Good day
For as long as it takes we are going to study the gospel of
John chapters fourteen to seventeen. Some of it will be what I have already
written and some will be new. Therefore it may sometimes appear that I leave
off in the middle of a topic to be continued, since I have reached my daily
word count limit.
To pick up the topic, you may need to read the one or two
postings preceding this one.
We continue from our previous message.
“If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have
obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love,” (John 15:10).
Do I pick up a condition in this verse? Do we for
example read: ‘If you don’t obey my
commands I do not love you?’ I think the Lord has made the answer clear
through several examples and parables throughout the Bible. I think it is a
question of: ‘I love everybody
regardless, but I love those who obey Me and support My cause more’.
Take for example Jacob. He was a crook and a deceiver.
According to our standards God should not even have considered him. Why did
Jacob deceive? He desperately craved God’s blessing. He so much wanted to be a
man after God’s own heart that he would have gone to any lengths to accomplish
that. On the other hand Esau did not care a dime. ‘Yeah, take my birthright as long as I can get some food for my hungry
tummy’. He made his carnal desires a higher priority than God’s
intentions. Whether God blessed him or not did not make a difference – he could
not care less. He seemed to have been a pacifist, just happy to follow the
family rituals. God seemed to have been just a religion to him whilst God was a
passion to Jacob. With whom do you identify?
Jacob also did not want to let go of the Angle of the
Lord until He blessed him. Did the Lord love Jacob more than average? Yes He
did. He made him Israel, the father of God’s chosen nation simply because His
cause was a priority to Jacob. He did love Esau enough not to destroy him
though. I often wondered how things would have turned out had Jacob not
followed the course he had taken.
Another example of an extraordinary love from God’s
side was King David. Why did God love Him so much more, calling him a man of
His own heart? It was because David covered for God time after time. According
to him he did not kill the bear and
the lion, God did – he was only the instrument. We read David’s words in 1 Samuel 17:36, 37:
“Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised
Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the
living God. The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of
the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.” When Goliath
challenged Israel, where was the faith of the Israelites, David wanted to know?
Did they not know God is able to bring victory – and to support his words he
showed them how it was done. When he had an opportunity to kill his greatest
enemy, Saul, he said he will not touch the anointed of the Lord, even though he
knew Saul did not honour the Lord. God loved David more because David proved
his love to God in considering His desires and values extremely important, more
than his own. When David had sinned with Bathsheba and was made aware of this
sin, he repented immediately. He seemed to have been blinded in what he had
done until the Lord opened His eyes via Nathan the prophet. The Lord’s great
love and forgiveness for David was portrayed mostly in the fact that the
Messiah was born from Bathsheba.
Jesus had a choice at several opportunities to follow
His own desires – for example when He was tempted in the desert, when the
people wanted to make Him king, in the garden of Gethsemane and so on. He could
have used these opportunities to become great in worldly terms and be safe as a
result of compromising with the world. But He wanted to uphold His Father’s
love – He wanted to please Him, He wanted to see to it that Father God’s dreams
come true.
Yes, how do we remain in Jesus’ love? I would sum it up
like this: First help Father God to make His dreams come true before we start
working at our dreams. This in the end might mean that we will never have our
own dreams come true. Jesus knew it when He said: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his
father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters--yes, even
his own life - he cannot be my disciple,” (Luke 14:26). Tough words, are
they not - the type of statement we would prefer to avoid. But there is a
solution. Make it your dream to make God's dreams come true and when you do it,
some of your family and friends will come with you, but the opposite will also
happen. Some of them will oppose you and it is at this point that you have to
choose whom you will love more – your family or God, your ambitions or God’s
cause.
Lord, we need to build your Kingdom. We need to be
obedient to you to remain in your love, but there are so many demands that take
hold of our priorities. Our desire is that you love us more. Please help us to
decide and then bless us as we go all the way for you and your Kingdom.
Thank you Lord that your Word went out from your mouth,
via your servant’s pen, and it will not return to you empty, but will
accomplish what you desire and achieve the purpose for which you sent it.
Please pass this on if you
think others may benefit by it.
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