I know I talked about these first verses last week, but we can’t leave them until we have completed the thought process. This week we start out looking at John 15: 1-4 again
I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. 3 You have already been pruned and purified by the message I have given you. 4 Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me.
We need to realize that Jesus is restructuring the Jewish mindset. Throughout their thousands of years of history, the Jews thought of themselves as God’s special children, and they had a special connection to God because they were Jewish. The metaphors abound in the Old Testament to strengthen that idea. God’s plan was that they understood they were special not because of ethnic heritage but because they had a special relationship with God, a relationship very few outside of the Jewish culture had. Jesus is clarifying that thought here. He is saying, do not think you have a deep connection with God because of your cultural heritage only those that have my life flowing through, a nation is not the grapevine, I am! Further emphasizing his point of being the way, the truth and the life!
It is not unlike people in our culture believing because they are Baptist, Catholic, Presbyterian or whatever that they have a special place in heaven. We have eternal life only because of our relationship with the Father, through the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit.
What Jesus says here is a challenge to many people and some theologians. The Father removes every branch that was part of him that doesn’t bear fruit.
None of us can bear fruit on our own. We only have life because Christ is in us. So if we are not bearing fruit it is because we have slowly but surely cut off Christ’s flow in our lives, in effect we are no longer abiding in Him because otherwise we would bear fruit. What kind of fruit should we be producing?
One of my favorite scriptures is found in Psalm 1 and Jeremiah 17:7-8
But blessed are those who trust in the LORD
and have made the LORD their hope and confidence.
8 They are like trees planted along a riverbank,
with roots that reach deep into the water.
Such trees are not bothered by the heat
or worried by long months of drought.
Their leaves stay green,
and they never stop producing fruit.
Our trust in the Lord and our abiding/remaining/staying in Him causes us to bear fruit, but what kind of fruit? What fruit should we be looking for to know if we are remaining in Him?
Fruit of good works
Colossians 1:9,10a
So we have not stopped praying for you since we first heard about you. We ask God to give you complete knowledge of his will and to give you spiritual wisdom and understanding. 10 Then the way you live will always honor and please the Lord, and your lives will produce every kind of good fruit.
Each of us is called to do different things. We are each gifted in different ways, and we need to keep saying, “yes” to the Lord. If you are gifted and not using those gifts, then this fruit is not alive in your life. At the same time, you can’t limit your serving because you see what others are doing. If His life is flowing through you, you will naturally do good works, not out of obligation but out of his love pouring through you. Comparing that way is damaging, and we need to not compare but choose to be effective in God’s call.
Fruit of praise
Hebrews 13:15 (NKJV)
Therefore by Him let us continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.
Part of our fruit is a continual attitude of gratitude, remembering the good things God has done for us so others will know he is loving, kind, and merciful. We proclaim this praise daily as we tell others about what God has done for us, as we sing together in worship, and as we live an overcoming life in the face of all the fear, doubt, worry, and insecurity. That is a true sacrifice of praise and the fruit of our lips!
Fruit of Prayer
John 15:7,8 (which we will see again in a moment)
But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted! 8 When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father.
Jesus expects us to know His heart, the Father’s heart, and to always be led by the Holy Spirit. As we do, we see the world clearly through their eyes and can respond to what He is doing in the people around us. So, as we pray, we are fulfilling the Father’s heart, and we will pray more because we see all the needs in the world through His eyes and know what he wants to do about them. Our prayers become more fruitful because we are simply praying the Father’s heart in all things. We know what to ask because we know what he is doing and His heart.
Those of you that really know me will understand my emphasis of this last fruit, the…
Fruit of the Spirit
Galatians 5:22,23
But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!
This kind of fruit is seen more in our thoughts, demeanors, and actions. When we have the opportunity to shout out a snappy, snarky, comeback at someone, we resist that urge. Patience and self-control are at work. When life’s storms hit us hard, we choose to look for peace in the middle of our storm. We choose to love those who spew hate at us or disagree with our point of view.
This fruit is in contrast to the fruit of the flesh, where lust, wanting to sexually satisfy ourselves instead of love, looks to build up and give completely and unselfishly to others.
We may look at our failings with this fruit (please notice it is all one fruit not differing fruits, we don’t just gain one we gain them all by being in the vine) and feel we are not exhibiting this fruit in our lives, but I would encourage you to look at your life today compared to even a year ago and see how much you have grown
This is part of the fruit that we will see produced through our lives because we are “in Him” and He “in us!”
John 15: 5-8
“Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. 6 Anyone who does not remain in me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned. 7 But if you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask for anything you want, and it will be granted! 8 When you produce much fruit, you are my true disciples. This brings great glory to my Father.
As they are walking and talking, Jesus talking with His best friends is reminding them two things:
1) all they have to do to bear fruit is simply remain in Him, stay connected through prayer, the Word, and relationship with other believers if they do, they can do everything Jesus did. Honoring the Father in the process. But 2) if they break a relationship with Him, the Father will cut them off as a branch that does not bear fruit just sucks the life from other branches.
It’s all about the joy…
John 15:9-12
“I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. 10 When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. 11 I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow! 12 This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you.
Jesus is saying the same way the Father and I love each other, so the assumption then is also, does the Father love you? I proved my love for my father because I was completely obedient to him. “I always do what pleases Him!” John 8:29, so I expect you to do the same.
We were designed by God to fulfill our purpose that pleases Him and as we fulfill our purpose it is done by the Holy Spirit pouring through us because we remain in God’s love and our fulfilling what we were designed to do brings us and fills us with great joy. Such joy that we really can’t contain it! He is not telling his disciples or us in this passage to love the world but to look to love each other the way that He loves us!
How does he love us?
John 15:13,14
There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command.
Laying down our lives for each other! How do we do that? Look around and see the needs and do it! My friend Bill Wilson, Metro Ministries in New York, says, “You see a need you are called to meet that need! The need is the call!”
Pride, saying, “That’s not my call,” and fear of failure are all things that stop our joy and loving others as Christ has loved us. Laying these things down is what Christ’s call is for us! We are after all His friends
John 15: 15-17
I no longer call you slaves, because a master doesn’t confide in his slaves. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me. 16 You didn’t choose me. I chose you. I appointed you to go and produce lasting fruit, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using my name. 17 This is my command: Love each other.
In the Old Testament, he called Abraham, Moses, and Daniel his friends and the beloved. In the New Testament, John was the beloved disciple. Each of them he revealed the future and what He had planned to do. We are His friends, the beloved because he wants to daily reveal His heart for our broken world and what He is going to do. To the unsaved world, Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 5 that Christ will come “like a thief in the night” because they live in darkness but he goes on to say we will not be surprised because we are children of the light. Not that we can date set but as we are remaining in Christ we know His heart, understand the father’s heart, the Father’s joy and we will not be caught off guard or unexpected as those who are in darkness.
As we remain in Him, the intimacy of that relationship reveals more of the Father, his joy, our joy, our life, our hope, and our future.
We can live in the fruit of the Spirit because our intimacy has grown. As we live in that relationship, we can have the fullness of life.
If you are not there, just relax He pours his life through you. Get the blockages out of the way and allow the life of God to pour through you so you can have real daily relationship with Him