Discovering Jesus in the Gospel of John pt 37 - John 15:1-17
Jesus is the True Vine
5/6/2011
Introduction – Last weeks message: “Ungrateful?” – this week could be called “Unfruitful?” The aim of the message last week was to protect us or cure us of the awful condition of an ungrateful heart. This week we will aim to be cured of or protected from an unfruitful life.
Do you ever feel that your spiritual life is dry? Do you feel like your Christian life isn’t actually making much of a difference – that there’s not a lot of fruit being shown?
Are you seeing an overflow of spiritual attitudes in your life, such as: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control?
Is your life bearing fruit in terms of building others up in their faith? Helping others to come to faith in Jesus? Is your life having the sort of impact that God designed it to have?
Are you seeing evidence of God being at work in you and through you?
That’s what this passage is all about.
It’s all about an experience of spiritual life that produces something.
I know what it’s like to be spiritually dry. I know what it’s like to work hard for Jesus, but feel distant from Jesus. I know what it’s like to feel like my efforts aren’t actually producing much fruit.
You know what that feels like too.
It’s not what we want.
It’s not what we should settle for.
If we listen to what Jesus says today and do something about it, it’s not what we will experience.
Let’s get into our passage:
John 15:1a
“I am….”
Many of you will know that there are 7 key “I am” statements of Jesus that we find in the Gospel of John. We’ve encountered 6 so far and we are about to discover the 7th!
Let’s quickly recap the first 6:
1. I Am the Bread of Life
Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. (John 6:35)
Remember Jesus is talking to people who had seen or heard about Him feeding over 5000 people from one boy’s lunch. They wanted Him to keep doing it. Jesus told them to stop worrying about food that only satisfies us for a short time; and to start being concerned about what would give them life for eternity. Like bread that gives life to our bodies, Jesus gives life to all who receive Him. Unlike normal bread or normal water, you don’t have to keep getting more – Jesus is enough. Once you’ve received eternal life from Him you don’t need to try get it from anyone or anything else.
2. I Am the Light of the World
When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)
3. I Am the Gate
I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture. (John 10:9)
4. I Am the Good Shepherd
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (John 10:11)
5. I Am the Resurrection and the Life
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” (John 11:25-26)
6. I Am The Way, The Truth and The Life
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)
These 6 statements emphasise for us the incredible person that Jesus is. He’s our source of life; He’s our protector and provider; He’s our access to the Father and our fellowship with the Spirit; He’s light that dispels darkness, He’s truth that overcomes lies, He’s the way that guides us out of confusion. He’s assurance that overcomes fear. He’s life that overcomes death.
Our hope never rests on anything that we can do for ourselves – it rests entirely in who Jesus is; what He has done for us and what He has promised to do for us, in us and through us.
That’s what brings us to number 7…
7. I Am the Vine
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)
This is the key verse of this passage. I want you to memorise it and live by it. If there’s any verse that sums up the Christian life this is it.
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”
Take these words with you this week and they will cure you of spiritual dryness. They will cure you of spiritual unfruitfulness. They will guide you into a satisfying and effective life where the life of Christ courses through your veins and results in all kinds of evidence being displayed.
Let’s take some time to properly understand these words so that they can have their full effect in you this week.
We’ll return to verse 1:
“I am the true vine,”
I want you to hear the emphasis of Jesus here – He starts by saying not just that He is a vine or even the vine, but the true vine.
Why does Jesus bother to include the word “true” here?
It’s because in the minds of His disciples, there was another vine that they already belonged to before they even met Jesus.
Psalm 80:8-11
8 You brought a vine out of Egypt;
you drove out the nations and planted it.
9 You cleared the ground for it,
and it took root and filled the land.
10 The mountains were covered with its shade,
the mighty cedars with its branches.
11 It sent out its boughs to the Sea,
its shoots as far as the River. [1]
What’s this psalm talking about? The nation of Israel. They were the descendants that God promised Abraham. They were the chosen people God gave His laws through Moses. God brought into the promised land and established them as a nation, making them prosperous and fruitful.
Jesus’ disciples were part of this vine firstly because they were they were born into it and secondly because they observed the laws that governed it.
But Jesus is saying that He is the true vine. He is saying that God’s people are not defined by their ancestry or even by how well they live by God’s laws. God’s people are defined by their connection to Him. In Galatians chapter 3 Paul explains how this was always what God’s promises to Abraham and the laws given to Moses were all about.
Jesus was the One through whom Abraham’s descendants would outnumber the sands on the shore, we become spiritual children of Abraham because like him we trust in God. Jesus is the One that the law given to Moses was designed to drive people toward, because by ourselves none of us can keep God’s commands and qualify for His approval.
Paul finishes his discussion with these words:
Galatians 3:26-29
26 You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
Now Jesus needed to clear this up for His disciples, because He knew how important it was for them to never lose sight of where their spiritual life came from. Many people in Israel had gotten so caught up in their national identity and their laws that they had lost sight of God Himself, who founded their nation and gave them their true laws.
It’s very easy for people in churches to have the same problem. It’s easy for people to think that they are part of God’s family because they’ve grown up in church. It’s easy for people to think that they are in God’s family because they were christened as a child. It’s easy for people to think that they are in God’s family because they do their best to live by God’s rules. It’s easy for people to think they are in God’s family because they follow the traditions of their particular church. None of those things are what connects us to God.
When we read the New Testament – especially in the book of Romans from chapters 9 to 11 – we discover that God still has a very special purpose for the nation of Israel, even though they initially rejected Jesus. But they will only experience that when they realise that they need to be included with all those who have found life in Jesus. As a nation they need to realise that Jesus is the true vine, just as those first disciples of Jesus needed to understand that.
John 15:1-2
“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 so that it will be even more fruitful.
OK, so Jesus is the vine and we are the branches. Life flows into us through Him. We are sustained by Him. We bear fruit because we are connected to Him.
But God the Father wishes us to bear much fruit (v.5), not just a little amount of fruit and certainly not no fruit.
How do you become a person whose life is overflowing with good fruit? How do you get so spiritually healthy that you are bearing much fruit, in all it’s different forms?
Certainly it’s what God does – He prunes us to make us fruitful. What does that actually look like? Pruning is not a pleasant experience – does that mean that the process is painful? It involves cutting away dead or unproductive wood – does that mean that God is going to take away things from our lives that aren’t achieving His good purposes for us?
Jesus goes on to explain it for us:
3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.
The word “clean” here is the same basic word for “pruned”. Jesus has said that the Father will prune or cleanse them to make them fruitful, and then He says that God has already done that through the words Jesus has spoken to them.
Remember Jesus never spoke on His own, He spoke on behalf of the Father, truly representing the Father in all that He did and said. He explained this in chapter 14.
The image of the vine that Jesus uses in chapter 15 is a way of picturing what He had already talked about in chapter 14.
In chapter 14 He was talking about the fact that the Holy Spirit would come and be an indwelling presence with all Christians so that we have a real, personal connection with God the Father and God the Son through the God the Holy Spirit. Because of the Holy Spirit, we are able to be connected to Jesus even though He has gone back to the Father.
John 14:10-12
Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you are not just my own. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. 12 I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.
A lot of times people obsess over miracles, and they think that Jesus is saying that we will do even greater miracles than He did. As Chris explained a couple of weeks ago, that is not at all what this passage is saying.
The work that Jesus has been talking about was the work of speaking words! The fact that they were not just His own words is what the miracles proved. I believe that God still affirms His word by miracles at times today to prove that people are speaking His truth. However the general test is no longer miracles; otherwise we will have the same problems Jesus encountered - people will chase miracles instead of the truth that changes lives for eternity. The general pattern that God has established is the authority of His written word as the reliable record of what He has said and what He wants us to proclaim.
Jesus has asked us to continue speaking the very words of God, so that we and those who hear us might believe and so be saved, and that we might obey and so be made fruitful.
Hearing and speaking the words of God - and obeying them – is what God has told us to do. Jesus could only teach in one place at a time – we can do even greater things than He did because we can take His word to every corner of the world.
But we need to be careful:
John 15:4
4 Remain in me, and I will 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.
Recently I heard some research findings from Melbourne which reported that there is not a single approach to church growth that is actually working. Contemporary churches that grew rapidly during the last decade have started to plateau, and are growing more slowly than the population of the areas they are located in. Most traditional churches are shrinking in weekly attendance.
The problem is not whether you’ve got a million dollars worth of sound and lighting gear and a rock band or whether you’ve got a pipe organ; it’s not about whether you have a guy in robes speaking or a guy in ripped jeans and a T-shirt. It’s not about style and it’s not about programmes. It’s about something deeper.
Whatever methods we use, real spiritual growth does not come from what we do or how we do it, but what God does in us and through us. We can’t bear fruit by ourselves, we must remain connected to Jesus. We must have lives marked by the cleansing of His word. We must make the proclamation of His word our work.
We recently did a series on speaking the truth in love. This is why!
Remember the theme verse?
Ephesians 4:15
“Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ.”
The metaphor is a bit different (body not vine), but the idea is the same – it’s by the cleansing of His truth that we grow up into Jesus. It’s how we become fruitful.
Colossians 3:16-17
16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Is it enjoyable to receive admonishment? Not usually - It feels a bit like being pruned, there’s a sting to it! We need it sometimes. We also need the teaching and the singing together of psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in our hearts to God. These things cleanse us and prepare us for fruitful living.
Sadly, some churches seem to work on the principle that knowing and being able to recite God’s words is the same as being cleansed by them. It’s not. Judas heard the words of Jesus, but he wasn’t cleansed by them (John 13:10). Our relationship with Jesus is demonstrated in our obedience to His words, not our ability to recite them.
The greatest weakness in the Australian church is not a lack of programmes or innovative methods to reach people with the gospel. Our greatest weakness is a lack of discipleship. It’s a lack of training in obedience to Jesus that produces a transformed and fruitful life. The success of the church was never meant to be found by people paying their offerings so churches could put on better shows or become more professional. Churches are successful in their mission only when their people are fruitful.
John 15:5
5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.
May you go out today prepared to abide in Christ and bear much fruit as a result. May godly attitudes overflow from you. May you impact the lives of those around you in ways that point people to Jesus. May you abound in good works to the praise of your Heavenly Father. May you live beyond what you can do yourself as you allow Jesus to will and to act in you according to His good purposes (Phil. 2:13).
Don’t live for yourself this week. Don’t work for God this week. Live in God, be cleansed by His Word daily and bear much fruit.
[1]All Scriptures from The Holy Bible : New International Version. 1996, c1984. Grand Rapids: Zondervan.
