Well let's turn our Bibles to John chapter 15 and I'll pick it up from verse 12 through to verse 17. John chapter 15. We'll pick it up from verse 12 through to verse 17. Verse 12. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing. but I've called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father, I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit shall abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you so that you will love one another. As we continue in our study through the Gospel of John, we come this morning to consider the section from verse 12 through to verse 17, and where we see what I'm calling truths concerning our friendship with Jesus. Truths concerning our friendship with Jesus. And what we see there is that the Lord Jesus Christ calls his disciples his friends, but he still remained their master and their teacher. He still remained their Lord and Savior. And before we open up those verses, looking at those truths concerning our friendship with Jesus, We need to know from the onset that Jesus Christ is not automatically your friend or my friend or the friend of everyone. The Bible clearly teaches us that by our very nature, we are enemies of God. We've all seen and fallen short of the glory of God. And the bad news is that you cannot have a worse enemy than God because God always wins. And so when we think of the friendship of the Lord Jesus Christ, it's not an automatic thing. It's not something that just happens automatically. Because he is holy, we are not. But the good news is that God sent his son, Jesus Christ, in this world to die in the place of sinners. To die a death of atonement. To die a sacrificial, substitutionally a death so that in his death, all who are born sinners, if they believe in him, they may be reconciled to God. And when you read the gospel, you will notice that the religious leaders of the day would scoff at the Lord Jesus Christ because he was considered a friend of sinners. But the Lord Jesus Christ gladly accepted that label. explaining that he did not come to call the self-righteous but sinners to repentance. So the first step in being friends with Jesus, as we sang in our different hymns, the first step in being friends with Jesus is to come to Him as a helpless sinner in need of a Savior, putting all your trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, believing Him and Him alone for the salvation of your soul. And so as we open up that vase and draw lessons for ourselves this morning, the question that you must ask yourself, the question that I need to ask myself is, would Jesus call me his friend? Would Jesus call you his friend? And what's the basis of that claim? What is your basis of that claim? And the first thing I want us to see from that portion of scripture we read is that our friendship with Jesus is only possible because of His sacrificial death on the cross. Our friendship with Jesus is only possible because of his sacrificial death. And this is what is picked in verse 12 and verse 13. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. Friendship with Jesus is the fruit of atonement. And the atonement is the expression of love. And in these verses we see our Lord Jesus Christ explaining or teaching us what should be the measure of love within the Christian community. How we should love one another. It should be a self-sacrificing love, even if possible to the point of death, just as He's demonstrated for us. And here the Lord Jesus Christ repeats the command He had made earlier of loving one another. And he knew the importance of drumming this truth. He knew the importance of repetition, that it is the key to learning. and especially learning something that is not easy, or something that we do not easily accept by our natural talents. And the Lord Jesus Christ knew that it would take more than just saying it once, and he repeats the command that he had made earlier on, the command of loving one another. The Lord Jesus Christ knew the human tendency towards selfishness. And so, in his final hours, with his disciples, he nailed and hammered this commandment to love one another. And he wanted his disciples to remember that this issue of love among his disciples is not optional for those who claim to be Christians. But he does not just command or give that commandment, he points to his supreme standard of love as the basis or the example or the standard of how we ought to love one another. And the Lord Jesus Christ demonstrates for us that there's no greater love that one can show, one can display, than someone laying down his life for his friends. And we can define the love of the Lord Jesus Christ as a self-sacrificing, caring commitment that shows itself in seeking the highest good of the loved ones. The love of Christ is a self-sacrificing, caring commitment that shows itself in seeking the highest good of those loved. And that's why after giving his command in verse 13, he says, greater love has no one than this, that someone should lay down his life for his friends. And the Lord Jesus Christ speaks here clearly of his own sacrificial death. Even his friends needed a substitute, someone to die for their sins. And Christ nails it down. That friendship with him is only possible because of his sacrificial death on the cross. When we think of the greatness of Christ's love for us, as Apostle Paul puts it in Ephesians chapter 3 and verse 19, he says it surpasses knowledge. It's a love that surpasses all knowledge. It's a love that we fail to comprehend. It's a love that we embrace by faith. He has demonstrated his love for us by dying for our sins. One of the amazing features of Jesus' love for his own is that he did it so that he could take them as to be his friends. We become friends of Jesus Christ, not because of some attraction in us. We become friends of Jesus Christ because of what he has done on the cross. And those who believe in his finished work, he calls them his friends. They are brought near him by the greatest love imaginable that the God of the universe would give his life for his friends. Jesse Rao marvels at this, and this is what he says. for sinful men and women like ourselves to be called friends of Christ is something that our weak minds can hardly grasp and take in. The King of kings and the Lord of lords not only pities and saves all of them that believe in him, but he actually calls them his friends. This is the King of Kings, the Son of God, the center of heaven. It is Him who causes all His friends. And this is possible because of His death. And it is the Son of God who speaks in this way. It is the God of the heavens. who cause us who believe in him, his friends. And in human societies, it's not common for men and women of different social standings to enjoy friendships. Rarely do educated people become close friends with uneducated people. Rarely do the rich become friends with the poor. That's the world we live in. But what makes Christ's death for us The expression of love beyond our imagination is that it is the very God of the heavens. who comes into this world, lives a perfect life, and dies in the place of sinners, so that those who believe in him, he may truly call them his friends. He will not be ashamed to call them his friends. He can stand by them, he walks with them, he identifies with them, and he gladly wants to announce to everyone, they are his friends. Because in Him dying on the cross, as our substitute, He exhausted in Himself the wrath of the Holy God. And as He exhausted the wrath of the Holy God, He secured your eternal forgiveness of your sins. and He can stand and call you His friends. And the highest good of all the people of this world is that they would come to Christ in forgiveness of their sins and believe in Him. And they will know what it means to have the King of kings call them their friends. And what we see here is that our friendship with Jesus is only possible because of his sacrificial death on the cross. And if you are here this morning and you think you can be friends with Jesus by other means, I want you to know that this is not possible. You cannot be friends with the Holy God because you are not holy. You cannot be friends with a righteous God because you are not righteous. You can only be friends with a holy God when you come to Christ, believe in Him, and put all your hope in what Christ Himself has accomplished on the cross. Only then can you be friends with Jesus. But the second thing we see here is that our friendship with Jesus is confirmed and seen in our commitment to do what he has commanded. Our friendship with Jesus is confirmed and seen in our commitment to do what he has commanded. Verse 14 and 15. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I've called you friends. For all that I have heard from my father, I have made it known to you. Those who say they are friends with Christ, their commitment to please their friend who's their master is evident in their lives. Friends of Jesus obey his commandments. Friends of Jesus, obey what He has instructed. Accepting the Lord Jesus Christ and all that He's done for us, we receive His friendship as the single greatest possession of our lives. And that gift of friendship also reveals itself or is confirmed or is displayed in our willingness to do that which He who died for us commands. And again, in verse 14, he repeats what he had said in verse 10 of our passage. In verse 10, he says, if you keep my commandments, you'll abide in my love, just as I've kept my father's commandments, and abide in his love. And in verse 14, again, we see where he says, you are my friends, if you do what I have commanded, Now, there are some who misunderstand this verse or these verses, verse 14 and 15, to mean, as if Jesus was saying that if you keep my commandments, or if you obey my commandments, then you are my friends, as if they are able to end their salvation. Some even argue that if you – one way to become a Christian is obedience to the commandments of the Lord. And what they mean is that as you obey the commandments of the Lord, God himself will put an approval on that obedience and then you earn your salvation. That's not what the Lord Jesus Christ is saying here. The summary of what he's saying here is that his friends obey him. What the Lord Jesus Christ is saying here is that those who claim to be his friends, they live a life of constant obedience to him. And this obedience is by the enabling power of God the Holy Spirit who resides in them. And God, the Holy Spirit, takes residence in them because once they put their faith and trust in Christ, and Jesus gives them the Holy Spirit as a gift from their Father, a seal of approval that they belong to Him. In other words, the Lord Jesus Christ is saying, If you do what I command, it proves you are one of my friends. If you do what I command, it confirms the truth that you are my friend. Doing what he commands is the fruit or the evidence that you are truly friends of Christ. What the Lord Jesus Christ is saying is that you can be assured that you are my friend. and that my death counts for you if my love for you and my death for you has transformed and motivated you to love others just as I've loved them by doing what I have commanded. It shows that his death is the motivation for us to do that which he commands. And that is what confirms that we are his, we are his friends, because our friendship with him shows itself in our commitment to him. And this commitment to Him, it's because of His presence in us. And His presence in us is what enables us to do that which He wills. In and of ourselves, we cannot do what He commands. We are opposed to everything that Christ stands for. But when you come to faith in Christ, when His death on the cross, begins to make sense, begins to show that he died for you. And when you believe in him, his death transforms you. And everything about you is about pleasing him who died a sacrificial death for you. Obedience. is a test of friendship with Christ. And what this means is that Jesus Christ is not friends with any who live in disobedience to him. Because obedience to what is commanded is a test of friendship with Christ. And he goes on to say in verse 15, that no longer do I call you friends, for the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I've called you friends. For all that I've heard from my father, I have made it known to you. And the Lord Jesus Christ there highlights that just as Moses and Abraham were called friends of God, when you read their lives it shows that they had these extraordinary privileges or revelations from God. God chose to reveal himself to them in certain ways, at certain times. The Lord Jesus Christ here as he speaks to the disciples in this immediate context, he's saying, everything I've heard from the Father, I have made it known to you. You've had this exclusive privilege to know the mind and the will of my Father in heaven. I have disclosed it to you. I have not withheld anything from you. You are not my servants. In that sense, you are my friends and I have disclosed to you the mind of the Father. And in a wide application, this is true of all of us as Christians. We have the Bible, God's Word. God has chosen to reveal himself in the scriptures. And when we read the scriptures as God's word, we find in it that God speaks to us. We have this privilege to know the mind of God, to know the will of God, and then in return to do his will. We know the mind and the will of our Father in Heaven. But our God, our Father in Heaven through Christ has given us His Spirit who helps us to make sense of what we are reading. Christ is saying where true friendship exists There's true disclosure which accompanies it. And this is a privilege we have as God's people, to know God himself. And in the third place, we see that our friendship with Jesus results in our bearing the fruits of godly living and effective prayer. Our friendship with Jesus results in our bearing the fruit of godly living and effective prayer. Results in our bearing the fruits of godly living and effective prayer. Verse 16 and verse 17. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit shall abide so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you so that you will love one another. The Lord Jesus Christ here reveals that the disciples in this context and also in a wider application to all of us, were chosen for a purpose. They were not just chosen so that they could go on bragging that the king of kings is my friend. They were chosen so that they could bear fruit, abiding fruit. They were chosen for a purpose. And so the Lord Jesus Christ, rather our text shows the purpose to which they were chosen and how they were to fulfill that purpose. They were chosen to be instruments through whom God was to continue displaying His love to the world. They were chosen to be instruments of preaching the gospel of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, to a lost world. And we see this in the life of the apostles when we read the book of Acts. They went about preaching the gospel and in the name of Jesus Christ casting out demons for the glory of God. but also the wider application is that all of us who are in Christ are chosen for a purpose and the purpose is that we may produce abiding fruit and the fruit is that we may go into this world and introducing our friends to a dying world. We are to go preach The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. The disciples did not choose Christ. Christ chose them. He called them. They did not apply for positions in his ministry. He called them and gave them a task. But also this verse points to God's sovereign grace in salvation. He did not just choose the 11 here. They did not choose him, he chose them and called them to himself and they believed in Christ. And this is true of all of us. We who've come to believe in Christ, the one who made the first move is the Lord Jesus Christ. He chose us and by Him choosing us, He caused us to believe in Him for our salvation. It is impossible for us to choose God. We are dead in sin and trespasses. We cannot choose Him. But God himself called us in our deadness and brought life in us so that we can respond to his call of salvation. We did not choose him. He chose us that we may bear fruit. And he says, part of that fruit is that will be accomplished when you ask in my Father's name. And this last clause there is just to remind the immediate audience, the disciples and all of us. Just in case we begin to be puffed up with pride that Christ chose us, He reminds us that without Him, you can do nothing. And that's why this fruit that you will accomplish will be as a result of you asking Him, asking the Father through Him, so that He can accomplish this fruit. This is what characterizes friendship with Jesus. To preach the gospel of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, and making disciples of all nations is not dependent on our methods. It's not dependent on us employing salesman techniques It can only be the result of a triune God changing a heart of stone into a heart of flesh. It is a supernatural base brought about by God himself. Only he can give life to those who are dead in sin. This is why we ought to be in a habit, constant habit of praying for the salvation of souls. You must be in a habit of having a list of individuals that you've been sharing the gospel with and pleading with God to open their hearts and they may respond to God. We must be in the habit of praying for the ministry of God's word, that it may have, it may bear fruit in the hearts of the hearers. This is God's work, and this is accompanied by effective prayer, and effective prayer is accompanied by obedience to God. We can't pray effectively if we're living in disobedience to God. We can't pray effectively if there's sin in our hearts. We can do so many things with sin in our hearts, but prayer, effective prayer, is not one of them. Maybe this is why some of us struggle to pray. Because you cannot come to commune with God, yet there is sin in your hearts. And yet Christ shows us that effective prayer is accompanied by obedience to him. The summary of what Christ is saying is that the ultimate aim in Jesus choosing us and dying for us, calling us his friends, and empowering us to bear the fruit of Godly living is so that the Father might be honored exalted and praised in the salvation of sinners. Our friendship with Jesus results in our bearing fruits of Godly living and effective prayer. So as I close, I want to ask, would Jesus call you his friend? Is this true of you what we've been highlighting this morning? Friends of Jesus love one another, obey His commandments, understand and treasure His truths, and are chosen to bear fruit that remains. And if this does not describe you this morning, If you cannot confidently say what a friend we have in Jesus, it is because you do not know this Jesus Christ. You don't know anything of what he's accomplished for those who believe in him on the cross. You don't know what it means when God's people sing with joy and confidence, tears in their eyes, when they say, Jesus knows all about our struggles. He will guide till the day is done. There is not a friend like the lowly Jesus. No, not one. No, not one. You know nothing of the confidence and the joy that comes when God's people testify and say, there's not an hour that is not near us. No, not one. There's no night so dark, yet his love can cheer us. Jesus knows all about our struggles, and he will guide till the day is done. There is not a friend like this lowly Jesus. No, not one. This is a testimony of God's people. They know what it means to be friends with Christ. And if Christ does not regard you as his friend this morning, Oh, please turn away from sin and put your hope and trust in Him. Because if you cannot have a worse enemy than God, if Jesus is not your friend, He is your enemy. And God will always win. Let this Jesus be your friend. And his friendship is only possible if you come to him on his terms and believe in him for the forgiveness of your sin. And you know what it means to have a friend who's high and lowly, a friend who's always by you, a friend to meet. when life's short race is over, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.