A Shared Life | John 15:5-17

John 15:5-17  |  Cody Hale

Transcript

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So beautiful to see you after a week away. If you have your Bibles, turn with me to John chapter 15. John chapter 15. We're still in our series on our new vision and our new discipleship pathway. So if you'll remember, our new vision is that we would make flourishing disciples through the enjoyment of God together. And we pursue that vision by walking down our discipleship pathway. The first week we talked about the first step, which is the enjoyment of God. This week we focus on the together part. We focus on sharing life. Next week, we'll conclude by looking at the final step of making disciples. John chapter 15. We'll begin in verse 5 and we'll read through verse 17 together. God's word says, I am divine, 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. 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. If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. 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. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this. Then someone would 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 have 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 should 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. Let's pray the Lord together. Father, what a responsibility we have. When we think about the costs that were paid, so that your church would be founded, so that your people would be saved. What a responsibility that we have together, Lord, to love one another as you have loved us. And Lord, as we think about your love, Lord, we find ourselves overwhelmed because, Lord, it is your love that is found on the cross, it is your love that is experienced through grace, it is your love that is known by the price that has been paid. And so, Father, as we follow in the ways of Jesus, let us love with the ferocity of Jesus, let us love with the generosity of Jesus, let us love with the grace of Jesus. I pray, Lord, that the community of Collierville and Germantown and the Mid-South would be able to look at the orchard church and they would know that we are disciples of Jesus because of the way that we love one another. Oh God, move among us this morning. Say what you have to say in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. We live in a time of great irony, don't we? We live in a time in which we are, on one hand, the most connected generation in all history. And on the other hand, if any of the studies hold up, we are at the same time the loneliest generation in all history. We have literally hundreds of ways to be able to connect with one another, and we have infinite ways to be able to communicate with one another, and yet, yet many of us feel as though nobody really knows us at all. Did you know that the average person spends six hours per day on their phone? Six hours per day. And yet, at the same time, 50% of all people say that they never have a real conversation with anyone. Did you know that? That we use our phones and we scroll through Facebook and Instagram and we try to see what everybody else is look doing and we post about our families on there, and we try to connect with people virtually. We get on there and we send memes and pass memes along. We pass along maybe even information for work. But most people, most people never have a conversation about what they're actually passionate about or what they're worried about, what they're looking forward to, or what they're dreading. That most people come away from all of those interactions feeling as though they are superficial, feeling as though nobody cares anything about them. But here we are living in the 21st century, and even in the church, loneliness feels normalized, doesn't it? It feels typical. It feels expected. Well, what we saw a few weeks ago is that this isn't just a social problem. This is a spiritual one. That before there is sin, before there is death, before there is corruption, that God looks down and he declares that something is not good. And the thing that God declares to be not good is loneliness. It is not good that man should be alone. So it shouldn't surprise us. That when Jesus came, Jesus didn't just come to save individuals. The individualism in America seems to often make us think that way. But Jesus didn't just come to save individuals. Jesus came to form a new kind of community. Jesus came to establish a new kind of family. You guys will forgive me. Our slides are not going to be able to be up on the screen this morning. In John chapter 15, Jesus says that he is the vine and we are the branches. That is, we are the branches abiding in the vine, but something remarkable takes place. The branches is always plural, isn't it? That we abide in Christ, and when we abide in Christ, we abide in Christ together. We abide together, many branches into one vine. That Jesus has come to establish a new kind of community, a kind of community that abides in him, a kind of community that bears burdens, a kind of community that walks in forgiveness, a kind of community that expresses grace, a kind of community that comes together for the purpose of sharing life, of overcoming this deficit of loneliness that so pervades our culture and society. And so what I want us to look at this morning is a picture that Jesus paints on the night before his crucifixion. That he wants to describe the nature of the kingdom to his disciples, and he describes the nature of the kingdom to his disciples by using this picture of the vine and the branches so that they could recognize, so that they could recognize that they are meant to be bound together in a way that is inextricable, in a way that is transformative, in a way that brings vision to the nature of the kingdom for all people to be able to see. And so by seeing this picture, we see the characteristics of a shared life. The first of those is that a shared life leads to shared love. A shared life leads to shared love. You don't get to choose your family, do you? You ever think about this? That just by the sheer fact that you were born to whom you were born, there's a group of people that you're expected to love and be committed to, take responsibility for all of your life. It may be cousin Eddie, it may be Aunt Bethany, it may be Ruby Sue, but maybe they're all yours, right? And they're all your responsibility. As a matter of fact, think about the amount of time and energy and resources that you utilize in your life just to cope with that very reality, the fact that you are born into the family that you were born into. Well, Jesus says something interesting. Jesus says that when you are born again, something similar takes place. That when you are born again, you are born into a new family, multiple branches, one vine. That we abide in Christ and we abide together. Here's what that means. What that means is that the Christian life simply cannot be lived alone. And it cannot be lived alone because fundamentally, by definition, we abide in Christ with one another. That we abide together, we enjoy God together, we serve Christ together, we obey the commands together. All of it is meant to be bound together in the nature of this new family. And we are brought together in this new family so that our love for one another can show the world who Jesus is. That is, by the fruit that is bore on the vine, on the branch, it reveals the identity of the vine. The fruit that is bore on the branches reveals the identity of the vine. My father-in-law is one of these guys that he can go and just by seeing the bark on the tree, he can tell you everything about that tree, right? You ever met a person like this? Like he doesn't just know that it's an oak tree, he knows that it's a white oak or a red oak or a water oak or a post oak. He knows the story, the indigenous, he knows whether it was God made, man, man-engineered, he knows the whole life story. Not me. Not me. I need to see apples and acorns if I'm gonna tell you what kind of tree that is, right? And I'm that's about as good as I'm gonna be able to do. Jesus says something is similarly true about the world and their perception of who he is. He's already made the case earlier in his passage that if you abide in him, the evidence that you abide in him is that you obey his commands. But as you come on down, if you'll notice in verse 12, what you'll see is that it becomes evident that he has a very specific command in mind. It's a command that he's just given to his disciples just a few moments earlier at the Last Supper, a command that he's given in John chapter 13. In John 15, verse 12, he says that this is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. The word as there is going to be really significant here in a second. But this is really, this is really emblematic of what he said in John chapter 13. He says, A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. That is, the way that we most clearly make Jesus known is not by the way that we gather once a week. It's not by the stances that we hold, it's not by the policies that we advocate for, it's not the opinions that we have, none of those things are necessarily insignificant. But these are not the ways that we primarily reveal Jesus to the world. The way that we primarily reveal Jesus to the world is by the way that we care for, commit to, and serve each other. Now, I think this is why so much of modern Christianity seems to fall flat. Because when you start looking at the way we care for each other today, it looks very different than the way that Jesus seems to set forward in his scriptures. Today, much of Christianity is really built around the worship experience, right? That you can create a worship experience and people can kind of slip in after it starts and slip out before it ends. And look, there is a time in your life when you may be going through something. There may be a time in which you're struggling with some particularly profound struggles, and you need that for a season. There's no judgment there. I understand that. It just can't sustain. It's not sustainable, right? That there is a way that you can actually come and you can attend church every single week, and you can attend church every single week without having an actual conversation with another Christian. Now contrast this with the early church. It was very different, wasn't it? In the early church, yeah, they gathered once a week in the temple to study God's word together, and you know what they did afterward? They went to one another's homes and they sat across from each other's dining room tables and they talked with each other and they broke bread together. We know that they disclosed their struggles with one another because it says that they would pool all of their resources together to make sure that every person that was in need had what they needed. Well, how would they know what that person needed? They told them, right? They told them. They confessed sin to each other, they confronted sin in one another, they held each other accountable. And y'all, they laughed. They laughed a lot. There's all kinds of parties taking place in the scriptures. They're enjoying one another's presence. They're enjoying one another's company, they're enjoying one another's friendship. Y'all, that's very different than the kind of fellowship that often we see in the church around a bucket of fried chicken on your way out the door, right? Like it's completely different. It's completely different. Here's the conviction that I have. I believe that we are positioned and responsible to make a dramatic impact on the Mid-South. I feel committed about it. I feel convinced of it. That with the resources that we have and the people that we have and the location that we have and what the Lord has done, we have a great responsibility to steward it all well. But the answer, if we're gonna have maximum impact in Shelby County and Fayette County, and throughout the Mid-South, the answer is not that we would have better produced services. And the answer is not that we would have more religious products that we can market, better religious products that we can market, than maybe the church down the street. The answer is that we would begin sharing dining room tables with one another. The answer is that we would share the waiting room of the intensive care unit on the scariest day of your life. The answer is that we would begin sharing the funeral home together on the hardest day of your life. The answer is that when we have an eye storm that's historic, we would all gather with our kids and watch them careen down mountains at 50 miles an hour and laugh about it together. It's that we would grow old with one another, attend weddings together, go to graduations with each other. That people would know that the ones that gather at the orchard church are so radically committed to each other that you cannot separate them, that you never see one without the other. And this puts on display the glory of Jesus. Y'all, this is the dream of community groups. This is the dream. I promise you, it is not that we would add something else to an already overfilled calendar. You don't need anything else on your calendar. I don't want anything else on my calendar. Are you with me? The dream is that it would be something that we could look forward to day in, day out, week in, week out, that we would come together and for our neighbors and for our children and for our grandchildren, we would put on display the beauty of Jesus because of our commitment and love for one another. That a shared life leads to shared love, and that shared love is meant to put on display who Jesus is, and it's meant to put on display for our kids and for our neighbors and for our husband and for our wife who it is that we are, who it is that we are. He goes on, he says in verse 8, you'll notice that he says, By this my father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove, if I was circling a word, I would circle the word prove, so prove to be my disciples. In other words, Jesus has it in his mind that it's important that you be able to look at the branch that is your life and be able to identify fruit that verifies you as abiding in Jesus. And so the logic of the text goes like this that if you are a disciple of Jesus, you abide in Jesus. And if you abide in Jesus, then you obey the commands of Jesus. And if you obey the commands of Jesus, the clearest evidence that you obey those commands are found in your relationships with other Christians. Found in the way that you live out that faith with other believers. See, here's the reality. The reality is that loving Jesus alone in the woods is pretty easy, right? The difficulty with loving Jesus is when you stand in the way. And the difficulty that you have in loving Jesus is when I stand in the way, right? That loving Jesus in the abstract is a pretty simple concept. But loving Jesus when it requires me to forgive someone that's hurt me? Loving Jesus when it requires me to have a hard conversation that I'd rather not have? Loving Jesus when I have to do the work of being a peacemaker? Loving Jesus when I have to put to death that root of bitterness that keeps wanting to spring up? I mean, that's difficult, isn't it? And this is where Jesus would say, this is the proving ground of your faith. Because this is where your faith meets the road. This is where life really ends to happen, and you have to live it out and apply it in everything that's taking place around you. Can we all just be honest for a second and say that church hurt is real? It's real, isn't it? And man, nothing makes you just want to kind of slip in and slip out and go through the motions more than church hurt. I know that because I've been there. I've literally been there and told myself, I'm just gonna go and I'm gonna preach the simplest sermon I can go and can and go home and be about my business because I'm done with people, right? You been there? I bet you have. I bet you have. Because that's real life, isn't it? That's real life. Do you know what else it is? It is an opportunity. It is an opportunity for you to love one another as Christ Jesus. That's the radical word, isn't it? As Christ Jesus has loved you. Because how has Christ Jesus loved you? He's loved you through mercy, he's loved you through grace, he's loved you by forgiving you, he's loved you by being generous with you, he's loved you even though you weren't committed to him, he was committed to you. That's the difficulty, isn't it? That when when we find ourselves in relational conflict, when we find ourselves in moments of church hurt, this is actually the backdrop against which we can begin to apply the cross to our own lives. See, here's the thing: I would never ask any of you to subject yourself to spiritual abuse. I would never ask any of you to subject yourself to pastoral abuse. I would never ask you to subject yourself to church abuse. But I would ask you to submit yourself to the cross. To submit yourself to the cross, to recognize that life with other people is complicated, life with other Christians is difficult, life in the in the nature of the church, because we are a collection of sinners that comes together, bound together by grace, is going to require a lot of grace for us to come together. And it's by coming together that we verify and bear the fruit of who we are and demonstrate to our community how good Jesus actually is. That we're being called to share love, showing who Jesus is, showing who we are. And we're being called to share costs. To share costs. In 1 John chapter 4, the same apostle he writes what I think is probably the most quoted verse in America today. He says, God is love. God is love. And it's a beautiful, profound, powerful statement, isn't it? But what's happened in American culture is it's become diluted, even perverted and twisted. We've taken a verse that says God is love, and we've redefined it to say, love is God, and there's a significant difference. You'll see this in uh Zach Brown band, he's one of my favorite hymn writers. Um, in his song Remedy, he says this. He says, Jesus preached the golden rule, Buddha taught it too. Gandhi said, An eye for an eye makes the whole world go blind. With a little understanding, we can break these chains that we've been handed. I've got the medication, love is the remedy. And then he says what I think is the most profound statement of all of it. He says, God is love one another. Do you see that small clause added at the end? It's different. Not God is love. God is love one another. In other words, the point of the song is that if we would just, if we would just see past the differences, if we would just love and accept those differences, if we would then approve of those differences, then all of us would be fine. There would be no problem. All of this would get along, right? But do you see how that's a subtle change? See, if God is love, then love is definable. It's objective, it's a it's derivative of his holy nature, it's derivative of his righteous character. But if love is God, well then love becomes something squishy. It becomes whatever it is I want it to be, so that I can get the approval and the tolerance and the and the acceptance that I'm looking for, that I can redefine it so that now I can liberate my conscience while binding yours. You're not able to disapprove of what I have. So it becomes something that's subjective, something that's squishy. Well, I think what Jesus is showing us in John chapter 15 is that God is love and love is definable. Love is objective. In fact, Jesus shows us that love shows us that it always pays the price. That one of the ways that you can know what love is is you can look and you can see what it is that love is will the price that love is willing to pay. Jesus says in John chapter 15, verse 13, he says this greater love has no one than this, that someone laid down his life for his friends. That love is so committed to paying the price that is necessary that it will pay the price all the way up until its own death. Well, it stands to reason that if you're willing to lay down your life and die for someone, that you would be willing to stand up and live for them. But in actuality, in practical living, standing up and living for someone can be much more difficult and much more trying for our faith than even laying down our life and dying for them, can't it? What is love? Love is my willingness to overlook what I want so that I can give you what you need. That's love, isn't it? Love is will my willingness to sacrifice what might be best for me because it is best for you. In fact, I would say, I would say that you really don't even know what how much you actually love another person until you are put in an environment in which your love for that person has a cost associated. Until you know what you're willing to pay for that person and the cost that you're willing to incur for that. Person, you really don't know how deeply committed and loving you are toward that person. Because love, true love, is sacrificial in its nature. And when this turns loose in the church, y'all, there's nothing more beautiful than that. I've seen this so many times in my ministry. I can think of a couple of years ago. We had a young man, a young dad in our church. Matter of fact, he and I, our uh birthdays were separated by just about a week. And he went, he was a business owner, vibrant man in our church, vibrant man in our community, great father, great husband. And he contracted a bacteria and literally in a matter of hours went from vital and vibrant to gone. I mean gone. So we're all gathered up together and we're in the intensive care unit waiting room. And I remember looking around that waiting room, and what I saw is I saw members of their community group all over the place. The elders of the church were there, the deacons of the church were there. And there we were, and we all gathered. When he was breathing his last breath, I remember going and looking him in the eye and saying, I give you my word. God is my witness, your family's gonna be taken care of. I remember holding her all over community group, coming around and holding this young mama as she gets the news that he's taking his last breath. People in our community group, people in our church going and sitting with her as she has to break the news to a little boy and a little girl that just lost their dad. People who rallied and they immediately start thinking, how can we make sure they have don't have to think about food? How can we make sure that the house is taken care of? How can we make sure that the business is squared away? How can we make sure that all their bills are taken care of because their breath had just been taken out of their lungs? And you know what I don't remember anybody doing? I don't remember a single person looking at their watch. I don't think I don't remember a single person thinking about how this was gonna make them tired for the next day at work. I don't remember anybody thinking about how much it was gonna cost them. I only remember people doing whatever it took to make sure that that family had everything that they need, that that family knew that they were loved. Y'all, that's what it's supposed to look like. It's beautiful, isn't it? The responsibility that we have in the church are to build a community here that is bound to one another in that kind of way, in a way that doesn't look at its watch, in a way that doesn't look at its budget, in a way that doesn't look at what's best for it, but looks at what's best for the whole, contributes to the whole, and then invite other people in our community to be a part of it. Did you know people will overlook bad preaching? That's good news. People will overlook mediocre music, that's we're we're good there, I think. I feel good about y'all, Andrew. People will overlook bad preaching and mediocre music to go to a place that they're loved. Did you know that? Because it's rare, man. It's rare. That's what we've got to build here together and invite the members of the Mid-South, the other community members of the Mid-South to come in and to be a part of this with us. We've got to build something that shows them that love will pay the price and love will go the distance. That's the other thing about that verse, isn't it? If I'm willing to lay down and die for you, then that means that I'm that there's no links to which I won't go to make sure that you're okay. Matter of fact, when you think about love in the context of the New Testament, when you think about love in the context of the cross, it's an enduring type of love, isn't it? It's a committed type of love. Jesus hangs on the cross till when? Till it is finished, he declares from the cross, right? So if we're gonna be loved, if we're gonna love one another and be committed to one another, what does our love have to look like? It has to look like the kind of love that is in it with each other until it is finished. That when you think about love in the New Testament, it always talks about enduring one another, bearing with one another, forgiving one another, being patient with one another. What does that say? It's all about steadfastness. It's all about commitment. It's all about the reality that life together is complicated and life together is hard, and life together is bumpy, and life together, if we're going to be committed to one another in such a way that puts on display the cross of Jesus Christ, we have to be in it with each other until the end. That true love is committed. Paul says it like this in his famous chapter on love, which is by the way, not about marriage, actually. It's actually about life in the church with one another. He says this in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, verse 7. He says, Love bears all things and believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Yo, that is counter-cultural. That is countercultural in a world whose concept of love has been formed by cohabitation, right? Think about the cohabitating culture that we have in the United States, right? What does it say? It's a lesser love, isn't it? It's the kind of love that says, I'm committed to you, but I want to keep my options open. I'm committed to you, but I but I want to make sure that you're gonna continue to romance me. I'm committed to you, but I want to make sure that you continue to satisfy me. I'm committed to you, but I want to make sure you don't change too much. I'm committed to you, but I want to make sure that you don't gain 15 pounds. I'm committed to you, but I want to make sure that somebody better doesn't come along. It's a lesser love, isn't it? Contrast that with marital love. Contrast that with marital love. Marital love doesn't say I'm committed to you until someone better comes along. It doesn't say that you better lose 15 pounds. It says that no matter what, if you're in a car accident tomorrow and you're a paraplegic and you bring nothing to the table till death do us part, I am resolved to be in this with you. I am committed to you. So if you gain weight or you lose weight, I'm in. If you make a fortune or you make nothing, I'm in. In sickness and in health, I'm in. For better or worse, I'm in. It's more beautiful, isn't it? It's more beautiful. So we're starting to see that if we're honest, true love really is objective. True love really is definable. Well, I would say that this is the same concept that sits behind church membership. This is the significance of church membership. You know, you really only enter into three covenants in this world. You enter into the new covenant with Christ, that's our covenant with Jesus. You enter into the marital covenant where we say till death do us part, and then you enter into a church covenant with one another, right? That we're supposed to be the kind of place that says, look, when the sermons are great, when the sermons are pretty dull, I'm in. When the show is exciting, when the production is bumpy, I'm in. When the slides are up and the slides aren't, I'm in. When church is going really well and everything seems to be flourishing, and when church seems to be really difficult, I'm in. I'm committed because I'm in this until the end to make sure that I'm putting up my myself as one of the ones in the way of Jesus, in the likeness of Christ, in the image of the cross, committed to the church so that we can do this together. I wonder this morning. I wonder this morning, if you've been on the fence about membership, maybe, maybe you just didn't even know what it was really the significance of it was. The significance of it is that we are committed to each other, to put on display in the mid-south that there are a there is a body of believers that is living out the gospel imperfectly, flawed as we are, to be committed to one another so that we can make a difference out there. And I wonder, I wonder if you would begin processing and thinking and praying, if you're not currently a member, that the Lord would have you come and join us because this shared life is about a shared love with shared costs. And that leads us finally to the culmination of a shared life, of a shared life. Jesus says something remarkable. If you look down at verses 14 and 15 with me, this is really amazing. He has this shift in perspective. And of course, Jesus doesn't change his mind. He's letting his disciples know that they're getting to the place that he's been preparing for them all along. Listen what he says. He says, You are my friends. I would circle that word, friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants. I don't regard you as servants. This is the shift in perspective. I don't regard you as servants any longer, 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. Can you imagine what this would have meant to his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane on the backside of the cross? Can you imagine what that would have meant? That here's Jesus and say, I don't regard you any longer as servants. No one I think of you, I think of you as my friends. But not only that, Jesus goes a step further. He begins to define friendship. He defines it by their commitment to him. You are my friends if you do what I command you. And he regards it about his disclosure toward them. I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father, I have made known. I have disclosed to you. Now, isn't that amazing? That the kind of community that Jesus is establishing is being lived out by Jesus Himself. That Jesus was it as the literal Son of God with a perfect nature, with no sin, with no known weaknesses. He chooses not to hold people at arm's length because it is the design of God for even the Son of God in his incarnation to live in a community of friends. And so here is Jesus, and he's saying, What I've done is I've made myself known to you. I've let you know about my fears and my concerns. I've let you know and asked you to pray when I was in the night of my agony. I've I've let you know what my father's will is, I've let you know what the plan of the cross is. I have given full disclosure to you. You are not just my servants, you are my friends. That now you would go forward and you would build a society like this, that you would build a kingdom like this, a kingdom that is defined by the kind of friendship that is lived out with this level of disclosure. That Jesus is here and he's founding his kingdom, and he's founding his kingdom as a place, a community of transparency. That this is the one place on earth, y'all, where it's okay that you're not okay. Where it's okay that that you don't have it all together. Where it's okay that that you haven't curated, a perfect image. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, he said this, he said that the one place where it seems to be unsafe to confess your sins is the church. Y'all, let it not be said of the orchard church. This is the place where we confess our sins to each other. This is the place where we deal with our brokenness with one another. This is the place where we get real about our dreams and real about our struggles, real about the things that we're looking forward to, and real about the things that we're dreading. This is where we deal with the difficulties of marriage and the difficulties of parenthood. This is where we deal with the complexity of life. This is where we deal, we deal with it together and we deal with it as friends. This is the language that we steal, by the way. When we say that our community groups are the place where our church family becomes friends. This is what Jesus has been establishing all along. This is the kind of community that he has in mind, a place where you can be honest with each other and transparent with each other and real with each other, that he intends for us to have a community of transparency so that we could ultimately live as a community independency on one another. It's interesting the way he frames this up. He says in uh in verse 16, he says, 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. If you go through John chapter 15, what you find out is time and again, Jesus says that you're to bear much fruit, all right? Like you're not just to try to like muster together one little apple, right? Like you're to be prolific and you're fruit bearing. But the idea of you being prolific and your fruit bearing is not that you would be an especially strong branch and an especially vibrant branch, more so than all the other branches, that you would bear more fruit than everybody else. It's that you would be one branch among many branches, and that all of you would be bearing fruit together, that you would be prolific because you're not alone, because in community with one another, you are abiding in the branch. And so look at what he says in verse 16. He says, I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide. The word appointed there, that's the same word that's often used throughout the New Testament to talk about a divine call, the way you're being called into a ministry. It's it's similar to the way that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians chapter 12 when he talks about uh one body but with many members, and he says that the Lord in his sovereignty has arranged all of the members in that body according to their spiritual gifts and their experiences, so that the entire body is complete together. So here's the vision. Here's the vision. The picture is that God Himself, in all of His kindness, in all of His wisdom, and all of His sovereign grace, has arranged and appointed the members of the Orchard Church to come together so that we have everything that we have, everything that we need, everyone that we need, so that we can live on the mission that Christ has given to us, and so that we can live on that mission effectively. That all of us have been arranged in eternity past and appointed. We didn't choose him, he chose us, and we've been put together so that we can live on this mission at this point, at this place, at this time, for such a time as this, that we would push back the brokenness of the mid-south and the lostness of the mid-south and the loneliness of the mid-south and bring hope that hope might abide as we abide together in Christ. That means that some of y'all were brought in here to pray prayers that I'm gonna experience answered in my life. And some of y'all were brought here so that I could pray for you and you could experience the answering of my prayers in your life. That means that we were brought together so that when I'm walking through brokenness, the Lord already knew that I needed you in my life. And when you're walking through brokenness, the Lord already knew that you needed me in your life, that the Lord has appointed us in his kindness to be there for one another. And if you ever experience this, y'all, if you ever experience this, you'll understand why he's leaning in here when he talks in verse uh 11 about the uh verses 11 and 12 about the fullness of joy that is available. It's only possible when you are biding together with a church family with a deep investment. There were a couple of years ago, um, I went through about five years, and I'm sure I'll have an opportunity to tell you more about this in the future. I went through about five years of just hellacious bad health. Um, just could not get off the mat. And during this time, I was in a discipleship group with a group of men, and I started experiencing in 2017 just debilitating headaches, debilitating migraines. I still uh struggle with headaches some, but this was just debilitating. I had one headache that lasted seven days a week, 24 hours a day for seven months. And I had another one that lasted 24 hours a day, seven days a week for eight months. And I was getting at the end of the one with the eight months that had lasted eight months, and y'all, I was depressed. They were talking about disability for me and pain management for me. And I was here, I was in my mid-30s, right? Like, supposed to be peak life. I have young kids at home that want their dad to play with them, and all I want to do is just go down, go home and just lay down my head. I had a ministry that I wanted to see and see what God could do and be able to preach and do all these dreams that you have for your life. But everything was on hold because all I wanted to do was just lay down my head. So I confided in this group of men that the headache was really, was really getting me down. I was struggling with being angry, I was struggling with being depressed, all the things that you struggle with when you struggle with chronic pain. And this group of men decided what they want to do is meet me at the church. They told me to meet me at the church, and when I met them at the church, they all circled around me. And they laid their hands on me. They began to pray and pray and pray and pray. The next two weeks the headache got worse. And I thought, I'm never letting those guys pray for me again, right? It turns out I got COVID. And so I'm laying in the floor of my bedroom at home, and I'm curled up in the fetal position, and my head is just throbbing, and I'm sick at my stomach, and I'm all the things that you have with COVID. And I'm like, God, why did you create me for this to be my life and this to be my experience? Well, the treatments that they gave me for COVID resolved the headache for the first time in eight months. And through that process, we were able to discover a previously unknown treatment plan for my headaches that enabled my headaches to be completely managed. Within two months, I was re-enrolled in seminary. I was starting new initiatives at the church. I felt like I had my personality back, I felt like I had my life back, and all I could think of is why did it take me so long to pray that the Lord had brought nothing short of miraculous recovery through the praying of people who were in community with me? Can I tell you? Like, I want that for you. I want that for you. I want you to have those kinds of testimonies, not because they're easy, but because they show you the glory of Jesus in a way that nothing else shows you. Here's the invitation. Here's the invitation. Did you know that here at the Orchard Church, we have more people that want to be in community than we have leaders able to lead in community? So we literally have group, community groups ready to multiply. We have new people wanting to sign up, and we don't have new groups to place them in. I wonder, I wonder this morning, I wonder if there would be some of you, not because you have a theological degree, because you probably don't. Not because you feel like you're worthy, because you probably aren't. Not because you feel like you got more time on your schedule, because you probably don't. But I wonder if there would be some of you that would say, I would be willing to open up my house, I would be willing to open up my dining room table, I would be willing to open up my life and the scriptures with a group of people. I would be willing to just put my yes on the table, not knowing what all that looks like, because here's the thing. I would bet that the yes that you put on the table is the answer to the prayer that somebody else is praying. And it's gonna put you in a position to be able to be there and to walk through life with people and to deal with real things with people so that the Lord can use your prayers in their life, in their prayers in your life, to build a genuine community where you're serving together. So here's what we've done. Ethan brought up a great point that so often we talk about sharing life, but we don't know what to do next. Here's what we did. We gave you a clear next step. We've got two tables that are out in our lobby. One of those is for our students, it's for D now. We need adults that want to connect with students, we need students who need to connect with other students. We want you to go and sign up and talk with Hannah and Ethan and their team at that table. We also have James and our community group team have set up a table in our lobby. And this morning, if you'd say, like, like, I don't know what it looks like, I don't know what it means, but I would be willing to offer my dining room table. I don't have a lot to offer, I can offer my dining room table. If you'd be willing to come and allow us to begin exploring the possibility of having a community group at your house, would you go and would you meet with James? If you're looking for community, maybe you're not ready to lead, but you just need to be in a group for the first time, would you go? He's gonna have volunteers at his name. They're clearly marked out in our lobby. There's no commitment today. You're not immediately signing up for a lifetime appointment, you're merely expressing interest, and you're saying, I don't know what it means, but what I'm willing to say is, I'm willing to say that my yes is on the table. Because, y'all, if we're gonna flourish, if we're gonna make the difference that God intends for us to make, if we're gonna become the people that God has called for us to become, it won't happen in a silo. It won't happen by ourselves. It's gonna happen in community. And so today I don't want you to get excited. I don't want you to live in lament. I want you to take new steps, a fresh action toward Jesus. And the clearest way is if you abide in Christ, you will abide one another, taking a fresh step toward Jesus this morning. I mean, takes taking a fresh step toward community this morning. Let me pray for us.