The other day I was listening to a Christian radio broadcast as I was driving back from seeing someone who is in prison in Princess Anne, Maryland. I won’t say the name of the pastor, but doctrinally he is considered sound and he seems to be relatively popular. And at the end of the sermon, the announcer came on and gave a commercial for the opportunity to go on a luxury cruise with the pastor to some exotic destination which I think was in the Caribbean. I found myself feeling a little jealous, I guess. I had just spent four hours visiting some guy in prison who is facing a life sentence, who lost his career, his wife divorced him, and now he just lost a custody hearing for his children and he has no way of seeing them or contacting them anymore. And I had to try to comfort him as he sat there and wept openly behind the glass partition. I had to try to convince him that God still loved him. That God would use this for good in some way. And I felt that I had failed to comfort him as I would have liked to. I found myself wanting to question God’s goodness and justice just as he was doing. Both of us struggling to keep the faith in the face of terrible circumstances. And against that background, the incongruity of the commercial juxtaposed with the reality of the prisoner’s ordeal seemed almost ludicrous.
There is nothing wrong with going on a luxury cruise with a Bible teacher I guess. But somehow I have a hard time reconciling drinks by the pool, and dancing on the Lido Deck after the evening Bible teaching seminar as being the epitome of the Christian life. That sort of thing sounds great and is certainly appealing on some level, but I find it at odds with the reality of my own and very many other’s experience as a Christian. And I find it at odds with the teachings of Christ and the apostles as well. We are told in Romans 8:17 that our glorification with Christ is directly tied with whether or not we partake in the sufferings of Christ. It says we are “heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.”
So at the risk of sounding “gloom and doom” and offending someone, I urge you to consider the context of the passage of scripture today, because Jesus is preparing His disciples for the rigors and trials and tribulations that are a real and present companion to the Christian experience which was true not only for the disciples, but for the modern church as well. So as we begin this chapter, let’s remember the context; it is dark, and the disciples are walking from the Upper Room where they had just observed the Passover, and where Judas had deserted them after being prophesied by Jesus that he would betray Him. Jesus has just told them that He is going to die, that He is going back to the Father, and that He is leaving them. He’s told them that He is going to send the Holy Spirit from heaven to comfort them, but they aren’t sure exactly what that means. Now it’s dark, and they leave the room and wind their way through the city of Jerusalem and around the temple walls, down into the ravine where the Kidron brook is flowing dark red with the blood of thousands of lamb sacrifices offered in the temple, as they make their way up towards the Mount of Olives.
The disciples are undoubtedly disillusioned, saddened, and probably more than a little depressed as they climb the hillside expecting to spend yet another cold night out under the stars as was their custom. And as they walk, Jesus is still talking to them. He is still teaching them, right up to the last moment. In spite of all the stress and concern that Jesus must have been feeling as He anticipated the torture that was in front of Him, yet His primary concern is for His followers. He has just said to them, “Let not your hearts be troubled, you believe in God, believe also in Me.” “Peace I leave unto you, my peace I give unto you, not as the world gives. Let not your hearts be troubled or afraid.” Then He said, “Let’s go, Let’s get out of here.” And they began their journey to the Mount of Olives, not knowing what distress was ahead of them, yet Jesus knew it full well.
As they are walking in the dark up the hillside, perhaps they passed a vineyard that someone had planted. And as was His custom, Jesus picked up on the metaphor at hand to teach them an important final lesson. He speaks of a vine, and it’s branches, and the fruit that one would expect from a vineyard. It was a metaphor that they were very much familiar with. Vineyards were everywhere in Israel. And Jesus had spoken of vineyards many times in His preaching, using them often as settings for parables. But they certainly also knew of them first hand. They were quite common in Israel.
In fact, they were a common metaphor for Israel in the Old Testament scriptures as well. For instance, Psalm 80 says in vs.8, “You have brought a vine out of Egypt and planted it in this land.” And Isaiah expounds upon that picture in the 5th chapter, vs.7, “For the vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel and the men of Judah His delightful plant. Thus He looked for justice, but behold, bloodshed; for righteousness, but behold, a cry of distress.” Isaiah goes on to paint a picture of a nation that had abandoned righteousness, and justice, and had spent it’s affection on drinking and carousing and taking advantage of others so that they might live luxuriously. And he prophesied that God would take vengeance upon them, vs.24, “Therefore, as a tongue of fire consumes stubble and dry grass collapses into the flame, so their root will become like rot and their blossom blow away as dust; for they have rejected the law of the LORD of hosts and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.”
As the disciples walked past the temple, they may have noticed on the gates of the temple was carved a large gold covered vine, symbolic of Israel. Israel had been the chosen vine of God, illustrated by the temple, the religious system which God had planted in Israel to give life to the Jews. But everything that the sacrifices and temple and ceremonies had portrayed, was actually a picture of Jesus. All the religious life that had been centered in Judaism, actually found it’s source in Him. The true vine was Jesus. The religious system centered in the temple was just a picture of Christ.
So Jesus says, “I am the true vine and My Father is the vinedresser.” Jesus is the life, He was the source of life for creation, nothing was made without Him it says in chapter 1 of John. He was the source of life for Israel, of which the temple and sacrifices merely pointed to. He was the Lamb that was sacrificed for the sins of the world. He was the rock in the wilderness from which came the living water. He was the manna from heaven. He was the light that was over the Tabernacle. And in the same way He is the source of life for the church. He is the Word of God. He is the Way, the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father except through Him. The disciples make up the first church who will represent Christ even as the temple and Israel was to have represented the Lord.
"My Father," Jesus declares, "is the vinedresser." This is the Father's work - he is the "vinedresser," the gardener who takes care of the vineyard. In Verse 5, Jesus clearly identifies that believers, the church, are the branches of the vine: "I am the vine, you are the branches." Furthermore, he indicates there are two kinds of branches - fruitless branches and fruitful branches. Thus right at the beginning of this teaching there is a clear indication that there are two kinds of believers. The difference between them is whether they produce fruit or not.
The first work of the Father in this great vineyard is: "Every branch in Me that bears no fruit'' (every fruitless believer) "he takes away.” I believe that this statement is actually made about believers, not unbelievers. In vs.6, Jesus speaks of branches that do not abide and are thrown away and burned. They are the unbelievers. But notice Jesus says in vs.2, “In Me.” He is talking about branches that are His, they are in Him. He is talking about a believer. But He is not saying that if they do not bear fruit God will condemn them to be burned with the unbelieving branches in vs.6. The Greek word translated “takes away” is airo, which actually means to raise up, or lift up from the ground. It’s not producing fruit because it isn’t getting enough sunlight, it’s lying on the ground. So there is a work of the vinedresser to lift up unfruitful believers by exposing them to the light. Fruitfulness is the result of maturity and training and discipline. So there is a need for that with unfruitful believers and God knows those who are His, those who are in Christ, and He will lift them up to make them productive. He will raise them up to get them up out of the earth, out of the world, so that they might be exposed to the light of truth, which will train them in righteousness, producing productivity. So lifting up is speaking of training, discipline which leads to greater fruit. As Heb. 12:11says, “All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.”
The second work of God towards believers is to cleanse the fruit bearing branches. Jesus said in vs.2, “every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit.” The word here, "prunes," really should be “cleanses." Because vs.3 uses the same word translated as prunes and has it as cleans. “You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you.” Now they are both referring to the same thing, so it’s just a matter of semantics. But for consistency they should be the same.
But perhaps the reason why the word "prunes" is chosen is because it’s speaking not as being "cut off" but "cut back." This is also what vinedressers do. They not only go through a vineyard and cut off shoots, but they cut back others so that they will bear more fruit. They are cleaning up the branches by cutting them back.
I have these knock out rose bushes by my house that I transferred years ago from a development that I was working at. And in the development, every so often the landscapers would prune those rose bushes back so much that I thought it was ridiculous. I thought it looked terrible when all these thriving rose bushes were cut so far back. I didn’t understand why it was necessary. So I left our bushes alone. I let them grow bigger and bigger. Today I have the biggest knockout rose bushes that I’ve ever seen. But the thing is, they don’t produce many roses nowadays. They have bare areas where nothing grows and sometimes hardly any roses bloom at all.
So it is with vines and fruit. God sometimes cuts back fruitful vine to the point of one thinking that they are cut too far back. They look like He might have killed them. But God knows that the trials and tribulations that we experience which we think are killing us are only designed to make us more productive. As the hymn “Great Is Thy Faithfulness” we just sang says, “The flame shall not hurt thee, I only design, thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine.”
Pruning, or cleansing is a drastic process. Jesus is clearly teaching here that this is what the Father will do in our lives to make us bear more fruit. He will drastically cut back our lives in a cleansing process. In a vineyard, pruning also removes dirt, cobwebs, dried leaves, and fungus that chokes out growth. And according to the Lord in vs.3, in the life of the believer, this is done by the "word which I have spoken unto you.”
God will use circumstances and trials in a Christian’s life to bring us to the point where the word of God can cleanse us. Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”
So the word of God is the knife that does the pruning. Affliction exposes those areas that need pruning. Charles Spurgeon spoke of affliction as the dresser, someone that dresses out game. He said, “Affliction is the dresser that removes our soft garments and lays bare the diseased flesh, so that the knife may get at it.” Affliction makes us ready for the knife, to prepare us for the Word of God. So Spurgeon continues, “It is the Word that prunes the Christian. It is the truth that purges him. The Scripture made living and powerful by the Holy Spirit eventually and effectively cleanses the Christian.”
Has the word of God ever corrected you in some painful way? I know in my life I went through a time of severe trial, of severe affliction, and I turned to the scriptures to try to understand what was happening. To know what God was doing, or if in fact it was Him that was doing it. And why was He doing it. And ultimately, the word worked in me to prune away deadness, to cleanse me from corruption, chipping away to change me and make me look more like Christ. To conform me to the image of Jesus by taking away things that were hindering me in my Christian life. It was painful, but it was necessary if I was going to be fruitful.
Many of you have had some experience of this. Sorrow, disappointment, los, or some experience of life left you shocked and hurt, feeling cast off and rejected. Yet here we are encouraged to remind ourselves that this is the work of a loving Father who does it so that we may "bear more fruit.”
But that raises a very important question. "What exactly is this fruit that God is expecting from us?" The reason our Lord does not identify it directly is because it was already clearly identified in the Old Testament. There, in the passages on the "vine," especially in Isaiah 5, the prophet says that God came to the nation Israel, the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts, "looking for fruit," which he identifies as "justice and righteousness." But what he found was oppression and misery - mistreatment of others without, and hurt and misery within. He calls these "sour grapes" - not fruit of justice and righteousness that he had every right to expect, but twisted, self centered, sour fruit.
Paul speaks of the fruit of self centeredness and fleshly living and contrasts that with the fruit that God desires in Galatians 5:19. “Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.”
it is clear that the fruit which Jesus is referring to here is Christlikeness - his character reproduced in us. He is refining us, changing us, transforming us through trials and through the Word into representatives of Christ. 2 Cor.3:18 says, ”We all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another.” It”s a process. Sometimes it’s a painful process. It does not happen by magic, all at once. We are being changed from one degree of glory to another, "for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit." The image of Christ is the "fruit" that God is looking for.
I used to think that fruit was people that I had led to Christ. That was the emphasis that my church gave to fruit when I was growing up. Another misconception is that fruit is how much a church grows or how many people attend. But that’s not accurate. Bearing fruit is bearing the image of Christ in all that I do and say. Fruit is not more people, but people more like Christ. And doing that is made possible as you abide in Christ. Look at vs.4 and 5. “Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.”
That makes sense doesn’t it? If we are going to look like Christ, then we must have Christ in us, and we have to be in Christ. Now how does that work? Well, first of all, we must have the Spirit of Christ abiding in us. This is a supernatural transaction that comes as a result of our salvation. We repent of our sins, we are made holy by faith in Christ, and we are given new life by being born again in the Spirit. The Spirit of God takes up residence in us.
But we can have the Spirit of God in us and yet not be filled with the Spirit, nor do the works of the Spirit. It takes more than just a spark to make a car’s engine run. It also takes gas. So though we have the Spirit in us, we must also be attuned to the Spirit through the word. It’s not enough to say we have the Spirit in us, we can just lay back and cruise through the Christian life and if God wants something done He will do it all by Himself. We need to depend upon God, but we also need discipline. That’s the spark and the gasoline.
Some Christians emphasize dependence on God. But they don’t like the idea of discipline. They never read the Bible. They don’t go to church unless it’s a holiday or some special occasion. They don’t want to worry about training in holiness. They expect God to speak directly to them, and put them into automatic pilot. They float around expecting God to do all the directing, open all the doors, and they seldom bother to deny themselves. That kind of dependence without discipline results in empty spirituality, a fake piety that sounds good, but is in fact worthless. It’s what James referred to as “faith without works.” It’s dead. It’s like dead branches that produce no fruit. Abiding in Christ is a very practical thing. It’s abiding in the word. It’s abiding in His body, that is the church. It’s abiding in His commands, which produces holiness and Christlikeness. That’s the peaceable fruit of righteousness according to Hebrews 12:11.
But not everyone who says that they are in Christ actually are. Jesus said twice in Matthew 7, “By their fruits you shall know them.” So He says in Vs.6, ”If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned." If you are not Christ’s, then God will remove the fruitless branch and cast it into the fire. He is speaking obviously of the judgment against the ungodly.
That again is the work of the Father - removing the fruitless branches. Those like Judas who gather with the people of God for awhile and appear to be believers - they show a certain degree of life. Leaves may be present, they hang around with all the fruit bearers, but there is no fruit in themselves. Ultimately these people eventually leave the vine. They do not stay with the body. As the Lord makes clear, it is a process: There is first the "withering" of the life they apparently had for awhile. Then the branches are "gathered," then "thrown into the fire," and ultimately "burned." This is a reference to Matthew 25:41, when Jesus speaks of the end of the age, when the angels will come and gather out of the Kingdom of God all that are not His, and throw them into eternal fire, and they are burned. These are those that are not truly saved.
Like Judas, they may have looked the part. They were part of the church. They even performed works like healing and casting out devils. But they are not saved. Jesus speaks of these folks in Matthew 7:21, saying, “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; DEPART FROM ME, YOU WHO PRACTICE LAWLESSNESS.’”
Listen, this is a fact about church growth that doesn’t get any traction today in the relevant, seeker friendly church. God is not interested in numbers. He isn’t interested in large crowds of people that give lip service, but who are not truly being transformed into the image of Christ. He cuts away those that are not abiding in Him. He doesn’t want pew fillers. He wants disciples who are being made in the image of Christ. Don’t be discouraged when people leave the church. God adds, and God takes away. The church is the Lord’s and He will build the church. And God in HIs wisdom knows which branches to cut away so that the church will bear fruit.
Finally, let’s look really quickly at four evidences of fruit in the last five verses. Vs.7, "If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you."
The first evidence of a fruitful life is the impact of answered prayer. You become effective at praying. I’ve said it before, when James says the effective prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much, the emphasis should be on righteous. God hears the prayer of the righteous. So when you are abiding in Him, and His words are abiding in you, then you will receive what you ask for.
We must never forget that prayer and promise are linked together. Prayer is not a way of getting God to do what you want him to do, rather it is asking him to do what he has promised to do. We pray according to the promises. So if you want to make your prayers effective begin to read and study the promises of God. When you do, you will pray according to the mind and will of God. And, as Jesus says, whatever you ask will be done. That’s the first fruit. Abiding in Christ produces effective prayer.
The second fruit is in vs.8, ”By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be my disciples." Your righteous life will be a testimony to the transformative power of God. There is no greater witness for God than that of a transformed, sold out life. And that is how you glorify God. Again, not by lip service, but by proving to be a disciple. Abiding in Christ produces righteous living, which proves you are His disciple to a watching world.
Thirdly, vs.9-10, ”As the Father has loved me, so have I 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." The third fruit of abiding in Christ is that you will keep HIs commandments, and thus you will love Him. The fruit of love is that you keep His commandments, even as Christ kept the Father’s commandments. We are like Christ, because we are to Christ as Christ was to the Father. So abiding produces love, and love produces obedience.
Then the last evidence of fruit is in vs. 11, "These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full." Notice, that My joy may be in you…What was his joy? In the 12th chapter of the book of Hebrews vs.2 it says of Jesus, "who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame.” What was it that filled his heart with joy as he faced the cross, and enabled him to go through that terrible ordeal? It was the expectation that he would be the instrument of redemption for the entire world - that a host, a great harvest of people, would be changed and redeemed and restored, real life given to them - by his work on the cross. In other words, his joy was the joy of being used of God.
That is the greatest joy anyone can know. There is the inheritance of the believer; the fruit of the Spirit - love, joy, and peace. Those are the three themes of chapter 14 an 15. Not as the world gives, but as God gives, as Christ illustrates, and we imitate. And as we abide in Christ and He abides in us, we can experience true love, joy and peace because He is the source, the Vine, and we are the branches which abide in Him.
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