Sermon Transcript
We’re very excited you guys are here. I know every time I get to be a part of the service when the children’s choir is here, I know many of you are Mandarin speaking, and it just takes me back to the 2 years my wife and I spent in China. We were 1 year in Beijing, 1 year in Shanghai, and it was just a very, very special time for us. And we just want to welcome you here to join us this morning. If this is your first time here, if you’re just here with the kids, welcome.
If you’re checking it out for— if you’re new to the area too, welcome. We’re just excited that you’re here to worship with us. Today we’re going to be looking at John 13, starting in verses 31 through 38, and we’re continuing our One Week to Live series.
And today we’re talking about revolutionary impact, and we just see revolutionary impact in our culture all around us. I mean, I think about this guy. For those of you in the back, maybe harder to see, this is my smartphone. This is my iPhone. And this thing has just changed the world.
I mean, if you think about it, how smartphones have changed the world. You have the internet literally at your fingertips. Some of you are using it right now. If I weren’t preaching, I’d be using it right now. And this thing is just— I remember when I was When I first got this thing, my brother-in-law who had had one a while before me, he said, David, this is going to be trouble.
You just need to realize you’re going to be using this thing probably every 5 minutes until you get rid of it, which you’re not going to do. And I remember thinking at the time, no, no, no, no, no. I’m going to have the discipline not to use this that much. Okay, I’ll probably use it a lot, but I’m not going to use it every minute. What am I doing now?
Using it every 5 minutes. I mean, this thing buzzes in my pocket and I think, okay, email, check it, okay, respond. Cindy, where do you want to eat tonight? Okay, figure out where we’re going to eat. How are we going to get there?
Okay, figure out how. Who are we going to— how are we going to get people to the— you know, this thing is just revolutionary impact. And to think about it, people in Turkey are having the same experience that you and I are having when we’re using this. It’s phenomenal. You think about Google search engine.
You do Apple in Silicon Valley, you gotta also talk about Google, right? Google’s product, you can ask the internet any question, virtually any question. You start typing it in, it’ll finish your question for you. Have you noticed that? One time I was writing, what is a mani-pedi?
And before I finished it, boom, there it is. Apparently there’s enough guys out there, there’s thousands of us, that Google has enough in their database to know That that’s what I’m going to type once I start getting to the Manny part. It’s amazing. Facebook. Revolutionary impact.
They got to 1 million— 1 billion users a little ago. And you think about, for many of you, I’m sure, as it is for me, try to imagine life without it going forward. I mean, revolutionary impact. And the amazing thing is, we don’t often think about it in these terms, but Jesus came to have revolutionary impact. Jesus came to change this world, and of course he was successful.
I mean, look at history. I was on Apple campus a couple months ago, and I was hanging out with a buddy. We were meeting to talk about ministry things, and at one point I was just kind of probably drooling over myself saying, wow, isn’t this so cool? You work here, it’s amazing, the products, everything. And he said, David, To be sure, yes, it is absolutely amazing that I get to work here, and I’m so blessed to be a part of it.
The products that I get to work on, they’re changing this world. They’re changing history. But you know what? We have a product, so to speak, that will outlast it all and that will revolutionize our eternity for the good. And of course, what he was talking about was the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Jesus came to revolutionize the world. But there’s a problem. And that problem is, do we see that happening in our actions? Because he, as his followers, he left it to us to carry on his movement, his kingdom. But is that happening?
Do we see that happening in our lives individually? Do we see that happening here at the church? I was sharing with Pastor Dave a little ago what I was planning to share, and he said, you know, Man, this might be very timely for us. It makes me think about the number of adult conversions we have seen. Not many.
Of course, we rejoice when the children are baptized. Wonderful things. But are we seeing revolutionary impact in this place? Jesus promises it. In this passage, he talks about how that you and I can have revolutionary impact.
How we can just change the world. And he talks about it in 3 ways, and we’re going to look at it in the sense of what keeps us from having revolutionary impact. If you’re not a Christ follower here today, this is a wonderful time, I think, personally. You can hear kind of the insider’s perspective, Jesus himself, how he intended for his followers to revolutionize the world. But what we’re going to look at today as a church is 3 things under the headings that you have in your notes there.
What keeps us from having revolutionary impact? 3 things. Well, to get into the passage, verse 31 starts, when he was gone, Jesus said, now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. The he, when he was gone, is Judas. If you remember, this is our One Week to Live series.
Pastor Dave, Pastor Steve, we’ve been preaching the last week of Jesus, and we’re now at the place where Jesus has been with his disciples in the upper room sharing the last precious hours with them, with the disciples, before he would be taken to be tried. And so he had washed their feet, we saw a couple weeks ago, and then last week Jesus predicts that one of them, Judas, will betray him. Well, now we see today it picks up, Judas has left to go betray Jesus, and so therefore Events have been set in motion irrevocably leading towards Jesus’ trial, arrest, and execution. And it’s in that time Jesus says, now is the Son of God glorified, and God is glorified in him. That’s pretty amazing.
I mean, Jesus is facing his death. He knows it. Absolutely clear in his mind.
Defeat is seemingly imminent, and yet Jesus says, now is the Son of God glorified. And God glorified in him. Jesus is claiming victory. That’s an amazing thought. Jesus is saying, I came for this reason.
This very reason is why I came. He goes on to say, if God is glorified in him, God will glorify the Son in himself and will glorify him at once. And then here’s the real kicker. Imagine if you’re a disciple and you hear this. My children, I will be with you only a little while longer.
You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now, where I am going you cannot come. Jesus is saying, in other words, I am going. I am getting ready to leave the scene. And if you are one of the disciples, think about what was going through your head. Jesus had been telling them to be sure that he was getting ready to leave, but they had not been getting it.
Instead, they were terrified. This movement, this kingdom that Jesus was pushing, people, followers are starting to form. In their minds, this is Jesus’ baby. Jesus is doing this. How can you leave?
You gotta take this thing to the next level. It makes me think of— I guess today’s my day to talk about Apple. You know, Apple’s transition with the late Steve Jobs. I was gonna say poor Tim Cook, but You can’t really say poor Tim Cook when he’s making hundreds of millions of dollars. He’s doing okay.
But poor Tim Cook in this sense. You know, ever since Steve Jobs passed away, anytime anything goes wrong or even seems to go wrong, stocks dip a little bit in Apple stocks, everybody’s saying, oh, it’s because Steve Jobs isn’t here anymore. I mean, you and I probably had those conversations, right? And you think about Tim. He’s just living under this enormous shadow.
Just incredible pressure. The disciples were scared. Jesus knew it. That’s why he’s saying, my children, I’m getting ready to leave you. We see from their response here in a few verses, they’re not ready for this.
And yet Jesus is saying, I came for this reason. Jesus is saying, this is what the last 3 years has been about. I have been pouring into you to equip you to take on the ministry. But here’s the problem. We, like the disciples, we fall into a mindset that keeps us from having the revolutionary impact that Jesus tells us we can have.
And that’s the first thing. This mindset of, I’m leaderless. I’m leaderless.
You know, for you and me— well, on Monday nights we’ve been having these trainings, these Compelled trainings, evangelism trainings, and Tim Riley, who preached here a couple of weeks ago, is leading these things. And if you know Tim, you’ve heard him speak, he’s an extremely gifted speaker. I mean, just an incredible communicator, very passionate, you know, just an evangelist. This guy spends all of his spare time at Peet’s Coffee talking to strangers about Christ, and by God’s grace, people are coming to faith in droves, in large numbers. God is doing a lot of work through Tim, and if you spend just a little bit of time with him, you see that.
And what was amazing is he’s giving us all these insights on how to equip us for evangelism. And at one point he says something that’s really cool. I thought this was really cool of him. He said, now look, I know there’s a lot of you guys in this room. Some of you guys in this room, you’re thinking this.
You’re thinking, oh, I have this friend and he’s going through this situation. She’s going through this situation very much like your story, Tim. And you know what? I’m just going to bring them to you and you talk to them and they’ll come to receive Christ. Tim said, absolutely not!
That’s why we’re doing these trainings, he said, to equip you. They’re your friends. It’s actually funny, he went on to say, he said he usually responds in those moments, he says, did your friend ask to speak to me? Well, no. Well, then I’m not talking to him.
Tim was absolutely right. He’s absolutely right. God wants to use you. God wants to use me. With the friends, with the people, with the coworkers that he’s put in our lives, our neighbors.
God wants to use you. But we often fall into this mindset of, I’m leaderless. Someone else can do it. And it’s debilitating. It keeps us from having revolutionary impact.
We don’t need to bring our friends to Tim, Pastor Dave, other people who are gifted speakers or good with words. God wants to use you. But we often have this mindset, and I struggle with this from time to time. We’re not the right— we feel like we’re not the right people. We’re not going to have the right words.
But God wants to use you. And I think the implication here is we need to embrace our calling as Christ followers. God wants to use you. God wants to use me to have revolutionary impact. Revolutionary impact.
He wants to use you. So we gotta embrace the calling. Jesus promises it, but are you willing? It can be a very scary thing.
And let me just ask the question, are we leaderless? Well, no, we’re not leaderless. We see in a couple of verses, actually in a few minutes in this time frame from this night that we’re looking at Jesus and the disciples’ lives, Jesus goes on to tell how he’s getting ready to send the Holy Spirit. And actually in the Great Commission, Jesus says Go and make disciples, and I will be with you to the ends of the earth. I’ll be with you always.
So Jesus actually hasn’t left us, but his plan and design all along is for you and me, just like the disciples, to carry on the ministry. But here’s what’s amazing. Look at— your Bible’s already open basically to this page. Look at John 14:12, just a few verses from what we’re looking at today. I tell you the truth, Anyone who has faith in me, Jesus says, will do what I have been doing.
He will do even greater things because I am going to the Father. You think about it. Peter, I mean, it would just be a couple, just a few weeks after Jesus had gone back to the Father in heaven, he would on a single day by the power of the Holy Spirit in him help 3,000 people put their faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus hadn’t done that before, and that was his design.
Revolutionary impact, but we have to embrace our calling. The second one we see starts down in verse 36. The second thing, the second mindset from us having revolutionary impact. Look at verse 36. I think you can section this thing, structure this passage, verse 31 to 32, and then Excuse me, 31 to 33, 34 to 35, and then 36 and the rest on.
Look at verse 36. It says, Simon Peter asked him, Lord, where are you going? So remember, verses 31 through 33, Jesus is saying, I am going. And Peter says, where are you going? I think this is important to notice because Jesus goes on to say some things in between there, and yet Peter flat out does not hear it.
Verse 36, in other words, flows completely naturally from verse 33, and it should not. We will come back to that in a little bit, verses 34 and 35. But it shows us what the second mindset is that keeps us from having revolutionary impact, and that is, I am not listening.
Simon Peter asked him, Lord, where are you going? And then he continues, Jesus replied, where I am going you cannot follow now, but you will follow later. Peter asked, Lord, why can’t I follow you now? I will lay down my life for you. Then Jesus answered, will you really lay down your life for me?
I tell you the truth, before the rooster crows, you will disown me 3 times.
Peter was stuck on the matters— on matters that mattered most to him. Peter was stuck on his own agenda, even with the good intentions that he had. He was saying, why can’t I come? Jesus says, you can’t come. And he says, okay, well, if it is not about that, then is it about devotion?
Okay, well, I will go all the way to lay down my life for you if that is what it takes. And Jesus has to gently but sternly say, you know what? You are not even going to do that.
You don’t even realize, but within a few hours you are actually going to disown me 3 times. You think you are going to lay down your life for me? You’re going to be doing the complete opposite. You’re going to be abandoning me in my hour of need. Peter is not listening to what Jesus has to say, how he can have revolutionary impact.
Instead, he’s focused on his own thing. Now Peter, bless his heart, great intentions, deeply loves Jesus, but he’s focused on his own thing. And that’s something that we fall into, unfortunately, a mindset of our own agenda. I’m not listening.
Pop Christianity. I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but I hear it. It’s very subtle, but it’s often preached. People need to be reformed before they can be accepted. Have you heard that?
It’s very subtle, but reform before acceptance. In other words, you need to get your act together before you can be a part of a church or a Christian community. You need to stop cussing. You need to stop drinking. You need to stop living together before you can be a part of our thing.
And Jesus— that is not the gospel. The gospel is we need forgiveness. We need the forgiveness of Jesus Christ, and then by God’s grace, he starts to work in our lives. The reality is Christians are not fully reformed. We don’t have our act together.
We need to— we can’t embrace it. It’s our own agenda. It’s our own thing getting in the way. Another example, there was an event not long ago. It was a church-driven event for a wonderful cause, and there’s a lot of people from the community there, a lot of non-Christ followers.
Wonderful. And one person who was invited came, and they were with a an organization, outside organization, and they got up there and said, isn’t this wonderful, this event? So many great things happening. We Christians should do more events like this, and went on. And I was just, oh no!
It was very subtle, very quick. Maybe people didn’t even hear it, but this idea of we Christians should do more things, he was saying, it’s very subtle, but if you’re not a Christian and you’re here, you’re an outsider. No. Jesus says we got to be arms wide open. It is not our own agenda.
We need to listen to what Jesus— follow his leading. Follow what matters to him. I think the implication here is we need to take steps back from the actions that we have around people who do not know Christ and look at them again. Because we are either doing typically one of two things. We are either leading people towards Jesus or pushing people away.
We are typically doing one of those two things. And the problem is Peter shows us that we often are— we have the greatest intentions but we are pushing people away. And it is an incredibly hard thing to step back and look at because we are partial to our bias. But we need to do it. I think it means a lot of prayer.
Lord, where are we doing this the way we want to do it, not the way you want to do it? And then looking to change.
So what’s keeping us from having revolutionary impact? Is it that we’re leaderless? No, it’s not quite because we’re leaderless. We struggle with this mindset from time to time, but we need to embrace our calling. Is it that we aren’t listening?
Very likely so, but we need to look at our actions and follow Jesus’ agenda, not ours, even when they might seem to be the right thing. But the main thing from this passage that keeps us from having revolutionary impact is found in verses 34 and 35. This is really the heart of Jesus’ message. You got to realize the scene here. Judas had just left to go betray Jesus.
And Jesus turns and looks at his 11 boys, his disciples. These are my guys. And these are the people who are going to— imagine what he was thinking about. I mean, as he looked into those guys’ eyes, these are the guys that he is going to use, work through them to revolutionize the world. And then through them down the ages, us.
And in that moment, here is what he says. A new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone— you talk about revolutionary impact— everyone will know that you are my disciples if you love one another. The 3rd thing that keeps us from having revolutionary impact, the main thing from this passage that we see, is that we don’t love each other the way we should.
We don’t love others the way we should.
The amazing promise here is when we love each other, everyone will know that we are Christ followers. Everybody will know and see Christ’s love in us connected to him. Know— that’s a powerful word, by the way. There’s 2 Greek verbs to know. One’s oida.
It kind of has this idea of to know about, to observe. But the word used here, ginosko, is this idea— it has the weight of knowing fully, weight of knowing absolutely. And that’s the word Jesus uses that when he’s— look, what Jesus is talking about here, he’s talking about evangelism. He’s saying this is how people will turn and see Jesus and come even to put their faith in me.
We have a video testimony. I— a couple of— not long ago in a life group that I attend that usually meets at this hour, one of the guys, Chris Abushan, shared his testimony. And this was his testimony. This is how he came to be a Christ follower. I was going to have him come up and use the microphone and share, but he’s on a babymoon.
He’s getting ready for his second kid, so they’re off having fun and relaxing. But I wanted to show you this testimony here. Love is the reason I’m a Christian today.
I’m humbled when I look back and go, I was the only child of a single mom. I had a pretty destructive lifestyle. And it was after a pretty destructive evening, actually, that I went to, in camaraderie with a friend, friend whose mom was forcing him to go to church, I went with him. I ended up meeting a guy by the name of Darwin, and a very big and boisterous and energetic guy, and he instantly invited me over to his house, something that apparently he did for many of the youth in the church at the time. He’s a pillar of the community, and I didn’t know him because I just didn’t know pillars of the community.
Where everything kind of started to change was that I saw, you know, I had seen Christians in the past, but I saw him and his family interact in a way that I didn’t have with my own family. My mom loved me dearly, but there’s something around that family unit that I saw and I was drawn toward. And that, that to me spoke more to my soul. It got around kind of the bulwark or the from the valley, the firewall that we all have. They were hacking me by love.
You know, they love, they kept loving me and nothing else would have worked. I’m humbled to know that, wow, following Christ’s calling of loving is all it took for me. And so I try to be that same person in life every day.
I don’t judge and I still love even though people make mistakes and make continued decisions that are sinful and I make them too. But for me, that whole loving, it speaks around everything else. It wraps around everything else that we are called as Christians. And for me, that’s the part that made the difference. I am a Christian today because of that love.
And if it weren’t for something, for someone loving me that way, I would probably still be wandering lost or maybe not even here today. It was a paradigm shift in my life to see someone love that kind of wholeheartedly. I’ll use that term. I can’t know their heart in every way, but I felt like at every turn, if I needed something, I could have called them. If I would— if I was in a tough spot, they were someone that I could come to.
If I was hurting, they were someone that would be there beside me, because I had a single mom growing up. So I kind of felt like this surrogate family provided that other layer. And what did they do? They disclosed the real Father to me by way of their love. I love that one line he had in there.
What’d he say? They were hacking me with love. That’s a very Silicon Valley guy. But you heard it. He was talking about how— I loved how he said it’s the family unit.
Got to see the love in their family unit. And he said, that’s how they hacked me with love.
I imagine if I asked the question of those of you who identify yourselves as Christ followers— don’t raise your hand— but I imagine if I asked this, If I asked how many of you came to faith by seeing the love of Christ in others, almost all of our hands would shoot up. I mean, think about it. I know this is my testimony. I grew up in a Christian family. I heard the gospel at a very, very young age, 4 years old.
But the reason I put my faith in him and continued to grow in Jesus was because I saw the love of Christ in my family and all my siblings. It’s the reason I’m standing here today.
Really? Jesus is saying when we love each other, we will have revolutionary impact. That’s not a hyperbole. Revolutionary impact when we love one another.
But here’s a sobering quote I came across.
This is a quote by Tim Keller. He says, a gospel-centered church is rare. Many churches begin with the core mission of connecting people to Jesus, but over time they drift into maintaining themselves or flowing— or following a separate agenda. They do it all in the name of Christianity, but the heart of their message has gone. Something else besides the grace of Jesus Christ takes center stage.
Similarly, similarly, churches can either exist for themselves, focused on the needs of the members, or they can answer God’s challenge to pour themselves into the city where they belong, bringing gospel healing to broken hearts, broken neighborhoods, broken societies. As I see it, we Christians, we’re so good at verse 34, or at least the first part of it— excuse me— to love one another. We’ve got that down. I think we’re doing a great job of that. But the problem is that’s often where it stops.
And do you see that when it stops there, according to Jesus, we are not going to have the revolutionary impact he promises? That everyone will see, will know you are Christ followers, will see the love of Christ in you, be drawn to him, even put their faith in him?
I think it leads to the big— the bottom line of today’s message really. To have revolutionary impact, it is this: helping people experience the love of Christ in community. We need to help people experience the love of Christ in community, in a gospel-centered community. Jesus’ movement was primarily about extending God’s family. Yes, he cares very much about us loving each other for the sake of loving each other.
He wants to grow and pour in us. He wants us to experience him more fully, experience each other in Christian community more fully. But think about it this way, as Christ followers, we’re going to have all eternity to do that. And we’re going to have all eternity to do that perfectly where there isn’t sin. But in this life, in this precious time that we have here, if there is a theme of this One Week to Live series, it’s how limited and precious our time is.
Jesus is saying we need to extend his family, help others see their need, and even come to put their faith in him. That is what we can— that is what we are called to do. God loves all people, and his plan, his wisdom is to use you and me to do this. And how do we do that? How do we have this revolutionary impact?
How do we hack people’s systems? Oh yeah, we love each other. We love each other.
This passage, I have to say, has been completely changing the way I see ministry. And I’m not just talking about in the week, you know, I used to prepare for this message. I’m talking about the last couple years. This passage, John 13:34-35, has probably had the biggest impact on me as I understand ministry. Ask one of the OPROs.
They’ll probably tell you, yeah, David I can’t stop talking about John 13:34-35. And that’s why it’s just so amazing to me that God worked it out that I’m preaching this today. I mean, we’re doing a preaching series. It just falls on you to preach this and that. Pastor Dave, Pastor Dave.
This is what I get to preach and explore further with you guys. And I’m just sitting there like, God, this is so much fun. These passages have changed the way I see ministry. Do you see that? Because ministry doesn’t need to be so It’s not daunting the way we make it out to be.
It can be simple and natural. Love each other. Bring others into that fold that they might see Christ’s love for each other, that they will know that we are Christ’s followers, that they will come to see him, put their faith in him even.
One of the young professionals, Mark Sternberg and Tanya Sternberg, He has a couple of relatives who live in the area, and they came out to the comedy night that was for raising awareness for human trafficking. Freedom House, that was mentioned earlier, raised support for that. And he said, David, my family members are coming. This is just awesome. You need to realize these guys, I mean, they just stay as far away from church as humanly possible.
Can. Okay? They are just staunch atheists, don’t want to have anything to do with church, and they are coming to this event. You know, this cause means something to them. I am just excited.
I said, wow, that is great. They came and it was great. The YOPros were out there. We were serving and just kind of staffing, doing kind of the hands and feet stuff of the ministry that night. And Mark at one point comes in and he says, David, he says, He said, guys, my relatives are here.
Can you guys go meet them? And so I was busy at the time. I said, okay, let me finish this up. He said, okay, but I’m coming back to get you. Okay?
So a couple people went over and they started talking to them. And a little bit later, Mark came over. Oh yeah, sorry. So I headed over there to talk to them. We were in the car.
And I kind of had this like— I saw a little bit of a register. Okay, here comes the pastor. This is going to be weird. And I don’t blame them for that. Pastors, we’re weird.
Okay? So they kind of had that thought and I saw that. But we just had a wonderful conversation. I mean, just, you know, talking about random things. I got to find out that Mark is actually named after that relative, and we were having fun talking about how they spell their name with a C as opposed to a K. That was a conversation.
A number of people had conversations with them. Mark was very intentional about getting people to get to know them. And then the following week at small group, Mark came up to me and said, Dave, just a miracle has happened. My family members are now saying, hey, we’d like to come to church sometime. And you just think about that.
That was just a simple, natural thing of seeing how Christ followers love each other. That was what was drawing them in. That was what was drawing them in. I mean, extroverts— excuse me, introverts, are you hearing this? You know, Jesus didn’t say, okay, It’s about good preaching.
It’s about miracles, doing some healings. It’s about getting this number of people to your event. Jesus said, when you love one another, you— everyone— revolutionary impact. It’s a natural thing. It can be simple.
I think about the men’s basketball league. The vision of that league, it’s not so much to have a devotional after each game, which we don’t do. We pray before each game. You know, we pray that the Lord would keep us from getting hurt and all that. And also to let people know, you know, this is what we’re about, very subtly, and we’re not trying to beat people over the head.
But what’s the vision? The vision is to offer up an opportunity for people in the community that otherwise wouldn’t come to church to rub shoulders with Christian guys as they play basketball and to see this happen in the league. And you know how this happens. If you’ve paid attention to basketball, especially basketball out on community parks, things can escalate very fast. If you didn’t know that, very fast.
And it’s not that Christians, Christian athletes are less competitive. I mean, I can speak personally from that, okay? But when, hopefully, things start to escalate a little bit, somebody steps in and says, you know what? I’m sorry for fouling you that way. Let’s move on.
I mean, you might say that doesn’t sound that weird. That is revolutionary in the basketball game. You’re weird, but okay, let’s do that. And then we find out at the end of the season people are asking, why are you a follower of Christ? I was having a conversation with Andrew Hill a couple weeks ago.
He just had a wonderful conversation with a guy on our team. Tell me more about this.
When we love each other and we bring people into that community, people will know that we are followers of Christ. People will experience him. Revolutionary impact. It doesn’t have to be a church function or a small group. It can be in your family unit, as Chris mentioned.
We have friends who have come from another church about a year ago now attending Bridges. In the previous church, like many churches— we probably fall into this at times too— was very— they very much felt like to do ministry you had to be doing church programs, right? But they were saying, you know what, we’re trying to live out ministry as a lifestyle, not so much doing church programs. And so they’re getting together with neighbors in their community. They meet somebody at the mailbox and they invite them over for dinner.
They meet somebody just kind of hanging out, invite them over for for dinner. And I was talking to one, I think it was just last week, this last week Wednesday. He’s saying, it was awesome, we had people over at our house and we were talking about Jesus. I didn’t even bring it up. We didn’t even bring it up.
They were saying, you guys are Christians, tell us about that. He said, it was awesome, we were talking about Jesus. Well, you know, my wife was talking about Jesus. I was just kind of— he’s the introvert, she’s very much extroverted. They were seeing Christ love for each other.
Revolutionary impact. It is not daunting. It can be simple. It should come natural. But here is the thing I would leave you with.
I would ask you, what is one thing that you can do this week to help someone who is not a follower of Christ experience the love that we have for each other in community? His love in community. What is one thing that you can do this week or invite them towards? And I would suggest to you that the answer to that is not necessarily bringing them to church.
It’s a very good option, but sometimes I have friends who are just unwilling to come to church. It’s just not their place. What can you do in your life groups, as individuals, in your group of friends? How can you bring somebody into your community? So that they could see the love of Christ.
Because the promise is when we do this, Jesus says you will have revolutionary impact. People’s eternity will be changed.
I mean, how much greater than an iPhone, Google search engine, that 10 years from now— 10,000 years from now, we would be standing side by side, because of the love of Christ that that person is standing there with you. Jesus working in you, the Holy Spirit working in you to bring them into faith.
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
The problem is, I think Peter just does a great job of showing us something. He shows us that you and me, we are the biggest obstacle when it comes to having this revolutionary impact. We, Christ followers. I mean, think about anybody you have in your life, someone.
How many of you know somebody in your life that would say, the reason I don’t consider Jesus, Christianity, is because of Christians?
I have a number of people in my life who tell me that straight out knowing that I’m a pastor. The reason I don’t consider Jesus is because of Christians. You’re okay, sort of, but the reason I don’t do it is because Christians, what they do. I have people who tell me that when I’m a— it’s the case. We are our biggest obstacle.
But you know what? Peter messed up fully. Peter abandoned Jesus in his hour of need. You just think about the pain that that must have caused Jesus. His main guy— we actually know from the text that they made eye contact right after Jesus disowned him.
He was disowning him out here in the courts. Jesus was over here in the temple courts. They made eye contact. Peter fled such that he wouldn’t even be there when Jesus was hanging on the cross. Think about how that pierced Jesus’ heart.
And yet Jesus died for that very reason. That’s the gospel. You and I, we’re Peter. We’re Peter, and Jesus came to die for you and me, to love us despite ourselves. You know, we don’t have time to look at it, but if you have your Bibles open, John 21 shows how Jesus restores his relationship with Peter.
And I think in light of the passage we are looking at here in John 13, it is amazing to me. You know, the elephant in the living room after Jesus died and rose again, he sought Peter out. The elephant in the living room was Peter’s sin, gross sin, I mean about the worst, disowning Jesus. Jesus sought him out and said, Peter, do you love me? Peter said, of course I love you.
Take care of my sheep. Peter, do you love me? Of course I love you. Take care of my lambs. Peter, do you love me?
Jesus, you know all things. You know that I love you. Feed my sheep. You see, Jesus not only came to save us, but he came to enable us to love others, to take care of others, to help others see the love of Christ that they might see him, know him, put their faith in him. Jesus not only dies for us to save us but to enable us.
And he— do you see how the gospel enables us? It gives us on the one hand complete humility that we are absolutely dependent on God because we are going to mess things up. Let’s be honest. God knows that. Let’s just throw that out there on the table.
Absolute humility. At the same time, absolute confidence because we know it in It’s not dependent on us in the least. And yet despite even ourselves, Jesus enables us to have revolutionary impact.
And so it is Jesus’ strength, his gospel that allows you and me to revolutionize this world. So are you willing to embrace this? Are we willing to embrace this calling as individual followers, as a church? Are we willing to look at our actions and reevaluate where are we truly following Jesus? Where is our own agenda, as good of intentions as might be there, getting in the way?
And then of course the biggest thing is how can we bring people in to experience the love of Christ in a gospel-centered community? Because the promise is when we do this, we will have revolutionary impact.
Think about the implication of that. I mean, I often think about Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley, it’s hard as a rock. We are extremely— the people here are extremely privileged, materially doing just fine. And just like Chris was sharing, it’s not going to be someone preaching or arguing him into the faith.
Jesus says the way to cut through all of that is to love each other and to bring people to experience that love. When you do that, people will know that you are my followers, Jesus says. They will experience me and they will come to put their faith in me. May that be true of us individually. May that be true of us as a church as we seek by God’s mercy to have revolutionary missionary impact.
Let’s pray.
Lord Jesus, thank you so much for laying down your life that we might have life. Thank you for coming for the very purpose to die so that you would claim victory in that death and give to us Eternal life. And Lord, if there’s someone here today who is not your follower, has not received the forgiveness of sins that you give, the extension, the hand that you just are reaching out to them that they might come and put their faith in you and receive this wonderful news of forgiveness of sins today, I pray that you would work in their heart, that they would take the next step and they would actually even put their faith in you today. You can do that, by the way, if you’re here today. Just ask the Lord for forgiveness of sins.
But then also, Lord, when it comes to us as Christ followers, we praise you that you also died to help us, to enable us to have revolutionary impact, to change this world for your kingdom. Lord, who are we? Who are we that we might be a part of something that is so great?
The greatest thing of this life, and you call us not to be some small part of it, but to be a central aspect of it. Forgive us our sins individually and as a church when we get this wrong, but we pray for your grace and your leading us to have revolutionary impact despite ourselves. May your gospel go forth. May the love of Christ that we share as brothers and sisters of Christ go forth in this community. May many people come to put their faith in Jesus.
We pray this in your powerful name. Amen. This concludes today’s service. The Lord bless you as you leave.
