Light of Togo

A few weeks ago, a friend of ours at church told us about his boss at work and about a unique donation that he had given to help missions work.  He works at Cutco, which is a very large knife and kitchen utensil maker.  His boss had heard about remote villages where the people spend countless hours peeling their potatoes and other vegetables with whatever tools they have available, which is usually just a very dull knife.  So, he donated a bunch of Cutco potato peelers to help some remote villages, in South America if I remember correctly.  Anyhow, they had a huge impact on the daily lives of these people.  They were able to peel and cut their potatoes in a fraction of the time it used to take, which freed them up to do many other important tasks around the village.

So after Eric finished telling me this, he said that he wanted to do the same thing for us in Togo.  Eventually, he was able to get 50 potato peelers which he gave to us to take over there and give to people in a remote village somewhere.

OK, so maybe potato peelers doesn’t sound to you like a profound way to do missions work, but as Eric and I talked it was very encouraging to me to see how he had thought through the implications of what a simple potato peeler can do.  He said, “You know, if these potato peelers can make a difference in some people’s everyday lives, that just might be the one thing that opens a door for you to talk to them about Jesus and what He’s done for them, and that is what it’s all about.”  I smiled and said, “You’re exactly right!  It’s all about Jesus Christ being glorified in all the world.  God is seeking people to know Him and worship Him in Togo, and if He can use potato peelers in the process, then He will.”

See, many times our problem is that we “compartmentalize” our lives into the “spiritual” and “non-spiritual” or “secular” categories.  But in reality, as a Christian, every part of your life belongs to God, and He desires that you glorify Him with all of it, not just the “churchy” parts.  What are the everyday, “non-spiritual” things in your life in which you could be glorifying Christ?

If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love.

This is the culmination of all that Jesus has been talking about up to this point.  When a true follower of Jesus abides in Him, walks in Him, and depends upon Him, he will also seek to obey Him.  It is only natural to do so.  But, the question that inevitably comes up is, “What if we don’t keep Him commandments?  Does this verse teach that God won’t love us anymore?”

It must be understood that Jesus is not trying to make a point of God’s love being conditional towards His children.  What He is saying is that in this abiding relationship, we are expected to obey Him, and that when we do we fully experience His love manifested in our lives.  Jesus gives us the example of His own life.  He fully experienced the love of the Father because of His obedience to Him.  As Warren Wiersbe says, “Because we love Him, we keep His commandments; and, as we keep His commandments, we abide in His love and experience it in a deeper way.” (The Bible Exposition Commentary)

Usually when we think of keeping the commandments we automatically think of the “Big 10,” right?  We might have the mental image of a Pharisee in ancient Jerusalem whose life is consumed with following each and every law, commandment, and ordinance in a precise and detailed fashion.  The problem with the Pharisees, both ancient and modern, is that they lack one very important thing: love.  Without a genuine love for the Savior, which is developed from an abiding relationship with Him, one can only merely obey commandments on the outside like a lifeless robot while having a love-lacking heart of hypocrisy on the inside.

What is very interesting is to clarify what Jesus is talking about when He speaks of His commandments. Is He saying that we should be like a Pharisee, one who “just obeys” and nothing more?  Well, let’s think about what Jesus’ response was to the question that was asked of Him about the commandments.  In Matthew 22, He was asked what the greatest commandment is.  Jesus’ response was simple, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all they heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind…and the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”  Then notice that in John 14:15 Jesus said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.”  This to me is one of the great paradoxes of Christianity.  In all other religions, followers are expected to obey mostly out of fear of what will happen to them if they don’t.  Christians, however, are told by Jesus to obey Him not because of what horrible thing He will do to us if we don’t, but because of the great and glorious things He has done for us already!  We love Him because of who He is and what He has done for us, and because of that we should want to and seek to obey Him.  And what commandment does He most want us to obey?  To love Him with all of our being! And this, as we will see in the coming verses, is the foundation on which God can develop a love within us for other people.

Here it is at last.  Sorry that it took so long, but there was a little trouble getting the audio file off of the church computer.  I know that you were all anxiously waiting to listen to me speak in French for 25 minutes!  Try not to fall asleep!

Just to give you some idea of what I’m talking about, I preached from Colossians 2:1-10, focusing mostly on verses 6-10.  The basic idea was that Paul instructed us to walk in Christ in the same manner in which we received Christ.  He then goes on to warn of those who would add unnecessary things to the Christian life, such as religious traditions, laws, and human philosophies.  So, just as we were saved by faith, in grace, in receiving the life of Christ, so we are to walk in faith, by grace, fully dependent on the life of Christ which dwells in us.  Because, as Paul points out, we are complete in Him.  We need not search elsewhere for finding out how to live the Christian life.

As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love.

The love of God is unfathomable.  There is no sin, no error, no mistakes in God.  He is entirely perfect and therefore so is His love.  Jesus brought directly to this earth the perfect love of God.  The love between He and His Father was unselfish, untainted, and perfect in every way.  It is with this love that Jesus loves us.  Jesus was reminding His discples here that His relationship of abiding in the love of the Father was being shared with them, and that they could be partakers of the perfect love of Christ.

He exhorts them to “continue in His love.”  This is not to say, “Make sure that you behave yourselves so that I will continue to love you.”  His love doesn’t work this way.  Romans 5:8 tells us that, “…God commendeth (demontrated) his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”  If His love for us was based upon our performance or something special within us, we would never receive His love!  He loves us even though we are completely unworthy of love. Continuing in His love is more like saying, “Keep walking in my love; keep partaking of my love; keep enjoying and sharing my love with others.”  In the following few verses, we will see how Jesus explains what continuing in His love looks like.

Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.

We exist to glorify God. Period.

If you have not come to the point yet where you realize that the sole purpose for your existence on this planet is to glorify God, you must not have ever read the Bible. There are countless ways in which a follower of Christ can bring glory to God, but here in this passage Jesus tells us that one way is in bearing fruit.  Again, let’s not forget what Jesus is referring to when He talks about fruit.  God is glorified when we show His love through our lives, when we express the joy of knowing Christ, when we exercise faith in the unfailing nature of God.  As John Piper says in his excellent book on missions, Let the Nations Be Glad, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.”  When He is everything to us, He is most glorified.

As the branch abides in the vine, the fruit producing process is simply a natural outflow of the life of the vine.  Imagine yourself at a local farm, where you are strolling through the rows of trees and plants, taking in all the sights and smells of non-city life.  Suddenly, as you pass by the grape vines, you hear a familiar but out-of-place sound.  It is the sound of struggle.  You bend your ear to distinguish the source, but you see no one.  Then something catches your eye.  It is a vine, to which is attached a small branch, on which is no fruit.  This comes as no surprise to you since it is not yet the season for grapes.  However, you see and hear that this little branch is grunting and groaning, struggling and squirming with all it’s might, trying to push out some fruit.  You say to the branch, “Hey buddy, what are you doing?”  He stops his efforts briefly and responds, “I’m making fruit!”  You try explaining to him that he can’t do it by all that struggling, and that it’s not even the season for it, but he turns a deaf ear and continues his travail.

As silly as this illustration is, it is a mirror of many Christians who have their focus on the wrong things.  Here is a question: is bearing fruit a good thing?  Yes, of course.  But does it mean that it should be the focus of all our attention?  We must realize that fruit in the Christian life is the result of our attention being fully on our abiding in Jesus and on the glorifying of God.  It is much like the sinner who tries to “be saved” by living a pseudo Christian life, without first going to the source of this life which is Jesus.

The last part of this verse can be a bit tricky.  At first glance, it appears to be telling us that discipleship is conditional and based upon the fruit that we produce.  If this is the case, how much is “much fruit?”  How can we ever be sure if we are disciples of Christ or not?  This dangerous thinking leads to many errors, such as putting all kinds of external stipulations on determining whether or not somebody is “right with God” or not.  I have seen and experimented this kind of Christianity, and in it there are many extra-biblical man-made rules that many times take priority over simple Bible truth.

In a situation like this, it is helpful to consult the original language of the text.  From the study that I have done, it appears that the idea is this: Fruitfulness in the Christian life is not a condition which is required to become a disciple of Christ, but rather it is the proof that one already is a disciple.  Jesus once said that you can tell whether a tree is good or bad by its fruit.  A vibrant, healthy tree will produce good fruit, but a dead or dying tree will produce undesirable fruit or no fruit at all.  The point of this parable was to show that what the tree is, it will produce.  It would be silly to say that the good fruit on the limbs is what makes the tree good.  But it is perfectly acceptable to say that the fruit on the limbs is good because the tree is good.  We must be careful not to reverse this order.  We bear fruit because we are disciples of Christ.  All Christians bear fruit.  It’s not always the exact same kind or quantity of fruit for everyone, but all Christians bear fruit because all Christians are disciples of Jesus Christ.  There is no such thing as a “non-discipleship Christianity.”

So where are your priorities, your focus?  On struggling and straining to push out fruit on your own?  On the glory of God?  Maybe on neither of these things.  The Word of God challenges us to abide in Jesus, rest in His life as our sufficiency, and to do all things for the purpose of glorifying God.  And through this God will bring forth fruit in us, showing that we are followers of Christ.

If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.

Hmm, let’s see here, what do I really want?  A professional Canon or Nikon SLR camera would be nice.  Oh, and all the lenses too.  An iPhone could really come in handy.  A tennis racket that could make me play like Rafael Nadal would be awesome.  Let’s see, what else?  Oh yes, the biggest, fastest Mac computer on the market.  All the best, super lightweight backpacking gear and a high clearance 4WD vehicle to get to all the best hiking spots.  Well, I guess that’s enough for now.  So alright, Lord, I ask for all of these things, in your name of course.  Well, I’m waiting!

Do you ever feel like your prayers aren’t getting answered?  God gives us the promise that He will answer our prayers, but sometimes we are just ignorant to the fact that His answer may be a definite and certain “NO!”  Our problem most of the time is that we are praying for the wrong person, and I am just as guilty of this as anyone else, although not quite as bad as the exaggerated example above.  We pray most often for the one who we are most concerned about pleasing - ourselves.

James 4:3 tells us about praying for our needs, for our desires, for our “things” that we think make us happy.  It says, Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.

The key to John 15:7 is the phrase and my words abide in you. I truly believe there is a great difference between knowing the Word of God, and the Word abiding in us.  The words of Christ abiding in us produces a change of mentality, a change of focus, and a change of our desires.  Instead of dwelling on what we need, want, and crave for, we begin to pray according to God’s plans, His purposes, and His desires.  God never intended prayer to be a service bell for our every whim in the cushy mansion of luxury that we like to call our life.  It is intended to be the line of communication between commander and soldier as He carries out His plans through you.

Perhaps you, like me, need to begin praying more biblically.  As Jesus did, we ought to pray, “I don’t seek my will, Father, but let yours be done through me.”  God desires to give us what we ask for, but are we asking for what God desires?  I encourage you to know Jesus more through His Word.  Let it abide and take root in you, that you might begin praying more for God and His desires and a lot less for ours.

I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.

It just doesn’t get much clearer than this, does it?  Jesus says in very clear terms that He, and He alone, is the vine: the source, the life-giver, the root; and that we are the branches: the result of the vine, the conduit of its life, and the bearer of its fruits.  He again gives the assurance that all those who abide in Him will produce fruit.

As I mentioned with verse two, it is necessary to ask ourselves what this fruit is.  I have heard numerous times, and believed until recently, that the fruit of a Christian is leading another person to Christ.  However, after combing through every reference to “fruit” in the Bible, and after reading these passages in their contexts, I cannot say that the Bible teaches this idea.  Certainly, that does not in any way diminish the importance or the role of evangelism; nothing about it is changed just because “fruit” does not mean evangelism. What is most important is not to make commonly held ideas fit conveniently into biblical texts, but to interpret the Word correctly.

The Bible is very clear, however, in another passage as to what the fruit of the Christian life is.  In Galatians 5:22-26 we read:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.  And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.  If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.  Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.

The Bible assures us that all of Christ’s true followers have the Holy Spirit within them.  The natural product, or should we say fruit, of the Spirit in a believer’s life are these things mentioned in Galatians.  The desire of Jesus is to produce much of this fruit through your life as you abide in Him and He in you.  Ouch!  That is quite convicting as I think, “How often do I exhibit much love, much peace, much longsuffering, and much of these other things, in my home, with my friends, and with other people that I come in contact with?  Is my branch full of the fruit which Jesus wants to grow through me?”

It does no good to ask these kind of questions for the purpose of self-condemnation, but like me maybe you think that at times your life does not exhibit this fruit as it should.  If so, it is essential to remember the last part of this verse, for without me ye can do nothing. It is silly to imagine grapes or the branches which they grow on existing without the vine, or detached from it.  It is God, the loving and gracious vine dresser, who keeps you attached to the vine of Jesus Christ.  It is not your job to “keep holding on to Jesus,” because He has a hold of you and will never let go.  Without the work of God, we would not even exist, and without His allowing us to do so, we could not even take our next breath.  Without Him, salvation would be impossible and we would have no part of it.  It is this all-powerful God who is patiently pruning and purging your life so that He can produce the fruit which He desires through you.

The branch is nothing and does nothing on its own.  It is helpless and useless by itself.  It is only in the vine that they fulfill their purpose.  Their position is this: complete and absolute dependence upon the vine.  That is exactly our greatest responsibility, to rest upon the work of Christ and to live in complete and absolute dependence upon what only He can do in us and through us for His glory.

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.

Jesus here lays down a very simple and unchanging truth: that all fruit, all success, all labor, all of our very being is completely dependent on one thing - Jesus!  Without Jesus we can do nothing of eternal importance, and have nothing of eternal value.

When we attempt to live our lives independent of Jesus Christ, we are like a branch which is connected to a vine but strenuously trying to grow a cluster of grapes.  We push and strain and exert all our effort in doing something that is impossible.  Physically it is impossible for a branch to make fruit without the vine, and spiritually it is impossible for us to live the Christian life without Christ.

Many people appear to have the idea that the ultimate goal in the Christian life is found in striving to “be like Jesus” in every area.  While the Bible does talk about  being conformed into His image, I would have to say that I disagree with this idea as the fundamental way of the Christian walk.  I believe that the Bible indicates that God is much more concerned with our depending upon Him than with our mimicking Him.  I do not mean to sound like I am criticizing anybody, but the problem I see (and that I have had many times) is that many Christians attempt to analyze and improve every compartment of their lives for the ultimate goal of being like Jesus.  But what happens many times is that we end up doing all of this in our own effort, independent from the one who we’re trying to be like!  When we are entirely reliant and dependent upon Him, however, He grows us and matures us as He desires and in His perfect timing.  He will produce fruit through us as His life flows through us.  We are simply the conduit through which the vine produces its fruit to the glory of the God.

Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.

Jesus here clearly classifies all people into two categories: those who abide in Him and produce fruit and those who don’t and have no fruit.  There have been many false doctrines which site this verse as a “proof text,” the most common of which being that Christians can loose their salvation if they do not produce fruit.  We’ll come across this thought again when we get to verse six, but for now I think it’s important to establish a vital truth from the very beginning of this passage: those who lack fruit do so because they do not have the life of the vine within them!  Fruit can only come from receiving the life of the vine.  A branch with no fruit is a dead branch!  The Bible is very clear on this: “He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” (I John 5:12)

Remember, Jesus was not speaking these words directly to all people of all time, although they certainly apply to all people.  He was speaking to his disciples, so it should be obvious that the immediate context and application refers to Judas, who of course was not bearing fruit because he was not receiving the life of the vine, because he was not abiding in Jesus.  The wider application is to all of those, who like Judas, appear to follow Christ; they hang out with His followers, talk like His followers, act like His followers, but never have the spiritual fruit of His followers.

But what about the branches which do have fruit?  It’s clear to see that God, for His own glory, desires to have a fruit-producing vine, and that He does what is necessary to acheive this.  The purging that is mentioned here is like the vital but sometimes painful pruning that God must do to our lives so that He may cause us to bear more fruit for His glory.  It really should make us stop and ponder the many “offshoots” that we follow in our lives which only serve to distract us from resting in the source of life that is in Jesus Christ.

Want to add something to this study? Leave a comment.

I just wanted to share some thoughts with you from a passage that I was reading the other day in John. Chapter 3, verses 22-36. It’s John the Baptist’s response to those who were asking him about the attention that was being taken away from him because of Jesus and his ministry. John’s response is extremely revealing of the way he viewed himself in light of the savior. I hope that you’ll read the entire passage on your own, but I want to focus on verse 30, where John says of Jesus, “He must increase, but I must decrease.”

That sounds simple enough, I guess, but it’s important that we ask what it really means. What does it mean to increase and decrease? Well, I’m sure that there’s a lot more than I’m going to write about here, but here’s a couple thoughts that come to my mind when I think about this.

(Read more…)

I was reading the account today in Matthew 15 of Jesus going up to a mountain by the sea of Galilee where all kinds of sick, blind, and crippled people came to him. The Bible tells us that he healed all of them to the amazement of everyone. After they got over the initial shock of seeing crippled people walk, deaf people hearing, mute people speaking, sick people well again, it says that “they glorified the God of Israel.”

Sometimes I believe that we underestimate the reason why God did, or does, things. You may have heard, like I have, that the primary reason why Jesus healed people and performed miracles was because He had great compassion on people, because He loved them; or because He was trying to convince the skeptical Jews of His authenticity. While both of these were reasons, we must not loose sight of the fact that they were secondary reasons. The reason why God does anything is for one primary reason: for His glory! He desires self-glorification above all else. How arrogant! How egotistic! How conceited! And yes, He would be if He were anything less than absolutely perfect! Only one who is without fault can be deserving or worthy of glory and worship. So let us, as those people on the mountain that day, stand in awe of Jesus Christ and glorify God in Him! It is Jesus who performed the greatest miracle of all time in forgiving our sin and securing our salvation. Again, why did He do this? Because He loved us? Yes. Because He wants fellowship with us? Yes. Because He wants us in Heaven with Him some day? Yes. But above all else, because He receives glory when a blind and hopeless sinner is transformed, given a new nature, and begins a life of following Jesus Christ.

[side note] Jesus seemed to really like climbing mountains…I suggest you do it sometime!

First of all, if you’ve never read “My Utmost for His Highest,” by Oswald Chambers, you really should. It’s a daily reading kind of book, just one page per day. It is basically a collection of writings and sermon/lecture excerpts from Chambers’ life.

Thanks to pastor Bill Anker in Spokane, Washington, I have now not only read from Oswald Chambers but about him too. He gave me Chambers’ biography a couple years ago, but I just got around to reading it lately. In case you’re interested the title is “Oswald Chambers: Abandoned to God.” It’s not the most entertaining read, but it is very challenging to see Chambers’ approach to life, ministry, and Christianity in general. I’m astounded at his simple but deep faith in God. He was not a man that was striving for or worried about results, success, or popularity even among Christians. His sole desire was to abide in Christ and draw closer to Him, leaving all the results up to His plan. Wow, if we could just learn how to do that! Aren’t we so often guilty of manipulating circumstances and people so we can get our results, our success, or popularity?

It’s always encouraging to read about the men who followed Christ wholeheartedly in the past, but let’s not forget that God works the same way today! He can use anyone in any culture at any time. Some people talk as if God is done using people in great ways, but that is the farthest thing from the truth. God is still working in and through people who have abandoned to Him the directing of their own lives. This is really what it comes down to, isn’t it? Who’s going to be God? Is He, or are we going to pathetically attempt to rule our own life, setting ourself up as a little demigod of our ugly little kingdom? The issue here is worship. God deserves and desires worship, and He gets it when we acknowledge His divine right to BE GOD in our lives.

What is it that really frustrates you? I know that for me, there’s too many things to list. As a recovering obsessive compulsive perfectionist (is there supposed to be a dash between “obsessive” and “compulsive?” See what I mean?), there are way too many things that frustrate me. But, by God’s grace, I’m learning not to fret the small stuff and not drive my wife insane! (Read more…)

I’m wondering if any of you have ever found yourself asking the same question that I have recently, “Am I really able to live for God and serve Him?” At the surface this sounds like an easy enough question to ponder. I mean, if we know God personally as all true Christians do, then we should want to live for Him, right? We should want to serve Him with our lives, right? (Read more…)