Abiding in the Vine — John 13-15

0:01 Good morning. Believe it or not, a a tomato actually is a a fruit, but I think a coconut is too. But if you want a story about how tomato actually is taxed in The US as a vegetable, you can ask me afterwards. So we're continuing in our our study of John, and here we get to John chapter 15. Over the past few months that I've been, studying, John 15, I've realized how, how studying a chapter of the Bible for an extended period of time has really, it becomes a part of who you are.

0:42 And I encourage you, to do that, not just study maybe a whole chapter just for a day or not even just a week, but for even a few months because it really... It touches your heart in a in a in a deep way. So let's get to our our chapter. John chapter 15, and we're gonna go with, my first half, which is John chapter 15 verses one through 15. This is Jesus talking to his disciples.

1:14 He says, I'm the true vine and my father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away and every branch that bears fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches.

1:43 He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit. For without me, you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered, and they gather them and throw them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire and it shall be done for you. By this, my father is glorified.

2:09 That you bear much fruit, so you will be my disciples. As the father loved me, I also have loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you that my joy may remain in you and that your joy may be full.

2:32 This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this than to lay down one one's life for his friends. You are my friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does does not know what his master's doing. But I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from my father, have made known to you.

2:59 Let's just ask the Lord's blessing on his word. Dear lord, we thank you for your word that you gave to us and that you inspired through John and wrote to us. Pray that you would teach us this morning, that we would know you in a a greater way even today. Pray all these things. Jesus Christ's name, amen.

3:25 So keeping with our theme, the book of John, we have this theme verse, which is John 20 and verse 31. It says, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name. So how does that how does that fit with our passage? What's the context? So Jesus, has just finished his talk with his disciples in the upper room, and he's taken his disciples to the Garden Of Gethsemane.

3:59 And it makes sense too because his next statement is gonna be about something in a garden. He's wants his disciples to learn what as Andy Hilton put it earlier in our study is what it means to believe God more and it... What it means to have life in his name. The life that Jesus refer to is is not only that life that we get from the moment of salvation, but it... It's a life that is in perfect fellowship with him.

4:36 And it's through the production of fruit is that we have this. So we start off in... Well, before I get in the verse, if I give you a title, this is how I would title this chapter or talk today. It says, how do we live the Christian life? Through the order of spiritual botany.

4:57 Now you'd be like, woah, Devin, now, those are some big words. But don't don't worry, we're gonna... I'll lay it out. We'll get through it. So let's start in verse one.

5:08 It says, I'm the true vine and my father is the vine dresser. This is Jesus' seventh I am statement, claiming that he is God in the flesh. And not only just in... Just like in John chapter 14 where he says, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. He is our salvation, but Jesus Christ is the only way that we can live the Christian life.

5:41 Only through his power can we live the Christian life. And just as an illustration, Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. I brought a leaf here from our, our vineyard back at home. And I picked this off at 07:00. And when I picked it off, it was nice and stiff.

6:02 I could hold it out like this, and it'd be just like that. Hold it out nice and stiff. And there's this waxy, shiny coating on on the outside of it. And at that point, it was abiding. It was...

6:14 It had fellowship with the vine. Right? But now this now is apart from the vine. It's not abiding in the vine. And see how it's wilted.

6:24 It has no life. It's losing its life. Just that way, we cannot live a life fruitful for Christ without Jesus Christ. So there's three ways that we can lead a fruitful life for Christ. Number one is cleansing.

7:34 Tells us in verse two how the lord will prune us. There's this these two types of cleansing. There's this pruning and then there's this watering. The pruning is is what the lord takes away in our lives that we might have a a closer relationship with him. It's anything that hinders us from having a relationship with him.

7:57 And over the past few months that I have been studying this, I can tell you that the Lord has spoke to me through his word and is cleansing me, and has shown me the things in my life that are hindering my relationship with him. If you think that from the moment that you're saved, that cleansing is over, then you believe a different gospel because our gospel, the gospel of Jesus Christ, we're cleansed when we are saved, and then after that, we are cleansed daily through, God's word. In John thirteen eight, earlier it says, Jesus answered him, if I did not wash you, you have no part with me. So cleansing is one of the most important things about living the Christian life. Psalm a 119 in verse nine, it says, wherewithal shall young man cleanse his way by taking heed thereto according to thy word.

9:10 Just as we are cleansed through Jesus Christ's blood on the cross, we're cleansed by Jesus's word that we reach... We we read each and every day. So now we get to abiding. This is the staying in Christ. This is the not running away from him.

9:33 This is... Comes from verses four through nine. Abide in me and I in you as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine. Neither can you unless unless you abide in me. I'm the vine, you're the branches.

9:54 He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit, for without me, you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered, and they gather them and throw them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire and it shall be done for you. By this, my father is glorified that you bear much fruit so you will be my disciples. As the father loved me, I also have loved you.

10:24 Abide in my love. So if you look in this in the botany aspect, the study of plants, Abiding with the vine is when you're you're you're staying with the vine. You're staying with the rest of the branches. And I have vines at my house, and we have a few grape vines ourselves. And what abiding doesn't look like is when a vine is going along right with the rest of the branches and abiding with the rest of vine and remain remaining and staying in the same place.

11:01 But what happens is sometimes they drop on the ground. And if you notice, none of those branches that drop onto the ground and go their own way produce fruit. So if we're not abiding in Christ, we can't produce fruit for him. Some antonyms, I guess, for, abiding would be to bail out, to clear out, to move out. I asked Jacob to go in the back room, and he's there right now.

11:32 Before when he was in here, he was abiding with us. He was in the same place as as us. He could have fellowship with us. But when he's outside of the room like he is now, we can't have fellowship with him. In that way, when we don't abide with Christ, we're outside of the room.

11:53 We can't have fellowship with him. You can... Yeah. I can't get him his attention, but you can come back in. That's...

12:04 See, that's the problem right there. We can't have communication and fellowship with him. Synonyms which I could say is is to stay, to dwell, to stick around, to tarry, remain. Abiding in Christ means to draw all things pertaining to life from the Lord Jesus Christ who saved us. I can tell you this, the Bible has has something to say about every aspect in life.

12:41 Now, let's look at this in the context of a family because we've all have families. What abiding is not is moving out. At some point in our lives, I haven't done this yet. My brother just did. We're gonna move out of our house.

13:00 But the Lord doesn't want us to do that. He doesn't want us to move out. He wants us to stay in the same place and remain with him. Verse seven says, if you abide in me and my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire and it shall be done for you. Just as when I live in my parents' house and, when we have lived with our families, the priorities that my parents hold dear become my priorities in life and what I hold dear in life.

13:38 And that's just like in verse seven how he says, if you abide in me and my words abide in you, God's word, just like that cleansing, you will ask what you desire and it shall be done for you. Our prayers will, go along with what, Jesus Christ holds most dear. Verse four says, abide in me and I in you as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself. Unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. We cannot lead a fruitful life for Christ just like all those fruits of the spirit we sang about.

14:27 We cannot have those fruits of the spirit and show them to others unless we abide with Christ. I'd just like to read a quote from, Schofield Study Bible and it is, it is from him that I also got my three points today, the cleansing, abiding, and obedience. It says, to abide in Christ is on the one hand, to have no known sin, unjudged and unconfessed. No interest into which he is not brought, no life which he cannot share. On the other hand, the abiding one takes all burdens to him and draws all wisdom, life, and strength from him.

15:12 It is not unceasing consciousness of these things and of him, but that nothing is allowed in the life which separates from him. Abiding in Christ is remaining with him and staying at home. We are part of the family of God. Let's stay part of the family of God. So our third part, third point is obedience.

16:09 This is my commandment that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this than to lay down one's life for his friends. We love God. We abide in his love because he first loved us and died for us on the cross and rose again the first day... Or the third day.

16:33 Excuse me. And because Jesus died for us, in the same way, when I live at home, I love Christ and I love my parents, so I obey them. In the same way, this is how we live a life for Christ, is in obedience because we love him. First John chapter four. First John chapter four.

17:13 We went there earlier this morning. This is a a great parallel passage, and there's a lot that you can get out of this, John chapter 15. So I encourage you to, keep studying it. We're just doing kind of an overview. So John...

17:31 First John chapter four in verses nine through 16 says, in this, the love of god was manifested toward us that god has sent his only begotten son into the world that we might live through him. In his love, not that we love god, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the propitiation for our sin. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and his love has been perfected in us.

18:06 By this, we know that we abide in him and he in us because he has given us of his spirit. We have seen and testify that the father has sent the son as savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of god, god abides in him and he in god. We have known and believed that the love that god has for us, god is love and he abides in love, abides in God, and God in him. And verse 19 says, we love him because he first loved us.

18:42 Loving one another is a proof of the love of Christ in our lives. We love one another because god first loved us and the perfect going back to obedience, the perfect representation of obedience when God abided in his father's love on this earth, and Jesus Christ then came down and died for us on the cross, and he was in perfect obedience of his father in heaven. Verse 11 says... Verse 11. These things I've spoken to you that my joy may remain in you and that your joy may be full.

19:36 The results of all this obedience, of all this loving one another, the proof of God's love in our life is the fullness of joy that comes to our lives. There's a certain peace that comes to your heart and your soul when you know you are right with God and you've experienced his love and you have perfect fellowship with him. It is... It's knowing God in a in a more intimate way. And that that kind of parallels to what he says in the last verses where we become friends of God, and I'll get that...

20:22 Into that in a minute. So we have all of this abiding, this cleansing, and this obedience for our fruit bearing for Christ in this order of spiritual body. Now I wanna talk about three, four levels of fruit bearing that Jesus tells his disciples in John chapter, 15. So there's four levels of fruit bearing. There's number one, there's no fruit.

21:12 Every branch in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. If you don't bear fruit, you're either not saved or you have fallen so far away from Christ that it appears that you're not saved. I believe that this is up to each individual though. It's not our, place to, say whether a person is saved or not. And you can, again, think of this in the context of the vine, The one that doesn't bear fruit.

21:48 It's that branch that was growing nicely for the lord is growing, abiding with the vine, but then it dropped off onto the ground, and it's not producing fruit. For a Christian like this where you're not bearing fruit at all, Jesus Christ really has to strip everything away that is in hindrance, and this person might find a new identity in Christ. So our our second level of fruit bearing is just fruit. Verse two, it says, and every branch in me, every branch that bears fruit, he prunes. And I believe that this just fruit is a representation of what a new believer looks like, and I can remember back to when I was saved.

22:46 I was saved, 09/24/2006, and immediately after I was saved, the fruit started in my life. And right after Iwana, I was leaving to go home. And what happened was I... I'm a practical guy, I was only 10 years old at the time. And I wouldn't normally have seen this, but I looked out the window.

23:10 There was a pair of shoes sitting on the sidewalk. And I didn't know it then, but now I know that what the Lord was telling me in my heart and Holy Spirit was that you should go pick up those shoes go put them inside because that's the right thing to do. And that was some of the new fruit that was in my life. And I got back into the car afterwards, and my dad was... He he said to me, he's like, I guess that Holy Spirit's working in after...

23:40 In you after all. But I I believe, he was that day. So our third our third level is more fruit. Verse two, it says, he he prunes that it may mirror... That it may bear more fruit.

24:03 When we're we're abiding with Christ and going through this cleansing and disobeying of god's word, god will prune us and take away those things in our life that, don't bear fruit for him. What he replaces them with is those fruits of the spirit that we just talked about or just... We just sang about in Galatians five, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control. When God prunes us and then adds this new fruit in our lives, It becomes a part of who we are in our daily lives. So our fourth level is much fruit, and we're gonna try and, speed up here.

24:56 This is verses five and eight. Verses five and eight. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit, for without me, you can do nothing. By this, my father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, so you will be my disciples.

25:19 All of this cleansing and abiding in Christ, And when we come to this much fruit, that's what the Lord wants us at because that is our ultimate purpose here on earth, is to glorify God here on earth. He wants us in this level of fruit bearing, and I encourage you, as you go home today and dwell on this that you ask yourself what level of fruit bearing you're in. So now we get to the results of all this fruit bearing and abiding with Christ, and that is in verses fourteen and fifteen. Says, you're my friends if you do whatever I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends for all things that I heard my father...

26:25 From my father, I have made known to you. Because of all this abiding that we can do in Christ that the the disciples were doing on Earth with Jesus, they knew Jesus in a more intimate way and Jesus knew them in an intimate way and they were no longer just servants of god. You know, you can think of a servant as just obeying orders but now, they were friends of god and they knew knew the future and they knew what to do themselves. Just like that, we can be friends of God and know God in a in a more intimate way and know how we can lead the Christian life. He's given us everything.

27:56 And then there's these levels of fruit bearing, and I encourage you again to ask yourself, what level are you in? Because God wants us to be at the the ultimate level, which is much fruit so that we can glorify him. And then, are you a friend of God? And did you... Just like to close with this one verse from first John again, first John chapter five.

28:21 This is my prayer for the message that the Lord laid on my heart to John 15. Says... First John five verse 13 says, these things I've written to you who believe in the name of the son of God that you may know that you have eternal life and that you may continue to believe in the name of the son of God. And with that, I'll turn it over to Vinay.