John 15 1 thru 8

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“Remain in Me and Bear Fruit,” John 15:1-8 (Palm Sunday, April 9, 2017) “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. 3 Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 5 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. 6 If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.” PRAY We are taking time in the weeks leading up to Easter to study the life of Jesus from the gospel of John. In particular, we’ve been looking at what scholars call the Upper Room Discourse, which stretches from John 13-17. In it Jesus gives some final instructions on the night before his crucifixion – the Thursday night of Holy Week. So even though today is Palm Sunday, we’re not looking at a Palm Sunday text, but a Maundy Thursday text. And in the first verses of chapter fifteen of John, Jesus calls himself “the true vine.” All through the Old Testament we see the nation of Israel referred to as a vine. We see it in Psalm 80: “You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove out the nations and planted it. 9 You cleared the ground for it; it took deep root and filled the land. 10 The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches. 11 It sent out its branches to the sea and its shoots to the River.” Psalm 80:8-11. We see it also later in the Bible in Isaiah 5. We know that after the closing of the Old Testament, during the period of the Maccabean rule in the first century B.C., coins in Israel had vines engraved on them, reflecting the vine’s status as a national symbol. But now Jesus comes and says, “I am the true vine,” and then in verse five Jesus says, speaking to the disciples: “I am the vine; you are the branches.” John 15:5. What’s he saying there? Whereas the nation of Israel was intended by God to be a kingdom of priests to minister God’s grace throughout the world, to show the world what it looked like to have the life of God flowing through you, Jesus Christ is that very life come to earth. In Jesus Christ God became a man. The source, the author, the fountain of all life took on flesh, took on human nature, and walked among us as a real, flesh and blood man. Jesus didn’t come as a prophet or priest to show us what it looked like to have the life of God flow through you; he is the life of God in human form. He is the true vine. And then he says to the eleven disciples remaining in the upper room after Judas’ exit, “You are the branches.” He could rightly say the same thing to us, as his followers, as well. To be a Christian, to be a follower of Jesus Christ, means that you are branch in the true vine.

© 2017 J.D. Shaw

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I don’t think any metaphor better describes what it means and indeed what it feels like to be a Christian, or, better yet, to follow Jesus, than the vine and the branches. And that’s what we’ll look at this morning. I want to show you three things about branches this morning: first, branches have life only in the vine. Second, branches must be pruned. Third, branches must bear fruit. First, branches have life only in the vine. Obviously, when you take a branch off a grapevine (or a vine of any kind, or a tree), you are severing it from the source of all its life. It’s dead. And dead vine branches are good for nothing. I’ve never been around grapevines much, but like all of you because of the wind we’ve had over the last few weeks I’ve been picking up limbs and sticks that have fallen out of the trees in my yard. Those sticks are dead, and it’s not like you can do anything with those sticks. You can’t build anything with them; it’s not like you can gather those sticks up and someone in construction will come and buy them from you. You can’t even build a decent fire with them – those sticks are good for kindling and that’s it. And unless you need kindling you have no use for them whatsoever – if you’re like me, you’re just bagging them up and putting them on the street for the county to take to the landfill. Vine wood was synonymous in ancient Israel for being absolutely worthless. 2 “Son of man, how does the wood of the vine surpass any wood, the vine branch that is among the trees of the forest? 3 Is wood taken from it to make anything? Do people take a peg from it to hang any vessel on it? 4 Behold, it is given to the fire for fuel. When the fire has consumed both ends of it, and the middle of it is charred, is it useful for anything?” Ezekiel 15:2-4. And the implied answer is, “No, of course not – it’s worthless.” Likewise Jesus says that anyone who calls himself a Christian yet is not connected to the true vine has no life. “If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned.” John 15:6. There is no life for the branch apart from the vine. “Apart from me you can do nothing,” Jesus says up in verse five. You know, the great temptation of the Christian life usually isn’t some obviously sinful activity, like murder or adultery or lying under oath. Not that those things aren’t real temptations, but a lot of us will go years without being tempted to commit any of the socalled “big” sins. A few of us will practically never be tempted to commit some of them. But do you know what we are all tempted to do every day, one way or another? Build a life of your own, on your own, apart from Jesus, and therefore the great need of the Christian life is to remember that apart from the vine you are dead. If you are ever going to follow Jesus, you must remember that you are a branch and apart from the true vine you have no life. Apart from Jesus you are dead. The Bible talks about this an awful lot. I’ll just give you a few of my go-to passages on this point. Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ

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who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” But my favorite, perhaps because it’s the clearest to me, is Colossians 3:1-3: “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. 2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” What does it mean, though, to not seek to build a life of your own, to remember that you are dead? That’s awfully abstract, and if I left it at that I don’t think anything I have said about it would be helpful. So I’ll try to illustrate: some of you really, really want to be known as competent, self-sufficient people. You’re good managers. You feel good about yourself when you work hard and you accomplish things and you didn’t need anyone’s help in getting it done. Now, of course, there’s nothing wrong with being competent, hard-working, dependable. But if it ever gets to the point where being known as competent, hard-working, and dependable is a source of life for you – where it becomes your identity – this is who I am, I’m competent – Jesus says that’s a problem. See, if you are that kind of person you also probably absolutely hate asking for anyone’s help. You're fearful of branching out and trying new things, harder things, because you might fail. You want more than anything else to project omni-competence to the people around you. You don’t want people to know that sometimes you need to rest. Sometimes you have to take a nap. Sometimes you’re just too tired. Sometimes you don’t know the answer. If that’s you, Jesus is saying here in John 15 that part of you that wants to be known as self-sufficient and competent in all things must die if you’re going to follow him. You are not omni-competent; you are human. You don’t know everything, you can’t do everything, and you need to rest. You are a branch, and your source of life must be the vine, and not some separate identity that has nothing to do with the vine. And to die to that identity of competence doesn’t mean that you fake incompetence, but it means that to the extent you do anything to project your ability to do it all, that’s got to go. It must die. And guess what? You will know when you are dying to that identity. You’ll know it because if that’s you, it will kill you when you have to ask for help. It will kill you when you have to try something new and fail. But that’s a good place to be – because the branch only has life in the vine. The branch can’t get its life anywhere else. The great temptation of the Christian life is to build a life, an identity, on your own apart from the vine, and the great skill of the Christian life is for the branch to know how to kill it. Do you know how to kill? How to kill your desire to control the lives of the people around you – especially your spouse and kids? How to kill your desire to escape from everything? How to kill your desire to stay bitter toward those who have hurt you?

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If it feels like a source of life to you – if you get energy and some sense of satisfaction from this identity, but it clearly doesn’t come from the vine – it’s got to go. You’re a branch – how could it be any other way? “The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing [in Christianity], is to hand over your whole self – all your wishes and precautions – to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call ‘ourselves,’ to keep personal happiness as our greatest aim in life, and yet at the same time be ‘good’ [in other words, make an identity for ourselves] … The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says, ‘Give me All. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You. I have not come to torment your natural self, but to kill it. No half-measures are any good. I don’t want to cut off a branch here and a branch there, I want to have the whole tree down … Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked [and] I will give you a new self instead.’” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 157-58. Only in the vine can the branch have any life. Do you know how to die? How to kill those desires? Second, branches must be pruned. Grapevines can produce grapes without pruning, but they won’t produce good grapes. You won’t get grapes that have rich flavor that will in turn produce the best wine. You’ll get grapes, but you’ll have to rent a ladder truck to get up to where they are on the vine, and you’ll have to fight a tangled mess of branches that aren’t producing any grapes to get to them. The key to a great vineyard is the pruning. It’s the hardest work, but it’s the most necessary. You’ve got to stay on top of those vines with the pruning shears, and cut away all the extraneous branches that are just taking energy away from the good branches, cut away all of last year’s dead growth so that the vine produces the kind of grapes that you really want and at the perfect height for harvesting. And Jesus says that’s what God does with us. John 15:1-2: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.” The Father, Jesus says, prunes Christians. Now, when I’ve heard those verses over the years I’ve immediately thought that the way God prunes is through suffering. And certainly, God does allow suffering to discipline this or that about our lives – Hebrews 12 is all about that. I certainly cry out to God in prayer more in pain than in plenty. But suffering is not what Jesus has in view here in John 15. What is it then? Jesus tells the disciples in verse 4: “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.” And then, in verse 7, Jesus says, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you …”

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What’s Jesus doing here? He’s using two concepts interchangeably: abiding in Him and abiding in his Word. Jesus is saying here that there is no abiding in Him, except through abiding in His Word. It is through the Scriptures and the Scriptures alone, Jesus says, that we abide in him. And through the Word God takes the shears to our understanding of Him and of ourselves and the world around us and he cuts away everything that is wrong and misguided. He takes the false notions and throws them away, but he does it so we may have life. He show us what is true through the Word, and that truth is like sun and water and nutrients for our souls – it grows us and makes us strong. It only happens through the Word. Suffering by itself is not enough. Ignorant suffering, suffering that comes apart form the Word will only make you bitter. You know people who have suffered and it’s only broken them and turned them hard. Therefore, Christians, fellow branches, the study of the Scriptures must be central to your life. There is no other way for you to be pruned. And we have the ultimate example of Scriptures being at the center of someone’s life in Jesus Christ. He was a Scripture-filled man. If you cut Jesus, he bled Scripture. He was constantly saying, “It is written,” or “Have you not read?” referring to the Scriptures. Some ten percent of all the words we have of Jesus were Bible verses. One example of Jesus enormous respect and devotion to the Scriptures comes from Matthew 4 where Jesus goes into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. How does he resist the temptation? By quoting Scripture. He used three passages from Deuteronomy chapters six and eight and rebuked the devil with them. But why does Jesus bother with quoting the Bible? What Jesus himself says that has never been said before is the Word of God. It has the same authority as Scripture. So why doesn’t Jesus say something new? Because he loved the Scriptures, he was devoted to the Scriptures, the Scriptures were the source of life to him. He wanted to demonstrate the absolute sufficiency of the Scriptures. Another example: in Luke 24, we read of one of the first post-resurrection appearances of Jesus. Two disciples are walking along the road to Emmaus on the afternoon of the first Easter Sunday, and suddenly Jesus appears and walks with them, but they are kept from recognizing him. Obviously these two guys are deep in conversation, so Jesus asks, “What are you talking about?” And one of them, Cleopas, replies, “Are you the only person in Jerusalem who doesn’t know about all the events of this past week?” And Jesus plays dumb – he says, “What things?” So these two guys tell Jesus … about Jesus, about how they thought he was the Messiah, but then he was crucified, and so he couldn’t have been the Messiah, but then some of the female disciples claimed they had a vision that he was alive, and how they went to the tomb of Jesus but found it empty. What does Jesus say in response? “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?’ And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” Luke 24:25-27.

© 2017 J.D. Shaw

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Jesus could have done any number of things on day of his resurrection – the most important day in human history. What does he do? He leads a Bible study. And this is what makes it most amazing to me: instead of saying to these two disciples, “Hey guys, it’s me! Look, my hands, my feet, my side! I’m back from the dead!” Jesus evidently thinks the best way to show them who he is is not through his body, but through his Word. Through a Bible study! Through pouring over the Scriptures. My goodness, friends, if the Scriptures were so evidently important to Jesus they must be important to us. “Let the word of Christ [that’s the Scriptures] dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” Colossians 3:16. Now, we hear that, especially those of us who have been in evangelical churches for a long time, and we say, “I know, I know, the Bible is important.” Do we, though, really? In our circles, we are often quick to come together in small groups and study something; it just may not be the Bible. We are quick to do book studies on marriage, or parenting, or finances, or manhood, or how to find contentment, or how to make Every Day a Friday. There’s nothing wrong with studying those books, and many of them are helpful. But when we study those books instead of the Bible do you know what we are saying? We are saying, “I have this felt need, and I want to get it met. And if Jesus can help, then that’s great. I want a book that’s sprinkled with Jesus, but is really about me.” So we tell people, “Come to this study on how to handle your finances.” Not, “come and meet Jesus and find everything, including how to handle your money, in Him,” but just come and find whatever it is you feel you need. Yet that’s not how you are pruned! Jen Wilkin, a Bible teacher our women have learned from, wrote this last month in Christianity Today: “Topical studies, devotional groups, and book discussions are beneficial, but not foundational. The church serves its members well by offering learning environments dedicated to opening the Bible and exploring it one passage at a time, one book at a time.” That’s how you are pruned. Jesus was devoted to the Scriptures, and he says that’s the only way to know him. Are you devoting yourself to the Scriptures? Now, what is the goal of this pruning? Third, branches must bear fruit. Boy, has John 15:7 ever been abused by some Christians: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” A lot of people have read only the last half of that verse and taken it to mean that in prayer, if you ask God to give you something, he will. When I was in high school my athletic hero was Shaquille O’Neal – I wanted to dominate in the paint like Shaquille O’Neal. So I prayed that God would give me the height, the strength, the quickness (he used to be quick, y’all), and the athleticism of Shaquille O’Neal, and I promised I would use all the fame I got as a basketball player to tell the world about Jesus. And God’s answer to that prayer was to give me none of the things I asked for. If anything, he took what little athletic ability I had away from me. That’s, obviously, not what this verse means. God is not a vending machine in the sky where we put in our prayers and mechanically get out our answers. The context of the

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promise regarding prayer is branches bearing fruit. And so the promise can be taken like this: “If you devote yourselves to the Scriptures so that they become a part of who you are, and your heart’s desire becomes Christ-likeness, holiness, fruit bearing, then ask whatever you wish so that you can be made over in my image, and you will receive it.” Our job, Christians, fellow branches, is to produce the fruit of holiness. Ephesians 2:10: “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?” James 2:14. And the answer is: no. Christian profession without production is worthless. It’s a branch that has separated itself from the vine and is going to be thrown out and burned. To be clear: it’s not that we have to do works in order to be Christians, but true Christians saved by grace will, as a result of abiding in Christ, always produce fruit. Branches in the vineyard exist for one reason: to produce grapes. The vinedresser doesn’t want anything else – he doesn’t want apples, he doesn’t want oranges, he doesn’t want pinecones, he doesn’t even want gold to come out of the branches. He doesn’t want creativity – he wants grapes. Likewise, God has told us in his Word what he wants from us. “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen … Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. 32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children 2 and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. 4 Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.” Ephesians 4:29-5:4 (NIV 1984). And that’s just a few verses out of Ephesians 4 and 5. Yet Jesus says, “These are the grapes I want from you, branches. Don’t get fancy, don’t get creative. Don’t try and surprise me with some other kind of production. Just give me the fruit that comes from my Word abiding in you. That’s all I want and all you’ve got to do.” And verse 8 tells us how we can be sure that if we want fruit in our lives it will happen – not because we can make it happen, but because the Father desires that it will happen. “By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.” John 15:8. We can be sure Jesus will answer our prayers for holiness. But you know the most important fruit Jesus wants from your life? I heard the other day about The National Bible Bee, hosted by Kirk Cameron, where kids clash over Bible trivia and memorization for $260,000 in cash and prizes. There’s nothing wrong with that, but that is not remotely why we study the Scriptures.

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Sometimes, though, it can feel that way. We can wonder, “Why am I spending all this time studying the Bible? Is it just so I can answer all the questions in community group? What is the point?” Friends, we don’t study the Bible for knowledge per se, but we study the Bible because it’s only by abiding in the Word that we can really know Jesus, and only if we really know Jesus can we trust him and feel secure in him. Security in Jesus can only come from abiding in the Word. Jesus is holding onto you and nothing, not even hell itself, can shake you loose from his hand. Jesus has you, but you’ll never believe it apart from abiding in the Word. And feeling secure in Jesus, especially when it feels like your world is collapsing all around you, might be the most God-glorifying fruit a branch could ever produce, because it honors Christ so much. Paige Brown came to Oxford a month or so ago to teach at a women’s retreat. Some of you were there; she’s a gifted Bible teacher. A few years ago (2014) I heard her give a different talk, and in it she told this story. She said that her senior year at Ole Miss, 1991, a woman came to talk to her and some other Christian girls on campus. This woman was about thirty or so at the time. And this woman had grown up in church, and in a Christian home, and she studied and read the Bible a lot. The woman said early in her life she wondered why all this study was necessary because her life was easy and good. You hear about suffering and the importance of the Bible at that age but you don’t understand it, but she said she took God at his word anyway and kept studying, kept reading. For some reason she began to think of her study and reading as bank deposits. She didn’t know why but she kept making the deposits. This woman graduated from college, met the love her life, got married in 1986, and three years later two things happened a few weeks apart that would change her life forever. The first thing was the birth of their first child. And the second was her husband’s leukemia diagnosis. And she said for the first time in her life, she had to write a check, and it was a big one. Then came the news that the leukemia her husband had was a particularly rare and aggressive form of leukemia, and as a result she had to write another big check. The normal treatments for leukemia wouldn’t work, so they had go to Seattle for a bone marrow transplant. During this time the deposits came more slowly, and the checks starting getting bigger and bigger. At this point she is going back and forth between this new baby who can’t be in a hospital for all this, and then grandparents bringing the baby to her and then the husband is in a plastic bubble and she and this baby who cannot touch him are cheering him on and she said, “All this time – I’m just writing checks.” Then on the same floor of that hospital, a convicted felon was let out of prison so that he could get his bone marrow transplant paid for by the state. And as her husband was getting sicker and sicker and wasting away before her, the felon kept getting stronger and stronger. She and the baby were watching her husband in his bubble, cheering him on,

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and the criminal started walking around with his IV. He got well only to go back to prison, her husband died when their baby was eleven months old. That last check was a big check, and she said she was completely depleted. Yet it was at this point in her talk back in 1991 she said, “But girls … I was never overdrawn. I was never overdrawn! I knew those deposits were not about how firmly I held on to Jesus but how firmly he held on to me.” Then at the end Paige Brown gave an update. In 2014 she said she emailed this woman, and the woman replied, “He had us then, and he has us now; we were never overdrawn and now that baby girl is 24 years old.” The greatest fruit a branch can produce is to trust in the vine even when your world appears to be coming down all around you, but that kind of security only comes from abiding in God’s Word – that’s why the Bible is so important. There is no other way. And friends, as best I can tell, we, the pastors at Grace Bible, really just have one job: our job is to make sure you are never overdrawn. That’s what we want. Let’s pray. PRAY

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