John 15:1-12
The Vine and the Branches
15 “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.
I hope you have enjoyed your week of Thanksgiving with your family, with your friends…eating lots of good food, and enjoying good fellowship. We all so much to be thankful for, we need to extend this time of Thanksgiving and turn it into an attitude of gratitude that stays with us all year long..amen?
This morning I want to start you out with a picture…this is a picture of my pile of branches, tree tops that I have lost off the trees in my yard in the last two months or so….It’s a pretty good pile, I’m sure some of you have the same thing with the storms we all have had come through this fall. Looking at that pile of dead wood, adding to it on Thanksgiving day as we were all busy working in the yard, trying to get some work in before the eating started…brought today’s passage to mind… Let’s read our passage this morning, John 15:1-12…. Please Stand
1. Jesus describes his relationship with the Father and declares who He is….
15 “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.”
Jesus just a little bit earlier in Chapter 14:6 reminded his disciples… “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. ”
Jesus is proclaiming that He is the Messiah, He is the one who has come to save His people, that God the Father has sent Him to be our Savior…and it will be only through Him that we will be saved.
Have you noticed that there are lots of false prophets running around our world today? Have you noticed that there is lots of deception and false teaching going on right inside many of our main line Protestant churches?
A major movement that I encourage all of you to be aware of is the Immergent Church movement, it’s affecting every denomination…it’s this teaching of Hyper Grace… In other words, because of God’s Grace…everyone will be saved…Universalism…so there is no Hell, and there is no sin…God’s Grace covers it all.
I have read where the Pope has said the same thing, not that we follow what He says, but He influences millions upon millions of people.
This false teaching takes one of the great doctrines of the Bible and perverts it to mean something that it doesn’t…so friends, it’s important to know God’s Word and what it teaches for yourself, make sure what is being preached is the whole truth and not half truths.
So what is Jesus telling us this morning?
“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.”
A branch gets its life from the vine, we are the branches…we have been grafted into the True Vine when we repented of our sins and asked for forgiveness….at that moment, God the Father forgave us and grafted us into His Son, the True Vine so that we would live and thrive.
As a Christian, your responsibility is simple… Stay in Relationship with Jesus…. I have a TShirt that reads… “Reject Religion, Embrace Jesus”
That phrase goes to the heart of this message today. Jesus is calling us into an intimate embrace, and it’s through that ongoing relationship that we will produce the fruit that the Father is looking for in our lives. Do you know what the Father (the gardener) is looking for?
Gal. 5 22-23 tell us the Fruit that the Father is looking for… 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control.
You will notice that there aren’t any fruit described that comes from just doing religious things.. I looked.. nothing about how many hours spent in prayer and Bible study (great things by the way)… nothing about cleaning the church, how much offering….. or teaching Sunday school or serving on the church board…(all great things….good things that we do)… I want you to catch this today.
This Fruit that the Father is looking for, we can’t do it. We can’t produce it no matter how disciplined, how committed we are…the Fruit of the Spirit is not a “Do” kind of thing.
So how is this Fruit produced?
The Bible describes the transformation of the Believer like this…
We were lost and without hope, lost in our sin…. Dead in our Transgressions Romans says…
The Holy Spirit, the hound of heaven, came and tugged on our heart and we realized that we were lost…God reaches out to us first…and once we realized we were lost…we responded and repented..
We were born again! God gave us new life through the Holy Spirit…the Holy Spirit, the very spirit of Christ entered into our hearts and minds…we became aware of His presence in our life.
As a result of having the Holy Spirit in our lives, the Spirit begins to do His work, producing in us His Fruit…22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control.
In the Nazarene Church, we emphasize a second work that God does in our life… after we are saved and the Holy Spirit comes into our lives…we keep growing, but we realize as a young Christian that I have this Love for God and want to embrace Him, but something keeps getting in the way…my own selfishness…Me gets in the way…this tug of war begins to play out in my spiritual life…
God brings us to a place of total surrender, where we make a willful choice to surrender our will… to die to ourselves, our future, our family, our everything and give it all to God…let Him be Lord and Savior of it all…we call this Entire Sanctification and it is the key to producing Fruit..because the Holy Spirit has the green light to lead our life.
This passage is pretty clear. For those branches that don’t produce fruit…what does the Gardner do? Jesus tells us that the fruitless branches are cut off.
Those that are producing fruit will be pruned, so that even more fruit will be produced. The spirit filled life is a never ending process of allowing God to cut things away in our lives that are disrupting the Embrace…the intimate relationship with Jesus.
2. Jesus calls us to Relationship… Remain in me…
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.
It’s a great promise for us today. Jesus is promising us that He will never leave us, if we will stay committed to this relationship, if we will continue to say yes to Him, being open to His leading.
How’s your relationship with Jesus going?
Relationships are not easy. It’s easy to get sideways in a hurry if you’re not staying in constant contact, constant communication. I know if I go a couple of days without talking to my wife… by talking to her, I mean having real conversation…meaningful conversation…not “what’s for dinner” or “where are my keys” kind of conversation.
When I don’t take time to talk to God….again… meaningful prayer time where it’s more than a wish list and a to do list for God, but it’s a time where I pour my heart out to Him in Worship, where I ask Him the questions that are on my mind….where I listen for His response….it’s in those times where I really can know God’s heart…it’s the embrace.
It happens when I get into God’s Word, I read, I allow His Word to soak in…saturate my mind…and He speaks to me, He encourages me, He corrects me, He energizes me…He embraces me through His Word.
This morning, one of the things we have that we should be most thankful for… We serve the One True King…and He has called us personally into relationship with Him….not some Master / Slave relationship… He has called us into a Loving, Intimate… Family Relationship…closer than a Brother kind of embrace.
Are you Embracing Jesus these days?
Staying busy doing church activities is easy to do, believe me I have been the one scheduling all those things for the past 22 years….activity is apart of our life…but activity in the church does not equal Relationship with Jesus.
Are you being Intimate with your Savior?
How’s the Fruit bearing going? Not the same thing as doing good deeds for Jesus… True Fruit can only be produced through the Holy Spirit living and directing your life… love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control.
If there is one thing that I could do for you this morning, it would be to encourage you to talk to God this morning about your embrace… are you where you want to be?
Lots of things get in the way…good things
Lots of voices out there trying to divide our attention, divide our loyalties…divide our hearts.
This morning, Jesus…through His Word…is calling out to you…His arms are open wide and He wants to live in the Embrace…He wants you to trust Him alone for your life, for your future, for your church…
We have alters in the church for a reason….it’s a meeting place…it’s a place for intimate communication…it’s a place to come and surrender…it’s a place to get things back on track… and it’s a place where we all should come from time to time…it’s healthy, it’s normal in the Christian life.
