Father in heaven thank you for gathering us today. Lord, I ask for peace in our hearts and minds today. Lord we need your peace today. There is weariness in our hearts that need comfort. God, we are exhausted as we are just trying to hang on to life as we know it. I pray that the unnecessary burdens we are carrying be lifted toward you so you can give us the endurance, and power that supersedes all our understanding, to sustain us.

In our powerlessness, let our eyes be on you. We look upon you because the battle of our lives is not in our hands but it’s in yours. Victory has already been won. Strengthen us so we can stand firm on your salvation. Lord, be with us as we follow you. We know you love us from here to the ends of eternity. Help us love one another with the same mind and heart. In Jesus name. Amen.

John 13:21-38.

²¹ After saying these things, Jesus was troubled in his spirit, and testified, “Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” ²² The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he spoke. ²³ One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was reclining at table at Jesus’ side, ²⁴ so Simon Peter motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. ²⁵ So that disciple, leaning back against Jesus, said to him, “Lord, who is it?” ²⁶ Jesus answered, “It is he to whom I will give this morsel of bread when I have dipped it.” So when he had dipped the morsel, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. ²⁷ Then after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, “What you are going to do, do quickly.” ²⁸ Now no one at the table knew why he said this to him. ²⁹ Some thought that, because Judas had the moneybag, Jesus was telling him, “Buy what we need for the feast,” or that he should give something to the poor. ³⁰ So, after receiving the morsel of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night.

³¹ When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. ³² If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once. ³³ Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.’ ³⁴ 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. ³⁵ By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

³⁶ Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered him, “Where I am going you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.” ³⁷ Peter said to him, “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.” ³⁸ Jesus answered, “Will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times.

(John 13:16-38 ESV)

So last week, I asked you if you would follow Jesus; to be cleansed by him, to obey him, and to serve like him.

This week, I want to challenge you to this end: if you would follow Jesus, will you be ready to take the risks of faith necessary to allow God’s glory shine through your life?

What that entails is going boldly beyond our comfort zones and to love in a way that glorifies God.

I’ve been praying over us, that all of us will be ready to take the necessary risks of faith to allow God’s glory shine through us into a dark, lonely world. That’s our big idea today.

Big Idea: The world knows who we follow by how we love one another

The risk of faith we need to take is to love one another. And loving one another is a huge risk! I mean, just the act of loving somebody you share blood with is hard! Like, have you had days like, you’re my kid, but shoot…. That’s the nicer, PG version of my thoughts I had recently.

But to actually love the people

• sitting next to you,
• who work with you,
• who piss you off,
• who are selfish and conceded

That’s the riskiest thing you can ever do because you don’t actually know what you’re going to get back in return.

But that is how the world will know who we follow and how God will be glorified in us.

Come on, be real with me, how many of know that we have to love the people I described above, but actually have a funny way of showing it. As in, we don’t actually show them love, we give them patient tolerance, at best.

We stink at showing love toward others the way God commands, which is to love them at their level, to bring to God’s. We don’t do that though. What we demonstrate in our attempts to love one another is:

• First, that we are self-interested in our outpouring of love, meaning we don’t love unless it’s capable of reciprocation or if it gives us a primal advantage or benefit;
• And, secondly, that our self-confidence keeps us from loving others where they are.

Very rarely do we embody love for others that is God-centered. Meaning that we rarely embody a type of love that’s willing to lose it all.

The source of our my greatest marital strife with Michelle involves my inability to love her and our kids in a God centered way—that is at their level, to bring them toward God.

A month ago, Michelle and I took the girls to the lake and we’re playing in the water and I see some good sized fish. Don’t ask me what they were, but I’m like Kate, come here, I’ll show you some big fish. So she waddles over to me in the water and she can’t see, so I pick her up, and I’m holding her over the water with her little feet dangling right beneath the surface. So she asks me, “dad, what do fish eat?”

And I’m thinking fast, because in my love for my daughter, I want to teach her the right things, you know. And so I say, they eat fish food.

“What’s fish food?” she asks. So now, I’m thinking, well, it’s these green plants and the stuff living in the green plants. Now these green plants look like legs and the little things growing on them look like toes. So in my playful tone, I say, “kate, this is fish food,” grabbing her feet and toes and I start singing, “here fishy fishy, I got some delicious kate fish food, come here and eat it so kate can see you.”

I said this lovingly, you know, because I’m a good father and I want her to have positive interactions with wildlife. Problem is, Kate’s freaking out, yelling, trying to keep her feet out of the water because I just invited the fish to eat her toes so she could have this experience with interacting with wildlife.

There was a lot of family strife that day. That’s me, with my own flesh and blood.

What about you?

The consequences of not loving others with a God-centered love, is that culture will swallow us alive. It will consume every good thing within us until we’re sapped dry, broken, and lonely because our way of life is more ideologically aligned with the undercurrent of post-modernistic, democratic capitalism, than with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Let me make this more simple: the pot calling the kettle black is laughable, and so our lives become, proclaiming faith in Christ without reflecting the love of Christ to others.

It’s crucial we show the world who we follow by our God centered love. So, I’m going to spend the rest of my time today doing three things:

1. First, I’m going to show you how loving in a self-interested way is actually satanic.
2. Second, I’m going to prove to you why self-confidence cannot be the source of your love toward others.
3. And thirdly, I’m going to illustrate what it looks like to embody a God-centered love.

Okay, back to the text. Let’s look at the subplot for Judas Iscariot because you’re going to see that

The self-interested follows Satan

Verse 21.

²¹ After saying these things, Jesus was troubled in his spirit, and testified, “Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” ²² The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he spoke. ²³ One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was reclining at table at Jesus’ side, ²⁴ so Simon Peter motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. 

This is John writing in the third person by the way, that’s how he described himself: as the one whom Jesus loved. If you want to feel confident in who you are, refer to yourself as the one Jesus loves, it’ll change your life.

 ²⁵ So that disciple, leaning back against Jesus, said to him, “Lord, who is it?” ²⁶ Jesus answered, “It is he to whom I will give this morsel of bread when I have dipped it.” So when he had dipped the morsel, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot. ²⁷ Then after he had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, “What you are going to do, do quickly.” ²⁸ Now no one at the table knew why he said this to him. ²⁹ Some thought that, because Judas had the moneybag, Jesus was telling him, “Buy what we need for the feast,” or that he should give something to the poor. ³⁰ So, after receiving the morsel of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night. (John 13:21-30 ESV)

I love that last half thought John adds, “and it was night.” Does anything good really happen under the cover of night?

John is poking fun at the disciples and himself saying, “why in the world did we think Judas was going to buy something for the feast or that he would give to the poor, we all knew that nothing is open, and everybody is sleeping. It’s the night time?!”

Ever wonder why sometimes you don’t think God is speaking to you? He does speak to you, we’re just too inobservant to recognize it most days!

Shameless plug, if you want to learn how to be more attentive to God speaking to you, and implement some disciplines to discern his leading so you can love others like God does, then after this service, go to the connect desk and ask to join a Huddle. We want to help you for the good works of ministry God has for you.

Back to Judas. John tells us that at this point during dinner, nobody knew who was going to betray Jesus even though he had been hinting at it.

I want to go on a limb and say Judas was probably still wrestling with it himself. He was still just flirting with the temptation of betrayal. I say that because of how verse 22 is written. John says the disciples “all looked at each other.” When he describes everybody as dumbfounded by Jesus’ comment, it indicates to me that Judas was still wrestling with the idea in the moment. In fact, when Jesus tells Judas to do what he got to do quickly, I think that Judas was prompted to get the money before somebody else does. He’s a business man after all.

All of us are a lot like Judas in that way—we’re opportunistic. We flirt and wrestle with temptations and succumb to sin because of the opportunity it presents. The temptation is just too great, and the reward, no matter how temporary, makes you feel so good!

Surely I’m not the only one that feels and thinks this.

Maybe we haven’t betrayed our savior outright like Judas; but don’t tell me that when you’re at the table of God, enjoying the presence of God, you’re not sometimes wrestling with the temptation of sin in his presence!

Like, we’ll be singing “What He’s done what He’s done. All the glory and the honor to the Son” and then you think, “remember what he’s done, that boss of mine, how can I screw him over this week. I’ll just quietly quit for a few hours and delay his project a week so I can swoop in as a hero and get that raise.

You’re looking at me like I’m the most devious person here, but don’t pretend that isn’t a thought you had earlier today.

Listen, people wouldn’t sin if it didn’t feel good. And there is nothing more self-interested than intentionally sinning because it makes us feel better about us. The very definition of being self-interested is being motivated by one’s personal interest or advantage, especially without regard for others. Judas betrays Jesus because what he gained made him feel so good, at least temporarily.

In fact, the whole reason Judas loved Jesus in the first place was self-interested. Being around Jesus benefited him. He had the moneybag that he could often reach into. I don’t know how much was in that money bag since Jesus was homeless and the 12 disciples all left their day-jobs to follow him, but regardless, it was a benefit. When loving Jesus no longer became lucrative for Judas his love for Jesus ends. On the night before his crucifixion, there was only one more opportunity to make money in having love Jesus, so in following Satan, Judas sells out his friend for what would amount to be like $250 today.

Temptation appeals to your self-interest! Judas can love Jesus as long as it makes him another denarii. That’s how some of us love – with conditions that must benefit us!

• As long as we don’t get hurt.
• As long as they do behave a certain way
• As long as they listen to you,
• I can keep going….

The same way Judas was following Satan in self-interest on the night he betrayed Jesus, our self-interested love would lead us to sin against a person we are supposed to love because it fails to give us an advantage.

• Perhaps that’s the reason you don’t serve?
• Perhaps that’s the reason you can’t commit to anything or anybody. I’m not just talking about church, I’m talking about in your family or in your office or in your community.
• You take and take and take, and you can love the family you’re with, the company you work for, the relationship you’re in, but only as long as it continues to give you and advantage.  

Perhaps, our self-interest takes the form of apathy. We are not actively following Satan like Judas was. We’re just passively indifferent toward people.

We “love” them by not getting involved. In loving them, we say and do nothing. We say things like “it’s none of my business…”, “we’ll avoid the subject.” All is permissible, because you, in some messed up way love them in tolerance—that’s apathy. At least until they impose on your rights, comforts, and interests.

God is not glorified in the world by that type of love. Satan is. Loving in a self-interested way is satanic, it’s the way of this culture and this world.

Second point:

The self-confident follows the flesh

Go to verse 36.

³⁶ Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered him, “Where I am going you cannot follow me now, but you will follow afterward.” ³⁷ Peter said to him, “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.”  ³⁸ Jesus answered, “Will you lay down your life for me? Truly, truly, I say to you, the rooster will not crow till you have denied me three times. (John 13:36-38 ESV)

You see how confident Peter is in wanting to follow Jesus wherever he goes? This is a great attitude. In fact, it foreshadows the type of death Peter will experience later on in life as he follows Jesus.

Some of us may have embodied the same type of confidence when we first started believing and journeying in faith. We did everything, served everywhere, told everyone. We were confident in who Jesus is and what he did for us. So we love him in that confidence.

Then, after a while, we actually had something to lose—a reputation, a career, a family, a lifetime of merits and accolades earned. The confidence we once had in God becomes a self-confidence in ourselves. We can never love the way God wants us to love if our love is based on how we’re feeling about ourselves or our identity that moment. A love that is self-confident is limited to your areas of confidence.

Peter’s love for Jesus was limited to his self-confidence. I’ll show you how this self-confident love story ends for Peter. Go to John 18. We’ll pick up in verse 8.

In John 18, Judas, in his self-interest, brought some soldiers and officers from the chief priests to the garden of gethsemane where Jesus was praying to arrest him. Verse 8.

⁸ Jesus answered, “I told you that I am he. So, if you seek me, let these men go.” ⁹ This was to fulfill the word that he had spoken: “Of those whom you gave me I have lost not one.” ¹⁰ Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant and cut off his right ear. (The servant’s name was Malchus.) ¹¹ So Jesus said to Peter, “Put your sword into its sheath; shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?” (John 18:8-11 ESV).

Wow! Look at that love! His love for Jesus caused him to draw a sword. He was going to fight against these soldiers so that they wouldn’t arrest Jesus.

But then look at verse 11. Jesus says to Peter, “did you forget the plan? This is the beginning of Peter’s waning self-confidence. Isn’t it interesting how God’s plan for us usually don’t bolster our self-confidence. In fact, have you noticed that as we journey deeper in faith, we actually have less confidence in ourselves and the more we find ourselves leaning into God?  

Peter’s act of love, was actually just propped up in self-confidence. It stemmed from picking the right Messiah. The Messiah who will change the world. Unfortunately, when Jesus’ plan to change the world didn’t fit with Peter’s understanding, Peter’s love for Jesus waned as his self-confidence waned.

Here’s the truth about life: There are way more days where you don’t feel so good about yourself than there are days where you feel great about yourself. Will you limit your love and the effusion of that love toward people on those days you feel good? If that’s you, then you’re following the flesh and you’re not loving that often.

Love fueled by self-confidence withers away. John 18:17.

¹⁷ The servant girl at the door said to Peter, “You also are not one of this man’s disciples, are you?” He said, “I am not.” ¹⁸ Now the servants and officers had made a charcoal fire, because it was cold, and they were standing and warming themselves. Peter also was with them, standing and warming himself. (John 18:17-18 ESV)

Out of love for Jesus, Peter followed him to the inner courtyard of where Jesus was being held. Then as his self-confidence waned, he couldn’t even admit to a servant girl, a kid basically, that he loved Jesus. Verse 25.

²⁵ Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. So they said to him, “You also are not one of his disciples, are you?” He denied it and said, “I am not.” ²⁶ One of the servants of the high priest, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, asked, “Did I not see you in the garden with him?” ²⁷ Peter again denied it, and at once a rooster crowed. (John 18:25-27 ESV)

If you love others because you are confident in who you are, then you will only have the bandwidth to love others who are like you, because we are most confident when we’re with people we’re comfortable with. For some of us, that doesn’t even include our siblings or our parents, and definitely not our in-laws.

When you are less comfortable, and therefore less confident, you love less. That’s the not a God-centered love.

God put certain people in your life that don’t make you feel comfortable or confident. You know who they are. So you love them from a distance, like watching from the inner courtyard of a house, when the person you should be loving is inside that house getting ripped to shreds. Why didn’t Peter have that same zeal toward Jesus in that courtyard when surrounded by the servant girl, and those other servants inside the courtyard? It’s because his confidence broke following Jesus.

When we follow God, our confidence will break, so we rely on God more, that’s the story of basically every single person in the Bible. They are heroes of faith because when their self-confidence broke, they stopped relying on themselves and started to rely on God.

If we stopped loving the people God called us to love as a result of that loss of self-confidence, how will they ever receive love?

Third point:

The God-centered follows Jesus

Let’s go to verse 31.

³¹ When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. ³² If God is glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself, and glorify him at once. 

In the Bible, the glory of God as it is manifested in this world is called Shekinah glory. That’s the physical manifestation of God’s glory in the world. In Exodus 13, we first encounter God’s shekinah glory in the form of a pillar of clouds by day, and a pillar by fire at night, neither of which left the vanguard of God’s people until they reached the promised land.

Jesus Christ is God’s glory! It’s a powerful cosmic crash that impacts every created thing in our world that so that all who witness it would repent and believe. That is the type of glory God wants to show us as we follow him. 

Isn’t that what we want in life? For God to be glorified through us? Isn’t that the purpose of living in this world – to bring glory to the creator?

God was about to be glorified through Jesus’ death on the cross. It was out of love for us that Jesus would die for us on the cross. He met us where we were, he took on our sins in his perfection, when he gave himself up to die on our behalf. That act of dying for people who do not deserve it, is the ultimate sign of God-centered love. God so loved the world, he sent his only son to give himself away so we could be brought before God in righteousness. In his death, Jesus glorified God, now God was about to bring glory to Jesus when he is resurrected and everything is placed underneath his feet.

When Jesus calls us to be his disciple, to follow him, Jesus, the manifestation of God’s shekinah glory, promises to be with us now and into eternity. In doing so, he gives us the helper, the third person of the trinity, the Holy Spirit, to fill us with God’s presence as he points back to the Son, the anointed one of God, so we can bring glory to God through our love for one another until we reach eternity. I want my life and your life to reflect the glory of God in this world, right here, right now.

Let Jesus be lord of your life!

Verse 33.

³³ Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you, ‘Where I am going you cannot come.’ ³⁴ 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. ³⁵ By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:31-35 ESV)

If Jesus is Lord of your life, I want to ask: in the last week, have you taken a risk of faith by loving somebody where they are to bring them to God? Whether it’s

• Loving your kids by publicly praying over them,
• Loving somebody you know by sharing your faith,
• Loving serving somebody undeserving by your service, or
• Loving somebody advocating on their behalf.

Let me lower the bar a little.

• What about loving somebody by doing the right thing and sacrificing a potential benefit for you?
• Or perhaps, loving somebody by praying for them with the same intensity by which you pray for yourself?

So let me encourage you: stop withholding your love toward others by calling your faith personal and gathering knowledge without applying it in love! Faith isn’t personal, it’s communal and public. Love is the visible manifestation of your faith.

God can’t be glorified if you’re holding him in secret, in the realm of private and personal!

Jesus’s love for us was not in private. His death was public and raw. His resurrection was also public: witnessed and testified by those who saw and felt his resurrected body.

That’s why Jesus commands his disciples: 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.”

You can only witness the glory of God if you take risks in faith by your acts of love. So let the world know who we follow by how we love.

Let’s pray.

Father in heaven thank you for loving us with intentionality. It is because you loved us that we received the opportunity to taste your glory through Jesus Christ. I pray that as we live in this world, journeying on a path home toward your kingdom in heaven, that you would continue to be a presence before us. We want you to be the focal point of our lives. We want you to be glorified in us, through us, and all around us. Not for our sake, but so the world will know who you are and what you do and why you do it. You are God, alpha and omega and you written everything beforehand and you will surely finish it. We believe it father.

Lord, let your spirit fill us and guide us so that we can be convicted of things we have no intention for. We need to be moved and illuminated of things in our lives that rail against your being, that keep us far from glorifying you. I ask that we can also be emboldened in the days to come to be your faithful disciples, following you to people and places where you are because we are seeking you with all our heart, mind, and soul.

Thank you Father. In Jesus name. Amen.