John 15:1-16
Let me introduce you to Billy Bob Brewer. Its been a long time coming, B.B….
Finally realizes he is a sinner….and it bothers him.
He starts trying to find spiritual peace—so be shows up a church. First, it’s a preaching service, then a Bible class, even a Wednesday night. But he is in a spiritual fog and still has no peace in his heart.
Billy Bob tries harder. He stops some habits, he cleans himself up a little. But guess what? Still no peace.
After months of trying and failing, struggling and losing, in desperation he feels the hopelessness of his condition and finally sees for the first time that if he is ever to be saved eternally from the awful penalty of sin it will be because of Jesus Christ alone–His death, His burial, His resurrection!
He comes to the end of himself and in simple faith he trusts Jesus. And, now, guess what? That’s right—heaven came down and glory filled his soul. Peaces comes in like a river. Joy fills his once empty life. Love floods his heart. Hope is sure and steadfast.
Immediately, church is the pleasure of his life. He is the first one there every week, ahead of the janitor and the last one to leave. He cannot get enough of church.
And the Bible is a living Book. He starts reading it day and night.
Prayer to him is as simple as a child talking to his Father. There is a lot of stuttering and stammering, but its real—straight from his heart to the heart of the God that has just found him.
He has an overwhelming drive to tell all his lost friends about Jesus and brings more people to the church services in a month than the “mature Christians” have in a year.
One Sunday Billy Bob is in church and his pastor mentions tithing. It’s the first time he had heard the word. “What tithing?” he asks the “mature Christian” sitting next to him. “That means you are to give 10% of your income to God through the church.” “Only 10%,” Billy Bob says. “Why I have been giving everything I can get my hands on!”
And one night the church calls an emergency Business Meeting. That is certain death for any new Christian. The situation was bleak. From all the information at hand, the church would not survive until next Sunday, without a miracle. That was the majority consensus of all the “mature Christians.” Every church usually has at least three groups.
* Feelers. “I feel…” Have you ever noticed? They never feel good or
positive about anything.
* Figurers. The calculators on the I-phones are red hot and they have
figured God out of business. The one things some people in the church
have not figured out is the while we are to be business-like in our
involvement in God’s work, God’s work is not a business in the world’s
sense of the word.
* Faithers (okay, I made that word up).
Billy Bob is a “faither.” He can’t figure out why the upright are so uptight about the financial needs of the church. He said he had started reading his Bible and had not read far, but he had read how God led the children of Israel out of place called Egypt (he wasn’t sure about the adults), and God took them through a place called the Red Sea and fed them six days a week for 40 years and gave them clothes and shoes to last the whole time. Lo, and behold, Billy Bob got the whole church so stirred up, a revival broken out in the church that night! It is known to this day as “The Billy Bob Brewer Revival.” Okay, I made that up.
Let’s leave the Billy Bob Brewer story and ask some questions.
What made Billy Bob such an alive, on fire, full of faith, successful Christian?
A: Not his in-depth knowledge of the Bible. Why, he thinks the Bible has 68 books—the 67th is “Concordance” and 68 is called “maps.
A: Not his vast Christian experience. He hardly knows when to stand up or sit down in church services. As a matter of fact, it is downright embarrassing to some in the church about how little he knows about church.
So, what is his secret? Here it is. Billy Bob is what he is, and does what he does, and is alive and on fire and a spiritual success (are you ready for this?)… because he is right with God! His success is spontaneous. He doesn’t work at being successful. He doesn’t work at work. He works at being right with God. Jesus Christ is real to him and he wants to keep it that way!
And as long as Billy Bob is right with God, he will have God’s blessings on him and, my friend, that is success. Success is being all God designed you to be in Christ!
Now look with me to our Saviour’s words in John 15. Our Lord is within hours of crucifixion and in His last hours before death is talked about vines and branches and grapes. What our Saviour has to say is not highly technical. There are no high-sounding words used needing a dictionary. It is conversational, personal, and simple. Our Lord is within hours of crucifixion and in His last hours before death is talked about vines and branches and grapes.
“I am the true Vine, and my Father is the husbandman,” v. 1.
“Ye are the branches…” v. 5. Immediately, this was to Christ’s apostles, but it includes us if we are His followers.
And it is to these His apostles, His closest friends on earth that this repeated command is made over and over again… “Abide in me.” I love it when even a Baptist preacher can’t miss the point and mess up the sermon. Imagine that we were walking and listening like they were that night. This repeated phrase would have been like a “speed bump,” if not a “stop sign.” It was the Greek word “meno,” in one of its different forms.
v. 4a “Abide in me, and I in you…”
v. 4b “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine….”
v. 4c “No more can ye, except ye abide in me.”
v. 5 “I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do…” How much? “Nothing!”
v. 6 “If a man abide not in me…”
v. 7a “If ye abide in me…”
v. 7b “And my words abide in me…”
v. 9 “Continue ye in my love…”
v. 10a “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love…”
v. 10b “Even as I have keep my Father’s commandment, and abide in his love.”
V. 11 “These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you…”
v. 16 “That your fruit should remain…”
Count them up. 12 times our Lord used the Greek word “meno,” in one of its forms. Think about it. These men had been with Jesus for 3 plus years. They had forsaken all to follow Him. Yet, with only hours to live before dying on the cross, among Jesus’ final words to His eleven and to us was simply, “Guys, don’t forget it—its all about me.”
Ladies and gentlemen, we have identified both the problem and the answer to the pitiful qualify of Christian living today. It is wrapped up in this word “abide.” That Greek word “meno” means “to stay with...to continue… to dwell… to remain.” Practical Christianity is reduced to these three words: Abide in Jesus. Or, we could say, “Stay with Jesus.” “Continue with Jesus.” “Dwell with Jesus.” “Remain in Jesus.” We need to be constantly giving our thoughts and energies to getting right and being right and staying right with Jesus. It’s really that simple.
These statements are about two elements of the Christian life that most coexist. v. 4 “Abide in me, and I in you.”
- Union and Communion with Christ.
- Salvation and sanctification.
- Christ’s operation and our cooperation with Christ.
- Our relationship with Christ and our responsibility to Christ.
- Devotion and discipline.
- The balance between resting and resolve.
Andrew Murray, the famous devotional writer, wrote Abide With Christ, giving 31 chapters and more than 200 pages in his attempt to captures this great truth.
The fact is the Christian life is not hard...its not difficult...it is impossible! You cannot live a Christian life until and unless Christ lives in you and you live in Him.
In the midst of all the demands and transition of life our personal, on-going fellowship with Jesus Christ, our Saviour, has gotten the short end. He becomes “the after-thought” instead of the “main-thought.” He has been demoted from His pre-eminence, to some prominence, and then to simply have some place among many other things in our lives. What we have is that most professed Christians “occasionally visit” Christ instead of “consistently abide” in Christ.
Now, with the time that remains, I would like to observe from this passage six ingredients in the life of the person that is right with God. Or to use our Saviour’s words, those who “abide in Jesus.” Let them serve both as a TEST and a TESTIMONY of our “abiding in Christ.”
When a person is abiding in Christ, right with God….
1. His Bible will be Essential, v. 7a.
The Scriptures, our Bibles, are to guide and guard and grow our lives. We are to be reading and heeding God’s Words.
The Bible is our daily meal, Matthew 4:4.
The Bible is our daily meditation, Psalm 1:2; Joshua 1:7.
The Bible is the medium through which God’s speaks to us.
2. His Prayers will be Effectual, v. 7b.
When a person is right with God they would have to backslide to keep from praying. We throw a party when we occasionally get an answer to prayer. Answered prayer is a normal thing to the person who is right with God.
“Ask”
Answer… “It shall be done.” All for the glory of God, John 14:13.
The key to getting from God we want is wanting only what God wants! Our asking is all about “Him,” not about “us.”
Psalm 37:4 “Delight thyself also in the Lord: and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.”
3. His Love will be Continual, v. 9-10a.
What did Jesus mean when He said, “Continue ye in my love”? Its actually pretty simple. He said, the Father loved me, I have loved you, so now, guys...love one another. Nine (9) times “love” is mentioned in these last 9 verses.
That is both our greatest challenge and our greatest opportunity.
It is our greatest challenge...Man, God has some real doozies in His family! Look at the person next to you! Loving other people is our greatest challenge because apart from abiding in Jesus we are all selfish, self-centered, self-serving.
But loving other people in the family of God and in the church of God is also our greatest opportunity. It is our greatest opportunity to show a different kind of love...the God-kind.
4. His Obedience will be Exceptional, v. 10, 14.
Those who “abide in Christ” are to “keep his commandments...do whatsoever he commands us.”
Some Christian think they can bend or break the rules and still abide in Christ. Others don’t like the idea of any rules.
Marriage has certain rules. Without principles and guidelines for respect and conduct in a marriage to guide a person’s life, “Mr. Freedom” will soon become “Mr. Divorce” if he insists on ignoring the obvious.
The hamburger chain, McDonald’s, has been incredibly successful for over 50 years, serving millions of hamburgers around the world. Their success does not “just happen.” Although each restaurant has different owners and employees at different locations, they are very much the same. Each owner must strictly adhere to the rules of the company, or the franchise will be taken from him. There are regular inspections with reports on each restaurant to insure their quality.
Could we face a similar “quality control” inspection on modern believers and churches?
The only way we can claim to be God’s people in this day is by strictly observing Christ’s commands...and there are at least 49 specific commands in the gospels. Dear people, we are not called to innovation, but to obedience.
Luke 6:46 “Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?”
James 1:22 “Be a doers of the word, and not a hearer only….”
5. His Joy will be Celestial, v. 11.
So many of today’s Christians are like the man with a headache. He doesn’t want to get ride of his head, but it hurts him to keep it. Some people have just enough religion to get them to heaven, but they are not having a heavenly time on the way! They come to church with that religious look—you know, the one somewhere between acid indigestion and migraine headache. They look like they are on a liquid diet of green persimmons and lemon juice. The critical, complainers, gripers, blamers, slanders are not abiding in Jesus.
Listen the man who is right with God has the joy of Jesus—and it is out of this world. I do not mean to minimize your problems and troubles. But we have a problem solver—Jesus Christ. And even in our trials we can have His joy, James 1:2.
“Joy” is not happiness. Happiness is based on happenings. Joy, John Phillips says, “is manufactured in heaven.”
Shared joy… “That my joy might remain in you…”
Supernatural joy… “My joy…” Hebrews 12:2.
“That your joy might be full.” Do you know when something is full? When it overflows! John 16:24; 17:13
Baptist people have more to be rejoicing about than any bunch I know, yet are not, by in large, people with real, sustained joy. The only reason is we are not right with God. Many people trying to get by on a 25-year-old profession of faith, when they ought to be walking with Jesus day-by-day.
Get right with God and you will break out with joy! You will not be able to help yourself. Whoopee!
6. His Fruit will be Perpetual, v. 16.
God designed you to be fruitful. Eight (8) times in these verses the word “fruit” occurs. Look at the order of fruitfulness in these verses.
“No fruit…” v. 2.
“Fruit…” v. 2.
“More fruit…” v. 2.
“Much fruit…” v. 8.
“Fruit should remain…” v. 16.
Fruit doesn’t just happen. The vine which produces grapes requires a great deal of attention if it produces the best fruit. The ground has to be clean and broken. The vine needs to rest on trellises, off of the ground. It needs water, air, sunlight. And, pruning. The branches that did not bear are removed, while the fruit-bearing branches are drastically prune on a regular basis.
Without trying to be cute, Christians don’t “produce” fruit, that’s the work of the Vine. We simply “bear” the fruit that God produces through an abiding life.
Fruitfulness in the Bible is generally connected to….
The work of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s heart and life, Galatians 5.
The witness of God’s people...seeing other people saved.
When we are right with God, we will go to people, Acts 8:29-30. We will be chasing some chariots when we are right with God. Philip was directed by the Holy Spirit to a strangers and he was gloriously saved!
And when we are right with God, people will even come to us, Acts 2:37. Peter preached on Pentecost and they begged him to let them come. They asked the questions. When we are right with God, God will open the way for us to be a testimony of Jesus in whom we abide.
Alexander Maclaren…
“There is only one kind of fruit that is permanent, incorruptible. The only life’s activity that outlasts life and the world is the activity of the men who obey Christ.”
Conclusion
“Without me ye can do nothing.” That doesn’t mean that Christians are limp, lifeless zombies. It is possible to carry on everyday without Christ...go to school...get married...raise a family...be an active church member...run a business...make a lot of money...teach and preach.
You can do all those things and more, but it will count for nothing!
“Abide” means you never arrive!
1. Is your Bible truly essential? 4. Is your obedience exceptional?
2. Is your prayer life effectual? 5. Is your joy celestial?
3. Is your love continual? 6. Is your fruit perpetual?
