Let's pray for the message and also have a time of pastoral
prayer. Let's pray.
Loving Father, we thank you so much for your grace to us.
Thank you that today we can draw near to you.
You are a God who is not far away, and you delight to draw
near to us. And so as we have sung these
praises and these words of assurance, we thank you for who
you are. Thank you that you are a God who
cares what a friend we have in Jesus.
Thank you so much that during this past week we have
experienced your hand of protection, your hand of
provision and guidance, your love to us as a shepherd, your
care for us as the living eternal God, the Sovereign one
who cares for your children. And now as a church family, we
want to give thanks for answered prayer.
Thank you for bringing Dan and Nikki back safely from overseas.
Thank you for bringing the Fiji team back safely.
Thank you for all your mercies to us and your provision today.
Lord, we bring you our offering. We bring you this in worship to
you with the gratitude and with the prayer that it will be
blessed and multiplied, that you will bless your people, bless
the missionaries and those who receive these gifts that we have
brought to you. Further, we pray for those who
are unwell at this time. We thank you for continued
blessing and recovery for Ria and for Eleanor.
We continue to pray for their healing.
We pray for those who are unwell amongst us.
Lord, we remember those who are seriously unwell and requiring
treatment. We pray for your peace and your
comfort for them and your strength day by day.
Father, we remember the families amongst us.
Thank you for the young ones. Thank you for the gift of new
life. Thank you for the little ones
and for those who care for them. Father, we pray for our elderly
today. We thank you for them.
Thank you for their wisdom. Thank you for their experience
and for their friendship with us.
And we pray that they'll be encouraged in these days that
may be difficult, maybe cold. We pray that they might be
encouraged and strengthened for each day.
Father, today as we approach your word, Lord, we come to you
with reverence as Lee brings the message.
We pray that we'll have open hearts that you will bless your
word to us, that you'll help Lee as he speaks your word.
We thank you for the true vine. We pray that we might abide in
you. And we pray this in Jesus name,
Amen. All right, if you have your
Bibles this morning, go ahead and grab them and turn to John
Chapter 15. We are in the 4th week of our I
M series and this is looking at the seven I AM sayings of Jesus
as John recorded them. And today we're looking at I am
the True Vine. Dan asked me to share from this
passage as I've spoken from here before.
So if you one of those people with a really good memory, some
of this might be familiar. If you're new to Hook Annoy, or
if you're bit like me and can't remember what happened last
week, little one, a couple of years ago, this will all be new,
so that'll be good. Alright John, Chapter 15.
We're just gonna read out the 1st 11 verses.
Jesus says I am the true vine and my father is the vine
dresser. 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.
Well, really you are clean because of the word that I have
spoken to you. Abide in me, and I and you.
As the branch cannot be a fruit by itself unless it abides in
the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me.
I am the vine, you are the branches.
Whoever abides in me, and I in him, he it is that be as much
fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
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. If you abide in Me and My words
abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for
you. By this my Father is glorified
that you bear much fruit, and so proved to be My disciples.
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.
These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you
and that your joy may be full. This is probably given this
morning. Dear Lord, we thank you for
these words of Jesus. Lord, I pray that you would be
with us this morning as we unpack some of these and look
into them. We just pray that you'd guide
our thoughts and hearts. Help us to have ears to listen
to what you'd have us to learn this morning.
We pray in Jesus name, I mean. So this morning we're going to
look at three things. We're gonna look at the troubled
vine, the true vine, and the triumphant life.
So first of all, why did Jesus use this imagery of a vine?
Like many of the iron statements that we've seen last week, we
looked at shepherd and sheep, other things like bread, light,
door, Rd. These things are just object
lessons from everyday life, and Jesus used these to teach
theological truths to his disciples.
And vines and vineyards were a big part of the life in Israel.
In fact, in the 39 books of the Old Testament, 34 of them
mentioned vines or vineyards. So there's some history to this
imagery as well, this idea that Israel was a vine or a vineyard.
And a number of these times are mentioned in the old system.
And so I want to look at a couple of these.
And so if you want to turn, turn to Genesis chapter 49, almost
all the way back to the beginning.
And where? Read this together.
This is from the new King James version.
It's a little bit clearer than the SV in this instance.
It says the sector shall not depart from Judah, nor a
lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh comes.
And to him shall be the obedience of the people, binding
his donkey to the vine, and his donkey's cult to the choice
vine. He washed his garments in wine
and his clothes in the blood of grapes.
So this piece of scripture is a prophetic blessing.
And like a lot of prophecy, there's some dual meaning in it.
The context is Jacob is blessing all of his children, and this
part of the blessing is for Judah and for Judah's offspring.
And the blessing of Judah is that rulers and lawmakers and
kings would come from his descendants.
And then he paints this picture of rich blessings for Judah,
that there would be so many grapes on the vine that you
could tie a donkey up to it and not even worry about how much of
the fruit and the vine that the donkey would eat.
Or the wine flowed so freely you could wash your clothes in it if
you wanted to. And so this is the direct
listing to Judah. But on top of this, we see this
mention of Shiloh. And this is the Messiah.
And the promise is that he will come through this line of kings,
through the line of Judah. And of course that was fulfilled
in Jesus. You can't help but notice the
other parallels though in this passage.
You know Jacob spoke these words 1700 years before Jesus came
into Jerusalem. Riding on a donkey's coat is the
true vine to spill his blood so we can have our garments washed
clean by his sacrifice. Even today when we take
communion, we use grape juice as a reminder of the sacrifice His
blood spilt for us. No, this was a positive
blessing. It was good.
This blessing of riches. It was a blessing.
Promise of the Messiah coming there was all very positive.
So if we zoom forward 1000 years, we get to Isaiah the
prophet and he tells us that there's some problems and Israel
and Isaiah chapter 5, it's like a love song.
It's a love song about God lovingly building a vineyard,
vineyard for his people, Israel. He made it the very best.
He gave it the best location, the best soil, the best
protection, everything the vineyard could need to flourish
and produce the best grapes. But if we pick it up there in
verse 3, it says, and now our inhabitants of Jerusalem and men
of Judah judge between me and my vineyard, what more was there to
do for my vineyard that I have not done in it?
When I looked for it to yield grapes, why did it yield wild
grapes? And now I will tell you what I
will do to my vineyard. I will remove its hedge and it
shall be devoured. I will breakdown its wall and it
shall be trampled down. Despite the very best of
everything that God had provided for Israel, the vineyard was
failing. That was producing bad fruit
rather than good. This even tells us, for the
vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the House of Israel, and the men
of Judah are his pleasant planting.
And he looked for justice, but behold bloodshed for
righteousness. But behold an outcry.
The vine. This vineyard was producing bad
fruit and the reason for this in Israel was means sin.
Sinful men had taken God's blessing the very good
conditions He had provided and used them for their own gain,
bringing evil and not good. So God says he will tear it down
and he will replace it. The broken vineyard would be
rebuilt when Shiloh the Messiah comes.
And so from Isaiah, we zoom forward another 740 years and we
find Jesus, the promised Messiah.
And as he journeyed through Israel, he saw the results of a
broken religious system, a system that was meant to produce
good grapes but that only produced wild ones.
And the side came, not as many were expecting.
They thought he would come and rid Israel of all its enemies,
to get rid of the Romans who were ruling over them at the
time. But he came to replace a broken
vine with the true vine himself. We see Jesus constantly fought
with the religious leaders. He called them things like
Vipers and whited sepulchres because they were responsible
for the spiritual wellbeing of Israel.
They were meant to be looking after God's vineyard.
They've taken something which should have been good and
twisted it for their own greed and pride.
So this troubled vine, this religious vineyard needed to be
torn down and replaced with something bitter, something that
couldn't be corrupted by man's sin.
So in Jesus is saying, there I am the true vine.
He's saying that this broken vineyard would flourish again.
This time the vine couldn't fail because it was not reliant on
sinful man. It was built on a sinless
Messiah. That's fine.
Was the perfect vine. So we come to the true Vine.
We come to Jesus, you know, in Jesus day there was a lot of
different religious ideas, beliefs and practises.
There was a lot of different vines in the vineyard and this
hasn't changed even to today. So thought I'd have a little
look at the vineyard of New Zealand.
Oi dug into some of the stats from the last century in census.
That's not century last census in 2023 to see what vines we
have in our country. And so the biggest vine is this
ugly thing. This is the vine of no religion.
51% of our population in the last census have passed the 50%
mark for the first time. It's sad to think that as you go
about your day at work or school in your neighborhood, did over
half the people that that you see have no belief in anything
outside of themselves? They're their own God.
There's no higher purpose, no direction, no power in their
lives, Sandy. This number goes up.
The quality of our society goes down.
You have to look in the news to see that's the case.
A self focused society based on what man thinks and not what God
sees will not thrive. So what's the next step?
Well, this is one we could be happy with.
This is the Christianity, Those Who took Christianity and the
religious column 32%. But even that number has gone
down in the five years since the previous census has gone down
5%. There was 37 and of course not
all that claimed to be Christian are Christian and will have a
look at that a little bit more shortly.
So there are some other vines in there, Hinduism, Islam, LDS for
the most and the next most common.
I was all I was surprised to see this number was quite small.
Atheist .13 and they gave the gave the punchline away there.
There's more. You're more likely in New
Zealand to meet a Jedi than you are an atheist, which I thought
was kind of interesting. I want to zoom in on the the
vine of Christianity. 32% claimed to be Christian in our
land. So big some question how do we
know where the true Vine is? And all of us?
Jesus helps us out a little bit there.
He sees you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to
you. That's one verse three of our
passage that we read this morning.
Jesus words, his message, what we call the gospel is the only
true path to forgiveness and to wholeness.
The disciples, they didn't have the completed word of God like
we do. They couldn't read the New
Testament cause they were still living in it.
So Jesus is the living gospel. They were forgiven and made
clean because of their faith in what Jesus said and who he
claimed to be. As Jesus was walking with his
disciples, He was teaching them what this new vine would look
like, tearing down the old religious fines to replace it
with something better and new. The New Vine We're pleased to be
able to read the Bible, the completed Word of God today, and
specifically the Gospel of John. John was the one disciple who
really stressed this need for faith in Jesus.
He was led to write this gospel at the end of the 1st century, a
little bit later than the other synoptic gospels of Matthew,
Mark and Luke, And John focuses on the deity of Christ and
belief in their truth. In John's Gospel, the word
believe is used about 100 times, almost twice as many as the
other gospels. So what did John emphasise?
Belief so much? Because it's not enough to know
about Jesus. We have to do something with
that. Your faith and trust and belief
must be in Him. So what about those who look
like the Vine and our illustration but are not part of
the true Vine? Well, this is where we see the
God here that work in perfect unison, God the Father working
with the God the Son. We see this and this is 12 N six
of our passage and verse one that we see that Jesus sees my
father is the vine dresser in verse 2.
He said every branch in me that he does not bear fruit He takes
away, and very sexy says if anyone does not abide in me, he
is thrown away like a branch and Withers.
And the branches they gathered, thrown into the fire and boomed.
You might have noticed that illustration on the PowerPoint
this morning. It's got a bit smaller.
God the Father is the vine dresser and He removes anyone
who is not genuine in their faith.
I think one of the scariest passages in the whole Bible was
Matthew Chapter 7. This is 21 to 24 sees not
everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord will enter the Kingdom of
heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in
heaven on that day, Minnie will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we
not prophecy in your name and cast out demons in your name and
do many mighty works in your name?
And then I will declare to them, I never knew you.
Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.
The scary thing about this passage is that these people
that Jesus are talking about here would call themselves
Christians. They would be within our 32%.
They proclaim Jesus as Lord. They prophecy in Jesus name.
They even do mighty works in his name, even casting out demons.
And yet they lack one thing. They look like the vine.
They're next to the vine, but they're not in the vine.
Anyone can call themselves a Christian.
People tend to do it all the time that you're not on the
vine, you're not a Christian just because you claim the
title. You know you're not in the Vine
by how religious you look, the family you grew up in, the
church you go to, the people you hang out with, or even the
Christian service that you do. None of that makes you a
Christian. You must repeat of your sin and
your faith and trust fully be in the true vine.
There can only be 1 Lord of your life and it has to be Jesus.
Jesus experience at first hand someone who looked like the vine
but wasn't in the vine. He had these 12 men and didn't
eat 12 disciples and he was close to.
If we look at that just after our passage this morning in this
15, this is no longer do I call you servants, for the servant
does not know what his master is doing.
But I have called you friends for all that I have heard from
my father. I have made known to you.
He was closer to these men at times than his own family.
They've been with them through his whole journey.
They'd heard him preach, seen his miracles, and even done some
miracles themselves in his name. And you win.
One of these men were not in the vine.
Judas looked like all the other disciples.
His faith was not in Jesus, though he was not in the vine,
and he would ultimately betrayed Jesus.
We can see the difference in attitude if we go to the Last
Supper. It seems there.
Matthew 26 verse 20. When it was evening, he reclined
at table with a 12 and as they were eating he said, Truly I say
to you, one of you will betray me.
And they were very sorrowful and began to say to him, one after
another, Is it I, Lord? If you jump down to this 25, it
says Judas, who would betray him, answered and said, Is it I,
Rabbi? He said to him, You have said so
you see the difference there? Leaving the disciples said to
the Lord, Is it I Lord, that will betray you?
And one of the side will see is that I, Rabbi Jesus was not his
Lord, he was just a teacher to Judas.
So the question is, who is Jesus to you?
Is he just a teacher? Did he say and do some good
things, or is he your Lord? Romans 8 or sort of Roman's tin
this nines he's If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is
Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the
dead, you will be saved. So we need to be sure of this
this morning. Can you confidently say that you
are in Christ and that He is in you, that He is your vine and
you are His branch? From their starting point, we
can have a triumphant life. You know, most people out there
think that Christianity limits your ability to enjoy your life,
that it's all about rules and regulations that holds you back
from living free. Like so many things.
And in life, the truth is often the opposite of what our culture
tells us. So let's see what Jesus sees.
A triumphant look, life look, look looks like and verse 11
there he says these things I have spoken to you that my joy
may be in you and that your joy may be full.
Most people are pursuing happiness.
We all want to be happy, right? To experience joy in our lives.
As parents, we want our kids to grow up and be happy.
The world tells us that to do that, you have to have lots of
money, a nice house, nice car, good job, respect, fun, bigger
muscles, all that kind of stuff. If you get all those, you'll be
happy. That's what the world tells us.
But we know that this endless pursuit is never satisfied.
Chasing these things and even attaining some of them doesn't
bring the satisfaction we are told it will.
All these things can come and go either instantly or over time.
If your happiness is tied up in them, it can be devastating.
So when Jesus says he wants to give you his full joy, he's not
talking about a life of comfort or of ease or of getting all the
things that you want out of life.
It's actually better than that. The joy that Jesus talks about,
this full joy comes from two things that we're going to look
at now, relationship and purpose.
I'm going to see this from our passage.
This you want to see that full joy comes from relationship.
God created all the emotions that we feel.
Love, joy, contentment, happiness.
God created these. So it makes sense that we need a
relationship with the author of these things to fully experience
them. The 1st and most important
relationship is of course with the true Vine, with God the Son.
And verse 9 Jesus sees as the Father has loved me, so have I
loved you. Abide in my love.
Think about that love for a second.
As the Father loves the Son, so Jesus loves you in the same way
as the with the same magnitude. As the Father loves his Son,
Jesus loves you. It's an unconditional,
unchanging 100% love and abiding, and their love is a
pretty good place to be. Sometimes we don't think we're
very good at giving or receiving love.
We might not think ourselves to be worthy of love.
We might not trust the motives of someone trying to give us
love. Many times in this fallen world
we are hurt by those who are supposed to love us that we
humans fail. God does not.
His love is pure, reliable, and perfect.
You can experience true joy in your love and your life by
abiding in His love. For John, the author of our
Gospel this morning, this was an amazing thought to him.
In fact, in the Gospel of John, he never even uses his own name.
He only ever refers to himself as the disciple that Jesus
loved. He was so blown away by the fact
that God the Son would love him and would treat him as a friend
and would put him at the centre of his earthly ministry, that he
used that title instead of his own name.
And we can claim that title too. That disciple that Jesus loves.
What a privilege that is. There's a little verb that
happens all the way through this passage this morning, and the
word is abide, and the triumphant life is a life of
abiding in Christ. So what does that mean?
Certainly doesn't mean coming to church on a Sunday morning and
forgetting about Jesus for the rest of the week.
To abide with Christ as an even closer relationship than you
would have with your husband or wife or a best friend is to do
every moment of everyday with Jesus.
And the more we abide with Jesus and involve Him in the
day-to-day activities of our lives, the more our friendship
with Him develops. It's doing all of life with Him,
the big important things down to the smallest things.
Paul tells the Philippian church to pray without ceasing.
And we think, how is that possible?
We have other stuff to do, right?
We've got to work and we got commitments.
We've got family things, but when we understand this idea of
abiding with Christ, we realise it's not one or the other.
It's not prey or work or prey or take care of other commitments
as to do both. To abide is to do all those
things with Christ. It means we leave those lines of
communication open even when we're busy with our day-to-day
activities or even if we don't have anything to say.
Abiding and praying without ceasing is the same thing as
doing everything in life with your best friend.
When we abide with Jesus, something starts to change
within us. As we learn more about Him, we
start to view the war world more through His eyes that priorities
begin to change and we can begin to become more focused on the
things that He cares about. Look at this incredible verse
from first number seven. If you abide in Me, and My words
abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done
for you. When we abide in Christ, when
His words abide in us, we desire what He desires.
The needs of those 51% of people who don't know Christ we
mentioned earlier, or the needs of our brothers and sisters in
Christ become far more important than money, positions or status.
And He promises to answer our prayer in these things.
So full joy comes through a deep relationship with the true Vine,
through abiding with Jesus. Secondly, we also see that full
joy comes from purpose and justice.
As we find joy through abiding in Christ, we find purpose
through abiding in Christ as well.
So what is our purpose? Verse 5 it says I am the vine,
you are the branches, whoever abides in me and I in Him.
Here it is the bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do
nothing. The Grapevine just has one
purpose, right? To grow grapes when we were in
the Viner price, we had one purpose too.
To grow fruit. Sounds like it should be easy,
but it's not. Our lives are busy, we get
distracted, we get caught up in the day-to-day things and we
forget our purpose. Sometimes we even fall into the
trap of trying to produce our own fruit.
There is good news from our passage though.
If we are in Christ and we abide with Him, we will bear fruit.
Just as those who are not in the vine cannot be a fruit, those
are in the vine can't help but be a fruit.
We are told twice in this passage, though we can't be a
fruit by ourselves. The fruit comes from the life
given from the vine, the strength, the nutrients.
The power is drawn through the vine and out to us, the
branches. The closer we get to Jesus, the
more fruit will be produced. The fruit grows through us and
not by us, and hurting our lives doesn't need to be some green
gesture, right? Some huge thing Jesus tells us
that even giving a brother or sister a cup of water in Jesus's
name is fruit. And Jesus puts a lot of emphasis
on loving each other and growing fruit by this means.
We see in verse 12, This is my commandment, that you love one
another as I have loved you. So here's the challenge this
morning. Do you love the people around
you, your brothers and sisters in Christ as much as Jesus loves
you? So fruit comes in different
forms. There is fruit of evangelism, of
encouragement, of practical help as service and inviting in.
Christ will give us clues as to what He wants from us.
It will reveal opportunities for fruit to be produced through us.
Jesus didn't seek out people to help.
They often came to Him or he just came across them as he went
about his day. And it's the same for us.
We're told to minister where we are.
We God has put you with the people around you.
If they're unsaved, they need to be saved.
If they're Christians, they need to be encouraged in their walk
and that is the fruit that we can produce.
Christ will use what we have. He will do His work through us
and sometimes that might be just small, sometimes it might be
bigger. It's fruit when it's done in His
strength and for His glory. 1st 2 says that the triumphant life
is not an easy life. In fact, the opposite is often
true. Often it's the time of ease and
comfort in our lives that produces less fruit, and God
wants to produce much fruit in our lives.
So we read this and face #2 every branch that does be a
fruit, he prunes that a beer more fruit.
There's a vine dresser prunes the the the the vine to produce
more fruit and the following season.
So the Father brings us to to produce more fruit in the
following season. He lovingly brings temporary
pain into our lives for long term blessing to produce more
fruit in our lives. And sometimes that pruning is in
the form of cutting sin from our lives.
The Holy Spirit convicts us through the Bible or through His
people through circumstances that our sinful attitudes and
actions must be cut away for fruit to grow.
Sometimes it's just the difficulty and stresses of life.
Now they are a form of provement, pruning from our
loving Father. The pain of losing someone close
to us allows us in the future to comfort others.
Brothers and sisters in Christ who are going through the same
thing. Having to endure physical injury
or poor health equips us to help others who are in the same
situation. Even the heart of our own
failures can sometimes be used by God to produce fruit, helping
others who struggle with the same sin.
We produce more fruit because of the pain and providing pruning.
The true path of following Jesus is called the narrow path, and
it's called that for a reason. That's not a popular or easy
path, but it leads to a triumphant life.
A life that is not reliant on things going well, it's not
reliant on you getting all the things you want.
It's relying on two things that you can never lose and that can
never be taken away from you. Your relationship with Christ
and your purpose in life. Christ is the true Vine, the
sinless Son of God, the great I am.
We have the privilege of being His branches.
So my prayer for you this morning is that you are sure of
your position and the true vine, that you abide with Christ, that
He is the most important relationship in your life, and
that you be a fruit so that your joy might be full.
Let's pray together. Dear Lord, we thank you that we
can have a relationship with you.
We thank you Lord that we can walk with you everyday.
We thank you that we have the privilege of joining you in the
work that you are doing. I pray that you would be with us
this week as we go out into a week.
Pray this is if there's anyone here today who doesn't know you,
who is not in the vine, that today would be this day of
salvation for them. We thank you for all the good
things you've placed us with everyday for the privilege of
calling Jesus a best friend. Help us to abide in the love of
Christ, to produce food, fruit for your glory and your honour.
We thank you Lord, in Jesus name, Amen.