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What is it good for? What's the point? What are you getting done? Or for that matter . . .What is God good for? What are we good for? What am I getting out of this?
Have you ever heard those questions . . . or perhaps posed them in one form or another yourself?
Have you ever had the idea that the value of something (or perhaps someone) has more to do with what they are doing for you, or perhaps what you are doing for them, rather than in just who they are? Because we value, hire, and reword those who work for us, and receive similar returns from those we work for, it is easy to being to think of our relationships in those terms. This is true also of our relationship with God. If we are not careful, we can come to think that the Christian life is all about working for God rather than being with God.
So are we just splitting hairs here? Is it all just semantics? Or does it matter - really matter - as to whether or not we believe that what God really wants is us working for Him, or what He really wants is for us to be be with Him?
John 15 (TNIV)
1 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes[a] so that it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.
5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.
9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.
That is the question that Pastor Jon explores with us in the sermon, and as we celebrate communion together. Is God is search of more workers, or is He in search of children that He would like to be with. What do the age old celebrations of communion point us to, greater productivity or richer intimacy? What is it that God really wants from us, and invites us to embrace?
If you would like to listen to the sermon once again, or perhaps for the first time, you can do so by accessing our sermon library by clicking here.
As you think about your own relationship with God, do you live more with the sense that God wants you to be working for Him, or that God wants to be with you, and invite you to be with Him?
Do you think it matters which of those receive the primary focus?
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