’re trying to run as hard as they can and before you know it they’re exhausted and they’re trying to hitchhike home amen now believe it or not there’s a medical term for this you say how do you know these things mike I actually do research okay but it’s called anaerobic it means to run or exercise without oxygen and this causes your body to use up more oxygen than it can take in and I tell you that there are many people who try to love like this and as a result they cannot give what they do not have and what I’m saying to you is that you need to kind of slowly work into this and that the key to loving others is for you to be under the fountain of God’s grace and love in your life and that as you are receiving his love being poured out by the Holy Spirit into your heart Romans 5 5 that this enables you to love others and so if you struggle get back to the cross get back to Christ get back in your walk and continue to grow and continue to get stronger and rather than huffing and puffing for a half a mile and trying to love others never love beyond the intake of the love that you are receiving into your life the second characteristic is that the friends of Jesus obey him we look at verse 14 and we note that Jesus said you are my friends if you do whatsoever I command you that’s a heavy statement in our life isn’t it Jesus says,

you are my friends if you do what I’ve commanded you. By keeping God’s commands, we are proving our friendship to God. Samuel reminded the Israelites that to obey God is better than sacrifice. Obedience does not earn us salvation.

Do not misunderstand me, church. But obedience is the reflection and the evidence of our salvation. The Bible says, for by grace are you saved through faith, that not of yourselves. It is a gift of God, not of works lest any man should what?

Both. I’m not saved by my achievements, my good works. You’re not saved because you came here to church today. Did you know that? Oh, you’re not saved because you went to Sunday school. You’re not saved because you come to Sunday night or Wednesday night church.

None of that saves you. No, it is a gift of God. It’s not of works lest any man should boast. I was telling my Sunday school class about this that I had lunch with a man a few weeks ago. And he was telling me about his mother and his brother who had passed away during the holidays.

And he said, pastor, I’ve got to be good so I can see them in heaven again. And I said, my friend, you do not have to depend upon yourself, but you simply have to depend upon and trust in what Christ already did for you on the cross and through the resurrection.

Right? Well, I hope this message is really speaking into your life and that you’re learning about what it really means to be a friend and that you’re growing your understanding of biblical friendship.

You know, what’s unique about today’s message is that this is That’s our first message as we are beginning our 16th year of broadcasting the gospel of Jesus Christ to your heart and to every home that we can.

And I want you to know we want to thank you. It’s so wonderful to have people who are faithful listeners and who are praying for us and supporting us in all the ways that they can. And it is such a blessing.

Do not forget that any time that you would like to review more of what we’ve been teaching, you can go to our YouTube channel on YouTube .com. Just type in Hope Worth Having. And again, there’s another archive of all of our sermons that we are preaching in addition to some Q and A’s and interviews that we’ve done.

And these again are opportunities for you to learn more about the Bible and try to answer some of the questions that you might have about the Bible. Help us out by sharing them out and letting other people know about this great ministry and how it can be a blessing to them.

This is Pastor Mike Sanders reminding you that in Christ there is hope worth having.