Sermon for Saturday, May 4, 2024

“I Have Called You Friends”

John 15:9-17

Let us pray: Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen. (Psalm 19:14)

The text for our meditation this evening is the Gospel lesson from John 15:9-17. You are welcome to look at it with me, as it is printed in your bulletin.

It is not very often in the Scriptures where people are specifically called “friends of God.” We read in James 2:23, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness - and he was called a friend of God.” Only two other times in the Scriptures is this term used for Abraham, and in one of those cases, the much more common term for believers, “servants of God,” is also used. God said through Isaiah, “You, Israel, My servant, are the offspring of Abraham, My friend” (Isaiah 41:8).

The second person called a “friend of God” was Moses, for we hear that when he was on Mt. Sinai, “the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (Exodus 33:11). And Moses asked God, “Please show me now Your ways, that I may know You.” God did show Moses so much that he became the first great prophet of God and wrote the first five books of Scripture, and predicted the coming of the greater Prophet, our Lord Jesus. Yet the Lord also told him on Mt. Sinai, “You cannot (really) see My face (in all its glory), for (no) man shall see Me and live” (Exodus 33:13-14, 20). And so, beyond this one occasion, Moses is simply known as “the servant of the Lord.”

And as time went on, that is how all the other prophets and writers of the Old Testament were known - as “God’s servants, the prophets.” To them the Lord revealed more and more of His will and His plans for Israel and for all nations and for the coming Messiah, the Savior Jesus. As we read in Amos 3:7-8, “The Lord God does nothing without revealing His secret to His servants the prophets… The Lord God has spoken; who can but prophesy?” And so we now have the whole Old Testament, the Words of God through the prophets, that we can still read and study to this day.

And when the Messiah, Jesus, came into the world, He emphasized the same things. He quoted the Old Testament and said, “You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve” (Matthew 4:10). Since God is God, and we are only lowly sinful human beings, how can we be anything but His servants, too? Jesus also taught, in one of His parables, “So you also, when you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty’” (Luke 17:10).

This finally takes us to our text, the Gospel, from John 15, where three times Jesus calls His disciples His “friends.” This is the Greek word “philos," which means “friendship love” or “brotherly love.” The city of Philadelphia is known as “the city of brotherly love, of “philos.” Unfortunately, that city and most all cities these days don’t always demonstrate a lot of that brotherly love. The problem is sin and our sinful nature, which isn’t always friendly toward all others.

That’s why Jesus, in our text, combines that word for “friendship” love with another word for love, “agape,” which means “sacrificial love.” And this “agape” love comes first and foremost from God the Father and His Son, Jesus, and His sacrificial love for us as a gift. Listen again to our text. Jesus says, “As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you. Abide in My love.” (In fact, in this passage, "sacrificial love" is mentioned nine times, while “friendship love” is mentioned only three times.)

Remember also that Jesus spoke these words to His disciples on Maundy Thursday, the night before His suffering and death on the cross. And he also taught them, in our text, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends.” We know that, humanly speaking. We probably should say it more often to more people, but to whom do we typically say, “Thank you for your service”? Don’t we usually use these words for those who we think could literally be risking their lives for us at some point - those in the military, police, firefighters, emergency personnel, and those in the medical field who risk exposure to serious disease and illness?

How much greater is the sacrificial love of Jesus, knowing what was coming and being willing to do it anyway! Remember the words of Paul in Romans 5: “While we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person - though perhaps for a good person, one would dare even to die - but God shows His love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us… While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son” (Romans 5:6-8,10).

Think also of how, in the Lenten season, we heard of the agony of Abraham, the friend of God, being asked to sacrifice his son, his only son, and yet being stopped from doing that. Could it have been easy for God the Father to go ahead with the plan He and God the Son had agreed to, even when He heard the cry of Jesus from the cross, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” - when Jesus suffered the God-forsakenness of hell, in our place, for what we deserved? It took that kind of complete sacrificial love, “agape” love, for the forgiveness of all sins and eternal life to be earned for us and for the world, by Jesus.

Jesus said again, in our text, “I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.” It gave Him joy to do His Father’s will, even with all the suffering, because it would bring such great joy to so many, who would be saved through faith in Him once He had completed His sacrificial, “agape” work. Jesus said, “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” The future would be secure for these believers and for all believers, through Jesus.

But this was a future to be believed and shared, and that is why Jesus had chosen these disciples to whom He was talking. Jesus said to them, “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.”

All believers, including these disciples, were servants of the Lord, as were Abraham and Moses and the other prophets of the Old Testament. But they were more than just that. Jesus says, “You are My friends… No longer do I call you (just) servants, for the servant does not know what his Master is doing.” In ancient times, many servants were slaves. They simply had to obey, no matter what, whether they understood what was going on or not. Jesus says, in contrast, “I have (also) called you friends, for all that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you.”

Jesus had been teaching these disciples for three years, and after His death and resurrection, He would keep teaching them more and more, as we have been hearing in this Easter season. He was pulling everything together about His saving work for them and for the world. In a few weeks, we will also hear again about Jesus sending the Holy Spirit to lead and guide and empower these disciples. In fact, soon after our text for today, still on Maundy Thursday, Jesus would say, in John 16, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of Truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:12-13).

That is just what happened, and soon these same disciples were going out and sharing the Good News of Jesus with everyone they could, both Jews and non-Jews. In
our Acts passage, the first reading for tonight, we heard Peter taking some non-Jews, Gentiles, step by step, through the saving work of Jesus, and that “everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins through His Name. And while Peter was still saying these things, the Holy Spirit came upon all who heard the Word,” and brought many to faith in Jesus and to baptism.

And a number of these original disciples, including Peter and others God chose, wrote down the very Words and message of Jesus in what we now call the New Testament so that future generations, including our own, can still hear the same messages and the same Words and the Good News of Jesus.

And what about us today? We are obviously not called to write new Scriptures. We already have everything we need and what God intended for us in the Old Testament, which points forward to Jesus, and the New Testament, which shows us the saving work of Jesus. Through that same Word of God, we have been brought to faith in the sacrificial love of Jesus and to Baptism and to the joy of Christ in us in gifts like the Lord’s Supper — or, we can still be brought to such faith if we still have doubts and questions and struggles.

We are called also to keep hearing and studying that Word of God so that we can better understand what Christ wants for us and is doing for us, as our Friend. An Old Testament proverb says, “A friend loves at all times” (Proverbs 17:17). According to that standard, our friendships are often imperfect. Christ is our truest Friend, though, always working for our good and loving us with both the Law and the Gospel in His Word. Another Old Testament proverb says, “Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy” (Proverbs 27:6). We don’t usually think of friends wounding us, but sometimes we need that. Jesus is our most faithful Friend when he shows us, through His Word, our weaknesses, and calls us to repentance, and then gives us His forgiving love. In contrast, the kisses of an enemy don’t always mean goodness of any kind, as we know from the story of Jesus and Judas.

And one more Old Testament proverb says, “A man of many companions may come to ruin; but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother” (Provers 18:24). Jesus is that closest Friend, in whom we can always trust. He teaches us to pray that His will be done and helps us to love others, as He has first loved us, as our text says, too. Then our joy will be more and more full, no matter what,

Let us pray: Now may the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, keep our hearts and minds safe, only where they are safe, in Christ Jesus. Amen. (Philippians 4:7)