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Jun 25, 2023

Ideas Made flesh

Ideas Made flesh

Passage: John 15:1-17

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: That’s the Spirit: Learning to keep in step with Him who indwells

What is art but an attempt to bring our attention to beauty our blindness and pace often obscure? We need something to slow us and to help us see. The Holy Spirit we are learning has served many roles in the ministry of the Triune God. In some of Jesus’s most famous words, we’ll listen for the implicit role of the Spirit to let the Son’s ideas take on flesh. What do we most need? What are we most here for? These questions we all ask and for which Jesus has clear and compelling answers still needs something more than clarity. They require the Spirit.

Readings & Scriptures

PREPARATION: Psalm 36:7-9
LEADER: How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

PEOPLE: They feast on the abundance of your house,
and you give them drink from the river of your delights.

LEADER: For with you is the fountain of life;

ALL: in your light do we see light.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH/SCRIPTURE READING/CORPORATE PRAYER: The Nicene Creed or Romans 5:1-5
ALL: I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered death and was buried,
and rose again on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.

I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins
and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

LEADER: Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

CENTRAL TEXT: John 15:1-17
John 15:1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3 Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. 9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

John 15:12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 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 heard from my Father I have made known to you. 16 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. 17 These things I command you, so that you will love one another.

CONFESSION OF SIN:
ALL: Many things hold our attention; one thing must hold it most. Martha was troubled with many things; Mary chose the necessary thing, the good portion that couldn’t be taken from her. We live distracted lives and wonder why our hearts feel frail in the whirlwind. Forgive us our pride or our fear in abiding in what mostly leaves us troubled. Help us to abide in the one thing needed–your love that does not fail, the love meant to take root and in us flourish.

ASSURANCE OF PARDON Romans 5:6-8
LEADER: For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 (For rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person perhaps someone might possibly dare to die.) 8 But God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

ALL: Thanks be to God. 

BENEDICTION: Hebrews 13:20-21
LEADER: Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, 21 equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever.

RELATED SCRIPTURES:

  • Ezekiel 15:4-6
  • John 17
  • John 21:30-31
  • Romans 5:5
  • Revelation 3:20

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. Can you think of a moment when an idea you’d heard before suddenly became real? Maybe a mathematical theorem, or a philosophical notion…or just a bit of wisdom you’d heard countless times which finally proved itself true through a bit of experience? 
  2. You heard us reach for explanations of how we’re to understand abiding in Jesus. How would you explain it to someone?
  3. Abiding is the path to the fullness of His joy. How would you define or describe His joy? How is it distinct from happiness? Why would His joy be desirable? How would it be helpful?
  4. We tend to assume we know clearly what real love is. What indicates the love Jesus embodies and commands? What are some subtle distortions of love in our day–that is, what sometimes looks like self-forgetful love but is in truth a quite self-serving act?
  5. Remind yourself how Jesus means for us to understand ourselves before we commit to loving as he has loved us. Why are those markers of our identity so crucial to loving as He asks?
  6. How would you put in more familiar terms what it means to abide in His word? Why do you think He put an emphasis there as key to walking in love? While Jesus makes no explicit mention of the Spirit in this passage (though on either side of it), how might the Spirit is necessary for abiding in Him and His love?

Illustrations & Media

InView Media Album 06.25.2023

QUOTES: 

  • Ideas are often poor ghosts; our sun-filled eyes cannot discern them; they pass athwart us in thin vapour, and cannot make themselves felt. But sometimes they are made flesh; they breathe upon us with warm breath, they touch us with soft responsive hands, they look at us with sad sincere eyes, and speak to us in appealing tones. . . . Then their presence is a power, then they shake us like a passion, and we are drawn after them with gentle compulsion, as flame is drawn to flame. George Eliot, Janet’s Repentance (cited in Simeon Zahl’s The Holy Spirit and Christian Experience)
  • Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself. C.S. Lewis
  • Christ, though He would not be the vine, except He were man, yet could not give this grace to the branches, except He were God. Augustine
  • “Abide in me”; “love one another”: these are not two things but one thing with two aspects, whereof the former is the occasion of the latter.  To do this is veritably to participate in the Holy Communion. William Temple
  • Pass on the same undeserved love you are experiencing in yourself from Jesus to the (perhaps) undeserving but hurting people around you.  Difficult people are, by definition, hurting people, and this fact, too, can give us more heart for them. F.D. Bruner
  • A pumpkin vine is far from where its roots
    first sprang into the earth. It seeks the sun,
    proceeding south as fast as it can run.
    With luck, it adventitiously re-roots
    itself when it can find the ground, re-routes
    itself in random zigzags to outrun
    the pestilence, the drooping of the sun,
    that stanch the flow from soon-abandoned roots.
    It seems as though it never has to die
    as long as it continues on its way
    away from rots that chase it from its roots,
    adventuring beneath renewing skies,
    discarding golden blossoms day by day—
    until it finds that it’s arrived, and fruits. Matthew King, “Advent”

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