April 23, 2020 YOU ARE MY FRIENDS
Matthew 15:14-16 “You are My friends, if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things 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 remain, that whatever you ask of the Father in My name, He may give it to you.”
Wow! There is a lot packed in to these three verses. To start with, Jesus is saying that our friendship with Him is conditional, and that may sound contradictory to Jesus loving us as we are, etc. We must understand that we do not become His friend by doing certain things; we do the things He commands because we are His friends; our friendship with Jesus is the motivator of our actions. In these verses, Jesus is speaking of an intimate relationship He desires to have with His followers; He is revealing the depths of His heart. In a very real sense, Jesus is ‘laying it all out there’ for us to see the inner-workings of His relationship with the Father and how it impacts us; it is like Jesus showing us the master plan of what He is doing. It is awesome, but everything the Father told Jesus, Jesus told it to His followers! He held nothing back. Jesus and God were not having private conversations while Jesus was on earth; whatever the Father revealed or said to Jesus, Jesus passed it on to His followers, His friends. Some may disagree with this, but we have a relationship with Jesus and we enjoy a friendship with Him because He chose us-we did not choose Him. Not only did He choose us, He appointed us for a certain purpose; Jesus appointed us and commissioned us to go and bear fruit. Note that we are to ‘go.’ We have been ‘sent.’ Go and sent or action words. If we spend our time listening to sermons, studying the word, attending church services, but do not ‘go,’ we are in great error and not fulfilling our commission. We may not be called to the foreign mission field, but we are called to be about His work-perhaps at home, next door or at our place of employment, or wherever. We are not just to go, but to go and bear fruit; we are not called just to be busy. It is abundantly clear that it was the intensions of Jesus for His followers to carry on the work that He began here on earth. Jesus did not leave His followers empty-handed or un-equipped when He ascended back into heaven, but promised that they would receive the Holy Spirit who would enable them to carry on His work. In this light, a key verse that believers need to embrace is Ephesians 2:10 which says “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” Yes, you and I are called to carry on the work that Jesus began; He did not just tell us what to do or how to live-He demonstrated it for us. We all know the disappointment and the frustration of seeing some of the work we do being short-lived, not lasting. The good news for us is that when we do the works that God has prepared for us, the fruit of that work will last. Let us grasp the fact that we are friends of Jesus, that Jesus has revealed to us the heart of our Father, and that He has called us to go and bear fruit. Finally, when our prayers are in line with the purposes of God, they will be answered.
John 9:4 “We must work the works of Him who sent Me as long as it is day; night is coming when no one can work.”
Blessings,
Buddy
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