Prepared by Sean Boisen
May 5, 2025
I wonder if any of you have ever kept a collection of things. Oh, I can tell by the laughter, the answer is yes. Could be past, could be present. ‚When I was a kid, I kept a coin collection.Some of you may have done that as well. I had special books. There was a special place to put each coin, maybe they would have a little plastic sleeve over it. ‚If they were really special, they might come encased in plastic. You never handled them. These were not coins you put in your pocket, right? ‚They were kept in a special place to see if you could get all the rare ones and get them in the best possible condition.
My mother had a cousin named Doris, who had a collection of blue bottles, cobalt blue, I think is the proper term. Maybe some of you know what those are. ‚She had an entire room of her house that was dedicated to her blue bottle collection. There were glass cases on the walls, as far as I can remember, I was only a child at the time. ‚There was nothing else in the room, except blue bottles. She had them all lit up: apparently, they were very valuable, so she had a special alarm system, with special insurance for all her cobalt blue bottle collection. Those are some of the ways that we keep things. We keep a collection of things.
Other Kinds of Keeping
The word keep has quite a few meanings in English. There’s another sense in which we keep things. ‚We keep animals. Later this week or the week after Donna and I will become keepers of chickens. And so, we will be feeding them and watering them and hopefully collecting some eggs from them. A shepherd who keeps a flock, safeguards it, right? And so, this kind of keeping means to care for something, or to maintain it.
There’s another sense of the word keep: to keep a secret, to keep something to ourselves, to withhold it from others.
Keeping His Word
I want to focus today in our passage on verse 23. “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them, and make our home with them. ” This is a very different kind of keeping. The word here, “keep” means really to continue to obey orders or commandments: other translations use the word “obey” here. And so, this is not something kept in a display case with special alarms and insurance and lights to highlight it, to be admired or never used, to never actually keep with us. It’s certainly not something to be withheld or kept away from others, like we would keep a secret. But it really means to obey.
Passage Context
Let me provide just a little context on the passage that Sylvia read for us this morning. The four surrounding chapters of John, chapters 13 through 17, describe Jesus’ last meal with his disciples before his passion. He washes their feet, demonstrating humility and servanthood. He predicts their betrayal and denial of him, and he provides reassurance and comfort for their upcoming trials. We saw a little bit of that in the passage this morning. And in the beginning of this chapter, chapter 14, he tells his disciples, He is going to the Father to prepare a place for them. And when Thomas questions him about this, “Lord, we don’t know where you’re going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus responds with that well known saying, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. ” And though the disciples do not fully understand what’s going on here, it’s clear that something significant is about to happen.
Now our lectionary section this morning doesn’t include what happens immediately before the words that were read from Jesus. He’s responding to a question asked by Judas. And John is careful to point out in our text this morning that this is not Judas Iscariot, who’s already left. But it’s Judas, son of James, sometimes called Thaddeus. This is actually the only interaction between this Judas and Jesus that’s recorded in the Gospels. And Judas asks him, “Lord, why do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?” His expectation, the expectation of many around Jesus, was that Jesus had come as a king to throw off Roman rule and reestablish the Davidic kingdom. And so Judas was expecting some glorious public triumph. And here is Jesus talking about suffering and dying. Jesus’ answer, in sum, is that he will reveal himself to those who love him. That is, to those who keep his word. Those are the ones to whom Jesus and the Father will come to make their home with him. As Jesus says at the beginning of the chapter, “in my Father’s house, there are many dwelling places. ”
The word translated “keep” here is really, again, to continue to obey orders or commandments, to observe and to conform. Sometimes it even has the sense of “to guard” or” to protect” . And so, again, “obey” really conveys the sense of it well. Jesus uses the same word when he talks to a rich young ruler who comes and asks, “what must I do to be saved?” Jesus’ response is to, at first, reinforce what the man already knows. “Keep the commandments. ” Jesus uses the same word in the Great Commission, where he tells the disciples to go and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey or to keep everything that Jesus commanded them. And three times in this chapter, John 14, Jesus’ repeats the same idea:• in verse 15, “If you love me, keep my commands.” • Verse 21: “Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. ” And then here in verse 23, “Those who love me will keep my word”.
In each case, the connection is with loving Jesus. Keeping Jesus’ word is presented here as an inherent trait of those who love him. It’s not “try to keep” or “you should keep” , but simply “those who love me will obey my word”. It’s very much like Jesus’ statement about trees and fruit from the sermon on the Mount, which I’m sure you recall. A good tree produces good fruit by its very nature. In the same way, keeping Jesus’ word is a natural outgrowth of our love for Him. Knowing the Word. If we’re going to keep Jesus’ word, if we’re going to obey Jesus’ word, it is clearly essential that we know it. By one count, there are some 900 instances in the New Testament, where Jesus explicitly tells someone to do something. We should take the time to know what Jesus said, and what he tells us to do. We should reflect deeply on how we can put into practice the things that Scripture teaches us, just as we’re reminded by our liturgy readers each week to “hear what the Spirit is saying to the church. ”
Now, each week in church, we hear selections from the Bible in our lectionary readings. That’s a good thing. But the Sunday lectionary readings only cover about 30% of the whole text of the Bible. I don’t know if you knew that. And it takes three years to go through that entire cycle. If you follow all of the daily lectionary readings, also a good thing, you’ll read more like 70%, but still not the complete bible. I’ve been reading the Bible for more than 50 years. Looking around me here, I’m guessing that some of you have been reading it for even longer. But we keep reading and rereading the Bible because having Scripture fresh in our minds is then something the Holy Spirit can use to teach us all things. If you don’t already have a plan or a process by which you regularly read the Bible, I would encourage you to adopt one. There are plenty out there.
Even though the Scriptures themselves do not change, there are always new opportunities to apply the Bible to our daily lives. And we never outgrow the need to hear Scripture, including the need to read it for ourselves on our regular basis, even if that’s only a few quiet moments to reflect on what it says.
Bible Engagement
The last 18 years of my professional life have been focused on the intersection of technology and the Bible. The last several have been with a company called Biblica. It’s actually a nonprofit, formerly known as the International Bible Society. And here’s their mission. I’ll quote it for you, “to provide the Bible an accurate contemporary translations and formats, so that more people around the world will have the opportunity to be transformed by Jesus Christ. ” Now, I don’t have time today to go into all the things that my work for them entails. I’m not actually a Bible translator. I’m primarily a technologist. But in the course of that work, I’ve come across a number of surveys about Bible reading, what is sometimes called Bible engagement, and the church. I want to just briefly share a few insights from those.
First from a broad site on churches and spiritual growth called REVEAL. This was initially sponsored by a church in Midwest called Willow Creek. But over the course of about a decade, they surveyed more than 400,000 individuals from about 2,000 churches. So, this is a very broad survey. Again, lots of interesting takeaways from that, but the key one I want to focus on this morning is about the relationship between Bible reading and spiritual maturity and growth. And here I’ll quote from one of the authors of the book talking about this study. “If church pastors could do only one thing to help people at all levels of spiritual maturity grow in their relationship with Christ. Their choice would be equally clear. They would inspire, encourage, and equip their people to read the Bible-specifically to reflect on Scripture for meaning in their lives.” They found this to be the key across this very broad swath of churches to spiritual growth. One of the authors later summarized this finding as follows: “The number one thing churches want from their pastors is to help them understand the Bible. ” Not more programs, not a fancier facility, not better music, (thank you, sweetheart, for lovely music this morning), not more entertaining sermons, but to understand the Bible. They want to know and understand their Bibles as a key to unlocking spiritual growth.
Let me talk about another study that comes from the American Bible Society, looking at Bible usage outside of church in America. The good news is that many churchgoers read or listen to the Bible outside of church. Their estimate was 25%, roughly one out of four, Americans engaged with the Bible at least once a week on their own, outside a church service. That’s good news. The bad news, however, and this won’t surprise many of you, is that about 40% of Americans never read or engage with the Bible at all. Another 20% do so once or twice a year. That means almost two-thirds of the people in this country have virtually no interaction with the Bible at all outside of church. That percentage is even worse in the world as a whole, as an aside, where millions of people do not yet have access to a Bible in their own language. And that’s a story for another sermon.
But here’s the takeaway from that study. For many people around us, we are the only Bible they will ever read. The only way they’ll know who Jesus is, what he taught, what the life of the Spirit is like, is if we live it out for them. In the chapter proceeding the one we read this morning, chapter 13, Jesus gives an explicit command to his disciples: “a new command I give you: love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this, everyone will know you are my disciples. If you love one another. ” And if we keep Jesus’ Word, if we have love for each other, we can help the world around us to know who Jesus really is and to experience his love and fellowship. Amen.