WWUTT 961 You Did Not Choose Me?

Jesus said to his disciples, You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you.

And this is not exclusive to the apostles. Are you a follower of Jesus? Well, it's because He chose you when we understand the text.

Many of the Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text is an online ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty.

Visit our website at www .utt .com. Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes.

Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study of the gospel of John chapter 15. Today, we're going to be looking at verses 16 and 17, but that's a small section.

So to keep this in context, I'm going to jump back to verse 12. Jesus said to his disciples,

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends.

For all 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 abide, so that whatever you ask the

Father in my name, he may give it to you. These things I command you, so that you will love one another.

It's in verse 16 where Jesus says, You did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit.

Earlier in the chapter, John 15, 5, Jesus said the following, I am the vine, you are the branches.

Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

It is in Christ that we grow in our sanctification, that we produce fruit for the kingdom of God.

You have no entrance into the kingdom of God apart from Christ. Whatever you do is not going to be accepted by God as righteous.

We have in Isaiah 64, 6, that even our best deeds are as filthy rags before a holy

God. If not for the righteousness of Christ that's been imputed to us by faith, then whatever we would do before God would amount to nothing.

Apart from Christ, we can do nothing. And what do I mean by imputed righteousness?

Understanding what it is that was said to us in 2 Corinthians 5, 21. For our sake he became sin who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

So when Jesus died on the cross, he took our sins upon himself, and he gave us his righteousness.

This exchange happens by faith. When we hear the gospel of Jesus Christ and believe it, we put our faith in Jesus and believe, then our sins are forgiven and we are clothed in the righteousness of Jesus.

So when God the Father looks at us, he sees us with the same love and affection that he has for his own son.

Because what we are wearing is his son's garments. We've been clothed in white robes, washed clean by the blood of the lamb.

So in Christ, we can do all things. Remember the Apostle Paul in Philippians 4,

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And he says this in the context of, I know what it's like to be in want, and I know what it's like to have plenty.

So whether he has an abundance or he is in need, he does all things through Christ. And this is the case for all of us.

We can do anything for Christ, no matter our circumstance, because we have

Christ. We can do all things through Christ who gives us strength. In Romans 8 .28,

it says, God works all things together for good for those who love

God and are called according to his purpose. Called according to his purpose.

And for these, God works all things together for good. He doesn't work all things together for good for every person.

But every single thing that happens to us, no matter how bad, is ultimately for some great good in the glorious kingdom of God.

We may not see clearly what that is now, but eventually we will get to the other side. And looking back, we will see how

God was working in all the finest details for his glory and for our good.

For we will share in his glory forever in his kingdom above, when our lowly bodies are transformed to be like his glorious body.

And then we will see him as he is because we will be made to be like him. 1 John 3 .2. So in this, we can do everything for the will of God to his glory to be received by God because we are in Christ.

And apart from Christ, we can't accomplish any of that. Our best deeds are nothing to God.

It is only in Christ Jesus that we accomplish this sanctification and that we store up for ourselves treasures above where Christ is.

So with that in mind, we come to verse 16. That was something that Jesus had set forth at the start of the chapter.

So just kind of keeping things in context here, we get to verse 16 and Jesus says, you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit.

Once again, apart from Christ, we cannot bear fruit. Jesus is even saying you are a part of me because I have chosen you, not because you chose me.

It's not like you were wandering around going, I need to bear some fruit. What am I going to latch myself onto?

Oh, this Jesus guy looks pretty good. No, Jesus called his disciples and he chose them and appointed them to go and bear fruit, meaning that they would go out growing in holiness and righteousness, but also spreading the gospel to others that they may hear and believe, turn from sin.

They also would bear fruit, bearing fruit in keeping with repentance, bearing fruit for righteousness, bearing fruit in sharing the gospel with others that they too may come to faith and be saved.

You think about specifically fruit. Why did Jesus choose fruit in this analogy or in this metaphor?

Well, fruit is a seed bearing plant. There are generally multiple seeds in fruit.

So you have a very nutritious, juicy, succulent food, but also has seeds in it that produce more.

And again, oftentimes multiple seeds. Let's just take an apple, for example. What do you have inside the core of an apple? Is it five seeds?

Trying to remember that star shape when you cut it right down the middle, not right down the middle vertically, but horizontally.

Have you ever done that with an apple before? So you cut the apple horizontally and you've got the five -star pattern, the five -pointed star pattern there on the inside of the apple.

Well, each one of those points is a seed. There's five seeds on the inside of an apple. So you can take five seeds and you can get five more apple trees.

One apple is going to produce more apple trees. So in bearing fruit means that we're going to produce an abundance, an abundance more than we had when we started.

We were one life that was changed by the hearing of the gospel. And then we go out and share the gospel with others.

Many more lives are changed. This is bearing fruit. And Jesus appointed his disciples for this.

But don't you know that anyone who is a follower of Jesus is his disciple? Do you follow

Jesus? Then you are a disciple. And you have been chosen by God. You have been appointed to go and bear fruit and that your fruit may abide so that whatever you ask, the

Father in my name, he may give it to you. Now, whenever I have talked about this, every time, just about every time

I think I've done a lesson on this, John 15, 16, you did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you.

There's generally a skeptic of some kind. I think you know what camp of theology they usually come from.

There's a skeptic of some kind that will interject themselves in what it is that I have taught and say, well, this only applies to the apostles.

Jesus was only talking to the apostles here. He's not talking to every single person. So yes, God has his messengers that he chose to go out and preach the gospel.

But this choosing is not every single person. It's just like, you know, the prophets. It's just the apostles.

Now it is true that God has a unique calling for a prophet or an apostle.

And it's a calling that you and I do not have. You and I will never be blessed with the same calling that the apostles received.

And this calling that they had, by the way, it wasn't a calling of power. It wasn't like prestige.

It was a call to lay their lives down. They died for the gospel that they preached. This wasn't something that they did to make money off of and become rich and famous.

That's not what the apostles did. They served. They went out preaching the gospel so that others may know the truth and come to believe and have an inheritance in the kingdom of God.

They did not do this for themselves. They did this for others by the grace of God that was given to them in their particular calling.

You and I are not going to have that calling. So we're not going to be endowed with the kinds of things that Jesus specifically gave his apostles, the kinds of signs and wonders and miracles that they performed to authenticate that the message that they preached truly came from God.

So yes, there is a uniqueness to the calling of a prophet and an apostle that you and I will not have. But that doesn't mean that only prophets and apostles are chosen so that we get to choose whether or not we want to follow

Jesus. That's not how that works. They're chosen so we get to choose. Now, nowhere in the

Bible are we ever given a picture of anybody choosing

God over and over again. The picture is God having chosen for himself a people.

You go all the way back to Genesis and God's calling of Abraham. Consider in particular

Genesis 18. This is where God has said to Abraham and his wife

Sarah at the Oaks of Mamre that they are going to have a son. And after this conversation, after this portion of the conversation,

God is going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. So in a conversation with himself, the

Lord says, Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do, seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?

For I have chosen him that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the

Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.

God has chosen Abraham from all the peoples on earth. Abraham is the one that he chose to make into a great nation.

Later on, that great nation becomes the nation of Israel. And God speaking to Israel in Deuteronomy 7 .6,

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

Now, the interesting thing is Peter uses those exact words in his first letter.

In 1 Peter 2 .9, he says, You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light.

In other words, God chose you that you might be appointed to go and bear fruit. That's Peter saying the same thing there that Jesus said to his disciples in the upper room in John chapter 15.

Sticking with the Old Testament of this calling out, this choosing, God chose David. In 1

Samuel 16, Samuel has been told by God to go to the house of Jesse and anoint the next king of Israel who is going to succeed

Saul. And all of these strapping warrior brothers of David pass by Samuel and over and over,

God says to Samuel, The Lord has not chosen this one. The Lord has not chosen this one.

And then when the last brother comes by, The Lord has not chosen these. And so Samuel has to say to Jesse, Is there anyone else?

Oh, yeah. Well, there's my shepherd boy, David, who is out in the field. And Samuel says,

Well, then go get him. So someone summons David. He comes. And this is the one the Lord has chosen.

Wasn't even from the line of Saul who was the king of Israel at that time. It makes sense that the son of Saul would become the next king of Israel.

Right? Nope. God had chosen David. God chose David. David wasn't out in a field going,

Boy, I'd sure like to be king one day. Like he's singing Lion King out there. I just can't wait to be king.

Okay, that's not David. He's writing psalms in praise to the Lord God. He's not thinking he's not having his own delusions of grandeur in which he's going to succeed the throne of Israel.

This is God who chose David, a shepherd boy out in the field that he was going to be a man after God's own heart.

Psalm 33 12. Blessed is the nation whose God is the

Lord, the people whom he has chosen as his heritage. By the way, we're that people.

Those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are the people whom God has chosen to whom

Jesus has said, You did not choose me, but I chose you. When Jesus is talking to his disciples about the signs of the end in Mark 13 20.

He says, And if the Lord had not cut short the days, no human being would be saved.

But for the sake of the elect whom he chose, he shortened the days.

Luke 6 13. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose from them 12 whom he named apostles.

And speaking to those apostles here in this particular gospel, John chapter 13, right at the start of this discourse in the upper room,

Jesus had said to his disciples, I know whom I have chosen. He was talking to all of them, but he said,

I'm not speaking to all of you. Just the 11, for there was the one Judas who was not considered those who had been chosen by Christ.

He had been chosen for a different reason. It was so that the prophecies of the scriptures would be fulfilled that one would betray

Christ into the hands of his enemies so that he would be crucified and put to death for the sins of mankind so that all who believe in him will not perish, but be saved.

As Jesus is talking to his disciples, he says, I know whom I have chosen, but the scripture will be fulfilled.

He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me. Once again, talking to them about having chosen them.

Acts 1, 1 and 2, the way that the acts of the apostles begins in the first book,

O Theophilus, I have dealt with all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day when he was taken up after he had given commands through the

Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen. And then when, after Jesus had ascended into heaven and the apostles go back to Jerusalem and they're waiting for the gift of the

Holy Spirit, they have to pick an apostle to replace Judas. So they prayed to God and said, you

Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two, because they narrowed it down to two guys,

Matthias and Justice. And they said, you Lord, know the hearts of all, show us which one of these two you have chosen.

God had already chosen which one was going to fill the role left behind or fill the vacancy left behind by Judas.

So what they're praying for in that moment is revealed to us who it is that you have chosen that we might see and know.

And this is the way that when we go out with the gospel, we don't know who the elect are. So we must preach to everyone.

But those who come to faith and believe reveal themselves to be chosen by God.

Consider these words in 1 Thessalonians 1, verses 2 and 6.

Paul says to the church in Thessalonica, we give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our

God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our

Lord Jesus Christ. Get this. This is verse 4. For we know, brothers, loved by God, that he has chosen you.

How does Paul know that? How does he know that they have been chosen by God? Verse 5. Because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the

Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we prove to be among you for your sake and you became imitators of us and of the

Lord. For you received the word in much affliction with the joy of the

Holy Spirit. That is how Paul knows that they are chosen by God. Because they heard the gospel, they believed it, and they bore fruit.

And that fruit abides. It's not just something that they showed in a momentary surge of feeling and emotion, but rather it was real.

It was genuine. And they received it in much affliction. So even when they suffered for the sake of the gospel, they endured through testing.

It was revealed that their faith was genuine and therefore it could be known that they indeed had been chosen by God.

They suffered through trial and endured and their faith was revealed as genuine, that God had chosen them.

And these weren't apostles that Paul was writing to. This was the church. These were those who had revealed genuine faith.

We have come to know. We've come to realize. God has chosen you because when our gospel came to you, you believed it and endured even in the face of much affliction.

We did not choose God. He chose us. According to Romans 3, none of us were even seeking after God.

No one does righteous, not even one. But he sought after us. And by the regeneration of the

Holy Spirit, Titus 3, 5, our hearts were changed from being rebellious against God, being cold -hearted and like stone.

And he gave us instead a heart of flesh as is talked about in Ezekiel 36, a soft heart.

So instead of being rebellious against God, we desired God. We yearned for the

Lord because he called us and wooed us to him. And by the regeneration of the Holy Spirit, we came to faith in God because of a decree that he set forth from before the foundation of the world that we would be holy and blameless before him.

Ephesians 1, 3 through 6. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.

In love, he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the beloved.

So given that God is the one that has chosen us by his will, and we have come to faith and believe because he first loved us, therefore we come to understand,

John 15, 16, 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.

It wasn't a momentary thing, but it remains. It continues through to the very end because it is

God who has decreed this and who can turn back what God has decreed. So that whatever you ask the

Father in my name, he may give it to you. We will ask according to the will of the Father because we have been chosen by the will of the

Father. And so what we desire to do is the Father's will and God will give it to us.

Verse 17, these things I command you, Jesus says, so that you will love one another.

Remember back to John chapter 11, Jesus commanded Lazarus to get up and walk out of the tomb and he did.

You have been raised from death to life by the command of God. You have been told to love one another and if God has decreed it, you will do it to the praise of his glorious grace and praise be to God for the grace that he has shown to us through his son,

Jesus Christ. Reiterating once again, we didn't choose him, he chose us.

You're a follower of Christ, you were chosen by him. Praise God for that today. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for your faithfulness and your goodness for what could we have done if left to ourselves.

None of us were wandering around in the world looking for ways that we could honor and praise God. We were looking for ways that we could appease our own flesh because we've all descended from Adam and inherited his sin nature so that we might live for ourselves and not for God.

But you were gracious and merciful and by your Holy Spirit had turned our hearts to condition our ears and open our eyes to see and understand the truth through the

Gospel of Jesus Christ. And so by your gracious work we have come to faith and are saved and we have fruit that is being produced in us by the

Holy Spirit in our hearts so may we continue to produce this fruit in keeping with repentance, in growing in righteousness and sanctification and even sharing the

Gospel with others so that they too may turn from sin and believe. Thank you for your goodness and we rejoice in this day by day in the name of your son

Jesus. Amen. Gabriel Hughes is the pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.